The Collective
Brain of a Society—Ethnic Cleansing and Race Hatred
“Curmudge, we’ve already talked about how the brain’s
plasticity can help people overcome their disabilities, from autism spectrum
disorders to paralysis resulting from strokes. Now you’re going to tell me that the brain can be
manipulated to achieve bad outcomes?
I think that you are just developing a negative streak in your old age.”
“You might be right, Jaded Julie, but at least it’s not part
of my name. As an octogenarian, I
have seen, heard, and read a lot of disturbing things from the 1930’s right up
to the present. It’s up to people
like me to share our learnings with you young folks from the ‘name’
generations. Although I was only
in preschool in the late 1930’s, I listened to my parents discuss the nightly
radio news and could sense their concerns.”
“Okay, Renaissance Man, how are you going to compress 80
years of wisdom into two pages?”
“I’m not going to.
We’ll start; and when we finish a posting we’ll stop, at least
temporarily. As a prologue, we
need to realize that negative brain manipulations lie along a continuum ranging
from pure evil—with North Korea as an example—to quite trivial, such as
promoting loyalty to a particular brand of toilet tissue. From top to bottom, so to speak. We’ll start at the top.”
“If you haven’t forgotten, we started at the top four years
ago. We were aghast at the horrors
of North Korea in our April
14, 2010 posting in Curmudgeon’s Wastebasket. I shudder whenever I read it. So what has changed since then?”
“Not much in the Hermit Kingdom except that their glorious
leader is now Kim Jong Un, who had his uncle executed. And two things of significance occurred
in the real world: (a) a report by the United Nations Human Rights Council
issued on February 17, 2014 validated the atrocities we already knew about, and
(b) you and I better understand the damage done to the brains of North Korean
children by their forced indoctrination during the ‘critical period’ of brain
development.”
“It’s beyond belief, Curmudge. The children are taught absolute allegiance to the state and
to relinquish all control of their thoughts and actions. If they report hearing a parent saying
anything negative about the government, their whole extended family, including
grandparents, are sent to concentration camps where they are tortured and will
ultimately starve to death. It’s
in the U.N. report, which is based on public testimony from more than 80
witnesses. ‘Much of the material
is based on firsthand testimony from escapees from this hell on Earth.’ (1) ”
“In our 2010 posting mentioned earlier we referred to the
teaching of the ‘unique moral superiority of the Korean race.’ In his recent WSJ article, Eberstadt
describes it this way, ‘State-promoted race-hatred is taught alongside worship
of the Kim dynasty to every North Korean schoolchild from the earliest age of
instruction.’ A result of this
teaching is the forced abortion visited upon refugees who have been forcibly
returned from China bearing a half-Chinese fetus. Their unforgivable crime is the defiling of the sacred
Korean race.”
“I’m confident Professor, that we’ll cite other examples of
atrocities against segments of a population that are viewed as different from
what the ruling dictator desires.
Some of those will be historical, but others, like North Korea and
Syria, are occurring right now before our very eyes.”
“Right as usual, Julie. And they are based on training the minds of at least a part
of the population that the ‘different’ people deserve ethnic cleansing as in
the Kosovo
massacres or the ‘Killing
Fields’ in Cambodia.”
“But how can a despot train the minds of adults? It must be different from North Korea
where the children are indoctrinated at the earliest possible age.”
“They use propaganda, Julie, that favors the ruling class
and is directed against everybody else.
In the 1930’s Hitler’s Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbels, blamed all
of Germany’s ills on their Jewish citizens. When one repeatedly proclaims a doctrine as unquestionably
true, it becomes dogma.”
“Dogma? Isn’t
that the stuff that goes in the plastic bag that I carry when I take Fido for
his morning walk?”
“Sometimes, but in this case it convinced many Germans to
become Nazis, Storm Troopers, and Hitler Youth and to believe Hitler’s raging
that, ‘We are the Master Race.’
This led to concentration camps and the Holocaust in the 1940’s.
So then as well as now, vicious leaders attempt to warp the
brains of their followers into believing that non-conformers are a form of
subhuman species.”
“I must have lived a sheltered life, Curmudge. The whole concept of a person’s brain
accepting the idea of ethnic cleansing is more than I can fathom.”
“Thankfully, Julie, my life as a child in the late 30’s and
early 40’s was thousands of miles from the horrors occurring in Europe. However, we children were close enough
to learn this little song, ‘When the Fuhrer says he is the Master Race, it’s
heil pfutt, heil pfutt right in the Fuhrer’s face.’ And as we were singing that silly song, our parents were not
fully aware of Hitler’s Final
Solution.“
“I hope, Mr. Historian, that our next discussion of the
brain’s dark side will be less upsetting.
Meanwhile, let’s make a pot of ginger tea to settle my stomach.”
Kaizen Curmudgeon
(1) Eberstadt, Nicholas. Time for the ‘Never
Agains’ on North Korea. Wall Street Journal, p. A13, February 19, 2014.
Link to posting from blog archives: Brand and Generic Drug Names 5/14/09
http://kaizencurmudgeon.blogspot.com/2009/05/prescription-drugs-brand-and-generic.html
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