me (Patrick McEvoy-Halston change)
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May 21
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"During the campaign, I heard the postal clerk, with whom I’ve had friendly relations for at least 23 years, commenting that “If Trump doesn’t win, you will see me on the top of the George Washington Bridge, jumping!” To me he always appeared to be a hard-working, frustrated man who felt stuck in what he considers to be a dead end job. While he feels incapable of changing his job, he could project his hopes for change on the presidency. In class this morning, there was so much anti-Trump sentiment expressed, without a word of challenge, that one would never guess that less than five months ago, the majority of the students I polled voted for him. We need to be careful not to denigrate those who don’t share our political judgments and preferences." (Paul Elovitz, Clio's Psyche, Summer 2017)
I should agree with this, but I'm not sure I do. I should agree, because I believe that our early environment almost entirely determines whether we are due to be agreeable and kind people, or due to be monstrous. It doesn't owe to you your particular adult imprint on the world, only to how well loved you were in early childhood. The more sadistic and abandoning your treatment, the more scabrous you'll appear, the more apparently worthy of sneer and jab and reduction. Given this, the cruelest thing to do is to denigrate the Trump-voters of the world, the "deplorables," because their past, their brain matrix, is already dense with this sort of cruelty and abuse... as babies and hopeful children, they were smashed.
Still, there is something disconcerting in how many refined, literate people are making public how when they visit Trump-conventions, just how pleasant they find the people there, how likeable and generous they find them. George Sanders and Dave Eggers both wrote pieces for the New Yorker last year where this was their say. I felt reading these pieces, as I did here with Elovitz's, that I was being told that it would be wise to shore up a sort of what I think of is actually a dissociated image of Trump-voters, that at some level we must know is rather unlikely. If I read perhaps any psychologist's categorization of what defines a person with strong self-esteem, in possession of a real self -- what I presume every person who voted for Trump, does not have -- it's like reading an itemized, piecemeal exploration of what makes for a likeable human being. Then when you switch to reading of their description of someone with an unhealthy self-esteem, it's piecemeal of what makes someone soundly unpleasant to be around. The clerk who's there because she's a clinging borderline and not because she finds enrichment... you feel it, even when she hasn't switched into her political animal.
The working clerk we've had friendly relations with for the last 23 years, who is hard-working but frustrated... when someone postulates someone like that, don't you feel instructed that there is only one acceptable way in which you're allowed to perceive this person in order to conceive of yourself as a kind, benevolent, unselfish public intellectual, who almost without saying, is also someone with significant power and influence (saying this SERVES as establishing your credentials)... someone very probably aloft from the working class origins of their parents? There is almost no millennial who is in this fight, hard, against the Trump-voters of the world, who is postulating the Trump-voter in this way. Their language is eviscerating towards them. Their anger and attitudes towards them, is much the same they have towards the men who've used their power to emotionally destroy women and children; they're in full Kathy Griffin, cut-off mode. These are the people refusing to watch films by Woody Allen. These are the people who are refusing to read Greek texts, for they -- the texts, as well as the ancient Greeks -- being intentional rape-apologia/ists. And when they look at people instructing them that they need to be careful not to denigrate those with, quote-unquote, "different political judgments and practices" -- different, in the I-have-a-huge-unconscious-need-to-see-good-people-raped-and-killed sense, I would suppose -- I wonder if they perceive if they might have another barrier in their way, because they, in the trenches of being the people who will find themselves in the worst fix if this regressive populism continues for it's coming at the time of the emergence of the full plateau of their adulthood, have every reason to respond to this situation as if someone is midst of choking them to death; with giant, giant alarm. It's impossible to demonstrate the becalmed, generous pose towards your opponents when you're the group, not only being most targeted... the "snowflake," "spoiled" generation, but, unlike in the 1960s, where there's nothing out there telling you that somehow the age is with you, that some intangible but very great historical spirit is lending its support to you, to the young, now, no matter how strong the old and regressive can make themselves appear. They could very well be extinguished here, and another opponent becomes those who at this time inflate the idea that if you express rage and hatred towards your opponent, you're not representing the real nature of the fight that is being undertaken here, which will lead to the death of many good people, but rather being unrestrained and cruel; in need of an adult hem-in. It's within our capacities to be alert to this, but we choose not to be... and our conscience is giving us a pass, because it has the credentials to pass in our conscious minds as simply empathy, not what it is, which is making abandonment of the progressive young certain, owing to our demonization/scandalizing of a position they can hardly be expected to be able to surmount.
I think endorsing this posture becomes another way of not needing to listen to some of the most promising young progressive voices out there, and keep one's own accustomed way of apperceiving the world, handling it, triumphing over it, the norm, while the people who ought to displant you get decimated the chance to do so. The "empathy," is a ward against growth-panic, because it's a play against an internal predatory maternal alter judging that you've grown to think too much of yourself, that you've separated yourself too far from roots. It's this in the same way as it will mean you're seeming separate from the millenial generation of progressives, who are the least sparing of the sensitivities of ol' hard-done-by, ever-hard-working-but-unrecognized, working class, as well as those with the fewest roots to a conception of the good public intellectual in the Noam Chomsky/Barbara Ehrenreich sense, someone who feels what is romantic and worthy -- rather than what is despicable -- in the blue-collar, and how we've got to reach "down" to them, as if they're the solid, rather than insist they find a way to reach up, if they are at all able.
For your consideration, this latest article from "Outline Magazine," the new Gawker, which registers someone right in the fight of what is really a Nazi force that is putting a gun to the young... all the Trump-voters, doing this. I thought to send this letter to the editor, but it's responding to an older issue of Clio. If it'll still work, still qualify, I'll clean it up and send it for possible submission.
me (Patrick McEvoy-Halston change)
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Jun 3
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Lovely meeting you all. Very rewarding time for me. Cheers.
Click here to Reply
Denis O'Keefe
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Jun 4
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Patrick,
It was great to meet in person and hopefully you can join us again soon.
Denis
On Sun, Jun 3, 2018 at 9:02 PM, Patrick McEvoy-Halston <pmcevoyhalston@gmail.com> wrote:
Lovely meeting you all. Very rewarding time for me. Cheers.
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binsightfl1
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Jun 4
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Hi Patrick,
I too enjoyed meeting, speaking with,
and hearing you in person. Hope to
continue the conversation.
Warm Regards,
Burton
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arniedr
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Jun 4
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JASPER
VOL 2 WHEN?
Arnold Richards
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bdagostino2687
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Jun 4
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Patrick,
I appreciated your contributions to the discussions. Hopefully these dialogs helped you formulate your ideas and are giving you grist for a paper to present next year. Glad we finally got to connect in person.
Brian
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binsightfl1
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Jun 4
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Busy working on it.
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me (Patrick McEvoy-Halston change)
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Jun 5
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Lovely meeting you and your family. Kudos to the all the help they provided; they made for intriguing guardians of the primal gateway: with presence too! You referred to deMause in your presentation and a bit from "Origins of War" came to mind. To deMause, concerning Hitler's first order of business, not immigrant expulsion, not splitting, but fusing with the nation:
Jews were not made the target of violence, since when Goebbels called for a nationwide boycott of Jewish shops he had to call it off after a few days because “it had failed to arouse popular enthusiasm." The initial central task of the Nazis was not persecuting Jews; it was creating a powerful Killer Mutterland, a Volk that made Germans feel they were fused with the Killer Mother alters in their heads. This fused state was termedGleichschaltung, a “total national unity.”
Important, I think, because if to spot a Hitler we are looking for persecution and targeting, for splitting, only/primarily, Ann Coulter would suggest he can't be that, that this is mostly a liberal's forced narrative, because in her opinion he's been way soft/slow on this. If however we're on the lookout for something else... like making one's nation first!, we might find that there are Hitlers that will eventually appear, even in nations where all we're seeing now is increased nationalism. In Canada, for instance, anti-immigration is not yet that strong, and deemed by some impossible, but is polling more for an "ordered" culture rather than an "open" one. DeMause would argue that this all you need to know: a Hitler of a kind will emerge here, and follow the sequence. (In the article I refer to, note how the study explains that non-white Cdn cultures are polling, too, more for "ordered" than for "open.")
Speaking of forced narratives, I heard repeatedly at the conference that Trump has conned the working class (I appreciate your explaining that he is not only a working class phenomena), because there is no way he's doing anything for them. Yet if the last few decades of economic hardship owes to something Lloyd also discusses, of masochism, that pulls leaders, that forces them, into depriving people who need to be deprived to maintain any sense of self-equilibrium, and if this period is over as we switch into another phase, Trump could prove akin to Hitler (the historian Gotz Aly explains how Hitler served as a genuine provider to his Volk, in "Hitler's Beneficiaries") and actually function as a good provider, as the mass's DESIRE for masochistic treatment is over. Again, if Lloyd is right, and liberals continue to maintain Trump as someone who will betray those he says he speaks for, they will be shown up and seem even less worth listening to. Liberals may be hammering home at something they cannot reconsider because there is a particular set-up they require of who Trump is (exploiter, not -- as Lloyd would argue -- slave), who the "people" are (fundamentally good, but näive), what their own relationship to "the people" are (i.e., protectors, liberators, not zookeepers, suspicious of their "flock"), so they don't have to consider that at some level they are themselves so close to becoming people who fear apocalyptic attack/abandonment for their life acquisitions, their ongoing growth/self-realization, that much of their daily activity might be about shoring up defensive "spells" so to keep themselves seeming mostly as serving and deferential to duty/public cause... the old script of public servant.
Depressions are economic anorexias, where people starve themselves to avoid being eaten up by the Dragon Mother, the maternal vulture of infancy. The nation begins to look for a Phallic Leader with whom they can merge and regain their failed potency and who can protect them against their growing delusional fears of a persecutory mommy. (Emotional Life of Nations)
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bdagostino2687
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Jun 5
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If mass psychology were sufficient to explain Trump’s or Hitler’s hold on power, then neither of them would require an elaborate propaganda machine or an institutional base of support.. You don’t need to pump the mass public full of lies if they spontaneously support an authoritarian leader. In the case of Trump, he would not need (1) the Fox News/Sinclair/Breitbart propaganda machine and (2) a Republican party that is essentially now a fascist party, if he enjoyed the spontaneous support of a majority of Americans. In fact, he lost the popular vote and is less popular now than when he was elected.
I believe there may be some truth in what Patrick says, and that it would help explain the enduring support that Trump has with some of his hard core supporters, for whom the propaganda machine just reinforces what they would believe anyway. However, this is not the case for even some who voted for Trump in 2016 and are having buyer’s remorse, and completely ignores the fact that the majority of voters opposed Trump and still do. I believe that what Patrick is saying may be valid for a segment of the electorate, but not for the majority. In the case of Hitler, he had not only the support of a fanatical minority, but more importantly of the army, the industrialists, and the landowners. We have no opinion polls from Nazi Germany, and considering that the majority of the German electorate voted against Hitler when the last free elections were held in 1932, and he maintained power thereafter with the help of both a propaganda machine and a terror apparatus, there is no reason to believe that Hitler ever enjoyed majority political support. –Brian
From: cliospsyche@googlegroups.com [mailto:cliospsyche@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Patrick McEvoy-Halston
Sent: Tuesday, June 05, 2018 8:00 AM
To: Clio’s Psyche
Subject: Re: [cliospsyche] Conference
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Denis O'Keefe
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Jun 5
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Patrick,
I’ll send along your kudos to Christine and Aiden.
Brian and I have been talking for some time now about a research program to better provide empirical footing for the psychogenic model, which relies on phenomenology, case studies and anecdotal clinical encounters. All of which are equally important, in my mind, in answering ‘how do we know what we know?’ My study was really ‘low hanging fruit’, to borrow Brian’s term, in this regard and an extension of previous research seeking to integrate the contextual, psychological, ideological and interpersonal factors that seem to fuel or thwart xenophobic tendencies in the US. The topic of immigration is highly politically salient since the events of 9/11 and given that the research demonstrates that American beliefs about immigrants, especially those who are anti-immigrant, do not match reality (indicating some level of projection) and immigrant threat narratives have been used to solidify political power and policies that have created a severe humanitarian crisis in detention centers and treatment of refugees, provides for a good subject to test the basic premise of the psychogenic model. That being, very simply stated, systems of belief (group fantasies) and the actions they motivate service basic defensive needs against childhood conflicts. Milburn’s research on affect displacement theory provides good evidence for this possible reality. Particularly split off rage in the development of authoritarianism. Terror Management Theory as a field has produced many hundreds, possibly in the thousands (who can keep up?) of empirical studies demonstrating the use of world view defense or belief systems to defend against existential fears. My research was simply testing whether having experienced childhood adversity in the forms of physical and sexual abuse and punitive parenting predicts authoritarianism and social dominance tendencies which then predicts anti-immigrant sentiment. The findings support both psychogenic and affect displacement hypothesis.
Experience in psychotherapy was added to the model to see if it moderated or provided some level of mitigation in the relationship between childhood adversity and stated personality factors. These findings suggested that it does, but the effect is small. If I was to do this again, I would include more pre-oedipal factors such as attachment, reflective functioning/mentalization and epistemic trust, among others as potential moderators, although staying away from mother bashing, as Lloyd was often easily misunderstood (IMO) to be doing. These factors are so much more difficult to measure and why my research is low hanging fruit.
I use Lloyd’s paper on the Childhood Origins of the Holocaust in my Psychohistory I class to demonstrate the application of his psychogenic model to a historical subject. The level of abuse and neglect suffered by the Nazi cohort that he writes about is far beyond what typical Americans experience today. If we take his model seriously, there isn’t the psychosocial context for another Hitler to rise. Only wannabes, which Trump is.
Denis
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me (Patrick McEvoy-Halston change)
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Jun 6
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I use Lloyd’s paper on the Childhood Origins of the Holocaust in my Psychohistory I class to demonstrate the application of his psychogenic model to a historical subject. The level of abuse and neglect suffered by the Nazi cohort that he writes about is far beyond what typical Americans experience today. If we take his model seriously, there isn’t the psychosocial context for another Hitler to rise. Only wannabes, which Trump is.
This is a fair comment. I have a couple of replies. One, there is context for a situation to occur where to us it FEELS exactly like Hitler's rise, even if it doesn't reach that level. Pinker, in one of his better bits, explores in both of his most recent two books why being alarmist about world violence is irrational, in a sense, because it just keeps on decreasing, but rational, in a different sense, because to those whose sensibilities have evolved a spike in violence nevertheless can be experienced as apocalyptic, as it is a marked increase from what they've ever known. (I of course believe -- after fusing with the nation -- that the level of violence is about to spike to an astronomical level, and that Pinker is at work discrediting the very people who'll put the best resources into keeping it as reduced as possible.)
Second, Lloyd has always pushed too hard on how far we've evolved. He insisted that evidence showed that the generation after the ww2 gen in Germany had actually done what was required for their childrearing to evolve to such an extent, that another Hitler was impossible. I always thought this was implausible, and to a certain extent, here, was simply speaking to a crowd who want to crown themselves (he always praises his own "advanced psychoclass" children as well, yet, if so advanced, why is there nowhere from them any of their own promotion of their father's work/theories? Their silence in this regard makes their father seem like a quack to get distance from; it's harsh, and psychologically ungenerous to today's generation... to me, not what an advanced psychoclass member would do: we would have heard from them, somewhere, as their father was getting targeted, if they came out as advertised. He got the 1960s Growth Phase lift; they go the Manic Phase... and it's showing). Not him at his best. I personally don't think it has evolved all that sufficiently. Even the current research into authoritarian parenting worries me, for I sense even amongst the researchers some dissociation from all that harms children within the family context. Indeed, we're even hearing how spanking can be a sign of a parent's love... it's what saved black children during the times of slavery, don't you know! Lloyd's writing, not about the Nazi cohort but the German aggregate, is about medieval instruments and constant sexual abuse... so it's ready-made to be dismissed as belonging to the medieval cauldron of the yesteryear. I personally suspect that might be smart use of deMause to defuse his ability to keep us woke to how another Hitler, not a wannabee Hitler, is arising, in multiple places, around the world right now. The number of years of ongoing social progress has stretched several decades now. Lloyd, if I remember correctly, argued that the reason ww1 was so colossal in terms of mass sacrifice, owed not only to level of childrearing but the number of decades of ongoing progress that preceded it. I think we might find we've found ways to hide the real extent of child abuse that has been occurring, that the #MeToo movement has not yet happened for the full extent of accepted child abuse in society (indeed, we collectively prevented it from breaching into pedophilia, where it was beginning to enter... and thus sexually abused children were further silenced), and the reason we've done this is because we sense that very soon, in fact, actually already beginning, right now, that we can play out the child abuse we experienced early in life onto the social stage and so don't need to reckon with it in a harder, more confrontational and honest sense, that would pit us against our inner parental (read: maternal) alters, pit us directly against mom, that threaten total abandonment of us, total lack of love for us, if we show we recognize their sadistic intentions towards us. The cost of this is that we will not evolve into healthier individuals, but become the "good sons and daughters" who won't stand in the way of the "bad sons and daughters" being transmogrified into threats to our civilization, and punished for it.
I suppose I have a third response. Your response makes Trump seem... not so great a concern. To me this gives him room he cannot be allowed to be given. It also makes the people who say he's a Hitler seem alarmist, not so much to be listened to (it also makes Clio seem not crazy, for saying Trump voters shouldn't be maligned, and for including Trump student voters amongst its published essays... how moderate and inclusive!). If we are entering a Hitlerian era, which I think we are, the context will become so mad that only the insane will be in control of themselves. For them, the outside will nicely fit their inside, as Lloyd says. Many people who currently argue that Trump isn't as bad and dangerous as his opponents claim, are I think explaining their viewpoint in a way which seems moderate now. How they will be explaining him 2, 4, 8, perhaps 12 years from now, as he remains in power, would seem outrageously horrible, if expressed now, but will be the moderate position subsequently. They'll never not know themselves as fully reasonable.
I think the universities will be purged and that there will be camps, and that when this happens, for the huge majority, it will be excused as regrettable but absolutely necessary for our civilization not to expire. I think, very soon, it will difficult for those who identify as moderates not to see what are in truth our most psychological advanced citizens, as not having moved into some land of dire hysterical crazy. People to be herded up.
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Denis O'Keefe
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Jun 6
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Patrick,
I cannot address all your thoughts with my limited time. Just a few things.
I don't mean to minimize the potential dangers and destructiveness already underway compliments of the Trump administration and the neo-liberal and alt-right backlash against Obama. Nor the human potential for destructiveness in groups given certain contextual stressors.... one of which you note... massive social change i.e. anomie or deMausian (Masterson) growth panic. These massive changes in American society including, but not limited to a persistent war on terror, demographic shifts, economic hardship and a changed economy, gender and racial equality, technological advances, etc. have certainly played a role in the creation of the regressive Tea Party politics which made the Trump Presidency possible. Social psyche research is indicating that context does prime different aspects of the self which can have strikingly different motivations, level of defense mechanisms employed and perceptions paving the way for non-sociopaths to fully engage in sociopathic behavior/movements. This could be common (but arguably more destructive) forms of structural violence such as our health care system leaving hundreds of thousands of people dying of treatable illness every year or more overt like genocide as you seem to be fearing. I think we must stay vigilant to the reality of what is happening as well as potentialities. The recent rise of authoritarianism around the globe, even in Europe has certainly been alarming and may also be partly explained by rapid social change. The problem with focusing too much on potentialities is that it can easily become a Rorschach of sorts. My conservative friends (I live in upstate NY so I have quite a few) railed against fascist Obama. Trump gets elected and my liberal friends are railing against a fascist Trump. There are fundamental differences in the reality of both their actions. Quantitatively or objectively, Trump wins every race toward fascism I could imagine, but the question of perception of potentialities too often seems to tell more about the personal than the literal reality. I am much more cautious than you in my projections about the future, although I certainly admit what you suggest is possible. I just don't find it as likely as less severe outcomes. That said, anyone who knows me, especially my social work students, know that I will not suffer guilt through silent collusion with social injustices and agree with your fears of complacency. You've said so much more I wish I could dialogue with you about. At the moment, I have to prepare for my next appointment. I do hope we can keep up the conversation.
Denis
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drwargus
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Jun 6
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Group,
On the lighter side, this sports article from Politico suggests that the NBA finals are a metaphor for the polarization in America. The difference between the Golden State Warriors (West Coast modernism) and the Cleveland Cavaliers (Rust Best Traditionalism). Both teams represent different parts of America. Interesting stuff, but I especially liked the conclusion and how it relates to this discussion about child rearing stages. "...to understand the value system that motivates our neighbors is the first step toward understanding the actions they take." Lloyd's stages are important because they help to determine what people value, and those values determine behavior. The stage of child rearing does not by itself determine peoples' behavior, but it effects what people value and their perceived needs (Maslow).
Bill
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me (Patrick McEvoy-Halston change)
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Jun 6
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Clever article. Has me thinking. To what extent is "players agreeing to let Lebron absolutely run things as other players experienced enough [which should read, broken enough] to know their role, stay out of the King’s way," a "value system"? One reads "childrearing stages" as differing levels of incurred parental abuse, and it's tough to work, from there, to anything like the neutral sounding term, "value system." "Your" "value system," built out of most of you being bullied by your parents, means you support Great Leaders, because you read them as the abusive parents whose love you try to claim by being "accomodating" to them. The Golden State' "value system," built out of greater support and genuine love in childhood, means a whole team feeling disappointment if each player didn't feel as valuable and important as any other. "Value systems," the sociological term, to me, privileges the idea that we have something to learn from one another. We don't. This is about knowing the opposition so we're less apt to be eaten as they accrue strength. A guy doing it for the forgotten fan vs. corporate oligarchy, indeed... right there, is someone in our opposition.
Thanks for the post. I valued the read.
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bdagostino2687
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Jun 8
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agency vs. fatalism
Patrick, you are talking as though you are a spectator of history and not a participant. No one can predict what will happen in public affairs because that is the total outcome of decisions that innumerable people make, including all of us on this list. No one knows what these decisions are going to be, so let´s dispense with the crystal balls. We cannot afford to be fatalistic about Trump or anything else. Too much is at stake. We need all hands on deck. If someone feels fatalistic and does not believe they have effective agency, they need to examine where these feelings originate and not conflate their childhood circumstances with the present state of the world. Millions of people in the world are stuck in group fantasies. It is our task as psychohistorians to hold these fantasies up to the light of consciousness, not to succumb to them.
Not everyone needs to be a political activist, but if you have the time or money and are feeling powerless, it might help to take some action, however small, to change the world. That will remind you that you are an agent and bear some responsibility for the state of the world. We are all in this together, but every person´s contribution matters. The most powerful contributions are the ones that come out of our own individuation. My personal task is to write peer reviewed articles and another book. That work puts my own unique gifts and passions to work helping to change the world. Because of this mission, I have a limited amount of time to spend on this list and only participate sporadically. I´m sure everyone on this list has their own unique contribution to make to our common project of creating a more humane, just, and sustainable world.
Brian
On 6/6/2018 9:13 AM, Patrick McEvoy-Halston wrote:
I think the universities will be purged and that there will be camps, and that when this happens, for the huge majority, it will be excused as regrettable but absolutely necessary for our civilization not to expire. I think, very soon, it will difficult for those who identify as moderates not to see what are in truth our most psychological advanced citizens, as not having moved into some land of dire hysterical crazy. People to be herded up.
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Judith Logue
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Jun 8
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agency vs. fatalism
Brian, this is a most inspiring message - and reinforces and validates how we all can (and must, I wish) use our individual strengths and talents to make the world a kinder, more mature and better place.
You start my day on the right foot!👠
Judy
Judith Logue, PhD
Port St. Lucie, FL 34987
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bdagostino2687
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Jun 8
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Re: [cliospsyche] agency vs. fatalism
Thanks, Judy. :-)
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mfbrttn
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Jun 8
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Re: [cliospsyche] agency vs. fatalism
Brian, I second Judy: I found this very inspiring and encouraging. Thanks so much!
I'll be in New York later today (Friday). Are you free early this afternoon?
Michael Britton
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Judith Logue
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Jun 8
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Re: [cliospsyche] agency vs. fatalism
🌹👍🌹
Judy
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me (Patrick McEvoy-Halston change)
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Jun 8
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Re: agency vs. fatalism
Not fatalistic. Just aware. It's good when you reach the young that you not blow smoke. You instead say, my science of psychohistory predicts that there will be no escape for about ten years, and then, suddenly, when the amount of wasted lives and sacrifices seems about right, about enough... when mommy's angry appetite is gauged, full, there will be another very lengthy period of huge allowance again. Make sure you keep intact to enjoy that. I think they'll find that more encouraging than to be told that hope exists now, that there is avenue and reception for their "effective agency," and then come to find, again and again and again, that it doesn't. This will lead to a much more rather gruesome fatalism, I think. By the by, Ontario just elected themselves their own Trump... I sense a lot of youth near about to strangle the adults who told them there was... hope.
That's the great thing about deMause. He informs you so that your agency doesn't go wasted... you don't have to play the Freud who almost lost his daughter; you know the lost cause. He also informs you that you don't have to adulterate/administrate everything you write/think so that it's moderate enough for today's preferences, which is a good thing, for most of today's is about keeping everyone's very precarious mental equilibrium intact, so it sparks only of tiny full truths. Another age ahead is not so far enough distant that it can't be imagined scooping down to already collect and recover the ingredients one is providing which mesh better later. In this time, the role is to be the Howard Hawks and the Hitchcocks who provide enough of what the 30s wanted that they succeeded then, but that had substantial contents that actually only a subsequent era really could chow down on. This is what I advise and am doing. I worry about flight to action... I think that this is what the Democrats did with the Russian scandal: they went into vigilant action rather than reflected.
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bdagostino2687
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Jun 8
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Re: [cliospsyche] Re: agency vs. fatalism
Patrick, you cannot have it both ways. If you want to invoke the predictive power of science, then you have no business shitting all over the spirit and methods of science. Unfortunately, Lloyd deMause set a bad precedent in this regard, and it behooves us to confront this contradictory legacy and decide once and for all whether we really believe in science or not. If we believe in science then we need to test our theories against evidence and discard them when they don´t measure up. We also need to take care that our theories are not self contradictory. Lloyd did neither of these things and therefore I have no use for his pretensions to be practicing science. Some of his ideas are worth testing, as Denis did with his study of child abuse and anti immigrant sentiment. To my knowledge, this is only the second effort to ever test any of Lloyd´s theories, not an impressive track record for the IPA if we really imagine that we are practicing science. The first effort to test one of Lloyd´s theories was a systematic content analysis of media images that preceded the 1990 Gulf War, undertaken by Ted Goertzel and published in 1993 in the peer reviewed journal Political Psychology. See Is Psychohistory a Science, Psychohistory News, Spring 2015 http://www.psychohistory.us/archive.php
It also needs to be said that not every science is predictive, a fact that chaos theory and quantum mechanics make abundantly clear. Physics cannot predict individual events at the quantum level. Meteorology is only predictive on short time scales. Biology and geology are not predictive with respect to the history of life on Earth, which is subject to innumerable random shocks such as the asteroid that apparently wiped out the dinosaurs. I would argue that psychohistory is also not a predictive science because complex systems are inherently chaotic and there is no more complex system than the real time interaction of some 200 political systems, representing 7.6 billion people, each of which is a complex and unpredictable psycho-physical system.
This brings us to the central contradiction of Lloyd´s thought. On the one hand, he recognized that national psyches are not monolithic, but in fact consist of psychoclasses in conflict. On the other hand, he frequently contradicted this truth by talking about national group fantasies. It was this latter kind of thinking that led him to imagine that he could predict the outbreak of wars. As I mentioned above, Goertzel showed that one such claim, that the supposed national group fantasy preceding the 1990 Gulf War provided a basis for predicting the war, proved to be incorrect. If you still believe this theory and claim to also believe in science, then I encourage you to read Goertzl´s article and engage in a scientific debate with him on this list, since he is a member as far as I know. By scientific debate, I mean a discussion of deMause´s and Goertzel´s claims with respect to the data and methodology at issue. If you have no interest in doing this or learning how to do it, then I respectfully recommend that you stop using the word science to legitimize your deMausian version of psychohistory.
Brian
- show quoted text -
- show quoted text -
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Mark as complete
drwargus
|
Jun 8
|
Re: [cliospsyche] Re: agency vs. fatalism
Brian et al
It is always interesting to try to predict the future. We have our own world views and have some sense of what is going to happen. And while I agree that if we are truly scientists, we should be able to make some predictions, when a science is in its infancy, I would suggest it is more observational. All academic departments started out as ideas that needed nurturing. For example, leading economic indicators are such an it an intrinsic part of our financial lives it is hard to imagine that 100 years ago none of them existed. There was no gross national product or unemployment rate. Economics departments did not exist but were soon to branch off in many schools from the political theory departments. Naturalists had to make observations about the environment before ecology could become a science. Many observations needed to be made before the theory of ecosystems could have any predictive power. And we must not forget that the pioneers in any field are always highly criticized for the irrelevance of their ideas and the unpredictability or lack of usefulness of their ideas.
So we have Lloyd‘s idea of different psychoclasses. I think that is a profound idea. He tried to predict too many things and made some mistakes. But people like Cambridge Analytica used similar logic and developed algorithms that are highly predictive. Those algorithms can predict what type of ads trigger people and alter elections. The science isn’t perfect, but after about 50 Facebook likes and dislikes, they know more about what motivates each one of us more than we do! Cambridge analytica knows an awful lot about the emotional life of elections and what type of group fantasies are out there.
Bill Argus
Sent from my iPhone
- show quoted text -
Mark as complete
bdagostino2687
|
Jun 8
|
Re: [cliospsyche] Re: agency vs. fatalism
The predictive power of Cambridge Analytica's models is based on MASSIVE, MASSIVE amounts of data, and computer modeling methods, not on Lloyd's theories as far as I know. Some prediction in experimental psychology is possible, because you can largely control the information to which people are exposed, such as Cambridge Analytica did with Facebook. However, predicting complex historical events like wars is IN PRINCIPLE a fool's errand because there are so many variables that no one can control. Bill, I don't think you are coming to grips with what I said about chaos theory and quantum mechanics. You seem to be operating with a classical Newtonian/Einsteinian paradigm of linear, predictive science that is no longer tenable. --Brian
- show quoted text -
Mark as complete
binsightfl1
|
Jun 8
|
Re: [cliospsyche] Re: agency vs. fatalism
Hi,
My goals are much more modest. Essentially they are:
do what you can do. Don't do what you cannot do (by
definition, you can't). The Talmud says, if you save one
person, you have saved the world. Modest, but, I hope,
meaningful.
Burton
- show quoted text -
Mark as complete
drwargus
|
Jun 8
|
Re: [cliospsyche] Re: agency vs. fatalism
Brian.
We are largely on the same page. I am not suggesting that Cambridge analytica was familiar with Lloyd. Rather, we all have assumptions about what causes behavior, whether it is Freudian unconscious, Skinner’s carrots and sticks, or psychoclasses. To my knowledge, Cambridge‘s idea was that people vote based on their fears – the emotional life of voters is about what people fear. They tapped into that data and from all of that chaos came some reasonably predictive models. But I agree with you, Lloyd took his predictions just too far.
So where do we take psycho history from here.? I believe that nations do have emotional lives. Nations and cultures have collective interiors, thoughts and feelings, that are promulgated by group fantasies. The fact that we still can’t predict wars and many other things is simply a sign that psychohistory is not yet a mature field
Bill Argus
Sent from my iPhone
- show quoted text -
Mark as complete
david
|
Jun 8
|
RE: [cliospsyche] Re: agency vs. fatalism
Hi Patrick,
My condolences re Dougie, I agree that things are looking pretty grim in a lot of places, and there are dangers in encouraging false hope.
David
From: cliospsyche@googlegroups.com <cliospsyche@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Patrick McEvoy-Halston
Sent: Friday, June 08, 2018 7:46 AM
To: Clio’s Psyche <cliospsyche@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [cliospsyche] Re: agency vs. fatalism
- show quoted text -
--
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Mark as complete
me (Patrick McEvoy-Halston change)
|
Jun 8
|
Re: [cliospsyche] Re: agency vs. fatalism
What I think what we should do is be very modest in what we predict. The radicalness should leave us and people should leave our conferences delighted in how it has slipped out of its juvenile past into a more mature state, more fully informed of how things, how life, is much more complex than we had guessed. I think at that point someone should take a picture of us, operating in refined and wizened form as we are -- such a contrast to the crazy alt-right phenomenon that is eating the world! -- ... maybe, also, we could all be on a yacht, and wearing fine Piaget watches... yeah, that'd be good... so even as we've neutered our field of the radical thinking that would offer us an unsurpassable angle of perspicuity on world affairs -- and at least some legitimate show, from the good side, of actually having resources of sufficient surprise and notability that they could maybe even turn around an age due by fate to grow dark -- maybe the universities will accept us and we'll feel, life-fulfilled, properly encapsulated for all time, before the age has an opportunity to complete its great purge on our venues of self-completion. Who knows? Maybe this self-completed state will persist into the afterlife, and we'll catch advance site of this wonderful due fate so strongly that we'll never really have to be out of focussing on it, even when the world brings the ghouls, the dirt, the claws, that we weren't up to really countering, probably because doing so would help rescue the young... and there DO have to be sacrifices -- someone's been "improperly" spoiling themselves -- don't there?, within the trespasses of our doors, our sight, our skin, our reality.
The future can be predicted. Lloyd's reach was appropriate. He did only what we should expect for the norm. Claims of modesty almost always mark people as those informed by a fear of being pretentious, a fear so powerful the "truth" of the world is absolutely to be manipulated, if it'll grant a final say of simply how things are and go, and the more presuming amongst us, become less effective in their applications for being made juveniles or madmen. Zaretsky and Lloyd mark the 1930s and 40s as an age of people agreeing to being misbehaving sons and daughters, ready, now, to defer and pledge service to their Mother Nations... the misbehaving sons and daughters, were their previous, unrestrained, pretentious selves. During the 30s and 40s the like of Lloyd's radicalness would be out, but not owing to being disproven -- though that would be how it would be presented -- but because it lent one the wrong look, when everyone was ruled out of a fear of appearing spoiled (i.e., populism).
On Friday, June 8, 2018 at 3:28:35 PM UTC-4, drwargus wrote:
Brian.
We are largely on the same page. I am not suggesting that Cambridge analytica was familiar with Lloyd. Rather, we all have assumptions about what causes behavior, whether it is Freudian unconscious, Skinner’s carrots and sticks, or psychoclasses. To my knowledge, Cambridge‘s idea was that people vote based on their fears – the emotional life of voters is about what people fear. They tapped into that data and from all of that chaos came some reasonably predictive models. But I agree with you, Lloyd took his predictions just too far.
So where do we take psycho history from here.? I believe that nations do have emotional lives. Nations and cultures have collective interiors, thoughts and feelings, that are promulgated by group fantasies. The fact that we still can’t predict wars and many other things is simply a sign that psychohistory is not yet a mature field
Bill Argus
Sent from my iPhone
On Jun 8, 2018, at 11:55 AM, Brian D'Agostino <bdagostino2687@gmail.com> wrote:
The predictive power of Cambridge Analytica's models is based on MASSIVE, MASSIVE amounts of data, and computer modeling methods, not on Lloyd's theories as far as I know. Some prediction in experimental psychology is possible, because you can largely control the information to which people are exposed, such as Cambridge Analytica did with Facebook. However, predicting complex historical events like wars is IN PRINCIPLE a fool's errand because there are so many variables that no one can control. Bill, I don't think you are coming to grips with what I said about chaos theory and quantum mechanics. You seem to be operating with a classical Newtonian/Einsteinian paradigm of linear, predictive science that is no longer tenable. --Brian
On 6/8/2018 11:31 AM, 'Bill Argus' via Clio’s Psyche wrote:
Brian et al
It is always interesting to try to predict the future. We have our own world views and have some sense of what is going to happen. And while I agree that if we are truly scientists, we should be able to make some predictions, when a science is in its infancy, I would suggest it is more observational. All academic departments started out as ideas that needed nurturing. For example, leading economic indicators are such an it an intrinsic part of our financial lives it is hard to imagine that 100 years ago none of them existed. There was no gross national product or unemployment rate. Economics departments did not exist but were soon to branch off in many schools from the political theory departments. Naturalists had to make observations about the environment before ecology could become a science. Many observations needed to be made before the theory of ecosystems could have any predictive power. And we must not forget that the pioneers in any field are always highly criticized for the irrelevance of their ideas and the unpredictability or lack of usefulness of their ideas.
So we have Lloyd‘s idea of different psychoclasses. I think that is a profound idea. He tried to predict too many things and made some mistakes. But people like Cambridge Analytica used similar logic and developed algorithms that are highly predictive. Those algorithms can predict what type of ads trigger people and alter elections. The science isn’t perfect, but after about 50 Facebook likes and dislikes, they know more about what motivates each one of us more than we do! Cambridge analytica knows an awful lot about the emotional life of elections and what type of group fantasies are out there.
Bill Argus
Sent from my iPhone
On Jun 8, 2018, at 10:11 AM, Brian D'Agostino <bdagostino2687@gmail.com> wrote:
Patrick, you cannot have it both ways. If you want to invoke the predictive power of science, then you have no business shitting all over the spirit and methods of science. Unfortunately, Lloyd deMause set a bad precedent in this regard, and it behooves us to confront this contradictory legacy and decide once and for all whether we really believe in science or not. If we believe in science then we need to test our theories against evidence and discard them when they don´t measure up. We also need to take care that our theories are not self contradictory. Lloyd did neither of these things and therefore I have no use for his pretensions to be practicing science. Some of his ideas are worth testing, as Denis did with his study of child abuse and anti immigrant sentiment. To my knowledge, this is only the second effort to ever test any of Lloyd´s theories, not an impressive track record for the IPA if we really imagine that we are practicing science. The first effort to test one of Lloyd´s theories was a systematic content analysis of media images that preceded the 1990 Gulf War, undertaken by Ted Goertzel and published in 1993 in the peer reviewed journal Political Psychology. See Is Psychohistory a Science, Psychohistory News, Spring 2015 http://www.psychohistory.us/archive.php
It also needs to be said that not every science is predictive, a fact that chaos theory and quantum mechanics make abundantly clear. Physics cannot predict individual events at the quantum level. Meteorology is only predictive on short time scales. Biology and geology are not predictive with respect to the history of life on Earth, which is subject to innumerable random shocks such as the asteroid that apparently wiped out the dinosaurs. I would argue that psychohistory is also not a predictive science because complex systems are inherently chaotic and there is no more complex system than the real time interaction of some 200 political systems, representing 7.6 billion people, each of which is a complex and unpredictable psycho-physical system.
This brings us to the central contradiction of Lloyd´s thought. On the one hand, he recognized that national psyches are not monolithic, but in fact consist of psychoclasses in conflict. On the other hand, he frequently contradicted this truth by talking about national group fantasies. It was this latter kind of thinking that led him to imagine that he could predict the outbreak of wars. As I mentioned above, Goertzel showed that one such claim, that the supposed national group fantasy preceding the 1990 Gulf War provided a basis for predicting the war, proved to be incorrect. If you still believe this theory and claim to also believe in science, then I encourage you to read Goertzl´s article and engage in a scientific debate with him on this list, since he is a member as far as I know. By scientific debate, I mean a discussion of deMause´s and Goertzel´s claims with respect to the data and methodology at issue. If you have no interest in doing this or learning how to do it, then I respectfully recommend that you stop using the word science to legitimize your deMausian version of psychohistory.
Brian
On 6/8/2018 7:46 AM, Patrick McEvoy-Halston wrote:
Not fatalistic. Just aware. It's good when you reach the young that you not blow smoke. You instead say, my science of psychohistory predicts that there will be no escape for about ten years, and then, suddenly, when the amount of wasted lives and sacrifices seems about right, about enough... when mommy's angry appetite is gauged, full, there will be another very lengthy period of huge allowance again. Make sure you keep intact to enjoy that. I think they'll find that more encouraging than to be told that hope exists now, that there is avenue and reception for their "effective agency," and then come to find, again and again and again, that it doesn't. This will lead to a much more rather gruesome fatalism, I think. By the by, Ontario just elected themselves their own Trump... I sense a lot of youth near about to strangle the adults who told them there was... hope.
That's the great thing about deMause. He informs you so that your agency doesn't go wasted... you don't have to play the Freud who almost lost his daughter; you know the lost cause. He also informs you that you don't have to adulterate/administrate everything you write/think so that it's moderate enough for today's preferences, which is a good thing, for most of today's is about keeping everyone's very precarious mental equilibrium intact, so it sparks only of tiny full truths. Another age ahead is not so far enough distant that it can't be imagined scooping down to already collect and recover the ingredients one is providing which mesh better later. In this time, the role is to be the Howard Hawks and the Hitchcocks who provide enough of what the 30s wanted that they succeeded then, but that had substantial contents that actually only a subsequent era really could chow down on. This is what I advise and am doing. I worry about flight to action... I think that this is what the Democrats did with the Russian scandal: they went into vigilant action rather than reflected.
On Friday, June 8, 2018 at 4:54:02 AM UTC-4, bdagostino2687 wrote:
Patrick, you are talking as though you are a spectator of history and not a participant. No one can predict what will happen in public affairs because that is the total outcome of decisions that innumerable people make, including all of us on this list. No one knows what these decisions are going to be, so let´s dispense with the crystal balls. We cannot afford to be fatalistic about Trump or anything else. Too much is at stake. We need all hands on deck. If someone feels fatalistic and does not believe they have effective agency, they need to examine where these feelings originate and not conflate their childhood circumstances with the present state of the world. Millions of people in the world are stuck in group fantasies. It is our task as psychohistorians to hold these fantasies up to the light of consciousness, not to succumb to them.
Not everyone needs to be a political activist, but if you have the time or money and are feeling powerless, it might help to take some action, however small, to change the world. That will remind you that you are an agent and bear some responsibility for the state of the world. We are all in this together, but every person´s contribution matters. The most powerful contributions are the ones that come out of our own individuation. My personal task is to write peer reviewed articles and another book. That work puts my own unique gifts and passions to work helping to change the world. Because of this mission, I have a limited amount of time to spend on this list and only participate sporadically. I´m sure everyone on this list has their own unique contribution to make to our common project of creating a more humane, just, and sustainable world.
Brian
On 6/6/2018 9:13 AM, Patrick McEvoy-Halston wrote:
I think the universities will be purged and that there will be camps, and that when this happens, for the huge majority, it will be excused as regrettable but absolutely necessary for our civilization not to expire. I think, very soon, it will difficult for those who identify as moderates not to see what are in truth our most psychological advanced citizens, as not having moved into some land of dire hysterical crazy. People to be herded up.
--
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me (Patrick McEvoy-Halston change)
|
Jun 8
|
Re: [cliospsyche] Re: agency vs. fatalism
Hi David. Thanks for the input. I appreciate hearing from you. Doug will get his 12 years and total destruction, but then his time of following through, quite genuinely, with the people's orders, will be done... so there's that.
On Friday, June 8, 2018 at 6:10:51 PM UTC-4, david wrote:
Hi Patrick,
My condolences re Dougie, I agree that things are looking pretty grim in a lot of places, and there are dangers in encouraging false hope.
David
From: cliospsyche@googlegroups.com <cliospsyche@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Patrick McEvoy-Halston
Sent: Friday, June 08, 2018 7:46 AM
To: Clio’s Psyche <cliospsyche@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [cliospsyche] Re: agency vs. fatalism
Not fatalistic. Just aware. It's good when you reach the young that you not blow smoke. You instead say, my science of psychohistory predicts that there will be no escape for about ten years, and then, suddenly, when the amount of wasted lives and sacrifices seems about right, about enough... when mommy's angry appetite is gauged, full, there will be another very lengthy period of huge allowance again. Make sure you keep intact to enjoy that. I think they'll find that more encouraging than to be told that hope exists now, that there is avenue and reception for their "effective agency," and then come to find, again and again and again, that it doesn't. This will lead to a much more rather gruesome fatalism, I think. By the by, Ontario just elected themselves their own Trump... I sense a lot of youth near about to strangle the adults who told them there was... hope.
That's the great thing about deMause. He informs you so that your agency doesn't go wasted... you don't have to play the Freud who almost lost his daughter; you know the lost cause. He also informs you that you don't have to adulterate/administrate everything you write/think so that it's moderate enough for today's preferences, which is a good thing, for most of today's is about keeping everyone's very precarious mental equilibrium intact, so it sparks only of tiny full truths. Another age ahead is not so far enough distant that it can't be imagined scooping down to already collect and recover the ingredients one is providing which mesh better later. In this time, the role is to be the Howard Hawks and the Hitchcocks who provide enough of what the 30s wanted that they succeeded then, but that had substantial contents that actually only a subsequent era really could chow down on. This is what I advise and am doing. I worry about flight to action... I think that this is what the Democrats did with the Russian scandal: they went into vigilant action rather than reflected.
On Friday, June 8, 2018 at 4:54:02 AM UTC-4, bdagostino2687 wrote:
Patrick, you are talking as though you are a spectator of history and not a participant. No one can predict what will happen in public affairs because that is the total outcome of decisions that innumerable people make, including all of us on this list. No one knows what these decisions are going to be, so let´s dispense with the crystal balls. We cannot afford to be fatalistic about Trump or anything else. Too much is at stake. We need all hands on deck. If someone feels fatalistic and does not believe they have effective agency, they need to examine where these feelings originate and not conflate their childhood circumstances with the present state of the world. Millions of people in the world are stuck in group fantasies. It is our task as psychohistorians to hold these fantasies up to the light of consciousness, not to succumb to them.
Not everyone needs to be a political activist, but if you have the time or money and are feeling powerless, it might help to take some action, however small, to change the world. That will remind you that you are an agent and bear some responsibility for the state of the world. We are all in this together, but every person´s contribution matters. The most powerful contributions are the ones that come out of our own individuation. My personal task is to write peer reviewed articles and another book. That work puts my own unique gifts and passions to work helping to change the world. Because of this mission, I have a limited amount of time to spend on this list and only participate sporadically. I´m sure everyone on this list has their own unique contribution to make to our common project of creating a more humane, just, and sustainable world.
Brian
On 6/6/2018 9:13 AM, Patrick McEvoy-Halston wrote:
I think the universities will be purged and that there will be camps, and that when this happens, for the huge majority, it will be excused as regrettable but absolutely necessary for our civilization not to expire. I think, very soon, it will difficult for those who identify as moderates not to see what are in truth our most psychological advanced citizens, as not having moved into some land of dire hysterical crazy. People to be herded up.
--
<><><>
To post to this group send to: cliospsyche@googlegroups.com
Clio's Psyche is sponsored by The Psychohistory Forum. For questions visit: cliospsyche.org
Digest is available on request and sends no more than 1 email a day.
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bdagostino2687
|
Jun 9
|
Re: [cliospsyche] Re: agency vs. fatalism
This responds to Bill and to Burton. Bill, you seem to be assuming that a ``mature`` science is necessarily predictive. But that assumption is precisely what chaos theory and quantum mechanics call into question. Scientific determinism is dead. No science is more mature than physics, and it is now indisputable that physics cannot predict individual events at the quantum level. Nor can the implications of this be ``quarantined`` to the quantum level. Most notably, random mutations are now know to be the driving force in biological evolution. Random events are by definition unpredictable.
The old way of thinking was to say that mutations are only apparently random, and that once we dig deeper and deeper into the microscopic processes that underlie mutations we will eventually reach a deterministic realm in which mutations are actually found to be the predictable outcomes of measurable physical processes. Similarly, the outcome of tossing dice, according to this way of thinking, is only apparently random because if we measure the initial conditions accurately enough and the exact forces acting on the dice, the outcome will be completely predictable according to Newtonian physics. Quantum mechanics throws all this out the window. If you go to the most minute atomic and sub-atomic levels of the forces that govern mutations or the tossing of dice, the familiar determinism of cause and effect breaks down and you find yourself in the INHERENTLY unpredictable realm of quantum mechanics. So the upshot of all this is that mutations and the tossing of dice are FUNDAMENTALLY AND INHERENTLY random events, not just apparently random. No amount of "maturity" of the sciences involved will get us back to determinism. Scientific determinism is dead, which to old fashioned materialists is just as traumatic a discovery as that God is dead.
It is easy enough to apply the above analysis to neuroscience and psychotherapy. The brain is a physical system and every neuron is a complex physical system unto itself that ultimately operates according to the laws of quantum mechanics. So the notion that the thoughts and actions of a single human being can ever be fully predictable is not tenable. If we knew everything down to the most minute details about the early childhood conditions that shaped the personality of a certain person, no amount of maturation in psychology and all the other sciences will ever enable us to predict how his or her life will unfold. For psychoanalysts, this requires a break from the scientific determinism in which Freud's thought was rooted. This brings us to Burton's point, with which I completely agree. The relationship between therapist and client is a universe unto itself and how things unfold in this relationship is, in a very real sense, of cosmic significance. For more on this, I recommend Gerald J. Gargiulo's book Quantum Psychoanalysis: Essays on Physics, Mind, and Analysis Today, which recently won a Gradiva Award. --Brian
-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject:
|
Re: [cliospsyche] Re: agency vs. fatalism
|
Date:
|
Fri, 8 Jun 2018 12:33:37 -0400
|
From:
|
Burton N. Seitler
|
Reply-To:
|
cliospsyche@googlegroups.com
|
To:
|
cliospsyche@googlegroups.com
|
Hi,
My goals are much more modest. Essentially they are: do what you can do. Don't do what you cannot do (by definition, you can't). The Talmud says, if you save one person, you have saved the world. Modest, but, I hope, meaningful.
Burton
On 6/8/2018 3:28 PM, 'Bill Argus' via Clio’s Psyche wrote:
Brian.
We are largely on the same page. I am not suggesting that Cambridge analytica was familiar with Lloyd. Rather, we all have assumptions about what causes behavior, whether it is Freudian unconscious, Skinner’s carrots and sticks, or psychoclasses. To my knowledge, Cambridge‘s idea was that people vote based on their fears – the emotional life of voters is about what people fear. They tapped into that data and from all of that chaos came some reasonably predictive models. But I agree with you, Lloyd took his predictions just too far.
So where do we take psycho history from here.? I believe that nations do have emotional lives. Nations and cultures have collective interiors, thoughts and feelings, that are promulgated by group fantasies. The fact that we still can’t predict wars and many other things is simply a sign that psychohistory is not yet a mature field
Bill Argus
Sent from my iPhone
On Jun 8, 2018, at 11:55 AM, Brian D'Agostino <bdagostino2687@gmail.com> wrote:
The predictive power of Cambridge Analytica's models is based on MASSIVE, MASSIVE amounts of data, and computer modeling methods, not on Lloyd's theories as far as I know. Some prediction in experimental psychology is possible, because you can largely control the information to which people are exposed, such as Cambridge Analytica did with Facebook. However, predicting complex historical events like wars is IN PRINCIPLE a fool's errand because there are so many variables that no one can control. Bill, I don't think you are coming to grips with what I said about chaos theory and quantum mechanics. You seem to be operating with a classical Newtonian/Einsteinian paradigm of linear, predictive science that is no longer tenable. --Brian
On 6/8/2018 11:31 AM, 'Bill Argus' via Clio’s Psyche wrote:
Brian et al
It is always interesting to try to predict the future. We have our own world views and have some sense of what is going to happen. And while I agree that if we are truly scientists, we should be able to make some predictions, when a science is in its infancy, I would suggest it is more observational. All academic departments started out as ideas that needed nurturing. For example, leading economic indicators are such an it an intrinsic part of our financial lives it is hard to imagine that 100 years ago none of them existed. There was no gross national product or unemployment rate. Economics departments did not exist but were soon to branch off in many schools from the political theory departments. Naturalists had to make observations about the environment before ecology could become a science. Many observations needed to be made before the theory of ecosystems could have any predictive power. And we must not forget that the pioneers in any field are always highly criticized for the irrelevance of their ideas and the unpredictability or lack of usefulness of their ideas.
So we have Lloyd‘s idea of different psychoclasses. I think that is a profound idea. He tried to predict too many things and made some mistakes. But people like Cambridge Analytica used similar logic and developed algorithms that are highly predictive. Those algorithms can predict what type of ads trigger people and alter elections. The science isn’t perfect, but after about 50 Facebook likes and dislikes, they know more about what motivates each one of us more than we do! Cambridge analytica knows an awful lot about the emotional life of elections and what type of group fantasies are out there.
Bill Argus
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On Jun 8, 2018, at 10:11 AM, Brian D'Agostino <bdagostino2687@gmail.com> wrote:
Patrick, you cannot have it both ways. If you want to invoke the predictive power of science, then you have no business shitting all over the spirit and methods of science. Unfortunately, Lloyd deMause set a bad precedent in this regard, and it behooves us to confront this contradictory legacy and decide once and for all whether we really believe in science or not. If we believe in science then we need to test our theories against evidence and discard them when they don´t measure up. We also need to take care that our theories are not self contradictory. Lloyd did neither of these things and therefore I have no use for his pretensions to be practicing science. Some of his ideas are worth testing, as Denis did with his study of child abuse and anti immigrant sentiment. To my knowledge, this is only the second effort to ever test any of Lloyd´s theories, not an impressive track record for the IPA if we really imagine that we are practicing science. The first effort to test one of Lloyd´s theories was a systematic content analysis of media images that preceded the 1990 Gulf War, undertaken by Ted Goertzel and published in 1993 in the peer reviewed journal Political Psychology. See Is Psychohistory a Science, Psychohistory News, Spring 2015 http://www.psychohistory.us/archive.php
It also needs to be said that not every science is predictive, a fact that chaos theory and quantum mechanics make abundantly clear. Physics cannot predict individual events at the quantum level. Meteorology is only predictive on short time scales. Biology and geology are not predictive with respect to the history of life on Earth, which is subject to innumerable random shocks such as the asteroid that apparently wiped out the dinosaurs. I would argue that psychohistory is also not a predictive science because complex systems are inherently chaotic and there is no more complex system than the real time interaction of some 200 political systems, representing 7.6 billion people, each of which is a complex and unpredictable psycho-physical system.
This brings us to the central contradiction of Lloyd´s thought. On the one hand, he recognized that national psyches are not monolithic, but in fact consist of psychoclasses in conflict. On the other hand, he frequently contradicted this truth by talking about national group fantasies. It was this latter kind of thinking that led him to imagine that he could predict the outbreak of wars. As I mentioned above, Goertzel showed that one such claim, that the supposed national group fantasy preceding the 1990 Gulf War provided a basis for predicting the war, proved to be incorrect. If you still believe this theory and claim to also believe in science, then I encourage you to read Goertzl´s article and engage in a scientific debate with him on this list, since he is a member as far as I know. By scientific debate, I mean a discussion of deMause´s and Goertzel´s claims with respect to the data and methodology at issue. If you have no interest in doing this or learning how to do it, then I respectfully recommend that you stop using the word science to legitimize your deMausian version of psychohistory.
Brian
On 6/8/2018 7:46 AM, Patrick McEvoy-Halston wrote:
Not fatalistic. Just aware. It's good when you reach the young that you not blow smoke. You instead say, my science of psychohistory predicts that there will be no escape for about ten years, and then, suddenly, when the amount of wasted lives and sacrifices seems about right, about enough... when mommy's angry appetite is gauged, full, there will be another very lengthy period of huge allowance again. Make sure you keep intact to enjoy that. I think they'll find that more encouraging than to be told that hope exists now, that there is avenue and reception for their "effective agency," and then come to find, again and again and again, that it doesn't. This will lead to a much more rather gruesome fatalism, I think. By the by, Ontario just elected themselves their own Trump... I sense a lot of youth near about to strangle the adults who told them there was... hope.
That's the great thing about deMause. He informs you so that your agency doesn't go wasted... you don't have to play the Freud who almost lost his daughter; you know the lost cause. He also informs you that you don't have to adulterate/administrate everything you write/think so that it's moderate enough for today's preferences, which is a good thing, for most of today's is about keeping everyone's very precarious mental equilibrium intact, so it sparks only of tiny full truths. Another age ahead is not so far enough distant that it can't be imagined scooping down to already collect and recover the ingredients one is providing which mesh better later. In this time, the role is to be the Howard Hawks and the Hitchcocks who provide enough of what the 30s wanted that they succeeded then, but that had substantial contents that actually only a subsequent era really could chow down on. This is what I advise and am doing. I worry about flight to action... I think that this is what the Democrats did with the Russian scandal: they went into vigilant action rather than reflected.
On Friday, June 8, 2018 at 4:54:02 AM UTC-4, bdagostino2687 wrote:
Patrick, you are talking as though you are a spectator of history and not a participant. No one can predict what will happen in public affairs because that is the total outcome of decisions that innumerable people make, including all of us on this list. No one knows what these decisions are going to be, so let´s dispense with the crystal balls. We cannot afford to be fatalistic about Trump or anything else. Too much is at stake. We need all hands on deck. If someone feels fatalistic and does not believe they have effective agency, they need to examine where these feelings originate and not conflate their childhood circumstances with the present state of the world. Millions of people in the world are stuck in group fantasies. It is our task as psychohistorians to hold these fantasies up to the light of consciousness, not to succumb to them.
Not everyone needs to be a political activist, but if you have the time or money and are feeling powerless, it might help to take some action, however small, to change the world. That will remind you that you are an agent and bear some responsibility for the state of the world. We are all in this together, but every person´s contribution matters. The most powerful contributions are the ones that come out of our own individuation. My personal task is to write peer reviewed articles and another book. That work puts my own unique gifts and passions to work helping to change the world. Because of this mission, I have a limited amount of time to spend on this list and only participate sporadically. I´m sure everyone on this list has their own unique contribution to make to our common project of creating a more humane, just, and sustainable world.
Brian
On 6/6/2018 9:13 AM, Patrick McEvoy-Halston wrote:
I think the universities will be purged and that there will be camps, and that when this happens, for the huge majority, it will be excused as regrettable but absolutely necessary for our civilization not to expire. I think, very soon, it will difficult for those who identify as moderates not to see what are in truth our most psychological advanced citizens, as not having moved into some land of dire hysterical crazy. People to be herded up.
Mark as complete
Howard S
|
Jun 9
|
RE: [EXTERNAL] Re: [cliospsyche] Re: agency vs. fatalism
Other recipients: Howard-Stein@ouhsc.edu
Dear Brian and Everyone in the CliosPsyche Listserve,
I have been reading the conversation on agency and fatalism with great interest -- our lives and the earth do depend on how we choose -- and find that Brian's argument drawing upon chaos theory and quantum mechanics to be persuasive.
If I may, I'd like to contribute a poem that is the concluding poem in my 2016 book, Light and Shadow , a poem called "Life is not a straight line." https://www.doodleandpeck.com/adult I think that it shares the Spirit of Brian's insights.
Warm regards to all,
Howard
Life Is Not a Straight Line
for Karam Adibifar
Life is not a straight
line; few paths are direct.
Contingencies rock our intentions.
Euclid is not all there is to life.
An asteroid here, a large meteor there,
a long volcanic night, an ice age –
an amoeba might wonder
how we got here at all.
Life makes wide spirals,
lurches far, then halts,
curves in upon itself.
“Man thinks, G-d laughs,”
goes an old Yiddish saying,
as our line from plans
to results is at best roundabout,
as our plans change in the middle,
and our outcomes stray far from our will.
“Life has no meaning,” I said
out of ignorance and arrogance,
when the dots failed to connect the
way I wished
and when I wished them to.
Then, in a moment of grace,
I surrendered to amazement and wonder; the dots spread out
before me like the Milky Way.
I yielded as an observer
of my own life, and for a moment
no longer needed to connect the dots
into a line of any kind.
Listening Deeply (Second Edition): https://www.amazon.com/Howard-F.-Stein/e/B001HCZ62C/ref=ntt_dp_epwpk_0
The Dysfunctional Workplace (with Seth Allcorn): same url as above, amazon.com
Howard F. Stein, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus
Department of Family and Preventive Medicine
University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center
Oklahoma City, OK USA;
howard-stein@ouhsc.edu
Phone: 405-787-6074
Poet Laureate, High Plains Society for Applied Anthropology
Home address: 1408 Oakhill Lane, Oklahoma City OK 73127 USA
From: cliospsyche@googlegroups.com [cliospsyche@googlegroups.com] on behalf of Brian D'Agostino [bdagostino2687@gmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, June 09, 2018 10:03 AM
To: cliospsyche@googlegroups.com
Subject: [EXTERNAL] Re: [cliospsyche] Re: agency vs. fatalism
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