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How Power Corrupts


pantodragon

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A young baby is hungry, or in some sort of discomfort or distress. It cries. Its mother comes and picks it up and soothes it. The baby likes this. Actually, this is fun. It cries again and its mother comes. This really is fun. It soon learns that if it cries, its mother will come. It is not long before the baby is just crying just for the fun of getting its mother to come and pick it up.

Soon it discovers another source of fun: if it throws its rattle out of the pram its mother will pick it up and give it back. Throw it out again, mother will do the same. This is fun. If it refuses to eat mummy gets in a tizzy and fusses over it. More fun. When it learns to crawl it soon learns that mummy will come after it if it goes away from her, and, later, when it learns to walk, it finds that mother will get in a real tizzy if it runs away down the road.

By now it’s getting really hooked on this game. It really is the very best entertainment. Toys are just not as good, not unless you use them to get mummy to come running again, or get her to sit with you and fuss over you and play with you. And you can play the same game with teachers and with other children. You can hit another child and it will cry, or teacher will come running and make a fuss. You can snatch their toys away, or break them. You can tell teacher another child has been doing something wrong, taking your toys, or hitting you, or calling you names – it does not matter whether it is true or not; in fact it’s probably more fun if it’s a lie because then there will be all the more fuss with the other child protesting its innocence, and maybe even getting punished.

You can just do things like talking in class. That will get teacher going, especially if you talk loudly, and if you do it persistently. The more persistent you are the more teacher gets in a tizzy. Or, if you’re a cute little girl you can take to crying a lot, take to playing the vulnerable, easily hurt, delicate creature that everyone will fuss over if you just so much as let your eyes go wide, and maybe let the mouth go down at the corners.

There are just endless ways that this fun game can be played, a strategy for every personality type: the strong, the weak, the loud and the quiet, the pretty and the ugly. Some strategies result in getting punished, but, hey, did that ever stop marathon runners? Lots of ‘games’ involve pain one way or another.

But actually, it would be better to compare the pain of being spanked with the pain of sticking a needle in your arm, or snorting stuff up your nose. And everyone who has ever taken to smoking knows about all the nausea and painful coughing involved in getting going. And afterwards there is the endless cough, the breathlessness, the bad taste in the mouth and the bad smells in all ones clothes and one’s hair and throughout one’s house. No, where drugs are concerned pain and discomfort are not really a consideration. And this is what we are talking about, because the baby that started out learning to control its mother by crying and throwing toys around quickly becomes ADDICTED to this game. It really is not interested in anything else.

Lets go back to the beginning again, to the crying baby. Babies have a huge amount of learning to do. They have to learn to use their senses, and to make sense of the world. For example, a baby has to learn to be able to distinguish one object from another in the mass of shapes and colours that it opens its eyes to, and similarly with sounds. It has to learn to recognise faces and voices and has to learn to make sounds itself, and to use its body, to grasp and to control its movements. And all the time that it is doing this its mind is developing new abilities. For example, once the baby has learned to identify its mother’s voice it can begin the first lessons in communication: it can learn to recognise tone of voice and what it means i.e. approval or disapproval etc. And this is where the trouble lies.

All this learning a baby has to do is, particularly in the early stages, is largely a matter of lying quietly and letting its senses absorb the world around it. When a baby is lying in its pram apparently doing nothing it is actually working VERY HARD, and should be left alone to get on with it. But, of course, if the baby has discovered how much fun it is to cry and have its mother come running, then it is not getting that work done, it is not allowing itself the space and time to learn to use its senses and to make sense of the world. So a child that cries all the time is blocking its own development and is doing serious damage to itself.

And then, later, when it should be learning to communicate with other people, it is not doing so, it is, again, more interested in playing this entertaining game. It is not really interested in what its mother has to say to it. For example, when its mother says, “You must not…” the child hears an opportunity to get attention. It is not interested and not taking in that it is dangerous to play with fire or to play with sharp knives or to run across the road or to speak to strangers. It is clocking up that these are things that will get it attention, get its mother in a tizzy. So, because it is not interested in learning, it is not learning to let its mother know that it has understood her.

This is the other side of the business of communication – the child is not learning to respond properly to other people and to give out the correct signals. Actually, rather that let its mother know that it has understood her, it would rather pretend it has not and make her have to fuss over it and spend more time trying to get it to understand. Also, in crying all the time, the child has been learning to pretend to experiencing feelings it does not have for the sake of the effect, so it is failing to learn to use its voice and facial expressions to communicate what it truly thinks and feels. To be able to make yourself understood, and to be able to understand other people is an extremely complex and sophisticated business, and one which should go on growing and becoming more refined throughout one’s life. If you tamper with it, mould it out of shape in order to achieve another purpose, such as playing power games, then you damage it and it will never work properly again. It will become like a plant that has been starved of proper watering and nourishment i.e. it will be stunted and will cease to grow and develop.

What one can see building up here are the symptoms of many diagnosable mental dysfunctions, in particular, autism. According to psychologists, almost everyone (In the developed world?) is autistic to some degree. In full-blown autism one sees people who are trapped inside bubbles that cut them off from the rest of the world. Their senses are dysfunctional such that they have very low awareness of the world about them and, particularly, of other people. They inhabit a world of shadows where nothing is substantial, nothing really solid to their senses. And this is, of course, because they did not spend the time just staring around themselves and developing their senses as babies because they were having too much fun getting their mother in a tizzy and running after them. And because they never learned to properly pay attention to and observe other people because they were not interested in communicating with them so much as playing their power games.

And there is more: if a baby allows it senses to develop properly the world becomes interesting. If it does not, then the world does not become interesting. If it learns to communicate properly then other people become endlessly interesting. If it does not then other people do not become interesting. And if you spend your childhood playing power games instead of learning to play properly, then the world will never be interesting to you. To a healthy, ‘normal’ person the world is endlessly interesting, and full of entertaining things to do. And it is a world of wealth in that the more a healthy person does and takes an interest in the more things there are to enjoy and take an interest in. In other words, it is a world in which interests and entertainments proliferate effortlessly. It is rather like an unending childhood with the world becoming a huge toy shop that just keeps growing and opening whole new departments. And there is nothing here of competition, or of developing skills; it is all about doing things because you love doing them, because you love playing. (Skills are things which you just acquire with practice, so, if you do things because you love doing them you actually acquire the skills anyway; but the point is that there is no boring ‘practicing’. It is all completely effortless and fun.)

So, the child that has not developed properly, that has become addicted to power games condemns itself to live in an extremely restricted world, and one that shrinks with age. To a power addict, it is all about competing and being skilful. Nothing is worth doing if you cannot excel – until you come to the time when you have to find something to do to ‘keep the brain active’, to keep the body in working order, to pass the time, etc. And some people do lots of things because there are points to be scored in some sections of society by having lots of interests, but this is still not the same proliferating world of doing things because you love doing them as the healthy person experiences. It is the outcomes that tell the difference: A healthy person who is doing what they like for no better reason that they like doing it is extremely productive and creative, way beyond the capacity of the power addict, who is, by comparison, very unproductive and barren of creative ideas.

There are many give-away signs, but they can best be summed up like this: a power addict behaves like an actor. Of course, that is because he IS acting. Give away signs, for example, are the way they never engage properly with, and really listen to, people they are talking to, but are more like actors waiting for a cue. Then there is the way their conversation is rehearsed. It is never fresh and spontaneous. At best there is a sort of acterly improvisation. And as a result, after a fairly short acquaintance one finds one has got to know them too well, got to know all they have to say, and they very rarely have something new to talk about, or something new to say about the old subjects. A healthy person has the alertness and spontaneity of a wild animal, and their mind is always on the move, always developing, and so their conversation reflects this.

This then is power addiction. It starts in babyhood and once a baby is addicted, that is that. It is then on a course to self-destruction. It is developing all sorts of mental dysfunctions which result in loss of communication with other people, loss of sensory contact with and interest in the world and loss of ability to enjoy life.

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I think that's quite a stretch for the cause of autism. I know many autistic children and their parents. But interesting thoughts non the less.

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When my kids started the drop it on the floor game I just picked it up and put it in my pocket. When I got my wife on board with it, that put an end to that stage.

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So, to go to the very beginning... You think babies should just be left to cry, even if it is because they are hungry or in pain or need changing?

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A baby is different than a older child. They usually cry because they need something or something is wrong.

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Or are you afraid of babies?

Yes, very. I never go anywhere without my necklace of garlic, phial of holy water and a crucifix.

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So, to go to the very beginning... You think babies should just be left to cry, even if it is because they are hungry or in pain or need changing?

Don't be absurd. Unfortunately this was where the parents show themselves up. As I said in the post, power damages the mind. If the parent is addicted, they will be unable to tell whether the baby is crying for a good reason or not. However, if the parents are healthy, they will be able to sense when the baby's distress is genuine and when it is not.

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pantodragon....

You sound like someone that does not have an autistic child or has worked with autistic children, and someone that hold tightly to a Freudian view of psychology. Autistic Spectrum Disorder presents itself in the form of communication issues predominately, but in reality it is that the child is processing the world in a different manner, usually without the filters of fear or pain that "normal" people process the world with.

If President Obama can maintain the funding for his Brain Mapping Initiative, you'll see changes in ASD treatments that will address how these children are taught and are integrated into society as a whole.

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pantodragon....

You sound like someone that does not have an autistic child or has worked with autistic children, and someone that hold tightly to a Freudian view of psychology. Autistic Spectrum Disorder presents itself in the form of communication issues predominately, but in reality it is that the child is processing the world in a different manner, usually without the filters of fear or pain that "normal" people process the world with.

If President Obama can maintain the funding for his Brain Mapping Initiative, you'll see changes in ASD treatments that will address how these children are taught and are integrated into society as a whole.

No, I'm not Freudian at all, and I don't have autistic children. However, I have cured autism and on that basis I feel I can speak with some confidence on the subject.

Furthermore, I could save Obama his bevy of scientists and American society a great deal of time and money pursuing a dead end.

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No, I'm not Freudian at all, and I don't have autistic children. However, I have cured autism and on that basis I feel I can speak with some confidence on the subject.

Furthermore, I could save Obama his bevy of scientists and American society a great deal of time and money pursuing a dead end.

You've cured ASD? Seriously? What medical journals was this remarkable feat published in? Or are you like Rick Dyer, claiming something that is untrue to bolster your flagging self-esteem?

Also, tell me how mapping the human brain is a dead end? Kind of like mapping the human genome was a dead end, isn't it? So what if the mapping will lead to treatments for Autism, Alzeheimer's, ALS among other neurological disorders. Who really cares about that right?

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No, I'm not Freudian at all, and I don't have autistic children. However, I have cured autism and on that basis I feel I can speak with some confidence on the subject.

Furthermore, I could save Obama his bevy of scientists and American society a great deal of time and money pursuing a dead end.

My godson is autistic, and I find your statement rather disturbing. So put up or shut up time, how, where and in which medical journal. And make ready with the proof, because I want to see it.

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Well panto, you're definitely on some kind of deluded powertrip.

Before you lecture everyone, maybe take some time to realise that.

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That's manipulation, isn't it?

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Yes, very. I never go anywhere without my necklace of garlic, phial of holy water and a crucifix.

As a super-genius-mastermind-doctor-who-has-cured-autism, you will no doubt revolutize the field by having other physicians adopt your practices, and you will run out of known cases, child and adult, to treat, and only the earliest cases will you find left in the future...but until then you shouldn't be afraid of babies dude.

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Were you lot all born yesterday?!! And are you actually reading what I am saying? Published in a medical journal? When I’ve rubbished science? Accused it of lying and cheating? Accused it of protectionism via the peer review system? Accused it of being a delusion? Don’t be stupid!

You all waded in with accusations of lying, of unbelievable arrogance, and every other expression of derision you could think of, and loudly demanded proof when I stated that I had cured autism. I can only imagine, then, what decibels of disbelief you will reach when I list my other achievements: I have also cured schizophrenia, paranoia, depression, anxiety, PTSD and a variety of physical ills which were psychologically based.

So first off, a lesson about the real world: who stands to lose if a cure for all these illnesses is found by a person working outside the system? Mr ICI and all the other big drug company bosses. Therapists, doctors, and all members of the medical professions. Educators and researchers. Whole university departments would have to be looking for alternative employment. All of these have an investment in maintaining these illnesses. None of them will tolerate an upstart who threatens their position. All big companies have policies to protect themselves by ensuring that competitive upstarts are sabotaged and go under before they can grow big enough to seriously compete. The medical profession is protected by professional qualifications and by peer review. Even the therapists have organisations which give accreditation so that anyone who is not accredited by some organization is suspect by the public. Under these circumstances, anyone who has the ability to think and work outside the box had better do so privately, even in secret, if they wish to survive.

Then there are the autistic, the schizophrenics etc, themselves. The question here is: how many of them actually wish to be cured and are prepared to make some effort to achieve a cure? And the answer, unfortunately, is: very few.

People are indolent and self-absorbed and prefer to escape from reality than to deal with it. They treat their illnesses like valuable possessions: it’s the goose that lays the golden egg i.e. gets you out of work, gets you privileges, gets you precedence in many situations (seat at the front of the bus, the car parking spaces nearest the shops, excuses you from having to pass exams, allows you days off work etc, etc), gets you out of tricky situations such as dealing with the boss or police, helps you get books published, art sold, gets you on radio and TV, gets you sympathy and makes you the centre of attention. In fact, the illness often becomes the person’s whole life; they create a social network usually involving others with the same illness, get involved in starting or working in charities, give their lives over to raising money for their particular charity, become authorities on their illness such that they can dispense advice --- in modern parlance, the illness becomes their Unique Selling Point, both professionally and socially. Even the parents or carers, not to mention assorted relatives and hangers-on, get to make mileage out of the disorder.

One might suppose that this lack of interest from those who have the conditions might manifest as simply ignoring someone like myself who actually has a cure --- no such thing. Hostility, anger, attack, those are what the “poor souls” direct at anyone who DARES to suggest that there may be a cure. I have rarely been attacked with more hysteria, determination and viciousness than by those who stand to benefit from my work.

So, you want proof? Well, bog off! What you want is for me to reveal myself and my work so that you can attack, can try to discredit and rubbish, can kill the cure before it ever becomes a threat to your cherished illnesses.

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You do make a lot of unsubstantiated claims, and without any sort of explanation or evidence that they are true, it's reasonable that people would question them. You are basically anonymous, no one has any idea of your education, experience, age, etc., and no way of determining how valid your claims are.

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Were you lot all born yesterday?!! And are you actually reading what I am saying? Published in a medical journal? When I’ve rubbished science? Accused it of lying and cheating? Accused it of protectionism via the peer review system? Accused it of being a delusion? Don’t be stupid!

You all waded in with accusations of lying, of unbelievable arrogance, and every other expression of derision you could think of, and loudly demanded proof when I stated that I had cured autism. I can only imagine, then, what decibels of disbelief you will reach when I list my other achievements: I have also cured schizophrenia, paranoia, depression, anxiety, PTSD and a variety of physical ills which were psychologically based.

So first off, a lesson about the real world: who stands to lose if a cure for all these illnesses is found by a person working outside the system? Mr ICI and all the other big drug company bosses. Therapists, doctors, and all members of the medical professions. Educators and researchers. Whole university departments would have to be looking for alternative employment. All of these have an investment in maintaining these illnesses. None of them will tolerate an upstart who threatens their position. All big companies have policies to protect themselves by ensuring that competitive upstarts are sabotaged and go under before they can grow big enough to seriously compete. The medical profession is protected by professional qualifications and by peer review. Even the therapists have organisations which give accreditation so that anyone who is not accredited by some organization is suspect by the public. Under these circumstances, anyone who has the ability to think and work outside the box had better do so privately, even in secret, if they wish to survive.

Then there are the autistic, the schizophrenics etc, themselves. The question here is: how many of them actually wish to be cured and are prepared to make some effort to achieve a cure? And the answer, unfortunately, is: very few.

People are indolent and self-absorbed and prefer to escape from reality than to deal with it. They treat their illnesses like valuable possessions: it’s the goose that lays the golden egg i.e. gets you out of work, gets you privileges, gets you precedence in many situations (seat at the front of the bus, the car parking spaces nearest the shops, excuses you from having to pass exams, allows you days off work etc, etc), gets you out of tricky situations such as dealing with the boss or police, helps you get books published, art sold, gets you on radio and TV, gets you sympathy and makes you the centre of attention. In fact, the illness often becomes the person’s whole life; they create a social network usually involving others with the same illness, get involved in starting or working in charities, give their lives over to raising money for their particular charity, become authorities on their illness such that they can dispense advice --- in modern parlance, the illness becomes their Unique Selling Point, both professionally and socially. Even the parents or carers, not to mention assorted relatives and hangers-on, get to make mileage out of the disorder.

One might suppose that this lack of interest from those who have the conditions might manifest as simply ignoring someone like myself who actually has a cure --- no such thing. Hostility, anger, attack, those are what the “poor souls” direct at anyone who DARES to suggest that there may be a cure. I have rarely been attacked with more hysteria, determination and viciousness than by those who stand to benefit from my work.

So, you want proof? Well, bog off! What you want is for me to reveal myself and my work so that you can attack, can try to discredit and rubbish, can kill the cure before it ever becomes a threat to your cherished illnesses.

Wow, pantiesinabunch, you must be right there with zoser in writing for Crack Pot Quarterly. Because your arguments and refutations are the hallmarks of classic quackery. First of all, you blame the system for being corrupt and using a thought process that may seem logical on its surface (they want to keep you barely sick to make more money). But is littered with a fallacy, the basic inhumanity of keeping a person in that state. Show me the smoking gun that proves this, so then we can arrest the CEOs of the drug companies, but you can't even though I'm quite sure you will claim you can but then your life would be in danger or you would be sued into obscurity or you would be imprisoned as a danger to society or maybe all three. Who knows, and who really cares? Because I don't about any thing you may say about it.

The reality is that quacks, such as yourself ignore facts when trying to prove your point. You don't take into account that not all diseases are the same and in cases such as HIV and Cancer, the treatments are not a one size fits all, just like with treating psychological issues, just because a drug works on one person, does not guarantee that it will work the same way on another person.

So go back to your cave in Afghanistan and sacrifice goats or drink the menstrual blood of virgins or whatever passes as medicine for you while the rest of the rational and sane world understands that we are just getting into these illnesses and know that breakthroughs take years, not seconds, in the development of a drug.

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Wow, pantiesinabunch, you must be right there with zoser in writing for Crack Pot Quarterly. Because your arguments and refutations are the hallmarks of classic quackery.

You wouldn't know quackery if a duck came up and bit you on the bum! Which is why the big drugs companies, other vested interests, can take you to the cleaners. They have you where they want you, kicking you in the teeth, robbing you blind and getting you to kiss their a***s for the privelege.

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And where is your proof of this great conspiracy? Absence of proof isn't proof, it is absence of proof. Like I said, you're a quack. If there was this conspiracy, there would be a backlash against the pharmaceutical-insurance-medical industry like no tomorrow. It is the best interest of the military-industrial complex to have its workers and soldiers healthy, not sick.

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Evidence: The available body of facts or information indicating whether a belief or proposition is true or valid.

Opinion: A view or judgment formed about something, not necessarily based on fact or knowledge.

Misanthrope: A dislike of humankind.

Thank you, Wiki.

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-snip-

Then there are the autistic, the schizophrenics etc, themselves. The question here is: how many of them actually wish to be cured and are prepared to make some effort to achieve a cure? And the answer, unfortunately, is: very few.

People are indolent and self-absorbed and prefer to escape from reality than to deal with it. They treat their illnesses like valuable possessions: it’s the goose that lays the golden egg i.e. gets you out of work, gets you privileges, gets you precedence in many situations (seat at the front of the bus, the car parking spaces nearest the shops, excuses you from having to pass exams, allows you days off work etc, etc), gets you out of tricky situations such as dealing with the boss or police, helps you get books published, art sold, gets you on radio and TV, gets you sympathy and makes you the centre of attention. In fact, the illness often becomes the person’s whole life; they create a social network usually involving others with the same illness, get involved in starting or working in charities, give their lives over to raising money for their particular charity, become authorities on their illness such that they can dispense advice --- in modern parlance, the illness becomes their Unique Selling Point, both professionally and socially. Even the parents or carers, not to mention assorted relatives and hangers-on, get to make mileage out of the disorder.

-snip-

Your statement shows that you have obviously no idea what you are talking about. I pity you.

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Your statement shows that you have obviously no idea what you are talking about. I pity you.

You may indulge your pity, but I will enjoy my good health.

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You put forth some statements & conclusions without satisfying any burden of proof. Your ideas are provocative, and perhaps that's your intent, in which case you've succeeded. However, because of lack of evidence, proof, statistics, or information that indicates you have acquired some sort of education or specialized knowledge, your arguments aren't persuasive. You've clearly thought about this a lot, I'd be interested in knowing what kind of research or reading or personal experiences helped you reach those conclusions. I've read the arguments, I'm wondering what led you to these conclusions. What was your thought process? What kinds of critical thinking skills did you employ? How did you get from A to B?

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You put forth some statements & conclusions without satisfying any burden of proof. Your ideas are provocative, and perhaps that's your intent, in which case you've succeeded. However, because of lack of evidence, proof, statistics, or information that indicates you have acquired some sort of education or specialized knowledge, your arguments aren't persuasive. You've clearly thought about this a lot, I'd be interested in knowing what kind of research or reading or personal experiences helped you reach those conclusions. I've read the arguments, I'm wondering what led you to these conclusions. What was your thought process? What kinds of critical thinking skills did you employ? How did you get from A to B?

First of all, I do not write to persuade or convert to my world view, so no proof is required. This in itself arises out of my world view.

However, you've asked for some answers, so I will attempt to satisfy your curiosity in some measure. This will take a little time, a day or two, so I will continue, or perhaps post my reply, as a new thread if it turns out to be substantial enough.

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