I’m currently re-reading Jon Ronson’s
book “The Men Who Stare at Goats”. Unlike (most of) the film,
it’s a disturbing examination of the depths of utter depravity – particularly those
that manifested themselves in Iraq after the US
invasion, and how a significant portion of that seems to have been the
result of people perverting Jim
Channon’s “First Earth Battalion” concepts.
I’ve had direct personal
experience of people perverting something good into something bad – actually,
one that many would perhaps be aware of in First World nations is the debasement
and perversion of the personal growth and healing technique mindfulness in
to something to boost corporate productivity, and thus the profits of the
corporations small band of owners.
Much has been written
about the banality
of
evil: there
is a need, I consider, to cover it’s perversion of good ideas using what
superficially seems reasonable – a journey that can be countered by allowing
one’s BPM conscience to have a say. (I
also recently watched a YouTube video pointing out that evil is often attractive – not, as portrayed in
Hollywood films, ugly and deformed.)
Sadly, it is ordinary,
everyday, unthinking/unreflective
people who are often the agents for such evil – people who get caught up in the
mass hysteria of fear politics and security theatre, people who – in the developing world – may be part
of mobs committing lynchings of strangers on the basis of false rumours on
social media.
There was a test that I
have been thinking about, wondering if it would give an insight into people who
were authoritarian, but I suspect it is a more useful indicator of those who
are susceptible to being manipulated. The test is:
Do you think more frequent password changes improves IT security?
More frequent password
changes don’t improve security,
as the evidence
is it leads to people choosing simpler passwords, but it is exactly the sort of
matter that superficially appears, at first glance, to be reasonable –a
“good thing”. (This is also, I suspect,
the problem behind my nation’s “gold plated” electrical infrastructure, which is apparently a major reason our
electricity prices have gone up . . . although no-one is talking
about it.)
Possibly another example
is businesses trying to force people
who work together to be friends. There is no doubt that people who like each other
will work better together – that’s well shown in business, military and life.
However, only the simple-minded, the sadistic / psychopathic, or the evil would
think it is possible to force people to like each other. This is why the
British Royal
Air Force, in World
War part Two, had bomber
crews choose
each other, rather than trying to impose who works with who. (I might finish an article I have roughed
out on the balancing act between group unity and groupthink one day
. . . )
This perversion by evil is
why it can be so important to challenge
or re-think ideas that seem to
be good: are they really, truly, in both short and long term, good?
Ironically, this notion of
objective but not obstructive caution is what conservatism should be, rather than its current incarnation as the purveyor of
evil perversions such as abuse of refugees.
This exercise of BPM
conscience has always been important: it is nowadays at least as important, and
quite possibly more so, as we all decide whether we are going to be courageous
enough to be free, or not.
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Remember: we generally need to be more human being rather than human doing, to mind our Mӕgan, and to acknowledge that all misgendering is an act of active transphobia/transmisia that puts trans+ lives at risk & accept that all insistence on the use of “trans” as a descriptor comes with commensurate use of “cis” as a descriptor to prevent “othering” (just as binary gendered [men’s and women’s] sporting teams are either both given the gender descriptor, or neither).Copyright © Kayleen White 2007-2024 NO AI
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