… but no one wants to BE Atlas Shrugging
By Brian R. Wright

When: Wednesday, January 30, 2019 and Thursday, January 31 ’til noon.
Where: Livonia, Michigan; Southeast and South Central Michigan.
Context: Polar Vortex, unprecedented arctic cold temperatures and winds
Note: Michigan is east of Chicago and on top of the word “Chicago” in the vortex map on the right. The US Post Office cancelled delivery operations in 10 states, Michigan being one.

Company: We do mobile swallow studies in southern Michigan, using a driver-technician, speech pathologist, and medical physician—travel to rehabilitation facilities in a Ford Transit 250, with a 500 lb. rolling Fluorscope machine and gear to diagnose and help patients swallow better. I’m the lead driver-tech, and was NOT scheduled to go out on 1/30 or 1/31. NOR WOULD I HAVE CONSENTED TO GO ON 1/30 ALL DAY OR 1/31 A.M… AT GUNPOINT.

Incident: Our company in central Illinois, of all places, schedules the Livonia, Michigan, team to go to three facilities on 1/30, where the HIGH temperatures for the day are -10º and sustained winds are above 20 mph (wind chill -45º. Further, the company schedules local studies on 1/31 where the morning high is -15º (!) and sustained winds are above 10 mph (temps were headed toward zero at around noon).
Coincident: Everyone on the Michigan swallow teams for 1/30 and 1/31 a.m.—one driver-tech (50-something guy), two speech paths (young mothers, 30-somethings), and two MDs (one single woman, 40-something; one man, ~74)—complies with the company dictated schedule without a peep [note: the woman MD on the Wednesday was likely gung ho to go because that’s her ‘certifiable’ nature].

My Deep Philosophical Question of the Moment

Why?

Not so much why does our company NOT have a rational, common sense policy on minimum temperatures and/or wind chills below which we do not go out to perform studies, buy WHY on earth would otherwise seemingly reasonable human beings consent to the blatant irrationality of taking a measurable risk of serious personal harm—exposure, frostbite, major injury, death—for the negligible time-critical benefit of performing a swallow checkout in effin’ Podunk, Michigan?

Speech path #2, who worked the Thursday, when I implored her via text the night before to just say NO to this insane, thoughtless, uncaring company directive to casually ignore bona fide Arctic conditions, replied thus:

“I know. I can’t believe we are not canceled for tomorrow. It takes time to get the machine in and out of the van and into the building. It really is crazy.” Separate text: “It’s not my call, though.”

“It’s not my call.”

And you know what, I’ll bet that’s exactly what the others were thinking who went along so blithely. [Note: the teams were lucky, and returned safely.]

Company: “Hey, we’re asking everyone today as a patriotic gesture, instead of taking your half-hour lunch break, simulate waterboarding by sealing yourself in the bathroom at McDonald’s and sticking your head in the toilet repeatedly.”
Employee: “That sounds nuts, but, well, okay, everyone else seems to be going along. Not my call.”

More substantiation of cultural surrender to the techniques of modern mass mind control, as documented in Rule from the Shadows. In particular, go to location 9:48 in the video to learn about a) the Solomon Asch Conformity experiments of 1951 and b) the Stanley Milgram Authority experiments of 1961.

The Asch Conformity experiments show that roughly 40% of the subjects would conform to an obviously incorrect perception [when that incorrect perception was affirmed as correct by the rest of the prearranged panel] consistently. [In 2005, neuroscientist Gregory Burns with a similar experiment showed that subjects attesting to the incorrect perception actually HAD the perception at the neurological level, in effect, THE BRAINS (of 4 out of 10 subjects) WERE REWRITING THEIR REALITY ACCORDING TO WHAT OTHERS DICTATED WAS ACCEPTABLE.]

The Milgram Authority experiments had test subjects deliver what they believed were electric shocks to another individual in another room if that individual gave a wrong answer. The lab-coated test director authority in a lab coat told the subject to continue administering shocks at increasingly higher levels, despite hearing screams of agony from the individual in the next room. Merely upon the test director’s instruction—no threats were made—that the subject must continue the test, 50-65% continued to administer the shocks to the highest level shown by the instruments… even to the point of no longer hearing the shocked individual’s screams (indicating he was unconscious or dead).

Thus in the middle of the 20th century 40-60% of Americans were willing to abandon clear perceptual reality in favor of group consensus conformity and do what they were told by an authority figure, even when their actions were approaching lethal injury to others. What do you think the percentage of authority-conforming drones is today, seven decades later? In my own little Brian R. Wright experiment, 4 or 5 out of 6 (67% to 83%) go along with what they’re told regardless of (even their own) harm, moreover they relieve themselves of any responsibility for making a decision by stating or thinking “It’s not my call.”

My Response

In the middle of the process of trying to elicit ONE of the members of either of the two teams to withhold consent and behave as a rational human being, albeit their decision MIGHT HAVE resulted in a mild disapproval from headquarters (or from the one Dr. Certifiable, I came up with the following requirement statement, which is what I adhere to personally:

The Team Unanimous Consent Rule (UCR):

In the absence of rational company policy each team member must consent to “go” real time [on day, facility, and study (and person) level] based on his or her own individual standard of “safe, timely, and reasonable (STR).” If any team member does not consent, level condition is “no-go,” no questions asked, and the driver-tech will communicate “no-go” as team decision to management.

When I sent the text out, it was met with complete silence. Oh, except for Dr. Normal Human who said we would talk tomorrow (the next time we were going out). [I gathered his objection to my UCR was “why put anything so forceful in writing?” Even the speech path who was not scheduled for either the 30th or 31st and who had earlier indicated she liked my ‘plan’ did not respond to my proposal of the UCR.

The Lesson

We who aim to rebuild human consciousness into its independent psychological essence and destiny face a daunting challenge. We see it in our daily lives. [I just had to get my own latest troubling example of failure off my chest.] The lesson is to hang in there. It’s bad but it’s not going to get much worse, because by nature it can’t.

We Independents, believe it or not, SHALL succeed… and relatively soon. The policy of blind, casual acquiescence to authority and doing what others find acceptable has reached the final stages of social destruction. There’s nowhere to go but up. Read my novel The Truman Prophecy, which is, well, prophetic, and I’m very excited to be launching and completing several Indie-focused projects at this time. The overall blueprint or map of these projects is indicated by the figure below, I call it my Big Picture of the FLOW way of being. Download the pdf; become a FLOWer and a GROWer.

As for my coworkers, they’ll step up. The coming American Gumption-Catharsis rules!