I have been remiss in not including prolific commenter Steve Witherspoon’s blog among the Ethics Alarms links, an error I will remedy today when I wake up sufficiently. You’ll be introduced to his site in his latest Comment of the Day, which sets out to answer a question that increasingly perplexes me, regarding how narcissistic lunatic race-hucksters like Ashleigh Shackelford (above) became regarded by American corporations and other organizations as competent trainers of their members or employees to set their beliefs and attitudes “straight.”
Here it is, on the post, Ethics Quiz: What Is The Ethical Response To This…?
“At what point did elements in our society start being receptive to what she does and says, and why did this happen?”
Here is my answer in part…
“When you have one stupid person ranting in public it’s easy for the public to shrug it off and explain it away to others as “it’s just a wacko”, but what happens when that wacko’s rantings become mainstream and there are hoards of stupid people publicly parroting the same irrational emotionally driven nonsense…”
I wrote that June 17, 2019 in my blog post Apathy Fertilizes A Breeding Ground For Stupidity after watching what has happened and realizing that societal apathy from rational thinking people across our society was wide-spread, and people just hid away under their rocks focusing on their own lives, actively ignoring what’s been going on around them and thinking thoughts like “just ignore the wacko’s, they’ll go away”, “don’t get involved”, “I don’t want to be sued”, “I won’t want to be canceled”. People have forgotten what the word “enable” means.
So, the answer to the question “At what point did elements in our society start being receptive to what she does and says, and why did this happen?” is “When society became apathetic to the stupid people, tunnel visioned their self-centered lives and gradually allowed stupid people to gain power.” We’re ALL at fault! Years of apathy from rational thinking people has given the hordes of totalitarian minded stupid people credibility and street power. They are intimidating themselves into positions of power; rational thinking is deemed quaint, evil, racist.
“Many observe that we are in the middle of a revolutionary change in the patterns and the processes of human endeavor.” John C. Hillary, 1991
“The objective of education is to measure and diagnose the child in order to prescribe a program to develop his feelings and emotions, values and loyalties toward predetermined behavioral objectives. Drawing it right down to basics, we are talking about conditioned response in human terms.” Charlotte Thompson Iserbyt, 1972
Cognitive Dissonance: Disorganization of thoughts, mental confusion, and emotional tension caused by behavior modification which conflicts with one’s values. Such manipulation causes many to rethink and modify their values in order to conform to expected behavior.
Emotional Training Determines Thinking: The direct and indirect emotional training that an individual receives that determines the way they think. The like button in Facebook is an great example, the user sees others getting instant gratification with emotional “likes” and that subconsciously trains the individual to think similarly to get similar “likes” and enables the individual to easily set aside critical thinking in favor of getting “likes”. Pavlov trained dogs.
In her own way Charlotte Thompson Iserbyt wasn’t incorrect back in 1972 when she wrote about The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America. As I wrote in Ignorance or Societal Brainwashing?..
“These gullible social justice warriors are blindly believing the accusations above with their whole body and soul regardless of real truth, real logic, real justice, real facts, real common sense and real critical thinking which appear to have all been buried in the quaint anecdotes of history; now these anecdotes are in direct conflict with the new social order that’s trying to lead us towards a chaotic society of public vigilantism. Brainwashing a huge swath of the population that has been dumbed down has taken a good ten to twelve years of constant drum-beating, and these brainwashed social justice warriors are now intimidating their way into positions of power. I’ve written about the downward spiraling social trends over the last year here, here, here and here. Progressives are not being “progressive” and leading society towards a more intellectually critically thinking society ;they are being regressive and leading us towards a society full of emotional troglodytes being led by “progressive” totalitarians…”
Ethics Alarms 
I’m humbled.
Thank you.
“These gullible social justice warriors are blindly believing the accusations above with their whole body and soul regardless of real truth, real logic, real justice, real facts, real common sense and real critical thinking which appear to have all been buried in the quaint anecdotes of history…
The gullible social justice warriors, as you name them, have been at work for decades now, and as I do not tire in saying have deeply infected how you yourself and you-plural see and perceive. So, when you make pronouncements, which are merely elaborate and romanticized *complaints* about what these nefarious social warriors are doing, it seems to happen that the focus is removed from you yourself.
According to Jungian psychological theory one of the first obstacles, or the primary obstacles as it were, to awareness, understanding and self-development is recognition of the Shadow. Our own Shadow is what we cannot see about our own self, or that which we do not wish to see, or which is too distressing or painful, so we project our Shadow onto others where, of course, we see it clearly! While Jungian analysis has definite limitations on the political realm my suggestion — as a Dissident Right critic of American Conservatism — is that instead of focusing constantly and in droning manner on ‘those wicked others’ that the examination-lens be turned around. Obviously, this points to self-analysis and then of course to *work on the self*.
So when terms are switched out:
These American Pseudo-Conservatives are blindly believing the accusations above with their whole body and soul regardless of real truth, real logic, real justice, real facts, real common sense and real critical thinking which appear to have all been buried in the quaint anecdotes of history …
. . . with this inversion of terms it is possible to see the usefulness and advantage of a confrontation with the Shadow.
Now there is this curious and I think related fact which though it does not seem to be terribly popular does yet appear to be true: When the Shadow is projected away from one’s own self and onto that nefarious other one does oneself a disservice. It is self-trickery really. It is an omission. It appears to be a way of protecting the self — the *structure of the self* as I often say — from more difficult sorts of self-analysis. “The problem is obviously them!” says the one captured by projection. Yet it is pretty obvious, or should be obvious, that if there is a range of problems and failures within America’s society that require rectification, that those problems need to be seen, recognized and understood. But that person, that man or woman, who merely projects content onto the other actually avoids the demanding task of actually *seeing* and actually *understanding*.
So there is an interesting metaphor that occurred to me as I observe people — a blog essentially — that is trapped in a sense within mutability and every day focuses strictly on an isolated problem but always in a superficial and *surface* manner without showing interest in *getting to the roots of the problem*. That metaphor is people flowing downstream in the current of a river. They have been drifting along for decades now in a current that has them in its control and which they are not (sufficiently) aware of. And every day, every week, every month, and every year they are that much further along down the river.
One floater complains to the other how bad things are getting and there is a general agreement — a chorus of complaint, an intricate symphony or in any case a series of duets and quartets — about the circumstances . . . but as it happens one has just floated another kilometer without realizing it.
The *current* that defines both our surrounding circumstances and even our very selves — the perceptual structure that we work with, the lenses we see through — needs to be *seen*. I got a great deal of ridicule for my emphasis on the term ‘metaphysics’ but I do suggest that we do very much need — if such were available — to refer to a Master Metaphysician who can help us to notice and to *see* the very structures we live in and give assent to.
I am interested in this phrasing:
In her own way Charlotte Thompson Iserbyt wasn’t incorrect back in 1972 . . .
Yet it appears that you would imply that she was not fully correct. You give with one hand and at the same time take away. What interests me in your entire approach is on one hand your uncertainty which is also combined with a desire to have a Certain Platform. You want to have all the answers and to be able to *name* all those Evil Democrats, to expose them to the light of the day, but yet you yourself do not seem to have answers. Or the answers that you have — the discourse that you work with — is not a great deal more than ever-more-elaborate complaining . . . as you pass one more kilometer mark in the gentle flow down the river.
So, such a statement like: The will that is required for us to be able to see our present, and to become actors in it such that we might begin to reverse the negative trends that progress daily, involves a far higher intellectual commitment as well as a willingness to subject oneself to extreme critical analysis. To confront one’s own *complicity*.
… is a statement that opens up the conversation to a wide group of questions, not merely a *complaint-fest* that really shows no intention of getting to the root of the problem, and perhaps most importantly moving beyond the projection of Shadow in all the realms referred to.
Is this not Wunderful? Am I not wunderful for spelling this out so cleanly and carefully? Can I not be granted *darling* status here?!? Who will take wunderfulness status away from me? Don’t even try, buddy, don’t even try! 😉
Well . . . it made sense to me when I wrote it this morning!
The trainer in the photo is using Critical Race Theory. Sooooo, ask Joe Biden if he subscribes to CRT and if he believes Trump canceling Federal funds for CRT training is wrong. Then ask him to publically proclaim he is a racist because CRT states all whites are racists.
To the tune of “Ain’t no rest for the wicked”
“Oh, there ain’t no rest for the triggered
We’re easily displeased
We’ve got hair to dye
We’ve got tears to cry
Please give me your sympathy
No I’m not confused, I get my news
From places like Salon
No there ain’t no rest for the triggered
Donate to my Patreon”
That’s the chorus to Chris Ray Gun’s third installment of “Social Justice, The Musical” released in 2016. I particularly liked the “Donate to my Patreon” line because it’s like every social justice YouTuber was eBegging around that time, because they just couldn’t get the views to make a go of it with adsense. It’s almost like most people don’t watch bullshit. Regardless, my point is that while “Ya’ll’re racist, pay me” is more blunt than I’m perhaps used to, it’s not even close to a new phenomenon.