Social sciences and the destruction of the individual
by Jon Rappoport
January 3, 2015
Think of this article as an introduction, a prelude, and an invitation to my three collections: The Matrix Revealed; Exit From The Matrix; and Power Outside The Matrix.
Everything in those collections is about the individual—not merely his bare-bones survival or his desperate attempt to hold on in an increasingly Group world. No.
The Matrix series is about the unlimited expansion of the power of the individual, in thought, in action, in creating futures and new realities. This kind of natural power is a joy.
The Matrix series is all about accessing that power and using it.
Okay. Here is the prelude…
Consider this: an individual writes a book in which he states that the individual doesn’t exist. That’s quite a hustle, if he can get away with it. And of course, he can.
Naturally, he’s employed by a college. What better place to operate con games? He banks his paychecks and no one ever says, “Wait, by your own admission you’re not an individual. Therefore, your checks were made out incorrectly. Your $$ assets are null and void.”
You may or not be interested in the sexual practices of Trobriand Islanders. You may or not be interested in what some tribe in the Amazon jungle is doing on a slow Thursday.
But either way, what sociologists and anthropologists have written about such subjects is as much science as you sitting in a park and making notes on what people are doing in the playground.
One of the founders of sociology, Emile Durkheim (1858-1917), coined the phrase “collective consciousness.” Durkheim insisted there were “inherent” qualities that existed in society apart from individuals. Exposing his own absurd theory, he went so far as to claim suicide was one of those qualities, as if the “phenomenon” were present beyond any individual choice to end life.
He wrote: “Man is the more vulnerable to self-destruction the more he is detached from any collectivity, that is to say, the more he lives as an egoist.”
In other words, according to Burkheim, the individual who rejects the norms and conformity of society must be wrapped up in himself in some morally repugnant way. There are no other alternatives. He’s either part of the Good Glob or he’s a criminal.
In his book, The Division of Labour in Society (1893), Burkheim spun moral conscience in the following fashion: “…Make yourself usefully fulfill a determinate function.” He cited this as a kind of command issued by collective consciousness. This is the presentation of the individual human as machine-cog.
From the mud of sociology’s beginnings, the long sordid history of the academic discipline brings us to something like this. Peter Collero, of the department of sociology, Western Oregon University, has written a book titled: The Myth of Individualism: How Social Forces Shape Our Lives:
“Most people today believe that an individual is a person with an independent and distinct identification. This, however, is a myth.”
When Callero writes “identification,” he isn’t talking about ID cards and Social Security numbers. He’s talking about an absence of any uniqueness from person to person. He’s asserting there is no significant distinction between any two people. There aren’t two individuals to begin with. They’re a group.
This downgrading of the individual human spirit is far from accidental. It’s launched as a sustained propaganda campaign, the ultimate purpose of which is top-down control over billions of people.
“The cold truth is that the individualist creed of everybody for himself and the devil take the hindmost is principally responsible for the distress in which Western civilization finds itself — with investment racketeering at one end and labor racketeering at the other. Whatever merits the creed may have had in the days of primitive agriculture and industry, it is not applicable in an age of technology, science, and rationalized economy. Once useful, it has become a danger to society.” (Charles Beard, 1931)
Beard, a celebrated historian, sees no difference between individual racketeering and the individual freely choosing and living his own life. In making this judgment, he becomes an intellectual/propaganda racketeer of the highest order.
“British empiricist philosophy is individualist. And it is of course clear that if the only criterion of true and false which a man accepts is that man’s, then he has no base for social agreement. The question of how man ought to behave is a social question, which always involves several people; and if he accepts no evidence and no judgment except his own, he has no tools with which to frame an answer.” (Jacob Bronowski, Science and Human Values, 1956).
Bronowski is quite sure that hearing other people’s evidence and then keeping one’s own counsel is wrong. One has to accept that evidence on its face. This is sheer idiocy. Individuals are capable of deciding, on their own, what social agreements to enter into.
Even more to the point, Beard and Bronowski were both high-achieving individuals—who then turned around and celebrated the kind of society that would try to flatten and level the individual to an average.
The world has many such experts. They rise high enough and then they preach collectivism. They become social meddlers. They believe they have the tools to plan what kind of world we should live in—since they are not part of that world anymore.
Freed from the obligations with which they want to bind us, they can pontificate and scheme and fantasize about social, economic, and political constructs in which The Group is all.
This is elitism par excellence.
I’ll stick with Orwell:
“It cannot be said too often — at any rate, it is not being said nearly often enough — that collectivism is not inherently democratic, but, on the contrary, gives to a tyrannical minority such powers as the Spanish Inquisitors never dreamt of.” (George Orwell, 1944)
The people who take it upon themselves to impose a planned society on everyone else don’t have much to say about freedom. Why would they? It’s a wild card, and it belongs to the individual, whom they consider merely an obstacle to the so-called progress of the group.
The very basis of sociology and anthropology, with which college students’ heads are filled, is: know the group; belong to the group. These pseudo-disciplines have thrived because elites with real power are doing everything they can to eradicate the concept of the individual.
Why would anyone perpetuate the myth that these two academic subjects are “social sciences?” There is nothing scientific about them. Their practitioners may devise computer models and debate the merits of one generality about cultures vs. another. But otherwise, we’re looking at nothing more than a gateway into planning a world management system.
In which the individual plays no part.
And when you cut through the pompous posturing, that’s what you find: an attempt to elevate the amorphous group, which is suddenly and arbitrarily endowed with “everything good.” A hustle, a hoax, a con.
Okay. Here are the contents of Exit From The Matrix:
First, my new audio presentations:
* INTRODUCTION: HOW TO USE THE MATERIALS IN EXIT FROM THE MATRIX
* EXIT FROM THE MATRIX
* 50 IMAGINATION EXERCISES
* FURTHER IMAGINATION EXERCISES
* ANESTHESIA, BOREDOM, EXCITEMENT, ECSTASY
* ANCIENT TIBET AND THE UNIVERSE AS A PRODUCT OF MIND
* YOU THE INVENTOR, MINDSET, AND FREEDOM FROM “THE EXISTENCE PROGRAM”
* PARANORMAL EXPERIMENTS AND EXERCISES
* CHILDREN AND IMAGINATION
* THE CREATIVE LIFE AND THE MATRIX/IMAGINATION
* PICTURES OF REALITY AND ESCAPE VELOCITY FROM THE MATRIX
* THIS WOULD BE A VERY DIFFERENT FUTURE
* MODERN ZEN
* THE GREAT PASSIONS AND THE GREAT ANDRIODS
Then you will receive the following audio seminars I have previously done:
* Mind Control, Mind Freedom
* The Transformations
* Desire, Manifestation and Fulfillment
* Altered States, Consciousness, and Magic
* Beyond Structures
* The Mystery and Magic of Dialogue
* The Voyage of Merlin
* Modern Alchemy and Imagination
* Imagination and Spiritual Enlightenment
* Dissolving Stress
* The Paranormal Project
* Zen Painting for Everyone Now
* Past Lives, Archetypes, and Hidden Sources of Human Energy
* Expression of Self
* Imagination Exercises for a Lifetime
* Old Planet, New Planet, New Mind
* The Era of Magic Returns
* Your Power Revealed
* Universes Without End
* Relationships
* Building a Business for Success
I have included an additional bonus section:
* My book, The Secret Behind Secret Societies (pdf document)
* My book, The Ownership of All Life (pdf document)
* A long excerpt from my briefly published book, Full Power (pdf document)
* My 24 articles in the series, “Coaching the Coaches” (pdf document)
And these audio seminars:
* The Role of Medical Drugs in Human Illness
* Longevity One: The Mind-Body Connection
* Longevity Two: The Nutritional Factors
(All the audio presentations are mp3 files and the documents and books are pdf files. You download the files upon purchase. There is no physical ship.)
What has been called The Matrix is a series of layers. These layers compose what we call Reality. Reality is not merely the consensus people accept in their daily lives. It is also a personal and individual conception of limits. It is a perception that these limits are somehow built into existence. But this is not true.
What I’ve done here is remove the lid on those perceived limits. This isn’t an intellectual undertaking. It’s a way to open up space and step on to a new road.
That road travels to more joy and fulfillment. More and more power.
Jon Rappoport
The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails at NoMoreFakeNews.com or OutsideTheRealityMachine.
Well stated sir. Some of us can see, that you are a man who would not sell out sir. This particular article, shows your deep thinking, your free spirit, we are in the days where good is called evil, and evil called good. a full attack on the individual for sure.
When I first heard the battle cry of “it takes a village to raise a child” I knew we were in trouble.
You know who i am, and where I live sir. On the front lines of what all free men fight,
I understand deeply, what you write, and my hats off to you.
As a general reply to JR above, I think that there are more nuances here than are clear at first perhaps. The two extremes, argued by JR and others here, seem to be ‘clone’ or ‘egotist’ but there are many gradations of belonging and belonging less to ‘society’. For example, modern full blown Capitalism in the West would seem to be one with humans not being as close to family and that is being part of society too I feel. Human beings can manage alone if necessary but it is not in their best interests of course and teamworks makes life easier and less isolating. Many studies seem to show that a sense of belonging to a group be it family, friends, or peers, is essentail for human mental health. That is not the same, of course, as saying that a human has to obey society and not be unique. A person can be unique and still be part of a group of others. Society is made up of many groups of others – we just have to try to discern which ones are bad for us I suppose. Things like suicide do seem to have a component which is greater than any one individual ie the numbers who do this go up and down, apparently, related to social phenomenon, in the West anyway, such as unemployment etc. This latter could be related to one having more or less meaning in their lives ie no job for some means no purpose. Sorry if this is a bit long winded. PS I have no idea what this site is for should have checked first – hopefully not Neo Nazi or anything.
Controlling the food supply also controls people – lest we forget. A crap food supply is good for the medical industry.. Also – nutritionally bankrupt people do not operate to their fullest potential.
Durkheim’s assertion that the opposite of collectivism is egotism, is hilarious, and is in fact the exact opposite of the truth. He is essentially claiming that if you are not a clone, you are egoic, meaning that you are either moved by the herd, or moved by the ego. Like I said in a previous post, these guys can’t even conceive of what an individual is or what such a thing looks like. They are clueless as to their body’s own instincts and intelligence. According to their logic, there must be thousands of species of solitary wild animals who are “egotists”.
“Even more to the point, Beard and Bronowski were both high-achieving individuals—who then turned around and celebrated the kind of society that would try to flatten and level the individual to an average.”
It clearly seems to me that they do not want any competition.
Probably a wise decision for them to make since I believe they would easily be outsmarted most of the time.
It is apparent to me that those who want to instigate “group think” are those who think they have devised a way to personally profiteer from the group.
This is also true about people who agree to the concept of social “groups.”
The Division of Labor was about a process of bifurcation due to an increase in specialization and the difficulty in coordinating a complex social organism. The insight on suicide was the first empirical study on suicide that noted in societies with a collective orientation suicide was more prevalent; in a society that was more individualistically oriented, people felt a sense of disconnection and hence suicide was more prevalent. Given that a particular society oriented to extreme individualization combined with the technologies that isolate people, suicide is a common effect.
Durkheim’s analysis actually is not a defense of the matrix; it is merely an informative source as to some causes due to the problems of a highly developed matrix that isolates people. Social science can be harnessed to great evil or good ends; it gives credence to those who view modernity as a source of the engineered problems. Humanists lie Charles Dickens wrote of the vulgarities of the industrial revolution; Marx traced the sources of this vulgarity, and Durkheim tried to explain it its growth, and Weber predicted it would get worse; all critiques in support of why the matrix is harmful. Perhaps we should look to human foibles in their behaviors as an explanation rather than attacking philosophers that had “issues’ with failed leaders and systems as well.
The author totally distorts Durkheim, who was concerned with the loss of individuality in people who had lost social connections. He was referred to the mass of people separated from traditional roots in family, community, and trade by the atomizing effect of modern industrial society. Now did he coin the term “collective consciousness,” which was coined much later by karl Jung.
When an author so misunderstands and misrepresents the first major thinker to pose the question of the loss of identity in modern society, one begins to think they are ….well, full of shit.
His thesis, that social science (a term he does not define) has destroyed the individual, is backed up by distorted views of 3 early social scientists, ranging from Durkheim’s groundbreaking work in 1893 to Beard in 1931 to Bronowski in 1956. The only social scientists he discusses who is newer than 60 years back is Peter Callero, who is attacked for calling ‘individualism’ a myth.
In fact, it is. No one grows into an individual without first being raised by a family, the basic collective of all societies. Those who do not have intact communities to grow up within do not become independent individuals but most often dependent mental cases, sometimes psychopaths who have not learned the value of empathy. It takes strong families and communities to raise strong individuals. The collective and the individual are not enemies, for individualism, as in people who are independent and able to form meaningful relationships, but rather they are complementary.
Rappaport uses mostly ancient social scientists because he is unfamiliar with current social science (and cites only one contemporary, whom he mangles in translation.).
Social science is too broad, complex, and evolving to blanket as “destroying individualism.”
The myth of individualism (not the reality of real individuals who are brought up in collectives which teach self-reliance and autonomy) is a shallow theory which does not withstand any empirical critique. Societies create individuals; human groups have features that are more than the sum of the individuals. Anyone who has ever been in a band or sports team knows that the collective(the team) has a purpose greater than any individual (ie victory for the collective) and provides, by the same token, opportunities for individual excellence.
The fake choice of individual or programmed slave is based on a basic misunderstanding of the intimate and inevitable relationship between the collective (family, school, team, corporation, community, nation, species and the individuals who compose it.
This article is based on a fake choice, a false dichotomy. What we require today is a deeper understanding of how strong and healthy communities (which are collectives) can produce sttong and healthy individuals. Sick and corrupt societies produce sick and crippled people.
The most evolved individuals (such as Buddha and Jesus) teach us to bond with all other people through compassion, love, and empathy. Those who do not become evil narcissists, the ultimate destination of an ideology of individualism which dismisses the roots of human autonomy in a strong commitment to serving others.
Those whose goal is to make money alone represent the epitome of this false individualism.
On the other hand, teachers, firemen, and those who serve show us the true flowering of an individualism rooted in a strong communal bond.
Durkheim observed that those cut off from social ties (not through deliberate rebellion but most often through having no family, no community ties, no lasting relationships—the creation of a system of labor exploitation and the deterioration of traditional ties, such as extended families and religious communities, which were being left behind by the dynamics of industrial exploitation of labor. The result, of such unrealized launches into independence and self-reliance, was widespread suicide. Life, without community, life isolated and fragmented, is not worth living.
Blessings to the Immortal Buddha, Thanks be to God(Jesus) for the Immortal Jesus (God)! Ultimate examples of Empathy (as far as I know), timeless treasures! However…how much more evolved/empathetic are/were they than say a: William Blake, Edgar Allen Poe, Wes Anderson, Thelonious Monk, Dr. Seuss, Roald Dahl, Giordano Bruno, Charles Bukowski, Leonard Cohen, Bill Hicks, Richard Pryor, Igor Stravinsky, Pablo Picasso, Antonio Gaudi, J.R.R. Tolkien, James Joyce or a James Brown? Alright..Alright…forgive me…much more so I’m sure(?), but just how much more so exactly? Is there a diagnostic test to determine empathy levels? Who taught Jesus and Buddha Empathy? (It seems they really came into themselves when they got some time alone under a tree or in a desert). Can we set up empathy universities with certificates awarded to evolved graduates? Were there any empathetic individuals before Jesus or Buddha? Was it the communities that Jesus and Buddha grew up in that made them so empathetic? Is there a diagnostic test to determine empathy levels? If all your friends were jumping off bridges would you do it too?
Carl Jung coined the term “collective unconscious.” Durkheim coined the term “collective consciousness” in 1893. They are not precisely the same thing. Nor would everyone agree with you that Buddha and Jesus are/were the most “evolved” beings … as per Homer’s comment.
I do agree that we need to beware of false dichotomies. There is a place for community, as well as individualism. Finding and walking that fine line will help to bring the individual’s dreams into some kind of tangible reality. Although we have infinite creative potential, most of us do not live in a complete vacuum. Even great sorcerers and shamans sometimes work together in groups in order to strengthen whatever reality they’re dreaming into being. For how expansive Jon’s thinking so often is, I always find it interesting when the old dichotomies win out. In a world of all possibilities, surely many exist besides two. 🙂
Well, Jon – I often agree strongly with you but this time you are simply wrong. Your fetish against ‘social’ and towards ‘individual’ is simply a distortion and misrepresentation of reality. The simple reality is that everyone who reads your posts is your ‘social’, your community. Soon (in relative terms) you will die. After you die, if any of your ideas, your passion, our message, is to survive, it can only survive through your communities. Any ‘power’ you derive from the matrix, is not power, unless it can affect the communities you are part of – willing participation or not. Power does not exist in an individual, it only exists as a force in a community.
I am in a similar place. I research healthicine, the science of health – as opposed to the science of illness. I am very afraid that all of my work will become an ‘individual’ work. a novelty that is never adopted, never studied, never taken any farther by my communities. I am worried that after I die, someone else will need to re-create my work, before it can be part of the human ‘social’, the human community.
You should worry too. If your work on The Matrix is of value, who will carry it forward? Who will make it bigger than just the work of a single individual? Many people can buy your books, your audio and other materials, but unless someone works to create a matrix community, a matrix ‘social’, your work will fade and die with you.
It’s a bit of a paradox. By claiming that everything comes from the individual, you paint yourself into a small corner, surrounded by not just individuals, but also individuals in communities, who simply ignore you out of existence.
Orwell got it wrong too, when he said “It cannot be said too often — at any rate, it is not being said nearly often enough — that collectivism is not inherently democratic, but, on the contrary, gives to a tyrannical minority such powers as the Spanish Inquitositors never dreamt of.” He should have said “gives to a tyrannical INDIVIDUAL such powers as”, then we might see the error in his thought process. It is not collectivism, nor individualism that is at fault, it is an imbalance of power in one direction or another. There will always be people who believe that communities aspect has too much power, and others who fear the individual. The way to fight communities is by giving power to individuals, and the way to fight individuals is by giving power to communities. This is not a trivial, one-sided affair, it requires balance, not dogmatism.
But it also requires fight!! You need to keep up the fight, and others need to maintain the fight for individual rights and powers, because communities have a natural tendency to take away powers. Most laws are created to take away powers. “THOU SHALT NOT …” is the natural phrasing of laws created by communities. We need to develop communities and governments that adopt a different stance. We need to ensure that the main purpose of governments is to create laws that enable the power of individuals, not to disable it..This can only be done through community (social) action, not by individuals acting on their own.
to your health, and the health of your communities,
tracy
As usual, Rappaport does a great job……
The Global public health community has whole heartedly embraced both anthropology and sociology, coupled with mass communication, as a means to first understand prevailing group norms, and then to develop ‘public health interventions that seek to change normative behaviors at the group level’ according to a particular ‘pre-defined’ public health objective (such as to introduce a new vaccine into society).
There is a popular model now embraced, called Positive Deviance, which does focus on the ‘individual’. The model posits a very systematic approach to social and behavior change at a group level. The description, process, and ‘engineered steps’ to promote behavioral change are outlined at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_deviance
This approach is quite popular in the public health arena for introducing new ‘health related’ behavior change interventions based on the pre-defined public health objective (such as encouraging ‘healthy behaviors’ which has been defined of course by the public health scientists).
– From Wikipedia:
Positive deviance (PD) is an approach to behavioral and social change based on the observation that in any community, there are people whose uncommon but successful behaviors or strategies enable them to find better solutions to a problem than their peers, despite facing similar challenges and having no extra resources or knowledge than their peers. These individuals are referred to as positive deviants.[1][2][3] The concept first appeared in nutrition research in the 1970s.
…. read more at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_deviance
🙂
If one is to believe in God then one must recognize that humans as part of that creation are each endowed with unique qualities and characteristics as no 2 of us are the same, not even “identical” twins. So what is to be done with these differences? Do we suppress and destroy the very things we are born with that make each of us a unique and singular being?
To do so is to deny that which creation has given us. Imagine the turtle renouncing it’s shell or the bird it’s feathers. That is precisely what the social engineers and government propagandists demand of us – to renounce our connection with the creator. After all, one cannot worship 2 Gods. No, the state and society have assumed the role of God and demand complete obeisance.
It is madness of the first order, demanding that we take our place as faithful cogs in the machine directed by an elite few. Does money somehow qualify their singularity as worthy of retaining? How can an inanimate object endow a person with anything? Money cannot confer anything to a person, it only changes the perception of others about the person who has the money. Considering today’s version of money is nothing more than printed paper created on demand it has become a tool of extortion that for whatever reason we all go along with. Imagine me writing on a piece of paper that this paper gives me the right to take whatever of value I want and create rules that others must abide by.
They made the rules of the game and it is our ignorance that makes us continue to play along to their benefit and our detriment. They ask of us to surrender that which makes us true individuals in return for playing pieces in the game of society. Choose that which you will claim: to be a part of group, a neutered being devoid of possibility and a connection to God or to be the person you were born to be, in harmony with the universe and our creator and with our wings unclipped and free to fly.
Sociology – being the codified system to brainwash the masses,
Psychology – being the weapon used against those who refuse the yoke of “society”,
Psychiatry – being used as the “solution” to the troubled individual,
Politics – being used as the means and method to “sell” the public on its socially-derived benefits,
Media – being used to laud and lionize the “experts” and professionals who know better how we should live,
Religion – to make it all into a belief system so that all who have intentions of being “individual” are threatened with being cursed as “sinners” for falling out of the fold,
All of this comes from a very ancient teaching that originated with those who created the first established “churches” and “schools”.
– Rev. Dragon’s Eye