#this comes from an anthropologist’s approximation for the term

[tepehkwi]

hey, i was wondering if you'd be willing to talk a bit about how you knew you were twospirit? i think i am but i have doubts about claiming the term for myself. did an elder claim you as 2S?

so my tribe has a twospirit concept that is so unacknowledged in literature about our history, even our own, that i only know of one source that mentions it, and in basically every other text it's just the umbrella term "berdashe" which is just the antiquated colonizer term for any native with a "weird" "gender" expression that you'll probably find in most textbooks that even bother to cover the topic. 😑

if you want some context, this is how colonizers described us, i-coo-coo-a, or twospirit meshkwahkihaki, and it should be noted that i-coo-coo-a is not listed anywhere in our own comprehensive language dictionaries to this day:

Later, in the 1830s, non-Native artist George Catlin traveled through western North America, where he witnessed and painted a “Dance to the Berdash.” In his travelogue, Catlin called the central figure “a man dressed in women’s clothes” although the Native term, i-coo-coo-a, loosely translates to “man-woman.” In Catlin’s opinion, the “berdash” performed “the most servile and degrading duties,” although he conceded that the i-coo-coo-a was considered sacred by the Sauk and Fox (Meskwaki) communities. “This is one of the most unaccountable and disgusting customs, that I have ever met in the Indian country,” Catlin fulminated, “where I should wish that it might be extinguished before it be more fully recorded.” Later, anthropologist Mary Owen estimated that the dance—and the traditional role fulfilled by the i-coo-coo-a—did indeed vanish around 1900. [source: from an nyhs blog/article on indigenous genders]

something you should know about my people is that we do not live on a reservation, we have our own sovereign nation within iowa. yes, it's a microscopic fraction of what our actual indigenous lands were, but we experience a level of privilege that rez natives don't. and this is just my own opinion but a lot of other meskwaki/meshkwahkihaki in tama are on the conservative side with both politics and religion, and i think that our comparative or relative lack of a struggle faced by the majority of other natives in this country has created an environment where we're unfortunately no more left-leaning and no less conservative than the rest of rural iowa. so, no, an elder didn't claim me as twospirit... excuse the slight hyperbole but i would be hard-pressed to find more than a couple of elders in my community that aren't literal republicans, let alone inclusive of our own culture's gender diversity.

like i'll be honest with you, i transitioned away from home and i don't really talk about my whole "gender journey" here, since i'm not as active on tumblr as much as i am on my private twitter, but it's been kind of depressing studying in other states and meeting ndns from other tribes who completely understand my identity only to come back home and find out that my uncle's voting for trump again. 😐 we're also in a caucus state and given how the last caucus went, it's just kinda disappointing to think about the fact that we’re essentially making decisions for other natives when a lot of us are literally so willfully out of touch with other tribes.

lol i know you didn't ask for my whole ass political commentary so, sorry for that... 😭

but idk i think it's important context, because twospirit is something that came from the pan-indigenous movement era (well sort of) and it's the closest thing i have as a widely-understood term to describe myself. but thanks for asking, i hope this clarifies some things or answers your question in some way. i don't think we necessarily need to consult with elders about it. many of us straightup can't. by all means, if you think it would be a good thing to seek out elder input about claiming twospirit, go ahead, but in my experience some of us just are. i relate to the insecurity completely... 😔

just know that elder input/approval isn't the end-all-be-all.

[gallusrostromegalus]

Funky Muguruma Kensei AEIWAM headcanons? Spare serotonins with the blorbos? /j Also what's AEIWAM Mashiro like? She's one of the only characters I genuinely get annoyed by in the canon oof

:)

So the friendship between Kaname and Mashiro is one of my favorite things in the fic so far. Have a spoilerific Scene (Part 1 of ?)

Crickets and Grasshoppers

Scene One of ??? Approximately 7K words Fluff that goes South and won't get (sort of ) better until part 2, warnings for body horror, referenced torture and Emotionally Devastating Betrayal

:)

It was Tuesday November 5th, 1901, Scheduling Day in the Ninth Division and Mashiro was standing in front of the vending machine just down the street from the Ninth, choosing her armaments for the coming battle. 

In other divisions, the actual drawing up of rosters was the job of lower-seated officers and the specific parts of the Division they were responsible for.  Tousen’s friend Komamura has told her once that the 7th Division’s schedule was so predictable, they only looked at the roster once a year when people retired or were hired. A fascinating concept to Mashiro, who listened to Komamura’s tales of the 7th with the rapt fascination of an anthropologist privileged to hear the folklore of distant and largely unknown people. 

The Ninth was… complicated for the sake of simplicity.  Information did not move the same way people did, and while the seventh could pass an inbound soul from the Intake Team to Queue Management to the Registry Office, passing an information project from one subdivision to another was a great way to lose said project. So instead of projects moving from subdivision to subdivision as they reached different stages, subdivisions went from stage to stage, following projects. 

This meant scheduling had to be done every month, but it beat the hell out of a major archive loss or communications failure. 

And it meant that Snackage was in order. 

Mashiro surreptitiously glanced over her shoulder to make sure Captain Muguruma was still overseeing drills in the courtyard, then selected 37 cookies, chips, snack cakes, bottles of pop and juice and other goodies from the machine and paid out of the Division Purse.  

Kensei, bless him, was a deeply honorable man who was so reliable you could set a watch by him and would probably cross actual Hell to help a friend, but he did not understand scheduling, much less the kind of caloric requirements it held. 

-- “You’re just sitting there!  What do you need all that for?” He’d asked her once.

“The brain’s the most expensive organ to run in terms of calories.” She’d explained, rolling her eyes and opening a bag of Barbecue-flavored corn chips. “-I know your brain is a plodding cart horse, but you can’t do scheduling.  You need my thoroughbred racehorse brain, and it needs snacks!”

He’d given up with a disgusted groan of defeat, which was good, because the other reason she needed the snacks would have actually made him snap.  -- Mashiro shoved the snacks into her backpack, checked that Kensei was still distracted by drills, darted back across the street where he might spot her, ran around the back of the division, and jumped up to the third-floor window that had been left open for her. 

“The level of subterfuge this perfectly normal administrative process requires…” Fifth-seat Kaname Tousen groaned from where he was lying on the floor, partially under his traditional low desk. 

“-Is half the fun, you dork!” Mashiro giggled, closing the window after her as she climbed in. “All the autumn stuff is in the shops and vending machines now, and I made sure to get every persimmon-flavored thing they had just for you!” She grinned down at her chosen assistant for scheduling. 

The other purpose for the snacks was Bribery. 

Kaname Tousen was, by Mashiro’s estimation, definitely the smartest person in the Ninth Division, and possibly in the entire Soul Society.  If the world was a fair place, he’d be lieutenant and she’d be fifth seat, but the world wasn’t a fair place and in the week between Graduation with every honor Shin’o academy had and starting as the 9th Division’s 20th seat, Kaname had been struck down with some sort of horrible spinal infection that damn near killed him, made him miss his entire first month and a half of work, and left him with occasional bouts of crippling pain, like today, when he’d decided to risk worsening Kensei’s already low opinion of him by doing his work lying flat on his back on a hot pad. 

Kaname’s services as a Brainiac were much in demand and his availability highly limited, so Mashiro guaranteed her place on his schedule with confection-based compensation.

“I mean, Kensei’s a mean old sack and that’s not great for the division too, but the spy shenanigans and scheduling snacktime really is like, The Highlight Of The Month sometimes.” Mashiro shrugged, flopping down on the floor beside him and  dumping the snacks out between them. 

“Captain Muguruma’s sense of discipline is intense but very necess- ow. Yeah, that’s not happening.” Kaname sighed, laying back down from trying to sit up. “-He’s a good man.  Difficult, sometimes, but a good man.”

“You’re way too nice for your own good. Here’s the Persimmon castella cakes.” Mashiro grunted, handing Kaname the small package and the payroll notes to read. 

Kaname groped across his desk for a clipboard, attached the payroll notes to it, propped them up on his stomach so they were balanced on the edge of his desk, and laid all the way back down, face pointed at the ceiling rather than the notes.  Mashiro opened up a packet of Amakara rice crackers, watching him with interest as Kaname took off his goggles. 

The goggles were what convinced Mashiro he was the smartest man in the Soul Society.  Kaname had been born totally blind, but he had figured out how to mount a pair of tiny cameras in the frame of a pair of safety goggles, which were connected to… he’d explained that the little bricks behind the opaque white lenses of his goggles contained something like an obscenely long and complicated Kido spell that spotted readable characters, ‘read’ them, and turned the resulting text into words that played out of the tiny “Microphonogram Speech Players or ‘speakers’ “ hidden in the legs of the goggles.  So he could read pretty much anything printed with enough contrast (and decent enough handwriting, Captain Urahara) because his goggles would read it aloud for him.  They were much slower than most people read, and sometimes he had to stop work to “charge” the spell that made them work, but they worked a damn treat, and had the added advantage that Kaname himself did not need to be looking at the thing he was trying to read, only the goggles.

So now he unwound the coil of wire that connected the Kido brick to the microphonogram, placed the ‘speaker’ back in his ear, and set the glasses on his chest so he could read the notes while keeping his back and neck pressed to the hotpad. 

True Genius, that.

“I love how the cameras wiggle.” Mashiro grinned, watching the two lenses shift and dilate as they focused on the notes. “They move the same way cicadas and grasshoppers shift their eyes independently to focus. It’s so clever to have them operate like that.”

“Hm.  That was Kakiyo’s design, not mine.” Kaname smiled.  Kakiyo was his adopted and now-deceased sister.  “She was always more of an entomologist than me.”

“Weird that you ended up with Suzumushi the cricket for a Zanpaktou then.” Mashiro pondered.  She liked Suzumushi- that sword, and her own Musabori Kuu Batta (Devouring Locust) were two of less than One Hundred insect-type Zanpaktou in the court guard, and fewer still that weren’t butterflies. She couldn’t really see Suzumushi- no shinigami could perceive another’s Zanpaktou Spirit- but she could hear Batta’s half of the conversation the two would chirp to each other sometimes.

Kaname paused from opening the persimmon cake packaging with his teeth. “...Yes. Bizarre.” he said, with a rueful finality that Mashiro took as her cue to change the subject.

“Right. Where are we on the Agricultural Practices census?” She sighed, pulling the active projects list and next month’s calendar out in front of her. 

“Maegawa-san has requested travel permissions to-” Kaname replied, flipping through the pages, the goggles faintly reading off names as he tracked them with his fingertip. “Ah, ‘pull the damn report out through the East 36th Daimyo’s nose if I have to’, which I think we can call a requisitions expense rather than reconnaissance. Unless you think Lieutenant Fon would enjoy the catharsis as well.”

“She WOULD, actually, that girl is wound tighter than my grandpa’s pocketwatch.”  Mashiro nodded, placing the card for “3rd Seat Maegawa” in the “Out Of Office” Pile. 

And so it went for a pleasant hour, eating snacks and solving the five-dimensional time, space and payroll puzzle of scheduling, with Kaname helping her keep track of the process and who was not supposed to be doing overtime or couldn’t be trusted to work with someone else or on maternity leave or whatever. 

“Alright, I think that’s nearly everyone sorted…” Mashiro muttered, going down the list of all 200 division members to make sure they’d made it onto the roster. “Oh wait, we didn’t put you down!” She giggled. 

“I believe my schedule should be identical to last months while we are still doing data entry into the archives, but I do have a request- May I have this coming Friday off?” he asked. “I have an engagement.”

“Who’s getting engaged?” Mashiro teased, erasing him from the roster that day.

Kaname tilted his head a bit, pointing his ear at her with a conspiratorial smirk. “...Can you keep a secret?”

Mashiro blinked at him in surprise, then gasped with delight and leaned in  “Cross my heart and hope to die!” She whispered back, giggling. 

Kaname regarded her for a moment, teasing. “Love- Captain Aikawa has finally worked up the nerve to propose to Lieutenant Yadomaru.”

Mashiro made a noise like an asthmatic teakettle as she tried to not shriek with delight and deafen Kaname as well, rolling onto her back and kicking her legs in the air with excitement.

“-He wants it to be a surprise though, and Lisa is always going through his bag for his water bottle or whatever at kendo practice and she will notice if his schedule changes, so I need to duck out during lunch today and pick up the ring for him to propose with on Friday.” Kaname elaborated.

“A conspiracy!” Mashiro balled her fists with excitement. “When? Where? Can I come?”

“You got an invitation to Captain Kyoraku’s next moon-viewing party, right?”  Kaname asked and she nodded.  “It’s then.”

“EEEK!” Mashiro giggled with delight. 

“What’re you two giggling about?” Kensei grunted from the doorway, still sweaty from training. 

“It’s a SECRET!” Mashiro glared imperiously, sweeping the snack wrappers out of sight off the desk as Kaname sat up with a small grunt of pain and bowed his head in salute.

“Whatever.” Kensei rolled his eyes. “Tousen. Read your report on the dodgy census statistics and possible disappearances in West 66 and I think you’re right.  Something stinks on ice out there.”

Kaname gasped sharply with relief and bowed his head in gratitude. “Thank you, Sir.”

“I gotta attend a captain’s meeting this afternoon because Urahara has some harebrained new project to show and tell-” Kensei continued, glaring at his battered fingertips where he’d caught a bokto the wrong way during training. “-Saw that Maegawa is gonna be in East 36 and Fukuda’s on maternity leave, so I’m sending every seated officer from you to 15th seat Shizawa out there to investigate and deal with it.  You all need to be at the Kido Corps for teleportation at three. Mashiro, don’t burn the place down.”

“OH COME ON!” Mashiro shouted with disappointment. 

“HEY! No backtalk!  I know you wanna go but someone’s gotta hold the fort-” Kensei glared down at her. 

“It’s not me!  Kaname has to- I mean-” She sputtered, abruptly remembering his request for secrecy.

“It’s alright!” Kaname tried to smile but ended up grimacing at her as he got up. “I’ll just go get it now and it’ll be in my pocket when I get back!” 

Mashiro glared at him for a moment, but sat back down. “Okay. I guess.” She pouted. 

“Get what?” Asked Kensei. 

“A surprise for Captain Kyoraku’s moon-veiwing party!” Kaname grinned at him as he collected his belongings into his satchel by touch.

Kensei pondered that for a long moment, glaring at Kaname. “...How’d you score an invite?”

“Captain Aikawa invited me along.” Kaname explained over Mashiro’s offended scoff. “We were roommates when we were at the academy and he has very kindly kept inviting me along to things despite my not really being able to keep up with him anymore.” 

Kensei regarded him a moment longer. “Huh.” he eventually decided. “Well, see you when you get back from the investigation.” He waved, dismissing Tousen.

“Thank you Sir.  Lieutenant Kuna.” Kaname bowed before jogging off. 

“See you later Kaname-kun!” Mashiro called after him.

“-Even if he won’t technically see yo- OW!” Kensei yelped as Mashiro clipped him sharply under the ear. 

“Why are you so MEAN to him!?” Mashiro glared up at her captain as he rubbed his jaw. 

“I’m not mean! I’m just- it’s just office banter!” Kensei growled back. “I can just not like a guy and still be colleagues with him, okay?”

“No, apparently you can’t!” Mashiro “You’ve been really hard on him and getting on his case and teasing him since day one!”

“-More like day thirty-two, he missed the first six weeks of his appointment.” Kensei grumbled.

“That was literally FIFTY years ago and he was in the HOSPITAL. BECAUSE HE NEARLY DIED!”  She bellowed, probably loud enough for Kaname to hear in the street but it didn’t matter. “Yeah, it sucked, but it wasn’t his fault! I don’t get why you were mad at him back then, and I really don’t get why you’re still mad about it NOW!”

“I’M NOT MAD ABOUT THAT, I JUST-” Kensei bellowed back but then stopped, hand over his mouth. “...He keeps secrets.”

Mashiro stared at him blankly for a moment, face slowly collapsing from bewilderment into disgust. “OH. MY GOD. You’re the one always going on about operational security!  He’s just careful- all the details are in his summarial reports, if you ever read them…”

“I do!” Kensei barked. “And they’re-  I mean, All the information he’s required to fill out is there, and then some.” He sputtered, deflating. 

Mashiro leaned in close, eyebrow cocked at him. 

“...But I keep getting this feeling it’s not the whole picture.” Kensei muttered. 

“Ugh!” Mashiro shouted, throwing her hands up and turning away. “So you don’t like him because you have bad reading comprehension?”

“Shut up! I don’t- there’s just something off about that guy! He’s always taking weird days off-” Kensei started, ticking off a list on his fingers. 

“You mean the sick days from his spinal infection?” Mashiro glared, arms folded across her chest.

Kensei continued to count his grievances “-and taking secret calls in weird corners-!”

“You mean privately scheduling his medical treatment? For his spinal infection?” Mashiro continued to glare.

“-And getting him to go to the fifth or third division is like pulling teeth! What the hell is up with that?” Kensei demanded.

“You mean the divisions that have A) Lieutenant Iba, the woman who has a weird horoscope-based personal grudge against him-” Mashiro asked, mimicking Kensei’s earlier counting, “-and B) Lieutenant Aizen, who also keeps forgetting he has a spinal injury and slaps Kaname across the shoulders every time they meet?  Yeah, I don’t blame him for wanting to avoid two of the most annoying people in the whole court guard!”

“Whatever.” Kensei waved her off. “I’m still right. There’s something off with him. Now get that roster updated and posted!”

“Yes, sir.” Mashiro groaned, rolling her eyes at him and stomping back to Kaname’s office for the Roster.

***

Kaname hadn’t felt this light in years. 

Oh god.

Oh, GOD!

Please, please, please please let this be happening?

He sprinted down the road, back towards the apartment that he and Sajin shared, the small box with Love’s ring in his chest pocket.  He allowed himself an ounce of elation- After all, I am just a young man who has picked up the engagement ring of one of his best friends!  It is exactly what anyone would expect to see-

That was the tricky part of The Curse. 

He couldn’t talk about it, like many curses, but it had the added complication that anyone who looked at him- or listened to him, or put their hands on him, or- 

Well, they’d only find what they expected to find. 

Certainly not a curse. 

But curses cut both ways- The broader and less specific a command for someone bearing a curse was, the harder it was to enforce, and it was harder to come up with a command broader and more open to interpretation than “Help Me Kill God”. So as long as Kaname could argue to the curse that an action did “help” some aspect of Aizen’s plans, he could be inefficient, neglect to mention something important, do an assigned task sloppily, fail to cover his tracks and so on-  Sometimes Other times, the curse would take effect and cripple him until he relented and obeyed Aizen’s command again. Or at least, managed to convince Aizen he was doing what Aizen wanted. 

Aizen hadn’t quite realized it, but he was also subject to his own illusions, and there was a gap- a mirror image, if Kaname understood mirrors correctly- so long as he appeared as Aizen expected, Aizen wouldn’t notice him sabotaging Aizen’s machinations. So for the last three years, Kaname had done his best to appear tired and overworked and failing from exhaustion rather than malice, or like he was starting to agree with Aizen, which is exactly what the narcissist expected after fifty years of mental, physical and spiritual torture. 

It was finally  paying off. 

He’d managed to make the kidnappings Aizen and Gin had been conducting on the villagers of West 56 appear by conducting a census that showed the discrepancy of expected versus actual population.  -And made sure the increased hollow activity in the area from Aizen’s experiments showed up in the 10th Division’s monitoring statistics. - And the weird waves of reiatsu visible on the 12th’s monitoring equipment- not what people expected to see, but by keeping all the evidence noticed by unrelated parties, he kept it out of the scope of Aizen’s Illusions. 

Kyoga Suigetsu took a lot of energy to operate, and Tousen was pretty sure Aizen could only passively fool about 150 at a time- he chose mostly his own division and people he saw daily, like his neighbors and cross-division colleagues, and could only actively alter the reality of maybe 20 people at once- the other captains and a few key would-be witnesses.   So a rural census-taker, and two members at the bottom ranks of other divisions weren’t actively subject to the illusion. 

He had to do it on faith, that someone would notice-

Kaname felt like he’d been holding his breath for weeks now, doing his best to tell Aizen and the constantly-itching nails in his spine that this was a Perfectly Normal Database Cross-referencing project- very boring, but it will be missed if it’s not done, Lord Aizen- and nothing to draw attention to the horrible Laboratory…

…By some miracle, Mugurama had read the report, understood and believed it- Kensei had a naturally suspicious mind, so Kaname made sure the report was full of “It's entirely possible this is all a weird coincidence!” to make him suspicious.  The curse only showed people what they expected to see, and for once, Kensei’s natural pessimistic expectations allowed him to see the truth. 

24 hours.  That’s all I have left.

The only people in the Ninth Aizen had under his Active Influence were Kensei and Mashiro, so he wouldn’t be able to hide the nature of the laboratory from the investigation team without dropping the Active Illusion on someone else and risk discovery- and so long as Aizen didn’t find out about the expedition, he wouldn’t know to make that shift in time.

24 hours. I only need to keep Aizen distracted for 24 hours. 

In Aizen’s personal quarters, The Distraction Apparatus waited.

Aizen was mistaken to force Kaname to do his lab work for him- Kaname understood it better than him now, and had pulled aside a little trick to confuse him. The Hogyoku bonded with its user, almost like a zanpaktou, and communicated with them- it purred when Aizen fed it, and whined when it was hungry.  Aizen knew about Suzumushi’s Bankai- he’d insisted Kaname develop it under his supervision, so he would know of all Kaname’s abilities.  But he only knew it from the inside, and hadn’t realized that not only was anyone inside blind, deaf and without any form of sensory input, neither could anyone on the outside sense anyone within. It was worth it to break Suzumushi like that. It was actually her idea, to break the guard of his Zanpaktou and separate the ring from it.  That’s where the Bankai was stored, and with a hell of a lot of practice, he’d learned to cast it remotely.

It had been months before he had an opportunity-  Kaname would never forgive what had been done to that poor angel, but during one of the The Sessions where Aizen was using the Hogyoku to change the angel, Kaname was able to get ahold of the little Illusion box Aizen kept the infernal device in, Secure Suzumushi’s ring to the floor, disguise the tampering with a false floor, and return the box to it’s place without Aizen’s notice. The Ring had been waiting there for months.

24 hours, and the secret will be out. 

He’d memorized Aizen’s schedule- in 22 minutes Aizen would be entering the reiatsu-locked laboratory of the 12th with his own Captain Shinji for Kisuke’s Demonstration, and would not be able to feel Kaname activate his Bankai. When he came back out, it would seem like the Hogyoku had vanished. And for all Aizen would be able to tell, it had- he wouldn’t be able to perceive the Hogyoku or it’s illusion box until Kaname released his Bankai. 

So for now, Kaname acted exactly like Aizen would expect him to act- a little tired, a lot in pain, but elated that two of his best friends were getting engaged, and that he’d be able to help. That was a natural source of excitement, and definitely not any kind of counter conspiracy-

Kaname jogged down the stairs to the apartment, ring box in his pocket, heart hammering, hands shaking a bit as he took out the keys to unlock his door, grabbed the knob that was not there and was suddenly off balance and falling- Into something soft and steady that carefully picked him up like a child’s doll and set him back on his feet, gently taking his hands.

“Are you alright?” Sajin asked, soft, deep voice tinged with concern. “My apologies, I was just trying to do some house cleaning while the weather is mild and had the door open for ventilation.”

“Y- yeah! I’m. I’m alright. Just- distracted. I’ve had some good news!”  He grinned up at his friend. 

“Oh?” Sajin asked, tugging lightly at Kaname’s fingertips to indicate he should step inside.  “Mind your way, I have all the chairs out in the living room so I can sweep.”

They had been living in this garden-level apartment for the forty years since Sajin had followed Kaname into the court guard, and under the same roof at the Akaido City Library for many years before that, and their domestic arrangements settled into a comfortable and comforting routine- Kaname was incapable of seeing grime, so Sajin did the housekeeping, and Sajin would eat raw, expired meat if left unattended, so Kaname did the cooking and shopping. 

Kaname followed his lead, hand reflexively on Sajin’s instinctively proffered arm to keep balance while he unbuckled and took off his boots- the gestures of proximal intimacy had calcified into a secret language between them.

“Thanks-” Kaname stood up and stepped in with a guiding hand on the wall. He could normally navigate the apartment by memory alone. “-I’m only here for a few minutes, I’ve also got a deployment I need to pack for.”

“Deployment?” Sajin asked, following after him, voice slightly muffled from the cloth mask he wore over his face- at least when the door was open.  Being mostly underground had it’s advantages- Kaname didn’t need much light and Sajin possessed almost superhuman darkvision, and the small, high windows that were obscured by bushes gave them enough Privacy that Sajin could relax and keep his face bare at home. 

24 hours.  

Maybe. Maybe when it all came out, and the dust settled--Assuming they don’t hang me alongside Aizen, which was a big If--But once it was all said and done and I still draw breath- Maybe I will have the courage to ask Sajin what it is he feels he needs to hide.Surely, he is far too gentle to be half so monstrous as he claims.

“Kaname?”  Sajin prompted, and Kaname realized he’d been silent for nearly a minute. “S-sorry. I just. Captain Muguruma finally read my report on West 66 and ordered and immediate investigation, so I have to be at the Kido corps by three-” “Kaname.” “Ah, No don’t worry,  I’ll get dinner prepared so you only have to put it under the broiler, and There’s um-” “Kaname.” 

“-I’ll be back by Friday for Love and Lisa’s- Right- Here, I need you to-”  He sputtered, dozens of ideas baying for his attention at once, patting his chest for the ring box- “Kaname!” Sajin snapped, and his giant hands were on Kaname’s shoulders again, turning him around in place to face his friend, gloved hand suddenly under his chin, holding his face up for Sajin to glare at. “...When was the last time you slept?”

“I’m fine!” Kaname tried to jerk back, laughing defensively. 

“You’ve gone to bed after me and gotten up before me, if you went to bed at all for at least a week, and I’m doing maximum overtime. You don't have bags so much as matched luggage under your eyes and can’t finish a sentence coherently.  You’re not touching anything in the kitchen.” Sajin rattled off, giving Kaname’s chin a light shake. “...it’s not yet eleven, and the Kido Corps is less than ten minutes from here. I’ll see to your packing. Lie down. Please.”  

Kaname sighed, shoulders slumping. “Sajin, I- I need to-”

“You need. To sleep.” Sajin rumbled, no room in his voice for argument.

Kaname panted for a moment, realizing that if Sajin wasn’t holding him in place he’d be swaying with exhaustion. 

24 hours.

…I can spend one or two of them resting. 

If I don’t manage to prove my innocence, I’ll want to have at least this to think about on the gallows.

“...Stay with me until I fall asleep?” Kaname asked, voice soft. “It’s just. It’s been a lot.” “Of course.” Sajin hummed, rubbing his cheek. “I also need to, ah- use facilities, first.” he grimaced, and Sajin let him go. 

“I’m coming in after you if I think you’ve passed out on the floor.” Sajin threatened. 

“That happened ONE TIME-!” Kaname protested, following the wall to the bathroom.

Once inside, he checked the time again. 

If the meeting had stuck to schedule, they should be inside the 12th’s labs now.  

Kaname sent Aizen a test message to his Soul Pager. 

> Mandatory Status Report: Muguruma handed me a sudden assignment. Won’t be back until Friday.

If he was outside the Reiatsu-locked lab, that missive would have Aizen furiously calling him in under five minutes. He timed it, relieving himself and washing his hands as he waited-

Nothing.

“Here goes…” he muttered, hoping the sound of the bathroom fan and the running water would cover his voice. He focused, feeling the silver ring start to rotate in his mind, the way it multiplied and stretched, the rings dancing a circle on that which needed to be concealed-

“-Bankai.” He whispered, skin tingling- 

-And suddenly he was keenly aware of the hogyoku and it’s illusion box, as though he were holding it, both wholly contained and hidden by his Bankai.  

It is done The distraction is set. In a few hours, all will be revealed to the rest of the court guard. There. All I need  to do now was follow the assignment like I was told and investigate the- the-

-He suddenly he felt the Bankai’s draw on his power and he collapsed over the sink, retching and knees shaking with how weak he felt. The skin on the back of his neck prickled and almost tasted like vinegar in the back of his mind,  high-pitched ringing between his ears. 

The nails sizzled ominously but there was no power behind it- It’s alright- I can- I can deal with this. Just breathe, come on dumbass, you just need to keep breathing for another 24 hours.

“Kaname? Sajin called.

“Nothing broke!” Kaname called back, forcing himself to his feet and stumbling back against the wall.  He tested the Bankai again- It holds. Very convenient of you Suzumushi, that I only need to cast and feed it, rather than concentrate…

Suzumushi chriped distractedly, her focus on maintaining the Bankai. With her concentration, the illusion would hold even as he slept. Cold water on his face and neck, trying to make himself vaguely presentable and the room stop spinning as he stumbled out- oh, Sajin is right here, how thoughtful of him…

“It’s alright, just follow me…” Sajin soothed, guiding him along to the Thick Futon and large collection of pillows they used as a couch- nothing with legs would bear Sajin’s weight for long. He allowed Sajin to pull him down, settling beside Kaname until he was wedged between Sajin’s giant body and the collection of cushions, head on his friend’s chest, listening to his heartbeat- A little slower than mine, and steady- always so steady- so- 

Kaname was asleep before he completed the thought. 

---

Scene two: 23 hours later

“It’s just up this way Mister Shinigami!”  The boy said, his hot little hand pulling Kaname along. 

They’d gotten to West 66 and Kaname had realized he’d been wrong to worry about looking like he already knew the way to the Laboratory- Iruka Village had taken some fairly extreme defensive measures against the kidnappings since the last time he’d been forced out here- Barricades errected, bridges taken out, and even the road torn up and replanted to hide the route to the village. Kaname was entirely turned around before they even set foot in the Village and started asking the peasants if there was anything unusual nearby.

Fortunately for the expediency of the investigation, one Young Shuuhei Hisagi was extremely eager to help, giving them a detailed accounting of the strange activities at the old foundry, where someone had turned one of the kiln’s back on and there was “An ‘lectric” generator and it smelled a lot like someone was cooking rancid pork but he’d never seen anybody there, even when he went into the basement because he wasn’t ascared of it, weird that there’s a basement, nobody makes basements here as it’s a swamp-

Kaname felt his skin go cold when he realized the boy had somehow gotten inside and made notes and even poked some of the machinery, but given he hadn’t tried to actually chew Kaname’s arm off as he lead the Ninth Division Investigation team to the Lab, he was probably uncontaminated…

“There’s a hill an’ it’s on the other side- mind the branch.” Young Shuuhei was one of the great tragedies of the poor parts of the Rukongai- whip-smart and observant and thoughtful, but illiterate from the lack of teachers, and likely destined for an early grave if the statistical average lifespan out here held true.  His Reiryoku shimmered at the edges- with a little training and a better diet he might even make for a good Shinigami. 

Maybe if I live through this I can get him a scholarship.  Kaname mused, trying to think about literally anything but the nauseating familiarity of the smell creeping over the hill. 

“Mr. Hisagi?” he asked in the polite voice he’d cultivated as the Head Librarian to indicate to children he was taking them very seriously.

The Boy snapped to attention. “Sir?”

“Thank you for leading us here, but I absolutely cannot allow you any closer. It’s extremely dangerous here-”  he started to explain.

“I been in before! An’ the door’s trickylike you gotta pull the handle up and in and rattle it to get in and then prop somethin’ in the gap or it locks back behind you-”  Shuuhei explained, gesturing  like Kaname could see him demonstrating. 

“-And you were lucky to get out in one piece! I also need you to do a very important job.”  Kaname sighed, familiar with this kind of kid- slightly too bright and kind-hearted for his own good, but reliable at a task- “-I can hear that some of your friends have followed us from the village.  They’re about a quarter mile behind us-”

“Dangit Suichi-!” Shuuhei muttered under his breath. “-Yeah that’s probably my little brother and his friends. You want me to go chase him back home?”

“Precisely. Also, tell everyone to get indoors and stay put until they get an all-clear.  Just in case something goes wrong, I need everyone to stay safe until re-enforcements arrive.  So go get everyone back home and inside, alright?” “Yessir!” Shuuhei snapped a salute and Kaname heard some of the other Shinigami giggle behind him.

“I’m glad I can rely on you.” He nodded, and shooed Shuuhei down the road. The boy took off, hollering for his brother.

“I didn’t know you were so good with kids.” Laughed Sixth Seat Todo Izaemon. “Cute little thing too-”

“Being in charge of the West 51 Children’s Intensive Literacy School teaches you how to get along with them.”  He shrugged. “Alright, I can’t sense anything, but that doesn’t mean danger is not present.  Even numbered seats- go west and approach from the north. Odd numbers, we go east and approach from the south.”

“Sir!” Izaemon nodded, the next ranked officer. 

Kaname approached the building at a crouch, straining to hear- the brief nap Sajin had insisted on and six-pack of illicitly acquired 4th Division “Stamina Supplements” were doing what they could for him, but everything  hurt and Suzumushi’s Bankai was even more draining than he’d anticipated and he could barely sense more than a few feet around him. But he found the door- Shuuhei was right, the Handle was starting to go out of alignment- Up and in, right? Yeah- and when nothing behind it exploded, he cautiously stepped in. 

“Nobody ran out our side Sir!” Izaemon called and Kaname acknowledged him with a nod. 

“What the hell IS this place?” Seventh-seat Akishita asked, looking around the room.  This was the main floor of the laboratory, where the bulk of Aizen’s butchery was done- the whole place reeked of rotting flesh and sulfur- byproducts of the ‘Hollowfication Process’, and Kaname very nearly tripped on a groove gashed into the floor that hadn’t been there last time. 

“That looks like an office or control room up there-” Kaname said, pointing to the partial second story that took up the west third of the building that he REALLY hoped was still there. “-Akishita, with me. Lets see if there’s a schematic or something.”

“Sir!” She agreed. 

Oh good, it is still there. He thought, trying to not pant with pain- oh god, his eyes were burning and spine felt like it was actively dissolving he was so TIRED- He touched his watch, checking the time again. 

24 minutes.  Come on, just a little more-

He got to the door at the top of the stairs, Akishita behind him. 

“Are you alright Sir?”  She asked.

“What?” He jerked towards her. 

“You seem… really off today.”  She frowned. He could sense the shape of her this close, and the way her hand on the hilt of her Zanpaktou. Maybe just resting, maybe not. 

“I- I haven’t been sleeping well. Nightmares.” He gulped. That was actually entirely true.  Still the nails sizzled louder and he winced. “-I -I might need to put in for sick leave when we get back.”

“You really should.  You look awful.”  She nodded, hand off the hilt. 

Kaname nodded, and carefully opened the door into the control room. He felt Akishita turn, making sure nothing unexpected followed them as he stepped in- no traps, but a strange sort of coldness- not a draft, like a there was a block of ice in here-

The door slammed shut behind him. 

“Heya Goggles!” a boy’s voice drawled behind him. 

-Or a snake. 

Kaname froze, skin going cold as Akishita called for him from the other side of the door.

“Gin?” He asked, trying to keep his voice even.

“She’s right, you look like shit!” the boy laughed, activating a Kido seal that barricaded them in the room.  “-Boss sent me to talk to you because the CRAZIEST thing happened at the Captain’s meeting this morning!”

“-Please tell me Urahara’s latest crime against nature maimed him?  I could use some good news.”  Kaname groaned, complaining like usual, like nothing was wrong. There was more shouting from the main floor. He braced himself, feet under his shoulders, feeling Gin’s aura twist as he decided on an angle to strike from.

“Oh nah, Aizen-sama is wrapping things up and planting evidence over at the 12th right now, that’s why I’m here!” Gin laughed. “No, Your Boss Muguruma stopped everyone before Urahara’s demonstration to tell everyone about this report you submitted sayin’ several hundred people had vanished in West 66!  The other haoris were all horrified, I tell ya- Captain Hirako just about shit bricks!  Hollerin’ Aizen-sama’s ear off about it the whole way back to the fifth!”

Kaname gripped Suzumushi’s hilt.

“Oh now don’t be unfriendly!  I even got somethin’ for ya!” Gin laughed, and tossed something his way. Knowing better than to catch anything he threw, Kaname waited for it to hit the floor-

PING!

-Stomach turning over as he recognized the metallic chime of Suzumishi’s ring. 

“Neat trick by the way- Aizen must have spent ten hours turning over the fifth looking for the Hogyoku!!” Gin laughed. “-He didn’t actually find it neither, if it’s any consolation. But he has me, and I got…Abilities.” The boy leered as Kaname Swiped the ring from the ground- Suzumushi had been strangely quiet, and only now did he realize that at some point the sensory illusion of his Bankai had been reversed. Louder yelling from the main floor and the sound of Akishita preparing a Hakudo Kido to blow the door in on the other side. 

“-Shit.”  Kaname growled, reconnecting the ring to the hilt, Suzumushi whimpering in pain. 

“Madder than a mosquito in a mannequin factory he is!” Gin chuckled, then surged forward. Even on a good day, Gin was nearly impossible to block and tonight-

“-Sorry goggles, but I got orders. Rikujokoru!” he hissed fingertips on kaname's sternum, and Kanane was slammed to the ground, six beams of Kido energy hitting his middle, paralyzing him completely. “Aizen-sama says if you can get outta this and get home you can live, but if I’m honest, I don’t really like your odds-” Gin explained, walking over to the control panel and flicking it on, the machines whirring to life and something rumbling beneath them. 

…Basement. Kaname realized. The boy said there was a basement- there wasn’t one last time?

There was a loud hissing as vents opened and gas streamed out of the floor into the main room, the sickening scent of rotting fruit comingled with melting plastic- The Hollowfication Compound? It’s a gas now!?

The shouting turned to screaming.

Oh God.

The screaming turned to roaring. 

Oh god, no. Please-

“- 'Specially not now.” Gin leered, patting him on the shoulder as he turned to leave. “Bye-Bye!  See you tomorrow-! …Maybe.”

Kaname could hear Gin leaving out the small fire window up at the roofline and he struggled, concentrating his reiatsu in his mouth to speak the counterspell- “-Horses of wind and gale, river of thread- 

-Akishita screamed in the hall, and there was the terrible wet sound of tearing flesh and breaking bones-

“- By Shadow and storm, unbind me!” He hissed, and the spell dissipated with the loud sound of shattering glass. Kaname scrambled to his feet, standing up in time to feel the gaze of ten newly-turned hollows fall upon him. His watch pulsed against his wrist, the timer for 24 hours Going off. 

“Well. I did say it would be over one way or another, didn’t I?” He grimaced, drawing Suzumushi as his former colleagues charged the plate glass that separated them. 

---

Part two approximately whenever I finish it :)

[discovertube]

THIS Archaeological Discovery In China Puts Scientists In SHOCK!!

It is impossible to know everything that has happened throughout the course of human history, and plenty of archaeological finds proved just how vast our collective ignorance is. Archeology is the study of human history through the examination of physical remains, with an emphasis on artifacts and architecture. Over the past few decades, numerous discoveries have revolutionized our understanding of history and taught us quite a lot about how ancient civilizations lived, worked, and died. We decided not to include things that people already knew about, such as the Great Pyramids or Machu Picchu; these are incredible places that people have known about for centuries. Instead, in this video, we will talk about some of the most remarkable archaeological discoveries.

This year, numerous discoveries have been made that span disciplines, periods, geographical regions, and cultural traditions. For instance, some discoveries are years old, but only this year have they been thoroughly documented. Meanwhile, one of our readers voted the most popular discoveries is a recently discovered Renaissance masterpiece and grizzly talismans made from human bone. While there have been many interesting discoveries this year, these are just some of the most fascinating ones. Here are the top 20 most unbelievable archaeology discoveries.

Number 20. Strange re-appearing hole.

The early 1970s, when satellites first began snapping photos of Earth, scientists noticed a mysterious hole in one of Antarctica's seasonal ice packs, floating on the Lazarev Sea. Come summertime the gap had disappeared, and for decades the strange event went unexplained.

Then, a year and a half ago, during the continent's coldest winter months, when ice should be at its thickest, a giant 9,500-square-kilometre hole (almost 3,700 square miles) suddenly showed up in the same ice pack. Two months later it had grown a stunning 740 percent larger, before once again retreating with the summer ice.

Number 19. Pet cemetery.

When Peruvian anthropologist Sonia Guillen and her team were excavating a cemetery south of Lima that was over a thousand years old, they found more than just human remains. The people who lived there during the Chiribaya civilization, which existed before the Inca Empire, had buried 43 dogs there. The treasured animals, which were employed in the herding of llamas, were buried in separate cemeteries close to their human owners. Many of the animals' final resting places had snacks and blankets. Due to the fact that the desert climate preserved the corpses of the dogs, Guillen was able to see how close they looked to a popular modern breed known as the Chiribaya shepherd, and her team is currently attempting to prove a genetic lineage between the two types of dogs.

Number 18. Medieval maternity.

A woman who lived in the village of Imola in Italy approximately 1300 years ago passed away just a couple of weeks before she was set to give birth. Archaeologists found the skeleton of her fetus between her legs, making her an example of a "coffin birth," which is an extremely unusual occurrence in which gases build up inside a pregnant woman's body and force the fetus out of the birth canal. However, the extraordinary discovery that someone drilled a hole in the mother's skull before she passed away has piqued the interest of the scientific community even more. Trepanation was the term given to the process of creating such a hole, and it has been used throughout history and in many different parts of the world to treat injuries to the head, headaches, and potentially even to exorcise bad spirits. In this particular instance, the researchers are pondering whether or not she was experiencing preeclampsia or eclampsia, both of which are disorders associated with pregnancy that involve extremely high blood pressure and possibly seizure activity.

Number 17. Gobekli Tepe.

More than 11000 years ago, at the end of the Stone Age, hunter-gatherers continued to live a nomadic existence; they had not yet settled down to a lifestyle based on agriculture, which is the foundation of our cities and towns today. On the other hand, this archaeological site in Turkey has raised questions about the timeframe due to the massive pillars decorated with animal sculptures, stone rings, and many rectangular rooms. Many academics believe that it may have been constructed for religious purposes and that it could be the earliest piece of known construction in the world.

Number 16. Surprises in Egypt.

Archaeologists are the source of some of the most peculiar objects discovered during excavations. Peter Der Manuelian, an Egyptology professor at Harvard and the director of the Harvard Semitic Museum, recalled in an email that one of his Harvard predecessors, Dows Dunham, attempted to fool his own boss, the renowned Egyptologist George Reisner, who directed many of the most successful excavations of the pyramids. Der Manuelian is an expert in the field of Egyptology. In 1914, Dunham decided to test whether or not Reisner would be puzzled by the presence of a bronze Roman coin that he had recently purchased from an antique shop in Cairo. He threw the coin into a burial chamber that was going to be excavated. It was a waste of time since as soon as the items in the room were organized, Reisner realized that his pupil had been the one to plant the coin. (It is interesting to note that Manuelian reports that one of Reisner's meter sticks was discovered in the beginning of 2018 in a tomb in Middle Egypt. This discovery occurred 103 years after he initially worked in the region.)

Number 15. Tiny human or alien?

The year 2003 saw the discovery of a naturally mummified skeleton in the Atacama Desert of Chile. The skeleton measured six inches in height and had a pointed head. Despite the fact that many individuals have claimed that the bones once belonged to an alien creature, scientists have since been able to sequence the skeleton's DNA and analyze it. This is despite the fact that many people have claimed that the bones once belonged to an alien entity. The bone density of the skeleton was comparable to that of a 6 year old, despite the fact that the skeleton was much smaller. She was descended primarily from native Chileans but also had some European ancestry in her family tree. Ata is the name given to the female mummy, and it was just recently found that she had once been a human creature. However, the researchers cannot determine which of these mutations is responsible for her skeletal abnormality because they found seven separate abnormalities in her genes that are connected with the growth process.

Number 14. Injured zoo animals in ancient Egypt.

Thousands of years ago, when Hierakonpolis was one of the most important towns along the Nile River. The wealthy citizens of Hierakonpolis displayed their status by keeping exotic pets. Hierakonpolis was one of the most important towns along the Nile River. The skeletal remains of several different creatures, including a hippopotamus, several baboons, and two elephants, were discovered during an excavation at a cemetery. On the other hand, the skeletons of many of the baboons and the hippo exhibited signs of bone fractures that had healed over time. This suggests that the animals did not live a life free of danger. The investigators are of the opinion that the animals were hurt either in the process of being seized or in the process of being tethered in place. However, the bones would not have been able to recover unless the animals had been protected, and the fact that the bones were recovered is how we know that the animals were held in captivity.

Number 13. Kids with disabilities are buried like royalty.

34000 years ago, hunter-gatherers buried many people, including two adolescents, at a site known as Sunghir, located a couple of hours east of the city of Moscow today. Sunghir may be reached by traveling east from Moscow for a couple of hours. When the graves were excavated, the researchers discovered that the boys had been buried together (with their heads adjacent) with approximately 300 pierced fox teeth, approximately 10000 mammoth ivory beads, more than 20 armbands, 16 ivory mammoth spears, carvings, antlers, and human fibulae laid across the chest of each child. Both of the boys had shown indicators of infirmity before their deaths, which occurred between the ages of 10 and 12. On the other hand, some of the adult tombs had no valuables at all, while others had only a handful of them included in them.

Number 12. Hidden Japanese settlement found in forests of British Columbia

Not to be outdone by Vancouver's rampant racism, a small community of Japanese Canadians established themselves in the North Shore mountains of British Columbia during the first half of the 20th century. Other limitations aside, Japanese people were not allowed to vote, enter the Civil Service, or practice law during this time period. In the early days, loggers were probably the first residents of the North Shore settlement. The forestry of the area had been largely harvested by 1924, but Muckle suspects that the forest may have been. There is no evidence that can be considered conclusive that Muckle lived there beyond 1920. A date and some reports of subsistence activity led him to conclude that this settlement was abandoned in a hurry. The World War II surge in military activity suggests that these settlers had to relocate, and some documents back this up likely this abandonment of the settlement was at its end date around the year 1942. the sheer number of objects left behind at the site more than one thousand found a date and some reports of subsistence activity led him to conclude that this settlement was abandoned in a hurry.

Number 11. Archaeologists cracked the case of one thousand seven hundred-year-old Roman eggs.

Researchers found a preserved Roman egg in a ditch near berry field, an ancient settlement along a busy Roman Road. It is the only complete Roman egg that has ever been discovered in Britain. The ditch is thought to have been used as a brewing pit during the second and third centuries and then tr used as a garbage pit after that. During excavation, a pair of the 1700 year old chicken eggs in central England released a pungent sulfurous smell, but a third egg remained intact and its rott

Number 10. A sorceress kit was discovered in the ashes of Pompeii.

According to Fran's Lids of Smithsonian Magazine in September, recent archaeological excavations have led to many significant discoveries including a Roman fast food joint, a fresco depicting a fierce Gladiator battle, the carcass of a horse still saddled, and an inscription claiming Mount Vesuvius eruption happened on October rather than August. These discoveries come from a conservation and restoration initiative dubbed the great Pompeii project launched in 2012 with a budget of 140 million dollars. Numerous playing cards are included in the assortment of goods. Tiny dolls and skulls made from scarab beetles. Crystals phallic amulets, mirrors and gems. We speculate that this may have been a primitive spell book used for telling fortunes or attracting good luck. Alternatively, it may have been the instrument that the sorceress used to hone her skills in order to become more familiar with fertility and seduction. According to Ansa's study, the cash most likely belonged to a slave or a servant because it did not include any of the gold accouterments that are generally linked with Pompeii Elites.

Number 9. Which bottle filled with teeth pins and the mysterious liquid was discovered in an English chimney.

Bottles containing bent pins, nails, thorns, urine, fingernail clippings, hair, and even teeth were used to ward off witchcraft between the 16th and 18th centuries. According to paralysis C Meyer of jstor daily, the bottle was believed to entrap witches with sharp objects inside on the points of pins. However, by the mid 19th century, talismans like a witch bottle one recently found in a former Inn and pub in Watford

Number 8. a container made from a hollowed-out whale vertebra.

During the middle of the second century A.D. A group of Iron Age Scots abandoned a brock on the Orkney Islands. The brock contained a human jawbone, the remains of newborn lambs, a pair of red deer antlers, and a large grinding stone. According to a statement released by the University Institute, the makeshift container was made from a hollowed-out whale vertebra. Archaeologists from the Munrov Institute discovered the b. This research had the same intention as a measure to perform an act of closure. The DNA analysis performed by UHI archaeologist Martin Carruthers and his colleagues identified the bone as a Finn will bone. As a result, they wondered whether the ancient humans were hunting whales of that magnitude or took advantage of a stranded whale carcass. Additional whale bones were found. Archaeological findings lend credence to the second hypothesis, which states that the assemblage bears some resemblance to that of opportunistic animals. According to Carruthers, who Williams of BBC news quotes, "that assemblage is what you would expect we suppose if you saw them as being quite opportunistic regarding what came across their path." You would expect this assemblage if you saw them as being quite opportunistic regarding what came across their path.

Number 7. cave full of untouched Maya artifacts found at Chichen Itza

The cave system was reported on for the first time by local villagers who told of the discovery to an archaeologist. This report was supposedly never heated by the research who ordered the area to be closed off to the public and refused to submit any documentation on the finding. In order to enter the network of Chambers, archaeologists had to get on their stomachs and Rabel through tight confines. It took archaeologists fifty years to travel down into the cave system that the Maya were famous for constructing. Guillermo Deanda was unable to speak and began to cry as the researcher told her that he had investigated human remains in the sacred Cenote in Chichen Itza, but that was nothing compared to the feeling he felt when he entered it for the first time by himself.

Number 6. Archaeologists discover medieval woman and child skeletons at the Tower of London.

The Tower of London, home to some of the country's most powerful and illustrious people, has also hosted less well-known residents such as these 500 year old skeletons that were long lost and rediscovered in one of its chapels. These residents served at the tower in less distinguished capacities but made important contributions in their day. Archaeologists excavated the chapel of Street Peter eventual earlier this year and found the remains, which are estimated to date between 1450 and 1550. One of the skeletons belonged to a mother who had died between the ages of 35 and 45, while the age of one of the children was estimated to have been somewhere about seven. According to the assistant historic building's curator for historic Royal palaces, Alfred Hawkins, Dali Alberts of the Telegraph reported in October that the two may have been related to the Royal Mint, the Royal armories, or the soldiers who were assigned to guard the crown jewels because neither showed signs of a violent death. This was based on the information provided by Alfred Hawkins. The ruins of the tower have made visible a facet of human nature that is typically obscured. Although it has served not only as a palace fortress and prison but also as a dwelling for the laborers who have been employed within its walls over the years, the Fortress has been continuously inhabited for close to a thousand years.

Number 5. Lost footage of one of the Beetle's last live performances was found in the attic.

Since no footage was captured at the time, many fans believed the show had been lost. Luckily for them, one dedicated music lover watched the episode on a wind-up camera after keeping it in his attic for over 50 years. He got the idea to digitally document the historic performance. Chandler had kept the tape in secret until this spring, when he came across another brief video recording of the top of the pops. Chandler had kept the tape in secret until this spring, when he came across another brief video recording of top of Chris Perry of Kaleidoscope, who specializes in restoring lost footage, was inspired by all of the media hype to send Chandler a 92 second clip of his own. The extended performance, which Perry deemed phenomenal, is silent, and so is the shorter clip. However, Kaleidoscope remastered the footage, sensing it with the Paperback Writer audio and enhancing its video quality, so that Beatles fans finally get the opportunity to watch The Lost performance.

Number 4. A perfectly preserved 32000 year old wolf head was found in Siberian permafrost.

When it comes to the long-term preservation of resources, the permafrost in the Siberian Heartland of Russia is nearly incomparable to anything else. On the banks of the Taretic River in 2017, a local person discovered the frozen remains of a cave lion cub that was 50000 years old. In 2018, mammoth tusk hunters recovered the remains of a foal that was 42000 years old. The most exciting find in recent times may have been the fully intact head of a plasticine Step wolf that had been preserved in permafrost for over 32000 years. This two to four-year-old wolf was part of an extinct lineage with different characteristics than modern species. Initial media reports said that the wolf's severed head, which was still covered in fur was unusually large. However, an evolutionary geneticist from the Swedish Museum of Natural History who was involved in the discovery said that the head was actually.

Number 3. The 26.8 million dollars Renaissance Masterpiece was found hanging above a woman hot plate.

In October, an unattractive little panel painting by Simabu that had nearly been thrown in the garbage sold at auction for 26.8 million dollars after experts identified it as a long-neglected work. The painting in question is an impressive 13th century work titled "Dancing Girl," and it is known as "Dancing Girl." Christ Mocked having sat undiscovered above the stove of an old woman in France for years now, the French government is imposing an important export ban on the painting purchasing time to gather funds to acquire it. According to the Guardian, the title has risen to be one of the top six most expensive artworks sold anywhere in the world so far this year. The author Angelique Christopher's writing the winning owner of the painting had always assumed it was a religious icon they do not know how it ended up in their possession while arranging items from an old woman's house they do not know how it ended up in their possession while arranging items from an old woman's house they do not know how it ended I told him that it would have all gone to waste if I did not take it to the dump. Auctioneer Philamine Wolf was taken aback by the image she stumbled across in her reflection. She told Ailey Julian of La Parisian that she had to make room in her schedule after discovering the photo. Researchers investigating the painting concluded that it originated from a polyptych created around 1280 by Simabu, perhaps best known as Giotto's teacher. Still, a pioneering artist in his own right Eric Turquin, an art historian, discussed this topic with Scott Rayburn of the art newspaper.

Number 2. Archaeologists Universe remains of infants wearing helmets made from the skulls of other children.

They were buried with decidedly unusual headgear head scarves carved from older children's skulls using a modified cranium from a second juvenile. The researchers placed it around the head of the first, allowing the primary individual face to peep out from behind it. The infants were buried at solango, a ritual complex located on Ecuador's Central Coast in 100 BC. Another infant was aged six to nine months was buried at salango around 1900 BC. both infants were interred at solango. The skulls of adolescent animals are frequently unstable unless they are supported by the skin. The macabre headpiece for the yogurt infant was made from a person's skull in their early twenties, while the helmet for the 18-month-old was worn by a child between the ages of 4 and 12. In addition to the baby's skull, the team found a finger bone and a fragment of a little shell. According to the lead author Sarah Just of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, the most plausible hypothesis links a natural or social disaster with the helmet's probable purpose of offering Extra Protection or links to ancestors. The researchers found a small shell and a finger bone between the baby's head and the second skull.

Number 1. Terracotta Army.

The armies of kin are represented here by the Terracotta Army. On March 29, 1974, farmers in the Shaki province of China were boring a water well when they discovered this image of hundreds of millions of mud soldiers all in one pit confronting the archaeologists. Several terracotta non-military figures were also discovered in numerous pits such as officials and acrobats. You may recognize this image from a horror film called The Mummy Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. On March 29, 1974, farmers in the Shaki province of China discovered this image of hundreds of millions of Since the Terracotta Army was excavated, some painted surfaces on the Terracotta figures have started to flake and fade away, making it difficult to open the tomb in 15 seconds. The lacquer covering the paint may curl and flake off when exposed to sand dry air. The Tomb of the First Kin Emperor was guarded by cavalry troops and war chariots. The length of the tomb is about the same as a football field.

[kemetic-dreams]

As an African historian, how does your field use the term “Tribe”? What meaning/definition does the term have in your specialty? If your specialty has moved away from the term, when & why did this come about? What words do you use in place of Tribe?

I will go ahead and offer an Africanist perspective.

The term Tribe was used among historians of Africa from at least the 19th century up until the late 1960s or early 1970s. Since the 1970s, Africanist historians and anthropologists have engaged in a good deal of discussion within their fields about the term. The resulting consensus has been that Tribe is not a useful term to use in an African context, for several reasons. For organization purposes, I will list a few reasons as headings, and provide a little more context under each heading.

The term was over-applied, so that ‘tribe’ has no clear meaning

Many, many different societies in Africa have been described as “Tribes”. For instance, there was a discussion of the Yoruba tribe, the Zulu and Kikuyu tribes, and the ”bushmen” (San) tribes.

The problem with applying one term to all of those societies is that the social organizations of these groups are completely different. For example, in the 1950s, momentarily after the article about the Yoruba “tribe” was written, a more significant proportion of Yoruba-speaking people were living in cities than the population of Canada. As well, historically, Yoruba modes of subsistence was based on agriculture (this changes in the 20th century), while the Kikuyu were a pastoral-agricultural people (ditto), and the San have been hunter-gatherer peoples.

Additionally, if we look at recent population figures, there are approximately 40 million Yoruba people in Nigeria and Benin, perhaps 12 million Zulus, 6 million-or-so Kikuyu, and 90,000 San. So somehow, the “tribe” is meant to describe a predominantly urban population larger than Canada, and also a hunter-gatherer population in the tens of thousands.

It promotes notions of timeless identity and social organization

This is connected to the problem of over-application. In the popular imagination, it seems that not only is every society in Africa a “tribe”, but that tribes began with the dawn of man. See this recent biology article as a demonstration.

As a corollary, it is often thought that tribal identity can be traced back through the centuries. That is, someone who identifies as a BaLuba today had ancestors who identified as BaLuba in the year 1890, and ancestors further back who identified as BaLuba in 1700.

In the past few decades, historians and anthropologists have come round to the idea that identities are situational and overlapping.

So, to come back to our Baluba example, a person in rural Katanga province might identify much more with their village or family, or occupational identity. They might even identify as non-baluba ethnically. However, when they move to a city like Kinshasa with a diverse population, it might be that they identify to others as Baluba, and the other identifiers become less pronounced.

The term promotes the idea of primitivism.

The usage of the word Tribe to describe African societies is deeply tied to the era of European colonization of Africa. In the context of the 19th century, it was understood to draw a connection between Africans and ancient Germanic and Gallic tribes encountered by the Roman Empire. The assumption made was that societies develop along a path from bands -> tribes -> chiefdoms —>kingdoms -> empires, and that African societies had only progressed to the tribal stage of development.

More recently, when phrases like “tribal-based conflict” is used to describe political violence, it promotes the idea that such conflict is intractable and the “ancient hatreds” are incomprehensible to sensible, modern Westerners. Thus, talk about “tribal violence” becomes a convenient shorthand to avoid delving into political, economic, or philosophical causes of violence.

Conclusion:

I think my answer is pretty straightforward. For Africanists, “tribe” carries the baggage of colonial-era designation systems that were reified and naturalized by a combination of governmental and individual selection. More than that, however, it carries the connotation of primitivism and atavism (as befits its ethnographic origins as a stage of sophistication) as well as a lack of “civilization,” and so it is inherently prejudicial. People from Africa use tribe in English primarily because this is what they’ve been taught to use; the real terms in vernacular are closer to nation or community (e.g., isizwe in isiZulu). The reality was that affinities were multiple and overlapping, and patron-client relations (even relative to centralized states) were far more important as identifiers and might change over time.

It’s not analytically a precise or useful term, when there are others that give much more detail (or at least not less) without the historiographical baggage. So among Africanists, it is definitely a term in eclipse. Where the term persists academically, it persists entirely because of colonial-era inertia and a lack of systematic challenge/broad education to change the perception. But then, that last bit is common to a lot of subjects connected to Africa.

[conceptsnest]

THE ORIGIN OF ANXIETY: BEHAVIORS ASSOCIATED

A deer may be startled by a loud noise and take off through the forest, but as soon as the threat is gone, the deer immediately calms down and starts grazing. And it does not appear to be in anxiety about it later. Let us play act for a moment that we are that deer, living in the grasslands of India. We have slim long feet that help us get into a sprint quickly and pruned senses that pick up signs of danger, a majestic antelope that grabs attention from the group of humans that, every now and then, come driving around on a jungle expedition taking pictures of us. Perhaps the biggest difference between us and our other deer friends, and the humans taking our photograph is that nearly every decision we make (as a deer) provides an immediate benefit to our life. When we are hungry, we walk over and chomp on a bush. When it rains, we shelter under a tree. When we spot a tiger, we run away. Most of our choices as a deer—like what to eat or where to sleep or when to avoid a predator—make an immediate impact on our life. We live in what scientists call an immediate-return environment because our actions instantly deliver clear and immediate outcomes.

Now, let’s flip the script and pretend we are one of the humans on the jungle expedition. While taking photographs from the Jeep, we might think, “This safari has been a lot of fun. It would be cool to work as a park ranger and see deer every day. Speaking of work, is it time for a career change? Am I really doing the work I was meant to do? Should I change jobs?”

Most of the choices we make today will not benefit us immediately. If we do a good job at work today, we will get recognition at the end of the business quarter. If we save money now, we will have enough for retirement later. Many aspects of modern society are designed to delay rewards until some point in the future. This is true of our problems as well.  Such a situation is commonly referred to as delayed returns. Researching hunting and gathering societies, anthropologist James Woodburn classified societies into two major categories: those with immediate return systems and those with delayed return systems. This entails two different environments.

The Immediate Return Environment

In an Immediate Return Environment, the actions of an individual bring about immediate benefits. Everything that prehistoric humans did was oriented at the present, as a result of following their instincts to survive: avoiding predators, finding shelter when they need it, reproducing, hunting and gathering to survive. For the sole purpose of completing these tasks, they made tools and weapons that did not require a lot of labour. The human brain evolved in this type of environment to use anxiety to protect humans from danger and starvation, compelling them to solve all the short-term problems they were faced with. The feelings of stress and anxiety were relieved as each problem was solved.

The Delayed Return Environment

The actions taken in a Delayed Return Environment are not directed at an immediate benefit, but with future reward in mind. Each day we work, we are putting in the effort to get a reward in the future: salary at the end of the month/project. We study in order to obtain a degree in years. We save money so we can invest it or enjoy spending it later. We choose healthy foods and exercise knowing that it will not make us fit immediately, but in the future and only if we maintain a regimen, and so on.

As humans evolved, they adopted more characteristics of delayed return societies, making elaborate weapons, processing, and storing food for future use, etc. But the modern environment presents a very abrupt change when you look at it from the perspective of evolution. The Delayed Return Environment tends to lead to chronic stress and anxiety for humans. Why? Because the human brain did not evolve for life in a delayed-return environment.

Evolution of the Brain

The earliest remains of modern humans, known as Homo sapiens, are approximately two hundred thousand years old. These were the first humans to have a brain relatively like ours. In particular, the neocortex—the newest part of the brain and the region responsible for higher functions like language—was roughly the same size two hundred thousand years ago as today. Compared to the age of the brain, modern society is incredibly new. It is only recently—during the last 500 years or so—that our society has shifted to a predominantly Delayed Return Environment.

The pace of change has increased exponentially compared to prehistoric times. In the last 100 years we have seen the rise of the car, the airplane, the television, the personal computer, the Internet, and MTV. Nearly everything that makes up our daily life has been created in a very small window of time. From the perspective of evolution, however, 100 years is nothing. The modern human brain spent hundreds of thousands of years evolving for one type of environment (immediate returns) and in the blink of an eye the entire environment changed (delayed returns).

The Evolution of Anxiety

The mismatch between our old brain and our new environment has a significant impact on the amount of chronic stress and anxiety we experience today. Thousands of years ago, when humans lived in an Immediate Return Environment, stress and anxiety were useful emotions because they helped us take action in the face of immediate problems. For Instance:

Anxiety was an emotion that helped protect humans in an Immediate Return Environment. It was built for solving short-term, acute problems. There was no such thing as chronic stress because there are no really chronic problems in an Immediate Return Environment. Wild animals rarely experience chronic stress. Today we face different problems. Will I have enough money to pay the bills next month? Will I get the promotion at work or remain stuck in my current job? Will I repair my broken relationship? Problems in a Delayed Return Environment can rarely be solved right now in the present moment.

Ways to balance our Anxiety and Stress.

One of the greatest sources of anxiety in a Delayed Return Environment is the constant uncertainty. There is no guarantee that working hard in school will get you a job. There is no promise that investments will go up in the future. There is no assurance that going on a date will land you a soul mate. Living in a Delayed Return Environment means you are surrounded by uncertainty. So how do we reconcile the way our brains work with the problems of the Delayed Return Environment? First things first: we need to deal with the built-up chronic stress through small lifestyle changes. Many of us have excess levels of cortisol (the stress hormone) because of this fast-paced environment, so adjusting our diet, sleeping habits, and exercising more is the first step to balancing these hormones. Of course, practices such as meditation can help us regain emotional balance and realign our thoughts; meditation takes time to perfect, but it is worth it (there we go, delayed return all over again).

Next, there are two ways to regain balance:

01) Measuring something:-> We cannot know for certain how much money we will have in retirement, but we can remove some uncertainty from the situation by measuring how much we save each month. We cannot predict when we will find love, but we can pay attention to how many times we introduce ourselves to someone new. The act of measurement takes an unknown quantity and makes it known. When we measure something, we immediately become more certain about the situation. Measurement will not magically solve our problems, but it will clarify the situation, pull us out of the black box of worry and uncertainty, and help us get a grip on what is actually happening. Furthermore, one of the most important distinctions between an Immediate Return Environment and a Delayed Return Environment is rapid feedback. Animals are constantly getting feedback about the things that cause them stress. As a result, they actually know whether or not they should feel stressed. Without measurement you have no feedback. 02) Shift Your Worry:-> The second thing we can do is “shift our worry” from the long-term problem to a daily routine that will solve that problem. Instead of worrying about living longer, we can focus on taking a walk each day. Instead of worrying about losing enough weight for the wedding, we can focus on cooking a healthy dinner tonight. The key insight that makes this strategy work is making sure our daily routine both rewards us right away (immediate return) and resolves our future problems (delayed return). In the end, hopefully, by reflecting on the way the brain works and acknowledging how it puts anxiety in motion, we can use these mechanisms to our advantage. The Delayed Return Environment presents a challenge for humans, but there is a way to reconcile the age-old hardwiring of the brain with this environment that presents itself as threatening. Research has shown that the ability to delay gratification is one of the primary drivers of success. It is then interesting that delaying gratification is both the opposite of what our brain evolved to do and the skill that matches the Delayed Return Environment we live in today.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

College Covid app is a security dumpster-fire

In the early days of the pandemic, the term "contact tracing" vaulted into the public consciousness: that's the shoe-leather- and labor-intensive process whereby skilled  heath experts establish a personal rapport with infected people to establish who they had contact with.

For both good reasons (the scale of the pandemic) and bad ones (tech's epistemological blindness, which insists that all social factors can be ignored in favor of quantifiable ones), there was interest in automating this process and "exposure notification" was born.

The difference is that exposure notification tells you whether your device was near another device whose owner is sick. It doesn't tell you about the circumstances - like, was it one of the people at that eyeball-licking party? Or someone in the next car in a traffic jam?

Exposure notification vaporizes qualitative elements of contact tracing, leaving behind just a quantitative residue of unknown value. There are two big problems with this: first, it might just not be very useful (that's what they learned in Iceland):

https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/12/evil-maid/#fjords

Second: people might be so distrustful of your data-handling processes that they actively subvert the app, meaning there are so many holes in your data that the data-set is useless. That's what happened in Norway.

https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/15/norway-pulls-its-coronavirus-contacts-tracing-app-after-privacy-watchdogs-warning/

The thing is, contact tracing is high-touch/low-tech because it is a social science intervention. Social scientists have always understood that if you only gather the data that's easy to reach, you'll come to bad conclusions skewed by defects in your collection.

A canonical text on this is Clifford Geertz's "Thick Description," where he describes an anthropologist trying to figure out why a subject just winked: is it flirting? Dust in the eye? Something else? The only way to know is to ask: you can't solve this with measurement.

To a first approximation, all the important stuff in our world has an irreducible, vital qualitative dimension. Take copyright exemptions: fair use rules are deliberately qualitative ("Is your use transformative in a way that comments on or criticizes the work it uses?").

These are questions that reflect policy priorities: in the words of the Supreme Court, fair use is the "escape valve" for the First Amendment, the thing that squares exclusive rights for authors with the public's right to free expression.

But the tech and entertainment industry have spent decades trying to jettison this in favor of a purely quantitative measure: it's not fair use if your image incorporates more than X pixels from another, or if your video or sound has more than Y seconds from another work.

This is idiotic. Solving automation challenges by declaring the non-automatable parts to be unimportant is how we get self-driving car assholes saying, "We just need to tell people that they're not allowed to act unpredictably in public."

(BTW, this is all said much better than I can in a superb Communications of the ACM article by Randy Connolly: "Why Computing Belongs Within the Social Sciences.")

https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2020/8/246368-why-computing-belongs-within-the-social-sciences/fulltext

All of this is a leadup to the story of @Q3w3e3, an anonymous student at Michigan's Albion College, a private uni that reopened after insisting that all students must install a proprietary exposure notification app before returning to campus to lick each other's eyeballs.

Albion paid some grifters to develop this app. Because of course they did. The app is called Aura, and it was created by a company called "Nucleus Careers."

If you're thinking that's a weird name for a public health development company, you're right. They're a recruiting firm, founded this year, "with no apparent history or experience in building or developing healthcare apps."

https://techcrunch.com/2020/08/19/coronavirus-albion-security-flaws-app/

Aura is predictably terrible. As @Q3w3e3 discovered when they audited it, the app stores all the students' location data in an Amazon storage bucket, and comes with the keys to access that data hard-coded into the app.

The app also allows attackers to trivially discover the test status of any registered user. Techcrunch discovered this bug and hypothesizes that they could get the health data for 15,000 people this way. Did someone say HIPAA?

Nucleus Careers refused to talk with Techcrunch's Zack Whittaker about this beyond a few glomarish nonstatements. But the school administration is standing behind the app, threatening to expel students who don't use it.

And this brings us back to the disutility of the denatured quantitative residue of the thick, qualitative process of contact tracing. Many of the students who have the most at risk from using the app are also at the highest risk of contracting the disease.

People struggling with addiction, queer kids who aren't out and have secret partners, people engaged in survival sex-work are all at higher risk of exposure, and they also have the biggest reason NOT to use the app, lest it leak their secrets.

These are the people who you absolutely WANT to include in public health efforts, but that can only happen through noncoercive, personal, high-trust, low-tech interventions.

In other words, Aura isn't just technologically inept, it's also epidemiologically inept. The cliche that "you treasure what you measure" could not be more applicable here.

Look, these students shouldn't even be on campus. Obviously. And even a good contact tracing system would probably mostly serve as a postmortem for analyzing the inevitable conflagration of infection incoming in 3...2...1

But Albion is still a fascinating case-study in the lethal incoherence of the contempt of both managerial and technology circles for "human factors."

At the very least, we should ensure that the lives they will squander through their hubris aren't totally wasted.

[manifestoinprogress]

Industrial Society and its Future - Ted Kaczynski

Editor's Note: This is the text of a 35,000-word manifesto as submitted to The Washington Post and the New York Times by the serial mail bomber called the Unabomber. The manifesto appeared in The Washington Post as an eight-page supplement that was not part of the news sections. This document contains corrections that appeared in the Friday, Sept. 22, 1995 editions of Washington Post. The text was sent in June, 1995 to The New York Times and The Washington Post by the person who calls himself “FC,” identified by the FBI as the Unabomber, whom authorities have implicated in three murders and 16 bombings. The author threatened to send a bomb to an unspecified destination “with intent to kill” unless one of the newspapers published this manuscript. The Attorney General and the Director of the FBI recommended publication.

INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY AND ITS FUTURE

Introduction

1. The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. They have greatly increased the life-expectancy of those of us who live in “advanced” countries, but they have destabilized society, have made life unfulfilling, have subjected human beings to indignities, have led to widespread psychological suffering (in the Third World to physical suffering as well) and have inflicted severe damage on the natural world. The continued development of technology will worsen the situation. It will certainly subject human beings to greater indignities and inflict greater damage on the natural world, it will probably lead to greater social disruption and psychological suffering, and it may lead to increased physical suffering even in “advanced” countries.

2. The industrial-technological system may survive or it may break down. If it survives, it MAY eventually achieve a low level of physical and psychological suffering, but only after passing through a long and very painful period of adjustment and only at the cost of permanently reducing human beings and many other living organisms to engineered products and mere cogs in the social machine. Furthermore, if the system survives, the consequences will be inevitable: There is no way of reforming or modifying the system so as to prevent it from depriving people of dignity and autonomy.

3. If the system breaks down the consequences will still be very painful. But the bigger the system grows the more disastrous the results of its breakdown will be, so if it is to break down it had best break down sooner rather than later.

4. We therefore advocate a revolution against the industrial system. This revolution may or may not make use of violence; it may be sudden or it may be a relatively gradual process spanning a few decades. We can’t predict any of that. But we do outline in a very general way the measures that those who hate the industrial system should take in order to prepare the way for a revolution against that form of society. This is not to be a POLITICAL revolution. Its object will be to overthrow not governments but the economic and technological basis of the present society.

5. In this article we give attention to only some of the negative developments that have grown out of the industrial-technological system. Other such developments we mention only briefly or ignore altogether. This does not mean that we regard these other developments as unimportant. For practical reasons we have to confine our discussion to areas that have received insufficient public attention or in which we have something new to say. For example, since there are well-developed environmental and wilderness movements, we have written very little about environmental degradation or the destruction of wild nature, even though we consider these to be highly important.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MODERN LEFTISM

6. Almost everyone will agree that we live in a deeply troubled society. One of the most widespread manifestations of the craziness of our world is leftism, so a discussion of the psychology of leftism can serve as an introduction to the discussion of the problems of modern society in general.

7. But what is leftism? During the first half of the 20th century leftism could have been practically identified with socialism. Today the movement is fragmented and it is not clear who can properly be called a leftist. When we speak of leftists in this article we have in mind mainly socialists, collectivists, “politically correct” types, feminists, gay and disability activists, animal rights activists and the like. But not everyone who is associated with one of these movements is a leftist. What we are trying to get at in discussing leftism is not so much movement or an ideology as a psychological type, or rather a collection of related types. Thus, what we mean by “leftism” will emerge more clearly in the course of our discussion of leftist psychology. (Also, see paragraphs 227-230.)

8. Even so, our conception of leftism will remain a good deal less clear than we would wish, but there doesn’t seem to be any remedy for this. All we are trying to do here is indicate in a rough and approximate way the two psychological tendencies that we believe are the main driving force of modern leftism. We by no means claim to be telling the WHOLE truth about leftist psychology. Also, our discussion is meant to apply to modern leftism only. We leave open the question of the extent to which our discussion could be applied to the leftists of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

9. The two psychological tendencies that underlie modern leftism we call “feelings of inferiority” and “oversocialization.” Feelings of inferiority are characteristic of modern leftism as a whole, while oversocialization is characteristic only of a certain segment of modern leftism; but this segment is highly influential.

FEELINGS OF INFERIORITY

10. By “feelings of inferiority” we mean not only inferiority feelings in the strict sense but a whole spectrum of related traits; low self-esteem, feelings of powerlessness, depressive tendencies, defeatism, guilt, self- hatred, etc. We argue that modern leftists tend to have some such feelings (possibly more or less repressed) and that these feelings are decisive in determining the direction of modern leftism.

11. When someone interprets as derogatory almost anything that is said about him (or about groups with whom he identifies) we conclude that he has inferiority feelings or low self-esteem. This tendency is pronounced among minority rights activists, whether or not they belong to the minority groups whose rights they defend. They are hypersensitive about the words used to designate minorities and about anything that is said concerning minorities. The terms “negro,” “oriental,” “handicapped” or “chick” for an African, an Asian, a disabled person or a woman originally had no derogatory connotation. “Broad” and “chick” were merely the feminine equivalents of “guy,” “dude” or “fellow.” The negative connotations have been attached to these terms by the activists themselves. Some animal rights activists have gone so far as to reject the word “pet” and insist on its replacement by “animal companion.” Leftish anthropologists go to great lengths to avoid saying anything about primitive peoples that could conceivably be interpreted as negative. They want to replace the world “primitive” by “nonliterate.” They seem almost paranoid about anything that might suggest that any primitive culture is inferior to our own. (We do not mean to imply that primitive cultures ARE inferior to ours. We merely point out the hypersensitivity of leftish anthropologists.)

12. Those who are most sensitive about “politically incorrect” terminology are not the average black ghetto- dweller, Asian immigrant, abused woman or disabled person, but a minority of activists, many of whom do not even belong to any “oppressed” group but come from privileged strata of society. Political correctness has its stronghold among university professors, who have secure employment with comfortable salaries, and the majority of whom are heterosexual white males from middle- to upper-middle-class families.

13. Many leftists have an intense identification with the problems of groups that have an image of being weak (women), defeated (American Indians), repellent (homosexuals) or otherwise inferior. The leftists themselves feel that these groups are inferior. They would never admit to themselves that they have such feelings, but it is precisely because they do see these groups as inferior that they identify with their problems. (We do not mean to suggest that women, Indians, etc. ARE inferior; we are only making a point about leftist psychology.)

14. Feminists are desperately anxious to prove that women are as strong and as capable as men. Clearly they are nagged by a fear that women may NOT be as strong and as capable as men.

15. Leftists tend to hate anything that has an image of being strong, good and successful. They hate America, they hate Western civilization, they hate white males, they hate rationality. The reasons that leftists give for hating the West, etc. clearly do not correspond with their real motives. They SAY they hate the West because it is warlike, imperialistic, sexist, ethnocentric and so forth, but where these same faults appear in socialist countries or in primitive cultures, the leftist finds excuses for them, or at best he GRUDGINGLY admits that they exist; whereas he ENTHUSIASTICALLY points out (and often greatly exaggerates) these faults where they appear in Western civilization. Thus it is clear that these faults are not the leftist’s real motive for hating America and the West. He hates America and the West because they are strong and successful.

16. Words like “self-confidence,” “self-reliance,” “initiative,” “enterprise,” “optimism,” etc., play little role in the liberal and leftist vocabulary. The leftist is anti-individualistic, pro-collectivist. He wants society to solve everyone’s problems for them, satisfy everyone’s needs for them, take care of them. He is not the sort of person who has an inner sense of confidence in his ability to solve his own problems and satisfy his own needs. The leftist is antagonistic to the concept of competition because, deep inside, he feels like a loser.

17. Art forms that appeal to modern leftish intellectuals tend to focus on sordidness, defeat and despair, or else they take an orgiastic tone, throwing off rational control as if there were no hope of accomplishing anything through rational calculation and all that was left was to immerse oneself in the sensations of the moment.

18. Modern leftish philosophers tend to dismiss reason, science, objective reality and to insist that everything is culturally relative. It is true that one can ask serious questions about the foundations of scientific knowledge and about how, if at all, the concept of objective reality can be defined. But it is obvious that modern leftish philosophers are not simply cool-headed logicians systematically analyzing the foundations of knowledge. They are deeply involved emotionally in their attack on truth and reality. They attack these concepts because of their own psychological needs. For one thing, their attack is an outlet for hostility, and, to the extent that it is successful, it satisfies the drive for power. More importantly, the leftist hates science and rationality because they classify certain beliefs as true (i.e., successful, superior) and other beliefs as false (i.e., failed, inferior). The leftist’s feelings of inferiority run so deep that he cannot tolerate any classification of some things as successful or superior and other things as failed or inferior. This also underlies the rejection by many leftists of the concept of mental illness and of the utility of IQ tests. Leftists are antagonistic to genetic explanations of human abilities or behavior because such explanations tend to make some persons appear superior or inferior to others. Leftists prefer to give society the credit or blame for an individual’s ability or lack of it. Thus if a person is “inferior” it is not his fault, but society’s, because he has not been brought up properly.

19. The leftist is not typically the kind of person whose feelings of inferiority make him a braggart, an egotist, a bully, a self-promoter, a ruthless competitor. This kind of person has not wholly lost faith in himself. He has a deficit in his sense of power and self-worth, but he can still conceive of himself as having the capacity to be strong, and his efforts to make himself strong produce his unpleasant behavior. [1] But the leftist is too far gone for that. His feelings of inferiority are so ingrained that he cannot conceive of himself as individually strong and valuable. Hence the collectivism of the leftist. He can feel strong only as a member of a large organization or a mass movement with which he identifies himself.

20. Notice the masochistic tendency of leftist tactics. Leftists protest by lying down in front of vehicles, they intentionally provoke police or racists to abuse them, etc. These tactics may often be effective, but many leftists use them not as a means to an end but because they PREFER masochistic tactics. Self-hatred is a leftist trait.

21. Leftists may claim that their activism is motivated by compassion or by moral principles, and moral principle does play a role for the leftist of the oversocialized type. But compassion and moral principle cannot be the main motives for leftist activism. Hostility is too prominent a component of leftist behavior; so is the drive for power. Moreover, much leftist behavior is not rationally calculated to be of benefit to the people whom the leftists claim to be trying to help. For example, if one believes that affirmative action is good for black people, does it make sense to demand affirmative action in hostile or dogmatic terms? Obviously it would be more productive to take a diplomatic and conciliatory approach that would make at least verbal and symbolic concessions to white people who think that affirmative action discriminates against them. But leftist activists do not take such an approach because it would not satisfy their emotional needs. Helping black people is not their real goal. Instead, race problems serve as an excuse for them to express their own hostility and frustrated need for power. In doing so they actually harm black people, because the activists’ hostile attitude toward the white majority tends to intensify race hatred.

22. If our society had no social problems at all, the leftists would have to INVENT problems in order to provide themselves with an excuse for making a fuss.

23. We emphasize that the foregoing does not pretend to be an accurate description of everyone who might be considered a leftist. It is only a rough indication of a general tendency of leftism.

OVERSOCIALIZATION

24. Psychologists use the term “socialization” to designate the process by which children are trained to think and act as society demands. A person is said to be well socialized if he believes in and obeys the moral code of his society and fits in well as a functioning part of that society. It may seem senseless to say that many leftists are oversocialized, since the leftist is perceived as a rebel. Nevertheless, the position can be defended. Many leftists are not such rebels as they seem.

25. The moral code of our society is so demanding that no one can think, feel and act in a completely moral way. For example, we are not supposed to hate anyone, yet almost everyone hates somebody at some time or other, whether he admits it to himself or not. Some people are so highly socialized that the attempt to think, feel and act morally imposes a severe burden on them. In order to avoid feelings of guilt, they continually have to deceive themselves about their own motives and find moral explanations for feelings and actions that in reality have a non-moral origin. We use the term “oversocialized” to describe such people. [2]

26. Oversocialization can lead to low self-esteem, a sense of powerlessness, defeatism, guilt, etc. One of the most important means by which our society socializes children is by making them feel ashamed of behavior or speech that is contrary to society’s expectations. If this is overdone, or if a particular child is especially susceptible to such feelings, he ends by feeling ashamed of HIMSELF. Moreover the thought and the behavior of the oversocialized person are more restricted by society’s expectations than are those of the lightly socialized person. The majority of people engage in a significant amount of naughty behavior. They lie, they commit petty thefts, they break traffic laws, they goof off at work, they hate someone, they say spiteful things or they use some underhanded trick to get ahead of the other guy. The oversocialized person cannot do these things, or if he does do them he generates in himself a sense of shame and self-hatred. The oversocialized person cannot even experience, without guilt, thoughts or feelings that are contrary to the accepted morality; he cannot think “unclean” thoughts. And socialization is not just a matter of morality; we are socialized to conform to many norms of behavior that do not fall under the heading of morality. Thus the oversocialized person is kept on a psychological leash and spends his life running on rails that society has laid down for him. In many oversocialized people this results in a sense of constraint and powerlessness that can be a severe hardship. We suggest that oversocialization is among the more serious cruelties that human beings inflict on one another.

27. We argue that a very important and influential segment of the modern left is oversocialized and that their oversocialization is of great importance in determining the direction of modern leftism. Leftists of the oversocialized type tend to be intellectuals or members of the upper-middle class. Notice that university intellectuals [3] constitute the most highly socialized segment of our society and also the most left-wing segment.

28. The leftist of the oversocialized type tries to get off his psychological leash and assert his autonomy by rebelling. But usually he is not strong enough to rebel against the most basic values of society. Generally speaking, the goals of today’s leftists are NOT in conflict with the accepted morality. On the contrary, the left takes an accepted moral principle, adopts it as its own, and then accuses mainstream society of violating that principle. Examples: racial equality, equality of the sexes, helping poor people, peace as opposed to war, nonviolence generally, freedom of expression, kindness to animals. More fundamentally, the duty of the individual to serve society and the duty of society to take care of the individual. All these have been deeply rooted values of our society (or at least of its middle and upper classes [4] for a long time. These values are explicitly or implicitly expressed or presupposed in most of the material presented to us by the mainstream communications media and the educational system. Leftists, especially those of the oversocialized type, usually do not rebel against these principles but justify their hostility to society by claiming (with some degree of truth) that society is not living up to these principles.

29. Here is an illustration of the way in which the oversocialized leftist shows his real attachment to the conventional attitudes of our society while pretending to be in rebellion against it. Many leftists push for affirmative action, for moving black people into high-prestige jobs, for improved education in black schools and more money for such schools; the way of life of the black “underclass” they regard as a social disgrace. They want to integrate the black man into the system, make him a business executive, a lawyer, a scientist just like upper-middle-class white people. The leftists will reply that the last thing they want is to make the black man into a copy of the white man; instead, they want to preserve African American culture. But in what does this preservation of African American culture consist? It can hardly consist in anything more than eating black-style food, listening to black-style music, wearing black-style clothing and going to a black- style church or mosque. In other words, it can express itself only in superficial matters. In all ESSENTIAL respects most leftists of the oversocialized type want to make the black man conform to white, middle-class ideals. They want to make him study technical subjects, become an executive or a scientist, spend his life climbing the status ladder to prove that black people are as good as white. They want to make black fathers “responsible,” they want black gangs to become nonviolent, etc. But these are exactly the values of the industrial-technological system. The system couldn’t care less what kind of music a man listens to, what kind of clothes he wears or what religion he believes in as long as he studies in school, holds a respectable job, climbs the status ladder, is a “responsible” parent, is nonviolent and so forth. In effect, however much he may deny it, the oversocialized leftist wants to integrate the black man into the system and make him adopt its values.

30. We certainly do not claim that leftists, even of the oversocialized type, NEVER rebel against the fundamental values of our society. Clearly they sometimes do. Some oversocialized leftists have gone so far as to rebel against one of modern society’s most important principles by engaging in physical violence. By their own account, violence is for them a form of “liberation.” In other words, by committing violence they break through the psychological restraints that have been trained into them. Because they are oversocialized these restraints have been more confining for them than for others; hence their need to break free of them. But they usually justify their rebellion in terms of mainstream values. If they engage in violence they claim to be fighting against racism or the like.

31. We realize that many objections could be raised to the foregoing thumbnail sketch of leftist psychology. The real situation is complex, and anything like a complete description of it would take several volumes even if the necessary data were available. We claim only to have indicated very roughly the two most important tendencies in the psychology of modern leftism.

32. The problems of the leftist are indicative of the problems of our society as a whole. Low self-esteem, depressive tendencies and defeatism are not restricted to the left. Though they are especially noticeable in the left, they are widespread in our society. And today’s society tries to socialize us to a greater extent than any previous society. We are even told by experts how to eat, how to exercise, how to make love, how to raise our kids and so forth.

THE POWER PROCESS

33. Human beings have a need (probably based in biology) for something that we will call the “power process.” This is closely related to the need for power (which is widely recognized) but is not quite the same thing. The power process has four elements. The three most clear-cut of these we call goal, effort and attainment of goal. (Everyone needs to have goals whose attainment requires effort, and needs to succeed in attaining at least some of his goals.) The fourth element is more difficult to define and may not be necessary for everyone. We call it autonomy and will discuss it later (paragraphs 42-44).

34. Consider the hypothetical case of a man who can have anything he wants just by wishing for it. Such a man has power, but he will develop serious psychological problems. At first he will have a lot of fun, but by and by he will become acutely bored and demoralized. Eventually he may become clinically depressed. History shows that leisured aristocracies tend to become decadent. This is not true of fighting aristocracies that have to struggle to maintain their power. But leisured, secure aristocracies that have no need to exert themselves usually become bored, hedonistic and demoralized, even though they have power. This shows that power is not enough. One must have goals toward which to exercise one’s power.

35. Everyone has goals; if nothing else, to obtain the physical necessities of life: food, water and whatever clothing and shelter are made necessary by the climate. But the leisured aristocrat obtains these things without effort. Hence his boredom and demoralization.

36. Nonattainment of important goals results in death if the goals are physical necessities, and in frustration if nonattainment of the goals is compatible with survival. Consistent failure to attain goals throughout life results in defeatism, low self-esteem or depression.

37, Thus, in order to avoid serious psychological problems, a human being needs goals whose attainment requires effort, and he must have a reasonable rate of success in attaining his goals.

SURROGATE ACTIVITIES

38. But not every leisured aristocrat becomes bored and demoralized. For example, the emperor Hirohito, instead of sinking into decadent hedonism, devoted himself to marine biology, a field in which he became distinguished. When people do not have to exert themselves to satisfy their physical needs they often set up artificial goals for themselves. In many cases they then pursue these goals with the same energy and emotional involvement that they otherwise would have put into the search for physical necessities. Thus the aristocrats of the Roman Empire had their literary pretensions; many European aristocrats a few centuries ago invested tremendous time and energy in hunting, though they certainly didn’t need the meat; other aristocracies have competed for status through elaborate displays of wealth; and a few aristocrats, like Hirohito, have turned to science.

39. We use the term “surrogate activity” to designate an activity that is directed toward an artificial goal that people set up for themselves merely in order to have some goal to work toward, or let us say, merely for the sake of the “fulfillment” that they get from pursuing the goal. Here is a rule of thumb for the identification of surrogate activities. Given a person who devotes much time and energy to the pursuit of goal X, ask yourself this: If he had to devote most of his time and energy to satisfying his biological needs, and if that effort required him to use his physical and mental faculties in a varied and interesting way, would he feel seriously deprived because he did not attain goal X? If the answer is no, then the person’s pursuit of goal X is a surrogate activity. Hirohito’s studies in marine biology clearly constituted a surrogate activity, since it is pretty certain that if Hirohito had had to spend his time working at interesting non-scientific tasks in order to obtain the necessities of life, he would not have felt deprived because he didn’t know all about the anatomy and life-cycles of marine animals. On the other hand the pursuit of sex and love (for example) is not a surrogate activity, because most people, even if their existence were otherwise satisfactory, would feel deprived if they passed their lives without ever having a relationship with a member of the opposite sex. (But pursuit of an excessive amount of sex, more than one really needs, can be a surrogate activity.)

40. In modern industrial society only minimal effort is necessary to satisfy one’s physical needs. It is enough to go through a training program to acquire some petty technical skill, then come to work on time and exert the very modest effort needed to hold a job. The only requirements are a moderate amount of intelligence and, most of all, simple OBEDIENCE. If one has those, society takes care of one from cradle to grave. (Yes, there is an underclass that cannot take the physical necessities for granted, but we are speaking here of mainstream society.) Thus it is not surprising that modern society is full of surrogate activities. These include scientific work, athletic achievement, humanitarian work, artistic and literary creation, climbing the corporate ladder, acquisition of money and material goods far beyond the point at which they cease to give any additional physical satisfaction, and social activism when it addresses issues that are not important for the activist personally, as in the case of white activists who work for the rights of nonwhite minorities. These are not always PURE surrogate activities, since for many people they may be motivated in part by needs other than the need to have some goal to pursue. Scientific work may be motivated in part by a drive for prestige, artistic creation by a need to express feelings, militant social activism by hostility. But for most people who pursue them, these activities are in large part surrogate activities. For example, the majority of scientists will probably agree that the “fulfillment” they get from their work is more important than the money and prestige they earn.

41. For many if not most people, surrogate activities are less satisfying than the pursuit of real goals (that is, goals that people would want to attain even if their need for the power process were already fulfilled). One indication of this is the fact that, in many or most cases, people who are deeply involved in surrogate activities are never satisfied, never at rest. Thus the money-maker constantly strives for more and more wealth. The scientist no sooner solves one problem than he moves on to the next. The long-distance runner drives himself to run always farther and faster. Many people who pursue surrogate activities will say that they get far more fulfillment from these activities than they do from the “mundane” business of satisfying their biological needs, but that is because in our society the effort needed to satisfy the biological needs has been reduced to triviality. More importantly, in our society people do not satisfy their biological needs AUTONOMOUSLY but by functioning as parts of an immense social machine. In contrast, people generally have a great deal of autonomy in pursuing their surrogate activities.

AUTONOMY

42. Autonomy as a part of the power process may not be necessary for every individual. But most people need a greater or lesser degree of autonomy in working toward their goals. Their efforts must be undertaken on their own initiative and must be under their own direction and control. Yet most people do not have to exert this initiative, direction and control as single individuals. It is usually enough to act as a member of a SMALL group. Thus if half a dozen people discuss a goal among themselves and make a successful joint effort to attain that goal, their need for the power process will be served. But if they work under rigid orders handed down from above that leave them no room for autonomous decision and initiative, then their need for the power process will not be served. The same is true when decisions are made on a collective basis if the group making the collective decision is so large that the role of each individual is insignificant. [5]

43. It is true that some individuals seem to have little need for autonomy. Either their drive for power is weak or they satisfy it by identifying themselves with some powerful organization to which they belong. And then there are unthinking, animal types who seem to be satisfied with a purely physical sense of power (the good combat soldier, who gets his sense of power by developing fighting skills that he is quite content to use in blind obedience to his superiors).

44. But for most people it is through the power process—having a goal, making an AUTONOMOUS effort and attaining the goal—that self-esteem, self-confidence and a sense of power are acquired. When one does not have adequate opportunity to go through the power process the consequences are (depending on the individual and on the way the power process is disrupted) boredom, demoralization, low self-esteem, inferiority feelings, defeatism, depression, anxiety, guilt, frustration, hostility, spouse or child abuse, insatiable hedonism, abnormal sexual behavior, sleep disorders, eating disorders, etc. [6]

SOURCES OF SOCIAL PROBLEMS

45. Any of the foregoing symptoms can occur in any society, but in modern industrial society they are present on a massive scale. We aren’t the first to mention that the world today seems to be going crazy. This sort of thing is not normal for human societies. There is good reason to believe that primitive man suffered from less stress and frustration and was better satisfied with his way of life than modern man is. It is true that not all was sweetness and light in primitive societies. Abuse of women was common among the Australian aborigines, transexuality was fairly common among some of the American Indian tribes. But it does appear that GENERALLY SPEAKING the kinds of problems that we have listed in the preceding paragraph were far less common among primitive peoples than they are in modern society.

46. We attribute the social and psychological problems of modern society to the fact that that society requires people to live under conditions radically different from those under which the human race evolved and to behave in ways that conflict with the patterns of behavior that the human race developed while living under the earlier conditions. It is clear from what we have already written that we consider lack of opportunity to properly experience the power process as the most important of the abnormal conditions to which modern society subjects people. But it is not the only one. Before dealing with disruption of the power process as a source of social problems we will discuss some of the other sources.

47. Among the abnormal conditions present in modern industrial society are excessive density of population, isolation of man from nature, excessive rapidity of social change and the breakdown of natural small-scale communities such as the extended family, the village or the tribe.

48. It is well known that crowding increases stress and aggression. The degree of crowding that exists today and the isolation of man from nature are consequences of technological progress. All pre-industrial societies were predominantly rural. The Industrial Revolution vastly increased the size of cities and the proportion of the population that lives in them, and modern agricultural technology has made it possible for the Earth to support a far denser population than it ever did before. (Also, technology exacerbates the effects of crowding because it puts increased disruptive powers in people’s hands. For example, a variety of noise- making devices: power mowers, radios, motorcycles, etc. If the use of these devices is unrestricted, people who want peace and quiet are frustrated by the noise. If their use is restricted, people who use the devices are frustrated by the regulations. But if these machines had never been invented there would have been no conflict and no frustration generated by them.)

49. For primitive societies the natural world (which usually changes only slowly) provided a stable framework and therefore a sense of security. In the modern world it is human society that dominates nature rather than the other way around, and modern society changes very rapidly owing to technological change. Thus there is no stable framework.

50. The conservatives are fools: They whine about the decay of traditional values, yet they enthusiastically support technological progress and economic growth. Apparently it never occurs to them that you can’t make rapid, drastic changes in the technology and the economy of a society without causing rapid changes in all other aspects of the society as well, and that such rapid changes inevitably break down traditional values.

51. The breakdown of traditional values to some extent implies the breakdown of the bonds that hold together traditional small-scale social groups. The disintegration of small-scale social groups is also promoted by the fact that modern conditions often require or tempt individuals to move to new locations, separating themselves from their communities. Beyond that, a technological society HAS TO weaken family ties and local communities if it is to function efficiently. In modern society an individual’s loyalty must be first to the system and only secondarily to a small-scale community, because if the internal loyalties of small-scale communities were stronger than loyalty to the system, such communities would pursue their own advantage at the expense of the system.

52. Suppose that a public official or a corporation executive appoints his cousin, his friend or his co- religionist to a position rather than appointing the person best qualified for the job. He has permitted personal loyalty to supersede his loyalty to the system, and that is “nepotism” or “discrimination,” both of which are terrible sins in modern society. Would-be industrial societies that have done a poor job of subordinating personal or local loyalties to loyalty to the system are usually very inefficient. (Look at Latin America.) Thus an advanced industrial society can tolerate only those small-scale communities that are emasculated, tamed and made into tools of the system. [7]

53. Crowding, rapid change and the breakdown of communities have been widely recognized as sources of social problems. But we do not believe they are enough to account for the extent of the problems that are seen today.

54. A few pre-industrial cities were very large and crowded, yet their inhabitants do not seem to have suffered from psychological problems to the same extent as modern man. In America today there still are uncrowded rural areas, and we find there the same problems as in urban areas, though the problems tend to be less acute in the rural areas. Thus crowding does not seem to be the decisive factor.

55. On the growing edge of the American frontier during the 19th century, the mobility of the population probably broke down extended families and small-scale social groups to at least the same extent as these are broken down today. In fact, many nuclear families lived by choice in such isolation, having no neighbors within several miles, that they belonged to no community at all, yet they do not seem to have developed problems as a result.

56. Furthermore, change in American frontier society was very rapid and deep. A man might be born and raised in a log cabin, outside the reach of law and order and fed largely on wild meat; and by the time he arrived at old age he might be working at a regular job and living in an ordered community with effective law enforcement. This was a deeper change than that which typically occurs in the life of a modern individual, yet it does not seem to have led to psychological problems. In fact, 19th century American society had an optimistic and self-confident tone, quite unlike that of today’s society. [8]

57. The difference, we argue, is that modern man has the sense (largely justified) that change is IMPOSED on him, whereas the 19th century frontiersman had the sense (also largely justified) that he created change himself, by his own choice. Thus a pioneer settled on a piece of land of his own choosing and made it into a farm through his own effort. In those days an entire county might have only a couple of hundred inhabitants and was a far more isolated and autonomous entity than a modern county is. Hence the pioneer farmer participated as a member of a relatively small group in the creation of a new, ordered community. One may well question whether the creation of this community was an improvement, but at any rate it satisfied the pioneer’s need for the power process.

58. It would be possible to give other examples of societies in which there has been rapid change and/or lack of close community ties without the kind of massive behavioral aberration that is seen in today’s industrial society. We contend that the most important cause of social and psychological problems in modern society is the fact that people have insufficient opportunity to go through the power process in a normal way. We don’t mean to say that modern society is the only one in which the power process has been disrupted. Probably most if not all civilized societies have interfered with the power process to a greater or lesser extent. But in modern industrial society the problem has become particularly acute. Leftism, at least in its recent (mid- to late-20th century) form, is in part a symptom of deprivation with respect to the power process.

DISRUPTION OF THE POWER PROCESS IN MODERN SOCIETY

59. We divide human drives into three groups: (1) those drives that can be satisfied with minimal effort; (2) those that can be satisfied but only at the cost of serious effort; (3) those that cannot be adequately satisfied no matter how much effort one makes. The power process is the process of satisfying the drives of the second group. The more drives there are in the third group, the more there is frustration, anger, eventually defeatism, depression, etc.

60. In modern industrial society natural human drives tend to be pushed into the first and third groups, and the second group tends to consist increasingly of artificially created drives.

61. In primitive societies, physical necessities generally fall into group 2: They can be obtained, but only at the cost of serious effort. But modern society tends to guaranty the physical necessities to everyone [9] in exchange for only minimal effort, hence physical needs are pushed into group 1. (There may be disagreement about whether the effort needed to hold a job is “minimal”; but usually, in lower- to middle- level jobs, whatever effort is required is merely that of OBEDIENCE. You sit or stand where you are told to sit or stand and do what you are told to do in the way you are told to do it. Seldom do you have to exert yourself seriously, and in any case you have hardly any autonomy in work, so that the need for the power process is not well served.)

62. Social needs, such as sex, love and status, often remain in group 2 in modern society, depending on the situation of the individual. [10] But, except for people who have a particularly strong drive for status, the effort required to fulfill the social drives is insufficient to satisfy adequately the need for the power process.

63. So certain artificial needs have been created that fall into group 2, hence serve the need for the power process. Advertising and marketing techniques have been developed that make many people feel they need things that their grandparents never desired or even dreamed of. It requires serious effort to earn enough money to satisfy these artificial needs, hence they fall into group 2. (But see paragraphs 80-82.) Modern man must satisfy his need for the power process largely through pursuit of the artificial needs created by the advertising and marketing industry [11], and through surrogate activities.

64. It seems that for many people, maybe the majority, these artificial forms of the power process are insufficient. A theme that appears repeatedly in the writings of the social critics of the second half of the 20th century is the sense of purposelessness that afflicts many people in modern society. (This purposelessness is often called by other names such as “anomic” or “middle-class vacuity.”) We suggest that the so-called “identity crisis” is actually a search for a sense of purpose, often for commitment to a suitable surrogate activity. It may be that existentialism is in large part a response to the purposelessness of modern life. [12] Very widespread in modern society is the search for “fulfillment.” But we think that for the majority of people an activity whose main goal is fulfillment (that is, a surrogate activity) does not bring completely satisfactory fulfillment. In other words, it does not fully satisfy the need for the power process. (See paragraph 41.) That need can be fully satisfied only through activities that have some external goal, such as physical necessities, sex, love, status, revenge, etc.

65. Moreover, where goals are pursued through earning money, climbing the status ladder or functioning as part of the system in some other way, most people are not in a position to pursue their goals AUTONOMOUSLY. Most workers are someone else’s employee and, as we pointed out in paragraph 61, must spend their days doing what they are told to do in the way they are told to do it. Even people who are in business for themselves have only limited autonomy. It is a chronic complaint of small-business persons and entrepreneurs that their hands are tied by excessive government regulation. Some of these regulations are doubtless unnecessary, but for the most part government regulations are essential and inevitable parts of our extremely complex society. A large portion of small business today operates on the franchise system. It was reported in the Wall Street Journal a few years ago that many of the franchise-granting companies require applicants for franchises to take a personality test that is designed to EXCLUDE those who have creativity and initiative, because such persons are not sufficiently docile to go along obediently with the franchise system. This excludes from small business many of the people who most need autonomy.

66. Today people live more by virtue of what the system does FOR them or TO them than by virtue of what they do for themselves. And what they do for themselves is done more and more along channels laid down by the system. Opportunities tend to be those that the system provides, the opportunities must be exploited in accord with rules and regulations [13], and techniques prescribed by experts must be followed if there is to be a chance of success.

67. Thus the power process is disrupted in our society through a deficiency of real goals and a deficiency of autonomy in the pursuit of goals. But it is also disrupted because of those human drives that fall into group 3: the drives that one cannot adequately satisfy no matter how much effort one makes. One of these drives is the need for security. Our lives depend on decisions made by other people; we have no control over these decisions and usually we do not even know the people who make them. (“We live in a world in which relatively few people—maybe 500 or 1,000—make the important decisions”—Philip B. Heymann of Harvard Law School, quoted by Anthony Lewis, New York Times, April 21, 1995.) Our lives depend on whether safety standards at a nuclear power plant are properly maintained; on how much pesticide is allowed to get into our food or how much pollution into our air; on how skillful (or incompetent) our doctor is; whether we lose or get a job may depend on decisions made by government economists or corporation executives; and so forth. Most individuals are not in a position to secure themselves against these threats to more [than] a very limited extent. The individual’s search for security is therefore frustrated, which leads to a sense of powerlessness.

68. It may be objected that primitive man is physically less secure than modern man, as is shown by his shorter life expectancy; hence modern man suffers from less, not more than the amount of insecurity that is normal for human beings. But psychological security does not closely correspond with physical security. What makes us FEEL secure is not so much objective security as a sense of confidence in our ability to take care of ourselves. Primitive man, threatened by a fierce animal or by hunger, can fight in self-defense or travel in search of food. He has no certainty of success in these efforts, but he is by no means helpless against the things that threaten him. The modern individual on the other hand is threatened by many things against which he is helpless: nuclear accidents, carcinogens in food, environmental pollution, war, increasing taxes, invasion of his privacy by large organizations, nationwide social or economic phenomena that may disrupt his way of life.

69. It is true that primitive man is powerless against some of the things that threaten him; disease for example. But he can accept the risk of disease stoically. It is part of the nature of things, it is no one’s fault, unless it is the fault of some imaginary, impersonal demon. But threats to the modern individual tend to be MAN-MADE. They are not the results of chance but are IMPOSED on him by other persons whose decisions he, as an individual, is unable to influence. Consequently he feels frustrated, humiliated and angry.

70. Thus primitive man for the most part has his security in his own hands (either as an individual or as a member of a SMALL group) whereas the security of modern man is in the hands of persons or organizations that are too remote or too large for him to be able personally to influence them. So modern man’s drive for security tends to fall into groups 1 and 3; in some areas (food, shelter etc.) his security is assured at the cost of only trivial effort, whereas in other areas he CANNOT attain security. (The foregoing greatly simplifies the real situation, but it does indicate in a rough, general way how the condition of modern man differs from that of primitive man.)

71. People have many transitory drives or impulses that are necessarily frustrated in modern life, hence fall into group 3. One may become angry, but modern society cannot permit fighting. In many situations it does not even permit verbal aggression. When going somewhere one may be in a hurry, or one may be in a mood to travel slowly, but one generally has no choice but to move with the flow of traffic and obey the traffic signals. One may want to do one’s work in a different way, but usually one can work only according to the rules laid down by one’s employer. In many other ways as well, modern man is strapped down by a network of rules and regulations (explicit or implicit) that frustrate many of his impulses and thus interfere with the power process. Most of these regulations cannot be dispensed with, because they are necessary for the functioning of industrial society.

72. Modern society is in certain respects extremely permissive. In matters that are irrelevant to the functioning of the system we can generally do what we please. We can believe in any religion we like (as long as it does not encourage behavior that is dangerous to the system). We can go to bed with anyone we like (as long as we practice “safe sex”). We can do anything we like as long as it is UNIMPORTANT. But in all IMPORTANT matters the system tends increasingly to regulate our behavior.

73. Behavior is regulated not only through explicit rules and not only by the government. Control is often exercised through indirect coercion or through psychological pressure or manipulation, and by organizations other than the government, or by the system as a whole. Most large organizations use some form of propaganda [14] to manipulate public attitudes or behavior. Propaganda is not limited to “commercials” and advertisements, and sometimes it is not even consciously intended as propaganda by the people who make it. For instance, the content of entertainment programming is a powerful form of propaganda. An example of indirect coercion: There is no law that says we have to go to work every day and follow our employer’s orders. Legally there is nothing to prevent us from going to live in the wild like primitive people or from going into business for ourselves. But in practice there is very little wild country left, and there is room in the economy for only a limited number of small business owners. Hence most of us can survive only as someone else’s employee.

74. We suggest that modern man’s obsession with longevity, and with maintaining physical vigor and sexual attractiveness to an advanced age, is a symptom of unfulfillment resulting from deprivation with respect to the power process. The “mid-life crisis” also is such a symptom. So is the lack of interest in having children that is fairly common in modern society but almost unheard-of in primitive societies.

75. In primitive societies life is a succession of stages. The needs and purposes of one stage having been fulfilled, there is no particular reluctance about passing on to the next stage. A young man goes through the power process by becoming a hunter, hunting not for sport or for fulfillment but to get meat that is necessary for food. (In young women the process is more complex, with greater emphasis on social power; we won’t discuss that here.) This phase having been successfully passed through, the young man has no reluctance about settling down to the responsibilities of raising a family. (In contrast, some modern people indefinitely postpone having children because they are too busy seeking some kind of “fulfillment.” We suggest that the fulfillment they need is adequate experience of the power process—with real goals instead of the artificial goals of surrogate activities.) Again, having successfully raised his children, going through the power process by providing them with the physical necessities, the primitive man feels that his work is done and he is prepared to accept old age (if he survives that long) and death. Many modern people, on the other hand, are disturbed by the prospect of physical deterioration and death, as is shown by the amount of effort they expend trying to maintain their physical condition, appearance and health. We argue that this is due to unfulfillment resulting from the fact that they have never put their physical powers to any practical use, have never gone through the power process using their bodies in a serious way. It is not the primitive man, who has used his body daily for practical purposes, who fears the deterioration of age, but the modern man, who has never had a practical use for his body beyond walking from his car to his house. It is the man whose need for the power process has been satisfied during his life who is best prepared to accept the end of that life.

76. In response to the arguments of this section someone will say, “Society must find a way to give people the opportunity to go through the power process.” For such people the value of the opportunity is destroyed by the very fact that society gives it to them. What they need is to find or make their own opportunities. As long as the system GIVES them their opportunities it still has them on a leash. To attain autonomy they must get off that leash.

HOW SOME PEOPLE ADJUST

77. Not everyone in industrial-technological society suffers from psychological problems. Some people even profess to be quite satisfied with society as it is. We now discuss some of the reasons why people differ so greatly in their response to modern society.

78. First, there doubtless are differences in the strength of the drive for power. Individuals with a weak drive for power may have relatively little need to go through the power process, or at least relatively little need for autonomy in the power process. These are docile types who would have been happy as plantation darkies in the Old South. (We don’t mean to sneer at the “plantation darkies” of the Old South. To their credit, most of the slaves were NOT content with their servitude. We do sneer at people who ARE content with servitude.)

79. Some people may have some exceptional drive, in pursuing which they satisfy their need for the power process. For example, those who have an unusually strong drive for social status may spend their whole lives climbing the status ladder without ever getting bored with that game.

80. People vary in their susceptibility to advertising and marketing techniques. Some are so susceptible that, even if they make a great deal of money, they cannot satisfy their constant craving for the the shiny new toys that the marketing industry dangles before their eyes. So they always feel hard-pressed financially even if their income is large, and their cravings are frustrated.

81. Some people have low susceptibility to advertising and marketing techniques. These are the people who aren’t interested in money. Material acquisition does not serve their need for the power process.

82. People who have medium susceptibility to advertising and marketing techniques are able to earn enough money to satisfy their craving for goods and services, but only at the cost of serious effort (putting in overtime, taking a second job, earning promotions, etc.). Thus material acquisition serves their need for the power process. But it does not necessarily follow that their need is fully satisfied. They may have insufficient autonomy in the power process (their work may consist of following orders) and some of their drives may be frustrated (e.g., security, aggression). (We are guilty of oversimplification in paragraphs 80- 82 because we have assumed that the desire for material acquisition is entirely a creation of the advertising and marketing industry. Of course it’s not that simple. [11]

83. Some people partly satisfy their need for power by identifying themselves with a powerful organization or mass movement. An individual lacking goals or power joins a movement or an organization, adopts its goals as his own, then works toward those goals. When some of the goals are attained, the individual, even though his personal efforts have played only an insignificant part in the attainment of the goals, feels (through his identification with the movement or organization) as if he had gone through the power process. This phenomenon was exploited by the fascists, nazis and communists. Our society uses it too, though less crudely. Example: Manuel Noriega was an irritant to the U.S. (goal: punish Noriega). The U.S. invaded Panama (effort) and punished Noriega (attainment of goal). Thus the U.S. went through the power process and many Americans, because of their identification with the U.S., experienced the power process vicariously. Hence the widespread public approval of the Panama invasion; it gave people a sense of power. [15] We see the same phenomenon in armies, corporations, political parties, humanitarian organizations, religious or ideological movements. In particular, leftist movements tend to attract people who are seeking to satisfy their need for power. But for most people identification with a large organization or a mass movement does not fully satisfy the need for power.

84. Another way in which people satisfy their need for the power process is through surrogate activities. As we explained in paragraphs 38-40, a surrogate activity is an activity that is directed toward an artificial goal that the individual pursues for the sake of the “fulfillment” that he gets from pursuing the goal, not because he needs to attain the goal itself. For instance, there is no practical motive for building enormous muscles, hitting a little ball into a hole or acquiring a complete series of postage stamps. Yet many people in our society devote themselves with passion to bodybuilding, golf or stamp-collecting. Some people are more “other-directed” than others, and therefore will more readily attach importance to a surrogate activity simply because the people around them treat it as important or because society tells them it is important. That is why some people get very serious about essentially trivial activities such as sports, or bridge, or chess, or arcane scholarly pursuits, whereas others who are more clear-sighted never see these things as anything but the surrogate activities that they are, and consequently never attach enough importance to them to satisfy their need for the power process in that way. It only remains to point out that in many cases a person’s way of earning a living is also a surrogate activity. Not a PURE surrogate activity, since part of the motive for the activity is to gain the physical necessities and (for some people) social status and the luxuries that advertising makes them want. But many people put into their work far more effort than is necessary to earn whatever money and status they require, and this extra effort constitutes a surrogate activity. This extra effort, together with the emotional investment that accompanies it, is one of the most potent forces acting toward the continual development and perfecting of the system, with negative consequences for individual freedom (see paragraph 131). Especially, for the most creative scientists and engineers, work tends to be largely a surrogate activity. This point is so important that it deserves a separate discussion, which we shall give in a moment (paragraphs 87-92).

85. In this section we have explained how many people in modern society do satisfy their need for the power process to a greater or lesser extent. But we think that for the majority of people the need for the power process is not fully satisfied. In the first place, those who have an insatiable drive for status, or who get firmly “hooked” on a surrogate activity, or who identify strongly enough with a movement or organization to satisfy their need for power in that way, are exceptional personalities. Others are not fully satisfied with surrogate activities or by identification with an organization (see paragraphs 41, 64). In the second place, too much control is imposed by the system through explicit regulation or through socialization, which results in a deficiency of autonomy, and in frustration due to the impossibility of attaining certain goals and the necessity of restraining too many impulses.

86. But even if most people in industrial-technological society were well satisfied, we (FC) would still be opposed to that form of society, because (among other reasons) we consider it demeaning to fulfill one’s need for the power process through surrogate activities or through identification with an organization, rather than through pursuit of real goals.

THE MOTIVES OF SCIENTISTS

87. Science and technology provide the most important examples of surrogate activities. Some scientists claim that they are motivated by “curiosity” or by a desire to “benefit humanity.” But it is easy to see that neither of these can be the principal motive of most scientists. As for “curiosity,” that notion is simply absurd. Most scientists work on highly specialized problems that are not the object of any normal curiosity. For example, is an astronomer, a mathematician or an entomologist curious about the properties of isopropyltrimethylmethane? Of course not. Only a chemist is curious about such a thing, and he is curious about it only because chemistry is his surrogate activity. Is the chemist curious about the appropriate classification of a new species of beetle? No. That question is of interest only to the entomologist, and he is interested in it only because entomology is his surrogate activity. If the chemist and the entomologist had to exert themselves seriously to obtain the physical necessities, and if that effort exercised their abilities in an interesting way but in some nonscientific pursuit, then they wouldn’t give a damn about isopropyltrimethylmethane or the classification of beetles. Suppose that lack of funds for postgraduate education had led the chemist to become an insurance broker instead of a chemist. In that case he would have been very interested in insurance matters but would have cared nothing about isopropyltrimethylmethane. In any case it is not normal to put into the satisfaction of mere curiosity the amount of time and effort that scientists put into their work. The “curiosity” explanation for the scientists’ motive just doesn’t stand up.

88. The “benefit of humanity” explanation doesn’t work any better. Some scientific work has no conceivable relation to the welfare of the human race—most of archaeology or comparative linguistics for example. Some other areas of science present obviously dangerous possibilities. Yet scientists in these areas are just as enthusiastic about their work as those who develop vaccines or study air pollution. Consider the case of Dr. Edward Teller, who had an obvious emotional involvement in promoting nuclear power plants. Did this involvement stem from a desire to benefit humanity? If so, then why didn’t Dr. Teller get emotional about other “humanitarian” causes? If he was such a humanitarian then why did he help to develop the H- bomb? As with many other scientific achievements, it is very much open to question whether nuclear power plants actually do benefit humanity. Does the cheap electricity outweigh the accumulating waste and the risk of accidents? Dr. Teller saw only one side of the question. Clearly his emotional involvement with nuclear power arose not from a desire to “benefit humanity” but from a personal fulfillment he got from his work and from seeing it put to practical use.

89. The same is true of scientists generally. With possible rare exceptions, their motive is neither curiosity nor a desire to benefit humanity but the need to go through the power process: to have a goal (a scientific problem to solve), to make an effort (research) and to attain the goal (solution of the problem.) Science is a surrogate activity because scientists work mainly for the fulfillment they get out of the work itself.

90. Of course, it’s not that simple. Other motives do play a role for many scientists. Money and status for example. Some scientists may be persons of the type who have an insatiable drive for status (see paragraph 79) and this may provide much of the motivation for their work. No doubt the majority of scientists, like the majority of the general population, are more or less susceptible to advertising and marketing techniques and need money to satisfy their craving for goods and services. Thus science is not a PURE surrogate activity. But it is in large part a surrogate activity.

91. Also, science and technology constitute a power mass movement, and many scientists gratify their need for power through identification with this mass movement (see paragraph 83).

92. Thus science marches on blindly, without regard to the real welfare of the human race or to any other standard, obedient only to the psychological needs of the scientists and of the government officials and corporation executives who provide the funds for research.

THE NATURE OF FREEDOM

93. We are going to argue that industrial-technological society cannot be reformed in such a way as to prevent it from progressively narrowing the sphere of human freedom. But, because “freedom” is a word that can be interpreted in many ways, we must first make clear what kind of freedom we are concerned with.

94. By “freedom” we mean the opportunity to go through the power process, with real goals not the artificial goals of surrogate activities, and without interference, manipulation or supervision from anyone, especially from any large organization. Freedom means being in control (either as an individual or as a member of a SMALL group) of the life-and-death issues of one’s existence; food, clothing, shelter and defense against whatever threats there may be in one’s environment. Freedom means having power; not the power to control other people but the power to control the circumstances of one’s own life. One does not have freedom if anyone else (especially a large organization) has power over one, no matter how benevolently, tolerantly and permissively that power may be exercised. It is important not to confuse freedom with mere permissiveness (see paragraph 72).

95. It is said that we live in a free society because we have a certain number of constitutionally guaranteed rights. But these are not as important as they seem. The degree of personal freedom that exists in a society is determined more by the economic and technological structure of the society than by its laws or its form of government. [16] Most of the Indian nations of New England were monarchies, and many of the cities of the Italian Renaissance were controlled by dictators. But in reading about these societies one gets the impression that they allowed far more personal freedom than our society does. In part this was because they lacked efficient mechanisms for enforcing the ruler’s will: There were no modern, well-organized police forces, no rapid long-distance communications, no surveillance cameras, no dossiers of information about the lives of average citizens. Hence it was relatively easy to evade control.

96. As for our constitutional rights, consider for example that of freedom of the press. We certainly don’t mean to knock that right; it is very important tool for limiting concentration of political power and for keeping those who do have political power in line by publicly exposing any misbehavior on their part. But freedom of the press is of very little use to the average citizen as an individual. The mass media are mostly under the control of large organizations that are integrated into the system. Anyone who has a little money can have something printed, or can distribute it on the Internet or in some such way, but what he has to say will be swamped by the vast volume of material put out by the media, hence it will have no practical effect. To make an impression on society with words is therefore almost impossible for most individuals and small groups. Take us (FC) for example. If we had never done anything violent and had submitted the present writings to a publisher, they probably would not have been accepted. If they had been been accepted and published, they probably would not have attracted many readers, because it’s more fun to watch the entertainment put out by the media than to read a sober essay. Even if these writings had had many readers, most of these readers would soon have forgotten what they had read as their minds were flooded by the mass of material to which the media expose them. In order to get our message before the public with some chance of making a lasting impression, we’ve had to kill people.

97. Constitutional rights are useful up to a point, but they do not serve to guarantee much more than what might be called the bourgeois conception of freedom. According to the bourgeois conception, a “free” man is essentially an element of a social machine and has only a certain set of prescribed and delimited freedoms; freedoms that are designed to serve the needs of the social machine more than those of the individual. Thus the bourgeois’s “free” man has economic freedom because that promotes growth and progress; he has freedom of the press because public criticism restrains misbehavior by political leaders; he has a right to a fair trial because imprisonment at the whim of the powerful would be bad for the system. This was clearly the attitude of Simon Bolivar. To him, people deserved liberty only if they used it to promote progress (progress as conceived by the bourgeois). Other bourgeois thinkers have taken a similar view of freedom as a mere means to collective ends. Chester C. Tan, “Chinese Political Thought in the Twentieth Century,” page 202, explains the philosophy of the Kuomintang leader Hu Han-min: “An individual is granted rights because he is a member of society and his community life requires such rights. By community Hu meant the whole society of the nation.” And on page 259 Tan states that according to Carsum Chang (Chang Chun-mai, head of the State Socialist Party in China) freedom had to be used in the interest of the state and of the people as a whole. But what kind of freedom does one have if one can use it only as someone else prescribes? FC’s conception of freedom is not that of Bolivar, Hu, Chang or other bourgeois theorists. The trouble with such theorists is that they have made the development and application of social theories their surrogate activity. Consequently the theories are designed to serve the needs of the theorists more than the needs of any people who may be unlucky enough to live in a society on which the theories are imposed.

98. One more point to be made in this section: It should not be assumed that a person has enough freedom just because he SAYS he has enough. Freedom is restricted in part by psychological controls of which people are unconscious, and moreover many people’s ideas of what constitutes freedom are governed more by social convention than by their real needs. For example, it’s likely that many leftists of the oversocialized type would say that most people, including themselves, are socialized too little rather than too much, yet the oversocialized leftist pays a heavy psychological price for his high level of socialization.

SOME PRINCIPLES OF HISTORY

99. Think of history as being the sum of two components: an erratic component that consists of unpredictable events that follow no discernible pattern, and a regular component that consists of long-term historical trends. Here we are concerned with the long-term trends.

100. FIRST PRINCIPLE. If a SMALL change is made that affects a long-term historical trend, then the effect of that change will almost always be transitory—the trend will soon revert to its original state. (Example: A reform movement designed to clean up political corruption in a society rarely has more than a short-term effect; sooner or later the reformers relax and corruption creeps back in. The level of political corruption in a given society tends to remain constant, or to change only slowly with the evolution of the society. Normally, a political cleanup will be permanent only if accompanied by widespread social changes; a SMALL change in the society won’t be enough.) If a small change in a long-term historical trend appears to be permanent, it is only because the change acts in the direction in which the trend is already moving, so that the trend is not altered by only pushed a step ahead.

101. The first principle is almost a tautology. If a trend were not stable with respect to small changes, it would wander at random rather than following a definite direction; in other words it would not be a long- term trend at all.

102. SECOND PRINCIPLE. If a change is made that is sufficiently large to alter permanently a long-term historical trend, then it will alter the society as a whole. In other words, a society is a system in which all parts are interrelated, and you can’t permanently change any important part without changing all other parts as well.

103. THIRD PRINCIPLE. If a change is made that is large enough to alter permanently a long-term trend, then the consequences for the society as a whole cannot be predicted in advance. (Unless various other societies have passed through the same change and have all experienced the same consequences, in which case one can predict on empirical grounds that another society that passes through the same change will be like to experience similar consequences.)

104. FOURTH PRINCIPLE. A new kind of society cannot be designed on paper. That is, you cannot plan out a new form of society in advance, then set it up and expect it to function as it was designed to do.

105. The third and fourth principles result from the complexity of human societies. A change in human behavior will affect the economy of a society and its physical environment; the economy will affect the environment and vice versa, and the changes in the economy and the environment will affect human behavior in complex, unpredictable ways; and so forth. The network of causes and effects is far too complex to be untangled and understood.

106. FIFTH PRINCIPLE. People do not consciously and rationally choose the form of their society. Societies develop through processes of social evolution that are not under rational human control.

107. The fifth principle is a consequence of the other four.

108. To illustrate: By the first principle, generally speaking an attempt at social reform either acts in the direction in which the society is developing anyway (so that it merely accelerates a change that would have occurred in any case) or else it has only a transitory effect, so that the society soon slips back into its old groove. To make a lasting change in the direction of development of any important aspect of a society, reform is insufficient and revolution is required. (A revolution does not necessarily involve an armed uprising or the overthrow of a government.) By the second principle, a revolution never changes only one aspect of a society, it changes the whole society; and by the third principle changes occur that were never expected or desired by the revolutionaries. By the fourth principle, when revolutionaries or utopians set up a new kind of society, it never works out as planned.

109. The American Revolution does not provide a counterexample. The American “Revolution” was not a revolution in our sense of the word, but a war of independence followed by a rather far-reaching political reform. The Founding Fathers did not change the direction of development of American society, nor did they aspire to do so. They only freed the development of American society from the retarding effect of British rule. Their political reform did not change any basic trend, but only pushed American political culture along its natural direction of development. British society, of which American society was an offshoot, had been moving for a long time in the direction of representative democracy. And prior to the War of Independence the Americans were already practicing a significant degree of representative democracy in the colonial assemblies. The political system established by the Constitution was modeled on the British system and on the colonial assemblies. With major alteration, to be sure—there is no doubt that the Founding Fathers took a very important step. But it was a step along the road that English-speaking world was already traveling. The proof is that Britain and all of its colonies that were populated predominantly by people of British descent ended up with systems of representative democracy essentially similar to that of the United States. If the Founding Fathers had lost their nerve and declined to sign the Declaration of Independence, our way of life today would not have been significantly different. Maybe we would have had somewhat closer ties to Britain, and would have had a Parliament and Prime Minister instead of a Congress and President. No big deal. Thus the American Revolution provides not a counterexample to our principles but a good illustration of them.

110. Still, one has to use common sense in applying the principles. They are expressed in imprecise language that allows latitude for interpretation, and exceptions to them can be found. So we present these principles not as inviolable laws but as rules of thumb, or guides to thinking, that may provide a partial antidote to naive ideas about the future of society. The principles should be borne constantly in mind, and whenever one reaches a conclusion that conflicts with them one should carefully reexamine one’s thinking and retain the conclusion only if one has good, solid reasons for doing so.

INDUSTRIAL-TECHNOLOGICAL SOCIETY CANNOT BE REFORMED

111. The foregoing principles help to show how hopelessly difficult it would be to reform the industrial system in such a way as to prevent it from progressively narrowing our sphere of freedom. There has been a consistent tendency, going back at least to the Industrial Revolution for technology to strengthen the system at a high cost in individual freedom and local autonomy. Hence any change designed to protect freedom from technology would be contrary to a fundamental trend in the development of our society. Consequently, such a change either would be a transitory one—soon swamped by the tide of history—or, if large enough to be permanent would alter the nature of our whole society. This by the first and second principles. Moreover, since society would be altered in a way that could not be predicted in advance (third principle) there would be great risk. Changes large enough to make a lasting difference in favor of freedom would not be initiated because it would be realized that they would gravely disrupt the system. So any attempts at reform would be too timid to be effective. Even if changes large enough to make a lasting difference were initiated, they would be retracted when their disruptive effects became apparent. Thus, permanent changes in favor of freedom could be brought about only by persons prepared to accept radical, dangerous and unpredictable alteration of the entire system. In other words by revolutionaries, not reformers.

112. People anxious to rescue freedom without sacrificing the supposed benefits of technology will suggest naive schemes for some new form of society that would reconcile freedom with technology. Apart from the fact that people who make such suggestions seldom propose any practical means by which the new form of society could be set up in the first place, it follows from the fourth principle that even if the new form of society could be once established, it either would collapse or would give results very different from those expected.

113. So even on very general grounds it seems highly improbable that any way of changing society could be found that would reconcile freedom with modern technology. In the next few sections we will give more specific reasons for concluding that freedom and technological progress are incompatible.

RESTRICTION OF FREEDOM IS UNAVOIDABLE IN INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY

114. As explained in paragraphs 65-67, 70-73, modern man is strapped down by a network of rules and regulations, and his fate depends on the actions of persons remote from him whose decisions he cannot influence. This is not accidental or a result of the arbitrariness of arrogant bureaucrats. It is necessary and inevitable in any technologically advanced society. The system HAS TO regulate human behavior closely in order to function. At work people have to do what they are told to do, otherwise production would be thrown into chaos. Bureaucracies HAVE TO be run according to rigid rules. To allow any substantial personal discretion to lower-level bureaucrats would disrupt the system and lead to charges of unfairness due to differences in the way individual bureaucrats exercised their discretion. It is true that some restrictions on our freedom could be eliminated, but GENERALLY SPEAKING the regulation of our lives by large organizations is necessary for the functioning of industrial-technological society. The result is a sense of powerlessness on the part of the average person. It may be, however, that formal regulations will tend increasingly to be replaced by psychological tools that make us want to do what the system requires of us. (Propaganda [14], educational techniques, “mental health” programs, etc.)

115. The system HAS TO force people to behave in ways that are increasingly remote from the natural pattern of human behavior. For example, the system needs scientists, mathematicians and engineers. It can’t function without them. So heavy pressure is put on children to excel in these fields. It isn’t natural for an adolescent human being to spend the bulk of his time sitting at a desk absorbed in study. A normal adolescent wants to spend his time in active contact with the real world. Among primitive peoples the things that children are trained to do tend to be in reasonable harmony with natural human impulses. Among the American Indians, for example, boys were trained in active outdoor pursuits—

just the sort of thing that boys like. But in our society children are pushed into studying technical subjects, which most do grudgingly.

116. Because of the constant pressure that the system exerts to modify human behavior, there is a gradual increase in the number of people who cannot or will not adjust to society’s requirements: welfare leeches, youth-gang members, cultists, anti-government rebels, radical environmentalist saboteurs, dropouts and resisters of various kinds.

117. In any technologically advanced society the individual’s fate MUST depend on decisions that he personally cannot influence to any great extent. A technological society cannot be broken down into small, autonomous communities, because production depends on the cooperation of very large numbers of people and machines. Such a society MUST be highly organized and decisions HAVE TO be made that affect very large numbers of people. When a decision affects, say, a million people, then each of the affected individuals has, on the average, only a one-millionth share in making the decision. What usually happens in practice is that decisions are made by public officials or corporation executives, or by technical specialists, but even when the public votes on a decision the number of voters ordinarily is too large for the vote of any one individual to be significant. [17] Thus most individuals are unable to influence measurably the major decisions that affect their lives. There is no conceivable way to remedy this in a technologically advanced society. The system tries to “solve” this problem by using propaganda to make people WANT the decisions that have been made for them, but even if this “solution” were completely successful in making people feel better, it would be demeaning.

118. Conservatives and some others advocate more “local autonomy.” Local communities once did have autonomy, but such autonomy becomes less and less possible as local communities become more enmeshed with and dependent on large-scale systems like public utilities, computer networks, highway systems, the mass communications media, the modern health care system. Also operating against autonomy is the fact that technology applied in one location often affects people at other locations far way. Thus pesticide or chemical use near a creek may contaminate the water supply hundreds of miles downstream, and the greenhouse effect affects the whole world.

119. The system does not and cannot exist to satisfy human needs. Instead, it is human behavior that has to be modified to fit the needs of the system. This has nothing to do with the political or social ideology that may pretend to guide the technological system. It is the fault of technology, because the system is guided not by ideology but by technical necessity. [18] Of course the system does satisfy many human needs, but generally speaking it does this only to the extend that it is to the advantage of the system to do it. It is the needs of the system that are paramount, not those of the human being. For example, the system provides people with food because the system couldn’t function if everyone starved; it attends to people’s psychological needs whenever it can CONVENIENTLY do so, because it couldn’t function if too many people became depressed or rebellious. But the system, for good, solid, practical reasons, must exert constant pressure on people to mold their behavior to the needs of the system. To much waste accumulating? The government, the media, the educational system, environmentalists, everyone inundates us with a mass of propaganda about recycling. Need more technical personnel? A chorus of voices exhorts kids to study science. No one stops to ask whether it is inhumane to force adolescents to spend the bulk of their time studying subjects most of them hate. When skilled workers are put out of a job by technical advances and have to undergo “retraining,” no one asks whether it is humiliating for them to be pushed around in this way. It is simply taken for granted that everyone must bow to technical necessity. and for good reason: If human needs were put before technical necessity there would be economic problems, unemployment, shortages or worse. The concept of “mental health” in our society is defined largely by the extent to which an individual behaves in accord with the needs of the system and does so without showing signs of stress.

120. Efforts to make room for a sense of purpose and for autonomy within the system are no better than a joke. For example, one company, instead of having each of its employees assemble only one section of a catalogue, had each assemble a whole catalogue, and this was supposed to give them a sense of purpose and achievement. Some companies have tried to give their employees more autonomy in their work, but for practical reasons this usually can be done only to a very limited extent, and in any case employees are never given autonomy as to ultimate goals—their “autonomous” efforts can never be directed toward goals that they select personally, but only toward their employer’s goals, such as the survival and growth of the company. Any company would soon go out of business if it permitted its employees to act otherwise. Similarly, in any enterprise within a socialist system, workers must direct their efforts toward the goals of the enterprise, otherwise the enterprise will not serve its purpose as part of the system. Once again, for purely technical reasons it is not possible for most individuals or small groups to have much autonomy in industrial society. Even the small-business owner commonly has only limited autonomy. Apart from the necessity of government regulation, he is restricted by the fact that he must fit into the economic system and conform to its requirements. For instance, when someone develops a new technology, the small-business person often has to use that technology whether he wants to or not, in order to remain competitive.

THE ‘BAD’ PARTS OF TECHNOLOGY CANNOT BE SEPARATED FROM THE ‘GOOD’ PARTS

121. A further reason why industrial society cannot be reformed in favor of freedom is that modern technology is a unified system in which all parts are dependent on one another. You can’t get rid of the “bad” parts of technology and retain only the “good” parts. Take modern medicine, for example. Progress in medical science depends on progress in chemistry, physics, biology, computer science and other fields. Advanced medical treatments require expensive, high-tech equipment that can be made available only by a technologically progressive, economically rich society. Clearly you can’t have much progress in medicine without the whole technological system and everything that goes with it.

122. Even if medical progress could be maintained without the rest of the technological system, it would by itself bring certain evils. Suppose for example that a cure for diabetes is discovered. People with a genetic tendency to diabetes will then be able to survive and reproduce as well as anyone else. Natural selection against genes for diabetes will cease and such genes will spread throughout the population. (This may be occurring to some extent already, since diabetes, while not curable, can be controlled through use of insulin.) The same thing will happen with many other diseases susceptibility to which is affected by genetic degradation of the population. The only solution will be some sort of eugenics program or extensive genetic engineering of human beings, so that man in the future will no longer be a creation of nature, or of chance, or of God (depending on your religious or philosophical opinions), but a manufactured product.

123. If you think that big government interferes in your life too much NOW, just wait till the government starts regulating the genetic constitution of your children. Such regulation will inevitably follow the introduction of genetic engineering of human beings, because the consequences of unregulated genetic engineering would be disastrous. [19]

124. The usual response to such concerns is to talk about “medical ethics.” But a code of ethics would not serve to protect freedom in the face of medical progress; it would only make matters worse. A code of ethics applicable to genetic engineering would be in effect a means of regulating the genetic constitution of human beings. Somebody (probably the upper-middle class, mostly) would decide that such and such applications of genetic engineering were “ethical” and others were not, so that in effect they would be imposing their own values on the genetic constitution of the population at large. Even if a code of ethics were chosen on a completely democratic basis, the majority would be imposing their own values on any minorities who might have a different idea of what constituted an “ethical” use of genetic engineering. The only code of ethics that would truly protect freedom would be one that prohibited ANY genetic engineering of human beings, and you can be sure that no such code will ever be applied in a technological society. No code that reduced genetic engineering to a minor role could stand up for long, because the temptation presented by the immense power of biotechnology would be irresistible, especially since to the majority of people many of its applications will seem obviously and unequivocally good (eliminating physical and mental diseases, giving people the abilities they need to get along in today’s world). Inevitably, genetic engineering will be used extensively, but only in ways consistent with the needs of the industrial- technological system. [20]

TECHNOLOGY IS A MORE POWERFUL SOCIAL FORCE THAN THE ASPIRATION FOR FREEDOM

125. It is not possible to make a LASTING compromise between technology and freedom, because technology is by far the more powerful social force and continually encroaches on freedom through REPEATED compromises. Imagine the case of two neighbors, each of whom at the outset owns the same amount of land, but one of whom is more powerful than the other. The powerful one demands a piece of the other’s land. The weak one refuses. The powerful one says, “OK, let’s compromise. Give me half of what I asked.” The weak one has little choice but to give in. Some time later the powerful neighbor demands another piece of land, again there is a compromise, and so forth. By forcing a long series of compromises on the weaker man, the powerful one eventually gets all of his land. So it goes in the conflict between technology and freedom.

126. Let us explain why technology is a more powerful social force than the aspiration for freedom.

127. A technological advance that appears not to threaten freedom often turns out to threaten it very seriously later on. For example, consider motorized transport. A walking man formerly could go where he pleased, go at his own pace without observing any traffic regulations, and was independent of technological support-systems. When motor vehicles were introduced they appeared to increase man’s freedom. They took no freedom away from the walking man, no one had to have an automobile if he didn’t want one, and anyone who did choose to buy an automobile could travel much faster and farther than a walking man. But the introduction of motorized transport soon changed society in such a way as to restrict greatly man’s freedom of locomotion. When automobiles became numerous, it became necessary to regulate their use extensively. In a car, especially in densely populated areas, one cannot just go where one likes at one’s own pace one’s movement is governed by the flow of traffic and by various traffic laws. One is tied down by various obligations: license requirements, driver test, renewing registration, insurance, maintenance required for safety, monthly payments on purchase price. Moreover, the use of motorized transport is no longer optional. Since the introduction of motorized transport the arrangement of our cities has changed in such a way that the majority of people no longer live within walking distance of their place of employment, shopping areas and recreational opportunities, so that they HAVE TO depend on the automobile for transportation. Or else they must use public transportation, in which case they have even less control over their own movement than when driving a car. Even the walker’s freedom is now greatly restricted. In the city he continually has to stop to wait for traffic lights that are designed mainly to serve auto traffic. In the country, motor traffic makes it dangerous and unpleasant to walk along the highway. (Note this important point that we have just illustrated with the case of motorized transport: When a new item of technology is introduced as an option that an individual can accept or not as he chooses, it does not necessarily REMAIN optional. In many cases the new technology changes society in such a way that people eventually find themselves FORCED to use it.)

128. While technological progress AS A WHOLE continually narrows our sphere of freedom, each new technical advance CONSIDERED BY ITSELF appears to be desirable. Electricity, indoor plumbing, rapid long-distance communications ... how could one argue against any of these things, or against any other of the innumerable technical advances that have made modern society? It would have been absurd to resist the introduction of the telephone, for example. It offered many advantages and no disadvantages. Yet, as we explained in paragraphs 59-76, all these technical advances taken together have created a world in which the average man’s fate is no longer in his own hands or in the hands of his neighbors and friends, but in those of politicians, corporation executives and remote, anonymous technicians and bureaucrats whom he as an individual has no power to influence. [21] The same process will continue in the future. Take genetic engineering, for example. Few people will resist the introduction of a genetic technique that eliminates a hereditary disease. It does no apparent harm and prevents much suffering. Yet a large number of genetic improvements taken together will make the human being into an engineered product rather than a free creation of chance (or of God, or whatever, depending on your religious beliefs).

129. Another reason why technology is such a powerful social force is that, within the context of a given society, technological progress marches in only one direction; it can never be reversed. Once a technical innovation has been introduced, people usually become dependent on it, so that they can never again do without it, unless it is replaced by some still more advanced innovation. Not only do people become dependent as individuals on a new item of technology, but, even more, the system as a whole becomes dependent on it. (Imagine what would happen to the system today if computers, for example, were eliminated.) Thus the system can move in only one direction, toward greater technologization. Technology repeatedly forces freedom to take a step back, but technology can never take a step back—short of the overthrow of the whole technological system.

130. Technology advances with great rapidity and threatens freedom at many different points at the same time (crowding, rules and regulations, increasing dependence of individuals on large organizations, propaganda and other psychological techniques, genetic engineering, invasion of privacy through surveillance devices and computers, etc.). To hold back any ONE of the threats to freedom would require a long and difficult social struggle. Those who want to protect freedom are overwhelmed by the sheer number of new attacks and the rapidity with which they develop, hence they become apathetic and no longer resist. To fight each of the threats separately would be futile. Success can be hoped for only by fighting the technological system as a whole; but that is revolution, not reform.

131. Technicians (we use this term in its broad sense to describe all those who perform a specialized task that requires training) tend to be so involved in their work (their surrogate activity) that when a conflict arises between their technical work and freedom, they almost always decide in favor of their technical work. This is obvious in the case of scientists, but it also appears elsewhere: Educators, humanitarian groups, conservation organizations do not hesitate to use propaganda or other psychological techniques to help them achieve their laudable ends. Corporations and government agencies, when they find it useful, do not hesitate to collect information about individuals without regard to their privacy. Law enforcement agencies are frequently inconvenienced by the constitutional rights of suspects and often of completely innocent persons, and they do whatever they can do legally (or sometimes illegally) to restrict or circumvent those rights. Most of these educators, government officials and law officers believe in freedom, privacy and constitutional rights, but when these conflict with their work, they usually feel that their work is more important.

132. It is well known that people generally work better and more persistently when striving for a reward than when attempting to avoid a punishment or negative outcome. Scientists and other technicians are motivated mainly by the rewards they get through their work. But those who oppose technological invasions of freedom are working to avoid a negative outcome, consequently there are few who work persistently and well at this discouraging task. If reformers ever achieved a signal victory that seemed to set up a solid barrier against further erosion of freedom through technical progress, most would tend to relax and turn their attention to more agreeable pursuits. But the scientists would remain busy in their laboratories, and technology as it progresses would find ways, in spite of any barriers, to exert more and more control over individuals and make them always more dependent on the system.

133. No social arrangements, whether laws, institutions, customs or ethical codes, can provide permanent protection against technology. History shows that all social arrangements are transitory; they all change or break down eventually. But technological advances are permanent within the context of a given civilization. Suppose for example that it were possible to arrive at some social arrangements that would prevent genetic engineering from being applied to human beings, or prevent it from being applied in such a way as to threaten freedom and dignity. Still, the technology would remain waiting. Sooner or later the social arrangement would break down. Probably sooner, given the pace of change in our society. Then genetic engineering would begin to invade our sphere of freedom, and this invasion would be irreversible (short of a breakdown of technological civilization itself). Any illusions about achieving anything permanent through social arrangements should be dispelled by what is currently happening with environmental legislation. A few years ago its seemed that there were secure legal barriers preventing at least SOME of the worst forms of environmental degradation. A change in the political wind, and those barriers begin to crumble.

134. For all of the foregoing reasons, technology is a more powerful social force than the aspiration for freedom. But this statement requires an important qualification. It appears that during the next several decades the industrial-technological system will be undergoing severe stresses due to economic and environmental problems, and especially due to problems of human behavior (alienation, rebellion, hostility, a variety of social and psychological difficulties). We hope that the stresses through which the system is likely to pass will cause it to break down, or at least will weaken it sufficiently so that a revolution against it becomes possible. If such a revolution occurs and is successful, then at that particular moment the aspiration for freedom will have proved more powerful than technology.

135. In paragraph 125 we used an analogy of a weak neighbor who is left destitute by a strong neighbor who takes all his land by forcing on him a series of compromises. But suppose now that the strong neighbor gets sick, so that he is unable to defend himself. The weak neighbor can force the strong one to give him his land back, or he can kill him. If he lets the strong man survive and only forces him to give the land back, he is a fool, because when the strong man gets well he will again take all the land for himself. The only sensible alternative for the weaker man is to kill the strong one while he has the chance. In the same way, while the industrial system is sick we must destroy it. If we compromise with it and let it recover from its sickness, it will eventually wipe out all of our freedom.

SIMPLER SOCIAL PROBLEMS HAVE PROVED INTRACTABLE

136. If anyone still imagines that it would be possible to reform the system in such a way as to protect freedom from technology, let him consider how clumsily and for the most part unsuccessfully our society has dealt with other social problems that are far more simple and straightforward. Among other things, the system has failed to stop environmental degradation, political corruption, drug trafficking or domestic abuse.

137. Take our environmental problems, for example. Here the conflict of values is straightforward: economic expedience now versus saving some of our natural resources for our grandchildren. [22] But on this subject we get only a lot of blather and obfuscation from the people who have power, and nothing like a clear, consistent line of action, and we keep on piling up environmental problems that our grandchildren will have to live with. Attempts to resolve the environmental issue consist of struggles and compromises between different factions, some of which are ascendant at one moment, others at another moment. The line of struggle changes with the shifting currents of public opinion. This is not a rational process, nor is it one that is likely to lead to a timely and successful solution to the problem. Major social problems, if they get “solved” at all, are rarely or never solved through any rational, comprehensive plan. They just work themselves out through a process in which various competing groups pursuing their own (usually short- term) self-interest [23] arrive (mainly by luck) at some more or less stable modus vivendi. In fact, the principles we formulated in paragraphs 100-106 make it seem doubtful that rational, long-term social planning can EVER be successful.

138. Thus it is clear that the human race has at best a very limited capacity for solving even relatively straightforward social problems. How then is it going to solve the far more difficult and subtle problem of reconciling freedom with technology? Technology presents clear-cut material advantages, whereas freedom is an abstraction that means different things to different people, and its loss is easily obscured by propaganda and fancy talk.

139. And note this important difference: It is conceivable that our environmental problems (for example) may some day be settled through a rational, comprehensive plan, but if this happens it will be only because it is in the long-term interest of the system to solve these problems. But it is NOT in the interest of the system to preserve freedom or small-group autonomy. On the contrary, it is in the interest of the system to bring human behavior under control to the greatest possible extent. [24] Thus, while practical considerations may eventually force the system to take a rational, prudent approach to environmental problems, equally practical considerations will force the system to regulate human behavior ever more closely (preferably by indirect means that will disguise the encroachment on freedom). This isn’t just our opinion. Eminent social scientists (e.g. James Q. Wilson) have stressed the importance of “socializing” people more effectively.

REVOLUTION IS EASIER THAN REFORM

140. We hope we have convinced the reader that the system cannot be reformed in such a way as to reconcile freedom with technology. The only way out is to dispense with the industrial-technological system altogether. This implies revolution, not necessarily an armed uprising, but certainly a radical and fundamental change in the nature of society.

141. People tend to assume that because a revolution involves a much greater change than reform does, it is more difficult to bring about than reform is. Actually, under certain circumstances revolution is much easier than reform. The reason is that a revolutionary movement can inspire an intensity of commitment that a reform movement cannot inspire. A reform movement merely offers to solve a particular social problem. A revolutionary movement offers to solve all problems at one stroke and create a whole new world; it provides the kind of ideal for which people will take great risks and make great sacrifices. For this reasons it would be much easier to overthrow the whole technological system than to put effective, permanent restraints on the development or application of any one segment of technology, such as genetic engineering, for example. Not many people will devote themselves with single-minded passion to imposing and maintaining restraints on genetic engineering, but under suitable conditions large numbers of people may devote themselves passionately to a revolution against the industrial-technological system. As we noted in paragraph 132, reformers seeking to limit certain aspects of technology would be working to avoid a negative outcome. But revolutionaries work to gain a powerful reward—fulfillment of their revolutionary vision—and therefore work harder and more persistently than reformers do.

142. Reform is always restrained by the fear of painful consequences if changes go too far. But once a revolutionary fever has taken hold of a society, people are willing to undergo unlimited hardships for the sake of their revolution. This was clearly shown in the French and Russian Revolutions. It may be that in such cases only a minority of the population is really committed to the revolution, but this minority is sufficiently large and active so that it becomes the dominant force in society. We will have more to say about revolution in paragraphs 180-205.

CONTROL OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR

143. Since the beginning of civilization, organized societies have had to put pressures on human beings of the sake of the functioning of the social organism. The kinds of pressures vary greatly from one society to another. Some of the pressures are physical (poor diet, excessive labor, environmental pollution), some are psychological (noise, crowding, forcing human behavior into the mold that society requires). In the past, human nature has been approximately constant, or at any rate has varied only within certain bounds. Consequently, societies have been able to push people only up to certain limits. When the limit of human endurance has been passed, things start going wrong: rebellion, or crime, or corruption, or evasion of work, or depression and other mental problems, or an elevated death rate, or a declining birth rate or something else, so that either the society breaks down, or its functioning becomes too inefficient and it is (quickly or gradually, through conquest, attrition or evolution) replaced by some more efficient form of society. [25]

144. Thus human nature has in the past put certain limits on the development of societies. People could be pushed only so far and no farther. But today this may be changing, because modern technology is developing ways of modifying human beings.

145. Imagine a society that subjects people to conditions that make them terribly unhappy, then gives them drugs to take away their unhappiness. Science fiction? It is already happening to some extent in our own society. It is well known that the rate of clinical depression has been greatly increasing in recent decades. We believe that this is due to disruption of the power process, as explained in paragraphs 59-76. But even if we are wrong, the increasing rate of depression is certainly the result of SOME conditions that exist in today’s society. Instead of removing the conditions that make people depressed, modern society gives them antidepressant drugs. In effect, antidepressants are a means of modifying an individual’s internal state in such a way as to enable him to tolerate social conditions that he would otherwise find intolerable. (Yes, we know that depression is often of purely genetic origin. We are referring here to those cases in which environment plays the predominant role.)

146. Drugs that affect the mind are only one example of the new methods of controlling human behavior that modern society is developing. Let us look at some of the other methods.

147. To start with, there are the techniques of surveillance. Hidden video cameras are now used in most stores and in many other places, computers are used to collect and process vast amounts of information about individuals. Information so obtained greatly increases the effectiveness of physical coercion (i.e., law enforcement). [26] Then there are the methods of propaganda, for which the mass communication media provide effective vehicles. Efficient techniques have been developed for winning elections, selling products, influencing public opinion. The entertainment industry serves as an important psychological tool of the system, possibly even when it is dishing out large amounts of sex and violence. Entertainment provides modern man with an essential means of escape. While absorbed in television, videos, etc., he can forget stress, anxiety, frustration, dissatisfaction. Many primitive peoples, when they don’t have work to do, are quite content to sit for hours at a time doing nothing at all, because they are at peace with themselves and their world. But most modern people must be constantly occupied or entertained, otherwise they get “bored,” i.e., they get fidgety, uneasy, irritable.

148. Other techniques strike deeper than the foregoing. Education is no longer a simple affair of paddling a kid’s behind when he doesn’t know his lessons and patting him on the head when he does know them. It is becoming a scientific technique for controlling the child’s development. Sylvan Learning Centers, for example, have had great success in motivating children to study, and psychological techniques are also used with more or less success in many conventional schools. “Parenting” techniques that are taught to parents are designed to make children accept fundamental values of the system and behave in ways that the system finds desirable. “Mental health” programs, “intervention” techniques, psychotherapy and so forth are ostensibly designed to benefit individuals, but in practice they usually serve as methods for inducing individuals to think and behave as the system requires. (There is no contradiction here; an individual whose attitudes or behavior bring him into conflict with the system is up against a force that is too powerful for him to conquer or escape from, hence he is likely to suffer from stress, frustration, defeat. His path will be much easier if he thinks and behaves as the system requires. In that sense the system is acting for the benefit of the individual when it brainwashes him into conformity.) Child abuse in its gross and obvious forms is disapproved in most if not all cultures. Tormenting a child for a trivial reason or no reason at all is something that appalls almost everyone. But many psychologists interpret the concept of abuse much more broadly. Is spanking, when used as part of a rational and consistent system of discipline, a form of abuse? The question will ultimately be decided by whether or not spanking tends to produce behavior that makes a person fit in well with the existing system of society. In practice, the word “abuse” tends to be interpreted to include any method of child-rearing that produces behavior inconvenient for the system. Thus, when they go beyond the prevention of obvious, senseless cruelty, programs for preventing “child abuse” are directed toward the control of human behavior on behalf of the system.

149. Presumably, research will continue to increase the effectiveness of psychological techniques for controlling human behavior. But we think it is unlikely that psychological techniques alone will be sufficient to adjust human beings to the kind of society that technology is creating. Biological methods probably will have to be used. We have already mentioned the use of drugs in this connection. Neurology may provide other avenues for modifying the human mind. Genetic engineering of human beings is already beginning to occur in the form of “gene therapy,” and there is no reason to assume that such methods will not eventually be used to modify those aspects of the body that affect mental functioning.

150. As we mentioned in paragraph 134, industrial society seems likely to be entering a period of severe stress, due in part to problems of human behavior and in part to economic and environmental problems. And a considerable proportion of the system’s economic and environmental problems result from the way human beings behave. Alienation, low self-esteem, depression, hostility, rebellion; children who won’t study, youth gangs, illegal drug use, rape, child abuse, other crimes, unsafe sex, teen pregnancy, population growth, political corruption, race hatred, ethnic rivalry, bitter ideological conflict (e.g., pro-choice vs. pro- life), political extremism, terrorism, sabotage, anti-government groups, hate groups. All these threaten the very survival of the system. The system will therefore be FORCED to use every practical means of controlling human behavior.

151. The social disruption that we see today is certainly not the result of mere chance. It can only be a result of the conditions of life that the system imposes on people. (We have argued that the most important of these conditions is disruption of the power process.) If the systems succeeds in imposing sufficient control over human behavior to assure its own survival, a new watershed in human history will have been passed. Whereas formerly the limits of human endurance have imposed limits on the development of societies (as we explained in paragraphs 143, 144), industrial-technological society will be able to pass those limits by modifying human beings, whether by psychological methods or biological methods or both. In the future, social systems will not be adjusted to suit the needs of human beings. Instead, human being will be adjusted to suit the needs of the system. [27]

152. Generally speaking, technological control over human behavior will probably not be introduced with a totalitarian intention or even through a conscious desire to restrict human freedom. [28] Each new step in the assertion of control over the human mind will be taken as a rational response to a problem that faces society, such as curing alcoholism, reducing the crime rate or inducing young people to study science and engineering. In many cases there will be a humanitarian justification. For example, when a psychiatrist prescribes an anti-depressant for a depressed patient, he is clearly doing that individual a favor. It would be inhumane to withhold the drug from someone who needs it. When parents send their children to Sylvan Learning Centers to have them manipulated into becoming enthusiastic about their studies, they do so from concern for their children’s welfare. It may be that some of these parents wish that one didn’t have to have specialized training to get a job and that their kid didn’t have to be brainwashed into becoming a computer nerd. But what can they do? They can’t change society, and their child may be unemployable if he doesn’t have certain skills. So they send him to Sylvan.

153. Thus control over human behavior will be introduced not by a calculated decision of the authorities but through a process of social evolution (RAPID evolution, however). The process will be impossible to resist, because each advance, considered by itself, will appear to be beneficial, or at least the evil involved in making the advance will appear to be beneficial, or at least the evil involved in making the advance will seem to be less than that which would result from not making it (see paragraph 127). Propaganda for example is used for many good purposes, such as discouraging child abuse or race hatred. [14] Sex education is obviously useful, yet the effect of sex education (to the extent that it is successful) is to take the shaping of sexual attitudes away from the family and put it into the hands of the state as represented by the public school system.

154. Suppose a biological trait is discovered that increases the likelihood that a child will grow up to be a criminal, and suppose some sort of gene therapy can remove this trait. [29] Of course most parents whose children possess the trait will have them undergo the therapy. It would be inhumane to do otherwise, since the child would probably have a miserable life if he grew up to be a criminal. But many or most primitive societies have a low crime rate in comparison with that of our society, even though they have neither high- tech methods of child-rearing nor harsh systems of punishment. Since there is no reason to suppose that more modern men than primitive men have innate predatory tendencies, the high crime rate of our society must be due to the pressures that modern conditions put on people, to which many cannot or will not adjust. Thus a treatment designed to remove potential criminal tendencies is at least in part a way of re-engineering people so that they suit the requirements of the system.

155. Our society tends to regard as a “sickness” any mode of thought or behavior that is inconvenient for the system, and this is plausible because when an individual doesn’t fit into the system it causes pain to the individual as well as problems for the system. Thus the manipulation of an individual to adjust him to the system is seen as a “cure” for a “sickness” and therefore as good.

156. In paragraph 127 we pointed out that if the use of a new item of technology is INITIALLY optional, it does not necessarily REMAIN optional, because the new technology tends to change society in such a way that it becomes difficult or impossible for an individual to function without using that technology. This applies also to the technology of human behavior. In a world in which most children are put through a program to make them enthusiastic about studying, a parent will almost be forced to put his kid through such a program, because if he does not, then the kid will grow up to be, comparatively speaking, an ignoramus and therefore unemployable. Or suppose a biological treatment is discovered that, without undesirable side-effects, will greatly reduce the psychological stress from which so many people suffer in our society. If large numbers of people choose to undergo the treatment, then the general level of stress in society will be reduced, so that it will be possible for the system to increase the stress-producing pressures. In fact, something like this seems to have happened already with one of our society’s most important psychological tools for enabling people to reduce (or at least temporarily escape from) stress, namely, mass entertainment (see paragraph 147). Our use of mass entertainment is “optional”: No law requires us to watch television, listen to the radio, read magazines. Yet mass entertainment is a means of escape and stress-reduction on which most of us have become dependent. Everyone complains about the trashiness of television, but almost everyone watches it. A few have kicked the TV habit, but it would be a rare person who could get along today without using ANY form of mass entertainment. (Yet until quite recently in human history most people got along very nicely with no other entertainment than that which each local community created for itself.) Without the entertainment industry the system probably would not have been able to get away with putting as much stress-producing pressure on us as it does.

157. Assuming that industrial society survives, it is likely that technology will eventually acquire something approaching complete control over human behavior. It has been established beyond any rational doubt that human thought and behavior have a largely biological basis. As experimenters have demonstrated, feelings such as hunger, pleasure, anger and fear can be turned on and off by electrical stimulation of appropriate parts of the brain. Memories can be destroyed by damaging parts of the brain or they can be brought to the surface by electrical stimulation. Hallucinations can be induced or moods changed by drugs. There may or may not be an immaterial human soul, but if there is one it clearly is less powerful that the biological mechanisms of human behavior. For if that were not the case then researchers would not be able so easily to manipulate human feelings and behavior with drugs and electrical currents.

158. It presumably would be impractical for all people to have electrodes inserted in their heads so that they could be controlled by the authorities. But the fact that human thoughts and feelings are so open to biological intervention shows that the problem of controlling human behavior is mainly a technical problem; a problem of neurons, hormones and complex molecules; the kind of problem that is accessible to scientific attack. Given the outstanding record of our society in solving technical problems, it is overwhelmingly probable that great advances will be made in the control of human behavior.

159. Will public resistance prevent the introduction of technological control of human behavior? It certainly would if an attempt were made to introduce such control all at once. But since technological control will be introduced through a long sequence of small advances, there will be no rational and effective public resistance. (See paragraphs 127, 132, 153.)

160. To those who think that all this sounds like science fiction, we point out that yesterday’s science fiction is today’s fact. The Industrial Revolution has radically altered man’s environment and way of life, and it is only to be expected that as technology is increasingly applied to the human body and mind, man himself will be altered as radically as his environment and way of life have been.

HUMAN RACE AT A CROSSROADS

161. But we have gotten ahead of our story. It is one thing to develop in the laboratory a series of psychological or biological techniques for manipulating human behavior and quite another to integrate these techniques into a functioning social system. The latter problem is the more difficult of the two. For example, while the techniques of educational psychology doubtless work quite well in the “lab schools” where they are developed, it is not necessarily easy to apply them effectively throughout our educational system. We all know what many of our schools are like. The teachers are too busy taking knives and guns away from the kids to subject them to the latest techniques for making them into computer nerds. Thus, in spite of all its technical advances relating to human behavior, the system to date has not been impressively successful in controlling human beings. The people whose behavior is fairly well under the control of the system are those of the type that might be called “bourgeois.” But there are growing numbers of people who in one way or another are rebels against the system: welfare leaches, youth gangs, cultists, satanists, nazis, radical environmentalists, militiamen, etc.

162. The system is currently engaged in a desperate struggle to overcome certain problems that threaten its survival, among which the problems of human behavior are the most important. If the system succeeds in acquiring sufficient control over human behavior quickly enough, it will probably survive. Otherwise it will break down. We think the issue will most likely be resolved within the next several decades, say 40 to 100 years.

163. Suppose the system survives the crisis of the next several decades. By that time it will have to have solved, or at least brought under control, the principal problems that confront it, in particular that of “socializing” human beings; that is, making people sufficiently docile so that heir behavior no longer threatens the system. That being accomplished, it does not appear that there would be any further obstacle to the development of technology, and it would presumably advance toward its logical conclusion, which is complete control over everything on Earth, including human beings and all other important organisms. The system may become a unitary, monolithic organization, or it may be more or less fragmented and consist of a number of organizations coexisting in a relationship that includes elements of both cooperation and competition, just as today the government, the corporations and other large organizations both cooperate and compete with one another. Human freedom mostly will have vanished, because individuals and small groups will be impotent vis-a-vis large organizations armed with supertechnology and an arsenal of advanced psychological and biological tools for manipulating human beings, besides instruments of surveillance and physical coercion. Only a small number of people will have any real power, and even these probably will have only very limited freedom, because their behavior too will be regulated; just as today our politicians and corporation executives can retain their positions of power only as long as their behavior remains within certain fairly narrow limits.

164. Don’t imagine that the systems will stop developing further techniques for controlling human beings and nature once the crisis of the next few decades is over and increasing control is no longer necessary for the system’s survival. On the contrary, once the hard times are over the system will increase its control over people and nature more rapidly, because it will no longer be hampered by difficulties of the kind that it is currently experiencing. Survival is not the principal motive for extending control. As we explained in paragraphs 87-90, technicians and scientists carry on their work largely as a surrogate activity; that is, they satisfy their need for power by solving technical problems. They will continue to do this with unabated enthusiasm, and among the most interesting and challenging problems for them to solve will be those of understanding the human body and mind and intervening in their development. For the “good of humanity,” of course.

165. But suppose on the other hand that the stresses of the coming decades prove to be too much for the system. If the system breaks down there may be a period of chaos, a “time of troubles” such as those that history has recorded at various epochs in the past. It is impossible to predict what would emerge from such a time of troubles, but at any rate the human race would be given a new chance. The greatest danger is that industrial society may begin to reconstitute itself within the first few years after the breakdown. Certainly there will be many people (power-hungry types especially) who will be anxious to get the factories running again.

166. Therefore two tasks confront those who hate the servitude to which the industrial system is reducing the human race. First, we must work to heighten the social stresses within the system so as to increase the likelihood that it will break down or be weakened sufficiently so that a revolution against it becomes possible. Second, it is necessary to develop and propagate an ideology that opposes technology and the industrial society if and when the system becomes sufficiently weakened. And such an ideology will help to assure that, if and when industrial society breaks down, its remnants will be smashed beyond repair, so that the system cannot be reconstituted. The factories should be destroyed, technical books burned, etc.

HUMAN SUFFERING

167. The industrial system will not break down purely as a result of revolutionary action. It will not be vulnerable to revolutionary attack unless its own internal problems of development lead it into very serious difficulties. So if the system breaks down it will do so either spontaneously, or through a process that is in part spontaneous but helped along by revolutionaries. If the breakdown is sudden, many people will die, since the world’s population has become so overblown that it cannot even feed itself any longer without advanced technology. Even if the breakdown is gradual enough so that reduction of the population can occur more through lowering of the birth rate than through elevation of the death rate, the process of de- industrialization probably will be very chaotic and involve much suffering. It is naive to think it likely that technology can be phased out in a smoothly managed, orderly way, especially since the technophiles will fight stubbornly at every step. Is it therefore cruel to work for the breakdown of the system? Maybe, but maybe not. In the first place, revolutionaries will not be able to break the system down unless it is already in enough trouble so that there would be a good chance of its eventually breaking down by itself anyway; and the bigger the system grows, the more disastrous the consequences of its breakdown will be; so it may be that revolutionaries, by hastening the onset of the breakdown, will be reducing the extent of the disaster.

168. In the second place, one has to balance struggle and death against the loss of freedom and dignity. To many of us, freedom and dignity are more important than a long life or avoidance of physical pain. Besides, we all have to die some time, and it may be better to die fighting for survival, or for a cause, than to live a long but empty and purposeless life.

169. In the third place, it is not at all certain that survival of the system will lead to less suffering than breakdown of the system would. The system has already caused, and is continuing to cause, immense suffering all over the world. Ancient cultures, that for hundreds of years gave people a satisfactory relationship with each other and with their environment, have been shattered by contact with industrial society, and the result has been a whole catalogue of economic, environmental, social and psychological problems. One of the effects of the intrusion of industrial society has been that over much of the world traditional controls on population have been thrown out of balance. Hence the population explosion, with all that that implies. Then there is the psychological suffering that is widespread throughout the supposedly fortunate countries of the West (see paragraphs 44, 45). No one knows what will happen as a result of ozone depletion, the greenhouse effect and other environmental problems that cannot yet be foreseen. And, as nuclear proliferation has shown, new technology cannot be kept out of the hands of dictators and irresponsible Third World nations. Would you like to speculate about what Iraq or North Korea will do with genetic engineering?

170. “Oh!” say the technophiles, “Science is going to fix all that! We will conquer famine, eliminate psychological suffering, make everybody healthy and happy!” Yeah, sure. That’s what they said 200 years ago. The Industrial Revolution was supposed to eliminate poverty, make everybody happy, etc. The actual result has been quite different. The technophiles are hopelessly naive (or self-deceiving) in their understanding of social problems. They are unaware of (or choose to ignore) the fact that when large changes, even seemingly beneficial ones, are introduced into a society, they lead to a long sequence of other changes, most of which are impossible to predict (paragraph 103). The result is disruption of the society. So it is very probable that in their attempts to end poverty and disease, engineer docile, happy personalities and so forth, the technophiles will create social systems that are terribly troubled, even more so than the present once. For example, the scientists boast that they will end famine by creating new, genetically engineered food plants. But this will allow the human population to keep expanding indefinitely, and it is well known that crowding leads to increased stress and aggression. This is merely one example of the PREDICTABLE problems that will arise. We emphasize that, as past experience has shown, technical progress will lead to other new problems that CANNOT be predicted in advance (paragraph 103). In fact, ever since the Industrial Revolution, technology has been creating new problems for society far more rapidly than it has been solving old ones. Thus it will take a long and difficult period of trial and error for the technophiles to work the bugs out of their Brave New World (if they every do). In the meantime there will be great suffering. So it is not at all clear that the survival of industrial society would involve less suffering than the breakdown of that society would. Technology has gotten the human race into a fix from which there is not likely to be any easy escape.

THE FUTURE

171. But suppose now that industrial society does survive the next several decades and that the bugs do eventually get worked out of the system, so that it functions smoothly. What kind of system will it be? We will consider several possibilities.

172. First let us postulate that the computer scientists succeed in developing intelligent machines that can do all things better than human beings can do them. In that case presumably all work will be done by vast, highly organized systems of machines and no human effort will be necessary. Either of two cases might occur. The machines might be permitted to make all of their own decisions without human oversight, or else human control over the machines might be retained.

173. If the machines are permitted to make all their own decisions, we can’t make any conjectures as to the results, because it is impossible to guess how such machines might behave. We only point out that the fate of the human race would be at the mercy of the machines. It might be argued that the human race would never be foolish enough to hand over all power to the machines. But we are suggesting neither that the human race would voluntarily turn power over to the machines nor that the machines would willfully seize power. What we do suggest is that the human race might easily permit itself to drift into a position of such dependence on the machines that it would have no practical choice but to accept all of the machines’ decisions. As society and the problems that face it become more and more complex and as machines become more and more intelligent, people will let machines make more and more of their decisions for them, simply because machine-made decisions will bring better results than man-made ones. Eventually a stage may be reached at which the decisions necessary to keep the system running will be so complex that human beings will be incapable of making them intelligently. At that stage the machines will be in effective control. People won’t be able to just turn the machines off, because they will be so dependent on them that turning them off would amount to suicide.

174. On the other hand it is possible that human control over the machines may be retained. In that case the average man may have control over certain private machines of his own, such as his car or his personal computer, but control over large systems of machines will be in the hands of a tiny elite—just as it is today, but with two differences. Due to improved techniques the elite will have greater control over the masses; and because human work will no longer be necessary the masses will be superfluous, a useless burden on the system. If the elite is ruthless they may simply decide to exterminate the mass of humanity. If they are humane they may use propaganda or other psychological or biological techniques to reduce the birth rate until the mass of humanity becomes extinct, leaving the world to the elite. Or, if the elite consists of soft- hearted liberals, they may decide to play the role of good shepherds to the rest of the human race. They will see to it that everyone’s physical needs are satisfied, that all children are raised under psychologically hygienic conditions, that everyone has a wholesome hobby to keep him busy, and that anyone who may become dissatisfied undergoes “treatment” to cure his “problem.” Of course, life will be so purposeless that people will have to be biologically or psychologically engineered either to remove their need for the power process or to make them “sublimate” their drive for power into some harmless hobby. These engineered human beings may be happy in such a society, but they most certainly will not be free. They will have been reduced to the status of domestic animals.

175. But suppose now that the computer scientists do not succeed in developing artificial intelligence, so that human work remains necessary. Even so, machines will take care of more and more of the simpler tasks so that there will be an increasing surplus of human workers at the lower levels of ability. (We see this happening already. There are many people who find it difficult or impossible to get work, because for intellectual or psychological reasons they cannot acquire the level of training necessary to make themselves useful in the present system.) On those who are employed, ever-increasing demands will be placed: They will need more and more training, more and more ability, and will have to be ever more reliable, conforming and docile, because they will be more and more like cells of a giant organism. Their tasks will be increasingly specialized, so that their work will be, in a sense, out of touch with the real world, being concentrated on one tiny slice of reality. The system will have to use any means that it can, whether psychological or biological, to engineer people to be docile, to have the abilities that the system requires and to “sublimate” their drive for power into some specialized task. But the statement that the people of such a society will have to be docile may require qualification. The society may find competitiveness useful, provided that ways are found of directing competitiveness into channels that serve the needs of the system. We can imagine a future society in which there is endless competition for positions of prestige and power. But no more than a very few people will ever reach the top, where the only real power is (see end of paragraph 163). Very repellent is a society in which a person can satisfy his need for power only by pushing large numbers of other people out of the way and depriving them of THEIR opportunity for power.

176. One can envision scenarios that incorporate aspects of more than one of the possibilities that we have just discussed. For instance, it may be that machines will take over most of the work that is of real, practical importance, but that human beings will be kept busy by being given relatively unimportant work. It has been suggested, for example, that a great development of the service industries might provide work for human beings. Thus people would spent their time shining each other’s shoes, driving each other around in taxicabs, making handicrafts for one another, waiting on each other’s tables, etc. This seems to us a thoroughly contemptible way for the human race to end up, and we doubt that many people would find fulfilling lives in such pointless busy-work. They would seek other, dangerous outlets (drugs, crime, “cults,” hate groups) unless they were biologically or psychologically engineered to adapt them to such a way of life.

177. Needless to say, the scenarios outlined above do not exhaust all the possibilities. They only indicate the kinds of outcomes that seem to us most likely. But we can envision no plausible scenarios that are any more palatable than the ones we’ve just described. It is overwhelmingly probable that if the industrial- technological system survives the next 40 to 100 years, it will by that time have developed certain general characteristics: Individuals (at least those of the “bourgeois” type, who are integrated into the system and make it run, and who therefore have all the power) will be more dependent than ever on large organizations; they will be more “socialized” than ever and their physical and mental qualities to a significant extent (possibly to a very great extent) will be those that are engineered into them rather than being the results of chance (or of God’s will, or whatever); and whatever may be left of wild nature will be reduced to remnants preserved for scientific study and kept under the supervision and management of scientists (hence it will no longer be truly wild). In the long run (say a few centuries from now) it is likely that neither the human race nor any other important organisms will exist as we know them today, because once you start modifying organisms through genetic engineering there is no reason to stop at any particular point, so that the modifications will probably continue until man and other organisms have been utterly transformed.

178. Whatever else may be the case, it is certain that technology is creating for human beings a new physical and social environment radically different from the spectrum of environments to which natural selection has adapted the human race physically and psychologically. If man is not adjusted to this new environment by being artificially re-engineered, then he will be adapted to it through a long and painful process of natural selection. The former is far more likely than the latter.

179. It would be better to dump the whole stinking system and take the consequences.

STRATEGY

180. The technophiles are taking us all on an utterly reckless ride into the unknown. Many people understand something of what technological progress is doing to us yet take a passive attitude toward it because they think it is inevitable. But we (FC) don’t think it is inevitable. We think it can be stopped, and we will give here some indications of how to go about stopping it.

181. As we stated in paragraph 166, the two main tasks for the present are to promote social stress and instability in industrial society and to develop and propagate an ideology that opposes technology and the industrial system. When the system becomes sufficiently stressed and unstable, a revolution against technology may be possible. The pattern would be similar to that of the French and Russian Revolutions. French society and Russian society, for several decades prior to their respective revolutions, showed increasing signs of stress and weakness. Meanwhile, ideologies were being developed that offered a new world view that was quite different from the old one. In the Russian case, revolutionaries were actively working to undermine the old order. Then, when the old system was put under sufficient additional stress (by financial crisis in France, by military defeat in Russia) it was swept away by revolution. What we propose is something along the same lines.

182. It will be objected that the French and Russian Revolutions were failures. But most revolutions have two goals. One is to destroy an old form of society and the other is to set up the new form of society envisioned by the revolutionaries. The French and Russian revolutionaries failed (fortunately!) to create the new kind of society of which they dreamed, but they were quite successful in destroying the old society. We have no illusions about the feasibility of creating a new, ideal form of society. Our goal is only to destroy the existing form of society.

183. But an ideology, in order to gain enthusiastic support, must have a positive ideal as well as a negative one; it must be FOR something as well as AGAINST something. The positive ideal that we propose is Nature. That is, WILD nature: those aspects of the functioning of the Earth and its living things that are independent of human management and free of human interference and control. And with wild nature we include human nature, by which we mean those aspects of the functioning of the human individual that are not subject to regulation by organized society but are products of chance, or free will, or God (depending on your religious or philosophical opinions).

184. Nature makes a perfect counter-ideal to technology for several reasons. Nature (that which is outside the power of the system) is the opposite of technology (which seeks to expand indefinitely the power of the system). Most people will agree that nature is beautiful; certainly it has tremendous popular appeal. The radical environmentalists ALREADY hold an ideology that exalts nature and opposes technology. [30] It is not necessary for the sake of nature to set up some chimerical utopia or any new kind of social order. Nature takes care of itself: It was a spontaneous creation that existed long before any human society, and for countless centuries many different kinds of human societies coexisted with nature without doing it an excessive amount of damage. Only with the Industrial Revolution did the effect of human society on nature become really devastating. To relieve the pressure on nature it is not necessary to create a special kind of social system, it is only necessary to get rid of industrial society. Granted, this will not solve all problems. Industrial society has already done tremendous damage to nature and it will take a very long time for the scars to heal. Besides, even pre-industrial societies can do significant damage to nature. Nevertheless, getting rid of industrial society will accomplish a great deal. It will relieve the worst of the pressure on nature so that the scars can begin to heal. It will remove the capacity of organized society to keep increasing its control over nature (including human nature). Whatever kind of society may exist after the demise of the industrial system, it is certain that most people will live close to nature, because in the absence of advanced technology there is no other way that people CAN live. To feed themselves they must be peasants or herdsmen or fishermen or hunters, etc. And, generally speaking, local autonomy should tend to increase, because lack of advanced technology and rapid communications will limit the capacity of governments or other large organizations to control local communities.

185. As for the negative consequences of eliminating industrial society—well, you can’t eat your cake and have it too. To gain one thing you have to sacrifice another.

186. Most people hate psychological conflict. For this reason they avoid doing any serious thinking about difficult social issues, and they like to have such issues presented to them in simple, black-and-white terms: THIS is all good and THAT is all bad. The revolutionary ideology should therefore be developed on two levels.

187. On the more sophisticated level the ideology should address itself to people who are intelligent, thoughtful and rational. The object should be to create a core of people who will be opposed to the industrial system on a rational, thought-out basis, with full appreciation of the problems and ambiguities involved, and of the price that has to be paid for getting rid of the system. It is particularly important to attract people of this type, as they are capable people and will be instrumental in influencing others. These people should be addressed on as rational a level as possible. Facts should never intentionally be distorted and intemperate language should be avoided. This does not mean that no appeal can be made to the emotions, but in making such appeal care should be taken to avoid misrepresenting the truth or doing anything else that would destroy the intellectual respectability of the ideology.

188. On a second level, the ideology should be propagated in a simplified form that will enable the unthinking majority to see the conflict of technology vs. nature in unambiguous terms. But even on this second level the ideology should not be expressed in language that is so cheap, intemperate or irrational that it alienates people of the thoughtful and rational type. Cheap, intemperate propaganda sometimes achieves impressive short-term gains, but it will be more advantageous in the long run to keep the loyalty of a small number of intelligently committed people than to arouse the passions of an unthinking, fickle mob who will change their attitude as soon as someone comes along with a better propaganda gimmick. However, propaganda of the rabble-rousing type may be necessary when the system is nearing the point of collapse and there is a final struggle between rival ideologies to determine which will become dominant when the old world-view goes under.

189. Prior to that final struggle, the revolutionaries should not expect to have a majority of people on their side. History is made by active, determined minorities, not by the majority, which seldom has a clear and consistent idea of what it really wants. Until the time comes for the final push toward revolution [31], the task of revolutionaries will be less to win the shallow support of the majority than to build a small core of deeply committed people. As for the majority, it will be enough to make them aware of the existence of the new ideology and remind them of it frequently; though of course it will be desirable to get majority support to the extent that this can be done without weakening the core of seriously committed people.

190. Any kind of social conflict helps to destabilize the system, but one should be careful about what kind of conflict one encourages. The line of conflict should be drawn between the mass of the people and the power-holding elite of industrial society (politicians, scientists, upper-level business executives, government officials, etc.). It should NOT be drawn between the revolutionaries and the mass of the people. For example, it would be bad strategy for the revolutionaries to condemn Americans for their habits of consumption. Instead, the average American should be portrayed as a victim of the advertising and marketing industry, which has suckered him into buying a lot of junk that he doesn’t need and that is very poor compensation for his lost freedom. Either approach is consistent with the facts. It is merely a matter of attitude whether you blame the advertising industry for manipulating the public or blame the public for allowing itself to be manipulated. As a matter of strategy one should generally avoid blaming the public.

191. One should think twice before encouraging any other social conflict than that between the power- holding elite (which wields technology) and the general public (over which technology exerts its power). For one thing, other conflicts tend to distract attention from the important conflicts (between power-elite and ordinary people, between technology and nature); for another thing, other conflicts may actually tend to encourage technologization, because each side in such a conflict wants to use technological power to gain advantages over its adversary. This is clearly seen in rivalries between nations. It also appears in ethnic conflicts within nations. For example, in America many black leaders are anxious to gain power for African Americans by placing back individuals in the technological power-elite. They want there to be many black government officials, scientists, corporation executives and so forth. In this way they are helping to absorb the African American subculture into the technological system. Generally speaking, one should encourage only those social conflicts that can be fitted into the framework of the conflicts of power-elite vs. ordinary people, technology vs nature.

192. But the way to discourage ethnic conflict is NOT through militant advocacy of minority rights (see paragraphs 21, 29). Instead, the revolutionaries should emphasize that although minorities do suffer more or less disadvantage, this disadvantage is of peripheral significance. Our real enemy is the industrial- technological system, and in the struggle against the system, ethnic distinctions are of no importance.

193. The kind of revolution we have in mind will not necessarily involve an armed uprising against any government. It may or may not involve physical violence, but it will not be a POLITICAL revolution. Its focus will be on technology and economics, not politics. [32]

194. Probably the revolutionaries should even AVOID assuming political power, whether by legal or illegal means, until the industrial system is stressed to the danger point and has proved itself to be a failure in the eyes of most people. Suppose for example that some “green” party should win control of the United States Congress in an election. In order to avoid betraying or watering down their own ideology they would have to take vigorous measures to turn economic growth into economic shrinkage. To the average man the results would appear disastrous: There would be massive unemployment, shortages of commodities, etc. Even if the grosser ill effects could be avoided through superhumanly skillful management, still people would have to begin giving up the luxuries to which they have become addicted. Dissatisfaction would grow, the “green” party would be voted out of office and the revolutionaries would have suffered a severe setback. For this reason the revolutionaries should not try to acquire political power until the system has gotten itself into such a mess that any hardships will be seen as resulting from the failures of the industrial system itself and not from the policies of the revolutionaries. The revolution against technology will probably have to be a revolution by outsiders, a revolution from below and not from above.

195. The revolution must be international and worldwide. It cannot be carried out on a nation-by-nation basis. Whenever it is suggested that the United States, for example, should cut back on technological progress or economic growth, people get hysterical and start screaming that if we fall behind in technology the Japanese will get ahead of us. Holy robots! The world will fly off its orbit if the Japanese ever sell more cars than we do! (Nationalism is a great promoter of technology.) More reasonably, it is argued that if the relatively democratic nations of the world fall behind in technology while nasty, dictatorial nations like China, Vietnam and North Korea continue to progress, eventually the dictators may come to dominate the world. That is why the industrial system should be attacked in all nations simultaneously, to the extent that this may be possible. True, there is no assurance that the industrial system can be destroyed at approximately the same time all over the world, and it is even conceivable that the attempt to overthrow the system could lead instead to the domination of the system by dictators. That is a risk that has to be taken. And it is worth taking, since the difference between a “democratic” industrial system and one controlled by dictators is small compared with the difference between an industrial system and a non-industrial one. [33] It might even be argued that an industrial system controlled by dictators would be preferable, because dictator-controlled systems usually have proved inefficient, hence they are presumably more likely to break down. Look at Cuba.

196. Revolutionaries might consider favoring measures that tend to bind the world economy into a unified whole. Free trade agreements like NAFTA and GATT are probably harmful to the environment in the short run, but in the long run they may perhaps be advantageous because they foster economic interdependence between nations. It will be easier to destroy the industrial system on a worldwide basis if the world economy is so unified that its breakdown in any one major nation will lead to its breakdown in all industrialized nations.

197. Some people take the line that modern man has too much power, too much control over nature; they argue for a more passive attitude on the part of the human race. At best these people are expressing themselves unclearly, because they fail to distinguish between power for LARGE ORGANIZATIONS and power for INDIVIDUALS and SMALL GROUPS. It is a mistake to argue for powerlessness and passivity, because people NEED power. Modern man as a collective entity—that is, the industrial system—has immense power over nature, and we (FC) regard this as evil. But modern INDIVIDUALS and SMALL GROUPS OF INDIVIDUALS have far less power than primitive man ever did. Generally speaking, the vast power of “modern man” over nature is exercised not by individuals or small groups but by large organizations. To the extent that the average modern INDIVIDUAL can wield the power of technology, he is permitted to do so only within narrow limits and only under the supervision and control of the system. (You need a license for everything and with the license come rules and regulations.) The individual has only those technological powers with which the system chooses to provide him. His PERSONAL power over nature is slight.

198. Primitive INDIVIDUALS and SMALL GROUPS actually had considerable power over nature; or maybe it would be better to say power WITHIN nature. When primitive man needed food he knew how to find and prepare edible roots, how to track game and take it with homemade weapons. He knew how to protect himself from heat, cold, rain, dangerous animals, etc. But primitive man did relatively little damage to nature because the COLLECTIVE power of primitive society was negligible compared to the COLLECTIVE power of industrial society.

199. Instead of arguing for powerlessness and passivity, one should argue that the power of the INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM should be broken, and that this will greatly INCREASE the power and freedom of INDIVIDUALS and SMALL GROUPS.

200. Until the industrial system has been thoroughly wrecked, the destruction of that system must be the revolutionaries’ ONLY goal. Other goals would distract attention and energy from the main goal. More importantly, if the revolutionaries permit themselves to have any other goal than the destruction of technology, they will be tempted to use technology as a tool for reaching that other goal. If they give in to that temptation, they will fall right back into the technological trap, because modern technology is a unified, tightly organized system, so that, in order to retain SOME technology, one finds oneself obliged to retain MOST technology, hence one ends up sacrificing only token amounts of technology.

201. Suppose for example that the revolutionaries took “social justice” as a goal. Human nature being what it is, social justice would not come about spontaneously; it would have to be enforced. In order to enforce it the revolutionaries would have to retain central organization and control. For that they would need rapid long-distance transportation and communication, and therefore all the technology needed to support the transportation and communication systems. To feed and clothe poor people they would have to use agricultural and manufacturing technology. And so forth. So that the attempt to insure social justice would force them to retain most parts of the technological system. Not that we have anything against social justice, but it must not be allowed to interfere with the effort to get rid of the technological system.

202. It would be hopeless for revolutionaries to try to attack the system without using SOME modern technology. If nothing else they must use the communications media to spread their message. But they should use modern technology for only ONE purpose: to attack the technological system.

203. Imagine an alcoholic sitting with a barrel of wine in front of him. Suppose he starts saying to himself, “Wine isn’t bad for you if used in moderation. Why, they say small amounts of wine are even good for you! It won’t do me any harm if I take just one little drink.... “ Well you know what is going to happen. Never forget that the human race with technology is just like an alcoholic with a barrel of wine.

204. Revolutionaries should have as many children as they can. There is strong scientific evidence that social attitudes are to a significant extent inherited. No one suggests that a social attitude is a direct outcome of a person’s genetic constitution, but it appears that personality traits are partly inherited and that certain personality traits tend, within the context of our society, to make a person more likely to hold this or that social attitude. Objections to these findings have been raised, but the objections are feeble and seem to be ideologically motivated. In any event, no one denies that children tend on the average to hold social attitudes similar to those of their parents. From our point of view it doesn’t matter all that much whether the attitudes are passed on genetically or through childhood training. In either case they ARE passed on.

205. The trouble is that many of the people who are inclined to rebel against the industrial system are also concerned about the population problems, hence they are apt to have few or no children. In this way they may be handing the world over to the sort of people who support or at least accept the industrial system. To insure the strength of the next generation of revolutionaries the present generation should reproduce itself abundantly. In doing so they will be worsening the population problem only slightly. And the important problem is to get rid of the industrial system, because once the industrial system is gone the world’s population necessarily will decrease (see paragraph 167); whereas, if the industrial system survives, it will continue developing new techniques of food production that may enable the world’s population to keep increasing almost indefinitely.

206. With regard to revolutionary strategy, the only points on which we absolutely insist are that the single overriding goal must be the elimination of modern technology, and that no other goal can be allowed to compete with this one. For the rest, revolutionaries should take an empirical approach. If experience indicates that some of the recommendations made in the foregoing paragraphs are not going to give good results, then those recommendations should be discarded.

TWO KINDS OF TECHNOLOGY

207. An argument likely to be raised against our proposed revolution is that it is bound to fail, because (it is claimed) throughout history technology has always progressed, never regressed, hence technological regression is impossible. But this claim is false.

208. We distinguish between two kinds of technology, which we will call small-scale technology and organization-dependent technology. Small-scale technology is technology that can be used by small-scale communities without outside assistance. Organization-dependent technology is technology that depends on large-scale social organization. We are aware of no significant cases of regression in small-scale technology. But organization-dependent technology DOES regress when the social organization on which it depends breaks down. Example: When the Roman Empire fell apart the Romans’ small-scale technology survived because any clever village craftsman could build, for instance, a water wheel, any skilled smith could make steel by Roman methods, and so forth. But the Romans’ organization-dependent technology DID regress. Their aqueducts fell into disrepair and were never rebuilt. Their techniques of road construction were lost. The Roman system of urban sanitation was forgotten, so that not until rather recent times did the sanitation of European cities equal that of Ancient Rome.

209. The reason why technology has seemed always to progress is that, until perhaps a century or two before the Industrial Revolution, most technology was small-scale technology. But most of the technology developed since the Industrial Revolution is organization-dependent technology. Take the refrigerator for example. Without factory-made parts or the facilities of a post-industrial machine shop it would be virtually impossible for a handful of local craftsmen to build a refrigerator. If by some miracle they did succeed in building one it would be useless to them without a reliable source of electric power. So they would have to dam a stream and build a generator. Generators require large amounts of copper wire. Imagine trying to make that wire without modern machinery. And where would they get a gas suitable for refrigeration? It would be much easier to build an icehouse or preserve food by drying or picking, as was done before the invention of the refrigerator.

210. So it is clear that if the industrial system were once thoroughly broken down, refrigeration technology would quickly be lost. The same is true of other organization-dependent technology. And once this technology had been lost for a generation or so it would take centuries to rebuild it, just as it took centuries to build it the first time around. Surviving technical books would be few and scattered. An industrial society, if built from scratch without outside help, can only be built in a series of stages: You need tools to make tools to make tools to make tools ... . A long process of economic development and progress in social organization is required. And, even in the absence of an ideology opposed to technology, there is no reason to believe that anyone would be interested in rebuilding industrial society. The enthusiasm for “progress” is a phenomenon peculiar to the modern form of society, and it seems not to have existed prior to the 17th century or thereabouts.

211. In the late Middle Ages there were four main civilizations that were about equally “advanced”: Europe, the Islamic world, India, and the Far East (China, Japan, Korea). Three of those civilizations remained more or less stable, and only Europe became dynamic. No one knows why Europe became dynamic at that time; historians have their theories but these are only speculation. At any rate, it is clear that rapid development toward a technological form of society occurs only under special conditions. So there is no reason to assume that a long-lasting technological regression cannot be brought about.

212. Would society EVENTUALLY develop again toward an industrial-technological form? Maybe, but there is no use in worrying about it, since we can’t predict or control events 500 or 1,000 years in the future. Those problems must be dealt with by the people who will live at that time.

THE DANGER OF LEFTISM

213. Because of their need for rebellion and for membership in a movement, leftists or persons of similar psychological type often are unattracted to a rebellious or activist movement whose goals and membership are not initially leftist. The resulting influx of leftish types can easily turn a non-leftist movement into a leftist one, so that leftist goals replace or distort the original goals of the movement.

214. To avoid this, a movement that exalts nature and opposes technology must take a resolutely anti-leftist stance and must avoid all collaboration with leftists. Leftism is in the long run inconsistent with wild nature, with human freedom and with the elimination of modern technology. Leftism is collectivist; it seeks to bind together the entire world (both nature and the human race) into a unified whole. But this implies management of nature and of human life by organized society, and it requires advanced technology. You can’t have a united world without rapid transportation and communication, you can’t make all people love one another without sophisticated psychological techniques, you can’t have a “planned society” without the necessary technological base. Above all, leftism is driven by the need for power, and the leftist seeks power on a collective basis, through identification with a mass movement or an organization. Leftism is unlikely ever to give up technology, because technology is too valuable a source of collective power.

215. The anarchist [34] too seeks power, but he seeks it on an individual or small-group basis; he wants individuals and small groups to be able to control the circumstances of their own lives. He opposes technology because it makes small groups dependent on large organizations.

216. Some leftists may seem to oppose technology, but they will oppose it only so long as they are outsiders and the technological system is controlled by non-leftists. If leftism ever becomes dominant in society, so that the technological system becomes a tool in the hands of leftists, they will enthusiastically use it and promote its growth. In doing this they will be repeating a pattern that leftism has shown again and again in the past. When the Bolsheviks in Russia were outsiders, they vigorously opposed censorship and the secret police, they advocated self-determination for ethnic minorities, and so forth; but as soon as they came into power themselves, they imposed a tighter censorship and created a more ruthless secret police than any that had existed under the tsars, and they oppressed ethnic minorities at least as much as the tsars had done. In the United States, a couple of decades ago when leftists were a minority in our universities, leftist professors were vigorous proponents of academic freedom, but today, in those of our universities where leftists have become dominant, they have shown themselves ready to take away from everyone else’s academic freedom. (This is “political correctness.”) The same will happen with leftists and technology: They will use it to oppress everyone else if they ever get it under their own control.

217. In earlier revolutions, leftists of the most power-hungry type, repeatedly, have first cooperated with non-leftist revolutionaries, as well as with leftists of a more libertarian inclination, and later have double- crossed them to seize power for themselves. Robespierre did this in the French Revolution, the Bolsheviks did it in the Russian Revolution, the communists did it in Spain in 1938 and Castro and his followers did it in Cuba. Given the past history of leftism, it would be utterly foolish for non-leftist revolutionaries today to collaborate with leftists.

218. Various thinkers have pointed out that leftism is a kind of religion. Leftism is not a religion in the strict sense because leftist doctrine does not postulate the existence of any supernatural being. But, for the leftist, leftism plays a psychological role much like that which religion plays for some people. The leftist NEEDS to believe in leftism; it plays a vital role in his psychological economy. His beliefs are not easily modified by logic or facts. He has a deep conviction that leftism is morally Right with a capital R, and that he has not only a right but a duty to impose leftist morality on everyone. (However, many of the people we are referring to as “leftists” do not think of themselves as leftists and would not describe their system of beliefs as leftism. We use the term “leftism” because we don’t know of any better words to designate the spectrum of related creeds that includes the feminist, gay rights, political correctness, etc., movements, and because these movements have a strong affinity with the old left. See paragraphs 227-230.)

219. Leftism is a totalitarian force. Wherever leftism is in a position of power it tends to invade every private corner and force every thought into a leftist mold. In part this is because of the quasi-religious character of leftism; everything contrary to leftist beliefs represents Sin. More importantly, leftism is a totalitarian force because of the leftists’ drive for power. The leftist seeks to satisfy his need for power through identification with a social movement and he tries to go through the power process by helping to pursue and attain the goals of the movement (see paragraph 83). But no matter how far the movement has gone in attaining its goals the leftist is never satisfied, because his activism is a surrogate activity (see paragraph 41). That is, the leftist’s real motive is not to attain the ostensible goals of leftism; in reality he is motivated by the sense of power he gets from struggling for and then reaching a social goal. [35] Consequently the leftist is never satisfied with the goals he has already attained; his need for the power process leads him always to pursue some new goal. The leftist wants equal opportunities for minorities. When that is attained he insists on statistical equality of achievement by minorities. And as long as anyone harbors in some corner of his mind a negative attitude toward some minority, the leftist has to re-educated him. And ethnic minorities are not enough; no one can be allowed to have a negative attitude toward homosexuals, disabled people, fat people, old people, ugly people, and on and on and on. It’s not enough that the public should be informed about the hazards of smoking; a warning has to be stamped on every package of cigarettes. Then cigarette advertising has to be restricted if not banned. The activists will never be satisfied until tobacco is outlawed, and after that it will be alcohol, then junk food, etc. Activists have fought gross child abuse, which is reasonable. But now they want to stop all spanking. When they have done that they will want to ban something else they consider unwholesome, then another thing and then another. They will never be satisfied until they have complete control over all child rearing practices. And then they will move on to another cause.

220. Suppose you asked leftists to make a list of ALL the things that were wrong with society, and then suppose you instituted EVERY social change that they demanded. It is safe to say that within a couple of years the majority of leftists would find something new to complain about, some new social “evil” to correct because, once again, the leftist is motivated less by distress at society’s ills than by the need to satisfy his drive for power by imposing his solutions on society.

221. Because of the restrictions placed on their thoughts and behavior by their high level of socialization, many leftists of the over-socialized type cannot pursue power in the ways that other people do. For them the drive for power has only one morally acceptable outlet, and that is in the struggle to impose their morality on everyone.

222. Leftists, especially those of the oversocialized type, are True Believers in the sense of Eric Hoffer’s book, “The True Believer.” But not all True Believers are of the same psychological type as leftists. Presumably a true-believing nazi, for instance, is very different psychologically from a true-believing leftist. Because of their capacity for single-minded devotion to a cause, True Believers are a useful, perhaps a necessary, ingredient of any revolutionary movement. This presents a problem with which we must admit we don’t know how to deal. We aren’t sure how to harness the energies of the True Believer to a revolution against technology. At present all we can say is that no True Believer will make a safe recruit to the revolution unless his commitment is exclusively to the destruction of technology. If he is committed also to another ideal, he may want to use technology as a tool for pursuing that other ideal (see paragraphs 220, 221).

223. Some readers may say, “This stuff about leftism is a lot of crap. I know John and Jane who are leftish types and they don’t have all these totalitarian tendencies.” It’s quite true that many leftists, possibly even a numerical majority, are decent people who sincerely believe in tolerating others’ values (up to a point) and wouldn’t want to use high-handed methods to reach their social goals. Our remarks about leftism are not meant to apply to every individual leftist but to describe the general character of leftism as a movement. And the general character of a movement is not necessarily determined by the numerical proportions of the various kinds of people involved in the movement.

224. The people who rise to positions of power in leftist movements tend to be leftists of the most power- hungry type, because power-hungry people are those who strive hardest to get into positions of power. Once the power-hungry types have captured control of the movement, there are many leftists of a gentler breed who inwardly disapprove of many of the actions of the leaders, but cannot bring themselves to oppose them. They NEED their faith in the movement, and because they cannot give up this faith they go along with the leaders. True, SOME leftists do have the guts to oppose the totalitarian tendencies that emerge, but they generally lose, because the power-hungry types are better organized, are more ruthless and Machiavellian and have taken care to build themselves a strong power base.

225. These phenomena appeared clearly in Russia and other countries that were taken over by leftists. Similarly, before the breakdown of communism in the USSR, leftish types in the West would seldom criticize that country. If prodded they would admit that the USSR did many wrong things, but then they would try to find excuses for the communists and begin talking about the faults of the West. They always opposed Western military resistance to communist aggression. Leftish types all over the world vigorously protested the U.S. military action in Vietnam, but when the USSR invaded Afghanistan they did nothing. Not that they approved of the Soviet actions; but because of their leftist faith, they just couldn’t bear to put themselves in opposition to communism. Today, in those of our universities where “political correctness” has become dominant, there are probably many leftish types who privately disapprove of the suppression of academic freedom, but they go along with it anyway.

226. Thus the fact that many individual leftists are personally mild and fairly tolerant people by no means prevents leftism as a whole form having a totalitarian tendency.

227. Our discussion of leftism has a serious weakness. It is still far from clear what we mean by the word “leftist.” There doesn’t seem to be much we can do about this. Today leftism is fragmented into a whole spectrum of activist movements. Yet not all activist movements are leftist, and some activist movements (e.g., radical environmentalism) seem to include both personalities of the leftist type and personalities of thoroughly un-leftist types who ought to know better than to collaborate with leftists. Varieties of leftists fade out gradually into varieties of non-leftists and we ourselves would often be hard-pressed to decide whether a given individual is or is not a leftist. To the extent that it is defined at all, our conception of leftism is defined by the discussion of it that we have given in this article, and we can only advise the reader to use his own judgment in deciding who is a leftist.

228. But it will be helpful to list some criteria for diagnosing leftism. These criteria cannot be applied in a cut and dried manner. Some individuals may meet some of the criteria without being leftists, some leftists may not meet any of the criteria. Again, you just have to use your judgment.

229. The leftist is oriented toward large-scale collectivism. He emphasizes the duty of the individual to serve society and the duty of society to take care of the individual. He has a negative attitude toward individualism. He often takes a moralistic tone. He tends to be for gun control, for sex education and other psychologically “enlightened” educational methods, for social planning, for affirmative action, for multiculturalism. He tends to identify with victims. He tends to be against competition and against violence, but he often finds excuses for those leftists who do commit violence. He is fond of using the common catch- phrases of the left, like “racism,” “sexism,” “homophobia,” “capitalism,” “imperialism,” “neocolonialism,” “genocide,” “social change,” “social justice,” “social responsibility.” Maybe the best diagnostic trait of the leftist is his tendency to sympathize with the following movements: feminism, gay rights, ethnic rights, disability rights, animal rights, political correctness. Anyone who strongly sympathizes with ALL of these movements is almost certainly a leftist. [36]

230. The more dangerous leftists, that is, those who are most power-hungry, are often characterized by arrogance or by a dogmatic approach to ideology. However, the most dangerous leftists of all may be certain oversocialized types who avoid irritating displays of aggressiveness and refrain from advertising their leftism, but work quietly and unobtrusively to promote collectivist values, “enlightened” psychological techniques for socializing children, dependence of the individual on the system, and so forth. These crypto- leftists (as we may call them) approximate certain bourgeois types as far as practical action is concerned, but differ from them in psychology, ideology and motivation. The ordinary bourgeois tries to bring people under control of the system in order to protect his way of life, or he does so simply because his attitudes are conventional. The crypto-leftist tries to bring people under control of the system because he is a True Believer in a collectivistic ideology. The crypto-leftist is differentiated from the average leftist of the oversocialized type by the fact that his rebellious impulse is weaker and he is more securely socialized. He is differentiated from the ordinary well-socialized bourgeois by the fact that there is some deep lack within him that makes it necessary for him to devote himself to a cause and immerse himself in a collectivity. And maybe his (well-sublimated) drive for power is stronger than that of the average bourgeois.

FINAL NOTE

231. Throughout this article we’ve made imprecise statements and statements that ought to have had all sorts of qualifications and reservations attached to them; and some of our statements may be flatly false. Lack of sufficient information and the need for brevity made it impossible for us to formulate our assertions more precisely or add all the necessary qualifications. And of course in a discussion of this kind one must rely heavily on intuitive judgment, and that can sometimes be wrong. So we don’t claim that this article expresses more than a crude approximation to the truth.

232. All the same, we are reasonably confident that the general outlines of the picture we have painted here are roughly correct. Just one possible weak point needs to be mentioned. We have portrayed leftism in its modern form as a phenomenon peculiar to our time and as a symptom of the disruption of the power process. But we might possibly be wrong about this. Oversocialized types who try to satisfy their drive for power by imposing their morality on everyone have certainly been around for a long time. But we THINK that the decisive role played by feelings of inferiority, low self-esteem, powerlessness, identification with victims by people who are not themselves victims, is a peculiarity of modern leftism. Identification with victims by people not themselves victims can be seen to some extent in 19th century leftism and early Christianity but as far as we can make out, symptoms of low self-esteem, etc., were not nearly so evident in these movements, or in any other movements, as they are in modern leftism. But we are not in a position to assert confidently that no such movements have existed prior to modern leftism. This is a significant question to which historians ought to give their attention.

Notes

1. (Paragraph 19) We are asserting that ALL, or even most, bullies and ruthless competitors suffer from feelings of inferiority.

2. (Paragraph 25) During the Victorian period many oversocialized people suffered from serious psychological problems as a result of repressing or trying to repress their sexual feelings. Freud apparently based his theories on people of this type. Today the focus of socialization has shifted from sex to aggression.

3. (Paragraph 27) Not necessarily including specialists in engineering or the “hard” sciences.

4. (Paragraph 28) There are many individuals of the middle and upper classes who resist some of these values, but usually their resistance is more or less covert. Such resistance appears in the mass media only to a very limited extent. The main thrust of propaganda in our society is in favor of the stated values.

The main reason why these values have become, so to speak, the official values of our society is that they are useful to the industrial system. Violence is discouraged because it disrupts the functioning of the system. Racism is discouraged because ethnic conflicts also disrupt the system, and discrimination wastes the talents of minority-group members who could be useful to the system. Poverty must be “cured” because the underclass causes problems for the system and contact with the underclass lowers the morale of the other classes. Women are encouraged to have careers because their talents are useful to the system and, more importantly, because by having regular jobs women become better integrated into the system and tied directly to it rather than to their families. This helps to weaken family solidarity. (The leaders of the system say they want to strengthen the family, but they really mean is that they want the family to serve as an effective tool for socializing children in accord with the needs of the system. We argue in paragraphs 51, 52 that the system cannot afford to let the family or other small-scale social groups be strong or autonomous.)

5. (Paragraph 42) It may be argued that the majority of people don’t want to make their own decisions but want leaders to do their thinking for them. There is an element of truth in this. People like to make their own decisions in small matters, but making decisions on difficult, fundamental questions requires facing up to psychological conflict, and most people hate psychological conflict. Hence they tend to lean on others in making difficult decisions. But it does not follow that they like to have decisions imposed upon them without having any opportunity to influence those decisions. The majority of people are natural followers, not leaders, but they like to have direct personal access to their leaders, they want to be able to influence the leaders and participate to some extent in making even the difficult decisions. At least to that degree they need autonomy.

6. (Paragraph 44) Some of the symptoms listed are similar to those shown by caged animals.

To explain how these symptoms arise from deprivation with respect to the power process:

Common-sense understanding of human nature tells one that lack of goals whose attainment requires effort leads to boredom and that boredom, long continued, often leads eventually to depression. Failure to attain goals leads to frustration and lowering of self-esteem. Frustration leads to anger, anger to aggression, often in the form of spouse or child abuse. It has been shown that long-continued frustration commonly leads to depression and that depression tends to cause guilt, sleep disorders, eating disorders and bad feelings about oneself. Those who are tending toward depression seek pleasure as an antidote; hence insatiable hedonism and excessive sex, with perversions as a means of getting new kicks. Boredom too tends to cause excessive pleasure-seeking since, lacking other goals, people often use pleasure as a goal. See accompanying diagram.

The foregoing is a simplification. Reality is more complex, and of course, deprivation with respect to the power process is not the ONLY cause of the symptoms described.

By the way, when we mention depression we do not necessarily mean depression that is severe enough to be treated by a psychiatrist. Often only mild forms of depression are involved. And when we speak of goals we do not necessarily mean long-term, thought-out goals. For many or most people through much of human history, the goals of a hand-to-mouth existence (merely providing oneself and one’s family with food from day to day) have been quite sufficient.

7. (Paragraph 52) A partial exception may be made for a few passive, inward-looking groups, such as the Amish, which have little effect on the wider society. Apart from these, some genuine small-scale communities do exist in America today. For instance, youth gangs and “cults.” Everyone regards them as dangerous, and so they are, because the members of these groups are loyal primarily to one another rather than to the system, hence the system cannot control them.

Or take the gypsies. The gypsies commonly get away with theft and fraud because their loyalties are such that they can always get other gypsies to give testimony that “proves” their innocence. Obviously the system would be in serious trouble if too many people belonged to such groups.

Some of the early-20th century Chinese thinkers who were concerned with modernizing China recognized the necessity breaking down small-scale social groups such as the family: “(According to Sun Yat-sen) the Chinese people needed a new surge of patriotism, which would lead to a transfer of loyalty from the family to the state.... (According to Li Huang) traditional attachments, particularly to the family had to be abandoned if nationalism were to develop in China.” (Chester C. Tan, “Chinese Political Thought in the Twentieth Century,” page 125, page 297.)

8. (Paragraph 56) Yes, we know that 19th century America had its problems, and serious ones, but for the sake of brevity we have to express ourselves in simplified terms.

9. (Paragraph 61) We leave aside the “underclass.” We are speaking of the mainstream.

10. (Paragraph 62) Some social scientists, educators, “mental health” professionals and the like are doing their best to push the social drives into group 1 by trying to see to it that everyone has a satisfactory social life.

11. (Paragraphs 63, 82) Is the drive for endless material acquisition really an artificial creation of the advertising and marketing industry? Certainly there is no innate human drive for material acquisition. There have been many cultures in which people have desired little material wealth beyond what was necessary to satisfy their basic physical needs (Australian aborigines, traditional Mexican peasant culture, some African cultures). On the other hand there have also been many pre-industrial cultures in which material acquisition has played an important role. So we can’t claim that today’s acquisition-oriented culture is exclusively a creation of the advertising and marketing industry. But it is clear that the advertising and marketing industry has had an important part in creating that culture. The big corporations that spend millions on advertising wouldn’t be spending that kind of money without solid proof that they were getting it back in increased sales. One member of FC met a sales manager a couple of years ago who was frank enough to tell him, “Our job is to make people buy things they don’t want and don’t need.” He then described how an untrained novice could present people with the facts about a product, and make no sales at all, while a trained and experienced professional salesman would make lots of sales to the same people. This shows that people are manipulated into buying things they don’t really want.

12. (Paragraph 64) The problem of purposelessness seems to have become less serious during the last 15 years or so, because people now feel less secure physically and economically than they did earlier, and the need for security provides them with a goal. But purposelessness has been replaced by frustration over the difficulty of attaining security. We emphasize the problem of purposelessness because the liberals and leftists would wish to solve our social problems by having society guarantee everyone’s security; but if that could be done it would only bring back the problem of purposelessness. The real issue is not whether society provides well or poorly for people’s security; the trouble is that people are dependent on the system for their security rather than having it in their own hands. This, by the way, is part of the reason why some people get worked up about the right to bear arms; possession of a gun puts that aspect of their security in their own hands.

13. (Paragraph 66) Conservatives’ efforts to decrease the amount of government regulation are of little benefit to the average man. For one thing, only a fraction of the regulations can be eliminated because most regulations are necessary. For another thing, most of the deregulation affects business rather than the average individual, so that its main effect is to take power from the government and give it to private corporations. What this means for the average man is that government interference in his life is replaced by interference from big corporations, which may be permitted, for example, to dump more chemicals that get into his water supply and give him cancer. The conservatives are just taking the average man for a sucker, exploiting his resentment of Big Government to promote the power of Big Business.

14. (Paragraph 73) When someone approves of the purpose for which propaganda is being used in a given case, he generally calls it “education” or applies to it some similar euphemism. But propaganda is propaganda regardless of the purpose for which it is used.

15. (Paragraph 83) We are not expressing approval or disapproval of the Panama invasion. We only use it to illustrate a point.

16. (Paragraph 95) When the American colonies were under British rule there were fewer and less effective legal guarantees of freedom than there were after the American Constitution went into effect, yet there was more personal freedom in pre-industrial America, both before and after the War of Independence, than there was after the Industrial Revolution took hold in this country. We quote from “Violence in America: Historical and Comparative Perspectives,” edited by Hugh Davis Graham and Ted Robert Gurr, Chapter 12 by Roger Lane, pages 476-478:

“The progressive heightening of standards of propriety, and with it the increasing reliance on official law enforcement (in 19th century America) ... were common to the whole society.... [T]he change in social behavior is so long term and so widespread as to suggest a connection with the most fundamental of contemporary social processes; that of industrial urbanization itself....”Massachusetts in 1835 had a population of some 660,940, 81 percent rural, overwhelmingly preindustrial and native born. It’s citizens were used to considerable personal freedom. Whether teamsters, farmers or artisans, they were all accustomed to setting their own schedules, and the nature of their work made them physically independent of each other.... Individual problems, sins or even crimes, were not generally cause for wider social concern....”But the impact of the twin movements to the city and to the factory, both just gathering force in 1835, had a progressive effect on personal behavior throughout the 19th century and into the 20th. The factory demanded regularity of behavior, a life governed by obedience to the rhythms of clock and calendar, the demands of foreman and supervisor. In the city or town, the needs of living in closely packed neighborhoods inhibited many actions previously unobjectionable. Both blue- and white-collar employees in larger establishments were mutually dependent on their fellows; as one man’s work fit into anther’s, so one man’s business was no longer his own.

“The results of the new organization of life and work were apparent by 1900, when some 76 percent of the 2,805,346 inhabitants of Massachusetts were classified as urbanites. Much violent or irregular behavior which had been tolerable in a casual, independent society was no longer acceptable in the more formalized, cooperative atmosphere of the later period.... The move to the cities had, in short, produced a more tractable, more socialized, more ‘civilized’ generation than its predecessors.”

17. (Paragraph 117) Apologists for the system are fond of citing cases in which elections have been decided by one or two votes, but such cases are rare.

18. (Paragraph 119) “Today, in technologically advanced lands, men live very similar lives in spite of geographical, religious, and political differences. The daily lives of a Christian bank clerk in Chicago, a Buddhist bank clerk in Tokyo, and a Communist bank clerk in Moscow are far more alike than the life of any one of them is like that of any single man who lived a thousand years ago. These similarities are the result of a common technology....” L. Sprague de Camp, “The Ancient Engineers,” Ballantine edition, page 17.

The lives of the three bank clerks are not IDENTICAL. Ideology does have SOME effect. But all technological societies, in order to survive, must evolve along APPROXIMATELY the same trajectory.

19. (Paragraph 123) Just think an irresponsible genetic engineer might create a lot of terrorists.

20. (Paragraph 124) For a further example of undesirable consequences of medical progress, suppose a reliable cure for cancer is discovered. Even if the treatment is too expensive to be available to any but the elite, it will greatly reduce their incentive to stop the escape of carcinogens into the environment.

21. (Paragraph 128) Since many people may find paradoxical the notion that a large number of good things can add up to a bad thing, we illustrate with an analogy. Suppose Mr. A is playing chess with Mr. B. Mr. C, a Grand Master, is looking over Mr. A’s shoulder. Mr. A of course wants to win his game, so if Mr. C points out a good move for him to make, he is doing Mr. A a favor. But suppose now that Mr. C tells Mr. A how to make ALL of his moves. In each particular instance he does Mr. A a favor by showing him his best move, but by making ALL of his moves for him he spoils his game, since there is not point in Mr. A’s playing the game at all if someone else makes all his moves.

The situation of modern man is analogous to that of Mr. A. The system makes an individual’s life easier for him in innumerable ways, but in doing so it deprives him of control over his own fate.

22. (Paragraph 137) Here we are considering only the conflict of values within the mainstream. For the sake of simplicity we leave out of the picture “outsider” values like the idea that wild nature is more important than human economic welfare.

23. (Paragraph 137) Self-interest is not necessarily MATERIAL self-interest. It can consist in fulfillment of some psychological need, for example, by promoting one’s own ideology or religion.

24. (Paragraph 139) A qualification: It is in the interest of the system to permit a certain prescribed degree of freedom in some areas. For example, economic freedom (with suitable limitations and restraints) has proved effective in promoting economic growth. But only planned, circumscribed, limited freedom is in the interest of the system. The individual must always be kept on a leash, even if the leash is sometimes long (see paragraphs 94, 97).

25. (Paragraph 143) We don’t mean to suggest that the efficiency or the potential for survival of a society has always been inversely proportional to the amount of pressure or discomfort to which the society subjects people. That certainly is not the case. There is good reason to believe that many primitive societies subjected people to less pressure than European society did, but European society proved far more efficient than any primitive society and always won out in conflicts with such societies because of the advantages conferred by technology.

26. (Paragraph 147) If you think that more effective law enforcement is unequivocally good because it suppresses crime, then remember that crime as defined by the system is not necessarily what YOU would call crime. Today, smoking marijuana is a “crime,” and, in some places in the U.S., so is possession of an unregistered handgun. Tomorrow, possession of ANY firearm, registered or not, may be made a crime, and the same thing may happen with disapproved methods of child-rearing, such as spanking. In some countries, expression of dissident political opinions is a crime, and there is no certainty that this will never happen in the U.S., since no constitution or political system lasts forever.

If a society needs a large, powerful law enforcement establishment, then there is something gravely wrong with that society; it must be subjecting people to severe pressures if so many refuse to follow the rules, or follow them only because forced. Many societies in the past have gotten by with little or no formal law- enforcement.

27. (Paragraph 151) To be sure, past societies have had means of influencing human behavior, but these have been primitive and of low effectiveness compared with the technological means that are now being developed.

28. (Paragraph 152) However, some psychologists have publicly expressed opinions indicating their contempt for human freedom. And the mathematician Claude Shannon was quoted in Omni (August 1987) as saying, “I visualize a time when we will be to robots what dogs are to humans, and I’m rooting for the machines.”

29. (Paragraph 154) This is no science fiction! After writing paragraph 154 we came across an article in Scientific American according to which scientists are actively developing techniques for identifying possible future criminals and for treating them by a combination of biological and psychological means. Some scientists advocate compulsory application of the treatment, which may be available in the near future. (See “Seeking the Criminal Element,” by W. Wayt Gibbs, Scientific American, March 1995.) Maybe you think this is OK because the treatment would be applied to those who might become violent criminals. But of course it won’t stop there. Next, a treatment will be applied to those who might become drunk drivers (they endanger human life too), then perhaps to peel who spank their children, then to environmentalists who sabotage logging equipment, eventually to anyone whose behavior is inconvenient for the system.

30. (Paragraph 184) A further advantage of nature as a counter-ideal to technology is that, in many people, nature inspires the kind of reverence that is associated with religion, so that nature could perhaps be idealized on a religious basis. It is true that in many societies religion has served as a support and justification for the established order, but it is also true that religion has often provided a basis for rebellion. Thus it may be useful to introduce a religious element into the rebellion against technology, the more so because Western society today has no strong religious foundation. Religion, nowadays either is used as cheap and transparent support for narrow, short-sighted selfishness (some conservatives use it this way), or even is cynically exploited to make easy money (by many evangelists), or has degenerated into crude irrationalism (fundamentalist protestant sects, “cults”), or is simply stagnant (Catholicism, main-line Protestantism). The nearest thing to a strong, widespread, dynamic religion that the West has seen in recent times has been the quasi-religion of leftism, but leftism today is fragmented and has no clear, unified, inspiring goal.

Thus there is a religious vacuum in our society that could perhaps be filled by a religion focused on nature in opposition to technology. But it would be a mistake to try to concoct artificially a religion to fill this role. Such an invented religion would probably be a failure. Take the “Gaia” religion for example. Do its adherents REALLY believe in it or are they just play-acting? If they are just play-acting their religion will be a flop in the end.

It is probably best not to try to introduce religion into the conflict of nature vs. technology unless you REALLY believe in that religion yourself and find that it arouses a deep, strong, genuine response in many other people.

31. (Paragraph 189) Assuming that such a final push occurs. Conceivably the industrial system might be eliminated in a somewhat gradual or piecemeal fashion (see paragraphs 4, 167 and Note 4).

32. (Paragraph 193) It is even conceivable (remotely) that the revolution might consist only of a massive change of attitudes toward technology resulting in a relatively gradual and painless disintegration of the industrial system. But if this happens we’ll be very lucky. It’s far more probably that the transition to a nontechnological society will be very difficult and full of conflicts and disasters.

33. (Paragraph 195) The economic and technological structure of a society are far more important than its political structure in determining the way the average man lives (see paragraphs 95, 119 and Notes 16, 18).

34. (Paragraph 215) This statement refers to our particular brand of anarchism. A wide variety of social attitudes have been called “anarchist,” and it may be that many who consider themselves anarchists would not accept our statement of paragraph 215. It should be noted, by the way, that there is a nonviolent anarchist movement whose members probably would not accept FC as anarchist and certainly would not approve of FC’s violent methods.

35. (Paragraph 219) Many leftists are motivated also by hostility, but the hostility probably results in part from a frustrated need for power.

36. (Paragraph 229) It is important to understand that we mean someone who sympathizes with these MOVEMENTS as they exist today in our society. One who believes that women, homosexuals, etc., should have equal rights is not necessary a leftist. The feminist, gay rights, etc., movements that exist in our society have the particular ideological tone that characterizes leftism, and if one believes, for example, that women should have equal rights it does not necessarily follow that one must sympathize with the feminist movement as it exists today.

If copyright problems make it impossible for this long quotation to be printed, then please change Note 16 to read as follows:

16. (Paragraph 95) When the American colonies were under British rule there were fewer and less effective legal guarantees of freedom than there were after the American Constitution went into effect, yet there was more personal freedom in pre-industrial America, both before and after the War of Independence, than there was after the Industrial Revolution took hold in this country. In “Violence in America: Historical and Comparative Perspectives,” edited by Hugh Davis Graham and Ted Robert Gurr, Chapter 12 by Roger Lane, it is explained how in pre-industrial America the average person had greater independence and autonomy than he does today, and how the process of industrialization necessarily led to the restriction of personal freedom.

[sciencespies]

New evidence shows it's not just Americans whose bodies are getting colder

https://sciencespies.com/humans/new-evidence-shows-its-not-just-americans-whose-bodies-are-getting-colder/

New evidence shows it's not just Americans whose bodies are getting colder

Something appears to be changing the temperature of the average human body, and it might be tied to our modern lifestyles.

Over the years, it seems as though people in the United States and the United Kingdom have grown steadily colder, with body temperatures coming up short of the usual 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit, or 37 degrees Celsius a generally accepted average.

New research on the Tsimane, a relatively remote indigenous tribe in Bolivia, suggests this trend is not a fluke, nor is not simply a product of high-income living. Instead, it appears to exist even in rural and tropical areas, where healthcare is minimal and infections are widespread. 

When anthropologists first began working with the Tsimane in 2002, the average body temperature among adults was an average of 37 C – exactly what was measured in Europe two centuries ago.

In just sixteen years, that measurement had dropped to 36.5 C (36.53 for women and 36.57 for men), a rapid decline of 0.03 C each year.

“In less than two decades we’re seeing about the same level of decline as that observed in the US over approximately two centuries,” says anthropologist Michael Gurven from the University of California Santa Barbara. 

The results come with a relatively high degree of confidence. The analysis is based on a large sample of 5,500 adults and about 18,000 long-term observations, taking into account numerous other factors that might influence a person’s body temperature.

No matter how researchers sliced up the results – even when they only analysed completely healthy adults – the decline was still there.  

Despite coming from a low-income population, the findings largely match a recent study in the US, which found “humans in high-income countries currently have a mean body temperature 1.6 percent lower [36.4°C] than in the pre-industrial era.”

But the study among Americans was only conducted in a single population, and it couldn’t explain why the decline happened.

Anthropologists working with the Tsimane were able to dig into more of the details. Researchers had access to clinical diagnoses and biomarkers of infection and inflammation for each and every patient in the study, which means they could test a bunch of different factors.

One of the currently leading hypotheses is that improved hygiene, clean water, and better access to medicine have reduced the number of infections humans experience and thus lowered their temperature.

While some infections among the Tsimane were indeed linked to higher body temperatures, a reduction in infections alone wasn’t enough to explain the steep decline. 

“Declines might be due to the rise of modern health care and lower rates of lingering mild infections now as compared to the past,” says Gurven.

“But while health has generally improved over the past two decades, infections are still widespread in rural Bolivia.” 

In the end, the team wasn’t able to find any single explanation or “magic bullet” to explain the rapid decline in body temperatures, and they say it’s likely a combination of factors.

It could be that people today are better conditioned, and our bodies don’t have to fight as hard to ward off infection. It may also have something to do with greater access to antibiotics, vaccinations, or other medical treatments.

For more developed communities, it could even be tied to modern luxuries, like air conditioning or heating, which makes it easier for our bodies to maintain their internal temperatures. 

“While Tsimane body temperatures do change with time of year and weather patterns, the Tsimane still do not use any advanced technology for helping to regulate their body temperature,” admits Thomas Kraft, who studies ethnography at UCSB.

“They do, however, have more access to clothes and blankets.”

While it’s clear cultural shifts in the way we warm up and cool down could influence our average temperatures, there’s no doubt a whole a lot more going on. We need far more research on various populations throughout the world to figure out exactly what is happening to our temperatures and why. 

The study was published in Science Advances.

#Humans

[assemblyoftheway]

SOUTH AMERICA ISRAELITES

AFRO-GUYANA

Afro-Guyanese people are inhabitants of Guyana who are of Sub-Saharan African descent, generally descended from slaves brought to the Guianas to work on sugar plantations. In 1621 the Dutch West India Company acquired a charter to colonize and monopolize trade in the Americas and in Africa where they established a chain of slave trading and collection forts along the western African coast to supply slave labor for the Americas. The first of many hundreds of shiploads of enslaved Africans began arriving in Guyana in 1640 to work on the Dutch slave labor plantations. Slave labor was used to build the remarkable system of large drainage canals, dikes and sluices that form a protective barrier between the Atlantic Ocean and the low-lying coastline where most of the population still lives. One of the largest segments of Guyana's population are the descendants of those freed slaves who stayed in the colony after 1833. They make up about three-tenths of the population. Guyana is the only English-speaking country of South America, it was also never a Spanish or Portuguese colony, but instead Dutch and then British. Emancipation Day in Guyana comes every August 1st and commemorates the abolition of slavery in Guyana in 1834. Guyana shares Emancipation Day with other Caribbean nations that were formerly British colonies. There is currently a Hebrew culture center in Guyana called ‘The Prophetic Priesthood at Jerusalem,’ that keeps the laws of The Highest. Also, the territory now known as Guyana was first inhabited by indigenous groups such as the Carib (Galibi or Kalinago), Arawak (Taino), Warrau, Wayana and Akawai. Before the captive’s slaves were brought to Guyana.

AFRO-BRAZILIAN

From the late 1500s to the 1860s, Brazil was consistently the largest destination for African slaves in the Americas. In that period, approximately 4 million enslaved Africans were imported to Brazil. Thousands of African slaves were brought to work in the gold mines. They were landed in Rio de Janeiro and sent to other regions. By the late 18th century, Rio de Janeiro was an "African city": most of its inhabitants were slaves. No other place in the world had as many slaves since the end of the Roman Empire. In 1808 the Portuguese Royal Family, fleeing from Napoleon, took charge in Rio de Janeiro. Some 15,000 Portuguese nobles moved to Brazil. The region changed a lot, becoming more European. The coast, in the past the place where millions of African slaves arrived (mostly from modern-day Angola, Ghana, Nigeria and Benin) to work in sugar-cane plantations, is where nowadays there is a predominance of Mulattoes, those of African and European ancestry. However, Salvador, Bahia is considered the largest African city outside of Africa, with over 80% of its inhabitants being African-Brazilians. It has been estimated by Darcy Ribeiro, a Brazilian anthropologist, author and politician that,12 million Africans were captured to be brought to Brazil, even though the majority of them died before becoming slaves in the country, only 45% of the Africans captured in Africa, to become slaves in Brazil, survived. Brazilian slavery included a diverse range of labor roles. For example, gold mining in Brazil began to grow around 1690 in interior regions of Brazil, such as modern-day region of Minas Gerais. Slaves in Brazil also worked on sugar plantations, such as those found in the first capital of Brazil—Salvador, Bahia. Other products of slave labor in Brazil during that era in Brazilian history included tobacco, textiles, and cachaça, which were often vital items traded in exchange for slaves on the African continent.

AFRO-URUGUAYANS

The majority of 190,000 Afro-Uruguayans are in Montevideo. The port of Buenos Aires served as the exclusive entry point for enslaved Africans in the Río de la Plata region. Slaves entering the port of Buenos Aires were then regularly shipped inland to Córdoba and the northwestern provinces of Salta and Tucumán in Argentina, across the Andes Mountains to Chile (see Afro-Chileans) and to the mines of Potosí in Alto Perú. Most African slaves worked as domestic servants or day laborers. Slavery was abolished gradually between 1842 and 1852. Economically they remain among the poorest sectors of Uruguayan society: most are non-qualified workers employed in the construction industry, domestic service, or cleaning and porter services. There is high unemployment among young Afro-Uruguayans. English is spoken in this country, but mostly for business, and then 99% of the population of Uruguay speaks Spanish.

AFRO-PERUVIANS

The first slaves arrived with the conquistadors (Spaniards) in 1521. In 1529 and 1537, Francisco Pizarro was granted permits to import 363 slaves to colonial Peru. The "New laws" of 1548 and the influence of the denunciation of the abuses against Native Americans by Friar Bartolomé de las Casas, slaves gradually replaced natives at the Encomienda’s. Over the course of the slave trade, approximately 95,000 slaves were brought into Peru, with the last group arriving in 1850.

Slave owners in Peru developed preferences to have slaves from specific areas of Africa (believed to have certain characteristics); they wanted to have slaves of one area who could communicate with each other. They believed slaves from Guinea, from the Senegal River down to the Slave Coast, were easier to manage and had marketable skills. They already knew how to plant and cultivate rice, train horses, and herd cattle on horseback. The slave owners also preferred slaves from the area stretching from Nigeria to eastern Ghana. The slave owners' third choice was for slaves from Congo, Mantenga, Cambado, Misanga, Mozambique, Madagascar, Terranova (who were probably bought in Porto-Novo, Benin), Mina and Angola. Two types of black slaves were forced to travel to Peru. Those born in Africa were commonly referred to as negros bozales ("untamed blacks"), which was also used in a derogatory sense. These slaves were shipped from west or southwest Africa or transported from the Spanish Indies or other Spanish colonies. Afro-Peruvians previously acculturated to Spanish culture and the ones who spoke Spanish were called negros ladinos (Latinized Negros) “Ladino” was a racist term used in the Iberia Peninsula. The Iberian Peninsula is Portugal and Spain, sound familiar? Well, if it does that’s because that is where black Jews (Yahudim) were expelled from and taking to the west coast of Africa only to be brought to the Americas and the Islands of the sea. Which would mean the slaves that were taking to Peru are descendants of these slaves, which would mean, they are the TRUE Jew/Yahudim.

In 1835, President Felipe Santiago Salaverry signed a decree again legalizing the deportation of slaves through the other Latin American countries. Thus, two years after his death, will be removed from the constitution the principle of "emancipating soil" according to which a slave entering Peru is, de facto, made free. In 1854, General José de San Martín outlaws slave trade in Peru. In 1856, President Ramón Castilla y Marquezado declared slavery abolished. Afro-Peruvian music has its roots in the communities of black slaves brought to work in the mines along the Peruvian coast. Today, Afro-Peruvians (also known as Afro descent Peruvians) reside mainly on the central and south coast, with the majority of the population in the provinces of Lima, Callao, Nazca, Chincha, Ica and Cañete. Many Afro-Peruvians live on the northern coast in Lambayeque and Piura. The greatest concentration of Afro-Peruvians and mestizos of Afro descent is in the Callao, an area that has historically received many of the Afro-Peruvians from the north and southern coast.

AFRO-ECUADORIAN

Slave ships first arrived in Ecuadorian ports in 1526, and slaves worked on plantations and in gold mines. Afro-Ecuadorians make up most of the balance of the percentage and include mulattos (mixed European and sub-Saharan African) and zambos (mixed indigenous and sub-Saharan African). Afro-Ecuadorians are an ethnic group in Ecuador who are descendants of black African slaves brought by the Spanish during their conquest of Ecuador from the Incas. They make up from 3% to 5% of Ecuador's population. The Afro-Ecuadorian culture is found primarily in the country's northwest coastal region. Africans form a majority (70%) in the province of Esmeraldas and also have an important concentration in the Valle del Chota in the Imbabura Province. They can be also found in important numbers in Quito and Guayaquil. Today, Afro-Ecuadorians have the highest unemployment level and are among the poorest of Ecuadorian social groups. Also, there is evidence that this group still faces regional inequalities and racial discrimination, particularly in urban areas.

AFRO-CHILEANS Afro-Chileans are descended from the Sub-Saharan part of Africa, who were brought to the New World by religious orders and Spaniards. Slavery bloomed from 1580 to 1660, the import of slaves into Chile was a response to a long-term population decline among indigenous peoples. Black slaves were often used as housekeepers, agriculture, gold mining, and construction projects. Mortality was high, due to harsh working environment. and other posts of confidence. It is believed some of them might have come from Peru from the Antilles or towns in Africa, specifically from the Bantu regions some also were considered as descendants of Enslaved Africans brought from Africa to Present day Peru, Cuba, Brazil, then later brought to Chile. Afro-Chileans are mainly located in Arica y Parinacota in northern Chile. They are not recognized by Chilean government as an ethnic group.

[lore-a-lie]

Chapter 2, Act 5: The Curious Case of the Siblings Shinguji

Daily Life- Free Time

Korekiyo wasn’t expecting any company as he left the dining hall the next day. He certainly wasn’t expecting it to be Kibo either. But lo and behold here they were, with the robotic approximation of a boy offering him the Story of Tokono. And who was he to turn down such a fine gift? It hardly mattered if the volume could be found in his lab or not, it wasn’t often he was the target of friendly gestures like this.

“So what brings you here Kibo? People rarely offer gifts without the expectation of gaining something in return. May I help you with something?”

“I hope you can? I was just wondering what your stance is in regards to Atua. You must know a lot about many faiths, even if you don’t strike me as religious yourself, given your various studies I assume.”

Ah, I see. Perhaps it would be for the best to tread cautiously then. I have no reason to cause him any undue crisis just yet at any rate.

“I have no knowledge on the sort of Atua she worships so if you’re looking for any particular works of his I’m afraid I can’t be of much service. If you’re asking whether or not I believe there is any truth to her claims of possession or divine inspiration… There are many cases across the globe that boast such claims and it’s nigh impossible to separate true instances from mere bouts of madness. But as in my personal experience, I know other forms of possession to be true among human subjects I see no reason to doubt it being possible in her case either. Does this answer suffice?”

Attempting to convince one who’s been brainwashed that the subject of their belief doesn’t exist would only serve to make things more difficult for everyone at present. Besides, I’m not really lying to him yet.

“So there’s no way to know for sure?” Kibo still looked most conflicted with his answer. ( Was he looking for genuine “proof” of Atua’s existence even if he was at “His prophet’s” beck and call? Most intriguing. )

“In this case no, but that is why this is called “faith” yes? If you choose to believe in Angie that’s up to you, just as none could force me to agree with her either. Not out of any disrespect for her mind you, but in my line of work I find it most useful to keep myself unconcerned with any “gods” I’m presented with. If invoking one is a matter of politeness then I will do what I must, but I’ve encountered too many that contradict each other to believe in more than their follower’s stories they are presented with.”

“I see… So this is what the emotion “faith” feels like. I understand! But to you this is more about putting my trust, my “faith”, in Angie rather than believing in Him?”

... You “understand” nothing Kibo. Faith isn’t an emotion, but rather a feeling based on one's belief- No. That might take a while to distinguish for him. And he is certainly trying to better understand himself. I’ll let him keep this, it should do his self-esteem some good at the very least. Correcting him can come later.

It was likely to Korekiyo’s benefit Kibo wasn’t one to take much notice of subtle social cues like “awkward pauses”, as from what he gathered from the way Kibo looked at him he was assuming his friend was merely talking a while to think through his response. The fact it was a positive one was likely also a sign Kibo was rather poor at reading any of Korekiyo’s expressions too, perhaps due to what his mask covers.

“For myself, most certainly. Humans are the only thing I’m truly concerned about, even if the topic can branch into other subjects such as what’s created through their beliefs. They can provide interesting similarities among different groups of people even if the groups involved had never once interacted.”

“How exactly are you defining “human” Kiyo?” ( ... Right. Persecution complex. How quaint. No matter. )

“Kehehe, am I being added to your list of “robophobic” individuals now? I meant no such offense. I’m certainly open to studying other sapient species should the opportunity arise, such as Gonta’s Reptites, for they provide new means of comparing human cultures. To better see what may be “universal” thoughts among sentient beings and thus sort out what may be more human-centric points of issue. I am an anthropologist after all; the human element would remain my greatest point of interest. As such I am more inclined to think of you in human terms, to better match your mind, rather than robotic ones.”

The issue of personhood would remain an open point of debate I’m sure, but humans have often tried to deny each other this right. Even if his robotic nature does make his case less interesting to me personally.

“I would appreciate not being limited to be thought of one way or the other. I may be based on humans but I’m not sure how accurate your assessment is as there are many aspects of the human condition I am obviously not attuned to. Like… Gender. I have no idea how this would apply to someone like me.”

Why must you be so difficult? I hardly need the reminder about your numerous inadequacies- No. Best not to think about him in such a way. Lackluster as he may be in concept, he’s still more than human enough in practice. Particularly with these horrid animatronic bears serving as a point of comparison.

“There are many things people can’t be sure they truly understand about themselves or others. Even gender as it’s conventionally considered isn’t nearly as rigid or binary as some cultures, such as our own, like to portray and socialize them as. Not that some of us here would likely understand I’m sure.”

Immature as it may be Korekiyo hoped the soft jab at a few of their friend’s expenses would help lighten some of Kibo’s tone, but it was hard for him to tell if it worked as intended. Not an unusual experience for him by any means, so instead he changed direction.

“Do you have any issues with how we are addressing you because of this? Many aspects of your appearance do incline one to treat you as though you are male but I understand if this can prove to be rather vexing for you.”

“Well… No. I don’t think I do at least? It’s not like I know what else I would like to be called, and this is certainly easier for everyone. “It” or “They” are too othering, trying to use female terms for myself doesn’t feel right at all, and anything else sounds... kinda weird to me. But I will certainly keep this information in mind for future reference!” ( There we go, he’s in higher spirits now. Much better. )

“I’m glad I could be of some service to you then. I do apologize if it’s not quite what you were expecting of me. Though given current tensions in the school I find your own visit here most peculiar. Is your council having any troubles the rest of us should be aware of?”

“N-no, not at all! Everything is under control. We even got another member last night. Nothing to be worried about.” Kibo said though he was as bad a liar as ever, since he strove to look anywhere else rather than risk meeting Korekiyo’s gaze. It was always fascinating to see how lying changed people.

This did limit the possibilities on who the new recruit could be if nothing else. But between Kokichi and Kaede this reaction was still a toss-up given Kibo’s personal grievances with both of them as of late.

“I’m sorry but I’ll have to be going now. Student council business. But thank you for your help Kiyo.”

With that not unpleasant anomaly out of the way, Kiyo returned to going over his lab’s works. There was still so much to discover, even with the delightful boons already uncovered such as the original Caged Dog Village’s tragic tome and its related artifacts. Not to mention how they already served to inspire him.

It almost seemed unfair for his lab to be so much larger and densely stocked than the others discovered thus far, but he wasn’t about to complain. A certain artist waltzing in unannounced and messing with the artifacts whilst he was preoccupied on the higher levels was a different story.

“Do be careful with how you are handling those Angie, pieces as old as these can be most delicate. Are you looking for references or inspiration perhaps?” (She’s not one to respond well to hostility, I’m not sure how often she’s ever even encountered it before. So let’s just try to stay calm. She’s no Kokichi. )

“Nope! Just looking. Atua provides me with all the inspiration I’ll ever need. And to ask you a question, has Kaede tried talking to you yet today?” (So it was Kaede after all. Odd choice to join her rival’s cult. )

“No, which isn’t surprising as she’s been giving my lab and to a lesser extent myself a fair berth as of late. Should I be expecting her?” Korekiyo was grateful for the lack of walls to dampen his voice as he made his way to the ground floor. Partly as it’d be less rude to carry a conversation that way and partly to make it easier keep her out of trouble. “Though if you have the time I would love to hear more about what your people and customs are like. If we manage to leave this place I’d enjoy paying your home visit.”

“You shouldn’t keep thinking like that you know. It’ll only cause more problems for us in here. You wouldn’t want Atua to punish you for defying his will now would you?”

How about I “punish” you instead, you conniving close-minded childish-  Calm down. Just avoid the topic. Neither of your opinions will be swayed here. She hasn’t been averse to talking about her culture in the past so simply reframe your request in a way that better plays to her own desires.

“I’d like to see him try, it would be a most unique experience I’m sure. Kehehe, it may even be able to make a believer out of me yet. But I would genuinely like to know more of your background even if the outside is no longer an option. If you think “culture clash” may be an issue you face when relating to the rest of us this could prove to be most beneficial for everyone in the long term could it not?”

There might have been a bit too much venom in his response to count as “calm” but the effort was being made. Angie wasn’t particularly convinced to become any more forthcoming unfortunately, but she hid her frustration with him most admirably with a large smile and hands clasped together in forced glee.

“Hopefully things won’t need to be that drastic for you to see the light! But until you do Angie doesn’t think she’ll be sharing anything just yet. If Kiyo doesn’t trust Angie why should Angie trust Kiyo?”

None of you should but you’re all essentially doing so anyway. Such a beautiful mistake in the making. It’ll almost be a shame when everyone else realizes this. But I’m sure your reactions will be well worth it.

“Why should I trust you in the first place? Given you won’t let anyone but yourself even look at our latest motive, much less weigh in on decisions regarding it. You do realize that the book it claims to be was the fictional creation of a certain Mr. Lovecraft yes? Hardly any reason for us to put stock into its claims about revival, even if you view it as a retrieval. Though with how you invoke your “Atua” for your own benefit I can see why honesty may not matter to you. What people think is more important to you yes?”

“... Angie doesn’t think she wants to talk to you anymore now. She doesn’t need to bother with baseless ramblings. Atua knows something’s wrong with you, and now He thinks maybe she can’t even help you anymore. But hopefully Kaede could talk some sense into you. Or at least make you see you’re wrong.”

I already know I am suspicious and “odd” Angie, your bluffs at knowing anything more are but a waste. Had you any sort of divine “protection” at least one of us wouldn’t be in here right now, would we?

Korekiyo did feel a twinge of what may have been guilt at the sight of her still masking her anger with a small smile as she left his lab in a hurry. He often had troubles dealing with personalities like hers, much in the same way talking to children can prove a most tiresome and fruitless endeavor.

It was a shame he might not get the chance to learn at least who Angie’s people were before her time came, but such is life. She did at least give him something to look into at the present though, even if Kaede may not appreciate him visiting just yet.

He didn’t need to look for her for long, as she was in her lab much like his map indicated. Hopefully his intrusion wouldn’t be too upsetting for her, as he had been trying to make up for his earlier mistake. One never could tell how long a person could be negatively affected by an act of carelessness like this.

It was a pleasant surprise that she didn’t look too bothered by his presence. She even took the time to pause her playing to properly address him. “Oh, hey Kiyo. Are you looking for something? I’m not sure I have many songs here that fit what you said interested you before, but I’d be happy to help if I could.”

“I’m actually here because Angie indicated you may be wishing to talk to me about something. Perhaps relating to why our previous leader has apparently joined our would be dictator’s tyrannical cult?”

“O-oh. Well first off it’s probably not what you’re thinking. Just… Make sure the door is closed okay?” ( And what would she think I’d be assuming? She’s not the weak-willed sort of person who’d genuinely buy into something like this, nor does a new loss of faith feel fitting. But neither was Tenko I suppose. )

Once she was confident the soundproofed door was firmly shut she resumed playing as if hoping the extra noise would further help mask what was being discussed. A pity to see how this game was making her become more paranoid to try and respond to their previous tragedies, but an understandable one.

And there is always something beautiful in the way humans learn to adapt to their situations, for better or for ill. It would be wonderful to see how else our situation might try to change her for the sake of protecting herself and those she has come to care about. Assuming she can last long enough to show it.

“I’ve already talked to Kaito and Kokichi about this but I’m just trying to convince Angie to postpone the ritual for another day. As far as she should be concerned I joined the student council to unite the class again and that means this day is to “convert” you all so the motive will be used as a group event of sorts tomorrow. I didn’t know what else I could do, since trying to stop her probably wouldn’t have worked.”

“So you’d like for us to all play along with this for the time being?”

“If you could that’d be great. Hopefully tomorrow we’ll be able to take the book away from her or something as a more permanent solution for this. I don’t want to risk it being used for real.”

“You do realize Kirumi was likely already attempting something similar yes? Her dedication to Angie’s ideals is obviously untrue, given how worried she is about her supposed wards beyond our current cage. I do believe you even saw firsthand how surprisingly lax she is being with her duties last night, despite how she normally fulfills her given tasks down to their very letter. Unless my ears had deceived me.”

“Well I… I mean I didn’t know for sure before, and I have no idea what she’s actually planning to do when Angie’s really ready to try and bring back Himiko.”

Because you are still all too trusting even with how this place has tried to change you. It’s not like Angie was ever one of her actual “citizens” and Kirumi will do anything to leave this place. Why else allow me to do as I will but try to set me up as her perfect patsy, given the ample opportunities I’d have with how our labs are on the same floor? It wouldn’t even be wrong of you to suspect me of doing such a thing.

“Do you really think she’ll believe you if you claim we’ve all had a change of heart? She’d have more than enough reason to think Kokichi, Kaito, or I are being less than sincere and her disdain for Ryoma and Maki has been equally apparent.”

“I think this does still have a chance of working. And speaking of… Try to go easy on Kaito for awhile okay? He hasn’t been well lately and I don’t want him getting any worse so I’m trying to help with stress.” 

Oh my, now this is interesting. She’s referring to that boorish brute of a boy from the other night, isn’t she? It would serve him right to be paid another visit for how he treated me. Honestly Korekiyo you really do need to raise your standards if you’re honestly considering someone that rude as a “friend” of yours.

Come now Sister, he isn’t so bad. Merely a bit old fashioned and a touch too earnest for his own good. Besides, it isn’t like you to be so active this early, no need to be hasty. Best we not rock the boat just yet.

Unexpected as his sister’s input was it wasn’t hard to keep any signs of his newly divided attention from showing. He’s had years of practice after all, and Kaede had no reason to look for any changes. She’d probably just take any pause she’d notice as being a moment while he considered her request.

“Of course, besides I doubt I’ll be seeing him much today at any rate. I do hope he improves soon.”

Are you seriously refusing me , brother? This isn’t like you either. Certainly not for a miserable lot like this. What could even be the harm of it? I merely want to mess with him a little. You can’t deny you’d like to see how he squirms when pushed too, with how pitiful his nerves are. Unless she’s who you’d rather see?

It’s not like that Sister. If everything is to go to plan it’d be best not to draw needless attention to myself.

Fine. But I think I want to be properly introduced to her next. You’d at least still do that for me, right little brother?

If Kaede saw anything off in his demeanor as he excused himself to head back to his lab she didn’t show it. This was a conversation best held in private, and certainly nowhere near the subject of discussion.

Not that he was terribly taken aback by his sister’s request, odd as the timing may be. He had already even gotten Kaede’s permission to prepare for this occasion quite some time ago, before even Rantaro died, and seeing his motive video didn’t seem to change her mind so this shouldn’t have been a surprise.

It’s not like he’s tried asking this of any of his other friends he thought would live up to his dear sister’s expectations yet either. Admittedly due in part to most already giving their consent earlier, as he didn’t wish to risk making any suspicious by reaffirming statements likely only said to help ease his worries.

Are you sure? She’s proven more useful than most of the others in the trials we’ve been facing in here. It’d be a shame to fail so close to your goal over losing a mere game such as this.

You’re not questioning me now, are you? Kukuku~ it’s a bit late for your rebellious stage, isn’t it?

Never Sister. I’d be nothing without you. I’m sure between Kaito’s experience and Kokichi’s intuition we’d be able to survive well without her. But should I hold back if someone else makes for a better target first?

As long as she’s the one you’re planning on I suppose it would be fine to also take advantage of a good moment. No point in ignoring someone so eager to meet with me if they unintentionally interrupt us. We wouldn’t want to waste an opportunity like what happened to Miss Yumeno again now would we? I was so looking forward to being able to learn more about her, but since you weren’t involved I can’t find her.

… Right. At least Miu’s death was no such loss for you, even if she could be amusing to me on occasion. But I best make sure current plans are going to schedule. I shan’t keep you waiting for much longer now.

At least that was enough to ease Her spirit’s concerns for now. She was still there of course, still watching over him as she normally does to help ease and guide him, but as a silent observer for the time being. This would just mean she’d be more likely to chime in on any of his other conversations from now on.

Particularly since to make sure everything was going as he’d thought they would he’d be visiting with Kirumi next. He already had a bottle of Cleopatra's Pearl Cocktail he assumed she’d enjoy so she shouldn’t refuse his company if he offered to share some with her in her lab. ( Though with its claim to help make one beautiful I’m inclined to think almost every girl here would be at least a little intrigued. )

She took the bait as expected. She hardly even considered his request to be unusual, so perhaps she thought this was a means of repaying her for her earlier leniency. From a certain point of view that could even be considered true. Her bloodlust gave him a safe window to act on his, so he is genuinely grateful.

Even though she could just as easily turn on you instead? I don’t like this little brother. You could have at least indicated to someone you two would be meeting in case something goes wrong.

I’m far more useful to her alive than dead Sister. If she wants to get away with murder in this place she needs someone to take the fall for her instead. Trying to set Ryoma up as a case of suicide was a boat that has long since sailed and with how I am it’d be easy to believably accuse me of killing anyone.

In an attempt to avoid getting lost in his own thoughts in front of her Korekiyo saw fit to break their comfortable silence. “So how does one such as yourself find any comfort among the student council? Has your sense of obligation towards us outweighed that of your supposed role as Prime Minister now?”

“Not “outweighed” so to speak, but I have made my peace with our situation for now. I do hope we can find a means to leave, despite Angie’s beliefs, but I saw firsthand my previous thoughts on how to do so were...deeply flawed. I merely want to make sure everyone’s lives here are as comfortable and bearable as possible until that time can come. And what about your sister? Aren’t you still worried about her?”

She is an amusing one, isn’t she? She’s even trying to avoid directly lying to you as if you were Oma. What a foolish girl. The inexperience of her youth betrays her no matter how mature she pretends to be.

But her heart’s in the right place. It’s only natural for someone like her to think of people as numbers that she can weigh against each other, as if there can ever be truly acceptable losses in any form of tragedy.

“I too have made my own peace of sorts, but at least I’m still being open about my desire to leave. While I’m here I do still have my lab and a unique set of human experiences to observe to pass the time. But your denial of weight begs the question, how do you value others? There are many ways to view it.”

“I could ask you the same thing then. But for me, if I can’t put the needs of my master first then I seek to aid those who can do the most good for others in general. That is why my initial reaction to certain circumstances was to act as though my own life was worth more than that of the rest of you. My master, our nation, still needed my service and on top of that I saw myself as best equipped to help everyone at risk.”

“So you use the perspective of your society as a whole? That’s rather arrogant of you wouldn’t you say? As “Prime Minister” you could easily argue your life was worth more than many larger groups of people. I value all of humanity, for all of their flaws, too much to accept such a thing. A life is worth one life, no more and most certainly no less, regardless of the actions a person may take or their physical condition. My fieldwork exposes me to too many differing sets of morals and values to try and use anything else, and all remain equal in death I find. All I can do to gauge beyond that is how I personally see a person.”

“I’m not putting myself first for the sake of my own needs so I don’t think “arrogant” is the proper word for it." Kirumi objected with a stern glare before she took another sip to settle herself. "It’s hard to really know how you’ll feel about judging others until you are truly tested I think. All I know is that as a maid it’s my duty to serve my wards as well as I am able. They are my only concern.”

Adorable sentiments if they are true, but I very much doubt that. Just look at how she bristles at the revelation of her hubris rather than taking the moment to self-reflect on it. However I do quite admire her spirit and determination, you’re right about that. Too bad you're having another one of those days where you keep getting under everyone’s skin though Korekiyo. Kukuku~

I'm glad you're enjoying yourself but I don't suppose you'd actually help narrow down if I'm the one too on edge or if it's everyone's nerves that's to blame for this, would you dear sister?

Now, why would I ever do something like that? It's so much more fun to see how your "friends" are when angered, given how much of them we've yet to see.

True, but it might be easier to observe all facets of their beauty if I'm not the target of their ire, yes?

Details, details~

“Responsibility is a virtue I more than understand I assure you, nor am I judging you for how you’ve chosen to best balance what you value the most. There is no shame to be had in expressing some selfishness afterall. And I’d certainly put my sister’s needs or wishes before my own as well, should she need me to. I simply don’t feel she needs me to endanger myself or others to leave this place just yet.”

Indeed, for if we play our cards right you won’t even need to leave to finally finish your promise. Though it will be a shame to lose a girl like Miss Yonaga to Miss Tojo, she would’ve made for a fine friend too.

“You accuse me of arrogance and then claim you aren’t judging me? Isn’t that rather contrary?”

“True. Perhaps it is best to say I am not negatively judging you. All aspects of humanity are beautiful to me, even those conventionally seen as ugly or “wrong”. I see nothing wrong with someone as generally selfless as yourself having flaws such as this. I certainly don't look up to you any less for them, if anything I think they make me admire your work ethic all the more." He assured her, which seemed to catch Kirumi by surprise which was a rare feat. She might have even been blushing a tad, since she turned her head away so her bangs hid most of her face. With a smile and a shug he continued. "Focusing only on one's “good” qualities can never give you a real idea of who they were. Humans are interesting because of their imperfections, not in spite of them. If people were perfect they wouldn’t be as wonderfully unpredictable as they truly are.”

As she faced him again she eyed him with some suspicion. He wasn't sure if it was because she was doubting his intentions with this talk or began thinking his words were hallow, but she didn't let him wonder for long. “I see. And do you see any contradiction in how you speak of “humanity” as if you aren’t a part of it?”

Touche. It is easy to sound like one has something of a God complex like this. Not to mention the irony of preaching the benefits of “unpredictability” to someone we’re relying on accurately predicting for now.

“I’m more often an observer than a participant so I’m inclined think it oft comes with the territory. It’s easy to divorce yourself from others. You have those not under your care, I have my subjects of study.”

She hummed a little at that, as if more in thought than agreement, but his answer satisfied her enough. They returned to drinking in silence for some time before Korekiyo made his leave, giving her what was left of the bottle in gratitude for her conversation and company.

It was nearly nighttime when he got back to his lab, but it wasn’t empty when he arrived. Maki had apparently made herself comfortable near one of many bookshelves, though when she heard him come in she put whichever book she was reading aside. If she wasn’t there to read there isn’t much else she could be looking for but him, given the sort of person she was. This was sure to be interesting.

What is she doing here? Send her away brother, we have no need for her company. We don’t need her lingering this late and interrupting Miss Tojo’s plans like she did last night. Even that delay was vexing.

Sister please, if she has been waiting to speak with me the least I can do for her is hear her out. It must be something unusual for her to come here. She’s far from the social type and we haven’t spoken much.

“Good evening, my apologies if I interrupted you. This is quite the surprise, seeing you here.” Korekiyo began as he offered her a brief bow.

Maki wasn't the sort to be offended by tardiness or mince words though. “You didn’t. I was hoping to talk to you actually.”

Why? Korekiyo I do not like this at all. Why must you keep interacting with such dangerous women?!

I hear you Sister but she’s hardly dangerous. Her talent being exposed puts too much suspicion on her to risk doing anything drastic. If she says she’s here to talk then there’s no reason to doubt her about that.

“Really? I’m sorry to have kept you waiting then. How may I help you? But isn’t it a bit late for this?”

“No, it’s fine. And there’s no point in acting like you actually care about any council’s curfews either. But…” Maki paused as if debating with herself for a moment, fiddling with her collar while in thought. Korekiyo took a seat near her as he waited to see what was on her mind. “... The only reason I’m asking you of all people is because no one would believe you if you breathed a word about any of this. And Ryoma indicted you aren’t as clueless about this sorta stuff as the rest of us mostly are. Got it?”

“Understood, but you do realize Angie’s just down the hall and doesn’t always stay in her lab yes?” Korekiyo reminded her but given her glare was less than appreciated. At least until it softened into a frustrated puffy faced pout as she nearly undid her bow with her fidgeting.

Realizing her mistake with a blush she instead shoved an item in front of his face to try and force things along. A mummified monkey’s paw no less. Awfully fitting considering what Monosuke indicated the results of a resurrection could turn out like. And as Korekiyo gladly took her bribe she found her voice.

“How… do you know when you like someone?” He heard her ask in a hushed tone and time seemed to screech to a halt.

… What ?

This… was not good. There is a reason why “May you live in interesting times” is considered to be meant as a curse, not a blessing.

He could only hope any pause on his part was taken as him thinking of a response to her question rather than dealing with the migraine to come. It was hard to tell where his own feelings ended and his sister’s began when situations got like this. But pain was far from a stranger and hiding it came naturally enough.

See what happens when you don’t listen to me?! Honestly, the nerve of this girl! How dare she ask us something like this. She could ask just about anyone else and no one would ever judge HER for whatever silly crush she’s dealing with! No matter how much blood is on her hands I doubt even the target of her affections would ever look at her with such… DISGUST . Korekiyo if you don’t get rid of her now I WILL.

Calm down Sister, she doesn’t know. And kicking her out for such a trivial mistake would be rather uncalled for, would it not? We don’t need her looking into us. Let’s just try to be more reasonable here-

And what, risk you saying too much again? You were pushing it as it was when you let that boy sidetrack you after you tried giving away that damned key! We both know what would happen to you if they find out, even if we do keep my current condition or my friends under wraps! They’d still look at you that way.

Regardless of how little it concerns them they’d still judge you, mock you, reject you, for this. For us .

Just like everyone else did. It always plays out the same, and these people will be no different Korekiyo.

And if I or the friends you’ve made for me do come to light they may very well try to kill you for it! Even if the blood you’ve shead for my sake couldn’t possibly compare to any of her measly blood money hits, or maybe not even match that of Killer Tennis’ bodycount, they’d see you as the threat. And what then?

I know Sister! I… I’m sorry. For everything you… that WE were put through before. But I can handle this.

“... If Ryoma gave you this impression then you know surely he’d be a better person for you to ask about this yes? As far as I’m concerned matters of the heart are a strictly private issue, not one for discussing.”

“Well I- I don’t know how I feel." She stammered, torn between looking embarassed and angered. "It could be something else. The closest I’ve come to feeling something like this was for a girl I knew back at the orphanage. Ryoma and Kaito tell each other everything so I can’t just ask him about anything…”

Okay. So she doesn’t need any personal information about this from me, just an outsider’s perspective. That… isn’t so bad. I just need to keep her the focus of this and act as an interactive sounding board.

BROTHER?!

Oh come now, can you really tell me you aren’t a little curious about our little assassin developing a crush on the world’s densest space cadet? Don’t forget who was the one bringing you those romance novels you’d ask for when you were ill. I remember what you like. And who knows where this could lead?

That was not the same thing! … But fine. If only to further mess with that awful boy. She suits him.

“So you are conflicted on if this is a crush or more… friendly or familial affections? For our own Kaito?”

The shade of the blush on her face alone was almost worth the literal headache, and heartache, that came with his sister’s frustration. For such a cold killer her range of expressions never ceased to amaze.

“... Something like that.” Maki mumbled, though it looked more like she was talking to her poorly re-tied and battered bow than to Korekiyo with her face still aflame. Red was certainly a color that suited her.

“So not quite? Are you also trying to sort out what you felt for your “friend” back then was too?”

“Maybe. So… How would I know?” It was likely a good thing she was too focused on her own thoughts to notice any of Korekiyo’s discomfort as she redirected things back to him. But there was an easy fix here.

“I couldn’t say. For some friends can be just as important as a lover, and to some others even more so. This is what part of what makes it so personal. How much do you think they mean to you?”

“... I’d be more upset if something happened to Kaito than the rest of you. No offense, but that’s really not saying much in this situation. But I was willing to kill for her. So she wouldn’t be forced to.”

“To be fair willing to kill for his sake here would be suicide at best and detrimental to you both at worst. Is that why you’re suspecting you may have felt more for her than just friendship or surrogate sibling?”

Bad move brother. What exactly are you going to say if she can’t figure out if her feelings for this girl were “sisterly” or “romantic”? And you could stand to be just a littleoffended by her lack of concern.

“A bit. I mean… It wouldn’t be normal to develop feelings in a place like this in such a short amount of time, would it?”

“It’s actually more common for strong bonds to develop quickly in times of great stress so it’s far from unusual. Which is why asking someone like Kibo, Kaede, or even Tenko may be more useful to you here.”

“I think you just mean Kaede, the other two aren’t exactly open-minded about me. And if I did Kaito might find out what I asked her about. Or worse Kokichi. He’s been hanging around her a lot lately.”

That would be a lot of fun. Maybe you should tell Oma anyway? It might make him less wary of you.

Sister no. Living is very much to our benefit at present.

“Fair point. Would it be so bad to just try talking to Kaito about this? He’s brash, but not inconsiderate.”

Korekiyo figured the glower he received was answer enough. So much for simply cutting this Gordian Knot. “No need to give me that look, I am being serious. If he had any existing relationships I’m sure he’d say so by now and he’s not the sort of person to play with a girl’s honest emotions. Would it hurt to try?”

You would know all about that, wouldn’t you little brother? Not always a girl’s honest emotions either. But they are ever so fun to toy with, aren’t they? Especially when something in them finally breaks.

“Fine. I guess I’ll think about it. And if any rumors start floating around before then you’re a dead man.”

“That’s a bit drastic wouldn’t you say? It’s not like you or he have been particularly subtle, as I’m sure you’ve noticed from the way Kokichi has tried teasing you both before. But rest assured, I won’t talk.”

“That would be a change.” Maki deadpanned, smirk naturally falling into place with it’s signature quirk.

Almost sad to consider an adorable if unusual physical feature like that might be part of why she hadn’t been adopted by a normal family when she still had a chance. Vanity could make people be ever so cruel.

“Alright, poor phrasing on my part. But it’s not like I’m one to participate in gossip anyway. Honestly I’d have much preferred going into the story connected to the paw you have so graciously given me than something of this nature. Or even how your work has affected your own views on the concept of death.”

“The one with the three wishes that keep going wrong? I think I’ve heard that one before. I think I’ll stop taking up your time though, just in case Kirumi comes by to check on you again. And… Thank you. It was nice to see Ryoma was right. You aren’t as much of a creepy weirdo as you could be. My words, not his.”

… How is an assassin able to be so blind to our intentions brother? Are you sure she isn’t toying with us?

It’s hardly like I’ve had any actual intent to kill around her. Not like Kirumi has. It makes sense she’d be more on Maki’s radar than I am. If you look suspicious enough sometimes you stop being suspicious.

And other times it just puts you on a fast track to be on a first name basis with the local sheriff. Again.

And yet that familiarity served its purpose, as they were still none the wiser and saw nothing wrong with me leaving town as a result even after her delightful daughter “ran away from home”, did it not?

He couldn’t help but laugh a little at the irony of it all while he gave her a partial bow as she departed. “Kehehe. I’m not sure your assessment, blunt as it was, is truly accurate. But I appreciate your praise, such as it is, all the same and do sincerely wish you the best. I’ll be rooting for you, so take care, Maki.”

He couldn’t really afford to spend too much time here himself though either. Kirumi would be less likely to do anything tonight if there was a chance he was still in earshot, and she already made an excuse if anyone rightly thought he was in bed when her crime was being committed with her Monopad trick.

It was tempting to at least try paying Angie one last visit before he left, but all things considered he thought better of it. Too much evidence against him could make proving Kirumi’s guilt harder if Kaede won’t be there to help anymore. But he could live with his last memory of Angie before her death being one that ended on poorer terms. He’s certainly had worse with all the friends he’s helped his sister make.

Getting back to the dorms was rather uneventful at any rate, but it was a small comfort for him to know that Gonta and Ryoma both made it clear they saw him. Witnesses will be a great boon in proving his innocence if the class turns out to be more inclined to trust Kirumi’s word over his own tomorrow. Gonta even insisted on walking back with him, to help ensure Korekiyo was indeed following the curfew now.

What will he and the others do with their leader gone? Would the cult remain without her guidance, or simply fall apart due to a loss of faith? Who would fill the voids Angie and Kaede would leave behind? Kaito? Kibo? Certainly not Kokichi, the imp’s too fond of implicitly pushing people to do what he wants.

He had ample time to think as he got ready for bed. It might not take as much time to undress and take off his sister’s preferred makeup than it does to put everything on but that wasn’t saying much.

Not to mention donning his sleeping mask and whatnot afterward. Sister was a tad too impatient to be in control when their body needed to rest so that was hardly an optional step for him anymore.

But before he entered his slumber he still had one question he needed to ask her first. And as there was no risk of interruptions they wouldn’t need to be as quiet this time. She did prefer to speak for herself.

“Sister, do you suppose voting for Kirumi tomorrow would be enough involvement for her spirit to reach you? I know indirect killings are far less reliable, but it could still work could it not?”

It wasn’t really his hand that reached to pull his mask down anymore, as odd a sensation as it was to lose control of his own body. Though it wasn’t “lost” as much as it was freely given. She didn’t even need to remove his mask to take full control, but it helped make it easier to avoid acting unusually around others.

It was more a ritual with a symbolic restraint they shared than an actual necessity for their symbiosis. Fitting considering its unconventional design, serving as a “fetish” for them in more ways than one.

She used the closest she could manage to her own voice as she answered him. “ How should I know little brother? The only chance we had to really test this was during that first execution, and you had voted for Miss Akamatsu rather than risk introducing me to a boy like Saihara by mistake back then did you not? ”

“Right, of course. But it would be nice to be able to make you two friends tomorrow instead of just one. Then we’d only need one more. Would you rather it be Tenko or Tsumugi? It won’t matter if I’m caught.”

“ Curb your impatience Korekiyo. It makes me happy to see you’re still thinking ahead, but do be careful. Over-eagerness can easily lead to one’s undoing so we mustn’t get too greedy just yet. We can’t let our emotions hasten your judgements and risk making a fatal error this close to our goal. First, we see how things will go. Then I’ll consider our options. Just focus on getting some rest for now, my sweet Korekiyo. ”

“Right, of course. My apologies. Goodnight Sister.”

He felt her response more than heard it as a hand reached to grip his shoulder while the other went around his waist. The closest either of them could get to anything resembling an embrace anymore.

Korekiyo ignored any sense of loneliness the gesture gave him in favor of basking in its intent. He should be used to this by now. And there’s nothing unusual about his pleasures having some pain intertwined.

It’s just a shame not all pains are of a sort I can find pleasure in. But it won’t be for much longer now.

The next day he had nearly finished getting ready for the day when something began pounding on his door. Odd as he hadn’t even heard the morning announcement begin yet, much less the one that signified a body discovery. Things were made odder still as it was Kaito he found on the other side looking ragged, like a man at the end of his rope, rather than a furious Tenko out for his blood.

“Did you have anything to do with this?!”

“... That depends what “this” would be. I’d offer you a good morning but it’s a bit late for that now yes? Did something happen that I should be aware of?” His answer gave Kaito some comfort as he calmed down a bit. Not the announcement choosing that particular moment to come to life helped that any.

Korekiyo really should have tried standing further away from his room’s monitor since he knew this should be coming. Or done something to help brace for how loud its parody of a school chime would be. He did so loathe loud noises like this, almost as much as he hated being bound to one place for too long.

“Okay, so you really didn’t know? That… That’s good at least. It’s in your lab, come on.”

Kaito obviously wasn’t in the mood for much talking so Korekiyo was content to merely follow his lead rather than ask questions. There wasn’t too much he felt he needed to really ask yet anyway.

Not until he saw a familiar head of silver hair in the hallway outside of his lab. Still happily bobbing along as per the usual for her, talking to Tenko standing beside her. At least Tenko hadn’t lost another friend.

Kukuku, I guess Miss Tojo wasn’t as predictable as you thought? This is good though, we haven’t lost my chance to be friends with her just yet. But whose body will we find now I wonder? Did she go for Hoshi after all?

This would explain Kaito’s current state. Or at least his response further narrowed down their options. But it wasn’t Ryoma’s body he found on the floor of his lab, lying there broken and bloody.

It was Maki’s.

It made sense Korekiyo supposed, even if the possibility slipped his mind before.

If Ryoma’s crimes helped ease any issues Kirumi could have with killing one of her citizens then so would Maki’s current profession. And if Kirumi was caught she could argue she acted for the good of the group.

But that doesn’t make this hurt any less does it? I told you, you should raise your standards little brother. Having friends like her would obviously only lead to pain or disappointment for you. They always do.

Never. This is... Bearable. And it's well worth the time spent with her. The same applies for everyone else here. Observing them all has been both informative and for the most part enjoyable, even with these... risks.

He could hardly even tell where the red of the blood ended and that of her clothing began anymore. He’d swear parts of the blood nearly looked pink against her crimson if he wasn’t looking directly at it. Seeing the mask sloppily laid over her face didn’t help either. Particularly given whose it really was.

But he knew better than to let any discomfort show. There was no need for it and it wouldn’t help.  

All he needed to do was make sure her death wasn’t a waste.

Korekiyo looked over to where Kaede and Kirumi were talking as he weighed his options one last time.

Maki may have never been admirable enough to be one of Sister’s friends but at least he could make sure her killer would soon be joining her. And his dearest sister was still in dire need of some company.

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[aeniith]

Bayën origin theories

I’m kind of too high strung right now to do much writing/creating without getting really antsy. Kind of in that high-alert mode because of the impending storm....so I’ve been going through my old writing/files and reading stuff from before. I wanted to share this piece about the various theories throughout Aeniith about what is the deal with the Bayë, because they are markedly different from the other humanoid species on the planet. They live for hundreds to thousands of year. They have six fingers on each hand. They have a bizarre circulatory system. The have nictitating membranes. They can’t interbreed with other species at all. Anyway, here are some of the theories of various groups about what’s up with the Bayë. 

Please note: none of these are necessarily canonically accurate. These are ideas about what people in Aeniith think about the Bayë. 

There is much mystery surrounding the origins and history of the Bayë species. They appear, from all existing evidence, to be almost completely unrelated to any other sentient Aeniith species. Even their relationship to other, non-sentient Aeniith species is suspect at best.

What makes Bayën history even more puzzling is the evidence of Bayën fossil remains. Since no Aeniith civilization has developed technology sufficient to accurately date fossil remains, it is very unclear as to the exact age of Bayë fossils. However, it is quite clear that the age of some excavated remains date back into the millions of years, which seems to defy all explanation.

For centuries, anthropologists, archeologists, and historians from all over the globe have attempted to piece together the mystery of Bayën origin. To this day, no one theory has been proven, but there are a few that have become the most popularly accepted. These theories vary by region and race, each nation or culture adopting their own theory or mythology to explain the Bayë's existence.

Evolutionary Stagnation Theory

The Tosi have the simplest explanation: the Bayë are simply incredibly slow to evolve. There is some merit to this theory, since the Bayën generational cycle is magnitudes slower than other Aeniith species (around 250 years), it makes sense that the genetic mutations required for evolution would be greatly slowed down. However, this alone does not explain the almost ceasing of evolution for hundreds of millions of years. Tosi researchers suggest that the nature of Bayë physiology has made them practically immune to mutation, that some time around 200,000,000 years ago, Bayë evolution practically stopped. This still does not explain the fact that the Bayë have not evolved technologically in this time either. Most Tosi write this off as a flaw of Bayën intellect, but this has very little scientific bearing.

Hibernation Theory

In recent years, Gotevian and Lomi researchers have compiled together what they call, "Hibernation Theory". It is also accepted among some Tosi and Selupa, though not quite as abundantly. This theory tries to explain why Bayë remains can be found dating back millions of years, while their oral history and technological advancement seems to only date back some 50,000 years (approximately 200 generations). Researchers theorize that the Bayë are an extremely ancient species with a history dating back into the hundreds of millions of years. Their ancient ancestors, for disputed reasons, were able to put themselves into a form of long-term hibernation, and kept themselves asleep for millions of years. During this time, the other sentient Aeniith species, quite possibly evolved from ancient Bayën, came into existence.

Other speculations are that the Bayë were put into hibernation as embryos, which would explain the lack of any oral history of the civilization from before hibernation. Another possible explanation is that the hibernation process imposed a sort of amnesia on the individuals, which caused them to lose all memory of their ancient lives.

In 577 E.K, Lomi archeologists happened upon one anomalous baa fossil which appears to be only some few hundred-thousand years old—within the great gap of Bayën fossil record. The fossil was found in the silt of what used to be an ancient estuary, suggesting that it was washed ashore from the ocean. Some Lomi researchers made the leap of suggesting that this was evidence of deep-ocean Bayë hibernation. Many Gotevian and Lomi researchers have scoffed at this idea as an unfounded conclusion; however, it has started gaining popularity in Lomilin, and is currently the most popular explanation.

Some of the most eccentric ideas stem from the notion that the Bayë once had a highly technologically advanced civilization that was threatened by some sort of global catastrophe. The Bayë put themselves into some sort of long-term hibernation in order to save their species from genocide, through the aid of their advanced technology. While there is no evidence to contradict this theory, there is little to support it either, and one would expect to find some sort of evidence of this civilization, even after millions of years.

Extra Planetary Theory

This is a theory most prevalent in Selupa, whose contact with the Bayë is one of the more recent, and where the Bayë still seem incredibly mysterious. The Selupa have come to believe that the Bayë are not of Aeniith at all, but originate from another world entirely. They point to the lack of evidence between Bayën physiology and other Aeniith species (including non-sentient). For instance, only two existing Aeniith species, living in limited numbers, possess anything resembling the iconic Bayën "blood-ropes". One of these animals is a small mammalian feline-like creature (often referred to as the "Bayën Cat"). The other is a large lizard found in southern Elta, and only in limited numbers. The Selupa suggest that these animals were imported, possibly as pets, from the world from which the Bayë originally came.

This theory, alone, however, does not explain the existence of Bayë fossil records dating back into the millions of years. The Selupa, faced with this new conundrum, have turned to other theories to explain this problem, (while still maintaining that the Bayë are aliens). The most prevalent idea is that the Bayë do not evolve at all, that the same genetic mutations that cause Aeniith species to evolve do not occur in Bayë, that maybe their mutations were silenced millions of years ago, in a world far away from Aeniith, possibly by advanced technology, or possibly by some kind of evolutionary stagnation.

In recent years, however, more and more Selupan scientists have come to believe in the Quariosian view that the Bayë are not evolutionarily stagnant, and that there was some sort of great hibernation. Some have even begun abandoning their insistence that the Bayë are of another world, though the vast majority still believes this to be the case.

Karkin Religion

The Bayë are an essential part of Karkin Religion, and thus the Karkin have very different views as to their origins. Karkin religious texts tell that the Bayë were created by the Gods in order to pass down their inevitable teachings. However, the teachings given to Bayë will only be passed along at a specific time, when the world is on the brink of global disaster. Until that time comes to pass, however, the Bayë are non-divine beings. Most Karkin treat the Bayë with respect similar to that of other cultures. Some of the more radical Karkin, however, believe that Bayë to be empty vessels, to be used simply for Karkin interests; some even advocate slavery. Others see the Bayë as divine beings and worship them as demi-Gods.

Since Karkin religion vastly predates their knowledge of Bayën fossil remains, the Karkin have not had a pleasant time coming to terms with these new findings. Most of the Karkin do not even care about the fossils, seeing them as simple error or even heretical diversions. However, others have begun to believe the fossil records, and have pushed back the date of the world's origins to support these new findings. Some believe that the Bayë were put to sleep by the Gods, in order to preserve themselves for the time when the rest of Aeniith civilization would need them.

The Bayë Perception of Themselves

Ironically, the Bayë do not seem to concern themselves with their own origins as much as their neighbors do. Few talk about it at all, believing the questions to be irrelevant to their current nature and civilization. Obviously, some Bayë do contemplate their origins, but there seems to be little consensus, as very few Bayë are willing to commit to one theory or another. Many times, the Bayë in a certain region will take on the theory that is most prevalent in that particular culture.

Conclusion

The reality is, Aeniith science is still in its infancy and there is much to learn before any concrete hypothesis can be made as to the origins of the Bayë people. The current trend is in acceptance of multiple theories: that the truth is a combination of a number of different ideas. This may, however, simply be a reflection of the times, where Aeniith cultures tend to be more concerned with making alliances than starting conflict. The truth may turn out to be something quite different, or something even mundane. Only continued research into the fields of biology, chemistry, and archeology will be able to answer these questions.

[kemetic-dreams]

In my research I learned that the word comes from tribus in Latin. Its earliest usage was in the time of the Roman empire where there were three original tribes, but more were added to organize the voting system.  At first, tribe may have been related to ethnicity, but as more were added, it became about geographical location, rather than kinship.   Tribe was a territorial voting unit in the Roman state. I've seen the word used to talk about Celtic and Germanic histories. It also became associated with the Hebrew people of the Torah and Bible. You must have heard of the 12 Tribes of Israel. The connotations evolved, and the problems with it began when it got into the hands of anthropologists. (Ironically, I have a degree in anthropology and I think it's a fascinating discipline; Good thing my favorite anthro professor back in my university days wisely recommended that we understand the controversies around the term.)

Truth be told, it offends many people. Here's why:

#1 For European missionaries and explorers who went out to conquer people, the word "tribal" was synonymous to "savage" and "primitive." It's mainstream connotation is rooted in colonial-era racist ideology. The word immediately conjures stereotypical imagery of brown people with bones in their noses or naked warriors running around in a rainforest

That “tribal” word

by

Chika Oduah

I cringe whenever I see that word in a news article. And I see it so often in journalese. Stories about developing countries often feature phrases like tribal healer, tribal land, tribal conflict, tribesmen, tribal chief, tribal wear, tribal name, tribal rhythm. The word is so problematic, I don't even know where to begin. I will suggest this - get some education on its history.

The Myth of the Noble Savage

The word plays into a historic imagination that classifies indigenous people outside of Europe into two categories of savages: the noble savage and the brutal savage. That leads me to number two.

The bottom-line problem with the idea of tribe is that it is intellectually lazy.

#2 Societies are constantly changing. No matter where you go, you're bound to see it. Technology, the spread of ideas, education, globalization, all of these elements contribute to sociocultural changes. But the word "tribal" freezes societies in a primordial past (real or imagined) where people wore animal skins and ran with wolves. I think it's hard for many people in the Western world to accept that societies in Africa (in other developing regions around the world) are dynamic. It's hard for some to grasp concepts of modernity in such places.   Even the most remote, far flung communities are not the same today as they were just 20 years ago.

The tribe, a long respected category of analysis in anthropology, has recently been the object of some scrutiny by anthropologists ... Doubts about the utility of the tribe as an analytical category have almost certainly arisen out of the rapid involvement of peoples, even in the remotest parts of the globe, in political, economic and sometimes direct social relationship with industrial nations. The doubts, however, are based ultimately on the definition and meaning which different scholars give to the term 'tribe', its adjective 'tribal', and its abstract form 'tribalism' ~ Dr. James Clyde Mitchell

Westerners have romanticized certain ethnic groups, like the Maasai in eastern Africa, because they have this romantic idea that the Maasai people are living the exact same way as their ancestors did. Untouched by modernity. But that's simply not true. And where does this desperate need to have ethnic groups permanently living in primordial or precolonial states come from? Is the "primitive," noble savage look more marketable for tourism? That leads me to number three.

#3 The relentless attempt to cast Africans are primitive, unchanging people relates to another popular notion that the past, when there was no internet, airplanes or sliced bread, was more peaceful, more pure and less complicated than modern times. The problem with that is that it pushes an identity (based on a misconstrued premise) on other people. It's someone from the West saying I want the kind of African who lives in a thatch-roofed hut in a village in Niamey, not the African who lives in a  brick home in a Harare suburb.  Africans are constantly being defined by the Western world, submitting to the names and descriptions put upon them. In my favorite work by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun, the character Odenigbo says, "But my point is that the only authentic identity for the African is the tribe...I am Nigerian because a white man created Nigeria and gave me that identity. I am black because the white man constructed black to be as different as possible from his white. But I was Igbo before the white man came.” (I'll talk about Africans using the word tribe further down!).

In the Americas, Africa, Australia, and elsewhere, colonial administrators applied these terms [tribe and band] to specific groups almost immediately upon contact. ~Encyclopedia Brittanica

#4 The word "tribal" distorts reality because it leads to misguided ideas of what is authentic and what is not. This is when a Westerner, looking at a picture of expensive cars parked at a chic hotel in Accra, says "this is not the real Africa." I hear the comment very often because there's this prevailing perception that the real Africa is "tribal." Its stick, bones, dirt and chiefs draped in leopard print. Anything outside of that, according to that line of thought, has been touched (contaminated, even) by the Western world, therefore is inauthentic. Again, it's that insistence on denying dynamism, that change happens. And that prerequisite applies to people, too. The African woman who graduated from Harvard Business School, works as a bank executive and wears Chanel suits is not a real African. The woman chopping firewood with a naked baby on her back is and gets bonus points for authenticity if the child has flies swarming around the face.

Over to You, Is the Word 'Tribe' Offensive? - BBC World Service

#4 For peoples who experienced oppression, suppression or marginalization from European colonizers or their descendants, the word "tribe" triggers memories of a traumatic past.  This is especially true of Native Americans, also called the First Nations. (I remember learning about the Trail of Tears in elementary school and feeling quite sad about it.)  Thousands of Native Americans were brutally uprooted from their ancestral lands when Europeans and their descendants decided to forcibly expand their presence in the Americas. Today, the U.S. government still officially uses the word "tribes" to refer to Native Americans, but I have read that they prefer to be called "nations" or "people."

#5 There's also this thing with numbers. British anthropologist and evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar, originator of the Dunbar's number theory, said that 500 - 1,500 people (who follow their ancestral culture, beliefs of unity, laws, and rights; are self-sufficient and have strong emotion towards their lands) can be classified as a one tribe. Those are pretty much the same numbers that other nineteenth century anthropologists used, defining a tribe as a human society made up of several bands. A band was a small, egalitarian, kin-based group of perhaps 10–50 people. So when you're looking at the large ethnic groups in Africa today, some numbering millions, they can't be described as tribes.

Tribe has no coherent meaning. What is a tribe? The Zulu in South Africa, whose name and common identity was forged by the creation of a powerful state less than two centuries ago, and who are a bigger group than French Canadians, are called a tribe. So are the !Kung hunter-gatherers of Botswana and Namibia, who number in the hundreds. The term is applied to Kenya's Maasai herders and Kikuyu farmers, and to members of these groups in cities and towns when they go there to live and work.

Tribe is used for millions of Yoruba in Nigeria and Benin, who share a language but have an eight-hundred year history of multiple and sometimes warring city-states, and of religious diversity even within the same extended families. Tribe is used for Hutu and Tutsi in the central African countries of Rwanda and Burundi. Yet the two societies (and regions within them) have different histories. And in each one, Hutu and Tutsi lived interspersed in the same territory. They spoke the same language, married each other, and shared virtually all aspects of culture. At no point in history could the distinction be defined by distinct territories, one of the key assumptions built into "tribe." ~Pambazuka News

Zambia is slightly larger than Texas. The country has approximately 10 million inhabitants and a rich cultural diversity. English is the official language, but Zambia also boasts 73 different indigenous languages. While there are many indigenous Zambian words that translate into "nation," "people," "clan," "language," "foreigner," "village" or "community," there are none that easily translate into "tribe." Sorting Zambians into a fixed number of "tribes" was a byproduct of British colonial rule over Northern Rhodesia (as Zambia was known prior to independence in 1964).

#6 In anthropological theories of social evolution, "tribe" is lower than "civilization." After studying early cultures in Central and South America, American neo-evolutionary cultural anthropologist Elman Rogers Service devised an influential categorization scheme for the political character of human social structures: band, tribe, chiefdom and state.

A band is the smallest unit of political organization, consisting of only a few families and no formal leadership positions. Tribes have larger populations but are organized around family ties and have fluid or shifting systems of temporary leadership. Chiefdoms are large political units in which the chief, who usually is determined by heredity, holds a formal position of power. States are the most complex form of political organization and are characterized by a central government that has a monopoly over legitimate uses of physical force, a sizeable bureaucracy, a system of formal laws, and a standing military force.

With this understanding, again, many of the large ethnic groups in Africa's modern nation states cannot be called tribes.

But... a lot of Africans use "tribe" to describe themselves. The word is taught in schools across African countries, because the secular educational system was largely created by Westerners. That's the basis of the ongoing  "decolonize education" campaign in South Africa. Check this out: When Africans learn English, they are often taught that "tribe" is the term that English-speakers will recognize. But what underlying meaning in their own languages are Africans translating when they say "tribe"? In English, writers often refer to the Zulu tribe, whereas in Zulu the word for the Zulu as a group is isizwe. Zulu linguists translate isizwe as "nation" or "people." Isizwe refers both to the multi-ethnic South African nation and to ethno-national peoples that form a part of the multi-ethnic nation. When Africans use the word "tribe" in general conversation, they do not draw on the negative connotations of primitivism the word has in Western countries.

But there has been a decades-long push by many African scholars and media professionals to get media outlets, textbooks and academia to stop using "tribe" and "tribal." Some have addressed their concerns to The New York Times, among other news publications.  Here's how Bill Keller, New York Times' Pulitzer Prize-winning executive editor from 2003 to 2011 responded:

"I get it. Anyone who uses the word "tribe" is a racist. [. . .] It's a tediously familiar mantra in the Western community of Africa scholars. In my experience, most Africans who live outside the comforts of academia (and who use the word "tribe" with shameless disregard for the political sensitivities of American academics) have more important concerns."

The logic here is, since the real Africans are using the word themselves, then what's the big deal? Well, for all the reasons I just presented and more. And recently we're seeing a wave of companies and organizations come out to announce that they will not longer use "tribe" and "tribal." The New York Times is now using "ethnic group" and "ethnic." (I have issues with ethnic. At a Walmart, I noticed that the aisle for hair products tailored to people of African descent was the "ethnic hair" aisle; that's literally what the sign said). These entities may have been motivated by political correctness or could be trying to save face. I don't know. I know that, what to do about the tribe/tribal word is a conversation that matters.

[universal-translation-services]

Funny Pashto Words in English

There are more interesting things in the world than a person can learn in a lifetime. But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try to learn at all. We have been given a fixed amount of time to live on this earth during which there is no limitations on the things we can experience and commit to our memory. We meet each other and learn new things about different communities every day. We also travel to different places and experience the beauty of various cultures and traditions. We may not be able to comprehend the beauty of the world in its entirety but we can see many glimpses of it in a lifetime and be grateful for that chance. The many similarities between humans are proof that we have all had the same origins. We are quite different from each other and yet we also share many similarities which have the ability to bring us together if we let them. From language and culture to recipes and festivals, there are many things that people from different regions share which can surprise anthropologists. People living so far away from each other can also practice similar customs. Such examples show how deeply we are connected with each other. When two persons start their family, it is just the two of them. Then their kids come along and the family grows. But when the kids get married and have their kids, the family becomes big. All the members of the family move to different locations and build different lives for themselves. However, no matter how far they get away from their roots, they will continue to carry a few features of their family. And they will pass those features to their kids. This example of one family can explain very well what happened to the world that started with two people and became a planet full of seven billion people. This also explains why we have a few similarities with each other despite not living in the same place.

The Pashto Language:

Spoken by approximately sixty million speakers in the world, Pashto is a language with a pretty old history. The time of its origin is often the topic of debate among language historians but there is no doubt about the fact that it originated from an ancient tongue. Today, it is recognized in the constitutions of Afghanistan and is the second most spoken tongue in the neighboring country of Pakistan. It is known for having various dialects. Written in Arabic script, Pashto is also spoken by the Pashtun diaspora. The most fascinating thing about this language is its oral literature. Long-form poems and stories made up by women are passed on to people in spoken words. Entertainment industries of Pakistan and Afghanistan produce songs and movies in this vernacular regularly and some of the songs even become famous among the non-speakers due to their music. Many linguists consider Pashto a language which is difficult to learn. Pronouncing Pashto words are also quite hard for non-native speakers and can prolong the learning process of a student of the tongue.

Funny Pashto Words in English:

Words are the most powerful tools at our disposal. They can convey even the deepest feeling of our heart to people. But sometimes, they fail us when we need them the most. There are things that can only be understood and not explained. Anyone who has ever tried to explain one of their slangs to a foreigner know how difficult the process can be. Although we have been blessed with translators who can help us understand people, there is a limit to their powers. Some words and phrases just cannot be interpreted into other languages. Pashto is full of such terms and phrases that cannot be translated. However, there are a few common funny and interesting phrases that everyone should know about. Pashto may not have too many funny words, but it has plenty of phrases to express love and hatred. Here are a few examples: Spuck Shay: This is what you say to someone if you wish them to be humiliated or disrespected. A rather polite insult considering the extent to which Pashtuns can go to express their dislike for someone. Ya zamaa jaanukai: Want to call someone ‘O my darling’ in Pashto? This is what you should say to them to express your love and impress them with your knowledge of a foreign language. Pa makh ta tora bala sha: There are a few people in everyone’s life that they want to say the opposite of best of luck to. This is where this phrase comes in, because it translates to ‘wishing you very bad luck’. Dere qrrate ma kawa! It is important to know the way in which a Pashto phrase is said or you will think all of them have a negative meaning. Because this phrase may translate to ‘stop talking too much’ it is always said as a joke, mostly to kids. Shoda: This means ‘idiot’. Short and precise for when someone is annoying you or does something stupid. The words and phrases mentioned above can help you a bit around your Pashto friends. You will be able to impress and surprise them with your knowledge. You can also have a little fun with the phrases and use them around people who don’t know the meaning to express their feelings towards them. Read the full article

[the-archlich]

Is it really right to call foreign societies as "tribes" or "barbarians"? The image we usually picture is like the Naman in the series, primitive and semi-nomadic people. But aren't the shanyue or Xiognu more like established kingdom? The wars they participated gave the impression they had a established army and king etc. I was wondering if calling them a tribe is pejorative.

I generally avoid calling the non-Han peoples of the area “barbarians” because it does have pejorative connotations. It implies a lack of sophistication and culture that I don’t find appropriate (nor was it really applicable to those peoples of North Africa to whom it was originally applied).

I don’t think there’s anything pejorative about the term “tribe”, though. Historians and anthropologists use the term to refer to a general organizational structure - family groups or clans organized loosely under one or more chiefs. That’s the best way to describe most of the non-Han peoples living in and around the borders of the empire. It has nothing to do with cultural or technical sophistication.

While we often use terms like “king” or such to refer to the leaders of tribal groups, it’s a mistake to think of them as monarchs with direct rule and established borders. These “kings” were tribal chiefs, often with multiple chieftains below them, who held the loyalty of family groups.

The term is, perhaps, misapplied to the Xiongnu, who had a much more organized system of government inspired to a large degree by the Han court. To some extent the same could be said of the Wuhuan and Xianbei. But the non-Han people, particular those on the eastern, western, and southern fringes, are best described this way.

And it’s always important to understand a few things about these people. The first is that virtually all records about them come from Chinese sources and are written from that perspective. The second is that when we use terms like “king” or “chief” or “tribe” or “barbarian” we’re applying western terms that don’t precisely fit. They’re inexact approximations of the words used by outsiders.

[imaginaireradical]

Why Capitalism Creates Pointless Jobs

It’s as if someone were out there making up pointless jobs just for the sake of keeping us all working.

By David Graeber

In the year 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted that technology would have advanced sufficiently by century’s end that countries like Great Britain or the United States would achieve a 15-hour work week. There’s every reason to believe he was right. In technological terms, we are quite capable of this. And yet it didn’t happen. Instead, technology has been marshaled, if anything, to figure out ways to make us all work more. In order to achieve this, jobs have had to be created that are, effectively, pointless. Huge swathes of people, in Europe and North America in particular, spend their entire working lives performing tasks they secretly believe do not really need to be performed. The moral and spiritual damage that comes from this situation is profound. It is a scar across our collective soul. Yet virtually no one talks about it.

Why did Keynes’ promised utopia – still being eagerly awaited in the ‘60s – never materialise? The standard line today is that he didn’t figure in the massive increase in consumerism. Given the choice between less hours and more toys and pleasures, we’ve collectively chosen the latter. This presents a nice morality tale, but even a moment’s reflection shows it can’t really be true. Yes, we have witnessed the creation of an endless variety of new jobs and industries since the ‘20s, but very few have anything to do with the production and distribution of sushi, iPhones, or fancy sneakers.

So what are these new jobs, precisely? A recent report comparing employment in the US between 1910 and 2000 gives us a clear picture (and I note, one pretty much exactly echoed in the UK). Over the course of the last century, the number of workers employed as domestic servants, in industry, and in the farm sector has collapsed dramatically. At the same time, “professional, managerial, clerical, sales, and service workers” tripled, growing “from one-quarter to three-quarters of total employment.” In other words, productive jobs have, just as predicted, been largely automated away (even if you count industrial workers globally, including the toiling masses in India and China, such workers are still not nearly so large a percentage of the world population as they used to be).

But rather than allowing a massive reduction of working hours to free the world’s population to pursue their own projects, pleasures, visions, and ideas, we have seen the ballooning not even so much of the “service” sector as of the administrative sector, up to and including the creation of whole new industries like financial services or telemarketing, or the unprecedented expansion of sectors like corporate law, academic and health administration, human resources, and public relations. And these numbers do not even reflect on all those people whose job is to provide administrative, technical, or security support for these industries, or for that matter the whole host of ancillary industries (dog-washers, all-night pizza deliverymen) that only exist because everyone else is spending so much of their time working in all the other ones.

These are what I propose to call “bullshit jobs.”

It’s as if someone were out there making up pointless jobs just for the sake of keeping us all working. And here, precisely, lies the mystery. In capitalism, this is exactly what is not supposed to happen. Sure, in the old inefficient socialist states like the Soviet Union, where employment was considered both a right and a sacred duty, the system made up as many jobs as they had to (this is why in Soviet department stores it took three clerks to sell a piece of meat). But, of course, this is the very sort of problem market competition is supposed to fix. According to economic theory, at least, the last thing a profit-seeking firm is going to do is shell out money to workers they don’t really need to employ. Still, somehow, it happens.

While corporations may engage in ruthless downsizing, the layoffs and speed-ups invariably fall on that class of people who are actually making, moving, fixing and maintaining things; through some strange alchemy no one can quite explain, the number of salaried paper-pushers ultimately seems to expand, and more and more employees find themselves, not unlike Soviet workers actually, working 40 or even 50 hour weeks on paper, but effectively working 15 hours just as Keynes predicted, since the rest of their time is spent organising or attending motivational seminars, updating their facebook profiles or downloading TV box-sets.

The answer clearly isn’t economic: it’s moral and political. The ruling class has figured out that a happy and productive population with free time on their hands is a mortal danger (think of what started to happen when this even began to be approximated in the ‘60s). And, on the other hand, the feeling that work is a moral value in itself, and that anyone not willing to submit themselves to some kind of intense work discipline for most of their waking hours deserves nothing, is extraordinarily convenient for them.

Once, when contemplating the apparently endless growth of administrative responsibilities in British academic departments, I came up with one possible vision of hell. Hell is a collection of individuals who are spending the bulk of their time working on a task they don’t like and are not especially good at. Say they were hired because they were excellent cabinet-makers, and then discover they are expected to spend a great deal of their time frying fish. Neither does the task really need to be done – at least, there’s only a very limited number of fish that need to be fried. Yet somehow, they all become so obsessed with resentment at the thought that some of their co-workers might be spending more time making cabinets, and not doing their fair share of the fish-frying responsibilities, that before long there’s endless piles of useless badly cooked fish piling up all over the workshop and it’s all that anyone really does.

I think this is actually a pretty accurate description of the moral dynamics of our own economy.

*

Now, I realise any such argument is going to run into immediate objections: “who are you to say what jobs are really ‘necessary’? What’s necessary anyway? You’re an anthropology professor, what’s the ‘need’ for that?” (And indeed a lot of tabloid readers would take the existence of my job as the very definition of wasteful social expenditure.) And on one level, this is obviously true. There can be no objective measure of social value.

I would not presume to tell someone who is convinced they are making a meaningful contribution to the world that, really, they are not. But what about those people who are themselves convinced their jobs are meaningless? Not long ago I got back in touch with a school friend who I hadn’t seen since I was 12. I was amazed to discover that in the interim, he had become first a poet, then the front man in an indie rock band. I’d heard some of his songs on the radio having no idea the singer was someone I actually knew. He was obviously brilliant, innovative, and his work had unquestionably brightened and improved the lives of people all over the world. Yet, after a couple of unsuccessful albums, he’d lost his contract, and plagued with debts and a newborn daughter, ended up, as he put it, “taking the default choice of so many directionless folk: law school.” Now he’s a corporate lawyer working in a prominent New York firm. He was the first to admit that his job was utterly meaningless, contributed nothing to the world, and, in his own estimation, should not really exist.

There’s a lot of questions one could ask here, starting with, what does it say about our society that it seems to generate an extremely limited demand for talented poet-musicians, but an apparently infinite demand for specialists in corporate law? (Answer: if 1% of the population controls most of the disposable wealth, what we call “the market” reflects what they think is useful or important, not anybody else.) But even more, it shows that most people in these jobs are ultimately aware of it. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever met a corporate lawyer who didn’t think their job was bullshit. The same goes for almost all the new industries outlined above. There is a whole class of salaried professionals that, should you meet them at parties and admit that you do something that might be considered interesting (an anthropologist, for example), will want to avoid even discussing their line of work entirely. Give them a few drinks, and they will launch into tirades about how pointless and stupid their job really is.

This is a profound psychological violence here. How can one even begin to speak of dignity in labour when one secretly feels one’s job should not exist? How can it not create a sense of deep rage and resentment. Yet it is the peculiar genius of our society that its rulers have figured out a way, as in the case of the fish-fryers, to ensure that rage is directed precisely against those who actually do get to do meaningful work. For instance: in our society, there seems a general rule that, the more obviously one’s work benefits other people, the less one is likely to be paid for it.  Again, an objective measure is hard to find, but one easy way to get a sense is to ask: what would happen were this entire class of people to simply disappear? Say what you like about nurses, garbage collectors, or mechanics, it’s obvious that were they to vanish in a puff of smoke, the results would be immediate and catastrophic. A world without teachers or dock-workers would soon be in trouble, and even one without science fiction writers or ska musicians would clearly be a lesser place. It’s not entirely clear how humanity would suffer were all private equity CEOs, lobbyists, PR researchers, actuaries, telemarketers, bailiffs or legal consultants to similarly vanish. (Many suspect it might markedly improve.) Yet apart from a handful of well-touted exceptions (doctors), the rule holds surprisingly well.

Even more perverse, there seems to be a broad sense that this is the way things should be. This is one of the secret strengths of right-wing populism. You can see it when tabloids whip up resentment against tube workers for paralysing London during contract disputes: the very fact that tube workers can paralyse London shows that their work is actually necessary, but this seems to be precisely what annoys people. It’s even clearer in the US, where Republicans have had remarkable success mobilizing resentment against school teachers, or auto workers (and not, significantly, against the school administrators or auto industry managers who actually cause the problems) for their supposedly bloated wages and benefits. It’s as if they are being told “but you get to teach children! Or make cars! You get to have real jobs! And on top of that you have the nerve to also expect middle-class pensions and health care?”

If someone had designed a work regime perfectly suited to maintaining the power of finance capital, it’s hard to see how they could have done a better job. Real, productive workers are relentlessly squeezed and exploited. The remainder are divided between a terrorised stratum of the – universally reviled – unemployed and a larger stratum who are basically paid to do nothing, in positions designed to make them identify with the perspectives and sensibilities of the ruling class (managers, administrators, etc) – and particularly its financial avatars – but, at the same time, foster a simmering resentment against anyone whose work has clear and undeniable social value. Clearly, the system was never consciously designed. It emerged from almost a century of trial and error. But it is the only explanation for why, despite our technological capacities, we are not all working 3-4 hour days.

[marymosley]

Concept of Humanitarian Forensics in Legal System

ABSTRACT – The term “forensic science” refers to a systematic & coherent study of traces to address the question of Authentication, Identification, Classification & Reconstruction. It can also be explained as the amalgamation of various branches of science and application of scientific methods & techniques to matters under investigation and present an opinion in the court of law.

But forensic science can have a humanitarian role as well. Humanitarian forensic action is the application of forensic science to humanitarian action. During conflicts, disasters, other situations of violence and consequences of migration there are victims of violence including deceased or missing individuals. A priority of forensic science in the humanitarian space is the respectable management of the deceased and the resolution of missing cases. The identification of the individuals in a priority as families has a right to know whereabouts and fate of their relatives and the deceased have a right to the restoration of their identity after death. When people die during any natural calamities or during migration as stated earlier, their corpses must be dealt with respect and with dignity; and the remains for an unidentified individual must be looked for, revering and identification. Humanitarian functions in a way that it includes these tasks, for which the expertise and proficiency of forensic science come into play.

INTRODUCTION- Since the 1980s, the detailed scientific knowledge and application of forensics for disinterring and identification of the deceased have been introduced in a wide-scale investigation. For instance, the Argentina team of Forensic Anthropology (EAAF, Equipo Argentino de Antropologia Forense) is one of the precursors in this field and is currently operational globally. Following the probe after the conflict of the Balkans, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) focused on the library of evidence for war crime trials. Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) is another example of usage of forensics in relation to humanitarian work, and they have a similar focus on the documentation and collection of evidence for judicial prosecution in the hopefulness of accountability and answerability for the human rights violations.

Regarding the deceased, humanitarian priorities should not be looked independently from the judicial aspects of international humanitarian, human rights, or criminal laws. The investigation in mass fatalities, whether they aim at the prosecution of perpetrators, the identification of the victims, or both, depends on the collection of the same type of related data [e.g. excavation data, biological profile (approximate age, gender, stature), pathology and trauma analyses, etc.]. The International Criminal Court (ICC) is using forensic professionals for field scrutiny as part of their court lawsuits. Then the connoisseur of the respective discipline may impart expert opinion or instruction to the court of law for trials of genocide, war crimes or any crime against humankind. The angle of approach (judicial versus humanitarian) will depend on the mandate of the corporation, and influences which disciplines and specialities of forensic sciences will be used in such operations.

Since 2003, the International Committee for the red cross (ICRC) have been actively functioning with the local authorities and forensic practitioners in order to construct standardized techniques and practices and to enhance communication & cooperation arrangement, for dealing with all aspects of forensic humanitarian demands. The neutrality, independence and impartiality of the ICRC assist its work in the forensic humanitarian deed which is grounded in International Humanitarian Law (IHL) and guided by humanitarian standards.  Now active in more than 80 countries worldwide with a well-distinguished team (anthropologists, archaeologists, pathologist, odontologists, geneticists, etc), the forensic unit of ICRC helps in ensuring and making sure the smooth conduction of search and identification procedure.

The ICRC’s forensic provisions are revised to demands and establish a part of an integrated methodology to humanitarian action that looks into matter such as safety conditioning, lawful supervision, psychosocial sustenance, health care services, financial assistance, availability to potable water and apposite habitation, and lessening the humanitarian impact of weapon contamination. Let’s look deeper into some of the fields ICRC’s forensic expertise comes into play for legal aspect-

ARMED CONFLICT & WAR SURVIVORS- Under the guidance of international humanitarian act, the remnants of people who have deceased during armed disaccord must be moved with respect and needs to be properly managed. However, in a situation of dispute, it is often not likely to reacquire or decently manage the remnants of those who have succumbed to death, both inhabitants and soldiers. In many occasions, individuals have been detached from their peoples, have vanished or have expired without being recognized, and the whereabouts of their residues are unidentified. The survivor of the war may be reluctant to express anything about gone companion due to fear retaliation from the concerned authority. There is an increasing demand for forensic expertise, including ICRC, among State establishments and local practitioners, who need it to accomplish their commitments under humanitarian law with regards to managing dead bodies and the provision of reports and findings45 to bereaved families. Using a variety of forensic specialities – such as anthropology, archaeology, pathology, odontology (dental testing), trichology, forensic onychology and DNA analysis among the many other fields, the scientist tries to identify the unidentified.

CASE STUDY – In the Caucasus, the ICRC helps the families of missing persons in fulfilling their legal, economic and psychosocial needs.  At the same time, the ICRC coordinates with the concerned authorities to encourage the obligatory forensic capacity and develop mechanisms in order to improve communication, collaboration and coordination between the involved personnel mandated to clarify the fate of missing persons.

DISASTERS – After a disaster, natural or man-made, the remains of the deceased must be assembled in a timely manner, properly managed and, ideally, recognized. This is vital the families and communities affected. When local infrastructure has disintegrated, it can be particularly challenging. The ICRC stipulates material aid, as well as guidance and training, to local authorities and first responders for these details. The training and advice provided by the ICRC enables first responders to collect and record information that will increase the likelihood of recognizing the dead.

CASE STUDY – In Nepal, the ICRC works with first-aiders, the Nepalese Red Cross and national authorities to enhance disaster response and develop sustainable capacity, including in the management of human remains.

MIGRATION – Migrants who perish along migratory routes often remain anonymous and the task of managing their remnants & establishing their identities can overwhelm local forensic facilities. The ICRC co-ordinates with local authorities and forensic practitioners in order to develop standardized techniques and protocols, and to advance communication and cooperation strategies, for dealing with this issue.

CASE STUDY – In Mexico, the ICRC and the Mexican Red Cross make arrangements for protection and assistance – basic medical services, access to basic amenities such as potable water and sanitation, and services for reuniting families – to migrants originating in or crossing through that country. The ICRC also functions with Mexico’s national medico-legal services to design domestic procedures and protocols to improve the whole process concerned with the management and identification & documentation of remains, including those of migrants, in order to assist answers to their families.

CONCLUSION – Humanitarian forensic offers us an endless variety of tools and expertise in order to locate, search and identify the unidentified. But the humanitarian forensic scientists don’t always succeed in their ventures. Sometimes their exploration never attains any conclusion or say reaches a dead end. The fate and place of those missing always remains a mystery, an unresolved case. People inspite having a name given by their loved one’s called anonymous. In the best-case scenario, though, the difficult & tedious work that these scientists do, brings closure to families so they can start mourning over their loss and gone peoples.

REFERENCES

https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/forensic-archaeology-and- anthropology/0/steps/67917

https://theconversation.com/amp/humaitarian-forensic-scientists-trace-the-missing-identify-the-dead-and-comfort-the-living-115623

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/book/10.1002/9781119482062

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31110447/

https://ift.tt/38hrnOM Humanitarian Forensic-IOSR Journal

Author – APARNA DUBEY

(Intern, Department of Forensic Science and Criminal Investigation, Legal Desire Media & Insights)

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