Out of the Perilous Forest

A moving essay. One to give courage and hope to those whose hearts have become almost too heavy to bear. You are not alone. The path is there to be found.

Blue Ibis
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Our Learned Helplessness

SOTT Special Correspondent
Sott.net
Thu, 27 Mar 2008 14:44 EDT

©William Kentridge

"[...] the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn't there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who's to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn't be? War, terror, disease. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got the best of you [...]" Character V, from V for Vendetta

Yes, V is right. There is something terribly wrong with this country - and this could be referring to almost any country on the globe, since Pathocracy has taken global control. It actually makes sense for psychopaths to act as they do as such is their nature. But what about the rest of us? How is it that "fear got the best of us", and why is it that a paralyzing fear descends upon us when we consider resisting? Why is it that thoughts of "them" coming for us and locking us away, overshadow our truest human desires for Freedom, Love, Truth?

There is, in fact, a reason. It is called Learned Helplessness. One can find various websites on the respective experiments with dogs done by psychologist Martin Seligman and his colleagues in the 60s. But I'll quote from Clarissa Pinkola Este's book, Women who run with the Wolves, which sums up the experiment quite nicely.

We all were conditioned to this helplessness from our earliest days, and it is possible that those of us with the innate need to know and the ability to resist, defend and actually do something at some point in the future were particularly targeted in order to really embed this helplessness so as to keep us frozen in inaction.

In my daily life I interact with so many people who are confident, mobile, and intelligent, people who have ideas and speak up for themselves, but I always wonder why it is that they are not out there voicing their opposition to the corruption and criminality of big government. These people can't be blind to the state of the world because the evidence is all around them, yet still they remain complacent in the face of a very grave threat to us all. They are content to live out their lives within the restrictive limits set them by the political and corporate elite of this world.

So the task of speaking out is left to us 'neurotics', despite all our fears and scars, we still have that burning desire to know, to understand, to see, and then see what we can do about it - to DO something about that which is causing our fear is the only way to alleviate it. And once we discover, once we understand something, we feel the need to share it, to pass it on to those who, like us, are searching.

Because frankly, what are we going to do with everything we learn if we keep it to ourselves? There's a Greek folk song that says "life not shared is a stolen life". I would argue that also "knowledge not shared, is stolen knowledge".

If you think about it, it's the not speaking up, the submission, the not sharing of our discoveries, the not pointing out that the emperor is naked that allows the psychopaths in power to continue their predatorial ways and for the situation to continue on its downward spiral. As with so many problems in life, the problem here is one of fear-based faulty thinking. People fear that "they" will come for them if they speak out, but the paradox is that by not speaking out and facilitating our continued slide towards "Armageddon", people vastly increase the chances that a jack booted agent of the Pathocrats will one day kick down their door. Because when "they" seek to imprison us, defame or attack us in one way or another, their first targets of choice are always those who speak out against "them".

But I digress, here is the experiment:

In the early 1960s scientists conducted animal experiments to determine something about the "flight instinct" in humans. In one experiment they wired half the bottom of a large cage, so that a dog placed in the cage would receive a shock each time it set foot on the right side. The dog quickly learned to stay on the left side of the cage.

Next, the left side of the cage was wired for the same purpose and the right side was safe from shocks. The dog reoriented quickly and learned to stay on the right side of the cage. Then, the entire floor of the cage was wired to give random shocks, so that no matter where the dog lay or stood it would eventually receive a shock. The dog acted confused at first, and then it panicked. Finally the dog "gave up" and lay down, taking the shocks as they came, no longer trying to escape them or outsmart them.

But the experiment was not over. Next, the cage door was opened. The scientists expected the dog to rush out, but it did not flee. Even though it could vacate the cage at will, the dog lay there being randomly shocked. From this, scientists speculated that when a creature is exposed to violence, it will tend to adapt to that disturbance, so that when the violence ceases or the creature is allowed its freedom, the healthy instinct to flee is hugely diminished, and the creature stays put instead. [Estes, 1995]

This is the case with every single feeling person on this planet. We've been so battered emotionally, physically, mentally; we are so injected with terror and fears since day one, that all our natural instincts for survival have vanished. We no longer are able to stand up, speak up, and defend that which matters most in our hearts. We are scared to even dream or hope for anything better than ponerized world that "they" have crafted for us. So passivity becomes our modus operandi.

Restin Wells and Barbara O'Brien in their published personal accounts of the psychological journey to healing, Deep Therapy in the Fast Lane and Operators and Things (both invaluable reading for every person honestly searching to understand their inner world), found and shared the fact that what saved their sanity, ultimately, was feeling angry at their condition and its causes.

If you see yourself in the same position as one of these dogs in the experimental cage, receiving the administered shocks and staying put while the cage door is open, can you not feel angry at those administering the shocks, for making you like this? Would you not want to inform the other "dogs" in the cages of what is really going on as soon as you figured it out?

It is true that we are not many and we are all scared, but by uniting and combining our efforts in this battle we may overcome our fear and present a force for freedom in this world that is much greater than the sum of its parts. In doing so we give our selves the chance to carve out a new and different future. But as you sit there, reading these words, if you understand nothing else, understand this: if we do not act and give a voice to the Truth in this world, our future and the future of all decent human beings on this planet will be dictated by the psychopaths that have brought us to the edge of the precipice on which we now stand. Understand, make a choice and then act, in however small a way. Do it for yourself, for others, for the Truth.

©Unknown