SIGNS THAT YOU ARE SUFFERING FROM DESPOTIC TOTALISM:
Morpheal
Now remember these are signs, indicators, and everything can happen,
by chance in unmanipulated life, outside of a dictatorship, totalism
or despotic system. However, the violently destructive patterns
causing resigned despair among the many, who urge a “sane” sense of
futility of striving, as their answer to what they see as “reality” is
something different. Distinguishing normative bad luck from totalistic
despotism is not always easy, but if the signs are too persistent and
repetitively experienced, you have a strong indication of where you
are pinned down.
1). You recognize a strong pattern, with few or no exceptions to that
pattern, across a significant number of instances, which is outside of
normal life expectations. This is harder for people who have lived for
a significant part of their lives under a totalistic, despotic,
regime. They are too accustomed to the patterns being abnormal and do
not know what a normal experiential pattern really is like. The
pattern you recognize has strong personal significance, and is an
obstacle rather than nurturing or facilitating development of your own
potential, contrary to personal aptitudes and interests, and
peculiarly damaging to efforts at achievement.
2). You experience social manipulation where you function as if free
to associate with whomever you happen to choose and who in return
allows you to associate with them, but the chosen relationships never
work out to any reasonably expected results. You find that the
development of those freely chosen relationships is peculiarly
difficult, or outright thwarted. Even if you severely limit your
expectations below social norms, the results still fall below those
expectations with routine predictability. This is to be distinguished
from outright hostility against your joining. The social door appears
open. You can enter. No one stands in your way or challenges you in
any significant manner. Nevertheless, you find that the results of
social investment do not have a payback, whereas you find other
groups, whom you have no desire or interest as to joining or
participating in pay a higher dividend, for nearly no social
investment. Clearly you feel someone is messing with your social
capital and thwarting your freedom to invest where you choose. Clearly
you are not in a social “free market” even if you were taught that you
are and are expected to claim that you actually are “free” to invest
socially and reap increase in social capital according to your own
free choice.
3). You experience sudden, inexplicable, repeated instances of loss
where you have reasonable expectations of continuity of social
dividends, from having invested more heavily than you tend to invest
in relationships on average. The relationships you value, for the sake
of social capital, are terminated without reasonable expectation, or
warning, often in exceptional ways, under peculiarly suspicious but
unexplained circumstances. You lose your investment. You get no social
dividends. You are discouraged from further investments of that type
by repeated instances of that type of unpredictable and exceptional
failure of social investment, and the damage from the loss is damage
tied to your efforts at achievement, in terms of your own potential,
personal interests and aptitudes, and your own free choices from among
the social spectrum that is accessible to you in your socio-economic
circumstances.
4). That brings us to that point of repeated disappointment. You
invest in what you believe in, are interested in (often shared
interests in common with others), and you find that the positive
beginning and the social investment, even if it appears to be going
well, is doomed to create disappointment. When this exceeds the
statistics of what is normative, and you know you have done nothing
unusually wrong, you know you are a victim of toalistic despotism.
5). You experience an unusually rigid class structure barrier which
stops you from communicating, relating, and collaborating with those
who are doing better than you are, in relation to your personal
interests, aptitudes, and goals. You find you simply don’t have any of
those chances, and you find that others at your own level start
pointing out how they, with less interest, less aptitude, lower
aspirations as to goals, and sometimes some very negative
characteristics and habits, have the chance, and can boast about it to
you with surprising regularity even if you never told them about your
own experience. They don’t know you that well, but their behavior is
strangely relevant, rubbing it in, outside of the statistics of
chance.
6). You experience tokenism. You get repeated instances of a chance to
sample, but you never really get more than a taste to wet your
appetites. Then it is gone, with remarkable regularity and nothing at
all to replace the desired opportunities, experiences, situations. You
were given the illusion that you were getting the chance, but as soon
as you believe in it, it is completely gone. Poof. Vaporized. Totally
an illusion. You find that that is at variance with the experiences of
some others who again take pleasure at your disappointment, if you
chance to express it. Well, that is all ordinary competition, isn’t
it ? Not quite, but their reaction might be. You find you are
becoming increasingly disillusioned, no longer able to believe in what
might be tokenism, being realizable as anything more than the fleeting
illusion that tokenism is. Then despotism has begun to win and you are
losing ground to its persistent violence.
7). You experience repeated instances of entrapment. You are
reasonably sold on something, and given a variety of apparently
disconnected, not communicatively or causally related, positive
experiences to sell you on the potential of the situation. When you
invest, buy into it, socially or financially, or both, you suddenly
find it is all a bill of goods. You have spent effort, time, and
money, to get nothing of what you were being lured to bargain for.
This can happen in personal relationships, occupational pursuits,
personal business endeavors, or attempts to develop talents and
aptitudes to their fuller realization. Now, once or twice,
disconnected by causality, is part of normative live. When it happens
too often, you know you are in totalistic despotism.
8). You feel you can choose freely, among available ideas, such as
are apparent in some others lives around you. However, when you choose
in any way outside the most mainstream and narrowly ideological
position prevalent in your society, you find that you only get the
most negative side of the experience of what you chose. Suddenly there
is no positive side for you to know. You only get the nasty side, not
the pleasant. It acts as a type of persistent conditioning of your
choices and responses to ideological conformity with the prevalent
system. You try to fight it by choosing differently, but you find that
the result is the equivalent of a high voltage electro-shock, even if
it is not physical, but rather socio-psychological in nature. Bad
experiences add up and too many bad experiences tend to put a person
off of whatever it is. Most people give up relatively easily, but some
persist, depending on the strength of the attraction and interest.
Some never give up. Might be some eventually die, still trying to
fight for their freedom of choice. Always some others have the free
choice in question. It isn’t unique and something no one else has got
and certainly it is never something that no one else has any positive
experiences of or within. It is always something that seems to be
available to choice, but ends up being unavailable to any positive
realization of the choice. Despotism particularly loves this little
trick as it is so very hard to fight against. The argument that there
is always prejudice against minority views, and minority interests, is
insufficient and in fact illogical when you examine society more
carefully. Despotism, however, loves that argument as much as the form
of torture that it allows despotism to utilize, often so
successfully.
9). You only get the opposite of whatever your personal choices are,
no matter what those attractions entail and quite without any real
moral or ethical justification. It is simply that free choice as to
what attracts is severely opposed beyond statistical norms for the
population. What attracts and what you strive to know is as if
completely unavailable to you. However, the opposite, and therefore
what you do not particularly like and perhaps cannot even tolerate
much if any of, is peculiarly prevalent and responsive. Whatever
attracts you is peculiarly non responsive. For instance if you are a
person who only feels strong enough sexual attraction to people who
are thin, and of the opposite sex, you find that those are completely
disinterested in you and unresponsive. Instead only fat people of the
same sex are responsive, and show real interest, contrary to your own
choices. Of course despotism likes the argument that some people fall
for that says that you were simply making the wrong choices for you,
and that you should be more open to what is interested in you. Well,
that doesn’t really hold up under real logical scrutiny in any real
way at all. Of course I used the sexuality and body type example
because it is easier to understand. It is not something limited to
sexual attraction, or body types. It could be that if you are
interested in being a particular occupation, and know you have some
talent for it, you find that the people you need to know and enter
into activities with in order to pursue your dream are peculiarly
disinterested in you and unresponsive to you. However, people in some
opposed occupation, which you have no personal interest in, and no
special talent for, will offer you more than statistical normatives of
what you needed from those others who _all_ suddenly went dead cold to
you, for no apparent reason. Negative and positive reinforcement away
from rather than towards what attracts your own choices. That is
despotism. It works that way. It dictates against your every choice,
to break your will power, and end any of your choosing. In this way
your political will is also broken.
10) If you take up a special cause and side with the group that you
feel is right and true in its position, you end up spurned, strangely
ridiculed, and ostracized, by that same group. Instead you find that
the opponents of that group, of the opposite position in life, welcome
you, take you seriously, and include you. Well, that makes a big
difference if you have black political activism on the one hand and
the KKK on the other. Similarly a big difference if you have achieving
peace as your goal, and you get kicked out of peace movements and
inducted into an army to fight a violent conflict, but with no other
choice as to belonging. You are simply forced into the opposite side
of the equation after making your own choice known as to your own
freely chosen position.
Apply the same idea to any similar situation. For instance male/female
equality and those believing in it reject your faith in that
fundamental principle, but those of religious fundamentalist
persuasion where the man must be always the “head” of the woman and
lead her to righteousness because she is deemed unable to do anything
right or good without his direction, quickly seek your inclusion among
their midst. Rejection and acceptance, totally manipulated is a sign
of despotic totalism. When it is ideologically blatent it is easiest
to discern, but many people still fail to discern it in their own
lives so it is tending to triumph.
11). Playing on your human needs, such as food, shelter, sex
(according to your own sexual gender and sexual predilection), and
perhaps social acceptance or inclusion, and certainly the very
important factor of some sort of support structure (in economic and
psychological terms) is another sign of despotism. Extremist religions
and extremist politics have used that forever. It’s not new, even if
the mechanisms for the manipulations based on playing on needs, on
deprivation and reward in terms of needs, and in terms of terrorism
with contrary situations than those that an individual is able to
adapt to and function properly within, tend to be increasingly subtle.
Could write a whole article simply on this one, but no need to. It’s
easier to discern. I recall those instances where someone could not
find a spouse, of any persuasion, unless they were first willing to
accept and prove psychological internalization of a belief in Jesus.
Well, it does happen in our North American world of today. It should
never happen, but it does. That’s only one example. Don’t stop at
religion. Don’t stop at the problem of Jesus. Don’t even stop at the
problem of people finding a match, as to having a spouse, and thus a
life partner and support structure. It goes far far beyond that.
12). You work hard, suffer incredible hardships, make amazing
sacrifices, to achieve the means and ways to do something you always
dreamt of doing and wanted to do. Soon as you have those means and
ways, in order, having suffered on a shoestring and nearly starved of
most of the pleasures of life, to get to having a chance at your
dream, whatever circumstances you needed for continuance of your hard
work on achieving it, is suddenly gone. It’s as if some evil genius,
letting you get that far, pulled the rug suddenly and violently right
out from under you. All your hard work to exhaustion. All your
searching and finding. All your researching through the jungle of
competitive lies. All your preparation and skills learning. All your
investment, in terms of time, money, and labor. All of it suddenly
attacked. Unexpectedly attacked. You are inexplicably, suddenly and
overwhelmingly undermined, sapped, and broken down. What happened ?
Ok, it was bad luck. Let’s use the normative thinking. You get up,
somehow from the floorboards, finding no one ever helps you up off of
them anyway, to begin again. So you pursue your dream. You build it up
again. You invest your time, money, effort, again. You see the holy
mountain of success not far forward in the distance. Then just as you
feel confident again, invigorated with the goal in sight, and feel a
sense of new progress, bang, it all comes down again. The rug comes
flying out from under you, completely unexpectedly, bringing you
violently and suddenly down. Now you still believe it was pure luck,
pure chance, purely a coincidence ? Try it three times, and tell me
then it was a pure luck, chance, coincidence... and some people have
tried that many times to achieve their dreams, their holy mountain to
climb and get to the top of. No, in totalistic despotism it isn’t
purely luck, chance or coincidence. Also you cannot expect that the
amount of effort, investment, and sacrifice that you put in will buy
the opportunity that you strive to gain. Someone else with no effort,
no investment to speak of, and no real sacrifices, might be seen
laughing at you from above. Then you know what despotism really
means.
13). Simple, usually fool proof, reliable as clockwork, situations in
life suddenly start to go wrong with amazing statistical regularity
and you get more and more entangled in trying to fix, rectify, and
remedy what should have been relatively logical, simple, easy matters
to take care of. Except that now they aren’t. They become major
entanglements consuming more and more of your time, money, energies,
and resolve. You get more and more beaten fighting fights you never
thought would ever need fighting, as to trivial issues that you never
were taught or knew could ever require that much fight. You become
more and more exhausted and no amount of pleas as to cooperation,
rationality and common sense are of any use. Now you know you are a
victim of despotic totalism. That’s the way it can work, and often
does.
14). You find that too man people whom you treated right, and with due
respect, and whom you made your effort to please, for their sake and
for mutual good of you, their selves and the groups involved (if any),
treat you exactly the same, irrationally wrongly. Now, remember, these
different people, not even knowing each other, treated you wrongly and
they all did something too similar to be ignored. Now there is a
problem. And nothing you could do about it. They all did you wrong.
They all did it similarly. They all disparaged, demeaned, ignored, and
failed to recognize your best efforts, what you really accomplished,
and of course your real potential (proven and as yet unproven). You
lose but you needed to win and you did your best to do everything as
right as the situation would let you. Well, you must have made one
small mistake. After all you are human. The key in this one is
different people, in all probability not knowing each other or you and
certainly not knowing much if anything on that, all became reflections
of each other, outside of statistical norms, and contrary to your own
best interests. They did similar damage to you. If you complain you
will be labeled paranoid. That won’t help, so shut your mouth. Besides
that you have no solid proof. No evidence as to their doing it to you.
And if there was a conspiracy, as is unlikely according to the facts
and very irrational and illogical to assume, outside sociological
norms for the situations involved, you could not prove it anyway. So
you take your lumps and move on, but you are damaged and you cannot
achieve what you sought to achieve in consequence of those contrary
and essentially unpredictable, unforeseeable, actions. A lot of people
ignore those types of patterns. I have heard about them happening.
They are more frequent than you might think. The root cause, however,
is despotism. Despotic pawns leading others in a despotic system which
manipulates its lesser despot pawns, but gives them some small
privilege for being despots and remaining manipulable tools of
despotism.
15). You are always treated differently, as if privileged in some way,
but it always proves to be contrary to your own best interests. You
get more work to do for less pay. You don’t get any of the “frills”
such as benefits, holidays, perks that others get, but you have the
position, the responsibility and the stress to deal with same as
anyone in the role. You simply don’t get compensated for it like the
others do. And heaven help you if you make even one mistake, but the
others make mistakes all of the time. Then no matter how long time you
manage to hang on and remain responsible, trying to equalize your
position with others by means of meriting it, you inevitably fail. You
must have made one mistake. That’s it. That’s the end of you. Well, if
you chance into that once, you might in fact be unlucky. Twice, really
unlucky. However compare your luck to the average and three, four,
five, times you know you are a victim of despotism.
16). You meet each challenge that you are given, and you exceed the
performance of others, repeatedly, in terms of some achievements, some
accomplishments, some dedication and endurance even when suffering
extreme adversity, opposition or deliberate distraction. However, you
can never achieve enough in anything, even in what you are best at and
particularly gifted at doing. No, its never enough. Never enough money
spent to buy your way in. Never enough social capital gained. Never
enough production. Never enough of whatever it is never enough of, but
always never enough of something else and something more. That in any
area of life. Ah, again you know you are a victim of despotism. In
totalism you can never be good enough, no matter how hard you try. You
are always a failure no matter what you do, and no matter how you do
it.
Eventually only the system is right, and you are forever and always
wrong. That is how totalistic despotism functions in the world. If you
see that trend you know you are its victim.
17). You invest heavily into something, in all the ways I mentionned
before, and everyone is eager to join in while you do so. Everyone you
ask is all for it. They are all friendly, inviting, socially
welcoming, smiling faces of encouragement. Then when you are ready
with the efforts, the means and ways, that they all were so
encouraging that you acquire, you find there is no one interested. No
one smiles anymore. No one is friendly. No one is available anymore.
Seems you were led down the garden path to nothing. Disillusion,
disappointment, and it can bridge across many social divides where the
people in each individual group do not even know each other, and yet
behave synchronously. You would never predict that happening if you
know conventional social psychology and sociology reasonably well
enough. It is not consistent with normative science, but you witness
it happening and you know you are a victim of totalistic despotism.
I am sure there are more indicators of people being victimized by
despotism. I am sure there are far more ways to kill a man or woman,
without leaving a mark on their bodies and without using any substance
or implement of physical violence, than are dreamt of in most
imaginations. These are some signs of being killed by totalistic
despotism. The death can be slow, agonizingly painful but tends to be
unrelenting until those who are victims of despotic tyranny give up
their own lives, dreams, hopes, goals, and give in completely,
hopelessly, to the despotic system. After all, in despotic totalism no
individual has any real talent of their own. They have no real
accomplishments or worth of their own. They have no value as
individuals. They have no worth in anything they do or could ever do.
There is only the system. It is the only and highest worth. It is the
only value. There is no individual. There is only the jackbood of
despotism stamping forever upon a human face that forever ceases to be
recognizable.
I know that knowing these signs of despotism others will find more
signs of despotism and will add their own to this little collection
that has been gathered in various ways, by various means, and that I
have attempted to expound herein. Yes, do so. Revealing despotism,
revealing tyranny, revealing totalism does tend to kill it, before it
kills us all.
Robert Morpheal
dearcilla
> SIGNS THAT YOU ARE SUFFERING FROM DESPOTIC TOTALISM:
I know what you're talking about. In my experience, two things help:
taking meds, and having a dialogue with that which is oppressing you.
But don't talk to other people about your experiences in a way that
worries them, if you don't want to be institutionalized.