Asymmetrical Information

From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:

A Treasure Trove of Weird and Bloggable Stuff

Whilst googling for an interview of Robert Scheer I heard on the radio, I happened upon The Institute for Psychohistory.

WARNING: This is a dangerous site. It has been known to cause long episodes of scrolling accompanied by giggles, frowns, and rapid intake of breath. There is no known cure, but saying "Penis envy did not cause the Korean War" and "The Invasion of Normandy was not staged to alleviate homosexual pressure in the military" several times in rapid succession has provided temporary relief in clinical trials. The treated population was compared to a control group that was shown a placebo site designed by a well-known behavioralist and asked to identify the GST and PST sales tax rates repeatedly. This resulted in involuntary arm spasms and compulsive checkbook balancing.

The Institute's website includes online books and essays with such "come hither" titles as:

The Phallic Presidency
"The Gulf War as a Mental Disorder
Reagonomics as a Sacrificial Ritual - cut! slash! chop!
The Childhood Origins of Terrorism

Let me offer some choice quotes:

It is no coincidence that of the thirteen womanizer presidents listed above, all but two also commanded major military ventures, while the twenty-eight other presidents who were not unfaithful were more peaceful. It is useful to ask the obvious question: might nations, when they are ready to go to war, unconsciously choose their leaders as some primitive tribes do--for their ability to conquer both women and enemies?

Indeed, the Clinton scandal wasn't "all about sex," it was "all about loss." Clinical studies of sex addicts find they aren't "expressing their drives" so much as combating desperate inner feelings of maternal abandonment, impotence and self-fragmentation through their repeated conquests of women. Feelings of impotence, not excess potency, is (sic)the source of all sex addictions. And wars.

Quite a leap, those last two words.

During the first few weeks of Reagan's presidency, the imagery of the bloody axing of people and their coming howls of pain seemed to be just what we needed to embody our growing rage. Only occasionally could we allow ourselves to feel our guilt about taking out our violent feelings on scapegoats. "Some of what Reagan is doing is great and some of what he's doing just scares me half to death," said one person interviewed, as he wondered how he felt about having voted for Reagan and about the prospect that "a year from now you're going to have people freezing and starving to death."

The New Republic captured the new mood perfectly in its article on "THE NEW BRINKSMANSHIP":

For the first time since the 1950s, the possibility of nuclear war with the Soviet Union appears to be seriously accepted by key figures inside and outside the US government. what long have been unthinkable thoughts now are entertained by in-fluential men and women in Washington... .A senior white House foreign policy specialist says: "In 30 years, I never thought war was really possible: now l think it is possible... "

It was left up to the women's section of the N.Y. Times to express directly our deepest feelings about "thinking the unthinkable" once again. Maggie Scarf, reviewing the literature on the "increasingly threatening reality" of engaging in atomic war, said simply: "I'm getting scared again."

Oops - same old poor predictions.

Of course, most adults did not openly cheer when they heard the news of the shooting (Hinkley's assassination attempt). Yet even they could admit, if asked directly, that some surprising feelings had gone through their minds when first hearing of the shooting. The only poll to actually ask people precisely what the first thought was which occurred to them after they had heard about the shooting found that about half admitted that their first thought was one of relief,(34) thinking "good" or "I laughed" or "I felt relieved" or "I wished he had had better aim" or some other identification with the shooting. The other half of those polled said the first thing that went through their minds was some form of conspiracy theory, such as "Haig did it" or "Bush did it" or "somebody wants to get revenge for the cuts he's made" or "the Russians did it." All responses, in other words, indicated that the shooting was equally wished for, but the wish for the second half of those asked was attributed to some person other than the respondent. No one answered the poll by saying that they were surprised at the shooting.

In fact, what psychologists actually call the "free floating anxiety" which people feel as a result of too much success is guilt, guilt about the success itself. And the "something bad which is about to happen" is actually the wish that something bad might happen to punish us for our growing success and pleasures. It was as though in the middle of our prosperity during the Carter period a vindictive parental figure awoke in our collective heads, begrudging us our happy families and prosperous work. The more our lives became successful, the more a ghostly conscience disturbed us in the middle of the night to remind us that we should not enjoy more happiness than our parents had enjoyed during our childhoods. Statistics confirmed what our consciences felt: in 1978 we earned double the real income our parents had earned, on the average,(9) we had better health, more personal freedom, more sexual enjoyment, in fact, more of everything worth striving for . . . and it was making us feel terrible.

Here are the root causes of the Falklands War:

Most modern nations keep several impulsive "children" around to be able to use when they need a blood sacrifice. England kept her dispute with Argentina over the Falkland Islands alive for decades for just this purpose, since a simple "leaseback" compromise had been worked out some time before which negotiators admitted made the problem one which "would take ten minutes to solve if both sides were willing."(2) Through a series of hidden messages suggesting that they were emo-tionally abandoning the islands-actions ranging from the denial of British citizenship to the Falklanders to the abrupt removal of the British ship Endurance(3) - Argentina was unconsciously invited to occupy the tiny islands, while being led to believe that England would take no military steps to oppose the occupation.

Some of this makes thought provoking reading, other parts sound like the crazy aunt in the cupboard. Personally, I don't buy the idea that the U.S. can be collectively diagnosed like a single patient on a couch, and I certainly don't think we act out our "issues" through the press and the voting booth. In fact, I think the Press often has their own issues to work out. But this is 'bloggertainment' for sure.

These are all creations of the psychoanalytic mind of Lloyd deMause. For tonight, at least, I think this is "de site".

Blog away, comrades!

Posted by Mindles H. Dreck at January 23, 2002 10:22 PM | Technorati inbound links