The Jesus Breakthrough Parry Penetrating the "limbic system barrier"... in our time
Note: If you are a Bible-breathing advocate of Jesus Christ as your/our personal savior, then let me tell you from the gitgo that my column today is not referring to that Jesus.
Respectfully, my Jesus is a special man who, like
the Buddha and other spiritual teachers, conveys universal truths—that many are coming to see as especially helpful for fulfilling our human potential. The appreciation of these truths—as a means for breaking thru a major political barrier to human consciousness—is the context for my comments today.
— bw
The Sacred Nonaggression Principle (SNaP)
In the beginning there was the nonaggression principle (NaP), and it was good. As we have seen from my first two chapters[1] of the so-called Kindergarten Edition of my book of the same name, human beings are naturally inclined toward observing the nonaggression (or natural rights) idea. The belief that we should not assault or rob others, and vice versa, is nearly universal across all communities and creeds; the idea for nonaggressive social behavior jibes with our biological self-interest
In the SNaP book—the new edition is being written as we speak[2]; indeed, this column is a condensation of SNaP II, Chapter 4—I believe the NaP proof is made successfully through the first two chapters. Then in Chapter 3, I formalize
a graphical scheme for understanding what human characteristics go into the natural progression of society along the "Nonaggression Vector." The figure below is my conception of the direction and magnitude for achieving a human society without coercion... our destiny.
In fact, that will be my provisional name for the picture: The Destiny Diagram.
Each of the axes of the Destiny Diagram is explained as follows:
Along the X-axis, we grow to discard blind obedience to authority
and learn to think for ourselves. This is reflected in our overall psychological independence and interest in objective truth and
reason.
I conceived of the Y-axis as a measure of interest in ideas. At the bottom of the scale an individual takes no interest in the rest of the world at all. Slightly higher, he cares for his job, his family, or his local
sports franchise. And so on, to the few at the top who, for example, passionately work for world peace and justice. [Or, for the authoritarians, passionately work to control and manipulate the nonauthoritarian creative class.]
Finally, the Z-axis describes the degree to which a person has proceeded toward spiritual enlightenment. At the lower end, he's insensitive to the suffering of other sentient beings, in the midrange shows respect for the political rights of others, and ultimately manifests a deeply felt connection with Being.
Quite a bit of thought went into setting up the above architecture, and at least demonstrating a degree of plausibility for the hypothesis that as humans develop psychologically and spiritually, they achieve—as exhibited in the Destiny Diagram along the Nonaggression Vector—a society without coercion. That is, a society of freedom and its corollaries: benevolence and abundance.
But the logical question after Chapter 3 is, "If freedom and humans living in accordance with the nonaggression principle is so natural and inevitable, why doesn't it exist right now?" Not only is that the perfect question, it's an incredibly important question.
The Barrier Cloud
Like, "if you're so smart, why ain't you rich?" If the nonaggression principle is so natural to the human species, why, when we look around, even (or especially) at our own country, do we find so much aggression in the world? In the 20th century alone, governments managed to kill more than 100 million individuals.
"Houston, we have a problem." Clearly, some impediment or obstacle has been placed in the way of a human destination your grandnmother would be proud of. Let me suggest the obstacle graphically, not to say expertly, in the following marked-up Destiny Diagram:
For the time being, we may think of this generic barrier cloud as the longstanding mysterious "something" interfering with the human ideal. So what is the barrier cloud and where does it come from? We know that something has been interrupting the flow of living human energy toward the positive social outcome of the simple NaP.
What?
Certainly, we have not yet achieved universal intellectual recognition of the NaP: the libertarians have been making and refining their arguments for decades now... but the reasoning is not penetrating the conventional media and educational institutions to reach the average fellow. [Though welcome signs of change have emerged—consider the Ron Paul phenomenon, the Free State, Hendrickson and others revealing "income" tax truth, even the hundreds of little victories by Libertarians/libertarians in local governments.]
The reality of the "media blockade" or the "media barrier" as it serves entrenched interests of the political-economic classes, I believe, provides a hint to what is fundamentally the cause of the Barrier Cloud. And in this column, I'll try to give you the mercifully short form of my analysis:
The Barrier Cloud duo...
For those of us who have spent nearly a lifetime prosecuting the libertarian cause—and doing so primarily intellectually (though with action), that is by argument, by reading and writing, by protests with signs, by concepts of morality, etc.—I don't need to tell you the level of frustration we feel. The litany of state horrors has only grown longer... and intensified: illegal preemptive wars, torture and rendition, torching civil liberties into charred hulks, drug prohibition, freedom prohibition, wholesale economic rape by the political classes of left and right. Don't get me started.
Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, I'm convinced the Barrier Cloud (BC) does not arise primarily from intellectual forces. Hence, while in the (very) long run good ideas will defeat bad ideas among the masses, if we seek to break through the BC more imminently we must counter the forces that do create and sustain it. I believe these forces are more biological defects than mental ones. Briefly:
The internal cause of the BC lies in the perpetuation beyond its survival value of extreme social-conformity functions of a common primitive brain circuitry known as the limbic system—what I sometimes like to call the "blind obedience to authority" system.
The external cause of the BC lies in the conscious and coordinated actions of a small ruling minority of people who have coalesced through the ages, stealthily and secretly. Their biological purpose: to systematically direct and appropriate the creative/productive work of normal humans who do not seek to live by the effort of others.
In the "Grand Scheme of the Cosmos," I feel the internal cause is the prime mover in the Barrier Cloud obstacle—because a stunted limbic system function afflicts the overwhelming majority of human beings. My theory is that the external cause—the persons who actually construct and benefit parasitically from the BC—is only possible to the extent that this internal limbic system defect is present: the external cause is a "crime of opportunity." Much like what one sees in nature in other sophisticated, deceptive parasitic behavior, such as a cuckoo's egg placement strategy.
So let me first briefly discuss the external cause first, then proceed to describe the internal cause (limbic system shortcomings), then finally put in my two cents on what constitutes a cure... for the internal defect.
[Without a widespread malfunctioning limbic system in individuals, the external cause of the BC—the parasite—cannot survive.]
Consider that the "official ones" in our society—the persons with robes, badges, guns, and jails—deal in coercion. Any Constitutional or legal prohibition on the expansion of this government power is considered by virtually everyone in our society, even the victims of government power, a quaint historical relic. Further, the general population
We have the appearance of popular enfranchisement of the politically powerful, but in truth our modern universe of elected and appointed government officials—from the local police busting down doors of marijuana users, to the Prosecutocracy that harrassing and imprisoning peaceful Americans, to contract armies and CIA torture/assassination squads slaughtering civilians abroad—have become a sophisticated oligarchy bought and paid for by a shadow oligarchy consisting of "the ones who have the gold."
The emergence of the central bank in connection with the corporation has effectively removed political control from the masses. Like any big government, the victim of bigness is democracy: corruption dictates the rules that effectively preclude participation by anyone not connected. They cannot run because they don't have the money. They do not serve the interests of the cartel.
and ===These bandit rulers continue pretty much on their merry way, thumbing their noses at the hundreds of thousands of thoughtful, caring Americans who passionately work for the cause of peace, freedom, and justice.
So, first, let's mark these rulers—however we may come to unveil them—as pointing toward one major source or cause of the Barrier Cloud. [My term for them is Kleptocons, and I feel it's still a reasonably serviceable and useful concept.] For one thing, they are the ones actively doing the aggressing day by day.
Since we are looking at the problem from a typical human's point of view, the ruling class may be considered the external source or cause of the Barrier Cloud.
Internal Cause—Limbic System
Second,
let's consider the internal source of the Cloud: I've tentatively pictured the barrier as a cloud, as it suggests a lowering of the average person's clarity of thought. But what I've come to suspect truly is the internal cause rests with common brain structures and circuitry... that at one stage of human evolution were appropriate to survival, but now are holding us back considerably. Specifically, I'm referring to the limbic system, sometimes called the paleomammalian brain.
The limbic system is to the entire human brain as puberty is to adulthood, especially in terms of how we manage deep urges or emotions... like sex, affection, fear, anxiety, and social acceptability. I've discussed the limbic system before, and originally paid attention to its political relevance when Dr. Barbara Oakley described the structure at some length in her book with the flamboyant subtitle: Evil Genes: Why Rome fell, Hitler rose, Enron failed, and my sister stole my mother's boyfriend.
The Limbic System
Aside from being reactive and emotional—which most of us mature our way out of—the limbic system, the "for us or against us" processor,
encourages slavish, even ferocious, conformance to authority... which most of us have trouble letting go of. [As evidence, consider that even today a large percentage of Americans believe Saddam Hussein was behind the 9/11 attacks, an impression carefully cultivated in the mind-control media by the Bush administration in the years leading up to the 2003 Iraq War.]
The diagram below provides my layman's view of the social purpose of how the limbic system filters out factual data from rational consideration.
[2] Due for publication January's end, 2010. [I've been more optimistic than warranted in previous predictions, but this 1/31/10 date should be good now.]
[3] AI = artificial intelligence. There's a fair chance I'm not truly interacting with a human being at all, rather a computer program.
[4] "Googlenator" is a term formulated by my good friend Don McCredie, also, literally, prime mover of the article I wrote on the famous Woodward Cruise (2009). He tells me all rights have been properly filed and claimed along with my obligation to buy him a beer tonight.
Note: If you are a Bible-breathing advocate of Jesus Christ as your/our personal savior, then let me tell you from the gitgo that my column today is not referring to that Jesus. 
