The power of Emotional Memories

[Steven Kossor]

New ideas evolve by linking together the known with the possible within a vessel made of memory. There are two kinds of memory: cognitive and emotional. Cognitive memories are what we know. Emotional memories are how we feel about knowing. Healthy emotional memories give us hope and courage about using what we know. Negative emotional memories give us pessimism and fear about using what we know. Emotional memories always trump cognitive memories. Minds poisoned by negative emotional memories will believe things that are not true, correct, adaptive or healthy. When too many people become afflicted with negative emotional memories, hope turns to despair and courage is overcome by fear.

Former leaders of deposed foreign governments over the past 100 years learned about this as they were being overwhelmed, struggling for survival against the onslaught of negative emotional memories being implanted and nurtured in their own people by outsiders. In both the foreign "target" country and in the domestic population as well, these outsiders go about implanting negative emotional memories to coerce the population to embrace changes that are not adaptive or healthy, but which meet the needs of the outsiders. Weapons of mass destruction threaten us all and must be destroyed!

Large portions of both the foreign and domestic populations come to embrace the take-over because its necessity is confirmed by the negative emotional memories that have been implanted and nurtured in them. The last straw in the overthrow of foreign governments is the replacement of the former leaders by outsiders. That is how the government of Hawaii was overthrown in the 1800's, and how the overthrow of other foreign governments in the 20th century has been accomplished through the covert actions of US corporate-intelligence operatives, as Stephen Kinzer has documented in Overthrow (Henry Holt & Co., 2006). John Perkins gave us an insider's view of the process in Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (Plume, 2004).

There is a script. Twentieth century corporate-intelligence leaders have learned from and expanded upon the tactics of their forebears. They utilize modern technology (especially the press and news media in all their forms and popular culture outlets) implant negative emotional memories that further their ends and conceal their machinations. Greed and fear make the machine work.

A picture is worth a thousand words, and motion pictures are a thousand times more powerful than a thousand words. Modern architects of governmental overthrow know this and use motion pictures to implant unhealthy emotional memories. Outrage over and opposition to any motion pictures that compete by creating alternative (healthy) emotional memories is as predictable as it is virulent. Hitler and Goebbels understood this better than most and applied their understanding to devastating effect on the people of Germany and elsewhere, preparing their minds for the final solution long before its implementation was obvious and undeniable. Emotional memories trumped cognitive memories then, as they always do.

Titans of industry, those committed architects of governmental restructuring based on the acquisition, preservation and controlled exploitation of other peoples' resources have been thriving in the US since the late 1800's. Their need to create strong, enduring negative emotional memories to further their ends has never diminished. They have always used the tools available to them and the learning curve has persisted as it always does, with new tools being brought into service as soon as they become available. Kermit Roosevelt (son of the Rough Rider himself) spoke softly, carried a big economic stick, and used it with great success for American oil interests in the Middle East in the 1940's. The ranks of unprincipled liars, cheats and scoundrels (so-called “Economic Hit Men”) have been swelling ever since, fertilized increasingly by government intelligence agencies operating their own war machines and underground economies with the tacit (if not overt) approval of elected officials. Greed and fear continue to make the world go ‘round.

In 1963, the inevitable happened. Our own government lost control over its plotters of change in foreign governments. They turned their tactics against our own leaders and against our own people. It's worked for the past fifty years, and the manipulators of unhealthy emotional memories (nobody can ever really know the truth, nobody can really be trusted because everybody is out for themselves, a bad end awaits anyone who causes trouble, the future could be much worse, you have nothing to fear from monitoring if you have nothing to hide, etc) mean to keep it that way.

In the last fifty years, as the threads of the Kennedy assassination cover-up started to unravel, renewed efforts were made to create reinforcing negative emotional memories to sustain the old ones. New books and motion pictures emerged, filled with unhealthy emotional memories. They pandered to the same dismal, pathetic, pessimistic views of ourselves and our future – saying things like: “It could be so much worse….” How we responded to this has determined the path of our country, just as it determined the future of every other overthrown government for the past 100 years. That path has been downhill.

There is new hope today, because we have some things that didn't exist before -- the internet and digital technology -- but knowledge isn't enough. It takes strong healthy emotional memories to pursue and achieve the healthy changes that we need. Healthy emotional memories are created by the presentation of simple observations that are emotionally compelling and healthy. Some examples include: We can take the action necessary to fix our situation without compromising our Constitution. We can honor it by restoring power to those we elected and stop allowing secret abuses of it. We will strive to honor and practice, truth and justice. If we have gone astray in the past we will correct our course and move forward confidently, not secretively. Hypocrisy, deceit and greed will not be encouraged by rewarding it.

The corporate-intelligence community that persists in creating unhealthy emotional memories has to be smashed into 1,000 pieces, as President Kennedy threatened to do after the Bay of Pigs fiasco. He was seduced by the allure of secret intelligence and James Bond, but he bristled at being cast in the role of a puppet (that is the only role permitted by the corporate-intelligence community for elected officials). He wanted to rule, and he thought he could. Regrettably, he told his opponents "I'm going to knock you out in the 10th round" and they knocked him out in the seventh.

Hindsight is 20/20, but we have to open our eyes. The evidence is indisputable. The Zapruder film has been unequivocally unmasked as an edited record of the events in Dealey Plaza where Kennedy was killed in 1963. You can find some of the scientific proof of these edits (more is coming to light as new researchers study the film's frames) at http://assassinationscience.com/johncostella/jfk/intro. No "lone nut" could do the editing that was finally discovered 48 years later when technology finally caught up with the perpetrators. Only the intelligence community and those responsible for President Kennedy's security could have done this editing -- to conceal their involvement in the crime and prevent the smashing of their organization into 1,000 pieces. Recently released recordings of in-flight conversations aboard Air Force One as it returned to Washington document more holes in the scheme to murder the President that has been successful only by the thinnest of margins, and that margin is constantly eroding. Kennedy's assassination and the doctoring of the evidence was so much more than "a mafia hit." The edits of the Zapruder film prove it unequivocally. Those who play the "mafia hit" card are missing the fact that the deck is stacked.

We desperately need leaders who have the courage to take government funding away from the occult corporate-intelligence war making machine. It cannot be allowed to run toward goals that violate our Constitution. We have to rein in and sever the tentacles that have spread out for the past 100 years that are threatening our own nation's vitality and survival. The roots of the CIA were created to help the President get untainted information during a World War, and those roots should have been cut down drastically at the end of the war, as President Truman ashamedly admitted after Kennedy was assassinated.

Instead, they have grown, spread and metastasized into the most pervasive, intrusive and perverted thing imaginable in the body of the world. This cult of corporate-intelligence blinds us to the unscrupulous profiteers of foreign and domestic strife in our midst until their misdeeds require such enormous "bail-outs" that future generations are maimed and kept in a state of fear that is ever more paralyzing and from which no escape seems possible but in which greater sacrifices, harder work and closer monitoring is required. Only a tiny portion of the population is "insulated" from such deprivations by their connections to the perpetrators. Eventually even they will fall, because a system so selfish and exploitive inevitably feeds on itself, but that is certainly no consolation for the prey today.

We need to recognize that intelligence agencies and their corporate collaborators in the US have rationalized, justified and perpetrated the assassination of elected foreign leaders for over 100 years -- and that domestic leaders have been their targets too. We have to recognize the harm that their predatory covert homicidal practices has done to America’s reputation in the world.

It won't matter who we elect in 2012 or thereafter if they shrink away from the abyss of the Kennedy assassination and its aftermath. That will continue to fertilize an unspeakable cult of corporate coercion, subversion and perversion of our constitutional republic's ideals. The members of that cult are "the outsiders" who believe that sitting in perpetual grammar school is the vision of the future best suited for the rest of us. For the past 100 years, schools in America have been primarily responsible for manufacturing citizens who are incapable of weighing costs and benefits, unable to make thoughtful decisions after deliberating facts (that takes time), and who seek only the most superficial means of showing their adequacy: getting the right answers on tests and moving up to the next grade every year. John Taylor Gatto’s books, especially An Underground History of Education in America (Oxford Village Press, 2006) document the devastation wrought by the corporate-intelligence interests that have insinuated themselves into the school business and effectively hijacked the future of the American people.

So what can we do? Well, we can learn. The last 50 years of US history can show us the way out.

First and foremost, we must learn not to run to a fight. We rushed to judgment in 1964 under the pretense of avoiding a global nuclear holocaust, preventing World War III, and other such imagined catastrophes and concluded that a "lone nut" killed the President of the United States. Good, honest people were terrified and willingly assisted in the cover-up of the crime because they were rushed to the conclusion that, to do anything else would be too dangerous for the country or to themselves. They were threatened with court martial (anyone in the military knows how utterly devastating that would be), exposure of their indiscretions by a corrupt and malevolent FBI whose director called his office “the seat of government,” or killed outright as so many have been. Still, many have talked. Their stories were unpublished and unreported, or vigorously discredited, by the mainstream media “assets” of the corporate-intelligence cult. But healthy emotional memories persist and continue to fuel the urge that almost all of have: to tell the truth. There are more outlets for the truth now than ever before, as long as the Internet remains freely accessible. Imagine the power of a people who know the truth and have enough healthy emotional memories to put that knowledge to good use….

Whenever a governmental agency says "we must do this NOW because to think about it anymore, or to waste any more time would be courting disaster" we should fight the urge to comply. The misguided "search for weapons of mass destruction" that occurred a decade or so ago would not have been launched if we had resisted the urge to "run to a fight." The misguided "bailout" of fabulously wealthy individuals whose fortunes were made by exploiting the naivety of others would not have been made if we had insisted upon taking the time necessary to weigh options, consider costs and benefits rationally and objectively, and made decision as to where and how to intervene thoughtfully, rather than on the basis of ignorant bliss as the problem was growing or manufactured fear as the evidence seemingly exploded into view. Congress reacted to manufactured fear in 1964 in founding the Warren Commission to suppress independent investigations of the Kennedy assassination. It happened again in 1990 to justify going to war in Iraq. In 2008 when fabulously wealthy and comparably amoral thieves had failed to run their businesses responsibly for decades, taxpayers were hit with a bum's rush and gave away $700 Billion dollars to save the US economy. It won't be nearly enough of course, because the outsiders remain in charge here.

Prescient author Michael Crighton, in State of Fear (Harper Collins, 2004) argued for removing politics from science and used global warming and real-life historical examples in the appendices to make this argument. In a 2003 speech at the California Institute of Technology he expressed his concern about what he considered the "emerging crisis in the whole enterprise of science—namely the increasingly uneasy relationship between hard science and public policy." By focusing on the controversy over global warming, his real message has been successfully obscured. Children are no longer taught "the scientific method" in school and are rendered defenseless against false claims about virtually everything as a result, from the fields of nutrition and product safety, to the need for (and the effectiveness of) government intervention in education, economics or disaster relief.

It has become painfully obvious that modern schools exist primarily for the benefit of their union members and that the education of students is at best, an accident. If children are not taught how to approach problem-solving effectively, and do not acquire the foundation skills of reading, coherent writing and arithmetic reasoning, they cannot teach others to do these things. The outsiders remain protected. That is why the foundering of public schooling in America has been progressing incessantly for the past 100 years and why we have finally raised a generation that cannot expect to have a higher standard of living than its parents. They understand that they need and deserve government assistance, that entrepreneurs are “workaholics,” and that their attention is supposed to be captured by things, not self-directed.

President Eisenhower in his 1961 farewell address warned: "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist." Later in that same speech, Eisenhower said: "Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society's future, we -- you and I, and our government -- must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow." That Congress has failed our children and mortgaged their financial future in a fast-buck "bailout" scheme of grotesque proportions is an incontrovertible fact. They ran to a fight.

Finally, former President Truman warned us on December 22, 1963 in the Washington Post about the monster that the CIA had become through its covert operations capability that he had absolutely never intended it to have. He wrote: "I think it has become necessary to take another look at the purpose and operations of our Central Intelligence Agency—CIA. At least, I would like to submit here the original reason why I thought it necessary to organize this Agency during my Administration, what I expected it to do and how it was to operate as an arm of the President. .... But there are now some searching questions that need to be answered. I, therefore, would like to see the CIA be restored to its original assignment as the intelligence arm of the President, and that whatever else it can properly perform in that special field—and that its operational duties be terminated or properly used elsewhere."

As the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination approaches, we can learn from history and do what is necessary to save our country, or we can ignore it as students of "Social Studies" in grammar school are supposed to. We need get out of grammar school -- and stay out -- no matter how much other people want to keep us in.

Steve Kossor

Edited March 12, 2012 by Steven Kossor

[Guest]

I am actually shocked that nobody read or replied to this. It’s a very eloquent essay and of real value here in my opinion. I have quite a bit to add later.  I’ve been touching upon much of this on another thread, I am amazed that so many look at the JFKA as if its an isolated historical event, with no bearing on anything that’s happened before or after it. Aside from the education system conditioning us, I do believe certain individuals have very analytical minds and see patterns easily, whereas most people struggle with that. 
 

I’ll come back to you this week with my thoughts/analysis. 

[Guest]

 

Have you read: "The Politics of Obedience" by Etienne de La Boetie? It's almost a 500 year old book by a French magistrate. He outlines that all power sits in 'consent', if the public do not 'consent', then no matter how powerful one man becomes or one government, they are left powerless if the public choose not to obey. It seems to me the only way to end servitude and tyranny is to do exactly that. 

We are seeing this phenomenon in society where fear via propaganda is used to create chaos and hysteria in the minds of the masses, in turn the masses are looking toward the great father figure (government) to save them. Of course by design government manufactures problems that the public needs saving from to push ever increasingly draconian policy which takes away freedoms and liberties. 

Regarding your words about motion pictures, I see the direct mediums to facilitate this as; public announcements, government actions, advertising campaigns, producing data to support policy. I see the indirect or subliminal as: The school curriculum, music, film, books, TV programming, radio, with news outlets and the mass media being the most effective and prominent. Then you have the censorship, passing laws under the guise of national security to reduce the rights or the individual. I see big tech platforms doing the censoring for government, under the guise of being 'woke' but, actually assisting in pushing through government policy and sharing all their data with the Pentagon. Googles role in stifling dissent using algorithms and methods to hide impartial content from search results. Yasha Levine wrote a great book about the beginnings of some of these silicon valley tech giants, receiving help from DARPA and providing seed money for these firms to perform the biggest data capture in history, creating a file on every living person. My background is marketing & PR, I've read everything I can lay my hands on by Bernays, there is no difference between selling products and ideas. 

I feel like the trick of our time is 'compassion', almost everything government or big corporations would like public support for, all they need to do is align their campaign with a compassionate cause or things that trigger emotions. Public consent is achieved almost instantly. The present political and social issues such as race, gender, equality etc are just a means to fulfil an agenda. How dumb are we all to believe that politicians and corporations care about the individual?! I see so much 'divide and rule' strategy used on western populations. Surely the end goal is to erase history, to have every human as similar as possible, totally distracted and completely compliant, like sheep following the shepherd. Despite being appalled by what humans are doing to the planet, I actually think 'climate change' is being used as one of the biggest tools to achieve this. I've looked at how the data is collected and just like anything else today in science, its being bent and by many of the people who made fortunes from the fossil fuels and knowingly harming the planet. It isn't making amends or guilt that is driving them, it's more wealth and control. 

You touched upon "timidity" and I thought I'd share RFK's speech in South Africa: 

"There is," said an Italian philosopher, "nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things." Yet this is the measure of the task of your generation and the road is strewn with many dangers.

First is the danger of futility; the belief there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world's ills – against misery, against ignorance, or injustice and violence. Yet many of the world's great movements, of thought and action, have flowed from the work of a single man. A young monk began the Protestant reformation, a young general extended an empire from Macedonia to the borders of the earth, and a young woman reclaimed the territory of France. It was a young Italian explorer who discovered the New World, and 32 year old Thomas Jefferson who proclaimed that all men are created equal. "Give me a place to stand," said Archimedes, "and I will move the world." These men moved the world, and so can we all. Few will have the greatness to bend history; but each of us can work to change a small portion of the events, and in the total of all these acts will be written the history of this generation. Thousands of Peace Corps volunteers are making a difference in the isolated villages and the city slums of dozens of countries. Thousands of unknown men and women in Europe resisted the occupation of the Nazis and many died, but all added to the ultimate strength and freedom of their countries. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage such as these that the belief that human history is thus shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

"If Athens shall appear great to you," said Pericles, "consider then that her glories were purchased by valiant men, and by men who learned their duty." That is the source of all greatness in all societies, and it is the key to progress in our own time.

The second danger is that of expediency; of those who say that hopes and beliefs must bend before immediate necessities. Of course if we must act effectively we must deal with the world as it is. We must get things done. But if there was one thing that President Kennedy stood for that touched the most profound feeling of young people across the world, it was the belief that idealism, high aspiration and deep convictions are not incompatible with the most practical and efficient of programs – that there is no basic inconsistency between ideals and realistic possibilities – no separation between the deepest desires of heart and of mind and the rational application of human effort to human problems. It is not realistic or hard-headed to solve problems and take action unguided by ultimate moral aims and values, although we all know some who claim that it is so. In my judgement, it is thoughtless folly. For it ignores the realities of human faith and of passion and of belief; forces ultimately more powerful than all the calculations of our economists or of our generals. Of course to adhere to standards, to idealism, to vision in the face of immediate dangers takes great courage and takes self-confidence. But we also know that only those who dare to fail greatly, can ever achieve greatly.

It is this new idealism which is also, I believe, the common heritage of a generation which has learned that while efficiency can lead to the camps at Auschwitz, or the streets of Budapest, only the ideals of humanity and love can climb the hills of the Acropolis.

A third danger is timidity. Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change the world which yields most painfully to change. Aristotle tells us "At the Olympic games it is not the finest or the strongest men who are crowned, but those who enter the lists. . .so too in the life of the honorable and the good it is they who act rightly who win the prize." I believe that in this generation those with the courage to enter the conflict will find themselves with companions in every corner of the world.

For the fortunate amongst us, the fourth danger is comfort; the temptation to follow the easy and familiar path of personal ambition and financial success so grandly spread before those who have the privilege of an education. But that is not the road history has marked out for us. There is a Chinese curse which says "May he live in interesting times." Like it or not, we live in interesting times. They are times of danger and uncertainty; but they are also the most creative of any time in the history of mankind. And everyone here will ultimately be judged - will ultimately judge himself – on the effort he has contributed to building a new world society and the extent to which his ideals and goals have shaped that effort.

So we part, I to my country and you to remain. We are – if a man of forty can claim the privilege – fellow members of the world's largest younger generation. Each of us have our own work to do. I know at times you must feel very alone with your problems and with your difficulties. But I want to say how impressed I am with what you stand for and for the effort you are making; and I say this not just for myself, but men and women all over the world. And I hope you will often take heart from the knowledge that you are joined with your fellow young people in every land, they struggling with their problems and you with yours, but all joined in a common purpose; that, like the young people of my own country and of every country that I have visited, you are all in many ways more closely united to the brothers of your time than to the older generation in any of these nations; you are determined to build a better future. President Kennedy was speaking to the young people of America, but beyond them to young people everywhere, when he said "The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it – and the glow from that fire can truly light the world."

And, he added, "With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth and lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God's work must truly be our own."

https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jfk/the-kennedy-family/robert-f-kennedy/robert-f-kennedy-speeches/day-of-affirmation-address-university-of-capetown-capetown-south-africa-june-6-1966

It's interesting that in June, 1966 he was prescient enough to outline timidity, futility, expediency and temptation to follow the familiar and easy path. 

To anyone who thought Biometric ID's were a conspiracy theory, well the UK government has been trailing them for 8 months but, they call them vaccine passports instead. Our UK NHS messaged me last month to ask me to consent to my own personal medical records being shared/sold t third party companies. That's basically the consent for the vaccine passports and an innumerable amount of wealth to be generated from peoples health data, we'll be sold to and marketed to based on our insecurities around health. It's also another piece of the 'social credit scoring' system that's accelerating alarmingly in China. We're so asleep with our entertainment and endless supply of meaningless pleasures that we don't even see this coming. 

Trans-humanism is around the corner, Musk is putting his Neurolink microchips in Motor-Neurone sufferers brains but, he openly admits this will be the future for everyones brains and that are mobile phones will effectively be inside us, working in synergy with our bodies. Now the Alexa-plebs will say "that's fantastic, pre-order me one now". Nobody sees anything wrong with corporations or governments having a chip in citizens brains or the propensity for misuse and control. We're headed for this two tier society where they'll be the 'normies' and the 'elites', one will be able to live virtually forever, having health upgrades and mind upgrades, the other will be like a dumb pet in captivity. 

Kinzer is an interesting writer, I am just reading his book about America's mad scientist, the head of the MK Ultra mind control program, Sidney Gottlieb "Poisoner in Chief". 

I have a few videos for anyone else reading this thread who hasn't got a clue what we are talking about, They are pretty easy to understand. 

 

Edited May 30, 2021 by Chris Barnard

[Guest]

 

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[Benjamin Cole]

15 hours ago, Chris Barnard said:

I am actually shocked that nobody read or replied to this. It’s a very eloquent essay and of real value here in my opinion. I have quite a bit to add later.  I’ve been touching upon much of this on another thread, I am amazed that so many look at the JFKA as if its an isolated historical event, with no bearing on anything that’s happened before or after it. Aside from the education system conditioning us, I do believe certain individuals have very analytical minds and see patterns easily, whereas most people struggle with that. 
 

I’ll come back to you this week with my thoughts/analysis. 

The movie "1984" sums it up nicely as well. There are dangerous subversives to hunt down and extinguish, and there are constant foreign threats and wars. 

This pattern repeats; the names change. 

[Guest]

28 minutes ago, Benjamin Cole said:

The movie "1984" sums it up nicely as well. There are dangerous subversives to hunt down and extinguish, and there are constant foreign threats and wars. 

This pattern repeats; the names change. 

That's right, the same MO, the players change. 

[Steven Kossor]

Chris, thanks so much for resurrecting my essay from 2012.  I hope the updated version from 2018 that Greg Burnham posted on his website becomes available again.  We seem to have been reading many of the same books!  If you haven't examined Chris Wylie's book Mindf*ck about Cambridge Associates and the orchestration of the 2016 US Presidential election and Brexit vote in the UK, you should definitely check it out.  The extent to which people are suggestible is wildly under-estimated by the general public.  I've had over 100 hours of training in clinical hypnosis technology and when you combine that awareness with the ability to selectively target minds that are exquisitely vulnerable to subtle psychological persuasion, you will realize exactly how powerful Facebook and Twitter are in the realm of consensus-building and driving the behavior of targeted individuals toward particular actions.  Trump was more of a "trojan horse" for the people who orchestrated his run for the Presidency and his legacy of Supreme Court appointments and other bureaucratic activities was the true purpose and value of his Presidency, after all is said and done.  We were played by those people and more than a few of us were swayed in critical decision making at a specific point in time to put him over the top and into office.  That play will certainly happen again and again in the future (the past is the best predictor of the future, after all).  I am thankful to find myself among the JFK research community and deeply appreciate the extent to which people have found my perspective and analyses to be helpful!  Best wishes always!!!

[W. Niederhut]

9 hours ago, Chris Barnard said:

 

Chris,

      Interesting essay by Steven Kossor, and this related material that you have posted about propaganda and mass delusions in the modern world.  It's an area that I have been very interested in recent years-- especially since the advent of the Bush/Cheney/PNAC "War on Terror" in 2001.  Since then, I have studied the work of Sigmund Freud's nephew, Edward Bernays-- the God Father of modern propaganda-- and also Jacques Ellul.

      I have a few thoughts to share about Kossor's essay on societal trauma, PTSD, and about Dostoevsky, in particular.

      I should preface this by mentioning that I'm a psychiatrist trained in psychoanalytic therapy, with a special interest in the treatment of PTSD, and also a late life convert from agnosticism to the "White" Russian Orthodox Church, (ROCOR) as it existed in Russia (and in Western Europe, Australia, and North America) prior to being taken over by the NKVD/KGB/FSB after 1917.  Dostoevsky has been my favorite writer since my teen years, but I never fully understood his work prior to immersing myself in the mystical theology and praxis of the Russian Orthodox Church during the past quarter century.

       Regarding societal trauma and PTSD, I see parallels with the diagnosis and treatment of PTSD in individuals.  Freud accurately described a process of, "remembering, repeating, and working through," in recovery from trauma-- although, unfortunately, his own theories about imagined childhood sexual abuse were fatally flawed.  

       A crucial first step in recovery from PTSD is the accurate recall of history.  This is why, on a societal level, the work of Oliver Stone and the JFK assassination "truthers" is so important!   How can we accurately "work through" societal traumas if we cannot even recall what actually happened-- if we cannot remember our true history?!  So, historians, in a sense, are therapists for societal PTSD.

       In the case of individuals, there are many impediments to remembering and recovering traumatic memories.  People defend against the emotional pain of remembering through repression, dissociation and denial.

       On a societal level, our tendency to avoid remembering and working through trauma is exacerbated by the denial and erasure of history by corporate and state propaganda.   Your posts get at this aspect of societal denial, myth, and mass delusions.

       As for Dostoevsky, his novel Demons, and much of his work after his Siberian exile, deals with psychological aspects of evil, as described.  But Dostoevsky was also concerned about metaphysical evil and the Russian Orthodox concept of prelest -- a kind of demonic spiritual delusion described commonly in the Orthodox monastic literature. (In his later years Dostoevsky sought spiritual direction from the clairvoyant Russian staretz, Amvrossy, at the Optina Monastery.) 

      Dostoevsky is thought of as an early existentialists, because he was concerned about the fate of post-Christian European society.   In the Brothers Karamazov, his modern intellectual character, Ivan Karamazov, famously asks, "If God is dead, will all things become lawful?"  Similarly, his novel, Demons, deals the advent of modern, atheistic, revolutionary beliefs in a traditional Russian community.  And his concerns were truly prophetic.  After 1917, Russian Orthodox monasteries like Solovki were turned into concentration camps, and the Soviet state perpetrated the worst genocide in human history.

      That genocidal chapter of Soviet history was largely "untold" in Western Europe and the U.S. until Solzhenitsyn's work was eventually published.  But the history of the widespread persecution and destruction of the Russian Orthodox Church by the atheistic Leninist/Stalinist state remains largely untold to this day.

      Instead, we have a paradigmatic Western historical narrative today which is largely antithetical to Dostoevsky's worldview.   Most modern intellectuals believe that religion is a source of evil-- the cause of war, strife, etc.  Obviously, this is true in many instances, but not all.  IMO, some world religions have provided a framework for moral order -- Confuscianism, Taoism, Buddhism, and Eastern Christianity-- that has not been replaced by Marxist/Leninist of fascist ideology.

      How many modern intellectuals know that the worst genocides in human history -- the Soviet, N-a-z-i, Maoist, and Khmer Rouge -- were all perpetrated by atheists?

       

Edited May 30, 2021 by W. Niederhut

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Steven Kossor said:

Chris, thanks so much for resurrecting my essay from 2012.  I hope the updated version from 2018 that Greg Burnham posted on his website becomes available again.  We seem to have been reading many of the same books!  If you haven't examined Chris Wylie's book Mindf*ck about Cambridge Associates and the orchestration of the 2016 US Presidential election and Brexit vote in the UK, you should definitely check it out.  The extent to which people are suggestible is wildly under-estimated by the general public.  I've had over 100 hours of training in clinical hypnosis technology and when you combine that awareness with the ability to selectively target minds that are exquisitely vulnerable to subtle psychological persuasion, you will realize exactly how powerful Facebook and Twitter are in the realm of consensus-building and driving the behavior of targeted individuals toward particular actions.  Trump was more of a "trojan horse" for the people who orchestrated his run for the Presidency and his legacy of Supreme Court appointments and other bureaucratic activities was the true purpose and value of his Presidency, after all is said and done.  We were played by those people and more than a few of us were swayed in critical decision making at a specific point in time to put him over the top and into office.  That play will certainly happen again and again in the future (the past is the best predictor of the future, after all).  I am thankful to find myself among the JFK research community and deeply appreciate the extent to which people have found my perspective and analyses to be helpful!  Best wishes always!!!

You’re most welcome. This is a component that is ever present in many aspects of the JFKA and cover up, so psychology should be present. 
 

- I did follow the Cambridge Analytica story and watched an or so of documentary on it. What they were doing worked a charm via Facebook in both campaigns. With the short attention spans of the distracted populous today, they now only read headlines, so the side column on Facebook or the way news apps present headlines is very effective. When you click on the articles, they headline is often not exactly genuinely portraying the whole article. When you then read the article the sources are often “he said/she said”, it really often amounts to grey propaganda. Of course nobody checks sources, who has time when in this world of so much entertainment and stimulating substances?! 

- My take on Trump is that he turned out to do his own thing here and there but, he was always conscious that he needed more allies than enemies in big business to survive. He irked the military at times but, respected the CIA at others. He irked some of the big tech firms but, kept a lot of Wall Street happy (pre-covid). In conclusion I think he was not a globalist at all but, not much help either, now that the dust has settled. We had no wars which is good. Though the bombing of Asad’s forces based on a dubious video of children crying being sprayed with water in a hospital (represented as being treated for a chemical weapons attack) was probably a low point. He was deceived or didn’t care.  It was interesting he kept his own private security throughout his presidency, which ran alongside the SS. My take on his personality is that he has never been accepted by the old money establishment in NY, who look upon him as brash, trashy, or ‘nouveau riche’  and that’s Trumps driving force, rejection. You might say Joseph P Kennedy’s getting black balled by the Porcelain’s at Harvard was the same driving force, instead Joseph P Kennedy still strived for acceptance and bought class, paving the way for his offspring, whereas Trump just doubled down with his show off mentality. Rejection has perhaps been the motivation for many high-achievers, the pain is ever present, that feeling of not being good enough or accepted by those you desire acceptance from. Nobody on the forum agrees with me on Trump, as they vote blue. When things become tribal it’s very difficult to think objectively. My perspective is an outsiders one. I just think it’s Pepsi or Coke, which equals continuity for one class. Most of what we see is theatre. IMHO. 

- The forum is such a great resource, I just hope there is a way that it can be preserved for the future, there is so much information here. 
 

- One question I do have for you, as you’ve had all of these hours of training in hypnosis. What do you think the probability is that Sirhan Sirhan was hypnotised and under hypnosis when he shot at Robert F Kennedy? I don’t know if you’ve researched it but, if so, are there indicators that lead you to conclusions? Even in the linguistics, we refer to the assassinations of JFK and RFK as separate things but, I firmly believe we should look at them together; drawing any parallels. 
 

Thanks

[Steven Kossor]

Lisa Pease's book on Sirhan (A Lie Too Big to Fail) is a definitive treatise that confirms, for me, the fact of his being a recipient of hypnotic treatment.  The connection between JFK and RFK was substantial on many levels, and their deaths share the fingerprints of the same cabal, as far as I can tell.  The common understanding that "people can't be hypnotized to do things that they wouldn't do otherwise" is incorrect in that people can be hypnotized to have private perceptions of things that lead them to do things that would otherwise be repugnant to them.  The clearest brief example is the hypnotized person taking a big bite of an onion and reporting that the "apple" tastes delicious and sweet.  Based on descriptions of Sirhan's behavior during the shooting, and his subsequent lack of coherent memories of it, it appears that he was operating on the basis of some post-hypnotic suggestion (his examiners over the years have reportedly found him to be an extraordinarily responsive hypnotic subject).  Like Lee Oswald, he was "the right person for the job" because of his own personal attributes and interests (which were expertly manipulated by persons with substantial skills and resources in the art of strategic deception).  Your video selections from the Academy of Ideas are terrific resources!  The thoughtful review of my essay by Dr. Niederhut was much appreciated as well.  Thanks!!!

[Guest]

13 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

Chris,

      Interesting essay by Steven Kossor, and this related material that you have posted about propaganda and mass delusions in the modern world.  It's an area that I have been very interested in recent years-- especially since the advent of the Bush/Cheney/PNAC "War on Terror" in 2001.  Since then, I have studied the work of Sigmund Freud's nephew, Edward Bernays-- the God Father of modern propaganda-- and also Jacques Ellul.

      I have a few thoughts to share about Kossor's essay on societal trauma, PTSD, and about Dostoevsky, in particular.

      I should preface this by mentioning that I'm a psychiatrist trained in psychoanalytic therapy, with a special interest in the treatment of PTSD, and also a late life convert from agnosticism to the "White" Russian Orthodox Church, (ROCOR) as it existed in Russia (and in Western Europe, Australia, and North America) prior to being taken over by the NKVD/KGB/FSB after 1917.  Dostoevsky has been my favorite writer since my teen years, but I never fully understood his work prior to immersing myself in the mystical theology and praxis of the Russian Orthodox Church during the past quarter century.

       Regarding societal trauma and PTSD, I see parallels with the diagnosis and treatment of PTSD in individuals.  Freud accurately described a process of, "remembering, repeating, and working through" in recovery from trauma-- although, unfortunately, his own theories about imagined childhood sexual abuse were fatally flawed.  

       An crucial stage in recovery from PTSD is the accurate recall of trauma.  This is why, on a societal level, the work of Oliver Stone and the JFK assassination "truthers" is so important!

       How can we accurately "work through" societal traumas if we cannot even recall what actually happened-- if we cannot remember our true history?!

       In the case of individuals, there are many impediments to remembering and recovering traumatic memories.  People defend against the emotional pain of remembering-- through dissociation and denial.

       On a societal level, our tendency to avoid remembering and working through trauma is exacerbated by the denial and erasure of history by corporate and state propaganda.   Your posts get at this aspect of societal denial, myth, and mass delusions.

       As for Dostoevsky, his novel Demons, and much of his work after his Siberian exile, deals with psychological aspects of evil, as described.  But Dostoevsky was also concerned about metaphysical evil and the Russian Orthodox concept of prelest -- a kind of demonic spiritual delusion described commonly in the Orthodox monastic literature. (In his later years Dostoevsky sought spiritual direction from the clairvoyant Russian staretz, Amvrossy, at the Optina Monastery.) 

      Dostoevsky is thought of as an early existentialists, because he was concerned about the fate of post-Christian European society.   In the Brothers Karamazov, his modern intellectual character, Ivan Karamazov, famously asks, "If God is dead, will all things become lawful?"  Similarly, his novel, Demons, deals the advent of modern, atheistic, revolutionary beliefs in a traditional Russian community.  And his concerns were truly prophetic.  After 1917, Russian Orthodox monasteries like Solovki were turned into concentration camps, and the Soviet state perpetrated the worst genocide in human history.

      That genocidal chapter of Soviet history was largely "untold" in Western Europe and the U.S. until Solzhenitsyn's work was eventually published.  But the history of the widespread persecution and destruction of the Russian Orthodox Church by the atheistic Leninist/Stalinist state remains largely untold to this day.

      Instead, we have a paradigmatic Western historical narrative today which is largely antithetical to Dostoevsky's worldview.

      How many modern intellectuals know that the worst genocides in human history -- the Soviet, poopoo, Maoist, Khmer Rouge -- were all perpetrated by atheists?

       

@W. Niederhut Thank you, that’s a fascinating post, I have no doubt Steven  will have some input on the medical side. It was Jordan Peterson who exposed me to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and the worst atrocities of the 20th century. I have watched so many of his lectures online and it’s really him I have to thank for introducing me to psychology, or giving me the appetite to explore it further. Peterson’s favourite writer is also Dostoevsky, he references him frequently. One of Peterson’s strongest messages is warning about the parallels between the western world now and the world that slipped into the most unimaginable tyranny in the 20th century. As Steve referenced on a other thread yesterday; we are moving into an anti-intellectual, anti-science dark age and most people are completely unaware, IMHO because of the effects of propaganda, endless entertainment and substances which trigger dopamine. It was Huxley’s 1958 “Brave New World Revisited” and accompanying media at the time that forewarned of those things putting people in servitude, without them realising it, as distractions would leave them unaware. I listened to one of the above videos pointing out that ancient Rome kept the citizens distracted with alcohol, women and the colosseum, it was like a drug. Then Marx describing religion as the opium of the people, that made great sense to me when thinking about the hardship in bygone eras and the Sunday community meeting and hearing fantastical, inspiring stories, but, on a psychological level the church used fear, whether locally or straight from the Vatican on behalf of an empire. In time schooling could replace that, as Steven and I were talking about yesterday; the book “Weapons of mass instruction” by John Taylor Gatto. I think that society needs some level of conditioning, perhaps along the lines of the 10 commandments, manners, civility etc but, what is going on now is on a whole other level, your are shaping the minds of the most impressionable, and deliberately leaving them without the skills or competencies to enter a world on a level playing field. Some of the architects may use the reasoning that we don’t want wars, a repetition of the tragedies of the 20th century but, that to me is failing to analyse why the world was at war twice (almost 3 times) in the last century and the causes of these atrocities and unimaginable acts. Some would argue that the Prussian education system actually created the environment for your Hitler’s and Stalin’s to rule over a highly compliant, obedient society. To me, we’re actively doing things now to lead us back down that path. 
A side note; almost 500 years ago La Boetie understood clearly that entertainment was used as a means to distract the population from reality. Back then he mentions; plays, farces, spectacles, gladiators, strange beasts, medals, pictures and other such opiates. The whole book is about how the ‘consent’ of the people is achieved, it’s staggering to me he new this back then. 
 

Regarding Freud, Dostoevsky or others who potentially face critique for some of their theories that are now proven to be wrong, I think we should’t be focussing or berating them now, rather society should be celebrating the things they got right. Less than 10 people perhaps are responsible for so much in modern intellectual thinking in this domain, their contribution is profound. I wonder how long it would have taken the human race to work things out if they hadn’t existed. Nietzsche might just be one of the most intelligent people who ever lived but, you hear people saying “but, he went mad”, as if it erases all of his good work. That seems to be a modern trend. People look for a hook and try to wipe people off the face of the earth for one mistake or error, yet their contribution was immense. You’ll never need to point out what Freud or any of these people got wrong to me, I am not scoring points, I am just very grateful that this kind of conversation can go on in a public space, in a reasonable way. It’s very nourishing. Something else Peterson said which struck me is:

“the more you read, the lonelier you become”. 
 

isn’t that true? The percentage of people who’d want to discuss this is so small, it’s highly frustrating when you are reading this stuff, that you have so few to share ideas with. I am fortunate that I also have an inquisitive brother, who doesn’t have the time that I do but, it interests him. I also have one good pal who chain reads philosophy books and we speak every other day about a lot of what we are seeing in the world. 
 

in answer to your question at the end; very few people know and understand that atheists were responsible in this day and age. I went to catholic school, it’s occurred to me that religion had to be removed to carry out the atrocities, because slaughtering and enslaving largely went against the core principals that were taught to children at that impressionable age. In my opinion one form of programming had to be undone to fulfil or realise another. Would the 50-100m dead in the 20th century have still happened if faith had been strong? Probably not, but, in the preceding history we did see faith used as a way to divide peoples and persecute, and so many wars for hundreds of years had people on both sides praying to a god, leaders advising god was with them and committing murder in the belief it was gods will or he was with them. I guess it’s a complicated one. The absence of god, or even a tyrant, created the vacuum for something else. After so long with faith, who would people look to when god is gone, another great father figure. What is unclear is what the human mind was like before religion? Would we have looked toward the strongest or the wisest in the tribe in the same way? I suspect that answer is in the animal kingdom under the topic of dominance hierarchies.  
 

PS I really need to open my laptop and write replies, instead of this tiny phone. 

[Guest]

42 minutes ago, Steven Kossor said:

Lisa Pease's book on Sirhan (A Lie Too Big to Fail) is a definitive treatise that confirms, for me, the fact of his being a recipient of hypnotic treatment.  The connection between JFK and RFK was substantial on many levels, and their deaths share the fingerprints of the same cabal, as far as I can tell.  The common understanding that "people can't be hypnotized to do things that they wouldn't do otherwise" is incorrect in that people can be hypnotized to have private perceptions of things that lead them to do things that would otherwise be repugnant to them.  The clearest brief example is the hypnotized person taking a big bite of an onion and reporting that the "apple" tastes delicious and sweet.  Based on descriptions of Sirhan's behavior during the shooting, and his subsequent lack of coherent memories of it, it appears that he was operating on the basis of some post-hypnotic suggestion (his examiners over the years have reportedly found him to be an extraordinarily responsive hypnotic subject).  Like Lee Oswald, he was "the right person for the job" because of his own personal attributes and interests (which were expertly manipulated by persons with substantial skills and resources in the art of strategic deception).  Your video selections from the Academy of Ideas are terrific resources!  The thoughtful review of my essay by Dr. Niederhut was much appreciated as well.  Thanks!!!

- I read that too, it was a great read and very logical. 

- I think so too, the same architects/planners. 

- I don’t know if in clinical psychology is there is something that explains an individual seeking out and killing someone when it’s against their everyday conscious values but, it seems odd that they could end up doing that and having no memory. 

- That makes sense to be regarding Sirhan.

 

- Have you ever looked at John Hinckley Jr and the shooting of President Reagan? On face value the circumstances seem very different but, the mathematical probability of Hinckley Jr knowing the Vice President, G H Bush personally, a family friend, is a lot to swallow. Strange coincidences do happen but, I did wonder if he is susceptible to hypnotic suggestibility. If I apply my ‘cui bono’ logic, it takes me to the VP. It’d be nice if someone on here had researched that very thoroughly. 
 

- The Academy of Ideas channel is excellent, the videos are bite-size, which helps even those with short attention spans. He is doing well with his 1m subscribers and he deserves every success. I can’t help but feel that just lately with the videos on ‘mass psychosis’ that he is showing his cards, revealing his feelings about what is going on in the world. If he has just identified that is what the public is crying out for, then he us very astute.