Monday, November 15, 2010

Etiology of Social Dementia - 3

In the first post of this series "Etiology of Social Dementia", we fingered government propaganda, leading to national doublespeak, as one trigger of dementia.

Then in "Etiology of Social Dementia - 2" we focused a bit more, zooming in on government war propaganda as one central trigger.

In the series "Jabber The Whut?" we dissected the issue a bit more, by discussing what is meant by government in the USA, then elaborated by discussing certain triggers of dementia emanating from the MOMCOM realm.

The subtitle of this post today, could easily be: "MOMCOM can fool some of the people all the time, but MOMCOM can't fool all of the people all of the time".

The fundamental subject matter of this post comes from considering the negative, destructive effects that MOMCOM forces on the citizenry by fooling them.

Fooling them with degrees of misrepresentation, called "spin", "propaganda", or "deceit".

When we ask ourselves "where does that type of dementia originate", one obvious answer is "the brain", but where in the brain, and how does it get there in the first place?

Of course, in the abstract, that depends on the type of dementia, i.e., whether it is triggered by a physical injury to some part of the brain, such as blunt force trauma, some chemical toxin, or whether it is triggered by a non-physical, ethereal source (e.g. emotional trauma, and the like).

This post is directed, then, toward ethereal sources that lead to the triggering of dementia of a particular sort.

Quotes from two posts, on other blogs, give us a basis for the remainder of this post:
There is a large amount of data indicating that the amygdala, a particular structure in the brain, is strongly involved during the learning of "conditioned" fear ... distinct neuronal circuits within the central nucleus of the amygdala ... are specifically involved in acquisition and control of behavioural fear responses ... researchers have recently discovered that ... prolonged activation of this defense system may lead to emotional disorders.
(Toxins of Power Blog). Lets narrow that down a bit to the emotional, ethereal dynamic of "trust":
Trust ... plays a key role in economic exchange and politics. In the absence of trust among trading partners, market transactions break down. In the absence of trust in a country's institutions and leaders, political legitimacy breaks down. Much recent evidence indicates that trust contributes to economic, political and social success ...

"If you take a broad enough definition of trust, then it would explain basically all the difference between the per capita income of the United States and Somalia," ventures Steve Knack, a senior economist at the World Bank who has been studying the economics of trust for over a decade. That suggests that trust is worth $12.4 trillion dollars a year to the U.S., which, in case you are wondering, is 99.5% of this country's income ...

The drop in trust, we believe, is a major factor behind the deteriorating economic conditions.
(Washington's Blog). We can easily link dementia to trust, truth, and money, by remembering: those jumping out of buildings during market crashes, the increase in divorces during economic trauma, the surge of suicides in the military, and this statement:
Trauma can be caused by a wide variety of events, but there are a few common aspects. There is frequently a violation of the person's familiar ideas about the world and of their human rights, putting the person in a state of extreme confusion and insecurity. This is also seen when people or institutions, depended on for survival, violate or betray or disillusion the person in some unforeseen way.
(Wikipedia, Psychological Trauma, citing The Harm of Trauma, PDF). You are doin' a heckuva job MOMCOM.

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

4 comments:

  1. There is an interesting story over at Three Quarks Daily that might work as a metaphor, microcosm, or the like for some of the subject matter of this post.

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  2. Here's hoping the Tea Baggers are up to speaking truth to power regarding MOMCOM's pernicious influence, but I'm not holding my breath. If they do nothing more than get a few paltry MOMCOM budget cuts through in what is sure to be an overtly contentious congress I'll think they'll be doing plenty good. Especially since the yellow stripe dems (or should it be yellow stain? Hmm...) don't seem to be up to the task. If the Tea Partiers do nothing else but make some small inroads into challenging MOMCOM budgetary hegemony they will be a success from my point of view, although, once again, I'm certainly not holding my breath on even that small account.

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  3. Dredd,

    I must say, I liked the link to the Three Quarks Daily story as well, although it took me awhile to read it all and appreciate it due to the usual BS of day to day living.

    In my own life, my own "dad" (I must admit that I too am a "bastard child") tried to awkwardly make amends a few years back (he wasn't dying or anything like that, I was merely graduating college at the decidedly awkward age of 46), at which time we both awkwardly realized (him more than me) that we had absolutely ZERO in common after a lifetime apart, besides the "dirty little fact" that we weren't even blood related in the first place. I found the whole experience totally surreal, as he attempted to "bond, father to son" in his timeworn and awkward way, while I in turn merely attempted to relate, drunk to drunk. Needless to say, it ended unremarkably, and I haven't talked to him since. I might add that the story had some extra relevance since my "dad's" dad died from smoking related emphysema and my dad is well on the way to the same fate.

    On a purely cognitive level I'm not even sure what the Three Quarks Daily story (or my own) even meant. On a subjective level, which is where we all actually exist after all, I caught a deeper meaning that I'm not sure I can even capture yet. A certain sense of regret, yet ennui (which I've been feeling A LOT of lately) perhaps; but more than anything, the sense that EVERYTHING that happens lately is TOTALLY and UTTERLY SENSELESS in every sense of the word.

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  4. disaffected,

    The Three Quarks Daily site is non-political, mainly book readers and writers.

    The article cited to used a technique where a subject builds then explodes suddenly at the end into a scenario totally unexpected, at odds with the subject matter in some way, yet also linked at another level.

    This post (Etiology of Social Dememtia - 3) is concerned with the damage that loss of trust can bring to nations, just like it does to individuals, and makes the case that the MOMCOM lie industry alone actually causes economic & psychological damage to the citizenry eventually.

    The toxins of power cause degeneration of those in office over time, especially those who are unaware of its existence.

    That in turn causes what we as aware citizens are experiencing, which you aptly expressed, downstream from a loss of trust in our government ruled from the shadows by MOMCOM.

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