J. R. Emry

Love as a dying anachronism. The human replaced in all musterable vigour through that descension into the post-human. The post-human concerns itself not with the likes of love, but instead with its daily, if not hourly, orgies; love as cannibalism of the other, the mutilation of the self, and the destruction of the person as phenomena. “Eros demoted from god to buffoon” (Gallagher 207). Yet, indeed, Eros upheld as the maxim of love, so that none other love may remain at all.

The production of the post-human by the removal of the heart; the making of the individual. The person as defined by the relation to the other. The individual as that which is demarcated from the other is set distant from the person. Individualization, an act of despair by which the self is systematically destroyed in pursuit of living suicide, if not suicide proper. The radical individual as the willful un-person. The leveling of person to the individual by equal measures as the removal of the second story from a house; a reduction away from higher orders (Stern). A leveling proceeding from the basis that a person is systematically taught to recognize significance from demarcation and by their own humanity see the similarity of human nature in others — thus to see insignificance in the self. In insignificance — despair! The person demarcates away humanity for significance; the removal of the heart to be without a chest (Lewis). From human to post-human, ever greater individualization sought by the increasing of category and selection to the infinite. No longer content to man or woman, the boundaries artificially blurred and the content within rendered meaningless. The phenomena of personal death, that is spiritual death, as result of the love of self, wherein that love is hatred.

In making the self a void of the person, the newfound individual inflicts mutilation by means of the laceration on some, if not all, aspects of their being. The infliction on the heart immediate by degree of laceration by even mere thought. The infliction on the mind immediate by degree of laceration. The psyche escapes from nothing. The infliction of the body by laceration of the flesh taken at any subsequent time. The so-called “sex change” as the culmination of three kinds of lacerations; the unmaking and destruction of the body to make in accord with the unmaking and destruction of the mind for reason of furthering the unmaking and destruction of the heart. To make what isn’t of what is. To make what shouldn’t of what should. Love of the self, wherein that love is hatred, defined by cruelty brutality against the self.

The sexual revolution having already taken root by the onset of the digital age finds amplification and completion of the pornographization of all culture. That what the hippies of the 1960s called “Free Love,” that polymorphic perversity, the idea therein that authoritarianism is the result of sexual repression thus that the subjugation of all to the sexual act even at the most base as a means to an end and the end contained in itself. The sexual revolution aims for dissonance and the disassociation of sex from all reality; the breakdown of the human spirit by means of the divorce of the body and the brain, reducing all to mere calculators and copulaters.  Feminism as the end of the female; setting forth the corrupted male as the ideal for both sexes. Homosexualism as the end of the relation; setting forth the dehumanized object as the ideal for both sexes. Once an act of creation, intercourse is reduced to an onanism, stagnant and infertile. As the most basic act of creation, reproduction is eroded, by necessity all acts of creation replaced by the fruitless. No longer will order be brought forth out of chaos. All the arts become impotent pornographies; bombastic in their obscenities. “They castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful” (Lewis 26). The fundamental goal of art changed from beauty to revolution; the malicious revolution against all existence. The distinction between the post-human and the mass murderer only differentiated by passivity. The inversion of the object with the subject as means of moral inversion necessitated by the creation of the individual from the death of the person. The dead abhor the living and so act as cannibals. In this way, the observance of feminism is absolutely equivalent to self-depersonalization; the integration of the former into society as equivalent to the leveling of all in society to inhuman states.  In this way, the support of homosexualism is absolutely equivalent to the support of pedophilia; the acceptance of the former the acceptance of the latter. This as the love of the other, wherein that love is hatred, defined by cruelty and brutality.

The post-human seeks the destruction of the human in others and the self. This destruction claimed as an act of love all the while blurring the heart between the body and mind until it dissipates. The mind for the disconnect of the presence by distraction, by amusement, by fun as an end to itself. The body by means of the gratification of the passions at the instant. All made digital for the heart is analog. Here, beyond good and evil, civilization is known to be dead. All events are proceeded by prophecy, herein the physical death shall follow this spiritual death. “You may suddenly understand it all someday — but only when you yourselves hear “hand behind your back there!” and step ashore on our Archipelago” (Solzhenitsyn 518).

Bibliography

Gallagher, M. (1989). Enemies of Eros: How the Sexual Revolution is Killing Family, Marriage, and Sex and What We Can Do about It. Chicago, IL: Bonus Books.

Lewis, C. S. (2013). The Abolition of Man. Exciting Classics.

Solzhenitsyn, A. I. (1978). The Gulag Archipelago Three: Katorga; Exile; Stalin is No More V-VII. New York: Harper & Row.

Stern, K. (1985). The Flight from Woman. New York: Paragon House.

Jared Emry

There are three major kinds of nihilism: moral nihilism, epistemological nihilism, and political nihilism. Political nihilism derives its root in the same way as the word annihilation. It is the idea “all social and political structures should be destroyed.” Epistemological nihilism is the idea “there is no truth.” Moral nihilism is the idea “there are no values.” These types of nihilism could be all accepted by a person, but any person could easily accept one type and reject the others. They may overlap in a person, but each type is discrete and unique from each other. The confusion of these terms needs to be eliminated before discussing any one individually (Joyce 1). Unfortunately, the term moral nihilism still is vague and slovenly to the point of being both useless and meaningless. For the sake of discussion the term will be defined as to refer to a collection of philosophies that claim there are no moral facts. It is also necessary to trace major moral nihilist thoughts and arguments behind them.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, in his landmark book The Brothers Karamazov, has Ivan Karamazov state “if God is dead, then everything is permissible.” Many of those in the current skeptic and atheist communities would and do openly reject this dictum as it seemingly remains as either a pragmatic or a metaethic for the need of God; however, this rejection is an offhand dismissal. While Dostoyevsky is an Orthodox Christian and the text could be interpreted as a shameless strawman for atheistic metaethics, Atheism does not necessarily lead to moral nihilism, nor is that an accurate representation for the book (Joyce 2). The novel presents characters from all walks of life and their perspectives on existence. Ivan is the most tortured of them all and not due to his atheism. Ivan is brilliantly analytical and comes to the conclusion people only care about right and wrong insofar as there exist consequences, especially eternal ones. He desires to embrace goodness, but he can’t logically justify it. He gives up on love, happiness, and humanity. He cannot reconcile himself to his disbelief. He cannot reconcile morality with reality. It seems the only way to save values is to betray them. He is left mad and without redemption. His logic is never refuted; rather the disbelief is too much of a burden. It is not a claim atheism leads to moral nihilism for whatever reason. The consequences of the human psyche are irrelevant to the cold mathematics of nihilism. The sentiment here is mirrored by Camus in L’Homme Révolté and Sartre in Existentialism and Humanism. Dostoyevsky’s dictum may be popular in that god is Buddha’s trapdoor — the only exit by which humanity can escape from nihilism. On the other hand, it could be described without a theistic premise, in which the question is what the nature of moral permissibility actually is. This all presupposes the natural intuition of morality found in humans is something that should be doubted.

What justification do we have for moral skepticism? The common standard of justified belief in skepticism is if any contrary hypothesis cannot be ruled out, then that belief is not justified. The skeptic only has the burden of showing for a belief, there is a contrary hypothesis that cannot be ruled out. More specifically there are two basic issues in question that highlight a general cause for analysis of greater depth (Joyce). The first is the pervasiveness of moral disagreement. The second is ability of the sciences to explain moral beliefs in terms of biosocial terms without endorsing moral premises. If morality exists as a property, why is there a lack of moral uniformity across cultures and between individuals? Is active euthanasia moral? Is abortion moral? These are dichotomous and are prominent examples of moral disagreement.  Is there really direct and non-inferential access to the nature of morality if disagreement is so common? If moral belief can be described entirely outside of moral terms and described better, then why the need of such terms? It would seem the questions need answering.

Moral skepticism can also be reached by an argument of regress. Moral beliefs must be justified either inferentially or non-inferentially. A non-inferential argument may be easily dismissed with Occam’s Razor. It seems implausible moral judgments are valid without inference for known disagreements (Loeb 282). Furthermore, moral judgments are subject to framing effects, misleading emotions, and are the product of processes independent of truth. The other option is inferential justification, which may take three forms. First, a moral belief may be justified with no normative premises. The naturalists who make this claim must still rely on suppressed normative premises. Evolutionary biology, psychology, sociology, or general culture can explain moral beliefs, but do not inherently appeal to any moral fact. The naturalist argument relies on the suppressed premise all acts with features they deem immoral are morally wrong, but from what do they deem those features? It can still easily be denied due to prior moral assumptions (Bedke). Second, a moral belief may be justified with some non-moral normative premises. The idea here is theoretically all unbiased and rational people would make the same decisions if placed in the same circumstance and thus allege said beliefs are true. All factors required in such judgments are controversial. How are impartiality, rationality, and relevance decided? (Brandt) The differing theories for each factor would seem to point to suppressed moral premises. The third option is to justify moral beliefs with moral premises. The obvious flaw here is all moral premises are moral beliefs that must be justified. The most common denial would be such justifications must either be infinite or circular. Contamination of the premises with the conclusion gives little reason for the doubter to accept the premise. However, some have proposed a branching tree of premises that together form a coherent whole that can be internally proven. The suppressed premise here is coherency is a suitable replacement for truth. A system may be internally coherent but bears no reflection on externalities. Many internally coherent systems may conflict with each other, which gives rise to doubt concerning which internally coherent system is actually true. Additionally, social contexts are unable to justify moral belief as social contexts are corruptible and no solitary link can be made to affirm social context as truth. These are all the options by which moral beliefs may be justified, and the valid conclusion is there are no justifiable moral beliefs. This conclusion can only be avoided by tackling at least one of the premises covered here.

This skepticism can be taken further by asserting a hypothesis that cannot be ruled out. Moral nihilism is capable of explaining any moral beliefs exist the way they do accurately through evolutionary biology, psychology, sociology, or general culture. A coherent system that creates accurate predictions cannot refute nihilism either. One must rule out moral nihilism to be justified in any moral belief, yet not justified in the denial of moral nihilism. Justification of moral belief requires the denial of moral nihilism. It could be said the belief “genocide is wrong” requires the denial of this moral nihilism and until such time as this denial is justified “genocide is wrong” is an unjustifiable belief. “Genocide is wrong” isn’t a controversial moral belief and so it is plausible this extends to most other moral beliefs and controversies. How can nihilism be denied? A claim may be held against nihilism lacking meaning or internal coherency, yet it remains meaningful and coherent in light of all theories of language. Furthermore, common moral beliefs cannot justify this denial regardless of how obvious they may seem, for this denial is countered by simply pointing to the fact many people do reject moral beliefs and a seemingly coherent system does not speak to the external world. Additionally, all arguments pointing to moral nihilism as being incompatible with non-moral facts can be dismissed for crossing the is-ought barrier. Yet, people reject these conclusions without being able to refute them. The kneejerk reaction might to simply call this nihilism or this skepticism irrelevant. In fact, many people do accept forms of moral nihilism due to a lack of defensible moral theories. It seems relevant because people really do reasonably hold to this skepticism and it does directly confront the moral belief in question. To call it irrelevant is to simply dismiss these people and to not question an underlying belief without justifiable cause.

Moral skepticism and moral nihilism support each other adequately but are not necessarily reliant upon each other, especially due to the diverse nature of moral nihilism. While moral nihilism can be roughly defined as a rejection of values, especially moral values, the method or reason of rejection may vary. Moral nihilism includes all three major theses of moral-antirealism, yet possibly includes other meta-ethical theories. These are non-cognitivism, error theory, and non-objectivism. Non-cognitivism can be boiled down to the idea when people say a moral declaration, they do not intend to express moral truth. Instead of moral truth, people proclaim only their feelings in regard to an action or features associated with an action. Non-objectivism holds morals are constituted by thought alone, but this is not to be confused with subjectivism, as subjectivism is a mere type of non-objectivism. Nor should non-objectivism be confused with moral relativism, which may or may not be nihilist in nature depending on its presentation. However, non-objectivism’s status as moral nihilism is controversial on both sides of the aisle. Error theory is the traditional form of nihilism and perhaps the form that carries the most weight.
Error theory claims there are no objective values and denies it on a similar principle by which an atheist rejects god. Nihilism may be seen as a disjointed whole, against which all strands may need substantial arguments. Either moral judgments aim at telling truth, or they do not. If they do, all claims necessarily fail. If not, moral judgments are inherently separate from truth. However, perhaps it is better to look at traditional nihilism.

Error theory has its unique arguments that may supplement moral skepticism. The previously mentioned argument from disagreement can be expanded (Brink). If we start with the empirical observation many moral disagreements exist, then the demand of moral superiority must also be demanded of epistemological superiority — at least in regard to morality. Why do some cultures or individuals lack this epistemological access to moral knowledge? Many who try to answer find the reason for their claimed superior access may not like the answers they find. Furthermore, it would be more logical that the moral beliefs arose as a result of those answers and not the other way around (Mackie). A second argument stands more uniquely, rather than supplementary, to moral skepticism in the form of what is known as the argument from queerness. The idea here is morality, as a property, is unlike all other properties in universe and is therefore weird. Morality must be described as being observable in a way fundamentally different from all other properties. Morality requires a special faculty by which to operate, whereas all (or at least most) other properties are operated by normal faculties of observation. Morality requires a foreign method of knowing (Mackie).

The existence of moral nihilism, like all nihilism, rests in the negation of commonly accepted beliefs and axioms. It is as various in form as all the things it attempts to negate. It also stands as a brooding giant in philosophical discussions, as it demands attention and yields no ground. It purports what seems obvious to humanity stands on shaky ground. The proposition seems alien to us. If we cannot accept it and we cannot refute it, do we stand on mere faith? Are we to be mad like Ivan Karamazov in our inability to reconcile our human psyche to our reason? Richard Joyce proposes even if morality is a delusion, that delusion must be maintained. For now, however, can modern society cope with such a fundamental in question?

Bibliography

Jared Emry

The Holocaust was a eugenics program that attempted to cleanse the Aryan race and society as a whole. Eugenics is the concept of breeding out traits considered to be inferior or the root of disease — societal, genetic, or otherwise. The use of eugenics through methods of sterilization and euthanasia became a solution to what was perceived by many to be a serious problem. Eugenics was incredibly popular in the world at the time. It was practiced throughout much of the western world in the form of sterilization. Hitler started the Nazi eugenics program only five months into the office of chancellor in 1933, and he began it as a sterilization campaign aimed at the mentally ill. The practice continued in some parts of the U.S. until at least the late ’60s. Starting with the mentally ill, the Holocaust spread to political dissidents, followed by certain races and homosexuals.  In this way, psychology was the primary tool used by the Nazis to justify and fuel the propaganda of the Holocaust.

The idea of Aryan domination first found a foothold in Alfred Ploetz’s The Efficiency of our Race and the Protection of the Weak. Ploetz originally argued the Jews were equal and indispensible, but revised his opinion after deciding Jews were too individualistic and lacked nationalism. Later, psychiatrist Alfred Hoche wrote Die Freigabe der Vernichtung Lebensunwerten Lebens, which spoke of euthanizing “life not worth living.” His idea was the mentally ill are merely shells of humans and they are massive burdens on society, financial and otherwise. Dr. Hoche even calculated the specific average financial cost of each mentally ill person’s burdens society per year (Cornwell 89). These calculation became central in Nazi propaganda. His work led to the euthanizing of mentally ill patients began, but the Nazis were forced to ban the practice because of public outrage. Despite the ban, most psychologists continued to kill their patients based on their beliefs in eugenics. Dr. Elizabeth Hecker was one such doctor who continued to kill her test subjects when she was through with them, she is even now still lauded as a pioneer of developmental psychology. Eventually, Alfred Hoche recanted after a close relative of his was disposed of.

The Holocaust started with the disposal of the mentally ill, but it moved past that. Prior to 1934, the Nazis had a neutral stance on homosexuality. Ernst Röhm, head of the SA, and many other officials were openly homosexual. Röhm was popular, became politically ambitious, and started to grow his own paramilitaries. Hitler and Himmler responded by filling the newspapers with rumors Röhm was working to stage a coup backed with planted evidence and used those rumors as a justification for a party purge. Himmler feared a conspiracy and thus the Holocaust grew to include the homosexuals (Oosterhuis 195). Despite that, homosexuals did not face the same severity of persecution as Nazi psychologists thought and proved homosexuals could be quarantined and rehabilitated. Again, the Nazis turned to the psychologists for justification. Mental illness is functionally definable as any culturally unacceptable deviancy or idiosyncrasy, and so with homosexuality considered to be a mental illness and also life not worth living. In this sense, the Holocaust never did move past the disposal of the mentally ill.

The Jews were next in 1935 and the justification was a little harder to reach. The breakthrough came when, “Erich Jaensch began organizing his biopsychological typology work around a notion of a superior ‘Northern integration type’ (the ‘J’ type), whose attributes he contrasted with an inferior ‘Jewish-liberal dissolution type’ (the ‘S’ type). The ‘S’ type — which he increasingly called the Gegentyp (‘anti-type’) — was described as intellectually rigid and abstract, yet with a tendency to become easily fragmented” (Harrington).

These results which purposefully aligned with the preexisting anti-Semitic ideology of the Nazi party were used as a justification and a source for anti-Semitic propaganda and the wholescale persecution of the Jews at the national level.

The corruption of science didn’t end with psychiatry.  The biologist Adolf Meyer-Abich gave a guest presentation at John Hopkins in 1933, where he showed a film depicting the Fuhrer principle in bacteria colonies. He failed to comprehend why the American scientists did not take the documentary seriously (Harrington 357). However, psychology fundamentally uses the culturally normative ideology as its basis for inquiry into both society and individual persons (Strous 8). Psychology, unlike the hard science, adopts an ideology and then builds evidence in support of that ideology rather than attempting an objective observation with analysis appropriate to the evidence. The field adopted the Nazi ideology as naturally as it adopts any ideology. In fact, it was in the Third Reich where psychology was first treated seriously by a governing authority and by a people as a whole with the Vordiplom Prüfung. The Vordiplom Prüfung, or the Diploma Examination Regulations, became the first professional qualification exam for psychology in 1940 making psychology a legitimate profession as it remains today. Even the modern qualification exams are nothing more than updates of Vordiplom Prüfung (Geuter 199).

The majority of psychologists intimately involved with the Holocaust would never see a second within the walls of a prison. Whether they had directly been involved with the killing or if they had merely claimed to have empirically proven scientific justification for the killing, they were given the most leniencies at the Nuremburg Trials. More psychologists and psychiatrists were prosecuted than any other group of professionals, but they were absolved of guilt because the courts believed the sterilization and euthanasia was legal. The majority of psychologists intimately involved simply chose to ignore their past, pretend nothing had happened, and repress their history (Oosterhuis). Dr. Elizabeth Hecker, who had maintained the first adolescent psychiatric clinic that tested and killed any children deemed delinquent or abnormal after being studied or experimented on, was never punished for her crimes. Instead, Dr. Hecker was elected an honorary member of the German Association of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Many others continue to be cited and quoted in modern medical articles without mention of the highly unethical and torturous nature of their studies (Langsdorff).

The evolution of psychology as a profession under the rule of the Third Reich and the aid it provided to the Third Reich is clearly demonstrated historically.  Psychologists provided Nazi Germany as a standard by which they could justify their worst atrocities, including the holocaust. The Nazis were given a position by which they could claim their opposition was both anti-science and a form of social disease requiring extermination. Any group they disliked could, and were, written off as antisocial and destroyed. But did this tendency to facilitate and organize the destruction of individuals with twisted scientific rationale end with the Third Reich?

Works Cited

Jared Emry

[Hans] Driesch defined a machine as “a typical configuration of physical and chemical constituents, by the acting of which a typical effect is attained” (102). The main issue with Driesch’s definition is the question of what typical means, because the difference between typical and atypical is the basic distinction within the definition. Additionally, all his proofs lie on this line between typical and atypical as set by the definition. Dictionary.com defines typical as “pertaining to, of the nature of, or serving as a type or emblem; symbolic.”

Driesch makes the argument that because life can have relatively atypical results, it cannot be mechanistic in nature. One of the atypical results is cells can be transplanted from one region that will develop into organ A to another region that will develop into organ B and yet both organs will still be formed properly. Another atypical result is cells can similarly be implanted, but from another related species and those cells will still allow the first creature to form its organs while the cells remain uniquely the same. A third atypical result is the organism grows despite the external pressure placed on it to prevent it from forming in the required three dimensional space typically thought to be needed.  This is atypical because a machine typically acts in regard to three dimensional space and has to be constructed in regard to three dimensional space and thus cannot have function at right angles to that plane.

There are two kinds of possible definitions for typical in the context of Driesch’s definition of a machine: a mathematical definition and a practical definition. The difference between the two options is predictive identifiability versus the possibility of absolute variable cognition. Predictive identifiability is the idea typicality is based on major traits that can be known in such a way as to perceive the most likely outcomes. Typicality, based upon a predictive identifiability definition, would be the use of variables of greater hamegin (perception of having relative influence on a given outcome) to analyze probable outcomes while combining the variables of lesser hamegin into a statistical average based on observations. The possibility of absolute variable cognition is the idea that typicality is the standard all relevant variables can be known well enough to create a formula that allows all possible outcomes to be known based on the inputs of all the relevant variables. In this form, typicality refers to all possible outcomes associated with necessarily anything and to be atypical would be to be unnatural. Also, the possibility of absolute variable cognition is not necessarily practical due to the difficulty of manipulating variables and the possibility the variables can’t be cognitively understood. The practical definition refers to predictive identifiability, whereas the mathematical definition refers to the possibility of absolute variable cognition. Driesch’s usage of typicality seems to be more closely related to the former rather than the latter. Essentially, Driesch’s concept of Entelechia could be seen as covering up the minor and relatively unknown or unknowable variables with a constant; it may not be the most precise or accurate way to describe any given biological entity, but it allows for identifiable outcomes to be predicted.

The use of the possibility of absolute variable cognition as the standard for typicality in Driesch’s definition is at best a topicality violation or at worst a strawman fallacy. Driesch is not directly implicating the supernatural in his theory and is still using the word “typical.” If he were to mean the word “typical” with a possibility of absolute variable cognition kind of definition, then he wouldn’t have to even use the word “typical” because it would be redundant. His description of how life responds in an atypical way also shows how there is distinction to be made in the natural world between typical and atypical. The only option that remains is typicality as predictive identifiability.

The use of predictive identifiability in Driesch’s definition of a machine must be applied to discern what is typical and what isn’t. While Driesch does not claim Entelechia is supernatural, he does make it apparent it is unknowable on certain levels; a distinction is made between the ability of the human to know Entelechia and the reality of Entelechia. Similarly, even if the functionality and causality of Entelechia is known, it still does not necessitate absolute variable cognition. It would still require the knowledge of how each and every variable interact in order to create each possible outcome. If such knowledge is beyond human compression, the use of predictive identifiability is a must. These distinctions are more than enough to create the need for distinct classifications. What is beyond human capability cannot be equally regarded with that which is within. According to Driesch’s definition, there cannot be a machine that is unknowable for a machine must always produce typical outcomes relative to known inputs. At the moment a machine can produce an atypical outcome, it can’t be classified properly as a machine. In this way, biologic entities cannot be considered to be mechanistic because it is impossible to know the entirety of life’s causalities, functions, and outcomes. The definition does not require that something that isn’t a machine is life; other options may include inanimate objects, a planet, or the universe.

The machine is classified by its definition based primarily upon the possibility of human comprehension in regards to a set of variables interacting in a three-dimensional space. Driesch’s idea of a machine does not require a concept such as Entelechia because it is fully knowable; the machine can have absolute variable cognition.

Works Cited

Driesch, Hans. The Science and Philosophy of the Organism; the Gifford Lectures Delivered Before the University of Aberdeen in the Year 1907. London: A. and C. Black, 1908. Print.

“Typical.” Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com, n.d. Web. 20 Oct. 2014.

Jared Emry

The Mayan civilization had a profound view of the world where everything was parallel, chiasmatic, and cyclical. The rising and falling of each star in the night sky are considered in their religion and their rituals are calendric. The traditional Mayan priest is known as an aj q’ijab’, which roughly translates to “day keeper” (Tedlock 7). For the Maya, the marking of time was sacred and all things had a proper place in time.

The central problem in writing histories of Mesoamerican people groups is the majority of written works by the people are now lost and various conquering groups tried to civilize the people by attempting to eradicate their culture and replacing it with their own. Many of the indigenous people also ended up being killed by foreign diseases or slaughtered for gold. Native scribes and scholars were targeted for persecution above any other demographic. The few western scholars who understood the importance of the indigenous literature faced persecution for their attempts to record the indigenous culture, like Fr. Andrés de Olmos and Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún who faced heavy censorship and the destruction or hiding of their manuscripts. Primary documents are scarce and translation is difficult. Many cultures relied on oral tradition. In most cases, the few remaining texts are simply unreadable because the written text hasn’t been deciphered. Fortunately, the Mayan language was fully writable and is now readable. Prior to 1952, the written language was known to be hieroglyphic and the hieroglyphic meanings of the words were known and the hieroglyphics could be translated, but in the process the words lost their parallel meanings. The Mayan language also uses a phonetic structure alongside or with the hieroglyphics. The written languages of surrounding civilizations, including the Aztecs, were pictorial in nature and thus incapable of carrying complex or abstract ideas; contrasting with the complexity of the Mayan texts that were more than capable of carrying the full range of the language. Despite many references to great texts that contained centuries of their history in the journals of the Spanish zealots who burned the books and defaced the writings that were placed in stone, only four incomplete codices are known to survive from the pre-Columbian times. Luckily, a few early translations into Latin texts by Mayan nobles and hidden by village elders for centuries (2-15). Out of the little that remains of Mayan literature, the most significant work is the Popol Vuh which was written by a handful of Quiche Mayans as they watched their civilization dismantled. It is an epic that contains their mythology, their culture, their history, and their philosophy mixed together for the purpose of preserving their heritage.

The Mayan creation mythology is recorded in chiastic structures. While chiastic structure is common in ancient writings, the Mayans mimic the chiastic structures in their religious rituals. It is one of the several forms of parallelism that the Mayans incorporated into their poetry. An example of this chiastic structure illustrates how this appears:

As is illustrated by the example, the story is reversed and told again once it is finished. The Popol Vuh is filled with such chiastic structures with each story being told in a manner and retold backwards. Another interesting factor about the stories are that they are told entirely in what translates to gerunds. It is present tense while the story weaves itself together — twisting and turning chiastically. It is a form of grammatical parallelism where all parts of the text are being taken to be in unity with each part. These parallels are then capped with a singular phrase that binds the sets of parallels together (37-40). Essentially the grammatical parallelism uses language to cause things to appear temporally equal.

Another form of parallelism found in the Mayan mythology is an association of two seemingly unlike things into a binding unity (39). For example, in the myth of the world tree, each compass direction is associated with a color and a god (Phillips and Jones 14). The world tree grew out of the center of the world and branched off in various directions. At the four corners of the globe (it might be noted here the Mayans knew the world was round), new trees would grow in association to new eras. Each era would have a new tree, a new color, and a new god associated with the tree. At the fifth era the cycle would begin anew. At the beginning of each era, more gods would appear and would need to be added to the pantheon.

In their mythology, the Pleiades are associated with protohumans, known as “The Four Hundred Boys,” who are revered as the gods of drunkenness (27). Due to the mythological connotations attached to the Pleiades, the Daykeepers watch the sky to see when the Pleiades rise and fall in order to divine when the proper rituals concerning that portion of the mythology should be done (Tedlock 89-93). Similarly, devotion to time is still found in their calendric divination practices (57, 68). The Daykeepers are known to spread maize over a calendar and to read the placement of the maize on the calendar as a form of divination.

The Mayan Calendar itself the divination would be performed on can be imagined as a series of three gears. The innermost gear would have thirteen notches each correlating to a day in one of the twenty months in the Sacred Almanac. An outer gear would have 20 symbols relating to each month, and they display the name of the day. It would take 260 days for the Almanac to complete itself. There is also a third gear, however, which could be imagined as being outside the other two gears but still attached to the outer gear. This large gear represents a 365-day cycle. This large gear contains a solar calendar of eighteen months that each have twenty days. An additional five days known as the “sleep” evened out the solar calendar. These two calendars in conjunction creates a fifty-two-year cycle that allows each day within the cycle to be uniquely named. This means that a day is only paralleled once every 52 years (Magnificent 31-31). The Mayans also kept other calendars, the most significant being a calendar of Venus. They used complex calculations (the Mayans had the number zero, which added to their astronomical and mathematical prowess) to map out the planet’s 584-day year and its gestation periods in order to properly merge it with the Sacred Almanac and the Solar Calendar (131). These calendars add significant amounts of parallels to time keeping due to the way new parallels may be found based off the combinations of the calendars examined. These parallels were considered sacred as they pertained directly to the mythical stories.

The parallels in the Mayan mythology and histories likely pertain to the parallels in their timekeeping. The Daykeepers spent their lives watching the calendars, and they were the ones who wrote the histories. The chiastic structures and the large amount of linguistic parallels in the ancient Mayan writings show the cyclical nature of the Mayan view of time. The calendars repeat themselves just as their mythologies do. They believed each and every action done could be predicted by their calendars and the proper timing for things were therefore integral to the nature of their world.

Bibliography

Goetz, Delia, Sylvanus Griswold Morley, and Adrián Recinos. Popol Vuh: the Sacred Book of the Ancient Quiché Maya. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1950.

The Magnificent Maya. Alexandria, Va.: Time-Life Books, 1993.

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Jared Emry

Already, at the title, the mere claim the topic of extrasensory perception may seem irrational and even pointless to discuss. If one were to do a Web search on the subject, it is likely one would find hundreds of sites without good credentials of any kind willing to impart their secret knowledge, often for a slight fee. These sites may be taken as representative of the subject matter, but they’re not. These sites tend to be fraudulent in nature, and one’s opinion of the subject matter should not be based on such things as these sites are filled to the brim with exaggerated claims and bogus studies in order to make money (Stein). Even without such a negative, yet extremely popular, influence, the claims of extrasensory perception may seem bizarre and baffling to the point they should be rejected offhand. However, as Einstein once said in a letter to Jan Ehrenwald, “It seems to me, at any rate, that we have no right, from a physical standpoint, to deny a priori the possibility of telepathy. For that sort of denial the foundations of our science are too unsure and too incomplete” (Frazier 63-64). This concept is known is otherwise known as Clarke’s Law. When a distinguished but elderly scientist says something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states something is impossible, he is almost certainly wrong. It would seem rather than denying extrasensory perception a place for discussion under the enlightenment of science it would be far more rational to explore the topic to see if it is researchable or to see if a phenomenon actually does exist. As our level of technology increases, perhaps phenomena currently difficult to study may be the next frontier of science. After all, the black hole was only recently considered to be mere science fiction and any scientist caught taking such things seriously would be politely ridiculed. Rationally, who could expect objects of infinite density, mass, and gravity could exist? The entire Earth would have to be collapsed into the size of a golf ball. Yet science has since proven these astronomical monsters do exist. If people weren’t scanning the heavens for them, they would still be a laughing matter. But what exactly is extrasensory perception? To know that, it is best to start with the history of extrasensory perception and its terminology. The potential benefits for scientific analysis should be examined so as to know whether or not the field is worth any extra attention.

Parapsychology really began in the British Isles during the middle of the 19^th century. Some of the people who were involved in the field at that time included such names as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, William James, Lord Rayleigh, Henry Sidgewick, and C.D. Broad. They studied such things as mediumship, telepathy, the Riechenbach Phenomena, and apparitions. While many scientists would subscribe to the belief in the validity of the field, it also became widely criticized by many scientists, splitting the scientific community more than ever before. Above all else, the field became incredibly popular in the masses. Harry Houdini even took it upon himself to try to prove parapsychology was false, although many people thought he could legitimately cast magic with strange occult powers. This era developed little to no substantive proof for anything in the field of parapsychology (Kurtz).

In 1930, Duke University opened up its parapsychology unit. Duke wasn’t the first university, but it spawned a new era in parapsychological research known as the Rhine Era. For the parapsychology laboratory, Duke University employed psychologists William McDougall, Karl Zener, Louisa E. Rhine, and J.B. Rhine. The era would be named after J.B. Rhine, who would become the most well-known parapsychologist ever. His name would become as well known as Einstein’s for a decade (Berger). J.B. Rhine would be one of the first to attempt to rigorously study parapsychology and quickly realized the study of Extrasensory Perception was at the time the only part of parapsychology that had a possibility for study in a laboratory setting. Initially the results of the Duke experiments were quite successful, but soon they discovered methodological errors in their studies. The studies would be fixed of those methodological errors and repeated only to have more methodological errors. The Rhine Era was a continuous cycle of refining methodologies for laboratory studies, and with each cycle the results diminished (Laycock 28-31). After the Rhine Era, the studies broadened to include more topics. The research publically known continued to show no significant results; however, other studies were done in secret.

In the late 1940s, with the defeat of the Nazis, the United States government began to secretly and systematically bring Nazi scientists back to the United States and even sometimes away from the Nuremburg Trials. Many scientists were given amnesty in return for sharing the Nazis’ technological secrets (National Archives). This program was known as Operation Paperclip. The goal was to keep Nazi scientists away from the Soviet Union. NASA was a product of Operation Paperclip, as the Nazis were the first to develop rocket technology, so much of NASA’s original group of scientists were former Nazi scientists. However, Operation Paperclip had a darker side to it. In addition to Nazi rocket scientists, they also brought over and employed Nazis who were involved in Nazi mind control experiments. These brainwashing specialists were employed by the CIA in a collection of programs often collectively referred to as Operation MKUltra (Lasby). MKUltra was declassified in 1975 by the U.S. Congress shortly after CIA Director Richard Helms managed to destroy all but 20,000 documents in 1973 (CIA). MKUltra and its many subprojects were experiments into human behavioral engineering; many of these experiments were highly illegal and unethical. The CIA would collect unwitting American and Canadian citizens for human experimentation that often resulted in severe neurological and psychological damage. The subjects of the human experimentation would be subject to many varieties of altered mental states brought on through various means including, but not limited to, hypnosis, hallucinogenic drugs, insulin induced comas, LSD, sensory deprivation, isolation, verbal abuse, and even sexual abuse. “The frequent screams of the patients that echoed through the hospital did not deter Cameron or most of his associates in their attempts to depattern their subjects completely” (Mark ch. 8). In subproject 119, scientists implanted electrical devices into people in order to try to take control of motor function and human behavior. In subproject 68, lead by Dr. Ewen Cameron, patients were placed into comas, sensory deprived, and forced to listen to repeating tapes for months on end. Dr. Cameron’s experiments included the sexual abuse of children. His subproject and other subprojects would manage to obtain film of high-ranking American government officials committing sexual acts on children and blackmail those officials in order to maintain funding (Goliszek 170-171). He would become president of the American, Canadian, and World Psychiatric Association.

How do these atrocities relate to extrasensory perception? Firstly, any significant research into extrasensory perception during altered states would have been researched in this program. Secondly, the work done (and probably still being continued under another codename) by Operation MKUltra prompted the U.S. Army to start Project Stargate. MKUltra lead to many strange and bizarre projects concerning parapsychology and extrasensory perception, but Project Stargate has more easily available information concerning it. Project Stargate was a remote viewing project that lasted until 1995. Remote viewing is a type of extrasensory perception that involved subjective locating abilities. The Stargate Project involved soldiers and some civilians being isolated from news reports and current events and asking them in to find out about enemy movements while in a trance. The final public report of the Stargate Project proclaimed that,

Even though a statistically significant effect has been observed in the laboratory, it remains unclear whether the existence of a paranormal phenomenon, remote viewing, has been demonstrated. The laboratory studies do not provide evidence regarding the origins or nature of the phenomenon, assuming it exists… even if it could be demonstrated unequivocally that a paranormal phenomenon occurs under the conditions present in the laboratory paradigm, these conditions have limited applicability and utility for intelligence gathering operations (Mumford).

While the specifics pertaining to results of these tests are widely unknown, they are still a significant portion of the history of extrasensory perception.

Modern-era parapsychology has become rare in the United States. The only two universities in America that continue to study parapsychology are the University of Virginia and the University of Arizona. The University of Virginia is studying near-death experiences and the possibility of survival after death. The University of Arizona is studying mediumship. Mediumship includes a little extrasensory perception. There are also a variety of private institutions in America that study parapsychology, and they do tend to have occasional studies into extrasensory perception. In Europe, parapsychology has had substantial increases in research funding. The University of Edinburgh has become somewhat famous for the Koestler Parapsychology Unit and is currently offering degrees in parapsychology for anyone who has two masters degrees in two other fields of psychology and completes all of their parapsychology courses. Parapsychology has also started to be augmented by other fields of psychology in recent years to try to provide theoretical framework (Zusne). Overall, there is no known research that substantiates the claim of extrasensory perception. To claim the government managed to succeed with their secret tests would be a conspiracy theory that would require far more substantiation. For more than a century research has been poured into this subject without any fruitful results.

As previously mentioned, there are several kinds of extrasensory perception, and they can be categorized into types. These types are telepathy, clairvoyance, and trans-temporal cognition (Encyclopedia Britannica). Telepathy is the transmission of thoughts between at least two people. Clairvoyance is a general term for several subtypes of the ability to know or be aware of objects or events that shouldn’t be known because the senses haven’t been exposed to them in what would generally be considered the natural way. Trans-temporal cognition is a broader term for precognition and retrocognition. Precognition is the ability to see into the future. Retrocognition is the ability to see into the past (Parapsychological Association).

Telepathy is essentially thought reading. There are several forms of telepathy. One of these forms is emotive telepathy, which is the ability to influence others with emotions. However, latent telepathy is typically considered to be the most frequent form. Both of these along with classic telepathy are the only pure forms of telepathy. Telepathy is often studied with Gansfeld effects, or other uses of sensory deprivation in order to try to increase the ability of extrasensory perceptions. Earlier experiments made use of Zener cards. Experiments tend to have two subjects, one of whom is given a picture in one room and the other is in another room and is supposed to try to know what the other is thinking subconsciously. Testing is done by marking the time by when the photos appear and what the sensory deprived subject says to be seeing or feeling (Parapsychological Association).

Clairvoyance is the sixth sense. It has many subtypes as follows: clairalience, clairaudience, claircognizance, clairgustance, clairsentience. True clairvoyance is the ability to actually see the objects or events that should be out of sight. True clairvoyance includes remote viewing. The subtypes each relate to the other senses, with the exception of claircognizance. For example, clairalience refers to the sense of smell, and clairgustance refers to the sense of taste. They all generally operate in the same way, but each to its own sense.  Claircognizance, on the other hand, is more of a general feeling. A good example of claircognizance would be the feeling one is being watched, which is a common phenomena currently being researched. While claircognizance is an intrinsic knowledge, it defers from trans-temporal cognition in that claircognizance only gives knowledge about the present. It may be likely claircognizance is more similar to trans-temporal cognition than the other forms of clairvoyance (Parapsychological Association).

Trans-temporal cognition is both retrocognition and precognition. It is the ability to know the past and the future. All evidence for this must be anecdotal in nature. Currently, there is no proof it is anything other than a confirmation bias and self-fulfilling prophecy. Recently, thanks to new technologies, social media, and mass data storage, it may be possible to start new experiments by observing old data collected in order to objectify the anecdotes (Alcock).

Extrasensory perception is part of the field known as Parapsychology. Parapsychology encompasses telepathy, precognition, clairvoyance, psychokinesis, near-death experiences, reincarnation, apparitional experiences, and similar claims. Contrary to popular belief, Parapsychology is not concerned with UFOs, Bigfoot, paganism, or witchcraft. Like many forms of psychology, parapsychology is a pseudoscience (pseudo is a prefix meaning false). A pseudoscience is anything that takes the form of science but isn’t. In other words, a pseudoscience can be empirical and based on statistics (Panskepp).

One of the key parts of what demarcates science from pseudoscience is the idea of falsifiability. For example, if one were to examine an instance where a man saved a child from drowning that was being drowned by another man from both Freud’s and Adler’s differing theories, we would get different results of which both are equally valid. Freud would claim the second man is suffering from psychological repression stemming from the Oedipus Complex and the first had attained sublimation. Adler, on the other hand, would claim both men simply had feelings of inferiority, which drove one man to save another and also drove the other man to kill. The observation in this case confirms the theory, both opposing theories. This is pseudoscientific as there is nothing that could prove either theory to be false (Popper). For something to be truly scientific, it must be falsifiable, refutable, and testable. In science a prediction must be made, like Einstein’s prediction light can bent by gravity. That is testable during a solar eclipse by observing the light of stars behind and nearby the sun during an eclipse. If the effect isn’t observed, then Einstein’s theory is refuted, thus it is refutable. Since Einstein is either correct or incorrect, it is falsifiable. Therefore, Einstein’s theory of relativity is true science. Psychology fails to meet the standards of science (Kuhn). Technically, however, psychology is an accepted science but is considered a soft science, which is merely a way to separate the stigma of the field being called a pseudoscience (Popper). The reason for this is just because it is pseudoscience doesn’t necessitate it being not true or helpful. Certainly psychology is thought to be helpful for many people, but it isn’t scientific. It uses many aspects of science to attain a level of empirical thought, but it relies on a confirmation basis, and the theories are mostly inherently improvable. It would be hubris to throw out psychology on the basis it isn’t always scientific. Additionally, psychology does have a few parts to it that are scientific (although, admittedly, quite a bit of the earlier scientific portions of psychology were unethical). Psychology’s credibility only came about by advances in other fields of science, particularly neurology and biology. Similarly, parapsychology currently fails at not being falsifiable or refutable.

If there hasn’t been any known substantiated research and if extrasensory perception is a pseudoscience that will defy any attempts at true scientific analysis, then why continue devoting funding and time to studying extrasensory perception? This is a good question. Parapsychologists always start from the assumption the phenomenon of extrasensory perception and other phenomena are real. There is an inherent confirmation bias in parapsychology that prevents answers from being found. Whereas in the past, some pseudosciences were able to achieve the rank of soft science, or even hard science in the case of chemistry, by managing to create a substantial theoretical framework and laboratory data, parapsychology will never be able to achieve that level of credibility. By always looking for the confirmation and not considering the null data, parapsychology has crippled itself. Yet, this doesn’t necessitate the subject matter of extrasensory perception shouldn’t be studied. It would be a fallacy to assume because the field extrasensory perception is relegated to is corrupt and unscientific extrasensory perception shouldn’t be studied scientifically at all. Unfortunately, until recently, the critics and skeptics of parapsychology have done very little in the way of running tests themselves in order to refute the phenomena the parapsychologists claim exist. There is a new field of psychology that has recently been established known as anomalistic psychology that attempts to study these purported phenomena from a purely scientific view (French). Anomalistic psychologists don’t rely on a confirmation bias and therefore are free to explore all possibilities, and they have made great strides in doing so. Wiseman and associates did a study on apparitions and alleged haunting that showed environmental factors caused people to more likely see apparitions. These environmental factors included levels of lighting, local electromagnetic fields, and other similar factors. In one case, they found a fault line in the earth was emanating certain ions underneath a house and causing hallucinations to anyone in proximity to the house and the effect of the ions increased with exposure. Hauntings and apparitions aren’t normally considered to be part of extrasensory perception, but this was brought up to make an example of the successes of anomalistic psychology. Unfortunately, there have not yet been anomalistic psychological studies into extrasensory perception. It is here encouragement for study into extrasensory perception is warranted and needed (Wiseman).

Extrasensory perception has eluded researches for more than a century because of a confirmation bias that has existed since research has begun. Only recently have researchers taken the study beyond the pseudoscience, and it is now time for research to truly begin into the paranormal. This line of research is of the utmost importance as the results would either change all we scientifically know about the nature of the universe, or it will do nothing more than cast away doubt. Either way, the research is necessary.

Bibliography

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Kuhn, Thomas S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: U of Chicago, 2012. Print.

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Jared Emry

The Pledge of Allegiance continues to be widely accepted in America.  Some people dislike it, but most of them just want it tweaked to leave out a part they don’t like.  Almost everyone agrees to keep the pledge in schools, camps, and other areas where children might be.  Unfortunately, few people know anything about the history of the pledge or the implications of the pledge in relation to its history.  It is also worth noting the effect such a pledge can have on a nation that is brought up saying it.

The author is an important subject to study when trying to understand the purpose of the pledge.  The Pledge of Allegiance was written by Francis Bellamy in 1892.  Bellamy was a Baptist preacher who spoke a social gospel but was forced out of his position for his teachings.  He later stopped attending church.  His most famous sermon was entitled “Jesus was a Socialist.”  Francis Bellamy was also known as one of the greatest advocates of public education, which fit perfectly with his ideas of economic egalitarianism.  Bellamy also joined the Nationalist movement, which sought to create government-owned monopolies of public service including education, healthcare, and transportation.  Nationalism has been defined as “the aim to promote the wellbeing of the whole nation or some groups of its citizens by inflicting harms on foreigners,” especially by “discrimination in the economic sphere” of life.  He became a major player in the Nationalist movement.  Francis and his cousin Edward were honored by the movement by having hundreds of Nationalist “Bellamy Clubs” appear throughout the country.  Francis Bellamy and his colleagues saw the best way to enact change in the nation was through the de-privatized school system.  Bellamy also happened to be one of the first people to mix the ideologies of Nationalism and Socialism.

He published his original version of the pledge in the Youth’s Companion magazine, the magazine Bellamy worked for in its premium department.  The magazine was an ardent supporter of the schoolhouse flags movement and began to popularize the use of America’s flag in the class room while selling flags to schools as a premium to magazine subscription.  By the time the pledge was published, Bellamy had already sold 26,000 flags.  His pledge became an immediate hit.  The pledge was aimed directly at the children of the nation in order to promote his ideologies.  Bellamy thought of his pledge as a vaccine against “insufficiently patriotic Americans” and immigrants.  He wrote “every dull-witted or fanatical immigrant admitted to our citizenship is a bane to the commonwealth.”  The original pledge was phrased “I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”  The pledge originally was said with the kids standing outside in military formation.  The kids started with a military salute followed through with the arm extended toward the flag with the palm facing downward.  The salute was named the Bellamy Salute.  This same salute continued to be the official salute for the pledge until the 1940s, when it was discontinued because the National Socialist (Nazi) party in Germany used an almost identical salute.  The salute was replaced with the right hand placed over the heart.  The Nazi salute and the Italian Fascist salute were supposedly based off an ancient Roman salute; however, there is no Roman text about such a salute, and the only Roman artworks that feature salutes all have salutes that bear little, if any, resemblance to the Nazi or Fascist salute.  The oldest known reference to that kind of salute is Bellamy’s Salute.

There may be great similarities between the Nazi Salute and the Bellamy Salute, but there must be a reason as to why such totalitarian governments would adopt a similar salute.  The reason can best be found in the Third Wave Experiment.  In 1967, Ron Jones, a history teacher, was attempting to explain how even democratic societies can become a dictatorship.  The sophomore class believed society had become too educated to fall for the appeal of tyranny.  Jones was also unable to get the students to understand how the German people could plead ignorance to the Holocaust.  He decided since he could not explain the concept to the students, he would show it to them.  He began a movement based on a few simple concepts.  The movement was called the Third Wave, and it was explicitly stated to the students the movement was meant to eliminate democracy.  The name came from the “fact” every third wave in nature is stronger, larger, and generally better than all other waves in a sequence.  The” fact” was a lie Jones made up in order to have the movement be based in a false assumption.  Using the “fact” as an example, Jones told the students the individuality in democracy was a drawback.  He initiated a short pledge for the movement: “Strength through discipline, strength through community, strength through action, strength through pride.”  On the first day he drilled them on proper seating until the class could enter the classroom and quietly take their seats within 30 seconds.  At the end of the first day, the students were given a few rules.  They had to be sitting at attention before the bell.  They had to stand to answer or ask questions.  They were allowed only three words to ask or answer while having to start each question or answer with “Mr. Jones.”  On the second day the class became a fully disciplined community, and he gave them a salute similar to the Nazi salute.  On the third day, the movement moved beyond the class of 30 to 200 students throughout the school, and each student was given a job.  Some students built a flag, other students created member cards.  Some students were even told to prevent non-member students from entering their classes.  The students even reported other members who failed to comply with the movement’s rules.  The students would police each other without prompting.  On the fourth day, Ron Jones stopped the experiment because he was losing control over it.  The significance of this experiment was it focused almost entirely on a pledge and a salute.  In three days a high school teacher had created a mini Nazi Germany in a California high school.  Psychologically, a group of people chanting and acting together in a certain way reinforces the behavior.  As Dr. Philip Zimbardo put it, “It is the perversion of the incredible power of the human mind that can do almost anything, all the magical things the mind does in terms of creativity, can be perverted to justify any evil or any transgression.”  The Pledge of Allegiance creates the same group mentality as it was designed to by Bellamy.  The difference is the Pledge of Allegiance has been around for more than a hundred years instead of three days.  The effect the Pledge of Allegiance has had must be exponentially greater than that of the pledge of the Third Wave.

Instead of directing the focus on one man, the Pledge of Allegiance directs the focus to the state in general.  Initially the Pledge reinforces the idea of the state as being the authority, with the newest version even claiming divine right in the monarchial sense.  The Pledge pushes for obedience to the state from the earliest years of childhood.  It is indoctrinating children into the values of the state.  The Pledge specifically refers to “liberty and justice for all,” but there is nothing to prevent those words from meaning anything.  All of the worst regimes in history promised liberty and justice.  The Pledge allows for the current leader of the country to define what that means.  In essence, the pledge is a dangerous weapon.  Fortunately for America, the leader has never called for some of the radical, violent, and oppressive policies that were in the Third Wave Experiment.  Unfortunately, America’s record isn’t that clean.  Since the Pledge appeared, America happened to lock up all the Japanese Americans during WWII, re-segregate the public schools, and go into a few dozen illegal wars.  Look at the anti-terror hype following 9/11.  American rights were suddenly thrown out the window in pursuit of justice.  The Patriot Act allowed for surveillance of all citizens and the recent NDAA now allows for the assassination of American Citizens.  The state claimed to be going to war for “justice.”  The state now claims it is striving for the “freedom (or liberty) from terrorism” while violating basic human rights including liberty in the classical sense.  The state merely has to warp the definitions of a few words in order to change the entire nation.  All of this can be linked directly to the Pledge of Allegiance.

The Pledge of Allegiance is dangerous because it is nothing more than a method of indoctrination to accepting a status quo.  If the Pledge of Allegiance isn’t there to teach the students something, then why is it a required part of the school day in all public schools?  Its sentimental value is basically worthless in school because the elementary school kids are just being introduced to it.  It must have a purpose for it to be included in the curriculum.  The logical assumption is it is there for the children to learn.  The purpose of the children learning this pledge can only be one thing, and that one thing is its stated purpose.  The purpose of the Pledge of Allegiance is to act as an inoculation against the virus of unloyalty or “insufficient patriotism” to the state.  Patriotism can be defined as the desire for good for one’s country.  The point of insufficient patriotism is indefinable as an absolute and must be entirely subjective to the authority, and patriotism cannot be measured.  The Pledge can produce only a blind patriotism: patriotism focused on what the authority considers to be patriotism.  The Pledge shifts the patriotism from the country to the government; from the people to the state.  This is the curse of the Pledge.

The Pledge of Allegiance is a dangerous tool that can be used to shape generations.  The Pledge is inherently designed to have kids become used to country planning, something only found in heavily socialistic or nationalistic societies.  The Pledge is introduced before the children are old enough to really begin thinking for themselves, and so the ideologies in the Pledge are reinforced in the children’s minds.  Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Maoist China, and other such regimes have all used similar pledges resulting in hundreds of millions of deaths worldwide.  The implications of the Pledge are enormous yet vastly ignored.

You thought that you were the elect.  That you were better than those outside this room.  You bargained your freedom for the comfort of discipline and superiority.  You chose to accept that group’s will and the big lie over your own conviction.  Oh, you think to yourself that you were just going along for the fun.  That you could extricate yourself at any moment.  But where were you heading?  How far would you have gone? … Through the experience of the past week we have all tasted what it was like to live and act in Nazi Germany.  We learned what it felt like to create a disciplined social environment.  To build a special society.  Pledge allegiance to that society.  Replace reason with rules.  Yes, we would all have made good Germans.  We would have put on the uniform.  Turned our head as friends and neighbors were cursed and then persecuted.  Pulled the locks shut.  Worked in the “defense” plants.  Burned ideas.  Yes, we know in a small way what it feels like to find a hero.  To grab a quick solution.  Feel strong and in control of destiny.  We know the fear of being left out.  The pleasure of doing something right and being rewarded.  To be number one.  To be right.  Taken to an extreme we have seen and perhaps felt what these actions will lead to. — Ron Jones

Bibliography

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“The Pledge of Allegiance — A Short History.” Oldtimeislands.org. Retrieved February 2, 2013.