Response to the "Knowledged" Master-Debater
jum...@my-deja.com
Well, Pyro, I'm not the one you need to "convince" but the GENERAL
AUDIENCE "out there" in this Cyberspace LaLa Land. You're NOT DOING
VERY WELL at present, and here's why:
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> Listen, eunuch ...
I'm listening, but the fact that you feel the need to go about
-telling- other people to listen points to the likelihood that THEY
really don't WANT to listen to you. If you were a great musician
then you'd NEVER need to "force" others to listen to you. The BASIC
QUESTION is how much readers of this newsgroup would *-PAY-* to read
your product, not whether you can "force" them to listen to you.
That's the TEST of its worthiness. Most on this newsgroup might say
instead that -YOU- should need to *-PAY-* -THEM- to read your stuff.
YOUR FALSITY #1: I'm not a "eununch" so you're off on a wrong foot.
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> ... you are right on the fact that nothing is more
> essential than TRUTH.
YOUR FALSITY #2: I did NOT say nothing is more essential than truth.
I asked: ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
WHAT DOES NIETZSCHE OFFER THAT IS MORE ESSENTIAL THAN TRUTH ???
^^^^^^^^^
You see, it's possible that Nietzsche -did- find something more
essential than truth, since you had said Nietzsche was asking his
readers to "question the value" of truth, even after Plato's
philosophers had ALREADY STIPULATED that truth was "highly valued."
So Nietzsche is POTENTIALLY on target.
YOUR FALSITY #3: A statement "nothing is more essential than TRUTH"
is -NOT- a fact, since Nietzsche had questioned it BY YOUR OWN
WORDS and Plato's philosophers said it was merely "highly valued."
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> The problem is that after proclaiming that,
> you say this: "Cochran, Marsallis, Kenny Drew Jr., George Russell,
> Duke Ellington, John Hicks, Amal Jamal, etc." (you left behind
> Oprah Winfrey) "are cultural treasures, leaders of civilization,
> etc." You enshrine them to the level of Socrates and Mozart.
YOUR FALSITY #4: Cultural treasures are by nature -incomparable-
to each other, since as you stated earlier, even with Mozart's DNA
we couldn't guarantee "another Mozart" through cloning. Also, one
could not expect of Mozart to write Shakespeare, or Socrates to
write the music of Mozart, Wagner, or Richard Strauss. So there's
no "level" to speak of when referring to "cultural treasures." Art
and the "cultural treasures" of art, are NOT matters of "levels" by
which they can be measured, tallied, rendered accounts, quantified.
We are invoking -qualitative- means when assigning the "cultural
treasure" designation, not the (quantitative) price of tea in China.
An easy way to debunk your superstition is to ask "how high" -IS-
that "level" called "Socrates and Mozart" and then ask "which" of
the two, Socrates or Mozart, are the "greater?" Obviously they had
excelled at VERY DIFFERENT FIELDS of -incomparable- human endeavor.
Here's what YOU had originally asked for, with MY replies:
---------
> From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
>> Tell me of a great Negro philosopher?
From: jum...@my-deja.com
> Booker T. Washington. Johnnie Cochran.
---------
> From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
>> Tell me of a black Mozart?
From: jum...@my-deja.com
> Stevie Wonder, Winton Marsallis, Louis Armstrong,
> Dizzy Gillespie; more than a dozen jazz artists
> with skills of a Mozart ...
Note that I did -NOT- claim Cochran was "on the level of Socrates"
but merely that he was "a great Negro philosopher." Similarly, I
did -NOT- say those jazz artists were "on the level of Mozart" but
that they had "skills of a Mozart ..." -- both non-controversial
statements. And yet another example of YOUR not-so-fine dyslexia.
I'm building no shrine here. Did you think alt.fan.unabomber was
some kind a shrine? If I'm wrong I'll freely admit to that in a
heartbeat. I'm not interested in WHO is right, but WHAT is right.
The name was spelt Amad Jamal, and I don't know enough about Oprah
Winfrey, though it's evident that *-YOU-* have been spending a LOT
of time evaluating Oprah's candidacy. Care to share your secrets?
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> What we condemn is the cynicism of prostituting TRUTH. You
> hypocrites are the masters of deception who give meaning to the
> words "Sadducee" and "Pharisee."
YOUR FALSITY #5:
Your words above are a striking illustration of exactly what you
say you condemn. Though you haven't defined for us what you mean
by the phrase "prostituting TRUTH" may I proceed for the interim on
an assumption that you refer to that which "compromises truth" or
to methods which do not apply proper investigative tools for arriving
at, or discovering truth? Shall we AGREE that the Socratic method
of dialectics, as given ample coverage in the _Gorgias_ dialogue,
which you can find easily now since it was posted to the newsgroup,
which is an inquiry characterized by means of asking and posing
questions, is our suitable common-ground? Here's the basic point:
if we haven't a common language, common means for inquiry, common
methods by which points of discourse may be arbitrated, then we
may as well not have a discussion. Why? Because without possibility
for changing -- refining -- perspectives, for goal-oriented endeavor
we may as well not even engage. So first we need to resolve whether
your purpose on this newsgroup is to blither-blather, or whether you
are here for a diplomatic purpose to persuade (if by rhetoric), or
to teach (if by dialectics), since you're MAKING NOTHING BUT NOISE
if you seek to do neither as with the case of your "buddy" Agent99:
(re: "intellectual bullying")
> From: agent99 <age...@post.cz>
>> You ARE confused on the difference. This is a
>> matter of world view, however, and I don't
>> expect to be able to persuade you.
With his typical flair for self-contradiction, Agent99 expects me to
"be persuaded" though he's not prepared to do any of the persuading:
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> From: agent99 <age...@post.cz>
>> Now, opinions are those mental things which
>> enable us to explain facts. A person like you
>> sees the virulent racism of those Jew books and
>> makes excuses for it, if he can be persuaded
>> to acknowledge it at all.
--------------
> From: <age...@post.cz>
>> I don't seek to persuade anybody.
From: jum...@my-deja.com
> So it's not difficult to understand why
> your words get lost.
The additional irony of it all, is that I haven't made any excuses
for the "racism of those Jew books" but I shall NOW STATE that I
believe we are all aware of the FACT that there are four major types
of Judaism: namely Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist,
and that Jews are NOT OBLIGATED by their faith to subscribe to each
and every piece of "non-scriptural writing" termed Jewish. The Talmud
is in a similar position as Hadith for Moslems: it is NOT the Bible
or Koran. I am in agreement, however, that Talmudic writing -should-
be made MORE PUBLIC and FREELY AVAILABE in electronic form over the
Internet rather than "sold at cost" in the proposed CD-ROM format.
The same goes for being a Christian: one is not obligated to defend
sectarian beliefs not germane to the particular Christian variety to
which one subscribes. I'm in full agreement that the Talmud contains
passages of embarassment to Orthodox Jews. Quite possibly THEY FAN
THEIR OWN FLAMES of anti-semitism, but this was "news" I had known
for more than 25 years and was not learned on alt.fan.unabomber.
The further irony, to Agent99's rhetoric, consists in his explanation
of "opinions" as a device to "explain facts." Opinions cannot serve
to "explain" because one then asks for an "explanation of opinions"
themselves, which by Agent99's logic would appear to be only more and
more "opinions" in a kind of infinite regress. Here's some of what
Plato has to SAY about the relationship of "facts" and "opinions" --
(a) 1. Truth of what he's saying is "as plain as the fact that..."
2. Poets (who give opinions) should instead speak in plain fact.
LAWS BOOK II:
"Ath. How! Then may Heaven make us to be of one
mind, for now we are of two. To me, dear Cleinias,
the truth of what I am saying is as plain as the
fact that Crete is an island. And, if I were a
lawgiver, I would try to make the poets and all
the citizens speak in this strain ..."
(b) Facts keep discussions away from the sort of "empty theory"
that is characteristic of opinion.
LAWS BOOK III:
"Ath. And may we not now further confirm what was
then mentioned? For we have come upon facts which
have brought us back again to the same principle;
so that, in resuming the discussion, we shall not
be enquiring about an empty theory, but about
events which actually happened."
(c) Courts do not always need to determine opinions but they
-must- determine "the question of fact" in all cases.
LAWS BOOK IX:
"And to allow courts of law to determine all these
things, or not to determine any of them, is alike
impossible. There is one particular which they
must determine in all cases-the question of fact."
(d) Though "philosophical imagination" allows for "every shade"
it might be given to "fancies" and "figures of speech" if it
does not focus on ideas and facts. Matters of practicability
and/or "real content" are subsidiary to the fundamental role
assigned to the "science of dialectic or the organization of
ideas" as the -method- by which higher knowledge is pursued.
(REPUBLIC) -- Summary of the Argument from the
Introduction (by Benjamin Jowett):
"Every shade of light and dark, of truth, and of
fiction which is the veil of truth, is allowable
in a work of philosophical imagination. It is not
all on the same plane; it easily passes from ideas
to myths and fancies, from facts to figures of
speech. It is not prose but poetry, at least a
great part of it, and ought not to be judged by
the rules of logic or the probabilities of
history. The writer is not fashioning his ideas
into an artistic whole; they take possession of
him and are too much for him. We have no need
therefore to discuss whether a State such as Plato
has conceived is practicable or not, or whether
the outward form or the inward life came first
into the mind of the writer. For the
practicability of his ideas has nothing to do with
their truth; and the highest thoughts to which he
attains may be truly said to bear the greatest
"marks of design" --justice more than the external
framework of the State, the idea of good more
than justice. The great science of dialectic or
the organization of ideas has no real content; but
is only a type of the method or spirit in which
the higher knowledge is to be pursued by the
spectator of all time and all existence."
(e) 1. If "the truth of facts" is kept at a distance then enchantment
(deception) can be the result through "fictitious arguments"
(opinions divorced from fact) and the -misimpression- that the
speaker of opinion, rather than fact, is seemingly "wise."
2. Later in life they may be compelled to -change- an opinion,
which was so separated from fact, having been discovered to
be merely a "dreamy speculation." To avoid that "sad reality"
they should have staying focused upon facts which are "nearer
to truth" so as not to be charmed by the Sophist who might be
merely a magician and imitator. Facts are less likely then
opinion to need changing, so -facts- are more "explanatory."
SOPHIST:
"Str. We know, of course, that he who professes by
one art to make all things is really a painter,
and by the painter's art makes resemblances of
real things which have the same name with them;
and he can deceive the less intelligent sort of
young children, to whom he shows his pictures at a
distance, into the belief that he has the absolute
power of making whatever he likes.
"Theaet. Certainly.
"Str. And may there not be supposed to be an
imitative art of reasoning? Is it not possible to
enchant the hearts of young men by words poured
through their ears, when they are still at a
distance from the truth of facts, by exhibiting to
them fictitious arguments, and making them think
that they are true, and that the speaker is the
wisest of men in all things?
"Theaet. Yes; why should there not be another such art?
"Str. But as time goes on, and their hearers
advance in years, and come into closer contact
with realities, and have learnt by sad experience
to see and feel the truth of things, are not the
greater part of them compelled to change many
opinions which they formerly entertained, so that
the great appears small to them, and the easy
difficult, and all their dreamy speculations are
overturned by the facts of life?
"Theaet. That is my view, as far as I can judge,
although, at my age, I may be one of those who see
things at a distance only.
"Str. And the wish of all of us, who are your
friends, is and always will be to bring you as
near to the truth as we can without the sad
reality. And now I should like you to tell me,
whether the Sophist is not visibly a magician and
imitator of true being; or are we still disposed
to think that he may have a true knowledge of the
various matters about which he disputes?
"Theaet. But how can he, Stranger? Is there any
doubt, after what has been said, that he is to be
located in one of the divisions of children's
play?
"Str. Then we must place him in the class of
magicians and mimics.
"Theaet. Certainly we must.
"Str. And now our business is not to let the animal
out, for we have got him in a sort of dialectical
net, and there is one thing which he decidedly
will not escape.
"Theaet. What is that?
"Str. The inference that he is a juggler.
"Theaet. Precisely my own opinion of him."
(f) Facts have a "very great advantage" over (opinionated) fiction.
TIMAEUS
"Soc. And what other, Critias, can we find that
will be better than this, which is natural and
suitable to the festival of the goddess, and has
the very great advantage of being a fact and not a
fiction?"
So Agent99 is *-WRONG-*. According to Plato, opinions CANNOT
SERVE TO EXPLAIN since opinions are "distanced" from the truth and
are subject to change. Facts are MORE EXPLANATORY than opinion.
Agent99's opinionated words will get LOST: they're not as valuable
as explanatory facts. Next let's examine the ROLE of "persuasion"
in Plato:
(a) Socrates considers that he is "not very likely to persuade other
men" if he cannot persuade Simmias.
PHAEDO:
"Simmias said: I must confess, Socrates, that doubts did
arise in our minds, and each of us was urging and inciting
the other to put the question which he wanted to have
answered and which neither of us liked to ask, fearing that
our importunity might be troublesome under present
circumstances.
"Socrates smiled and said: O Simmias, how strange that is; I
am not very likely to persuade other men that I do not
regard my present situation as a misfortune, if I am unable
to persuade you ... "
(b) Socrates says he shall "try and persuade some old men" to join
him in his visit to "the strangers" so that they might receive
him and not fear being ridiculed by Socrates.
EUTHYDEMUS:
"Soc. Certainly not, Crito; as I will prove to you,
for I have the consolation of knowing that they
began this art of disputation which I covet,
quite, as I may say, in old age; last year, or the
year before, they had none of their new wisdom. I
am only apprehensive that I may bring the two
strangers into disrepute, as I have done Connus
the son of Metrobius, the harp-player, who is
still my music-master; for when the boys who go to
him see me going with them, they laugh at me and
call him grandpapa's master.
"Now I should not like the strangers to experience
similar treatment; the fear of ridicule may make
them unwilling to receive me; and therefore,
Crito, I shall try and persuade some old men to
accompany me to them, as I persuaded them to go
with me to Connus ... "
(c) At the conclusion of the Meno dialogue, Socrates says that Meno
was "persuaded" by their mutual argument, and advises Meno to
"persuade" Anytus, which is expected to be a "good service" to
the Athenian people.
MENO:
"Men. That is excellent, Socrates.
"Soc. Then, Meno, the conclusion is that virtue
comes to the virtuous by the gift of God. But we
shall never know the certain truth until, before
asking how virtue is given, we enquire into the
actual nature of virtue. I fear that I must go
away, but do you, now that you are persuaded
yourself, persuade our friend Anytus. And do not
let him be so exasperated; if you can conciliate
him, you will have done good service to the
Athenian people."
(d) Socrates offers that he has been "persuaded" that he ought
not be "grieved at death" so he accepts a role and validity
to persuasion.
PHAEDO:
"Yes, replied Socrates; there is reason in that.
And this indictment you think that I ought to
answer as if I were in court?
"That is what we should like, said Simmias.
"Then I must try to make a better impression upon
you than I did when defending myself before the
judges. For I am quite ready to acknowledge,
Simmias and Cebes, that I ought to be grieved at
death, if I were not persuaded that I am going to
other gods who are wise and good (of this I am as
certain as I can be of anything of the sort) and
to men departed (though I am not so certain of
this), who are better than those whom I leave
behind; and therefore I do not grieve as I might
have done, for I have good hope that there is yet
something remaining for the dead, and, as has been
said of old, some far better thing for the good
than for the evil."
(e) 1. Socrates invokes a hypothetical argument involving the
device of persuation.
2. Socrates says it's better to have a "ridiculous friend"
than a "cunning enemy."
PHAEDRUS:
"Soc. The words of the wise are not to be set
aside; for there is probably something in them;
and therefore the meaning of this saying is not
hastily to be dismissed.
"Phaedr. Very true.
"Soc. Let us put the matter thus:-Suppose that I
persuaded you to buy a horse and go to the wars.
Neither of us knew what a horse was like, but I
knew that you believed a horse to be of tame
animals the one which has the longest ears.
"Phaedr. That would be ridiculous.
"Soc. There is something more ridiculous
coming:-Suppose, further, that in sober earnest I,
having persuaded you of this, went and composed a
speech in honour of an ass, whom I entitled a
horse beginning: "A noble animal and a most useful
possession, especially in war, and you may get on
his back and fight, and he will carry baggage or
anything."
"Phaedr. How ridiculous!
"Soc. Ridiculous! Yes; but is not even a ridiculous
friend better than a cunning enemy?
"Phaedr. Certainly."
(f) 1. Socrates says he has been "persuaded" toward truth
by the words of Diotima.
2. Socrates also says that he tries "to persuade" others.
SYMPOSIUM:
"Such, Phaedrus-and I speak not only to you, but to
all of you-were the words of Diotima; and I am
persuaded of their truth. And being persuaded of
them, I try to persuade others, that in the
attainment of this end human nature will not
easily find a helper better than love: And
therefore, also, I say that every man ought to
honour him as I myself honour him, and walk in his
ways, and exhort others to do the same, and praise
the power and spirit of love according to the
measure of my ability now and ever."
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> You, IDIOT, have elevated this group of pygmies to the level of the
> immortals. Is this a true evaluation of this group of individuals?
It seems to be my evaluation of nearly everyone who reads this
newsgroup -- "alt.fan.unabomber" -- excepting Pyro and Agent99.
YOUR FALSITY #6: I haven't "elevated" readers of the newsgroup who
were already "immortally intelligent." J.S.Mill's writings have
been around for MORE THAN A HUNDRED YEARS, and Plato's dialogues
for MORE THAN TWO -THOUSAND- years. I didn't perform elevation
over what was ALREADY ON RECORD FOR ANYBODY WHO CAN READ WORDS.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> Putting a convicted criminal, still having the warm blood of his
> victims dripping from his hands, back on the street again, is the
> essential _TRUTH_ you proclaim? The vociferous charlatan, Johnnie
> Cochran, who used all kinds of tricks, LIES, and mob influence?
> Presenting this mental dwarf and liar as a cultural treasure,
> respected individual, leader of civilization, and contributor to
> the positive good?
YOUR FALSITY #7:
Uh, last I checked it was a Jury and Judge who exonerated O.J.,
*-NOT-* Johnny Cochran. All that time, of course, Marcia Clark WAS
THERE TO CHALLENGE EVERYTHING Mr. Cochran did, with plenty of trial
time and television coverage so that Pyro could TOSS OUT peanuts.
DID YOU THROW IN YOUR 2-CENTS WHILE YOU HAD THE CHANCE, PYRO ????
If Johnny Cochran hadn't been a defense attorney it would have been
somebody else because in the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA people charged
with a crime are ENTITLED to legal representation if they cannot
afford it. So you have your "facts" WRONG if you think O.J. was
a "convicted criminal, still having the warm blood of his victims
dripping from his hands." In the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA people
are labelled as "convicted criminals" if, and only if, they are
-CONVICTED- by a COURT OF LAW for some CRIMINAL CRIME. Evidently
you don't subscribe to the BASIC PRINCIPLES enunciated by our
Constitution and Bill of Rights? Are you an UN-AMERICAN commie ???
Lawyers are SUPPOSED TO REPRESENT clients. Juries and Judges are
SUPPOSED TO DETERMINE truth. That's how JUSTICE works in THE USA.
YOU *-CANNOT-* CLAIM SOMEBODY IS GUILTY BEFORE HOLDING THE TRIAL.
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> You, IDIOT, have no idea of what you are talking about. Jesus
> said: "I am the WAY, the TRUTH, and the LIFE." And still, you
> crucified him, you deicide! You killed the TRUTH; the TRUTH has
> always been your victim.
YOUR FALSITY #8:
Do you have evidence that I crucified Jesus 1969 years ago?
At the same time you try to call -ME- an "idiot" and allege that
I don't know what I'm talking about? GET BEHIND ME, SATAN !!!
So, Pyro, I think you need some VERY SPECIAL psychiatric help.
And everyone on this newsgroup who follows this little exchange
must be in STITCHES over your woefully ineffectual rejoinder.
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> In your diagram, you wrote: "A has B" "A has C" therefore "B has
> some kinship to C." Let's try again! Your father has your mother,
> and your mother fucks your neighbor, so you are a bastard. That's
> the logic you have to follow. Your subconscious betrayed you: what
> I was using as symbolism of truth made you think about your
> father's dick.
YOUR FALSITY #9:
No, I'm afraid not. YOU are positing that logic, not me. The
logic I "need to follow" are the logical coherencies *-I-* claim
as valid for -MY- discourse, not those invalid incoherencies YOU
had advanced and now SEEK TO PROJECT by way of a "back door" entry.
I don't recall invoking a reference to my father's dick, so you're
-FABRICATING- your own LITTLE fantasy. Here was the actual exchange:
> From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
>> "Mathematics rightly viewed possesses not
>> only _TRUTH_, but supreme BEAUTY,"
>> wrote Bertrand Russell ...
From: jum...@my-deja.com
> Your "analysis" of Russell's "cite" is
> OUTRAGEOUSLY LAUGHABLE.
> Here's what seems to be *-YOUR-* logic:
> ( ha ha ha ha ha ha ha )
>
> "A has B."
> "A has C."
> "Therefore B has some kinship to C."
>
> Let's try it! Pyro has a son.
> Pyro has a daughter. Therefore
> Pyro's son and daughter COPULATE ??
> Aha! NOW I UNDERSTAND ALL !!!
So after conducting an examination from ALL of the -EVIDENCE- it is
quite -OBVIOUS- that Pyro is THE ACTUAL PERPETRATOR OF LIES AND
FICTIONS. I NEVER USED THE WORD "FATHER" OR THE WORD "DICK" SO AS
AN EASY-TO-FOLLOW LOGICAL ARGUMENT (except for you) I NEVER USED THE
PHRASE "FATHER'S DICK." CHECK FACTS, PYRO. YOU'RE *-LOSING-* IT !!!
( ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha )
I USED THE WORD *-COPULATE-* PYRO, NOT "FATHER'S DICK." SO, IF
YOU'RE GOING TO BE THE MANLY "RACIST" YOU ARE, YOU'LL NEED TO TAKE
YOUR HAND OFF OF YOUR "FATHER'S DICK" AND START COPULATING REAL SOON
NOW. Hurry up and make those *-NAZI-* babies, Pyro !! Maybe you
can do it ALL BY YOURSELF in the *-CLONING-* LAB !!!! (squirt squirt)
You must be using a REAL DIFFERENT definition of TRUTH, i.e. one that
nobody here can recognize !!! Give us your DEFINITION, please !!!
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> ... You know better than anyone else how you feel his
> "tail" between your fingers, bastard!
YOUR FALSITY #10:
How do you "know" what I "know" unless you try to put -YOUR-
fingers on "his 'tail'" ??? Or did you want to bend over instead?
YOU BROUGHT UP THAT TOPIC, AND HERE WAS *-YOUR-* VERBATIM:
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> ... As Ivan Turgueniev wrote to Liev Tolstoy,
> "The truth is like a lizard: you open your hand
> when you think you have got it to contemplate it,
> and the only thing you see is the tail between
> your fingers. It has escaped knowing it will grow
> a new tail." And Nietzsche wrote, "Let's define
> our task: once and for all we have to question the
> value of TRUTH."
Psychiatrists take note: Pyro -juxtaposed- the Nietzsche cite
directly after the Turgueniev (sic!) cite. First Pyro considers
putting his "lizard-like truth" in an "open hand" so he can then
"contemplate it" while looking at the "tail" between his fingers.
Then something "escapes" !!! (Q. What was it, Pyro?) Then Pyro
"jumps" DRAMATICALLY to the Nietzsche cite to "define our task"
which is to "question the value of TRUTH" -- eh? -- small wonder
that TRUTH is being put into "question" since that "lizard-like"
stuff "escaped" the "tail" between HIS fingers. Keep us posted,
Pyro! Send us an updated PROGRESS REPORT from the field, eh ???
Meanwhile you'd better start COPULATING for more of those *-NAZI-*
BABIES because "Y2K TIME" IS RUNNING OUT !!! While you're at it
send us some INFO about COPULATION cites from FAMOUS PEOPLE, ok ???
Here's what the meat-tenderizer had to say about "tails" --*--
-----------------
Mein Kampf - Volume II, Chapter XIII - CHAPTER XIII
THE GERMAN POST-WAR POLICY OF ALLIANCES
(Re: the leaders of the November parties with their
Cyclopean intellects ... )
"... Yes, during all these recent years, with the
touching simplicity of incorrigible visionaries,
they went on their knees to France again and
again. They perpetuaily wagged their tails before
the Grande Nation."
-----------------
Volume One - A Reckoning
Chapter II: Years of Study and Suffering in Vienna
"... I was outraged that in a state where every
idiot not only claimed the right to criticize, but
was given a seat in the Reichstag and let loose
upon the nation as a 'lawgiver,' the man who bore
the imperial crown had to take 'reprimands' from
the greatest babblers' club of all time.
"But I was even more indignant that the same
Viennese press which made the most obsequious bows
to every rickety horse in the Court, and flew into
convulsions of joy if he accidentally swished his
tail, should, with supposed concern, yet, as it
seemed to me, ill-concealed malice, express its
criticisms of the German Kaiser. Of course it had
no intention of interfering with conditions within
the German Reich-oh, no, God forbid-but by placing
its finger on these wounds in the friendliest way,
it was fulfilling the duty imposed by the spirit
of the mutual alliance, and, conversely,
fulfilling the requirements of journalistic truth,
etc. And now it was poking this finger around in
the wound to its heart's content.
"In such cases the blood rose to my head.
"It was this which caused me little by little to
view the big papers with greater caution."
So the meat-tenderizer EVENTUALLY figured out that "big papers"
deserved greater caution -- "little by little" that is ...
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> Agent99 described you well, STAIN. You are pestilent! Go back to
> kindergarten, IDIOT, and learn how to read; and later on, practice
> a little bit of ethics.
YOUR FALSITY #11:
Ok, thanks! Here's what the meat-tenderizer said about "stain" -
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
------------------
Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler
Volume Two - A Reckoning
Chapter XV: The Right of Emergency Defense
"The fall of Carthage is the most horrible picture
of such a slow execution of a people through its
own deserts.
"That is why Clausewitz in his Drei Bekenntnisse
incomparably singles out this idea and nails it
fast for all time, when he says:
'That the STAIN of a cowardly
submission can never be effaced;
that this drop of poison in the
blood of a people is passed on to
posterity and will paralyze and
undermine the strength of later
generations';
that, on the other hand,
'even the loss of this freedom after
a bloody and honorable struggle
assures the rebirth of a people and
is the seed of life from which some
day a new tree will strike fast roots.'
"Of course, a people that has lost all honor and
character will not concern itself with such
teachings. For no one who takes them to heart can
sink so low; only he who forgets them, or no
longer wants to know them, collapses. Therefore,
we must not expect those who embody a spineless
submission suddenly to look into their hearts and,
on the basis of reason and all human experience,
begin to act differently than before. On the
contrary, it is these men in particular who will
dismiss all such teachings until either the nation
is definitely accustomed to its yoke of slavery or
until better forces push to the surface, to wrest
the power from the hands of the infamous spoilers.
In the first case these people usually do not feel
so badly, since not seldom they are appointed by
the shrewd victors to the office of slave
overseer, which these spineless natures usually
wield more mercilessly over their people than any
foreign beast put in by the enemy himself."
So the meat-tenderizer PRAISED Clausewitz's observation that such
STAIN "...can NEVER be effaced..." and will be "...passed on to
posterity..." and is "...the seed of life from which some day a
new tree will strike fast roots..." All this from Adolf's words,
yet he set about trying to "efface" that which he said, according
to Clausewitz, "...can NEVER be effaced..." A GROSS CONTRADICTION!
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> "It should be preserved in golden letters." This is a form of
> discourse, as when you refer to someone as having a golden heart.
> It is about merit and like a seal of distinction, for a
> masterpiece, or recognition and homage, to a good person. In both
> cases it implies _substance_. Again, learn how to read, ignoramus.
YOUR FALSITY #12:
I did! Let's see what Plato says about "goldenness" ---
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
(a) Plato claimed that the WAR DEAD are those of the "golden race."
REPUBLIC - BOOK V
"Yes, I said; and when a man dies gloriously in war
shall we not say, in the first place, that he is
of the golden race?
"To be sure."
(b) Socrates said that those who dress in "golden crowns" are
not in their right mind.
ION
"Ion. That proof strikes home to me, Socrates. For
I must frankly confess that at the tale of pity,
my eyes are filled with tears, and when I speak of
horrors, my hair stands on end and my heart
throbs.
"Soc. Well, Ion, and what are we to say of a man
who at a sacrifice or festival, when he is dressed
in holiday attire and has golden crowns upon his
head, of which nobody has robbed him, appears
sweeping or panic-stricken in the presence of more
than twenty thousand friendly faces, when there is
no one despoiling or wronging him;- is he in his
right mind or is he not?
"Ion. No indeed, Socrates, I must say that,
strictly speaking, he is not in his right mind."
(c) Hesiod's reference to a "golden race" does NOT apply to Plato's
philosophers, who are of the "iron race."
CRATYLUS
"Soc. You know how Hesiod uses the word?
"Her. I do not.
"Soc. Do you not remember that he speaks of a
golden race of men who came first?
"Her. Yes, I do.
"Soc. He says of them-
But now that fate has closed over this race
They are holy demons upon the earth,
Beneficent, averters of ills, guardians of mortal men.
"Her. What is the inference?
"Soc. What is the inference! Why, I suppose that he
means by the golden men, not men literally made of
gold, but good and noble; and I am convinced of this,
because he further says that we are the iron race.
"Her. That is true."
----------------
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> Jew-Man-"G", you are exactly like the Pharisees and Sadducees,
> reading the laws and missing the spirit of the laws for their own
> convenience. They gave real meaning to the words HYPOCRISY,
> DECEIT, and GREED, which probably represent your own character.
> Therefore, ignorant eunuch, I do not need to ask you for your
> definition of TRUTH. You, FOOL, and people like you are the
> assassins of TRUTH. What you are doing is raping and profaning it,
> as you do to _BEAUTY_, cultural leper. You bastardize everything
> you touch.
YOUR FALSITY #13:
Who is Jew-Man-"G" ? My handle is spelled "jumangi" which is
a cognate of the movie by the same name starring Robin Williams.
On what BASIS do you assert qualities "which probably represent"
my character? Do you admit, by use of "probably," that you're NOT
SURE? Why not provide EVIDENTIARY ARGUMENT if you've got a point?
Oh, I forgot just then: YOU DON'T HAVE ANY VALID ARGUMENT !!!
THE TABLES ARE BEING TURNED ON *-YOU-* PYRO !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
On WHAT FOUNDATION do you label me a "eunuch," an -IGNORANT- basis?
More of your same -PROJECTED- -RATIONALIZATION- tactics, Pyro ???
Keep POSTING here, and I'll keep "touching" it. ( ha ha ha ha )
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> Asshole, what do you mean by, "They [agent99 and Pyro] cannot
> follow the basic rules of basic reasoning?" Do you mean like
> bringing Johnnie Cochran to the level of Socrates, or Winton
> Marsallis as the new Mozart? Winton Marsallis and those other
> pygmies as leaders of civilization?!?! Is this what you call
> logical reasoning? The ignorance in your writing, like in a lie
> detector, gives us a clear picture of what you are: AN IGNORANT
> IMBECILE. What Nietzsche meant by, "to question the value of
> TRUTH" is to question the kind of bullshit you hold as TRUTH.
YOUR FALSITY #14:
Pose your question then! I've already explained (above) that
I had never claimed to "raise" others to the "level" (sic!) of
Socrates or Mozart. All I said was that Cochran was an EXAMPLE
of a Black Philosopher and that those jazz musicians had "the
skills of Mozart." Any "raising" was on -their- part, not mine.
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> Take note of this, CRETIN, and learn how to read before you say
> something about a text. Shakespeare made a good portrait of you in
> "The Merchant of Venice," Shylock. You, ASSHOLE, wrote: "They
> [agent99 and Pyro] have shown no indication that they have the
> slightest appreciation for either the arts or the skill of logical
> reasoning." You, EUNUCH, trash John Keats, J.S. Mill and the
> ROMANTICS, and enshrine those dwarfs as the new Socrates', Mozarts,
> Bachs, Michelangelos, and leaders of civilization. Is that what
> you call LOGICAL DISCOURSE AND APPRECIATION FOR THE ARTS?
YOUR FALSITY #15:
It would be difficult for Shakespeare to make "a good portrait"
of -ME- because Shakespeare lived during 1564-1616, which was more
than 380 years ago if I use a calculator to do the arithmetic. So
you have right there YET ANOTHER INSTANCE of your FAILED ATTEMPT TO
USE LOGICAL REASONING. This is the year 1999, not 1564-1616, Pyro.
Which each FAILED ATTEMPT AT LOGICAL REASONING you demonstrate, the
evidence is PILING UP on USENET ARCHIVES that you are showing MENTAL
DEFECTIVENESS, and are becoming your own candidate for that Hitler
extermination program. YOU MUST *-PROVE-* YOUR ARYAN CANDIDACY
TO QUALIFY FOR THE "MASTER RACE" ELSE YOU WILL BE SENT TO AUSCHWITZ.
If I was unfair to J.S.Mill, THEN SHOW ME WHERE I MADE AN ERROR !!!
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> And again, MORON, it didn't take me more than 2 months to discover
> your ignorance on J.S. Mill and John Keats. It took you more than
> 2 months to discover that what you said and quoted was actually
> from Keats. It was you who asked me 2 days ago in what points you
> were wrong, and my answer to you was: YOU ARE WRONG ON EVERYTHING.
> We can see you acting in your real character, naked of that varnish
> of culture, laughing like a fool of your own ignorance, like an
> illiterate buffoon. Who else would place Cochran with Socrates,
> and Marsallis with Mozart? EXPLAIN THIS EUNUCH, IS THIS WHAT YOU
> CALL APPRECIATION FOR THE ARTS AND LOGICAL DISCOURSE?
YOUR FALSITY #17:
Well, if I'm wrong on EVERYTHING then surely you can show me
where I'm wrong on SOMETHING. I grant you one point for catching
the Mill/Keats misattribution, so that particular SOMETHING is not
a satisfactory argument for claiming me wrong on a hundred other
issues WHICH YOU LEFT BY THE WAYSIDE, i.e. questions you did not
answer and points you tacitly conceeded. I had responded in my
previous post by showing how Mill was philosophically not much
different from Keats and the other romantic poets of his time,
which means the Mill could just as well have AGREED with Keats on
the point. Indeed, the philosophy of "utilitarianism" is premised
upon conflation of "truth" & "beauty" because it places "the good"
ABOVE the use of valid methods to find truth. You -agreed- that
we need to find truth BEFORE discovering "the good" so if Mill is
not employing the correct philosophical means of truth discovery
then Mill's notion of "the good" is HIGHLY SUSPECT. How do you
estimate the "scoresheet" on these exchanges? How accurate are you
to the way OTHERS on this -newsgroup- estimate the "scoresheet?"
The Mill/Keats misattribution provided me an opportunity to CITE
for you the long passages from J.S.Mill that established consonance
with Keats. They're both off-base for the same reasons. I showed
some of the ERRORS in Mill's thinking. Care to comment, or do you
conceed all of THAT analysis? Do you resent "going to the mat?"
I'll say this also: you -NOTICE- how QUICKLY I was ready to
admit to a misattribution. EVERYONE ON THIS NEWSGROUP ALSO NOTICES
how Pyro and Agent99 pose themselves as "perfect people" without a
sin, arrogating their membership in an Aryan Race without PROVING
it to the newsgroup. My interest is not to "win" a debate, but to
discover something about the nature of truth. I don't have an axe
to grind and I'm not an ideologue. We see, however, TIME AND TIME
AGAIN, how the research CONCLUSIVELY DEMONSTRATES that Pyro and/or
Agent99 have FAILED TO READ PLATO, FAILED TO READ MILL, FAILED TO
READ HITLER, FAILED TO STUDY PHILOSOPHY, FAILED TO APPLY DIALECTICS,
FAILED TO UNDERSTAND OUR SYSTEM OF LAW AND JUSTICE WITH REGARDS TO
THE DETERMINED GUILT OR INNOCENCE OF THOSE BROUGHT BEFORE THE COURT,
RELIED UPON REPEATED USE OF _AD_HOMINEM_ ATTACK WHICH MEANS NOTHING
IN THE COURSE OF RIGOROUS AND ENGAGING DISCOURSE, REPEATEDLY SHOWED
RELIANCE UPON *-FALLACIOUS-* LOGIC, FAILED TO MAKE DEMONSTRATION
OF -RELEVANCY- TO *-THIS-* NEWSGROUP WHICH IS alt.fan.unabomber
AND *-NOT-* alt.revisionism , ENGAGED IN SLANDER AND EXAGGERATION,
SHOWED WILLFUL DISREGARD FOR DIPLOMATIC METHODS OF TRUTH INQUIRY,
the list goes on and on and I do not draw a conclusion to it...
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> Those ROMANTICS that you desecrate, EUNUCH, are the foundation of
> MODERNISM and all subsequent movements in the ARTS. Again, MENTAL
> INSECT, you don't know what you are talking about.
YOUR FALSITY #18:
I agree that ROMANTICS are at a foundation of MODERNISM, but YOU
OVERSTATE AND EXAGGERATE YET AGAIN WHEN CLAIMING THEY ARE FOUNDATION
TO "all subsequent movements in the ARTS." Why are you so *-PROUD-*
about a "modernism" that led to two World Wars, the Soviet Union, and
this bloodiest of all travesties called the 20th-century? There's
nothing "artistic" about war and killing. ART IS ABOUT CREATION AND
LIFE, NOT DESTRUCTION AND DEATH. "Mental insect?" In my Kafkaesque
world of high-technology computer software engineering, the phrase
"mental insect" is a compliment, not an epithet. I've never claimed
to "KNOW" what I'm talking about, but perhaps you could OUTLINE some
criteria whereby this question can be settled once and for all. What
exactly and precisely, should I need to "DO" in order to "KNOW" what
I'm talking about? Let me put it another way. Share with us your
hyperborean "WISDOM" concerning how YOU determine whether you "KNOW"
what you're talking about. I'm actually VERY *-CURIOUS-* about your
METHODOLOGIES. I haven't seen you DEMONSTRATE them on the newsgroup,
though I'm reasonably certain that you could describe them for us
using less than 25 words.
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> And by the way, all that "HA HA HA HA HA HA," EUNUCH, shows not
> laughter as you pretend, FOOL, but your insecurity, your stupidity,
> rage and frustration.
YOUR FALSITY #19:
Rage and frustration? At what, pray tell?
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> Your duplicity and Sadducean trickery (i.e., buttkissing the Blacks
> for their sympathy, talking bullshit, presenting pygmies you admire
> as leaders of culture, etc.) shows you are an illiterate fool not
> qualified to debate culturally or otherwise.
YOUR FALSITY #20:
I don't recall "buttkissing" anybody, so I defer expertise on that
sort of activity to YOU. As for debating qualifications:
-----------------
EUTHYPHRO:
"Soc. And I should also conceive that the art of
the huntsman is the art of attending to dogs?
"Euth. Yes."
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> You, IGNORANT EUNUCH, don't know anything about PHILOSOPHY, not
> even the meaning of it. Your lexicon is that of a gangmember.
> Again, your writing, like in a lie detector, shows not only
> _ignorance_ but also your hoofs. We know you are a bastard, now
> the only thing we have to determine is which of the 12 goats your
> mother fucks is your father.
YOUR FALSITY #21:
According to the dictionary I'd have to be an "illegitimate child"
in order to be a "bastard," but even "bastards" can attend to dogs.
You win the "vulgarity contest" hands down, Pyro. I was correct in
my strong suspicions that you could be sucked into that, hook, line
and sinker. The "12 goats" reference is apropos of what seems to
be YOUR ASSESSMENT of a (Satanic) Jesus and disciples. If you read
Matthew, however, you'll learn that Jesus REJECTED the temptations
of Satan. That would be premised, of course, on the assumption that
you can read AND UNDERSTAND what you read in spite of those numerous
coutra-indications you provide to this newsgroup.
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> On success, you wrote: "[success] goes according to one's desires."
> What do you know of anyone's desires, FOOL? Is your judgement on
> this as stupid as your judgement on literature, the arts,
> philosophy, and culture in general? Then this is an idiotic
> judgement that no one should care about. ;-)
YOUR FALSITY #22:
Alright, is it your "desire" to be a cultural contribution? I'll
need to REPEAT the ORIGINAL FULL TEXT of my posted definition taken
from the OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY:
From: jum...@my-deja.com
> Here's a "success" definition: persistence,
> duration, endurance, stamina. OED "successful" --
> attains to wealth or position or an object
> according to one's desire, (prominence in)
> subsequent history, prosperous achievement of
> something attempted.
What I ACTUALLY SAID, before it got -MaNgLeD- by your despotic text
butchery was that success "ATTAINS TO WEALTH OR POSITION OR AN OBJECT
according to one's desire." I DID *-NOT-* SAY "_goes_ according..."
so YOU MISQUOTED ME and RADICALLY CHANGED THE SENSE OF THE WORD !!!!
"Success" is *-NOT-* simply something which follows one's desire,
but very specifically that which "ATTAINS TO WEALTH OR POSITION OR AN
OBJECT according to one's desire" among my other definitions offered.
SINCE YOU WERE UNABLE TO *-READ-* THE DEFINITION CORRECTLY, ALSO
FAILING TO UNDERSTAND THE SENSE OF THE DEFINITION, YOU PROVIDED THE
"PROOF" OF MY ASSERTION THAT *-YOU-* ARE *-NOT-* SUCCESSFUL !!!
HOW CAN YOU BE SUCCESSFUL IF YOU DON'T SATISFY A CORRECT DEFINITION?
'scuse me now, I'm going to LAUGH some more -- ha ha ha ha ha ha ...
- regards
- jb
.
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
jum...@my-deja.com
360 BC
SOPHIST
by Plato
translated by Benjamin Jowett
SOPHIST
PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE: THEODORUS; THEAETETUS; SOCRATES An ELEATIC.
STRANGER, whom Theodorus and Theaetetus bring with them.
The younger SOCRATES, who is a silent auditor.
Theodorus. Here we are, Socrates, true to our agreement of
yesterday; and we bring with us a stranger from Elea, who is a
disciple of Parmenides and Zeno, and a true philosopher.
Socrates. Is he not rather a god, Theodorus, who comes to us in
the disguise of a stranger? For Homer says that all the gods, and
especially the god of strangers, are companions of the meek and
just, and visit the good and evil among men. And may not your
companion be one of those higher powers, a cross-examining deity,
who has come to spy out our weakness in argument, and to cross-examine
us?
Theod. Nay, Socrates, he is not one of the disputatious sort-he is
too good for that. And, in my opinion, he is not a god at all; but
divine he certainly is, for this is a title which I should give to all
philosophers.
Soc. Capital, my friend! and I may add that they are almost as
hard to be discerned as the gods. For the true philosophers, and
such as are not merely made up for the occasion, appear in various
forms unrecognized by the ignorance of men, and they "hover about
cities," as Homer declares, looking from above upon human life; and
some think nothing of them, and others can never think enough; and
sometimes they appear as statesmen, and sometimes as sophists; and
then, again, to many they seem to be no better than madmen. I should
like to ask our Eleatic friend, if he would tell us, what is thought
about them in Italy, and to whom the terms are applied.
Theod. What terms?
Soc. Sophist, statesman, philosopher.
Theod. What is your difficulty about them, and what made you ask?
Soc. I want to know whether by his countrymen they are regarded as
one or two; or do they, as the names are three, distinguish also three
kinds, and assign one to each name?
Theod. I dare say that the Stranger will not object to discuss the
question. What do you say, Stranger?
Stranger. I am far from objecting, Theodorus, nor have I any
difficulty in replying that by us they are regarded as three. But to
define precisely the nature of each of them is by no means a slight or
easy task.
Theod. You have happened to light, Socrates, almost on the very
question which we were asking our friend before we came hither, and he
excused himself to us, as he does now you; although he admitted that
the matter had been fully discussed, and that he remembered the
answer.
Soc. Then do not, Stranger, deny us the first favour which we ask of
you: I am sure that you will not, and therefore I shall only beg of
you to say whether you like and are accustomed to make a long
oration on a subject which you want to explain to another, or to
proceed by the method of question and answer. I remember hearing a
very noble discussion in which Parmenides employed the latter of the
two methods, when I was a young man, and he was far advanced in years.
Str. I prefer to talk with another when he responds pleasantly,
and is light in hand; if not, I would rather have my own say.
Soc. Any one of the present company will respond kindly to you,
and you can choose whom you like of them; I should recommend you to
take a young person-Theaetetus, for example-unless you have a
preference for some one else.
Str. I feel ashamed, Socrates, being a new comer into your
society, instead of talking a little and hearing others talk, to be
spinning out a long soliloquy or address, as if I wanted to show
off. For the true answer will certainly be a very long one, a great
deal longer than might be expected from such a short and simple
question. At the same time, I fear that I may seem rude and ungracious
if I refuse your courteous request, especially after what you have
said. For I certainly cannot object to your proposal, that
Theaetetus should respond, having already conversed with him myself,
and being recommended by you to take him.
Theaetetus. But are you sure, Stranger, that this will be quite so
acceptable to the rest of the company as Socrates imagines?
Str. You hear them applauding, Theaetetus; after that, there is
nothing more to be said. Well then, I am to argue with you, and if you
tire of the argument, you may complain of your friends and not of me.
Theaet. I do not think that I shall tire, and if I do, I shall get
my friend here, young Socrates, the namesake of the elder Socrates, to
help; he is about my own age, and my partner at the gymnasium, and
is constantly accustomed to work with me.
Str. Very good; you can decide about that for yourself as we
proceed. Meanwhile you and I will begin together and enquire into
the nature of the Sophist, first of the three: I should like you to
make out what he is and bring him to light in a discussion; for at
present we are only agreed about the name, but of the thing to which
we both apply the name possibly you have one notion and I another;
whereas we ought always to come to an understanding about the thing
itself in terms of a definition, and not merely about the name minus
the definition. Now the tribe of Sophists which we are investigating
is not easily caught or defined; and the world has long ago agreed,
that if great subjects are to be adequately treated, they must be
studied in the lesser and easier instances of them before we proceed
to the greatest of all. And as I know that the tribe of Sophists is
troublesome and hard to be caught, I should recommend that we practise
beforehand the method which is to be applied to him on some simple and
smaller thing, unless you can suggest a better way.
Theaet. Indeed I cannot.
Str. Then suppose that we work out some lesser example which will be
a pattern of the greater?
Theaet. Good.
Str. What is there which is well known and not great, and is yet
as susceptible of definition as any larger thing? Shall I say an
angler? He is familiar to all of us, and not a very interesting or
important person.
Theaet. He is not.
Str. Yet I suspect that he will furnish us with the sort of
definition and line of enquiry which we want.
Theaet. Very good.
Str. Let us begin by asking whether he is a man having art or not
having art, but some other power.
Theaet. He is clearly a man of art.
Str. And of arts there are two kinds?
Theaet. What are they?
Str. There is agriculture, and the tending of mortal creatures,
and the art of constructing or moulding vessels, and there is the
art of imitation-all these may be appropriately called by a single
name.
Theaet. What do you mean? And what is the name?
Str. He who brings into existence something that did not exist
before is said to be a producer, and that which is brought into
existence is said to be produced.
Theaet. True.
Str. And all the arts which were just now mentioned are
characterized by this power of producing?
Theaet. They are.
Str. Then let us sum them up under the name of productive or
creative art.
Theaet. Very good.
Str. Next follows the whole class of learning and cognition; then
comes trade, fighting, hunting. And since none of these produces
anything, but is only engaged in conquering by word or deed, or in
preventing others from conquering, things which exist and have been
already produced-in each and all of these branches there appears to be
an art which may be called acquisitive.
Theaet. Yes, that is the proper name.
Str. Seeing, then, that all arts are either acquisitive or creative,
in which class shall we place the art of the angler?
Theaet. Clearly in the acquisitive class.
Str. And the acquisitive may be subdivided into two parts: there
is exchange, which is voluntary and is effected by gifts, hire,
purchase; and the other part of acquisitive, which takes by force of
word or deed, may be termed conquest?
Theaet. That is implied in what has been said.
Str. And may not conquest be again subdivided?
Theaet. How?
Str. Open force may; be called fighting, and secret force may have
the general name of hunting?
Theaet. Yes.
Str. And there is no reason why the art of hunting should not be
further divided.
Theaet. How would you make the division?
Str. Into the hunting of living and of lifeless prey.
Theaet. Yes, if both kinds exist.
Str. Of course they exist; but the hunting after lifeless things
having no special name, except some sorts of diving, and other small
matters, may be omitted; the hunting after living things may be called
animal hunting.
Theaet. Yes.
Str. And animal hunting may be truly said to have two divisions,
land-animal hunting, which has many kinds and names, and water-animals
hunting, or the hunting after animals who swim?
Theaet. True.
Str. And of swimming animals, one class lives on the wing and the
other in the water?
Theaet. Certainly.
Str. Fowling is the general term under which the hunting of all
birds is included.
Theaet. True.
Str. The hunting of animals who live in the water has the general
name of fishing.
Theaet. Yes.
Str. And this sort of hunting may be further divided also into two
principal kinds?
Theaet. What are they?
Str. There is one kind which takes them in nets, another which takes
them by a blow.
Theaet. What do you mean, and how do you distinguish them?
Str. As to the first kind-all that surrounds and encloses anything
to prevent egress, may be rightly called an enclosure.
Theaet. Very true.
Str. For which reason twig baskets, casting nets, nooses, creels,
and the like may all be termed "enclosures"?
Theaet. True.
Str. And therefore this first kind of capture may be called by us
capture with enclosures, or something of that sort?
Theaet. Yes.
Str. The other kind, which is practised by a blow with hooks and
three pronged spears, when summed up under one name, may be called
striking, unless you, Theaetetus, can find some better name?
Theaet. Never mind the name-what you suggest will do very well.
Str. There is one mode of striking, which is done at night, and by
the light of a fire, and is by the hunters themselves called firing,
or spearing by firelight.
Theaet. True.
Str. And the fishing by day is called by the general name of barbing
because the spears, too, are barbed at the point.
Theaet. Yes, that is the term.
Str. Of this barb-fishing, that which strikes the fish Who is
below from above is called spearing, because this is the way in
which the three-pronged spears are mostly used.
Theaet. Yes, it is often called so.
Str. Then now there is only one kind remaining.
Theaet. What is that?
Str. When a hook is used, and the fish is not struck in any chance
part of his body-he as be is with the spear, but only about the head
and mouth, and is then drawn out from below upwards with reeds and
rods:-What is the right name of that mode of fish, Theaetetus?
Theaet. I suspect that we have now discovered the object of our
search.
Str. Then now you and I have come to an understanding not only about
the name of the angler's art, but about the definition of the thing
itself. One half of all art was acquisitive-half of all the art
acquisitive art was conquest or taking by force, half of this was
hunting, and half of hunting was hunting animals, half of this was
hunting water animals-of this again, the under half was fishing,
half of fishing was striking; a part of striking was fishing with a
barb, and one half of this again, being the kind which strikes with
a hook and draws the fish from below upwards, is the art which we have
been seeking, and which from the nature of the operation is denoted
angling or drawing up (aspalienutike, anaspasthai).
Theaet. The result has been quite satisfactorily brought out.
Str. And now, following this pattern, let us endeavour to find out
what a Sophist is.
Theaet. By all means.
Str. The first question about the angler was, whether he was a
skilled artist or unskilled?
Theaet. True.
Str. And shall we call our new friend unskilled, or a thorough
master of his craft?
Theaet. Certainly not unskilled, for his name, as, indeed, you
imply, must surely express his nature.
Str. Then he must be supposed to have some art.
Theaet. What art?
Str. By heaven, they are cousins! it never occurred to us.
Theaet. Who are cousins?
Str. The angler and the Sophist.
Theaet. In what way are they related?
Str. They both appear to me to be hunters.
Theaet. How the Sophist? Of the other we have spoken.
Str. You remember our division of hunting, into hunting after
swimming animals and land animals?
Theaet. Yes.
Str. And you remember that we subdivided the swimming and left the
land animals, saying that there were many kinds of them?
Theaet. Certainly.
Str. Thus far, then, the Sophist and the angler, starting from the
art of acquiring, take the same road?
Theaet. So it would appear.
Str. Their paths diverge when they reach the art of animal
hunting; the one going to the seashore, and to the rivers and to the
lakes, and angling for the animals which are in them.
Theaet. Very true.
Str. While the other goes to land and water of another sort-rivers
of wealth and broad meadow-lands of generous youth; and he also is
intending to take the animals which are in them.
Theaet. What do you mean?
Str. Of hunting on land there are two principal divisions.
Theaet. What are they?
Str. One is the hunting of tame, and the other of wild animals.
Theaet. But are tame animals ever hunted?
Str. Yes, if you include man under tame animals. But if you like you
may say that there are no tame animals, or that, if there are, man
is not among them; or you may say that man is a tame animal but is not
hunted-you shall decide which of these alternatives you prefer.
Theaet. I should say, Stranger, that man is a tame animal, and I
admit that he is hunted.
Str. Then let us divide the hunting of tame animals into two parts.
Theaet. How shall we make the division?
Str. Let us define piracy, man-stealing, tyranny, the whole military
art, by one name, as hunting with violence.
Theaet. Very good.
Str. But the art of the lawyer, of the popular orator, and the art
of conversation may be called in one word the art of persuasion.
Theaet. True.
Str. And of persuasion, there may be said to be two kinds?
Theaet. What are they?
Str. One is private, and the other public.
Theaet. Yes; each of them forms a class.
Str. And of private hunting, one sort receives hire, and the other
brings gifts.
Theaet. I do not understand you.
Str. You seem never to have observed the manner in which lovers
hunt.
Theaet. To what do you refer?
Str. I mean that they lavish gifts on those whom they hunt in
addition to other inducements.
Theaet. Most true.
Str. Let us admit this, then, to be the amatory art.
Theaet. Certainly.
Str. But that sort of hireling whose conversation is pleasing and
who baits his hook only with pleasure and exacts nothing but his
maintenance in return, we should all, if I am not mistaken, describe
as possessing flattery or an art of making things pleasant.
Theaet. Certainly.
Str. And that sort, which professes to form acquaintances only for
the sake of virtue, and demands a reward in the shape of money, may be
fairly called by another name?
Theaet. To be sure.
Str. And what is the name? Will you tell me?
Theaet. It is obvious enough; for I believe that we have
discovered the Sophist: which is, as I conceive, the proper name for
the class described.
Str. Then now, Theaetetus, his art may be traced as a branch of
the appropriative, acquisitive family-which hunts
animals,-living-land-tame animals; which hunts man,-privately-for
hire,-taking money in exchange-having the semblance of education;
and this is termed Sophistry, and is a hunt after young men of
wealth and rank-such is the conclusion.
Theaet. Just so.
Str. Let us take another branch of his genealogy; for he is a
professor of a great and many sided art; and if we look back at what
has preceded we see that he presents another aspect, besides that of
which we are speaking.
Theaet. In what respect?
Str. There were two sorts of acquisitive art; the one concerned with
hunting, the other with exchange.
Theaet. There were.
Str. And of the art of exchange there are two divisions, the one
of giving, and the other of selling.
Theaet. Let us assume that.
Str. Next, will suppose the art of selling to be divided into two
parts.
Theaet. How?
Str. There is one part which is distinguished as the sale of a man's
own productions; another, which is the exchange of the works of
others.
Theaet. Certainly.
Str. And is not that part of exchange which takes place in the city,
being about half of the whole, termed retailing?
Theaet. Yes.
Str. And that which exchanges the goods of one city for those of
another by selling and buying is the exchange of the merchant?
Theaet. To be sure.
Str. And you are aware that this exchange of the merchant is of
two kinds: it is partly concerned with food for the use of the body,
and partly with the food of the soul which is bartered and received in
exchange for money.
Theaet. What do you mean?
Str. You want to know what is the meaning of food for the soul;
the other kind you surely understand.
Theaet. Yes.
Str. Take music in general and painting and marionette playing and
many other things, which are purchased in one city, and carried away
and sold in another-wares of the soul which are hawked about either
for the sake of instruction or amusement;-may not he who takes them
about and sells them be quite as truly called a merchant as he who
sells meats and drinks?
Theaet. To be sure he may.
Str. And would you not call by the same name him who buys up
knowledge and goes about from city to city exchanging his wares for
money?
Theaet. Certainly I should.
Str. Of this merchandise of the soul, may not one part be fairly
termed the art of display? And there is another part which is
certainly not less ridiculous, but being a trade in learning must be
called by some name germane to the matter?
Theaet. Certainly.
Str. The latter should have two names,-one descriptive of the sale
of the knowledge of virtue, and the other of the sale of other kinds
of knowledge.
Theaet. Of course.
Str. The name of art-seller corresponds well enough to the latter;
but you must try and tell me the name of the other.
Theaet. He must be the Sophist, whom we are seeking; no other name
can possibly be right.
Str. No other; and so this trader in virtue again turns out to be
our friend the Sophist, whose art may now be traced from the art of
acquisition through exchange, trade, merchandise, to a merchandise
of the soul which is concerned with speech and the knowledge of
virtue.
Theaet. Quite true.
Str. And there may be a third reappearance of him;-for he may have
settled down in a city, and may fabricate as well as buy these same
wares, intending to live by selling them, and he would still be called
a Sophist?
Theaet. Certainly.
Str. Then that part of acquisitive art which exchanges, and of
exchange which either sells a man's own productions or retails those
of others; as the case may be, and in either way sells the knowledge
of virtue, you would again term Sophistry?
Theaet. I must, if I am to keep pace with the argument.
Str. Let us consider once more whether there may not be yet
another aspect of sophistry.
Theaet. What is it?
Str. In the acquisitive there was a subdivision of the combative
or fighting art.
Theaet. There was.
Str. Perhaps we had better divide it.
Theaet. What shall be the divisions?
Str. There shall be one division of the competitive, and another
of the pugnacious.
Theaet. Very good.
Str. That part of the pugnacious which is contest of bodily strength
may be properly called by some such name as violent.
Theaet. True.
Str. And when the war is one of words, it may be termed controversy?
Theaet. Yes.
Str. And controversy may be of two kinds.
Theaet. What are they?
Str. When long speeches are answered by long speeches, and there
is public discussion about the just and unjust, that is forensic
controversy.
Theaet. Yes.
Str. And there is a private sort of controversy, which is cut up
into questions and answers, and this is commonly called disputation?
Theaet. Yes, that is the name.
Str. And of disputation, that sort which is only a discussion
about contracts, and is carried on at random, and without rules-art,
is recognized by the reasoning faculty to be a distinct class, but has
hitherto had no distinctive name, and does not deserve to receive
one from us.
Theaet. No; for the different sorts of it are too minute and
heterogeneous.
Str. But that which proceeds by rules of art to dispute about
justice and injustice in their own nature, and about things in
general, we have been accustomed to call argumentation (Eristic)?
Theaet. Certainly.
Str. And of argumentation, one sort wastes money, and the other
makes money.
Theaet. Very true.
Str. Suppose we try and give to each of these two classes a name.
Theaet. Let us do so.
Str. I should say that the habit which leads a man to neglect his
own affairs for the pleasure of conversation, of which the style is
far from being agreeable to the majority of his hearers, may be fairly
termed loquacity: such is my opinion.
Theaet. That is the common name for it.
Str. But now who the other is, who makes money out of private
disputation, it is your turn to say.
Theaet. There is only one true answer: he is the wonderful
Sophist, of whom we are in pursuit, and who reappears again for the
fourth time.
Str. Yes, and with a fresh pedigree, for he is the money-making
species of the Eristic, disputatious, controversial. pugnacious,
combative, acquisitive family, as the argument has already proven.
Theaet. Certainly.
Str. How true was the observation that he was a many-sided animal,
and not to be caught with one hand, as they say!
Theaet. Then you must catch him with two.
Str. Yes, we must, if we can. And therefore let us try, another
track in our pursuit of him: You are aware that there are certain
menial occupations which have names among servants?
Theaet. Yes, there are many such; which of them do you mean?
Str. I mean such as sifting, straining, winnowing, threshing.
Theaet. Certainly.
Str. And besides these there are a great many more, such as carding,
spinning, adjusting the warp and the woof; and thousands of similar
expressions are used in the arts.
Theaet. Of what are they to be patterns, and what are we going to do
with them all?
Str. I think that in all of these there is implied a notion of
division.
Theaet. Yes.
Str. Then if, as I was saying, there is one art which includes all
of them, ought not that art to have one name?
Theaes. And what is the name of the art?
Str. The art of discerning or discriminating.
Theaet. Very good.
Str. Think whether you cannot divide this.
Theaet. I should have to think a long while.
Str. In all the previously named processes either like has been
separated from like or the better from the worse.
Theaet. I see now what you mean.
Str, There is no name for the first kind of separation; of the
second, which throws away the worse and preserves the better, I do
know a name.
Theaet. What is it?
Str. Every discernment or discrimination of that kind, as I have
observed, is called a purification.
Theaet. Yes, that is the usual expression.
Str. And any one may see that purification is of two kinds.
Theaet. Perhaps so, if he were allowed time to think; but I do not
see at this moment.
Str. There are many purifications of bodies which may with propriety
be comprehended under a single name.
Theaet. What are they, and what is their name?
Str. There is the purification of living bodies in their inward
and in their outward parts, of which the former is duly effected by
medicine and gymnastic, the latter by the not very dignified art of
the bath-man; and there is the purification of inanimate substances-to
this the arts of fulling and of furbishing in general attend in a
number of minute particulars, having a variety of names which are
thought ridiculous.
Theaet. Very true.
Str. There can be no doubt that they are thought ridiculous,
Theaetetus; but then the dialectical art never considers whether the
benefit to be derived from the purge is greater or less than that to
be derived from the sponge, and has not more interest in the one
than in the other; her endeavour is to know what is and is not kindred
in all arts, with a view to the acquisition of intelligence; and
having this in view, she honours them all alike, and when she makes
comparisons, she counts one of them not a whit more ridiculous than
another; nor does she esteem him who adduces as his example of
hunting, the general's art, at all more decorous than another who
cites that of the vermin-destroyer, but only as the greater
pretender of the two. And as to your question concerning the name
which was to comprehend all these arts of purification, whether of
animate or inanimate bodies, the art of dialectic is in no wise
particular about fine words, if she maybe only allowed to have a
general name for all other purifications, binding them up together and
separating them off from the purification of the soul or intellect.
For this is the purification at which she wants to arrive, and this we
should understand to be her aim.
Theaet. Yes, I understand; and I agree that there are two sorts of
purification and that one of them is concerned with the soul, and that
there is another which is concerned with the body.
Str. Excellent; and now listen to what I am going to say, and try to
divide further the first of the two.
Theaet. Whatever line of division you suggest, I will endeavour to
assist you.
Str. Do we admit that virtue is distinct from vice in the soul?
Theaet. Certainly.
Str. And purification was to leave the good and to cast out whatever
is bad?
Theaet. True.
Str. Then any taking away of evil from the soul may be properly
called purification?
Theaet. Yes.
Str. And in the soul there are two kinds of evil.
Theaet. What are they?
Str. The one may be compared to disease in the body, the other to
deformity.
Theaet. I do not understand.
Str. Perhaps you have never reflected that disease and discord are
the same.
Theaet. To this, again, I know not what I should reply.
Str. Do you not conceive discord to be a dissolution of kindred
clements, originating in some disagreement?
Theaet. Just that.
Str. And is deformity anything but the want of measure, which is
always unsightly?
Theaet. Exactly.
Str. And do we not see that opinion is opposed to desire, pleasure
to anger, reason to pain, and that all these elements are opposed to
one another in the souls of bad men?
Theaet. Certainly.
Str. And yet they must all be akin?
Theaet. Of course.
Str. Then we shall be right in calling vice a discord and disease of
the soul?
Theaet. Most true.
Str. And when things having motion, an aiming at an appointed
mark, continually miss their aim and glance aside, shall we say that
this is the effect of symmetry among them, or of the want of symmetry?
Theaet. Clearly of the want of symmetry.
Str. But surely we know that no soul is voluntarily ignorant of
anything?
Theaet. Certainly not.
Str. And what is ignorance but the aberration of a mind which is
bent on truth, and in which the process of understanding is perverted?
Theaet. True.
Str. Then we are to regard an unintelligent soul as deformed and
devoid of symmetry?
Theaet. Very true.
Str. Then there are these two kinds of evil in the soul-the one
which is generally called vice, and is obviously a disease of the
soul...
Theaet. Yes.
Str. And there is the other, which they call ignorance, and which,
because existing only in the soul, they will not allow to be vice.
Theaet. I certainly admit what I at first disputed-that there are
two kinds of vice in the soul, and that we ought to consider
cowardice, intemperance, and injustice to be alike forms of disease in
the soul, and ignorance, of which there are all sorts of varieties, to
be deformity.
Str. And in the case of the body are there not two arts, which
have to do with the two bodily states?
Theaet. What are they?
Str. There is gymnastic, which has to do with deformity, and
medicine, which has to do with disease.
Theaet. True.
Str. And where there is insolence and injustice and cowardice, is
not chastisement the art which is most required?
Theaet. That certainly appears to be the opinion of mankind.
Str. Again, of the various kinds of ignorance, may not instruction
be rightly said to be the remedy?
Theaet. True.
Str. And of the art of instruction, shall we say that there is one
or many kinds? At any rate there are two principal ones. Think.
Theaet. I will.
Str. I believe that I can see how we shall soonest arrive at the
answer to this question.
Theaet. How?
Str. If we can discover a line which divides ignorance into two
halves. For a division of ignorance into two parts will certainly
imply that the art of instruction is also twofold, answering to the
two divisions of ignorance.
Theaet. Well, and do you see what you are looking for?
Str. I do seem to myself to see one very large and bad sort of
ignorance which is quite separate, and may be weighed in the scale
against all other sorts of ignorance put together.
Theaet. What is it?
Str. When a person supposes that he knows, and does not know this
appears to be the great source of all the errors of the intellect.
Theaet. True.
Str. And this, if I am not mistaken, is the kind of ignorance
which specially earns the title of stupidity.
Theaet. True.
Str. What name, then, shall be given to the sort of instruction
which gets rid of this?
Theaet. The instruction which you mean, Stranger, is, I should
imagine, not the teaching of handicraft arts, but what, thanks to
us, has been termed education in this part the world.
Str. Yes, Theaetetus, and by nearly all Hellenes. But we have
still to consider whether education admits of any further division.
Theaet. We have.
Str. I think that there is a point at which such a division is
possible.
Theaet. Where?
Str. Of education, one method appears to be rougher, and another
smoother.
Theaet. How are we to distinguish the two?
Str. There is the time-honoured mode which our fathers commonly
practised towards their sons, and which is still adopted by
many-either of roughly reproving their errors, or of gently advising
them; which varieties may be correctly included under the general term
of admonition.
Theaet. True.
Str. But whereas some appear to have arrived at the conclusion
that all ignorance is involuntary, and that no one who thinks
himself wise is willing to learn any of those things in which he is
conscious of his own cleverness, and that the admonitory sort of
instruction gives much trouble and does little good-
Theaet. There they are quite right.
Str. Accordingly, they set to work to eradicate the spirit of
conceit in another way.
Theaet. In what way?
Str. They cross-examine a man's words, when he thinks that he is
saying something and is really saying nothing, and easily convict
him of inconsistencies in his opinions; these they then collect by the
dialectical process, and placing them side by side, show that they
contradict one another about the same things, in relation to the
same things, and in the same respect. He, seeing this, is angry with
himself, and grows gentle towards others, and thus is entirely
delivered from great prejudices and harsh notions, in a way which is
most amusing to the hearer, and produces the most lasting good
effect on the person who is the subject of the operation. For as the
physician considers that the body will receive no benefit from
taking food until the internal obstacles have been removed, so the
purifier of the soul is conscious that his patient will receive no
benefit from the application of knowledge until he is refuted, and
from refutation learns modesty; he must be purged of his prejudices
first and made to think that he knows only what he knows, and no more.
Theaet. That is certainly the best and wisest state of mind.
Str. For all these reasons, Theaetetus, we must admit that
refutation is the greatest and chiefest of purifications, and he who
has not been refuted, though he be the Great King himself, is in an
awful state of impurity; he is uninstructed and deformed in those
things in which he who would be truly blessed ought to be fairest
and purest.
Theaet. Very true.
Str. And who are the ministers of this art?
I am afraid to say the Sophists.
Theaet. Why?
Str. Lest we should assign to them too high a prerogative.
Theaet. Yet the Sophist has a certain likeness to our minister of
purification.
Str. Yes, the same sort of likeness which a wolf, who is the
fiercest of animals, has to a dog, who is the gentlest. But he who
would not be found tripping, ought to be very careful in this matter
of comparisons, for they are most slippery things. Nevertheless, let
us assume that the Sophists are the men. I say this provisionally, for
I think that the line which divides them will be marked enough if
proper care is taken.
Theaet. Likely enough.
Str. Let us grant, then, that from the discerning art comes
purification, and from purification let there be separated off a
part which is concerned with the soul; of this mental purification
instruction is a portion, and of instruction education, and of
education, that refutation of vain conceit which has been discovered
in the present argument; and let this be called by you and me the
nobly-descended art of Sophistry.
Theaet. Very well; and yet, considering the number of forms in which
he has presented himself, I begin to doubt how I can with any truth or
confidence describe the real nature of the Sophist.
Str. You naturally feel perplexed; and yet I think that he must be
still more perplexed in his attempt to escape us, for as the proverb
says, when every way is blocked, there is no escape; now, then, is the
time of all others to set upon him.
Theaet. True.
Str. First let us wait a moment and recover breath, and while we are
resting, we may reckon up in how many forms he has appeared. In the
first place, he was discovered to be a paid hunter after wealth and
youth.
Theaet. Yes.
Str. In the second place, he was a merchant in the goods of the
soul.
Theaet. Certainly.
Str. In the third place, he has turned out to be a retailer of the
same sort of wares.
Theaet. Yes; and in the fourth place, he himself manufactured the
learned wares which he sold.
Str. Quite right; I will try and remember the fifth myself. He
belonged to the fighting class, and was further distinguished as a
hero of debate, who professed the eristic art.
Theaet. True.
Str. The sixth point was doubtful, and yet we at last agreed that he
was a purger of souls, who cleared away notions obstructive to
knowledge.
Theaet. Very true.
Str. Do you not see that when the professor of any art has one
name and many kinds of knowledge, there must be something wrong? The
multiplicity of names which is applied to him shows that the common
principle to which all these branches of knowledge are tending, is not
understood.
Theaet. I should imagine this to be the case.
Str. At any rate we will understand him, and no indolence shall
prevent us. Let us begin again, then, and re-examine some of our
statements concerning the Sophist; there was one thing which
appeared to me especially characteristic of him.
Theaet. To what are you referring?
Str. We were saying of him, if I am not mistaken, that he was a
disputer?
Theaet. We were.
Str. And does he not also teach others the art of disputation?
Theaet. Certainly he does.
Str. And about what does he profess that he teaches men to
dispute? To begin at the beginning-Does he make them able to dispute
about divine things, which are invisible to men in general?
Theaet. At any rate, he is said to do so.
Str. And what do you say of the visible things in heaven and
earth, and the like?
Theaet. Certainly he disputes, and teaches to dispute about them.
Str. Then, again, in private conversation, when any universal
assertion is made about generation and essence, we know that such
persons are tremendous argufiers, and are able to impart their own
skill to others.
Theaet. Undoubtedly.
Str. And do they not profess to make men able to dispute about law
and about politics in general?
Theaet. Why, no one would have anything to say to them, if they
did not make these professions.
Str. In all and every art, what the craftsman ought to say in answer
to any question is written down in a popular form, and he who likes
may learn.
Theaet. I suppose that you are referring to the precepts of
Protagoras about wrestling and the other arts?
Str. Yes, my friend, and about a good many other things. In a
word, is not the art of disputation a power of disputing about all
things?
Theaet. Certainly; there does not seem to be much which is left out.
Str. But oh! my dear youth, do you suppose this possible? for
perhaps your young eyes may see things which to our duller sight do
not appear.
Theaet. To what are you alluding? I do not think that I understand
your present question.
Str. I ask whether anybody can understand all things.
Theaet. Happy would mankind be if such a thing were possible!
Soc. But how can any one who is ignorant dispute in a rational
manner against him who knows?
Theaet. He cannot.
Str. Then why has the sophistical art such a mysterious power?
Theaet. To what do you refer?
Str. How do the Sophists make young men believe in their supreme and
universal wisdom? For if they neither disputed nor were thought to
dispute rightly, or being thought to do so were deemed no wiser for
their controversial skill, then, to quote your own observation, no one
would give them money or be willing to learn their art.
Theaet. They certainly would not.
Str. But they are willing.
Theaet. Yes, they are.
Str. Yes, and the reason, as I should imagine, is that they are
supposed to have knowledge of those things about which they dispute?
Theaet. Certainly.
Str. And they dispute about all things?
Theaet. True.
Str. And therefore, to their disciples, they appear to be all-wise?
Theaet. Certainly.
Str. But they are not; for that was shown to be impossible.
Theaet. Impossible, of course.
Str. Then the Sophist has been shown to have a sort of conjectural
or apparent knowledge only of all things, which is not the truth?
Theaet. Exactly; no better description of him could be given.
Str. Let us now take an illustration, which will still more
clearly explain his nature.
Theaet. What is it?
Str. I will tell you, and you shall answer me, giving your very
closest attention. Suppose that a person were to profess, not that
he could speak or dispute, but that he knew how to make and do all
things, by a single art.
Theaet. All things?
Str. I see that you do not understand the first word that I utter,
for you do not understand the meaning of "all."
Theaet. No, I do not.
Str. Under all things, I include you and me, and also animals and
trees.
Theaet. What do you mean?
Str. Suppose a person to say that he will make you and me, and all
creatures.
Theaet. What would he mean by "making"? He cannot be a
husbandman;-for you said that he is a maker of animals.
Str. Yes; and I say that he is also the maker of the sea, and the
earth, and the heavens, and the gods, and of all other things; and,
further, that he can make them in no time, and sell them for a few
pence.
Theaet. That must be a jest.
Str. And when a man says that he knows all things, and can teach
them to another at a small cost, and in a short time, is not that a
jest?
Theaet. Certainly.
Str. And is there any more artistic or graceful form of jest than
imitation?
Theaet. Certainly not; and imitation is a very comprehensive term,
which includes under one class the most diverse sorts of things.
Str. We know, of course, that he who professes by one art to make
all things is really a painter, and by the painter's art makes
resemblances of real things which have the same name with them; and he
can deceive the less intelligent sort of young children, to whom he
shows his pictures at a distance, into the belief that he has the
absolute power of making whatever he likes.
Theaet. Certainly.
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Str. And may there not be supposed to be an imitative art of
reasoning? Is it not possible to enchant the hearts of young men by
words poured through their ears, when they are still at a distance
from the truth of facts, by exhibiting to them fictitious arguments,
and making them think that they are true, and that the speaker is
the wisest of men in all things?
Theaet. Yes; why should there not be another such art?
Str. But as time goes on, and their hearers advance in years, and
come into closer contact with realities, and have learnt by sad
experience to see and feel the truth of things, are not the greater
part of them compelled to change many opinions which they formerly
entertained, so that the great appears small to them, and the easy
difficult, and all their dreamy speculations are overturned by the
facts of life?
Theaet. That is my view, as far as I can judge, although, at my age,
I may be one of those who see things at a distance only.
Str. And the wish of all of us, who are your friends, is and
always will be to bring you as near to the truth as we can without the
sad reality. And now I should like you to tell me, whether the Sophist
is not visibly a magician and imitator of true being; or are we
still disposed to think that he may have a true knowledge of the
various matters about which he disputes?
Theaet. But how can he, Stranger? Is there any doubt, after what has
been said, that he is to be located in one of the divisions of
children's play?
Str. Then we must place him in the class of magicians and mimics.
Theaet. Certainly we must.
Str. And now our business is not to let the animal out, for we
have got him in a sort of dialectical net, and there is one thing
which he decidedly will not escape.
Theaet. What is that?
Str. The inference that he is a juggler.
Theaet. Precisely my own opinion of him.
Str. Then, clearly, we ought as soon as possible to divide the
image-making art, and go down into the net, and, if the Sophist does
not run away from us, to seize him according to orders and deliver him
over to reason, who is the lord of the hunt, and proclaim the
capture of him; and if he creeps into the recesses of the imitative
art, and secretes himself in one of them, to divide again and follow
him up until in some sub-section of imitation he is caught. For our
method of tackling each and all is one which neither he nor any
other creature will ever escape in triumph.
Theaet. Well said; and let us do as you propose.
Str. Well, then, pursuing the same analytic method as before, I
think that I can discern two divisions of the imitative art, but I
am not as yet able to see in which of them the desired form is to be
found.
Theaet. Will you tell me first what are two divisions of which you
are speaking?
Str. One is the art of likeness-making;-generally a likeness of
anything is made by producing a copy which is executed according to
the proportions of the original, similar in length and breadth and
depth, each thing receiving also its appropriate colour.
Theaet. Is not this always the aim of imitation?
Str. Not always; in works either of sculpture or of painting,
which are of any magnitude, there is a certain degree of deception;
-for artists were to give the true proportions of their fair works,
the upper part, which is farther off, would appear to be out of
proportion in comparison with the lower, which is nearer; and so
they give up the truth in their images and make only the proportions
which appear to be beautiful, disregarding the real ones.
Theaet. Quite true.
Str. And that which being other is also like, may we not fairly call
a likeness or image?
Theaet. Yes.
Str. And may we not, as I did just now, call that part of the
imitative art which is concerned with making such images the art of
likeness making?
Theaet. Let that be the name.
Str. And what shall we call those resemblances of the beautiful,
which appear such owing to the unfavourable position of the spectator,
whereas if a person had the power of getting a correct view of works
of such magnitude, they would appear not even like that to which
they profess to be like? May we not call these "appearances," since
they appear only and are not really like?
Theaet. Certainly.
Str. There is a great deal of this kind of thing in painting, and in
all imitation.
Theaet. Of course.
Str. And may we not fairly call the sort of art, which produces an
appearance and not an image, phantastic art?
Theaet. Most fairly.
Str. These then are the two kinds of image making-the art of
making likenesses, and phantastic or the art of making appearances?
Theaet. True.
Str. I was doubtful before in which of them I should place the
Sophist, nor am I even now able to see clearly; verily he is a
wonderful and inscrutable creature. And now in the cleverest manner he
has got into an impossible place.
Theaet. Yes, he has.
Str. Do you speak advisedly, or are you carried away at the moment
by the habit of assenting into giving a hasty answer?
Theaet. May I ask to what you are referring?
Str. My dear friend, we are engaged in a very difficult
speculation-there can be no doubt of that; for how a thing can
appear and seem, and not be, or how a man can say a thing which is not
true, has always been and still remains a very perplexing question.
Can any one say or think that falsehood really exists, and avoid being
caught in a contradiction? Indeed, Theaetetus, the task is a difficult
one.
Theaet. Why?
Str. He who says that falsehood exists has the audacity to assert
the being of not-being; for this is implied in the possibility of
falsehood. But, my boy, in the days when I was a boy, the great
Parmenides protested against this doctrine, and to the end of his life
he continued to inculcate the same lesson-always repeating both in
verse and out of verse:
Keep your mind from this way of enquiry, for never will you show
that not-being is
Such is his testimony, which is confirmed by the very expression
when sifted a little. Would you object to begin with the consideration
of the words themselves?
Theaet. Never mind about me; I am only desirous that you should
carry on the argument in the best way, and that you should take me
with you.
Str. Very good; and now say, do we venture to utter the forbidden
word "not-being"?
Theaet. Certainly we do.
Str. Let us be serious then, and consider the question neither in
strife nor play: suppose that one of the hearers of Parmenides was
asked, "To is the term 'not-being' to be applied?"-do you know what
sort of object he would single out in reply, and what answer he
would make to the enquirer?
Theaet. That is a difficult question, and one not to be answered
at all by a person like myself.
Str. There is at any rate no difficulty in seeing that the predicate
"not-being" is not applicable to any being.
Theaet. None, certainly.
Str. And if not to being, then not to something.
Theaet. Of course not.
Str. It is also plain, that in speaking of something we speak of
being, for to speak of an abstract something naked and isolated from
all being is impossible.
Theaet. Impossible.
Str. You mean by assenting to imply that he who says something
must say some one thing?
Theaet. Yes.
Str. Some in the singular (ti) you would say is the sign of one,
some in the dual (tine) of two, some in the plural (tines) of many?
Theaet. Exactly.
Str. Then he who says "not something" must say absolutely nothing.
Theaet. Most assuredly.
Str. And as we cannot admit that a man speaks and says nothing, he
who says "not-being" does not speak at all.
Theaet. The difficulty of the argument can no further go.
Str. Not yet, my friend, is the time for such a word; for there
still remains of all perplexities the first and greatest, touching the
very foundation of the matter.
Theaet. What do you mean? Do not be afraid to speak.
Str. To that which is, may be attributed some other thing which is?
Theaet. Certainly.
Str. But can anything which is, be attributed to that which is not?
Theaet. Impossible.
Str. And all number is to be reckoned among things which are?
Theaet. Yes, surely number, if anything, has a real existence.
Str. Then we must not attempt to attribute to not-being number
either in the singular or plural?
Theaet. The argument implies that we should be wrong in doing so.
Str. But how can a man either express in words or even conceive in
thought things which are not or a thing which is not without number?
Theaet. How indeed?
Str. When we speak of things which are not attributing plurality
to not-being?
Theaet. Certainly.
Str. But, on the other hand, when we say "what is not," do we not
attribute unity?
Theaet. Manifestly.
Str. Nevertheless, we maintain that you may not and ought not to
attribute being to not-being?
Theaet. Most true.
Str. Do you see, then, that not-being in itself can neither be
spoken, uttered, or thought, but that it is unthinkable,
unutterable, unspeakable, indescribable?
Theaet. Quite true.
Str. But, if so, I was wrong in telling you just now that the
difficulty which was coming is the greatest of all.
Theaet. What! is there a greater still behind?
Str. Well, I am surprised, after what has been said already, that
you do not see the difficulty in which he who would refute the
notion of not-being is involved. For he is compelled to contradict
himself as soon as he makes the attempt.
Theaet. What do you mean? Speak more clearly.
Str. Do not expect clearness from me. For I, who maintain that
not-being has no part either in the one or many, just now spoke and am
still speaking of not-being as one; for I say "not-being." Do you
understand?
Theaet. Yes.
Str. And a little while ago I said that not-being is unutterable,
unspeakable, indescribable: do you follow?
Theaet. I do after a fashion.
Str. When I introduced the word "is," did I not contradict what I
said before?
Theaet. Clearly.
Str. And in using the singular verb, did I not speak of not-being as
one?
Theaet. Yes.
Str. And when I spoke of not-being as indescribable and
unspeakable and unutterable, in using each of these words in the
singular, did I not refer to not-being as one?
Theaet. Certainly.
Str. And yet we say that, strictly speaking, it should not be
defined as one or many, and should not even be called "it," for the
use of the word "it" would imply a form of unity.
Theaet. Quite true.
Str. How, then, can any one put any faith in me? For now, as always,
I am unequal to the refutation of not-being. And therefore, as I was
saying, do not look to me for the right way of speaking about
not-being; but come, let us try the experiment with you.
Theaet. What do you mean?
Str. Make a noble effort, as becomes youth, and endeavour with all
your might to speak of not-being in a right manner, without
introducing into it either existence or unity or plurality.
Theaet. It would be a strange boldness in me which would attempt the
task when I see you thus discomfited.
Str. Say no more of ourselves; but until we find some one or other
who can speak of not-being without number, we must acknowledge that
the Sophist is a clever rogue who will not be got out of his hole.
Theaet. Most true.
Str. And if we say to him that he professes an art of making
appearances, he will grapple with us and retort our argument upon
ourselves; and when we call him an image-maker he will say, "Pray what
do you mean at all by an image?" -and I should like to know,
Theaetetus, how we can possibly answer the younker's question?
Theaet. We shall doubtless tell him of the images which are
reflected in water or in mirrors; also of sculptures, pictures, and
other duplicates.
Str. I see, Theaetetus, that you have never made the acquaintance of
the Sophist.
Theaet. Why do you think so?
Str. He will make believe to have his eyes shut, or to have none.
Theaet. What do you mean?
Str. When you tell him of something existing in a mirror, or in
sculpture, and address him as though he had eyes, he will laugh you to
scorn, and will pretend that he knows nothing of mirrors and
streams, or of sight at all; he will say that he is asking about an
idea.
Theaet. What can he mean?
Str. The common notion pervading all these objects, which you
speak of as many, and yet call by the single name of image, as
though it were the unity under which they were all included. How
will you maintain your ground against him?
Theaet. How. Stranger, can I describe an image except as something
fashioned in the likeness of the true?
Str. And do you mean this something to be some other true thing,
or what do you mean?
Theaet. Certainly not another true thing, but only a resemblance.
Str. And you mean by true that which really is?
Theaet. Yes.
Str. And the not true is that which is the opposite of the true?
Theaet. Exactly.
Str. A resemblance, then, is not really real, if, as you say, not
true?
Theaet. Nay, but it is in a certain sense.
Str. You mean to say, not in a true sense?
Theaet. Yes; it is in reality only an image.
Str. Then what we call an image is in reality really unreal.
Theaet. In what a strange complication of being and not-being we are
involved!
Str. Strange! I should think so. See how, by his reciprocation of
opposites, the many-headed Sophist has compelled us, quite against our
will, to admit the existence of not-being.
Theaet. Yes, indeed, I see.
Str. The difficulty is how to define his art without falling into
a contradiction.
Theaet. How do you mean? And where does the danger lie?
Str. When we say that he deceives us with an illusion, and that
his art is illusory, do we mean that our soul is led by his art to
think falsely, or what do we mean?
Theaet. There is nothing else to be said.
Str. Again, false opinion is that form of opinion which thinks the
opposite of the truth:-You would assent?
Theaet. Certainly.
Str. You mean to say that false opinion thinks what is not?
Theaet. Of course.
Str. Does false opinion think that things which are not are not,
or that in a certain sense they are?
Theaet. Things that are not must be imagined to exist in a certain
sense, if any degree of falsehood is to be possible.
Str. And does not false opinion also think that things which most
certainly exist do not exist at all?
Theaet. Yes.
Str. And here, again, is falsehood?
Theaet. Falsehood-yes.
Str. And in like manner, a false proposition will be deemed to be
one which are, the nonexistence of things which are, and the existence
of things which are not.
Theaet. There is no other way in which a false proposition can
arise.
Str. There is not; but the Sophist will deny these statements. And
indeed how can any rational man assent to them, when the very
expressions which we have just used were before acknowledged by us
to be unutterable, unspeakable, indescribable, unthinkable? Do you see
his point, Theaetetus?
Theaet. Of course he will say that we are contradicting ourselves
when we hazard the assertion, that falsehood exists in opinion and
in words; for in maintaining this, we are compelled over and over
again to assert being of not-being, which we admitted just now to be
an utter impossibility.
Str. How well you remember! And now it is high time to hold a
consultation as to what we ought to do about the Sophist; for if we
persist in looking for him in the class of false workers and
magicians, you see that the handles for objection and the difficulties
which will arise are very numerous and obvious.
Theaet. They are indeed.
Str. We have gone through but a very small portion of them, and they
are really infinite.
Theaet. If that is the case, we cannot possibly catch the Sophist.
Str. Shall we then be so faint-hearted as to give him up?
Theaet. Certainly not, I should say, if we can get the slightest
hold upon him.
Str. Will you then forgive me, and, as your words imply, not be
altogether displeased if I flinch a little from the grasp of such a
sturdy argument?
Theaet. To be sure I will.
Str. I have a yet more urgent request to make.
Theaet. Which is-?
Str. That you will promise not to regard me as a parricide.
Theaet. And why?
Str. Because, in self-defence, I must test the philosophy of my
father Parmenides, and try to prove by main force, that in a certain
sense not-being is, and that being, on the other hand, is not.
Theaet. Some attempt of the kind is clearly needed.
Str. Yes, a blind man, as they say, might see that, and, unless
these questions are decided in one way or another, no one when he
speaks false words, or false opinion, or idols, or images or
imitations or appearances, or about the arts which are concerned
with them; can avoid falling into ridiculous contradictions.
Theaet. Most true.
Str. And therefore I must venture to lay hands on my father's
argument; for if I am to be over-scrupulous, I shall have to give
the matter up.
Theaet. Nothing in the world should ever induce us to do so.
Str. I have a third little request which I wish to make.
Theaet. What is it?
Str. You heard me-say what-I have always felt and still feel-that
I have no heart for this argument?
Theaet. I did.
Str. I tremble at the thought of what I have said, and expect that
you will deem me mad, when you hear of my sudden changes and
shiftings; let me therefore observe, that I am examining the
question entirely out of regard for you.
Theaet. There is no reason for you to fear that I shall impute any
impropriety to you, if you attempt this refutation and proof; take
heart, therefore, and proceed.
Str. And where shall I begin the perilous enterprise? I think that
the road which I must take is-
Theaet. Which?-Let me hear.
Str. I think that we had better, first of all, consider the points
which at present are regard as self-evident, lest we may have fallen
into some confusion, and be too ready to assent to one another,
fancying that we are quite clear about them.
Theaet. Say more distinctly what you mean.
Str. I think that Parmenides, and all ever yet undertook to
determine the number and nature of existences, talked to us in
rather a light and easy strain.
Theaet. How?
Str. As if we had been children, to whom they repeated each his
own mythus or story;-one said that there were three principles, and
that at one time there was war between certain of them; and then again
there was peace, and they were married and begat children, and brought
them up; and another spoke of two principles,-a moist and a dry, or
a hot and a cold, and made them marry and cohabit. The Eleatics,
however, in our part of the world, say that things are many in name,
but in nature one; this is their mythus, which goes back to
Xenophanes, and is even older. Then there are Ionian, and in more
recent times Sicilian muses, who have arrived at the conclusion that
to unite the two principles is safer, and to say that being is one and
many, and that these are held together by enmity and friendship,
ever parting, ever meeting, as the-severer Muses assert, while the
gentler ones do not insist on the perpetual strife and peace, but
admit a relaxation and alternation of them; peace and unity
sometimes prevailing under the sway of Aphrodite, and then again
plurality and war, by reason of a principle of strife. Whether any
of them spoke the truth in all this is hard to determine; besides,
antiquity and famous men should have reverence, and not be liable to
accusations; so serious; Yet one thing may be said of them without
offence-
Theaet. What thing?
Str. That they went on their several ways disdaining to notice
people like ourselves; they did not care whether they took us with
them, or left us behind them.
Theaet. How do you mean?
Str. I mean to say, that when they talk of one, two, or more
elements, which are or have become or are becoming, or again of heat
mingling with cold, assuming in some other part of their works
separations and mixtures,-tell me, Theaetetus, do you understand
what they mean by these expressions? When I was a younger man, I
used to fancy that I understood quite well what was meant by the
term "not-being," which is our present subject of dispute; and now you
see in what a fix we are about it.
Theaet. I see.
Str. And very likely we have been getting into the same perplexity
about "being," and yet may fancy that when anybody utters the word, we
understand him quite easily, although we do not know about
not-being. But we may be; equally ignorant of both.
Theaet. I dare say.
Str. And the same may be said of all the terms just mentioned.
Theaet. True.
Str. The consideration of most of them may be deferred; but we had
better now discuss the chief captain and leader of them.
Theaet. Of what are you speaking? You clearly think that we must
first investigate what people mean by the word "being."
Str. You follow close at heels, Theaetetus. For the right method,
I conceive, will be to call into our presence the dualistic
philosophers and to interrogate them. "Come," we will say, "Ye, who
affirm that hot and cold or any other two principles are the universe,
what is this term which you apply to both of them, and what do you
mean when you say that both and each of them 'are'? How are we to
understand the word 'are'? Upon your view, are we to suppose that
there is a third principle over and above the other two-three in
all, and not two? For clearly you cannot say that one of the two
principles is being, and yet attribute being equally to both of
them; for, if you did, whichever of the two is identified with
being, will comprehend the other; and so they will be one and not
two."
Theaet. Very true.
Str. But perhaps you mean to give the name of "being" to both of
them together?
Theaet. Quite likely.
Str. "Then, friends," we shall reply to them, "the answer is plainly
that the two will still be resolved into one."
Theaet. Most true.
Str. "Since then, we are in a difficulty, please to tell us what you
mean, when you speak of being; for there can be no doubt that you
always from the first understood your own meaning, whereas we once
thought that we understood you, but now we are in a great strait.
Please to begin by explaining this matter to us, and let us no
longer fancy that we understand you, when we entirely misunderstand
you." There will be no impropriety in our demanding an answer to
this question, either of the dualists or of the pluralists?
Theaet. Certainly not.
Str. And what about the assertors of the oneness of the all-must
we not endeavour to ascertain from them what they mean by "being"?
Theaet. By all means.
Str. Then let them answer this question: One, you say, alone is?
"Yes," they will reply.
Theaet. True.
Str. And there is something which you call "being"?
Theaet. "Yes."
Str. And is being the same as one, and do you apply two names to the
same thing?
Theaet. What will be their answer, Stranger?
Str. It is clear, Theaetetus, that he who asserts the unity of being
will find a difficulty in answering this or any other question.
Theaet. Why so?
Str. To admit of two names, and to affirm that there is nothing
but unity, is surely ridiculous?
Theaet. Certainly.
Str. And equally irrational to admit that a name is anything?
Theaet. How so?
Str. To distinguish the name from the thing, implies duality.
Theaet. Yes.
Str. And yet he who identifies the name with the thing will be
compelled to say that it is the name of nothing, or if he says that it
is the name of something, even then the name will only be the name
of a name, and of nothing else.
Theaet. True.
Str. And the one will turn out to be only one of one, and being
absolute unity, will represent a mere name.
Theaet. Certainly.
Str. And would they say that the whole is other than the one that
is, or the same with it?
Theaet. To be sure they would, and they actually say so.
Str. If being is a whole, as Parmenides sings,-
Every way like unto the fullness of a well-rounded sphere,
Evenly balanced from the centre on every side,
And must needs be neither greater nor less in any way,
Neither on this side nor on that-
then being has a centre and extremes, and, having these, must also
have parts.
Theaet. True.
Str. Yet that which has parts may have the attribute of unity in all
the parts, and in this way being all and a whole, may be one?
Theaet. Certainly.
Str. But that of which this is the condition cannot be absolute
unity?
Theaet. Why not?
Str. Because, according to right reason, that which is truly one
must be affirmed to be absolutely indivisible.
Theaet. Certainly.
Str. But this indivisible, if made up of many parts, will contradict
reason.
Theaet. I understand.
Str. Shall we say that being is one and a whole, because it has
the attribute of unity? Or shall we say that being is not a whole at
all?
Theaet. That is a hard alternative to offer.
Str. Most true; for being, having in a certain sense the attribute
of one, is yet proved not to be the same as one, and the all is
therefore more than one.
Theaet. Yes.
Str. And yet if being be not a whole, through having the attribute
of unity, and there be such a thing as an absolute whole, being
lacks something of its own nature?
Theaet. Certainly.
Str. Upon this view, again, being, having a defect of being, will
become not-being?
Theaet. True.
Str. And, again, the all becomes more than one, for being and the
whole will each have their separate nature.
Theaet. Yes.
Str. But if the whole does not exist at all, all the previous
difficulties remain the same, and there will be the further
difficulty, that besides having no being, being can never have come
into being.
Theaet. Why so?
Str. Because that which comes into being always comes into being
as a whole, so that he who does not give whole a place among beings,
cannot speak either of essence or generation as existing.
Theaet. Yes, that certainly appears to be true.
Str. Again; how can that which is not a whole have any quantity? For
that which is of a certain quantity must necessarily be the whole of
that quantity.
Theaet. Exactly.
Str. And there will be innumerable other points, each of them
causing infinite trouble to him who says that being is either, one
or two.
Theaet. The difficulties which are dawning upon us prove this; for
one objection connects with another, and they are always involving
what has preceded in a greater and worse perplexity.
Str. We are far from having exhausted the more exact thinkers who
treat of being and not-being. But let us be content to leave them, and
proceed to view those who speak less precisely; and we shall find as
the result of all, that the nature of being is quite as difficult to
comprehend as that of not-being.
Theaet. Then now we will go to the others.
Str. There appears to be a sort of war of Giants and Gods going on
amongst them; they are fighting with one another about the nature of
essence.
Theaet. How is that?
Str. Some of them are dragging down all things from heaven and
from the unseen to earth, and they literally grasp in their hands
rocks and oaks; of these they lay hold, and obstinately maintain, that
the things only which can be touched or handled have being or essence,
because they define being and body as one, and if any one else says
that what is not a body exists they altogether despise him, and will
hear of nothing but body.
Theaet. I have often met with such men, and terrible fellows they
are.
Str. And that is the reason why their opponents cautiously defend
themselves from above, out of an unseen world, mightily contending
that true essence consists of certain intelligible and incorporeal
ideas; the bodies of the materialists, which by them are maintained to
be the very truth, they break up into little bits by their
arguments, and affirm them to be, not essence, but generation and
motion. Between the two armies, Theaetetus, there is always an endless
conflict raging concerning these matters.
Theaet. True.
Str. Let us ask each party in turn, to give an account of that which
they call essence.
Theaet. How shall we get it out of them?
Str. With those who make being to consist in ideas, there will be
less difficulty, for they are civil people enough; but there will be
very great difficulty, or rather an absolute impossibility, in getting
an opinion out of those who drag everything down to matter. Shall I
tell you what we must do?
Theaet. What?
Str. Let us, if we can, really improve them; but if this is not
possible, let us imagine them to be better than they are, and more
willing to answer in accordance with the rules of argument, and then
their opinion will be more worth having; for that which better men
acknowledge has more weight than that which is acknowledged by
inferior men. Moreover we are no respecters of persons, but seekers
after time.
Theaet. Very good.
Str. Then now, on the supposition that they are improved, let us ask
them to state their views, and do you interpret them.
Theaet. Agreed.
Str. Let them say whether they would admit that there is such a
thing as a mortal animal.
Theaet. Of course they would.
Str. And do they not acknowledge this to be a body having a soul?
Theaet. Certainly they do.
Str. Meaning to say the soul is something which exists?
Theaet. True.
Str. And do they not say that one soul is just, and another
unjust, and that one soul is wise, and another foolish?
Theaet. Certainly.
Str. And that the just and wise soul becomes just and wise by the
possession of justice and wisdom, and the opposite under opposite
circumstances?
Theaet. Yes, they do.
Str. But surely that which may be present or may be absent will be
admitted by them to exist?
Theaet. Certainly.
Str. And, allowing that justice, wisdom, the other virtues, and
their opposites exist, as well as a soul in which they inhere, do they
affirm any of them to be visible and tangible, or are they all
invisible?
Theaet. They would say that hardly any of them are visible.
Str. And would they say that they are corporeal?
Theaet. They would distinguish: the soul would be said by them to
have a body; but as to the other qualities of justice, wisdom, and the
like, about which you asked, they would not venture either to deny
their existence, or to maintain that they were all corporeal.
Str. Verily, Theaetetus, I perceive a great improvement in them; the
real aborigines, children of the dragon's teeth, would have been
deterred by no shame at all, but would have obstinately asserted
that nothing is which they are not able to squeeze in their hands.
Theaet. That is pretty much their notion.
Str. Let us push the question; for if they will admit that any, even
the smallest particle of being, is incorporeal, it is enough; they
must then say what that nature is which is common to both the
corporeal and incorporeal, and which they have in their mind's eye
when they say of both of them that they "are." Perhaps they may be
in a difficulty; and if this is the case, there is a possibility
that they may accept a notion of ours respecting the nature of
being, having nothing of their own to offer.
Theaet. What is the notion? Tell me, and we shall soon see.
Str. My notion would be, that anything which possesses any sort of
power to affect another, or to be affected by another, if only for a
single moment, however trifling the cause and however slight the
effect, has real existence; and I hold that the definition of being is
simply power of
Theaet. They accept your suggestion, having nothing better of
their own to offer.
Str. Very good; perhaps we, as well as they, may one day change
our minds; but, for the present, this may be regarded as the
understanding which is established with them.
Theaet. Agreed.
Str. Let us now go to the friends of ideas; of their opinions,
too, you shall be the interpreter.
Theaet. I will.
Str. To them we say-You would distinguish essence from generation?
Theaet. "Yes," they reply.
Str. And you would allow that we participate in generation, with the
body, and through perception, but we participate with the soul through
in true essence; and essence you would affirm to be always the same
and immutable, whereas generation or becoming varies?
Theaet. Yes; that is what we should affirm.
Str. Well, fair sirs, we say to them, what is this participation,
which you assert of both? Do you agree with our recent definition?
Theaet. What definition?
Str. We said that being was an active or passive energy, arising out
of a certain power which proceeds from elements meeting with one
another. Perhaps your cars, Theaetetus, may fail to catch their
answer, which I recognize because I have been accustomed to hear it.
Theaet. And what is their answer?
Str. They deny the truth of what we were just now, saying to the
aborigines about existence.
Theaet. What was that?
Str. Any power of doing or suffering in a degree however slight
was held by us to be a sufficient definition of being?
Theaet. True.
Str. They deny this, and say that the power of doing or suffering is
confined to becoming, and that neither power is applicable to being.
Theaet. And is there not some truth in what they say?
Str. Yes; but our reply will be that we want to ascertain from
them more distinctly, whether they further admit that the soul
knows, and that being or essence is known.
Theaet. There can be no doubt that they say so.
Str. And is knowing and being known, doing or suffering, or both, or
is the one doing and the other suffering, or has neither any share
in either?
Theaet. Clearly, neither has any share in either; for if they say
anything else, they will contradict themselves.
Str. I understand; but they will allow that if to know is active,
then, of course, to be known is passive. And on this view being, in so
far as it is known, is acted upon by knowledge, and is therefore in
motion; for that which is in a state of rest cannot be acted upon,
as we affirm.
Theaet. True.
Str. And, O heavens, can we ever be made to believe that motion
and life and soul and mind are not present with perfect being? Can
we imagine that, being is devoid of life and mind, and exists in awful
unmeaningness an everlasting fixture?
Theaet. That would be a dreadful thing to admit, Stranger.
Str. But shall we say that has mind and not life?
Theaet. How is that possible?
Str. Or shall we say that both inhere in perfect being, but that
it has no soul which contains them?
Theaet. And in what other way can it contain them?
Str. Or that being has mind and life and soul, but although
endowed with soul remains absolutely unmoved?
Theaet. All three suppositions appear to me to be irrational.
Str. Under being, then, we must include motion, and that which is
moved.
Theaet. Certainly.
Str. Then, Theaetetus, our inference is, that if there is no motion,
neither is there any mind anywhere, or about anything or belonging
to any one.
Theaet. Quite true.
Str. And yet this equally follows, if we grant that all things are
in motion-upon this view too mind has no existence.
Theaet. How so?
Str. Do you think that sameness of condition and mode and subject
could ever exist without a principle of rest?
Theaet. Certainly not.
Str. Can you see how without them mind could exist, or come into
existence anywhere?
Theaet. No.
Str. And surely contend we must in every possible way against him
who would annihilate knowledge and reason and mind, and yet ventures
to speak confidently about anything.
Theaet. Yes, with all our might.
Str. Then the philosopher, who has the truest reverence for these
qualities, cannot possibly accept the notion of those who say that the
whole is at rest, either as unity or in many forms: and he will be
utterly deaf to those who assert universal motion. As children say
entreatingly "Give us both." so he will include both the moveable
and immoveable in his definition of being and all.
Theaet. Most true.
Str. And now, do we seem to have gained a fair notion of being?
Theaet. Yes truly.
Str. Alas, Theaetetus, methinks that we are now only beginning to
see the real difficulty of the enquiry into the nature of it.
Theaet. What do you mean?
Str. O my friend, do you not see that nothing can exceed out
ignorance, and yet we fancy that we are saying something good?
Theaet. I certainly thought that we were; and I do not at all
understand how we never found out our desperate case.
Str. Reflect: after having made, these admissions, may we not be
justly asked, the same questions which we ourselves were asking of
those who said that all was hot and cold?
Theaet. What were they? Will you recall them to my mind?
Str. To be sure, I will remind you of them, by putting the same
questions, to you which I did to them, and then we shall get on.
Theaet. True.
Str. Would you not say that rest and motion are in the most entire
opposition to one another?
Theaet. Of course.
Str. And yet you would say that both and either of them equally are?
Theaet. I should.
Str. And when you admit that both or either of them are, do you mean
to say that both or either, of them are in motion?
Theaet. Certainly not.
Str. Or do you wish to imply that they are both at rest, when you
say that they are?
Theaet. Of course not.
Str. Then you conceive of being as some third and distinct nature,
under which rest and motion are alike included; and, observing that
they both participate in being, you declare that they are.
Theaet. Truly we seem to have an intimation that being is some third
thing, when we say that rest and motion are.
Str. Then being is not the combination of rest and motion, but
something different from them.
Theaet. So it would appear.
Str. Being, then, according to its own nature, is neither in
motion nor at rest.
Theaet. That is very much the truth.
Str. Where, then, is a man to look for help who would have any clear
or fixed notion of being in his mind?
Theaet. Where, indeed?
Str. I scarcely think that he can look anywhere; for that which is
not in motion must be at rest, and again, that which is not at rest
must be in motion; but being is placed outside of both these
classes. Is this possible?
Theaet. Utterly impossible.
Str. Here, then, is another thing which we ought to bear in mind.
Theaet. What?
Str. When we were asked to what we were to assign the appellation of
not-being, we were in the greatest difficulty:-do you remember?
Theaet. To be sure.
Str. And are we not now in as a difficulty about being?
Theaes. I should say, Stranger, that we are in one which is, if
possible, even greater.
Str. Then let us acknowledge the difficulty; and as being and
not-being are involved in the same perplexity, there is hope that when
the one appears more or less distinctly, the other will equally
appear; and if we are able to see neither there may still be a
chance of steering our way in between them, without any great
discredit.
Theaet. Very good.
Str. Let us enquire, then, how we come to predicate many names of
the same thing.
Theaet. Give an example.
Str. I mean that we speak of man, for example, under many names-that
we attribute to him colours and forms and magnitudes and virtues and
vices, in all of which instances and in ten thousand others we not
only speak of him as a man, but also as good, and having number-less
other attributes, and in the same way anything else which we
originally supposed to be one is described by us as many, and under
many names.
Theaet. That is true.
Str. And thus we provide a rich feast for tyros, whether young or
old; for there is nothing easier than to argue that the one cannot
be many, or the many one; and great is their delight in denying that a
man is good; for man, they insist, is man and good is good. I dare say
that you have met with persons who take-an interest in such
matters-they are often elderly men, whose meagre sense is thrown
into amazement by these discoveries of theirs, which they believe to
be the height of wisdom.
Theaet. Certainly, I have.
Str. Then, not to exclude any one who has ever speculated at all
upon the nature of being, let us put our questions to them as well
as to our former friends.
Theaet. What questions?
Str. Shall we refuse to attribute being to motion and rest, or
anything to anything, and assume that they do not mingle, and are
incapable of participating in one another? Or shall we gather all into
one class of things communicable with one another? Or are some
things communicable and others not?-Which of these alternatives,
Theaetetus, will they prefer?
Theaet. I have nothing to answer on their behalf. Suppose that you
take all these hypotheses in turn, and see what are the consequences
which follow from each of them.
Str. Very good, and first let us assume them to say that nothing
is capable of participating in anything else in any respect; in that
case rest and motion cannot participate in being at all.
Theaet. They cannot.
Str. But would either of them be if not participating in being?
Theaet. No.
Str. Then by this admission everything is instantly overturned, as
well the doctrine of universal motion as of universal rest, and also
the doctrine of those who distribute being into immutable and
everlasting kinds; for all these add on a notion of being, some
affirming that things "are" truly in motion, and others that they
"are" truly at rest.
Theaes. Just so.
jum...@my-deja.com
Str. Again, those who would at one time compound, and at another
resolve all things, whether making them into one and out of one
creating infinity, or dividing them into finite clements, and
forming compounds out of these; whether they suppose the processes
of creation to be successive or continuous, would be talking
nonsense in all this if there were no admixture.
Theaet. True.
Str. Most ridiculous of all will the men themselves be who want to
carry out the argument and yet forbid us to call anything, because
participating in some affection from another, by the name of that
other.
Theaet. Why so?
Str. Why, because they are compelled to use the words "to be,"
"apart," "from others. "in itself," and ten thousand more, which
they cannot give up, but must make the connecting links of
discourse; and therefore they do not require to be refuted by
others, but their enemy, as the saying is, inhabits the same house
with them; they are always carrying about with them an adversary, like
the wonderful ventriloquist, Eurycles, who out of their own bellies
audibly contradicts them.
Theaet. Precisely so; a very true and exact illustration.
Str. And now, if we suppose that all things have the power of
communion with one another -what will follow?
Theaet. Even I can solve that riddle.
Str. How?
Theaet. Why, because motion itself would be at rest, and rest
again in motion, if they could be attributed to one another.
Str. But this is utterly impossible.
Theaet. Of course.
Str. Then only the third hypothesis remains.
Theaet. True.
Str. For, surely, either all things have communion with all; or
nothing with any other thing; or some things communicate with some
things and others not.
Theaet. Certainly.
Str. And two out of these three suppositions have been found to be
impossible.
Theaet. Yes.
Str. Every one then, who desires to answer truly, will adopt the
third and remaining hypothesis of the communion of some with some.
Theaet. Quite true.
Str. This communion of some with some may be illustrated by the case
of letters; for some letters do not fit each other, while others do.
Theaet. Of course.
Str. And the vowels, especially, are a sort of bond which pervades
all the other letters, so that without a vowel one consonant cannot be
joined to another.
Theaet. True.
Str. But does every one know what letters will unite with what? Or
is art required in order to do so?
Theaet. What is required.
Str. What art?
Theaet. The art of grammar.
Str. And is not this also true of sounds high and low?-Is not he who
has the art to know what sounds mingle, a musician, and he who is
ignorant, not a musician?
Theaet. Yes.
Str. And we shall find this to be generally true of art or the
absence of art.
Theaet. Of course.
Str. And as classes are admitted by us in like manner to be some
of them capable and others incapable of intermixture, must not he
who would rightly show what kinds will unite and what will not,
proceed by the help of science in the path of argument? And will he
not ask if the connecting links are universal, and so capable of
intermixture with all things; and again, in divisions, whether there
are not other universal classes, which make them possible?
Theaet. To be sure he will require science, and, if I am not
mistaken, the very greatest of all sciences.
Str. How are we to call it? By Zeus, have we not lighted unwittingly
upon our free and noble science, and in looking for the Sophist have
we not entertained the philosopher unawares?
Theaet. What do you mean?
Str. Should we not say that the division according to classes, which
neither makes the same other, nor makes other the same, is the
business of the dialectical science?
Theaet. That is what we should say.
Str. Then, surely, he who can divide rightly is able to see
clearly one form pervading a scattered multitude, and many different
forms contained under one higher form; and again, one form knit
together into a single whole and pervading many such wholes, and
many forms, existing only in separation and isolation. This is the
knowledge of classes which determines where they can have communion
with one another and where not.
Theaet. Quite true.
Str. And the art of dialectic would be attributed by you only to the
philosopher pure and true?
Theaet. Who but he can be worthy?
Str. In this region we shall always discover the philosopher, if
we look for him; like the Sophist, he is not easily discovered, but
for a different reason.
Theaet. For what reason?
Str. Because the Sophist runs away into the darkness of not-being,
in which he has learned by habit to feel about, and cannot be
discovered because of the darkness of the place. is not that true?
Theaet. It seems to be so.
Str. And the philosopher, always holding converse through reason
with the idea of being, is also dark from excess of light; for the
souls of the many have no eye which can endure the vision of the
divine.
Theaet. Yes; that seems to be quite as true as the other.
Str. Well, the philosopher may hereafter be more fully considered by
us, if we are disposed; but the Sophist must clearly not be allowed to
escape until we have had a good look at him.
Theaet. Very good.
Str. Since, then, we are agreed that some classes have a communion
with one another, and others not, and some have communion with a few
and others with many, and that there is no reason why some should
not have universal communion with all, let us now pursue the
enquiry, as the argument suggests, not in relation to all ideas,
lest the multitude of them should confuse us, but let us select a
few of those which are reckoned to be the principal ones, and consider
their several natures and their capacity of communion with one
another, in order that if we are not able to apprehend with perfect
clearness the notions of being and not-being, we may at least not fall
short in the consideration of them, so far as they come within the
scope of the present enquiry, if peradventure we may be allowed to
assert the reality of not-being, and yet escape unscathed.
Theaet. We must do so.
Str. The most important of all the genera are those which we were
just now mentioning-being and rest and motion.
Theaet. Yes, by far.
Str. And two of these are, as we affirm, incapable of communion with
one another.
Theaet. Quite incapable.
Str. Whereas being surely has communion with both of them, for
both of them are?
Theaet. Of course.
Str. That makes up three of them.
Theaet. To be sure.
Str. And each of them is other than the remaining two, but the
same with itself.
Theaet. True.
Str. But then, what is the meaning of these two words, "same" and
"other"? Are they two new kinds other than the three, and yet always
of necessity intermingling with them, and are we to have five kinds
instead of three; or when we speak of the same and other, are we
unconsciously speaking of one of the three first kinds?
Theaet. Very likely we are.
Str. But, surely, motion and rest are neither the other nor the
same.
Theaet. How is that?
Str. Whatever we attribute to motion and rest in common, cannot be
either of them.
Theaet. Why not?
Str. Because motion would be at rest and rest in motion, for
either of them, being predicated of both, will compel the other to
change into the opposite of its own nature, because partaking of its
opposite.
Theaet. Quite true.
Str. Yet they surely both partake of the same and of the other?
Theaet. Yes.
Str. Then we must not assert that motion, any more than rest, is
either the same or the other.
Theaet. No; we must not.
Str. But are we to conceive that being and the same are identical?
Theaet. Possibly.
Str. But if they are identical, then again in saying that motion and
rest have being, we should also be saying that they are the same.
Theaet. Which surely cannot be.
Str. Then being and same cannot be one.
Theaet. Scarcely.
Str. Then we may suppose the same to be a fourth class, which is now
to be added to the three others.
Theaet. Quite true.
Str. And shall we call the other a fifth class? Or should we
consider being and other to be two names of the same class?
Theaet. Very likely.
Str. But you would agree, if I am not mistaken, that existences
are relative as well as absolute?
Theaet. Certainly.
Str. And the other is always relative to other?
Theaet. True.
Str. But this would not be the case unless being and the other
entirely differed; for, if the other, like being, were absolute as
well as relative, then there would have been a kind of other which was
not other than other. And now we find that what is other must of
necessity be what it is in relation to some other.
Theaet. That is the true state of the case.
Str. Then we must admit the other as the fifth of our selected
classes.
Theaet. Yes.
Str. And the fifth class pervades all classes, for they all differ
from one another, not by reason of their own nature, but because
they partake of the idea of the other.
Theaet. Quite true.
Str. Then let us now put the case with reference to each of the
five.
Theaet. How?
Str. First there is motion, which we affirm to be absolutely "other"
than rest: what else can we say?
Theaet. It is so.
Str. And therefore is not rest.
Theaet. Certainly not.
Str. And yet is, because partaking of being.
Theaet. True.
Str. Again, motion is other than the same?
Theaet. Just so.
Str. And is therefore not the same.
Theaet. It is not.
Str. Yet, surely, motion is the same, because all things partake
of the same.
Theaet. Very true.
Str. Then we must admit, and not object to say, that motion is the
same and is not the same, for we do not apply the terms "same" and
"not the same," in the same sense; but we call it the "same," in
relation to itself, because partaking of the same; and not the same,
because having communion with the other, it is thereby severed from
the same, and has become not that but other, and is therefore
rightly spoken of as "not the same."
Theaet. To be sure.
Str. And if absolute motion in any point of view partook of rest,
there would be no absurdity in calling motion stationary.
Theaet. Quite right, -that is, on the supposition that some
classes mingle with one another, and others not.
Str. That such a communion of kinds is according to nature, we had
already proved before we arrived at this part of our discussion.
Theaet. Certainly.
Str. Let us proceed, then. we not say that motion is other than
the other, having been also proved by us to be other than the same and
other than rest?
Theaet. That is certain.
Str. Then, according to this view, motion is other and also not
other?
Theaet. True.
Str. What is the next step? Shall we say that motion is other than
the three and not other than the fourth-for we agreed that there are
five classes about and in the sphere of which we proposed to make
enquiry?
Theaet. Surely we cannot admit that the number is less than it
appeared to be just now.
Str. Then we may without fear contend that motion is other than
being?
Theaet. Without the least fear.
Str. The plain result is that motion, since it partakes of being,
really is and also is not?
Theaet. Nothing can be plainer.
Str. Then not-being necessarily exists in the case of motion and
of every class; for the nature of the other entering into them all,
makes each of them other than being, and so non-existent; and
therefore of all of them, in like manner, we may truly say that they
are not-and again, inasmuch as they partake of being, that they are
and are existent.
Theaet. So we may assume.
Str. Every class, then, has plurality of being and infinity of
not-being.
Theaet. So we must infer.
Str. And being itself may be said to be other than the other kinds.
Theaet. Certainly.
Str. Then we may infer that being is not, in respect of as many
other things as there are; for not-being these it is itself one, and
is: not the other things, which are infinite in number.
Theaet. That is not far from the truth.
Str. And we must not quarrel with this result, since it is of the
nature of classes to have communion with one another; and if any one
denies our present statement [viz., that being is not, etc.], let
him first argue with our former conclusion [i.e., respecting the
communion of ideas], and then he may proceed to argue with what
follows.
Theaet. Nothing can be fairer.
Str. Let me ask you to consider a further question.
Theaet. What question?
Str. When we speak of not-being, we speak, I suppose, not of
something opposed to being, but only different.
Theaet. What do you mean?
Str. When we speak of something as not great, does the expression
seem to you to imply what is little any more than what is equal?
Theaet. Certainly not.
Str. The negative particles, ou and me, when prefixed to words, do
not imply opposition, but only difference from the words, or more
correctly from the things represented by the words, which follow them.
Theaet. Quite true.
Str. There is another point to be considered, if you do not object.
Theaet. What is it?
Str. The nature of the other appears to me to be divided into
fractions like knowledge.
Theaet. How so?
Str. Knowledge, like the other, is one; and yet the various parts of
knowledge have each of them their own particular name, and hence there
are many arts and kinds of knowledge.
Theaet. Quite true.
Str. And is not the case the same with the parts of the other, which
is also one?
Theaet. Very likely; but will you tell me how?
Str. There is some part of the other which is opposed to the
beautiful?
Theaet. There is.
Str. Shall we say that this has or has not a name?
Theaet. It has; for whatever we call not beautiful is other than the
beautiful, not than something else.
Str. And now tell me another thing.
Theaet. What?
Str. Is the not-beautiful anything but this-an existence parted
off from a certain kind of existence, and again from another point
of view opposed to an existing something?
Theaet. True.
Str. Then the not-beautiful turns out to be the opposition of
being to being?
Theaet. Very true.
Str. But upon this view, is the beautiful a more real and the
not-beautiful a less real existence?
Theaet. Not at all.
Str. And the not-great may be said to exist, equally with the great?
Theaet. Yes.
Str. And, in the same way, the just must be placed in the same
category with the not-just the one cannot be said to have any more
existence than the other.
Theaet. True.
Str. The same may be said of other things; seeing that the nature of
the other has a real existence, the parts of this nature must
equally be supposed to exist.
Theaet. Of course.
Str. Then, as would appear, the opposition of a part of the other,
and of a part of being, to one another, is, if I may venture to say
so, as truly essence as being itself, and implies not the opposite
of being, but only what is other than being.
Theaet. Beyond question.
Str. What then shall we call it?
Theaet. Clearly, not-being; and this is the very nature for which
the Sophist compelled us to search.
Str. And has not this, as you were saying, as real an existence as
any other class? May I not say with confidence that not-being has an
assured existence, and a nature of its own? just as the great was
found to be great and the beautiful beautiful, and the not-great
not-great, and the not-beautiful not-beautiful, in the same manner
not-being has been found to be and is not-being, and is to be reckoned
one among the many classes of being. Do you, Theaetetus, still feel
any doubt of this?
Theaet. None whatever.
Str. Do you observe that our scepticism has carried us beyond the
range of Parmenides' prohibition?
Theaet. In what?
Str. We have advanced to a further point, and shown him more than he
for bad us to investigate.
Theaet. How is that?
Str. Why, because he says-
Not-being never is, and do thou keep thy thoughts from this way
of enquiry.
Theaet. Yes, he says so.
Str. Whereas, we have not only proved that things which are not are,
but we have shown what form of being not-being is; for we have shown
that the nature of the other is, and is distributed over all things in
their relations to one another, and whatever part of the other is
contrasted with being, this is precisely what we have ventured to call
not-being.
Theaet. And surely, Stranger, we were quite right.
Str. Let not any one say, then, that while affirming the
opposition of not-being to being, we still assert the being of
not-being; for as to whether there is an opposite of being, to that
enquiry we have long said good-bye-it may or may not be, and may or
may not be capable of definition. But as touching our present
account of not-being, let a man either convince us of error, or, so
long as he cannot, he too must say, as we are saying, that there is
a communion of classes, and that being, and difference or other,
traverse all things and mutually interpenetrate, so that the other
partakes of being, and by reason of this participation is, and yet
is not that of which it partakes, but other, and being other than
being, it is clearly a necessity that not-being should be. again,
being, through partaking of the other, becomes a class other than
the remaining classes, and being other than all of them, is not each
one of them, and is not all the rest, so that undoubtedly there are
thousands upon thousands of cases in which being is not, and all other
things, whether regarded individually or collectively, in many
respects are, and in many respects are not.
Theaet. True.
Str. And he who is sceptical of this contradiction, must think how
he can find something better to say; or if. he sees a puzzle, and
his pleasure is to drag words this way and that, the argument will
prove to him, that he is not making a worthy use of his faculties; for
there is no charm in such puzzles, and there is no difficulty in
detecting them; but we can tell him of something else the pursuit of
which is noble and also difficult.
Theaet. What is it?
Str. A thing of which I have already spoken;-letting alone these
puzzles as involving no difficulty, he should be able to follow, and
criticize in detail every argument, and when a man says that the
same is in a manner other, or that other is the same, to understand
and refute him from his own point of view, and in the same respect
in which he asserts either of these affections. But to show that
somehow and in some sense the same is other, or the other same, or the
great small, or the like unlike; and to delight in always bringing
forward such contradictions, is no real refutation, but is clearly the
new-born babe of some one who is only beginning to approach the
problem of being.
Theaet. To be sure.
Str. For certainly, my friend, the attempt to separate all
existences from one another is a barbarism and utterly unworthy of
an educated or philosophical mind.
Theaet. Why so?
Str. The attempt at universal separation is the final annihilation
of all reasoning; for only by the union of conceptions with one
another do we attain to discourse of reason.
Theaet. True.
Str. And, observe that we were only just in time in making a
resistance to such separatists, and compelling them to admit that
one thing mingles with another.
Theaet. Why so?
Str. Why, that we might be able to assert discourse to be a kind
of being; for if we could not, the worst of all consequences would
follow; we should have no philosophy. Moreover, the necessity for
determining the nature of discourse presses upon us at this moment; if
utterly deprived of it, we could no more hold discourse; and
deprived of it we should be if we admitted that there was no admixture
of natures at all.
Theaet. Very true. But I do not understand why at this moment we
must determine the nature of discourse.
Str. Perhaps you will see more clearly by the help of the
following explanation.
Theaet. What explanation?
Str. Not-being has been acknowledged by us to be one among many
classes diffused over all being.
Theaet. True.
Str. And thence arises the question, whether not-being mingles
with opinion and language.
Theaet. How so?
Str. If not-being has no part in the proposition, then all things
must be true; but if not-being has a part, then false opinion and
false speech are possible, for. think or to say what is not-is
falsehood, which thus arises in the region of thought and in speech.
Theaet. That is quite true.
Str. And where there is falsehood surely there must be deceit.
Theaet. Yes.
Str. And if there is deceit, then all things must be full of idols
and images and fancies.
Theaet. To be sure.
Str. Into that region the Sophist, as we said, made his escape, and,
when he had got there, denied the very possibility of falsehood; no
one, he argued, either conceived or uttered falsehood, inasmuch as
not-being did not in any way partake of being.
Theaet. True.
Str. And now, not-being has been shown to partake of being, and
therefore he will not continue fighting in this direction, but he will
probably say that some ideas partake of not-being, and some not, and
that language and opinion are of the non-partaking class; and he
will still fight to the death against the existence of the
image-making and phantastic art, in which we have placed him, because,
as he will say, opinion and language do not partake of not-being,
and unless this participation exists, there can be no such thing as
falsehood. And, with the view of meeting this evasion, we must begin
by enquiring into the nature of language, opinion, and imagination, in
order that when we find them we may find also that they have communion
with not-being, and, having made out the connection of them, may
thus prove that falsehood exists; and therein we will imprison the
Sophist, if he deserves it, or, if not, we will let him go again and
look for him in another class.
Theaet. Certainly, Stranger, there appears to be truth in what was
said about the Sophist at first, that he was of a class not easily
caught, for he seems to have abundance of defences, which he throws
up, and which must every one of them be stormed before we can reach
the man himself. And even now, we have with difficulty got through his
first defence, which is the not-being of not-being, and lo! here is
another; for we have still to show that falsehood exists in the sphere
of language and opinion, and there will be another and another line of
defence without end.
Str. Any one, Theaetetus, who is able to advance even a little ought
to be of good cheer, for what would he who is dispirited at a little
progress do, if he were making none at all, or even undergoing a
repulse? Such a faint heart, as the proverb says, will never take a
city: but now that we have succeeded thus far, the citadel is ours,
and what remains is easier.
Theaet. Very true.
Str. Then, as I was saying, let us first of all obtain a
conception of language and opinion, in order that we may have
clearer grounds for determining, whether not-being has any concern
with them, or whether they are both always true, and neither of them
ever false.
Theaet. True.
Str. Then, now, let us speak of names, as before we were speaking of
ideas and letters; for that is the direction in which the answer may
be expected.
Theaet. And what is the question at issue about names?
Str. The question at issue is whether all names may be connected
with one another, or none, or only some of them.
Theaet. Clearly the last is true.
Str. I understand you to say that words which have a meaning when in
sequence may be connected, but that words which have no meaning when
in sequence cannot be connected?
Theaet. What are you saying?
Str. What I thought that you intended when you gave your assent; for
there are two sorts of intimation of being which are given by the
voice.
Theaet. What are they?
Str. One of them is called nouns, and the other verbs.
Theaet. Describe them.
Str. That which denotes action we call a verb.
Theaet. True.
Str. And the other, which is an articulate mark set on those who
do the actions, we call a noun.
Theaet. Quite true.
Str. A succession of nouns only is not a sentence any more than of
verbs without nouns.
Theaet. I do not understand you.
Str. I see that when you gave your assent you had something else
in your mind. But what I intended to say was, that a mere succession
of nouns or of verbs is not discourse.
Theaet. What do you mean?
Str. I mean that words like "walks," "runs," "sleeps," or any
other words which denote action, however many of them you string
together, do not make discourse.
Theaet. How can they?
Str. Or, again, when you say "lion," "stag," "horse," or any other
words which denote agents -neither in this way of stringing words
together do you attain to discourse; for there is no expression of
action or inaction, or of the existence of existence or
non-existence indicated by the sounds, until verbs are mingled with
nouns; then the words fit, and the smallest combination of them
forms language, and is the simplest and least form of discourse.
Theaet. Again I ask, What do you mean?
Str. When any one says "A man learns," should you not call this
the simplest and least of sentences?
Theaet. Yes.
Str. Yes, for he now arrives at the point of giving an intimation
about something which is, or is becoming, or has become, or will be.
And he not only names, but he does something, by connecting verbs with
nouns; and therefore we say that he discourses, and to this connection
of words we give the name of discourse.
Theaet. True.
Str. And as there are some things which fit one another, and other
things which do not fit, so there are some vocal signs which do, and
others which do not, combine and form discourse.
Theaet. Quite true.
Str. There is another small matter.
Theaet. What is it?
Str. A sentence must and cannot help having a subject.
Theaet. True.
Str. And must be of a certain quality.
Theaet. Certainly.
Str. And now let us mind what we are about.
Theaet. We must do so.
Str. I will repeat a sentence to you in which a thing and an
action are combined, by the help of a noun and a verb; and you shall
tell me of whom the sentence speaks.
Theaet. I will, to the best my power.
Str. "Theaetetus sits"-not a very long sentence.
Theaet. Not very.
Str. Of whom does the sentence speak, and who is the subject that is
what you have to tell.
Theaet. Of me; I am the subject.
Str. Or this sentence, again-
Theaet. What sentence?
Str. "Theaetetus, with whom I am now speaking, is flying."
Theaet. That also is a sentence which will be admitted by every
one to speak of me, and to apply to me.
Str. We agreed that every sentence must necessarily have a certain
quality.
Theaet. Yes.
Str. And what is the quality of each of these two sentences?
Theaet. The one, as I imagine, is false, and the other true.
Str. The true says what is true about you?
Theaet. Yes.
Str. And the false says what is other than true?
Theaet. Yes.
Str. And therefore speaks of things which are not as if they were?
Theaet. True.
Str. And say that things are real of you which are not; for, as we
were saying, in regard to each thing or person, there is much that
is and much that is not.
Theaet. Quite true.
Str. The second of the two sentences which related to you was
first of all an example of the shortest form consistent with our
definition.
Theaet. Yes, this was implied in recent admission.
Str. And, in the second place, it related to a subject?
Theaet. Yes.
Str. Who must be you, and can be nobody else?
Theaet. Unquestionably.
Str. And it would be no sentence at all if there were no subject,
for, as we proved, a sentence which has no subject is impossible.
Theaet. Quite true.
Str. When other, then, is asserted of you as the same, and not-being
as being, such a combination of nouns and verbs is really and truly
false discourse.
Theaet. Most true.
Str. And therefore thought, opinion, and imagination are now
proved to exist in our minds both as true and false.
Theaet. How so?
Str. You will know better if you first gain a knowledge of what they
are, and in what they severally differ from one another.
Theaet. Give me the knowledge which you would wish me to gain.
Str. Are not thought and speech the same, with this exception,
that what is called thought is the unuttered conversation of the
soul with herself?
Theaet. Quite true.
Str. But the stream of thought which flows through the lips and is
audible is called speech?
Theaet. True.
Str. And we know that there exists in speech...
Theaet. What exists?
Str. Affirmation.
Theaet. Yes, we know it.
Str. When the affirmation or denial takes Place in silence and in
the mind only, have you any other name by which to call it but
opinion?
Theaet. There can be no other name.
Str. And when opinion is presented, not simply, but in some form
of sense, would you not call it imagination?
Theaet. Certainly.
Str. And seeing that language is true and false, and that thought is
the conversation of the soul with herself, and opinion is the end of
thinking, and imagination or phantasy is the union of sense and
opinion, the inference is that some of them, since they are akin to
language, should have an element of falsehood as well as of truth?
Theaet. Certainly.
Str. Do you perceive, then, that false opinion and speech have
been discovered sooner than we expected?-For just now we seemed to
be undertaking a task which would never be accomplished.
Theaet. I perceive.
Str. Then let us not be discouraged about the future; but now having
made this discovery, let us go back to our previous classification.
Theaet. What classification?
Str. We divided image-making into two sorts; the one
likeness-making, the other imaginative or phantastic.
Theaet. True.
Str. And we said that we were uncertain in which we should place the
Sophist.
Theaet. We did say so.
Str. And our heads began to go round more and more when it was
asserted that there is no such thing as an image or idol or
appearance, because in no manner or time or place can there ever be
such a thing as falsehood.
Theaet. True.
Str. And now, since there has been shown to be false speech and
false opinion, there may be imitations of real existences, and out
of this condition of the mind an art of deception may arise.
Theaet. Quite possible.
Str. And we have: already admitted, in what preceded, that the
Sophist was lurking in one of the divisions of the likeness-making
art?
Theaet. Yes.
Str. Let us, then, renew the attempt, and in dividing any class,
always take the part to the right, holding fast to that which holds
the Sophist, until we have stripped him of all his common
properties, and reached his difference or peculiar. Then we may
exhibit him in his true nature, first to ourselves and then to kindred
dialectical spirits.
Theaet. Very good.
Str. You may remember that all art was originally divided by us into
creative and acquisitive.
Theaet. Yes.
Str. And the Sophist was flitting before us in the acquisitive
class, in the subdivisions of hunting, contests, merchandise, and
the like.
Theaet. Very true.
Str. But now that the imitative art has enclosed him, it is clear
that we must begin by dividing the art of creation; for imitation is a
kind of creation of images, however, as we affirm, and not of real
things.
Theaet. Quite true.
Str. In the first place, there are two kinds of creation.
Theaet. What are they?
Str. One of them is human and the other divine.
Theaet. I do not follow.
Str. Every power, as you may remember our saying originally, which
causes things to exist, not previously existing, was defined by us
as creative.
Theaet. I remember.
Str. Looking, now, at the world and all the animals and plants, at
things which grow upon the earth from seeds and roots, as well as at
inanimate substances which are formed within the earth, fusile or
non-fusile, shall we say that they come into existence-not having
existed previously-by the creation of God, or shall we agree with
vulgar opinion about them?
Theaet. What is it?
Str. The opinion that nature brings them into being from some
spontaneous and unintelligent cause. Or shall we say that they are
created by a divine reason and a knowledge which comes from God?
Theaet. I dare say that, owing to my youth, I may often waver in
my view, but now when I look at you and see that you incline to
refer them to God, I defer to your authority.
Str. Nobly said, Theaetetus, and if I thought that you were one of
those who would hereafter change your mind, I would have gently argued
with you, and forced you to assent; but as I perceive that you will
come of yourself and without any argument of mine, to that belief
which, as you say, attracts you, I will not forestall the work of
time. Let me suppose then, that things which are said to be made by
nature are the work of divine art, and that things which are made by
man out of these are work of human art. And so there are two kinds
of making and production, the one human and the other divine.
Theaet. True.
Str. Then, now, subdivide each of the two sections which we have
already.
Theaet. How do you mean?
Str. I mean to say that you should make a vertical division of
production or invention, as you have already made a lateral one.
Theaet. I have done so.
Str. Then, now, there are in all four parts or segments-two of
them have reference to us and are human, and two of them have
reference to the gods and are divine.
Theaet. True.
Str. And, again, in the division which was supposed to be made in
the other way, one part in each subdivision is the making of the
things themselves, but the two remaining parts may be called the
making of likenesses; and so the productive art is again divided
into two parts.
Theaet. Tell me the divisions once more.
Str. I suppose that we, and the other animals, and the elements
out of which things are made-fire, water, and the like-are known by us
to be each and all the creation and work of God.
Theaet. True.
Str. And there are images of them, which are not them, but which
correspond to them; and these are also the creation of a wonderful
skill.
Theaet. What are they?
Str. The appearances which spring up of themselves in sleep or by
day, such as a shadow when darkness arises in a fire, or the
reflection which is produced when the light in bright and smooth
objects meets on their surface with an external light, and creates a
perception the opposite of our ordinary sight.
Theaet. Yes; and the images as well as the creation are equally
the work of a divine hand.
Str. And what shall we say of human art? Do we not make one house by
the art of building, and another by the art of drawing, which is a
sort of dream created by man for those who are awake?
Theaet. Quite true.
Str. And other products of human creation are twofold and go in
pairs; there is the thing, with which the art of making the thing is
concerned, and the image, with which imitation is concerned.
Theaet. Now I begin to understand, and am ready to acknowledge
that there are two kinds of production, and each of them two fold;
in the lateral division there is both a divine and a human production;
in the vertical there are realities and a creation of a kind of
similitudes.
Str. And let us not forget that of the imitative class the one
part to have been likeness making, and the other phantastic, if it
could be shown that falsehood is a reality and belongs to the class of
real being.
Theaet. Yes.
Str. And this appeared to be the case; and therefore now, without
hesitation, we shall number the different kinds as two.
Theaet. True.
Str. Then, now, let us again divide the phantastic art.
Theaet. Where shall we make the division?
Str. There is one kind which is produced by an instrument, and
another in which the creator of the appearance is himself the
instrument.
Theaet. What do you mean?
Str. When any one makes himself appear like another in his figure or
his voice, imitation is the name for this part of the phantastic art.
Theaet. Yes.
Str. Let this, then, be named the art of mimicry, and this the
province assigned to it; as for the other division, we are weary and
will give that up, leaving to some one else the duty of making the
class and giving it a suitable name.
Theaet. Let us do as you say-assign a sphere to the one and leave
the other.
Str. There is a further distinction, Theaetetus, which is worthy
of our consideration, and for a reason which I will tell you.
Theaet. Let me hear.
Str. There are some who imitate, knowing what they imitate, and some
who do not know. And what line of distinction can there possibly be
greater than that which divides ignorance from knowledge?
Theaet. There can be no greater.
Str. Was not the sort of imitation of which we spoke just now the
imitation of those who know? For he who would imitate you would surely
know you and your figure?
Theaet. Naturally.
Str. And what would you say of the figure or form of justice or of
virtue in general? Are we not well aware that many, having no
knowledge of either, but only a sort of opinion, do their best to show
that this opinion is really entertained by them, by expressing it,
as far as they can, in word and deed?
Theaet. Yes, that is very common.
Str. And do they always fail in their attempt to be thought just,
when they are not? Or is not the very opposite true?
Theaet. The very opposite.
Str. Such a one, then, should be described as an imitator-to be
distinguished from the other, as he who is ignorant is distinguished
from him who knows?
Theaet. True.
Str. Can we find a suitable name for each of them? This is clearly
not an easy task; for among the ancients there was some confusion of
ideas, which prevented them from attempting to divide genera into
species; wherefore there is no great abundance of names. Yet, for
the sake of distinctness, I will make bold to call the imitation which
coexists with opinion, the imitation of appearance-that which coexists
with science, a scientific or learned imitation.
Theaet. Granted.
Str. The former is our present concern, for the Sophist was
classed with imitators indeed, but not among those who have knowledge.
Theaet. Very true.
Str. Let us, then, examine our imitator of appearance, and see
whether he is sound, like a piece of iron, or whether there is still
some crack in him.
Theaet. Let us examine him.
Str. Indeed there is a very considerable crack; for if you look, you
find that one of the two classes of imitators is a simple creature,
who thinks that he knows that which he only fancies; the other sort
has knocked about among arguments, until he suspects and fears that he
is ignorant of that which to the many he pretends to know.
Theaet. There are certainly the two kinds which you describe.
Str. Shall we regard one as the simple imitator-the other as the
dissembling or ironical imitator?
Theaet. Very good.
Str. And shall we further speak of this latter class as having one
or two divisions?
Theaet. Answer yourself.
Str. Upon consideration, then, there appear to me to be two; there
is the dissembler, who harangues a multitude in public in a long
speech, and the dissembler, who in private and in short speeches
compels the person who is conversing with him to contradict himself.
Theaet. What you say is most true.
Str. And who is the maker of the longer speeches? Is he the
statesman or the popular orator?
Theaet. The latter.
Str. And what shall we call the other? Is he the philosopher or
the Sophist?
Theaet. The philosopher he cannot be, for upon our view he is
ignorant; but since he is an imitator of the wise he will have a
name which is formed by an adaptation of the word sothos. What shall
we name him? I am pretty sure that I cannot be mistaken in terming him
the true and very Sophist.
Str. Shall we bind up his name as we did before, making a chain from
one end of his genealogy to the other?
Theaet. By all means.
Str. He, then, who traces the pedigree of his art as follows-who,
belonging to the conscious or dissembling section of the art of
causing self-contradiction, is an imitator of appearance, and is
separated from the class of phantastic which is a branch of
image-making into that further division of creation, the juggling of
words, a creation human, and not divine-any one who affirms the real
Sophist to be of this blood and lineage will say the very truth.
Theaet. Undoubtedly.
-THE END-
jum...@my-deja.com
http://home.mira.net/~gaffcam/phil/jameson.htm
----------------------------------------------
Postmodernism or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism
by Fredric Jameson
Postmodernism
or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism
by Fredric Jameson (1991)
I
The last few years have been marked by an inverted millenarianism in
which premonitions of the future, catastrophic or redemptive, have
been replaced by senses of the end of this or that (the end of
ideology, art, or social class; the "crisis" of Leninism, social
democracy, or the welfare state, etc., etc.); taken together, all of
these perhaps constitute what is increasingly called postmodernism.
The case for its existence depends on the hypothesis of some radical
break or coupure, generally traced back to the end of the 1950s or the
early 1960s.
As the word itself suggests, this break is most often related to
notions of the waning or extinction of the hundred-year-old modern
movement (or to its ideological or aesthetic repudiation). Thus
abstract expressionism in painting, existentialism in philosophy, the
final forms of representation in the novel, the films of the great
auteurs, or the modernist school of poetry (as institutionalised and
canonised in the works of Wallace Stevens) all are now seen as the
final, extraordinary flowering of a high-modernist impulse which is
spent and exhausted with them. The enumeration of what follows, then,
at once becomes empirical, chaotic, and heterogeneous: Andy Warhol and
pop art, but also photorealism, and beyond it, the "new
expressionism"; the moment, in music, of John Cage, but also the
synthesis of classical and "popular" styles found in composers like
Phil Glass and Terry Riley, and also punk and new wave rock (the
Beatles and the Stones now standing as the high-modernist moment of
that more recent and rapidly evolving tradition); in film, Godard,
post-Godard, and experimental cinema and video, but also a whole new
type of commercial film (about which more below); Burroughs, Pynchon,
or Ishmael Reed, on the one hand, and the French nouveau roman and its
succession, on the other, along with alarming new kinds of literary
criticism based on some new aesthetic of textuality or écriture ...
The list might be extended indefinitely; but does it imply any more
fundamental change or break than the periodic style and fashion
changes determined by an older high-modernist imperative of stylistic
innovation?
It is in the realm of architecture, however, that modifications in
aesthetic production are most dramatically visible, and that their
theoretical problems have been most centrally raised and articulated;
it was indeed from architectural debates that my own conception of
postmodernism - as it will be outlined in the following pages -
initially began to emerge. More decisively than in the other arts or
media, postmodernist positions in architecture have been inseparable
from an implacable critique of architectural high modernism and of
Frank Lloyd Wright or the so-called international style (Le Corbusier,
Mies, etc), where formal criticism and analysis (of the high-modernist
transformation of the building into a virtual sculpture, or monumental
"duck," as Robert Venturi puts it)' are at one with reconsiderations
on the level of urbanism and of the aesthetic institution. High
modernism is thus credited with the destruction of the fabric of the
traditional city and its older neighbourhood culture (by way of the
radical disjunction of the new Utopian high-modernist building from
its surrounding context), while the prophetic elitism and
authoritarianism of the modern movement are remorselessly identified
in the imperious gesture of the charismatic Master.
Postmodernism in architecture will then logically enough stage itself
as a kind of aesthetic populism, as the very title of Venturi's
influential manifesto, Learning from Las Vegas, suggests. However we
may ultimately wish to evaluate this populist rhetoric,' it has at
least the merit of drawing our attention to one fundamental feature of
all the postmodernisms enumerated above: namely, the effacement in
them of the older (essentially high-modernist) frontier between high
culture and so-called mass or commercial culture, and the emergence of
new kinds of texts infused with the forms, categories, and contents of
that very culture industry so passionately denounced by all the
ideologues of the modern, from Leavis and the American New Criticism
all the way to Adorno and the Frankfurt School. The postmodernisms
have, in fact, been fascinated precisely by this whole "degraded"
landscape of schlock and kitsch, of TV series and Reader's Digest
culture, of advertising and motels, of the late show and the grade-B
Hollywood film, of so-called paraliterature, with its airport
paperback categories of the gothic and the romance, the popular
biography, the murder mystery, and the science fiction or fantasy
novel: materials they no longer simply "quote;' as a Joyce or a Mahler
might have done, but incorporate into their very substance.
Nor should the break in question be thought of as a purely cultural
affair: indeed, theories of the postmodern - whether celebratory or
couched in the language of moral revulsion and denunciation - bear a
strong family resemblance to all those more ambitious sociological
generalisations which, at much the same time bring us the news of the
arrival and inauguration of a whole new type of society, most famously
baptised "'Postindustrial society" (Daniel Bell) but often also
designated consumer society, media society, information society,
electronic society or high tech, and the like. Such theories have the
obvious ideological mission of demonstrating, to their own relief,
that the new social formation in question no longer obeys the laws of
classical capitalism, namely, the primacy of industrial production and
the omnipresence of class struggle. The Marxist tradition has
therefore resisted them with vehemence, with the signal except on of
the economist Ernest Mandel, whose book Late Capitalism sets out not
merely to anatomise the historic originality of this new society
(which he sees as a third stage or moment in the evolution of capital)
but also to demonstrate that it is, if an thing, a purer stage of
capitalism than any of the moments that preceded it. I will return to
t is argument later; suffice it for the moment to anticipate a point
that will be argued in Chapter 2, namely, that every position on
postmodernism in culture - whether apologia or stigmatisation - is
also at orle an e same time, and necessarily, an implicitly or
explicitly political stance on the nature of multinational capitalism
today.
A last preliminary word on method: what follows is not to be read as
stylistic description, as the account of one cultural style or
movement among others. I have rather meant to offer a periodising
hypothesis, and that at a moment in which the very conception of
historical periodisation has come to seem most problematical indeed. I
have argued elsewhere that all isolated or discrete cultural analysis
always involves a buried or repressed theory of historical
periodisation; in any case, the conception of the "genealogy" largely
lays to rest traditional theoretical worries about so-called linear
history, theories of "stages," and teleological historiography. In the
present context, however, lengthier theoretical discussion of such
(very real) issues can perhaps be replaced by a few substantive
remarks.
One of the concerns frequently aroused by periodising hypotheses is
that these tend to obliterate difference and to project an idea of the
historical period as massive homogeneity (bounded on either side by
inexplicable chronological metamorphoses and punctuation marks). This
is, however, precisely why it seems to me essential to grasp
postmodernism not as a style but rather as a cultural dominant: a
conception which allows for the presence and coexistence of a range of
very different, yet subordinate, features.
Consider, for example, the powerful alternative position that
postmodernism is itself little more than one more stage of modernism
proper (if not, indeed, of the even older romanticism); it may indeed
be conceded that all the features of postmodernism I am about to
enumerate can be detected, full-blown, in this or that preceding
modernism (including such astonishing genealogical precursors as
Gertrude Stein, Raymond Roussel, or Marcel Duchamp, who may be
considered outright postmodernists, avant la lettre). What has not
been taken into account by this view, however, is the social position
of the older modernism, or better still, its passionate repudiation by
an older Victorian and post-Victorian bourgeoisie for whom its forms
and ethos are received as being variously ugly, dissonant, obscure,
scandalous, immoral, subversive, and generally "antisocial." It will
be argued here, however, that a mutation in the sphere of culture has
rendered such attitudes archaic. Not only are Picasso and Joyce no
longer ugly, they now strike us, on the whole, as rather "realistic,"
and this is the result of a canonisation and academic
institutionalisation of the modern movement generally that can be to
the late 1950s. This is surety one of the most plausible explanations
for the emergence of postmodernism itself, since the younger
generation of the 1960s will now confront the formerly oppositional
modern movement as a set of dead classics, which "weigh like a
nightmare on the brains of the living," as Marx once said in a
different context.
As for the postmodern revolt against all that, however, it must
equally be stressed that its own offensive features - from obscurity
and sexually explicit material to psychological squalor and overt
expressions of social and political defiance, which transcend anything
that might have been imagined at the most extreme moments of high
modernism - no longer scandalise anyone and are not only received with
the greatest complacency but have themselves become institutionalised
and are at one with the official or public culture of Western society.
What has happened is that aesthetic production today has become
integrated into commodity production generally: the frantic economic
urgency of producing fresh waves of ever more novel-seeming goods
(from clothing to aeroplanes), at ever greater rates of turnover, now
assigns an increasingly essential structural function and position to
aesthetic innovation and experimentation. Such economic necessities
then find recognition in the varied kinds of institutional support
available for the newer art, from foundations and grants to museums
and other forms of patronage. Of all the arts, architecture is the
closest constitutively to the economic, with which, in the form of
commissions and land values, it has a virtually unmediated
relationship. It will therefore not be surprising to find the
extraordinary flowering of the new postmodern architecture grounded in
the patronage of multinational business, whose expansion and
development is strictly contemporaneous with it. Later I will suggest
that these two new phenomena have an even deeper dialectical
interrelationship than the simple one-to-one financing of this or that
individual project. Yet this is the point at which I must remind the
reader of the obvious; namely, that this whole global, yet American,
postmodern culture is the internal and superstructural expression of a
Store new- wave of American military and economic domination
throughout the world: in this sense, as throughout class history, the
underside of culture is blood, torture, death, and terror.
The first point to be made about the conception of periodisation in
dominance, therefore, is that even if all the constitutive features of
postmodernism were identical with and coterminous to those of an older
modernism - a position I feel to be demonstrably erroneous but which
only an even lengthier analysis of modernism proper could dispel the
two phenomena would still remain utterly distinct in their meaning
antisocial function, owing to the very different positioning of
postmodernism in the economic system of late capital and, beyond that,
to the transformation of the very sphere of culture in contemporary
society.
This point will be further discussed at the conclusion of this book. I
must now briefly address a different kind of objection to
periodisation, a concern about its possible obliteration of
heterogeneity, one most often expressed by the Left. And it is certain
that there is a strange quasi-Sartrean irony - a "winner loses" logic
which tends to surround any effort to describe a "system," a
totalising dynamic, as these are detected in the movement of
contemporary society. What happens is that the more powerful the
vision of some increasingly total system or logic - the Foucault of
the prisons book is the obvious example - the more Powerless the
reader comes to feel. Insofar as the theorist wins, therefore, by
constructing an increasingly closed and terrifying machine, to that
very degree he loses, since the critical capacity of his work is
thereby Paralysed, and the impulses of negation and revolt, not to
speak of those of social transformation, are increasingly perceived as
vain and trivial in the face of the model itself.
I have felt, however, that it was only in the light of some conception
of a dominant cultural logic or hegemonic norm that genuine difference
could be measured and assessed. I am very far from feeling that all
cultural production today is postmodern in the broad sense I will be
conferring on this term. The postmodern is, however, the force field
in which very different kinds of cultural impulses - what Raymond
Williams has usefully termed "residual" and "emergent" forms of
cultural production - must make their way. If we do not achieve some
general sense of a cultural dominant, then we fall back into a view of
present history as sheer heterogeneity, random difference, a
coexistence of a host of distinct forces whose effectivity is
undecidable. At any rate, this has been the political spirit in which
the following analysis was devised: to project some conception of a
new systematic cultural norm and its reproduction in order to reflect
more adequately on the most effective forms of any radical cultural
politics today.
The exposition will take up in turn the following constitutive
features of the postmodern: a new depthlessness, which finds its
prolongation both in contemporary "theory" and in a whole new culture
of the image or the simulacrum; a consequent weakening of historicity,
both in our relationship to public History and in the new forms of our
private temporality, whose "schizophrenic" structure (following Lacan)
will determine new types of syntax or syntagmatic relationships in the
more temporal arts; a whole new type of emotional ground tone - what I
will call "intensities" - which can best be grasped by a return to
older theories of the sublime; the deep constitutive relationships of
all this to a whole new technology, which is itself a figure for a
whole new economic world system; and, after a brief account of
postmodernist mutations in the lived experience of built space itself,
some reflections on the mission of political art in the bewildering
new world space of late or multinational capital.
VI
The conception of postmodernism outlined here is a historical rather
than a merely stylistic one. I cannot stress too greatly the radical
distinction between a view for which the postmodern is one (optional)
style among many others available and one which seeks to grasp it as
the cultural dominant of the logic of late capitalism: the two
approaches in fact generate two very different ways of conceptualising
the phenomenon as a whole: on the one hand, moral judgments (about
which it is indifferent whether they are positive or negative), and,
on the other, a genuinely dialectical attempt to think our present of
time in History.
Of some positive moral evaluation of postmodernism little needs to be
said: the complacent (yet delirious) camp-following celebration of
this aesthetic new world (including its social and economic dimension,
greeted with equal enthusiasm under the slogan of "postindustrial
society") is surely unacceptable, although it may be somewhat less
obvious that current fantasies about the salvational nature of high
technology, from chips to robots - fantasies entertained not only by
both left and right governments in distress but also by many
intellectuals - are also essentially of a piece with more vulgar
apologies for postmodernism.
But in that case it is only consequent to reject moralising
condemnations of the postmodern and of its essential triviality when
juxtaposed against the Utopian "high seriousness" of the great
modernisms: judgments one finds both on the Left and on the radical
Right. And no doubt the logic of the simulacrum, with its
transformation of older realities into television images, does more
than merely replicate the logic of late capitalism; it reinforces and
intensifies it.
Meanwhile, for political groups which seek actively to intervene in
history and to modify its otherwise passive momentum (whether with a
view toward channelling it into a socialist transformation of society
or diverting it into the regressive re-establishment of some simpler
fantasy past), there cannot but be much that is deplorable and
reprehensible in a cultural form of image addiction which, by
transforming the past into visual mirages, stereotypes, or texts,
effectively abolishes any practical sense of the future and of the
collective project, thereby abandoning the thinking of future change
to fantasies of sheer catastrophe and inexplicable cataclysm, from
visions of "terrorism" on the social level to those of cancer on the
personal. Yet if postmodernism is a historical phenomenon, then the
attempt to conceptualise it in terms of moral or moralising judgments
must finally be identified as a category mistake. All of which becomes
more obvious when we interrogate the position of the cultural critic
and moralist; the latter, along with all the rest of us, is now so
deeply immersed in postmodernist space, so deeply suffused and
infected by its new cultural categories, that the luxury of the
old-fashioned ideological critique, the indignant moral denunciation
of the other, becomes unavailable. The distinction I am proposing here
knows one canonical form in Hegel's differentiation of the thinking of
individual morality or moralising from that whole very different realm
of collective social values and practices. But it finds its definitive
form in Marx's demonstration of the materialist dialectic, most
notably in those classic pages of the Manifesto which teach the hard
lesson of some more genuinely dialectical way to think historical
development and change. The topic of the lesson is, of course, the
historical development of capita ism itself and the deployment of a
specific bourgeois culture. In a well-known passage Marx powerfully
urges us to do the impossible, namely, to think this development
positively and negatively all at once; to achieve, in other words, a
type of thinking that would be capable of grasping the demonstrably
baleful features of capitalism along with its extraordinary and
liberating dynamism simultaneously within a single thought, and
without attenuating any of the force of either judgment. We are
somehow to lift our minds to a point at which it is possible to
understand that capitalism is at one and the same time the best thing
that has ever happened to the human race, and the worst. The lapse
from this austere dialectical imperative into the more comfortable
stance of the taking of moral positions is inveterate and all too
human: still, the urgency of the subject demands that we make at least
some effort to think the cultural evolution of late capitalism
dialectically, as catastrophe and progress all together.
Such an effort suggests two immediate questions, with which we will
conclude these reflections. Can we in fact identify some "moment of
truth" within the more evident "moments of falsehood" of postmodern
culture? And, even if we can do so, is there not something ultimately
paralysing in the dialectical view of historical development proposed
above; does it not tend to demobilise us and to surrender us to
passivity and helplessness by systematically obliterating
possibilities of action under the impenetrable fog of historical
inevitability? It is appropriate to discuss these two (related) issues
in terms of current possibilities for some effective contemporary
cultural politics and for the construction of a genuine political
culture.
To focus the problem in this way is, of course, immediately to raise
the more genuine issue of the fate of culture generally, and of the
function of culture specifically, as one social level or instance, in
the postmodern era. Everything in the previous discussion suggests
that what we have been calling postmodernism is inseparable from, and
unthinkable without the hypothesis of, some fundamental mutation of
the sphere of culture in the world of late capitalism ' which includes
a momentous modification of its social function. Older discussions of
the space, function, or sphere of culture (mostly notably Herbert
Marcuse's classic essay The Affirmative Character of Culture) have
insisted on what a different language would call the "semi-autonomy"
of the cultural realm: its ghostly, yet Utopian, existence, for good
or ill, above the practical world of the existent, whose mirror image
it throws back in forms which vary from the legitimations of
flattering resemblance to the contestatory indictments of critical
satire or Utopian pain.
What we must now ask ourselves is whether it is not precisely this
semi-autonomy of the cultural sphere which has been destroyed by the
logic of late capitalism. Yet to argue that culture is today no longer
endowed with the relative autonomy it once enjoyed as one level among
others in earlier moments of capitalism (let alone in pre-capitalist
societies) is not necessarily to imply its disappearance or
extinction. Quite the contrary; we must go on to affirm that the
dissolution of an autonomous sphere of culture is rather to be
imagined in terms of an explosion: a prodigious expansion of culture
throughout the social realm, to the point at which everything in our
social life - from economic value and state power to practices and to
the very structure of the psyche itself - can be said to have become
"cultural" in some original and yet untheorised sense. This
proposition is, however, substantively quite consistent with the
previous diagnosis of a society of the image or the simulacrum and a
transformation of the "real" into so many pseudo-events.
It also suggests that some of our most cherished and time-honoured
radical conceptions about the nature of cultural politics may thereby
find themselves outmoded. However distinct those conceptions - which
range from slogans of negativity, opposition, and subversion to
critique and reflexivity - may have been, they all shared a single,
fundamentally spatial, presupposition, which may be resumed in the
equally time-honoured formula of "critical distance." No theory of
cultural politics current on the Left today has been able to do
without one notion or another of a certain minimal aesthetic distance,
of the possibility of the positioning of the cultural act outside the
massive Being of capital, from which to assault this last. What the
burden of our preceding demonstration suggests, however, is that
distance in general (including "critical distance" in particular) has
very precisely been abolished in the new space of postmodernism. We
are submerged in its henceforth filled and suffused volumes to the
point where our now postmodern bodies are bereft of spatial
coordinates and practically (let alone theoretically) incapable of
distantiation; meanwhile, it has already been observed how the
prodigious new expansion of multinational capital ends up penetrating
and colonising those very pre-capitalist enclaves (Nature and the
Unconscious) which offered extraterritorial and Archimedean footholds
for critical effectivity. The shorthand language of co-optation is for
this reason omnipresent on the left, but would now seem to offer a
most inadequate theoretical basis for understanding a situation in
which we all, in one way or another, dimly feel that not only punctual
and local counter-culture forms of cultural resistance and guerrilla
warfare but also even overtly political interventions like those of
The Clash are all somehow secretly disarmed and reabsorbed by a system
of which they themselves might well be considered a part, since they
can achieve no distance from it.
What we must now affirm is that it is precisely this whole
extraordinarily demoralising and depressing original new global space
which is the "moment of truth" of postmodernism. What has been called
the postmodernist "sublime" is only the moment in which this content
has become most explicit, has moved the closest to the surface of
consciousness as a coherent new type of space in its own right - even
though a certain figural concealment or disguise is still at work
here, most notably in the high-tech thematics in which the new spatial
content is still dramatised and articulated. Yet the earlier features
of the postmodern which were enumerated above can all now be seen as
themselves partial (yet constitutive) aspects of the same general
spatial object.
The argument for a certain authenticity in these otherwise patently
ideological productions depends on the prior proposition that what we
have been calling postmodern (or multinational) space is not merely a
cultural ideology or fantasy but has genuine historical (and
socioeconomic) reality as a third great original expansion of
capitalism around the globe (after the earlier expansions of the
national market and the older imperialist system, which each had their
own cultural specificity and generated new types of space appropriate
to their dynamics). The distorted and unreflexive attempts of newer
cultural production to explore and to express this new space must then
also, in their own fashion, be considered as so many approaches to the
representation of (a new) reality (to use a more antiquated language).
As paradoxical as the terms may seem, they may thus, following a
classic interpretive option, be read as peculiar new forms of realism
(or at least of the mimesis of reality), while at the same time they
can equally well be analysed as so many attempts to distract and
divert us from that reality or to disguise its contradictions and
resolve them in the guise of various formal mystifications.
As for that reality itself, however - the as yet untheorised original
space of some new "world system" of multinational or late capitalism,
a space whose negative or baleful aspects are only too obvious - the
dialectic requires us to hold equally to a positive or "progressive"
evaluation of its emergence, as Marx did for the world market as the
horizon of national economies, or as Lenin did for the older
imperialist global network., For neither Marx nor Lenin was socialism
a matter of returning to smaller (and thereby less repressive and
comprehensive) systems of social organisation; rather, the dimensions
attained by capital in their own times were grasped as the promise,
the framework, and the precondition for the achievement of some new
and more comprehensive socialism. Is this not the case with the yet
more global and totalising space of the new world system, which
demands the intervention and elaboration of an internationalism of a
radically new type? The disastrous realignment of socialist revolution
with the older nationalisms (not only in Southeast Asia), whose
results have necessarily aroused much serious recent left reflection,
can be adduced in support of this position.
But if all this is so, then at least one possible form of a new
radical cultural politics becomes evident, with a final aesthetic
proviso that must quickly be noted. Left cultural producers and
theorists - particularly those formed by bourgeois cultural traditions
issuing from romanticism and valorising spontaneous, instinctive, or
unconscious forms of "genius," but also for very obvious historical
reasons such as Zhdanovism and the sorry consequences of political and
party interventions in the arts have often by reaction allowed
themselves to be unduly intimidated by the repudiation, in bourgeois
aesthetics and most notably in high modernism, of one of the age-old
functions of art - the pedagogical and the didactic. The teaching
function of art was, however, always stressed in classical times (even
though it there mainly took the form of moral lessons), while the
prodigious and still imperfectly understood work of Brecht reaffirms,
in a new and formally innovative and original way, for the moment of
modernism proper, a complex new conception of the relationship between
culture and pedagogy. The cultural model I will propose similarly
foregrounds the cognitive and pedagogical dimensions of political art
and culture, dimensions stressed in very different ways by both Lukacs
and Brecht (for the distinct moments of realism and modernism,
respectively).
We cannot, however, return to aesthetic practices elaborated on the
basis of historical situations and dilemmas which are no longer ours.
Meanwhile, the conception of space that has been developed here
suggests that a model of political culture appropriate to our own
situation will necessarily have to raise spatial issues as its
fundamental organising concern. I will therefore provisionally define
the aesthetic of this new (and hypothetical) cultural form as an
aesthetic of cognitive mapping.
In a classic work, The Image of the City, Kevin Lynch taught us that
the alienated city is above all a space in which people are unable to
map (in their minds) either their own positions or the urban totality
in which they find themselves: grids such as those of Jersey City, in
which none of the traditional markers (monuments, nodes, natural
boundaries, built perspectives) obtain, are the most obvious examples.
Disalienation in the traditional city, then, involves the practical
reconquest of a sense of place and the construction or reconstruction
of an articulated ensemble which can be retained in memory and which
the individual subject can map and remap along the moments of mobile,
alternative trajectories. Lynch's own work is limited by the
deliberate restriction of his topic to the problems of city form as
such; yet it becomes extraordinarily suggestive when projected outward
onto some of the larger national and global spaces we have touched on
here. Nor should it be too hastily assumed that his model - while it
clearly raises very central issues of representation as such - is in
any way easily vitiated by the conventional poststructural critiques
of the "ideology of representation" or mimesis. The cognitive map is
not exactly mimetic in that older sense; indeed, the theoretical
issues it poses allow us to renew the analysis of representation on a
higher and much more complex level.
There is, for one thing, a most interesting convergence between the
empirical problems studied by Lynch in terms of city space and the
great Althusserian (and Lacanian) redefinition of ideology as "the
representation of the subject's Imaginary relationship to his or her
Real conditions of existence." Surely this is exactly what the
cognitive map is called upon to do in the narrower framework of daily
life in the physical city: to enable a situational representation on
the part of the individual subject to that vaster and properly
unrepresentable totality which is the ensemble of society's structures
as a whole.
Yet Lynch's work also suggests a further line of development insofar
as cartography itself constitutes its key mediatory instance. A return
to the history of this science (which is also an art) shows us that
Lynch's model does not yet, in fact, really correspond to what will
become map-making. Lynch's subjects are rather clearly involved in
pre-cartographic operations whose results traditionally are described
as itineraries rather than as maps: diagrams organised around the
still subject-centred or existential journey of the traveller, along
which various significant key features are marked oases, mountain
ranges, rivers, monuments, and the like. The most highly developed
form of such diagrams is the nautical itinerary, the sea chart, or
portulans, where coastal features are noted for the use of
Mediterranean navigators who rarely venture out into the open sea.
Yet the compass at once introduces a new dimension into sea charts, a
dimension that will utterly transform the problematic of the itinerary
and allow us to pose the problem of a genuine cognitive mapping in a
far more complex way. For the new instruments - compass, sextant, and
theodolite - correspond not merely to new geographic and navigational
problems (the difficult matter of determining longitude, particularly
on the curving surface of the planet, as opposed to the simpler matter
of latitude, which European navigators can still empirically determine
by ocular inspection of the African coast); they also introduce a
whole new coordinate: the relationship to the totality, particularly
as it is mediated by the stars and by new operations like that of
triangulation. At this point, cognitive mapping in the broader sense
comes to require the coordination of existential data (the empirical
position of the subject) with unlived, abstract conceptions of the
geographic totality.
Finally, with the first globe (1490) and the invention of the Mercator
projection at about the same time, yet a third dimension of
cartography emerges, which at once involves what we would today call
the nature of representational codes, the intrinsic structures of the
various media, the intervention, into more naive mimetic conceptions
of mapping, of the whole new fundamental question of the languages of
representation itself, in particular the unresolvable (well-nigh
Heisenbergian) dilemma of the transfer of curved space to flat charts.
At this point it becomes clear that there can be no true maps (at the
same time it also becomes clear that there can be scientific progress,
or better still, a dialectical advance, in the various historical
moments of map-making). Transcoding all this now into the very
different problematic of the Althusserian definition of ideology, one
would want to make two points. The first is that the Althusserian
concept now allows us to rethink these specialised geographical and
cartographic issues in terms of social space - in terms, for example,
of social class and national or international context, in terms of the
ways in which we all necessarily also cognitively map our individual
social relationship to local, national, and international class
realities. Yet to reformulate the problem in this way is also to come
starkly up against those very difficulties in mapping which are posed
in heightened and original ways by that very global space of the
postmodernist or multinational moment which has been under discussion
here. These are not merely theoretical issues; they have urgent
practical political consequences, as is evident from the conventional
feelings of First World subjects that existentially (or "empirically")
they really do inhabit a "postindustrial society" from which
traditional production has disappeared and in which social classes of
the classical type no longer exist - a conviction which has immediate
effects on political praxis.
The second point is that a return to the Lacanian underpinnings of
Althusser's theory can afford some useful and suggestive
methodological enrichments. Althusser's formulation remobilises an
older and henceforth classical Marxian distinction between science and
ideology that is not without value for us even today. The existential
- the positioning of the individual subject, the experience of daily
life, the monadic "point of view" on the world to which we are
necessarily, as biological subjects, restricted - is in Althusser's
formula implicitly opposed to the realm of abstract knowledge, a realm
which, as Lacan reminds us, is never positioned in or actualised by
any concrete subject but rather by that structural void called le
sujet supposé savoir (the subject supposed to know), a subject-place
of knowledge. What is affirmed is not that we cannot know the world
and its totality in some abstract or "scientific" way. Marxian
"science" provides just such a way of knowing and conceptualising the
world abstractly, in the sense in which, for example, Mandel's great
book offers a rich and elaborated knowledge of that global world
system, of which it has never been said here that it was unknowable
but merely that it was unrepresentable, which is a very different
matter. The Althusserian formula, in other words, designates a gap, a
rift, between existential experience and scientific knowledge.
Ideology has then the function of somehow inventing a way of
articulating those two distinct dimensions with each other. What a
historicist view of this definition would want to add is that such
coordination, the production of functioning and living ideologies, is
distinct in different historical situations, and, above all, that
there may be historical situations in which it is not possible at all
- and this would seem to be our situation in the current crisis.
But the Lacanian system is threefold, and not dualistic. To the
Marxian-Althusserian opposition of ideology and science correspond
only two of Lacan's tripartite functions: the Imaginary and the Real,
respectively. Our digression on cartography, however, with its final
revelation Of a properly representational dialectic of the codes and
capacities of individual languages or media, reminds us that what has
until now been omitted was the dimension of the Lacanian Symbolic
itself.
An aesthetic of cognitive mapping - a pedagogical political culture
which seeks to endow the individual subject with some new heightened
sense of its place in the global system - will necessarily have to
respect this now enormously complex representational dialectic and
invent radically new forms in order to do it justice. This is not
then, clearly, a call for a return to some older kind of machinery,
some older and more transparent national space, or some more
traditional and reassuring perspectival or mimetic enclave: the new
political art (if it is possible at all) will have to hold to the
truth of postmodernism, that is to say, to its fundamental object -
the world space of multinational capital - at the same time at which
it achieves a breakthrough to some as yet unimaginable new mode of
representing this last, in which we may again begin to grasp our
positioning as individual and collective subjects and regain a
capacity to act and struggle which is at present neutralised by our
spatial as well as our social confusion. The political form of
postmodernism, if there ever is any, will have as its vocation the
invention and projection of a global cognitive mapping, on a social as
well as a spatial scale.
jum...@my-deja.com
ftp://english-www.hss.cmu.edu/WWW/philosophy/foucault/what-is-
enlightenment.html
What Is Enlightenment?
(Was ist Aufklärung?)
Michel Foucault, 1978
translation by Mathew Henson, 1992
Today when a periodical asks its readers a question, it does so in
order to collect opinions on some subject about which everyone has
an opinion already; there is not much likelihood of learning
anything new. In the eighteenth century, editors preferred to
question the public on problems that did not yet have solutions. I
don't know whether or not that practice was more effective; it was
unquestionably more entertaining.
In any event, in line with this custom, in November 1784 a German
periodical, Berlinische Monatschrift published a response to the
question: Was ist Aufklärung? And the respondent was Kant.
A minor text, perhaps. But it seems to me that it marks the discreet
entrance into the history of thought of a question that modern
philosophy has not been capable of answering, but that it has never
managed to get rid of, either. And one that has been repeated in
various forms for two centuries now. From Hegel through Nietzsche or
Max Weber to Horkheimer or Habermas, hardly any philosophy has
failed to confront this same question, directly or indirectly.
What, then, is this event that is called the Aufklärung and that has
determined, at least in part, what we are, what we think, and what
we do today? Let us imagine that the Berlinische Monatschrift still
exists and that it is asking its readers the question: What is
modern philosophy? Perhaps we could respond with an echo: modern
philosophy is the philosophy that is attempting to answer the
question raised so imprudently two centuries ago: Was ist
Aufklärung?
Let us linger a few moments over Kant's text. It merits attention
for several reasons.
To this same question, Moses Mendelssohn had also replied in the
same journal, just two months earlier. But Kant had not seen
Mendelssohn's text when he wrote his. To be sure, the encounter of
the German philosophical movement with the new development of
Jewish culture does not date from this precise moment. Mendelssohn
had been at that crossroads for thirty years or so, in company
with Lessing. But up to this point it had been a matter of making
a place for Jewish culture within German thought -- which Lessing
had tried to do in Die Juden -- or else of identifying problems
common to Jewish thought and to German philosophy; this is what
Mendelssohn had done in his Phadon; oder, Über die Unsterblichkeit
der Seele. With the two texts published in the Berlinische
Monatschrift the German Aufklärung and the Jewish Haskala
recognize that they belong to the same history; they are seeking
to identify the common processes from which they stem. And it is
perhaps a way of announcing the acceptance of a common destiny --
we now know to what drama that was to lead.
But there is more. In itself and within the Christian tradition,
Kant's text poses a new problem.
It was certainly not the first time that philosophical thought had
sought to reflect on its own present. But, speaking schematically,
we may say that this reflection had until then taken three main
forms.
The present may be represented as belonging to a certain era of
the world, distinct from the others through some inherent
characteristics, or separated from the others by some dramatic
event. Thus, in Plato's Statesman the interlocutors recognize
that they belong to one of those revolutions of the world in
which the world is turning backwards, with all the negative
consequences that may ensue.
The present may be interrogated in an attempt to decipher in it
the heralding signs of a forthcoming event. Here we have the
principle of a kind of historical hermeneutics of which
Augustine might provide an example.
The present may also be analyzed as a point of transition toward
the dawning of a new world. That is what Vico describes in the
last chapter of La Scienza Nuova; what he sees 'today' is 'a
complete humanity ... spread abroad through all nations, for a
few great monarchs rule over this world of peoples'; it is also
'Europe ... radiant with such humanity that it abounds in all
the good things that make for the happiness of human life.' [1]
Now the way Kant poses the question of Aufklärung is entirely
different: it is neither a world era to which one belongs, nor an
event whose signs are perceived, nor the dawning of an
accomplishment. Kant defines Aufklärung in an almost entirely
negative way, as an Ausgang, an 'exit,' a 'way out.' In his other
texts on history, Kant occasionally raises questions of origin or
defines the internal teleology of a historical process. In the
text on Aufklärung, he deals with the question of contemporary
reality alone. He is not seeking to understand the present on the
basis of a totality or of a future achievement. He is looking for
a difference: What difference does today introduce with respect to
yesterday?
I shall not go into detail here concerning this text, which is not
always very clear despite its brevity. I should simply like to
point out three or four features that seem to me important if we
are to understand how Kant raised the philosophical question of
the present day.
Kant indicates right away that the 'way out' that characterizes
Enlightenment is a process that releases us from the status of
'immaturity.' And by 'immaturity,' he means a certain state of our
will that makes us accept someone else's authority to lead us in
areas where the use of reason is called for. Kant gives three
examples: we are in a state of 'immaturity' when a book takes the
place of our understanding, when a spiritual director takes the
place of our conscience, when a doctor decides for us what our diet
is to be. (Let us note in passing that the register of these three
critiques is easy to recognize, even though the text does not make
it explicit.) In any case, Enlightenment is defined by a
modification of the preexisting relation linking will, authority,
and the use of reason.
We must also note that this way out is presented by Kant in a rather
ambiguous manner. He characterizes it as a phenomenon, an ongoing
process; but he also presents it as a task and an obligation. From
the very first paragraph, he notes that man himself is responsible
for his immature status. Thus it has to be supposed that he will be
able to escape from it only by a change that he himself will bring
about in himself. Significantly, Kant says that this Enlightenment
has a Wahlspruch: now a Wahlspruch is a heraldic device, that is, a
distinctive feature by which one can be recognized, and it is also a
motto, an instruction that one gives oneself and proposes to others.
What, then, is this instruction? Aude sapere: 'dare to know,' 'have
the courage, the audacity, to know.' Thus Enlightenment must be
considered both as a process in which men participate collectively
and as an act of courage to be accomplished personally. Men are at
once elements and agents of a single process. They may be actors in
the process to the extent that they participate in it; and the
process occurs to the extent that men decide to be its voluntary
actors.
A third difficulty appears here in Kant's text in his use of the
word 'mankind,' Menschheit. The importance of this word in the
Kantian conception of history is well known. Are we to understand
that the entire human race is caught up in the process of
Enlightenment? In that case, we must imagine Enlightenment as a
historical change that affects the political and social existence of
all people on the face of the earth. Or are we to understand that it
involves a change affecting what constitutes the humanity of human
beings? But the question then arises of knowing what this change is.
Here again, Kant's answer is not without a certain ambiguity. In any
case, beneath its appearance of simplicity, it is rather complex.
Kant defines two essential conditions under which mankind can escape
from its immaturity. And these two conditions are at once spiritual
and institutional, ethical and political.
The first of these conditions is that the realm of obedience and the
realm of the use of reason be clearly distinguished. Briefly
characterizing the immature status, Kant invokes the familiar
expression: 'Don't think, just follow orders'; such is, according to
him, the form in which military discipline, political power, and
religious authority are usually exercised. Humanity will reach
maturity when it is no longer required to obey, but when men are
told: 'Obey, and you will be able to reason as much as you like.' We
must note that the German word used here is räsonieren; this word,
which is also used in the Critiques does not refer to just any use
of reason, but to a use of reason in which reason has no other end
but itself: räsonieren is to reason for reasoning's sake. And Kant
gives examples, these too being perfectly trivial in appearance:
paying one's taxes, while being able to argue as much as one likes
about the system of taxation, would be characteristic of the mature
state; or again, taking responsibility for parish service, if one is
a pastor, while reasoning freely about religious dogmas.
We might think that there is nothing very different here from what
has been meant, since the sixteenth century, by freedom of
conscience: the right to think as one pleases so long as one obeys
as one must. Yet it is here that Kant brings into play another
distinction, and in a rather surprising way. The distinction he
introduces is between the private and public uses of reason. But he
adds at once that reason must be free in its public use, and must be
submissive in its private use. Which is, term for term, the opposite
of what is ordinarily called freedom of conscience.
But we must be somewhat more precise. What constitutes, for Kant,
this private use of reason? In what area is it exercised? Man, Kant
says, makes a private use of reason when he is 'a cog in a machine';
that is, when he has a role to play in society and jobs to do: to be
a soldier, to have taxes to pay, to be in charge of a parish, to be
a civil servant, all this makes the human being a particular segment
of society; he finds himself thereby placed in a circumscribed
position, where he has to apply particular rules and pursue
particular ends. Kant does not ask that people practice a blind and
foolish obedience, but that they adapt the use they make of their
reason to these determined circumstances; and reason must then be
subjected to the particular ends in view. Thus there cannot be,
here, any free use of reason.
On the other hand, when one is reasoning only in order to use one's
reason, when one is reasoning as a reasonable being (and not as a
cog in a machine), when one is reasoning as a member of reasonable
humanity, then the use of reason must be free and public.
Enlightenment is thus not merely the process by which individuals
would see their own personal freedom of thought guaranteed. There is
Enlightenment when the universal, the free, and the public uses of
reason are superimposed on one another.
Now this leads us to a fourth question that must be put to Kant's
text. We can readily see how the universal use of reason (apart from
any private end) is the business of the subject himself as an
individual; we can readily see, too, how the freedom of this use may
be assured in a purely negative manner through the absence of any
challenge to it; but how is a public use of that reason to be
assured? Enlightenment, as we see, must not be conceived simply as a
general process affecting all humanity; it must not be conceived
only as an obligation prescribed to individuals: it now appears as a
political problem. The question, in any event, is that of knowing
how the use of reason can take the public form that it requires, how
the audacity to know can be exercised in broad daylight, while
individuals are obeying as scrupulously as possible. And Kant, in
conclusion, proposes to Frederick II, in scarcely veiled terms, a
sort of contract -- what might be called the contract of rational
despotism with free reason: the public and free use of autonomous
reason will be the best guarantee of obedience, on condition,
however, that the political principle that must be obeyed itself be
in conformity with universal reason. Let us leave Kant's text here.
I do not by any means propose to consider it as capable of
constituting an adequate description of Enlightenment; and no
historian, I think, could be satisfied with it for an analysis of
the social, political, and cultural transformations that occurred at
the end of the eighteenth century.
Nevertheless, notwithstanding its circumstantial nature, and without
intending to give it an exaggerated place in Kant's work, I believe
that it is necessary to stress the connection that exists between
this brief article and the three Critiques. Kant in fact describes
Enlightenment as the moment when humanity is going to put its own
reason to use, without subjecting itself to any authority; now it is
precisely at this moment that the critique is necessary, since its
role is that of defining the conditions under which the use of
reason is legitimate in order to determine what can be known, what
must be done, and what may be hoped. Illegitimate uses of reason are
what give rise to dogmatism and heteronomy, along with illusion; on
the other hand, it is when the legitimate use of reason has been
clearly defined in its principles that its autonomy can be assured.
The critique is, in a sense, the handbook of reason that has grown
up in Enlightenment; and, conversely, the Enlightenment is the age
of the critique.
It is also necessary, I think, to underline the relation between
this text of Kant's and the other texts he devoted to history. These
latter, for the most part, seek to define the internal teleology of
time and the point toward which history of humanity is moving. Now
the analysis of Enlightenment, defining this history as humanity's
passage to its adult status, situates contemporary reality with
respect to the overall movement and its basic directions. But at the
same time, it shows how, at this very moment, each individual is
responsible in a certain way for that overall process.
The hypothesis I should like to propose is that this little text is
located in a sense at the crossroads of critical reflection and
reflection on history. It is a reflection by Kant on the
contemporary status of his own enterprise. No doubt it is not the
first time that a philosopher has given his reasons for undertaking
his work at a particular moment. But it seems to me that it is the
first time that a philosopher has connected in this way, closely and
from the inside, the significance of his work with respect to
knowledge, a reflection on history and a particular analysis of the
specific moment at which he is writing and because of which he is
writing. It is in the reflection on 'today' as difference in history
and as motive for a particular philosophical task that the novelty
of this text appears to me to lie.
And, by looking at it in this way, it seems to me we may recognize a
point of departure: the outline of what one might call the attitude
of modernity.
I know that modernity is often spoken of as an epoch, or at least as
a set of features characteristic of an epoch; situated on a
calendar, it would be preceded by a more or less naive or archaic
premodernity, and followed by an enigmatic and troubling
'postmodernity.' And then we find ourselves asking whether modernity
constitutes the sequel to the Enlightenment and its development, or
whether we are to see it as a rupture or a deviation with respect to
the basic principles of the 18th century.
Thinking back on Kant's text, I wonder whether we may not envisage
modernity rather as an attitude than as a period of history. And by
'attitude,' I mean a mode of relating to contemporary reality; a
voluntary choice made by certain people; in the end, a way of
thinking and feeling; a way, too, of acting and behaving that at one
and the same time marks a relation of belonging and presents itself
as a task. A bit, no doubt, like what the Greeks called an ethos.
And consequently, rather than seeking to distinguish the 'modern
era' from the 'premodern' or 'postmodern,' I think it would be more
useful to try to find out how the attitude of modernity, ever since
its formation, has found itself struggling with attitudes of
'countermodernity.'
To characterize briefly this attitude of modernity, I shall take an
almost indispensable example, namely, Baudelaire; for his
consciousness of modernity is widely recognized as one of the most
acute in the nineteenth century.
Modernity is often characterized in terms of consciousness of the
discontinuity of time: a break with tradition, a feeling of
novelty, of vertigo in the face of the passing moment. And this is
indeed what Baudelaire seems to be saying when he defines
modernity as 'the ephemeral, the fleeting, the contingent.' [2]
But, for him, being modern does not lie in recognizing and
accepting this perpetual movement; on the contrary, it lies in
adopting a certain attitude with respect to this movement; and
this deliberate, difficult attitude consists in recapturing
something eternal that is not beyond the present instant, nor
behind it, but within it.
Modernity is distinct from fashion, which does no more than call
into question the course of time; modernity is the attitude that
makes it possible to grasp the 'heroic' aspect of the present
moment. Modernity is not a phenomenon of sensitivity to the
fleeting present; it is the will to 'heroize' the present .
I shall restrict myself to what Baudelaire says about the painting
of his contemporaries. Baudelaire makes fun of those painters who,
finding nineteenth-century dress excessively ugly, want to depict
nothing but ancient togas. But modernity in painting does not
consist, for Baudelaire, in introducing black clothing onto the
canvas. The modern painter is the one who can show the dark
frock-coat as 'the necessary costume of our time,' the one who
knows how to make manifest, in the fashion of the day, the
essential, permanent, obsessive relation that our age entertains
with death. 'The dress-coat and frock-coat not only possess their
political beauty, which is an expression of universal equality,
but also their poetic beauty, which is an expression of the public
soul -- an immense cortège of undertaker's mutes (mutes in love,
political mutes, bourgeois mutes...). We are each of us
celebrating some funeral.' [3] To designate this attitude of
modernity, Baudelaire sometimes employs a litotes that is highly
significant because it is presented in the form of a precept: 'You
have no right to despise the present.'
This heroization is ironical, needless to say. The attitude of
modernity does not treat the passing moment as sacred in order to
try to maintain or perpetuate it. It certainly does not involve
harvesting it as a fleeting and interesting curiosity. That would
be what Baudelaire would call the spectator's posture. The
flâneur, the idle, strolling spectator, is satisfied to keep his
eyes open, to pay attention and to build up a storehouse of
memories. In opposition to the flâneur, Baudelaire describes the
man of modernity: 'Away he goes, hurrying, searching .... Be very
sure that this man ... -- this solitary, gifted with an active
imagination, ceaselessly journeying across the great human desert
-- has an aim loftier than that of a mere flâneur, an aim more
general, something other than the fugitive pleasure of
circumstance. He is looking for that quality which you must allow
me to call 'modernity.' ... He makes it his business to extract
from fashion whatever element it may contain of poetry within
history.' As an example of modernity, Baudelaire cites the artist
Constantin Guys. In appearance a spectator, a collector of
curiosities, he remains 'the last to linger wherever there can be
a glow of light, an echo of poetry, a quiver of life or a chord of
music; wherever a passion can pose before him, wherever natural
man and conventional man display themselves in a strange beauty,
wherever the sun lights up the swift joys of the depraved animal.'
[4] But let us make no mistake. Constantin Guys is not a flâneur;
what makes him the modern painter par excellence in Baudelaire's
eyes is that, just when the whole world is falling asleep, he
begins to work, and he transfigures that world. His
transfiguration does not entail an annulling of reality, but a
difficult interplay between the truth of what is real and the
exercise of freedom; 'natural' things become 'more than natural,'
'beautiful' things become 'more than beautiful,' and individual
objects appear 'endowed with an impulsive life like the soul of
their creator.' [5] For the attitude of modernity, the high value
of the present is indissociable from a desperate eagerness to
imagine it, to imagine it otherwise than it is, and to transform
it not by destroying it but by grasping it in what it is.
Baudelairean modernity is an exercise in which extreme attention
to what is real is confronted with the practice of a liberty that
simultaneously respects this reality and violates it.
However, modernity for Baudelaire is not simply a form of
relationship to the present; it is also a mode of relationship
that has to be established with oneself. The deliberate attitude
of modernity is tied to an indispensable asceticism. To be modern
is not to accept oneself as one is in the flux of the passing
moments; it is to take oneself as object of a complex and
difficult elaboration: what Baudelaire, in the vocabulary of his
day, calls dandysme. Here I shall not recall in detail the
well-known passages on 'vulgar, earthy, vile nature'; on man's
indispensable revolt against himself; on the 'doctrine of
elegance' which imposes 'upon its ambitious and humble disciples'
a discipline more despotic than the most terrible religions; the
pages, finally, on the asceticism of the dandy who makes of his
body, his behavior, his feelings and passions, his very existence,
a work of art. Modern man, for Baudelaire, is not the man who goes
off to discover himself, his secrets and his hidden truth; he is
the man who tries to invent himself. This modernity does not
'liberate man in his own being'; it compels him to face the task
of producing himself.
Let me add just one final word. This ironic heroization of the
present, this transfiguring play of freedom with reality, this
ascetic elaboration of the self -- Baudelaire does not imagine
that these have any place in society itself, or in the body
politic. They can only be produced in another, a different place,
which Baudelaire calls art.
I do not pretend to be summarizing in these few lines either the
complex historical event that was the Enlightenment, at the end of
the eighteenth century, or the attitude of modernity in the various
guises it may have taken on during the last two centuries.
I have been seeking, on the one hand, to emphasize the extent to
which a type of philosophical interrogation -- one that
simultaneously problematizes man's relation to the present, man's
historical mode of being, and the constitution of the self as an
autonomous subject -- is rooted in the Enlightenment. On the other
hand, I have been seeking to stress that the thread that may connect
us with the Enlightenment is not faithfulness to doctrinal elements,
but rather the permanent reactivation of an attitude -- that is, of
a philosophical ethos that could be described as a permanent
critique of our historical era. I should like to characterize this
ethos very briefly.
A. Negatively
This ethos implies, first, the refusal of what I like to call the
'blackmail' of the Enlightenment. I think that the Enlightenment,
as a set of political, economic, social, institutional, and
cultural events on which we still depend in large part,
constitutes a privileged domain for analysis. I also think that
as an enterprise for linking the progress of truth and the history
of liberty in a bond of direct relation, it formulated a
philosophical question that remains for us to consider. I think,
finally, as I have tried to show with reference to Kant's text,
that it defined a certain manner of philosophizing.
But that does not mean that one has to be 'for' or 'against' the
Enlightenment. It even means precisely that one has to refuse
everything that might present itself in the form of a simplistic
and authoritarian alternative: you either accept the Enlightenment
and remain within the tradition of its rationalism (this is
considered a positive term by some and used by others, on the
contrary, as a reproach); or else you criticize the Enlightenment
and then try to escape from its principles of rationality (which
may be seen once again as good or bad). And w e do not break free
of this blackmail by introducing 'dialectical' nuances while
seeking to determine what good and bad elements there may have
been in the Enlightenment.
We must try to proceed with the analysis of ourselves as beings
who are historically determined, to a certain extent, by the
Enlightenment. Such an analysis implies a series of historical
inquiries that are as precise as possible; and these inquiries
will not be oriented retrospectively toward the 'essential kernel
of rationality' that can be found in the Enlightenment and that
would have to be preserved in any event; they will be oriented
toward the 'contemporary limits of the necessary,' that is, toward
what is not or is no longer indispensable for the constitution of
ourselves as autonomous subjects.
This permanent critique of ourselves has to avoid the always too
facile confusions between humanism and Enlightenment.
We must never forget that the Enlightenment is an event, or a set
of events and complex historical processes, that is located at a
certain point in the development of European societies. As such,
it includes elements of social transformation, types of political
institution, forms of knowledge, projects of rationalization of
knowledge and practices, technological mutations that are very
difficult to sum up in a word, even if many of these phenomena
remain important today. The one I have pointed out and that seems
to me to have been at the basis of an entire form of philosophical
reflection concerns only the mode of reflective relation to the
present.
Humanism is something entirely different. It is a theme or rather
a set of themes that have reappeared on several occasions over
time in European societies; these themes always tied to value
judgments have obviously varied greatly in their content as well
as in the values they have preserved. Furthermore they have
served as a critical principle of differentiation. In the
seventeenth century there was a humanism that presented itself as
a critique of Christianity or of religion in general; there was a
Christian humanism opposed to an ascetic and much more theocentric
humanism. In the nineteenth century there was a suspicious
humanism hostile and critical toward science and another that to
the contrary placed its hope in that same science. Marxism has
been a humanism; so have existentialism and personalism; there was
a time when people supported the humanistic values represented by
National Socialism and when the Stalinists themselves said they
were humanists.
From this we must not conclude that everything that has ever been
linked with humanism is to be rejected but that the humanistic
thematic is in itself too supple too diverse too inconsistent to
serve as an axis for reflection. And it is a fact that at least
since the seventeenth century what is called humanism has always
been obliged to lean on certain conceptions of man borrowed from
religion science or politics. Humanism serves to color and to
justify the conceptions of man to which it is after all obliged to
take recourse.
Now in this connection I believe that this thematic which so often
recurs and which always depends on humanism can be opposed by the
principle of a critique and a permanent creation of ourselves in
our autonomy: that is a principle that is at the heart of the
historical consciousness that the Enlightenment has of itself.
From this standpoint I am inclined to see Enlightenment and
humanism in a state of tension rather than identity. In any case
it seems to me dangerous to confuse them; and further it seems
historically inaccurate. If the question of man of the human
species of the humanist was important throughout the eighteenth
century this is very rarely I believe because the Enlightenment
considered itself a humanism. It is worthwhile too to note that
throughout the nineteenth century the historiography of
sixteenth-century humanism which was so important for people like
Saint-Beuve or Burckhardt was always distinct from and sometimes
explicitly opposed to the Enlightenment and the eighteenth
century. The nineteenth century had a tendency to oppose the two
at least as much as to confuse them.
In any case I think that just as we must free ourselves from the
intellectual blackmail of being for or against the Enlightenment
we must escape from the historical and moral confusionism that
mixes the theme of humanism with the question of the
Enlightenment. An analysis of their complex relations in the
course of the last two centuries would be a worthwhile project an
important one if we are to bring some measure of clarity to the
consciousness that we have of ourselves and of our past.
B. Positively
Yet while taking these precautions into account we must obviously
give a more positive content to what may be a philosophical ethos
consisting in a critique of what we are saying thinking and doing
through a historical ontology of ourselves.
This philosophical ethos may be characterized as a limit-attitude.
We are not talking about a gesture of rejection. We have to move
beyond the outside-inside alternative; we have to be at the
frontiers. Criticism indeed consists of analyzing and reflecting
upon limits. But if the Kantian question was that of knowing what
limits knowledge has to renounce transgressing, it seems to me
that the critical question today has to be turned back into a
positive one: in what is given lo us as universal necessary
obligatory what place is occupied by whatever is singular
contingent and the product of arbitrary constraints? The point in
brief is to transform the critique conducted in the form of
necessary limitation into a practical critique that lakes the form
of a possible transgression. This entails an obvious consequence:
that criticism is no longer going to be practiced in the search
for formal structures with universal value, but rather as a
historical investigation into the events that have led us to
constitute ourselves and to recognize ourselves as subjects of
what we are doing, thinking, saying. In that sense, this criticism
is not transcendental, and its goal is not that of making a
metaphysics possible: it is genealogical in its design and
archaeological in its method. Archaeological -- and not
transcendental -- in the sense that it will not seek to identify
the universal structures of all knowledge or of all possible moral
action, but will seek to treat the instances of discourse that
articulate what we think, say, and do as so many historical
events. And this critique will be genealogical in the sense that
it will not deduce from the form of what we are what it is
impossible for us to do and to know; but it will separate out,
from the contingency that has made us what we are, the possibility
of no longer being, doing, or thinking what we are, do, or think.
It is not seeking to make possible a metaphysics that has finally
become a science; it is seeking to give new impetus, as far and
wide as possible, to the undefined work of freedom.
But if we are not to settle for the affirmation or the empty dream
of freedom, it seems to me that this historico-critical attitude
must also be an experimental one. I mean that this work done at
the limits of ourselves must, on the one hand, open up a realm of
historical inquiry and, on the other, put itself to the test of
reality, of contemporary reality, both to grasp the points where
change is possible and desirable, and to determine the precise
form this change should take. This means that the historical
ontology of ourselves must turn away from all projects that claim
to be global or radical. In fact we know from experience that the
claim to escape from the system of contemporary reality so as to
produce the overall programs of another society, of another way of
thinking, another culture, another vision of the world, has led
only to the return of the most dangerous traditions.
I prefer the very specific transformations that have proved to be
possible in the last twenty years in a certain number of areas
that concern our ways of being and thinking, relations to
authority, relations between the sexes, the way in which we
perceive insanity or illness; I prefer even these partial
transformations that have been made in the correlation of
historical analysis and the practical attitude, to the programs
for a new man that the worst political systems have repeated
throughout the twentieth century. I shall thus characterize the
philosophical ethos appropriate to the critical ontology of
ourselves as a historico-practical test of the limits that we may
go beyond, and thus as work carried out by ourselves upon
ourselves as free beings.
Still, the following objection would no doubt be entirely
legitimate: if we limit ourselves to this type of always partial
and local inquiry or test, do we not run the risk of letting
ourselves be determined by more general structures of which we may
well not be conscious, and over which we may have no control?
To this, two responses. It is true that we have to give up hope of
ever acceding to a point of view that could give us access to any
complete and definitive knowledge of what may constitute our
historical limits. And from this point of view the theoretical and
practical experience that we have of our limits and of the
possibility of moving beyond them is always limited and
determined; thus we are always in the position of beginning again
. But that does not mean that no work can be done except in
disorder and contingency. The work in question has its generality,
its systematicity, its homogeneity, and its stakes.
(a) Its Stakes
These are indicated by what might be called 'the paradox of the
relations of capacity and power.' We know that the great promise
or the great hope of the eighteenth century, or a part of the
eighteenth century, lay in the simultaneous and proportional
growth of individuals with respect to one another. And, moreover,
we can see that throughout the entire history of Western societies
(it is perhaps here that the root of their singular historical
destiny is located -- such a peculiar destiny, so different from
the others in its trajectory and so universalizing, so dominant
with respect to the others), the acquisition of capabilities and
the struggle for freedom have constituted permanent elements. Now
the relations between the growth of capabilities and the growth of
autonomy are not as simple as the eighteenth century may have
believed. And we have been able to see what forms of power
relation were conveyed by various technologies (whether we are
speaking of productions with economic aims, or institutions whose
goal is social regulation, or of techniques of communication):
disciplines, both collective and individual, procedures of
normalization exercised in the name of the power of the state,
demands of society or of population zones, are examples.
What is at stake, then, is this: How can the growth of
capabilities be disconnected from the intensification of power
relations?
(b) Homogeneity
This leads to the study of what could be called 'practical
systems.' Here we are taking as a homogeneous domain of reference
not the representations that men give of themselves, not the
conditions that determine them without their knowledge, but rather
what they do and the way they do it. That is, the forms of
rationality that organize their ways of doing things (this might
be called the technological aspect) and the freedom with which
they act within these practical systems, reacting to what others
do, modifying the rules of the game, up to a certain point (this
might be called the strategic side of these practices). The
homogeneity of these historico-critical analyses is thus ensured
by this realm of practices, with their technological side and
their strategic side.
(c) Systematicity
These practical systems stem from three broad areas: relations of
control over things, relations of action upon others, relations
with oneself. This does not mean that each of these three areas is
completely foreign to the others. It is well known that control
over things is mediated by relations with others; and relations
with others in turn always entail relations with oneself, and vice
versa. But we have three axes whose specificity and whose
interconnections have to be analyzed: the axis of knowledge, the
axis of power, the axis of ethics. In other terms, the historical
ontology of ourselves has to answer an open series of questions;
it has to make an indefinite number of inquiries which may be
multiplied and specified as much as we like, but which will all
address the questions systematized as follows: How are we
constituted as subjects of our own knowledge? How are we
constituted as subjects who exercise or submit to power relations?
How are we constituted as moral subjects of our own actions?
(d) Generality
Finally, these historico-critical investigations are quite
specific in the sense that they always bear upon a material, an
epoch, a body of determined practices and discourses. And yet, at
least at the level of the Western societies from which we derive,
they have their generality, in the sense that they have continued
to recur up to our time: for example, the problem of the
relationship between sanity and insanity, or sickness and health,
or crime and the law; the problem of the role of sexual relations;
and so on. But by evoking this generality, I do not mean to
suggest that it has to be retraced in its metahistorical
continuity over time, nor that its variations have to be pursued.
What must be grasped is the extent to which what we know of it,
the forms of power that are exercised in it, and the experience
that we have in it of ourselves constitute nothing but determined
historical figures, through a certain form of problematization
that defines objects, rules of action, modes of relation to
oneself. The study of modes of problematization (that is, of what
is neither an anthropological constant nor a chronological
variation) is thus the way to analyze questions of general import
in their historically unique form.
A brief summary, to conclude and to come back to Kant.
I do not know whether we will ever reach mature adulthood. Many
things in our experience convince us that the historical event of
the Enlightenment did not make us mature adults, and we have not
reached that stage yet. However, it seems to me that a meaning can
be attributed to that critical interrogation on the present and on
ourselves which Kant formulated by reflecting on the Enlightenment.
It seems to me that Kant's reflection is even a way of
philosophizing that has not been without its importance or
effectiveness during the last two centuries. The critical ontology
of ourselves has to be considered not, certainly, as a theory, a
doctrine, nor even as a permanent body of knowledge that is
accumulating; it has to be conceived as an attitude, an ethos, a
philosophical life in which the critique of what we are is at one
and the same time the historical analysis of the limits that are
imposed on us and an experiment with the possibility of going beyond
them.
This philosophical attitude has to be translated into the labor of
diverse inquiries. These inquiries have their methodological
coherence in the at once archaeological and genealogical study of
practices envisaged simultaneously as a technological type of
rationality and as strategic games of liberties; they have their
theoretical coherence in the definition of the historically unique
forms in which the generalities of our relations to things, to
others, to ourselves, have been problematized. They have their
practical coherence in the care brought to the process of putting
historico-critical reflection to the test of concrete practices. I
do not know whether it must be said today that the critical task
still entails faith in Enlightenment; I continue to think that this
task requires work on our limits, that is, a patient labor giving
form to our impatience for liberty.
Notes:
Giambattista Vico, The New Science, 3rd ed., (1744), abridged
trans. T. G. Bergin and M. H. Fisch (Ithaca/London: Cornell
University Press, 1970), pp. 370, 372.
Charles Baudelaire, The Painter of Modern Life, trans. Jonathan
Mayne (London: Phaidon, 1964), p. 13.
Charles Baudelaire, 'On the Heroism of Modern Life,' in The Mirror
of Art, trans. Jonathan Mayne (London: Phaidon, 1955), p. 127.
Baudelaire, Painter, pp. 12, Il. Ibid., p. 12.
jum...@my-deja.com
http://www.dundee.ac.uk/~mksimpso/refs.htm
------------------------------------------
Pre-1920 References on Idiocy and Mental Deficiency
This bibliography is a chronologically organised list of references
pertaining directly or indirectly to idiocy and mental deficiency. The
cut-off date of 1920 is somewhat arbitrary, and in any case a
comprehensive listing becomes almost impossible from around the 1870s
onward with the founding of a number of key periodicals and the
increased production of books, articles and papers. Additional
contributions are very welcome and should preferably be e.mailed to
myself.
Paracelsus, 1567, De Generatione Stultorum, trans. P. Cranefield and
W. Federn, `The begetting of fools', Bulletin of the History of
Medicine, 41
Defoe, Daniel, 1697, `A hospital for natural fools', in An Essay upon
Projects
Diderot, D., 1749, Lettre sur les aveugles à l'usage de ceux qui
voient [english trans., 1773, An essay on blindness]
1771, (An) Account of the Rise and Present Establishment of the
Lunatic Asylum in Manchester. Manchester.
Cox, W., 1779, travellers account of Swiss cretins, Annual Register
Ald, T., 1782, Observations of the Nature, Kinds, Causes, and
Prevention of Insanity, Lunacy or Madness, Leicester, G. Ireland
Bentham, J., 1791, Panopticon; or, the Inspection House, Great
Britain.
Crichton, A., 1798, An Inquiry into the Nature and Origins of Mental
Derangement, 2 vols., London, Davies
Epée, Abbé de l', 1801, The method of Educating the Deaf and Dumb
Confirmed by Long Experience, trans. F. Green, London, G. Cooke
Itard, J., 1801, An Historical Account of the Discovery and Education
of a Savage Man, or of the First Development, Physical and Moral, of
the Young Savage Caught in the Woods Near Aveyron in the Year 1798,
trans Nogent, London, Philips
Itard, J., 1806, The Wild Boy of Aveyron, trans. E. Fawcett, P. Ayrton
and J. White (1972, London, New Left Books)
Pinel, P., 1806, A Treatise on Insanity, trans. D. Davis, London,
Cadell and Davis
Thelwall, J., 1810, Imperfect Development of the Faculties, Mental and
Moral, London, Richard Taylor and Co.
Collinson, D., 1812, A Treatise on the Law Concerning Idiots, Lunatics
and Other Persons non compos mentis, London, W. Read.
Rush, B., 1812, Medical Inquiries and Observations upon the Diseases
of the Mind, facsimile, New York, Hafner, 1962
Spurzheim, J., 1817, Observations on the Deranged Manifestations of
the Mind or Insanity, London, Baldwin, Craddock and Joy
Ray, I., 1831, A Treatise on the Medical Jurisprudence of Insanity,
Boston, Little, Brown
Feuerbach, A., 1833, Caspar Hauser, trans. H. Lindberg, London
Uwins, D., 1833, A Treatise on those Disorders of theBrain and Nervous
System which are usually considered and called Mental, London, Renshaw
and Rush.
1834, Education of the deaf and dumb, North American Review, 4, 99-106
Itard, J., 1836, On the surgical treatment of deafness, Dunglison's
American medical Library, Philadelphia, Waldre, 75-92
Browne, W.A.F., 1837 What Asylums Were, Are and Ought to Be,
Edinburgh, Scotland.
Dix, Dorothea, 1843, Memorial to the Legislature of Massachusetts,
Boston, Munroe and Francis
Dix, Dorothea, 1845, Memorial Soliciting a State Hospital for the
Insane Submitted to the Legislature of Pennsylvania, February 3rd,
Harrisburg, PA, J.M.G. Lescue
Esquirol, J., 1845, Mental Maladies, trans. E. Hunt, Philadelphia
Guggenbuhl, J.J., 1845, Extracts from the First Report of the
Institution on the
Abendberg, near Interlachen, Switzerland; for the Cure of Cretinism,
London.
Seguin, Edouard, 1846, Traitement moral, hygiène et éducation des
idiots et des autres enfants arrières, Baillière Tindall,
1847, Asylums and schools for idiots, American Journal of Insanity, 4,
76?79
1847, Notices of books, essays and articles on insanity, American
Journal on Insanity, 4, 79-80
1847, Visit to the Bicêtre, Chambers Edinburgh Journal (series 2)
7(158), 20-22; (161), 71-73; (163), 105-107
1848, A village of lunatics, American Journal of Insanity, 4, 217-222
1848, Association of Medical Superintendents of American Institutions
for the Insane, American Journal of Insanity, 5, 19
1848, Schools and asulums for idiotic and imbecile, in American
Journal of Insanity, 5, 19-33
Howe, Samuel, 1848 The Causes of Idiocy, Edinburgh, Maclachlan and
Stewart,
Howe, S., 1848, Report Made to the Legislature of Massachusetts upon
Idiocy, Boston, Collidge and Wiley
1849, Witchcraft and insanity, American Journal of Insanity, 3,
246-261
1849, Idiots, American Journal of Insanity, 5, 373-375
Howe, S., 1849, The condition and capacities of the idiots in
Massachusetts, reproduced in American Journal of Insanity, 5, 374-375
Howe, S., 1850, Report to Massachusetts Senate, Boston, Senate
Document No. 38
1851, Constitution and By-laws of the Massachusetts School for Idiotic
and Feeble-minded Youth, Boston, Cross and Freeman
Howe, S., 1852, Third and Final Report on the Experimental School for
Teaching and Training Idiotic Children: Also, the First Report of the
Trustee of the Massachusetts School for Idiotic and Feeble-Minded
Youth, Cambridge, Mass., Metcalf and Co.
Lotze, R., 1852, Medical Psychology,
Wilbur, H., 1852, First Annual report of the Trustees of the New York
State asylum for Idiots to the Legislature of State, Albany, State
Printers
Dickens, C., 1853, 'Idiots', in Household Words, 7, 313-317.
1854, Account of the Ceremonies at the Laying of the Cornerstone of
the New York Asylum for Idiots, at Syracuse, September 8, 1854,
Albany, J. Munsell
Sidney, E., 1854, Teaching the Idiot, London, Society for the
Encouragement of Arts, Manufacture and Commerce
Arlidge, John Thomas, 1859, On the state of lunacy and the legal
provision for the insane, with observations on the construction and
organization of asylums, London: Churchill.
Browne, J., 1860, Psychical diseases of early life, Journal of Mental
Science, 6, 284?320
1861, De Gérando, North American Review, 92, 391-415
Day, G., 1861, Report on some strange school for the deaf and dumb in
Europe: France, American Annals of the Deaf, 13, 98-109
DJ.L.D., 1862, 'On the condition of the mouth in idiocy', in Lancet,
1, 186.
Little, W., 1862, On the influence of abnormal parturition, difficult
labors, premature birth, and asphyxia neonatorum, on the mental and
physical condition of the child, especially in relation deformities,
Obsterical Transactions, 3, 293?346
Millard, W., 1864, The Idiot and his Helpers, Colchester, Essex Hall
idiot Asylum
1865, `Idiot asylums', and reports on Highgate and Earlswood asylums,
in Edinburgh Review, 122
Bernard, C., 1865, Introduction a l'étude de la médecine
expérimentale, [English trans. 1927]
Purdon, Henry. (1865) Peculiarities of the Deaf and Dumb as Regards
Medical Treatment and their Idiocyncrasies which have been Observed at
the Ulster Institution. Belfast, Northern Ireland: H. Greer.
Down, J., 1866, Observations on an ethnic classification of idiots,
Rep. Obs. London Hospital, 3, 259?262
Duncan, P. and Millard, W., 1866, A Manual for the Classification,
Training, and Education of the Feeble-Minded, Imbecile, and Idiotic,
London, Longmans Green
Howe, S., 1866, In Ceremonies on Laying the Cornerstone of the New
York State Institution for the Blind, at Batavia, Genesee Co., New
York, Batavia, Henry Todd
Séguin, E., 1866, Idiocy and its Treatment by the Physiological
Method, New York
Down, J., 1867, Observations on an ethnic classification of idiots,
Journal of Mental Science, 13, 121?123
Maudsley, H., 1868, The Physiology and Pathology of the Mind, 2nd ed.,
London
West, C., 1868, Diseases of Infancy and Childhood,, Philadelphia,
Henry C. Lea
Galton, F., 1869, Hereditary Genius: An Enquiry into its Laws and
Consequences, London, Macmillan
Greenwell, D., 1869, On the Education of the Imbecile, Strahan.
Seguin, Edouard, 1870 New facts and Remarks Concerning Idiocy, New
York, W. Wood & Co.
Down, J.L.H., 1871-72, 'On the relation of the teeth and mouth to
mental development', Transactions of the Odontological Society, 4,
268-288.
Bucknill, J., 1873, Idiocy, Journal of Mental Science, July
Down, J.L.H., 'Some of the causes of idiocy and imbecility', British
Medical Journal, 2, 89.
Krüsi, H., 1875, Pestalozzi: His Life, Work and Influence, New York,
American Book
Fraser, J. and Mitchell, A., 1876, 'Kalmuc idiocy: report of a case
with autopsy' in Journal of Mental Science, 22, 169-179.
Langdon-Down, John, 1876, The Education and Training of the Feeble in
Mind, H.K. Lewis,
Séguin, E., 1876, Report on education, R. Thurston, ed., Report of
Commissioners to Vienna International Exhibition, Washington
Shaw, T.C., 1876, 'On the measurement of the palate in idiots and
imbeciles, in Journal of Mental Science, 22, 196-201.
Charity Organization Society, 1877, Report of a Special Committee on
the Education and Care of Idiots, Imbeciles and Harmless Lunatics,
London, Longmans, Green and Co.
Dugdale, R., 1877, The Jukes: A Study in Crime, Pauperism, Disease and
Heredity, New York, G.P. Putnam
Ireland, William, 1877, On Idiocy and Imbecility, J. & A. Churchill,
Kerlin, I., 1877, The organization of establishments for the idiotic
and imbecile classes, Proceedings of the Association of Medical
Officers of American Institutions for Idiotic and Feebleminded Persons
19-35
Shuttleworth, G.E., 1877, 'Intemperance as a cause of idiocy', in
Journal of Mental Science, 23, 372-327.
Wilbur, H., 1877, The classification of idiocy, Proceedings of the
Association of Medical Officers of American Institutions for Idiotic
and Feebleminded Persons 29-35
Seguin, E., 1878, Recent progress in the training of idiots,
Proceedings of the Association of Medical Officers of American
Institutions for Idiotic and Feebleminded Persons 3, 60-65
Knight, H., 1879, Status of the work, Proceedings of the Association
of Medical Officers of American Institutions for Idiotic and
Feebleminded Persons 4, 96
Wilbur, H., 1879, Status of the work, Proceedings of the Association
of Medical Officers of American Institutions for Idiotic and
Feebleminded Persons 4, 96
Kerlin, I., 1880, The Mind Unveiled, Philadelphia, U. Hunt
Lester, E.R. (1880) Degeneration: a Chapter in Darwinism, London,
MacMillan & Co.
Wilbur, 1880, Instinct not predominant in idiocy, Proceedings of the
Association of Medical Officers of American Institutions for Idiotic
and Feebleminded Persons 135-144
Brockett, L., 1881, In memory of Edouard Seguin, Proceedings of the
Association of Medical Officers of American Institutions for Idiotic
and Feebleminded Persons, 9?23
Shuttleworth, G.E., 1881, In Memory of Edouard Seguin, H.W.Wolff
Brown, C., 1882, A visit to four English institutions, Proceedings of
the Association of Medical Officers of American Institutions for
Idiotic and Feebleminded Persons, 226-235
Ireland, William, W., 1882, 'On the diagnosis and prognosis of idiocy
and imbecility', in Edinburgh Medical Journal, 27, 1072-85.
Kerlin, 1882, The epileptic change and its appearance among
feeble-minded children, Proceedings of the Association of Medical
Officers of American Institutions for Idiotic and Feebleminded Persons
202-211
Stewart, J., 1882, The industrial department of the Kentucky
institution for the education and training of feeble-minded children,
Proceedings of the Association of Medical Officers of American
Institutions for Idiotic and Feebleminded Persons 236-239
Tuke, D., 1882, Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British
Isles, London, Kegan Paul
Wilbur, H., 1882, Some of the abnormal characteristics of idiocy and
the methods adopted in obviating them, Proceedings of the Association
of Medical Officers of American Institutions for Idiotic and
Feebleminded Persons 190-201
Bell, Alexander Graham. (1883) Memoir upon the formation of a deaf
variety of the human race. Washington: National Academy of Science.
Butler, A., 1883, Does the education of the feebleminded pay?
Proceedings of the Association of Medical Officers of American
Institutions for Idiotic and Feebleminded Persons, 152
Galton, F., 1883, Inquiries into Human Faculty and its Development,
London, Macmillan
Greene, H., 1884, The obligation of civilized society to idiotic and
feeble-minded children, Proceedings of National Conference Charities
and Correction, 264-271
Kerlin, I., 1884, Provision for idiotic and feeble-minded children,
Proceedings of National Conference Charities and Correction, 246-263
Richards, J., 1884, The education of the feeble-minded, Proceedings of
the Association of Medical Officers of American Institutions for
Idiotic and Feebleminded Persons 18-29
Kerlin, 1885, Status of the work, Proceedings of the Association of
Medical Officers of American Institutions for Idiotic and Feebleminded
Persons, 369-372
Bryant, S., 1886, Experiments in testing the character of
schoolchildren, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 15,
338?349
Kerlin, I., 1886, [Provision for imbeciles:] Report of the committee
on provision for idiotic and feeble-minded persons, Proceedings of
National Conference Charities and Correction, 288-297
Seguin, E., 1886, Recent progress in the training of idiots, 1878.
Proceedings of the American Association of Mental Deficiency,
1876-1886, 60-65.
Shuttleworth, G., 1886, The health and physical development of idiots
as compared with mentally sound children of the same age, Proceedings
of the Association of Medical Officers of American Institutions for
Idiotic and Feebleminded Persons 315-322
Down, J., 1887, Mental Affections of Children and Youth, London, J.&A.
Churchill
Jacobs, J., 1887, Experiments in prehension, Mind, 12, 75-79
Kerlin, I., 1887, Moral imbecility, Proceedings of the Association of
Medical Officers of American Institutions for Idiotic and Feebleminded
Persons 32-37
Powell, F., 1887, The care and training of feeble-minded children,
Proceedings of National Conference Charities and Correction, 250-260
Barrows, S., 1888, Discussion on provision for the feeble-minded,
Proceedings of National Conference Charities and Correction, 396-404
Jefferson, Francis, 1888, Canadian versus English deaf-mutes and
schools; the welcome home supper to J.D. Nasmyth of Toronto on his
return from England by the deaf-mutes of Toronto. Toronto.
Rogers, A., 1888, Functions of a school for feeble-minded, Proceedings
of National Conference Charities and Correction, 101-106
Shuttleworth, G., 1888, The ducation of children of abnormally weak
mental capacity, Journal of Mental Science, 34, 80?84
Wilbur, C., 1888, Institutions for the feeble-minded: the result of
forty years of effort in establidshing them in the United States,
Proceedings of National Conference Charities and Correction, 106-111
1889, Report of the Royal Commission on the Blind, the Deaf and the
Dumb. London.
Ashman, W., 1889, The medico-legal study of idiocy, Proceedings of the
Association of Medical Officers of American Institutions for Idiotic
and Feebleminded Persons, 17?31
Brown, G., 1889, Public aid for the feeble-minded, Proceedings of
National Conference Charities and Correction, 86-88
Galton, F., 1889, Natural Inheritance, London, Macmillan
Johnson, A., 1889, Discussion on the care of the feeble-minded,
Proceedings of National Conference Charities and Correction, 318-319
Wilmarth, A., 1889, Mongolian idiocy, Proceedings of the Association
of Medical Officers of American Institutions for Idiotic and
Feebleminded Persons 57-61
Byers, A., 1890, Discussion on the care of the feeble-minded,
Proceedings of National Conference Charities and Correction, 441
Cattell, J., 1890, Mental tests and measurments, Mind, 15, 373?379
Kerlin, I., 1890, Discussion on the care of the feeble-minded,
Proceedings of National Conference Charities and Correction, 444-445
Warner, F., 1890, Lectures on Mental Faculty, Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press
1891, Ear of Man (the): its past, present, and future. Boston.
Bonsall, A., 1891, Discussion on the care of imbeciles Proceedings of
National Conference Charities and Correction, 331-332
Burdett, H., 1891, Hospitals and Asylums of the World: Vol. 1 -
Asylums: history and administration; Vol. 2 - Asylum construction with
plans and bibliography, London, J.&A. Churchill
Galton, F., 1891, Retrospect of the work of the Anthropometric
Laboratory, Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 21, 32?35
Kerlin, I., 1891, Manual of Elwyn: 1863-1891, Philadelphia, Lippincott
Knight, G., 1891, Colony care for adult idiots, Proceedings of
National Conference Charities and Correction, 107-108
Osborne, A., 1891, The founding of a great institution and some of its
problems, Proceedings of the Association of Medical Officers of
American Institutions for Idiotic and Feebleminded Persons 15, 173-185
Blake, L., 1892, Some practical and speculative views derived from six
months' experience at Elwyn, Proceedings of the Association of Medical
Officers of American Institutions for Idiotic and Feebleminded
Persons, 313?317
Evans, E., 1892, The Story of Caspar Hauser from Original records,
London
Fish, W., 1892, The colony plan, Proceedings of National Conference
Charities and Correction, 161-165
Fish, W., 1892, Report of the committee on rules of proceedure:
discussion, Proceedings of National Conference Charities and
Correction, 337-350
Keen, W., 1892, Linear craniotomy for the relief of idiotic
conditions, Proceedings of the Association of Medical Officers of
American Institutions for Idiotic and Feebleminded Persons 344-353
Knight, G., 1892, Report of the committee on rules of proceedure:
Discussion, Proceedings of National Conference Charities and
Correction, 348-349
Rogers, A., 1892, Report of five cases of mental and moral aberration
among the feeble-minded at the Minnesota school for feeble-minded,
Proceedings of the Association of Medical Officers of American
Institutions for Idiotic and Feebleminded Persons 318-325
Salisbury, A., 1892, The education of the feeble-minded, Proceedings
of the Association of Medical Officers of American Institutions for
Idiotic and Feebleminded Persons 219-234
Tuke, D., 1892, A Dictionary of Psychological Medicine, London,
Churchill
Burdett, Henry, 1893, Hospitals and Asylums of the World: their
origin, history, construction, administration, management and
legislation... . The portfolio of plans containing the plans
of...British, Colonial, American and foreign hospitals...in addition
to plans of all the hospitals of London. 4 vols. London: J. A.
Churchill.
Charity Organization Society, 1893, The Feeble-minded Child and Adult,
London, COS
Fernald, W., 1893, The history of the treatment of the feeble-minded,
Proceedings of National Conference Charities and Correction, 203-221
Weismann, A., 1893, The Germ Plasm: A Theory of Heredity, New York,
Scribner
Barr, M., 1895, Moral paranoia, Proceedings of the Association of
Medical Officers of American Institutions for Idiotic and Feebleminded
Persons, 522?531
Beach, F., 1895, Types of idiocy and imbecility, Proceedings of the
Association of Medical Officers of American Institutions for Idiotic
and Feebleminded Persons, 573?586
Beedy, H., 1895, Discussion on the care of the feeble-minded,
Proceedings of National Conference Charities and Correction, 467-468
Brewer, W., 1895, Discussion on the care of the feeble-minded,
Proceedings of National Conference Charities and Correction, 467
Follett, M., 1895, Discussion on the care of the feeble-minded,
Proceedings of National Conference Charities and Correction, 462
Knight, G., 1895, The feeble-minded, Proceedings of National
Conference Charities and Correction, 150-159
Knight, G., 1895, The feeble-minded, Proceedings of the Association of
Medical Officers of American Institutions for Idiotic and Feebleminded
Persons 559-563
Shuttleworth, G., 1895 Mentally Deficient Children: Their Treatment
and Training, H.K. Lewis,
US Department of the Interior, 1895, Report on the Insane,
Feeble-minded, Deaf and Dumb, and Blind (Eleventh Census: 1890),
Washington, US Government Printing Office
Warner, F., 1895, Report on the Scientific Study of the Mental and
Physical Conditions of Childhood, with Particular Reference to
Children with Defective Constitution and with Recommendations as to
Education and Training, London, Royal Sanitary Institute
Winespear, C., 1895, The protection and training of feeble-minded
women, Proceedings of National Conference Charities and Correction,
160-163
Bicknell, E., 1896, Custodial care of the adult feeble-minded, Journal
of Psycho-Asthenics, 1, 51-63
Johnson, A., 1896, Permanent custodial care: report of the committee
on the care of the feeble-minded, Proceedings of National Conference
Charities and Correction, 207-219
Barr, M., 1897, President's annual address, Journal of
Psycho-Asthenics, 2, 1-13
Bateman, F., 1897, The Idiot: His Place in Creation and His Claims on
Society, Jarrold and Sons, Norwich
Johnson, G., 1897, What we do, and how we do it, Journal of
Psycho-Asthenics, 2, 98-105
LeGalley, 1897, Teeth and jaws of the feeble-minded, Journal of
Psycho-Asthenics, 2, 55-60
Wells, K., 1897, State regulation of marraige, Proceedings of National
Conference Charities and Correction, 302-308
Bell, Alexander Graham, 1883, Memoir upon the formation of a deaf
variety of the human race. Washington: National Academy of Science.
Carson, J., 1898, Prevention of feeble-mindedness from a moral and
legal standpoint, Proceedings of National Conference Charities and
Correction, 294-303
Education Department (Defective and Epileptic Children) (Committee),
1898, vol. I: Report, Cd 8746; vol. II: Minutes of Evidence, Cd 8747,
London, HMSO Ireland, W., 1898, Affections of Children, Idiocy,
Imbecility and Insanity, London, Churchill
Johnson, A., 1898, Concerning a form of degeneracy, American Journal
of Sociology, 463-473
Knight, G., 1898, Prevention from a legal and moral standpoint,
Proceedings of National Conference Charities and Correction, 304-308
Rogers, A., 1898, Does the education of the feeble-minded pay?,
Journal of Psycho-Asthenics, 2, 152-154
Talbot, E., 1898, Degeneracy: Its Causes, Signs and Results, London,
Scott
Taylor, J., 1898, Hints to the officers of institutions for the
feeble-minded, Journal of Psycho-Asthenics, 3, 76-81
Barr, M., 1899, The how, the why, and the wherefore of the training of
feebleminded children, Journal of Psycho-Asthenics, 4, 204-212
Dunlap, M., 1899, Progress in the care of the feeble-minded and
epileptics, Proceedings of National Conference Charities and
Correction, 255-259
Wylie, A., 1899, Investigation concerning the weight and height of
feeble-minded children, Journal of Psycho-Asthenics, 4, 47-57
Johnson, A., 1900, The self-supporting imbecile, Journal of
Psycho-Asthenics, 4, 91-100
Lawrence, C., 1900, Principles of education for the feeble-minded,
Journal of Psycho-Asthenics, 31, 210-218
Townsend, P., 1900, The care of the feeble-minded, Charity
Organisation Review, August, 151-158.
Wilmarth, A., 1900, Institution construction and organization, Journal
of Psycho-Asthenics, 5, 58-64
Montessori, M., sometime 1901-1906, Pedagogical Anthropology
1901, Concerning recent legislation, Journal of Psycho-Asthenics, 7,
83?84
1901, Report of Committee on Psychological Research, Journal of
Psycho-Asthenics, 37, 483-485
Bancroft, M., 1901, Classification of thre mentally deficient,
Proceedings of the National Conference Charities and Correction,
191-200
Galton, F., 1901, The possible improvement of the human breed under
the existing conditions of law and sentiment, Nature, 64, 659?665
Johnson, A., 1901, Discussion on care of feeble-minded and epileptic,
Proceedings of National Conference Charities and Correction, 410-411
Polglase, W., 1901, The evolution of the care of the feeble-minded and
epileptic in the past century, Proceedings of National Conference
Charities and Correction, 186-190
Wissler, C., 1901, The correlation of mental and physical tests,
Psychological Review Monograph Supplements, 3
Barr, M., 1902, The imbecile and epilaptic versus the tax-payer and
the community, Proceedings of the National Conference Charities and
Protection, 161-165
Barr, M., 1902, The imperative call for our present to our future,
Journal of Psycho-Asthenics, 7, 5?8
Fernald, W., 1902, The Massachusetts farm colony for the
feeble-minded, Proceedings of National Conference Charities and
Correction, 487-490
Johnson, A., 1902, Discussion on the feeble-minded and epileptic,
Proceedings of National Conference Charities and Correction, 492-495
Johnson, A., 1903, Report of committee on colonies for segregation of
defectives, Proceedings of National Conference Charities and
Correction, 245-253
Lincoln, D., 1903, Special classes for feeble-minded children in the
Boston Public Schools, Journal of Psycho-Asthenics, 7, 83-93
Perry, M., 1903, Minority report, Proceedings of National Conference
Charities and Correction, 253-254
Pinsent, E., 1903, On the permanent care of the feeble minded, The
Lancet, 21-2-1903, 513?515
Barr, M., 1904, Classification of mental defectives, Journal of
Psycho-Asthenics, 9, 29?38
Barr, M., 1904, Mental Defectives: Their History, Treatment and
Training, Philadelphia, P. Blakiston's & Son
Fernald, W., 1904, Care of the feeble-minded, Proceedings of National
Conference Charities and Correction, 380-390
Shuttleworth, G. and Potts, W., 1904, Mentally Deficient Children,
H.K. Lewis,
Spearman, C., 1904 `General intelligence': objectively determined and
measured, American Journal of Psychology, 15, 201?292
Barr, M., 1905, Results of asexualization, Journal of
Psycho-Asthenics, 9, 129
Craig, M., 1905, Psychological Medicine, London, Churchill
Jacob, A., 1905, Systematic physical training for the mentally
defective, Journal of Psycho-Asthenics, 9, 98-112
Risely, S., 1905, Is asexualization ever justifiable in the case of
imbecile children?, Journal of Psycho-Asthenics, 9, 92-98
Bruce, L., 1906, Studies in Clinical Psychiatry, London, Macmillan
Carson, J., 1906, Review of legislation for defectives in the United
States for the year 1905, Journal of Psycho-Asthenics, 11, 36-38
Down, J.L.H., 1906, 'Some observations on the Mongolian type of
imbecility', in Journal of Mental Science, 52, 188-190.
Norsworthy, N., 1906, The psychology of mentally deficient children,
Archives of Psychology, 1
Wilmarth, A., 1906, To whom may the term, feeble-minded, be applied?,
Journal of Psycho-Asthenics, 10, 203-205
Binet, A. and Simon, T., 1907, Mentally Defective Children, trans. B.
Drummond, London, Edward Arnold
Butler, A., 1907, The burden of feeble-mindedness, Proceedings of
National Conference Charities and Correction, 1-10
Galton, F., 1907, Probability, the Foundation of Eugencis, Oxford,
Clarendon Press
Nosworthy (Norsworthy ), N., 1907, Suggestions concerning the
psychology of mentally deficient children, Journal of
Psycho-Asthenics, 12, 3-7 Royal Commission on the Care and Control of
the Feeble Minded, 1908, eight vols., London, HMSO
Dunphy, M., 1908, Modern ideals of education applied to the training
of mental defectives, Proceedings of National Conference Charities and
Correction, 325-333
Farrell, E., 1908, Special classes in New York City schools, Journal
of Psycho-Asthenics, 13, 91?96
Fernald, W., 1908, Discussions, Journal of Psycho-Asthenics, 13, 116
Johnson, A., 1908, Custodial care, Proceedings of National Conference
Charities and Correction, 333-336
Johnstone, E., 1908, Practical provision for the mentally deficient,
Proceedings of National Conference Charities and Correction, 316-325
Milburn, R., 1908, Problems of feeble-minded, Journal of
Psycho-Asthenics, 13, 51-73
Schwartz, K., 1908, 'Nature's corrective principle in social
evolution', in Journal of Psycho-Asthenics, 13, 74-90.
Tredgold, Alfred, 1908, Mental Deficiency - Amentia, Baillière
Tindall,
Burt, C., 1909, Experimental tests of general intelligence, British
Journal of Psychology, 3, 94?177
Fry, E., 1909, The Problem of the Feeble-Minded, an abstract of the
Report of the Royal Commission
Maennel, B., 1909, [Auxilliary Education], trans E. Sylvester, New
York, Doubleday
Murdoch, J., 1909, Quarantine mental defectives, Proceedings of
National Conference Charities and Correction, 64-67
1910, Committee on Classification of Feeble-minded, Journal of
Psycho-Asthenics, 15, 61?67
Barr, M., 1910, Mental Defectives, Philadelphia, Blakistons
Bullard, W., 1910, State care of high-grade imbecile girls,
Proceedings of National Conference Charities and Correction, 299-303
Bullard, W., 1910, The high grade mental defectives, Journal of
Psycho-Asthenics, 14, 14-15
Tredgold, A., 1910, The feeble-minded, Contemporary Review, 97,
717?727
Webb, S., 1910, Eugenics and the Poor Law: the minority report,
Eugencis Review, 2, 233?241
Abelson, A., 1911, The measurement of mental ability, British Journal
of Psychology, 4, 268?314
Ayres, L., 1911, The Binet-Simon measuring scale for intelligence.
Some criticisms and suggestions, Psychological Clinic, 5, 187?196
Brown, S., 1911, The Essentials of Mental Measurement, London,
Cambridge University Press
Burt, C., 1911, Experimental tests and their relation to general
intelligence, Journal of Experimental Pedagogy, 1, 93?112
Cave, F., 1911, Report of sterilization in the Kansas State Home for
the feeble-minded, Journal of Psycho-Asthenics, 15, 123-125
Diller, T., 1911, Some practical problems relating to the
feeble-minded, Journal of Psycho-Asthenics, 16, 20?25
Kuhlmann, F., 1911, Binet and Simon's system for measuring
intelligence in children, Journal of Psycho-Asthenics, 15, 76-92
Lapage, C.P., 1911, Feeblemindedness in Children of School Age,
Manchester, University of Manchester.
Myers, C., 1911, The pitfalls of `mental tests', British Medical
Journal, 1, 195
Sherlock, E.B., 1911, The Feeble Minded, London, MacMillan & Co.
Talbot, E., 1911, Developmental Pathology, Boston, Gorham Press
Davenport, C., 1912, The Nams, New York, Eugenics Record Office
Farnell, F., 1912, A consideration of feeble-mondedness, Journal of
Psycho-Asthenics, 16, 160?172
Fernald, G., 1912, The defective delinquent class differentiating
tests, American Journal of Insanity, 72, 523?594
Fernald, W., 1912, The burden of feeble-minded, Journal of
Psycho-Asthenics, 17, 87-111
Goddard, H., 1912, Discussion, Proceedings of National Conference
Charities and Correction, 283-284
Goddard, H., 1912, The Kallikak Family, New York, Macmillan
Kite, E., 1912, Mental defect as found by the field-worker, Journal of
Psycho-Asthenics, 17, 145-154
Rogers, A., 1912, `The Kallikak Family', H. Goddard, book review,
Journal of Psycho-Asthenics, 17, 83-84
Stern, W., 1912, The Psychological Methods of Testing Intelligence,
trans. G. Whipple, Baltimore, Warwick and York
Bernstein, C., 1913, Minutes, Journal of Psycho-Asthenics, 18, 59
Berry, C., 1913, Some limitations of the Binet-Simon Test of
Intelligence, Transactions, 5, 649?654
Bliss, G., 1913, The cottage plan in the care of the feeble-minded,
Journal of Psycho-Asthenics, 18, 139-141
Davey, H., 1913, The Law Relating to the Mentally defective, London,
Stevens and Sons
Doll, E., 1913, Suggestions on the extension of the Binet-Simon
Measuring Scale, Transactions, 5, 665?669
Johnstone, E., 1913, Discussion, State care of the feeble-minded,
Journal of Psycho-Asthenics, 18, 38-45
Kuhlmann, F., 1913, Degree of mental deficiency in children as
expressed by the relation of age to mental age, Journal of
Psycho-Asthenics, 17, 132-144 Murdock(Murdoch ), J., 1913, State care
for the feeble-minded, Journal of Psycho-Asthenics, 18, 34-38
Vaughn, V., 1913, Race betterment, Journal of Psycho-Asthenics, 18,
128-138
Wormwald, J. and Wormwald, S., 1913, A Guide to the Mental Deficiency
Act, 1913, London, P.S. King
1914, 68th Report of the Commissioners in Lunacy,
Binet, Alfred and Simon, T., 1914, Mentally Defective Children, Edward
Arnold, (see 1907)
Burt, C., 1914, The measurement of intelligence by the Binet tests,
Eugenics Review, 6, 36?50 & 140?152
Douglass, M., 1914, Special lines of work and results sought, Journal
of Psycho-Asthenics, 19, 135?149
Farrell, E., 1914, The place of the School in the problem of mental
deficiency, Transactions, 3, 435?443
Holman, H., 1914, Seguin and His Psychological Method of Education,
London, Pitman
Johnstone, E., 1914, The extension of the care of the feeble-minded,
Journal of Psycho-Asthenics, 19, 3-18
Kilpatrick, W., 1914, The Montessori System Examined, Boston, Houghton
Mifflin
McDougall, W., 1914, Psychology in the service of eugenics, Eugenics
Review, 5, 295?308
US Department of Commerce, Insane and Feebleminded in Institutions,
1910, Washington, US Government Printing Office
Van Wagenen, B., 1914, Surgical sterlization as a eugenic measure,
Journal of Psycho-Asthenics, 18, 185-196
Barr, M., 1915, The prevention of mental defect, the duty of the hour,
Proceedings of National Conference Charities and Correction, 361-367
Berley, H., 1915, The psychosis of the high imbecile, American Journal
of Insanity, 75, 15?19
Butler, A., 1915, The feeble-minded: the need for research,
Proceedings of National Conference Charities and Correction, 356-361
Cornell, W., 1915, Methods of preventing feeble-mindedness,
Proceedings of National Conference Charities and Correction, 328-339
Fernald, W., 1915, What is practical in the way of prevention of
mental defect?, Proceedings of National Conference Charities and
Correction, 289-297
Fitts, A., 1915, How to fill the gap between the special classes and
institutions, Journal of Psycho-Asthenics, 20, 78-87
Goddard, H., 1915, The possibilities of research as applied to the
prevention of feeble-mindedness, Proceedings of National Conference
Charities and Correction, 307-312
Kuhlmann, F., 1915, What constitutes feeble-minded? Journal of
Psycho-Asthenics, 19, 214-236
Porteus, S., 1915, Mental tests for the feeble-minded: A new series,
Journal of Psycho-Asthenics, 19, 200-213
Schlapp, M., 1915, Available field for research and prevention in
mental defect, Proceedings of National Conference Charities and
Correction, 320-328
Schlapp, A., 1915, Recent progress in dealing with feeble-minded and
netally defective dependent children, Journal of Psycho-Asthenics, 19,
175-187
Southard, E., 1915, The feeble-minded as subjects of research in
efficiency, Proceedings of National Conference Charities and
Correction, 315-319
Spearman, C., 1915, The measurement of intelligence, Eugenics Review,
6, 312?313
Terman, L. and Knollin, H., 1915, Some problems relating to the
detection of borderline cases of mental deficiency, Journal of
Psycho-Asthenics, 20, 3-9
Webb, E., 1915, Character and Intelligence, British Journal of
Psychology Monograph Supplement 3, Cambridge, Cambridge University
Press
Anderson, V., 1916, Feeble-mindedness as seen in court, Journal of
Psycho-Asthenics, 21, 82?87,
Binet, A. and Simon, T., 1916, The Devlopment of Intelligence in
Children, trans. E. Kite, Baltimore, Williams and Watkins
Byers, J., 1916, A state plan for the care of the feeble-minded,
Proceedings of National Conference Charities and Correction, 223-229
Doll, E., 1916, Form board speeds as diagnostic age tests, Journal of
Psycho-Asthenics, 20, 55?62
Estabrook, A., 1916, The Jukes in 1915, Washington, Carnegie Institute
Johnstone, E., 1916, Committee report: stimulating public interest in
the feeble-minded, Proceedings of National Conference Charities and
Correction, 205-215
Kirkbride, F., 1916, Types of buildings for state institutions for the
feeble-minded, Proceedings of National Conference Charities and
Correction, 250-257
Kuhlman, F., 1916, Part played by the state institutions in the care
of the feeble-minded, Journal of Psycho-Asthenics, 21, 3-24
MacMurphy, H., 1916, The relation of feeble-mindedness to other social
problems, Journal of Psycho-Asthenics, 21, 58-63
Mastin, J., 1916, The new colony plan for the feeble-minded, Journal
of Psycho-Asthenics, 21, 25-35
Terman, L., 1916, The Measurement of Intelligence, Cambridge,
Riverside press
Anderson, M., 1917, Education of Defectives in the Public Schools, New
York, World Book,
Bernstein, C., 1917, Self-sustaining feeble-minded, Journal of
Psycho-Asthenics, 22, 150?161
East, E., 1917, Hidden feeblemindedness, Journal of Heredity, 8,
215?217
Mercier, C., 1917, Moral imbecility, The Practitioner, 99, 301?308
Punnet, R., 1917, Eliminating feeble-minded, Journal of Heredity, 8,
464-465
Tredgold, A., 1917, Moral imbecility, The Practitioner, 99, 43?55
Weidensall, J., 1917, The mentality of the unmarrie dmother, National
Conference of Social Work, 44, 287-294
Anderson, M., 1918, Instruction of the feebleminded, Conf.[erence?]
Social Work, 536-543
Anderson, V., 1918, Studies in personality among feeble-minded
delinquents seen in court, Journal of Psycho-Asthenics, 23, 117?142
Bernstein, C., 1918, Rehabilitation of the mental defective, Journal
of Psycho-Asthenics, 23, 92?103
Bernstein, C., 1918, Self-sustaining feeble-minded, Journal of
Psycho-Asthenics, 23, 92-94
Hastings, G., 1918, Registration of the feeble-minded, Conference
Social Work, 527, 536
McCready, E., 1918, The treatment of mental defective through physical
and medical measures, Journal of Psycho-Asthenics, 23, 43-51
Matzinger, H., 1918, The prevention of mental defect, Journal of
Psycho-Asthenics, 23, 11-21
Parsons, H., 1918, Mental defect as a bar to reformation, Journal of
Psycho-Asthenics, 23, 163-168
Southard, E., 1918, Remarks on the progress of the Waverly researcher
in the pathology of the feeble-minded, Journal of Psycho-Asthenics,
23, 48-59
Taft, J., 1918, Supervision of the feeble-minded in the community,
Conference Social Work, 543-550
Fernald, G., 1919, The defective delinquent since the war, Journal of
Psycho-Asthenics, 24, 55?64
Fernald, W., 1919, A state program for the care of the mentally
defective, Mental Hygiene, 3, 566-574
Fernald, W., 1919, State programs for the care of the mentally
defective, Journal of Psycho-Asthenics, 24, 114-125
Southard, E., 1919, An attempt at an orderly grouping of the
feeble-minded (hypophrenias) for clinical diagnosis, Journal of
Psycho-Asthenics, 24, 99-113
Ballard, P., 1920, Mental Tests, London, Hodder and Stoughton
Bernstein, C., 1920, Colony and extra-institutional care for the
feebleminded, Mental Hygiene, 4, 1?29
Fernald, G., 1920, Curative treatment vs. punitive for defective
delinquents, Journal of Psycho-Asthenics, 25, 161?167
Fernald, W., 1920, An out-patient clinic in connection with a state
institution for the feeble-minded, Journal of Psycho-Asthenics, 25,
81-89
Kuhlmann, F., 1920, The results of mental re-examinations of the
feeble-minded, Journal of Psycho-Asthenics, 25, 147-160
Lapage, C., 1920, Feeblemindedness in Children of School Age,
Manchester, Manchester University Press
Tansley, A., 1920, The New Psychology and its Relation to Life,
London, Allen and Unwin
Barr, M. and Maloney, E., 1921, Types of Mental Defectives, P.
Blakiston,
Burt, C., 1921, Mental and Scholastic Tests, London, London County
Council
Doll, E., 1921, lassification of defective delinquents, Journal of
Psycho-Asthenics, 26, 91?100
Mathews, M., 1921, One hundred institutionally trained male defectives
in the community under supervision, Journal of Psycho-Asthenics, 26,
60-70
Porteus, S., 1921, A social rating scale for defectives, Journal of
Psycho-Asthenics, 26, 117-126
Vanuxem, M., 1922, Self-government as applied to feeble-minded women,
Journal of Psycho-Asthenics, 27, 18-26
Burt, C., 1923, Delinquency and mental defect, British Journal of
Medical Psychology, 3, 168?178
East, W., 1923, Delinquency and mental defect, British Journal of
Medical Psychology, 3, 153?167
Shrubshall, F., 1923, Delinquency and mental defect, British Journal
of Medical Psychology, 3, 179?187
Stoddart, W., 1923, Delinquency and mental defect, British Journal of
Medical Psychology, 3, 188?193
Davies, S., 1923, Social Control of the Feeble-minded: A Study of
Social; Programs and Attitudes in relation to the Problem of Mental
Deficiency, New York, Committee for Mental Hygiene
Crookshank, F., 1924, The Mongol in Our Midst: A Study of Man and his
Three Faces, London, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co.
Ecob, K., 1924, New York state's accomplishments and immediate aims in
extra institutional care of mental defectives, Journal of
Psycho-Asthenics, 29, 20?31
Fernald, W., 1924, Thirty years progress in the care of the
feeble-minded, Journal of Psycho-Asthenics, 29, 206-219
Kline, G., 1924, Accompolishments and immediate aims in Massachusetts
in community care of the feeble-minded, Journal of Psycho-Asthenics,
29, 32-40
Greene, R., 1927, An ideal institution organization for 1000 to 15,000
beds, Journal of Psycho-Asthenics, 32, 186-192
Descourdes, A., 1928, The Education of Mentally Defective Children,
trans E. Row, New York, D.C. Heath
Report of the Royal Commission on Lunacy and Mental Disorder, 1929,
London, HMSO
Board of Education and Board of Control, 1929, Report of the Joint
Departmental Committee on Mental Deficiency, The Wood Committee, 3
vols., London, HMSO
Murray K. Simpson : 12 September 1997
jum...@my-deja.com
http://liberty.k12.mo.us/hs/holocaust/Amanda/Amanda1.html
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Arbeit Macht Frei
S.S. Hauptsturm Fuehrer Rudolf Hess visited Auschwitz, located
in the town of Owiecium in upper Silesia, Poland, on April
18-20, 1940, and was ordered to submit a report on the
feasibility of transforming an already existing barracks into a
concentration camp. On April 27, 1940, Reichsfuhrer S.S.
Heinrich Himmler ordered the construction of a concentration
camp in Auschwitz. Auschwitz opened its doors on June 14, 1940,
majority of its prisoners suffered from dehydration and
malnourishment and were put to death almost immediately upon
arrival or given a fate almost worse than death in the labor
camps. The original plan for the Auschwitz concentration camp
was to be a place of punishment for Polish political prisoners.
It slowly came to be a death camp as the extermination of people
was forced from idea to reality when overcrowding threatened the
camp.
Shooting had been ruled out because of the sheer numbers of people and
the psychological burden it would place on the S.S. who had to carry
it out. The S.S. men were a branch of Hitler's private army, chosen to
run the concentration camps and ghettos. In September of 1941 the
initial experiments were conducted. Zyklon B, a hydrogen cyanide gas,
was the gas that became the instrument of murder. Two hundred and
fifty Polish prisoners and six hundred Russian prisoners of war were
asphyxiated in the trial of the gas. By introducing Zyklon B into
underground chambers made for mass killings, about 1500 people could
be "disposed of" at one time. This required between 5 and 7 kilograms
of Zyklon B. Records show that about 20 tons of the material was
delivered to Auschwitz in 1942 and 1943.
By 1942, there were 28 buildings in the original camp at Auschwitz --
Auschwitz I. Auschwitz I could not be expanded to accommodate the mass
influx of Jews and other prisoners and in 1942, plans were made for
the construction of another site that could accommodate up to 200,000
people at nearby Brzezinka, or Birkenau, just two miles away. This
became the Auschwitz II-Birkenau sub-camp, the primary site of
technological, industrial mass-murder. At Birkenau, there were first
two gas chambers and then, after the technology was perfected and the
buildings constructed to house them, four massive crematoriums. The
Auschwitz complex also grew to accommodate 40 other sub-camps designed
to harvest the ready supply of slave labor. The first of these camps
was build at Monowitz.
By 1943 resistance organizations had developed in the camp. These
organizations helped a few prisoners escape; these escapees took with
them news of exterminations, such as the killing of hundreds of
thousands of Jews transported from Hungary between May and July 1944.
On October 7, 1944 a group of sonderkommandos destroyed one of the
four crematoria located at Birkenau. They and their accomplices, a
group of women from the Monowitz labor camp, were all put to death.
When the Soviet army marched into Auschwitz to liberate the camp on
January 27, 1945, they found about 7600 survivors abandoned there.
More than 58,000 prisoners had already been evacuated by the Nazis and
sent on a final death march to Germany.
More than six million people died as a result of this massacre, many
of them in the Auschwitz complex. It is often hard to believe that
such a terrible thing could have happened just a short time ago, but
remnants of this infamous camp still remain serving as a reminder of
the reality of the tragic end of so many lives. In 1946 Poland founded
a museum at the site of the Auschwitz concentration camp in
remembrance of its victims. By 1994, about 22 million visitors-700,000
annually-had passed through the iron gates that bear the cynical motto
Arbeit macht frei (work makes one free).
The Spread of Auschwitz
Written by Amanda Pence
========================================================
http://liberty.k12.mo.us/hs/holocaust/Amanda/Amanda2.html
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The Spread of Auschwitz
It is imperative to reach back behind the name and probe the reality
of Auschwitz in its multiplicity, its complexity, its disparate
spatial and logistical expanse. estimates of deaths at the camp
complex range from 1.5 million to as many as 4 million. Camp
Commandant Rudolf Hoess admitted to a minimum figure of 2.5 million
deaths at Auschwitz. at least one-third of the estimated 5 million to
6 million Jews killed by the Nazis during World War II died there.
Large numbers of Poles, Soviet prisoners of war, gypsies, and
homosexuals also died at Auschwitz. The Nazis established Auschwitz in
April 1940 under the direction of Heinrich Himmler. Auschwitz
Concentration Camp it was centrally located rudimentary train
connection, easily camouflaged, Auschwitz I, acted primarily as a
conventional concentration camp. The camp at Auschwitz originally
housed political prisoners from occupied Poland and from concentration
camps within Germany. The first gas chamber was in Auschwitz I.
Construction of nearby Auschwitz II (Birkenau), the death camp, began
in October 1941 and included a women's section after August 1942 . At
Birkenau, the main part of Auschwitz used for murder, two small
farmhouses operated as improvised gas chambers: the "white house" and
the "red house." Later, four custom-built chambers were constructed in
Birkenau (Gas Chambers II, III, IV, and V). Two were underground and
two above ground. About 2.5 million people were killed at Birkenau.
Mass killings of this magnitude presented the S.S. with the problem of
disposing of the bodies. Each of the four custom-built gas chambers in
Auschwitz II-Birkenau had its own crematorium, giving a combined
theoretical capacity of reducing 4,416 bodies to ashes every
twenty-four hours. The S.S. soon realized that more then 8,000 bodies
could be disposed of if the incinerators were emptied before the
bodies were fully reduced to ashes and any remaining bones were
crushed separately. Since the number of people murdered was far
greater than the number of corpses that could be burned in the
incinerators, a solution was adopted to pile up the remaining bodies
and burn them in the open air. Approximately 40 more satellite camps
were established around Auschwitz. These were forced labor camps and
were known collectively as Auschwitz III. The first one was built at
Monowitz and it was a camp for political prisoners and other people
dubbed "undesirable" by the Nazis. Another major sub-camp was Buna,
where I.G. Farben, one of the largest conglomerates of the world at
the time, had a synthetic oil and rubber research and production
facility. There were three main components of Auschwitz.
Life at Auschwitz
Written by Amanda Pence
==============================================================
http://liberty.k12.mo.us/hs/holocaust/Amanda/Amanda3.html
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Life at Auschwitz
Arrivals at the complex were separated into three groups. One group
went to the gas chambers within a few hours; these people were sent to
the Birkenau camp, where more than 20,000 people could be gassed and
cremated each day. At Birkenau, the Nazis used a cyanide gas called
Zyklon-B, which was manufactured by a pest-control company. A second
group of prisoners were used as slave labor at industrial factories
for such companies as I. G. Farben and Krupp. A third group, mostly
twins and dwarfs, underwent medical experiments at the hands of
doctors such as Josef Mengele, who was also known as the "Angel of
Death." Those killed at Auschwitz perished in the gas chambers.
According to Landau (1992), the gas chambers were disguised as
showers. Victims were told to undress and were herded into the
chambers with whips and gunfire. The chamber would be locked up, and
Zyklon B slowly escaped out of the impostor shower heads. Those
standing under the shower heads were killed instantly. As soon as the
victims felt the gas, they would crowd together away from the menacing
columns and stampede toward the huge metal door where they piled up in
what Levin (1968) describes as "a blue clammy blood-splattered
pyramid." (p. 316) Twenty or thirty minutes later, electric pumps
removed the poisonous air and the Nazis took the opportunity to
maximize the economic benefits from this cold-blooded murder. Before
the bodies were burned the victim's hair was cut off and fillings and
false teeth made of precious metals were removed. The hair was used
for making haircloth, and the metals were melted into bars and sent to
Berlin. After the liberation tons of hair were found in camp
warehouses; the Nazis had not had time to process it all. The bodies
were then sent to the crematoriums for disposal.
Group threeís fate was often worse than immediate death in the gas
chambers. In the infirmaries, S.S. doctors conducted lethal medical
experiments on the prisoners. They murdered the sick and the weak by
injecting phenol, a toxic substance, into the heart. Professor Carl
Clauberg conducted experiments on Jewish women in Block 10 of
Auschwitz I to devise a rapid method for mass sterilization. According
intention was to use it for the biological genocide of the Slavs.
These experiments were performed under the rationalization of the
advancement of medical science. These doctors would engage in such
activities as sterilization, castration, removal of living fetuses at
different stages of development, transplanting of human organs, and
seeing how long a man could survive in freezing water. In the third
section of the Auschwitz complex, Buna, existed labor camps and
factories in which Jews were forced to endure harsh working conditions
in order to serve the war economy. Those who were not gassed
immediately were subject to all manners of torture. Those who were
judged as being physically capable were forced into back breaking
labor, in which, as Nazi official Adolf Eichman described, " a large
proportion dropped out through natural reduction." Buna, or Auschwitz
III, was opened on May 31, 1942, as a series of forced labor camps
where synthetic oil and rubber were produced. Auschwitz also had
fish-breeding and experimental plant-growing facilities, along with an
S.S. armaments factory. The Buna works did offer some Jews a method in
which to survive the mass killings of the Holocaust. Survival was
possible because of the need of un-paid labor workers in the camps.
Therefore, a healthy worker had a greater chance of survival than an
elderly person.
Those who remained in Auschwitz I were given striped prisoner clothing
and a number was tattooed on their arm. A color coded triangle
attached to their clothing indicated the type of prisoner, the
political prisoners wore red, asocials black, homosexuals pink,
Jehovah's Witnesses purple, and green indicated habitual prisoners.
Those who managed to escape the fate of Birkenau were then forced to
do slave labor. The prisoners at Auschwitz I were housed in brick
barracks, thousands with packed into each one. A typical day for a
prisoner started at 4:30 a.m. with the sound of the morning gong.
Prisoners were beaten awake and received a half-liter of "coffee" for
breakfast, which was just a lukewarm substance. Prisoners worked in
factories, mines, farming operations, and construction, usually
without equipment for even the hardest work. Anybody who tried to rest
was sent to a special penal unit where they were tortured so harshly
that it was unlikely they would survive. The return trip from a day of
work was terrible because the bodies of those who had died that day
had to be brought back for the evening roll-call, which was taken at
the end of each day. Roll-calls were dragged out sometimes for hours
to torture the prisoners, especially on days of poor weather. When
roll-call was finally finished, prisoners received a tiny amount of
pork. Sleep was almost impossible due to overcrowding and lice in the
beds. The prisoners were dying a slow, painful death.
At the Auschwitz complex 405,000 prisoners were recorded as laborers
between 1940 and 1945. Of these about 340,000 perished through
executions, beatings, starvation, and sickness. Some prisoners
survived through the help of German industrialist Oskar Schindler, who
saved about 1000 Polish Jews by diverting them from Auschwitz to work
for him, first in his factory near Krakow and later at a factory in
what is now the Czech Republic.
Working to death was not the only was a prisoner could face death at
the camp, death was facing prisoners squarely everywhere they turned.
The main execution site of Auschwitz I was Block 11 and its courtyard,
also known as the "block of death." Shooting was the punishment for
prisoners suspected of involvement in resistance activities or when
the cells in Block 11 were particularly overcrowded. There were also
hangings during roll-call on portable gallows. Some prisoners were
subject to die of starvation. This was collective punishment for
another prisoner's attempt to escape.
It is an amazing feat that anyone survived the extermination camp of
Auschwitz, and the camp stands today as a memorial to those who died.
We will never forget.
===========================================================
http://au.spunk.org/texts/pubs/lr/sp001715/isispap.html
-------------------------------------------------------
Afrocentricity vs Homosexuality: The Isis Papers
by Matthew Quest
Dr. Frances Cress Welsing's The Isis Papers (Third World Press, 1991)
is one of the most popular texts of the much debated but loosely
defined ideology of afrocentricity. Arguing for the African origins of
civilization by highlighting Egyptian and other Africans' pioneering
achievements in architecture, science, and philosophy, afrocentric
interpretations of history subvert traditional eurocentric
fabrications. Afrocentric scholars also potentially open a path toward
a new humanism, one which includes everybody with an African
ancestry—the whole human race.
Unfortunately, misguided scholars often silence Black women, gay men,
and lesbians, identifying these voices as oppressive and divisive
manifestations of white supremacy. It is their reluctance to link
questions of race with resistance to other oppressions that
reinforces the categories of "race" that are the essence of
eurocentric denigration of "non-white" peoples.
The Origins of White Supremacy
Welsing articulates a familiar critique of white supremacy as the
dominant system and culture in the Western world. However, her notions
about the origins and perpetuation of racism are far from
conventional. White supremacy, according to Welsing, began with the
birth of albinos in Africa. These "recessive genetic mutants" began to
mate with one another and multiply, producing what is now known as the
white race.
Besides masking their African origin and proclaiming their affinity
with Greece, whites avoid the true meaning of skin whiteness: "a
mutation and genetic deficiency state from the Black norm, 'hue-man'
norm." White supremacy is a psychological defense mechanism to genetic
color inadequacy (whiteness). Dr. Welsing believes whites are
"genetically vulnerable," and therefore overcompensate for their
insecurity with oppressive behavior towards people of color.
Effeminization as Oppression
A major tool of those who subscribe to white supremacy, according to
Welsing, is the perpetuation of Black male passivity through
encouraging effeminization, bisexuality, and homosexuality. Welsing
believes this is "a problem of epidemic proportions amongst Black
people in the US."
Homophobia in communities of color is rampant...to the tenth power of
the white mainstream. Why? Because the struggle for human rights
against white supremacy has been disproportionately explained as the
need to achieve "manhood" rights, from the period of the slave trade
to the present.
Welsing believes homosexual patterns of behavior are simply
expressions of male self-submission to other males in the area of
"sex," as well as in other areas—economics, education, entertainment,
labor, law, politics, religion, and war. Oppression is defined as
forced submission, homosexuality as a sign of weakness.
Welsing defines "primary effeminacy" and "secondary effeminacy" to
distinguish white causes of homosexuality from Black ones. "Primary
effeminacy" is a self-derived response by whites to their genetic
insufficiency, causing a negation of self-reproduction due to disgust
with their own genetic weaknesses.
"Secondary effeminacy" (Black male homosexuality) is consciously
imposed on the Black man by the white man for the purpose of
destroying the Black family. Welsing attempts to propagate a
patriarchal concept of the Black family, which is curious, since it is
afrocentric conventional wisdom that there was no patriarchy in
traditional African societies.
Welsing does have a concept of gender roles being environmentally
conditioned. However, a continuum would not represent qualities such
as aggression and nurturing as universal that all humans can embody.
Rather, the author clearly believes that in the process of the Black
man taking on homosexual tendencies, he is acting like a woman. She is
firmly against this as illustrated by the following examples.
From her work with incarcerated Black males, Welsing concludes that,
as they have been broken by the system and forced to submit to an
authoritarian environment, prison is the epitome of white supremacy.
Black males are "feminized in jail" in the following ways: They are
given orders by men to whom they must submit; they wait passively to
be fed three meals a day by men; and finally, they have sexual
intercourse with men.
Welsing, in an attack on cross dressers of the "Flip Wilson/Geraldine"
variety, implies that a real Black man wouldn't wear earrings or
bracelets. How can an African-centered critique of white supremacy
discount the earring and bracelet wearing Masai warriors or the "Mau
Mau," just two of many examples of "manhood" in resistance?
The author, angry with the American Psychological Association's
relatively recent repeal of their former opinion that homosexuality
constitutes poor mental health, prescribes a distinct position for
Black people. Black psychiatrists must understand that whites may
condone homosexuality for themselves, but we as Blacks must see it as
a strategy for destroying Black people. Welsing argues that
homosexuals or bisexuals should neither be condemned nor degraded, as
they did not decide that they would be so programmed in childhood. The
racist system should be held responsible. Welsing believes the task of
professionals who concur with her should be proactive treatment and
prevention of homosexuality among Black people.
Feminism
Welsing argues that, since there is no patriarchy in traditional
African societies, a feminist critique is not necessary. Besides,
feminism is eurocentric. I wonder what Angela Davis, Audre Lorde,
Michele Wallace, and bell hooks would think of that. They're anything
but eurocentric. Welsing, disgusted with the stereotyped image of the
Black male as "sex-machine," believes the Black male should be the
guardian of Black civilization, not only in protecting the family even
at consequence of death, but by procreating. It is their sper m which
is endowed with the melanin that preserves the "hue-man" norm.
Welsing gives the Black woman agency in preserving Black manhood from
becoming the female, clown, infant, buffoon, transvestite, homosexual,
etc. This should be done by denying these "effeminized men" "the
right" to procreate, and should be enforced by the "self-respecting"
Black woman.
Revolution
Welsing offers The Isis Papers as a revolutionary treatise. This makes
many of her assertions even more problematic. By equating Black
manhood with "not macho or money" but "warrior or soldier against the
system," she attempts to deny Black homosexuals and women, whites, and
others, their necessary role as revolutionaries against white
supremacy. She suffers from the common reasoning among Black
middle-class voices (common especially now in books articulating their
"rage") that are surprised and/or dis appointed that "even when high
income is allowed, there is no true power in its ultimate
sense—meaning to support, protect and defend the lives of one's self,
one's wife, and one's children." Dr. Welsing remains adamant that a
class analysis of capitalism is not relevant to Black people, as most
afrocentrists claim, because they are oppressed as a race.
Dr. Welsing, like many afrocentrists, puts forward a conception of
revolution that is doomed to fail. However, it has already been
successful in provoking the politics of reaction, though not on the
scale of her eurocentric predecessors. Under the guise of unity she
continues the alienation of Black homosexuals as acting white and/or
acting abnormal. Under an American system of white supremacy and
capitalism, she attempts to put forward an Africa-centered agenda for
Black revolution that is woefully ignorant of the political economy
that destroys both Africans and Americans and, for that matter, the
diversity of the culture of the diaspora. No one should hesitate from
pulling out all the stops to oppose such retrogressive ideas, even at
the risk of being proclaimed an "Uncle Tom" or a race traitor.
=========================================================
http://wonderland.pasdex.com.au/~belgrave/
the_expurgated.obey.html/aidtape1.htm
--------------------------------------------------------------
Aids: Epidemic or Weapon of War?
The following is a transcript of a lecture given by Mr. Dave Emory in
November, 1991. [Transcriber: Proper names are spelled phonetically
when unclear.]
Part I
(Announcer: Again, thank you for coming. Here is Dave Emory.)
I am going to be talking about AIDS as a biological warfare weapon.
One of the tapes we are going to play is a tape of an epidemiologist
at Martin Luther King Hospital in Los Angeles talking about one of the
aspects of AIDS that I think is completely incredible in terms of the
original hypothesis or the accepted hypothesis. I am not a physician,
nor am I a microbiologist, or an oncologist, or geneticist, so there
is a considerable body of scientific evidence that backs up my
political theories that AIDS is a biological warfare weapon. I will
talk about that to a certain extent. But it would be both pretentious
and, frankly, intellectually dishonest for me to sit up here and hold
forth on the scientific theory past a point, although I am aware of
some of it. Because I am not an expert in these fields, I cannot
critically evaluate the information past a point. And it's a safe bet
that there is a lot of disinformation in this regard. I am going to
talk about the medical evidence to a certain extent and play you a
tape of a physician talking about the incredible epidemiology of AIDS,
that is to say the absolutely unbelievable way in which this disease
has spread, if we are to accept the official version. But again I am
going to talk about the political and historical aspects primarily. I
don't think one has to be Sherlock Holmes to detect some very unusual
things in the way this disease has developed, and it is those unusual
things I will be focusing on primarily. After the break, we will hear
a tape of Dr. Wilbert Jordan, as I said. And I will make people
familiar with some of the physicians who have come up with ideas
similar to the political theories that I have formed. Also, before
getting into the main body of the talk, I want to emphasize that there
is a personal involvement with yours truly in the AIDS situation. I am
sorry to see that a friend of mine from San Francisco did not come
down, because I am going to talk about a prediction I made in 1980. I
actually have this on the air. I really was the first person to go
public with this theory. I also want to emphasize that a lot of people
helped me with the research. Virtually all of the scientific
information comes from other people, so I was generously assisted. But
I think in the course of the progress of this disease and in an
analysis of AIDS as a political phenomenon, yours truly has played a
significant role. And I want to apologize if it seems a little
egotistical when I hypothesize about that, but I will get to that a
little bit later. Now, the thing that I want to do in the first part
of the talk is to give a chronology, basically an accounting of the
development of biological warfare in this country over the last fifty
years or so. The notion that AIDS might be a biological warfare weapon
would seem incredible to the average American citizen. That is
unfortunate, because the fact of the matter is that experimenting on
human beings with deadly diseases is something that has a very
established history in the United States. Many people might be
familiar with the Tuskeegee study that was begun in the 1930s. Some
eight hundred Black Americans in Tuskeegee, Alabama were infected with
syphilis. They were not treated. This was to study how this deadly
disease progressed as it went along. Most of them were allowed to die.
They received no treatment. It should also be noted that one of the
top Army chemical and biological warfare experts during the second
World War openly boasted of having deliberately infected Puerto Ricans
with cancer when he was doing experiments in Puerto Rico in the early
1940s. In fact, he said that Puerto Ricans were "the most dirty,
disgusting, filthy people on earth and that the best thing that could
happen to this whole island would be for a tidal wave or another
natural disaster to wipe it off the face of the earth." And as I say,
he admitted to having infected some fourteen Puerto Ricans with
cancer. They all died and he was very proud of that. So, this is not
something that is alien to our culture as we consider the progress of
the disease, as we consider unusual circumstances, how this disease
suddenly appeared like "magic," no pun intended. But obviously this is
a subject that is receiving a lot of focus because of Magic Johnson's
becoming infected with HIV. Magic Johnson, for those of you ! ! not
familiar with him, is arguably the best point guard ever to play the
game of basketball. He has focused a lot of attention on the disease.
Now, the real story of the development of AIDS begins at the end of
the second World War when the United States incorporated something
called Unit 731. Unit 731 was the Japanese chemical and biological
warfare research center. It was located in Manchuria. Specifically,
this was the most advanced chemical and biological warfare unit on the
face of the earth. The Japanese experimented on American prisoners of
war, Allied prisoners of war, many of whom later died. That did not
trouble the people in this country past a point. Our officials and our
military people were very anxious to get their hands on that
information and on some of the scientists, some of whom continue to
practice medicine in Japan to this day. So what we did was incorporate
some of the records and some of the personnel from Unit 731, despite
the fact that this organization, this Unit of the Japanese military
had experimented on Allied prisoners of war, including Americans, with
very deadly results. We took the files and the personnel from Unit 731
and they were installed in Fort Detrick, Maryland. That is or was, I
believe it still is, the Army's top chemical and biological warfare
research center. Remember the name Fort Detrick, because it is going
to come in in a big, big way. Now, many of you, no doubt, are familiar
with the subject of my last lecture here at Foothill College. It is
one of the frequent topics that I talk about on the air, and that is
the Gehlen spy organization. Reinhard Gehlen was the Nazi Chief of
Intelligence for the Eastern front during the second World War. At the
end of World War II, we brought in Gehlen and basically made him a
four star General. He was brought in and given the uniform and pay of
a four star General. His entire Eastern front intelligence
organization was incorporated into the Central Intelligence Agency
where it became for all intents and purposes the CIA's Department of
Russian and Eastern European Affairs. It was the sole purveyor of
intelligence on that part of the world for the CIA. It later became
the de facto NATO intelligence organization. After that it was
installed as the Budis Nacree, the West German intelligence service,
or now the German intelligence service, since there is no West/East
Germany ! ! anymore, which it remains to this day. This was the
vehicle for importing thousands of SS and Gestapo veterans into the
U.S. intelligence system, where some of them hold senior positions to
this day. Many of them are war criminals of the first order. Many of
them had participated in the brutal extermination of the Jews, gays,
and other people that Hitler wanted to get rid of. Many of them had
also been involved in some of the brutal medical experiments which the
Germans could not get in their concentration camps. The Germans, too,
were very accustomed to experimenting on living human beings with
deadly results in order to find out the things that they wanted to
find out. So we take an already on-going tradition of experimenting on
living human beings with deadly results, the same thing that was done
in the Tuskeegee study, the same thing that was done in this top Army
chemical and biological warfare doctor had done in Puerto Rico,
combine it with Unit 731, add the Gehlen organization and the German
scientists brought in under Project Paper Clip, people like Verner Von
Brom, who was a Major in the SS. They also had a very low regard for
human life and were quite willing to achieve their intellectual goals
at the expense of their fellow human beings. When you take these
things and combine them, basically you have the blueprint for a very
deadly engine. And I believe that this engine got on track at the end
of the second World War and it is bearing down upon us, not unlike
those old cliffhangers, where we're all tied on the tracks and the
engine is coming straight for us. It should be noted that after the
second World War, a tradition of experimenting on unwitting civilian
subjects gathered steam, gathered momentum in the United States. In
the Bay Area, for example, a barge spewing a bacteria, a supposedly
harmless bacteria, called seratia marsesans was towed around San
Francisco Bay by the Navy for a couple of days. This was done in order
to see how a microorganism could be spread using the prevailing winds.
Seratia marsesans was supposedly a harmless microorganism. To people
with healthy immune systems, it is. But to people whose immune systems
were compromised, in particular senior citizens, it can be very
deadly. Seratia infection is a common cause of death for senior
citizens. It should be noted that a fellow of a father right down here
at Stanford University sued because his father died of seratia
infection right at that time. Now I also want to note that the Bay
Area to this day has the highest incidents of seratia infection in the
entire world. There has never been a place where seratia has been
found in the frequency that we have it right here. It should also be
noted that experiments were conducted in the New York City subway
system to see how a microorganism, supposedly harmless again, and
chemical agents again could be distributed in a public thoroughfare.
It should also be noted, too, that the United States and Great Britain
jointly conducted chemical and biological warfare research also on
unwitting citizens largely in the third world. We are going to come
back to the U.S. and British connection a little bit later. Also, and
this is very, very important, we should take note of the fact that one
of the major foci of U.S. biological warfare research and chemical
warfare research was to develop what is known as ethno-specific or
culturally-specific biological and chemical agents. That is to say
biological and chemical agents which would take advantage of the
genetic differences and cultural and habitual differences of various
groups, specifically to target those groups. And that is something
which I think looms very large in the background of AIDS today. Now in
1962 the Department of Defense had forty geneticists working
full-time. It should be noted that genetics research was a major focus
also of biological warfare research in the United States. Now in 1969
a Dr. McArthur was testifying before the House Appropriations
Subcommittee. They were trying to draw up the Defense Department
Budget for fiscal year 1970. Dr. McArthur had a very interesting
quote. I am going to play you a tape now of that quote. By the way, at
the break point, Paul from Archives on Audio, my trusted cohort over
here, had the foresight and brilliance to copy this particular section
of this House Appropriations Subcommittee tape. So if you would like
to go home this evening with a copy of it, Paul has characteristically
prepared for this eventuality. So you will actually be able to get a
hold of this quote. Now I'm going to play a short section of Radio
Free America #16 and you'll hear what this Dr. McArthur had to say
about the future of biological warfare and the future of genetics and
genetic engineering:
"Continuing now with my quotations from A Higher Form of Killing:
'It is in the field of biological warfare that the most frightening
possibilities present themselves. It is now nearly thirty years since
Crick and Watson made the momentous discovery of the double helix
structure of DNA, the molecule which controls heredity. The discovery
has not yet, as far as is known, been applied to the business of war.
But in the civilian laboratories of Europe and North America,
biologists are regularly tampering with the nature of life itself with
gene splicing or recombinant DNA. It has been called the most awesome
discovery since man split the atom. Should the breakthrough, like
atomic physics, come to be applied to warfare, the implications
scarcely bare thinking about. As long ago as 1962 forty scientists
were employed at the U.S. Army biological warfare laboratories on
full-time genetics research. Many others, it was said, appreciate the
implications of genetics for their own work. The implications remain
more specific seven years later when a Department of Defense spokesman
claimed that genetic engineering could solve one of the major
disadvantages of biological warfare, that it is limited to diseases
which occur naturally somewhere in the world.'
And again, the next section here is from a U.S. House Appropriations
Subcommittee hearing for fiscal year 1969-70. We are going to read you
some of the complete text here in just a second. Listen to this
statement very carefully because it is one of the keys to the program:
'Within the next five to ten years it would probably be possible to
make a new infective microorganism which could differ in certain
important respects from any known disease-causing organisms. Most
important of these is that it might be refractory to the immunological
and therapeutic processes upon which we depend to maintain our
relative freedom from infectious disease.'
Now one of the keys here is the definition of the word refractory. Now
the word refractory in medicine means to be resistant to. What they
are talking about here is to develop a disease that would be resistant
to the immunological and therapeutic processes which normally keep us
healthy. Obviously AIDS is certainly resistant to the immune system.
Now what's interesting is another meaning of the word refractory,
specifically in physics and biotechnology, is to break down. A prism
refracts light. It breaks it into its component spectra. A refractory
telescope, for example, does the same thing. Now the person speaking
these couple of sentences is a physician, so it may be that he was
speaking in the medical sense, in which refractory means to be
resistant to. On the other hand he was referring to recombinant DNA.
In the context of biotechnology refractory means to break down, as it
does in physics. So whichever of the two definitions this doctor is
using here, what we have here is something very close to the clinical
definition of AIDS, only we have it in a House Appropriations
Subcommittee for the Department of Defense for fiscal year 1969 to 70,
almost a full decade before AIDS appears to have been infiltrating the
population. And, again, we don't know whether refractory here means
resistance to the immune system, as i! ! t does in conventional
medicine or break down, as it does in biotechnology or physics. But
this is certainly an intriguing statement, as I said, practically the
clinical definition of AIDS, only many , many years before the fact
and coming from a Defense Department Appropriations Hearing. Now, it
is also interesting to note here how the authors, Paxson and Harris,
follow this statement. They say:
'The possibility that such a super-germ may have been successfully
produced in a laboratory somewhere in the world in the years since
that assessment was made is one which should not be too readily cast
aside.'"
Now that basically is a forecast of what I believe the authorities
were working on. You've just heard something which very closely
approximates the clinical definition of AIDS, only this is from a
House Appropriations Subcommittee Hearing in 1969. Now I'm going to
begin a chronology of events that I believe to be very closely related
and which are inextricably involved with the development of AIDS. Now
bear in mind, again, that this is 1969. In the year 1969, a number of
primate laboratories, including one at the University of California at
Davis, not incidentally primate laboratories, many of which got
funding from the National Institutes of Health, about which I will
have more to say later, there was an outbreak of immunodeficiency
disease among primates in this laboratory. Now a friend of mine who is
skilled in biotechnology and microbiology has said that the virus
which was identified, and here again, I'm not on my home turf with
some of the scientific information. I have to trust my instincts and
the people that I know who are competent in this area. But this
outbreak of immunodeficient disease in these primates was produced by
a virus which is now called SIV, the Simian Immuno Deficiency Virus.
This is a virus which is around today and which supposedly, well it
actually does come from Africa. I'll explain more about that in a
second. But this first occurred in primate laboratories in the United
States. Now this particular virus was discovered to have come from the
Green Monkey in Africa. It should be noted that there are two species
of monkeys which are actually called the Green Monkey. The species in
question here is one that has long been a staple of the diet of the
natives in that region. The animal is captured. It is brought into the
market places, sold on the hoof, and then it is basically taken home,
slaughtered, butchered, and eaten. The notion that has been spread
around, and I'm going to talk about the disinformation vis a vis AIDS
in a little bit, but the notion that this disease could have come from
Africa, and this foreshadows some of Dr. Jordan's discussion that we
will hear in the second part of the lecture, the notion that this
disease could have come from Africa and been infecting people in
Africa is not only wrong, but in all probability, racist. It is said
that a Green Monkey bit someone in Africa and that this is how the
disease got started. There have been a number of other variations on
that theme. One of the things that makes me so suspicious, and I'm
going to come back to this later, is that as the discussion concerning
AIDS as a biological warfare weapon has progressed, there have been
theories tossed out by the medical community, which I believe have
been deliberately concocted in order to cover up the true origin of
the disease. Obviously that's my theory, but I will get to that in a
minute. In any event, this particular virus which is native to the
Green Monkey does not hurt the Green Monkey. One of the interesting
things I have learned as I've been studying AIDS, is I've come to
appreciate how absolutely beautiful nature can be, that is to say when
human beings aren't screwing it up deliberately, which unfortunately
they do. One of the interesting things about viruses and virology is
that most viruses mutate in such a way as to become symbiotic with
their host. That is to say they mutate genetically very readily. Most
viruses mutate to the point where they do not hurt their host. This
benefits the virus because the virus is not then attacked and
destroyed by the immune system of the host. And obviously this
benefits the host, too, because the host does not get sick. The SIV
virus is native to the Green Monkey and it does not hurt the Green
Monkey. It hurts Macaques, a different primate and that is the primate
in the U.S. laboratories which became infected and acquired
immunodeficiency disease. The SIV is very important because we are
going to come back to that later. Now we are still in 1969. We are
going to jump ahead to calendar year 1971. In that year under
President Nixon's administration, Fort Detrick, the Army's top
chemical and biological warfare research center, was largely turned
over to the National Cancer Institute, one of the National Institutes
of Health, many of which have been funding these primate laboratories
which had this outbreak of immunodeficiency disease in these Macaques.
Now, although Fort Detrick was turned over to the National Cancer
Institute and supposedly became a civilian institution, it should be
noted, and this is in Radio Free America #16, that the National Cancer
Institute's Frederick facility, which is Fort Detrick, their molecular
oncology research center was run for them by Litton Biomedics. It is a
wholly owned biotechnology subsidiary of Litton Industries, a major
contractor and also a major vehicle for covert operations. 1967 there
was a CIA coup which installed a fascist government in Greece, and
overthrew the legitimate government. Litton Industries was a major
vehicle for the various machinations involved with that coup. So in
1971 we have Fort Detrick supposedly going civilian and being turned
over to the National Cancer Institute, but it is run for the National
Cancer Institute by Litton Biomedics, which contracts to run the NCI
facility. It should also be noted that co-habiting the Frederick
research facility for the National Cancer Institute at this point is
the Army's Institute of Infectious Diseases. That is a military
facility which continues to do research on biological warfare,
supposedly for defensive purposes. But that is an academic
consideration because there is no effective distinction between
offensive and defensive research. Now we are in 1971 still. We are
going to jump ahead to 1974. In 1974, the publication of the Army's
Institute of Infectious Diseases, which bear in mind is co-habiting
Fort Detrick with the National Cancer Institute at this point, first
uses the term Acquired Immune Deficiency. That term first appeared in
the bulletin of the Army's Institute of Infectious Diseases as far as
I have been able to determine. Myself and others who have done this
research have not been able to identify that term, Acquired Immune
Deficiency, in scientific literature prior to that time. Now this is
1974. We're going to jump ahead now to the late 1970s. In the 1970s
Hepatitis B, a very dangerous and infectious disease was epidemic in
the United States, in particular, among gays. Now there was research
done to develop a Hepatitis B vaccine. This vaccine had some trial
runs on gays in various North American cities, primarily New York, Los
Angeles, and San Francisco. It should be noted that only very
promiscuous homosexuals were permitted to take part in the Hepatitis B
vaccination trial runs. The fellow who ran the Hepatitis B vaccination
program was a Polish born physician, actually I believe he was
Ukrainian, named Wolf Szmuness. The biography of Wolf Szmuness
suggests very strongly that Wolf Szmuness was a spook, a spy, and in
all probability, tied in with the Eastern Front Division and the
Soviet Union Division of the CIA, translate Gehlen. He had been
imprisoned as a political prisoner by Stalin, somehow was released.
The travels of Dr. Szmuness and that way he was able to get
appointments when he was almost new to the various countries he lived
in, he lived in Italy for a while, strongly suggest that he is an
intelligence agent or working for an intelligence agency of some kind.
It should also be noted that in the late 1950s, he was the roommate of
a young Polish priest named Carrol Woytola, now, of course, Pope John
Paul II. Pope John Paul II is an interesting fellow, too. This is
somewhat peripheral, but it may be relevant. His rise within the
Vatican was largely due to a lay Catholic Order called Opus Dei, which
has extremely reactionary political views. It was founded by a Spanish
priest named Father de Scriva de Balagaya, who was openly pro-fascist.
He was an ardent supporter of Francisco Franco, the fascist dictator
of Spain. It should also be noted that the Pope was also supposedly a
slave laborer at some of the slave labor camps at Auschwitz. But in
1982 when the Vatican banking scandals broke, one of the people
brought in by Pope John Paul II to help straighten out the mess was a
fellow named Hermann Abbs. In fact, Hermann Abbs, there was an article
in the papers about him recently. He is publishing his memoirs. He is
being hailed as one of ! ! the architects of the "new" Germany. Well,
Hermann Abbs was chairman of Duotche Bank, one of the top commercial
banks in Germany during the Hitler period and today. He also was a
member of the Board of Directors of I.G. Farben. It was Hermann Abbs
who put forth the venture capital to build the slave labor camps
around Auschwitz where the Pope worked supposedly as a slave. I
suspect he was actually a labor capo. So we have Pope John Paul II,
the roommate and close friend of Wolf Szmuness bringing in his slave
master to handle his finances. Well, if I had been a slave and I had
some financial problems, I wouldn't bring in my slave master to handle
my financial problems for me. But, then again, I'm not the Pope, so
what do I know. Now, it should be noted that in the late 1970s Wolf
Szmuness is running the Hepatitis B vaccination program. And it should
be noted that only promiscuous gays are to be allowed to participate
in the program. Dr. Alan Cantwell in his book, AIDS and the Doctors of
Death, has proposed that it was through Hepatitis B vaccination
program, and I find his evidence compelling, that gays were
deliberately infected with AIDS. It should be noted that the first
AIDS cases are generally believed to have surfaced among American gays
in calendar year 1979. Now bear in mind this is ten years after 1969,
of course. And it was in l969 that in that House Appropriations
Subcommittee Hearing for the Defense budget for fiscal 70 it was
forecast that within the next five to ten years it should be possible
to make a disease like AIDS. Now in 1980 Ronald Reagan was running for
President of the United States, successfully, obviously and
unfortunately. One of the main boosters, one of the main weapons in
his political arsenal was the Christian right, the former Moral
Majority and others. The Moral Majority was openly advocating in 1980
capital punishment for homosexuals. It should be noted, too, that on
Labor Day weekend in 1980, my friend Josh, who is gay and who I'm
sorry to say is not here tonight, we were doing some book shopping in
downtown San Jose. A friend of his, also gay, lived nearby. So we
stopped off and had a couple of glasses of wine with this fellow. I,
being the veteran political war horse that I am and the indomitable
will that I think I am, was encouraging this individual to get
politically active. Now we're talking Labor Day weekend in 1980 when
Reagan kicked off his campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where
incidentally three civil rights workers were brutally slain by the Ku
Klux Klan in 1964. I think Reagan was sending a message to his
constituency. But on Labor Day weekend of 1980 I told this fellow that
he should become active. I made the prediction, I said, "If Ronald
Reagan gets elected President of the United States, the gays are going
to be wiped out." He said, "Well, you know, I'm not into politics,"
which he wasn't. I encouraged him, perhaps more forcefully than I
should have. Josh got kind of upset with me. We smoothed things over,
but he said I had been rude and that I shouldn't have tried to jolt
the guy out of his lethargy under the circumstances. Well, there is a
footnote to that particular story. Josh called up my program about a
year and a half ago. I brought up that particular conversation. I
asked him what had happened to his friend, Dave. He said he hadn't
seen Dave in a couple of years, but that when he did see him, he was
deadly ill with AIDS. So in all probability, he is dead now. I'm not
trying to gloat over something like that. It certainly saddens me, but
I think it is something that might be born in mind as you listen to my
predictions about the future. They might seem a little grim. They
might seem a little incredible. You might want to think about what
happened to this fellow Dave as an example and take an advisory from
his situation.
jum...@my-deja.com
Now bear in mind we are still in 1980. Ronald Reagan is
running for President of the United States. The Moral Majority is
calling for capital punishment for homosexuals. It should be noted,
too, in this context that in Weimar Germany, there was a very active
gay rights movement. A fellow named Magnus Herschfeld was very active
in promoting gay rights in Weimar Germany. It should be noted that as
I covered in the program The Pink Triangle, I borrowed from the
Richard Plant book by the same name, the issue of gay rights and
homosexuality was used very effectively by the German Nazi Party to
tar all of progressive politics. They were portrayed as homophiles and
all sorts of nasty terms. Homosexuality was used by the Nazi Party to
tar their political opponents, individually and collectively. It
should also be noted that gays were among the very first victims of
the Nazi extermination programs. They had to wear pink triangles,
whereas the Jews had to wear a yellow Star of David. This made the
Nazi extermination program much more palatable, from a psychological
sense, to the German people. They had grown accustomed to seeing gays,
a traditional out-group, being liquidated. So when it came time to
liquidating other groups, there was already a very useful precedent. I
see a very strong analogy in this country between the way the
Christian right and the right wing in general uses gay rights to tar
progressive politics and the way it was used in Weimar Germany. In
late 1981 there was publicity about the first AIDS cases. It is
believed that in the United States AIDS first broke in 1979. There is
disinformation, which I'm going to talk about later. But in late 1981,
there is the first publicity about AIDS in the United States. Kaposi's
Sarcoma, a rare form of cancer, was being found among gays, primarily
in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York, the same area where Wolf
Szmuness has conducted the Hepatitis B vaccination programs with, bear
in mind, only promiscuous gays, only promiscuous homosexuals. Next
we're going to jump to 1983, Dr. Wolf Szmuness dies of cancer. Maybe
it was a natural cancer. God knows those happen. Maybe his karma
finally caught up with him. But one of the things I wonder about is
that as AIDS began to develop, I wonder whether he had been
assassinated with cancer. It is a matter of record that the CIA and
the Defense Department had by 1954 perfected a means of giving people
cancer as a means of assassination. It's a safe bet that in the 1980s
and 90s, given the advances in medical technology, those techniques
are far more advanced now. Now in 1983 Wolf Szmuness dies of cancer.
Next we are going to jump to the Spring, 1984, April specifically of
1984, Dr. Robert Gallo of the National Cancer Institute. Now bear in
mind Fort Detrick was turned over to the National Cancer Institute,
although it continued to co-habit the facility with the Army's
Institute of Infectious Diseases. And bear in mind that Fort Detrick
was NCI's molecular oncology research facility. Molecular oncology
refers to the producing of cancer at the molecular level. An oncogene
is a gene that produces cancer. Molecular oncology is the study of
that at the molecular level. In 1984 Robert Gallo of the National
Cancer Institute has a press conference with Margaret Heckler, the
Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare. They announced that they
had discovered the cause of this dread disease which had spread
considerably by this time. This was first identified as a virus known
as HTLV3, which Dr. Gallo said had evolved from the HTLV1, Human
T-cell Lymphoma Virus 1. This is extremely unlikely. One of the
reasons that it in all probability did not evolve from this particular
virus is that there is only a five percent degree of homology between
the HTLV1 and the HTLV3. In other words, only five percent of its
genome, its genetic material, is similar to that of the HTLV3. That
means that basically we are to believe the first official version of
AIDS, now bear in mind there have been several since and I'm going to
go into those, that means that this one virus has to have
spontaneously mutated ninety-five percent of its genetic material.
That is extrem! ! ely unlikely. Now in June of 1984 I produced on One
Step Beyond the very first public information suggesting, pointing out
the National Cancer Institute links, suggesting that AIDS might in
fact be a biological warfare weapon, given the history of testing on
civilian populations. I produced this for the One Step Beyond show. At
that point Nip Tuck was the host of One Step Beyond. I put together
the prepared portion for him and I did the Hard Rain and Radio Free
America shows, but it was simply too much trouble to do two broadcasts
a week and one a month. So eventually the programs merged and
eventually Nip Tuck went to pursue his literary career. This is June
of 1984. Dave Emory comes up with the first information suggesting
that AIDS might be a biological warfare weapon. In July of 1984, the
National Security Agency reclassifies the files of the National Cancer
Institute "Top Secret," which is unusual. You would expect that with
this disease growing with the priority on fighting this disease
growing that the files of the National Cancer Institute would be
opened up to permit research. Not so. In July of 1984, three months
after the AIDS virus is discovered, the files of the National Cancer
Institute were reclassified "Top Secret," which they are, as far as I
know, to this day. Now in late 1984, I am going to introduce a
conjectural element, it was one of the most unpleasant experiences of
my life and I've had a number of them. It's something oddly enough,
which, if my hypothesis is correct, it is something I'm very proud of,
but it's something that, frankly, scared the you know what out of me
at the time. In December of 1984 I was producing the Hard Rain series
on AIDS, several programs. A listener who monitors short-wave sent me
a post card saying that Radio Moscow in late December of 1984 had a
broadcast which said that basically one of the only Americans working
for peace was David Emory who has done much to control biological and
psychological weapons. At the time I was also working on the Radio
Free America #5, #6, and #7 series having to do with mind control. The
only work I have ever done on biological warfare is AIDS. Now one of
the methodological considerations, one of the major methodological
tools of Soviet propaganda has been to use Western sources in their
information. I should note that I have no grief for the late Soviet
Union, which doesn't even exist anymore. But it is worth noting that
Soviets in their propaganda have traditionally used Western
journalistic sources. Many of you, perhaps, have seen the movie Dr.
Strangelove. If you haven't seen it, it's a really fine movie. But at
one point, the Soviets and the American high command and the President
are discussing how to shoot down some American bombers which had been
dispatched by a mad general to begin World War III. The Soviets have
revealed that they have a doomsday machine, which if attacked, will
automatically blow up the whole world. So at one point, I believe it
was Peter Sellers playing the President of the United States, he asks
Ambassador Kissoff, the Soviet Ambassador, he says, "Ambassador
Kissoff, where did you first! ! learn about the doomsday machine?"
Kissoff goes, "From the Western press." So it is a common technique.
In late 1984 Radio Moscow identifies David Emory. Now there was also a
former Republican Senator from Maine named David Emory, who was
involved with anti-nuke activity, but I don't think he was doing much
about biological and psychological weapons. It should also be noted
that the Silicon Valley, being the epicenter of the defense
electronics industry, is an area of high strategic importance and one
of great interest to the Soviet Union. No Soviets were allowed within
something like a forty or fifty mile radius of this area. Although it
would certainly be easy for Soviet or other intelligence to pick up a
radio signal coming from that area. I don't know if I'm the David
Emory that they were referring to, but I suspect that may very well be
the case. The reason that is the case is that in 1985 the Soviet
Literary Gazette began a campaign as identifying AIDS as a U.S.
biological warfare weapon. I want to take note of the fact that I
began doing that in June of 1984, so I'm not parroting Soviet
propaganda. It is my suspicion that the Soviets have been parroting
yours truly. Radio Moscow, I've only heard it a couple of times. It's
a pretty bad act if you've ever heard it. It's about as shabby as most
of the rest of the coun! ! try is at this point. But it should be
noted that the Soviets in 1985 the Soviet Literary Gazette begins its
first public announcement of the Soviet propaganda campaign, pinning
AIDS on the United States as a biological warfare weapon. Also in
1985, a Ugandan Carposi's Sarcoma expert named Dr. Ann Bailey voices
in a New York Times article the opinion that she's surprised that no
one has ever thought to identify AIDS as the result of a genetic
engineering accident. So she was thinking along much the same lines I
was. I don't think it was an accident at all. I think that it was
deliberately created. It should also be noted that as we jump ahead to
1986, in February of 1986, and I'm going to play this tape of the
reading of this article in the second part of the program, a
terrifying proposal was made by various right wing institutions,
including the Hoover Institute and various military related
institutions which had been involved in biological warfare research to
begin quarantining people who were infected with AIDS or who were at
high risk, HIV positive or high risk, because it was their feeling
that the disease might be casually spread. This was being used at the
time, and it's worth noting that this has been defeated, at least for
the time being, as a pretext for drastically reducing civil liberties
in the United States. We are going to hear about that later as I
hypothesize about why such a disease might have been created. But
we're in February of 1986 at this point. In April of 1986, I produced
Radio Free America #16, the Archive show on AIDS called, AIDS:
Epidemic or Weapon of War?, not coincidentally, the title of this
particular lecture. Now also in 1986 after there has already been
considerable discussion of the theory that AIDS is a biological
warfare weapon, the first of a number of what I believe to be
deliberately false theories about the origins of AIDS or pinpointing
the origin of AIDS began. There was an article which identified a
fellow that had died in 1959 in Great Britain, supposedly of AIDS.
Also there was an article which said that a boy in St. Louis died in
1969. This seems virtually impossible from an epidemiological
standpoint, because frankly, how did they get the disease? This is
supposed to be a sexually-transmitted and blood-borne disease. Where
did it come from? It is also extremely unlikely that a disease this
deadly and of this kind could have been present in the population and
not been detected, the reasons for which we will hear Dr. Jordan talk
about a little later. It is my belief, and I can't prove it, but that
the already considerable discussion underway in 1986 about AIDS as a
biological warfare weapon occasioned this disinformation effort of
pinpointing AIDS as far back as 1959. If the disease was present, it
almost certainly would have been detected, particularly if it was
present in an industrialized nation like Great Britain or the United
States. We are going to hear Dr. Jordan talk about how thoroughly
health matters are monitored in the third world. They are monitored
there very effectively, even though health care is not good there.
They are monitored much more closely in industrialized nations. So it
seems virtually impossible that this disease could have infected one
person in Britain and one person in the United States ten years later.
Where did they get it from? Was it blood-borne? Was it sexually
transmitted? And how come nobody else was discovered with this
disease? Now bear in mind there has been research being done on AIDS
for five years publicly at this point. And all of a sudden they go,
"Woops! Look what we found going all the way back when!" It is
extremely unlikely under the circumstances. I suspect that this
information was delibe! ! rate ly concocted in order to combat the
research that was being done into the theory of AIDS as a biological
warfare weapon. Now we have August of 1986. In August the Defense
Department Official named Douglas Feith is quoted in an article
published in the Washington Post on August 18, which was also carried
in the San Francisco Chronicle, in which he says that due to the
advances in genetic engineering in the last five to ten years, a
similar time period that we heard in 1969 when they were casting
ahead, in 1986 due to the advances in genetic engineering in the last
five to ten years, AIDS first detected in American gays in 1979, the
Defense Department was re-evaluating and had come to a different
conclusion concerning the viability of biological warfare. Now
biological warfare had been shunned as a really practical means of
waging war for the simple reason that the motive for waging war is
economic gain and territorial gain. If you spread a bunch of wee
beasties around to infect the enemy troops and make them get sick and
die, well, there is no guarantee that when your troops occupy the
territory that they're not going to sicken and die also. So for this
reason biological warfare had not been deemed to be particularly
effective under the circumstances. However, remember that one of the
major foci of the U.S. biological warfare research program had been to
develop ethno- and culturally-specific biological warfare agents. In
August of 1986, Douglas Feith says that we've now re-evaluated our
assessment of how viable biological warfare is due to the advances in
genetic engineering in the last five to ten years, language
unnervingly similar to that which Dr. McArthur had forecast ahead in
1969, ten years before AIDS was first detected in American gays. Now
it should also be noted that in late 1986 a number of officials quit
from the Centers for Disease Control because they said that the Center
for Disease Control was deliberately covering up information which
would permit AIDS to be combatted. Specifically there was information
developed by the CDC that non-oxynol nine, a common ingredient in the
spermicides which are used with a contraceptive diaphram, would kill
the AIDS virus in sixty seconds. Yet this information was being
deliberately suppressed. One of the questions I have is why that
information was being deliberately suppressed. Was it because they
wanted the disease to spread? Or it may very well have been because
the medical industry wanted to continue to rake in the big bucks,
which they continue to do, in order to develop a more sophisticated
and, not incidentally, expensive cure. That may be one of the reasons
why AIDS has not spread into the heterosexual population as rapidly as
it has, although it is now begi! ! nning to do so. By the way, AIDS
has been renamed HIV because a number of people have criticized the
notion that HTLV3 could have come from HTLV1. Ninety-five percent of
its genome, its genetic material is different. So you are looking at
the spontaneous generation of ninety-five percent of its genetic
material, which seems extremely unlikely. An East German physician
named Dr. Yakov Siegel in a paper drawn largely from Western medical
sources has pointed out that it appears that the AIDS virus was partly
developed from the Medi Visna Vishnu virus, a virus which effects
sheep. He concluded from a mathematical standpoint, given the number
of genes that would have to have spontaneously mutated, and he pointed
out the very close relationship with the Medi Visna Vishnu virus. He
believes that HIV1 was a splicing of part of the genome of the HTLV1
with the Medi Visna Vishnu virus. But he said that the mathematical
odds against HIV1 being a spontaneous mutation from the Medi Visna
Vishnu virus was one in six times ten to the eighty-second power. Now,
those are pretty long odds. I don't think you would want to go up to
Vegas or Reno or Tahoe and let your bank roll ride on that. Maybe you
will. Maybe you want to have unprotected sex, too, with a stranger,
but the odds are about the same. I wouldn't advise either of them. Now
in late 1986 a second variant of the HIV is found in Africa. Here
again, I'm relying on the information provided to me by scientific and
medical people. I cannot critically evaluate it, so you should take
what I say with a grain of salt. But I think what I'm about to say is
very, very important and should be investigated. HIV2 is identical to
simian immuno virus. Now bear in mind that's a virus which is native
to the Green Monkey of Africa. It does not hurt the Green Monkey. But
when it turned up in Macaques in primate laboratories associated with
the National Institutes of Health, it produced simian immunodeficiency
syndrome. Well the SIV is identical, according to people whose
opinions I trust. They may be wrong, so you want to take this with a
grain of salt. It is identical to HIV2 except for a piece of genetic
material called a stop codon placed directly in the middle of one
gene. Now a stop codon basically functions according to my information
in a manner analogous to the period in a sentence. It instructs your
genes to stop reading one amino acid sequence and to begin reading
another. The notion that this could have been a spontaneous mutation,
a random act of mutogenic agents in the environment is very, very,
very difficult to accept. This is in the opinion of those who have
done the research the smoking gene because the HIV2 discovered in
Africa in late 1986 is almost identical with the simian immuno virus,
bear in mind, native to the Green Monkey, except that this stop codon
is placed right in the middle of one gene, suggesting almost certainly
that somebody knew where to place this particular piece of genetic
material. It should be noted there are many mutogenic agents,
chemicals, x-rays, things of this kind. They would alter genetic
material in a random fashion. Most adaptations are maladaptive. That
is to say they either weaken or destroy the organism. Adaptive
mutations are relatively rare, so the SIV and the HIV2 are virtually
identical except for this one "period," the stop codon placed in the
middle of the gene. Now we are going to jump ahead to 1987 when the
American far right begins a campaign to counteract what they see as a
very effective Soviet propaganda campaign, basically pinning AIDS on
the United States as a biological warfare weapon. That is my belief as
well. There was an article in the San Francisco Sunday Examiner This
World Magazine by an ultra-right wing activist and propagandist named
Roy Dodson, in which he said that generally Soviet propaganda is not
very effective. Generally it is shallow and doesn't have too much
effect. But the Soviet propaganda campaign about AIDS being developed
by the United States was being very effective and that citizens in
third world countries in particular were making it a point to avoid
Americans and American military personnel. It was causing the United
States a lot of problems. This is early 1987. Now it should also be
noted, and I'm sorry I can't give you the name of the individual, but
my files were seriously disrupted in the earthquake of 1989. I had to
move a bunch of material into a storage area and I have not had a
chance to put this information on tape at this point. But this special
White House advisor on biotechnology policy, his name I do not know
off the top of my head, I tried to find the article in my storage
area, but that thing is heaped half way up and it's not the easiest
thing to find, but he resigned his post as White House biotechnology
advisor because of a conflict of interest. Now this conflict of
interest was that he was also very much involved with a company called
Porton International. Porton International is located at Porton Down
in Great Britain, which was Britain's top biological and chemical
warfare research center. Just like Fort Detrick it was largely turned
over to supposedly civilian authorities. Porton International, which
this guy ! ! was very close to and involved with, was also a facility
or company which had moved onto an old biological warfare research
center. In 1987 the media battle about AIDS as a biological warfare
weapon was joined in a big way. The summer issue of Covert Action
Information Bulletin for 1987 carried a long series of articles as a
biological warfare weapon, but they did not go as far as it might
have. In 1988 the intermediate range missile treaty was concluded
between the Soviet Union and the United States. This basically meant
that the United States would destroy its intermediate range missiles
in Europe. The Soviet Union would do the same. It was precisely at
this time that the Soviets agreed to drop their propaganda campaign
concerning AIDS as a U.S. biological warfare weapon. I cannot prove
anything, so this is conjecture. But I suspect that given the American
right's and the American military's concern about the effectiveness of
the Soviet Union propaganda campaign that one of the quid pro quo in
this particular intermediate range missile agreement's sub rosa
element was that the Soviets would knock off this propaganda campaign
at the same time. So if that broadcast on Radio Moscow alluding to
David Emory having done much to control biological weapons was what I
suspect it may have been, a way of backing off the CIA by using my
research, it is within the realm of poss! ! ibility, and this is not
to be egotistic al, but this may very well have something to do with
it, but I was basically used as a pawn in one of the greatest games
ever played. It was not something that I felt very good about. When I
first read this communication about the Radio Moscow broadcast, I was
one depressed puppy because here is the KGB using me to back off the
CIA. It was sort of like trying to break up a bar fight between these
two enormous giants, saying, "Now, boys, let's be nice." I didn't feel
too good about it. I was pretty depressed. But it is within the realm
of possibilities that I was used as a pawn in this enormous game. I'm
going to end my chronology at this point. We are going to take a break
and I'm going to come back and I'm going to talk about some of the
medical evidence, some of the scientific evidence in connection with
AIDS as a biological warfare weapon, which I believe it is. And we are
going to listen to some tapes. And the third section, we probably
won't take a break, I'm going to talk about why I feel this was being
done. So we are going to take a break and then more of the lecture.
=========================================================
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the_expurgated.obey.html/aidtape2.htm
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Part II
One of the things that I indicated at the beginning is that I'm not
going to concentrate past a point on medical and scientific evidence.
I have had people whose opinions I trust advise me in some of these
matters. But as I indicated before, it would be pretentious and
intellectually dishonest for me to hold forth on medical and
scientific evidence past a certain point. By the way, for those of you
taking notes, Radio Free America #16 has most, not all, of the
information. There are some things I have not had a chance to put in
there, but most of it is. But this lecture is being taped. Paul will
have tapes of this lecture at Archives on Audio. So you can always get
a hold of the tapes and peruse them at your will. [Archives on Audio,
Post Office Box 170023, San Francisco, California 94117-0023;
telephone (415) 346-1840; e-mail .] One of the major factors that I
think may, and other scientific people think may loom in the
consideration of AIDS is what is known as cross-vectoring. A lot of
people have asked why is it that people can become HIV infected and
some people will get sick and some people don't. AIDS related complex,
Kaposi's Sarcoma , AIDS related pneumonia, it appears to be really a
series of different diseases. The only common denominator is the HIV.
One of the things that's been suggested is that AIDS really results
from cross-vectoring. In other words you don't get AIDS or some of the
AIDS related diseases unless you are infected with several different
organisms, including HIV. That obviously would be quite utilitarian
from the standpoint of biological warfare. Just say arbitrarily, if
you need five organisms to get a particular disease or the interaction
of three, you could infect the population with one or two of these and
then when you want to get rid of someone or a group of people, then
you give them the magic bullet or the magic virus, no pun intended
here. You give them HIV and out they go. That is one of the things
that has been suggested in connection with AIDS. Another major factor,
one of the scientific aspects that I think is most compelling, and
it's the one I'm going to discuss at greatest length this evening, is
the epidemiology of AIDS. That is to say, the study of how the disease
is spread. The single most compelling piece of information from a
medical and scientific standpoint, and again the relationship between
SIV and HIV2 is something that I believe is very significant. But not
being qualified in genetics or biotechnology, I cannot critically
evaluate that past a point. But the epidemiology of AIDS makes no
sense. We have been told that the disease has existed as far back as
1959 and that it wasn't discovered until 1981. That is absolutely
incredible. We are told that the disease appeared in Great Britain in
1959 and in the United States in 1969. The study of diseases,
epidemiology, is such that if it appeared in the third world, anywhere
in the third world, even areas where public health care is not good,
it would have been detected. You are going to hear a talk in just a
second by a fellow named Dr. Wilbert Jordan of Martin Luther King
Hospital in Los Angeles. Dr. Jordan is an epidemiologist. He is going
to talk about some of the profound anomalies and some of the
contradictions in the official version of the epidemiology of AIDS. As
he pointed out, loss of fever, which occurred in Nigeria, I believe it
was in 1969, at the time there were something like a half dozen cases
of it. Every airport in the United States was on alert, was on
quarantine for this disease. Other diseases have appeared in the third
world and after only a few cases, the diseases were identified and
people were on alert for them. He points out that in most places in
the third world, due to poor nutrition and also due to the fact that
there are other infectious organisms which have compromised the immune
systems of those people, a disease like AIDS which is incredibly
deadly would have spread very, very quickly and very noticeably.
Again, we have also been told that AIDS came from the Green Monkey,
that supposedly a monkey bit someone and this is how the disease got
started. Well, the Green Monkey has been eaten as a staple of the
natives where it lives. The notion that a monkey could have bitten
somebody and given it to them that way when the people have been
eating the monkey all this time, it's actually sort of a man bites dog
situation. It is a little bit too much to believe. It should also be
noted that AIDS when it first got going, and this information is
somewhat dated now, was heterosexual in Africa, heterosexual in Haiti,
and yet it effected primarily gays in the United States. Another thing
which is not covered by Dr. Jordan in the discussion that you are
going to hear, is that another group which has suffered very, very
heavily from AIDS are Native Americans, American Indians on
reservations. Now that just doesn't compute. If you know anything
about Native Americans on the reservation, it's n! ! ot c onsidered
all that cool for a white person to be caught on a reservation after
dark. This is in no way to cast aspersions on Indians or Native
Americans. But the fact of the matter is because of the legacy of
oppression that the Native Americans have experienced at the hands of
the white race, they are not really crazy about it. It's not advisable
for the average white person to get caught on a reservation after
dark. The epidemiology of this country just doesn't compute. How do we
have heterosexuals in Africa, heterosexuals in Haiti, and homosexuals
and Native Americans in the United States? This is basically, or so
we've been told, a venereal disease, basically. I just don't see a
whole lot of American gays flocking to Native American reservations in
order to have sex with Indians. It just doesn't compute. And how come
it's heterosexual in Africa? One of the things I've learned as a
political researcher over the years is that basically the story of the
Emperor's New Clothes is a very important consideration. You all know
the story of the Emperor's New Clothes. The Emperor wanted an outfit
of magnificent clothes and basically was fooled by the local tailor.
He was told that he had a marvelous suit. But in fact he was wearing
nothing. He was walking around buck naked. The fact of the matter is
nobody would say that the guy was naked, because it was just too
embarrassing. The same basic thing holds true with political research.
People are afraid to use common sense. But the fact of the matter is
that the principle of the Emperor's New Clothes applies. People are
told that the Emperor has this marvelous new ermine cape, then they're
not going to ask about that thing hanging down there. They're going to
be told that's an ermine tail and they'll believe it, too. It's
basically worth noting the principle from the Wizard of Oz: Pay no
attention to that man behind the curtain. You want to pay attention to
the man behind the curtain. The epidemiology of AIDS as we have been
told it exists just doesn't compute. I would note that the three
countries in the third world that first became seriously infected with
AIDS were Zaire in Africa, Haiti, and Granada in the Caribbean, all of
which are U.S. sponsored dictatorships. Now it has since spread much
farther in the third world, as it has in the United States. But that
is worth noting. I would also underscore a point that Dr. Jordan makes
which is that Haiti is on the same island as the Dominican Republic,
which did not at least at first experience a major AIDS outbreak. Both
countries are on the island of Hispanola, separated by a mountain
chain. But how can you have AIDS ravaging Haiti, but you don't have
AIDS ravaging the Dominican Republic? The third section of the lecture
this evening, I am going to talk about some of the motivational
factors that I believe propelled this disease and propelled the people
who developed it to develop it. Racism and extermination have a great
deal to do with it. It's worth noting that the epidemiology just
doesn't compute with AIDS. Having said that, I'm going to play a tape
now. By the way, this information is also in Radio Free America #16.
This is a discussion that was originally conducted on KPFA radio
station by Rayna Cowan. She interviewed Dr. Wilbur Jordan, again an
epidemiologist with Martin Luther King Hospital in Los Angeles about
AIDS. The following was taped off of KPFA's Traffic Jam program on
Monday, December 16, 1984 between the hours of 4:30 PM and 5:15 PM,
Pacific Standard Time:
Rayna Cowan (RC): "The reason why I played that song is because 'Some
Day My Prince Will Come' is not actually something you can look
forward to. One of the growing diseases in the United States today is
AIDS. With me on the phone right now I have a person who is an expert
in many different aspects of AIDS. He is the director of graduate
medical education at Martin Luther King Hospital in Los Angeles. He is
the former Public Health Chief for the Southern Area of Los Angeles
County. He has had training in infectious diseases. I want to welcome
Dr. Wilbur Jordan to the airwaves. Good afternoon, Doctor. Dr. Wilbur
Jordan (WJ): Thank you. Good afternoon. RC: I had heard about you
originally from a friend of mine who was in UCLA Medical School who
studied with you. You had done a lot of research on infectious
diseases. Right now we have more and more information coming out about
infectious diseases, where they come from and how they start. I am
especially interested in AIDS. I wanted to get the information of
somebody who is an expert in epidemiology. Why don't you begin telling
me exactly what epidemiologists study and how this relates to learning
about AIDS. WJ: Epidemiology is the study of diseases and disease
trends, and trying to determine where the disease comes from, how long
it takes it to go through a complete cycle, its virulence, how potent
it can be, etc. So an epidemiologist really studies the causes and
effects of the disease. He or she doesn't necessarily treat the
disease. Some are also medically trained, as I am. Many have a
Master's in Public Health or a Doctorate in Public Health and may not
necessarily be physicians. But they study disease trends, disease
outbreaks and not treat the individual. They look at the overall
disease in a cluster, rather than individual cases. RC: Well, I can't
really say what kind of diseases you have studied. But your expertise,
what has it proved about certain diseases, especially in the past few
years? Diseases like AIDS or the Legionnaire's Disease are considered
new diseases and we've never experienced them before. WJ: Right. RC:
What does that actually mean? How can a disease really come out of
nowhere. WJ: Well, it isn't that it comes out of nowhere. We have to
explain where it comes from. We see Swine Flu develop. We have the flu
vaccine every year. And it changes all the time. Influenza is a
changing virus, which is why we give it names like Hong Kong, Brazil,
Tokyo, Influenza A Tokyo, because a new strain is found in that area
and we always name it for that. So that is nothing new. We have
diseases that are developing all the time. Some of the things that are
interesting about AIDS, though, to me is the lack of attention as to
where it has come from. We tend to keep looking outside of the United
States shores. I personally, as your friend may have told you,
question some of the present theories as to where AIDS comes from just
using common sense. One doesn't have to be an epidemiologist. Just
look at what we see and ask some questions. This is a disease. It has
a high morbidity. It is deadly. It is the most impressive and critical
crisis we have had in public health in any of our generations, whether
you are seventy or whether you are seven. This is worse than polio.
Even Small Pox, I would dare say, was not as critical as this is right
now. But I don't think we are really looking at some of the very
simple questions in terms of where did this come from. And that is
where I disagree with some other people. RC: When you mention where it
comes from, I have heard stories that it comes from rabbits from
Southern Japan. I've heard it comes from monkeys from Haiti. I've
heard that it started in Haiti or Zaire. There are many theories about
where it started. WJ: That's one thing about the American personality.
We think of ourselves as being better than everybody else. So whenever
something bad happens, we say, 'Where did it come from?' assuming it
couldn't have come from here. I think the Haitian theory was really
ridiculous. It's a disease that is basically effecting Americans. Over
eighty-five percent of all cases in the world still, and we are now in
the sixth year of this disease, is American. It is an American
disease. Most of the cases in Europe or outside of this country, you
can trace back to having had contact with someone in this country. The
only atypical ones are the ones in France that can be traced back to
Zaire, which has been different. But for the most part, the European
cases were traced back to the United States. So you have a disease
that is effecting a reasonably large number of people with a very high
mortality rate. At this point those who even live to get out of the
hospital the first time have a life expectancy of about two years. The
overwhelming majority in the United States, three main areas
particularly, New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. That's
unusual. Viruses, bacteria don't do that. Diseases don't create
themselves, don't become born in one country, get on a plane or a
boat, go to a second country, become epidemic for two or three years,
and then be found retrospectively in the first country. And I say this
because of what was said about Haiti. The first five hundred cases we
knew about in this country, there were no cases in Haiti. And those
persons who had it hadn't been to Haiti, hadn't been around any
Haitians. San Francisco is epidemic right now. You don't have many
Haitians there. In fact, if you have any cases, I think it's been one
or two who are Haitians. In American cities that have large numbers of
Haitians, i.e., Washington, D. C., Boston, Philadelphia, you don't
have many cases of AIDS. Miami is a port that has them and so does New
York, but your other major cities that have large Haitian populations,
don't have large cases of AIDS. RC: So where do you think AIDS does
come from? WJ: I think we have to look at our own forty-eight states
to ask where did it come from. I say that because if you look at Haiti
again. Let's look at Haiti. If we accept that theory, that means
either someone from here went there and got it and brought it back, or
someone from there brought it to this country. Right? RC: Yes. WJ:
Well, if you accept someone from here went there, the first cases were
in white homosexual males, the majority. Then, I would have to ask,
one, why only white homosexual males from New York, San Francisco, and
Los Angeles. Frankly, those white homosexual males who travel to Haiti
for an adventurous trip don't tend to get involved with a dirty
looking native boy, to sound very whatever. Certainly a large number
of white homo- and heterosexual from Europe also go to Haiti. If it
was from someone going to Haiti from this country, then, one, why the
predominance in those three cities; and two, why didn't we see it also
in Europe since you have whites from Europe also going to Haiti and no
one there took it back. I have to postulate that the virus only liked
white homosexual males from New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.
That's a very, very particular virus. I don't buy that. If you tell me
that someone from Haiti brought it over here, I say one, it's
interesting. We never heard of it being in Haiti until we had the
Haitians put in concentration camps in Florida. Then suddenly it was
backtracking and cited in Haiti. Two, the average Haitian and the
above- and below-average Haitian who come to the United States move
into a black Haitian community, which intermingles more with the
routine black community, which has some association with the white
community, and will finally find its way to the white gay community.
Haitians do not have a strong association with white male homosexuals.
So again, how does it get from the boat to the white gay male
community in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York and bypassing
the Haitian community and the black community, particularly in Los
Angeles, where we've had no cases of it. That just makes no sense. You
have a disease that is predominantly in Americans. There are other
cities, Chicago, New York, Washington, Philadelphia, Baltimore, New
Orleans, with very large gay populations, larger in number than San
Francisco, but are not at all effected with this number of cases. So
it is not just numbers of homosexuals. It is not just promiscuity.
What is unique about those three cities is the fact that they have a
very structured gay community, more than any other city. I think
that's interesting. I think we need to be asking 'Is there an
association with that fact?' The three cities that we have rampant
cases, a really high number of cases, and if you can rate it, these
three cities have a more structured gay community. Washington, D. C.
has a very, very large gay community, but it's a very integrated gay
community. So does Chicago. So does New Orleans. But those three
cities have a very identifiable gay communities. Is that by accident
or is that also coincidental? I mean there are too many coincidences
here for me to accept. To me it points to this being a disease that is
an American disease. Now where it came from, one can speculate and go
from one extreme to the other. But I personally think it was something
that we created in some kind of laboratory here. RC: I think it's
interesting that researchers are spending a lot of time trying to
figure out where it came from. And not that much money is being spent
on research. Some people are speculating on the idea that why is it
certain gay populations. You just mentioned that it's three urban
centers that seem to be the ones that are getting it. And the news
media is playing up the fact of lifestyle. There are other reasons.
Well, you mentioned earlier the unification of these particular gay
communities. How do you think that could be used in some way, both to
fight the disease and for somehow the disease to be brought in? WJ:
Well, I hope I can speak freely without offending someone. What is
unique about white homosexual males, and I would separate them from
black homosexual males, particularly is that they have tried to
portray themselves as an ethnic group. You have now a new ethnic group
with no international ties. It is an American ethnic group. You really
can't say that about black homosexuals because black homosexuals
haven't been in the closet to come out of. They've been out of the
closet. You can go to any black church in any major city and you will
find people who everyone knows is gay, who is functioning, who has a
very established role in churches and other organizations, too. This
again, to me, is a white male homosexual phenomena. The best way I can
explain it is to give an example. If I were to have or you were to
give me a virus that had an effect on skin color and we said that this
virus would make black people sterile, but it may turn white people
green. But, we need to test this. We've seen it in rats. We've seen it
in monkeys. Let's see if it will do what we think it will do in black
people. Well, I know there are certain places I can go in the black
community where the people are basically total association, total
lifestyle of black people. I wouldn't go to Second Baptist Church in
Los Angeles. I wouldn't go to [unclear] Baptist Church in New York. I
don't know any names of the major churches in San Francisco, but my
point, I wouldn't go to a place that had a very middle class type of
black audience because those people would have contact the next day
with whites. So you would have an overflow into the white community
right away. I do know where there are clubs. I do know where there are
[unclear] churches. I do know where there are places I can go to in
the black community where the people go first, second, third, and go
probably four generations, their contacts are all black. I don't know
that about the gay community. I think you have that same counterpart
in New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. You don't have it as much
in Washington, Chicago, and other cities, but you have the numbers. So
somebody else may know what places they can go that you could do the
same thing. In some of the early cases of the disease you have a lot
of interesting shows, particularly in San Francisco where there were
nine people, all had been at one bar at a table. One physician in San
Franciso knew twenty of the first forty-five cases. That's atypical.
There's no one physician in any city, even if he was himself a gay
doctor or just served in the gay community, would know that just by
accident. That's strange. There have been too many sort of strange
things happen with this disease. And one still can't account for the
fact that now in 1984, we're going into 85, this disease started in
79, you still are seeing the same percentages stay in the same three
cities. No other disease does that. Hepatitis didn't do that.
[unclear] didn't do that. San Francisco is probably the gay capital of
the U.S. in terms of somebody in Des Moines, Iowa or Little Rock
deciding where to go. They go to San Francisco, New York, or Los
Angeles. Still in a lot of those cases that you've had in those cities
have been people who have come to San Francisco, or went to Los
Angeles or New York and got infected and came back. But you haven't
had it set up that much there and started spreading. That's
interesting. You don't have in many cities with reasonable and
sizeable gay communities an ongoing epidemic, like you have in San
Francisco, which is now really out of hand. RC: That's interesting,
because I think the doctors around here are talking about AIDS as
being a social phenomena versus a disease phenomena. WJ: Well, you
know when you say social, homosexuals today are not doing anything
they weren't doing in the times of Rome. Their bodies haven't changed.
There is still the same anatomy. Nothing is new. The most new things
are basically the cosmetics one uses. That has not been before. But
certainly the sex acts aren't new. Men do one particular sex act that
is strictly a male act that you don't find women and women doing or
men and women doing. From my reading, I haven't heard of it being that
long. I would say that's the only new sex act that involves using the
fist. But other than that, sex acts per se is nothing new. So it can't
just be the sex act. It can't be promiscuity. We've had promiscuous
heterosexuals, homosexuals for years. That's nothing new. In San
Francisco, and in Little Rock, and in Oklahoma City, you've had
promiscuity for years in terms of one individual being promiscuous, in
terms of a lot of individuals being promiscuous. Gay bath houses,
you've had them for years. At least twenty years you've had bath
houses. So that's nothing new. I've had fifty-six cases, most of whom,
in terms of their sexual contact, you really can find it being two to
six months. With some saying four years, I don't believe that. Most of
the patients I've had, their contact trail was relatively two to four
month incubation period. If that is the case, this is something new.
Now when Lot's Fever, if you remember in 72, 73, became known in
Africa before the first case got out, we knew about it. Quarantine
stations at all of our major ports were on alert. We kept everyone.
Small Pox, if someone got a fever on the plane from any country that
had Small Pox, you knew about it. We knew how many cases of Small Pox
were in the deepest part of Ethiopia, Somalia, and India. [another
disease, unclear], we knew, we caught it. Now I'm expected to believe
that this virus, which is so much deadlier, which wipes you out in
America, which is among the healthiest persons in the world, I'm now
expected to believe it existed in Haiti, which is the poorest country
in this hemisphere so the average person's system is already
compromised. If AIDS began in Haiti, Haiti wouldn't have any people.
And if AIDS began in Haiti, why don't we see it in the Dominican
Republic, which is the same island with a mountain that separates the
two countries. It makes no sense. RC: We're speaking with Dr. Wilbur
Jordan. He is the Director of Graduate Medical Education at Martin
Luther King Hospital in Los Angeles. He is the former Public Health
Chief for the Southern Area of Los Angeles County. He has had training
in infectious diseases. We're almost running out of time, Dr. Jordan.
It seems to me that you're building up to say something. From what
you're saying, it seems to me that there's some type of testing going
on. Maybe I'm at liberty to say that. But, what do you think? Why are
these certain populations getting it? I wish we had more time to talk.
In the future we can do a longer interview. WJ: I don't think I want
to say why. I think we need to ask ourselves why. Pick up any book and
look at any other disease. You would see it is extremely difficult for
any other disease, Hepatitis B, which we feel is being transmitted the
same way. It has not stayed strictly within the gay male community in
the three cities. All I'm really suggesting is that we start asking
ourselves, one, why do we continue to look outside of these shores for
the cause of it or the origin of this disease. And why does it tend to
stay in three metropolitan areas when there are many other cities in
this country that have very large gay populations? This is not the
first time we've had some kind of "germ warfare." I mean San Francisco
was sprayed with seratia bacteria, as you know. We did see black
soldiers with syphilis and didn't treat them. They are having other
kinds of experiments. Whether this is one of them, I don't know. But I
think one has to look at something from these shores, or at least
entertain that idea to see, if in fact, it is not there, rather than
trying to assume it comes from an underdeveloped country. If you've
seen patients with the disease, you see it's devastating. If this
disease began in any underdeveloped country, there is no way in this
world it could have began there and us not know about it before it got
here. Of all diseases, this, I mean we even knew about Cooper
Gonorrhea in the Philippines. And it did not kill anyone. How in the
world could you have a disease like this that has at this point a
fifty percent mortality in two years.
jum...@my-deja.com
And hope we can find some
treatment. Those people who have the disease have a two-year life
expectancy. This is the most deadly disease we have created that we've
known about in our lifetime. How could we have possibly have had it in
a underdeveloped country where the average person is malnourished,
already susceptible, and not see any cases until you've had over five
hundred in the United States, and then you go back retroactively and
find it in Zaire? That makes no sense. RC: Well, I want to thank you
very much for your time and all the information you gave to the KPFA
listening audience. I would like to do a longer interview with you at
some time. Thank you very, very much. WJ: Thank you. RC: Coming up
next on Traffic Jam, we are going to be speaking with...."
** I'm going to give Doc a chance to change the tapes here. Okay. The
sound quality was a little fuzzy. It's actually a little better on
Radio Free America #16. Once again, if you want to go over this
material, you can obtain Radio Free America #16 from Archives on
Audio. Also, again, this lecture will be on file with Archives on
Audio, so you can obtain a tape of that. Now I thought Dr. Jordan,
perhaps the sound quality, again, was not that clear, I thought Dr.
Jordan made some very excellent and telling points. And frankly, there
were some of the same things that had led me to sniff the air when
AIDS first came about or when it was first announced. Again, there
have been homosexuals since Biblical times. Nothing's changed in this
regard. The sex act has not changed. Why is this disease appearing in
this way at this time. Again, although AIDS in the interim has spread
since this tape was made, since AIDS has now spread considerably in
the third world, we should note that the first three third world
countries to have serious AIDS infection were Zaire, Haiti, and
Granada, all U.S. sponsored dictatorships. Also Uganda had very high
incidents of AIDS and we actively supported Idi Amin. In fact, Idi
Amin was very close to Frank Terpel of the Terpel-Wilson operation.
Terpel had had a lot to do with training Idi Amin's security forces.
So there is a very strong American connection there as well. Now there
are a number of physicians who have come forward and discussed AIDS as
a biological warfare weapon, suggesting that AIDS was deliberately
created by the United States. The aforementioned Dr. Yakov Siegel, an
East German physician, which now, I guess, a German physician, which
casts a certain amount of aspersions on what he has to say, but his
paper was drawn almost exclusively from Western medical sources. There
is something like seventy-seven footnotes, and only two of them come
from non-Western sources. There is a Dr. Seale from Great Britain. Dr.
John Seale, he is almost at the opposite end of the political spectrum
from Dr. Yakov Siegel. He is a far right winger and has close
association with the La Rouche organization, not close association,
but has hob-nobbed with them. There is also a Dr. Robert Strecker in
Southern California. Also Dr. Alan Cantwell, which to me sounds like a
very bad name for a doctor, you know, can't well. But he has written a
book called AIDS and the Doctors of Death, which was published by the
Aries Press in 1989. So if you would like to pursue Dr. Cantwell's
information, it is in book form. Also, as I mentioned, Dr. Ann Bailey,
a Ugandan Carposi's Sarcoma expert, had theorized in an article in the
New York Times in 1985 that in fact AIDS, she speculated that it was a
genetic engineering accident. I don't think it was an accident. You
can pursue the scientific information from that particular standpoint.
There is also another interesting theory which has arisen, which has
it that AIDS may very well be somehow connected with Swine Fever. Now,
Cuba was deliberately infected with Swine Fever in order to wipe out
its porcine population and put the island in economic distress. That
was done by the CIA. Some physicians from Boston who had been doing
research on the incidents of Swine Fever in American pigs and also
pigs which had found their way, had been slaughtered, butchered, and
found their way to the dinner table. It's also been found that Swine
Fever Virus often lives on even after the pork has been cooked. But it
was his theory that somehow Swine Fever might be connected with AIDS.
I'm not in a position to comment on that directly. But it's worth
noting, and this is covered also in Radio Free America #16, that when
this doctor began publicizing his findings, he not only couldn't get a
research grant, but he also was discouraged by the Department of
Agriculture from spreading this particular piece of information. Now
this was carried in a Jack Anderson column in the San Francisco
Chronicle. That is in Radio Free America #16. However, the same
version, the same Jack Anderson column in the Monterey Herald had a
very interesting piece of information which the Chronicle left out.
That is that the Department of Agriculture were urging these
researchers not to publicize their findings "for national security
reasons." That was left out of the Anderson column in the San
Francisco Chronicle. National security generally means defense or
defense-related matters. So make of that what you will. The thought
obviously occurs why. If, in fact, AIDS was developed as a biological
warfare weapon, why? I think again we go back to the period
immediately following the second World War when we not only
incorporated Unit 731, the Japanese biological warfare research unit,
the most advanced of its kind, basically we took in the war criminals.
We took in their files. We did this same thing with the Project Paper
Clip scientists. We did the same thing with the Gehlen people and the
thousands of SS and Gestapo officers that served under Gehlen. And
they jumped to CIA. It should also be noted that American
industrialists and financiers, many of them, many of the top
industrialists and financiers in this country were openly pro-fascist
prior to and during World War II. And they didn't change their
stripes. They simply got a little more PR conscious. In fact, in Radio
Free America #10 there is a discussion of an attempted fascist coup in
the United States in 1934. A group of American industrialists and
financiers grouped around the House of Morgan, primarily the DuPonts,
attempted to overthrow President Roosevelt, because they did not like
his New Deal policies, and set up a corporate state along the lines of
Mussolini's fascist state in Italy. It is worth noting again that
there are very powerful interests in our country, not only within the
national security establishment proper, but within our American
financial and industrial structure who openly favor fascism. They
liked Hitler. They like Mussolini. And they damn bloody well vowed to
do the same thing here at some point. And I think to understand why
AIDS may have been created, and I am convinced that it was, I think we
need to take a look at some of the features of fascism in Germany to
understand that those features may very well be being applied in the
United States today. It should be noted that, and this is covered in a
book called The Pink Triangle by Richard Plant, much of that book, the
most important parts of that book are also accessed in a miscellaneous
Archive show, available from Archives on Audio, called The Pink
Triangle. There was, as I touched on earlier in the lecture, a very
strong gay rights movement in Weimar Germany. The chief figure in that
gay rights movement was a fellow named Magnus Herschfeld. The issue of
homosexuality, the issue of gay rights was used very effectively and
very vitriolically by the Nazis to tar progressive politics, to
stigmatize progressive politics in Weimar Germany. Their political
opponents were seen as being "homo lovers" and that this was basically
a way of tarring the opposition. We're seeing much the same kind of
tactic being used by the American far right today. The Democratic
Party, if it favors gay rights, is termed immoral or licentious. It's
also worth noting that the religious right is making tremendous
propaganda gains by portraying AIDS as God's visitation upon the
immoral. You know, if you're a drug user or a homosexual or if you're
promiscuous, God has stricken you with this plague. It melds very
effectively with Christian right wing propaganda. It should be noted,
too, that AIDS is obviously wiping people out. It began with black
heterosexuals in Zaire and Haiti, homosexuals in the United States. It
has spread to intravenous drug users who are out-groups. All of these
groups are out-groups with the U.S. national security establishment
and the far right. It has spread to American Indians, Native Indians,
Native Americans. It has spread, of course, through blood transfusions
to hemophiliacs. Well, hemophiliacs, because of their disorder, make
poor laborers and they cannot go into the military. Ultimately the
goal of the Third Reich was to eliminate what they saw as "useless
bread gobblers," people who couldn't work or serve in the military,
particularly industrial laborers. Hemophiliacs cannot do hard labor
because of their situation and obviously cannot go into the military.
One of the things that I think we need to look at in connection with
AIDS is basically AIDS as a manifestation of extermination. A lot of
people have become alarmed about the possibility of over-population in
the world. It is my belief that AIDS may very well be being
deliberately disseminated in the third world in order to control the
population, to hold down the population, in particular, in Africa. I
don't think one need be a conspiracy theorist to understand the deep
racism which effects and has always effected the United States.
Mercifully David Duke has been defeated in Louisiana, according to my
understanding. However, I do not think we should overlook David Duke
or others like him. One of the things I am going to be talking about
on the radio program tomorrow is David Duke's probable background with
the intelligence community. He worked for the State Department, or by
his own account, the Agency for International Development in Laos in
the early 1970s. That was a front for intelligence activity to a large
extent. Duke in his campaign is claiming to have flown for Air America
in Laos. Well, Air America is a CIA airline. In the late 1970s as I am
going to cover tomorrow, the British Scotland Yard, the federal police
of Great Britain, tried to bar David Duke from entering Britain in
order to promote his Ku Klux Klan activities. They had people at
airports to see to it that he didn't land. Somehow, David Duke was
able to get into Great Britain despite the fact that he was barred by
Scotland Yard. Scotland Yard are pretty good at what they do. If Dave
Emory or if one of you had wanted to get into Great Britain and
Scotland Yard didn't want you going, then you damn bloody well would
not have gotten in. David Duke somehow did. It's also worth noting
that in the early 1980s there was an abortive Ku Klux Klan and Nazi
Party coup on the Caribbean Island of Dominica. A group of American
and Canadian Klansmen and Neo-Nazis were arrested, I believe it was
just outside of New Orleans, as they were going to invade the island
of Dominica, a very small island, and take it over. It's worth noting
that these people were trained on a mercenary training camp run by
Frank Camper, a fellow who was an FBI informant the whole time. The
Grand Jury investigation into this event found that David Duke was one
of the conspirators who arranged this particular attempted coup. Yet
he was never indicted, suggesting that he had friends in high places.
Finally, in the mid 1980s David Duke was working to raise money for
the Contras with a fellow named Dr. Arnold Ochsner. Dr. Arnold Ochsner
is the son of Dr. Alton Ochsner, an American far right wing activist
with very strong connections to the U.S. intelligence community. It
was Dr. Alton Ochsner who made a recording of Lee Harvey Oswald,
talking about what a great communist he was, how he was a Castro
sympathizer, and how he had been to the Soviet Union. This was played
all over the United States the evening of President Kennedy's
assassination to show that the person who had killed Kennedy was a
communist. It is my belief that many of the liberals who might have
spoken up about President Kennedy's assassination declined to do so
primarily for one reason. Basically the liberals, I suspect, thought
that if the American people believed that a popular American president
had been killed by a communist, it could have led to a Third World
War. Kennedy was very popular with everybody but the military and
industrialists. He was not popular in the South to a large extent
because of his support for civil rights, but he was a very popular
president. Dr. Alton Ochsner's son, Arnold Ochsner, raising money for
the Contras with David Duke, obviously that also smacks of
intelligence. Now I go into David Duke, and I'm going to be covering
this at greater length on the program tomorrow evening, I believe. I
might bump it in favor of Zodiac material, but we will see. The thing
that's worth noting is that there is an ominous parallel between David
Duke's probable status, either as an agent or as an agency asset, a
U.S. intelligence agency asset of some kind, and the career of Adolph
Hitler. Adolph Hitler got his start in government life as an
undercover agent for the political department of the Reichsfare, the
German Army under General Von Lossow. Hitler was used to infiltrate an
abortive socialist revolution in Bavaria, specifically in Munich. He
pretended to be one of the Marxists who had staged this abortive
revolution. Then after the German Army put down the rebellion, he
fingered all of the top conspirators, the leaders of the rebellion,
who were then promptly taken out and shot. Hitler's next assignment as
an undercover agent for the German Army was to infiltrate a moribund
political party, the German Socialist Workers Party, which was then
renamed the German National Socialist Workers Party. Hitler and a
number of other undercover agents for the German Army were infiltrated
into it. The German Nazi Party in its inception was a front for
Reichsfare intelligence, literally a vehicle for fomenting political
reaction in Germany. I see an ominous parallel between David Duke and
Hitler, not that Duke himself will ever become President, but I
wouldn't absolutely rule that out in the event of an economic
collapse. But the point is that David Duke is essentially espousing
theories which are very similar to those and views very similar to
those of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford, and George Bush.
When Ronald Reagan would make the statement that we've got to hold
down government spending, the fact is that people think that Ronald
Reagan was the greatest government spender of all time. He spent two
and a half times as much as all of the previous presidents in American
history put together from George Washington through Jimmie Carter. He
turned the United States from being the world's biggest creditor
nation, which we had been since the end of World War I right up to
1980. We were owed more money by other nations than any nation on
earth. We are now the world's biggest debtor nation. We owe more money
than all of the third world countries combined. The savings and loan
industry is gone with the bail out figures to cost roughly a trillion
dollars or maybe even more. The commercial banks are in very bad
shape. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is bankrupt, nine
billion dollars in debt and the bail out bill has just been turned
down. It should also be noted that the insurance companies are in very
bad shape. Most money market funds are privately insured. So if the
insurance companies are in bad shape, that means your money isn't safe
in a money market fund either. Now it's also worth noting that there
is enormous corporate debt. The leveraged buy-outs of the 1980s, the
go-go financing of the 1980s, has left us with a legacy of enormous
corporate debt. There also is enormous consumer debt as well. We
should also note that America's industrial base is being badly eroded.
U.S. corporations are moving manufacturing facilities abroad to take
advantage of cheap labor, primarily the third world. And, of course,
the Japanese and Europeans led by Germany are making strong inroads
not only into American markets abroad that had been our particular
province, but also, obviously, domestic markets as well. Sooner or
later the economic chickens are going to come home to roost. I expect
it is rather sooner than later. When Ronald Reagan says we've got to
hold down government spending, people should have rushed the stage and
hang the old fart in his garters, but the fact of the matter is they
didn't for the simple reason that his words were very well understood.
When he talks about holding down government spending, he is not
talking about spending billions and billions of dollars on trident
submarines or nuclear bombers or missiles. He's talking about, and if
you'll pardon my use of strong language, "Let's get those s----- and
n------ off of welfare so they don't spend our hard-earned tax
dollars." That was well understood by Joe and Jane Sixpack. That's
well understood by Reagan's constituency out in cracker America. And
that's why he's still been able to get away with that. That's why
George Bush can sound the same theme. It's worth noting that poor
people, people of color in particular, are already being scape-goated
for America's economic problems. If those economic problems get more
severe, and I would be willing to be they get much more severe, then
it figures that the degree of scape-goating also is going to get more
severe. I think we must take very seriously the possibility of a
"final solution to the Negro problem" in this country in the event of
an economic collapse. One of the things that made the German people
much more willing to accept the holocaust, the liquidation of the
Jews, than they might have been was the fact that as the war developed
and the economic pressure on the German population developed, the
liquidation of the Jewish population and the Aryanization of their
property basically went to economically benefit the non-Jewish
population. One of the darker aspects of the holocaust that has not
received the publicity it deserves is that many non-Jewish
professionals, non-Jewish doctors, non-Jewish lawyers, would turn in
their Jewish compatriots and then take over their clientele. This was
very, very common. I think as the economic crunch worsens in this
country, excess population groups are going to be gotten rid of. I
think the groups currently most affected with AIDS are those groups
that are going to be gotten rid of, people of color, Black people in
particular, homosexuals, intravenous drug users, Native Americans, and
poor people in general. I think in the third world, the Black
population faces a very, very serious threat from the United States
and from the national security establishment. It should also be noted
that in addition to being a vehicle of liquidation, and it is my
belief that it is being deliberately promoted in that regard and used
in that way, AIDS itself has a very, very powerful psychological
component. Wilhelm Reich, a very skilled though very controversial
psychologist, published a book called The Mass Psychology of Fascism
in which he theorized, he stated that there was a very strong
connection between the degree of sexual repression in a society and
that society's inclination to fascism. Certainly AIDS with its
deadliness makes sex a threat. It is an intimidating factor vis a vis
sex and in that regard, I think, it is going to lead to more sexual
repression. If Reich's theories are correct, that is going to propel
people in the direction of fascism. I would also note, too, that there
is a very strong connection between male aggressive behavior and
sexual deprivation. The males of all species become more aggressive
during mating season. The male of the human species does not have a
mating season, but when, and this is an established fact, when there
are higher levels of testosterone in males, they become as a rule more
aggressive. It's common knowledge in the military, basically, that
when soldiers go on leave, either they get laid or they get into a
fight. This is very well established. But if you can set up a society
of economically deprived, horny males running around, you are going to
have a war. I think ultimately this benefits the military
establishment in this country. I'm afraid that if things continue as
they are with the spread of AIDS, the threat it presents to having
sex, and with the growth of the right wing, with all of its strictures
against having sexual relations, that we are going to have a society
full of damn celibates from hell straining at the leash in
anticipation of a blood meal. That's basically what we face. That is
in my opinion one of the things they are working toward. I also think,
and this is a matter of established record, that AIDS is being used to
justify the restriction of civil liberties, basically your right to
privacy. When people can go into your veins and your blood stream, you
have no privacy whatsoever. It should also be noted at least for the
time being that AIDS is being dealt with in a relatively intelligent
fashion. People are not being locked up because of AIDS. In the 1980s,
however, there was a lot of propaganda being generated by the far
right and elements associated with the military that AIDS could be
casually transmitted and this meant that people who had AIDS or who
were at high risk for AIDS should be put into concentration camps,
basically, or otherwise incarcerated. I'm going to play for you a
section of a tape from Radio Free America #16. You are going to hear
an article from February 9, 1986 in which people from the American far
right with strong connections not only to the military, but to the
biological warfare research are proposing basically a "Star of David"
concept, in other words, the yellow star that Jews had to wear. But
basically people at high risk for AIDS or people who were HIV positive
had to be incarcerated. This represented a significant strategic
engine, at least at the time, for justifying the restriction of civil
liberties and the implementation of fascism:
Dave Emory (DE): "Okay, now one of the reasons that AIDS is such a
very, very important subject to study, in particular, the possibility
that it may have been manufactured by our own government and is being
deliberately used for whatever reason, is that in order to combat,
aside from the basic issue of the fact that many, many people are
being killed and sickened by this disease, in order to prevent the
spread of AIDS a number of far right wing sources, various reactionary
elements, have proposed a number of very draconian measures in the
recently much publicized primary elections at the La Rouche
organization. The La Rouchies centered their campaign in considerable
measure on confining people who were potentially at risk for AIDS. I
guess they are proposing quarantining AIDS patients. The religious
right, the Jerry Falwells, the Moral Majority, and so forth, have been
very, very active in proposing anti-gay legislation and suggesting
that basically AIDS is the visitation of the Lord on sinners and
sodomizers and fornicators and so forth. The point is that AIDS is
being used as a major political tool by the far right in this country.
Perhaps the most dramatic and potentially alarming use of AIDS by the
far right or potential use of AIDS by the far right was covered in the
San Francisco Sunday Examiner on February 9, 1986. This is an article
headlined, 'Extreme Proposal by AIDS Researcher.' It's by David L.
Kirp. It is a special to the Examiner. It reads as follows:"
Examiner Article (EA): "The military is seriously considering spending
$12.5 million to fund a study aimed at proving AIDS is casually
transmitted and at devising methods to control the disease that appear
to be Constitutionally questionable. The proposal which contradicts
established scientific data on AIDS contemplates forbidding
association between service men and members of high risk groups and
quarantining those who have been exposed to AIDS."
DE: "Now it doesn't say what 'exposed to AIDS,' whether that means
basically someone who tests positive for antibodies to the HTLV3 or
whether someone has actually contracted the disease. Because a lot of
people, as pointed out, have antibodies to the HTLV3 virus and do not
have AIDS. Continuing with the article:"
EA: "'Extreme public health measures' may be necessary says the
proposal by San Francisco based scientists seeking funding for the
study. 'Some of these measures would be in direct conflict with the
Constitution,' the researchers concede. The drastic measures are not
only spelled out in the proposal sent to the military, but a memo
circulated among those working on the project mentions, 'mandatory and
overt identification of AIDS victims,' however loathsome a Star of
David concept. The reference is to the symbol Nazis used to publicly
identify Jews. Initiators of the proposal are two scientific research
organizations with a long history of work for the military. One has
conducted biological and chemical warfare research. They are backed by
a stellar list of collaborators, including scholars of the Hoover
Institution of Stanford University, a conservative think-tank that
lists President Reagan as an Honorary Fellow, and SRI [Stanford
Research Institute] International of Menlo Park. The proposal's
premise runs counter to overwhelming scientific opinion on Acquired
Immune Deficiency Syndrome by asserting that the fatal disease will be
proven communicable by touch or even by close proximity to people with
AIDS. It suggests the disease will be proven transmissible through
tears, saliva, feces, urine, or sweat, and that infection can follow a
sneeze or cough, a mosquito bite or something as simple as touching a
doorknob or toilet handle used by someone with the disease."
DE: "I would interrupt here that in much of the other literature it is
pointed out that although mosquitoes communicate malaria in places
like Africa, there is no indication that insects can communicate this
disease. Continuing with the article:"
EA: "It projects a catastrophic epidemic within a decade. Infection of
10% of the population of the United States and 68.2% of the military.
A copy of the proposal marked confidential by its authors was obtained
by the Examiner. It says, 'Consistent with the need to be conservative
in avoiding undue alarm until all the facts are in, the prevalence of
published and express medical opinion is that AIDS infection cannot
occur through casual transmission of the virus. However, the
non-medical public and an increasing number of medical scientists are
fearful that AIDS may be spread through various forms of casual
contact. Because it is a slow virus and the evidence is that the
incubation period is dosage related, illness may not become manifest
until many years after casual infection occurs. It can therefore be
argued that AIDS cases resulting from low dosage casual contact
infection are not yet appearing on a widespread basis, but that many
cases could surface in the years ahead.'! !
Both the premise and research agenda of the proposal, which has
passed an initial screening by the U.S. Army's Medical Research
and Development Command at Fort Detrick, Maryland, drew strong
criticism from public health officials, leading medical
researchers, and politicians with expertise on AIDS."
DE: "Of course we know that that is now the National Cancer Institute,
which discovered the AIDS virus. Skipping down in the article:"
EA: "The initiators of the proposal are AIMS, Advanced Investigation
of Medical Science Group, and the Institute for Cancer Research, both
housed at the Pacific Prebyterian Medical Center. Both have done
research for the military previously. Since 1962, the AIMS Group has
done classified work on biological and chemical warfare. Two of the
senior Hoover Institution scholars who will do economic and political
analyses for the study are Rita Ricardo-Campbell, who was a leading
contender to succeed Margaret Heckler as Secretary of Health and Human
Services last year, and Richard Star, a specialist on the Soviet Union
who headed America's delegation to the mutual and balanced force
reduction talks between 1981 and 1983. Glen Campbell, Director of the
Hoover Institution and Ricardo-Campbell's husband, denies that the
Institution is formally involved with the project."
DE: "So there are a couple of things to contemplate here. Well, there
are a lot of things to contemplate here in connection with this
article. Obviously, the fact that the military, and this is primarily
a military-associated group of people here, and also, incidentally,
people very close to the Reagan administration, the links between the
Hoover Institute and the Reagan administration are very close and of
long standing, but basically this group is saying, and whether they
know something we don't or whether it is being done for psychological
reasons, that AIDS may very well be casually transmitted. They are
proposing essentially tossing the Constitution down the drain in order
to deal with this. Now, Nip is going to embellish on this in just a
second. But one of the things to take note of here, of course, aside
from the Fort Detrick connection, which is front and center with
regard to AIDS, it's worth noting that the Reagan administration has
been very, very quick to propose ! ! rest rictions on our civil
liberties, and obviously many of them unconstitutional. It's worth
thinking about the possibility that if AIDS has been deliberately
spread by our government, whether perhaps a restriction of the
Constitution was one of the things they had in mind as part of this
program. Again, the Hoover Institute, Army's Medical Research and
Development Command at Fort Detrick, these two groups, the Pacific
Presbyterian Medical Center and AIMS, both involved with chemical and
biological warfare research for the Army, that and the Hoover
Institute very close to Ronald Reagan, proposing, basically, chucking
the Constitution in order to deal with AIDS."
Nip Tuck (NT): "Yeah, exactly. The point that I wanted to make, Dave,
is basically made. But let me embellish it a little bit. What we have
here is a direct circuit of cause and effect or apparently a direct
circuit of cause and effect, directly through the military from one
end to the other. We talked earlier, of course, about all the
biological warfare being under the military. What we have in this case
is a plan that has been essentially put forward by military
bacteriological contractors, has been preliminarily approved by the
military's bacteriological and chemical research center, which is
housed in the same building with the National Cancer Institute, which
presumably has the cutting edge of medical information on hand, which
at this point suggests that everything that these people are saying is
incorrect. So not only do we have these military people, but then we
have the plan proposed by a couple of Hoover Fellows, one of whom is
an expert in Soviet affairs, which one has to wonder what this man is
doing."
DE: "And also who is involved in arms talks. I mean he was one of our
delegates to Strategic Arms Limitations Talks."
NT: "Indeed. So, what we have here is a very strange cycle coming,
emanating from and returning directly to the military. One has to ask,
in this case, if we have supposedly, as we are constantly being told,
the best scientists in the country working on this, and things of this
nature. But, basically, from the most absolute fundamental point of
view, what is the military doing involved with AIDS and the prevention
of the spread of AIDS and the quarantining of AIDS victims without any
kind of Congressional or even Executive initiative, at least overt
Executive initiative whatsoever. It is very bizarre and very fishy."
DE: "And, again, consider that this one fellow, Richard Star, is not
only an expert on the Soviet Union, but one of our representatives to
Strategic Arms Limitation Talks. What intersection could there be
between AIDS and strategic arms, something we should think about
perhaps."
NT: "Yes, and let's think about, again, self-admittedly, they said the
'Star of David concept.' And again, remember that not only in Germany
were the Jews forced to go around with yellow Stars of David pinned to
their clothes, but the gays wore pink triangles and were separated
out. Many of them, hundreds of thousands, in fact, died alongside the
Jews and the Slavs and the Gypsies and the other groups,
intellectuals, and communists, in the extermination camps. So there
are certain people who have had the gays on their agenda for some
time."
DE: "It's worth noting that the idea of getting rid of various groups
who were in the way was made a lot easier, a lot more palatable for
the German public, those who were aware of it, by the fact that gays
who were traditionally an outcast group were the first to go. It made
it much easier to accept the later exterminations on the part of the
Nazis. It's a tactic the Nazis refer to as salami tactic, literally
just like slicing a sausage. Before you know it, the whole thing is
gone. That is something to think about."
All right, that information hopefully spoke for itself. One of the
reasons I allowed the interpolative discussion afterward to allow
people to think about the cause and effect from the military to the
military. We see the same people implicated and the same elements
implicated in these drastic proposals for reducing civil liberties as
loom in the background, in my opinion, of the creation of AIDS itself.
Now for the time being anyway, draconian measures like this have been
shunted aside, have been successfully defeated by progressive
political activists and by the public as a whole. But if my theories
concerning AIDS are correct, who knows what else they have in mind. It
may be that a more casually communicable type of AIDS will, if not be
created, will be publicized or propagandized and that this will serve
as a pretext for confining people in the future. It's worth noting too
the reaction of the population to neighbors who have AIDS. There have
been a number of well publicized cases in which children with AIDS
were horribly abused by their neighbors. I remember reading about a
little boy, I believe it was in Pinole or somewhere in Contra Costa
County. He had AIDS and his neighbors kept trying to drive the family
out of the neighborhood. They would break his toys. They would steal
his tricycle. That's a pretty cruel thing to do to a kid with AIDS.
Yet, the disease has a capacity to panic people that is worth noting
as a strategic device or as a possible tool of psychological warfare.
There was a well publicized case in Florida where a little boy with
AIDS was horribly oppressed by his neighbors. The family had their
home burned down. I think this is indicative of the power of this
disease, the psychological power and its ability to motivate people in
a reactionary or fascistic direction. One of the things that I see
very possibly is that this might be being deliberately manipulated in
that regard. Basically that concludes the lecture. What we are going
to do now is take a break. Then for the rest of the evening, I am
going to take your questions.
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Part III
There are a couple of points that I forgot to mention that I will
bring up briefly. I wanted to reiterate that in the Dr. Jordan talk
you heard that San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles were the main
areas of infection among the gay population. Those, not coincidentally
in my opinion, are the areas where Dr. Wolf Szmuness was administering
the Hepatitis B trial vaccine program. Again, you can read about AIDS
and the Doctors of Death. That is the title of a book by Dr. Alan
Cantwell, published by Aries Publishers, 1989. Also I wanted to
mention that it has been theorized by Dr. Strecker that AIDS was
spread in Africa through the Small Pox vaccination program conducted
by the World Health Organization, which has very strong links with
Fort Detrick and the National Cancer Institute. So those are a couple
of details to remember under the circumstances. Now, once again I want
to reiterate that the medical and scientific evidence is not my long
suit. It would be quite pretentious and intellectually dishonest for
me to discuss that past a point. I will do the best I can. I also want
to emphasize that if you want to ask a general questions about the
subject material that I deal with, your questions needn't be confined
to AIDS, under the circumstances.
Question (Q): I have a two-tiered question. One is I've read the
series of articles that Covert Action Information Bulletin did on
AIDS. They talked about the five different theories on the origin.
They didn't fully discount all of them having something to do with
AIDS. They also talked about the African Swine Fever Virus. They said
that in their investigation, at least eighty percent of people with
AIDS tested positive for the African Swine Fever Virus. Do you believe
that it is possible that this is what you talk about as being
cross-vectoring? And also, a follow up question is, have you read or
in your investigations, have you seen anything suggesting that a
vaccine or solution to AIDS might be in existence somewhere?
Answer (A): Yes, as a matter of fact, there was an article, I believe
it was in the Alta Mata Star, to answer your last question first. I
neglected to mention this during the lecture. But, it is in Radio Free
America Program !6 that you can get from Archives on Audio or from
Paul over here, that the Army's Institute of Infectious Diseases
mentioned that they had been testing for a vaccine for AIDS or a cure
for AIDS. When asked if they had any success, the doctor whose name
I've forgotten, I think it was Dr. Driscoll but I may be wrong, he had
an interesting and ambiguous response. He said that laboratory test
results don't always pan out when applied in the general population.
So they certainly were looking for it as far back as 1986, possibly
with some success. Now about the African Swine Fever theory, that may
very well be. If that is correct, that may very well be one of the
cross-vectors that's involved. As I mentioned, a couple of physicians
from Boston who had been doing research into the Swine Fever
connection and who had wanted to be funded were told by the Department
of Agriculture to cool it, not to publicize this "for reasons of
national security." So it certainly suggests at least the possibility.
I personally wasn't that impressed with the covert action series. They
touched on some good information, but I also felt they pulled their
punches. I've forgotten the name of one of the authors. It was a
fellow who writes for the New York Native, a New York daily newspaper.
He called me up right after he heard about my Radio Free America #16
show. Frankly, I thought he was something of a fool. I wasn't real
impressed. But he had a lot to do with that series.
Q: One more question and that is, there is presently in South and
Central America a cholera epidemic. Do you think this might be related
to biological warfare?
A: It's possible. I really don't know.
Q: Yeah, Dave, I was wondering about, they have been saying on certain
media sources have been talking about making AIDS a maintainable
disease like diabetes, if you will. You know, you take an insulin shot
to maintain it. I was wondering what you thought about that.
A: It's a possibility. Again, I'm not a doctor or a biologist or a
geneticist. So it's a possibility. They certainly have made some
progress in some areas with AIDS. Although, I'm told by people that I
consider knowledgeable that the drug AZT is really a whammy. AZT will
give you AIDS. It does attack the HIV, but because the protein code on
the HIV is very similar to the amino acid make-up of the T-cell
lymphocytes, which are the main things which appear to be attacked by
Aat when a virus mutates, it takes on the characteristics of already
pre-existing viruses? And, is it true that the AIDS virus does not
necessarily relate to or compare with other existing viruses?
A: I really don't know that much about the way in which viruses mutate
from a technical standpoint, nor can I comment again on the AIDS virus
and the way it mutates. I have not heard that viruses mutate in the
same way, or take on the characteristics of other viruses. Now I have
been told by people skilled in virology, which by the way is not
nearly the exact science it's been portrayed. You can show the same
virus to two different virologists. They will agree on the make-up of
the genome, but they will disagree on the interpretation of where it
comes from. But the thing that I've been told is that most viruses,
many viruses anyway, no most viruses eventually adapt in such a way as
they become symbiotic with their host. In other words, they mutate in
such a way as they don't sicken the host, which obviously benefits the
host and they mutate in such a way as the host's immune system does
not, therefore, attack the virus. So it's mutually beneficial. But
that is as much as I know. Again, at the risk of seeming a little
repetitive, not being a physician or a microbiologist or a geneticist,
my ability to respond to these questions intelligently is limited.
What I have done is to present what I believe is historical and
political evidence pointing very strongly to AIDS as a biological
warfare weapon and to recommend some of the medical people who have
come forward with these theories. The one thing that I do feel
reasonably intelligent talking about, of course, is the epidemiology
because I think that involves a good deal of common se! ! nse. But my
feeling is that it is up to the medical and scientific community to
carry the search on past this point.
Q: Has Dr. Cantwell received any repercussions since?
A: I don't know about Cantwell. I do know that Dr. Robert Strecker was
quite shaken when his brother mysteriously died who had been doing the
research with him. I got a call from Strecker once. He had heard about
my work and I wasn't particularly impressed with the guy. He is an
extreme right winger. But on the other hand, I think that the fear of
God got put in him, because his brother, who I believe his name was
John, had been working on the research with him. All of a sudden he
had died very suddenly.
Q: This is a somewhat broad, maybe naive question that seems to come
up when I lay all this stuff on people who I've managed to trap.
A: You'll get a lot of broad, naive questions when you try to lay this
stuff on people.
Q: Well, it's one that I have difficulty answering. Why would the
security establishment go to all this trouble to "waste a bunch of
losers?"
A: Well, you've just answered your own question. I tried to address
that as best I could in the final portion of the talk. These people
are considered out-groups. In a shrinking economy, I believe an
economy that is going to be completely devastated before much longer,
there aren't going to be enough goodies to go around. This country
operates on the law of supply and demand. Supply and demand must be
kept in line. If there are too many workers for the available jobs and
if there are not enough goodies for the people that want them, then
supply and demand will be brought in line. We will have fewer workers
to fit the jobs and we will have fewer people competing for the
goodies, if it gets to be too much of a strain. It will also by
reducing the population reduce the strain on the society as a whole. I
think the basic motivations in my opinion for eliminating people in
this country are the same as the motivations for eliminating similar
groups in Europe under the fascist period! ! . I think you could ask
the same question of Hitler. Why would Hitler go to all this trouble
to eliminate "losers?" Precisely because the people that are viewed as
losers by our national security establishment, people of color, gays,
intravenous drug users, hemophiliacs, Native Americans, they are
viewed as losers. I'm not saying they are losers, far from it. But
they are viewed that way by the far right and they want to get rid of
them for exactly that reason. The Nazis had a concept that was called
"useless bread gobblers." And that is the real answer.
Q: I think we can all find some reason why we think that AIDS has a
suspicious or questionable origin. I'm a scientist by trade. Sometimes
we do things to confuse the competition as far as programming,
rewrite, obfuscated code that nobody can understand except us, or if
it is electronics, we do things in weird sort of ways so that nobody
can understand. But one thing in common is that when youevery case of
AIDS in the United States, if it wasn't somebody who got infected by
intravenous means as in a blood transfusion was always traced back to
drug usage, that actually certain combinations of drugs that people
used to have a good time with the virus in their system or some other
type of microorganism that actually triggers HIV. Do you have any
comment on that?
A: I am familiar with Duesburg's theories up to a point. He is a
researcher up at the University of California at Berkeley. I am not in
a position, again, to comment critically or in an intelligent fashion
on scientific and medical evidence past a point. But one of the things
that makes me skeptical, at least to a certain extent, of his claims
is that if recreational drugs in combination with certain other
organisms are involved in AIDS, how come American Indians are getting
it? There is drug usage on Native American reservations. It should
also be noted that many Native American cultures are also far more
tolerant of homosexuality than the culture as a whole. But, on the
other hand, with the exception of alcohol and perhaps some other
drugs, I would tend to think that the drug usage on Native American
reservations would be very different than the rest of the population.
Beyond that, how about the results in the Third World. I wonder
whether Duesburg's study really takes into ! ! acco unt the lifestyle,
the habits of people in Haiti or in Africa or other places in the
Third World. For that reason, I'm skeptical. Because at this point
there are enough people who have AIDS all around the world that would
come from very different cultures and consequently would have very
different lifestyles that at least from my position as a relative
naive, I would tend to be skeptical of that.
Q: Well, what he says is that AIDS in Africa is a far cry different
than AIDS in the United States. For instance, one thing that he says
is that in Zaire, for example, where AIDS is primarily transmitted
heterosexually that it doesn't kill at the same rate. There a person
may have the virus and may live twenty-five or thirty years. In the
meantime the average African in that area also have other parasitic
organisms in their system that would kill the average person in
Western society. But they seem to live quite normally with this in
their system.
A: Well, again, I can't comment on this stuff from an expert
standpoint as I've already indicated. But I would be very skeptical of
Duesburg's claim that people can live twenty-five or thirty years
because we haven't known about this disease that long, just as a
matter of fact.
Q: I was wondering if in all your studies, have you ever found reason
to believe that declassified information may be used as a method of
spreading disinformation among people willing to seek out this kind of
thing?
A: That has always been the case. The national security establishment
of this country always cloaks its secrets relatively effectively. I'm
glad you brought that up. That's one of the reasons that I am very
leery about touching a lot of the scientific and medical evidence
because there are a lot of contradictory theories around, many of
them, I suspect, disinformation efforts by the national security
establishment. I, myself, was talking about AIDS. I remember speaking
many times with the late Mae Brussel in the early 1980s, saying that
we were convinced that AIDS whatever it was, this mysterious
infection, which first turned up in American homosexuals was some sort
of biological warfare weapon. That's why the historical evidence, the
development of things from a historical and political standpoint is
what I focus on. There is, for example, no ambiguity about the
National Cancer Institute having its Frederick research facility run
by Litton Biomedics or that in 1971 it, that i! ! s to say Fort
Detrick, was turned over to the National Cancer Institute. Or that in
1969 we have the House Appropriations Subcommittee hearings for
defense budget for fiscal 1970, which again Paul has a copy of. So
that's why I stick with that kind of information. That is primarily my
long suit. I am very suspicious of a lot of the scientific and medical
information that has been generated about AIDS, including the notion
after six years of study that oh yeah, we've found this case in
Britain in 1959. But, it's a good point. I'm glad you brought it up.
jum...@my-deja.com
questions. The first one is regarding the American Red Cross and where
you see them in all of this when the unthe inoculation against
biological warfare is a classic example of what I call food for
thought and grounds for further research. Often inoculation programs
are used to vector people, in response to an earlier question. So it's
something to think about, but again I can't give you a hard answer.
Q: Thank you.
A: You're welcome.
Q: Hi. I was wondering with Magic Johnson getting HIV positive and
your speculation back in 1983 or 1984 with the studies of how to make
the disease more communicable, and I'm wondering if this might be a
higher consciousness to get the public's awareness towards it as
something that is highly communicable.
A: I really can't say. Obviously I don't know Magic Johnson. The
accounts that have appeared in the press, both for Magic Johnson and
people who claim to have known him well, apparently he was quite the
ladies' man. As the Lakers would go on the road, apparently he had a
lot of one night stands. He was very sexually prolific in this regard.
By his own account, he just was careless. So I don't really know if
one could consider there to be a conspiratorialogical aspect to Magic
Johnson's infection. Certainly it is publicizing the disease.
Certainly it is scaring heterosexuals. Heterosexuals started flocking
to get tested for HIV in a big, big way. One of the things that I've
wondered about, too, this is something of an aside, when you go to get
tested for HIV, they take blood. They stick something into you. If the
government knows who you are and doesn't like you and their records
are extensive, then they could also either vector you at that point or
they could say you were HIV ! ! positive when in fact you weren't.
That has a very devastating psychological effect and professional
effect on many people. It's very difficult to get medical insurance or
increasingly difficult to get medical insurance if you are HIV
positive. So I wonder. I wonder whether the testing could in fact be
used to spread the disease or nail certain indi viduals.
Q: Okay. I had two other questions. Are you familiar with General
Prouty back in the 1960s.
A: Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty. Yes, he was in charge of Special
Operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the early 1960s. He also
was Air Force Focal Point Officer for quite some time. That is to say
he was the Air Force Officer, and again he was a Colonel, who was the
liaison between the CIA and the Air Force for CIA covert operations
requiring air units. He did some excellent work on the Kennedy
assassination. He also wrote one of the best books on the CIA, called
The Secret Team: The CIA and Its Allies in Control of the World. I
have accessed Prouty's material in a number of Archive shows,
primarily the Guns of November and Addenda. He did some excellent work
in the 1960s and early 1970s. On the other hand, he is sort of thrown
his lot in with the space aliens, so to speak. He is on the Liberty
Lobby's twenty-four member populist action committee. His work has
gone down hill, in my opinion.
Q: I was looking to see how reliable his writings were.
A: His earlier work is reliable and his views on the Kennedy
assassination and the Vietnam war. Prouty is someone I would rely on
when he is talking, these days he is not that reliable. In the old
days he had done excellent work. But when he is talking about his own
experiences in the military I think he can be discredible, regardless
of his affiliation with Liberty Lobby, which is Neo-Nazi and which I
have no use for.
Q: And one last question. Back in the 1960s, it would be about the
time I was one year old, there was an experiment done on some San
Francisco protesters with the family name of Nevin. I was wondering if
you know anything about it.
A: Nevins. That is the name of the people, they were not in San
Francisco, but that is the name of the fellow at Stanford whose father
died from the Seratia experiments in which the barge was towed around
San Francisco Bay in 1950. By the way, I should note that in Dr.
Jordan's speech or in his talk, he confused two biological warfare
experiments: One, the Seratia in San Francisco in which a barge was
towed around spewing this microorganism into the wind in San Francisco
harbor; and two, the test on the New York City subway system because
in 1950 San Franciso didn't have a subway. So he just basically fused
a synapse on that. But that is the experiment in which Mr. Nevins
died.
Q: Thank you.
A: Okay.
Q: If what you say is true, then can't the people who are responsible
for this simply bring two more pieces of genetic material together and
create some other disease and kill everybody even if AIDS was cured?
A: That is a good question and that is my fear. That is exactly why I
came forward with Radio Free America #16 and this whole line of
inquiry. Because my feeling is there are things a lot worse than AIDS
that have probably been created. I can't prove it. But it wouldn't
surprise me. There has been discussion in military ciro were permitted
to participate in that.
Q: May I ask one last question?
A: Sure.
Q: The latest issue of Rolling Stone talks about Bangkok as a sex
center for Asia. They talk about how one out of every fifty people in
Thailand is a "sex worker" and how many of them are coming down with
HIV and that hundreds of thousands of Japanese businessmen are
visiting Thailand as a sexual vacation. Could this be part of the plan
to get rid of Japanese competition?
A. I doubt it. I doubt it very seriously. It might be a windfall. But
the thing is the Japanese big capitol at this point is international.
For example, people are aware of the damage being done to the American
automobile industry by Japanese competition. But there is massive
involvement by the big three auto makers in Japanese automobile
production. The Mazda, for example, is manufactured by the Toyo Kogyo
Company which is a machine tool company which is owned by the Ford
Motor Company, the controlling interest anyway. When you buy a Mazda,
you are buying a Ford. Big capitol has always been more or less
international. It is much more so today. One of the reasons why I did
the programs Uncle Sam and the Swastika, Uncle Sam and El Duche, and
the program about Japanese fascism, Radio Free America #10, is to
point out these international links of big capitol. I would tend to
think that infecting Bangkok with AIDS in order to reduce the Japanese
competition would not have much to do with it. At this point, the
Japanese have the United States by the short hairs. They're supporting
our debt. If we take any action against the Japanese, they are just
going to stop supporting our debt, which also would be mutually
destructive for them, because then they are not going to be able to
market their products in the United States. So I would doubt that
under the circumstances.
Q: I'm wondering what you know about the concentration camps that have
been built in the United States and what organization Global 2000 has
to do with this AIDS epidemic.
A: I don't know anything about Global 2000. As I recall that is the
organization founded by Sid Bass. I'm not absolutely positive. I can't
identify Global 2000. Is that the environmental organization that's
involved with this biosphere?
Q: One of their programs is to reduce the population of the earth
drastically.
A: Well, I'm not familiar with the organization. So I cannot actually
give you a definitive answer to that. But as far as concentration
camps in the United States, that has been a contingency plan that has
been set up for a long time. One of the things that came out during
the Nixon administration was that there was a plan afoot by far right
wing activists in the military and intelligence community to set up a
provocation at the Republican Convention in San Diego, blow it up and
thereby probably assassinate Richard Nixon in order to serve as a
pretext for cancelling the elections and interning people in camps.
During the Iran/Contra scandal, one of the most controversial aspects
that came out was the so called Rex 84 or Operation Night Train
Martial Law Contingency Plan in which some twenty million people were
to be interned in concentration camps. This in turn was based on a
plan to intern upwards of twenty million Black people in the event of
an uprising by so called Black militants in the 1960s and 1970s. So
these plans are very real. There has also been a lot of discussion
about using closed military bases to house "drug offenders" who then
would be put to work in work camps. They are talking about, again,
upwards of twenty million under the circumstances. These "drug
offenders" would work for private corporations who would maintain
these camps. In turn, the corporations would get the profits from
their labor as long as they continued to fund the establishment of
other institutions. Radio Free America #32 has a good discussion of
Operation Night Train. There is material available from the Christic
Institute about that. You can read about it also in a number of
different publications. I would recommend Covert Action Information
Bulletin #33. There is a very fine article in there called FEMA and
the National Security Council. It is by a woman named Diana Reynolds.
That will go into that and the development of this to a considerable
extent. There is also discussion in Radio Free America #23 about the
early martial law contingency plans under Richard Nixon. That, in
turn, if you can find the book, it draws on the book The Glass House
Tapes, published in soft cover by the Avon Press, copyright 1973.
That's put out by the Citizens Research and Investigating Commission.
That will give you some hard information about that.
Q: Thanks. I think it was the last few days. The Cuban Government is
actually locking up people who are testing positive for HIV virus. As
soon as anyone becomes of an age where they are sexually active are
immediately incarcerated for this if they are tested and found
positive. They are immediately incarcerated in this semi-fancy
sanitariums. The Cuban Government is bragging about how well this
program is working on curbing the proliferation of AIDS in their
country. I was wondering if maybe you thought that we are watching
them closely or our government is watching them closely.
A: There has been a proposal. In fact, one of the addenda to Radio
Free America #16 talks about, I believe it was Sweden's proposal for
AIDS, which was to take all AIDS patients and quarantine them on an
island, basically in a huge concentration camp, which is what is being
done in Sweden. It wouldn't surprise me. It wouldn't surprise me. And
again, the article from the Sunday Examiner Chronicle from February 9,
1986 with which I concluded the lecture this evening, the tape of the
reading of that article, I think certainly points in that direction.
Q: All right, David, I have like two questions regarding money, the
thing that seems to make all this go. One is how do you explain the
amount of money, well there has been quite a bit that's been going
into AIDS research if it's something which is caused by the government
and there's all that money in [unclear] government agency?
A: Well, as I said earlier, I think that one of the possible goals of
AIDS was to serve as a pretext for basically a gene race, much like
the arms race. Certainly biotechnology and research into it has been
greatly spurred by the advent of AIDS, I believe the invention of
AIDS. One of the things I find amusing about ACT UP and some of the
more militant gay groups who are constantly talking about "We want
more government funding for AIDS" is that I think there has been a lot
of government funding for AIDS, specifically to make it. And I think
they may find that if the government begins funding AIDS even more
there will be fewer of them around.
Q: That's the answer to the second part.
A: Okay.
Q: Hi. I was wondering if you have any information on the organization
called Porack.
A: I'm not familiar with it.
Q: Okay. This is the police officers' standard training that was
developed by the FBI in the early 1971 - 1972 and then the formation
of intelligence officers throughout the United States within the
police departments and the funds connected to that.
A: The Nixon administration specifically using the Law Enforcement
Assistance Administration was very active in promoting that sort of
thing. There have been discussions. The aforementioned Glass House
Tapes talks about it. And there has been a fair amount of publicity
about that, about really the militarization of domestic police.
Q: Yeah, I noticed also with the special units, we know them as SWAT
teams and stuff like that, originally when those officers responded to
domestic situations, they responded in full dress uniform. As recently
as in the last couple of months, these NOW teams respond in military
fatigues at all times and they wear the hooded masks. Can you respond
to that?
A: I think basically the old expression, what goes around, comes
around, which is Emory's first principle, has a lot to do with that.
Ultimately, as the economy collapses and as the social dislocation
resulting from that grows, I think basically there is going to be a
need to keep civil order to a greater extent. The trend of the
militarization of domestic police which began during the anti-war
movement, the anti-Vietnam war movement, is accelerating at this
point. It is my feeling, for example, I've done a lot of work on gun
control and there is a very strong CIA connection to gun control,
specifically, the leading Hand Gun Control, Incorporated and the other
supposedly competing organization. Hand Gun Control, Incorporated was
founded by William O. Wells, a newly retired "former" CIA agent, who
himself owns two pistols and a sharps bore shard rifle. He has been
greatly assisted in his efforts by William Colby, former CIA Director.
Wells is very active with the supposedly competing organization as
well. William Colby is real big on gun control. He says he learned
about the dangers of hand guns while serving with the CIA. William
Colby was Director of the Phoenix Program for quite some time in which
by conservative estimates some forty thousand Vietnamese were
dispatched, mostly using silenced twenty-two and twenty-five caliber
automatics. So it doesn't surprise me that he would learn about the
dangers of hand guns under the circumstanc! ! es. I, myself, am
opposed to gun control. I see many of these lone nuts going off and
shooting. I've discussed on my program the fellow who went off in
Colene, Texas. A postal worker went off and shot a female former
supervisor. There was another postal worker who went off. I've done a
lot of work on what I call Purdy's last stand. Patrick Purdy, the
follow who killed those students, the young Asian students at the
Cleveland Elementary School in Stockton. Purdy had Aryan Nations
literature on him at the time of an earlier arrest. He had Aryan
Nations graffiti on his weapons, clothing, and in his room. He had
previously been a member of the Moonies. A teacher from the Cleveland
Elementary School who was going to testify in front of the California
Assembly received a threatening letter with a swastika letterhead. It
should also be noted that the spokesperson for the Stockton School
District who handled the media was up until 1985 the spokesperson for
the United States Army Western Command. So I think that the
militarization of the police, toposing the [unclear] advances in
genetic engineering, etc. That virus is, according to my sources,
virtually identical to the HIV II with the exception that a piece of
genetic material called a stop codon has been introduced right in the
middle of one gene. That is the smoking gene in his opinion.
Q: Is the HIV II what is commonly referred to as the HIV virus?
A: There are three variants that have been discovered so far that I'm
aware of, I, II, and III. This number II is very similar to the SIV,
in all probability indicating that HIV II is a man-made virus.
Q: Is this assuming that HIV is, you know, we hear about it mutating.
In other words, is HIV II the main cause of AIDS, one of the causes of
AIDS, or is it unclear?
A: It is one of the variants of the virus that has been reported to be
causing AIDS in Africa.
Q: Hi. It seems that people infected with the Nazi ideology...
A: That's a good way of putting it. Go ahead...
Q: ...that they would find it irresistible, the temptation to fool
around with genetic engineering.
A: Well, Mengela was doing that at Auschwitz. We know he was doing
experiments with genes, with twins and so forth to examine the genetic
factors. Absolutely.
Q: Do you know of any further research or any clues of what they might
be doing in that area?
A: Well, I see the whole situation AIDS against that background. That
is why I began the discussion with the historical connections of the
United States to things like Unit 731, the Gehlen organization, plus
we've had that in our own country for quite some time. It should be
noted that the idea of genetics, and this is something that I probably
should have brought up in the lecture proper and I'm glad you brought
this up, the whole idea of genetics and genetic research is
inextricably linked with the concept of eugenics, which in turn is
very closely connected with the mental hygiene movement. The mental
hygiene movement and the eugenics movement have led to euthanasia. The
euthanasia programs in Nazi Germany were the programs that paved the
way for the extermination programs that followed later. I've done a
miscellaneous Archive show about that. Genetic engineering I think
also figures into the concept of eugenics in a big, big way. If you
can make a super race then you might! ! do that. [unclear] Du Pont,
for example, who was an avid supporter of Adolph Hitler advocated in
the 1920s creating using eugenics to create a race of super men which
would have tremendous intellects, which would be as physically fit as
Marines. So it is a concept that has gone on for some time. It
certainly would prove irresistible.
Q: It seems like it's the other side of the coin, their fascination
with defective genetic groups. The other side of that is a fascination
with super qualified or endowed.
A: One of the things that should be borne in mind with the issue of
genetic engineering is that the military always gets any technology
first. They advance it secretly well beyond what the civilian
population is aware of. Now in 1985, okay, six plus years ago, there
was an article which was published in many newspapers, I remember
specifically the New York Times, of the results of a genetic
engineering experiment. What they did was they took a gene from a
firefly. They were able to splice it into a tobacco plant. What they
got was a tobacco leaf that glowed like a firefly and they showed it.
Now the implications of that are absolutely enormous. That is a gene
introduced, taken from one phylum and placed into another phylum, a
whole other category of organisms, and it produced the same physical
characteristic in the other phylum that it did in the first. You start
thinking about what they might be doing with, you know, taking genes
from Apes and putting them into people, or lizards or salamanders. Who
knows what they might be doing? Among the many thoughts that I've had
about these periodic sightings of things like Big Foot or there was
supposed to be some sort of lizard man or alligator man down in some
place in Georgia or Florida. Now a lot of that, no doubt, is being
generated by the local chamber of commerce. They get the word out in
Tent Flap, Arkansas that there is a lizard man running around.
Basically, all the hockey pucks from fifty miles around are going to
come in. The local country store is going to sell a lot of beer and a
lot of ammunition and a lot of sandwiches. Not only the local chambers
of commerce are responsible to a certain extent for that, but I
wouldn't entirely discount that we may be seeing the results at some
point of the genes from one type of animal introduced into people, and
then producing something like that. I am going to be doing a lecture
in the months to come about so-called UFOs, which are very real and
don't come from outer space. The only thing that comes from outer
space are the people who think they come from outer space. I'm going
to be talking about those as devices for social control. They have a
very real physical history. It began with German experimentation
toward the closing days of the war. Two circular flying objects used
by the Germans as anti-aircraft weapons, one called the Fireball and
the other called Ball Lightening, were recorded as a matter of history
to have been used. The organization that developed them was a German
aeronautical research facility called Fluwkfuwnkforshunkshunstalter
Oberfafenhafen, a typically compact German name, as I've said. But
when you think about the possibilities, okay, suppose the ozone layer
goes, suppose the economy collapses, suppose the Green House effect
takes place, suppose the polar ice caps begin to melt. Right now in
the southern most parts of South America, people are going blind from
the ozone layer. They are being blinded by the hole in the ozone
layer. Think about all these things worsening. There is talk of global
warming melting the polar ice caps to the point where coastal cities
become completely inundated. If this happens, you won't see the
Forty-Niners playing at Candlestick Park. The only thing that will be
playing at Candlestick Park are the sea hawks and the dolphins. Now,
you think about the possibilities there and those are really
terrifying. Think about what people will be willing to do if they want
to combine say genetic engineering with UFOs. Suppose they take a gene
from a salamander or a lizard or something and figure out how to
introduce that into a human being. edical records or anything?
A: There probably would be. I don't know what kinds of records were
kept. And of course Wolfe Szmuness died of cancer in 1983, so he isn't
around to tell us. I should think that would be relatively easy to
check. But again, I would read the book AIDS and the Doctors of Death
by Alan Cantwell, which goes into it at greater length.
Q: The other question I have is are you advocating, or did I
misinterpret your saying that people should not be tested for AIDS?
A: No, I'm not advocating that. But I have thoughts about the
ambiguity of having somebody stick a needle in you. They could be
giving you AIDS or if they want to make life miserable and damned near
impossible they can tell you you have HIV, which first of all is going
to really, really demoralize people and undermine them
psychologically.
Q: Why would a doctor, your personal doctor, do that to you?
A: Well, I'm not saying a personal doctor, but at a clinic, if you are
someone, say a political activist or a member of an ethnic or racial
group that the government does not like, and the authorities in
command now do not like certain groups, this would be one way of
undermining you, even if you didn't have the virus. You would have a
tough time getting insurance. You would have a tough time getting
employment. It would eat on you psychologically. Your spouse might
divorce you. It could have a tremendous effect, even if you didn't
have it. And then if they decided to give it to you, that could have
an even more tremendous effect. No, I don't advocate not getting
tested. But at the same time it might be a good idea to get yourself
tested under another name rather than your own. That is what I would
recommend.
Q: Your talk about the genetic [engineering], it triggered a memory of
an article in the Chronicle. I think it was a couple of years ago.
[It] was about combining humans with apes genetically and making a
slave race. It even went into the all the ramifications of well, what
if your daughter wanted to date one of these guys, the whole thing. It
really made an impression on me.
A: I've known a few of those myself.
Q: Well, it really made an impression on me and I wonder. That was a
while back and they were talking about that very seriously.
A: In fact, that's true. That's a good point. The Vatican even was
ruling that they thought that was immoral. This has tremendous
economic implications. The idea is that if you could cross-breed say a
man and an ape, you could get something that wouldn't technically be
human, therefore, wouldn't have any human rights. One of the things to
think about is that this could then be used to perform manual labor.
It would put a lot of people out of work and perhaps into liquidation
centers, as I've indicated, or "decontamination centers."
Q: Frightening.
[S.F.M.H.P. NOTE: This article has been intentionally left un-touched
up. This article was supplied to us by David Jones, Editor of NewDawn
Magazine]
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http://xroads.virginia.edu/~UG97/blues/garber.html
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A Spectacle in Color: The Lesbian and Gay Subculture of Jazz Age Harlem
Eric Garber
At the beginning of the twentieth century, a homosexual subculture,
uniquely Afro-American in substance, began to take shape in New York's
Harlem. Throughout the so- called Harlem Renaissance period, roughly
1920 to 1935, black lesbians and gay men were meeting each other.
street corners, socializing in cabarets and rent parties, and
worshiping in church on Sundays, creating a language, a social
structure, and a complex network of institutions. Some were discreet
about their sexual identities; others openly expressed their personal
feelings. The community they built attracted white homosexuals as well
as black, creating friendships between people of disparate ethnic and
economic backgrounds and building alliances for progressive social
change. But the prosperity of the 1920s was short-lived, and the
Harlem gay subculture quickly declined following the Stock Market
crash of 1929 and the repeal of Prohibition, soon becoming only a
shadow of its earlier self. Nevertheless, the traditions and
institutions created by Harlem lesbians and gay men during the Jazz
Age continue to this day.
The key historical factor in the development of the lesbian and gay
subculture in Harlem was the massive migration of thousands of
Afro-Americans to northern urban areas after the turn of the century.
Since the beginning of American slavery, the vast majority of blacks
had lived in rural southern states. American participation in World
War I led to an increase in northern industrial production and brought
an end to immigration, which resulted in thousands of openings in
northern factories becoming available to blacks. Within two decades,
large communities of black Americans had developed in most northern
urban areas. So significant was this shift in population that it is
now referred to as the "Great Migration." Black communities developed
in Chicago, Detroit, and Buffalo, but the largest and most spectacular
was Harlem, which became the mecca for Afro-Americans from all over
the world. Nowhere else could you find a geographic area so large, so
concentrated, really a city within a city, populated entirely by
blacks. There were black schoolteachers, black entrepreneurs, black
police officers, and even black millionaires. A spirit was in the
air-of hope, progress, and possibilities- which proved particularly
alluring to the young and unmarried. Harlem's streets soon filled with
their music, their voices, and their laughter.
They called themselves "New Negroes," Harlem was their capital, and
they manifested a new militancy and pride. Black servicemen had been
treated with a degree of respect and given a taste of near-equality
while in Europe during the World War; their experiences influenced
their expectations when they returned home. Participation in the war
effort had given the entire black community a sense of involvement in
the American process and led them to demand their place in the
mainstream of American life. Marcus Garvey, the charismatic West
Indian orator, had thousands of followers in his enormous black
nationalist "Back to Africa" movement. W. E. B. DuBois and his
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP),
with its radical integrationist position, generally appealed to a more
educated, middle- class following, as did Charles W. Johnson's
National Urban League, but were just as militant in their call for
racial justice. A variety of individuals and organizations generated
Afro-American pride and solidarity.
The New Negro movement created a new kind of art. Harlem, as the New
Negro Capital, became a worldwide center for Afro-American jazz,
literature, and the fine arts. Many black musicians, artists, writers,
and entertainers were drawn to the vibrant black uptown neighborhood.
Duke Ellington, Fletcher Henderson, Fats Waller, Cab Calloway, Bessie
Smith, and Ethel Waters played in Harlem nightclubs. Langston Hughes,
Zora Hurston, and Countee Cullen published in the local newspapers.
Art galleries displayed the work of Aaron Douglas and Richmond Barthé.
These creative talents incorporated the emerging black urban social
con sciousness into their art. The resulting explosion of
self-consciously AfroAmerican creativity, now known as the "Harlem
Renaissance," had a profound impact on the subsequent development of
American arts.
The social and sexual attitudes of Harlem's new immigrants were best
reflected in the blues, a distinctly Afro-American folk music that had
developed in rural southern black communities following the Civil War.
Structurally simple, yet open to countless subtleties, the blues were
immensely popular within American black communities throughout the
1920s. They told of loneliness, homesickness, and poverty, of love and
good luck, and they provided a window into the difficult, often
brutal. world of the New Negro immigrant.
Homosexuality was clearly part of this world. "There's two things got
me puzzled, there's two things I don't understand," moaned blues great
Bessie Smith, "that's a mannish-acting woman and a lisping, swishing,
womanish-acting man." In "Sissy Blues," Ma Rainey complained of her
husband's infidelity with a homosexual named "Miss Kate." Lucille
Bogan, in her "B.D. Women Blues," warned that "B.D. [bulldagger] women
sure is rough; they drink up many a whiskey and they sure can strut
their stuff." The "sissies" and "bull daggers" mentioned in the blues
were ridiculed for their cross-gender behavior, but neither shunned
nor hated. "Boy in the Boat" for example, recorded in 1930 by George
Hanna, counseled "When you see two women walking hand in hand, just
shake your head and try to understand." In fact, the casualness toward
sexuality, so common in the blues, sometimes extended to homosexual
behavior. In "Sissy Man Blues," a traditional tune recorded by
nurnerous male blues singers over the years, the singer demanded "if
you can't bring me a woman, bring me a sissy man." George Hanna's
"Freakish Blues," recorded in 1931, is even more explicit about
potential sexual fludity. The blues reflected a culture that accepted
sexuality, including homosexual behavior and identities, as a natural
part of life.
Despite the relatively tolerant attitude shown toward homosexuality by
Afro-American culture, black lesbians and gay men still had a
difficult time. Like other black migrants, they soon learned that
racism crossed the Mason-Dixon line. Economic problems, unemployment,
and segregation plagued black communities across the North. High rents
and housing shortages made privacy a luxury for Harlem's newcomers.
Moreover black homosexuals, like their white counterparts, were
continually under attack from the police and judicial systems. In
1920, young lesbian Mabel Hampton, recently arrived in Harlem from
Winston- Salem, North Carolina, was arrested on trumped-up
prostitution charges and spent two years in Bedford Hills Reformatory.
Augustus Granville Dill, distinguished business editor of the NAACP's
Crisis and personal protégé of DuBois, had his political career
destroyed when he was arrested for soliciting sex in a public
restroom. Black gay people were also under attack from the developing
psychiatric institutions; Jonathan Katz cites a tragic case in which a
young black gay man was incarcerated for most of the 1920s at the
Worcester (Massachusetts) State Hospital. But in spite of racial
oppression, economic hardship, and homophobic persecution, black
lesbians and gay men were able to build a thriving community of their
own within existing Afro- American institutions and traditions.
Private parties were the best place for Harlem lesbians and gay men to
socialize, providing safety and privacy. "We used to go to parties
every other night.... The girls all had the parties," remembered Mabel
Hampton. Harlem parties were extremely varied; the most common kind
was the "rent party." Like the blues, rent parties had been brought
north in the Great Migration. Few of Harlem's new residents had much
money, and sometimes rent was hard to come by. To raise funds, they
sometimes threw enormous parties, inviting the public and charging
admission. There would be dancing and jazz, and bootleg liquor for
sale in the kitchen. It is about just such a party that Bessie Smith
sang her famous "Gimme a Pigfoot and a Bottle of Beer." On any given
Saturday night there were scores of these parties throughout Harlem,
often with those in attendance not knowing their hosts. The dancing
and merriment would continue until dawn, and by morning the landlord
could be paid. Lesbians and gay men were active participants in rent
parties. The New York Age, one of Harlem's newspapers, complained in
1926:
One of these rent parties a few weeks ago was the scene of a tragic
crime in which one jealous woman cut the throat of another, because
the two were rivals for the affections of a third woman. The whole
situation was on a par with the recent Broadway play [about
lesbianism, The Captive], imported from Paris, although the underworld
tragedy took place in this locality. In the meantime, the combination
of bad gin, jealous women, a carving knife, and a rent party is
dangerous to the health of all concerned.
At another Harlem rent party, satirically depicted in Wallace
Thurman's 1932 Harlem Renaissance novel Infants of the Spring, a
flamboyantly bisexual Harlem artist proudly displayed his new protégé,
a handsome, bootblack, to the "fanciful aggregation of Greenwich
Village uranians" he had invited. Gay men could always be found at the
literary gatherings of Alexander Gumby. Gumby, who had arrived in
Harlem near the turn of the century, immediately became entranced with
the theatrical set and decided to open a salon to attract them. He
worked as a postal clerk and acquired a patron, eventually renting a
large studio on Fifth Avenue between 131st and 132nd streets. Known as
Gumby's Bookstore because of the hundreds of books that lined the
walls, the salon drew many theatrica and artistic luminaries. White
author Samuel Steward remembers being taken to Gumby's one evening by
a lesbian friend and enjoying a delightful evening of "reefer,"
bathtub gin, a game of truth, and homosexual exploits. Certainly the
most opulent parties in Harlem were thrown by the heiress A'Lelia
Walker. Walker was a striking, tall, dark-skinned wondan who was
rarely seen without her riding crop and her imposing, jeweled turban.
She was the only daughter of Madame C. J. Walker, a former washerwoman
who had made millions marketing her own hair-straightening process.
When she died, Madame Walker left virtually her entire fortune to
A'Lelia. Whereas Madame Walker had been civic-minded, donating
thousands of dollars to charity, A'Lelia used most of her inheritance
to throw lavish parties in her palatial Hudson River estate, Villa
Lewaro. and at her Manhattan dwelling on 136th Street. Because A'Lelia
adored the company of lesbians and gay men, her parties had a
distinctly gay ambience. Elegant homosexuals such as Edward Perry,
Edna Thomas. Harold Jackman, and Caska Bonds were her closest friends.
So were scores of white celebrities. Novelist Marjorie Worthington
would later remember:
We went several times that winter to Madame Allelia [sic]
Walker's Thursday "at-homes" on a beautiful street in Harlem
known as,Sugar Hill...." [Madame Walker's] lavishly furnished
house was a gathering place not only for artists and authors and
theatrical stars of her own race, but for celebrities from all
over the world. Drinks and food were served, and there was
always music, generously performed enthusiastically received.
Everyone from chorus girls to artists to socialites to visiting
royalty would come at least once to enjoy her hospitality.
Another Afro-American institution that tolerated, and frequenty
encouraged, homosexual patronage was the "buffet flat." "Buffet flats
were after-hours spots that were usually in someone's apartment,"
explained celebrated entertainer Bricktop, "the type of place where
gin was poured out of milk pitchers." Essentially private apartments
where rooms could be rented by the night, buffet flats had sprung up
during the late 1800s to provide overnight accommodations to black
travelers refused service in white-owned hotels. By the 1920s, buffet
flats developed a wilder reputation. Some were raucous establishments
where illegal activities such as drinking, gambling, and prostitution
were available. Others offered a variety of sexual pleasures
cafeteriastyle. A Detroit buffet flat of the latter sort, which Ruby
Smith remembered visiting with her aunt, Bessie Smith, catered to all
variety of sexual tastes. It was "an open house, everything goes on in
that house":
They had a faggot there that was so great that people used to
come there just to watch him make love to another man. He was
that great. He'd give a tongue bath and everything. By the time
he got to the front of that guy he was shaking like a leaf.
People used to pay good just to go in there and see him do his
act.... That same house had a woman that used to . . . take a
cigarette, light it, and puff it with her pussy. A real educated
pussy.
In Harlem, Hazel Valentine ran a similar sex circus on 140th Street.
Called "The Daisy Chain" or the "101 Ranch," it catered to all
varieties of sexual tastes, and featured entertainers such as "Sewing
Machine Bertha" and an enormous transvestite named "Clarenz." The
Daisy Chain became so notorious that both Fats Waller and Count Basie
composed tunes commemorating it.
There were also buffet flats that particularly welcomed gay men. On
Saturday nights pianist David Fontaine would regularly throw stylish
flat parties for his many gay friends. Other noted hosts of gay male
revelry were A'Lelia Walker's friend Caska Bonds, Eddie Manchester and
the older Harlem couple, Jap and Saul. The most notorious such flat
was run by Clinton Moore. Moore was an elegant, light-skinned
homosexual, described as an "American version of the original ...
Proust's Jupien." Moore had a fondness for celebrities, and his
parties allegedly atracted luminaries like Cole Porter, Cary Grant,
and society page columnist Maury Paul. Moore's entertainments were
often low-down and dirty. According to Helen Lawrenson,
Clinton Moore's . . . boasted a young black entertainer named
Joey, vho played the piano and sang but whose specialty was to
remove his clothes and extinguish a lighted candle by sitting on
it until it disappeared. I never saw this feat but everyone else
seemed to have and I was told that he was often hired to perform
at soirees of the elite. 'He sat on lighted candles at one of
the Vanderbilts',' my informant said.
Somewhat more public-and therefore less abandoned-were Harlem's
speakeasies, where gays were usually forced to hide their preferences
and to blend in with the heterosexual patrons. Several Harlem
speakeasies though, some little more than dives, catered specifically
to the "pansy" trade. One such place, an "open" speakeasy since there
was no doorman to keep the uninvited away, was located on the
northwest corner of 126th Street and Seventh Avenue. It was a large,
dimly lit place where gay men could go to pick up "rough trade."
Artist Bruce Nugent, who occasionelly visited the place, remembered it
catering to "rough queers . .
. the kind that fought better than truck drivers and swished better
than Mae
West." Ethel Waters remembered loaning her gowns to the transvestites
who frequented Edmond's Cellar, a low-life saloon at 132nd Street and
Fifth Avenue. Lulu Belle's on Lenox Avenue was another hangout for
female impersonators, named after the famous Broadway melodrama of
1926 starring Leonore Ulric. A more sophisticated crowd of black gay
men gathered nightly at the Hot Cha, at 132nd Street and Seventh
Avenue, to listen to Jimmy Daniels sing and Garland Wilson play piano.
Perhaps the most famous gay-oriented club of the era was Harry
Hansberry's Clam House, a narrow, smoky speakeasy on 133rd Street. The
Clam House featured Gladys Bentley, a 250- pound, masculine,
darkskinned lesbian, who performed all night long in a white tuxedo
and top hat. Bentley, a talented pianist with a magnificent, growling
voice, was celebrated for inventing obscene Iyrics to popular
contemporary melodies. Langston Hughes called her "an amazing
exhibition of musical energy." Eslanda Robeson, wife of actor Paul
Robeson, gushed to a friend, "Gladys Bentley is grand. I've heard her
three nights, and will never be the same!" Schoolteacher Harold
Jackman wrote to his friend Countee Cullen, "When Gladys sings 'St.
James Infirmary,' it makes you weep your heart out." A glimpse into a
speakeasy, based in part on the Clam House. is provided in Blair
Niles' 1931 gay novel Strange Brother. The Lobster Pot is a smoky room
in Harlem, simply furnished with a couple of tables, a piano, and a
kitchen, where white heterosexual journalist June Westwood, Strange
Brother's female protagonist, is first introduced to Manhattan's gay
subculture. The Lobster Pot features a predominantly gay male clientel
and an openly lesbian entertainer named Sybil. "What rhythm!" June
comments to her companions. "And the way she's dressed!" Westbrook
finds the atmosphere intoxicating, but abruptly ends her visit when
she steps outside and witnesses the entrapment of an effeminate black
gay man by the police.
Decidedly safer were the frequent Harlem costume balls, where both men
and women could dress as they pleased and dance with whom they wished.
Called "spectacles in color" by poet La Igston Hughes, they were
attended by thousands. Several cities hosted similar functions, but
the Harlem balls were anticipated with particular excitement. "This
dance has been going on a long time," observed Hughes, "and . . . is
very famous among the male masqueraders of the eastern seaboard, who
come from Boston and Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Atlantic City to
attend.'' Taylor Gordon, a noted concert singer, wrote in 1929: The
last big ball I attended where these men got the most of the prizes
for acting and looking more like ladies than the ladies did
themselves, was at the Savoy in Harlem.... The show that was put on
that night for a dollar admission, including the privilege to dance,
would have made a twenty-five dollar George White's "Scandals" opening
look like a side show in a circus. The largest balls were the annual
events held by the Hamilton Lodge at the regal Rockland Palace, which
could accommodate up to six thousand people. Only slightly smaller
were the balls given irregularly at the dazzling Savoy Ballroom, with
its crystal chandeliers and elegant marble staircase. The organizers
would obtain a police permit making the ball, and its participants,
legal for the evening. The highlight of the event was the beauty
contest, in which the fashionably dressed drags would vie for the
title of Queen of the Ball.
Charles Henri Ford and Parker Tyler's classic 1933 gay novel The Young
and Evil suggests that these balls were just as popular with white
gays as with black. Julian, the white protagonist, dons a little
makeup (just enough to be "considered in costume and so get in for a
dollar less"), leaves his Greenwich Village apartment, and sets off to
a Harlem ball. Once there he greets his friends, dances to the jazz
music, gets exceedingly drunk, flirts with the band leader, and
eventually exchanges phone numbers with a handsome stranger. But drag
balls lacked the primary allure of the buffet flat: privacy. These
cross-dressing celebrations were enormous events and many of those who
attended were spectators, there to observe rather than participate. It
was not unusual to see the cream of Harlem society, as well as much of
the white avant-garde, in the ballroom's balconies, straining their
necks to view the contestants. The costume balls, parties, speakeasies
and buffet flats of Harlem provided an arena for homosexual
interaction, but not for the development of homosocial networks. One
area where black lesbians and gay men found particular bonds of
friendship was within Harlem's predominantly heterosexual
entertainment world. While some entertainers, like popular composer
Porter Grainger and choir leader Hall Johnson, kept their homosexual
activities private, others were open with their audiences. Female
impersonator Phil Black, entertainer Frankie "Half Pint" Jaxon, and
singer George Hanna used elements of homosexuality in their
professional acts and were still highly respected within the
entertainment community. Both Black and Jaxon wore women's clothing
while on stage and Hanna even recorded his "Freakish Blues" without
fear of censure.
For black lesbians, whose social options were more limited than those
of their male counterparts, the support offered by the black
entertainment world for nontraditional lifestyles was especially
important. After leaving her family home in North Carolina, Mabel
Hampton worked with her lover as a dancer in a Coney Island show
before landing a position at Harlem's famed Lafayette Theatre. By
entering the show business life, Hampton was able to earn a good
income, limit her social contact with men and move within a
predominantly female social world. Many bisexual and lesbian black
women, including Bessie Smith, Gladys Bently, Jackie "Moms" Mabley,
Alberta Hunter, Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Josephine Baker and Ethel Waters
found similar advantages in the show business life. Nearly all these
women adopted a heterosexual public persona, most favoring a "red hot
mama" style, and kept their love affairs with women a secret, but a
few acknowledged their sexuality openly. Gladys Bentley, of course,
was one exception. Another was Ma Rainey. Rainey was a short, squat,
dark-skinned woman with a deep, earthy voice and a warm, friendly
smile. She was the first vaudeville entertainer to incorporate the
blues into her performance and has justifiably become known as the
"Mother of the Blues." Though married, the flamboyant entertainer was
known to take women as lovers. Her extraordinary song, "Prove It on Me
Blues," speaks directly to the issue of lesbianism. In it she admits
to her preference for male attire and female companionship, yet dares
her audience to "prove it" on her. Rainey's defense of her lesbian
life was quite remarkable in its day, and has lost little of its
immediacy through the years.
Back to:
Gay Men, Lesbians, Bisexuals and Transgenders in Harlem
Where Are the Blues?
Bibliography
jum...@my-deja.com
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> I have posted an anthology of my writings because the individual
> who I have been discussing philosophy with ....
Which individual was that? I don't recall having a philosophy
discussion (yet) with anybody on this list.
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> ... has resorted to "copying and pasting" philosophical passages
> (among other things, mostly irrelevant) ...
Which passages were irrelevant, and why?
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> ... akin to a robot, to cover up the blatant ignorance he has
> shown to this forum again and again.
Which method or methods do you employ to evaluate the degree
of ignorance?
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> This individual has in the past enjoyed coming off as "intelligent"
> and "cultured" in this forum ...
To which evidence do you point that establishes I've derived
any enjoyment by these exchanges? Where have I claimed to be
"intelligent" or "cultured" ?
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> ... and to his dismay, I have exposed him as a terrorist and
> cultural leper, vandal, barbarian, and, worst of all, IMBECILE.
How do you show that somebody satisfies the definitions of
these terms?
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> Don't be fooled by his "copying and pasting"; it is his thin veneer
> of intellectualism.
I thought you said "copying and pasting" was irrelevant. Is
that what you mean by "intellectualism," however thin its veneer?
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> He is unable to post original ideas, so he posts those of others ...
Why should I have original ideas?
What's wrong with the ideas of others?
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> ... and gives cheap criticism of them ...
Examples? What about that criticism makes it "cheap" ? What are
your methods and criteria for assessing something as "cheap" ?
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> ... whilst failing to acknowledge the gaping holes in his own
> flimsy, ignorant, yet abundant commentary.
Examples? How do you determine (generally) whether there are
"gaping holes" and whether something is or is not "flimsy" ?
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> .. This individual is clearly unable to grasp the concepts in my
> writings, so he has resorted to a game of semantics and obfuscation.
Then explain the concepts you say I'm "unable to grasp." Which
of -MY- concepts were -you- "unable to grasp?"
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> Originally I had asked: "Name me a great Negro philosopher?" The
> eunuch's response ...
See, Pyro? You didn't read my reply when I reported to you
that I'm NOT a eunuch. THEREFORE YOU ARE DYSLEXIC !!!!!!!!!!!
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> ... was: "Booker T. Washington. Johnnie Cochran." I also asked:
> "Name me a Black Mozart?" This IDIOT's response ...
Which IDIOT was that?
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> ... was: "Winton Marsallis, Amad Jamal, etc., et al., and a dozen
> of other jazz artists all have the skills of a Mozart."
No, Pyro. YOU DIDN'T GET YOUR FACTS CORRECT. I DID -NOT- MENTION
THE NAME "AMAD JAMAL" IN MY -ORIGINAL- ANSWER. THIS WAS THE TEXT:
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
From: jum...@my-deja.com
> Here's what YOU had originally asked for, with MY replies:
>
>---------
>> From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
>>> Tell me of a great Negro philosopher?
>
> From: jum...@my-deja.com
>> Booker T. Washington. Johnnie Cochran.
>
>---------
>> From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
>>> Tell me of a black Mozart?
>
> From: jum...@my-deja.com
>> Stevie Wonder, Winton Marsallis, Louis Armstrong,
>> Dizzy Gillespie; more than a dozen jazz artists
>> with skills of a Mozart ...
As you can see, the name "Amad Jamal" DID NOT APPEAR in the text
of my original answer. I APPENDED "Amad Jamal" in a -LATER- post:
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
From: jum...@my-deja.com
> YOU DON'T HAVE ANY SUCCESS, "relative" or otherwise, compared to
> Cochran, Marsallis, and I will add Kenny Drew, Jr., George Russell,
> Duke Ellington, John Hicks, and Amad Jamal. ALL OF THEM ARE BLACK
> PEOPLE MORE SUCCESSFULL, MORE ARTISTIC, GREATER CULTURAL TREASURES,
> RESPECTED INDIVIDUALS, LEADERS OF CIVILIZATION, CONTRIBUTORS TO THE
> POSITIVE GOOD. *-UNLIKE-* *-YOU-* !!!! YOU ARE A *-LOSER-* !!!
> HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You see, Pyro, I had NEVER juxtaposed "Winton Marsallis" with "Amad
Jamal." I juxtaposed the -LAST- -NAME- -ONLY- of "Marsallis" when
I had introduced "Amad Jamal." SO YOU ARE A LIAR !!!!!!!!!!!!!
And you continue to provide evidence to this newsgroup of the SHODDY
practices you employ when conducting and reporting research !!!!!!!
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> When I wrote "great philosopher" the implication was clear ...
No, there was no clear implication. And even if there -WERE- an
implication it would be incumbent upon the READER to CONSTRUCT that
implication. So you cannot say implication, or inference, exists
in the text WITHOUT INCLUDING THE READER in your "analysis." It was
NOT clear. So make it clear next time, ok?
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> ... that I was referring to those of the stature of Socrates, Plato,
> Aristotle, Kant, Nietzsche, John Locke, Rene Descartes, St. Thomas
> Aquinas, etc., et al.
Fine. So this is YOUR IMPLICATION NOW. I'm confused however,
because I'm not sure whether Socrates or Plato has more stature,
or how to assess the relative merits of Aristotle, Kant, Nietzsche,
Locke, Descarte, Aquinas. Can you provide a 1-10, or 1-100 scale?
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> When I wrote "Name me a Black Mozart" I was also very clear in
> regards to stature.
No you weren't. You didn't SAY the word "stature." Now you do.
So where does Mozart "rate" on your 1-10, or 1-100 scale?
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> This imbecile ...
Are you referring to yourself (tail) again?
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> ... is now attempting to distort what I had clearly implied, to dig
> himself out of the embarassment he brought to himself in this forum.
What embarassment is that?
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> One of the methods he uses to save face is to argue that there
> is no way to measure genius, or to compare geniuses of different
> fields. Yes, it is true that one cannot compare geniuses of different
> fields, and that the greatness of an artist or contributor to culture
> cannot simply be tallied like the number of home runs in a baseball
> game, for example. However, genius manifests and shows itself in the
> creation of something. If it were impossible to discern genius -- or
> GREATNESS -- how could we possibly differentiate Sophocles from an
> ape?
So, Pyro, tell us how YOU differentiate Sophocles from an ape.
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> Obviously this idiot DOES NOT UNDERSTAND ART OR CULTURE.
Then explain ART OR CULTURE to the newsgroup.
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> His conclusions on these issues shows that.
Which conclusions were they?
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> Worst of all, he has been UNCLEAR.
Where was I UNCLEAR, and why don't you ask a question? When
faced with a lack of clarity do you typically FAIL to ask the
relevant and proper question? Do such "habits" explain Pyro?
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> On another instance I wrote about Plato's writings: "It [his
> writings] should be preserved in golden letters." This imbecile
> responded:
Which imbecile was that?
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> "How would that improve upon the substance of his writings?"
------->>>>>>> MISQUOTE !!!!! I said:
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
From: jum...@my-deja.com
> HOW DO "GOLDEN LETTERS" IMPROVE UPON THE SUBSTANCE OF PLATO ???
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
So, Pyro, be VERY CAREFUL if you use "quotation marks" BECAUSE
YOU JUST MADE A MISATTRIBUTION, WHICH -VIOLATES- ETIQUETTE !!!
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
NOW ANSWER MY QUESTION, IF YOU PLEASE. DO -NOT- DUCK THE ISSUES !
I did -NOT- say "his writings." I said "Plato." !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> This response (if we will call it that) clearly gives ...
Why "clearly gives" -- can you demonstrate that?
^^^^^^^^^^^
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> ... those who regularly participate at alt.fan.unabomber ...
Who might that be? Do you have a list? What are the criteria
you utilize to decide who does, or who does not, have a regular
participation? What might be the RELEVANCE of discrimination
between those who "regularly participate" and those who do not?
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> ... an indication of what a FOOL he is.
Who is? By what method or process do you adjudicate that?
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> On another instance I wrote: "Putting a convicted criminal, still
> having the warm blood of his victims dripping from his hands, back
> on the street again, is the essential _TRUTH_ you proclaim? The
> vociferous charlatan, Johnnie Cochran, who used all kinds of tricks,
> LIES, and mob influence?" To paraphrase him, the ignorant eunuch ...
Uh, I think you -CANNOT- make that "eunuch" word stick because
it's not the case, as I had informed you previously. What an
irony that you continue to use the adjective "ignorant" when in
fact you persist in -LYING- about something THAT IS NOT TRUE !!!
THIS IS VERY TYPICAL OF YOUR "MANNER OF PROCESS" AND DEFEATS ANY
EFFORT AT CREDIBILITY ON YOUR PART ON ALL OF YOUR OTHER ARGUMENTS.
PLAY BY THE RULES OF COURTEOUS DEBATE IF YOU EXPECT TO BE A MASTER!
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> ... then responded: "O.J. Simpson was not convicted of a crime.
> In America you can only refer to someone as convicted if he is
> found guilty by a jury and judge in the court of law. If Cochran
> didn't represent O.J. someone else would have instead. As an
> attorney, Cochran's duty was to represent O.J. to the best of his
> ability. Throughout the trial Marcia Clark had the opportunity to
> challenge Jonny Cochran's defense of O.J."
YOU DO NOT HAVE MY PERMISSION TO "PARAPHRASE" MY WORDS INSIDE OF
YOUR QUOTATION MARKS !!! ANOTHER -MISATTRIBUTION- ATTEMPT BY YOU !
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I DID NOT SAY that Cochran's duty was to represent "to the best of
his ability" though that's something I might agree with NOW. I did
NOT say Marcia Clark had an "opportunity to challenge." All I said
was that Marcia Clark was THERE TO CHALLENGE at the trial. Whether
or not she had an "opportunity" is a SEPARATE QUESTION !~!~!~!~!~!~!
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
YOU ARE MISREPRESENTING THE DISCOURSE BY NOT EMPLOYING EXACT CITES!
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
YOU ARE SLIPSHOD AND SLOPPY. YOU ILLUSTRATE YOUR LOW-GRADE LEVEL !
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
YOU DO -NOT- QUALIFY AS A MASTER-RACE "ARYAN" SO GO TO AUSCHWITZ !!
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Here's what I ACTUALLY said. And for readers of this list, anytime
you need the STRAIGHT EVIDENCE, YOU'LL KNOW WHOM TO SUSPECT !!!!!!!
From: jum...@my-deja.com
> Uh, last I checked it was a Jury and Judge who exonerated O.J.,
> *-NOT-* Johnny Cochran. All that time, of course, Marcia Clark
> WAS THERE TO CHALLENGE EVERYTHING Mr. Cochran did, with plenty of
> trial time and television coverage so that Pyro could TOSS OUT
> peanuts. DID YOU THROW IN YOUR 2-CENTS WHILE YOU HAD THE CHANCE,
> PYRO ???? If Johnny Cochran hadn't been a defense attorney it
> would have been somebody else because in the UNITED STATES OF
> AMERICA people charged with a crime are ENTITLED to legal
> representation if they cannot afford it. So you have your "facts"
> WRONG if you think O.J. was a "convicted criminal, still having
> the warm blood of his victims dripping from his hands." In the
> UNITED STATES OF AMERICA people are labelled as "convicted
> criminals" if, and only if, they are -CONVICTED- by a COURT OF
> LAW for some CRIMINAL CRIME. Evidently you don't subscribe to
> the BASIC PRINCIPLES enunciated by our Constitution and Bill of
> Rights? Are you an UN-AMERICAN commie ??? Lawyers are SUPPOSED
> TO REPRESENT clients. Juries and Judges are SUPPOSED TO DETERMINE
> truth. That's how JUSTICE works in THE USA. YOU *-CANNOT-*
> CLAIM SOMEBODY IS GUILTY BEFORE HOLDING THE TRIAL.
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> When I used the word "convicted" I was referring to the
> overwhelming evidence stacked up against O.J.
Fallacy of Non-Standard Word Usage
----------------------------------
v.t. convict: (1) To prove guilty; find guilty after a judicial trial.
(2) To awaken to a sense of guilt or sin.
n. convict: (3) One serving a sentence in prison.
(4) One found guilty of a crime.
At the time of Johnny Cochran's representation, the civil suit had
not gone forward, so when O.J. was put "back on the street again" he
had not (yet) been brought to acknowledge definition #2 (above).
The "overwhelming evidence stacked up" DOES NOT RENDER A CONVICTION
WITHOUT A FAIR-TRIAL. THE FAIR-TRIAL WAS CONDUCTED OVER A VERY LONG
PERIOD OF TIME WITH AMPLE OPPORTUNITY FOR -EVERYBODY- IN THE USA TO
PRESENT AN "OPINION" AND MAKE ARGUMENTS (by _amicus_curiae_ briefs,
if necessary) AND THE CONCLUSION OF THAT FAIR-TRIAL IN THE CRIMINAL
CASE WAS EXONERATION !!! SINCE YOU MADE A GROSS ERROR WITH REGARDS
TO ASSESSMENT OF THE O.J.SIMPSON CASE YOUR CREDIBILITY IS LOW !!!
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> I was referring to _TRUTH_ and general judgment of intelligent
> people, not that group of retarded pithecanthopuses referred to as
> the "jury."
THE JURY DOES NOT RENDER THE -ULTIMATE- VERDICT! THE JURY RENDERS
ITS -FINDINGS- OF FACT BASED ON THE TRIAL-HEARING. THE JUDGE TAKES
THE JURY'S RECOMMENDATION OF VERDICT AND IN ALMOST EVERY CASE WILL
RUBBER-STAMP THE JURY. ONLY THE JUDGE CAN RENDER THE -FINAL- VERDICT!
DOES YOUR -IGNORANCE- OF LAW SUGGEST THAT YOU HAVE -BAD- GENES ????
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
PRIOR TO THE TRIAL BOTH SIDES HAD AN OPPORTUNITY TO CONDUCT JURY
SELECTION, WITH DISQUALIFICATION MOTIONS AND PRE-EMPTIVE CHALLENGES.
MARCIA CLARK *-AND-* JOHNNY COCHRAN -APPROVED- OF THE JURY *-BEFORE-*
THE TRIAL BEGAN. SO THEY WERE -LESS- "RETARDED" THEN *-YOU-* !!!!
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> The verdict: he was guilty.
FALSE !!! YOU ARE A LIAR AND A CHEAT !!!
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> Of course, with his mind as limited as it is ...
Whose mind?
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> ... most likely he will continue prating ...
Who will continue prating?
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> ... about O.J. not having "officially" been convicted ...
O.J. lost the civil case which renders a "conviction" under
definition #2 (above), but you were speaking of the CRIMINAL CASE
and NOT the CIVIL CASE.
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> ... and continue on with semantics and legal jargon.
Sorry Charlie, but that's the "name of the game" when deciding
guilt and innocence. If you were the person "on trial" then you'd
PAY ATTENTION TO SEMANTICS AND LEGAL JARGON.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> He is a FOOL who cannot think abstractly.
Who is? Your "evidence," "argument," and "demonstration?"
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> The ideas, that no one can be judged guilty of a crime UNDER THE
> COURT OF LAW until the facts of a case are examined, that all
> persons accused of crimes have a right to face their accusers and
> defend themselves before a judge, that if there is any doubt about
> a person's guilt he or she should be judged innocent, that any law
> that seems unreasonable or grossly unfair should be set aside, are
> invaluable legacies bestowed upon Western culture (and other
> cultures) by the Romans.
>
> Of course, this system is predicated upon the notion that the
> general public has the capacity to make their own decisions rather
> than abide by despotic rule, that the public must be _trusted_ and
> relied upon to determine the innocence or guilt of a person charged
> with a crime, and that this system diminishes, to a great degree, the
> inequities inherent under autocratic rule. But this system is, and
> never can be, perfect: there will always be foolish jurors,
> incompetent prosecutors and deceitful attorneys, foolish judges,
> foolish media, a foolish public, etc.
Interesting case of plagiarism? (See above).
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> This imbecile ...
Who?
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> ... enjoys ...
Evidence that there's any enjoyment in this?
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> ... flaunting jocular non-sequiturs that I have drawn ...
Such as?
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> ... taking them at face value and debunking them ...
So how shall we tell the difference if you don't inform us?
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> ... as if he has actually made a point ...
What point was that?
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> ... (and of course missing the underlying meaning) ...
What was the underlying meaning that was missed?
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> He referred to them as "falsities" and even numbered them, to give
> you an indication of his stupidity.
So people who use numbers and count things are stupid?
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> However, as he was doing this he drew his own non-sequiturs.
> For example, I wrote: "We know you are a bastard, now what is left
> to determine is which of the twelve goats your mother fucks is your
> father." He responded: "The '12 goats' reference is apropos to what
> seems to be your assessment of a (Satanic) Jesus and disciples."
> Nowhere did I even imply that the 12 goats I referred to were the
> disciples of Jesus. The 12 goats could have been the 12 jurors who
> gave their verdict in the O.J. Simpson trial, or something else, if
> there were any such connotation (which there wasn't). As you can
> see, even at the game of semantics HE LOSES.
Suggesting that trial jurors are goats still seems SATANIC !
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> On another instance he wrote: "Agent99 and Pyro pose themself as
> 'perfect' people without sin." Having been a regular at a.f.u. for
> at least several months, this individual should be familiar with my
> admission to being naive about many things due to my age. I have
> admitted that I am far from perfect, and have many things to learn
> in life.
WHAT WERE YOUR SPECIFIC CITATIONS WHERE YOU ADMITTED THIS?
Until you DO LEARN those MANY THINGS perhaps you can TONE DOWN
the UNWARRANTED ARROGANCE you display. While you're at it, why
not study LAW so you'll have more credibility than the GUTTER ?
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> He later on claims, "you [Pyro] win the vulgarity contest hands
> down," but forgets he initiated the vulgarity by referring to me
> as a "cocksucker."
Allow me to remind the newsgroup that "Pyro," under one or more of
his various addresses, has this 1999 record of vulgarity on a.f.u.
Pyro said "fuck" 6/28, 7/31, 8/24, 8/26, 9/24, 10/19 (3x), 10/27
Pyro said "fucker" 10/29
Pyro said "shit" 7/27, 8/5, 8/13, 10/19 (4x)
Pyro said "fucking" 6/28, 7/2, 8/24, 8/30, 10/5, 10/19, 10/27
Pyro said "bitch" 7/27, 7/31, 8/5, 8/26, 9/16
My reference to the word "cocksucker" occured on 10/30. <----*
PYRO WINS THE VULGARITY CONTEST ON BOTH "INITIATION" AND "VOLUME" !!
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Add to the list of Pyro's mental aberrations the word *-DENIAL-* !
What do you know? It seems *-PROVEN-* that Pyro -IS- a "cocksucker."
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> Until he referred to Johnnie as a great philosopher and to dozens of
> Negro jazz musicians as possessing the skills of a Mozart, I
> respected him. I refrained from insults until he hurled ad hominem
> attacks toward me.
YES, BUT I -MIGHT- BE JEWISH, SO YOU DON'T KNOW !!!!!!
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> To top it off, he accuses me of having no appreciation for the arts.
> I will post some previous messages directed to Jumangi and let you
> all decide if I show no appreciation for the arts.
This is really sad. Posting messages to demonstrate "appreciation
for the arts." DOESN'T PROVE JACK, JACK !!! GET A LIFE !!!!
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> Then, in finding him refer to pygmies ...
In order to be a "pygmy" one must be:
"diminutive; dwarfish; trivial; unimportant; a small
person or thing regarded as insignificant; a member
of a Negroid people of equatorial Africa, ranging in
height from four to five feet; any of the Negrito
peoples of the Philippines, Andaman Islands, and
Malaya; in Greek legend, one of a race of dwarfs."
so Johnny Cochran is -NOT- a "pygmy" since he's taller than five feet,
and is not from the Philippines, Andaman Islands, or Malaya, and is
not a member of "Greek legend," and is NOT "unimportant/insignificant"
because *-YOU-* have given Cochran A LOT OF COVERAGE HERE on A.F.U.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> ... as "great philosophers" and "having the skills of a Mozart,"
> I'll let you decide who is the IMBECILE who lacks understanding of
> ART and culture.
Thanks, Pyro. WE WERE ALL WAITING FOR *-YOU-* TO GIVE US
PERMISSION TO DECIDE "WHO" IMBECILES ARE, AND WHETHER WE WERE
GOING TO APPRECIATE AND "UNDERSTAND" *-ART-* AND *-CULTURE-*.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> He asked me for my definition of TRUTH but apparently my words have
> gone right past him. On message #1 is my answer: BEAUTY = _TRUTH_.
********* T H E N P R O V E I T *********
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> I would also like to point out that I have edited my posts to
> make my ideas as clear as possible to the audience.
I shall edit them even further !
- regards
- jb
.
-------- DANGER, DANGER, PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK !!!! -------
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> .... (Please, do not ask me what is beauty).
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> "There is only one thing I know, and that is that I know nothing."
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> If this is what we are to look forward to, I hope there is a
> nuclear war.
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> ... perhaps like throwing feces to Michelangelo's "Pieta", or
> farting during the performance of "Requiem" ....
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> ... to have a new Mozart would be boring and repetitious.
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> ... The Spartans' valor left a deep impression on all Greeks.
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> He believed, in this case, no life was better than some life ...
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> ... you have disqualified yourself of being able to participate ...
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> ... YOU ARE WRONG ON EVERYTHING.
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> ... As Ivan Turgueniev wrote to Liev Tolstoy, "The truth is like
> a lizard: you open your hand when you think you have got it to
> contemplate it, and the only thing you see is the tail between your
> fingers. It has escaped knowing it will grow a new tail." And
> Nietzsche wrote, "Let's define our task: once and for all we have
> to question the value of TRUTH." I have serious doubts that you
> are familiar with what a library is ...
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> You, IDIOT, have elevated this group of pygmies ...
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> Jesus said: "I am the WAY, the TRUTH, and the LIFE." And still,
> you crucified him, you deicide!
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> Your subconscious betrayed you: what I was using as symbolism of
> truth made you think about your father's dick.
>
> You know better than anyone else how you feel his "tail" between
> your fingers, bastard!
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
>... people like you are the assassins of TRUTH. What you are
> doing is raping and profaning it, as you do to _BEAUTY_,
> cultural leper. You bastardize everything you touch.
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> Asshole, what do you mean by, "They [agent99 and Pyro] cannot
> follow the basic rules of basic reasoning"?
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> ... your writing, like in a lie detector, shows not only
> _ignorance_ but also your hoofs.
>
> [ ... ]
>
> We know you are a bastard, now the only thing we have to determine
> is which of the 12 goats your mother fucks is your father.
From: Pyro 1488 <pyro...@aol.com>
> ... this is an idiotic judgement that no one should care about.
Ok, thanks! See ya !
.
============================================================
http://www.silcom.com/~patrick/mag3/FASCSMPR.htm
------------------------------------------------
Fascism in a Pinstriped Suit
by Dr. Michael Parenti
If fascism came to America, some say it would be an unbearable
nightmare drastically disrupting the everyday pattern of our lives.
And since our lives seem to retain their normal pattern, it follows
that fascism has not taken over. In actuality, however, the fascist
state, like all states, has no need to make nightmarish intrusions
into the trivia of every citizen's life.
The Orwellian image of Big Brother commanding an obscure citizen to do
his morning exercises via two-way television leaves us with a grossly
exaggerated caricature of the authoritarian state. Rather than
alerting us to more realistic dangers, novels like1984 cloud our
vision with fanciful horrors of the future, thereby making the present
look not all that bad in comparison, and leaving us the more convinced
that there is no cause for alarm.
The dirty truth is that many people find fascism to be not
particularly horrible. I once asked some Iranian businesspeople to
describe what life had been like under the Shah's police state. "It
was perfect," they responded. Workers and servants could be cheaply
procured, profits were high, and they lived very well. To be sure,
fascism is not perfect for everyone. Mussolini's Italy and Hitler's
Germany inflicted a great deal of intentional hardship upon working
people, including the destruction of labor unions, the loss of job
benefits, and a shift in national income from the lower and middle
classes to the upper class. Many among thepetite bourgeoisie in
Germany, who generally supported the Nazi party, suffered the loss of
their small businesses and the dread slippage into working class ranks
- with jobs in the armaments factories, when they were lucky enough to
find employment. The number of Germans who lived in poverty and want
increased substantially as wages were cut by as much as forty percent.
Those who equate fascism with the horrors of Auschwitz are correct in
their moral condemnation but mistaken in their sense of sequence. The
worst of Auschwitz did not come until the war years. As late as 1939,
the Nazi state was still pursuing a policy of encouraging, and more
often forcing, the emigration of Jews to other lands. Mass liquidation
as a "final solution" was not seriously considered and was in fact
opposed until Hitler's order came (sometime after March, 1941, most
historians believe).
The concentration camp was never the normal condition for the average
gentile German. Unless one were Jewish, or poor and unemployed, or of
active leftist persuasion or otherwise openly anti-Nazi, Germany from
1933 until well into the war was not a nightmarish place. All the
"good Germans" had to do was obey the law, pay their taxes, give their
sons to the army, avoid any sign of political heterodoxy, and look the
other way when unions were busted and troublesome people disappeared.
Since many "middle Americans" already obey the law, pay their taxes,
give their sons to the army, are themselves distrustful of political
heterodoxy, and applaud when unions are broken and troublesome people
are disposed of, they probably could live without too much personal
torment in a fascist state - some of them certainly seem eager to do
so. Orwell's imaginings to the contrary, what is so terrifying about
fascism is its "normality," its compatibility with the collective
sentiments of substantial numbers of "normal" persons - though
probably never a majority in any society.
We might do well to stop thinking of fascism as being a simple
either-or condition. The political system of any one country
encompasses a variety of uneven and seemingly incongruous
institutional practices. To insist that fascism does not obtain until
every abomination of the Nazi state is replicated and every vestige of
constitutional government is obliterated is to overlook, at our peril,
the disturbingly antidemocratic, authoritarian manifestations inherent
in many states that call themselves democracies.
Selective Repression
It is sometimes argued by those who deny the imminence of American
fascism that we are more free today than ever before. One's ability to
accept such reassurance partly depends on the class conditions and
life chances that one confronts. The affluent individual whose views
fit into that portion of the American political spectrum known as the
"mainstream" (from rightist Republican to centrist Democrat) and whose
political actions are limited to the standardized forms of
participation - informal discussion, television viewing, newspaper
reading, and voting - is apt to dismiss the contention that America is
fascistic. But those who oppose the existing political orthodoxy and
who find themselves under surveillance and subjected to the
intimidations, harassments, and sanctions of the U.S. national
security state have a less sanguine view. Over the last several
decades just about every African-American protest leader who achieved
any local or national prominence eventually ended up either under
indictment, in jail, on appeal, in hiding, in exile, or murdered by
the forces of "law and order." Most of the killings have gone
unreported in the national press. Few, if any, of the law officers
involved have ever been convicted of murder by the predominantly
white, middle American juries that pass judgment on these matters.
The leniency displayed by authorities toward those on the right side
of the political spectrum stands in marked contrast to the relentless,
punitive justice meted out to people of color, the poor, and radicals
of all stripes. While the guardians go unguarded, political activists
are arrested on trumped-up charges and end up serving astronomical
sentences for crimes they never committed or for relatively minor
offenses.
The last decade or so has seen a growth in reactionary and racist
groups. Yet the government does little about them. In the first half
of 1995 alone, a county employee in California who refused a demand by
rightist anti-tax activists to remove an IRS lien imposed on one of
them, was beaten by two men and slashed with a knife. A judge in
Montana was terrorized, threatened with kidnapping, and had a murder
contract put out on her by a militia group that claimed she had no
jurisdiction over them. A federal wildlife worker received a threat
that his wife and children would be bound in barbed wire and stuffed
down a well. During a forum on Capitol Hill, government workers,
environmentalists, and abortion rights activists described incidents
of harassment, intimidation, and violence perpetrated by paramilitary
groups (<M>Washington Post, July 13, 1995). A number of these groups
are financed by shady individuals of affluent means. In 1995 the
Republican-controlled Congress refused to hold congressional hearings
on these paramilitary groups. Meanwhile, the Justice Department has
done next to nothing about the menacing arms caches, threats, and
openly violent actions these organizations have delivered upon others.
At the same time, however, the government's repressive mechanism is
geared up against leftist dissenters. The FBI and local police Red
Squads are once again spying, burglarizing, disrupting, and otherwise
targeting various organizations that work for social justice, peace
and disarmament, or environmentalism. During the 1980s almost two
hundred organizations were labeled, not communist fronts as during the
repressive McCarthy era of the 1950s, but "terrorist fronts,"
including Martin Luther King Jr.'s own Southern Christian Leadership
Conference, and various church and student organizations. President
Clinton lifted not a finger to undo this new round-up list, and in
1995 he supported a repressive counterterrorist act which gives the
president power to arrest and detain without benefit of evidence or
trial or even formal charges, individuals deemed to be aiding any
group designated as "terrorist" by the President.
Read the rest of this enlightening article in Prevailing Winds
Magazine issue #3. For a complete magazine and catalogue simply send
$7.00 (magazine and post.) to: Prevailing Winds, P.O. Box 23511, Santa
Barbara, CA 93121. For a four issue subcription please include $20.00.
Make sure to let us know which issue you would like, or would like
your suscription to start on. Thanks for your support!
jum...@my-deja.com
http://www.jeffcomp.com/faq/index.html
--------------------------------------
FAQ - What's REALLY Wrong With Objectivism?
Note From The Author
What's REALLY Wrong With Objectivism?
What Does It Mean To Sanction Something?
Is Objectivism Open Or Closed?
Ayn Rand On Emergencies.
Biggest Screwball Response So Far:
How The Ayn Rand Institute Screwed Two Prominent Objectivists
How The Ayn Rand Institute Screwed Linda Reardan and Jerry Kirkpatrick
How The Ayn Rand Institute Screwed Richard Sanford and Genevieve Sanford
How The Intellectual Activist Screwed Richard Sanford
Leonard Peikoff: Who Needs Him?
Leonard Peikoff Threatens To Sue Barbara Branden
Barbara Branden Throws Down The Glove!
More Crap From Peikoff
My Dinner With Andy
The Dishonesty Of Stephen Speicher
Links To Other Sites:
Principles Of Efficient Thinking A tape series by Barbara Branden. Get
the most from your mind!
Capitalism: A Treatise On Economics George Reisman's fabulous new book
on Capitalism!
The Benefits And Hazards Of The Philosophy Of Ayn Rand by Nathaniel
Branden
The Jefferson School A great new Objectivist organization by George
Reisman and Edith Packer.
The Society For Objective Science Science meets Objectivism.
Full Context An international Objectivist publication.
The Contradiction In Anarchism by Robert Bidinotto.
The Fountainhead (parody) by Robert Lee.
Check out the world's fastest keyboard!
=================================================================
http://www.jeffcomp.com/faq/wrong.html
--------------------------------------
What's REALLY Wrong With Objectivism?
by Chris Wolf
Why do so many Objectivists insist on attacking the honesty,
integrity, and character of their opponents? Are such attacks an
aberration, or is this sort of behavior actually advocated by
Objectivism?
Such attack behavior, so prevalent among Objectivists, is not
supported and advocated by the fundamental principles of the
philosophy of Objectivism. However such behavior is personally
supported and advocated by Ayn Rand, Leonard Peikoff, and many of
their supporters. Such behavior is a clear case of misapplication of
the fundamental principles of Objectivism. (If you think it's
impossible for the originator of a philosophy to misapply it; think
again.) Anyone who has had much exposure to the philosophy of
Objectivism, or the Objectivist movement, has observed the endless
moralizing and condemnation which seems to characterize the philosophy
of Objectivism and many of its adherents. People who oppose the
philosophy of Objectivism, or who simply espouse ideas at odds with
Objectivism, frequently find their character, honesty, and integrity
under vicious attack.
For example, we are told that an academic Marxist is not merely
mistaken, but is 'evil,' and is guilty of practicing 'evasion.' People
who are the victims of such attacks frequently come away baffled. They
cannot understand how their character and honesty can be judged solely
by the ideas they have proposed or defended. These personal attacks
cause many people to hurriedly back away from Objectivism, and refuse
to have anything further to do with it. The victims of such attacks
frequently conclude that Objectivism is simply another nutty cult, not
worth wasting time on.
Anyone who has had much contact with the Objectivist movement knows
that it is far from being a united movement. On the contrary, the
in-fighting, warring factions, and schisms would rival those of any
religious cult. This seems very strange, coming as it does from a
philosophical movement that proudly claims its devotion to reason and
logic, and insists that its entire philosophy is an integrated whole.
The fact is, Objectivists are in violent disagreement concerning the
applications of their philosophy. Of course, disagreement as to the
correct application of any philosophy is to be expected. This is
inherent in the fact that conceptual knowledge is not automatically
given to human beings. Such knowledge must be discovered by
individuals who are not omniscient. But in Objectivism, the
disagreement is seldom polite. Friendships, marriages, and lifetime
associations are constantly torn apart by disagreements among
Objectivists. Obviously there is much more going on here than a simple
academic disagreement over the proper interpretation of a philosophy.
To repeat, there is no flaw in the fundamental principles of
Objectivism, but there is a very great flaw in some of Ayn Rand's
applications and interpretations of the fundamental principles of the
Objectivist ethics. This flaw is based on Rand's seeming inability to
separate philosophy from psychology, and her insistence on making
unrealistic and inappropriate moral judgments about other people. She
makes claims about human psychology that are never proved or defended.
The claims are simply asserted as self-evident philosophical truths.
These claims fall into three different, but closely-related
categories:
Inherently Dishonest Ideas
Evasion
Evil
Summary
Let us look at each of these categories, in detail.
(You may click on a link to go directly to a particular category.)
Inherently Dishonest Ideas
Like any philosophy, Objectivism has begun to fragment into various
schools of thought, each with its own interpretation of Objectivism,
and with each school convinced that its particular interpretation is
the correct version. This fragmentation has been accompanied by
tremendous bitterness and character assassination. Probably nowhere
has this bitterness reached such heights as over the subject of
inherently dishonest ideas.
Currently, the two main schools of Objectivist thought are headed by
Dr. Leonard Peikoff and Dr. David Kelley. Peikoff is supported by the
Ayn Rand Institute (ARI), while Kelley is supported by the Institute
For Objectivist Studies (IOS). Dr. Peikoff considers Dr. Kelley to be
a dishonest renegade; a dangerous man who has abandoned and betrayed
the fundamental principles of Objectivism, but who nevertheless
continues to claim that he is an Objectivist, and falsely claims to be
spreading the ideas of Objectivism. Dr. Kelley mostly ignores Dr.
Peikoff, having written Peikoff off as a hopeless intrinsicist.
Meanwhile, the supporters of Kelley and Peikoff wage constant, never-
ending electronic war with each other on the
humanities.philosophy.objectivism newsgroup on the Internet, and to a
lesser extent on private mailing lists.
David Kelley was kicked out of the ARI when he disagreed with Peikoff
over the proper way to judge a man's ideas. However, unlike so many
others in the Objectivist movement who had met similar fates in the
past, Dr. Kelley did not simply vanish into obscurity. As a
professional philosopher, he founded the IOS and began promoting his
own interpretation of Objectivism which has attracted many supporters
(including myself).
What exactly are Peikoff and Kelley arguing over? What has caused yet
another bitter split in the ranks of Objectivism? A great deal has
been written and argued by both sides, but the fundamental point of
contention concerns the judging of the intellectual honesty of people.
In other words, when someone espouses a false idea, how do we
determine if he has merely made an 'honest error,' or is actually
guilty of 'evasion,' i.e., refusal to think? The difference is one of
crucial importance. Under Objectivism, one does not morally condemn a
man for making an honest error in his thinking, however one never
forgives (or fails to morally condemn) a dishonest evader, because
Objectivism considers evasion to be the root of all evil.
Concerning the question of judging the intellectual honesty of others,
Peikoff and Kelley give two very different answers. Peikoff puts forth
his position in his essay, "Fact and Value". According to Peikoff:
"Just as every 'is' implies an 'ought,' so every identification of
an idea's truth or falsehood implies a moral evaluation of the idea
and of its advocates."
In other words, according to Peikoff, as soon as we identify an idea
as true or false, this immediately implies a moral judgment of the
person who is advocating the idea. In this context, 'moral judgment'
means we are trying to determine if this person is being honest, or
dishonest. If the idea is true, we assume that he has sought the
truth. However if the idea is false, then we must decide if he has
committed an honest error, or has engaged in evasion. In other words,
we must determine the person's state of mind. Peikoff offers a simple
test to make this determination:
"The general principle here is: truth implies as its cause a
virtuous mental process; falsehood, beyond a certain point, implies
a process of vice."
In other words, if your idea is false, and the falsehood goes beyond a
'certain point,' then you cannot simply be guilty of an honest error
in your thinking. Rather, you must have engaged in evasion, which is
the root of all evil. By claiming that false ideas are the result of
evasion (at least beyond a certain point), Peikoff gives rise to the
concept of inherently dishonest ideas.
Peikoff never gives a useful definition of inherently dishonest ideas.
In his entire Fact & Value essay, there are only two places where
Peikoff makes an effort to provide a definition of inherently
dishonest ideas. In the first case, he states that inherently
dishonest ideas are an "explicit rebellion against reason and
reality." Later on, he talks about ideas that are "openly at war with
reason and reality." So the two 'definitions' we have are:
1. Explicit rebellion against reason and reality.
2. Openly at war with reason and reality.
Needless to say, neither of these statements are definitions, except
in an extremely limited, technical sense. As Peikoff uses them, they
are subjective rhetoric, little more than figures of speech. They are
not precise, and they are not objective. A false idea is one that in
some way contradicts reason and reality. That's what it means to be
false. In that sense, any false idea could be described as an
"explicit rebellion against reason and reality," or said to be "openly
at war with reason and reality." This is why such 'definitions' are
largely useless.
On the other hand, if we take Peikoff's definitions literally, then an
inherently dishonest idea could only be an idea that explicitly comes
out against reason and reality; one that says specifically, "I'm
against reason. I'm against reality." Nihilism might qualify in this
regard, but Communism, egalitariansism, non-objective art, or
channelers, certainly would not. Nowhere do these ideologies
explicitly state, "Down with reason! Down with reality!" Yet Peikoff
claims that such ideologies are inherently dishonest.
In short, Peikoff's definitions of inherently dishonest ideas are so
vague and subjective as to be worthless, except to dogmatic moralizers
who can use such definitions to declare any idea to be inherently
dishonest.
Peikoff does give some examples of inherently dishonest ideas, such as
Nazism, Communism, non-objective art, non-Aristotelian logic,
egalitarianism, nihilism, the pragmatist cult of compromise, and
channelers. As Peikoff puts it:
"In all such cases, the ideas are not merely false; in one form or
another, they represent an explicit rebellion against reason and
reality (and therefore, against man and values). The originators,
leaders and intellectual spokesmen of all such movements are
necessarily evaders on a major scale; they are not merely mistaken,
but are crusading irrationalists. The mass base of such movements
are not evaders of the same kind; but most of the followers are
dishonest in their own passive way. They are unthinking,
intellectually irresponsible ballast, unconcerned with logic or
truth."
From the above, one would conclude that an inherently dishonest idea
is an idea that cannot be held as a result of honest error. In other
words, an academic Marxist must be holding his Marxism as a result of
evasion. He cannot be holding it as a result of honest error.
Needless to say, this notion of 'inherently dishonest' ideas is not
philosophy; it is simply Peikoff's personal evaluation of Nazism,
Communism, etc. Of course Peikoff is entitled to his opinion, but he
is not entitled to present it as a philosophical principle. It is okay
to say, "I have met many academic Marxists over the years, and all of
them turned out to be dishonest evaders." However it is wrong to
conclude that all academic Marxists are dishonest evaders. This is a
false argument. No matter how many dishonest academic Marxists a man
might personally have met, this can never be used to prove that all
academic Marxists are inherently dishonest. Human beings simply aren't
that predictable.
Even if we could somehow demonstrate that most academic Marxists do,
in fact, hold their Marxism as a result of evasion, this still would
not prove that all academic Marxists must hold their Marxism as a
result of evasion. Because human beings have free will, and can make
enormous mistakes on the conceptual level, there is always the
possibility that a particular academic Marxist is holding his ideas
honestly. In such a case, it would be a monstrous injustice to morally
condemn such a man, solely on the basis of the ideas he holds. There
can be no greater injustice than to morally condemn a man, solely
because the other members of his group are known to be dishonest.
Obviously Peikoff's 'certain point' at which an idea becomes
inherently dishonest, is critically important. If we know that a man
is holding his false idea as the result of evasion, then we can
immediately morally condemn him. Unfortunately, Peikoff never tells us
where this 'certain point' is, nor how to determine it. This means
that every Objectivist is free to determine, on his own, the location
of that 'certain point.'
What this means, in actuality, is that every Objectivist uses his own
internal standard of reasonableness, and his own knowledge of human
psychology, to determine the location of that 'certain point.' He asks
himself, "Do I think it's possible to hold such an idea as the result
of honest error?" Needless to say, one would expect different
individuals to have wildly different answers to such a question. What
this does, in effect, is to make the process of judgment, in the realm
of ideas, totally subjective. One merely hauls out one's own guess, or
estimate, based on one's own limited observations (or feelings). There
is no fact of reality on which one can reliably base such an estimate.
Such a process is about as 'objective' as Trial By Ordeal.
What does the concept of inherently dishonest ideas mean in practice?
According to Peikoff, there can be no such thing as an honest academic
Marxist. To become an academic Marxist, a man "must have" engaged in
evasion. How does Peikoff know this? He will tell you that the
evidence of the falsity of Marxism is simply overwhelming, and no
honest adult could be aware of this mountain of evidence and still
honestly advocate Marxism. In other words, this is simply Peikoff's
psychological guess. It is not proof of any sort. Yet on such shaky
grounds, Peikoff (and many of his supporters) are willing to morally
condemn human beings, and declare that such people are dishonest
evaders.
David Kelley's position is just the opposite of Peikoff's. Writing in
his monograph, Truth & Toleration, Kelley states:
"Can we tell from the truth or falsity of an idea, and from its
consequences, whether those who accept it are rational or
irrational? This is the central issue on which Peikoff and I
disagree."
Kelley goes on to say:
"This does not mean that all errors are honest. People subscribe to
mistaken views, in philosophy as elsewhere, for any number of bad
motives. But it does mean that we cannot judge a person's
rationality solely by reference to the content of his ideas."
Kelley's position on the subject of inherently dishonest ideas is
quite different from Peikoff's. Writing in his monograph, Truth &
Toleration, Kelley states:
"I believe it is fruitless to define a category of inherently
dishonest ideas, and then try to list its members. A more accurate
approach would be to rank ideas on a continuum defined by the
likelihood that adherents of the idea are honest. At one extreme are
issues about which any error is almost certainly innocent. As we
move along the continuum, the probability shifts toward the
assumption that the error springs from irrationality, and proponents
of the ideas must bear an increasingly heavy burden of proving their
intellectual honesty."
Kelley does not say where on the continuum he would place an academic
Marxist. Nevertheless, it is obvious that Kelley would not
automatically conclude that the academic Marxist is dishonest, solely
because the man believed in Marxism. What the Kelley-Peikoff split
ultimately comes down to is a disagreement over the psychological
nature of human beings. Peikoff claims that some ideas are so
blatantly false that they could not possibly be held honestly. Kelley
claims that even a blatantly false idea has at least the possibility
of being held honestly. As a result, Kelley would never automatically
judge a man as intellectually dishonest, solely on the basis of
holding a false idea. The same cannot be said for Peikoff.
For Objectivists, the choice of supporting Kelley or Peikoff is not a
trivial issue. Not only has the Kelley-Peikoff split torn the
Objectivist movement apart (and continues to do so), but it's also
(and more fundamentally) a question of justice. If an academic Marxist
is always dishonest, then one should morally condemn him. On the other
hand, if it's possible that an academic Marxist is honest in his
belief, then it would be a great injustice to morally condemn him,
solely on the basis of his Marxism.
In his article, "A Question Of Sanction," David Kelley writes:
"Soviet tyrants are not evil because they believe in Marxian
collectivism. They are evil because they have murdered millions of
people and enslaved hundreds of millions more."
Here we see a concrete application of Kelley's position. Just because
someone believes in Marxian collectivism does not automatically make
him evil. Such a man is only evil if he holds his Marxism as a result
of evasion. If he holds his Marxism as a result of honest error, then
he is mistaken, but he is not evil. Simply knowing that a man is a
Marxist does not automatically tell us that he is evil; we must find
out why the man is a Marxist. (On the other hand, an action, such as
murdering millions of people, can instantly be judged as evil, using
life as the standard of value.)
Needless to say, Peikoff would instantly judge Soviet tyrants as
dishonest, even if they had never murdered anyone, solely on the
grounds that such men could not be Marxists as a result of honest
error.
The chief problem with Peikoff's claim of inherently dishonest ideas
is that it's an extraordinary claim, requiring extraordinary proof.
Peikoff is claiming that certain ideas (such as being an academic
Marxist) are impossible to hold honestly, rather than simply being
unlikely to be held honestly (which would be in accordance with
Kelley's position). Nowhere does Peikoff offer proof of such an
extraordinary claim. He merely asserts that the evidence against
certain ideas (such as academic Marxism) is so overwhelming, and so
readily available, that no one could hold such an idea honestly.
Unfortunately, this does not constitute proof. It's merely Peikoff's
own opinion. No doubt this opinion is based on many years of
first-hand observation of academic Marxists, but nevertheless, it's
merely an opinion, and not a proven philosophical principle. An
opinion (even an informed opinion) is not proof.
It's critically important to remember that the notion of inherently
dishonest ideas is not a philosophical principle; it's simply
Peikoff's personal evaluation of a group of particular ideologies.
Peikoff is saying, in effect,
"I've known a lot of Marxists, Nazis, Channelers, and Egalitarians
over the years, and except for the illiterate, the retarded, and the
very young, they always turned out to be dishonest." Unfortunately,
while this may give us a general idea as to the typical honesty of
Marxists, Nazis, Channelers, and Egalitarians as a group, it tells
us nothing about any particular member of these groups. Peikoff is
taking an overall judgment about a large group of people, and
applying it to individual members of the group. There is a name for
this sort of judgment. It's called Collectivism.
Peikoff's evaluation of Nazis, Communists, etc., is actually only one
step above racism. Under racism, all members of a group are pronounced
evil, solely because of their physical characteristics. Under Peikoff,
all members of a group are pronounced evil, solely because of their
ideas.
In his attempt to establish the validity of inherently dishonest
ideas, Peikoff resorts to incredible intellectual contortions. He
tries to establish the concept of inherently dishonest ideas as a
principle, and at the same time, he barely admits that it's not a
principle. In his article, "Fact & Value", Peikoff writes about the
leaders of inherently dishonest movements, such as Nazism,
Communism, and Egalitarianism:
"The originators, leaders and intellectual spokesmen of all such
movements are necessarily evaders on a major scale; they are not
merely mistaken, but are crusading irrationalists."
Let us very carefully note that Peikoff does not claim that it is
highly probable or very likely that the leaders of Communism and
Egalitarianism are dishonest evaders. No, he states very clearly that
they are necessarily evaders (and on a major scale, too). This leaves
no room for the possibility that such leaders could be honestly
mistaken; rather it means that it's impossible for such people to be
honestly mistaken. One does not use the term 'necessarily' when one
actually means 'highly likely.' Peikoff's language is the sort one
would use when talking about an absolute philosophical principle,
rather than simply offering one's opinion or evaluation. Even the term
'inherently dishonest ideas' is misleading. If one is simply giving
one's opinion or evaluation, one does not use the term 'inherently
dishonest.' Such a term does not mean highly likely to be dishonest;
it means that it absolutely is dishonest. Such a term can only
properly be used to identify an absolute philosophical principle.
Having made every attempt to establish inherently dishonest ideas as a
philosophical principle, Peikoff then gives himself an escape clause
by declaring that it is just barely possible that someone might be a
Communist or Channeler through an honest error. Peikoff writes:
"Even in regard to inherently dishonest movements, let me now add a
marginal third category of adherent is possible: the relatively
small number who struggle conscientiously, but simply cannot grasp
the issues and the monumental corruption involved. These are the
handful who become Communists, "channelers," etc. through a truly
honest error of knowledge. Leaving aside the retarded and the
illiterate who are effectively helpless in such matters, this third
group consists almost exclusively of the very young."
Notice the phrase "almost exclusively" in the last line of the above
quote. This phrase destroys the principle of inherently dishonest
ideas, and turns it into a rule, or generality. Even after excluding
the illiterate, the retarded, and the very young, it's still just
barely possible to have an 'honest' communist. In other words, Peikoff
is admitting an exception to his principle of 'inherently dishonest.'
If it's possible to have an exception to your principle, then it's not
a principle. Within its defined context, a principle is absolute. If
you have an exception, then it's not a principle; it's a rule. A rule
is something that is frequently true, but not necessarily true. That's
the difference between a rule and a principle.
If you state that Marxism is 'inherently dishonest,' then you are
making a statement of principle. You cannot then turn around and say,
"Well, yeah, it's just barely possible to have an honest Marxist." By
allowing for an exception, you have just destroyed your principle, and
turned it into a rule.
The concept of inherently dishonest ideas may be a good rule, but it
can't be called a principle, because it can never be absolute. As long
as men have free will, and can be mistaken on the conceptual level,
there can be no such thing as an 'inherently dishonest' idea. To claim
otherwise is to wipe out the concept of free will.
The concept of inherently dishonest ideas is not a philosophical
principle; it's merely an unproven psychological assertion. It's in
the same category as Rand's other famous psychological statement of
"No woman should aspire to be President of the United States." It's
interesting that Peikoff and his followers are quite willing to
declare Rand's statement about a woman President to be separate and
distinct from the philosophy of Objectivism, but apparently are
willing to fight to the death to defend the equally-shaky
psychological notion of inherently dishonest ideas. It is also
interesting to note that Rand herself never wrote on the subject of
inherently dishonest ideas. Her writings and public behavior would
certainly lead one to conclude that she did support the concept of
inherently dishonest ideas. How else could she instantly conclude, on
the basis of a single question, that a questioner was evasive and
dishonest? Nevertheless, the actual concept of inherently dishonest
ideas is not to be found in Rand's writings, although it's implied in
many ways. For example, writing in her essay, "The Psychology of
Psychologizing," Rand states:
"A man's moral character must be judged on the basis of his actions,
his statements, and his conscious convictions."
Obviously Rand believed that a man's conscious convictions (his ideas)
can be used to judge his moral character as good or evil. In other
words, bad convictions imply bad moral character. It's only one step
further to the notion of inherently dishonest ideas.
The actual concept of inherently dishonest ideas seems to have
originated with Leonard Peikoff. It is briefly mentioned in his
"Understanding Objectivism" tape lecture series, and made explicit in
his article, "Fact & Value." Thus it's very difficult even to defend
the notion of inherently dishonest ideas as an official part of the
philosophy of Objectivism.
Evasion
The concept of inherently dishonest ideas is made possible by the
concept of evasion. A dishonest idea is one that is held as the result
of evasion, rather than honest error. In his book, Objectivism: The
Philosophy of Ayn Rand, Peikoff defines evasion as follows:
"Evasion is the act of blanking out, the willful suspension of one's
consciousness, the refusal to think--not blindness, but the refusal
to see; not ignorance, but the refusal to know. It is the act of
unfocusing your mind and inducing an inner fog to escape the
responsibility of judgment--on the unstated premise that a thing
will not exist if only you refuse to identify it."
In essence, evasion is defined as the refusal to think. Evasion is
certainly an interesting psychological phenomenon, but of what value
is it to a philosophy? How are we know when a man is engaging in
evasion? It's very rare that someone will openly admit, "I refuse to
think about it." And even in such a case, how can we be certain that
we are actually witnessing deliberate evasion, as opposed to an
involuntary psychological problem?
For example, suppose we show Mrs. Jones a videotape of her son robbing
a liquor store? She responds by closing her eyes, clapping her hands
over her ears, and shouts, "I refuse to watch! I refuse to think about
it!" Now is Mrs. Jones engaging in evasion, or is she simply
manifesting a severe psychological problem? Perhaps evasion is a
psychological problem, in which case it would be incredibly unjust to
morally condemn Mrs. Jones for being mentally ill.
One can certainly imagine the phenomenon of evasion. One can look
inside one's own mind and easily imagine a situation where one simply
refuses to integrate a particular fact with the rest of one's
knowledge. Unfortunately, this tells us nothing about the minds of
others. It does not tell us if they are actually engaged in such a
phenomenon.
There is no question that Peikoff considers evasion to be a widespread
phenomenon. In his book, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, he
writes:
"Morally, it is the essence of evil. According to Objectivism,
evasion is the vice that underlies all other vices. In the present
era, it is leading to the collapse of the world."
If one believes that evasion is the essence of evil, and is leading to
the collapse of the world, wouldn't it be a good idea to have ironclad
proof that such a phenomenon not only exists, but is also widespread?
But Peikoff offers no proof that this is the case, and he certainly
offers no test for the presence of evasion. Once again, Peikoff simply
makes an unsupported psychological assertion, and treats it as a
self-evident philosophical truth.
As a result of this unsupported assertion, many Objectivists treat the
phenomenon of evasion in exactly the same fashion as they do the
concept of inherently dishonest ideas. They simply look inside their
own minds for a standard of reasonableness, and ask the question,
"Could I hold such an idea honestly?" If the answer is "no," they
immediately pronounce the judgment of evasion.
Many Objectivists are willing to pronounce the judgment of evasion
after little or no debate with their opponents. If such an Objectivist
decides that an opponent's idea is 'inherently dishonest,' then of
course no debate is necessary, and we may proceed with the hanging.
Frequently an Objectivist will make an argument (sometimes
repeatedly), and when his opponent continues to disagree, the
Objectivist will simply decide that his opponent is evading. "After
all," the Objectivist reasons, "I have just made a shatteringly
brilliant argument that no honest man could fail to understand.
Therefore if my opponent still claims to disagree, then he must be
evading." Needless to say, this is an incredibly naive (and stupid)
conclusion.
There are a thousand reasons (in addition to evasion) why an honest
man may fail to grasp a particular argument, no matter how clear and
brilliant the argument may be. This is inherent in the nature of Man's
conceptual faculty. Men are not moved by mere facts; they are moved by
principles, and an honest man does not change his principles on the
spur of the moment, even when confronted with an unanswerable
argument. An honest, conscientious man needs time to think things
through. This is an inescapable result of the fact that men can make
enormous mistakes on the conceptual level, and must always proceed
with great caution. Many Objectivists acknowledge that Man is fallible
on the conceptual level, but then seem to promptly forget this fact.
Observing the depressing frequency with which many Objectivists
denounce their opponents as evaders, one is tempted to conclude that
Objectivism is a great magnet for simple-minded fools who have deluded
themselves into thinking that they are philosophical and psychological
experts.
The point is, there is no simple way to instantly and reliably
identify a phenomenon such as evasion. Realistically, such a
determination requires a long period of observation and analysis. In
the end, it is a psychological evaluation; a judgment-call of great
uncertainty. It cannot be done solely on the basis of a man's ideas.
The critical point here is that in dealing with the phenomenon of
evasion, we have left the realm of philosophy and have entered the
realm of human psychology. Once again, an unproven psychological
assertion is being used to judge the honesty of others. One might as
well read tea leaves.
Evil
Ayn Rand appears to have had a very poor grasp of human psychology.
Nathaniel Branden reports that Rand once said to him, "You know, I
really don't know anything about psychology." Of course we don't know
in what context this statement was made, but Rand's view of human
psychology was peculiar, to say the least. Her statement that no woman
should aspire to be President of the United States is one of the more
obvious examples. Another example is her strange notion of 'evil.'
Rand defined 'evil' as "anything that is anti-life." This is quite
different from the working definition of evil that most people have,
namely that evil is a man's deliberate choice to do something he knows
to be immoral. This difference in definition leads to a great deal of
confusion and misunderstanding. For example, Objectivism considers the
idea of socialized medicine to be a very bad idea. Many
non-Objectivists would agree with this characterization. However
Objectivism also declares that the idea of socialized medicine is evil
because it is anti-life. Most non-Objectivists would categorize
socialized medicine as a bad idea, but would not call it evil. Most
non-Objectivists would not consider false ideas to be evil. This is
because, unlike human beings, ideas do not possess the volition
necessary to make evil possible. Since evil (in the layman's term)
requires that one choose to do something immoral, only humans can be
evil. Objectivism agrees that humans who deliberately do immoral
things are evil, but Objectivists also use the term in a much broader
sense to indicate any human activity that is anti-life. For example,
Objectivists are in the peculiar position of declaring socialized
medicine to be an evil idea, but they also claim that the supporters
of socialized medicine are not necessarily evil.
It would be difficult to find a modern day religion that tosses off
the word 'evil' as frequently as Objectivism uses it. Because
Objectivism uses the word 'evil' in so many different ways, because
the word can mean something as serious as cold-blooded murder, or
merely an idea that would have anti-life consequences (such as
socialized medicine), the term ends up encompassing so much territory
that it becomes virtually meaningless. Indeed, under Objectivism, the
term 'evil' has become little more than a synonym for 'bad.' This is
very strange in a philosophy whose epistemology is so carefully
defined when it comes to forming concepts, and whose epistemology
insists that concepts must refer to specific related concretes in
reality, according to logical definitions, and cannot be defined so as
to include vastly dissimilar concretes.
The concept of 'evil' should be reserved solely for human beings who
deliberately do things they know to be immoral. Why Rand would insist
on using the term 'evil' to characterize anything that is anti-life,
when the term 'bad' is much better suited to the task, is a mystery.
As Rand defines it, the term 'evil' loses virtually all of its impact
and meaning.
Like the concepts of 'inherently dishonest ideas' and 'evasion,' the
concept of 'evil' is a psychological concept that doesn't even belong
in philosophy. The sooner the concept of 'evil' is tossed out of
Objectivism, the better.
Summary
The concepts of 'evil,' 'evasion,' and 'inherently dishonest ideas'
are psychological concepts that do not belong in philosophy. These
concepts merely serve to give Objectivists unrestricted license to
morally condemn other human beings. As a result, Objectivists end up
treating their intellectual opponents (and each other) as people who
can be despised and hated. This is what has torn the Objectivist
movement apart for the last thirty years, and will continue to do so.
The players change, but the game remains the same.
The power of moral judgment is enormous. The power to pronounce
someone as an evil evader is the greatest power of all. By making such
power available, subject only to whim, with no objective facts or
principles to restrain it, Ayn Rand has unleashed a reign of
intellectual terrorism. She has transformed many honest, well-meaning
individuals into unjust dogmatic moralizers.
This propensity to engage in unjust moral condemnation is also what
keeps Objectivism a tiny, insignificant intellectual movement that has
all the appearance of a religious cult, and is seldom taken seriously
in the academic world. People of self-esteem will not remain in a
movement where a single mistake can result in having one's character,
morality, and honesty attacked. In the same vein, spokesmen for other
philosophical movements will not debate, nor take seriously,
Objectivists who constantly attack their opponents' morality and
intellectual honesty.
If you have ever wondered why so many Objectivists are so quick to
pronounce their opponents as evil and dishonest, it's because they are
honestly convinced that their opponents are evil and dishonest. If
your only criterion for pronouncing someone to be evil and dishonest
is the conclusion, "He can't be holding that idea honestly," then
virtually anyone who opposes you can be instantly transformed into a
dishonest evader. This also means that Objectivists who agree with Ayn
Rand and Leonard Peikoff's psychological concepts of 'evil',
'evasion,' and 'inherently dishonest ideas,' will automatically end up
insulting many of their opponents. Such an Objectivist, upon deciding
that his opponent is expressing an inherently dishonest idea (and is
therefore evading), will immediately declare his opponent to be a
dishonest evader. Needless to say, if the opponent is holding his idea
honestly, he will be immediately offended at having his character and
honesty smeared in so unjust a manner. He will quite properly take it
as an insult.
Fortunately for Objectivism, these unproven psychological assertions
are not fundamental to the philosophy. The psychological concepts of
'evil,' 'evasion,' and 'inherently dishonest ideas' can be discarded
with no significant effect on the structure of the philosophy. The
unjust moralizing, which has become a virtual trademark of
Objectivism, can be eliminated. These unproven psychological concepts
represent the tragic errors of Ayn Rand (and are being perpetuated by
Leonard Peikoff). The fact that Rand chose to incorporate such
psychological concepts into her philosophy does not obligate the rest
of us to make the same mistake.
It's very easy to avoid repeating Rand's mistakes. By leaving the
psychological concepts of 'evil,' 'evasion,' and 'inherently dishonest
ideas' out of the picture, we avoid the fatal mistake of mixing
psychology with philosophy. Our judgments of other men will no longer
require that we be armchair psychologists and psychiatrists. This
completely eliminates the need to attempt the hopeless task of getting
inside someone else's head, and trying to determine his actual mental
motivation.
What is the proper form of moral judgment? Morality is a code of
values that tells a man how he should act to protect and promote his
life. Since morality is so critically important, moral judgment takes
on a life-or-death importance. The wrong moral judgment can get you
killed. Moral judgment comes in two very different flavors; judging
yourself, and judging others. Because their contexts are so different,
these two different types of moral judgment require very different
standards.
Personal moral judgment is something each individual man must do
inside his own mind. Each man must constantly ask, "Am I acting in my
rational self-interest? Am I being rational? Am I being honest?" Each
man must ask (and answer) these questions for himself. No one else can
do it for him.
Moral judgment of others is quite different from personal moral
judgment. Unlike the contents of your own mind, the thoughts,
reasoning, and volitional processes of other men are not available to
you. Any attempt to morally judge someone else that depends on knowing
the contents of his mind, will never be anything more than a guessing
game. And it's an unjust game, guaranteed to alienate everyone in your
sphere of influence.
Moral judgment that requires us to determine the mental state of
another man, is worthless. Ever since Rand proposed this impossible
standard, Objectivists have been scrambling to find ways to implement
it. Peikoff's concept of 'inherently dishonest ideas' is simply the
latest doomed attempt. Actually, there is one very common technique
that most Objectivists use to determine the mental state of another
man. This technique is called 'guessing'.
Any proper moral judgment of other men must rely on facts that are
readily available to anyone; not facts that only a trained
psychiatrist could hope to obtain. What are the facts that can be used
for moral judgment?
Ayn Rand wrote that, "Morality is a code of values to guide man's
choices and actions, that determine the purpose and the course of his
life." Accordingly, judging the morality of others requires that we
judge how well they are adhering to a code of rational values, rather
than trying to discern the actual motivations of another man's mind
(as Rand and Peikoff would have us do). In broadest terms, are other
men acting in a pro-life, or anti-life manner? Are they being
rational, or irrational? Are they using reason, or emotion? Do they
tell the truth?
We base such judgments on direct observations of a man's actions,
statements, and conscious convictions. Such judgments are not always
easy to make, and they can never be made quickly, but none of them
requires us to determine if a man is 'evading,' or is advocating an
'inherently dishonest idea,' or is 'evil.' To try to answer any of
these last three questions, is to push moral judgment into the realm
of unjust fantasy.
If a man is performing life-threatening actions, or advocating life-
threatening ideas, then he is doing bad things (for whatever reason),
and we must take steps to protect ourselves from him. It isn't
necessary to judge the true motivation of the man. Not only is the
task virtually impossible, but in most cases we simply don't care what
his motivation is. All we need to know is that he's doing bad things
that threaten us. He's not acting in a rational manner. It doesn't
matter if he's doing these things as a result of 'honest error' or
'evasion.' The end result is the same.
Moral judgment does not mean deciding if someone is motivated by an
honest mistake, or by evasion. That is a job for the specialized
sciences of psychology and psychiatry, not philosophy. Any attempt to
enter the realm of these specialized sciences, armed only with the
principles of philosophy, will end in utter disaster. This was the
tragic mistake of Ayn Rand, but we need not perpetuate it.
Just as the valid parts of the philosophy of Aristotle have survived,
so will much of the philosophy of Ayn Rand. But just as we have
discarded Aristotle's ethical concept of the 'virtuous Athenian', so
should Ayn Rand's psychological concepts of 'evil,' 'evasion,' and
'inherently dishonest ideas' be discarded. Rand's attempt to mix
psychology with philosophy should be relegated to the status of
historical footnotes.
=====================================================
http://www.potomac-inc.org/aynrand.html
---------------------------------------
Big Sister Is Watching You
It's not about guns...
It's about citizenship
The Potomac Institute
A nonprofit corporation, PO Box 5907, Bethesda, MD 20824-5907
pot...@potomac-inc.org
This essay from 1957 is present as part of our effort to elucidate
conflicts within rightwing ideologies. Ayn Rand wrote in The Virtues
of Selfishness:
If a society provided no organized protection against force, it
would compel every citizen to go about armed, to turn his home into
a fortress, to shoot any strangers approaching his door--or to join
a protective gang of citizens who would fight other gangs, formed
for the same purpose, and thus bring about the degeneration of that
society into the chaos of gang-rule, i.e., rule by brute force, into
perpetual tribal warfare of prehistoric savages.
The use of force— even its retaliatory use— cannot be left at the
discretion of individual citizens. Peaceful co-existence is
impossible if a man has to live under the constant threat of force
to be unleashed against him by any of his neighbors at any moment.
Whether his neighbor's intentions are good or bad, whether their
judgement is rational or irrational, whether they are motivated by a
sense of justice or by ignorance or by prejudice or by malice— the
use of force against one man cannot be left to the arbitrary
decision of another.
We can claim Ayn Rand in support of at least a nightwatchman state
that maintains the monopoly on violence. We think Whittaker Chambers
would have agreed. We think William F. Buckley, Jr., would also agree.
However, when the National Review talks about gun violence these days
it is usually in terms of those silly liberals trying to fight crime
by attacking guns. The National Review does not have to worry. They
have nothing to offer. National Review's contributions meanwhile are
not constructive. The Chambers' review of Ayn Rand was a constructive
contribution in the distant past. Other constructive constributions:
"Libertarians & Conservatives", 1979
"Libertarianism or Libertinism?", 1969
See also:
"The Libertarian Movement in America, George Friedmand and Gary
McDowell, 1983
Books in Review
Big Sister is Watching You
From National Review, December 28, 1957, pp. 594-596.
©1957 by National Review, Inc.,
215 Lexington Avenue,
New York, NY 10016.
Reprinted with permission
Several years ago, Miss Ayn Rand wrote The Fountainhead. Despite a
generally poor press, it is said to have sold some four hundred
thousand copies. Thus, it became a wonder of the book trade of a kind
that publishers dream about after taxes. So Atlas Shrugged (Random
House, $6.95) had a first printing of one hundred thousand copies. It
appears to be slowly climbing the best seller lists.
The news about this book seems to me to be that any ordinarily
sensible head could possibly take it seriously, and that apparently, a
good many do. Somebody has called it: "Excruciatingly awful." I find
it a remarkably silly book. It is certainly a bumptious one. Its story
is preposterous. It reports the final stages of a final conflict
(locale: chiefly the United States, some indefinite years hence)
between the harried ranks of free enterprise and the "looters." These
are proponents of proscriptive taxes.
Government ownership, Labor, etc. etc. The mischief here is that the
author, dodging into fiction, nevertheless counts on your reading it
as political reality. "This," she is saying in effect, "is how things
really are. These are the real issues, the real sides. Only your
blindness keeps you from seeing it, which, happily, I have come to
rescue you from."
Since a great many of us dislike much that Miss Rand dislikes, quite
as heartily as she does, many incline to take her at her word. It is
the more persuasive, in some quarters, because the author deals wholly
in the blackest blacks and the whitest whites. In this fiction
everything, everybody, is either all good or all bad, without any of
those intermediate shades which, in life, complicate reality and
perplex the eye that seeks to probe it truly. This kind of simplifying
pattern, of course, gives charm to most primitive story-telling. And,
in fact, the somewhat ferro-concrete fairy tale the author pours here
is, basically, the old one known as: The War between the Children of
Light and the Children of Darkness. In modern dress, it is a class
war. Both sides of it are caricatures.
The Children of Light are largely operatic caricatures. In so far as
any of them suggests anything known to the business community, they
resemble the occasional curmudgeon millionaire, tales about whose
outrageously crude and shrewd eccentricities sometimes provide the
lighter moments in Board rooms. Otherwise, the Children of Light are
geniuses. One of them is named (the only smile you see will be your
own): Francisco Domingo Carlos Andres Sebastian d'Antonio. This
electrifying youth is the world's biggest copper tycoon. Another, no
less electrifying, is named: Ragnar Danesjold. He becomes a
twentieth-century pirate. All Miss Rand's chief heroes are also
breathtakingly beautiful. So is her heroine (she is rather fetchingly
vice-president in charge of management of a transcontinental
railroad). So much radiant energy might seem to serve an eugenic
purpose. For, in this story as in Mark Twain's, "all the knights marry
the princess"— though without benefit of clergy. Yet from the
impromptu and surprisingly gymnastic matings of heroine and three of
the heroes, no children— it suddenly strikes you— ever result. The
possibility is never entertained.
jum...@my-deja.com
And indeed, the strenuously sterile world of Atlas Shrugged is
scarcely a place for children. You speculate that, in life, children
probably irk the author and may make her uneasy. How could it be
otherwise when she admiringly names a banker character (by what seems
to me a humorless master-stroke): Midas Mulligan? You may fool some
adults, you can't fool little boys and girls with such stuff— not for
long. They may not know just what is out of line, but they stir
uneasily.
The Children of Darkness are caricatures, too; and they are really
oozy. But at least they are caricatures of something identifiable.
Their archetypes are Left Liberals, New Dealers, Welfare Statists, One
Worlders, or, at any rate, such ogreish semblances of these as may
stalk the nightmares of those who think little about people as people,
but tend to think a great deal in labels and effigies. (And neither
Right nor Left, be it noted in passing, has a monopoly of such
dreamers, though the horrors in their nightmares wear radically
different masks and labels.)
In Atlas Shrugged, all this debased inhuman riffraff is lumped as
"looters." This is a fairly inspired epithet. It enables the author to
skewer on one invective word everything and everybody that she fears
and hates. This spares here the plaguy business of performing one
service that her fiction might have performed. Namely: that of
examining in human depth how so feeble a lot came to exist at all, let
alone be powerful enough to be worth hating and fearing. Instead, she
bundles them into one undifferentiated damnation.
"Looters" loot because they believe in Robin Hood, and have a lot of
other people believing in him, too. Robin Hood is the author's image
of absolute evil151 robbing the strong (and hence good) to give to the
weak (and hence no good). All "looters" are base, envious, twisted,
malignant minds, motivated wholly by greed for power, combined with
the lust of the weak to tear down the strong, out of a deep-seated
hatred of life and secret longing for destruction and death. There
happens to be a tiny (repeat: tiny) seed of truth in this. The full
clinical diagnosis can be read into the pages of Friedich Nietzsche.
(Here I must break in with an aside. Miss Rand acknowledges a grudging
debt to one, and only one, earlier philosopher: Aristotle. I submit
that she is indebted, and much more heavily, to Nietzche. Just as her
operatic businessmen are, in fact, Nietzschean supermen, so her
ulcerous Leftists are Nietzsche's "last men," both deformed in a way
to sicken the fastidious recluse of Sils Maria. And much else comes,
consciously on not, from the same source.) Happily, in Atlas Shrugged
(though not in life), all the children of Darkness are utterly
incompetent.
So the Children of Light win handily by declaring a general strike of
brains, of which they have a monopoly, letting the world go,
literally, to smash. In the end, they troop out of their Rocky
Mountain hideaway to repossess the ruins. It is then, in the book's
last line, that a character traces in the air, "over the desolate
earth," the Sign of the Dollar, in lieu of the Sign of the Cross, and
in token that a suitably prostrate mankind is at last ready, for its
sins, to be redeemed from the related evils of religion and social
reform (the "mysticism of mind" and the "mysticism of muscle").
That Dollar Sign is not merely provocative, though we sense a
sophomoric intent to raise the pious hair on susceptible heads. More
importantly, it is meant to seal the fact that mankind is ready to
submit abjectly to an elite of technocrats, and their accessories, in
a New Order, enlightened and instructed by Miss Rand's ideas that the
good life is one which "has resolved personal worth into exchange
value," "has left no other nexus between man and man than naked
self-interest, than callous "cash payment." The author is explicit, in
fact deafening, about these prerequisites. Lest you should be in any
doubt after 1168 pages, she assures you with a final stamp of the foot
in a postscript: "and I mean it." But the words quoted above are those
of Karl Marx. He, too, admired "naked self-interest" (in its time and
place), and for much of the same reasons as Miss Rand: because, he
believed, it cleared away the cobwebs of religion and led to prodigies
of industrial and cognate accomplishment.
The overlap is not as incongruous as it looks. Atlas Shrugged can be
called a novel only by devaluing the term. It is a massive tract for
the times. Its story merely serves Miss Rand to get the customers
inside the tent. And as a soapbox for delivering her Message. The
Message is the thing. It is a sum, a forthright philosophic
materialism. Upperclassmen might incline to sniff and say that the
author has, with vast effort, contrived a simple materialist system,
one, intellectually, at about the state of the oxcart, though without
mastering the principle of the wheel. Like any consistent materialism,
this one begins by rejecting God, religion, original sin, etc. etc.
(This book's aggressive atheism and rather unbuttoned "higher
morality," which chiefly outrage some readers, are, in fact, secondary
ripples, and result inevitably from its underpinning premises.) Thus,
Randian Man, like Marxian Man, is made the center of a godless world.
At that point, in any materialism, the main possibilities open up to
Man. 1) His tragic fate becomes, without God, more tragic and much
lonelier. In general, the tragedy deepens according to the degree of
pessimism or stoicism with which he conducts his "hopeless encounter
between human questioning and the silent universe." Or, 2) Man's fate
ceases to be tragic at all. Tragedy is bypassed by the pursuit of
happiness. Tragedy is henceforth pointless. Henceforth man's fate,
without God, is up to him. And to him alone. His happiness, is strict
materialist terms, lies with his own workaday hands and ingenious
brain. His happiness becomes, in Miss Rand's words, "the moral purpose
of his life." Here occurs a little rub whose effects are just as
observable in a free enterprise system, which is in practice
materialist (whatever else it claims or supposes itself to be), as
they would be under an atheist Socialism, if one were ever to deliver
that material abundance that all promise. The rub is that the pursuit
of happiness, as an end in itself, tends automatically, and widely, to
be replaced by the pursuit of pleasure with a consequent general
softening of the fibers of will, intelligence on "man as a heroic
being" "with productive achievement as his noblest activity." For, if
man's "heroism" (some will prefer to say: "human dignity") no longer
derives from God, or is not a function of that godless integrity which
was a root of Nietzsche's anguish, then Man becomes merely the most
consuming of animals, with glut as the condition of his happiness. And
this, of course, suits the author's economics and the politics that
must arise from them.
For politics, of course, arise, though the author of Atlas Shrugged
stares stonily past them, as if this book were not what, in fact it
is, essentially--a political book. And here begins mischief. Systems
of philosophic materialism, so long as they merely circle outside this
world's atmosphere, matter little to most of us. The trouble is that
they keep coming down to earth. It is when a system of materialist
ideas presumes to give positive answers to real problems of our real
life that mischief starts. In a age like ours, in which a highly
complex technological society is everywhere in a high state of
instability, such answers however philosophic, translate quickly into
political realities. And in the degree to which problems of complexity
and instability are most bewildering to masses of men, a temptation
sets in to let some species of Big Brother solve and supervise them.
One Big Brother is of course, a socializing elite (as we know, several
cut-rate brands are on the shelves). Miss Rand, as the enemy of any
socializing force, calls in a Big Brother of her own contriving to do
battle with the other. In the name of free enterprise, therefore, she
plumps for a technocratic elite (I find no more inclusive word than
technocratic to bracket the industrial-financial-engineering caste she
seems to have in mind). When she calls "productive achievement" man's
"noblest activity," she means, almost exclusively, technological
achievement, supervised by such a managerial political bureau. She
might object that she means much, much more; and we can freely
entertain her objections. But in sum, that is just what she means. For
that is what, in reality, it works out to. And in reality, too, by
contrast, with fiction, this can only head into a dictatorship,
however benign, living and acting beyond good and evil, a law unto
itself (as Miss Rand believes it should be), and feeling any restraint
on itself as, in practice, criminal, and, in morals, vicious— as Miss
Rand clearly feels it to be. Of course, Miss Rand nowhere calls for a
dictatorship. I take her to be calling for an aristocracy of talents.
We cannot labor here why, in the modern world, the pre-conditions for
aristocracy, an organic growth, no longer exist, so that impulse
toward aristocracy always emerges now in the form of dictatorship.
Nor has the author, apparently, brooded on the degree to which, in a
wicked world, a materialism of the Right and a materialism of the
Left, first surprisingly resemble, then in action tend to blend each
with each, because, while differing at the top in avowed purposed, and
possibly in conflict there, at bottom they are much the same thing.
The embarrassing similarities between Hitler's National Socialism and
Stalin's brand of Communism are familiar. For the world, as seen in
materialist view from the Left. The question becomes chiefly: who is
to run that world in whose interests, or perhaps, at best, who can run
it more efficiently?
Something of this implication is fixed in the book's dictatorial tone,
which is much its most striking feature. Out of a lifetime of reading,
I can recall no other book in which a tone of overriding arrogance was
so implacably sustained. Its shrillness is without reprieve. Its
dogmatism is without appeal. In addition, the mind, which finds this
one natural to it, shares other characteristics of its type. 1) It
consistently mistakes raw force for strength, and the rawer the force,
the more reverent the posture of the mind before it. 2) It supposes
itself to be the bringer of a final revelation. Therefore, resistance
to the Message cannot be tolerated because disagreement can never be
merely honest, prudent or just humanly fallible. Dissent from
revelation so final (because, the author would say, so reasonable) can
only be willfully wicked. There are ways of dealing with such
wickedness, and, in fact, right reason itself enjoins them. From
almost any page of Atlas Shrugged, a voice can be heard, from painful
necessity, commanding: " To the gas chambers— go!" The same inflexibly
self-righteous stance results, too (in the total absence of any saving
humor), in odd extravagances of inflection and gesture— that Dollar
Sign, for example. At first, we try to tell ourselves that these are
just lapses, that this min has, somehow, mislaid the discriminating
knack that most of us pray will warn us in time of the differences
between what is effective and firm, and what is wildly grotesque and
excessive. Soon we suspect something worse. We suspect that this mind
finds, precisely in extravagance, some exalting merit; feels a surging
release of power and passion precisely in smashing up the house. A
tornado might feel this way, or Carrie Nation.
We struggle to be just. For we cannot help feel at least a sympathetic
pain before the sheer labor, discipline and patient craftsmanship that
went to making this mountain of words. But the words keep shouting us
down. In the end that tone dominates. But it should be its own
antidote. Warning us that anything it shouts is best taken with the
usual reservations with which we might sip a patent medicine. Some may
like the flavor. In any case, the brew is probably without lasting ill
effects. But it is not a cure for anything. Nor would we, ordinarily,
place much confidence in the diagnosis of a doctor who supposes that
the Hippocratic Oath is a kind of curse.
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no support from foundations or large contributors. For concerned
citizens who learn something here and want to help elevate public
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============================================================
http://www.jeffcomp.com/faq/sanc.html
-------------------------------------
What Does It Mean To Sanction Something?
by Chris Wolf
Sanction simply consists in giving your moral approval to something.
It's the equivalent of saying, "I morally approve of this. I support
this."
Normally, sanction requires an explicit statement of support and
approval on your part, and cannot be done unconsciously or
unwittingly. However there are some actions, such as giving money to
the Ku Klux Klan, that directly imply sanction by their very nature.
In other words, if you gave money to the Klan, there would be no other
conceivable explanation for it, except that you really do support the
Klan. Or if one friend steals money from another, and you knowingly
continue to be friends with the thief, that could logically be treated
as a sanction of the thief.
However such actions of implied sanction are rather rare. In most
cases, there are a number of possible explanations, in addition to the
possibility of sanction. For example, the fact that you might buy
groceries from a man who is a Klan member, does not automatically
qualify as a sanction. You might be buying groceries because you know
you're supporting the Klan, or you might simply be buying groceries
because you're hungry. The rest of us can't tell, solely from your
action. It would be necessary to question you. Obviously one does not
wish to support one's enemies, but in today's interlocking,
interdependent world, it's impossible to live a normal life without
conferring some benefits on one's enemies. However such benefits do
not constitute sanction. All of us are forced to deal with people we
don't approve of, but that's just the point; if we don't approve of
them, then we're not sanctioning them.
Unfortunately, in the current Objectivist movement, the principle of
sanction has run amok. It has come to mean almost any situation where
a benefit or value is conferred on your enemies. The idea that merely
speaking to a group of your intellectual opponents somehow constitutes
a sanction of them, is one of the more absurd ways in which the
principle of sanction has been distorted beyond all recognition.
For Objectivists, the question of sanction mostly boils down to, "What
is the proper degree of involvement with groups who do not share my
philosophy? To whom can I speak without inadvertently sanctioning
them?"
Anytime that you speak to any group, there is a certain measure of
sanction involved. You are admitting that such a group is not outside
the realm of civilized discourse. Of course, the key question is,
where does one draw the line? Different people give wildly different
answers, which would suggest that different principles are involved.
I submit that such differences can be explained via the concept of
inherently dishonest ideas. If one subscribes to this concept, then
one will have a particular view of sanction. If one does not subscribe
to this concept, then one will have a very different view of sanction.
Let us compare these two viewpoints.
If someone embraces the concept of inherently dishonest ideas, then
one is, in effect, claiming that certain ideas cannot be held
honestly. One automatically knows that anyone holding an inherently
dishonest idea is dishonest, or is guilty of evasion. Obviously if an
entire group embraces an inherently dishonest idea, then the group is,
in essence, guilty of evasion, and must be treated accordingly.
If a group is guilty of evasion, then it is impossible to have a
rational discussion with them. A rational discussion implies that both
sides are seeking the truth. If one side is deliberately refusing to
seek the truth, then rational discussion is impossible. From this, we
can conclude that any attempt at rational discussion with a group who
has embraced an inherently dishonest idea, is not only a waste of
time, but would also be highly irrational. To attempt to seek the
truth with someone whom you know to be evading, is a complete
contradiction. To knowingly embrace and participate in such a
contradiction would be guilty of willful irrationality.
This is why the supporters of Leonard Peikoff will not speak to
organized groups of libertarians, Nazis, Communists, etc. They
consider such groups to be dishonest evaders (or at least the leaders
and intellectual spokesmen of such groups). Given this premise, it
would be very irrational for any supporter of the concept of
inherently dishonest ideas to speak to such a group, for they would be
giving sanction to their enemies. The very act of speaking to such a
group would be an implied sanction. They would be saying, in effect,
"I consider the members of this group to be honest seekers of the
truth. That is why I am willing to speak to them." And it would be a
lie. No honest, rational man would wish to be guilty of so irrational
a deed.
However if one does not accept the concept of inherently dishonest
ideas, then one will have a very different view of sanction. Just as
one grants benevolence to strangers by assuming they are honest and
rational, one also assumes that someone who holds a false idea is
holding it due to honest error, rather than evasion. Therefore one
would not automatically regard a group of Nazis, Communists, or
Libertarians as automatically dishonest. One would presume they were
honestly mistaken, and seeking the truth. This assumption would not
change until one had conclusive evidence to the contrary that such
people are dishonest evaders. But the false idea alone would not
constitute conclusive evidence. Under such conditions, speaking to
such groups is simply a matter of cost/benefit analysis, tactics, and
taste.
If one rejects the concept of inherently dishonest ideas, then the
only sanction one grants by speaking to Communists or Libertarians is
the assumption that such groups are open to civilized discussion. One
is admitting that the members of such groups still retain a conceptual
capacity, have the potential to be persuaded by a rational argument,
and are willing to engage in civilized discourse. Of course, if this
proves not to be the case, or if one already knows from past
experience that this is not the case, then it would be very irrational
and immoral to speak to such a group. One would be refusing to
acknowledge a fact of reality, namely that one's opponents are not
worthy of civilized debate. However such a conclusion cannot be known,
solely on the basis of the group's ideas, if one rejects the concept
of inherently dishonest ideas.
===============================================================
http://world.std.com/~mhuben/faq.html
-------------------------------------
Critiques Of Libertarianism: A Non-Libertarian FAQ.
Part of the "Critiques of Libertarianism" site.
http://world.std.com/~mhuben/libindex.html
Last updated 10/25/99.
Version 1.5
Copyright 1998 by Mike Huben ( mhu...@world.std.com ).
This document may be freely distributed for non-commercial purposes if
it is reproduced in its textual entirety, with this notice intact.
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
INTRODUCTION
ABOUT THIS FAQ
WHAT IS LIBERTARIANISM?
STRATEGIES FOR ARGUMENT
LIBERTARIAN EVANGELISTIC ARGUMENTS
The original intent of the founders has been perverted.
The US Government ignores the plain meaning of the constitution.
The Declaration Of Independence says...
Libertarians are defenders of freedom and rights.
Taxation is theft.
If you don't pay your taxes, men with guns will show up at your
house, initiate force and put you in jail.
Social Contract? I never signed no steenking social contract.
The social contract is like no other because it can be
"unilaterally" modified.
Other misc. claims denying the social contract.
Why should I be coerced to leave if I don't like the social
contract?
Do Cubans under Castro agree to their social contract?
Isn't that "love it or leave it"?
Why should we be coerced to accept the social contract? Why can't
we be left alone?
We can't emigrate because there is no libertarian nation.
Extortion by the state is no different than extortion by the Mafia.
There's no such thing as rights to govern territory!
Why should I be told what to do with my property? That infringes
on my rights of ownership.
Of course it's my property. I paid money and hold the deed.
New limitations on use of property are a taking, and should be
compensated.
Think how much wealthier we'd be if we didn't pay taxes.
We lived in a fairly libertarian society in the US 150 years ago.
"Might Makes Right" is the principle behind statism.
I want self-government, not other-government.
Why shouldn't we adopt libertarian government now?
There's a conspiracy to prevent a working libertarian experiment.
An event is explained by the issue at hand.
Haven't you read "Libertarianism in One Lesson"?
Have you read "No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority"?
Libertarians oppose the initiation of force.
Dred Scott and the Fugitive Slave Laws were examples of government
enforcement of slavery.
The World's Smallest Political Quiz. [Nolan Test]
The Libertarian Party: America's third largest political party.
You're a Statist!
Why do you spend so much time trying to debunk?
QUOTATIONS POPULAR WITH LIBERTARIAN EVANGELISTS
George Washington
Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850)
Lysander Spooner (1808-1887)
Thomas Jefferson
Alexander Fraser Tyler
Ayn Rand
Andre Marrou
James A. Donald
Unattributed
LIBERTARIAN PHILOSOPHY
CRITICAL REFERENCES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
CREDITS
INTRODUCTION
Many USENET readers encounter libertarianism for the first time on
USENET. Such unfamiliar claims might be quite difficult to judge if we
haven't had the time to think of reasons why the claims might be
false. This FAQ is intended to review a few common libertarian claims
that seem wrong to newcomers, and present some arguments in opposition
that show their shortcomings.
ABOUT THIS FAQ
The purpose of this FAQ is not to attack libertarianism, but some of
the more fallacious arguments within it. That done, libertarians can
then reformulate or reject these arguments. This is also needed to
help people place libertarianism and its arguments in context. It is
very hard to find any literature about libertarianism that was NOT
written by its advocates. This isolation from normal political
discourse makes it difficult to evaluate libertarian claims without
much more research or analysis than most of us have time for. Compare
this to (for example) the extensive literature of socialism and
communism written by ideologues, scholars, pundits, etc. on all sides.
Libertarianism is scantily analyzed outside its own movement. Let's
fix that.
This particular FAQ is mostly a personal view of libertarianism. It is
impossible to have an objective view of something like libertarianism,
and it would be a mistake to presume this FAQ is. (Or that the FAQs
written by proponents are.) It is also impossible for this FAQ to
represent all the opposing positions to libertarianism, though I hope
to see many future contributions from others. One notable failing
(common to many libertarians as well) is that this FAQ is rather
US-centric. All statements in this FAQ can be argued further by both
sides, and indeed most have in several answers to this FAQ, available
at the Critiques website. However, feel free to save a copy of this
FAQ and cite from it. It may not be ultimate truth, but it can be a
starting point for answers to libertarianism.
The editor and primary author, Mike Huben , has 20 years experience in
debate over electronic networks. Much of that has been with religious
believers and creationists, and this colors some of the arguments and
examples. No judgement or personal offense is intended, though there
is a substantial amount of ridicule of arguments (based in large part
on my belief that it is the most effective antidote to pompous
argument.) I welcome recommendations for alleviating offense while
retaining the sense and humor of the arguments. This FAQ is an
unfinished work. Vast sections have yet to be created: as in
talk.origins, we might expect perhaps 20 FAQs to eventually result.
Only the first major section (Evangelism) has been written and
included here. This FAQ is written in HTML, then converted to plain
text for posting.
WHAT IS LIBERTARIANISM?
It's hard to clearly define libertarianism. "It's a desert topping!"
"No, it's a floor wax!" "Wait-- it's both!" It's a mixture of social
philosophy, economic philosophy, a political party, and more. It would
be unjust for me to try to characterize libertarianism too exactly:
libertarians should be allowed to represent their own positions. At
least two FAQs have been created by libertarians to introduce their
positions. But the two major flavors are anarcho-capitalists (who want
to eliminate political governments) and minarchists (who want to
minimize government.) There are many more subtle flavorings, such as
Austrian and Chicago economic schools, gold-bug, space cadets,
Old-Right, paleo-libertarians, classical liberals, hard money, the
Libertarian Party, influences from Ayn Rand, and others. An
interesting survey is in chapter 36 of Marshall's "Demanding the
Impossible: A History of Anarchism", "The New Right and
Anarcho-capitalism."
This diversity of libertarian viewpoints can make it quite difficult
to have a coherent discussion with them, because an argument that is
valid for or against one type of libertarianism may not apply to other
types. This is a cause of much argument in alt.politics.libertarian:
non-libertarians may feel that they have rebutted some libertarian
point, but some other flavor libertarian may feel that his "one true
libertarianism" doesn't have that flaw. These sorts of arguments can
go on forever because both sides think they are winning. Thus, if you
want to try to reduce the crosstalk, you're going to have to specify
what flavor of libertarianism or which particular point of
libertarianism you are arguing against.
Libertarians are a small group whose beliefs are unknown to and not
accepted by the vast majority. They are utopian because there has
never yet been a libertarian society (though one or two have come
close to some libertarian ideas.) These two facts should not keep us
from considering libertarian ideas seriously, however they do caution
us about accepting them for practical purposes.
STRATEGIES FOR ARGUMENT
Many libertarian arguments are like fundamentalist arguments: they
depend upon restricting your attention to a very narrow field so that
you will not notice that they fail outside of that field. For example,
fundamentalists like to restrict the argument to the bible.
Libertarians like to restrict the argument to their notions of
economics, justice, history, and rights and their misrepresentations
of government and contracts. Widen the scope, and their questionable
assumptions leap into view. Why should I accept that "right" as a
given? Is that a fact around the world, not just in the US? Are there
counter examples for that idea? Are libertarians serving their own
class interest only? Is that economic argument complete, or are there
other critical factors or strategies which have been omitted? When
they make a historical argument, can we find current real-world
counterexamples? If we adopt this libertarian policy, there will be
benefits: but what will the disadvantages be? Are libertarians
reinventing what we already have, only without safeguards?
There are some common counterarguments for which libertarians have
excellent rebuttals. Arguments that government is the best or only way
to do something may fail: there are many examples of many government
functions being performed privately. Some of them are quite
surprising. Arguments based on getting any services free from
government will fail: all government services cost money that comes
from somewhere. Arguments that we have a free market are patently
untrue: there are many ways the market is modified.
There are a number of scientific, economic, political, and
philosophical concepts which you may need to understand to debate some
particular point. These include free market, public goods,
externalities, tragedy of the commons, prisoner's dilemma, adverse
selection, market failure, mixed economy, evolution, catastrophe
theory, game theory, etc. Please feel free to suggest other concepts
for this list.
One way to bring about a large volume of argument is to cross-post to
another political group with opposing ideas, such as
alt.politics.radical-left. The results are quite amusing, though there
is a lot more heat than light. Let's not do this more often than is
necessary to keep us aware that libertarianism is not universally
accepted.
LIBERTARIAN EVANGELISTIC ARGUMENTS
Evangelists (those trying to persuade others to adopt their beliefs)
generally have extensively studied which arguments have the greatest
effect on the unprepared. Usually, these arguments are brief
propositions that can be memorized easily and regurgitated in large
numbers. These arguments, by the process of selection, tend not to
have obvious refutations, and when confronted by a refutation, the
commonest tactic is to recite another argument. This eliminates the
need for actual understanding of the basis of arguments, and greatly
speeds the rate at which evangelists can be trained.
Without preparation, even blatantly fallacious arguments may disturb
or convince a targeted individual. Evangelists, who tend to be more
interested in effect than in accuracy, don't tend to point out that
there are usually lots of valid counterarguments available, sometimes
known for millennia.
If the target is not the person spoken to (it may be a group of
onlookers, such as the lurkers in newsgroups or listeners on a radio
show), we might expect that the "discussion" will focus on making the
person spoken to seem wrong, ridiculous, uncomfortable, at a loss,
etc.
Small wonder many people are not interested in entering "discussions"
with evangelists! They're likely to be out-prepared, swamped (or worse
convinced) by specious arguments, and possibly used as a cat's paw in
the persuasion of listeners.
The arguments treated here are not strawman misrepresentations: they
are all evangelistic arguments that have actually been made by
libertarians. Many of them have been made frequently. Although they
are often used evangelistically, we can't presume that someone making
them doesn't understand their basis or cannot support their argument.
And on the other hand, often other libertarians cringe when they hear
these.
Most of these questions are phrased as assertions: that is simply a
less clumsy shorthand for "How could I respond to a libertarian
claiming X?", where X is the assertion.
The original intent of the founders has been perverted.
The founders of the USA were a contentious lot, who hardly agreed on
any one thing, let alone libertarian notions. It is well documented
that the Constitution and Bill of Rights are compromises amongst
them: few agreed wholeheartedly with any particular part. Thus,
looking to the founders for "original intent" is silly: it will vary
amongst them. Not to mention that "original intent" (or original
understanding) is just as open to interpretation as the Constitution
itself because while there is lots of explicit data, it is from many
contradictory sources. For example, Judge Bork presents notably
non-libertarian versions of original intent.
I think the best way to interpret the constitution is the way the
founders explicitly specified in the Constitution: look to the
courts, especially the Supreme Court. The Constitution leaves the
method of its interpretation by the court entirely to the court to
decide. This begs the question of how to judge the interpretive
philosophies of the possible justices, but libertarians seldom get
that far.
"The interpretation of the laws is the proper and peculiar province
of the courts. A constitution is, in fact, and must be regarded by
the judges, as a fundamental law. It therefore belongs to them to
ascertain its meaning, as well as the meaning of any particular act
proceeding from the legislative body." Federalist No. 78.
There is no reason short of worship of the founders to presume that
the Supreme Court is less capable than the founders. Indeed, many
libertarians from outside the US find the authority of the founders
unconvincing. One writes: "As a Canadian, I don't give a _damn_ what
the `founders' intended. I hate it when a net.opponent trots out
some bit of tired U.S. history as a most holy of holies, not to be
questioned."
Jefferson himself said this plainly: "Some men look at constitutions
with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the ark of the
Covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the
preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to
be beyond amendment... laws and institutions must go hand in hand
with the progress of the human mind... as that becomes more
developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made,
institutions must advance also, to keep pace with the times.... We
might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him
when a boy as civilized society to remain forever under the regimen
of their barbarous ancestors."
The US Government ignores the plain meaning of the constitution.
Often this is presented as "The US wouldn't be so bad if the
government followed the Constitution."
"Plain meaning" is a matter of opinion. A plain meaning one century
can well be reversed in another, depending on popular usage,
historical context, etc. Well intentioned people can disagree on
"plain meaning" endlessly, as we see in any non-unanimous court
decision. For practical purposes, the meaning MUST be decided one
way or another.
Libertarian claims of "plain meaning" are often clearly shaped by
their beliefs. Where this occurs, it's pretty obvious that their
claims to "plain meaning" are not "common sense".
The Declaration Of Independence says...
The Declaration Of Independence is a rhetorical document, without
legal standing in the USA. That status was a deliberate decision of
the founders, not an accident. If it is purported to reflect the
intent of the founders, then we can only conclude that they changed
their minds when writing the Articles of Confederation and then the
Constitution.
Nor should it be mistaken for a philosophical treatise: that was not
its purpose. If a libertarian would like to defend it as philosophy,
he should rely on sound argument, not reverence for the founders.
Libertarians are defenders of freedom and rights.
The foremost defenders of our freedoms and rights, which
libertarians prefer you overlook, are our governments. National
defense, police, courts, registries of deeds, public defenders, the
Constitution and the Bill Of Rights, etc. all are government efforts
that work towards defending freedoms and rights.
Libertarians frequently try to present themselves as the group to
join to defend your freedom and rights. Lots of other organizations
(many of which you would not want to be associated with, such as
Scientologists) also fight for freedom and rights. I prefer the
ACLU. (Indeed, if you wish to act effectively, the ACLU is the way
to go: they advertise that they take on 6,000 cases a year free of
charge, and claim involvement in 80% of landmark Supreme Court cases
since 1920.)
It would be foolish to oppose libertarians on such a
mom-and-apple-pie issue as freedom and rights: better to point out
that there are EFFECTIVE alternatives with a historical track
record, something libertarianism lacks. Nor might we need or want
to accept the versions of "freedom" and "rights" that libertarians
propose. To paraphrase Anatole France: "How noble libertarianism, in
its majestic equality, that both rich and poor are equally
prohibited from peeing in the privately owned streets (without
paying), sleeping under the privately owned bridges (without
paying), and coercing bread from its rightful owners!"
Taxation is theft.
Two simple rebuttals to this take widely different approaches.
The first is that property is theft. The notion behind property is
that A declares something to be property, and threatens anybody who
still wants to use it. Where does A get the right to forcibly stop
others from using it? Arguments about "mixing of labor" with the
resource as a basis for ownership boil down to
"first-come-first-served". This criticism is even accepted by some
libertarians, and is favorably viewed by David Friedman. This
justifies property taxes or extraction taxes on land or extractable
resources if you presume that the government is a holder in trust
for natural resources. (However, most people who question the
creation of property would agree that after the creation of
property, a person is entitled to his earnings. Thus the second
argument)
The second is that taxation is part of a social contract.
Essentially, tax is payment in exchange for services from
government. This kind of argument is suitable for defending almost
any tax as part of a contract. Many libertarians accept social
contract (for example, essentially all minarchists must to insist on
a monopoly of government.) Of course they differ as to what should
be IN the contract.
If you don't pay your taxes, men with guns will show up at your
house, initiate force and put you in jail.
This is not initiation of force. It is enforcement of contract, in
this case an explicit social contract. Many libertarians make a big
deal of "men with guns" enforcing laws, yet try to overlook the fact
that "men with guns" are the basis of enforcement of any complete
social system. Even if libertarians reduced all law to "don't commit
fraud or initiate force", they would still enforce with guns.
Social Contract? I never signed no steenking social contract.
That argument and some of the following libertarian arguments are
commonly quoted from Lysander Spooner.
The constitution and the laws are our written contracts with the
government. There are several explicit means by which people make
the social contract with government. The commonest is when your
parents choose your residency and/or citizenship after your birth.
In that case, your parents or guardians are contracting for you,
exercising their power of custody. No further explicit action is
required on your part to continue the agreement, and you may end it
at any time by departing and renouncing your citizenship.
Immigrants, residents, and visitors contract through the oath of
citizenship (swearing to uphold the laws and constitution),
residency permits, and visas. Citizens reaffirm it in whole or part
when they take political office, join the armed forces, etc. This
contract has a fairly common form: once entered into, it is
implicitly continued until explicitly revoked. Many other contracts
have this form: some leases, most utility services (such as phone
and electricity), etc.
Some libertarians make a big deal about needing to actually sign a
contract. Take them to a restaurant and see if they think it
ethical to walk out without paying because they didn't sign
anything. Even if it is a restaurant with a minimum charge and they
haven't ordered anything. The restaurant gets to set the price and
the method of contract so that even your presence creates a debt.
What is a libertarian going to do about that? Create a regulation?
The social contract is like no other because it can be
"unilaterally" modified.
Not true. Consider the purchase of a condominium. You have a
contract with the condominium association, agreeing to pay the fees
they levy for the services they provide and obey the rules that they
create. You have an equal vote with the other residents on the
budget and the rules. If you don't like the budget or rules that are
enacted, you can vote with your feet or persuade everyone to change
them.
There are numerous other common sorts of contracts that allow
changes by one or both sides without negotiation. Gas, electric,
oil, water, phone, and other utility services normally have
contracts where at most they need to notify you in advance when they
change their rates. Insurance companies raise their rates, and your
only input is either pay the new rates or "vote with your feet".
(The exception is when rates are supervised by government regulatory
agencies.)
Other misc. claims denying the social contract.
One commonly cited Spooner argument is that the social contract is
like no other, and thus not a contract. That's a nonsequitur. A
unique feature or combination of features doesn't disqualify
something from being a contract.
Some complain that the social contract is fundamentally unjust
because it doesn't treat people equally, that people are taxed
unequally or receive services unequally. So? Like insurance, rates
can vary from individual to individual, and services received may be
more or less than premiums paid.
Some complain "Any contract where the enforcing agency is one of the
contractors is hardly fair." But the U.S. Constitution is a contract
between SEVERAL parties: the three branches of the government, the
states, and citizens. It's a multilateral contract where every party
is subject to enforcement by one or more of the other parties, and
every party is involved in enforcement for at least one other. This
pattern of checks and balances was specifically designed to deal
with precisely this fairness issue.
Why should I be coerced to leave if I don't like the social
contract?
Why leave an apartment if you change your mind about the lease? You
do not own the apartment, just as you do not own the nation. At
most, you may own some property within the apartment, just as you
may own some property within the nation.
Do Cubans under Castro agree to their social contract?
If you define contracts as voluntary, then you probably wouldn't say
the Cuban government operates by social contract, since most people
who wanted to emigrate have not been permitted to.
Most libertarians have a peculiar definition of voluntary:
contractual agreement makes all requirements of the contract
"voluntary", no matter how unexpected they are, no matter how long
the contract lasts for, no matter if the contractee changes his
mind. However, they're seldom willing to view our social contract in
that manner.
Our social contract in the USA is one of the nice, voluntary
contracts that libertarians should like. Even better, because you
can terminate it by leaving at any time. There is no US government
obstacle to emigration from the US. Isn't that "love it or leave
it"?
Nope. This is a distinction that seems too subtle for a lot of
libertarians: the difference between having a choice and having to
leave.
For example, let's say you live in a condominium, and are very fond
of it. As long as you can move out, you have a choice. No matter how
firmly you intend to stay. No matter how much you prefer your
current condo. No matter how good or bad your current condo is for
you, you still have a choice.
This is analogous to living in a nation. You choose which one to
live in, and you can change. You may not be able to improve some
things about it all by yourself, because it is not entirely yours.
You have at least 4 choices. 1) Tolerate the social contract, and
perhaps try to amend it. 2) Leave it by emigrating. 3) Violate it.
4) Revolt.
Why should we be coerced to accept the social contract? Why can't we
be left alone?
You are not coerced to accept US government services any more than
you are coerced to rent or purchase a place to live. If pretty much
all territory is owned by governments, and pretty much all houses
and apartments are owned, well, did you want them to grow on trees?
There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.
We can't emigrate because there is no libertarian nation.
Yes, you can emigrate, just as you could buy a different car even
though your favorite company doesn't produce cars which let you
travel at the speed of sound and get 2000 mpg. Even if nobody
produces EXACTLY what you want, you can choose any car the market
produces or you create yourself.
There are roughly 200 nations to which you could emigrate. They are
the product of an anarcho-capitalist free market: there is no
over-government dictating to those sovereign nations. Indeed, the
only difference between the anarchy of nations and libertopia is
that anarcho-capitalists are wishing for a smaller granularity.
These nations have found that it is most cost-efficient to defend
themselves territorially.
If any other market provided 200 choices, libertarians would declare
that the sacred workings of the market blessed whatever choices were
offered. The point is that choices do exist: it's up to libertarians
to show that there is something wrong with the market of nations in
a way they would accept being applied to markets within nations.
Libertaria is a combination of values that just doesn't exist: the
government equivalent of a really posh residence for very little
money. You can find nations which have much lower taxes, etc.: just
don't expect them to be first class.
And the reason these combinations don't exist is probably simple:
the free market of government services essentially guarantees that
there is no such thing as the free lunch libertarians want. It's not
competitive.
Extortion by the state is no different than extortion by the Mafia.
This is a prize piece of libertarian rhetoric, because it slides in
the accusation that taxation is extortion. This analogy initially
seems strong, because both are territorial. However, libertarians
consider contractual rental of land by owners (which is also
fundamentally territorial) ethical, and consider coercion of
squatters by those owners ethical. The key difference is who owns
what. The Mafia doesn't own anything to contract about. The
landowner owns the land (in a limited sense.) And the US government
owns rights to govern its territory. (These rights are a form of
property, much as mineral rights are a form of property. Let's not
confuse them with rights of individuals.) Thus, the social contract
can be required by the territorial property holder: the USA.
There's no such thing as rights to govern territory!
You'd have to ignore an awful lot of history to claim this sort of
PROPERTY didn't exist. The US government can demonstrate ownership
of such rights through treaty, purchase, bequeathment by the
original colonies and some other states, and conquest. The EXACT
same sources as all other forms of land ownership in the US. Also
note that governance rights are merely a subset of the rights that
anarcho-libertarians would want landowners to have. For example,
insistence on contractual obedience to regulations and acceptance of
punishment for violations.
Why should I be told what to do with my property? That infringes on
my rights of ownership.
This question comes up rather often, since absolute ownership of
property is fundamental to most flavors of libertarianism. Such
propertarianism fuels daydreams of being able to force the rest of
the world to swirl around the immovable rock of your property. For
example, there were trespass lawsuits filed against airlines for
flying over property.
jum...@my-deja.com
A good answer is: what makes you so sure it is yours?
Of course it's my property. I paid money and hold the deed.
What do you hold the deed to? Property as recognized by a
government. As such, you can address infringement of your rights
through the legal system. However your property as recognized by the
legal system is limited.
This isn't too surprising, since limitations created by private
transactions are also common. For example, property is often sold
without water rights or timber rights. Property is commonly sold
with easements: for example a neighbor may have the right to cross
to reach the road. And property may be sold with limitations to its
usage: for example, the Adirondack State Park was bequeathed to the
people of New York State with the stipulation that it remain forever
wild.
Most government limitations on property are analogous, and you
bought property that was already under those limitations. Just as it
would be wrong to deny the validity of an easement sold by the
previous owner, it is wrong to deny the validity of the current
system of limited ownership of property. For example, a clear
statement of such an "easement" is in the Fourth Amendment, which
essentially says that the government can enter your property with a
valid search warrant and not be trespassing.
There are many existing limitations such as government rights to tax
and to zone property, limitations to ownership of navigable waters,
how far property extends to the water, etc. And sometimes new
limitations are specified, such as non-ownership of airspace above
property.
New limitations on use of property are a taking, and should be
compensated. Some new limitations can be viewed as merely making
specific that what was claimed was never really owned. For example,
where was ownership of airspace above property ever explicitly
granted in our system of property? Where were polluters ever
explicitly granted the right to dump wastes into air or water that
they do not have a title to?
Other limitations (such as rezoning to eliminate undesirable
business or protecting wetlands from development) might be viewed as
control of negative externalities. Most libertarians would recognize
the right of a mall owner to write his leases so that he could
terminate them if the renters cause externalities: why shouldn't
communities have this right to self-governance as well?
Think how much wealthier we'd be if we didn't pay taxes.
This is a classic example of libertarians not looking at the
complete equation for at least two reasons. (1) If taxes are
eliminated, you'll need to purchase services that were formerly
provided by government. (2) If taxes are eliminated, the economics
of wages have changed, and wages will change as well.
Here's a really ludicrous (but real) example of (1): "With taxation
gone, not only will we have twice as much money to spend, but it
will go twice as far, since those who produce goods and services
won't have to pay taxes, either. In one stroke we'll be effectively
four times as rich. Let's figure that deregulation will cut prices,
once again, by half. Now our actual purchasing power, already
quadrupled by deTAXification, is doubled again. We now have eight
times our former wealth!" (L. Neil Smith)
And here's an example of (2): "I'm self-employed. My pay would
absolutely, positively go up 15+% tomorrow if I wasn't paying
FICA/Medicare." But only briefly. Standard microeconomic theory
applies just as well to someone selling labor as to someone selling
widgits. If FICA disappeared, your competitors in the market to sell
labor would be attracted to the higher wages and would sell more
labor. This increase in supply of labor would drive down your wage
from the 15% increase. You'd earn more (per hour). But less than 15%
more.
We lived in a fairly libertarian society in the US 150 years ago.
A classic libertarian roll-back-the-clock argument, that sounds good
at first because none of us directly remembers it. Libertarians do
usually remember and criticize some of the more prominent
non-libertarian features of that period, such as unequal protection
under the law for blacks and women. However, they seem to overlook a
lot of other important things.
Yes, the Federal government had a much lighter hand then. However,
state and local governments had a much greater influence. There is
not one class of positive duty or obligation in the US today that
did not exist 200 years ago at state or federal level.
All the biggies were there except income tax. The equivalent of
income tax was property tax (on all possessions) or head tax by many
states. There was involuntary conscription, eminent domain, etc. As
a matter of fact, things got much better when powers of states were
interpreted to be restricted by the US constitution (much later.)
Powers such as state religious authority.
Also, society was organized quite differently before the industrial
revolution spread to the US. Our "nation of shopkeepers" was
actually a nation of farmers. The means of production were
controlled primarily by the workers (who were the owners of the
farms and shops.) Government of that era would be as out-of-place
today as the tarriffs and scientific knowledge of that era.
"Might Makes Right" is the principle behind statism.
No, "Might makes ability to make something", Right or Wrong. You
can't even try for Right until you have Might to back it up in the
real world. That's the reason that some real governments have
survived and all utopian governments that have tried to abolish
force have failed.
However, government is not alone in requiring might. All property is
based on might as well. Nobody is beholden to your notions of what
constitutes your property. Property is just as "involuntary" as the
social contract. There is no moral obligation for anyone to respect
your property: only a practical one.
Recognition that the fundamental nature of property is based on
force is essential to recognition that there are costs and benefits
to the principle of property. It is not as negative a "right" as
libertarians like to portray it. I want self-government, not
other-government.
"Self government" is libertarian newspeak for "everybody ought to be
able to live as if they are the only human in the universe, if only
they believe in the power of libertarianism." It's a utopian ideal
like those of some Marxists and born-agains that would essentially
require some sort of human perfection to work.
More explicitly, "self government" is the peculiar notion that other
people ought not to be able to regulate your behavior. Much as we
would like to be free of such regulation, most people also want to
be able to regulate the behavior of others for practical reasons.
Some libertarians claim that they want the first so much, that they
will be willing to forgo the second. Most other people feel that
both are necessary (and that it would be hypocritical or stupid to
want just one.)
Why shouldn't we adopt libertarian government now?
Because there are no working examples of libertarian cities, states,
or nations.
Innumerable other ideologies have put their money where their mouths
are, if not their lives. Examples include most nations that have had
Marxist revolutions, Israel, many of the American colonies, a huge
number of religious and utopian communities, etc.
Yet libertarians want us to risk what many of them consider the best
nation in the world with their untested beliefs. It's not even
sensible to convert here first for the claimed economic benefits of
libertarianism: there would be less marginal benefit to converting
the USA to a libertarian system than most other nations. Let
libertarians bear the risk and cost of their own experiment.
Let libertarians point to successful libertarian programs to seek
our endorsement. For example, narcotic decriminalization in the
Netherlands has been a success. So has legalized prostitution in
Nevada and Germany (and probably other places.) Privatization of
some municipal services has been successful in some communities. But
these are extremely small scale compared to the total libertarian
agenda, and do not rule out emergent problems and instabilities of a
full scale libertarian system.
There's a conspiracy to prevent a working libertarian experiment.
Right. Uh huh. [Read: sarcasm.]
Libertarians sometimes cite the Minerva project (armed squatting on
a Tongan island) and an attempted overthrow of the government of
Suriname. If libertarians are too inept to compete internationally
through diplomacy, politics, bribery, or force of arms, it hardly
takes a conspiracy to explain that they lost. That's what
sovereignty takes.
A working libertarian experiment could be easily county sized. A
tiny religious sect was able to buy control of Antelope, Oregon and
relocate there a few years ago: the vastly more numerous
libertarians could do much more.
Privatize the roads, schools, libraries, police. Abolish property
taxes, zoning, anything not required by the state. Then show the
benefits. Yes, the state will prevent you from achieving some
libertarian goals: do what you can to show how you can improve
things. You shouldn't have to go 100% libertarian to show marked
benefits according to most libertarian claims.
An event is explained by the issue at hand.
This is really a class of argument, "post hoc, ergo propter hoc",
that is made all too often by arguers of all stripes. The claims
made with this sort of argument by libertarians are innumerable.
Counter examples and other issues that plainly had influence are
usually extremely easy to find. Here are some real claims actually
made in a.p.l.
For example: "The automotive recession started in October 1989,
which was the start of the requirement that some cars of each
manufacturer be fitted with air bags... Perhaps the reason that car
sales have gone down is that many consumers are not willing to pay
for a car with air bags."
For example: "There are as many military reasons why the draft is
bad as there are moral ones. Witness our success using a volunteer
army versus a conscripted one."
It would be possible to collect libertarian examples of the other
classes of fallacies of argument, but this frequent one can serve as
the exemplar. This particular one comes up a lot because of the lure
of testing theory with reality.
Haven't you read "Libertarianism in One Lesson"?
Every belief system has its evangelistic writings, designed to help
convince or draw in new members. The Campus Crusade for Christ uses
"Evidence That Demands A Verdict", Scientology uses "Dianetics", and
libertarians use "Libertarianism in One Lesson".
All of these books are very convincing-- in the absence of
counterargument. However, they are easily rebutted by skeptics
because they MUST omit the exceptions to their point of view to be
convincing.
If I may cite a convert: "Libertarians like me believe in a simple
morality-- everyone should be free to do what they like, so long as
they don't initiate use of force... If you're not familiar with this
morality, I urge you to read "Libertarianism in One Lesson", by
David Bergland. I was personally shocked to find that things could
be so neatly axiomatized, and what's even more remarkable is that in
the empirical world, societies seem to me to be punished in an eye
for an eye fashion from their deviation from this simple morality.
We are deviating quite a bit and suffering accordingly... in my view
this is why economic growth is stagnating, the inner cities are
dying..."
Any time I read how simple it is to understand the world through
system X, I know I'm dealing with a convert from evangelistic
writings. They blithely assert that their explanations show the true
cause of current problems. And the key to showing them to be wrong,
is to show that there's more complexity to the world than is
encompassed by their simplistic explanations.
Have you read "No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority"?
"No Treason" is a lengthy rant that doesn't take longer than the
first paragraph to begin its egregious errors.
For example, in the first paragraph: "It [The Constitution]
purports, at most, to be only a contract between persons living
eighty years ago." Thus he focuses his attention on the Preamble,
and evidently ignores Article VII, which says EXACTLY who contracted
for the Constitution:
"The ratification of the conventions of nine States shall be
sufficient for the establishment of this Constitution between
the States so ratifying the same. Done in Convention, by the
unanimous consent of the States present, the seventeenth day of
September, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred
and eighty-seven, and of the Independence of the United States
of America the twelfth. In Witness whereof, we have hereunto
subscribed our names." [signatories FOR STATES omitted.]
He's wrong on this simple matter of fact: the constitution says who
contracted with whom. But then he goes on to make a big deal about
the people of that era being dead, as if contracts between
organizations lapse when their office holders depart.
The rest of his "analysis" is equally shoddy, and consists largely
of calling government a collection of thieves and murderers at least
75 times. David Friedman, in "The Machinery of Freedom", says
Spooner "attacks the contract theory of government like a lawyer
arguing a case": but REAL presentations of cases have to cope with
counterarguments, and can't depend so heavily on invalid
presumptions which are easily shot full of holes.
Libertarians oppose the initiation of force.
How noble. And I'm sure that in a real libertarian society,
everybody would hold to this morality as much as Christians turn the
other cheek. [ :-( For the sarcasm-impaired.]
"Initiation of force" is another libertarian newspeak term that does
not mean what the uninitiated might think. Libertarians except
defense of property and prosecution of fraud, and call them
retaliatory force. But retaliation can be the initiation of force: I
don't need force to commit theft or fraud. This is a bit of
rhetorical sleight of hand that libs like to play so that they can
pretend they are different than government. You know: break a law
(like not paying your taxes) and MEN WITH GUNS initiate force.
Sorry, but you've gotta play fair: it can't be initiation for
government and retaliation for you. Like most other non-pacifistic
belief systems, libertarians want to initiate force for what they
identify as their interests and call it righteous retaliation, and
use the big lie technique to define everything else as evil
"initiation of force". They support the initial force that has
already taken place in the formation of the system of property, and
wish to continue to use force to perpetuate it and make it more
rigid.
The National Libertarian Party membership form has "the pledge" on
it: "I do not believe in or advocate the initiation of force as a
means of achieving political or social goals." It's quite amusing to
hear how much libertarians disagree over what it means: whether it
is or isn't ok to overthrow the US because it has "initiated force"
and they would be "retaliating".
Beyond this perceived class interest, libertarian dislike of
"initiation of force" isn't much different than anyone else's. It
may be humanitarian, defensive, etc.
Dred Scott and the Fugitive Slave Laws were examples of government
enforcement of slavery.
No. There's a subtle distinction: they were enforcement of property
rights of slaveowners. It was entirely the owners' assertion that he
was property that the government was acting upon. If the owner had
at any time freed him, he would not have been a slave.
Libertarians would love to lay slavery at the feet of government
precisely because slavery is a sin of capitalism. The US government
NEVER enslaved the blacks. The US government never said "you must
now own this slave" or "you've never been a slave before, but you
are one now." US slavery was initiated by capitalists.
The US government was NOT in the business of proclaiming people free
or slaves: that was a private sector responsibility until that Evil
Statist Lincoln stole that sacred private right for the State. Until
that time, only private, capitalist owners had the right to declare
whether a black person was free or slave.
The World's Smallest Political Quiz. [Nolan Test]
This libertarian quiz asks a set of leading questions to tempt you
to proclaim yourself a libertarian. The big trick is that if you
answer yes to each question, you are a macho SELF GOVERNOR: there is
an unspoken sneer to those who would answer anything else. It is an
ideological litmus test.
The most obvious criticism of this quiz is that it tries to graph
the range of politics onto only 2 axes, as if they were the only two
that mattered, rather than the two libertarians want the most change
in. For example, if socialists were to create such a test, they
would use a different set of axes.
The second obvious criticism is typical of polls taken to show false
levels of support: the questions are worded to elicit the desired
response. This is called framing bias. For example, on a socialist
test, you might see a question such as "Do you believe people should
help each other?" Libertarians would answer "yes" to this question;
the problem is the "but"s that are filtered out by the question
format.
Many libertarians use this as an "outreach" (read: evangelism) tool.
By making it easy to get high scores on both axes, subjects can be
told that they are already a libertarian and just didn't know it.
This is the same sort of suckering that cold readers and other
frauds use.
The Libertarian Party: America's third largest political party.
Wow, third! That sounds impressive until you realize that the
Libertarian Party is about one percent of the size of the other two.
Funny how they don't mention that in their slogan. I guess they
should get a new slogan. Let's have a new slogan contest for the
Libertarian Party!
A party a lot smaller than the Communists used to be?
The party that can't get as many votes as any one-shot third
party?
The party that's elected fewer to national office than the
Socialists?
The party whose symbol is a big government statue.
The party with the oxymoronic name?
The party of Pat Paulson, uh, I mean Don Imus, uh, I mean Howard
Stern!
America's Third Most Comical Political Party?
Preschool for hyperactive Republicans?
Join in! Submit your slogan today!
Almost as comical is the Libertarian Party's '94 election results.
They now have even fewer elected dogcatchers and other important
officials. Most notable, their loss of 2 out of 4 state reps in New
Hampshire.
Interestingly, many of the elected libertarian officials run as
stealth candidates, not declaring their party or real ideology. Like
creationists and fundamentalists trying to pack school boards, they
often conceal their beliefs to gain positions.
You're a Statist!
Don't be surprised if you receive some ad-hominem abuse from
libertarian evangelists when you don't accept their arguments. It's
no different than if a communist called you bourgeois or a Bircher
called you a commie lover.
Sometimes they'll go overboard and even accuse you of mental
disease, at which time you can point out to them the fine company
they keep: Stalin, Hitler, etc.
Why do you spend so much time trying to debunk?
As I told creationists who wondered why I bothered, it's interesting
to me to study unusual beliefs for the same reason it's interesting
for doctors to study pathologies. You don't have to catch a disease
to be able to understand it, fight it, or vaccinate against it.
QUOTATIONS POPULAR WITH LIBERTARIAN EVANGELISTS
The purpose of bumper sticker phrases is not to enlighten: it is to
misdirect and channel your thoughts. That's a prime need for
evangelism, and thus we see a lot of these from libertarian
evangelists.
George Washington
"Government, like fire, is a dangerous servant and a fearful
master." Well, if we wish to use that analogy, let's note that we
now exploit combustion for vastly more purposes, in vastly greater
quantity, and for vastly greater benefit than George Washington
would have dreamed of. Likewise modern liberal government.
Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850)
"Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made
laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and
property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the
first place."
This quote is one of the central ideas of "The Law", a piece of
philosophical propaganda full of errors and uncompelling arguments.
Let's start with a simple demonstration of its ambiguity. Did men
make laws to support or suppress life, liberty, and property? At
first glance, since we like those three glittering generalities,
we'd say support. But if we change the generalities and keep the
"logic" the same:
"Death, enslavement, and indigence do not exist because men have
made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that death,
enslavement, and indigence existed beforehand that caused men to
make laws in the first place."
Now we'd say suppress. The fact is, this ringing statement can be
interpreted to praise or damn law supporting or suppressing any
generality.
Now, Bastiat does get more specific. If you read a few sentences
further into "The Law", he presumes natural rights from god, a
simple fallacy of reification (pretending an idea is a real thing.)
But the real source of rights is might. Individuals don't have
rights to protect their lives, liberty and property: they have
minuscule powers to attempt to create such rights. Law is an attempt
to benefit those within society by creating rights through
conventions that reduce in-society conflict and utilize combined
powers efficiently. Bastiat has the tail wagging the dog: collective
rights being justified by individual rights, when in actual society
individual rights are produced by collective might.
It's hard to accept philosophy like this which starts by preferring
imaginary rights to basic observable facts of society.
Lysander Spooner (1808-1887)
"A man is none the less a slave because he is allowed to choose a
new master once in a term of years."
When you contract for government services, you are a customer, not a
slave. If you think you cannot change with whom you contract, you
have enslaved your self.
Thomas Jefferson
"A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from
injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to
regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall
not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is
the sum of good government." (First Inaugural Address)
Perhaps as an unreachable goal. Certainly Jefferson practiced
differently than this would seem to imply he thought. For example,
Jefferson supported compulsory tax-supported schools and kept
slaves. Jefferson was very much a political pragmatist full of such
contradictions, as any non-hagiographic biography will tell.
But if you want get into a founder quoting contest, Ben Franklin
wrote:
"Private property ... is a Creature of Society, and is subject to
the Calls of that Society, whenever its Necessities shall require
it, even to its last Farthing, its contributors therefore to the
public Exigencies are not to be considered a Benefit on the
Public, entitling the Contributors to the Distinctions of Honor
and Power, but as the Return of an Obligation previously
received, or as payment for a just Debt."
We could find quite a few other appropriate quotes with a little
searching.
Libertarians might endorse their interpretation of the initial quote
without the backing of Jefferson: if so, let them present a working
example of such a government before we take it as more than a
utopian ideal.
"Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the
government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the
government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of
kings to govern him? Let history answer this question." (First
Inaugural Address)
History shows that the USA has been one of the best governments, by
most people's standards, even libertarian. The last sentence
indicates that Jefferson intended these as rhetorical questions, not
as statements against all government. He also said (in the same
address:
"If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union
or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as
monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be
tolerated where reason is left free to combat it."
Jefferson clearly had more confidence in government than the initial
quotation out of context would imply. If libertarians want to adopt
this position (as some do), they'd be better off supporting it with
something more than an appeal to the inconsistent authority of
Jefferson.
Thomas Paine
"Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in
its worst state, an intolerable one."
To say that governments are evil is on a par with saying that humans
are evil. To claim that it is a necessary evil is on a par with
saying that cars are a necessary evil. What we are really talking
about are subjective preferences which may or may not be satisfied,
not some theological notion of right and wrong.
The inescapable evils of coercive behavior are not unique to
government. Our government is where we choose to channel and
regulate them, because the alternative (private, unregulated
coercion) gives much worse results, as the history of privately
owned states (monarchies, dictatorships, despotisms) and private
"law" such as slavery, mafias, warlords, etc. show rather clearly.
We have constructed a government that is jointly owned by all,
because private ownership gives too much incentive for profit
through coercion of others.
Alexander Fraser Tyler
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It
can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote
themselves money from the Public Treasury. From that moment on,
the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most
benefits from the Public Treasury with the result that a democracy
always collapses over loose fiscal policy always followed by
dictatorship." From: "The Decline and Fall of the Athenian
Republic".
I wasn't aware that there was any "permanent form of government".
However, we could make a pretty good case that voters in the US have
always known that they could vote themselves benefits from the
Public Treasury. Indeed, it's been done pretty often. Yet we've
lasted 200+ years.
Unlike the Athenian Republic, in the USA the money in the Public
Treasury comes directly from the pockets of the majority, the middle
class. This might be the most significant deterrent to loose fiscal
policy.
Ayn Rand
"I shall choose friends among men, but neither slaves nor
masters."
Did Ayn Rand pay her taxes out of friendship then? That's a new one
on me.
Andre Marrou
"Liberals want the government to be your Mommy. Conservatives want
government to be your Daddy. Libertarians want it to treat you
like an adult."
Libertarians want to kill mommy and daddy so that they can stay up
later and buy more ice cream than they can now.
Bumper sticker analogies are as poor a method of understanding
libertarianism (let alone anything else) as science fiction. Too bad
so many libertarians make such heavy use of those methods.
James A. Donald
"We have the right to defend ourselves and our property, because
of the kind of animals that we are. True law derives from this
right, not from the arbitrary power of the omnipotent state."
The two red-alert-for-a-whopper phrases in this quote are: "the kind
of animals that we are" and "true law".
People who compare us to animals usually know little about animals
and less about people. If we look to animals for models we can find
all sorts of unacceptable (and conflicting) behaviors which are
entirely natural.
Characterizations of humans as animals for most philosophical
purposes have historically ignored sociological, anthropological,
and sociobiological knowledge in favor of conveniently parochial
observations.
There is no "true law". Innumerable political and religious sects
might claim it, but I'd think that if there was such a thing, people
could recognize it and agree on it.
Unattributed
"Mob rule isn't any prettier merely because the mob calls itself a
government."
Corporate feudalism isn't any prettier merely because the
corporations prattle about free markets. Strawmen are SO easy to
create.
The presumption that the US government is the equivalent of mob rule
is ludicrous. The assertion that libertarian anarchy would be better
is unsupported by real examples. (Libertarian minarchy doesn't
change the form of government from "mob rule".)
"It ain't charity if you are using someone else's money."
Almost all charitable organizations use other people's money. Their
real point is that the money used for government social programs is
"coerced" (libertarian newspeak for taxes.) What they overlook is
that, in many philosophical and religious systems (including Judaism
and Islam), charity isn't a virtue of the giver: charity is the
relief of the receiver.
"Utopia is not an option."
This is the libertarian newspeak formula for overlooking problems
with their ideas. Much like "Trust in Jesus". Used the way it
commonly is, it means "libertarianism might do worse here: I don't
want to make a comparison lest we lose."
It is also another motherhood and apple pie issue; it applies to
EVERY political theory. The question is what provisions are made for
coping with necessary imperfections; libertarians tend to assume
"the same as today but better", without any experience of what their
proposed changes actually will do.
According to Perry Metzger, who claims to have popularized the
phrase, the correct usage is "you *have* to make a comparison of
libertarianism against the existing system rather than against your
ideals of what you'd like your system to do." However, since there
is no real example of libertarianism, that would be comparing the
real current system against an ideal libertarian system. That's
hardly a fair or valid comparison.
There is one valid way of using this phrase: to indicate that
perfection is not a possible result. That is a rare usage.
"Democracy is like three wolves and a sheep deciding what to have
for lunch."
We are not a simple democracy: we are a representative democratic
republic: there are not direct elections of laws and there is a
constitution that limits what laws can be enacted. Extend the
analogy to take that into account and lo and behold, it becomes:
"deciding what to have for lunch that is not one of us."
Now, if you were making the analogy about anarcho-capitalism, it
would become "three wolves competing to be first to 'add value' to
the sheep by slaughtering it and sell it to the others."
This is really a classic libertarian strawman, used by many flavors
of anarchists for centuries. The authors of the US Constitution were
well aware of this: they devoted a segment of the Federalist papers
to it: "... it may be concluded that a pure democracy... can admit
of no cure for the mischiefs of faction... A republic, by which I
mean a government in which the scheme of representation takes place,
opens a different prospect, and promises the cure for which we are
seeking." Federalist No. 10, James Madison.
LIBERTARIAN PHILOSOPHY
Libertarianism does have a lot of philosophical literature which is
much more sophisticated than the evangelistic and bumper sticker
arguments critiqued above. However, much of it can be critiqued as
fundamentally flawed. James K. Galbraith, criticizing many economists,
might well have been criticizing libertarians when he wrote (in a
letter in Slate, Nov. 5, 1996):
I don't accept that much of use can be learned about policy in this
way [well-structured deduction from metaphysical first principles.]
When the world deviates from the principles, as it usually does, the
simple lessons go astray. This is not a complaint against math. It
is a complaint against indiscriminate application of the deductive
method, sometimes called the Ricardian vice, to problems of human
action. Mine is an old gripe against much of what professional
economists do; not against science but against scientism, against
the pretense of science. To combat it, I spend my research time
wrestling with real-world data, and I spend much of my writing time
warring against the policy ideas of aggressive, ahistorical
deductivists.
A thorough discussion of problems of libertarian philosophy would be
well beyond the scope of this FAQ, though an overview might one day be
developed. In the mean time, a few sources are available at the
"Critiques of Libertarianism" site
(http://world.std.com/~mhuben/libindex.html ), and still better are
a number of the excellent critical references listed below.
CRITICAL REFERENCES
I am seeking references to critiques and analyses of libertarianism or
its positions, which seem to be very scarce. So far the following have
been found or recommended (special thanks to James Hammerton and
Robert Lockard):
Walter Adams "The Bigness Complex" Pantheon Books, 1987.
(opposes libertarian antitrust position)
Norman P. Barry "On Classical Liberalism and Libertarianism"
MacMillan 1987
Jeremy Bentham "Anarchical Fallacies"
Frank Bourgin "The Great Challenge: The Myth of Laissez-Faire in the
Early Republic"
John Bryant "Libertarian Dirt" Socratic Press, 1995. A ranting
pamphlet about Murray Rothbard; 2/3 self promotion and blank pages
Allen Buchanan "Ethics, Efficiency, and the Market"
Rowman & Littlefield, 1985. From the cover: "... contains the most
thorough and systematic analysis of economic and moral arguments
both for and against the market as an instrument of resource
allocation." The chapter, "Moral Arguments For and Against the
Market" occupies most of the book.
George W. Carey, editor "Freedom & Virtue : The Conservative
Libertarian Debate" Intercollegiate Studies Inst., 1998.
Conservatives and Libertarians duke it out.
Noam Chomsky "Profit Over People: Neoliberalism And Global Order"
Seven Stories Press 1999. Places the current ascendency of
neoliberalism in historic context as yet another form of
oppression by elites.
G. A. Cohen "Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality (Studies in
Marxism and Social Theory)" Cambridge Univ Press, 1995.
Charles Derber "Corporation Nation: How Corporations Are Taking Over
Our Lives, And What We Can Do About It" St. Martin's Press 1998.
Ascendency of corporate power is decried as illiberal, and a
new positive populism is prescribed.
George W. Downs and Patrick D. Larkey "The Search For Government
Efficiency: From Hubris to Helplessness" Random House, 1986.
A serious, scholarly study of efficiency. Not a polemic but
very necessary to balance the government as inefficient polemics.
Albert Ellis "Is Objectivism A Religion?" L. Stuart, 1968.
Peter Erickson "The Stance of Atlas: An Examination of The Philosophy
of Ayn Rand"
Herakles Pub. 1997. Shows some fundamental errors in Rand's
philosophy, and identifies some earlier alternatives that are
supposedly correct.
Barbara H. Fried "The Progressive Assault On Laissez Faire: Robert
Hale And The First Law And Economics Movement"
Harvard University Press 1998. The first, full-length study of
Hale's work, which showed that "private", unregulated economic
relations were in fact determined by a state imposed regime of
property and contract rights which were hard to square with
common-sense notions of social justice.
Willard Gaylin and Bruce Jennings "The Perversion of Autonomy :
The Proper Uses of Coercion and Constraints in a Liberal Society"
Free Press, 1996. Discusses the balance in a liberal society
between the autonomy of the individual against the responsibility
of individuals toward the community at large.
Charles T. Goodsell "The Case for Bureaucracy: A Public
Administration Polemic"
Chatham House, 1994. Reexamines empirical findings on U.S.
bureaucratic performance, noting how well the American system
really works.
John Gray "Beyond the New Right: Markets, Government and the Common
Environment"
Routledge 1994. John Gray once held views very close to
libertarianism, but in this book he repudiates both neoclassical
liberalism and libertarianism. Chapter 3, "The Moral
Foundations of Market Institutions" contains some strong
criticisms of the libertarian position.
John Gray "False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism"
New Press 1999. A critique of the politics of neo-liberalism that
shows the ideological connections between neo-liberalism and
Marxism.
Donald P. Green "Pathologies of Rational Choice Theory"
Yale University Press, 1994. A serious, scholarly study of
the intellectual failures of Rational Choice Theory.
William Greider "One World, Ready or Not : The Manic Logic of Global
Capitalism"
Simon & Schuster 1997. A liberal examination of the implications of
the global industrial revolution.
Alan Haworth "Anti-Libertarianism: Markets, Philosophy, and Myth"
Routledge 1994.
Dennis Henigan, Bruce Nicholson, David Hemenway "Guns and the
Constitution" Aletheia Press 1995. A book-length FAQ of
refutations of the gun-ownership propganda and mythology
promulgated by the NRA and gleefully parroted by libertarians.
Essential reading.
Stephen Holmes, Cass Sunstein "The Cost of Rights: Why Liberty
Depends on Taxes"
W. W. Norton 1999. Legally enforceable rights cost money, a fact
ignored by libertarian ideologues.
William E. Hudson "American Democracy in Peril"
Chatham House, 1996. Chapter 3 "The second challenge: radical
individualism" has a subsection "The flaws of libertarianism."
Thomas Parke Hughes "Rescuing Prometheus"
Pantheon Books 1998. An analysis of how four large-scale government
projects basically invented and then transformed modern systems
management and operations research while also developing much of
the core technology of the post-modern world.
Attracta Ingram "A Political Theory of Rights"
Oxford University Press 1994. Ingram argues that the libertertarian
concept of self-ownership is inadequate, and proposes a (much
more complex) theory of rights based in a principle of
self-government. Chapters 1-3, form a useful exposition and
critique of the standard libertarian position.
Jane Kelsey "Rolling Back the State: Privatisation of Power in
Aotearoa/New Zealand"
Paul & Co Publishing Consortium 1996. And "Economic Fundamentalism:
The New Zealand Experiment - A World Model for Structural
Adjustment?"
Pluto Press 1996. Two books that detail the unhappy consequences
of a real-world libertarian economic experiment.
Roland Kley "Hayek's Social and Political Thought" Oxford University
Press 1994. Shows that Hayek's concept of a spontaneous order
doesn't stand up to scrutiny, undermining a body of theory
libertarians often draw upon to show that free markets work.
Robert Kuttner "Everything for Sale: The Virtues and Limits of
Markets" Knopf, 1997. Why mixed economies would outperform pure
markets. Essential for countering libertarian economic arguments.
Will Kymlicka "Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Introduction"
Clarendon Press, 1990. Now the standard text in the field; very
highly regarded. Has a long chapter on libertarianism. Not at
all kind to it.
William Leach "Land of Desire" Vintage Books, 1993. Discusses the
rise of America's consumerist culture and shows how our
capitalist system has depended on government support at every
stage of its development.
Steven Luper-Foy "The Possibility of Knowledge: Nozick and His
Critics"
Linda McQuaig "The Cult of Impotence: Selling the Myth of
Powerlessness in the Global Economy" Viking 1998. Why economic
globalization and its effects are not inevitable, and why
democratic government can and should ameliorate those effects.
Stephen L. Newman "Liberalism at Wits' End: The Libertarian Revolt
Against the Modern State" Cornell University Press in 1984
William J. Novak "The People's Welfare: Law and Regulation in
Nineteenth-Century America"
Univ. of North Carolina Pr., 1996. "Blasts to pieces... the
libertarian fantasy that until the twentieth century the American
state left private property owners and economic entrepreneurs
alone." --Robert W. Gordon, Yale Law School.
William F. O'Neill "With Charity Toward None: An Analysis Of Ayn
Rand's Philosophy" Littlefield, Adams, 1972.
Jeffrey Paul, editor "Reading Nozick"
(anthology of essays about "Anarchy, State, And Utopia")
John W. Robbins "Answer to Ayn Rand : [a critique of the philosophy
of objectivism]"
John W. Robbins "Without a Prayer: Ayn Rand and the Close of Her
System" Apparently a rebuttal from a religious point of view.
L.A. Rollins "The Myth of Natural Rights"
Schwartz, Peter "Libertarianism: The perversion of liberty"
An article reprinted in "The Voice of Reason: Essays in
Objectivist Thought".
Thomas A. Spragens, Jr. "The Limitations of Libertarianism."
Responsive Community (Spring 1992)45-47. (Part 2.)
James P. Sterba "Contemporary Social and Political Philosophy"
Wadsworth, 1994. His chapter on libertarianism makes the
argument that, "... the right to a social minimum endorsed
by welfare liberals is also required by the libertarian's own
ideal of liberty."
James P. Sterba "Morality in Practice" Fifth edition, Wadsworth,
1997. Another statement of the above argument. A longer version
of this article will appear as "Reconciling Liberty and
Equality or Why Libertarians must be Socialists" in Liberty
and Equality,
edited by Larry May and Jonothan Schonsheck (MIT, 1996).
Cass Sunstein "Free Markets and Social Justice" (Oxford Univ. Press
1997). Takes on the claims of the Law and Economics camp,
libertarians such as Epstein and Posner.
Lars Udehn "The Limits of Public Choice: A sociological critique of
the economic theory of politics" (Routledge 1996).
Jeff Walker "The Ayn Rand Cult" (Open Court 1998). Questions the
originality of Rand's ideas, and presents the cult-like
organization of Objectivism.
Robert Anton Wilson "Natural Law"
Donald A. Wittman "The Myth of Democratic Failure: Why Political
Institutions Are Efficient"
University of Chicago Press, 1995. "... refutes one of the
cornerstone beliefs of economics and political science: that
economic markets are more efficient than the processes and
institutions of democratic government."
Jonathan Wolff "Robert Nozick: Property, Justice and the Minimal
State" Blackwell 1991. (Details Nozick's political theory and
exposes its flaws and incompleteness.)
I've yet to read most of these, and welcome reviews, summaries, and
better citations.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bergland, David "Libertarianism in One Lesson"
Friedman, David "The Machinery of Freedom"
Marshall, Peter "Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism"
Spooner, Lysander "No Treason"
CREDITS
Thanks to many people who have contributed directly or indirectly to
this FAQ.
Some specific recommendations have come from (in alphabetical order):
Ken Arromdee (arro...@blaze.cs.jhu.edu)
Chris Auld (au...@econ01.econ.QueensU.CA)
Paul Barton-Davis (pa...@cs.washington.edu)
Bruce Baugh (Bruce...@p23.f40.n105.z1.fidonet.org)
John Bicketts (sfei...@mach3ww.com)
Jeffrey Bolden (bol...@s5.math.umn.edu)
Daniel Brown (dbr...@ai.uga.edu)
Steven Burnap (sbu...@netcom.com)
Caliban (cal...@gate.net)
Tony Cox (tc...@SSRL01.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU)
Merle Christopher (me...@a.cs.okstate.edu)
Ervan Darnell (er...@cs.rice.edu)
Lamont Granquist (lam...@cs.washington.edu)
James A Hammerton
Chris Holt (Chris...@newcastle.ac.uk)
Aman Jabbi (Amandee...@Eng.Sun.COM)
Steve Kangas
Alex Khan (pseudo...@rocketmail.com)
Jim Larson (j...@zeus.Jpl.Nasa.Gov)
Robert Lockard (RLock...@aol.com)
Calvin Bruce Ostrum (c...@cs.toronto.edu)
Mark Roddy
Glen Raphael (rap...@fx.com)
Scott Susin (ssu...@econ.Berkeley.EDU)
Russell Turpin (tur...@cs.utexas.edu)
Bob Waldrop (bwal...@xmission.com)
Matthew Daniel Walker (mdwa...@1.amherst.edu)
I owe a debt to the many people with whom I have discussed
libertarianism on the net whose ideas have helped to inform and shape
my own.
Visitors since 97/1/21.
Copyright 1998 by Mike Huben ( mhu...@world.std.com ).
This document may be freely distributed for non-commercial purposes if
it is reproduced in its textual entirety, with this notice intact.
jum...@my-deja.com
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Rhodes/1698/rand.html
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Ayn Rand's Objectivism
3rd View
Current Affairs
Index Libertarian Zen Christianity Sign-In View Book
09/10/96
Here is an attempt at a brief summary of Ayn Rand's Objectivist
epistemology, and of her political/economic views. I have taken the
liberty of translating Rand's ideas into more readily understandable
language. Hopefully, not too much has been lost via the translation.
For further information, please visit Objectivist Links.
Cognition and Measurement:
1. The perceptual level of awareness is the base of all of knowledge.
2. Cognition is based on perceiving that something exists, then
identifying it.
3. That which is perceived is a "percept," and that which exists is an
"existent" or an "entity."
4. A "unit" is an existent which is a separate member of a group of
entities which share one or more distinguishing characteristic(s).
5. Measurement uses a standard to identify quantitative relationships
between entities, and its purpose is to expand knowledge beyond that
which is directly perceivable as "concretes."
Concept Formation:
6. Concept formation involves identifying two or more existents or
units which have (a) distinguishing characteristic(s).
7. Concepts may function epistemologically as units which may be
integrated into larger concepts. The distinguishing characteristic(s)
of the larger concept is common to all the concepts used as units. The
distinguishing characteristics of the concepts used as units are
subsumed under the larger concept, but the larger concept uses (a) new
distinguishing characteristic(s).
8. Concept formation may be applied to states of consciousness
(psychological processes such as cognition and evaluation) as above,
but their measurement is ordinal (e.g., "A" is greater than "B" which
is greater than "C") rather than cardinal.
9. As condensations of knowledge and by reducing the number of units
which man must deal with, concepts allow him to deal with the vast and
growing body of information present in his environment.
10. Axiomatic concepts are primary facts of reality. They are implicit
in all facts and in all knowledge, are perceived directly but grasped
conceptually, and apply to all of man's awareness. The primary
axiomatic concepts are "existence," "identity," and "consciousness."
Axiomatic concepts are the foundation of objectivity, and are
identified by noting their necessity even in attempts to deny their
existence.
Definitions:
11. A definition identifies the nature of the units of a concept,
including their essential distinguishing characteristic(s) of the
units, and the essential distinguishing characteristic of the concept.
12. Definitions are "condensations" of many observations,and their
validity depends on the validity of those observations.
13. The validity of man's conclusions, inferences and knowledge rest
on the validity of his definitions.
14. Correct "primitive" definitions (e.g., man walks) do not
contradict more advanced correct definitions (e.g., man walks on two
legs).
Capitalism:
15. Man's essential characteristic is his rational faculty, and his
mind is his basic means of survival and his only means of gaining
knowledge.
16. Society's recognition of "individual rights" involves recognizing
that man must use his reason to survive.
17. Capitalism is a social system which honors individual rights,
including the right of privately-owned property.
18. Socialism is a theory or social system which gives ownership and
control of goods (including production, capital and land) to the
"community."
19. Fascism is a governmental system with strong centralized power,
which forbids opposition or criticism, and which controls all affairs
of the nation (including commercial and industrial).
20. Statism is the principle of concentrating extensive economic,
political, and related controls in the state at the cost of individual
liberty.
21. Supply and demand means that the economic value of a man's work is
determined by the voluntary consent of others' to trade their work or
products for his.
22. Supply and demand rejects tribal premise (involuntary service to
the tribe) and altruism (involuntary service to others).
23. Wealth is not anonymous, nor a tribal product, but instead belongs
to individuals. "Redistribution" of that wealth to others who have not
earned it equals theft from the individuals who worked for it.
24. Capitalism has been damaged by mysticism, altruism, the soul-body
dichotomy and the tribal premise.
25. A country's prosperity is related to the degree of its individual
freedom, including the freedom to keep what has been earned.
26. Altruism does not mean kindness, benevolence, or respect for the
rights of others. Instead it means self-sacrifice to others, and to an
unspecified "public need." It regards man as a sacrificial animal to
be used at whim by the state.
27. The U. S. has abandoned capitalism and is falling apart,
splintered into "economic pressure groups" under a statist system.
28. Instead of fighting the growing statism of our system,
conservatives emphasize fighting only "liberals."
29. Both the Republican and Democratic parties hold altruism as their
basic moral principle, and both advocate a welfare state or mixed
economy as their ultimate goal. Both parties are motivated by the
altruism-collectivism-statism axis. Both parties view "extremism" as
evil and honor "moderates." This is an "anti-concept" (similar to
anti-hero). Both parties ignore the fact that extremism is preferable
to moderation when dealing with evil. Moderation is in fact a giving
in to evil.
30. Collaborating and compromising with communist and fascist groups
equates giving in to their demands for acceptance and prominence. It
is like asking criminals to act as board members in crime task-force
committees.
31. Only the use of the individualism-capitalism axis can save us from
the consequences of the altruism-collectivism-statism axis.
Yours in liberty,
E. C. Joe Polanco, PA-C, BS, MA, DPA-ABD
Proud member of the Citizens Internet Empowerment Coalition (CIEC)
Copyright © 1996 E. C. Joe Polanco
http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Rue/3199/randreal1.html
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Introduction
Philosophy is not a bauble of the intellect, but a power from which no
man can abstain. Anyone can say that he dispenses with a view of
reality, knowledge, the good, but no one can implement this credo. The
reason is that man, by his nature as a conceptual being, cannot
function at all without some form of philosophy to serve as his guide.
Ayn Rand discusses the role of philosophy in her West Point lecture
"Philosophy: Who Needs It." Without abstract ideas, she says
you would not be able to deal with concrete, particular, real-life
problems. You would be in the position of a new-born infant, to
whom every object is a unique, unprecedented phenomenon. The
difference between his mental state and yours lies in the number
of conceptual integrations your mind has performed. You have no
choice about the necessity to integrate your observations, your
experiences, your knowledge into abstract ideas, i.e., into
principles.
Your only choice, she continues, is whether your principles are true
or false, rational or irrational, consistent or contradictory. The
only way to know which they are is to integrate your principles.
What integrates them? Philosophy. A philosophic system is an
integrated view of existence. As a human being, you have no choice
about the fact that you need a philosophy. Your only choice is
whether you define your philosophy by a conscious, rational,
disciplined process of thought and scrupulously logical
deliberation - or let your subconscious accumulate a junk heap of
unwarranted conclusions, false generalizations, undefined
contradictions, undigested slogans, unidentified wishes, doubts
and fears, thrown together by chance, but integrated by your
subconscious into a kind of mongrel philosophy and fused into a
single, solid weight: self doubt, like a ball and chain in the
place where your mind's wings should have grown.
Philosophy, in Ayn Rand's view, is the fundamental force shaping every
man and culture. It is the science that hides men's conceptual
faculty, and thus every field of endeavour that counts on this
faculty. The deepest issues of philosophy are the deepest root of
men's thought, their action, their history - and therefore, of their
triumphs, their disasters, their future.
Philosophy is a human need as real as the need of food. It is a need
of the mind, without which man cannot obtain his food or anything else
his life requires.
To satisfy this need, one must recognize that philosophy is a system
of ideas. by its nature as an integrating science, it cannot be a grab
bag of isolated issues. All philosophic questions are interrelated.
One may not, therefore, raise any such questions at random, without
the requisite context. If one tries the random approach, then
questions (which one has no means of answering) simply proliferate in
all directions.
Suppose, for example, that you read an article by Ayn Rand and glean
from it only on e general idea, with which, you decide, you agree: man
should be selfish. How, you must soon ask, is this generality to be
applied to concrete situations? What is selfishness? Does it mean
doing whatever you feel like doing? What if your feelings are
irrational? But what is to say what's rational or irrational? and who
is Ayn Rand to say what a man should do, anyway? Maybe what's true for
her isn't true for you, or what's true in theory isn't true in
practice. What is truth? Can it vary from one person or realm to
another? And, come to think of it, aren't we all bound together? Can
anyone ever really achieve private goals in this world? If not,
there's no point in being selfish. What kind of world is it? And if
people followed Ayn Rand, wouldn't that lead to monopolies or
cutthroat competition, as the socialists say? And how does anyone know
the answers to all these (and many similar) questions? What method of
knowledge should a man use? And how does one know that?
For a philosophic idea to function properly as a guide, one must know
the full system to which it belongs. An idea plucked from the middle
is of no value, cannot be validated, and will not work. One must know
the idea's relationship to all the other ideas that give it context,
definition, application, proof. One must know all this not as a
theoretical end in itself, but for practical purposes; one must know
it to be able to rely on an idea, to make rational use of it, and,
ultimately, to live.
In order to approach philosophy systematically, one must begin with
its basic branches. Philosophy, according to Objectivism, consists of
five branches. The two basic ones are metaphysics and epistemology.
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the nature of the
universe as a whole. Epistemology is the branch that studies the
nature and means of human knowledge. These two branches make possible
a view of the nature of man.
Flowing from the above are the three evaluative branches of
philosophy. Ethics, the broadest of these, provides a code of values
to guide human choices and actions. Politics studies the nature of a
social system and defines the proper functions of government.
Esthetics studies the nature of art and defines the standards by which
an art work should be judged.
Every philosophy builds on its starting points. Where, then, does one
start? What ideas qualify as primaries?
By the time men begin to philosophize, they are adults who have
acquired a complex set of concepts. The first task of the philosopher
is to separate the fundamentals from the rest. He must determine which
concepts are at the base of human knowledge and which are farther up
the structure - which are the irreducible principles of cognition and
which are derivatives.
Objectivism begins by naming and validating its primaries. Ayn Rand
does not select questions at random; she does not plunge in by
caprice. She begins deliberately at the beginning - at what she can
prove is the beginning, and the root of all the rest.
http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Rue/3199/randreal2.html
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Existence, Consciousness, and Identity as the Basic Axioms
We begin as philosophers where we began as babies, at the only place
there is to begin: by looking at their world. As philosophers,
however, we know enough to state, as we look at anything: it is. This
(I am pointing to a table) is. That (pointing to a person seated at
it) is. These things (sweeping an arm to indicate the contents of the
whole room) are.
Something exists.
We start with the irreducible fact and concept of existence - that
which is.
The first thing to say about that which is is simply: it is. As
Parmenides in ancient Greece formulated the principle: what is, is.
Or, in Ayn Rand's words: existence exists. ("Existence" here is a
collective noun, denoting the sum of existents.) This axiom does not
tell us anything about the nature of existents; it merely underscores
the fact that they exist. This axiom must be the foundation of
everything else. Before one can consider any other issue, before one
can ask what things there are or what problems men face in learning
about them, before one can discuss what one knows or how one knows it
- first, there must be something, and one must grasp that there is. If
not, there is nothing to consider or to know. The concept of
"existence" is the widest of all concepts. It subsumes everything -
every entity, action, attribute, relationship (including every state
of consciousness) - everything which is, was, or will be. The concept
does not specify that a physical world exists. As the first concept at
the base of explicitly, by the gamut of the human race, from the
newborn baby or the lowest savage on through the greatest scientist
and the most erudite sage. All of these know equally the fundamental
fact that there is something, something as against nothing.
You the reader have now grasped the first axiom of philosophy. This
act implies a second axiom: that you exist possessing consciousness,
consciousness being the faculty of perceiving that which exists.
Consciousness is not inherent in the fact of existence as such; a
world without conscious organisms is possible. But consciousness is
inherent in your grasp of existence. Inherent in saying "There is
something - of which I am aware" is: "There is something - of which I
am aware."
The fact of consciousness is also a fundamental starting point. Even
if biologists or physicists were someday to give us a scientific
analysis of the conditions of consciousness (in terms of physical
structures or energy quanta or something now unknown), this would not
alter the fact that consciousness is an axiom. Before one can raise
any questions pertaining to knowledge, whether of content or of method
(including the question of the conditions of consciousness), one must
first be conscious of something and recognize that one is. All
questions presuppose that one has a faculty of knowledge, i.e., the
attribute of consciousness. One ignorant of this attribute must
perforce be ignorant of the whole field of cognition (and of
philosophy).
Consciousness, to repeat, is the faculty of perceiving that which
exists. ("Perceiving" is used here in its widest sense, equivalent to
"being aware of.") To be conscious is to be conscious of something.
Here is Ayn Rand's crucial passage in regard to the above:
Existence exists - and the act of grasping that statement implies
two corollary axioms: that something exists which one perceives
and that on exists possessing consciousness, consciousness being
the faculty of perceiving that which exists.
If nothing exists, there can be no consciousness: a consciousness
with nothing to be conscious of is a contradiction in terms. A
consciousness conscious of nothing but itself is a contradiction
in terms: before it could identify itself as consciousness, it had
to be conscious of something. If that which you claim to perceive
does not exist, what you posses is not consciousness.
Whatever the degree of your knowledge, these two - existence and
consciousness - are axioms you cannot escape, these two are the
irreducible primaries implied in any action you undertake, in any
part of your knowledge and in its sum, from the first ray of light
you perceive at the start of your life to the widest erudition you
might acquire at its end. Whether you know the shape of a pebble
or the structure of a solar system, the axioms remain the same:
that it exists and that you know it.
A third and final basic axiom is implicit in the first two. It is the
law of identity: to be is to be something, to have a nature, to
possess identity. A thing is itself; or, in the traditional formula, A
is A. The "identity" of an existent means that which it is, the sum of
its attributes or characteristics.
Whatever you choose to consider, be it an object, an attribute or
an action, the law of identity remains the same. A leaf cannot be
a stone at the same time, it cannot be all red and all green at
the same time, it cannot freeze and burn at the same time. A is A.
Or, if you wish it stated in simpler language: You cannot have
your cake and eat it too.
Ayn Rand offers a new formulation of this axiom: existence is
identity. She does not say "existence has identity" - which might
suggest that identity is a feature separable from existence (as a coat
of paint is separable from the house that has it). The point is that
to be is to be something. Existence and identity are indivisible;
either implies the other. If something exists, then something exists;
and if there is a something, then there is a something. The
fundamental fact cannot be broken in two.
Why, one might ask, use two concepts to identify one fact? This
procedure is common in philosophy and in other fields as well. When
men have several perspectives on a single fact, when they consider it
from different aspects or in different contexts, it is often essential
to form concepts that identify the various perspectives.
"Existence" differentiates a thing from nothing, form the absence of
the thing. This is the primary identification, on which all others
depend; it is the recognition in conceptual terms that the thing is.
"Identity" indicates not that it is, but that it is. This
differentiates one thing from another, which is a distinguishable step
in cognition. The perspective here is not: it is (vs. it is not), but:
it is this (vs. it is that). Thus the context and purpose of the two
concepts differ, although the fact both concepts name is indivisible.
Like existence and consciousness, identity is also a fundamental
starting point of knowledge. Before one can ask what any existent is,
it must be something, and one must know this. If not, then there is
nothing to investigate - or to exist.
Inherent in a man's grasp of any object is the recognition, in some
form, that: there is something I am aware of. There is - existence;
something - identity; I am aware of - consciousness. These three are
the basic axiomatic concepts recognized by the philosophy of
Objectivism. An axiomatic concept, writes Ayn Rand, is
the identification of a primary fact of reality, which cannot be
analyzed, i.e., reduced to other facts or broken into component
parts. It is implicit in all facts and in all knowledge. It is
the fundamentally given and directly perceived or experienced,
which requires no proof or explanation, but on which all proofs
and explanations rest.
Axiomatic concepts are not subject to the process of definition. Their
referents can be specified only ostensively, by pointing to instances.
Everything to be grasped about these facts is implicit in any act of
adult cognition; indeed, it is implicit much earlier. "After the first
discriminated sensation (or percept)," Miss Rand observes, "man's
subsequent knowledge adds nothing to the basic facts designated by the
terms 'existence', 'identity', 'consciousness.' ..." Subsequent
knowledge makes the explicit, conceptual identification of these facts
possible. But the facts themselves - which are the data or
constituents later to be integrated into the concepts - are present to
and from the first such awareness. It is in this sense that a
knowledge of axioms is "implicit" from the beginning. "It is this
implicit knowledge," Miss Rand holds, "that permits [man's]
consciousness to develop further."
Being implicit from the beginning, existence, consciousness, and
identity are outside the province of proof. Proof is the derivation of
a conclusion from antecendent knowledge, and nothing is antecedent to
axioms. Axioms are the starting points of cognition, on which all
proofs depend.
One knows that the axioms are true not by inference of any kind, but
by sense perception. When one perceives a tomato, for example, there
is no evidence that it exists, beyond the fact that one perceives it;
there is no evidence that it is something, beyond the fact that one
perceives it; and there is no evidence that one is aware, beyond the
fat that one is perceiving it. Axioms are perceptual self-evidencies.
There is nothing to be said in their behalf except: look at reality.
What is true of tomatoes applies equally to oranges, buildings people,
music, and stars. What philosophy does it to give an abstract
statement of such self-evident facts. Philosophy states these facts in
universal form. Whatever exists, exists. Whatever exists is what it
is. In whatever form one is aware, one is aware.
The above is the validation of the Objectivist axioms. "Validation" I
take to be a broader term than "proof," one that subsumes any process
of establishing an idea's relationship to reality, whether deductive
reasoning, inductive reasoning, or perceptual self-evidence. In this
sense, one can and must validate every item of knowledge, including
axioms. The validation of axioms, however, is the simplest of all:
sense perception.
The fact that axioms are available to perception does not mean that
all human beings accept or even grasp axioms in conscious, conceptual
terms. Vast numbers of man, such as primitives, never progress beyond
implicit knowledge of the axioms. Lacking explicit philosophic
identification of this knowledge, they have no way to adhere to the
axioms consistently and typically fall into some form of contradicting
the self-evident, as in the various magical world views, which
(implicitly) deny the law of identity. Such men stunt their minds by
subjecting themselves to an undeclared epistemological civil war. The
war pits their professed outlook on the world against the implicit
knowledge on which they are actually counting in order to survive.
Even lower are the men of an advanced civilization who - thanks to the
work of a genius such as Aristotle - know the explicit identification
of axioms, then consciously reject them. A declared inner war - i.e.,
deliberate, systematic self-contradiction - is the essence of the
intellectual life of such individuals. Examples include those
philosophers of the past two centuries who reject the very idea of the
self-evident as the base of all knowledge, and who then repudiate all
three of the basic axioms, attacking them as "arbitrary postulates",
"linguistic conventions", or "Western prejudice."
The three axioms I have been discussing have a built-in protection
against all attacks: they must be used and accepted by everyone,
including those who attack them and those who attack the concept of
the self-evident. Let me illustrate this point by considering a
typical charge leveled by opponents of philosophic axioms.
"People disagree about axioms," we often hear. "What is self-evident
to one may not be self-evident to another. How then can a man know
that his axioms are objectively true? How can he ever be sure he is
right?" This argument starts by accepting the concepts of
"disagreement," which it uses to challenge the objectivity of any
axioms, including existence, consciousness, and identity. The
following condensed dialogue suggests one strategy by which to reveal
the argument's contradictions. The strategy begins with A, the
defender of axioms, pretending to reject outright the concept of
"disagreement."
A: "Your objection to the self-evident has no validity. There is no
such thing as disagreement. People agree about everything."
B: "That's absurd. People disagree constantly, about all kinds of
things."
A: "How can they? There's nothing to disagree about, no subject
matter. After all, nothing exists."
B: "Nonsense. All kinds of things exist. You know that as well as I
do."
A: "That's one. You must accept the existence axiom even to utter
the term 'disagreement.' But, to continue, I still claim that
disagreement is unreal. How can people disagree, since they are
unconscious being who are unable to hold ideas at all?"
B: "Of course people hold ideas. They are conscious beings - you
know that."
A: "There's another axiom. But even so, why is disagreement about
ideas a problem? Why should it suggest that one or more of the
parties is mistaken? Perhaps all of the people who disagree about
the very same point are equally, objectively right."
B: "That's impossible. If two ideas contradict each other, they
can't both be right. Contradictions can't exist in reality. After
all, things are what they are. A is A."
Existence, consciousness, and identity are presupposed by every
statement and by every concept, including that of "disagreement."
(They are presupposed even by invalid concepts, such as "ghost" or
"analytic" truth.) In the act of voicing his objection, therefore, the
objector has conceded the case. In any act of challenging or denying
the three axioms, a man reaffirms them, no matter what the particular
content of his challenge. The axioms are invulnerable.
The opponents of these axioms pose as defenders of truth, but it is
only a pose. Their attack on the self-evident amounts to the charge:
"Your belief in an idea doesn't necessarily make it true; you must
prove it, because facts are what they are independent of your
beliefs." Every element of this charge relies on the very axioms that
these people are questioning and supposedly setting aside. I quote Ayn
Rand:
"You cannot prove that you exist or that you're conscious," they
chatter, blanking out the fact that proof presupposes existence,
consciousness and a complex chain of knowledge: the existence of
something to know, of a consciousness able to know it, and of a
knowledge that has learned to distinguish between such concepts as
the proved and the unproved.
When a savage who has not learned to speak declares that existence
must be proved, he is asking you to prove it by means of
non-existence - when he declared that your consciousness must be
proved, he is asking you to prove it by means of unconsciousness -
he is asking you to step into a void outside of existence and
consciousness to give him proof of both - he is asking you to
become a zero gaining knowledge about a zero. When he declares
that an axiom is a matter of arbitrary choice and he doesn't
choose to accept the axiom that he exists, he blanks out the fact
that he has accepted it by uttering that sentence, that the only
way to reject it is to shut one's mouth, expound no theories and
die. An axiom is a statement that identifies the base of
knowledge and of any further statement pertaining to that
knowledge, a statement necessarily contained in all others,
whether any particular speaker chooses to identify it or not. An
axiom is a proposition that defeats its opponents by the fact that
they have to accept it and use it in the process of any attempt to
deny it.
The foregoing is not a proof that the axioms of existence,
consciousness, and identity are true. It is a proof that they are
axioms, that they are at the base of knowledge and thus inescapable.
This proof itself, however, relies on the axioms. Even in showing that
no opponent can escape them, Ayn Rand too has to make use of them. All
argument presupposes these axioms, including the argument that all
argument presupposes them. If so, one might ask, how does one answer
an opponent who says: "You've demonstrated that I must accept your
axioms if I am to be consistent. But that demonstration rests on your
axioms, which I don't choose to accept. Tell me why I should. Why
can't I contradict myself?"
There is only one answer to this: stop the discussion. Axioms are
self-evident; no argument can coerce a person who chooses to evade
them. You can show a man that identity is inescapable, but only by
first accepting the fact that A is A. You can show that existence is
inescapable, but only by accepting and referring to existence. You can
show that consciousness is inescapable, but only by accepting and
using your consciousness. Relying on these three axioms, you can
establish their position as the foundation of all knowledge. But you
cannot convince another person of this or anything until he accepts
the axioms himself, on the basis of his own perception of reality. If
he denies them, it is a mistake to argue about or even discuss the
issue with him.
No one can think or perceive for another person. If reality, without
your help, does not convince a person of the self-evident, he has
abdicated reason and cannot be dealt with any further.
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Causality as a Corollary of Identity
So far we have been concerned, as adults, to identify the foundations
of human cognition. In this context, the three axioms we have
discussed are inescapable primaries: no conceptual knowledge can be
gained apart from these principles. Chronologically, however, the
three axioms are not learned by the developing child simultaneously.
"Existence," Miss Rand suggests is implicit from the start; it is
given n the first sensation. To grasp "identity" and (later)
"consciousness" however, even in implicit form, the child must attain
across a period of months a certain perspective on his mental
contents. He must perform, in stages, various processes of
differentiation and integration that are not given in the simple act
of opening his eyes.
Before a child can distinguish this object from that one, and thus
reach the implicit concept of "identity," he must first come to
perceive that objects exist. This requires that he move beyond the
chaos of disparate, fleeting sensations with which his conscious life
begins; it requires that he integrate his sensations into the percepts
of things or objects. At this point, the child has reached, in
implicit form, the concept of "entity."
The concept of "entity" is an axiomatic concept, which is presupposed
by all subsequent human cognition, although it is not a basic axiom.[
1 ] In particular, the grasp of "entity", in conjunction with the
closely following grasp of "identity", makes possible the discovery of
the next important principle of metaphysics, the one that is the main
subject of the present section: the law of causality.
First, however, I must offer some clarification in regard to the
concept of "entity." Since it is axiomatic, the referents of this
concepts can be specified only ostensively, by pointing to the things
given to men in sense perception. In this case, one points to solid
things with a perceivable shape, such as a rock, a person, or a table.
By extension from this primary sense, "entity" may be used in various
contexts to denote a vast array of existents, such as the solar
system, General Motors, or the smallest subatomic particle. But all
"entities" like these are reducible ultimately to combinations,
components, or distinguishable aspects of "entities" in the primary
sense. Entities constitute the content of the world men perceive;
there is nothing else to observe. In the act of observing entities, of
course, the child, like the adult, observes (some of) their
attributes, actions, and relationships. In time, the child's
consciousness can focus separately on such features, isolating them in
thought for purposes of conceptual identification and specialized
study. One by-product of this process is philosophers' inventory of
the so-called "categories" of being, such as qualities ("red" or
"hard"), quantities ("five inches" or "six pounds"), relationships
("to the right of" or "farther of"), actions ("walking" or
"digesting"). The point here, however, is that none of these
"categories" has metaphysical primacy; none has any independent
existence; all represent merely aspects of entities.
There is no "red" or "hard" apart from the crayon or book or other
thing that is red or hard. "Five inches" or "six pounds" presuppose
the object that extends five inches or weighs six pounds. "To the
right of" or "father of" have no reality apart from the things one of
which is to the right of another or is the father of another. And -
especially important in considering the law of cause and effect -
there are no floating actions; there are only actions performed by
entities. "Action" is the name for what entities do. "Walking" or
"digesting" have no existence or possibility apart from the creature
with legs that walks or the body or organ with enzymes that does the
digesting.
When a child has reached the stage of (implicitly) grasping "entity",
"identity", and "action", he has the knowledge required to reach
(implicitly) the law of causality. To take this step, he needs to
observe an omnipresent fact: that an entity of a certain kind acts in
a certain way. The child shakes his rattle and it makes a sound; he
shakes a pillow and it does not. He pushes a ball and it rolls along
the floor; he pushes a book and it just sits there, unmoving. He lets
a block out of his hands and it falls; he lets a balloon go and it
rises. The child may wish the pillow to rattle, the book to roll, the
block to float, but he cannot make these events occur. Things, he soon
discovers, act in definite ways and only in these ways. This
represents the implicit knowledge of causality; it is the child's form
of grasping the relationship between the nature of an entity and its
mode of action.
The adult validation of the law of causality consists in stating this
relationship explicitly. The validation rests on two points: the fact
that action is action of an entity; and the law of identity, A is A.
Every entity has a nature; it is specific, non-contradictory, limited;
it has certain attributes and no others. Such an entity must act in
accordance with its nature.
The only alternatives would be for an entity to act apart from its
nature or against it; both of these are impossible. A thing cannot act
apart form its nature, because existence is identity; apart from its
nature, a thing is nothing. A thing cannot act against its nature,
i.e., in contradiction to its identity, because A is A and
contradictions are impossible. In any given set of circumstances,
therefore, there is only one action possible to an entity, the action
expressive of its identity. This is the action it will take, the
action that is caused and necessitated by its nature.
Thus, under ordinary circumstances, if a child releases a balloon
filled with helium, only one outcome is possible: the balloon will
rise. If he releases a second balloon filled with sand, the nature of
the entity is different, and so is its action; the only possible
outcome now is that it will fall. If, under the same circumstances,
several actions were possible - e.g., a balloon could rise or fall (or
start to emit music like a radio, or turn into a pumpkin), everything
else remaining the same - such incompatible outcomes would have to
derive from incompatible (contradictory) aspects of the entity's
nature. But there are no contradictory aspects. A is A.
Cause and effect, therefore, is a universal law of reality. Every
action has a cause (the cause is the nature of the entity which acts);
and the same cause leads to the same effect (the same entity, under
the same circumstances, will perform the same action).
The above is not to be taken as a proof of the law of cause and
effect. I have merely made explicit what is know implicitly in the
perceptual grasp of reality. Given the facts that action is action of
entities, and that every entity has a nature - both of which facts are
known simply by observation - it is self-evident that an entity must
act in accordance with its nature. "The law of causality," Ayn Rand
sums up, "is the law of identity applied to action. All actions are
caused by entities. The nature of an action is caused and determined
by the nature of the entities that act; a thing cannot act in
contradiction to its nature."
Here again, as in regard to axioms, implicit knowledge must not be
confused with explicit. The explicit identification of causality (by
the Greeks) was an enormous intellectual achievement; it represented
the beginning of a scientific outlook on existence, as against the
prescientific view of the world as a realm of miracles or of chance.
(And here again the worst offenders philosophically are not the
primitives who implicitly count on causality yet never discover it,
but the modern sophisticates, such as David Hume, who count on it
while explicitly rejecting it.)
Causality is best classified as a corollary of identity. A "corollary"
is a self-evident implication of already established knowledge. A
corollary of an axiom is not itself an axiom; it is not self-evident
apart from the principle(s) at its root (an axiom, by contrast, does
not depend on an antecedent context). Nor is a corollary a theorem; it
does not permit or require a process of proof; like an axiom, it is
self-evident (once its context has been grasped). It is, in effect, a
new angle on an established principle, which follows immediately once
on grasps its meaning and the principle on which it depends.
Many of the most important truths in philosophy occupy this
intermediate status. They are neither axioms nor theorems, but
corollaries - most often, corollaries of axioms. In fact, the essence
of metaphysics, according to Objectivism, is the step-by-step
development of the corollaries of the existence axiom. The main
purpose of this chapter is to unravel systematically the implications
of "Existence exists."
Now let me reiterate that the causal link relates an entity and its
action. The law of causality does not state that every entity has a
cause. Some of the things commonly referred to as "entities" do not
come into being or pass away, but are eternal - e.g., the universe as
a whole. The concept of "cause" is inapplicable to the universe; by
definition, there is nothing outside the totality to act as a cause.
The universe simply is; it is an irreducible primary. An entity may be
said to have a cause only if it is the kind of entity that is
non-eternal; and then what one actually explains causally is a
process, the fact of its coming into being or another thing's passing
away. Action is the crux of the law of cause and effect: it is action
that is caused - by entities.
By the same token, the causal link does not relate two actions. Since
the Renaissance, it has been common for philosophers to speak as
though actions directly cause other actions, bypassing entities
altogether. For example, the motion of one billiard ball striking a
second is commonly said to be the cause of the motion of the second,
the implication being that we can dispense with the balls; motions by
themselves become the cause of other motions. This idea is senseless.
Motions do not act, they are actions. It is entities which act - and
cause. Speaking literally, it is not the motion of a billiard ball
which produces effects; it is the billiard ball, the entity, which
does so by a certain means. If one doubts this, one need merely
substitute an egg or soap bubble with the same velocity for the
billiard ball; the effects will be quite different.
The law of causality states that entities are the cause of actions -
not that every entity, of whatever sort, has a cause, but that every
action does; and not that the cause of action is action, but that the
cause of action is entities.
Many commentators on Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle claim that,
because we cannot at the same time specify fully the position and
momentum of subatomic particles, their action is not entirely
predictable, and that the law of causality therefore breaks down. This
is a non sequitur, a switch from epistemology to metaphysics, or from
knowledge to reality. Even if it were true that owing to a lack of
information we could never exactly predict a subatomic event - and
this is highly debatable - it would not show that, in reality, the
event was causeless. The law of causality is an abstract principle; it
does not by itself enable us to predict specific occurrences; it does
not provide us with a knowledge of particular causes or measurements.
Our ignorance of certain measurements, however, does not affect their
reality or the consequent operation of nature.
Causality, in the Objectivist viewpoint, is a fact independent of
consciousness, whether God's or man's. Order, lawfulness, regularity
do not derive from a cosmic consciousness (as claimed by the religious
"argument from design"). Nor is causality merely a subjective form of
thought that happens to govern the human mind (as in the Kantian
approach). On the contrary, causality - for Objectivism as for
Aristotelianism - is a law inherent in being qua being. To be is to be
something - and to be something is to act accordingly. Natural law is
not a feature superimposed by some agency on an otherwise "chaotic"
world; there is no possibility of such chaos. Nor is there any
possibility of a "chance" event, if "chance" means an exception to
causality. Cause and effect is not a metaphysical afterthought. It is
not a fact that is theoretically dispensable. It is part of the fabric
of reality as such. One may no more ask: who is responsible for
natural law (which amounts to asking: who caused causality?) than one
may ask: who created the universe? The answer to both questions is the
same: existence exists.
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Existence - Primacy Over Consciousness
After a child has observed a number of causal sequences, and thereby
come to view existence (implicitly) as an orderly, predictable realm,
he has advanced enough to gain his first inkling of his own faculty of
cognition. This occurs when he discovers causal sequences involving
his own senses. For example, he discovers that when he closes his eyes
the (visual) world disappears, and that it reappears when he opens
them. This kind of experience is the child's first grasp of his own
means of perception, and thus of the inner world as against the outer,
or the subject of cognition as against the object. It is his implicit
grasp of the last of the three basic axiomatic concepts, the concept
of "consciousness."
From the outset, consciousness presents itself as something specific -
as a faculty of perceiving an object, not of creating or changing it.
For instance, a child may hate the food set in front of him and refuse
even to look at it. But his inner state does not erase his dinner.
Leaving aside physical action, the food is impervious; it is
unaffected by a process of consciousness as such. It is unaffected by
anyone's perception or non-perception, memory or fantasy, desire or
fury - just as a book refuses to roll despite anyone's tantrums, or a
pillow to rattle, or a block to float.
The basic fact implicit in such observations is that consciousness,
like every other kind of entity, acts in a certain way and only in
that way. In adult, philosophic terms, we refer to this fact as the
"primacy of existence," a principle that is fundamental to the
metaphysics of Objectivism.
Existence, this principle declares, comes first. Things are what they
are independent of consciousness - of anyone's perceptions, images,
ideas, feelings. Consciousness, by contrast, is a dependent. Its
function is not to create or control existence, but to be a spectator:
to look out, to perceive, to grasp that which is.
The opposite of this approach Ayn Rand calls the "primacy of
consciousness." This is the principle that consciousness is the
primary metaphysical factor. In this view, the function of
consciousness is not perception, but creation of that which is.
Existence, accordingly, is a dependent; the world is regarded as in
some way a derivative of consciousness.
A simple example of the primacy-of-existence orientation would be a
man running for his life from an erupting volcano. Such a man
acknowledges a fact, the volcano - and the fact that it is what it is
and does what it does independent of his feelings or any other state
of consciousness. At least in this instance, he grasps the difference
between mental contents and external data, between perceiver and
perceived, between subject and object. Implicitly if not explicitly,
he knows that wishes are not horses and that ignoring an entity does
not make it vanish. Contrast this approach with that of a savage who
remains frozen under the same circumstances, eyes fixed sightless on
the ground, mind chanting frantic prayers or magic incantations in the
hope of wishing away the river of molten lava hurtling toward him.
Such an individual has not reached the stage of making a firm
distinction between consciousness and existence. Like many of our
civilised contemporaries who are his brothers-in-spirit (and like the
ostrich), he deals with threats not by identification and consequent
action, but by blindness. The implicit premise underlying such
behaviour is: "If I don't want it or look at it, it won't be there;
i.e., my consciousness controls existence."
The primacy of existence is not an independent principle. It is an
elaboration, a further corollary, of the basic axioms. Existence
precedes consciousness, because consciousness is consciousness of an
object. Nor can consciousness create or suspend the laws governing its
objects, because every entity is something and acts accordingly.
Consciousness, therefore, is only a faculty of awareness. It is the
power to grasp, to find out, to discover that which is. It is not a
power to alter or control the nature of its objects.
The primacy-of-consciousness viewpoint ascribes precisely the latter
power to consciousness. A thing is or does what consciousness ordains,
it says; A does not have to be A if consciousness does not wish it to
be so. This viewpoint represents the rejection of all the basic
axioms; it is an attempt to have existence and eat it too. To have it,
because without existence there can be no consciousness. To eat it,
because the theory wants existence to be malleable to someone's mental
contents; i.e., it wants existence to shrug off the restrictions of
identity in order to obey someone's desires; i.e., it wants existence
to exist as nothing in particular. But existence is identity. The
above is to be taken not as a proof of the primacy of existence, but
as an explication of a self-evidency implicit in the child's first
grasp of consciousness. The ability to prove a theorem comes later.
First one must establish the ideas that make possible such a process
as proof, one of which is the primacy of existence. Proof presupposes
the principle that facts are not "malleable." If they were, there
would be no need to prove anything and no independent datum on which
to base any proof.
Since knowledge is knowledge of reality, every metaphysical principle
has epistemological implications. This is particularly obvious in the
case of the primacy-of-existence principle, because it identifies the
fundamental relationship between our cognitive faculty and existence.
To clarify the principle further, I shall indicate here the kind of
epistemology to which it leads.
If existence is independent of consciousness, then knowledge of
existence can be gained only by extrospection. In other words, nothing
is relevant to cognition of the world except data drawn from the
world, i.e., sense data or conceptual integrations of such data.
Introspection, of course, is necessary and proper as a means of
grasping the contents or processes of consciousness; but it is not a
means of external cognition. There can be no appeal to the knower's
feelings as an avenue to truth; there can be no reliance on any mental
contents alleged to have a source or validity independent of sense
perception. Every step and method of cognition must proceed in
accordance with facts - and every fact must be established, directly
or indirectly, by observation. To follow this policy according to
Objectivism, is to follow reason.
If a man accepts the primacy of consciousness, by contrast, he will be
drawn to an opposite theory of knowledge. If consciousness controls
existence, it is not necessary to confine oneself to studying the
facts of existence. On the contrary, introspection becomes a means of
external cognition; at critical points, one should bypass the world in
the very quest to know it and instead look inward, searching out
elements in one's mind that are detached from perception, such as
"intuitions," "revelations," "innate ideas," "innate structures."
jum...@my-deja.com
In relying on such elements, the knower is not, he feels, cavalierly
ignoring reality; he is merely going over the head of existence to its
master, whether human or divine; he is seeking knowledge of fact
directly from the source of facts, from the consciousness that creates
them. This kind of metaphysics implicitly underlies every form of
unreason.
The primacy-of-existence principle (including its epistemological
implications) is one of Objectivism's most distinctive tenets. With
rare exceptions, Western philosophy has accepted the opposite; it is
dominated by attempts to construe existence as a subordinate realm.
Three versions of the primacy of consciousness have been prevalent.
They are distinguished by their answer to the question: upon whose
consciousness is existence dependent?
Dominating philosophy from Plato to Hume was the supernaturalistic
version. In this view, existence is a product of a cosmic
consciousness, God. This idea is implicit in Plato's theory of Forms
and became explicit with the Christian development from Plato.
According to Christianity (and Judaism), God is an infinite
consciousness who created existence, sustains it, makes it lawful,
then periodically subjects it to decrees that flout the regular order,
thereby producing "miracles." Epistemologically, this variant leads to
mysticism: knowledge is said to rest on communications from the
Supreme Mind to the human, whether in the form of revelations sent to
select individuals or of ideas implanted, innately or otherwise,
throughout the species.
The religious view of the world, though it has been abandoned by most
philosophers, is still entrenched in the public mind. Witness the
popular question "Who created the universe?" - which presupposes that
the universe is not eternal, but has a source beyond itself, in some
cosmic personality or will. It is useless to object that this question
involves an infinite regress, even though it does (if a creator is
required to explain existence, then a second creator is required to
explain the first, and so on). Typically, the believer will reply:
"One can't ask for an explanation of God. He is an inherently
necessary being. After all, one must start somewhere." Such a person
does not contest the need of an irreducible starting point, as long as
it is a form of consciousness; what he finds unsatisfactory is the
idea of existence as the starting point. Driven by the primacy of
consciousness, a person of this mentality refuses to begin with the
world, which we know to exist; he insists on jumping beyond the world
to the unknowable, even though such a procedure explains nothing. The
root of this mentality is not rational argument, but the influence of
Christianity. In many respects, the West has not recovered from the
Middle Ages.
In the eighteenth century, Immanuel Kant secularized the religious
viewpoint. According to his philosophy, the human mind - specifically,
the cognitive structures common to all men, their innate forms of
perception and conception - is what creates existence (which he called
the "phenomenal" world). Thus God's will gives way to man's
consciousness, which becomes the metaphysical factor underlying and
ordering existence. Implicit in this theory is the social version of
the primacy of consciousness, which became explicit with the Hegelian
development from Kant and which has dominated philosophy for the past
two centuries.
According to the social version, no one individual is potent enough to
create a universe or abrogate the law of identity, but a group -
mankind as a whole, a particular society, a nation, a state, a race, a
sex, an economic class - can do the trick. In popular terms: one
Frenchman alone can't bend reality to his desires, but fifty million
of them are irresistible. Epistemologically, this variant leads to
collective surveys - a kind of group introspection - as the means to
truth; knowledge is said to rest on a consensus among thinkers, a
consensus that results not from each individual's perception of
external reality, but from subjective mental structures or contents
that happen to be shared by the group's members.
Today, the social variant is at the height of its popularity. We hear
on all sides that there are no objective facts, but only "human"
truth, truth "for man" - and lately that even this is unattainable,
since there is only national, racial, sexual, or homosexual truth. In
this view, the group acquires the omnipotence once ascribed to God.
Thus, to cite a political example, when the government enacts some
policy (such as runaway spending) that must in logic have disastrous
consequences (such as national bankruptcy), the policy's defenders
typically deal with the problem by fudging all figures, then asking
for "optimism" and faith. "If people believe in the policy," we hear,
"if they want the system to work, then it will." The implicit premise
is: "A group can override facts; men's mental contents can coerce
reality."
A third version of the primacy of consciousness has appeared
throughout history among sceptics and is well represented today: the
personal version, as we may call it, according to which each man's own
consciousness controls existence - for him. Protagoras in ancient
Greece is the father of this variant. "Man," he said - meaning each
man individually - "is the measure of all things; of things that are,
that they are, and of things that are not, that they are not." In this
view, each man's consciousness creates and inhabits its own private
universe. Epistemologically, therefore, there are no standards or data
of any kind to which a person must conform. There is only truth "for
me" vs. truth "for you" - which truth is, for any individual, whatever
he arbitrarily decrees it to be. In regard to fundamentals, it makes
no difference whether one construes existence as subservient to the
consciousness of God, of men, or of oneself. All of these represent
the same essential metaphysics containing the same essential error.
Objectivism rejects them all on the same ground: that existence
exists. If existence exists, then it has metaphysical primacy. It is
not a derivative or "manifestation" or "appearance" of some true
reality at its root, such as God or society or one's urges. It is
reality. As such, its elements are uncreated and eternal, and its laws
immutable.
There were once Western philosophers who upheld the primacy of
existence; notably, such ancient Greek giants as Parminedes and
Aristotle. But even they were not consistent in this regard.
(Aristotle, for example, describes his Prime Mover as a consciousness
conscious only of itself, which serves as the cause of the world's
motion.) There has never yet been a thinker who states the principle
explicitly, then applies it methodically in every branch of
philosophy, with no concession to any version of its antithesis. This
is precisely what Ayn Rand does. Her philosophy is the primacy of
existence come to full, systematic expression in Western thought for
the first time.
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The Metaphysically Given As Absolute
The Objectivist view of existence culminates in the principle that no
alternative to a fact of reality is possible or imaginable. All such
facts are necessary. In Ayn Rand's words, the metaphysically given is
absolute. By the "metaphysically given," Ayn Rand means any fact
inherent in existence apart from human action (whether mental or
physical) - as against "man-made facts," i.e., objects, institutions,
practices, or rules of conduct that are of human origin. The solar
system, for example, is metaphysically given; communication satellites
are man-made. The law of gravity is metaphysically given; the laws
against murder are man-made. The fact that man's life requires food is
metaphysically given; the fact that some men, such as ascetics or
anorectics, prefer to starve is man-made.
Let us focus now on the metaphysically given. As soon as one says
about any such fact: "It is" - just that much - the whole Objectivist
metaphysics is implicit. If the fact is, it is what it is (the law of
identity). It is lawful, inherent in the identities of the relevant
entities (the law of causality). It is independent of consciousness,
of anyone's or everyone's beliefs and feelings (the primacy of
existence). Such a fact has to be; no alternative to it is possible.
If such a fact is, then, within the relevant circumstances, it is
immutable, inescapable, absolute. "Absolute" in this context means
necessitated by the nature of existence and, therefore, unchangeable
by human (or any other) agency.
A fact is "necessary" if its non-existence would involve a
contradiction. To put the point positively: a fact that obtains "by
necessity" is one that obtains "by identity." Given the nature of
existence, this is the status of every (metaphysically given) fact.
Nothing more is required to ground necessity. Hume and Kant searched
for a perceptual manifestation labelled "necessity," like a
metaphysical glue sticking events together or holding facts in place;
unable to find it, they proceed to banish necessity from the world.
Their search, however, was misbegotten. "Necessity" in the present
sense is not a datum over and above existents; it is an identification
of existents from a special perspective. "Necessary" names existents
considered as governed by the law of identity. "To be," accordingly,
is "to be necessary."
The above formula does not apply to man-made facts; the antonym of
"necessary" is "chosen," chosen by man. Man-made facts, of course,
also have identity; they too have causes; and once they exist, they
exist, whither or not any particular man decides to recognize them. In
their case, however, the ultimate cause is an act(s) of human choice;
and even though the power of choice is an aspect of human identity,
any choice by its nature could have been otherwise. No man-made fact,
therefore, is necessary; none had to be.
In holding that the metaphysically given is absolute, Ayn Rand is not
denying that man has the power of creativity, the power to adapt the
materials of nature to his own requirements. A barren desert, for
instance, may be the metaphysically given, but man has the power to
change the circumstances responsible for its barrenness; he can decide
to irrigate the desert and make it bloom. Such creativity is not the
power to alter the metaphysically given (under the original
circumstances, the desert necessarily remains barren); it is not the
power to create entities out of a void or to make any entity act in
contradiction to its nature. In Ayn Rand's words, creativity is the
power
to rearrange the combinations of natural elements... "Creation"
does not (and metaphysically cannot) mean the power to bring
something into existence out of nothing. "Creation" means the
power to bring into existence an arrangement (or combination or
integration) of natural elements that had not existed before....
The best and briefest identification of man's power in regard to
nature is Francis Bacon's "Nature, to be commanded, must be
obeyed."
One can alter a natural condition only by enacting the requisite
cause, the one demanded by the immutable laws of existence. Man's
creativity, therefore, is not defiance of the absolutism of reality,
but the opposite. In order to succeed, his actions must conform to the
metaphysically given.
The distinction between the metaphysically given and the man-made is
crucial to every branch of philosophy and every area of human life.
The two kinds of facts must be treated differently, each in accordance
with its nature.
Metaphysically given facts are reality. As such, they are not subject
to anyone's appraisal; they must be accepted without evaluation. Facts
of reality must be greeted not by approval or condemnation, praise or
blame, but by a silent nod of acquiescence, amounting to the
affirmation: "They are, were, will be, and have to be."
The metaphysically given [writes Ayn Rand] cannot be true or
false, it simply is - and man determines the truth or falsehood of
his judgments by whether they correspond to or contradict the
facts of reality. The metaphysically given cannot be right or
wrong - it is the standard of right or wrong, by which a
(rational) man judges his goals, his values, his choices.
Man-made facts, by contrast, being products of choice, must be
evaluated. Since human choices can be rational or irrational, right or
wrong, the man-made cannot be acquiesced in merely because it exists;
it cannot be given the automatic affirmation demanded by a fact of
reality. On the contrary, the man-made "must be judged," in Miss
Rand's words, "then accepted or rejected and changed when necessary."
To confuse these two kinds of facts is to court a series of disastrous
errors. One kind of error consists in regarding the man-made as
immutable and beyond challenge; the other, in regarding the
metaphysically given as alterable. The first is typified by the idea
that "You can't fight city hall, or tradition, or the consensus of the
times - that's reality." "Reality" is equated here with any decisions
men make and cling to, whether right or wrong. "Realism," accordingly,
becomes a synonym for mindless conformity. In this view, it is
"unrealistic" to reject the supernatural is one's ancestors were
religious - or to fight for capitalism if big government is the
popular trend - or to reject racism when Hitler is in power - or to
create representational art when the museums feature only smears - or
to uphold principles when the schools turn out only pragmatists. This
approach leads to the sanctioning of any status quo, however debased,
and thus turns its advocates into pawns and accessories of evil. It
makes sacrosanct any human conclusions, even those that contradict
metaphysically given facts. The essence of this so-called "realism" is
the evasion of reality.
The other kind of error consists in regarding the metaphysically given
as alterable. This amounts not merely to evading reality, but to
declaring war on it.
The attempt to alter the metaphysically given is described by Ayn Rand
as the fallacy of "rewriting reality." Those who commit it regard
metaphysically given facts as non-absolute and, therefore, feel free
to imagine an alternative to them. In effect, they regard the universe
as being merely a first draft of reality, which anyone may decide at
will to rewrite.
A common example is provided by those who condemn life because man is
capable of failure, frustration, pain, and who yearn instead for a
world in which man knows nothing but happiness. But if the possibility
of failure exists, it necessarily exists (it is inherent in the facts
that achieving a value requires a specific course of action, and that
man is neither omniscient nor omnipotent in regard to such action).
Anyone who holds the full context - who keeps in mind the identity of
man and of all the other relevant entities - would be unable even to
imagine an alternative to the facts as they are; the contradictions
involved in such a projection would obliterate it. The rewriters,
however, do not keep identity in mind. They specialize in
out-of-context pining for a heaven that is the opposite of the
metaphysically given.
A variant of this pining is the view that the fact of death makes life
meaningless. But if living organisms are mortal, then (within the
relevant circumstances) they are so necessarily, by the nature of the
life process. To rebel against one's eventual death is, therefore, to
rebel against life - and reality. It is also to ignore the fact that
indestructible objects have no need of values or of meaning, which
phenomena are possible only to mortal entities. Another example of
rewriting reality, taken from epistemology, is provided by those
sceptics who condemn human knowledge as invalid because it rests on
sensory data, the implication being that knowledge should have
depended on a "direct," non-sensory illumination. This amounts to the
claim: "If I had created reality, I would have chosen a different
cause for knowledge. Reality's model of cognition is unacceptable to
me. I prefer my own rewritten version." But if knowledge does rest on
sensory data, then it does so necessarily, and again no alternative
can even be imagined, not if one keeps in mind the identity of all the
relevant entities and processes.
As with many other errors, the historical root of the fallacy of
rewriting reality lies in religion - specifically, in the idea that
the universe was created by a supernatural Omnipotence, who could have
created things differently and who can alter them if He chooses. A
famous statement of this metaphysics was offered by the philosopher
Leibnitz in the eighteenth century: "All is for the best in this best
of all possible worlds." In Leibnitz's view, the universe is only one
of many worlds; the others happen not to exist, because God in His
goodness chose the present one as the best; but the others have always
been possible and still are today. This is the kind of metaphysics
that tempts men to spend their time projecting and wishing for
alternatives to reality. Christianity, indeed, invites such wishing,
which it describes as the virtue of "hope" and the duty of "prayer."
By the nature of existence, however, such "hope" and "prayer" are
futile. Leaving aside the man-made, nothing is possible except what is
actual. The concept of "omnipotence," in other words, is logically
incompatible with the law of identity; it is one or the other.
As with the doctrine of the primacy of consciousness, so with the idea
of "possible universes": it has been taken over uncritically from
religion by more secular thinkers, including even those who call
themselves atheists and naturalists. The result is an entire
profession, today's philosophers, who routinely degrade the actual,
calling it a realm of mere "brute" or "contingent" - i.e.,
unintelligible and rewritable - facts. The lesson such philosophers
teach their students is not to adhere to reality, but to brush it
aside and fantasize alternatives.
Respect for reality does not guarantee success in every endeavour; the
refusal to evade or rewrite facts does not make one infallible or
omnipotent. But such respect is a necessary condition of successful
action, and it does guarantee that, if one fails in some undertaking,
he will not harbour a metaphysical grudge as a result; he will not
blame existence for his failure. The thinker who accepts the
absolutism of the metaphysically given recognizes that it is his
responsibility to conform to the universe, not the other way around.
If a thinker rejects the absolutism of reality, however, his mental
set is reversed: he expects existence to obey his wishes, and then he
discovers that existence does not obey. This will lead him to the idea
of a fundamental dichotomy: he will come to view conflict with reality
as being the essence of human life. He will feel that clash or warfare
between the self and the external world is not a senseless torture
caused by an aberration, but the metaphysical rule. On one side of the
clash, he will feel, are the desires and fantasies he seeks to elevate
above existence; on the other, the "brute" facts inexplicably
impervious to them.
The classic statement of this philosophy is given by Plato. In the
Timaeus, discussing the formation of the physical world, Plato
recounts the myth of the demiurge. Matter, we are told, was originally
unformed and chaotic; a godlike soul enters and tries to shape the
chaos into a realm of perfect beauty. The demiurge, however, fails;
matter proves to be recalcitrant; it takes the imprint of beauty only
so far and thereafter resists all efforts to perfect it. Hence, Plato
concludes, matter is a principle of imperfection, inherently in
conflict with the highest ideals of the spirit. In a perfect universe,
matter should obey consciousness without reservation. Since it does
not, the universe - not any man-made group or institution, but the
physical universe itself - is flawed; it is a perpetual battleground
of the noble vs. the actual.
What the Timaeus actually presents, in mythological form, is the
conflict between existence and a mind that tries to rewrite it, but
cannot. In effect, the myth's meaning is the self-declared failure of
the primacy-of-consciousness viewpoint. The same failure is inherent
in any version of Plato's creed. Whenever men expect reality to
conform to their wish, they are doomed to metaphysical disappointment.
This leads them to the dichotomy: my dream vs. the actual which
thwarts it; or the inner vs. the outer; or value vs. fact; or the
moral vs. the practical. The broadest name of the dichotomy is the
"spiritual" realm vs. the "material" realm.
The theory of a mind-body conflict, which has corrupted every branch
and issue of philosophy, does have its root in a real conflict, but of
a special kind. Its root is a breach between some men's consciousness
and existence. In this sense, the basis of the theory is not reality,
of refusing to accept the absolutism of the metaphysically given.
The man who follows and understands the opposite policy comes to the
opposite conclusion: he dismisses out-of-hand the idea of a
metaphysical dichotomy. A faculty of perception, he knows, cannot be
an adversary of the world or the body; it has no weapons with which to
wage any such war; it has no function except to perceive.
In due course, we will develop in detail the Objectivist position on
the key aspects of the mind-body question. We will study the inner and
the outer, value and fact, the moral and the practical, and several
other such pairs, including reason and emotion, concepts and percepts,
pure science and technology, love and sex. In every such case, Ayn
Rand holds, the conventional viewpoint is wrong; man does not have to
make impossible choices between the "spiritual" side of life and the
"material." The relationship between the two sides, she holds, is not
clash or warfare, but integration, unity, harmony.
The theory of mind-body harmony, like its Platonic antithesis, also
has its root in a real correlate. Its root is the fundamental harmony
and serenity that flows from accepting, as an absolute, the axiom that
existence exists.
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Idealism/Materialism as Rejection of Basic Axioms
Now let us apply the principles we have been discussing to two
outstanding falsehoods in the history of metaphysics: idealism and
materialism.
The idealists - figures such as Plato, Plotinus, Augustine, Hegel -
regard reality as a spiritual dimension transcending and controlling
the world of nature, which latter is regarded as deficient, ephemeral,
imperfect - in any event, as only partly real. Since "spiritual," in
fact, has no meaning other than "pertaining to consciousness," the
content of true reality in this view is invariably some function or
form of consciousness (e.g., Plato's abstractions, Augustine's God,
Hegel's Ideas). This approach amounts to the primacy of consciousness
and thus, as Ayn Rand puts it, to the advocacy of consciousness
without existence.
In regard to epistemology, Ayn Rand describes the idealists as
mystics, "mystics of the spirit." They are mystics because they hold
that knowledge (of true reality) derives not from sense perception or
from reasoning based on it, but from an otherworldly source, such as
revelations or the equivalent.
The more sophisticated versions of idealism rest on technical analyses
of the nature of percepts or concepts. The unsophisticated but popular
version of idealism, which typically upholds a personalized other
dimension, is religion. Essential to all versions of the creed,
however - and to countless kindred movements - is the belief in the
supernatural.
"Supernatural," epistemologically, means that which is above or beyond
nature. "Nature," in turn, denotes existence viewed from a certain
perspective. Nature is existence regarded as a system of
interconnected entities governed by law; it is the universe of
entities acting and interacting in accordance with their identities.
What then is a "super-nature"? It would have to be a form of existence
beyond existence; a thing beyond entities; a something beyond
identity.
The idea of the "supernatural" is an assault on everything man knows
about reality. It is a contradiction of every essential of a rational
metaphysics. It represents a rejection of the basic axioms of
philosophy (or, in the case of primitive men, a failure to grasp
them).
This can be illustrated by reference to any version of idealism. But
led us confine the discussion here to the popular notion of God.
Is God the creator of the universe? Not is existence has primacy over
consciousness.
Is God the designer of the universe? Not if A is A. The alternative to
"design" is not "chance." It is causality.
Is God omnipotent? Nothing and no one can alter the metaphysically
given.
Is God infinite? "Infinite" does not mean large; it means larger than
any specific quantity, i.e., of no specific quantity. An infinite
quantity would be a quantity without identity. But A is A. Every
entity, accordingly, is finite; it is limited in the number of its
qualities and in their extent; this applies to the universe as well.
As Aristotle was the first to observe, the concept of "infinity"
denotes merely a potentiality of indefinite addition or subdivision.
For example, one can continually subdivide a line; but however many
segments one has reached at a given point, there are only that many
and no more. The actual is always finite.
Can God perform miracles? A "miracle" does not mean merely the
unusual. If a woman gives birth to twins, that is unusual; if she were
to give birth to elephants, that would be a miracle. A miracle is an
action not possible to the entities involved in their nature; it would
be a violation of identity.
Is God purely spiritual? "Spiritual" means pertaining to
consciousness, and consciousness is a faculty of certain living
organisms, their faculty of perceiving that which exists. A
consciousness transcending nature would be a faculty transcending
organism and object. So far from being all-knowing, such a thing would
have neither means nor content of perception; it would be
non-conscious.
Every argument commonly offered for the notion of God leads to a
contradiction of the axiomatic concepts of philosophy. At every point,
the notion clashes with the facts of reality and with the
preconditions of thought. This is as true of the professional
theologians' arguments and ideas as of the popular treatments. The
point is broader than religion. It is inherent in any advocacy of a
transcendent dimension. Any attempt to defend or define the
supernatural must necessarily collapse in fallacies. There is no logic
that will lead one from the facts of this world to a realm
contradicting them; there is no concept formed by observation of
nature that will serve to characterize its antithesis. Inference from
the natural can lead only to more of the natural, i.e., to limited,
finite entities acting and interacting in accordance with their
identities. Such entities do not fulfil the requirements of "God" or
even of "poltergeist." As far as reason and logic are concerned,
existence exists, and only existence exists.
If one is to postulate a supernatural realm, one must turn aside from
reason, eschew proofs, dispense with definitions, and rely instead on
faith. Such an approach shifts the discussion from metaphysics to
epistemology.
For now, I will sum up by saying: Objectivism advocates reason as
man's only means of knowledge, and, therefore, it does not accept God
or any variant of the supernatural. We are a-theist, as well as
a-devilist, a-demonist, a-gremlinist. We reject every "spiritual"
dimension, force, Form, Idea, entity, power, or whatnot alleged to
transcend existence. We reject idealism. To put the point positively:
we accept reality, and that's all.
This does not mean that Objectivists are materialists.
Materialists - men such as Democritus, Hobbes, Marx, Skinner -
champion nature but deny the reality or efficacy of consciousness.
Consciousness, in this view, is either a myth or a useless by-product
of brain or other motions. In Objectivist terms, this amounts to the
advocacy of existence without consciousness. It is the denial of man's
faculty of cognition and therefore of all knowledge.
Ayn Rand describes materialists as "mystics of muscle" - "mystics"
because, like idealists, they reject the faculty of reason. Man, they
hold, is essentially a body without a mind. His conclusions,
accordingly, reflect not the objective methodology of reason and
logic, but the blind operation of physical factors, such as atomic
dances in the cerebrum, glandular squirtings, S-R conditioning, or the
tools of production moving in that weird, waltz-like contortion known
as the dialectic process.
Despite their implicit mysticism, materialists typically declare that
their viewpoint constitutes the only scientific or naturalistic
approach to philosophy. The belief in consciousness, they explain,
implies supernaturalism. This claim represents a capitulation to
idealism. For centuries the idealists maintained that the soul is a
divine fragment or mystic ingredient longing to escape the "prison of
the flesh"; the idealists invented the false alternative of
consciousness versus science. The materialists simply take over this
false alternative, then promote the other side of it. This amounts to
rejecting arbitrarily the possibility of a naturalistic view of
consciousness.
The facts, however, belie any equation of consciousness with
mysticism.
Consciousness is an attribute of perceived entities here on earth. It
is a faculty possessed under definite conditions by a certain group of
living organisms. It is directly observable (by introspection). It has
a specific nature, including specific physical organs, and acts
accordingly, i.e., lawfully. It has a life-sustaining function: to
perceive the facts of nature and thereby enable the organisms that
possess it to act successfully. In all this, there is nothing
unnatural or supernatural. There is no basis for the suggestion that
consciousness is separable from matter, let alone opposed to it, no
hint of immortality, no kinship to any alleged transcendent realm.
Like the faculty of vision (which is one of its aspects), and like the
body, the faculty of awareness is wholly this-worldly. The soul, as
Aristotle was the first (and so far one of the few) to understand, is
not man's ticket to another reality; it is a development of and within
nature. It is a biological datum open to observation,
conceptualization, and scientific study.
Materialists sometimes argue that consciousness is unnatural on the
grounds that it cannot be perceived by extrospection, has no shape,
colour, or smell, and cannot be handled, weighed, or put in a test
tube (all of which applies equally to the faculty of vision). One may
just as well argue that the eyeball is unreal because it cannot be
perceived by introspection, does not have the qualities of a process
of awareness (such as intensity or scope of integration), and connote
theorize about itself, suffer neurotic problems, or fall in love.
These two arguments are interchangeable. It makes not more sense
arbitrarily to legislate features of matter as the standard of
existents and then to deny consciousness, than to do the reverse. The
facts are that matter exists and so does consciousness, the faculty of
perceiving it.
Materialists sometimes regard the concept of "consciousness" as
unscientific on the grounds that it cannot be defined. This overlooks
that fact that there cannot be an infinite regress of definitions. All
definitions reduce ultimately to certain primary concepts, which can
be specified only ostensively; axiomatic concepts necessarily belong
to this category. The concept of "matter," by contrast, is not an
axiomatic concept and does not require a definition, which it does not
yet have; it requires an analytical definition that will integrate the
facts of energy, particle theory, and more. To provide such a
definition is not, however, the task of philosophy, which makes no
specialized study of matter, but of physics. As far as philosophic
usage is concerned, "matter" denotes merely the objects of
extrospection or, more precisely, that of which all such objects are
made. In this usage, the concept of "matter," like that of
"consciousness," can be specified only ostensively.
There is no valid reason to reject consciousness or to struggle to
reduce it to matter; not if such reduction means the attempt to define
it out of existence. Even if, someday, consciousness were to be
explained scientifically as a product of physical conditions, this
would not alter any observed fact. It would not alter the fact that in
many respects these attributes and functions are unique; they are
different from anything observed in unconscious entities. Nor would it
alter the fact that one can discover the conditions of consciousness,
as of anything else one seeks to know, only through the exercise of
consciousness. The monist insistence that, despite the observed facts,
reality (or man) can have only one constituent, is groundless; it is
an example of rewriting reality. The materialist equation of physics
with science is equally groundless. Science is a systematic knowledge
gained by the use of reason based on observation. In using reason,
however, one must study each specific subject matter by the methods
and techniques suited to its nature. One cannot study history by the
methods of chemistry, biology by the methods of economics, or
psychology by the methods of physics. At the dawn of philosophy, the
ancient Pythagoreans in an excess of enthusiasm attempted,
senselessly, to equate mathematics with cognition and to construe the
universe as "numbers." The modern behaviourists, with far less excuse,
commit the same error in regard to physics.
"I want," the behaviourist says in effect, "to deal with entities I
can weigh and measure just as the physicist does. If consciousness
exists, my dream of making psychology a branch of physics is
destroyed. Consciousness upsets my program, my goal, my ideal.
Therefore, consciousness is unreal." In this statement, a desire is
being used to wipe out a fact of reality. The primacy of consciousness
is being used - to deny consciousness!
A philosophy that rejects the monism of idealism or materialism does
not thereby become "dualist." This term is associated with a Platonic
or Cartesian metaphysics; it suggests the belief in two realities, in
the mind-body opposition, and in the soul's independence of the body -
all of which Ayn Rand denies.
None of the standard terms applies to the Objectivist metaphysics. All
the conventional positions are fundamentally flawed, and the ideal
term - "existentialism" - has been pre-empted (by a school that
advocates Das Nichts, i.e., nonexistence). In this situation, a new
term is required, one which at least has the virtue of not calling up
irrelevant associations.
The best name for the Objectivist position is "Objectivism."
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Appendix VI
Objectivism:
The Philosophy of Ayn Rand
Leonard Peikoff's recently published book Objectivism: The Philosophy
of Ayn Rand is a philosophical masterpiece. Dr. Peikoff acknowledges
that all of the principle ideas in his book originated from Ayn Rand.
Peikoff, however, is the first person to pull together into a
complete, integrated work the full system of Objectivism. That
required enormous nitty-gritty effort and wide-scope integration.
Dr. Peikoff is uniquely qualified for such a task. As a professional
philosopher, Peikoff has spent his life learning about and teaching
philosophy at universities. He commands a full scope of the
discipline. In addition, Peikoff spent 30 years as Ayn Rand's closest
associate. He spent hours upon hours discussing philosophy and
Objectivism with Ayn Rand.
Peikoff's probing caused Rand to bring out for further clarification
crucial philosophical issues. Without Peikoff's in-depth questioning,
Rand's ideas about Objectivism probably would not have been so well
developed.
Although Ayn Rand was a prolific writer, she never wrote a definitive
treatise on Objectivism. Thus, Objectivism could never really take
hold as a philosophical system and make a major impact upon
civilization...not until someone exerted the enormous effort required
to organize and write down a complete, hierarchically structured
treatise of objectivist philosophy. That is what Leonard Peikoff has
done. Objectivism now stands as a fully matured, complete philosophy
with the power to change the world.
Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand brings to fruition, for the
first time, a completely reality-based, non-contradictory system of
ideas.
Objectivism is the only philosophical system axiomatically grounded to
reality, without any contradictions. Objectivism: The Philosophy of
Ayn Rand shows why reality exists and why no alternative to reality is
possible (i.e., why no form of mysticism or mind-created realities are
possible).
Peikoff proceeds to systematically demonstrate why there are no
alternatives to the use of our senses to perceive reality and the use
of consciousness to integrate our senses and act accordingly. Building
upon fundamental axioms, Peikoff demonstrates why existence exists,
why man's senses are necessarily valid, and why only our senses can
ultimately validate reality. Peikoff then builds a spiraling proof to
demonstrate how this leads to the validation or non validation of
every other aspect of reality and life. Peikoff demonstrates how to
use the mind to determine what is rational (i.e., consistent with
reality) and what is irrational (i.e., not consistent with reality).
Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand builds a non-contradictory
road map to the fundamental topics of philosophy -- Reality, Sense
Perception and Volition, Concept-Formation, Objectivity, Reason, Man,
The Good, Virtue, Happiness, Government, Capitalism, Art.
After reading Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, a person
understands explicitly how to identify reality and how to act
rationally. Mankind has finally been given the axiomatic grounding and
necessary proofs. In the process of building a complete foundation of
the objectivist philosophy, Peikoff is forced to show the
contradictions and invalid premises of every other major philosophical
idea system. Thus, all of the countless contradictions and deceptions
promoted by mystical and neocheating intellectuals throughout the ages
are swept away.
A philosophical system that is completely consistent with reality has
never taken hold in any society. Every civilization on Earth has been
shaped and guided by idea systems full of mysticism and
contradictions. Objectivism is the first philosophy based completely
upon reality without any compromises, without any contradictions.
Thus, the contrast between reality-based Objectivism and all of the
other non-reality, mystical-based idea systems that have guided the
thoughts and actions of essentially every human being since the dawn
of mankind becomes strikingly clear.
Objectivism, as a complete philosophy, is the most powerful tool for
identifying reality and acting rationally a person can have. Once an
individual grasps Objectivism, it becomes clear how most people have
little idea how to identify reality and act rationally. Worse are the
high-placed mystics and neocheaters that rule over us (i.e.,
politicians, media people, academe, clergymen, union leaders,
environmentalists, and other activists). As documented in The Neo-Tech
Discovery, their livelihoods are dependent upon obscuring reality and
creating deceptions. Thus, they actually become epistemologically
incapable of identifying reality. That is why we live in an
upside-down anti-civilization. We are ruled by blind, anti-reality pip
squeaks and clowns.
Few people today, if any, can cognitively function in a completely
non-contradictory, reality-based manner. Many individuals cannot
accurately identify reality beyond a perceptual level. Thus, most
people yearn for a leader. Consciously or subconsciously, most sense
that they are not capable of identifying reality and acting rationally
upon that knowledge. They seek an authority to tell them what to do.
Mystics and neocheaters rush in to fill that authority position.
Now that Objectivism has been presented in its entirety, all of the
countless irrational and destructive idea systems guiding mankind are
destined for the dust bin of history. People can now acquire the tools
to clearly identify reality and act rationally upon that knowledge.
All other reality-evading idea systems of the past and present will
eventually be laughed out of existence. The implications of
Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand are profound. Objectivism: The
Philosophy of Ayn Rand marks the beginning of the end for
institutionalized mysticism, irrationality, and rule-by-force on this
planet.
As the reality-based, rational philosophy of Objectivism slowly
spreads throughout society, dramatic social, political and business
changes will occur. Forward-moving individuals will learn how to apply
Objectivist principles to other professions. For example,
forward-essence movers in business will learn how to apply Objectivism
to accurately perceive reality, to think rationally, and to integrate
concepts into a non-contradictory hierarchy. This will lead to
specific, philosophically grounded approaches for developing new
values and moving forward the essence of a business. The results will
be spectacular. The draining, white-collar hoax now rampant in many
long-established companies will be uprooted while the groundwork for a
permanent, systematic development of values and markets will be set in
place. The world will prosper like never before once it learns how to
think and act upon reality rather than upon mysticism, deception, and
wishful thinking.
To fully realize this goal, the reality-based concepts of Objectivism
must be combined with the fully integrated honesty, high-effort
business mode of Neo-Tech. Neo-Tech will take the concepts of
Objectivism to their furthest limit in order to create a new
civilization based upon the primacy of existence (i.e., based upon
reality). Because all civilizations on earth, past and present, have
been based upon the primacy of consciousness (i.e., based upon
mysticism), all current societies have been structured upon false,
anti-reality foundations. Thus, all civilizations on earth today are
corrupt at their core. A corrupt system cannot be fixed. It can only
be replaced with a new, uncorrupted system. That is what Neo-Tech will
do. Combining the philosophical principles of Objectivism with the
business/action mode of Neo-Tech will push mankind into a new,
reality-based civilization of the universe.
* * *
The Academic Disease:
Objectivists Versus Neo-Tech Business People
Upon examining the life of essentially every significant intellectual,
one glaring fault jumps out -- intellectuals are incessantly jealous
of others who compete with their ideas. Well-known examples afflicted
with this "academic disease" included intellectuals such as Sigmond
Freud and Isaac Newton. Freud viciously turned upon his closest
associates once they advanced from the role of student to that of
developing new ideas in their own right. Similarly, Isaac Newton was
an incredible genius who made enormous contributions to science. He
certainly did not need to feel jealous of or threatened by anyone.
Yet, Newton became neurotically jealous of the German mathematician
Leibnitz. Leibnitz made important breakthroughs in calculus at the
same time Newton did. As a result, Newton devoted great energy and
time in an attempt to destroy Leibnitz' reputation. When Leibnitz died
of a heart attack a short time later, Newton commented that he hoped
he was the cause of Leibnitz' death.
The list of accomplished intellectuals who felt threatened by and as a
result attacked other intellectuals working in fields related to their
own stretches on and on. In almost every instance, an intellectual who
achieved significant "forward movement" within his field became
extremely jealous of others in similar fields whom he felt competed
with his own accomplishments. This included destructive intellectuals
such as Karl Marx. Marx, whose only goal supposedly was to overthrow
the bourgeois and install socialism, viciously denounced various
socialist groups of his day that had branched out and were not
directly under his control. Leading socialists of Marx's day were
often assassinated by other leading socialists out of professional
jealousy.
Unfortunately, yet quite predictably, Ayn Rand, Leonard Peikoff, and
other leading objectivists were and are afflicted with this academic
disease. Objectivists viciously attack other free-market, pro-reason
intellectuals. Especially vicious and unjust are objectivists' attacks
upon modern libertarians. Objectivists have officially stated that
libertarians are worse than the communist dictators of the Soviet
Union and Red China. They back up such out-of-context accusations by
linking modern libertarians with the anarchists of the Nineteenth
Century. True, 19th-century anarchists were Marxists at heart. Their
goal was to eliminate government in order to let mob rule destroy
civilization. But, to apply that definition to today's libertarians is
completely out of context. The modern libertarian movement was founded
by sympathizers of Ayn Rand and Objectivism. Libertarians do not seek
to abolish government in order to destroy values, they seek to limit
and, if possible, eliminate the evils of government rule-by-force in
order to uphold and build values. These are the same principles and
goals espoused by objectivists.
The modern libertarian movement has made great contributions toward
advancing the cause of freedom and reason. Yet, it is precisely
because libertarians are contributing to fields that objectivists are
concerned with that causes objectivists to jealously attack
libertarians. And, vice versa, many libertarian intellectuals unfairly
attack Ayn Rand, Leonard Peikoff, and Objectivism out of professional
jealousy. Quite predictably, both objectivist and libertarian
intellectuals feel threatened by and attack Neo-Tech by the very
virtue that Neo-Tech is making enormous contributions within their
areas of endeavor.
Why do academic intellectuals succumb to such irrational mysticism? As
identified in The Neo-Tech Discovery, academic intellectuals base
their self-esteems on ideas held, not on values produced. Yet, it is
the production of competitive, marketable values from which comes a
genuine sense of self-worth or self-esteem. Holding pro-reason ideas,
on the other hand, takes relatively little effort. Merely holding an
idea does not require the nitty-gritty, continuous effort that
producing values in a competitive business mode does. Thus, academic
intellectuals who base their self-esteems on ideas held feel
psychologically vulnerable.[ 18 ] They will attack others who are
making advancements in areas similar to theirs as this threatens their
own feelings of importance. On the other hand, a person in a
high-action business mode does not feel threatened by others who can
advance his goals. His self-esteem is secure. Such a person will
cooperate with and, when possible, will team up with any person or
organization that can advance his goals and expand his business. He
won't viciously put down their accomplishments.
Because our current civilization has been built upon a corrupt,
primacy-of-consciousness (mystical) foundation, an unnatural dichotomy
exists between intellectuals and competitive, marketplace businessmen.
That is why even reality-based, effort-exerting intellectuals like
Rand and Peikoff succumb to the academe disease of professional
jealousy. In a reality-based, primacy-of-existence civilization such a
dichotomy between intellectual achievement and competitive,
business-like value production would not exist. The two functions
would be integrated together. Intellectuals would be forced into a
competitive, business-like mode of value production and marketing.
Intellectuals would then be in control of their success. They would
not have to depend upon their "reputation" for success. Thus, the
spectacle of intellectuals immaturely attacking peers out of
professional jealousy would cease. Likewise, businessmen would be
forced to think and act on principle in contrast to the
self-destructive pragmatism practiced by many businessmen today.
Fortunately, Neo-Tech integrates the intellectual mode of thinking and
acting on principle with the business mode of producing and marketing
values in the competitive marketplace. Thus, unlike objectivists,
libertarians, and other intellectuals, those developing and applying
Neo-Tech do not become jealous of or feel threatened by other
intellectuals who genuinely help advance the goal of collapsing
mysticism and building a reality-based civilization of the universe.
Instead of immaturely attacking such individuals and dismissing their
legitimate values, Neo-Tech recognizes and benefits from their
achievements. That is why Neo-Tech will succeed when other
intellectuals stagnate as they cut themselves off from everything that
falls outside their "bubble of reality."
jum...@my-deja.com
http://www.ai.mit.edu/people/ellens/SPR/docs/prison-sex.html
------------------------------------------------------------
Prison Sexuality
Article from Encyclopedia of Homosexuality, Wayne R. Dynes, ed.,
1990, NY: Garland Public.
For related information, see Stop Prisoner Rape.
Prisons, Jails, and Reformatories
Stephen Donaldson
Incarceration facilities have for some time provided fodder for those
seeking a comprehensive understanding of the full range and potential
of homosexual behavior. These facilities host social worlds in which
sexual acts and long-term sexual pairing between people of the same
gender, who consider themselves and are generally considered by others
to be heterosexual ("man"/"punk" pairs), are not only common but
validated by the norms of the prisoner's subculture.
General Features of Incarceration Facilities
Incarceration centers constitute a subset of the "total institution,"
a category which includes the several branches of the armed forces and
boarding schools. Along with monasteries and nunneries, incarceration
facilities are characterized by gender segregation, a limited
interface with the outside world, and an official norm of sexual
abstinence. Like other total institutions, confinement facilities
witness a good deal of resistance on the part of their inmates to the
regimentation demanded by the institution; such resistance can take
the form of involvement in officially censured sexual activity.
There is a great deal of diversity among institutions holding
prisoners sent to them by government as a result of criminal charges.
Probably the most salient differences exist between confinement
centers for males and for females, at least with regard to the
prevalent sexual conditions; unless otherwise noted, the account below
pertains to facilities for males, who are still nearly 19 out of every
20 prisoners in the United States, with similar ratios elsewhere.
Confinement institutions for the mentally disturbed and for
privately-committed juveniles have been omitted from this article or
lack of data. For similar reasons, there is a focus on contemporary
American institutions, which held nearly three-quarters of a million
prisoners in the late 1980s at any one time and saw nearly eight
million admissions over the course of a year (mostly short jail
lock-ups for minor offenses such as public drunkeness).
Confinement institutions for adults (most commonly 18 or over, though
there is considerable variation in age limits) may be divided into
prisons and jails. A prison is a place of incarceration for persons
serving a sentence, usually of a year or longer; they are divided by
security level into maximum (long-term), medium, and minimum
(short-term) security. A jail, properly speaking, is a place of
detention for defendants awaiting trial or sentencing and for convicts
serving misdemeanor or very short sentences. This division, which is
characteristic of modern penal systems, is replicated at the juvenile
level with reformatories (going by a wide variety of names) and
juvenile detention centers. Both "prison" and "jail," though
especially the latter, are also used as comprehensive terms for all
confinement institutions.
The proportion of the general population which is incarcerated varies
enormously from jurisdiction to jurisdiction; the countries with the
highest rates are said to be South Africa, the Soviet Union, Cuba, and
the United States.
Demographically, the incarcerated population is overwhelmingly young,
with the late teens and twenties predominating, and lower or working
class.
Historically, widespread confinement is a relatively recent
development, replacing previous criminal sanctions of execution,
banishment, and short times in the stocks and pillories. Imprisonment
as a punishment for crime is unknown to the Mosaic law, whether for
sexual or for non-sexual offenses. The first penitentiaries were built
in the United States in the nineteenth century and were soon copied by
other countries, although debtor's jails existed for some time
previous.
Not all penal systems have sought to banish sex from the prisoners'
lives; conjugal visits were common in English jails of the seventeenth
century, while in South American countries today conjugal visits are
common and in many places the prisoners are allowed visits from female
prostitutes. Originally, solitary confinement was the rule in the
penitentiaries, but so many of the prisoners became insane as a result
that this regime was dropped. Evidence for widespread homosexual
activity in confinement is generally lacking until the twentieth
century, handicapping attempts to trace its historical development;
there are, however, indications that sexual patterns similiar to those
found today prevailed in the nineteenth century as well.
Sexual Roles in Confinement
The inmate subculture has its own norms and definitions of homosexual
experience, which are to some extent archaic: they derive from the
period before the modern industrialized-world concept of homosexuality
had become even imperfectly known to the educated public, much less to
the criminal underworld. In general, they seem to reflect a model of
homosexuality found in ancient Rome, medieval Scandinavia and the
Viking realms, and in Mediterranean countries into modern times: any
man can be active in the sexually penetrating role without stigma, and
does not thereby compromise either his masculinity or his
heterosexuality. A male, on the other hand, who submits to penetration
has forfeited his claim on "manhood" and is viewed with contempt
unless he is too young to make the claim, is a powerless slave, or has
become sufficiently feminine so as to never raise the claim. A salient
difference with the Greek model is that the sexually passive youths
are not being trained to become men, but are expected instead to
become increasingly effeminate.
That this model is not limited to jails, prisons, and reformatories,
but is also widespread (if not so sharply drawn or so clearly
legitimized and institutionalized) in the lower class of the general
population from which prisoners are drawn, is clear to students of
sexual patterns.
Discussion of conditions in confinement, including sexual mores, is
common among outlaws, so that even a juvenile delinquent who has never
been locked up has some idea of the sexual system prevalent among
prisoners. The model is introduced in the reform schools and
reinforced in the local jails, so that by the time a convict reaches a
prison, he has already been saturated with it and considers it
"normal" for such institutions.
The Role of "Man"
The prison subculture is characterized by a rigid class system based
on sexual roles. The majority of prisoners are "men" (used in
quotation marks as a term of jail slang, not as a reflection on the
masculinity of such individuals), also known as "jockers," "studs,"
"wolves," "pitchers," and the like. These prisoners are considered to
be heterosexual, and most of them exhibit heterosexual patterns before
and after incarceration, though a small number of macho homosexuals
blend with this group by "passing." The "men" rule the roost and
establish the values and behavioral norms for the entire prisoner
population; convict leaders, gang members, and the organizers of such
activities as the smuggling of contraband, protection rackets, and
prostitution rings must be "men."
Sexually, the "men" are penetrators only; a single incident of being
penetrated is sufficient for lifelong explusion from this class. The
sexual penetration of another prisoner by a "man" is sanctioned by the
subculture and considered to validate the "man's" masculinity.
"Manhood," however, is a tenuous condition as it is always subject to
being "lost" to another, more powerful or aggressive "man"; hence a
"man" is expected to "fight for his manhood."
Middle-aged and older "men" are most likely to abstain from sexual
activity while incarcerated. A minority of the younger "men" also
abstain, but most of the young "men" who have been incarcerated for a
significant amount of time will take advantage of any opportunity for
sexual relief, despite its necessarily homosexual nature. The latter,
however, is not recognized by the prisoner subculture, which insists
that aggressive-penetrative activity is not homosexual, while
receptive-penetrated activity is.
Some of the reasons for such involvement go beyond the necessity of
relieving the sex/intimacy drive. One is that aggressive sexual
activity, especially rape and possession of a known sexual receptive,
are considered to validate masculine status and hence tend to protect
the "man" from attempts to deprive him of that status. There is
considerable peer pressure in many institutions to engage in
"masculine" sexual activity because it validates such activity on the
part of other "men" already engaged.
Other motivations are not as directly sexual: deprived of almost all
areas of power over his own life by the regime of incarceration, a
"man" often seeks to stake out a small arena of power by exerting
control over another prisoner. The existence of such an island of
power helps the "man" retain a sense of his own masculinity - the one
social asset which he feels the administration cannot take from him -
because of his identification of power and control with the masculine
role or nature. For an adolescent prisoner, this motivation is often
even stronger, as he has few other means of acquiring "manhood"
stature. Furthermore, involvement in prohibited homosexual activity is
an act of rebellion against the total institution, hence a
demonstration that the institution's control over that person is less
than complete.
Prisoners serving long terms are often looking for a companion to "do
time" with; such "men" tend to rely less on aggression and more on
persuasion in their search for someone to "settle down" with, but they
are not above arranging for a confederate to supply the coercion
needed to "turn out" someone for this purpose.
As the demand for sexual partners always far exceeds the supply,
however, only a minority of the "men" succeed in obtaining possession
of a partner; these tend to be the highest-ranking "men" in the
prisoner power structure. The remainder, including some "men" who
would be able to claim and retain a sexual partner but who choose not
to do so for various reasons, make use of prostitution, join in
gang-rapes, borrow sexual submissives from friends who control them,
or do without. "Men" who are without sexual outlet altogether may be
considered marginal in their claim to "man" status, and targeted for
violent demotion.
The Role of "Queen"
A second class consists of the "queens," also known as "bitches,"
"ladies" and so forth. These are effeminate homosexuals whose sexual
behavior behind bars is not markedly different from their patterns "on
the street." They are strictly receptive (penetrated) and are
generally as feminine in appearance and dress as the local
administration will allow. By prison convention, these prisoners are
considered to be females in every possible way, e.g., their anus is
termed "pussy," they take female names, and are referred to using
female pronouns. The queen are submissive to the "men" and may not
hold positions of overt power in the inmate social structure.
Known or discovered homosexuals who enter confinement without a
feminine identity are relentlessly pressured to assume one; the idea
of a homosexual who is not a substitute female is too threatening to
be tolerated. The more extreme the contrast between the effeminized
homosexual and the super-machismo "men," the more psychologically safe
distance is placed between the "men's" behavior and the notion of
homosexuality.
In some prisons and many jails and reformatories, queens are
segregated from the general population and placed in special units,
referred to by the prisoners as "queens' tanks." There they are often
denied privileges given to the general population such as attendance
at the recreation hall, yard visits, library call, hot food, etc. The
rationale given for such units is to protect the homosexuals (who
generally would prefer to pair off with the "men" instead) and reduce
homosexuality, though in practice it simply increases the frequency of
rape among the remaining population.
The actual life of prison homosexuals, it should be clear, has little
or nothing to do with the ideals propagated by the gay liberation
movement, which have barely affected prison life. There is little room
for the independent, self-affirming homosexual, who upon entering
confinement faces the choice of "passing" as a heterosexual "man",
submitting to the subservient role of the "queen," or risking his life
in combat time after time. Only the toughest of homosexuals can even
seriously consider the third option.
The Role of "Punk"
The lowest class (though the difference between the two "non-men"
classes is often minimal) consists of those males who are forced into
the sexually receptive role; they are called "punks," "fuck-boys",
"sweet kids," and other terms. The overwhelming majority of these
punks are heterosexual in orientation; they are "turned out" (a phrase
suggesting an inversion of their gender) by rape, usually gang rape,
convincing threat of rape, or intimidation. Punks retain some vestiges
of their male identity and tend to resist the feminizing process
promoted both by the "men" and by the queens; upon release they
usually revert to heterosexual patterns, though often with disruptions
associated with severe male rape trauma syndrome.
Punks often try to escape their role by transferring to another cell
block or institution, but almost always their reputation follows them:
"once a punk, always a punk."
Punks tend to be younger than the average inmate, smaller, and less
experienced in personal combat or confinement situations; they are
more likely to have been arrested for non-violent or victimless
offenses, to be middle class, and to belong to ethnic groups which are
in the minority in the institution.
Relations between queens and punks are often tense, as the former tend
to look down on the latter while trying to recruit them into their
ranks, a process which the latter resent, though some may succumb to
it over the years.
In subsequent usage, when both queens and punks are meant, the
American prison slang word "catcher," which includes both (as the
opposite of "pitcher," both terms derived from the sport of baseball)
will be used.
The percentage of queens in an incarcerated population is usually very
small, from none to a few per cent. The number of punks is usually
much larger, given the unrelenting demand on the part of the "men" for
sexual catchers; nevertheless, the supply of punks never approaches
the demand, so that the majority of the population is always "men."
The number of punks tends to rise with the security level of the
institution, as the longer the prison term, the more risks will be
taken by an aggressive "man" to "turn out" a punk for his own use.
Big-city jails and reform schools are also considered to have
relatively high populations of punks.
Relationships
In ongoing sexual relationships, a "man" is paired ("hooked up") with
a catcher; no other possibilities, such as a pair of homosexuals, are
tolerated, but this one is not only tolerated but sanctioned by the
prisoner subculture. These relationships are taken very seriously, as
they involve an obligation on the part of the "man" to defend his
partner, violently if necessary, and on the part of the catcher to
obey his "man." Catchers are required to engage in "wifely" chores
such as doing laundry, making the bunk, keeping the cell clean, and
making coffee. Due to the shortage of catchers, only a small minority
of "men" succeed in entering into such a relationship, and the
competition for available catchers is intense, sometimes violent.
The impetus manifested by the "men" to form pairs is remarkable in
light of the many disadvantages in doing so, for the "man" not only
risks having to engage in lethal combat on behalf of someone else and
hence suffer for his catcher's blunders, seductiveness, or good looks,
but he also greatly increases his vulnerability to administrative
discipline by increasing his profile and the predictability of his
prohibited sexual activities. The fact that so many "men" seek to form
pairs rather than find sexual release through rape, prostitution, etc.
is strong testimony for the thesis that such relationships meet basic
human needs which are related to, but not identical to, the sexual
one, such as a need for affection or bonding.
Sometimes the "man" part of the relationship is actually a collective,
so that a catcher may belong to a group of "men" or to a whole gang.
Ownership of a catcher tends to give high status to the "man" and is
often a source of revenue since the "man," who is often without
substantial income, can then establish himself in the prostitution
business. These relationships are usually but not always exploitive
and they often result from aggression on the part of the "man"; the
catcher may or may not have consented before the "man" "puts a claim"
on him.
The relationship of involuntary to voluntary sexual activity inside
prison is a complex one. Many continuing and isolated liaisons
originate in gang rape, or in the ever present threat of gang rape.
Prison officials can label such behavior as "consensual," but fear on
the part of the passive partner is certainly a prime stimulus.
"Free-lance" or unpaired catchers are not very common, since they are
usually unable to protect themselves and are considered to be fair
game for any aggressive "man." Usually, a gang-rape or two is
sufficient to persuade an unattached catcher to pair off as soon as
possible. A catcher who breaks free from an unwanted pairing is called
a "renegade."
Pair relationships are based on an adaptation of the heterosexual
model which the prisoners bring with them from the street; the use of
this model also validates the jail relationship while confirming the
sense of masculinity of the "man." The "men" tend to treat their
catchers much as they habitually did their female companions, so a
wide range of relationships ranging from ruthless exploitation to love
are encountered.
Emotional involvement by the "men" is less common than "on the
street," but not rare; long-term prisoners may even "get married" in
an imitation ceremony to which the whole cell block may be invited. A
little-noted emotional significance of the relationship for almost all
the "men," however, is that it becomes an island of relaxation away
from the constant competitive jungle, with its continual dangers and
fear of exposing anything which might be considered a "weakness,"
which marks social relations between the "man" and other "men."
Confident in his male role, the "man" can allow himself to drop the
hard mask which he wears outside the relationship and express with his
catcher the otherwise-suppressed aspects of his humanity, such as
caring, tenderness, anxiety, and loneliness.
Sexual reciprocation is rare, and when it does occur, is almost always
kept very secret.
Another noteworthy alteration from the heterosexual model is that the
"men" tend to be considerably more casual about allowing sexual access
to their catchers than they would with regard to their females. The
catchers are frequently loaned to other "men" out of friendship or to
repay favors or establish leadership in a clique, and are commonly
prostituted. Unlike the females, the jail catchers won't get pregnant
by another man. It is very important, however, for a "man" to retain
control over such access to his catcher.
The punks, who retain a desire for an insertive role which they cannot
find in sex with their "men," sometimes reciprocate with one another,
giving each a temporary chance to play the "male" role which is
otherwise denied them. As queens are highly valued, being both scarce
and feminine-appearing, they tend to have a little more autonomy than
the punks, who are for all practical purposes slaves and can be sold,
traded, and rented at the whim of their "man." The most extreme forms
of such slavery, which can also apply to queens, are found in the
maximum-security institutions and some jails.
Rape
Perhaps the most dreaded of all jailhouse experiences is forcible
rape. This phenomenon, while it has much in common with rape of males
in the community, is distinguished by its institutionalization as an
accepted part of the prisoner subculture. Most common in urban jails
and in reformatories, gang rape (and the common threat of it) is the
principle device used to convert "men" into punks. In the subculture
of the prison those with greater strength and knowledge of inmate lore
prey on the weaker and less knowledgeable. Virtually every young male
entering a confinement institution will be tested to see whether he is
capable of maintaining his "manhood"; if a deficiency is spotted, he
will be targeted. Sometimes an aggressive "man" will seek to "turn"
the youngster using non-violent techniques such as psychological
dependence, seduction, contraband goods, drugs, or offers of
protection. There is a great variety of "turning out" games in use,
and with little else to do, much time can be spent on them. If these
techniques fail, or if the patience or desire to use them is absent,
or if a rival's game is to be pre-empted, violent rape may be plotted.
Usually this is a carefully planned operation involving more than one
rapist ("booty bandit," "asshole bandit"). The other participants in a
gang rape may sometimes have little sexual interest in the
proceedings, but need to reaffirm that they are "one of the boys," to
retain membership in the group led by militant aggressors. In the
absence of such positive identification, they would expose themselves
to becoming victims.
The aggressor selects the arena for the contest, initiates the
conflict, and deliberately makes the victim look as helpless, weak,
and inferior as possible. The usual response is a violent defense
which, if successful, will discourage further attempts. Frequently the
target is seized by a number of rapists under circumstances which do
not even allow a defense. Sometimes the attack will be discontinued
even when the attacker (or attackers) has the advantage, so long as
the victim puts up a vigorous fight and thereby demonstrates his
"manhood." In other cases, especially with particularly young and
attractive newcomers, the assault will be pressed with whatever force
and numbers it takes to subdue the victim. If the victim forcibly
resists he is liable to be wounded or mutilated, in no small part
because he has no experience or skill in the use of knives and the
like.
Defenses used to preempt a rape by knowledgeable but vulnerable
newcomers include paying for protection, joining a gang, and being
sponsored by relatives or friends already locked up.
Rape in prisons is less frequent than in jails and reform schools
because most prisoners who are vulnerable to rape will have already
learned to accomodate themselves to the punk role in jail or reform
school and will "hook up" with a protector shortly after arrival.
Nevertheless, rape remains a feature of prison life since the testing
process is never really concluded and the demand for punks is always
high. In a minimum-security prison, rape is uncommon because few "men"
want to assume the risks involved and the separation from females
tends to be short or release imminent; in a maximum-security prison
rape is far more prevalent because the prisoners are more violent to
begin with, are more willing to take the risks involved, and feel a
more intense need for sexual partners. The psychological roots of jail
rape are complex, but it is clear that the primary motivation for the
rapist lies more in the area of power deprivation than sexual
deprivation, though the role of the latter should not be
underestimated. In the eyes of the perpetrator the victim is less a
sexual object than a means of exhibiting male dominance and
superiority of the rapist. That physical qualities are significant,
however, is shown by the fact that obese or older inmates are rarely
selected as victims.
From a sociological perspective, rape functions as a violent rite de
passage to convert "men" into punks in order to meet part of the
demand for sexual partners. Most jail rape victims quickly "hook up"
with a "man" (not necessarily or even usually the lead rapist) in
order to avoid repetitive gang-rapes; some enter "protective custody"
(often called "punk city") but usually find it impossible to remain
there indefinitely, or find the promised protection to be illusory;
some take violent revenge on their assailant(s) at a later date,
risking both death and a new prison term; others commit suicide.
In the United States, rape often takes on a racial dynamic as a means
by which the dominant ethnic group (usually but not always black) in
the institution intimidates the others. As such it can become a major
source of racial tension. The rape problem has class aspects as well:
the middle-class white who finds himself in an institution where he is
a total stranger to its subculture, its language, even the tricks and
strategems played on unwary newcomers, simply lacks the survival
skills requisite for the prison milieu, while the repeated offender of
lower-class or delinquent background has mastered all of them, even if
he is not adroit enough in his calling to escape the clutches of the
law. The rape of an "attached" catcher is also a direct challenge to
his "man", who must retaliate violently, according to the prison code,
or give up his claim on the catcher and be targeted for rape himself.
It should also be mentioned that when the combination of easy victims
and administrative pressure against pair-bonding arises, as it often
does, it becomes less risky to commit rapes than to commit oneself to
an ongoing consensual relationship.
A further dimension of prison rape is the racial issue. Whether or not
blacks constitute a majority or plurality of the prison population,
the aggressor in homosexual rape tends to be black, the victim to be
white or Puerto Rican. A study of 129 separate incidents in the
Philadelphia prison system showed that:
13% involved white aggressors and white victims
29% involved black aggressors and black victims
56% involved black aggressors and white victims
Hence 85% of the aggressors were black, 69% of the victims were white.
The motivation for the crime is not primarily sexual; it is conceived
as an act of revenge against a member of white society collectively
regarded as exploiting and oppressing the black race. Among older boys
in a reform school, the white victim was often forced to submit to a
black in full view of others so that they could witness the
humiliation of the white and the domination of the black. Gang rapes
are typically perpetrated by black inmates from urban areas serving
sentences for major crimes such as armed robbery and assault with a
deadly weapon. The white inmates are often disadvantaged in the prison
setting if they have not been part of a delinquent subculture in the
outside world, and they lack the sense of racial solidarity that
furnishes the blacks with a group ethos and the collective will to
oppose the official norms of the prison and to risk the penalties
attached to fighting, even in self-defense.
Further, in some institutions blacks commit acts of sexual aggression
to let the white inmates collectively know that the black inmates are
the dominant element, even if they are involuntarily behind bars. It
is essential to their concept of manhood to make white prisoners the
victims of their assaults, and they resent the black homosexuals in
the prison whom they identify as weak and effeminate. This whole
pattern of symbolic acts is first inculcated in reform schools and
then carried over into the penitentaries where the offenders are sent
for the offenses of their mature years. As the black population of the
United States has ceased to be concentrated almost entirely in the
states of the historic Confederacy, as it was before World War I, and
is now spread more evenly over the territory of the Union, the share
of blacks in the prison population of other states has risen, so that
a more homogeneous institutional subculture now exists in which whites
are the dominated and exploited class.
Thus far the white prisoners have not developed their own sense of
solidarity in order to cope with the threats inherent in the
situation.
Prevalence
As noted above, reliable statistics on the extent of homosexuality in
confinement are notably lacking. However, from the Wooden-Parker study
cited above, some figures are worth citing. It must be kept in mind
that these figures are derived from a low-medium-security prison, that
they apply only to incidents affecting the prisoners while in that
particular prison (thus omitting previous "turn-outs" by rape), that
the percentages apply to prisoners of all age groups and races taken
together, and that the authors themselves emphasized that "our study
is likely underreporting certain types of sexual behavior (i.e.,
sexual coercion and assault)."
This study found that 55% of all (self-designated) heterosexuals
reported being involved in sexual activity while in that prison, this
figure breaking down into 38% of whites, 55% of Hispanics, and 81% of
blacks; that 14% of all the prisoners (9% of heterosexuals and 41% of
homosexuals) had been sexually assaulted there; that 19% of all the
prisoners (100% of homosexuals and 10% of heterosexuals) were
currently "hooked up."
Looking at the (self-designated) homosexuals alone, 64% reported
receiving some type of pressure to engage in sex (82% of whites, 71%
of Hispanics, 49% of blacks) and 41% had been forced into it.
Disciplinary action for sex had been taken against 71%, while 35% were
engaged in prostitution. An eye-opener for some gay consumers of
pornography featuring jailhouse sex may be the report by 77% of the
homosexuals that they had better sex "on the Street" and by 78% that
they were "looked down upon and treated with disrespect by other
inmates." The Davis study of the Philadelphia jail system, based upon
interviews with 3,304 prisoners, estimated that the number of sexual
assaults in the 26 months of the study was about 2000; during this
period some 60,000 men passed through the system. Of these assaults,
only 96 were reported to prison authorities, only 64 were mentioned in
prison records, only 40 resulted in disciplinary action, and only 26
were reported to the police for prosecution.
Davis studied 129 documented sexual assaults in which the races of
both victim and assailant were known, finding that 15% involved whites
only, 29% involved blacks only, and 56% involved black assailants and
white victims; none of the incidents involved white assailants and a
black victim.
Jailhouse Sexual Mores
Sexual activity in confinement may take place nearly anywhere; the
expectation of privacy which prevails in other circumstances often
gives way to necessity. Furthermore, it is often to a "man's"
advantage to be seen engaging in "masculine" sexual activity by other
prisoners, enhancing his reputation as a "man." For these reasons, sex
is often a group activity with some participants taking turns standing
"lookout" for guards or shooing away uninvolved prisoners from the
area being used.
While disciplinary codes in confinement institutions are nearly
unanimous in outlawing all sexual activity, these codes usually have
little more effect than to ensure that sex takes place outside the
view of the guards. They do, however, inhibit catchers from enlisting
the aid of administrators in avoiding rape situations, given the fact
that such avoidance usually requires pairing off with a protector. The
furtive nature of consensual activities and pairings necessitated by
the disciplinary codes also works to dehumanize them and favor the
quick mechanical relief as distinguished from an affectionate
relationship. The severe sanctions provided by the prisoner code
against informers protects even rapists from being reported to the
administration by their victims. These fear retaliation from the
perpetrators, who can be well placed in terms of the inmate power
structure- and famed for their criminal ruthlessness and daring. The
aggressor is usually guilty of the far more serious crime, the victim
may have committed only a trivial one. Officials usually have a
general idea of what is going on, based on reports from informers, but
these reports cannot be made openly enough to provide a basis for
disciplinary action.
The openness of jailhouse sexuality, in spite of disciplinary codes,
is one of its most remarkable features. The institution of "hooking
up" which is the heart of the system, and which specifies that any
catcher who is "hooked up" may be "disrespected" only at the risk of
violent retaliation from his "man," is dependent on general knowledge
of the specifics of such pairings among the entire incarcerated
population. Virtually the first result of a claim being laid on a
catcher is its announcement to the prisoner population at large; sex
is the number one topic of conversation, and the news that a new punk
has been "turned out" spreads like wildfire throughout an institution.
Under such circumstances, guards and administrators with their eyes
open can hardly fail to be aware of pairings. Often, in fact, housing
moves are made to facilitate keeping the pair together; practical
experience has shown that this tends to minimize fights and therefore
keeps the general peace, which is the first priority of all officials.
Thus when a "man" in a double cell acquires a catcher, he "persuades"
his current cellmate to request a move out, the new catcher requests a
move in, the catcher's current cellmate is prompted to request that he
be moved out, and the administration approves it to keep the peace
among all concerned. A particularly dangerous situation is one in
which a catcher is bunked with a "man" other than the one he is hooked
up with. For this reason punks are often celled together, as are
queens.
Female Institutions
It is not known whether the incidence of homosexuality in prison is
higher in male or female populations. One survey that used the same
criterion for male and female inmates reported the same incidence in
both.
The role of the female inmate in lesbian activity is precisely defined
by the prison subculture. The "penitentiary turnout" is the woman who
resorts to lesbian relations because the opposite sex is unavailable;
in contrast, the "lesbian" prefers homosexual gratification even in
the outside world, and thus is equated with the queen in the men's
prison. The lesbian is labeled as sick by some of the other inmates
because the preference in a situation of choice is deemed a
perversion. The participant in lesbian relations who does so for lack
of choice is not so stigmatized.
The "femme" or "mommy" is the inmate who takes the female role in a
lesbian relationship, a role highly prized because most of the inmates
still wish to play the feminine role in a significant way in prison.
In the context of a pseudo-marital bond, the femme continues to act
out many of the functions allotted to the wife in civil society. The
complement is the "stud broad" or "daddy" who assumes the male role,
which in its turn is accorded much prestige for three reasons: 1) the
stud invests the prison with the male image; 2) the role is considered
more difficult to sustain over a period of time because it goes
against the female grain; 3) the stud is expected not just to assume
certain symbols of maleness, but also to personify the social norms of
male behavior.
In sharp contrast with the men's prison, homosexual relations are
established voluntarily and with the consent of the partners; no
physical coercion is applied to the weaker or feminine partner.
Interpersonal relations linked with homosexuality play a major role in
the lives of the female prisoners. Cast as a quasi-marital union, the
homosexual pair is viewed by the inmates as a meaningful personal and
social relationship. Even though for previously heterosexual women
this mode of adjustment is difficult, the uniqueness of the prison
situation obliges the inmate to attach new meaning to her behavior.
When a stud and a femme have established their union, they are said to
be "making it" or to "be tight," which is to say that other inmates
recognize them socially as a "married" pair. Since the prisoners
attach a positive value to sincerity, the "trick" - one who is simply
exploited sexually or economically - is held in low esteem by the
inmate subculture. Tricks are also regarded as "suckers" and "fools"
because their lovers dangle unkept promises in front of them. The
"commissary hustler" is the woman who establishes more than one
relationship; besides an alliance with an inmate in the same housing
unit, she also maintains relations with one or more inmates in other
housing units for economic advantage. The other women, labeled tricks
in the prison argot, supply her with coveted material items which she
shares only with the "wife" in her own unit. The femme may even
encourage and guide the stud in finding and exploiting the tricks. The
legitimacy of the primary pseudo-marriage is not contested, though the
tricks may anticipate replacing the femme when a suitable opportunity
arises.
Writers on female institutions agree that, apart from sexual
relationships, such institutions are marked by quasi-family social
units which provide emotional support to their members, in sharp
contrast to the ever-competitive male environments.
Administrative Attitudes
There is, as may be expected, a wide range of administrative attitudes
towards both violent and consensual homosexuality in their confinement
institutions. Consensual activities are accepted as inevitable by
some, hunted out and seriously punished when discovered by others,
while most tend to look the other way so long as the behavior does not
become disruptive or too open. Convicts have charged that
administrators too often exploit rape as a tool to divide and control
the inmate population, particularly in connection with racial
tensions. A state commission investigating the unusually violent New
Mexico prison riot (1980) found that officials used the threat of
placement of new inmates in cells with known rapists to recruit
informers. Other administrations have been charged with setting
vulnerable prisoners up for gang-rape in order to discharge tensions
within a housing unit or reward it for keeping quiet. Administrators
are aware that a difficult or disliked prisoner can be maneuvered into
a position where he will be sexually victimized by his fellow inmates.
In other cases the staff is simply resigned to what is happening
inside the institution and turns a blind eye to the sexual violence.
Administrators themselves deny such actions and universally proclaim
their opposition to rape, while often denying that it is a problem in
their own institution. The uniformed guards often have a different set
of attitudes. Some of them consider all participants in homosexual
activity to be homosexuals; some display considerable homophobia and
engage in private witch-hunts. Others, especially those with long
experience as guards, may encourage a "man" prisoner whom they
consider to be dangerous to get "hooked up" with a catcher on the
theory that paired-off "men" are less likely to cause major trouble.
Guards are also involved in setting up some rapes and sexual
encounters, in exchange for payoffs or for such diverse reasons as to
destroy the leadership potential of an articulate prisoner. The guards
are capable even of ignoring the screams of a prisoner who is being
raped. The guards may even tell the prisoner that to file charges
against the aggressor would be tantamount to publicizing his own
humiliation, just as a public rape trial in the outside world exposes
the female victim to shame and embarrassment.
Writings on Sex in Confinement
A good deal has been written in scholarly style, in North America at
least, concerning homosexual behavior in prisons, jails, and
reformatories. Much of this literature is fraught with controversy,
and the views of penologists, often concerned more with institutional
control and abstract theorizing on "the problem of homosexuality" than
with actual behavioral patterns, tend to differ both normatively and
descriptively from the accounts of inmates. Penologists reflect the
concerns of their employers, who usually seek to minimize aspects of
life in their institutions which would arouse public indignation, and
who are usually hostile to all forms of sexual contact among
prisoners. The conclusions of a recent paper cited in Criminal Justice
Abstracts, that "greater efforts to deter . . . consensual homosexual
activity" are needed, are not untypical for penological writings.
Complicating the matter is the extreme difficulty, which is often
glossed over, of a non-imprisoned investigator, usually someone
associated with the administration (at least in the eyes of the
prisoners), seeking to obtain reliable data on behavior which violates
disciplinary codes and which is as secretive as the most sensitive
aspect of underworld life can be to the prying eyes of outsiders. As a
result, armchair theorizing, remote from the actual behavior which is
supposed to be its subject, is endemic to the formal literature.
A few non-penological psychologists and at least one sociologist
(Wayne Wooden) have published useful studies in the 1980s, but it is
noteworthy that only one comprehensive survey of sexual behavior in a
prison (a low-medium-security California institution) has found its
way into print (the Wooden-Parker book Men Behind Bars, for which Jay
Parker gathered information while a prisoner). The only systematic
investigation of sexual behavior (in this case rape) in jails (the
Philadelphia system) was reported in 1968 by Alan J. Davis. Reliable
statistics for juvenile institutions are apparently non-existent,
though reform schools have been described as the incarceration
facilities where sexual activity is most common, and as the locus in
which habitual criminals first acquire the mores governing sexual
expression in the prisoner subculture. Accounts written by prisoners
or ex-prisoners have usually taken the form of autobiography or
fiction, and these also tend to draw veils over areas which might
reflect unfavorably on the writer in presenting himself to the general
public, such as rape and homosexuality. Former prisoners also tend to
remain silent concerning their sexual experiences in confinement when
conversing with people who have not shared that environment, former
"punks" being most loathe to disclose anything about their humiliating
sexual role.
Novels by Jean Genet have depicted homosexuality in French reform
schools and prisons, and these are the only widely read books dealing
with the subject, though one must hesitate to draw too much from
Genet's hallucinogenic-fantastic writings. Billy Hayes'
autobiographical Midnight Express (1977) gave an explicit account of
the author's homosexual experiences in Turkish prisons. Karlheinz
Barwasser wrote from a gay inmate's point of view on German prisons in
Schwulenhetz im Knast (1982), while Robert N. Boyd did the same on the
California prison system in Sex Behind Bars (1984). The only
systematic account from a "punk's" perspective can be found in Donald
Tucker's "A Punk's Song" in Anthony Scacco's 1982 anthology, Male
Rape. A third-person novel which has dealt candidly with prison sex,
based on the author's experience in the California system, is On the
Yard (1967) by Malcolm Braly; a play by Canadian ex-inmate John
Herbert, "Fortune and Men's Eyes" (1967), made into a movie in 1971,
revolves around sexuality in a reformatory. There are numerous gay
pornographic books featuring an incarceration setting, but very few of
them have been written by former inmates and they are generally
extremely inaccurate.
Theories of Prison Homosexuality
Two major theories have been advanced by penologists to account for
prison homosexuality: the Importation Model and the Deprivation Model.
The Importation Model suggests that the "problem" of homosexuality
exists in a prison because it has been brought in from outside, the
Deprivation Model assigns it to the conditions of incarceration where
it is found.
The Importation Model rests on studies showing that the variable of
previous homosexual experience is significant for predicting
homosexual activity in prison. It alone accounted for 29% of the
variance of the individuals' scores on an index of homosexuality. Its
major flaw is that much of the prior homosexuality - including
aggression against other prisoners - is likely to be imported from
other incarceration programs rather than from the larger society
outside prison. The variable of prison homosexuality is not a pure
measure of importation free of the effects of imprisonment, since
convicts have often served previous sentences, some as adolescents in
reform schools. The aftereffects of such periods of incarceration are
difficult to unravel from the impact of the outside world. In one
study, two-thirds of those reporting prison homosexuality indicated
that their first experience had occurred in a reform school. However,
the validity of this finding is weakened by the absence of comparable
data from non-correctional institutions: how many young adults
involved in homosexuality had their first experience while enrolled in
high school?
An Importation Theory might more legimitately be focused on the
concepts applied to sexual activity in confinement by the prisoners.
There is little doubt but that the dominant group seeks to apply the
heterosexual models with which they are familiar from the outside
world to the female-deprived prison society; if there are no females
around, they will be created. The particular application of this model
draws from lower-class ideas of masculinity and homosexuality already
mentioned. Only with respect to the punks - admittedly an
indispensible element - does the prisoner culture depart from these
ideas in upholding the notion of the "fall from manhood" and
rationalizing its violent inducement through the act of rape.
The Deprivation Model focuses on the negative aspects of the prison
experience as a cause of homosexuality. The deprivation model predicts
that persons and institutions that associate high pains and intense
suffering with imprisonment are more likely to have homosexual
experience. Advocates of this view also assume that the harsh,
depriving conditions of custody oriented, maximum-security prisons
would favor the development of homosexual patterns. Yet this
prediction is belied by a study finding more prison homosexuality in a
treatment- oriented prison (37%) than in a custody-oriented one (21%).
The only positive correlations found are with the degree of isolation
from the prisoner's family and friends, and the distance from home.
The element of loneliness caused by the deprivation of the prison
experience may contribute to the need for sexual affection and
gratification.
Perhaps it would be too much to suggest that penologists consider a
Deprivation Theory which posits that homosexuality results from the
sexual, affectional, and emotional deprivation of prisoners who would,
if given the opportunity, otherwise continue their heterosexuality.
Such a theory, however, would also have to take into account the
question of power deprivation, which might motivate sexual assaults on
other prisoners even if females were readily available. Another
question which has yet to be addressed is why pecking-order contests
are resolved in a sexual rather than some other manner.
jum...@my-deja.com
Incarceration as Punishment for Homosexual Conduct
Imprisonment for homosexual offenses is a comparatively modern
innovation. For no infraction of its commandments does the Mosaic Law
prescribe imprisonment as a penalty, and as the punishment for sodomy,
late medieval law decreed castration, banishment, or death. In
practice, if not in law, eighteenth-century England commuted the death
penalty for buggery to exposure in the pillory - a fate almost worse
than death - together with a term of imprisonment, and when the
punishment of hanging established by 5 Eliz. I c. 17 was finally
abolished in 1861, the sentence was reduced only to penal servitude
for life. In 1885 the Criminal Law Amendment Act prescribed a sentence
of two years for "gross indecency" between males. One can question the
logic of sentencing a man found guilty of homosexual acts with other
males to confinement for years or even for life in an exclusively male
community, but the legislatures of the nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries evidently had no qualms.
Though until recently homosexual acts were illegal in most American
states, relatively few men and fewer women were imprisoned for
violating such laws. More frequent was the incarceration of convicted
pedophiles, which still continues. Far more homosexuals arrive in
local jails for prostitution (particularly "street transvestites"),
and other, usually non-violent, offenses.
Conclusion
The patterns of sexual behavior and sexual exploitation documented in
recent studies have a long history. In the nineteenth century such
behavior could simply be dismissed as another sordid aspect of "prison
vice," but with the coming of a more scientific approach prison
administrators have had to confront this issue at least in terms of
the effect on the inmates whom they held in custody. Isolation and
maximum-security wards for obvious homosexual prisoners were part of
the solution, but they did not keep the young and physically slight
prisoner with no previous homosexual experience from being victimized.
The lurking danger for the individual prisoner has become so overt
that an appellate court has even upheld the right of a prisoner to
escape if he surrenders to the authorities within a reasonable time,
and courts of the first instance have hesitated to send convicted
persons to prison because of the likelihood that they would be exposed
to sexual violence.
Proposals for reform include new systems of inmate classification
based on scoring devices designed to indicate the level of security
required for each prisoner. However, the state often does not have
available space within suitably differentiated facilities to provide
the correct berth for each prisoner. A more fundamental flaw with such
proposals is that they do not address the reasons for sexual
aggression, so that present patterns are likely to replicate
themselves within each classification level.
One strategy which, so far, has yet to be tried would be to legalize
consensual sexuality and encourage the formation of stable, mutually
supportive pair-bonds in that context, while reserving the full weight
of administrative attention and discipline for rape. With
administrators continuing to regard both rape and consensual
homosexuality as problems to be equally eliminated, such suggestions
have produced only "we can't sanction homosexuality" replies.
So long as the sex-segregated prison remains society's answer to
crime, the issues of rape and of consensual homosexual behavior behind
prison bars are likely to persist. So, also, will the strong
suggestion that most sexually active heterosexuals, deprived of access
to the opposite sex and not discouraged by their peers from doing so,
will eventually turn to another person of the same sex, and may even
become emotionally attached to that person. The full implications of
that statement, supported as it is by a considerable body of
experience, for our concepts of sexual orientation and potential, have
yet to be fully explored.
Bibliography
Robert N. Boyd, Sex Behind Bars: A Novella, Short Stories, and True
Accounts, San Francisco, Gay Sunshine Press, 1984.
Alan J. Davis, "Sexual Assaults in the Philadelphia Prison System and
Sheriff's Vans," Transaction, 6:2 (1968), 8-16.
Rose Giallolombardo, Society of Women: A Study of a Women's Prison,
New York: John Wiley, 1966.
Alice M. Propper, Prison Homosexuality: Myth and Reality, Lexington,
MA: Lexington Books, 1981.
Anthony M. Scacco, Jr., Rape In Prison, Springfield, IL: Charles C.
Thomas, 1975.
Anthony M. Scacco, Jr., ed. Male Rape: A Casebook of Sexual
Aggressions, New York: AMS Press, 1982.
Hans Toch, Living in Prison: The Ecology of Survival, New York: The
Free Press, 1977.
Wayne S. Wooden and Jay Parker, Men behind Bars: Sexual Exploitation
in Prison, New York: Plenum Press, 1982.
Stop Prisoner Rape, Inc.
P.O. Box 2713
Manhattanville Station
New York, NY 10027-8871
(212) 663-5562
Web pages by Ellen Spertus (ell...@ai.mit.edu)
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http://www.geocities.com/SouthBeach/Pier/6365/prape.html
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Socialization of Male Prison Rape
by Corey Knoettgen
(submitted for Sociology of Gender, May 14, 1998; do not reprint or
cite without e-mailing ckno...@virtu.sar.usf.edu; don’t worry, I’ll
give you permission as long as you e-mail me)
Introduction
Prison Rape is a social phenomenon which plagues America’s
“correctional” facilities. Similar to other social phenomenon, prison
rape is reproduced through a socialization process. Prison rape is
reproduce by a unique form of socialization in prisons, however, as it
socially constructs gender and race in ways unfamiliar to the outside
world. The institution of prison itself is unique, and its structure
facilitates the existence of rape in prison. Like other forms of rape,
prison rape is not about sexual relationships, but power
relationships. The power relationships involved in prison rape are
learned socially in the outside world, but they take a more
institutionalized form inside prisons. Once aggression is reinforced
within prison walls through prison rape, the aggression can return to
endanger the outside community. Because of the threat to prisoners and
the outside community, prison rape must be abolished.
In the Summer of 1973, Robert A. Martin, a Quaker anti-war
demonstrator, went to jail rather than paying $10 bail after a peace
demonstration in Washington, D. C. While imprisoned, Martin was
repeatedly gang raped. Follwoing his release the next day, Martin
called a press conference to publicize the brutality which he had
experienced. Although prison rapes had been documented in the United
States since 1826, Martin’s case was the first to raise public
awareness of the epidemic of rape among male prisoners (Brownmiller,
1975).
Studies of prison rape have only appeared in the last 30 years. The
first systematic study of prison rape, “Sexual Assaults in the
Philadelphia Prison System and Sheriff’s Vans,” was conducted by Alan
J. Davis in 1968. Davis’s examination of the Philadelphia prison
system was a landmark study, and all subsequent studies have borrowed
heavily from Davis’s work. Davis found, among other things, that of
156 documented cases of sexual assault in the Philadelphia prison
system, only 96 were reported to prison authorities; of those 96, only
64 were recorded in prison records; of those 64, only 40 resulted in
disciplinary action against the aggressors; and of those 40, only 26
were reported for prosecution (in Scacco, 1982). Davis estimated that
2000 sexual assaults occurred in the Philadelphia prison system over a
two-year period. Interestingly enough, subsequent authors have
generalized Davis’s estimate of the scope of prison rape to the entire
United States prison system.
The next non-fictional study of prison rape, Terror in the Prisons:
Homosexual Rape and Why Society Condones It by Carl Weiss and David
James Friar, appeared in 1974, after the publicization of Robert
Martin’s ordeal. The work contains some valuable insights into prison
rape, but it was written in a highly sensationalistic fashion. Weiss
and Friar generally concur with Davis’s estimate of the prevalance of
prison rape.
The first serious, scientific account of prison rape, Rape in Prison
by Anthony M. Scacco, Jr., appeared the following year, in 1975.
Scacco’s work became the basis for many future writings on prison
rape. Scacco asserts that “the judge who sentences a young person to
reform school or prison passes male rape on him as surely as the
sentence” (vii).
Before delving into the paper, definition of some commonly used terms
seems in order. “Men,” sometimes called “wolves,” are perpetrators of
sexual assault. Single incidences of rape exclude inmates from the
category of “men.” “Punks” are prisoners who have been “turned out,”
which means they have become the victims of sexual assault. “Queens,”
also called “bitches” and “ladies,” are effeminate homosexuals. Other
commonly used terms include “pitchers,” who are penetrators during
prison rapes, and “catchers,” who are recipients during prison rape.
“Hooking up” is the pairing of a “man” with either a “queen” or a
“punk.” The term “prison rape” is used throughout this paper in favor
of an archaic term, “homosexual rape.” “Homosexual rape” is an older
term that was once used to describe prison rape. The term must be
discarded, because it obscures the fact that prison rape is
perpetrated, not by true homosexuals, but by men who would otherwise
be heterosexual had they not been in confinement.
Prison Rape and Power
Prison Rape is about power rather than sex. This idea challenges older
notions that prisoners turned to homosexual activity because they
needed a sexual release in the absence of females. If sexual release
were the primary motive, then inmates could turn to autoeroticism. The
proposal that providing women wil solve the “homosexual problem” is
flawed for two reasons. One, homosexuality is not based on the
availability of women. Two, it doesn’t address “the need of some men
to prove their mastery through physical and sexual assault, and to
establish, most strikingly within the special male crucible of the
male-violent, a coercive hierarchy of the strong on top of the weak”
(Brownmiller, 1975, p.267).
Male prisoners face an environment, not where sexual outlets have been
restricted, but where nonsexual social outlets for acting out the
masculine role have been closed (Davis in Scacco, 1982; Bowker, 1980).
The assertion of power is generally a reaction to three things. The
first is the reaction to the person’s economic powerlessness, since
prisoners come disproportionately from the working class. The second
is the reaction to outside racial domination, since prisoners are
disproportionately minorities. The racial aspects of prison rape will
be cinsidered later in the paper. Deprived of almost all power over
his life, the prisoner, who is most likely a working-class minority,
turns to rape as a means of exerting power over another prisoner
(Donaldson, 1990). Rape is not just a reaction to the prisoner’s
economic and racial powerlessness on the outside. The “involvement in
prohibited homosexual activity is an act of rebellion against the
total [prison] institution, hence a demonstration that the
institution’s control over that person is less than complete”
(Donaldson, 1990, p.1037). Age is another power motivator, because
adolescents are particularly eager to acquire manhood.
Power and control are defined with the masculine role.
Aggressive-penetrative activity is identified with heterosexuality and
masculinity. A man can penetrate without stigma, but one who has been
penetrated has lost his claim to “manhood.” Receptive-submissive
activity is identified with homosexuality and femininity. In fact, the
“pitcher” or penetrator is encouraged to find a “catcher” or recipient
that will do wifely chores. The pitcher must constantly assert his
masculinity in two ways. One, he is expected to defend his catcher
with his life. Two, although the catcher is allowed to be penetrated
by other inmates, access to the catcher must be controlled by the
pitcher.
The “Players in Prison Rape and the Social Construction of Gender
Prisoners construct gender in ways quite different than the outside
world. The gender constructs form a hierarchy in prison. The highest
level in this hierarchy is the “man.” The “man” is a penetrator only,
since one incidence of being raped puts him in a class with the punks.
The “man” is often overly masculine, since his “manhood” status is
constantly in jeopardy. The “man” can never be fully secure, for a
punk may retaliate, or he may be “punked” by a person seeking to be a
“man.” (Donaldson, 1990).
Juvenile institutions have their equivalent of the “man” or “wolf,”
called the “booty bandit.” Booty bandits have “adopted as their
primary role the sexual exploitation of weaker inmates” (Bartollas et
al. in Scacco, 1982, p.155). They are usually from ghettos, have been
involved in crimes against the person, have spent several years in an
institutional setting, and have been assigned “dangerous” status by
institution officials. Booty bandits are almost always black, and they
are ussually more indignant about victimization received from whites
when they were on the streets.
“Queens,” the effeminate homosexuals, are among the lowest in the
prison power structure. They are generally considered to be female. In
fact, their anus is often reffered to as “pussy” (Donaldson, 1990).
They are strictly placed in the receptive role, since they are not
allowed to have relations with other homosexuals. Queens are required
to hook up with a “man.” The prohibition of sex between consenting
homosexuals exists because “the idea of a homosexual who is not a
substitute female is too threatening to be tolerated” (Donaldson,
1990, p.1038). Furthermore, preventing consensual relationships among
homosexuals is another way for “men” to exert power over inmates
perceived to be weaker, as well as to ensure an available population
of “girls” to exploit. In some facilities, queens are segregated from
the general population, which is harmful for two reasons. First,
queens in segregation are often denied priveleges given to the general
population. Second, the segregation of queens increases the frequency
of rape among the remaining population. The rationale usually given to
segregate queens is to protect homosexuals, but also to reduce
homosexual behavior.
The lowest individuals in the prison hierarchy are the “punks.” Punks
have been “turned out” by a “man.” The term “turned out” is revealing
in the case of punks, because it suggests an inversion of their
gender. Punks are considered female, like the homosexuals. Unlike the
homosexuals, however, punks resist being feminized. The resistance to
feminization may involve retaliation, which seems like a rough form of
justice. Retaliation, however, increases the rate of victimization
(Bowker, 1980). The institutionalized social pressure toward
feminizing queens and punks serves two functions. One, feminizing
queeens and punks puts them at a psychologically-safe distance from
the convict’s masculine image. Two, it makes the homosexual
relationship appear heterosexual (Wooden & Parker, 1982).
The Institution of Prison and the Institutionalization of Prison Rape
The structure of the prison institution itself is conducive to sexual
assault. An examination of how prisons facilitate the
institutionalization of rape must begin at the level of juvenille
facilities, because “older inmates are educated in the ways of
aggression as a result of the training they receive as inmates of
youth institutions” (Scacco, 1975, p.9).
Before the juvenile even enters his corridors, he is subjected to a
physical examination which makes him vulnerable to sexual
exploitation. The strip searches conducted on all newcomers are often
conducted by inmate trustees, since there is a lack of Registered
Nurses. The trustee’s opinion of the newcomer can be passed on to the
general inmate population if the trustee owes favors to another
inmate. Records on newcomers’ sexual orientation and psychological
characteristics are available to trustees. Signs of exploitable
characteristics in the psychological and physcial profile can be
passed on from trustees to the broader institution. Prison guards who
dislike a newcomer may open him up to attack by referring to him as
“sissy” or “girl.” Overcrowding in juvenille facilities, like adult
facilities, may cause multiple inmates to be locked up in a single
cell, therefore increasing the chances of being raped (Scacco, 1975).
Several physical features of juvenille facilities, like adult
facilities, lend themselves easily to sexual assault. Juvenille
training schools, most of which were built a century ago, contain
closets, abandoned attics and cellars, and little-used hallways which
are used for sexual assaults. Communal showers increase the chances of
rape occurring. Bathrooms are commonly referred to as “battle zones”
(Scacco, 1975). In short, any area which is unsupervised becomes a
possible hotbed of sexual exploitation. Even “supervised” areas do not
provide protection if patrolled by sleeping, negligent, or uncaring
guards.
Detention centers are the site of some of the most gross violations of
justice due to prison rape. In these facilities, people who have not
even been convicted of committing a crime, those just awaiting trial,
are often mixed with hardened criminals.
Jails are the institutions in which juvenilles either become “punks”
or “men.” As in juvenille facilities, trustees often conduct physical
examinations of newcomers. Some “men” actually can put in “orders” for
specific body types with the trustees. The “men” can get other
convicts to threaten the newcomer with gang rape as he enters the
facility. The “man” can then offer the newcomer protection from gang
rape in exchange for one-on-one sexual favors. The “man’s” offer is
then accepted because intercourse with one inmate is seen as
preferable to being forcibly gang raped (Scacco, 1975).
In addition to the physical structures common to juvenille institution
and jails, jails have some additional features which increase the
likelihood of prison rape. Younger offenders are housed with older
offenders, and those awaiting trial are housed with convicts,
increasing the rate of victimization. Furthermore, the lack of proper
air conditioning and peer pressure forces many inmates to walk around
with as few clothes as possible, increasing physical awareness of each
other. Those inmates who show signs of physical weakness are chosen to
be “punked” (Scacco, 1975).
Reformatories are the highest level of detention facility. In a
reformatory, inmates seek to establish a reputation through sexual
exploitation. Many sexual attacks occur in the cell block, because of
the large size of the installation, lack of adequate coverage by the
custodial staff, and officer negligence. During the night, security
crews number only half that of the daytime staff, increasing the
chances that sexual assault will occur. Reformatory classrooms are
often the site of prison rape, because there are frequently only two
teachers serving as guards in a spread out area. Shop areas are
generally isolated, so that they become common sites for prison rape.
Once again, showers are always dangerous (Scacco, 1975).
Some physical aspects of the prison system extend past the prison
walls. Sheriff’s vans have been recorded as sites of prison rape.
These vans are completely unsupervised, there is no ventilation, which
leads to frustration during longer rides, and witnesses are sometimes
put in vans with the very people they are going to testify against
(Davis in Scacco, 1982).
While physical structures promote sexual assaults, economic factors
are also important. A prisoner with economic advantage “often uses it
to gain sexual advantage” (Davis in Scacco, 1982, p.113). One
institutionalized form of economic advantage that lends itself to
sexual exploitation is the use of prisoners in medical
experimentation. Compensating inmates for medical experimentation
gives them capital with which to buy another’s sexual favors. The
economically disadvantaged prisoner then becomes either a commodity to
be used and discarded, or is forced into becoming the “man’s” partner
(Wooden & Parker, 1982). Two things promote the institutionalization
of medical experimentation as a tool of rapists. First, inmates in
some cases decide who will receive medical experimentation. By this
mechanism, the inmate can choose which convicts become “men” through
economic advantage (Scacco, 1975). The second factor which promotes
the institutionalization of medical experimentation is the fact that
the prison system receives 20% of the inmate-subject’s wages (Davis in
Scacco, 1982). There is thus little incentive to discontinue medical
experimentation. The wages, in the context of a prison economy, can be
quite substantial for inmates.
Administartors play a role in the perpetuation of prison rapes. One
author suggests that “officials usually have a general idea of what is
going on based on reports from informers, but these reports cannot be
made openly enough to provide a basis for disciplinary action”
(Donaldson, 1990, p.1043). Administartors have also been accused of
using rape as a tool to divide and control the inmate population,
especially along racial lines. Some guards give up an inmate to the
population to ease tensions, and others encourage stable pairing of
inmates to keep the peace (Donaldson, 1990).
Other problems with the corrections system have bben identified.
Administartors won’t spend the time or money to protect easily
victimized inmates through segregation. Wardens sometimes reject
requests for protection. Guards are sometimes participants in prison
rapes (Scacco, 1975). An often cited problem is that guards tell
victims that the news would get back to their family and friends.
Finally, some guards “knowingly or unknowingly” allow prison rapes to
occur (Bowker, 1980).
Other factors may contribute to the instituionalization of prison
rape. Legislators and citizens turn a blind eye to the “criminals” and
underfund prisons, contributing to poor prison living conditions.
These poor living conditions themselves add to the behavior of the men
behind bars. Weightlifting is an institutionalized statement of
manhood that reinforces domination of the strong over the weak.
Furthermore, “catching an inmate in the act, or having others testify
to an attack is a rare occurrence” (Scacco, 1975).
Prison Rape and Race
Every prison rape researcher since Davis in 1968 has noticed the
racial characteristics of prison rape. Davis found that of 156 cases
of reported sexual assaults in the Philadelphia prison system, 15% of
the cases involved white aggressors and white victims; 29% of the
cases involved black aggressors and black victims; 56% of the cases
involved black aggressors and white victims; and no cases involving
white aggressors and black victims were reported (in Scacco, 1982).
These results don’t seem so starnge, since 80% of Philadelphia’s
inmate population was black at the time. Leo Carroll, however, found a
similar racial distribution in a facility that was only 22% black (in
Scacco, 1982). Donaldson (1990) concurred that “the aggressor in rape
tends to be black, the victim to be white or Puerto Rican” (p.1042).
The explanations for the current racial breakdown of aggressors and
victims are generally uniform. Patterns of racial domination in prison
are the reverse of patterns in the outside world. It is usually the
white and middle-class who are victimized. On one level, victimizing
whites is a form of revenge for black aggressors (Donaldson, 1990).
Black aggressors sometimes choose black victims, however, because
black heterosexuals tend to resent black homosexuals.
There is consensus among researchers that statistics on race should
not be used to show that blacks have a natural affinity for rape.
Instead, “interracial rape is like all other social phenomena in that
its epidemiology changes over time in response to changes in the
social environment” (Bowker, 1980, p.10).
Proposals for Change
Several organizations advocating gay rights have been involved in
prison struggles. One is the Gay Task Force. Homosexuals, however, are
a minority of the victims of prison rape. Stop Prisoner Rape, Inc. is
a more inclusive organization with a singular focus. It was founded by
Stephen Donaldson (a.k.a. Robert A. Martin), who himself was
gang-raped in a Washington, D.C. jail, as recounted at the beginning
of this paper. The Prisoner Rape Education Project (PREP) consists of
two audio tapes designed for prisoners and a manual for guards. The
program reccomends distribution of condoms to prevent the spread of
venereal diseases (Donaldson, 1995).
There is reason, however, to be cycnical. General ignorance hovers
about the subject of prison rape, despite efforts to publicize the
problem. Male rape is often attributed to homosexuality, and that the
victims were “faggots asking for it” (Brownmiller, 1975). The
conservative atmosphere, with a hysterical fear of crime, prevents
successful and widespread prisoner advocacy. Institutional pressures
exist, because informers tend to receive severe sanctions for
reporting rapes to guards, so the chances of further victimization
exist. The Department of Corrections and Bureau of Justice also leave
prisoners out of their rape statistics and crime victimization surveys
(Donaldson, 1995). Legislative decisions, however, have been made
which are positive. In LaMarca v. Turner (1990), a staff-wide prison
training program on rape was mandated. Farmer v. Brennan (1994),
reinstated a prisoner’s claim for money damages from prison officials
for failure to protect from prison rape (Donaldson, 1995). Despite
some progress and some drawbacks, rape remains a basic feature of the
social organization of correctional institutions.
Works Cited
Bartollas, Clemens; Miller, Stuart J.; and Dinitz, Simon. (1980). The
“Booty Bandit”: A Social Role in a Juvenile Institution. In Male Rape:
A Casebook of Sexual Aggressions. Ed. by Anthony M. Scacco. Jr. AMS
Press: New York.
Bowker, Lee H. (1980). Prison Victimization. Elsevier North Holland:
New York.
Brownmiller, Susan. (1975). Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape.
Fawcett Columbine: New York.
Carroll, Leo. (1980). Humanitarian Reform and Biracial Sexual Assault
in a Maximum Security Prison. In Male Rape: A Casebook of Sexual
Aggressions. Ed. by Anthony M. Scacco. Jr. AMS Press: New York.
Davis, Alan J. (1980). Sexual Assaults in the Philadelphia Prison
System and Sheriff’s Vans. In Male Rape: A Casebook of Sexual
Aggressions. Ed. by Anthony M. Scacco. Jr. AMS Press: New York.
Donaldson, Stephen. (1990). Prisons, Jails, and Reformatories. In The
Encyclopedia of Homosexuality. Vol. 2. Ed. by Wayne R. Dynes. Garland
Publsihing: New York.
_______________. (1995). Can We Put an End to Inmate Rape. USA Today
Magazine, May 1995, p.40-42.
Scacco, Anthony M., Jr. (1975). Rape in Prison. Charles C. Thomas:
Springfield, Illinois.
__________________. (1982). Male Rape: A Casebook of Sexual
Aggressions. AMS Press: New York.
Wooden, Wayne S. and Parker, Jay. (1982). Men Behind Bars: Sexual
Exploitation in Prison. Plenum Press: New York.
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http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/narth/pedoph.html
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NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF RESEARCH AND THERAPY OF HOMOSEXUALITY
The Problem of Pedophilia
Adult-Child Sex Is Not Necessarily "Abuse," Say Some Psychologists The
issue of adult-child sex is a contentious and difficult one in the
debate about homosexuality; gay men are justifiably angry when they
are typecast as attracted to children.
However, at the same time must be clear that there is some connection
between pedophilia and the gay movement--and there is a movement among
some psychologists to justify certain types of homosexual pedophilia.
For centuries, Western society--under the influence of its
foundational Judeo-Christian roots--has considered adult-child sex to
be legally, socially, morally, and psychologically taboo. Pedophiles
have been judged criminal by the courts, sinful by theologians, and
psychologically disordered by the mental-health profession.
Slowly, however, that situation is changing.
A Fringe Element Begins to Enter the Mainstream
NAMBLA--the North American Man-Boy Love Association--was once the lone
voice lobbying for the normalization of pedophilia. NAMBLA
representatives marched in gay-pride parades as a fringe element of
the gay-rights movement.
Then in 1990, the highly respected Journal of Homosexuality produced a
special double issue devoted to adult-child sex, which was entitled
"Male Intergenerational Intimacy" (1). One article said many
pedophiles believe they are "born that way and cannot change" (p.
133). Another writer said a man who counseled troubled teenage boys
could achieve "miracles not by preaching to them, but by sleeping with
them." The loving pedophile can offer a "companionship, security and
protection" which neither peers nor parents can provide (p. l62).
Parents should look upon the pedophile who loves their son "not as a
rival or competitor, not as a thief of their property, but as a
partner in the boy's upbringing, someone to be welcomed into their
home..." (p. 164).
A British university professor wrote: "Boys want sex with men, boys
seduce adult men, the experience is very common and much enjoyed" (p.
323). A professor of social science at the State University of New
York says he looks forward to the day when Americans will "get over
their hysteria about child abuse" (p. 325) and child pornography.
A.P.A. Publishes a New Study Opening the Way to the Normalization of
Pedophilia
The American Psychological Association did not denounce the positions
advanced within that journal. In fact, just recently, the A.P.A.
published a new, major study (2) written by one of those same Journal
of Homosexuality writers.
This latest article appears in the A.P.A.'s own prestigious
Psychological Bulletin. It provides an overview of all the research
studying the harm resulting from childhood sexual abuse.
The authors' conclusion? That childhood sexual abuse is on average,
only slightly associated with psychological harm--and that the harm
may not be due to the sexual experience, but to the negative family
factors in the children's backgrounds. When the sexual contact is not
coerced, especially when it is experienced by a boy and is enjoyed, it
may not be harmful at all.
The authors of the article propose that psychologists stop using
judgmental terms like "child abuse," "molestation," and "victims,"
using instead neutral, value-free terms like "adult-child sex."
Similarly, they say we should not talk about the "the severity of the
abuse," but instead refer to "the level of sexual intimacy."
The authors conclude that behavior which psychotherapists commonly
term "abuse" may only constitute a violation of social norms. And
science, they say, should separate itself from social-moral
terminology. Religion and society, these writers argue, are free to
judge behavior as they wishbut psychiatry should evaluate behavior by
its own set of standards.
If it Feels Good, It Must Be Good
In fact, the authors of the Psychological Bulletin article propose
what they consider a better way of understanding pedophilia: that it
may only be "abuse" if the child feels bad about the relationship.
They are in effect suggesting a repetition of the steps by which
homosexuality was normalized. In its first step toward removing
homosexuality from the Diagnostic Manual, the A.P.A. said the
condition was normal as long as the person did not feel bad about it.
Few laymen are aware that the American Psychiatric Association has
already set the stage for this same transition--in the case of
pedophilia--by quietly redefining it. NARTH first made this story
public in its Bulletin (3). According to the latest diagnostic manual
(DSMIV), a person no longer has a psychological disorder simply
because he molests children. To be diagnosed as disordered, now he
must also feel anxious about the molestation, or be impaired in his
work or social relationships. Thus the A.P.A. has left room for the
"psychologically normal" pedophile.
Theology and the Law Are Led By Psychology
If psychology indeed recognizes consensual pedophilia as harmless,
then civil law and social norms will be under pressure to follow the
lead of social scienceas indeed they did on the issue of
homosexuality. When psychiatry declared homosexuality normal, our
courts and theologians began to re-write both civil law and moral
theology based on what psychiatry said it had discovered through the
medium of empirical science.
But What is a Psychological Disorder?
The problem with the law and society being a follower of psychology,
is that the majority of psychological conditions considered to be
disorders are not disorders per se, but socially undesirable character
traits. What is categorized as a "psychological illness" depends on
psychiatry's view of the good life, and of human nature. And today,
there is grave disagreement on those subjects.
So when psychiatry decided to redefine homosexuality as normal, it
simply moved the condition from one category labeled "undesirable" to
another category labeled "desirable." (4) It did so based on a study
showing that some homosexual individuals evidence no obvious
psychological abnormality (5), and also as a result of listening to
personal testimony from several gay people. In essence, these
individuals said, "We aren't psychologically unbalanced or distressed,
and we're happy being gay. So psychiatry has no right to label us
disordered."
Psychology Yields to the Authority of Personal Experience
The A.P.A. agreed with them. In doing so, it surrendered its authority
to contradict personal experience. At the same time, it relinquished
the age-old conviction that human beings are governed by certain
immutable laws of nature.
As psychiatry becomes detached from its foundations, we hear more
opinions such as these--expressed by world-renowned, Professor
Emeritus (Johns Hopkins U.) sexologist Dr. John Money:
"If I were to see the case of a boy aged ten or eleven who's
intensely erotically attracted toward a man in his twenties or
thirties, if the relationship is totally mutual, and the bonding
is genuinely totally mutual then I would not call it pathological
in any way" (6)
And so we can see that a door has been opened.
Psychiatrist Jeffrey Satinover reflects on the Journal of
Homosexuality's "Male Intergenerational Intimacy":
"This special issue reflects the substantial, influential, and
growing segment of the homosexual community that neither hides
nor condemns pedophilia. Rather they argue that pedophilia is an
acceptable aspect of sexuality, especially of homosexuality.
Indeed, the San Francisco Sentinel, a Bay Area gay-activist
newspaper, published a piece arguing that pedophilia is central
to male homosexual life" (7).
Gay advocates correctly state that most child molesters are
heterosexual males. But this is a misleading statement. In proportion
to their numbers (about 1 out of 36 men), homosexual males are more
likely to engage in sex with minors: in fact, they appear to be three
times more likely than straight men to engage in adult-child sexual
relations (8). And this does not take into account the cases of
homosexual child abuse which are unreported. NARTH's Executive
Director Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, for example, says that about one-third
of his 400 adult homosexual clients said they had experienced some
form of homosexual abuse before the age of consent, but only two of
those cases had been reported.
While no more than 2% of male adults are homosexual, some studies
indicate that approximately 35% of pedophiles are homosexual (9).
Further, since homosexual pedophiles victimize far more children than
do heterosexual pedophiles (10), it is estimated that approximately
80% of pedophilic victims are boys who have been molested by adult
males (11).
Homosexual Men were Often Childhood Victims
Dr. Nicolosi says that many of his clients' childhood sexual contacts
occurred with a trusted older person, and were perceived at the time
of the abuse as loving. Other sexual-reorientation therapists report
similar high rates of molestation among their clients (12, 13).
Tragically, the abused child is then more likely to become an abuser
in adulthood (14). Thus, it is not surprising that we see more
pedophilia among homosexual men: since they are more likely to have
been victims of abuse themselves, they are also more likely to
initiate a repetition of that abuse with a same-sex child.
Which Child is Most Likely to Become a Victim?
Certain children are especially vulnerable to abuse--especially the
boy who is predisposed to homosexuality. The prehomosexual boy is very
often lonely, alienated from his father, and experiencing frustrating
and deficient same-sex peer relationships. He quite naturally craves
male attention, affection and approval.
Often the same boy is also experiencing an overly intense and intimate
relationship with his mother, which makes normal masculine
individuation difficult. An intimate relationship with a man is one
place of separation and individuation "where Mother cannot go" (15).
When this lonely boy receives flattering attention from an older male,
then a link is established between love and homoerotic sex. The boy
comes to believe, "If I want love from men, I must have sex with
them." Thus the normal and natural developmental need of same-sex love
and approval has become eroticized. The boy may then develop a
compulsive, promiscous sexual habit pattern, which in gay life is seen
fairly frequently.
Many Gay Biographies Tell the Story
In his life story, Breaking the Surface, Olympic diver Greg Louganis
tells the poignant tale of his own experience with adult-child sex. He
was an unusually sensitive boy, with an intense closeness with his
mother, and a distant, fearful relationship with his father. Lonely
and starving for male affection, he was molested by an older man he
encountered on the beach. In his childish neediness, Louganis--like
many victims of man-boy molestation--perceived that relationship as
loving.
Who is Likely to be an Abuser?
Psychoanalysis recognizes the child abuser as typically an immature
man who wants to "give love" to a boy which he did not himself receive
in childhood. He makes a narcissistic identification with the child,
seeing him as an idealized version of himself, and perceives himself
as giving the same love which he wishes he had received from his own
father. Thus the pedophile cannot understand that he is inflicting
emotional damage.
Gay Fiction Presents Pedophilic Relationships Positively
Popular gay and lesbian fiction often portrays adult-child sexual
relationships as fondly remembered, tender "coming-of-age" stories.
Much of this fiction is clearly pornographic--is aimed specifically at
teenagers--and is recommended to them on reading lists distributed by
gay-advocacy groups such as P-FLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians
and Gays) (16), or offered to them in some public-school libraries
(17).
What is the Harm of Childhood Seduction?
Dutch psychologist Gerard van den Aardweg points out that
"non-coerced" sex is a misnomer because there is always an element of
coercion -- involving a misuse of adult authority, and a misuse of the
child's need for affection. If a researcher sees no harm, "it may be
because he is using the wrong glasses--not because there is nothing to
see." Even adult-child sex which is mutually enjoyed, he says, is
always an intrinsic injustice to the integrity of the person (18).
Dr. David Finkelhor, a leading U.S. researcher in the field of child
sexual abuse, similarly disputes the conclusions of pedophile
advocates. He describes some of the consequences of childhood
seduction: confusion about sexual identity and sexual norms; inability
to differentiate sex from love; confusion between care-getting and
care-giving, with lowered respect for adult authority; guilt, shame,
anxiety, lowered self-esteem, depression, vulnerability to drug and
alcohol abuse, and impaired ability to judge the trustworthiness of
others. We also see an age-inappropriate sexual knowledge, and sex
acts sometimes compulsively reenacted with other children (19).
Victims of sex abuse also appear to be at higher risk for suicide
(20), and may repeat the sexual abuse in adulthood, in order to gain a
feeling of psychological mastery over the experience (21). Children
who experience prolonged abuse are more likely to view the abuse as
positive or neutral, suggesting that as the molestation continues,
children eventually identify with the molester (22).
If the abuse was homosexual, the boy is likely to question his sexual
orientation; if the abuser was a male and the child a girl, she may
defensively turn to lesbianism (23).
But even if pedophile advocates proved to be right, that children
don't often suffer psychological damage in adulthood (and Dr.
Finkelhor believes they're wrong), the impact of pedophilia must not
be judged simply on the basis of empirical findings.
"Ultimately," says Dr. Finkelhor, "I do continue to believe that the
prohibition on adult-child sexual contact is primarily a moral issue.
While empirical findings have some relevance, they are not [to be] the
final arbiter."
Some slaves, he says, experienced slavery as good; likewise, many
child sweatshop workers said their work was beneficial. Despite this,
we know better than to conclude that either slavery or child labor are
ultimately good, he argues.
Similarly, research reveals that the birth of children is correlated
with a drop in marital satisfaction for several years. Yet in spite of
that empirical evidence, we do not declare childrearing to be "bad for
marriage." We know that psychological distress, or the lack of it,
only gives us a partial understanding of any particular life issue.
Dr. Finkelhor concludes: "Some types of social relationships violate
deeply held values and principles in our culture about equality and
self-determination. Sex between children and adults is one of them.
Evidence that some children have positive experiences does not
challenge these values" (24).
Endnotes
(1) The Journal of Homosexuality, "Male Intergenerational Intimacy:
Historical, Socio-Psychological, and Legal Perspectives," vol. 20,
Nos. 1&2, 1990. This back issue can be ordered by calling
1-800-HAWORTH.
(2) Rind, Bruce, Tromovitch, Philip, and Bauserman, Robert. (Temple U.
Dept. of Psychology, Phila., PA)., A Meta-analytic Examination of
Assumed Properties of Child Sexual Abuse Using College Samples.
Psychological Bulletin, 1998 (July), vol. 124 (1), 22-53.
(3) Pedophilia Not Always a Disorder? NARTH Bulletin, April 1995,
page 1.
(4) Satinover, Jeffrey (1996). Homosexuality and the Politics of
Truth. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books. P. 43.
(5) Hooker, Evelyn, The Adjustment of the Male Overt Homosexual,
Journal of Projective Techniques, 1957, 21, 1831.
(6) Interview: John Money. PAIDIKA: The Journal of Paedophilia,
Spring 1991, vol. 2, no. 3, p. 5.
(7) Satinover, Jeffrey (1996). Homosexuality and the Politics of
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Updated: 5 August 1999
Fischer
jum...@my-deja.com wrote in message <7vp5si$l15$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>...
>
>A further dimension of prison rape is the racial issue. Whether or not
>blacks constitute a majority or plurality of the prison population,
>the aggressor in homosexual rape tends to be black, the victim to be
>white or Puerto Rican. A study of 129 separate incidents in the
>Philadelphia prison system showed that:
>
> 13% involved white aggressors and white victims
> 29% involved black aggressors and black victims
> 56% involved black aggressors and white victims
Apparently the media doesn't know about this...