The power of Emotional Memories

[Steven Kossor]

There have been a couple of outfits, including Scientology, that have tried to target Hinckley and medication in general for the attempted assassination of Reagan.  I haven't looked into it too deeply, by any means.  It's never a good idea to dismiss seemingly coincidental linkages between victims and perpetrators since most victims knew the people who killed them, right?  I look forward to lots of future conversations since we share similar perspectives and backgrounds!  Best wishes for the future!

[Guest]

@W. Niederhut as you mentioned Aleksandr Solzjenitsyn, I think you’ll find this latest podcast interview between Jordan Peterson and Yeonmi Park (the girl who escaped North Korea) very interesting. @Steven Kossor You’ll see the parallels of group identity / group guilt and where it leads a society. Also where compelled speech takes a country. There is just so much harrowing stuff contained in this interview, it has Peterson in tears, as he is relating it to his extensive studies of communism. What she is saying is almost unimaginable, how a people are psychologically broken down and conditioned and nobody even knows they are living in tyranny. She says: “How do you fight to be free when you don’t know you are a slave?” 

This little girl watched her mother be raped in front of her after they crossed into China, traffickers then sold them for $100 & $300. Her sister, father and mother are all separated from her at 13, she wants to kill herself but, her captor tells her that he’ll try and buy her mother back if she doesn’t kill herself and that thought is all that keeps her alive. The heartbreaking is she went to China for food, left the North Korean state slavery and ended up in China as a slave to an individual. She talks about how they barely survived as children eating grasshoppers and dragonflies for protein, everyone dying of malnutrition, to never know what it’s like to have a full stomach. 💔

She mentions Orwell’s “Animal Farm” and “1984” and how they helped her understand her plight and that everybody was responsible. “He who controls the language controls the thoughts”. 
 

Toward the end when she describes Columbia Uni as teaching her how to be censored again, teaching you how to think, it’s just so upsetting. By the end both of them are crying and I have tears hitting my keyboard. I think you would struggle to watch anything more profound. I watched the 2 hours 11 mins without missing a beat. 
 

if China is propping up North Korea and the west is mimicking China, we are in some very very dark times. 
 

@Paul Brancato @Joe Bauer I am sure you guys might find this interesting too. 

Edited June 1, 2021 by Chris Barnard

[Joe Bauer]

What an incredibly thought provoking thread this is.

[Paul Brancato]

On 5/30/2021 at 11:48 AM, 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.  

       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?

       

Good point, but one might say that any belief system can be used to create mass psychosis, and atheism is a belief system, as are organized religions. I don’t know much about the old Russian Orthodox church you are part of. Since it is Christian, how do you view it as part of that continuum? I’m dimly aware of power struggles within Catholicism and the division between eastern and western groups. Where does your church stand on the questions raised in these videos relating to conformity and non conformity? It seems to me that any belief system which has hierarchal structures is already on the path to perdition, because power hungry sociopathic individuals can manipulate those structures for their own ends.  

[W. Niederhut]

3 hours ago, Paul Brancato said:

Good point, but one might say that any belief system can be used to create mass psychosis, and atheism is a belief system, as are organized religions. I don’t know much about the old Russian Orthodox church you are part of. Since it is Christian, how do you view it as part of that continuum? I’m dimly aware of power struggles within Catholicism and the division between eastern and western groups. Where does your church stand on the questions raised in these videos relating to conformity and non conformity? It seems to me that any belief system which has hierarchal structures is already on the path to perdition, because power hungry sociopathic individuals can manipulate those structures for their own ends.  

 Paul,

       I would have to write an entire book to adequately answer your questions.

      Briefly, I will point out that the Roman Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodox Church were the same ecclesiastical institution for the first 1,000 years of Christian history-- having become the official state religion of the Roman Empire during the reign of Constantine.  The basic Nicean theological doctrines of the Eastern and Western (RC) churches are identical, other than a few post-Schism innovations in the West.

       The Eastern and Western churches split into two separate institutions in 1054 A.D. (the Great Schism.)  Beginning in the 11th century, the Roman Popes established a College of Cardinals and, essentially, organized the Latin RC as an administrative, Papal monarchy.  Hierarchically, this was a change in the West from the administrative organization of the Church of the first millennium, which was always governed by councils of autonomous bishops-- patterned after the Apostolic councils of the first century, as described in St. Luke's Acts of the Apostles.   The Bishop of Rome was, traditionally, considered primus inter pares-- "first among equals" -- in the Church.  And no individual hierarch has ever been considered "infallible" in the (Eastern) Church.  (And, in fact, the doctrine of Papal Infallibility wasn't promulgated by the Vatican until 1871.)

       The genius of Rome (relative to the Hellenistic world of the Eastern Mediterranean) was always administrative and juridical, and administrative organization has been the peculiar forte of the post-Schism Roman Catholic Papacy-- for better or worse.  On the dark side, the post-Schism Papacy sponsored the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the brutal Conquest of Latin America.  (In contrast, war was considered evil in the Orthodox Byzantine Empire.  Even killing someone in battle in defense of the Empire required a year of spiritual penance.)  The peculiar genius of the Greek Orthodox East (including the Russia Empire, which embraced Orthodoxy in the 11th century) has always been philosophical and spiritual, but administratively disorganized compared to the monarchical Roman Church.  The Eastern Orthodox Church has also been fragmented into national and culturally autonomous patriarchates-- at Alexandria, Jerusalem, Antioch, Constantinople, and (later) Belgrade, Sophia, Bucharest, Moscow, etc.

      In Orthodox Christianity, truth is considered a Divine revelation given to the original Apostles of Christ in the first century, and preserved through the Apostolic Succession, and the mystical presence of the Holy Spirit in the Church.

      Is it mass psychosis?  A delusion?  The answer depends on whether the Theophany-- the Divine revelation upon which the Church was established and maintained during the past 2,000 years -- is genuine or illusory.

     If Christianity is based on an illusion, as Freud believed, then Marx was correct in viewing Christianity, like all religions, as a mere "opiate of the masses."  Marx recommended a different paradise-- the illusory "dictatorship of the proletariat."  🤥

    Dostoevsky, in contrast, was a devout Russian Orthodox Christian.  I have visited his flat in St. Petersburg, across the street from the Orthodox Church that he attended in his later years.  (It's now a museum.)  He feared that great evil would result from the destruction of Christianity-- i.e., that, "if God is dead, all things will become lawful."

   That's exactly what happened to Europe in the 20th century.

      

Edited June 2, 2021 by W. Niederhut

[Guest]

I've mentioned the French magistrate Etienne de La Boetie a couple of times in this thread and I have found an audiobook version of his essay/book for free on Youtube. It's just over 2 hours in total (broken into 3 parts), not a long listen but, a very interesting one. How he understood all this almost 500 years ago, and had such a clear outlook, I do not know. 


Part 1

Part 2

 

Part 3

 

[Steven Kossor]

Greg Burnham was able to reconnect the links to the essay I updated at his site in 2018: http://assassinationofjfk.net/emotional-memories/  He's collected a wide array of material there, readers of this thread will probably appreciate his collection of contributions.

I just finished reading The Politics of Obedience and found it to be as thought-provoking as any recent reading I've done.  There really is a terrific depth of knowledge in this thread; so glad to participate!!!!

Steve

[Guest]

@Steven Kossor here are a couple more that I watched recently, which may be nice to add to this collection. 

Edited July 25, 2021 by Chris Barnard

[Benjamin Cole]

As Benjamin Franklin said, if you seek seek security before liberty, soon you will have neither....

[Ron Bulman]

I'd like to go more basic with this thread if I may Steven.  I've told this in part on the forum in other threads before.   May other members forgive my repeating it.  I'll try to be concise. 

I'd just turned seven.  Came home for lunch from school, mother excited, on the phone, radio on.  Back to school.  No one there, except the teacher and she was crying.  Go back home.  No afternoon cartoons, lassie or rin tin tin.  Nor on Saturday morning, not even Roy Rogers.  Even Sunday's religious ones.

But I do remember the funeral, watching it with my parents, asking about the backwards boots.

I think my "emotional" memories influenced my later interest in JFK's death.

It made me wonder why was my teacher crying, no cartoons, the backwards boots, my parents somberness watching the funeral parade.  Which made me eventually wonder, what Really happened after so many questions came to light later in live.    

[Steven Kossor]

There are so many influences that shape a person's outlook and sense of optimism for the future.  It has been widely recognized that our children have become more pessimistic; their beliefs about heroism and the value of risk-taking have become tainted.  When my son was in 5th grade, he had to do a science project, so like most parents I suggested some ideas for an interesting project.  The one he liked best was a sinister black covered box with a hole cut in it a little bigger than a fist.  The project was to show the box to students in the 1st grade and compare their responses to students in the 8th grade when they were told "There is something inside here that may make you uncomfortable.  Will you put your hand into the box?"  The hypothesis was that the younger children would be less likely to put their hand into the black box and that the older children would be more likely to explore the box (a stopwatch was used to measure the delay in sticking the hand into the box), but the exact opposite occurred!  The older children were less willing to explore the box.  The 1st graders hadn't learned to be afraid, but by the time they were in 8th grade, the message had gotten through!  Once courage is subverted, it can't be retrieved or revived, and the society we've created has done a phenomenal job at undermining and subverting courage.  That was the point of my essay on "Emotional Memories" and why I think it's so important to give children "corrective emotional experiences" in their lives that thwart the message of fear and cowardice that are otherwise directed at them in school and the social media in all its forms.  Thanks for your encouragement and I look forward to future helpings of inspirational viewing/reading!!!

[Ron Bulman]

21 minutes ago, Steven Kossor said:

There are so many influences that shape a person's outlook and sense of optimism for the future.  It has been widely recognized that our children have become more pessimistic; their beliefs about heroism and the value of risk-taking have become tainted.  When my son was in 5th grade, he had to do a science project, so like most parents I suggested some ideas for an interesting project.  The one he liked best was a sinister black covered box with a hole cut in it a little bigger than a fist.  The project was to show the box to students in the 1st grade and compare their responses to students in the 8th grade when they were told "There is something inside here that may make you uncomfortable.  Will you put your hand into the box?"  The hypothesis was that the younger children would be less likely to put their hand into the black box and that the older children would be more likely to explore the box (a stopwatch was used to measure the delay in sticking the hand into the box), but the exact opposite occurred!  The older children were less willing to explore the box.  The 1st graders hadn't learned to be afraid, but by the time they were in 8th grade, the message had gotten through!  Once courage is subverted, it can't be retrieved or revived, and the society we've created has done a phenomenal job at undermining and subverting courage.  That was the point of my essay on "Emotional Memories" and why I think it's so important to give children "corrective emotional experiences" in their lives that thwart the message of fear and cowardice that are otherwise directed at them in school and the social media in all its forms.  Thanks for your encouragement and I look forward to future helpings of inspirational viewing/reading!!!

So courage may have been thwarted in the public mind by the Public Execution of the (Peace seeking) leader of the free world, John Fitzgerald Kennedy?

[Guest]

4 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

So courage may have been thwarted in the public mind by the Public Execution of the (Peace seeking) leader of the free world, John Fitzgerald Kennedy?

Yes. I am just reading Psychiatrist Joost Meerloo’s “Rape of the Mind” and the first chapter is discussing the psychological impacts of public burnings, hangings, and tortures. Whilst the crowd often identified with the victim and their plight, the horror they witnessed shaped their own minds, and made a the terror widespread in the public consciousness. In modern times we may think about public stoning in Iran. JFK’s murder was a very public execution. Our subconscious has survival mechanisms and when we think about something that could put us in jeopardy, it alerts us with a feeling of anxiety in the pit of our stomach. 
If we think about politicians after this, who wants to show courage when you might get the open top car ride in Dallas as a result?! 

[David Andrews]

In 1964 I started kindergarten.  One day, the teacher was extolling us on how anyone could grow up to be president.  I wasn't paying much attention.  She asked me suddenly (probably because I had come in with good reading skills), "David, wouldn't you like to grow up to be president?"

"No!" I blurted.  "I might get shot."

A call was made to my mother, asking what values they were teaching me at home.  My mother took it philosophically, educating me to watch my tongue around well-meaning assholes.  Thankfully, no authorities explored my potential trauma, as would happen today.  That would have made it all worse.

Edited July 30, 2021 by David Andrews

[Guest]

5 minutes ago, David Andrews said:

"No!" I blurted.  "I might get shot."

That’s a proper reflex. 

 

6 minutes ago, David Andrews said: