I happened to catch a snippet of Ernest commenting on Alex Jones’ interview with Billy Corgan.  Corgan was trying to persuade  Jones that Jones over-emphasizes fear.   Ernest contrasted himself with Jones by saying that Ernest emphasizes love.  The luv-alution.  Love is more effective than fear.

I want to add something to Ernest’s comments.

One of the details I find interesting is that Jones chose to call his website Prison Planet.

What makes this interesting is Eric Fromme’s definition of love:

Each of us lives in a prison of aloneness.  Failure to transcend that prison means insanity.  Love is the individual capacity to connect with others.

I think that fear inhibits the capacity to love, to connect with others.  Fear makes prisons – in more ways than one.

Ernest spoke of the way in which Jones’ tack appeals to younger males suffering from mild to acute testosterone poisoning – up to a point.  Much of Jones’ material is factual and accurate.  Some, in stark contrast, which may be deliberately broadcast to appeal to that audience, borders on ludicrous.

E.G.  Last summer, I happened to catch a part of Jones’ broadcast, which I seem to recall was live from outside the hotel where the Bilderbergs were meeting.  Alex said (gistwise), “We’ve got ‘em on the run.  They know we’re here.  They’re scared of us.  We know all their plans and they know it.”

Really, a world-class organization, by Jones’ own words, is scared of Jones?!  His audience?!  I’m sorry.  I just have to say that I seriously doubt that.  They have their agenda.  They may have to adapt to the influence of Jones and others and popular resistance, but I doubt they’re actually scared.  I’m 60.  I no longer suffer from testosterone poisoning – most days.  I guess the day I listened to that broadcast was one of the days I was not poisoned by my own glands.  So it didn’t sound that great to me.  But to the intended audience, for the young members of which the condition is at least chronic, if not constant, maybe it was appealing.  Or maybe it was just something unscripted spoken live.

Ernest mentioned post-traumatic-stress-syndrome.  He associated it with guilt rather than fear.  That’s a whole new thought for me – ya’ lurnz sumthin’ knew evereee dadburn deigh.  Really.  I liked it.  It’s something new to chew on and chew on it I will.

I want to talk about primary (biological) fear and other (socially conditioned) fears.

According to Piaget (a major popular child-learning researcher widely discussed in the 1970’s, when I did a lot of my reading), the fear of falling is the only natural fear.  All other fears are socially conditioned.

My college Psychology 101 textbook was Psychology and Life by Zimbardo and Ruch.  It had an illustration in it that showed a baby on a glass table top of sufficient thickness to support the baby safely.  About half this glass table top had a checkered table cloth just beneath it.  From the other half, the baby could see all the way to the floor.  Every baby tested would crawl to the edge of where the table cloth was visible.  They would pat the glass beyond the table cloth.  (Again, the table cloth is beneath the glass.  The glass felt the same on both sides of this visual boundary.)  But even though they could feel the glass, none would venture past the visual boundary created by the table cloth.

One explanation for this behavior is Piaget’s fear of falling.

So how does this become socially conditioned?  Imagine on the playground a situation in which one child pushes another child down.  The child has fallen.  A natural fear is aroused.  Now imagine the other children laughing at the fallen child and pointing their fingers in his/her direction.  With repetition, or adequate reminders as other recount the tale, derision and chiding become conditioned fears.

Or something like that.

How far can this social conditioning go?

I remember a quote from President Ronald Reagan, “When a soldier jumps out of a trench and charges into a hopeless firefight, it is because he is more afraid of what the other men will think of him if he doesn’t than he is of dying.”

If Reagan’s assessment is correct, social conditioning can become strong enough to override the instinct of self-preservation.

One of the debilitating things about the whole “this is wrong, and this is who is doing it, and we should all be mad at them and scared about it” mindset is that it is immobilizing.  How many things can you be against?  It becomes impossible to accomplish consistent coherent action.

It’s easy to wear yourself out with this mindset and accomplish nothing.  Especially when you discover that the action you took against one wrong thing sorta’ cancelled out the action you took against some other wrong thing.  Or with so many irons in the fire, you don’t stay on one issue long enough to be effective.

I recall an author (either Kopp or Peck) who compared (some hopeless approach) to trying to discover the source of life by carving up cadavers.  Analogously, how can anyone possibly hope to arrive at a picture of proper government (formal or a-formal) by reviewing countless examples of government-gone-awry?

Better to be FOR a few things than against many.

Imagine two activists.  One is against many things.  Let’s call this guy a re-activist.  (He’s ready to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing, end them!)  The other is for a few things.  So let’s call this guy a pro-activist.  (No, he’s not ready to suffer [quietly] the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.)

At the beginning of some pre-set time period, let’s put a pedometer on each of these guys.  At the end of the pre-set time period, let’s come back and measure the distance each is from his starting point and record how many steps were taken.

My hypothesis:  The pro-activist with have a number of steps equal or smaller to the re-activist and will be further from his point of origin – which is to say, will have produced more results.

I suppose that one of those few things I might be for is everybody being left alone.  (BTW, this is not happening.)

Which brings to mind Ernest’s luv-alution.  If love is about connection, the ultimate end of the luv-alution would be for everybody in the country to connect with each other.  For a long time, I have considered the union mentioned in the preamble to be a union among all the people.  I was told otherwise in the 1970’s, but did not accept it.  In the past few weeks, I’ve been undergoing a paradigm shift regarding that.

So whether the union of 1787 referred to all the people, or to the 13 States, or to the 2,000 or so white men (approximately 0.1% of the population of the colonies at that time) who would by status and interest eventually vote on ratification, I cannot say right now.

Regardless of what the term union means in the Constitution, I think the aim of the luv-alution should be to connect as many people as possible (if not everybody) into a body that will act coherently toward a few well-selected aims.

FWIW.