At 09:34 AM 3/22/98 +0000, Emily Sandblade <codehead@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>
>Recently, on a cryptography list, there was a discussion
>about how a prisoner of a political system begins to accept
>that system, just as prisoners in extreme situations begin
>to identify with the prison guards. It is an act of survival
>on the part of the prisoner: by identifying with his captors,
>he can withstand the torture and violence that he is subject
>to.
>
>This well-identified mechanism, known as "The Stockholm
>Syndrome" may be readily used to explain why NSPIC becomes
>so deeply ingrained in the psyche of most individuals.
NSPIC = Neuro-Semantic Political Illusion Complex.
NSPIC consists of pemes (political memes) plus the
Peme Rules. See '#TL07E: NSPIC DEBATE #1' --
<http://www.buildfreedom.com/tl/tl07e.htm> and
'#TL075: Pemes = Political Memes' --
<http://www.buildfreedom.com/tl/tl075.htm>.
>I believe that there are strong similarities between
>the cases of:
>[class 1] individuals in an overtly hostile situation,
>such as overt prisoner situation, and
>[class 2] those who live under a government where the
>immediate threat of violence is somewhat less apparent.
>
>These two classes are described as follows:
>-----
>Class 1: The individual's safety and life is at the
>mercy of cruel and unpredictable captors. The captors
>threaten to kill the individual and are perceived to
>be capable of doing so.
>
>Class 2: The individual perceives his safety and
>life to be at the mercy of unpredictable terrorcrats
>who may use violence to enforce their wishes. The
>terrorcrats threaten to kill, imprison, or take away
>everything valuable to the individual and are perceived
>to be capable of doing so.
"Terrorcrat" = terrorist bureaucrat or coercive political
agent -- usually written "terrocrat." Phobocrat is used
in the same sense.
>-----
>Class 1: The individual cannot escape.
>
>Class 2: The individual believes that he cannot escape.
>-----
>Class 1: The individual is isolated from support, or in
>the case of hostages, the knowledge that other people are
>trying to help them.
>
>Class 2: The individual is isolated from support, and
>discredits any support that he might see.
>-----
>Class 1: The captor shows kindness as well as violence,
>increasing the individual's sense of being totally
>dependent on the captor.
>
>Class 2: The bureaucrats show kindness as well
>as violence and unpredictability, increasing the
>individual's sense of being totally dependent
>on the government.
>-----
>
>In this syndrome, all the individual's attention is
>focused on survival. The individual clings to the
>captor because the captor has complete power over
>him. If the captor doesn't use this power, the
>individual feels grateful and in his mind the
>abuser becomes a good guy. The individual also
>knows that any expression of anger, resentment,
>or challenge to the captor's power will result
>in violence. (Sound familiar?)
>
>There are four stages in Stockholm syndrome:
>
>1. Disbelief and denial. "This isn't happening."
>The person refuses to believe the evidence that
>he sees.
>
>2. Acceptance. The person comes to identify
>with the captors/terrorcrats, and believes that
>his life depends on them.
>
>3. Escape/release from situation, accompanied
>by depression and post-traumatic stress. The
>individual is separated from the source of his
>identity, and feels lost without it. In addition,
>he may continue to identify with the former captor,
>going to such lengths as trying to defend the
>captor, and even re-entering the previous
>relationship.
>
>4. Integration of the experience; re-establishing
>personal identity; acknowledgement of the horror
>of the captor's acts.
>
>Stage 3 may be correlated with f-prime's description
>of some libertarians, who have managed to lose some
>of their "surface pemes," but are still have an
>intrinsic commitment to their captors.
>
>Stage 4 hints at potential processes to discover and
>release the deeper beliefs.
>
>----------------------
>How we burned in the prison camps later thinking: What
>would things have been like if every police operative,
>when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been
>uncertain whether he would return alive? If during
>periods of mass arrests people had not simply sat there
>in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the
>downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but
>had understood they had nothing to lose and had boldly
>set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen
>people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else
>was at hand? -- the organs would very quickly have
>suffered a shortage of officers -- and, notwithstanding
>all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have
>ground to a halt. -- Alexander Solzhenitsyn
This is a great contribution to understanding why so
many freedom lovers support the terrocrats at the
most fundamental or semantic level. Peme Rule 19:
"Whenever pro-freedom humans (secondary
peme purveyors) communicate -- although
they may question, attack, and expose a
few surface pemes -- they shall make a
special effort to use deep pemes in their
language -- in order to maximize peme
survival and propagation."
The word "government" is one of the most pernicious deep
pemes. The falsely-called "constitution" is a fraud, hoax,
and sham. The hucksters who masquerade as "president,"
"congressmen," etc. are liars and imposters. The false
notion that these terrocrats constitute "the government"
is central to NSPIC = Neuro-Semantic Political Illusion
Complex. To habitually call these phobocrats "government"
(using the word as if valid) is a lie, a gross and harmful
misrepresentation of reality.
To use the word "government" as if valid, is to conceal
the fact that the entire "political system" is a hoax,
fraud, and sham. It's a form of identifying with the
terrocrats.
The power of terrocrats depends most fundamentally on
words such as "constitution," "government," "state,"
etc. not being challenged, i.e., using them as if valid.
(Caveat: Most people operate at a level such that it's
not appropriate to challenge the terrocrat lexicon in
their presence -- they'll simply think you're crazy
and you'll lose your audience. Great care needs to
be taken to challenge basic terrocrat words (deep
pemes) when it's appropriate to do so.)
Report '#TL50C: Bought-Into-The-System' expands on
several issues relevant to this topic. Interestingly,
it includes a section on "Identifying with the Enemy"
-- see <http://www.buildfreedom.com/tl/tl50c.htm>.
Frederick Mann
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"The [one] who knows what freedom is will find a way to be free."
-- Robert LeFevre
"We are free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it."
-- William Faulkner
"The most potent weapon of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed."
-- Steve Biko
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