How To Identify The Despotic Minority - 11

Heroes Aplenty

I. Factors Aplenty

One of the "DNA" factors in the despotic minority is denial of global warming and a hatred toward nature.

In the scientific literature this is known as "a heroism that triumphs over nature, perpetuating itself through new immortality ideologies that value material acquisitions and money"  which have become a modernistic religion:

"Because there are few cultures remaining that have not been superseded by larger entities, with tribes becoming townships, cities, states, and nations, we no longer have an “integrated world conception into which we fit ourselves with pure belief and trust” (Becker 1975). Although this might open up the possibility of a utopian, egalitarian, and secular society in which the combined gifts of individuals prevail, what we have in the West is a secular inequality devoid of a shared sense of the sacred and a heroism that triumphs over nature, perpetuating itself through new immortality ideologies that value material acquisitions and money. Lacking in heroism, these immortality ideologies come up empty or even inspire guilt. The irony of Western materialism is that wealth beyond the point of basic material comfort does not make people happy (Gilbert 2005)."
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[That "heroism" is seen as savior that saves humanity from nature, but like other religions, it morphs into a modernistic religion that fractures a society:]

"Traditionally, technology consolidates power within a society and  exacerbates inequity. What is interesting about the new information  technologies is that they do both: They consolidate power with patents, exclusive intellectual capital, and expensive tools, and they distribute power through open source technologies and open communication networks. As such, they promote material segregation  while at the same time providing a relatively open network within which  ideological communities can function. Photo galleries, forums,  listserves, Google groups, and new social networking tools like MySpace,  Facebook, and Second Life present mechanisms for growing online  communities. In this new virtual world, frequent interaction is easy to  achieve, and the topics around which free choice interaction occurs can  be very focused and specific, suggesting that large social networks function like smaller ideological communities once did in the real  world."
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"Technocracy itself is an immortality ideology that, although it is coupled with materialism, has as part of its makeup an element of the magical and a belief that new tools and innovations provide solutions to both the small day-to-day problems of life and the larger problems of human happiness and mortality. Technology is entrancing, and, functionally, technologists become creators of magic and the wizards of today, claiming the same authority over technology that doctors claim over human health or shamans over the cursed. This has always been so, going back to ancestral peoples who learned to use fire, tools, wind, and wheels. Even in subsistence societies, technology has a greater impact on a variety of sociological variables than do supernatural or religious beliefs (Nolan and Lenski 1996).
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Even in subsistence societies, technology has a greater impact on a variety of sociological variables than do supernatural or religious beliefs (Nolan and Lenski 1996)."

(The Machine Religion, quoting Dickinson, J. L., Ecology and Society 14, 2009 , emphasis added). Let me repeat what I said in that post: "These observations explain why a minority of participants in the (it is said) 'greatest, richest, and militarily most powerful nation' of current civilization can take control of power."

II. Despotic Factors

And that is the final essence of the despotic minority that forms and destroys the civilization through primitive and pervasive fear:

But always TCS is primarily the population segment diagnosed as a despotic minority which the once most-often-quoted historian, Toynbee, fingered as one of the members of the trinity of extinction that he found in all civilizations that were about to become very successful at becoming extinct:

That something is the dementia that produces and ends up in suicide:

"In other words, a society does not ever die 'from natural causes', but always dies from suicide or murder --- and nearly always from the former, as this chapter has shown."

(A Study of History, by Arnold J. Toynbee). There is no cure for the final symptom of that group dementia, there is only prevention by way of avoiding it altogether in the first place.

The components of that group dementia were pointed out in an encyclopedia piece concerning that historian quoted above:

"In the Study Toynbee examined the rise and fall of 26 civilizations in the course of human history, and he concluded that they rose by responding successfully to challenges under the leadership of creative minorities composed of elite leaders. Civilizations declined when their leaders stopped responding creatively, and the civilizations then sank owing to the sins of nationalism, militarism, and the tyranny of a despotic minority. Unlike Spengler in his The Decline of the West, Toynbee did not regard the death of a civilization as inevitable, for it may or may not continue to respond to successive challenges. Unlike Karl Marx, he saw history as shaped by spiritual, not economic forces" ...

(Encyclopedia Britannica, emphasis added). The show stopper, in terms of remedy, in this type of group dementia is that it is a contagious dementia.

(Etiology of Social Dementia - 18). That particular "minority" is not a racial or ethnic minority, rather, it is primarily composed of a destructive suicidal trance (Choose Your Trances Carefully, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8).

(Arrested Development: The Creep State). Our culture is composed, now, of the toxins of power that habitually destroy nations and civilizations (Hypothesis: The Cultural Amygdala - 2).

(How To Identify The Despotic Minority). The essence that finally does the deed is probably "it can't happen here."

III. Final Factors

I think that most readers will be able to identify the despotic minority (How To Identify The Despotic Minority, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10).

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

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Lyrics to Telegraph Road are here ...

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