The Game of Becoming

Part 43 of Prisoners of the Real

Although history illustrates that one civilization may be buried beneath the foundations of another, this isn't always the case. Sometimes only the ashes remain. If human society is to be rescued and transformed, moving from the aggressively “rational” to the receptively Dionysian, many of our psychic road maps will have to be redrawn. Dionysian capacities are latent possibilities. But they may or may not become actualities.

One step toward the necessary change is honest reflection concerning our fundamental assumption about ourselves. The heart of the rational thesis is the belief that humans are essentially self-serving beasts. This belief has produced fear of our neighbors, and led to wall-building and extreme defensiveness. It has been safer, or so it has seemed, to turn control over to impersonal structures than to trust human nature. Gradually, each village, city, state and nation has come to look upon its neighbors as threats, "aliens," competitors who will either dominate or be controlled. Domination means defeat. And defeat, at the hands of the dehumanized beast called the enemy, normally means destruction.

Fear has given power to elite competitors who claim that control over others – in other words, victory – is the only route to independence and security. But in a hostile world, independence actually turns out to mean isolation. And the "rational" people who achieve the mastery they seek so diligently through self-discipline, ethical neutrality and mechanical effort find at the end that a beast confronts them still. The arrogant dragon has become themselves.

But this beast, who also whispers that everyone else is a brute, is no more than a nightmare image brought into the "real world" by our own minds. It is imagination run amok within a psyche that fears imagination and other natural impulses.

And yet...it can be changed. Reshaped by human will into a pleasing form.

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Trust and love aren't merely options that we can take when we have finished with hard-nosed business dealings in the "jungle.” They are demands of the self for warmth and aceptance and "irrational" emotions.

To this rational managers reply, "Of course, that may be so, but it is also important to be prepared for the unexpected. We have to watch out for those who have rejected their better angels. That's why we need a strong defense to ward off predators, and an aggressive offense to push 'em back." Some also argue that intuition, while acceptable in those not in positions of power, is no substitute for facts. And after all, they will add, it's no crime to guard your flanks, lock up at night, keep a weather eye out, or even to get ahead of the game. "You see," they claim, "the name of the game is winning."

But is it? Just as we teach our children about the value of competition we also tell them that it isn't winning but how you play the game that really matters. Perhaps our task then is simply to figure out what the game of living really means to us as individuals and as a group of potentially beautiful beasts.

There is a life's work for all of us.

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In the end, the purpose of the game isn't winning. It is playing well. In order to do that in any group experience, as most athletes know, you must work both against and with competitors. The most exhilarating moments aren't those in which you devastate an unwary opponent, but rather occur when the outcome remains in play. Then you feel a dynamic tension of united opposition, a cooperative exchange in which the elation of winning emerges from the excitement generated along the way.

Overcoming the fear that others will dominate us, let us down, steal affection like some finite commodity, and rob us of time, we must begin to build a new faith. Neither time nor love is finite. When our boundaries expand far enough beyond our physical borders, they can become infinite. Dragons need not be fire-breathing beasts. They can breathe life-sustaining warmth if they wish, if they are convinced that is their purpose.

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When Konrad Lorenz wrote On Aggression, many readers confused the word "aggression" with "violence," even though the ethologist emphasized that most animals actually avoid killing. He subsequently realized that in translating his title from German the connotation of the word "aggressivity" had been lost.

Lorenz' insight is that animals and humans do seek some sort of dominance, in the form of a drive that differentiates all of us as individuals. "If you lack personal aggressivity," he wrote, "you are not an individual. You have no pride in yourself and you are everyone else's man." The collective enthusiasm that, unfortunately, produces war is also the motivator for our most creative achievements. "Without the instinct of collective enthusiasm, a (human being) is an emotional cripple; he cannot get involved in anything."

The point is that aggressivity is actually a potential force for spontaneous invention, and doesn't necessarily imply hostility or evil. But when aggressivity lacks purpose, dominance can produce devastation. Purpose tells us where we are heading, and when we have arrived. Its absence leaves us roaming the planet, searching for victories we won't even recognize.

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The key to our purpose is intuition, more reliable as a guide than analysis alone has been. The Dionysian approach – spontaneous, lunar-centered, reflective rather than reactive – rests upon the naturally aggressive nature of any inspired idea that struggles to impose itself upon reality.

Intuitive processes demand intimate involvement with the subject of one's attention. You can't be a detached, disinterested observer and maintain the necessary intellectual sympathy. Centuries ago rational men resigned themselves to watching and reacting to what they observed. They called it the "practical" path. In contrast, the Dionsyian path is a "romantic" alternative, one that recognizes the value inherent in the infinite variability of individual acts.

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The Receptive brings completion to the Creative.
And feels the pulsing rhythms of matter in space
which is nature.
Creativity is the light power of consciousness;
thinking and seeing.
Receptivity is the dark power of what is inside;
unconscious and
Invisible. What I cannot see may feel threatening.
By yielding, the dark mystery is revealed.
My Creative spirit soars to Heaven and leads with
energetic ideas.
As I am Receptive and absorb them in practical and
Earth-bound work.
A doubled Earth signifies fixed lasting conditions
and mysterious
Powers within that have strength to bring Creativity
to birth and nourish it devotedly.

-- Adele Aldridge, I Ching Meditations

The image of harmony within duality is the root of many knowledge systems. The first two hexagrams of the I Ching illustrate the need for both aggressive creativity and intuitive receptivity. The hexagram on which the meditation above is based, the six broken lines known as K'un, The Receptive, says that although The Creative begets things – ideas, plans, machines – they are brought to life through the complimentary action of The Receptive, which helps us to act in conformity with our situation. This bespeaks an attitude of acceptance.

As Richard Wilhelm explained in his commentaries on the Chinese oracle, the "superior" person allows him or herself to be guided, learning from each situation what is demanded and then following this intimation from fate. This calls for both effort and planning. The Receptive is a planner who uses solitude to discover plans that grow from unique experiences.

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Both formal and intuitive knowledge are valuable in building humane institutions. As Bergson wrote, instinct and intelligence, manifested through voluntary and reflex actions, embody two views of a primordial, indivisible activity which can become both at once.

"As a rule," he explained, "they have been developed only in succession...one of them will be clung to first; with this one we shall move more or less forward, generally as far as possible; then, with what we have acquired in the course of this evolution, we shall come back to take up the one we left behind." Of course, cooperation would be preferable, with each one intervening when circumstances require. But the signs don't point in this direction. For several centuries we have relied on the rational, the predictable, the efficient, the material, the absolute. Therefore, it is likely that, as we fully realize the physical and psychic costs of this approach, we will turn – perhaps too much – to the intuitive, the spontaneous, the romantic, the spiritual, the relative.

Still, there is always hope. If we are wise the pendulum will not swing too far this time around from the cool, harsh light in which we now stand toward a fiery darkness. If we are wise the rational and Dionysian will not become antagonists again.

The two are, after all, complimentary opposites. They could fuse into a new synthesis of intuition and analysis and create a community of subjects, a flexible whole in which science and art merge, in which infinity is glimpsed in its temporary structure, and through which we humanize our machines rather than allowing mechanisms to destroy us.

In such a New World, we would replace static order with dynamic tension, re-energizing the dialectic of spirit and matter. In that world, Apollo and Dionysus unite to play the endless game of becoming.

Until then, let us dream.

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Originally posted on June 3, 2010. To read other chapters, go to Prisoners of the Real: An Odyssey

Cyber Threats: System Failures & Living in Denial

By Greg Guma

In August 2010, when Foreign Policy posted an article citing credible research and directly warned oil companies worldwide that their offshore oil rigs were highly vulnerable to hacking, few people took notice.

     “Computer commands can derail a train or cause a gas pipeline to burst,” warned former Bush administration counter-terrorism chief Richard Clarke a few years later in Cyber War, his book on the topic. The reaction: mainly silence. Until recently, such scenarios seemed more like movie plots than foreign policy concerns, and the threat looked more domestic than foreign. 

     In early 2009, for instance, a 28-year-old contractor in California was charged in federal court with almost disabling an offshore rig. Prosecutors said the contractor, who was allegedly angry about not being hired full time, had hacked into the computerized network of an oil-rig off the coast, specifically the controls that detect leaks. He caused damage, but fortunately not a leak.

     After the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling disaster in the Gulf of Mexico the Christian Science Monitor reported that at least three US oil companies had been targets in a series of cyber attacks. The culprit was most likely someone or some group in China, and the incidents, largely un-reported for several years, had involved Marathon Oil, ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips. But the companies apparently didn’t realize how serious their problem was until the FBI alerted them.

     At the time, federal officials said that proprietary information – email passwords, messages, and information linked to executives – had been flowing out to computers overseas. Chinese government involvement could not be confirmed, but some data did end up on a computer in China. One oil company security staffer privately coined the term “China virus.”
     Still, the companies generally preferred not to comment, or even admit that the attacks had happened. But the Monitor persisted, interviewing insiders, officials and cyber attack experts, and ultimately confirmed the details. Their overall conclusion was that cyber-burglars, using spyware that is almost undetectable, pose a serious and potentially dangerous threat to private industry.
     According to Clarke, many nations conduct Internet espionage and sometimes even cyber attacks. China has been aggressive at times, but so have Russia and North Korea. Spying on defense agencies and diplomats has been one major focus; strategically important businesses and even national governments have also been targeted.

     In 2011, when I first published an article on the problem, Google claimed that it had evidence of at least 20 companies that had been infiltrated by Chinese hackers. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, logic bombs were being infiltrated into the US electric power grid. If so, they could operate like time bombs. Now it looks likely that Russia was the actual culprit, or had the same idea.
     On oil rigs, the advent of robot-controlled platforms has made a cyber attack possible with a computer anywhere in the world. Control of a rig could be accomplished by hacking into the "integrated operations" that link onshore computer networks to offshore ones. Until 2018 few experts would speculate publicly that this may already have happened. But there has been confirmation of computer viruses causing personnel injuries and production losses on North Sea platforms for several years.
     One problem is that even though newer rigs have cutting-edge robotics technology, the software that controls their basic functions can still be old school. Many rely on supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) software, which was created in an era when "open source" was more important than security.
     "It's underappreciated how vulnerable some of these systems are," warned Jeff Vail, a former counterterrorism and intelligence analyst with the US Interior Department who talked with Greg Grant, author of the Foreign Policy article. "It is possible, if you really understood them, to cause catastrophic damage by causing safety systems to fail."
     The name of the article, by the way, was “The New Threat to Oil Supplies – Hackers.” It sounds a lot like “Bin Laden Determined to Strike Inside the US.”
     To be fair, the US government’s failure to address private-sector vulnerability to cyber attacks goes back decades. Until recently, however, Congress and various administrations hesitated to challenge the status quo. Given the vulnerability of crucial infrastructure and much of the private sector, surprisingly little was done to prepare for what sounds inevitable.
     The US Cyber Command has attempted to protect federal infrastructure, while various branches of the military have developed their own offensive capabilities. But not even the Department of Homeland Security is officially responsible for protecting the private sector.  Legal and privacy issues get in the way of having the government directly monitor the Internet or business operations for evidence of potential cyber attacks. As you might expect, many businesses are wary of the regulations that might accompany government help.
     Though cyber attacks have clearly happened, many leave no obvious trace. As Clarke explained, corporations tend to believe that the “millions of dollars they have spent on computer security systems means they have successfully protected their company’s secrets.” Unfortunately, they are wrong. Intrusion detection and prevention systems sometimes fail.
     As it stands, no single federal agency is responsible for defending the banking system, power grids and oil rigs from attacks. The prevailing logic is that businesses should handle their own security. Yet their experts readily admit that they wouldn’t know what to do if an attack came from another nation, and assume that defense in such a case would be the government’s job.That’s capitalist thinking for you, private interests but socialized costs.
     In 2011, a US Senate bill sponsored by Democrat Jay Rockefeller and Republican Olympia Snowe sought to change that, but became another victim of DC gridlock. It would have required the president to work with the private sector on a comprehensive national cybersecurity strategy, created a joint public-private advisory board, and led to a Senate-confirmed national security adviser position. Rockefeller said the goal was “unprecedented information sharing between government and the private sector.”
     James Fallows has argued that the US suffers from “a conspiracy of secrecy about the scale of cyber risk.” His point was that many companies simply won’t admit how easily they can be infiltrated. As a result, changes in the law, the regulatory environment, or personal habits that could increase safety are not seriously discussed.  
      But sooner or later, Fallows concluded, “the cyber equivalent of 9/11 will occur.” That prediction is bad enough. But then he adds, “if the real 9/11 is a model, we will understandably, but destructively, overreact.” 
      So we’ve also got that to look forward to.

MIND GAMES: Cyberspace and Psychiatric Drugs

At least 10 percent of all Americans over six-years-old are on antidepressants. That’s more than 35 million people, double the number from less than two decades ago. Meanwhile, anti-psychotics have eclipsed cholesterol treatments as the country’s fastest selling and most profitable drugs, even though half the prescriptions treat disorders for which they haven’t been proven effective. At least 5 million children and adolescents use them, in part because more kids are being diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

This raises some troubling alternatives: Are a growing number of people experiencing psychological troubles? Have we just become better at recognizing them? Or is some other dynamic at work?

One possibility is that the criteria for what constitutes a mental illness or disability may have expanded to the point that a vast number appear to have clinical problems. But there’s an even more insidious development: the drugs being used to treat many of the new diagnoses could cause long-term effects that persist after the original trouble has been resolved. That’s the case made by Robert Whitaker in his book, Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America.

Speaking of long-term impacts on the brain, we’re also heading toward a world where humans are directly linked with computers that profoundly influence their perceptions and ideas. Despite many potential benefits, there is danger here as well. Rather than simply augmenting our memories by providing neutral information, the brain-computer connection may lead people into separate realities based on their assumptions and politics.

Brain-altering drugs and digital “indoctrination” – a potent combination. Together, they pose a potential threat not only to the stability of many individuals but of society itself. Seduced by the promise that our brains can be managed and enhanced without serious side-effects, we may be creating a future where psychological dysfunction becomes a post-modern plague and powerful forces use cyberspace to reshape “reality” in their private interest.

Do prescription drugs create new mental problems? And if so, how could it be happening? For Whitaker the answer lies in the effects of drugs on neurotransmitters, a process he calls negative feedback. When a drug blocks neurotransmitters or increases the level of serotonin, for instance, neurons initially attempt to counteract the effects. When the drug is used over a long period, however, it can produce “substantial and long-lasting alterations in neural function,” claims Steven Hyman, former director of the National Institutes of Mental Health. The brain begins to function differently. Its ability to compensate starts to fail and side effects created by the drug emerge.

What comes next? More drugs and, along with them, new side effects, an evolving chemical mixture often accompanied by a revised diagnosis. According to Marcia Angell, former editor of The New England Journal of Medicine, it can go this way: use of an antidepressant leads to mania, which leads to a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, which leads to the prescription of mood stabilizers. Through such a process people can end up taking several drugs daily for many years.

What may happen after that is deeply troubling. Researcher Nancy Andreasen claims the brain begins to shrink, an effect she links directly to dosage and duration. “The prefrontal cortex doesn’t get the input it needs and is being shut down by drugs,” she explained in The New York Times. “That reduces the psychotic symptoms.” But the pre-frontal cortex gradually atrophies.

Anyone who has been on the psychiatric drug roller coaster understands some of the ride’s risks and how hard it can be to get off. But the new implication is that we may be experiencing a medically-induced outbreak of brain dysfunction caused by the exploding use of drugs. One big unanswered question at the moment: What does Big Pharma really know, and when did they learn it?

Drug companies are not the only ones experimenting with our brains. Bold research is also being pursued to create brain-computer interfaces that can help people overcome problems like memory loss. According to writer Michael Chorost, author of World Wide Mind and interface enthusiast who benefited from ear implants after going deaf, we may soon be directly connected to the Internet through neural implants. It sounds convenient and liberating. Ask yourself a question and, presto, there’s the answer. Google co-founder Larry Page can imagine a not-too-distant future in which you simply think about something and “your cell phone whispers the answer in your ear.”

Beyond the fact that this could become irritating, there’s an unspoken assumption that the information received is basically unbiased, like consulting an excellent encyclopedia or a great library catalog. This is where the trouble starts. As Sue Halperin noted in a New York Review of Books essay, “Mind Control and the Internet,” Search engines like Google use an algorithm to show us what’s important. But even without the manipulation of marketing companies and consultants who influence some listings, each search is increasingly shaped to fit the profile of the person asking. If you think that we both get the same results from the same inquiry, guess again.

What really happens is that you get results assembled just for you. Information is prioritized in a way that reinforces one’s previous choices, influenced by suggested assumptions and preferences. As Eli Pariser argues in The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You, environmental activists and energy executives get very different listings when they inquire about climate science. It looks and feels “objective” but they’re being fed data that fits with their existing view – and probably not seeing much that conflicts.

A study discussed in Sociological Quarterly looked at this development by following attitudes about climate science over a decade. Here’s a strange but significant finding: Although a consensus emerged among most scientists over the years, the number of Republicans who accepted their conclusion dropped. Why? Because the Republicans were getting different information than the Democrats and others who embraced the basic premise. In other words, their viewpoint was being reflected back at them.

Does this sound dangerous? Pariser thinks so, and suggests that the type of reinforcement made common by search engines is leading to inadvertent self-indoctrination. For democracy to function effectively, people need exposure to various viewpoints, “but instead we’re more and more enclosed in our own bubbles,” he writes. Rather than agreeing on a set of shared facts we’re being led deeper into our different worlds.

Whether this is a problem depends somewhat on your expectations. For some people it is merely a bump in the road, a faltering step in the inevitable evolution of human consciousness. Techno-shamen and other cosmic optimists see the potential of drug-induced enlightenment and an Internet-assisted “hive mind,” and believe that the long-term outcome will be less violence, more trust, and a better world. But others have doubts, questioning whether we’ll really end up with technological liberation and a psychic leap forward. It could go quite differently, they worry. We could instead see millions of brain-addled casualties and even deeper social polarization.

How will current trends influence democracy and basic human relations? Increased trust and participation don’t immediately come to mind. Rather, the result could be more suspicion, denial and paranoia, as if we don’t have enough. In fact, even the recent upsurge in anger and resentment may be drug and Internet-assisted, creating fertile ground for opportunists and demagogues.

In False Alarm: The truth about the epidemic of fear, New York internist Marc Siegel noted that when the amygdala — the Brain’s central station for processing emotions – detects a threatening situation, it pours out stress hormones. If the stress persists too long, however, it can malfunction, overwhelm the hippocampus (center of the "thinking" brain), and be difficult to turn off. In the long term, this "fear biology" can wear people down, inducing paralysis or making them susceptible to diseases and delusions that they might otherwise resist. Addressing this problem with drugs that change the brain’s neural functioning isn’t apt to help. Either will the Internet’s tendency to provide information that reinforces whatever one already thinks.

More than half a century ago, Aldous Huxley – who knew a bit about drugs – issued a dire prediction. He didn’t see the Internet coming, but other than that his vision remains relevant. “There will be within the next generation or so a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude,” he wrote in Brave New World, “and producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda, brainwashing or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods."

Pretty grim, but there’s no going back. Despite any dangers posed by computer algorithms and anti-psychotic drugs, they are with us for the foreseeable future. Still, what we’ve learned about them in recent years could help us to reduce the negatives. Not every illness listed in the DMS – that constantly growing, Big Pharma-influenced psychiatric bible – requires drug treatment. And the results of your online searches will very likely tell you what you want to know, but that does not mean you’re getting a “balanced” or comprehensive picture.

(Originally published on 6/15/11, based on a radio broadcast)

Cults of Personality: Power, Narcissism & Delusions

They come in all sizes.
Christie's big tell: "I'm the victim."

We are living through a chronically tense and, in affluent parts of the world, a desperately self-indulgent era. Advertising teaches that fulfillment comes with compulsive consumption. News media trivialize history and turn current events into a competition of spectacles and personality cults. Addicted to fads and the quick fix, frightened of the future and cut adrift from the past, millions of people flee from imagination and look for meaning in pre-digested realities.
    
The very sense that we are part of real families and communities is threatened. Virtual images that dominate our days begin to look more real than we do. Experts meanwhile have a field day providing clever evaluations of the psychic assault on humanity and the breakdown of culture, while conveniently omitting that they are some of the culprits.
    
Societal narcissism has reached the epidemic level. Traditionally, a narcissist was often described as some "beautiful person" who can relate only to his or her own image or problems. But the definition has expanded to include traits like exploitation of the warmth provided by others, combined with fear of dependence, a sense of inner emptiness, boundless repressed rage, and unsatisfied cravings. Narcissists can be pseudo-intellectuals or calculating seducers. Usually, they are afraid of old age and death, and fascinated with celebrities. These callous, superficial climbers seek out the famous, and yet are also compelled to destroy their fantasy figures.
    
If this merely described a few "sick" individuals we might find comfort. But patterns of narcissistic behavior afflict millions and are reinforced daily. And perhaps most disquieting, the narcissistic personality is ideally suited for positions of power, the type of leader who sells himself to win at any price.
    
Capitalism has turned self promotion into a growth industry, with success often resting on the ability to project a "winning personality" and often false image. Relentless self-promotion, whether by conservative demagogues or their radical counterparts, meshes neatly with an idealization of powerful people who represent what the narcissist seeks.
    
Narcissists identify with winners out of a fear of being losers. Objects of hero worship give meaning to the frequently unfocused or direction-deprived lives of society's many emotional casualties. Yet mixed with this idealization is an urge to degrade the object of one's admiration, sparked when the "hero" ultimately disappoints. This desperate need, intensified by the machinery of mass promotion, can turn even assassination, political or physical, into a form of spectacle.
    
Among the influences that reinforce narcissism, mass media have the most pervasive impact. They tend to create both a sense of chronic tension and a cynical detachment from reality. But detachment does not have to express itself as cynicism. It can also lead to intelligent skepticism. This raises a political question, since media and other powerful institutions could help to reduce dependence and support individuals in solving their own problems. In recent years, however, being detached has mainly meant a crippling negativism about the entire political process, a nihilistic and escapist conclusion that no constructive change is possible.
    
The abdication of responsibility to various bureaucracies has meanwhile promoted character traits consistent with a corrupted culture, and this in turn has accelerated the excesses of corporate capitalism. The result is a kind of mass neurosis. Images of a "good" and a "bad" parent, objects of love and hatred, are formed early, internalized, and become part of the self-image of children. But rather than fusing into a super-ego that also contains social values and self-confidence, these early images often melt into a harsh, punishing super-ego. The emerging adult is torn between repressed rage and the desire for some all-powerful other. Sexual needs are also distorted, barriers are erected against strong emotions, and fear of death and old age becomes intense.
    
The decay of older traditions of self-help has eroded competence in one area after another, leaving the individual dependent on the state, corporations, and other bureaucratic structures. Narcissism is the psychological dimension of this dependence. Popular culture feeds on narcissistic fantasies, encouraging delusions of omnipotence while simultaneously reinforcing feelings of dependence and discouraging strong emotions.
    
Ultimately, the bland and empty facade of mass existence can become overwhelming. Yet within millions of people there remains enormous rage, resentment, and potential for which bureaucratic society provides few outlets. In truth, few people are actually satisfied with the facade. Some do nothing yet know the system doesn't work, others actively look for ways to limit the damage. Some strike out violently, others tap cultural resources like cooperative work, art, and spirituality to counteract the effects.
    
With the belief in individual responsibility undermined in so many ways, moral impulses help to keep alive a sense that people are responsible for what they do. If such a view spread widely enough, it could change an entire society. Another remedy, in response to professional imperialism, is to reclaim responsibilities we have ceded to the experts. Call it a program of conscious self-rule, one that could also protect us from discriminatory or authoritarian tendencies.
    
Such changes carry risks. For example, reactionary impulses in the family or church may be exploited. But given the state of society – moral bankruptcy, political corruption, economic inequality, and ecological decay – a few risks are preferable to playing it safe. The goal is to restore humanity's basic dignity through compassion, engagement, and mutual aid. Along with healthy skepticism and intelligently directed anger, these could be keys to a new, freer and more natural culture.
    
This is Chapter 34 of Prisoners of the Real. To read more, go to Prisoners of the Real: An Odyssey

Community & Consciousness

Part 35 of Prisoners of the Real

We can't go back. The only route is through the current crisis and on to the next stage of human evolution. But we can only get there if we know where we want to go.

First and foremost, the impulses toward centralization, rationalization, absolutism, and hierarchy must be rejected as means toward personal liberation and global harmony. This is especially difficult at a time when the need for global control is so strongly asserted and threatens to erase the vision of free communities. Complicating matters further is the confusion between the concept of true community and the State. The more a group of people allows itself to be represented from outside, the less community life is left in it.

Community is the joint and active management of what we hold in common, a primary aspiration of all human beings. Survival itself depends on the use of community structures and institutions to promote genuine freedom and spontaneous social action.

Second, we must recognize that community isn't a rigid idea but instead a living form, shaped by daily experience. It must satisfy the demands of real situations rather than abstractions. Like any realization, community is not reached once and for all time. Every moment presents new challenges and calls for original answers. For the individual, community building requires the inner disposition to pursue a life in common, despite the prospect of adverse circumstances and anxiety, tribulations, and toil. What sustains it is spirit, trust and love.

Community begins when its members see their common purpose and relation to the whole, a living togetherness that is the essence of sister and brotherhood. In that sense, few true communities currently exist in our "post-modern" world. Most of our cities have no real centers, and we devote little time to defining what holds us together. That work has mostly been turned over to elected representatives and appointed bureaucrats. Their "rational collectives" leave little space for warmth or friendship in the press of political and economic reality. Visions of togetherness are usually viewed as romantic fantasy, conceivable at all only in terms of their concrete effects.

Dionysian collectives, in contrast, are the seeds of an organic commonwealth that place true solidarity at the center of social experience. Every act of true friendship, every moment of selfless aid in our rationalized "post-industrial" world, brings social transformation a step nearer. This is true community building, and it occurs whenever autonomous actions create dynamic unity.

The Dionysian path is known by many names – metaphysical reconstruction, holistic epistemology, deep ecology, and new age claptrap, among others. Critics rightly note that attacks on rationalism and "instrumental reason" often extend too far, ending in rejection of all forms of purposeful activity and a retreat into the mystical haze of nature worship and “magical thinking.” Wary of the cult of technique, cultural revolutionaries sometimes confuse technology with practice and reject all human inventiveness as wanton dominance. In truth, however, it is possible to make peace with nature even while acknowledging the separation created by our consciousness. As Christopher Lasch explained, "Nature sets limits to human freedom, but it does not define freedom."

Ecological and systems thinking provide a theoretical foundation for the Dionysian approach. The former encompasses the realization that structures that may appear rigid in nature are actually manifestations of processes in continual flux; the latter has moved beyond analysis of complex machines to an understanding of relationships and integration in living systems. After 2000 years of reducing the world to smaller and smaller building blocks, science has finally turned its attention to principles of organization. Every organism is an integrated whole, a living system. Families and communities exhibit the same characteristics of wholeness as cells and ecosystems.

Yet the metaphysical reconstruction implied by a turn to the Dionysian principle also involves reconciliation of two realms of experience that have long been viewed as separate and irreconcilable – the political and spiritual. Marx's claim that religion is the "opiate of the people" has been as debilitating as the notion that enlightenment is a purely personal pursuit, fundamentally incompatible with the "dirty" world of social action.

The keys to a synthesis have been found in ecological consciousness and the post-modern politics of Gaia. Together they form a new cultural paradigm – planetary consciousness. With roots in myth, Gaia re-emerged as hypothesis, out of research on the auto-regulation of the Earth as a living system. According to James Lovelock, originator of the hypothesis, "the entire range of living matter on Earth, from whales to viruses, can be regarded as a single entity." Studying the nature of Earth's atmosphere, he and other researchers discovered that it is not merely a biological product but instead an active system designed to maintain a chosen environment within the biosphere.

Since this initial research Gaia has developed as a theoretical and artistic context, embraced by social critics, articulated in music, and developed as an eco-social organizing principle. There is talk also of a Gaian mode of consciousness, one acknowledging that science has a myth-making quality. Closely linked to ecological concepts, Gaian consciousness recognizes that opposites can – in fact, must – coexist.

This emerging form of spirituality is politically consistent with certain strains of Green thinking, in particular deep ecology, holistic feminism, community-based populism, and bio-regionalism. All of these incorporate a subtle awareness of the oneness of life, the interdependence of its limitless manifestations, and its cyclical processes of change and transformation. The sense that we are connected to the cosmos as a whole is a spiritual revelation that ties together the disparate expressions of this new consciousness.

In The Spiritual Dimension of Green Politics, Charlene Spretnak argued persuasively that Green concepts of inter-relatedness and sustainability open the way toward what she called post-modern spirituality. Human beings, she wrote, are social and interconnected, and the boundaries between us are more illusory than we normally think. Taking account of the nature reverence buried within most religious traditions, she concluded that a spiritual grounding can not only answer a deep hunger in modern experience, but also mesh comfortably with the Green tendrils that have sprouted around the world. Like others who are attempting to describe the next stage of humanity's journey, she found herself in a region where cosmic consciousness and political analysis meet.

William Irwin Thompson defined the current transition as a shift from the cultural ecology of the Atlantic, with its capitalist, industrial approach, to a new Pacific ecology that is more communal and balanced. On the spiritual level, this translates as a move from obedience to symbiosis. Working with a series of paradoxes, he noted that "Good at one level of order becomes evil at another.... In the age of mental understanding of doctrine (the current Atlantic era), obedience to law is evil, for it aborts the development of the mind. In an age of universal compassion (the new Pacific era), understanding of doctrine becomes evil, for it simply sanctifies murder in religious warfare."

The key to a new age, says Thompson, is the acceptance of difference, "the consciousness of the unique that contributes to the understanding of the universal." The main danger, on the other hand, is what he has labeled "collectivization through terror," the stamping out of differences. Just as mono-crop agriculture does violence to nature, a mono-crop society – essentially the extreme of an industrial mentality – would be deadly to human nature. Even Green politics, which may yet develop an ecology of consciousness, could instead become a fundamentalist ideology, rejecting flexibility and promoting a Luddite contempt for innovation.

"The real secret of freedom," Thompson once wrote, "seems to lie in the ability to deal with ambiguity, the capacity to tolerate noise and yet hear within its wild, randomizing abandon the possibilities of innovation and transformation."

Next: The Eclipse of Free Expression

To read other chapters, go to Prisoners of the Real: An Odyssey

Crimes of the Surveillance State: A Victim’s Story

By Greg Guma

"I was totally unprepared for today's bombshell revelations describing the NSA's efforts to defeat encryption,” wrote Professor Matthew Green on Sept. 5. “Not only does the worst possible hypothetical I discussed appear to be true, but it's true on a scale I couldn't even imagine."

Widely circulated online Green’s words reflected the betrayal felt by other scientists and academicians who have often worked in secret with the government. In response, however, the acting dean of the engineering school at Johns Hopkins asked him to take the post down and stop using the NSA logo as clip art. He also warned that if Green resisted or continued he would need a lawyer.

William A. Pierce, 1961

In covering this story, The UK Guardian concluded that if America's system of research universities “becomes captive to government and handmaiden to the surveillance state, that would be an economic and cultural crime of monstrous proportions.” Unfortunately, the crime was committed long ago.

Green’s story reminds me of a professor I met decades ago – William Pierce, a gifted mathematician, a former university professor with a Harvard Ph.D., and valedictorian of the University of Vermont’s 1943 graduating class. He was 57-years-old when we met in 1978 and was no long working at a university. But he’d attended a local talk about intelligence community abuses and claimed he had an even more explosive story to tell.

Even before the Internet it was easy to verify some details, particularly his academic credentials and past employment. William Augustus Pierce had indeed been an academic star. Born in Lyndonville in 1921, he’d received the highest academic grades as an undergraduate at UVM since John Dewey.

In 1950, attracted by “an excellent group of research scholars,” Pierce joined the Math Department at Syracuse University. But the City of Syracuse “was then a hotbed of anti-Communist activity,” he told me, “and the University was under considerable pressure to do something about ‘them reds on the faculty’ – especially the Jewish reds in the Math Department.”

A few months after he arrived, Dr. Donald Kibbey, then acting Math Department chair, fired two members of the Syracuse faculty for alleged activities in “controversial” political groups. Several other mathematicians submitted their resignations in solidarity, and one colleague, Prof. Paul Rosenbloom, warned Pierce that he “was terribly wrong to stay at Syracuse.”

More than 25 years later, he still chided himself for not listening and seeking a teaching post elsewhere, as some colleagues were doing. “I was certainly untrue to myself,” he admitted. “It was the worst mistake I have ever made. 

“At Harvard and Syracuse I was considered a left-winger,” Pierce acknowledged. “The label resulted partly from my membership in peace groups and opposition to the Cold War, but it was primarily my criticism of FBI investigations and security procedure in areas of human learning. There was some trouble, for instance, when I described Russian advances in certain fields of mathematics and science, and then urged that Americans wage a more effective, peaceable competition with the Soviet Union.”

“Listen buddy,” a colleague snapped in response, “”if you don’t like your Uncle Sammy, get the hell back to Russia.”

Pierce felt that security clearances were out of place in the academic community and didn’t hesitate to publicly say so. In April 1953, for example, he spoke out about a Presidential Executive Order establishing new security requirements for government employment that included a “loyalty” standard. To him it looked like a form of profiling, another tool of the notorious McCarthy era blacklist.

Earlier that year Prof. William Martin, head of the Syracuse Math department in the 1940s and then chair at M.I.T., had been called before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Once a member of the Communist Party, he buckled under questioning and named others who he claimed had once joined the party.

“My Syracuse colleague Professor Abe Gelbart, Dean of Science and Technology at Yeshiva University in New York, was on the list,” Pierce said. “FBI agents moved into Gelbart’s situation and questioned him at length. They even asked him about his associations with me, and said they had observed us drinking in local restaurants.”

That summer Pierce nevertheless went to Los Angeles to consult for the National Security Agency (NSA) at UCLA. “I had a temporary, low-level clearance for work on S.C.A.M.P. and I suppose a security check was initiated.” S.C.A.M.P. was the acronym for the Southern California Applied Mathematics Project, a top secret operation conducted on behalf of the Defense Department. The official purpose was research on numerical analysis, but those involved focused mainly on cryptology.

It was a summer of suspicion and unsettling Cold War developments. On June 19, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were electrocuted for the alleged theft of atomic bomb secrets. “Your country is sick with fear,” wrote Jean-Paul Sartre in response. A month later Fidel Castro led an attack on the Moncada barracks in Cuba, an early attempt to overthrow the Batista dictatorship. At his trial, the future Cuban leader proclaimed, “History will absolve me.”

A day after the Moncada attack, on July 27, an armistice ended the Korean War. More than 50,000 American had been killed in what had been designated a “police action,” at least 100,000 were wounded, and about 8,000 were still missing. Less than a month later, Mohammed Mossadegh, the elected Prime Minister of Iran, was overthrown. Few people knew it, but the coup had been orchestrated by the CIA.

While Bill Pierce was in L.A. he noticed headlines about Abe Gelbart’s HUAC appearance. On television Sen. Joseph McCarthy complained that his colleague was receiving a Fulbright Fellowship “even after taking the Fifth Amendment 47 times.” He also noticed reports that McCarthy was “setting out for California on another Alger Hiss case.”

Shortly after returning to Syracuse, Pierce’s government-funded research was abruptly cancelled.

One reason may have been Pierce claim that advanced technology was being used to control subversive activities. Directional bugging devices “were snooping and spying on undesirables,” he said. “Psychological harassment was being widely adopted.”

Most of what he said was hard to dispute. The development of nuclear weapons by the Soviet Union, plus the memory of Pearl Harbor, had indeed made intelligence activities a high national priority. “You have to remember, people were desperate about the so-called Communist threat,” Pierce noted. “Some of them, although sincere and well-meaning, had a paranoid idea about domestic security that was being encouraged by ambitious opportunists. Vigilante extremism, faked investigations and security procedures sprang up across the country.”

A bit harder to accept at the time was his claim that “organized sociology” and “applied psychology” were being mobilized to manipulate reputations, attack the mental reliability of government critics, and conduct systematic psychological harassment. “There were fearsome new ways to attack the mental health, the very sanity, of their victims,” he said ominously.

Given that context, his theory was that he'd attracted the attention of some extreme anti-Communists at Syracuse. But it was “impractical to call me before HUAC or file judicial charges,” he concluded, “and so instead, they used underhanded psychological harassment to isolate me from the academic community.”

In 1955, when his troubles began, and in 1964, when he first committed his experiences to paper, he had no solid proof that mind control projects were being pursued by the federal government. But once the surviving MKULTRA documents were declassified in 1977 – most of them were destroyed before they could be reviewed by Congress -- his descriptions and speculation began to look uncannily close to the experiments being pursued at the exact same time by the CIA.

Even prior to MKULTRA, considerable research had been done by the government on amnesia, hypnotic couriers and efforts to create a Manchurian Candidate – a label commonly used after the release of a 1963 conspiracy thriller with that title. The CIA’s goal was to develop “brainwashing” techniques and program subjects with a hypnotically implanted trigger, thus turning them into secret agents who wouldn’t remember what they had done. In scientific terms, the objective was to deliberately and experimentally create dissociative identity disorders, with associated amnesia barriers, and use this technique in both simulated and actual covert operations.

MKULTRA was officially launched by the Central Intelligence Agency on April 3, 1953, and continued for a decade until it was rolled into another project, MKSEARCH, in 1964. That ran for another eight years, until CIA Director Richard Helms ordered most of the MK documents shredded in June 1972. Despite this, and redactions to most documents that survived, they revealed that there had been hundreds of separate “sub-projects.”

In an August 1963 “Report of Inspection of MKULTRA,” Deputy CIA Director Marshall Carter acknowledged a problem: “Research in the manipulation of human behavior is considered by many authorities in medicine and related fields to be professionally unethical, therefore the reputations of professional participants in the MKULTRA program are on occasion in jeopardy.” Beyond that, “the testing of MKULTRA products places the rights and interests of U.S. citizens in jeopardy.” As a result, the paper trail was being kept to a bare minimum, operational control was delegated to the Technical Services Division (TSD), and the entire project was exempted from audit.

During the preceding decade the “avenues to the control of human behavior” had expanded to include “radiation, electro-shock, various fields of psychology, psychiatry, sociology, and anthropology, graphology, harassment substances, and paramilitary devices and materials.” 

Under a heading titled “Advanced testing of MKULTRA materials,” the 1963 CIA report asserted the “firm doctrine in TSD that testing of materials under accepted scientific procedure fails to disclose the full pattern of reactions and attributions that may occur in operational situations.” It added that TSD had “initiated a program for covert testing of materials on unwitting U.S, citizens in 1955,” the same year Pierce said that his own harassment began.

The ultimate test for any drug, device or technique, argued the report, was “application to unwitting subjects in normal life settings. It was noted earlier that the capabilities of MKULTRA substances to produce disabling or discrediting effects or to increase the effectiveness of interrogation of hostile subjects cannot be established solely through testing on volunteer populations.”

To keep the loop small and secure, “certain cleared and witting individuals in the Bureau of Narcotics” provided various drugs for testing on those “deemed desirable and feasible.” Some of the most “feasible” subjects were informers and criminals. But as the report added, “the effectiveness of the substances on individuals at all social levels, high and low, native American and foreign, is of great significance and testing has been performed on a variety of individuals within these categories.” After several tests the “subject has become ill for hours or days, including hospitalization in at least one case.”

By this time, Pierce was no longer at Syracuse. After a year at West Virginia University, he had moved to Stillwater to teach at Oklahoma State University in September, 1962. But he was still writing letters to prominent people and newspapers about “right-wing extremism” and “security procedures.”

In mid-October, he was removed from his teaching duties and ordered by the university administration to undergo a psychological examination. According to Pierce, extremists were trying to discredit him. But a few students, along with the manager of a local coffee shop, told President Oliver Willham that Pierce was the one creating the disturbances. Word rapidly spread across campus that he was “psycho.” It was precisely the type of harassment and discrediting tactics described in the MKULTRA documents.

In a letter written by Pierce and published in the Oklahoma City Times on Oct.19, 1962 the focus was the arrest and hospitalization of Maj. Gen. Edwin A. Walker, whose fiery rhetoric had recently helped to spark a violent riot on the University of Mississippi campus. On September 30, after hundreds of people were wounded and two were killed, Walker was arrested on charges including sedition and insurrection.

Attorney General Robert Kennedy ordered Walker held in a mental institution for 90 days of psychiatric examination. But that decision was challenged by psychiatrist Thomas Szasz, who argued that psychiatry shouldn’t be a political tool, as well as by the American Civil Liberties Union. After five days Kennedy backed down and Walker was released.

Pierce didn’t agree with Walker’s politics but did identify with his situation. “Admittedly, Walker’s extreme views on ‘liberals’ and his alleged defiance of the government (including alleged incitement to violence) suggest mental unbalance; but the presumptions of enforced mental tests and/or treatment should cause us grave concern,” he wrote. “It is only a short step from psychiatric tests for rioters to psychiatric tests for victims of crime and political persecution. A favorite technique of the latter is clever misuse of the ‘psychopath’ label; and, even worse, revolutionary devices of psychological warfare and brainwashing capable of crippling almost any human being, and in such a manner that the victim’s factual description of the attack sounds like mental illness.”

A few days after this letter was published a police officer and sheriff’s deputy showed up at Pierce’s apartment with a warrant for his arrest, apparently at the instigation of OSU President Willham. Although Sheriff Charlie Fowler had never met Pierce, the detention order claimed that Fowler had “personal knowledge” that he was violent and showed the potential to injure himself or others.

A week later, he was involuntarily committed and, without knowing it, placed in the care of Dr. Louis J. West, one of the CIA’s influential MKULTRA doctors.

Ever since Pierce shared his story I have been assembling the missing pieces. Before he died we wrote to many federal agencies, requesting any records they had about him under the Freedom of Information Act. All of them claimed that no such records existed. Yet just last week, as Matthew Green was dealing with his NSA problem, I conducted another online search and found some correspondence between Pierce and the CIA.

Dated August 1, 1960 and addressed to him at the Syracuse Math Department, it included this statement: “Mr. Dulles (CIA Director at the time) asked me to acknowledge and thank you for your letter of 9 July 1960 enclosing a message to Dr. Glennan of NASA and Mr. D.H. Lewis. The thoughtfulness in bringing our attention to your proposal is indeed appreciated.”

And what was the proposal? Electronic mental telepathy, Pierce called it. “Though the technical requirements have already been met, the process and application are new,” he wrote. It was basically a fishing expedition, an attempt to discover whether his suspicions were true. In a letter to NASA, he pointed to the work being done at the Aviation Medicine School in Texas, where tiny transmitters were being used for research, as well as cybernetic work underway to assist with space exploration, and “extensive use of various voice analyzers and signal separators.”

Every agency we wrote, including NASA, NSA and CIA, denied ever hearing from Pierce or knowing anything about him. Yet he apparently did get their attention.  

Greg Guma’s new novel, Dons of Time, which looks at the dangers of the surveillance state, will be released in October by Fomite Press. More of William Pierce's story will be released in coming months.

REBEL NEWS, 4/5/2013: Obama's Secret Trade Deal

Maverick Media’s Rebel News airs 9-10 a.m. (more or less) on Fridays on WOMM (105.9-FM/LP – The Radiator and live streaming). THIS WEEK: Obama’s secret deal, Labor amnesia, Fukushima fallout, America’s love affair with conspiracies, an attention deficit epidemic, guns in schools , college majors and unemployment, jails gone wild (shocking video from Maine!),  and local updates.  Here are highlights:

TOP STORY: Obama’s Secret Trade Deal

Out of public view the Obama administration is negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, a US-led free trade deal with several Pacific Rim countries. Six hundred US corporate advisers have had input, but so far the text hasn’t been shared with the public or media.

     The level of secrecy is unprecedented. During discussions paramilitary teams guard the premises, helicopters loom overhead, and there’s a near-total media blackout on the subject. US Senator Ron Wyden, who chairs the congressional committee with jurisdiction over TPP agreement, was denied access to the negotiation texts.

     In a floor statement to Congress Wyden said, “The majority of Congress is being kept in the dark as to the substance of the TPP negotiations, while representatives of US corporations — like Halliburton, Chevron, Comcast and the Motion Picture Association of America — are being consulted and made privy to details of the agreement.”

     The deal would give multinational corporations unprecedented rights to demand taxpayer compensation for policies they think will undermine their expected future profits -- straight from the treasuries of participating nations. It would push Big Pharma’s agenda in the developing world -- longer monopoly controls on drugs, drastically limiting access to affordable generic meds that people need. The TPP would undermine food safety by limiting labeling and forcing countries like the US to import food that fails to meet its national safety standards,  and ban Buy America or Buy Local preferences.

     The proposed legislation on intellectual property will have enormous impacts, including Internet termination for households, businesses, and organizations as an accepted penalty for copyright infringement. Nations who sign on to the deal would essentially submit themselves to oppressive IP restrictions designed by Hollywood, severely limiting their ability to digitally exchange information on sites like YouTube, where streaming videos are considered copyrightable.

     “Broader copyright and intellectual property rights demands by the US would lock up the Internet, stifle research and increase education costs, by extending existing generous copyright from 70 years to 120 years, and even making it a criminal offense to temporarily store files on a computer without authorization. The US, a net exporter of digital information, would be the only party to benefit from this,” said Patricia Ranald, convener of the Australian Fair Trade and Investment Network. 

ARMAGEDDON UPDATE

Reuters reports that the United States will soon send a missile defense system to Guam to defend it from North Korea. The U.S. military is adjusting to what Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has called a "real and clear danger" from Pyongyang. 

LABOR AMNESIA

Rediscovering the legacy

Automation and globalization continue to create massive labor displacement as corporations advance their interest while attempting to restrict the rights of workers. Labor’s fall from grace is a case of collective amnesia. The true, largely ignored history of the labor movement tells a different story... Revisiting May Day & the First Red Scare.  (Radio drama segment)

The Fukushima Effect 

Thyroid problems for US kids

Some bad news from Common Dreams -- Infants on the West Coast are showing increased incidents of thyroid abnormalities and researchers attribute it to radiation released after the 2011 meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. According to a new study published in the Open Journal of Pediatrics, children born in Alaska, California, Hawaii, Oregon and Washington between one week and 16 weeks after the meltdown began are 28 percent more likely to suffer from congenital hypothyroidism.

     The abnormalities result from a build up of radioactive iodine in the thyroid and can result in stunted growth, lowered intelligence, deafness, and neurological abnormalities—although some can be treated if detected early. Because their bodies are more vulnerable and their cells grow faster than adults', infants are the proverbial 'canary in the coal mine' for injurious environmental effects.

     Earlier this year, the Fukushima Prefecture Health Management Survey found that more than 40 percent of the Japanese children studied showed evidence of thyroid abnormalities.

CONSPIRACY NATION

America Speaks: One quarter say Obama is the Anti-Christ

They aren’ t absolutely sure, but about a fourth of all Americans suspect that the President just might be the anti-christ. Of course, more than a third also believe that global warming is a hoax and more than half suspect that a secretive global elite is trying to set up a New World Order.

     The survey, conducted by Public Policy Polling, asked a sample of voters about a number of conspiracy theories, phrasing the questions in eye-catching language. The study revealed that 13% of respondents thought Obama was "the antichrist", while another 13% were "not sure" – just open to the possibility that he might be. Some 73% were able to say unequivocally that they didn’t think Obama was "the antichrist".

     The survey also showed that 37% of Americans thought that global warming was a hoax, while 12% were not sure and a slim majority – 51% – agreed with the overwhelming majority view of the scientific establishment and thought that it wasn’t. It indicates that 28% of people believed in a sinister global New World Order conspiracy which is aimed at ruling the whole world through authoritarian government. Another 25% were "not sure," and only – 46% – thought such a theory wasn’t true.

     Some theories were dismissed by large majorities. For example, only 7% said the moon landing was faked, 14% believed in Bigfoot, and 4% accepted that "shape-shifting alien reptilian people control our world by taking on human form." 5% believed that Paul McCartney died in a car crash in 1966 and was replaced by a double so the Beatles could continue their careers. Just 11% believe that the US government knowingly allowed the terror attacks of 11 September 2001 to take place. 

Head Games

One in five boys has ADHD

From Alternet  ...The number of young people diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder has increased remarkably over the past decade, according to data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The rise, reported in the New York Times, has led some to say that it is due to parent pressure on doctors and a loose definition of the disorder. The data says an estimated 6.4 million children aged 4 to 17 have received the diagnosis, a 16 percent increase from 2007 and a 53 percent rise over the last decade.

    The data says an estimated 6.4 million children aged 4 to 17 have received the diagnosis, a 16 percent increase from 2007 and a 53 percent rise over the last decade. Two-thirds of those diagnosed take meds like Ritalin and Adderall, which can lead to anxiety, addiction and potentially psychosis. Nearly one in five high school boys and 11 percent of all school-age children have ADHD, the data indicates.

     One Harvard professor of medicine said, “There’s a tremendous push where if the kid’s behavior is thought to be quote-unquote abnormal — if they’re not sitting quietly at their desk — that’s pathological, instead of just childhood.”

EDUCATION

Indiana could be first state to require guns in schools 

The NRA released its long-awaited "National School Shield Report" last week.  It’s a lengthy document that recommends schools arm and train staff members to carry guns. A few hours earlier, Indiana's House Education Committee advanced a similar measure -- but one that takes the NRA's logic even further. The NRA's "model" legislation would lift restrictions on guns in schools and require training for school employees who carry guns. But the Indiana proposal would make the state the first to require all public schools to have an armed person with a loaded weapon in the building during school hours.

     But the Indiana proposal would make the state the first to require all public schools to have an armed person with a loaded weapon in the building during school hours.  After receiving a yet-to-be-determined training course, any school employee -- a teacher, principal, or janitor -- could become the school's guard, called "school protection officers." The amendment doesn't specify which firearms the "officers" must hold or whether the guns should be visible or concealed.

     The amendment's sponsor, Rep. Jim Lucas (R), thinks mass shootings like the one in Newtown could be prevented by more firearms. "The way they are right now, school is a gun-free zone. Tragically we see the tragic consequences of gun-free zones, defenseless zones like the Colorado theater, Columbine, and Virginia Tech," Lucas told The Huffington Post Wednesday. "We have to work to overcome the stigma that firearms are a bad thing."

     According to Marc Egan, a lobbyist for the National Education Association, 27 states are now considering various laws that would arm people in schools. "This is not the right approach," he said. "Parents do not want to see their kids' schools turned into fortresses."

RELATED NEWS: A new report finds a clear link between high levels of gun violence and weak state gun laws. The 10 states with the weakest gun laws collectively have an aggregate level of gun violence that is more than twice as high - 104 percent higher, in fact - than the 10 states with the strongest gun laws.

  

POST-COLLEGE DEPRESSION

From CBS News… Here are the college majors with the highest unemployment rates. Top marks go to number 1. Clinical psychology, with 19.5% unemployment... 2. Miscellaneous fine arts 16.2%... 3. US history 15.1%... 4. Library science 15.0%... 5. a tie between Military technologies and educational psychology 10.9%.

     The rest of the list isn’t good news for prospective psychologists and those interested in the arts. But there are a few surprises: 6. Architecture 10.6%; 7. Industrial & organizational psychology 10.4%; 8. Miscellaneous psychology 10.3%; 9. Linguistics & comparative literature 10.2%; 10. (tie) Visual & performing arts; engineering & industrial management 9.2%.

     11. Engineering & industrial management 9.2%  (what’s up with this?) ;12. Social psychology 8.8%; 13. International business 8.5%; 14. Humanities 8.4%; 15. General social sciences 8.2%; 16. Commercial art & graphic design 8.1%; 17. Studio art 8.0%; 18. Pre-law & legal studies 7.9%; 19.  (tie) Materials engineering and materials science and composition & speech 7.7%; 20. Liberal arts 7.6%.

     21. (another tie) Fine arts and genetics 7.4%; 22. (tie) Film video & photography arts and cosmetology services & culinary arts 7.3%; 23. Philosophy & religious studies and neuroscience (tie) 7.2%; 24. Biochemical sciences 7.1%; 25. (tie) Journalism and sociology 7.0%.

VIDEO SHOCKER: JAILS GONE WILD

Maine provides the latest example of corrections staff abusing restraints and pepper spray, at times with deadly results. Other examples include: Nick Christie died in 2006 after being pepper sprayed twelve times and spending six hours naked in a restraint chair. As in Maine, guards placed a spit hood over him, ensuring he would breathe the liquid as long as he wore it. The case was ruled a homicide. 

     In Arizona, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio discontinued the use of restraint chairs in 2006 after three wrongful death lawsuits. And Jesse Lee Williams, Jr. was restrained when guards sprayed an entire can of pepper spray into a hood before putting it over his mouth as part of a savage beating. He died two days later.

     And now Paul Schlosser, a former military medic who was receiving treatment in a Maine prison for bipolar disorder and depression. In the video, Schlosser is in a restraint chair while his face is coated at close range with pepper spray from a canister intended for use on large crowds from a distance of 20 feet. Schlosser chokes and fights for breath.