The Praxis Journal

The Praxis Journal — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 06:32:44 +0000

When an ostrich buries its head in the sand as danger approaches, it very likely takes the happiest course. It hides the danger, and then calmly says there is no danger; and, if it feels perfectly sure there is none, why should it raise its head to see? A man may go through life, systematically keeping out of view all that might cause a change in his opinions, and if he only succeeds—basing his method, as he does, on two fundamental psychological laws—I do not see what can be said against his doing so. It would be an egotistical impertinence to object that his procedure s irrational, for that only amounts to saying that his method of settling belief is not ours. He does not propose to himself to be rational, and indeed, will often talk with scorn of man’s weak and illusive reason. So let him think as he does.

But this method of fixing belief, which may be called tenacity, will be unable to hold its ground in practice. The social impulse is against it. The man who adopts it will find that other men think differently from him, and it will be apt to occur to him in some saner moment that their opinions are quite as good as his own, and this will shake his confidence in his belief. This conception, that another man’s thought or sentiment may be equivalent to one’s own, is a distinctively new step, and a highly important one. It arises from an impulse too strong in man to be suppressed, without danger of destroying the human species. Unless we make ourselves hermits, we shall necessarily influence each other’s opinions; so that the problem becomes how to fix belief, not in the individual merely, but in the community.

Charles S. Pierce

The Fixation of Belief

The Praxis Journal — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 06:31:33 +0000

Wolverine: Easy to forget, but that’s just what life is. Right there. The fight not to be dead just yet.

Cyclops: Fight’s rigged.

Wolverine: Sure it is. You know you’re going down. Only question is, how many rounds you last.

Cyclops: But we don’t stop fighting.

Wolverine: Nope.

Cyclops: Why is that?

Wolverine: Because we don’t know how.

X-Men:

Endangered Species

The Praxis Journal — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 06:30:43 +0000

Undergraduates come to me very often and say, “I want to go on to graduate school in psychology. Where should I go?” And I always ask them the question, “Why do you want to study psychology?” And as I listen to them, usually one of two answers develops. Answer number one is: “I want to become a psychologist. I want to play the psychology game. I want to be able to play the role and use the terms you use, and I want to be an assistant professor and then an associate professor and then a full professor, and I want to get tenure, and maybe if I’m really ambitious, I might get to be president of the American Psychological Association.” Well, that’s fair enough, and for someone who has that ambition I can give them advice about the strategic universities to go to, like go to Michigan or Yale but don’t go to XYZ.

Some students, though, will say, “I want to study psychology because I want to study human nature” or “I want to find out what’s what.” To do some good. And then I can tell them, well, forget about graduate school. What kind of good do you want to do? Do you want to help the mentally ill? Then get yourself committed to a mental hospital. Stay there for a year or two; you’ll learn more about mental illness in that two years than our profession has learned in a hundred years. If you want to learn about delinquency and reducing crime, go down to the tough section, learn the crime game, learn how to make a man-to-man contact with tough guys, learn from them why they are crooks and criminals. Spend a year in prison, not as a psychologist, but maybe as a guard, or cleaning up the garbage, and you’ll learn more than you will ever learn in a criminology textbook. That is how it goes. There is no problem that can’t be best solved and best worked out at this stage of ignorance by getting right into the reality.

Timothy Leary

The Politics of Ecstasy

Absence of self-confidence among subjects

The Praxis Journal — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 06:30:02 +0000

Many people do not have sufficient confidence in themselves, their judgment and their capacities to make them capable of disobedience and resistance. Having no strong will of their own, they accept that of their rulers, and sometimes prefer rulers who will direct their lives and relieve them of the task of making decisions. The subjects may be disillusioned, exhausted, apathetic, of possessed of inertia, or they may lack a belief system which makes it possible both to evaluate when one ought to obey and disobey, and also to give confidence in one’s right and ability to make such a decision. Lack of self-confidence may also be influenced by a belief that the ruling group is more qualified to make decisions and to carry them out than are the subjects. This attitude may be based on perceived greater competence, social customs and class distinctions, or conscious indoctrination.

One consequence of the lack of self-confidence is a tendency to avoid responsibility, to seek to delegate it upward and to attribute greater authority to superiors in the hierarchy than is in fact merited. People lacking self-confidence may seek a ruler, a leader, a despot, a tyrant who will relieve them of responsibility for guiding their present and their future. Wrote Rousseau: “Slaves lose everything in their chains, even their desire for escaping them: they love their servitude, as the comrades of Ulysses loved their brutish condition.” Even where subjects wish to alter the established order, they may remain submissive because they lack confidence in their ability to act effectively in bringing about the desired changes. As long as people lack self-confidence they are unlikely to do anything other than obey, cooperate with, and submit to their rulers.

Gene Sharp

The Politics of Nonviolent Action

Part One: Power and Struggle

Habit

The Praxis Journal — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 06:28:08 +0000

One reason why men obey is that obedience has long been the practice of humanity, and it has become a habit. In the opinion of some, the habit of obedience is in fact “the essential reason” for continued obedience. David Hume said that habit consolidates what other principles of human nature have imperfectly founded. Once accustomed to obedience, he wrote, men “never think of departing from that path in which they and their ancestors have constantly trod, and to which they are confined by so many urgent and visible motives.”

Gene Sharp

The Politics of Nonviolent Action

Part One: Power and Struggle

-Hesiod- Edith Hamilton, “Mythology”

The Praxis Journal — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 15:22:07 +0000

According to another story, the gods themselves created men. They made first a golden race. These, although mortal, lived like gods without sorrow of the heart, far from toil and pain. The cornland of itself bore fruit abundantly. They were rich also in flocks and beloved of the gods. When the grave covered them they became pure spirits, beneficent, the guardians of mankind.
In this account of the creation the gods seemed bent on experimenting with the various metals, and, oddly enough, proceeding downward from the excellent to the good to the worse and so on. When they had tried gold they went to silver. This second race of silver was very inferior to the first. They had so little intelligence that they could not keep from injuring each other. They too passed away, but, unlike the gold race, their spirits did not live on after them. The next race was of brass. They were terrible men, immensely strong, and such lovers of war and violence that they were completely destroyed by their own hands. This, however, was all to the good, for they were followed by a splendid race of godlike heroes who fought glorious wars and went on great adventures which men have talked and sung of through all the ages since. They departed finally to the isles of the blessed where they live in perfect bliss forever.
The fifth race is that which is now upon the earth: the iron race. They live in evil times and their nature too has much of evil, so that they never have rest from toil and sorrow. As the generations pass, they grow worse; sons are always inferior to their fathers. A time will come when they have grown so wicked that they will worship power; might will be right to them, and reverence for the good will cease to be. At last when no man is angry any more at wrongdoing or feels shame in the presence of the miserable, Zeus will destroy them too. And yet even then something might be done, if only the common people would arise and put down rulers that oppress them.

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The Praxis Journal — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 15:21:36 +0000

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