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Home Page Introduction - March 1st, 2001

Lucy and Neandertal - January 1st, 2001

Most recent update to the file below:

May 5th, 2001

Paradigm from California, Volume I: Appendix III (circa 1983, 1998)

Written and Compiled by Neil R. Miller
(c) 1983-1998, San Francisco

Note:
To Reach the Home Page of this Website
and an index to the 50 slides and papers
that form the context for this document
click here for the text only home page
click here for the graphics home page

State of the Art

stardate: March 1st, 102001


Currently Relevant Files At This Web-site, Are As Follows.




Lucy and Neandertal --- Affection and Mathematics --- January 2001

The Silver Locket --- The Proposal (Acrobat *.PDF only)--- October 2000

Beyond the Wave --- The Warm Caress of Deep History --- November 1996

The Magic Sentence --- In Pursuit of a Simple Equation --- November 1999

Schema --- Science, Medicine, and Social Relations --- March 1985

Flying Blind --- The Politics of American Science --- May 2000

The Sky Buckle --- The Science of American Politics --- March 2001

Summary --- Science, Cognition and Frameworks --- June 1992

On Elections 2000 --- American Politics --- November 2000

Bibliography --- 120 Book Reviews --- 1978-1999

Autobiography --- Notes on Discovery --- March 1994

American Pearls --- 200 Word Summary --- July 2000

Jacob's Ladder

stardate: May 5th, 102001



10. 2001 - 100 words - The Sky Buckle. high level illumination

9. 2001 - 3,000 words - The Silver Locket. pearl

8. 2000 - 50,000 words - Lucy and Neandertal, Affection and Cognition. conversation

7. 2000 - 5,000 words - Flying Blind. fog

6. 1999 - 15,000 words - In Pursuit Of The Magic Sentence. magic

5. 1997 - 50,000 words - Bibliography. gridwork

4. 1996 - 12,000 words - Beyond The Wave. women

3. 1995 - 20,000 words - Web Site. politics

2. 1993 - 15,000 words - Summary. cognition

1. 1985 - 10,000 words - Schema. medicine


Beginning just above, are the ten major paradigm manuscripts available at this web-site in chronological order.

The Following lists all major paradigm manuscripts in order of importance.



1. The Silver Locket - 3,000 words - 2001


2. Everything else.

The Medusa And The Snail. More Notes of A Biology Watcher. ·°·°·
Bantam Books, New York, 1980. 146 Pages, $3.00.

Joshua S. Horn, MD

David King Dunaway

Thomas S. Kuhn

Kristin Linklater

Viola Klein

Supplementary Bibliography - 1986 - 1994

Riane Eisler

Marija Gimbutas

Geoffrey Ashe

Donald Johanson and Maitland Edey

Donald Johanson and James Shreeve

Delta Willis

Richard Leakey and Roger Lewin

Roger Lewin

Donald Johanson, Lenora Johanson, and Blake Edgar

Goran Burenhult (ed.)

John McCrone

Richard Dawkins

Lewis Thomas

John A. Paulos

Lawrence M. Krauss

John Bowlby

Mardi Jon Horowitz, M.D.

Christopher Simpson

Martin Gilbert

Russell Jack Smith

Christopher Simpson

Tom Tomorrow

Mark Zepezauer

Russ Bellant

Nigel Hamilton

Jeremy Holmes

John Bowlby, M.D.

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

Louise Armstrong

Keith Richards

Louise Armstrong

April Daniels and Carol Scott

E. Sue Blume

Sheila Sisk and Charlotte Foster Hoffman

Lenore Terr, M.D.

Peter Lee-Wright

Peter R. Breggin, M.D. and Ginger Ross Breggin

Gilberto Dimenstein

Connie Guberman and Margie Wolfe (eds.)

Patricia Politzer

Marjorie Agosin (ed.)

Alicia Partnoy (ed.)

Jacobo Timerman

Alicia Partnoy

Margaret Hooks

Caipora Women's Group

Marjorie Agosin

Nawal el Sa'adawi

Jill Radford and Diana E.H. Russell, (ed.)

Louise Malette and Marie Chalouh (eds.)

Freidoune Sahebjam

Anne Llewellyn Barstow

Selma R. Williams and Pamela Williams Adelman

Kate Millett

Darius M. Rejali

Diana E. H. Russell

Christopher Simpson

Catharine A. MacKinnon

____________________________

Note: For the purposes of this bibliography, for some books on this page and the next, I used the author's academic title rather than the sales title.

Alice Vachss

Judith Rowland

Linda A. Fairstein

Susan Estrich *

Kate Shanahan

Peggy Reeves Sanday

Alexandra Stiglmayer (ed.)

Margaret T. Gordon and Stephanie Riger

Emilie Buchwald, Pamela R. Fletcher, and Martha Roth (eds.)

Emma Goldman

Cecilie Hoigard & Liv Finstad

Joan J. Johnson

Lisa Louis

Anne Allison

Leslie McRay with Ted Schwarz

Saundra Pollock Sturdevant and Brenda Stoltzfus

Jess Wells

Sue Gronewold

Gilbert Hernandez and Jaime Hernandez

Jan Goodwin

Peoples Translation Service

Yayori Matsui

Emily Hancock

Max Sugar, M.D., (ed.)

Susanna Kaysen

Fred Lawrence Guiles

Marilyn Monroe

Joyce Nicholson

Jeffrey L. Geller and Maxine Harris

Arlie Russell Hochschild

Fulang Lo

Rebecca E. Klatch

Ashley Montagu

Todd Gitlin

Holly Near with Derk Richardson

William D. Haywood

Philip S. Foner

Anthony Bimba

Len De Caux

Melvyn Dubofsky

Tomiko Higa

Dorothy Gilman

Katherine Paterson

Scott O'Dell

Zia *
Dell Publishing Company, New York, 1976, 144 pages

First and Foremost:

The Chalice and the Blade by Riane Eisler

A Secure Base by John Bowlby

Then, after that:

Lucy by Donald Johanson and Maitland Edey

Against the Current by William D. Haywood

The Splendid Blond Beast by Christopher Simpson

The Assault on Truth by Jeffrey Mason

Rocking the Cradle of Sexual Politics by Louise Armstrong

Sex Crimes by Alice Vachss

Backstreets by Cecilie Hoigard & Liv Finstad

Tender Mercies by Keith Richards

Child Slaves by Peter Lee-Wright

And They Call It Help by Louise Armstrong

Witchcraze by Anne Llewellyn Barstow

Fear in Chile by Patricia Politzer

Tune in Tomorrow by Tom Tomorrow

JFK: Reckless Youth by Nigel Hamilton

Also:

Anything written by John Bowlby

Anything written by Louise Armstrong

Anything written by Christopher Simpson

Any talk given by Michael Parenti

Any performance by The San Francisco Mime Troupe

Any cartoon by Tom Tomorrow

Anything at all by Pete Seeger

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Special thanks to: Modern Times Bookstore, Old Wives Tales Bookstore, and UCSF Medical Center Bookstore in San Francisco for, at one time or another over the past twenty years, stocking each of the books in these bibliographies, which, for the most part, is how I found them.

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1995/1996 Bibliography Update

(December 1, 1996)

top

The above bibliographic text and bibliography were last amended in mid-1995 and have essentially not been updated since then. In the meantime, between mid-1995 and the present (November, 1996), I have discovered about 100 additional books of particular relevance to this paradigm, and managed to read about 35. Listed immediately below are my 'picks' from this new list, and following that, the full listings and citations.

Please Note: This section is under construction, and the listings as well as the general organization are not yet completed. Planned also are one-line descriptions or comments . . .

Please Note Also: With the exception of some of the psychiatry texts in the first section of the bibliography, and a very few others throughout, all of the books listed in these bibliographies are ones that I found to be very useful, and to-the-point of this paradigm, and, for the most part entirely readable as well. In other words, this entire bibliography is the "recommended reading" list for grasping this paradigm. Still and all, there were some books that struck me, given my situation, as particularly illuminating and enlightening. Highlighting those is not meant to detract from the others that are not highlighted. I found each book in these bibliographies, with very few exceptions, to have a profound and to-the-point story to tell.

Recommendations from among the most recently discovered works (1995-1996).

I've found these selections to be new, highly relevant to this paradigm, and generally fascinating.

Well, by my lights, herein are about two dozen really excellent books, in approximately this order:

First of all

Beverly Allen

John D. Barrow

Laurence Leamer

Thanh-dam Truong

Mike A. Males

Zohl De Ishtar

Margaret Thaler Singer and Janja Lalich

Books Read, January to December, 1997:



January

• When Women Rebel, 1985, by Carol Andreas
  

• The Making and Breaking of Affectional Bonds, 1979, by John Bowlby
  
• Killing Hope, 1995, by William Blum
  
• Price of Honor, 1994, by Jan Goodwin

Carol Andreas

I remember when I'd almost finished the book, I was suddenly inspired to write the "configuration" section of the Schema/Backbone paper, the flagship paper at this web-site, and it was the first new section I've written for that paper in quite a long time. That section notes that things are made up of the high level assembly - the "configuration" - of low level raw materials, rather than things being made up of the low level raw materials - the atoms and molecules, by amount or weight. It is that "assembly", the "configuration of atoms", not the atoms themselves, that constitutes things of value to humans.

I was kind of pleased with that new section of the "Backbone" paper that I wrote right after reading this book. It's not the first time I thought of this matter of "the 'assembly' of the atoms" - the way the atoms are configured, and what it takes to configure them, being the things of value - rather than the atoms themselves being the things of value; I'd originally written a version of that idea in a section of the paradigm twelve years ago, but this book, 'Glass, Paper, Beans' did seem to focus my mind on the subject, in perhaps a more to-the-point way, and I'm sure it must have salted in some new elements, so I am appreciative of Leah Cohen for it. Thank you.

PS. Speaking of 'salting in': . . . All day, I've been thinking of annotation notes to write regarding Jeremy Holmes' "Attachment Theory" and Aljean Harmetz's "The Making of Casablanca", both of which I finished just today - my mind buzzing with Holmes' rendition of the nature of affectional bonding, and spinning with Bogey and Ingrid at the airport . . . but when I sat down to write, it was the above note about Leah's book that came to mind . . . I wonder if there's a connection . . .

Magda Denes

April

Alice Echols

An important, core history of 'the Sixties'; this book is often difficult and confusing (for me, anyway), as so much of the discussions that Echols' reports are "perception-based" (see footnote 7), but I'm finding it personally fascinating, riveting actually, as it (finally) illuminates events and currents that I eagerly followed in print at the time, but didn't really understand, as I was totally excluded from these circles when it was happening. Now I get it, a little more, anyway.

But it does seem like they never touched the issues of accuracy, integrity, logical levels and mathematics, archeology, psychiatry, the specifics of how things are supposed to be, formal science, and a host of other decisively central stuff, just like everyone else didn't touch that stuff either in those days, or since for that matter.

It seems like the earliest pioneers - mid to late sixties; the Westside group in Chicago, the DC women's group, and later Redstockings in New York - had some of the best clues, but somehow, every time, so much of the overall women's movement theories seemed to veer off, into a kind of one-against-the-other overall framework, into "the dominant paradigm" as they say, albeit well-disguised, time and time again . . .

Enduring and poignant images of Marilyn Webb being heckled from the SDS stage "Take her off the stage and f__k her . . .", and later, back at the women's group office, being expelled for elitism, Shulamith Firestone exasperated beyond words at constantly being thrown back to square one, the Gloria Steinem row . . . the thinking and actions of scores of individual women, and groups of women talking, writing, pondering, acting, "Notes From The First Year", lots of things I remember vividly, things I remember vaguely, and lots and lots of things I'd never heard about at all, this book covers the major ground at a critical eight-year moment in American history . . . excellent and comprehensive documentation . . .

In the end, I found this book very exciting, but . . . it looks to me like the issues being hashed out twenty-five and thirty years ago are still unresolved, still waiting to be resolved . . . as if the serious "conversation-about-the-conversation" (my term), never really happened quite well enough, if it happened really at all . . .

"The Personal is Political" was stated again and again, but just what that means, in terms of the sort of cooperative overall change in societal dynamics that everyone seeks, was never defined in a relevant enough manner, best I can tell. By my lights, it's almost as if, in terms of theory anyway, "the clocks stopped around 1972" (my phrase), and somehow have not really rolled on very much since then.

Frankly, that seems true of a lot of "high-level" "basic science" type fields . . . nobody's topped Lewis Thomas (biology, 1972), John Bowlby (interactive health, 1968), Paul Watzlawick (communication, 1967), Salvador Minuchin (hierarchy, 1967), Marija Gimbutas (1964), and later, Riane Eisler (humanity as matrifocal) . . . anyway, the 1960's, the most important advance in the logical level of science since the turn of the century, best I can tell . . . nothing even close since . . .

If the imbecile capitalist financiers and technicians had one ounce of brains (which they obviously don't), but if they did, they would back their rabid monsters off of the Clintons and let The President and Mrs. Clinton do their stuff . . . It is liberalism that produces logical levels of scientific advance; on the other hand, political reaction produces nothing - it merely consumes what the liberals produced the last time around . . .

Even to the reactionaries, I would note: "You know, you don't get to rape it later, if you don't allow the liberals to produce the gridwork in the first place . . ."

Well, I suppose what the reactionaries are most afraid of is, "just one more round of Genuine liberalism, and the reactionaries are scared they'll be found out, once and for all, scared that they'll never get it back . . . "

It seems as if they worry that, in just one more Genuine round of liberalism, the whole system of horror, deception, and political-reaction could be exposed in a way that dissolves that entire right-wing System, right to the bone of its dishonesty core, and therein bars the return to power of the reactionary persuasion, forever.

In my opinion, they have damn good reason to worry about that . . . it's exactly what I have in mind . . .

Well, back to "Daring to Be Bad", at any rate, for me personally, the conversations reported in Echols' book, from all those years ago . . . feel like just last week . . . and (sigh) feel like right now . . . a progressive movement, still waiting in the wings . . . over-ripe for a new round of geometric advancement . . .

Mikiso Hane (editor and translator)

Hillary Carlip

John W. Dower

This seems to be a major blockbuster . . . analyzes the profoundly vicious racial propaganda directed at the American people regarding the Japanese during the Second World War . . . I was born in 1944, and, although I never realized it, in reading the first two chapters, I was absolutely stunned at how much of this imagery I picked up and internalized, as so much of it was still present when I was growing up . . . I thought I was immune to this sort of stuff, but you can't contradict what you don't even know you've absorbed . . . let that be a lesson to me . . .

also details the anti-Western racial propaganda of the Japanese . . . in the Japanese propaganda, American "individuality" was evidence of a beast-like 'dog-eat-dog' nature, using movies of gangster and Western shoot-'em-ups as examples . . . and clips of American treatment of black people . . . meanwhile, the Americans depicted the Japanese concern for group and community as evidence of a mindless, fanatical, automaton-like nature, deserving of extermination, using Japanese movies to make the point . . .

Early on, in the anti-Japanese propaganda draft scripts that the U.S. War Department solicited, the Japanese people were depicted as under the thumb of repressive militarists who were responsible for the war, but these scripts were rejected in favor of a propaganda policy depicting the Japanese people as uniformly savage . . . all paving the way for the merciless bombing of Japanese civilian cities and that ultimate, deranged war crime, Hiroshima . . . and, a profoundly brutal "take no prisoners" strategy which prevailed in much of the Pacific war . . .

Although in the U.S. war films regarding Europe, it was often not the Germans, but the Nazis who were depicted as the enemy, with references to "good Germans", but in regard to the Japanese, there was no such provision . . . every Japanese was depicted as the embodiment of the "Yellow Peril" . . .

For the American propagandists, this was a good 'ole fashioned, All-American Race War . . .

I personally, have much respect for President Roosevelt, but this one does not speak well for him. Not at all, not at all. Mr. Roosevelt, hopefully unwittingly, set up the climate for Hiroshima; not good. Perhaps he was just naive, but when it comes to Franklin Roosevelt, married to Eleanor Roosevelt, that's hard to swallow. In the current day, regarding immigrants, and poor people, and especially regarding workers, indigenous peoples, and women throughout the third world, Mr. Clinton, BEWARE.

Sure, Roosevelt (following Churchill's plan) helped set up Pearl Harbor, a "little deception", expedient; maybe it seemed ok at the time - someone had to stop the US Nazis in their tracks, ok. But my guess is, he had a heart attack in his grave when those atom bomb gas chambers from the sky were dropped on Japan. Worse still, when those SS legions were brought in to lead US policy councils after the war (see Christopher Simpson's "Blowback", listed elsewhere on this page). In politics, like in psychiatry or science (see next review), "little" deceptions, when they involve whole classes of people or populations, sooner rather than later, always come home, big time . . .

At the present moment, sure, everyone loves a "strong" economy, but watch out what you set up in the course of it . . . when you're gone, all the worst of it will come slamming home, Hard. If Mr. Roosevelt could speak, he could tell you that . . .

Back to the book though: Dower reports much of the historical background of the war against Japan, and some that too, was new to me. With all I knew of the European war, it never occurred to me that, in South Asia and the near Pacific, the Japanese were not invading sovereign countries; they were expelling Europeans from long, tormentuous Western colonial rule. Churchill was said to be more traumatized by the fall of Malaysia than by the Battle of Britain . . . the American rulers more traumatized by the fall of the Philippines than by Pearl Harbor . . . the French lost Indochina, the Dutch, Indonesia . . .

Apparently the Asian people were alerted to the fact that Asians could defeat Westerners, leading, presumably unintentionally, to the formation of armies of national liberation all across the area, including of course . . . the Viet Minh in Vietnam . . . Was Hiroshima, in part "pay back" for awakening the peoples of Asia . . . ? My guess is, probably yes . . .

And of course, on all those savagely contested Pacific Islands . . . there were indigenous people living - and dying by the tens, even hundreds of thousands - under those bombs.

I learned of this book from footnotes in Zohl De Ishtar's "Daughters of The Pacific", itself a brilliant study of the peoples of the Pacific Ocean in the current day . . . 'War Without Mercy' is an obscure book, but it should not be . . . very highly recommended . . .

May

John Bowlby, MD

June

Javier Giraldo, S.J.

Joan Holden (playwright)

Written with Gregory R. Tate and Kate Chumley, with some assistance from yours truly, and directed by Michael Sullivan. Starring Michael Oosterom, Velina Brown, Conrad Cimarra, Ed Holmes, Keiko Shimasato, and Amos Glick; Approx. 1 hours, performed three times per week all summer in the parks of the San Francisco Bay Area (Click here for the sfmt home page, or here for the schedule, or here for the program notes)

This isn't really a book that I've read, but I have been going to Mime Troupe shows since the early 1970's, including seeing about ten or twelve performances of each of the last five summer plays, so I thought I'd include this play in the book list.

Over the years, some Mime Troupe plays are about local events, some are about history, some are taken from classic plays, and some grope more or less directly at the high level system of things. This year's seems to be more of the latter category. One of the newspaper critics seemed to think it was less focused than plays on more local themes, but I myself kinda like that 'groping at the high level' stuff.

Anyway, this summer's performance is about some kids (well, forgive me, in their late twenties anyway), living their life, but "going nowhere", "killing time", and also several corporate types, destroying the planet, and apparently enjoying themselves at it. First, we're introduced to the kids' housemate adventures, and then to the corporate partners in crime, way above . . . and then they all find their way to the great campgrounds (Bohemian Grove) and have a bit of a conversation, Mime Troupe style . . . included also is a fascinating rendition of Mr. Clinton.

And, as always with the Mime Troupe, there's a representative of " . . . The Maaaain Branch in the sky . . ." (a line from an old Mime Troupe play) threading through, "holding the pencil-point down", so to speak. This year, the part is wonderfully played by Velina Brown. All very well done, sparkling, and lots of fun.

By the way, for persons unfamiliar, the name "Mime", as a name, is almost an albatross, and derives from only their first season back in the sixties; since then they've intended it to mean - a most energetic and vocal 'reflection of life'.

Anyway, their dialogue is ace - succinct, clear, rapid fire, and often hilarious, as are the songs as well. And for some reason, from way back, I've always found the staging, and, really, the acting in particular, to be extraordinarily attractive and compelling.

I've always thought of The San Francisco Mime Troupe as the best political theater that I know about anywhere, particularly considering its amazing consistency over thirty-five years. (I do remember that I saw Michele Linfante and the Lilith Theater do a couple of seasons that were totally incredible, back around 1977, and maybe have seen a few others here and there but the Mime Troupe is the only ones that I know of that do it on target, always at this high professional level, year after year, decade after decade.)

So anyway, if you're in San Francisco in the summertime, or near an SFMT tour performance during the year, the 'resonance' from these folks is always very strong and very helpful. And very entertaining.

Claire M. Renzetti

Donald Spoto

August

Carlos E. Sluzki, MD and Donald C. Ransom (editors)

Note to the reader: I have decided to include here a 4,500 word essay on the causes of schizophrenia, which occurred to me upon rereading this book, and that I deem to be of political significance. For those who wish to skip to a shorter, 1,000 word summary of this matter, click here; for those who wish to skip this item entirely, click here.

I initially read this book in early 1983, some fourteen years ago, when I was completely immersed in these subjects - "family therapy", "double bind", "human communications", and all that stuff - and I've long since integrated all that I then figured out into "Paradigm from California", but it's been almost ten years since I seriously read anything about these sorts of dynamics. For some reason though, I almost idly picked this book off my bookshelf last week and, bemused, started reading it, this time, from the beginning (last time around, I only read the main articles - about half the book - and passed over Sluzki's commentaries and other apparently tangential materials).

This time though, by about page twenty, I was saying to myself, ' . . . gosh, I was bored to tears with this book once already, why the hell am I boring myself by reading it again . . .' But there was something about it . . . maybe it's the pretty, mustard yellow hardcover binding, with the electric blue lettering that got to me . . . can't tell exactly . . . I'm a sucker for well-bound hardcover books . . . But then again, Carlos Sluzki, and also Gregory Bateson, are a couple of the most boring, opaque writers I've ever had occasion to study. Sluzki is also someone I personally had trouble with all those years ago, when he was supervising a therapist in Palo Alto that I was seeing for a while. But anyway, despite all that, after reading a few pages of this book last week, for some reason, I decided to keep going, and sat down to read it, this time, cover to cover and word for word. Sure enough, I think I'm seeing something new, something currently relevant regarding paradigm issues (and personal issues) that I'm currently working on, something major.

First, what's the "Double Bind". It starts with Gregory Bateson. He was a famous high level British scientist (incidentally, Bateson was married to Margaret Mead, the famous anthropologist, but that's another story altogether).

Anyway, Bateson knew a lot about mathematics, and anthropology, and schizophrenia, and around 1952 (forty-five years ago), he got together with several American scientists in Palo Alto, California (including Don D. Jackson, MD, Jay Haley, John Weakland, Richard Fry, and later, Paul Watzlawick), and together they began a project to determine if there was some connection between modes of human communication and the causes of the mental illness known as schizophrenia. (I think Margaret T. Singer and Virginia Satir were also involved with that crowd for awhile, at least tangentally.)

But anyway, the project started with a grant from The Rockefeller Foundation, and in 1956, the team published what became a very famous paper identifying a communications phenomenon they called "The Double Bind" as decisively present in the families of severely disturbed young people suffering from acute or chronic mental illness.

Briefly, the Double Bind is defined in the following way: The parents set up a context for communication with their child which is basically contradictory. The classic example is the parents insist on being viewed by their child as loving parents, while giving powerful, but never discussed signs that they are uncaring towards their child. "We love you" are the words, but 'we don't love you' are the actions and the signs. That's the overall - high level - but covert message that their children get. At the low level, the parents insist that the child love them back, but, again, the parents reject signs of affection from their child, while scolding the child for being unloving.

So that's two of the elements of the "double bind" - 1. High level message: we don't love you but we say that we do, and 2. Low level message: You must love us/keep your distance. A couple of pretty nasty contradictions for a small child to sort out, since he's just little, and is totally dependent on his or her parent's love.

The third element is that the child cannot walk away from such confusion, as he is attached and entirely dependent on his or her parents - that is, the child cannot "leave the field", and the forth element is that the child cannot discuss these contradictions and confusions, for if he does he is exposing the parents as being bad parents, and dishonest, and if he attempts to expose that, he will be severely punished, one way or another.

Finally, the fifth element is that this is not a one-time or occasional event, but rather is the whole ongoing mode of the parent/child relations in "schizophrenic families".

Again:

1. We show you we don't love you, but you better believe we do (high level context);
2. You better love us, but if you do, we'll push you away (low level instructions);
3. There's no way out of this one;
4. Better not talk about it or we'll really smack you hard;
5. It just goes on and on and on;
6. All at a formative stage of the child's development.

What happens, is that the child's mind is formed in an ongoing state of bewilderment and confusion, with no ability to figure out what is real and what is unreal, can't quite grasp what a person's statements actually mean, develops a chronic panic, anxiety, hallucinations, rage, and then psychotic - even violent - episodes, and begins round after round of incarceration in mental institutions.

(Of course, in the institutions, the "doctors" replicate the double-bind, in force: i.e. "we're-here-to-help-you/we're-here-to-make-more-money-by-keeping-you-crazy-and-protecting-your-parents", etc. etc., but that's another story . . . )

Anyway, back at the ranch in Palo Alto, all the several scientists on Gregory Bateson's team in the early 1950's were either psychologists or psychiatrists who had worked extensively with schizophrenics and had recorded and studied many families of schizophrenics, and they all came to the conclusion that this dynamic of "schizophrenic communication" in families was a leading, or the leading cause of this sort of mental illness. Of the hundreds of anecdotes they'd accumulated, they give one exemplary anecdote in their original 1956 paper, which was widely quoted thereafter; it's about a young man who was confined in a psychiatric hospital:

"A young man who had fairly well recovered from an acute schizophrenic episode was visited in the hospital by his mother. He was glad to see her and impulsively put his arm around her shoulders, whereupon she stiffened. He withdrew his arm and she asked, "Don't you love me any more?" He then blushed, and she said, "Dear, you must not be so easily embarrassed and afraid of your feelings." The patient was able to stay with her only a few minutes more and following her departure he assaulted an aide and was put in the tubs."

For those unfamiliar with psychiatric literature, you should know that it is important to not to make too much of a single anecdote, especially regarding a single incident. Such things are designed to show a general illustration, and are not designed to be a detailed description of a syndrome. Still and all, it gives a sense of the subtlety and power of this sort of interaction.

She comes to see him, which is an overt statement that she cares. When he touches her, she recoils, a far more powerful (covert, unstated, overall, high level) sign that she doesn't like him. Then she accuses him of not loving her as shown by the fact that he withdrew from her. He is unable to sort out what the hell is going on, and becomes so agitated that he has to leave the room, confirming her charge, or does it . . . or what the hell did she mean ? In a rage, he assaults the next authority figure that he sees, and has to be restrained . . . all further confirming how crazy he is . . . (!!!)

The essential problem, really, is not a matter of there being a simple contradiction - a simple contradiction is common, normal occurrence, that the human mind is designed to cope with. The essential problem is that there is no continuity between the "high level" information, that is, the all-powerful, overall, but covert, context of the situation - no continuity between that and the low level instructions given.

The way life works, you have to have an accurate idea of the overall context of your situation, in order to develop a realistic view of your choices of action within that context, and the consequences of any one of those choices.

To use a very crude metaphor, if you can't tell if you live in the mountains or by the sea, you're going to spend your life falling off cliffs or drowning, and never being able to tell exactly what the hell is going on.

You have to learn how to understand the terrain, in order to know what you can and cannot do in it.

But when these kids are growing up, they are barred from learning how to understand the terrain.

According to the writers of the 1956 paper, Bateson et. al, the schizophrenic's mind was formed in a situation where they learned that there was no solid terrain; no matter how they attempted to deal with the "terrain" (their relationship to their primary attachment figure), they were punished, and so they never learned how to judge what the context of their life was. Do they care for me, or do they want me to go away - no clues, and punishment any which way you turn. Bewilderment, confusion, betrayal, psychosis, et voila, schizophrenia.

Anyway, I should mention that there are some qualifications regarding this matter. For one thing, back in those days, psychologists were attempting to prove things through laboratory experiments. Thus, many laboratory studies were employed to attempt to prove that "double binds" cause schizophrenia. Unfortunately, all the laboratory experiments (maybe fifteen or so that were tried) came up empty-handed. Some said that this proved the double-bind theory was all bunk. But others (including me) say that you can't exactly confine a child in a laboratory for a couple of years and keep double-binding him to see if he eventually becomes schizophrenic. Not exactly ethical, if you know what I mean.

The best they could do was give some volunteers a bunch of confusing questions to see if they would then exhibit signs of the mental illness. But that's never going to even nearly approximate the important conditions leading to the illness.

A second qualification to keep in mind is that a little bit, just a little double-binding, might not be such a bad thing. I mean, a little uncertainty, sometimes, about the way the world is, can cause you to have to look at things "from outside" the context of your life. That can lead to some serious, very useful creativity. But, BUT, BUT!!!, a whole childhood full of that, or an ongoing situation at all, or at crucial stages of life, or imbedded in some primary relationships, or under traumatic stress, or during times of other stress when you need certainty and support - in those situations "schizophrenic communications" can and often does lead to horrifying mental situations, including lifelong mental crippling, self-destructive behavior, even criminal behavior, and, very much, suicide. Very very bad stuff to happen to a kid. An ugly situation.

So anyway, what's all this have to do with "Paradigm from California", which is essentially a political paradigm, designed to solve the political and social problems for the whole world. Ok. That's the part that I find a little bit new, with this current reading of the book.

First of all, I find it fascinating that the original grant for Bateson's project, back in 1952, was from The Rockefeller Foundation. Rockefeller, the old John D. of 19th century robber-baron fame, was the guy who was in love with the ability to "communicate" in such a way as to rob other people 'till they dropped - Native Americans, laborers, politicians, and anyone else he could strip of their resources, their land, their wealth, or their labor or other power. I think the famous quote was something like: 'I will pay more for an employee's ability to communicate, than any other ability', or something very close to that.

Little wonder that his heirs would be most interested in Gregory Bateson's project to refine the field of human communications ever more sharply. But when Mr. Bateson's project began to get close to actually, publicly exposing the whole sick, schizophrenia-producing "double bind" dynamic, Rockefeller withdrew funding, I think in 1954; public exposure is not something Rockefeller is inclined to pay for. Macy's, the famous sales organization, then took up the slack for a little while, and backed the next phase. But, my guess is, Bateson and Jackson (Don D. Jackson, MD, the other heavyweight) were warned - 'don't get too close'.

Sure enough, thereafter, while the discoverers of the double-bind made vague, one-line allusions to the general applicability of their discovery beyond mother/child relations, regarding social, institutional, and political implications, their allusions remained just that - a line or two vaguely mentioned at the end of this paper or that, nothing more.

Thereafter, in the project itself, mama was the big bad-guy honcho, and the original core project never really went much beyond that.

Indeed, for the next twenty-five years, "The Double Bind", and the paradoxes therein derived, became the foundation of half of the entire, huge, "Family Therapy" school of psychology and psychotherapy, generally known as "Strategic Family Therapy".

(The other half of the "Family Therapy" field - which is the one I preferred - was headed up by Salvador Minuchin of Philadelphia, who focused on healthy hierarchical family arrangements, and healthy boundaries between family members, and went by the name of "Structural Family Therapy", but that's another story entirely.)

Anyway, the point is, the Double Bind idea was never, to my knowledge, systematically applied, in the large scale way it should have been, to analysis of how the corporations and their institutions manage to strip bare the world's entire population and resources, while convincing the billions suffering under starvation and torture that it's really their own fault. Obviously, curing that problem is where the theory should have gone next, but, surprise, no surprise, it didn't. The foundations, academia, and the professionals just didn't seem to be interested - I wonder why . . . (sarcastic; I don't really wonder why . . . ).

So anyway, Paradigm from California. This is what occurs to me:

First: It is an obvious fact of life that this bioecosystem operates on a singular reality system, in which illusions play a mostly, but not always, helpful role. When something is true, it has the properties of being consistent with everything else that's true, accessible via anyone's cognitive mind, constant for all time, and the same for everyone. (See my paper "The Nature of Truth" at this site.)

1. At the high level, at the overall context level, the allegedly sophisticated view projected by the powers that be, is that "there's no real, constant, solid truth", that everything is just the ever-changing perception of the strongest killer around, and whoever can project their perception the strongest, that is, those with the most power to destroy, starve, maim, and kill, must be the ones who really know the truth. In terms of the way this bioecosystem is actually structured, this has nothing to do with reality, but this "no-real-truth" imbecility is the projection oozing from every pore of academia, the foundations, the media, entertainment, corporate life, and everywhere else that the corporate and financial vipers can get their filthy hands on.

2. Everyone operates on the idea (necessarily, by the nature of being human) that they're supposed to know what's true. When a person says they think something to be true, they're supposed to look like they know what they're talking about. But if you actually let on that you actually think what you're saying is accurate, you are informed, by subtle but extremely powerful, life-threatening conversational conventions that you are some sort of arrogant, egotistical, pompous fool, who ought to be a humble, humility-filled person, because there really is no real truth to begin with.

Thus:

1. Operate on the basis of actual reality; there is no "real" reality (high level context).

2. Speak the truth, but remember, you will be superseded by whoever has the power to starve you out, or starve out those you're talking to, so you better not actually count on knowing anything (low level instructions).

3. You can't leave the field, because the deranged, laughing imbeciles who run the corporations, control finance, employment, distribution of merchandise for small business, the entire media and entertainment industry including what everyone talks about every day (social life), publishing, most professional contracts, academia, medicine, the law, and just about every other aspect of daily life for almost everyone. So you can't leave the field; it's everywhere.

4. You can't really discuss this matter of truth in the context of everyday discussion, because everyone's so scared of being exposed as a bullshit artist, that they'll go to any means to stop you, including accusing you of being "philosophical" (meaning nothing is concrete), or a bore, or driving people crazy, or being cult-like, or playing word games, or some such. In fact, you could wind up getting so isolated that you "fall-out-of-the-loop", and then things can get really crazy. So this whole matter of singular-truth/no-real-truth remains effectively undiscussed in the general popular discourse.

5. This dynamic goes on and on - it pervades everything from the early teenage years on to old age - at school, at work, in families, in professional life, in media, in entertainment - for most people, everywhere, unbroken.

Again:

1. Know reality; there is no reality;
2. Speak the truth; nothing is true;
3. Can't get away from this one;
4. People get nasty when you try to talk about it;
5. It goes on and on; blankets a person's entire adult life.
6. Formative in school; formative on the job; formative in social life, formative everywhere.

The effect is to leave the population in a constant state of bewilderment, uncertainty, unsure of the value of anything, no clues as to the value of their work, their skills, their time, their mind, their sexuality, or anything else, unable to tell context from content, unable to tell the truth of even the simplest political, social, medical, or any other life and death issues; not really understanding the "terrain" of life, easily manipulated, and especially for the most oppressed (the vast majority of the world) in a constant state of being ripped-off, stripped-down, and, of primary importance, self-blaming to boot.

In short, that whole dynamic stops, blocks, everyone from accurately figuring out anything, leaving just about everyone in a state of "believing" or "believing in" and following whichever threatening leader, high and low, that offers not to hurt them and offers some morsel of local protection. Leaves everyone in a state of bewilderment, glued-up cognition, and cluelessness especially regarding the basic issues of overall life survival.

Now I ask you, is that an archetype case of "The Double Bind" as discovered by Bateson et al. The schizophrenia-producing, uncertainty-producing, rage-producing, toxin-producing, self-destructive - on the grand scale - producing 'double bind'? "Know-the-truth/can't-know-the-truth", "speak-the-truth/there's-no-truth-to-speak" . . . quite an insanity producing mess.

And that's not all. There are other insanely preposterous "high level, contextual absurdities" that are enforced with equality disastrous and large-scale suicidal results.

Combing that out, and curing those society-wide and world-wide "double-binds" is where that theory should have gone forty years ago, and where it should go now. But you can bet your sweet life that neither The Rockefeller Foundation, nor anyone else connected to those imbeciles who run the world of finance and the corporations would allow one thin dime towards that sort of research.

Unless they could co-opt it of course, in the service of making the situation worse. Only under those circumstances, of course, would they weigh in with big bucks. Of course.

Oh well. Onward.

--- Neil R. Miller, August 6th, 1997

Further notes on this matter - August 29th, 1997 -

Thinking about it all after completing a rereading of this book - thinking about the "Double Bind" and the origins of schizophrenia - and putting together what I've read from Piaget, Lorenz, Russell, Bowlby, Kuhn, Sullivan, Singer, Metcalf, as well as Bateson, Watzlawick, Haley, Sluzki, and many others including my own work in Chapters 4 and 6 of the "Paradigm", I would summarize the causes of schizophrenia as follows:

The ability to understand the distinction between 'one-individual-element-among-many-elements-within-a-system'; understanding the distinction between that and "a unified system of things", is a basic ability that every human being has, and that develops, physiologically, that is, that "grows in", slowly, from the genetic code, at around the age of seven.

This ability, to understand context, to develop an understanding of an entire system of things, as different from individual things within a system, is basic to the operations of every older child and adult.

This distinction, between grasping and operating within a whole governing system, and simply seeing a single thing within a system, is a distinction that everyone makes, however unconsciously, although very few people seem to be conscious of this crucial distinction, or able to articulate just what that distinction is.

At any rate, the ability to make such a distinction - again, between a whole system of operation, and a single thing within a system - does come on line, neurologically, at about the age of seven.

Like many other 'mechanisms' in the body, notably for example, the attachment mechanism (which first strongly develops at about the age of two), like many other such bodily mechanisms, there is what is called "a sensitive period", during which time the child first learns to use the newfound ability.

Regarding the logical levels "mechanism", during the first years of its development, it is important that there be some sort of specific behavioral context presented to a child - a system of consistent, I'll repeat that, a system of consistant and clearly defined rules, a setting that makes sense, a consistent context for the child to operate within.

If, during the "sensitive period" regarding the development of an understanding of context, the child has a consistent overall context to operate within, he or she develops the ability to grasp and understand context, to grasp and understand overall rules, and the like.

This doesn't mean that he or she will forever be "locked into" whatever specific set of rules are operating in childhood - far from it. It only means that the child will thereafter be able to easily understand context, and in fact, will not be overly confused when rules and contexts change, later in life.

However, if, during that "sensitive period" for first learning about context - say from about the age of six to about the age of nine - if through that several year period, the child is constantly forbidden from understanding the system he or she is supposed to behave within, if during that time, no matter what he or she does, they're wrong, no matter what he tries, he is punished, each time he thinks he understands what he's supposed to do, he's slapped down, then his ability to understand context altogether is damaged, is harmed.

Thenceforward, into adulthood, he may well be able to adjust to a particular context, if there is great consistency, but should that context change, i.e. loss of an attachment figure, the breakup of a relationship, a change of job, a change of city, a national political change, a change of climate of various sorts, a change of culture, then, the person is at high risk for a "schizophrenic episode", "an inability to understand the new context". That is, the person will experience an "episode" of inability to understand the overall context within which they are living.

If the child did not, during the few years of "sensitive period" for learning about context, if the child was not given a consistent overall context for their behavior and their life at that time, then the child and adult, will, forever after, have far more difficulty grasping context altogether, particularly in times of change and stress.

So, why would parents fail to present a constant context for a child to live within? For one thing, their own lives may be fraught with inconsistency and uncertainty. For another thing, they may be living some sort of "double life"; living outwardly one way - honest and upstanding - and in reality another way, deceitful and criminal. Perhaps overtly according to one moral code, and covertly according to another. Perhaps there is a secrecy problem regarding political repression, or regarding survival in the world of corporate or financial duplicity. Perhaps there is some sort of constant emotional turmoil such that no one ever knows "which end is up", so to speak. There are lots of conditions that can breed the sort of inconsistency for a child, such that the condition known as "schizophrenia" can develop.

Again, some amount of inconsistency and confusion in childhood can turn out to be a helpful thing. After all, it is often pointed out that, some ability to "step outside" the current context of one's circumstance can, under some limited circumstances, lead to the greatest large-scale discoveries in science, art, medicine, and even politics.

But But, BUT, acute schizophrenia is a serious, life-damaging and life-threatening illness. Indeed, especially in a society that is constantly looking for "losers" and scapegoats, especially in a society that is constantly deceitful, such an "episode" is likely to lead to ever escalating changes of context, and escalating confusion and misunderstanding, all the way to further life-threatening events, and even to suicide. The severe problem of the development and the effects of this difficulty is not to be taken lightly.

(c) nrm 8/97

. . . Again, onward.

Susan Brownmiller

Then, a couple of years ago, when I was corresponding with a 'stop violence against women' internet mailing list (which inspired me to write the '22 Books' group of reviews, the Beyond The Wave paper, and about a hundred other little essay/posts on violence against women), a woman named Ellen, who provided my primary guidance on that list, mentioned something she'd read about differences in some sort of communicative CNS 'wiring' that had been identified between men and women - the way she put it was a little vague - but anything that particular girl wrote always turned my mind almost luminescent.

(Unfortunately, that mailing list was systematically destroyed by female agents provocateurs purporting to be 'feminists' - an all too common problem when dealing with women's issues altogether - so that conversation, and all others in that forum were rudely, abruptly, and permanently terminated.) But still and all, that remark by Ellen about possible 'wiring' differences, like everything else she wrote, stayed with me; it more or less reawakened my mind to this issue. Even so though, it was only a wisp of a possible clue.

So anyway, when I saw this book, Brownmiller's "Femininity" at Aardvark Books last spring, one quick look at the chapter titles (wonderful definition, I love it), the writing style (easy, entertaining, information-rich), and the author's name (writer of "Against Our Will", which I've seen in virtually every special violence bibliography, which has been sitting on my shelf for about ten years, but which I have never read) I instantly decided that I had to read Susan's book on 'femininity'.

I remember when I was reading it, I thought to myself that a woman might find it an entirely boring book, just a statement of the obvious, but to me, I found it incredibly fascinating and enlightening, and it keeps coming to mind. (I also read Joan Brumberg's "The Body Project" a couple of months later, another direct hit; another dizzying [for me] look at the same issue.) Anyway, now, six months later, I think I've finally figured out the long-fabled difference between da girlz and da boyz.

I mean, it would take probably a couple of hundred hours of conversation to really get it down, and maybe a half a chapter to write it up, but, in a word (so to speak), I think the difference has something to do with the converting of the "raw materials" of nature into higher level things, into things of special value to humans, i.e. Shelter, art supplies, food, talk, clothing, etc.

Maybe something like a "two-stage" process; first, the lower level stage, initial carving out and forming, and then the second stage, the higher level process, the final shaping and meshing with the world.

Perhaps there are things, "wiring", in the "masculine" central nervous system that are more suited to the former stage, the initial, low level part, and things in the "feminine" central nervous system that are more suited to the latter, the shaping and intermeshing. I know that's vague and gross as it stands, but I think something vaguely like that is going to turn out to be the case, at some definitive higher level than the way I'm putting it now.

So the way I've put it here definately is Not to be taken literally, as an everyday matter - in the current form of the idea, it's obviously not that simple. And then besides that, also, in my experience, things in nature, especially processes, only very rarely come in two's; the general, and very reliable rule that I've figured out is, "It Takes At Least Three To Make A System". So obviously it would take a certain amount of figuring and work for me to figure out exactly what it is I'm trying to say, including why it matters, and the solution always , of course, being in the context of solving some pressing, large scale, generalized, otherwise unsolved human problem.

For example, I betcha that the era could be rewritten, so as to accomplish exactly what it was originally designed to accomplish, and more, and written simply and clearly in even almost fewer words, and written in such a way that no one could argue with it. Maybe like a definition that, sort of, arches back on itself somewhere, no loopholes, all locked up; maybe sort of like the solution to Fermat's Last Theorem, or something, but different. Maybe it could be done in just a few thousand hours of person-figuring . . . Well, it seems that way to me anyway, just for an example . . .

For another example, I remember back during the Thomas confirmation hearings thinking that Anita Hill would probably make a much better justice than Clarance Thomas, and it occurred to me. that even in many of the most patriarchal societies, it seems that the symbolism for "justice", the "face" of justice is so often female. Depending on what an accurate, a scientifically accurate illumination of the difference between female and male turns out to be, I wonder if the most reasonable division of government might be a male executive, a male President, administrating the major day to day decisions and absorbing the major external heat, a female Supreme Court, in council, determining ultimate right and wrong, and a 50/50 legislature, writing the rules. I remember being a bit disappointed when Mr. Clinton appointed his first male justice (understandable given the current Republican Party pressures, and of course, the supression of a provable paradigm to work from), but anyway, I remember thinking nine female justices for the Supreme Court, well, eight or nine say, might well be in line with what evolution - nature - has developed. But of course, all that would be pending some very accurate-to-singular-reality findings and distinctions. Oh well . . .

So, anyway, while I don't recall Brownmiller (or Brumberg) saying anything like that specifically, still and all, it is definitely in the context of thinking about her book, that the above distinction has occurred to me. And I'm pretty sure that this difference of "process", or "presentation", or "stage-of-value", or something, somewhere like that, somehow, is going to figure in centrally to the finished conclusion, should that ever come.

So anyway, thank you Susan Brownmiller.

Michael Parenti

Ever since I first heard Michael Parenti speak, about seven or eight years ago, I thought him to be the very finest political analyst I've heard in decades; no one else is even close. But for some reason, I hadn't read his books, I'm not sure why. Anyway, when I saw this title, I grabbed it immediately, and, sure enough, it is the best and clearest brief rendition of what has happened in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe that I have ever seen. His writing style is superb, and his command of highly relevant information and his organization of it is excellent. More to the point perhaps, his analysis of the situation is very directly on target.

My differences with Parenti, as I see it anyway, are in regard to areas of information, rather than understandings about right and wrong (ideology). He has a better command of vast political information and a far better writing style than I, and, he has at least some access to the general public. What's lacking though, and this is tragically true throughout the known left, is a clear understanding of why people act the way they do, as regards basic human structure, which is the ground I've covered. I don't mean to criticize Dr. Parenti though; he is, by far, the clearest and most directly accurate of all the dozen or so current political speakers that I've heard of.

At any rate, this book, "Blackshirts and Reds" is an excellent book; short, easy to read, and very very highly recommended.

Marjorie Agosin

Andrea Johnston

September

A. M. Sperber and Eric Lax

October

Doug Henwood

Unfortunately, upon reading the book, it did turn out that I don't know enough to understand a lot of the basic high level math concepts that he mentions - although I do suspect that it might not be that far beyond a college or even a high school kid who was adept at the subject, although I don't really know. But anyway, without me being able to understand a lot of the low-level details, much of this book went over my head, but it did give some clues from mathematics about how you string together a lot of very diverse things, weed them out, comb them out, discover some new things, become desperately despairing, and completely ignored, and finally (sometimes after - literaly - hundreds of years of effort) put it all together into a solution. And, sure enough, there were some things about the process reported in the book that did indeed very much remind me of what I went through when I was working on Paradigm, Vol. I.

I actually did find this book useful, even though I didn't understand a lot of it, but I'll bet there is a way to comb out high level math, crystal clear, for the mathematically unschooled reader. A lot of authors make that promise, but I myself haven't seen it done yet. The author would have to know a lot about politics, and what people really want, and, of course, why it matters, humanly speaking. And, as is well known, those subjects are basically taboo in the world of corporate and most academic science.

Anyway, I did find this book basically well written, with some fascinating personal history regarding various mathematicians over the centuries, and somewhat illuminative of solving processes.

Katherine Paterson

I don't read much fiction, so sometimes, when I do, I don't really know quite what to make of what I'm reading. With this book, I started crying almost as soon as I started reading it, and more and more as the story went on. By the time I neared the end, I was sobbing uncontrollably, so much so that I could barely associate the last few pages, I really don't know why. So anyway, therefore, I presume this must be a very good book.

Michael Dorris

This is a very short, and very pretty story about a sister, Morning Girl, and her brother, Star Boy, and their life among their family in the Bahamas, in the months before Columbus arrives.

Gloria Whelan

This is a very brief, simple story set in Michigan or Indiana of the 1840's, about Native Americans, in this case, the Potawatomis, being driven from their homeland, and a young settler who is caught up in the forced march.

November

Jean Craighead George

I hate to say it, but I've been reading little books like this for almost forty years, since I was a little kid, about Greece and Italy in the forties, about Iran and Guatemala in the fifties, about Brazil, Indonesia, Uruguay, and of course about Vietnam in the sixties, and by the truckload in the seventies, eighties, and nineties. It's great to produce the important information like this book, but, obviously, there's something distrastously missing in the whole conversation, including all through the progressive populations, and has been for a long time. I do believe that that is what my work addresses. (See Schema, Summary, Home Page, Integrity Rules, Conversational Conventions, Components, Beyond the Wave, and all the rest.)

Third, there is the matter of this idea of "forgiveness" and other such "religious" (anti-religious) type concepts. Frankly, I never could understand what this word "forgiveness" means, and I get the feeling no one else understands what it means either. Usually, it's put in terms of "either forgive, or, revenge and punishment". But in fact, that's all part and parcel of the same system.

The way I see it, there's no forgiveness and no forgetting. If someone changes their mode of operation to operate in a work out well all around way, then they become just like anyone else. If they choose to continue to operate in the deceitful and deadly "one against the other" "you lose, I win" frame of operations, they must be "quarantined" (Alice Vachss' term from "Sex Crimes"; see review elsewhere at this site), or at least placed in a low-power enough position where they can't hurt anyone. No vengeance, no forgiving, no punishment, and no forgetting, of anything, ever. Never.

Either a person operates in a helpful way, in which case they are integrated into society, or they operate in a harmful way, in which case they are quarantined or otherwise placed out of reach of harming others. No forgiving, ever, whatever the hell that means anyway. I get the feeling that the "forgiving" concept comes from the idea that the whole "forgiving" idea comes from the preposterous idea that people can't change their mode of behavior, so they're just supposed to say they're sorry, and get a little better, a little more deceitful, at their deadly activities. "Inevitable evil", "people can't really change", so we better just have them mouth "I'm sorry" platitudes, make 'em pay for the crime (prepostrous), "put it all behind us", and all that bullshit, and leave it at that. "Church of satin" is what that stuff is, as far as I can tell. The disappeared will never go away! That's a basic rule of life, as far as I can tell.

Never forgive; never forget; never vengence; never punish. Society for those operating in a work out well all around framework, some form of major quarantine for those operating in a "you lose, I win" frame of mind. "But, but, what about . . . Eternal Evil?" Bullshit. The church of satan; that's what that is, and it's total bullshit. Again, see the papers above, and especially the "Origins of the Commonly Understood Framework" section of the Summary paper on that. (Also, an entire chapter of the paradigm proper - "Chapter Twelve, 'Farming Society'" (tragically unpublished) is devoted to this subject.) So anyway, I have concluded that the whole "forgiveness" framework is not accurate to solving our problems, and is extremely unhelpful to put it mildly.

Finally, the fourth problem I have with the general approach people often take to fighting against the operations like the "School of Assassins" is a lack of taking into account of what is lost in these Holocausts - be it towards Armenia and the European working class in WWI, or the German murder of Europe's Jews and other indigenous and intellectual peoples, or towards Africa, or Latin America, or Bosnia, or anywhere else. People think of the tragedy and losses as what happens to the people getting tortured and killed. That's a tenth of it. Bigger still is what happens to the immediate people left alive. Bigger than that even, even a bigger loss, the biggest loss of all, is what happens to the entire society, for generations to come, and indeed, the whole world around and everyone in it. That's not an abstract idea. Nothing abstract about it.

(In process, (c) nrm November 16, 1997, 11 am pst)

Well, having said all that, this book is a generally helpful exposition of the matter of US corporate engineering, via CIA and army, of torture and murder throughout Latin America and I do recommend it.

Lewis Thomas

This is the sequel to Thomas' 'Lives of a Cell'. I decided to reread it as, like Bowlby's work and that of a few others, I find that the general framework within which he writes is extraordinarily helpful in organizing my mind.

Katherine Paterson

I picked this up because it was highly recommended to me by the person who works in the children's section of a local bookstore. It also sort of dawned on me that Katherine Paterson has written some other stuff I liked, so I was looking forward to reading it.

As it turns out, this is a very very nice little story; I liked it lots and lots. It's about a kid being shuffled, sort of, through a foster home in Virginia. When I finished it, I read the tiny author's biography in the back. Katherine Paterson was born in, and was raised for part of her childhood in China and later spent several years teaching in Japan. Somehow, somehow or other, it shows. She's really a very good writer.

Ryan Bishop and Lillian S. Robinson

Note: What follows is me blabbing for about 1500+ words regarding what reading this book makes me think of. To skip to the next listing, click here.

November 22, 1997
I asked the bookseller at Modern Times Bookstore if he had anything new on violence against women, and, after considering the matter for about half an hour, he handed me this. It looks worrisome - a weighty tome, written in the "sociology" (ulp) genre. Oh well, I'm kind of a pushover for next year's news, and it does, maybe, seem to be to the point . . . we'll see . . .

Reading through the first part took some teeth grinding, as it seemed to be written without much clear purpose that I could discern (maybe I just wasn't used to their writing style yet). Then, the next 30 pages or so seemed to be the usual "perception soup" - analysis floating in space, so to speak. But then I realized that that was just the general literature review, written in the framework that too too many books about prostitution and international economics are written in. In "Night Market", the authors review others' materials within the framework that those other materials were written in; so that's why it was such a bore. Ok, fair enough.

But now, I'm about a third of the way through the book, and in fact it's turning out to be an excellent study. I remember back in '64, entering the New York World's Fair in Queens and seeing a huge sign - "Peace Through Understanding".

At the time, I was immersed in reading about the growing war in Indochina, and I thought that the slogan was rather absurd - war doesn't come from misunderstanding culture, or language, nor anything else like that. It comes from finance capital stealing resources helter skelter worldwide, and killing - indeed, slaughtering by the millions - anyone and everyone that tries to stop them - pure and simple.

What I didn't realize at the time though, was that the idea of the slogan - "peace through understanding" - was an advance forewarning of the creation of an international army of civilian rapists who would serve as a backup army for destroying the resistance of colonial populations, should the traditional colonial hot-war operations somehow fail.

This "tourism" planning stuff has been going on since the fifties, and Bishop's and Robinson's book give an excellent, if brief overview of how international, mainly western, finance capital has been preparing the groundwork for the wholesale, literal rape of third world cultures, since before the Vietnam war.

They mention McNamara's trip to Thailand, as President of the World Bank (Stank) in 1971 as the clarion call for the conversion of tourism from "seeing the sights" into massive gang rape. McNamara had, as secretary of defense, overseen the groundbreaking U-Dorn conversion of millennia old local culture into a massive U.S. army brothel culture, so it was a simple, and, for him, natural matter to again effect another conversion - this time from R&R ("rest and 'recreation'" for marauding army troops) to S&S ("sun and sin" for their planet-destroying corporate employers) - S&S, as the "new 'tourist' order" came to be known. Anyway, the chapter of "Night Market" entitled "Languages of Tourism" gives a much needed picture of what so much of the boom in third world tourism is really all about.

Back around 1978 or so, I was avidly reading two excellent publications, both now long gone: one was "Pacific Research and World Empire Report", and the other was called "South-East Asia Chronicle". I used to spend several days, each term with my high school classes, passing out articles on "Palm Oil", and "SE Asia Electronics Workers", reading them in class, and discussing the implications regarding "popular culture" and advertising right here in river city.

Both publications, were concerned principally with Indonesia, The Philippines, Thailand, The Pacific Peoples, Korea, and the various environs of that part of the world. Those publications chronicled the takeover and 'buy'-outs by U.S. led transnationals, of the best rural lands that had been tilled by indigenous people for generations, centuries, even millennia, and the conversion of the land to Palm Oil plantations, in effect, to Palm Oil factories.

The local people were driven away, crowded onto much poorer lands, and herded into refugee status. The young girls, now displaced along with their families, were then lured, indeed, herded into the cities with promise of new, modern, money-making jobs.

The jobs, as it turned out, were for the US high-tech electronics industry. For quarters per hour, six days a week, these girls would sit, bent over an eye-infection producing microscope, perfectly painting those beloved circuits for our watches, our calculators, our nuclear missiles, and later our precious home computers (including, of course, the one I'm typing on right now, built by I know who). And, most significant here, part of their workday would consist of being a rapt audience for the various cosmetics vendors that would wander the shop floor, advertising and peddling their wares.

By their mid-teenage years, they'd become used to living in alienated dormotories, they were almost blind, they'd become no longer useful at the microscopes, but were now fully dependent on at least a paltry money-income for barest survival. Furthermore, their families back uplands had come to depend on the few dollars that the girls had been able to save and send home, as the girls themselves were dependent on the self-respect that being able to send a few dollars home brought.

At that point, rural girls suddenly jobless in the big city and practically blind, they'd be led into the brothels, by the hundreds of thousands. Surprise. No surprise. It seemed to me that that whole sequence, start to finish, had always been the organized, integrated, well-planned-out "development" strategy, right from the start.

McNamara - a fine specimen of a protégé of The Henry 'Heil Hitler' Ford Motor Company - seeing that the traditional Napalm and Holocaust (5 million Vietnamese killed) methods for extracting wealth from the third world, were no longer entirely reliable, switched to a strategy of digging into the rural population, clearing away their age-old farmland, rendering the local people into refugees, isolating various sectors, and then, raping the entire teenage population en mass, and in that way, suppressing all possible anti-bourgeois dissent.

What does happen to the population at large, intellectually and emotionally? What happens with their brothers, their boyfriends, their childhood pals, their mothers, their fathers, their cousins their schoolmates? What happens when you break the loves of their lives in this manner? Not to mention what happens with what was, in many ways, still, at least reminiscent of the original matrifocal cultures?

My guess is, massive self-disrespect among the population left behind, a viciously brutal and reactive anger, a pervasive and powerful sense of thoroughly deadening internal loss, a massive hopelessness about what matters in life, lots of depression, lots of suicide, lots of internal pain that can only barely be stemmed by alcohol, opium and heroin, and most important, a total cluelessness about what to do, or even which end is up.

And it gets worse. With few young women left in the countryside, the main sexual outlet for many is the brothels - and that deepens the picture. A famous 19th century American Robber Baron once said "I can get half the working class to kill the other half any time I want!" He was of course referring to his employment of agents provocateurs, scabs, detective agency thugs, cops on the street, company unions, corrupt leaders, and the like.

But essentially, the old British idea of getting one portion of the population to fight the other, getting them to bludgeon one another half to death, and then primly walking in and taking over control of the now severely weakened, even shattered local structures, is, I think, a première, classic strategy of modern capitalism the whole world over.

In the case at hand - perhaps in Thailand as an archetype, but not only in Thailand - it's done by "getting one half of the population to rape the other half" (or at least a large, decisive portion thereof), therein destroying the internal certainty, sense of history, destroying their caretaking, destroying their maps of caretaking, and destroying their self-respect, and the internal maps of their community, and of their future, that are a requisite of leftist, progressive, popular revolution.

In short, the culture of prostitution creates a very ripe and welcoming environment for mindless, reactive, 'one-against-the-other' right-wing political reaction, the infamous "good business climate", and creates an impossible social, educational, and psychological environment for leftist, intelligent, cooperative revolutionary development. It seems to me that that was always, and is always, the strategy of the World Bank, The Internazi Monetary Fund, and finance capital generally, right from the start, in one form or another.

When McNamara stared down from that high window in the Pentagon in October of 1967 (I was looking right at him, wondering what he was thinking), and saw that crowd of 50,000 kids attempting to levitate that building (and, in fact levitating him right out of it), inside, one can only guess what he was thinking. Since then, I've realized that he was probaby thinking something like: "Ok. Ok. I can't break your armies, ok, ok, but I can break your soul." That has been, and is, the bottom line regarding all the "Development" strategies of transnational finance capital as best I can tell.

It is not enough for them to, metaphorically, rape the planet; no no, that's not enough for them - they feel compelled, as a matter of high-level financial-defense strategy, to rape its peoples, quite literaly and en mass, as well. Joseph Goebles smiles and tips his hat to Robert McNamara.

Well, it gets worse again; and it also gets closer to home . . . but I'll leave it at that for now . . .

Well, anyway, of course the authors of "Night Market" don't say any of that. Well, actually, they do say, or imply some of it, but the general understanding above originates with me, as best I can tell, from back when I was reading Pacific Research, SE Asia Chronicle, and the ooollllld NACLA.

But the point here is, that - again, I'm only a third the way through this book - but anyway, "Night Market is turning out to be very information-rich, quite to the point, and it seems worth reading slowly. I suppose I'm also a bit prejudiced by the fact that I do feel some ideological kinship with the framework of the authors.

I'm looking forward to the chapters ahead, "Imagining Sexual Others", "The Bar Scene", and "The Unspeakable", and I wonder if they will have the sort of 'case history' type narrative that was so well done in Sturdevant's and Stoltzfus' "US Military Prostitution in Asia".

Well, I don't know what to expect really; they might say anything for all I know. Except at this point, I am kind of expecting this book to be, at the very least, extremely helpful.

November 25, 1997

Chris Crutcher

This was recommended to me by a gal who works in the children's section of one of those big chain bookstores; looking it over, I was skeptical at first, but boy, was she ever on the mark . . . It's about a couple of junior high, and then high school best pals - a gal whose face is completely covered with scar tissue from a horrible burn at the age of three, and a guy who is of average height but weighs a couple of hundred pounds; a couple of outcast types . . . The guy has a way out though - a gem of a mom, a flair for writing, and a super skill as a competitive swimmer - Sarah Byrnes, on the other hand, is trapped, big time . . . there are a couple of aces in the area though . . . one or two reasonable classmates and a very wonderful teacher. I had a certain amount of trouble reading this book in the beginning - a bit too much sarcasm for me; sarcasm is a general style I'm not real fond of, when overused anyway. But about halfway through; I became totally absorbed, and by the end, well, knockout! . . . very highly recommended . . .

December

in process - 1/1/98

Lois Lenski

If "Night Market" (see note two listings above) is about what happens when the bourgeoise captures indigenous girls, "Indian Captive" is about what happens when indigenous people capture a settler girl. It certainly is a different sort of tale.

While this is a fictional account, it seems pretty well researched and probably close to the actual historical situation it refers to. Lois Lenski, the author, before writing this book in the 1930's did a substantial amount of research about the life of a woman named Mary Jamison, who'd lived from the mid 1700's to the mid-1800's. She read Mary's autobiography, visited many historical museums, interviewing the curators, and lived in a Seneca village, watching their artisans work and talking with them about their work and their life.

In fact, the introduction reports that there was a large literature of captured settler children, who were raised by Native Americans, who then, at some point in their lives, recounted their life stories in books that were widely read and appreciated during the 1800's.

The real Mary Jamison had found herself living with the Senecas from her early teenage years, became, in effect, a 'full-blooded' Seneca, had many children within the tribe, and, in her later years, became a highly respected tribal elder. When she was in her '80s, in the 1830's, she told her story to a writer of the day, and it became one of the most famous.

This book, Lois Lenski's fictional rendition, takes place during a two year period around 1750, when Mary Jamison was about 12 years old. She was raised with her Scot and Irish (British, by the politics of the day) parents and their family of seven on a wilderness farm in eastern Pennsylvania. It was a hard life, constant hard work was required of all for barest survival, but her dad was proud of his homesstead and his family's ability to make a go of it. Mary loved the farm life, the corn, all the living things around her, and was a child much favored for her spirits, and her awe of nature.

But around this time, the holocaust against Native Americans was sweeping westward, across eastern Pennsylvania. Apparently, what had been happening, was that the European authorities had taken a pause from their usual fulltime work of murdering native peoples, and decided to settle some things among themselves. So the English hired some of the indigenous people they had been murdering, to kill French settlers, while the French hired others of them to kill English settlers. I think they called it "The French and Indian War", although I really don't know much about it.

Anyway, one day in April, 1758, four French Advisers (how little has changed), with a troup of Iroquois in tow, showed up at her Pennsylvania farm, ordered their troops to wreck the place and Mary and her family were sent on a forced march westward into the Wilderness. Mary was seperated from the group and brought to a Seneca village in what is now Ohio, to be raised as a native American.

The book is about the first two years after capture, and the enormous conflict Mary feels, longing desperately for her family and their farm life, while slowly but surely adopting the ways and understandings of her Native American surroundings.

In the end, she learns that her family, and their homestead had been wiped out, and she gets a good look at the sort of life she'd be living if she chose to rejoin English culture. And she makes her decision.

The book was published in 1941, some thirty years before the current awareness of Native American history had entered the general culture. Still and all, Lois Lenski writes with all the sensitivity that one would expect from current understandings regarding what was done to America's indigenous peoples.

"Indian Captive" must have been quite an eye-opening knockout in 1941 when it was written, and it seems to me to be pretty good history.

(annotation written Jan. 8, 1998; slightly edited and posted April 12, 1998)

Astrid Lindgren

Angus Mackenzie

Marjorie Agosin

Michael Parenti

Jean Craighead George

And Best Wishes To All . . .

next ----

Books Read In
. . . January, 1998

• The Comfort Women by George Hicks 1994
  
• Burma: The Next Killing Fields by Alan Clements 1992
  
• Where Angels Glide at Dawn edited by Lori M. Carlson and Cynthia L. Ventura 1990
  
• Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape by Frans De Wall 1997
  
• Sing Down The Moon by Scott O'Dell 1970
  
• Embracing The Fire by Julia A. Boyd 1997

• Journals and Periodicals
  The New Internationalist - March, 1994 - East Timor
  Extra - November/December, 1997 - Mass Media Monolith
  The Nation - November 24, 1997 - Media Sexual Imagery
  Columbia Bulletin - Summer/Fall, 1997 - Violence
  Teen Voices - Autumn, 1997 - Race and Stereotyping
  Extra - January/February, 1998 - Prisons
  The East Timor Estafeta - Autumn, 1997 - The Fires Burn On
  Off Our Backs - November, 1997 - Violence Against Russian and US Women
  Multinational Monitor - November, 1997 - Multinational Ownership of US Universities

George Hicks

Alan Clements

Lori M. Carlson and Cynthia L. Ventura (editors)

Frans De Wall

Scott O'Dell

Journals and Periodicals