The roots of our enslavement

[undergroundpanther]

The war of one against all: The roots of our enslavement

by Herb Ruhs, MD, Unknown News

Aug. 19, 2005

Try and tell me you haven't seen this happen. You are sitting around with friends and acquaintances talking about some topic or the other, at a dinner party perhaps. Someone there is more articulate, better informed, and, I think understandably, more passionate about the topic.

Are the rest of the people in the discussion pleased at discovering this resource so close at hand? Not likely, unless the person is seen as a celebrity, as "other," as someone unlike the other guests by being seen, in some way, as being superior. More likely, if this person is seen as a peer, as a member of the class of people represented there, they will become the focus of negative metalanguage, dirty looks, interruptions, unnecessary and contrarian responses, and before long the "expert" is silenced or maybe just leaves early.

The same person can be invited to "give a talk" and in the discussion afterwards is equally distressed by sycophantic and superciliously fawning responses from an audience consisting, essentially of the same sorts of people who were so dismissive at the dinner party. In either case, real discussion with real give and take does not happen and needed learning does not occur.

So what is going on here? Why are we so eager to shoot ourselves in the foot this way? Why do we find it so hard to learn from each other, to share openly, to allow ourselves to be influenced by other, ordinary, people who just happen to have more access to knowledge and experience on a particular topic than we posses?


http://www.unknownnews.org/050819a-hr.html

[Trillo]

1. I think people are good at hiding. Hiding is encouraged

in school where people who do not hide are made examples of with punishments of various amplitudes. Similar hiding behaviors are reinforced in some families. That doesn't extinguish the humans impulse to share however, it just modifies the behavior of sharing. Because the impulse still exists, and the people trained to hide have dissonance with that impulse, when they do speak out it comes out in ways that are others perceive as dissonant.

This is not meant to be comprehensive.

FYI--I have not followed the link to read anymore that may be there.

[wli]

2. an enlightened voice

There definitely needs to be more structural analysis going on.