Youth Violence: Black Thugs to Eco-Fascists -- Don't Blame Conformity

Pan-African News Wire

From ethnic flash mobs to organised political mobs, to religious rape and violence, to more traditional violent delinquents and gang-bangers, youth and young adult violence has become a permanent fixture in cities across the modern world.

Is most of this violence a result of the influence of conformity and peer pressure on impressionable youth, or are violent participants more cognitively committed to the violence than is commonly thought? Australian researchers suggest the latter:

Milgram's 'Obedience to Authority' research is widely believed to show that people blindly conform to the instructions of an authority figure, and Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE) is commonly understood to show that people will take on abusive roles uncritically.

However, Professor Haslam, from the University of Queensland, argues that tyranny does not result from blind conformity to rules and roles. Rather, it is a creative act of followership, resulting from identifying with authorities who represent vicious acts as virtuous.

.... people participate in horrific acts not because they become passive, mindless functionaries who do not know what they are doing, but rather because they come to believe—typically under the influence of those in authority—that what they are doing is right," Professor Haslam explained. Professor Reicher, of the University of St Andrews, added that it is not that they were blind to the evil they were perpetrating, but rather that they knew what they were doing, and believed it to be right. _MXP

Professors Haslam and Reicher have performed prison experiments of their own, and discovered a much more complex layering of actions and motivations on the part of participants than most sociologists appear willing to admit -- based upon how the Milgram research continues to be interpreted.

Haslam and Reicher suggest that youth and young adults have already largely decided that violence is justified "in the cause" even before they participate in the looting, rapes, and other violent assaults. The youth have already been indoctrinated into an acceptance of violent behaviour by education, family, community, peers, and popular music and media.

In Palestine and Gaza, for example, Arab youth are indoctrinated by parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, siblings, etc. in undying hatred against Jews and Israel -- from the cradle and throughout childhood and youth. For a Palestinian youth to take up arms against Israelis and Jews is instinctive after a certain amount of this.

In many black and minority communities across North America, Oceania, Europe, and beyond, the hated ones -- the targets of lifelong indoctrination into hatred by families and local communities -- are the whites, the Koreans, the ethnic Chinese, or any other group that experiences a greater degree of success or perceived acceptance than the particular minority community.

But perhaps a greater problem than ethnic violence -- even within multi-cultural societies -- is the problem of the widespread political and social indoctrination of children and youth inside government schools. Not only are children taught that modern productive economic systems are the root of global warming catastrophe and all types of other eco-doom, they are also isolated from serious responsibility and prevented from acquiring practical skills and competencies which would allow them to succeed in a modern economic system.

This flood of indoctrinated psychological neotenates and lifelong incompetents is dumped onto the jobs market -- often hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, and with no meaningful skills, competencies, or developed talents. It should be no surprise that besides escaping in drugs, alcohol, and meaningless social interaction and entertainment, that some of them are attracted to violent leftist and green activist organisations.

As new communications technologies develop, coordinating "spontaneous" mass violence and mass crime becomes easier, and within the reach of larger numbers of youth and young adults.

An ongoing evolution of flash mobs

Climatology: A Textbook Example of Groupthink

In groupthink, organizations value consensus more than free thought. The emphasis on consensus leads to group polarization, in which a group’s positions become more extreme than any individual would come up with. Alarmist climate science is a textbook example of groupthink in action.

...The groupthink syndrome...

This consists of three main categories of symptoms:

1. Overestimate of the group’s power and morality, including “an unquestioned belief in the group’s inherent morality, inclining the members to ignore the ethical or moral consequences of their actions.”

2. Closed-mindedness, including a refusal to consider alternative explanations and stereotyped negative views of those who aren’t part of the group’s consensus. The group takes on a “win-lose fighting stance” toward alternative views.[5]

3. Pressure toward uniformity, including “a shared illusion of unanimity concerning judgments conforming to the majority view”; “direct pressure on any member who expresses strong arguments against any of the group’s stereotypes”; and “the emergence of self-appointed mind-guards … who protect the group from adverse information that might shatter their shared complacency about the effectiveness and morality of their decisions.”[6]

_Paul McRae...in_WUWT

A description of "the groupthink syndrome" also happens to be a good description of the current state of climate scientology science. Particularly troubling is the lack of sceptical doubt among climate orthodoxy insiders. Without scientific scepticism and critical self-monitoring, the climate orthodoxy becomes indistinguishable from a religious belief.

Instead of a healthy scepticism, orthodox climate science and a suspiciously compliant mainstream press attempt to block all thoughtful consideration of the deeper issues involved in climate -- which go far beyond concerns about greenhouse gases such as CO2. But it is only through consideration of the deeper issues that a true scientific examination of climate can be carried out.

Here are a few of the current debates and theories which are being blocked by the orthodoxy:

Total Cloud Cover from Satellite Observations and Climate Models

How Stratospheric Temperature is Decoupled from Surface Temperatures

Levitus on Ocean Forcing

etc etc etc

The astoundingly insular nature of modern climate science would not be particularly important, if it were not for the political, economic, and industrial implications for modern societies. Modern societies would be ruined -- bankrupted -- if they were to take the policy recommendations of the climate orthodoxy seriously. Such societies would be left without reliable energy supplies, starving industry and commerce. Trillions of dollars in redistribution payments from the first world to the third world would drive modern nations even more deeply into debt than at present -- and for no good reason at all. Perhaps worst of all, the barrage of propaganda directed at modern societies to keep them compliant with the "greenhouse agenda" would create generations of schoolchildren and adults incapable of thinking logically, beyond their groupthink greenhouse programming.

And yet that is precisely what orthodox politicians such as Barack Obama, Al Gore, and other fringe greens currently and formerly in power want to do.

Groupthink is toxic to the ability of the human mind to think clearly and independently. It is destructive of creativity and productive imagination. It is destructive of any hopeful or livable future for the majority of humans -- those living outside the inner circles of power.

Unless the voters of the western democracies wake up to the nightmare of groupthink conformity which is being forced on them by the climatological - political - faux environmental complex, it will be too late for them to stop the top-down steamroller of hopelessness and opportunity destruction.

At that point, alternative plans would have to be called upon.

Hope for the best. Plan for the worst.

More: The Shocking Rise of Eco-Fascism

When Everyone is Thinking the Same Thing, Someone is Not Thinking

He, who has learned to doubt and to ask questions where the norms forbid it, can never stop the habit. As such, every creative person is building bridges to those masses of people who are tied up helplessly by the pressures of peers and society. His is a step out and above the group. And however strong the creative person is enchained by conventions, he has unshackled himself on his way as a free and autonomous personality. As such, he may have cleared a new path for his group, his society and perhaps humankind in order to transform culture and to create space for other free personalities who want to set new goals.--Franz Oppenheimer (1864-1943)
_Tahoe is Walking On

The established order is always threatened by innovation and creative ideas. That is why the persons who display a great deal of creative talent and potential for disruptive thought are generally either co-opted, marginalised, or disposed of in some way.

The lopsided ideological nature of modern media and the modern professoriate and intellectual celebrities, suggests that almost everyone is thinking the same thing. Which means that almost no one is actually thinking.

A lot of people are emoting, and intuiting. But few are thinking.

And that is a huge problem, when modern societies are faced with the huge problems of debt and demography, among others.

If you are wondering what people and societies can do to get themselves out of this groupthink conundrum, this would be a good place to start.

In a Climate Where Science is Being Raped by Political Correctness, Can the Scientific Method Be Restored?

The video above, "Restoring the Scientific Method," is taken from the recent 6th International Conference on Climate Change. Follow this link to all the videos from that conference. (via Anthony Watts) The ICCC was instituted to provide a forum where an open exchange of information regarding issues of climate could be exchanged, without regard to political correctness.

But climate is just one small -- albeit multidisciplinary -- area where science is engaged. Political bias distorts outcomes from a wide array of topics where political correctness has taken an interest in science. Of course, none of the other politically hot topics in science have declared their intention to take over the advanced world's economies and industries, as climate science politics has done. So climate clearly warrants citizen oversight on a large scale.

But if science can be distorted and prostituded in the area of climate, it can be hired out to powerful interests in other areas as well. Scientific misconduct and outright fraud appears to be more common than previously thought, in the age of a growing dependency on government for research funding.

In Hitler's Germany, science was bent to do the will of the Fuhrer, to prove the superiority of "the master race." In Stalin's USSR, science was perverted to prove the superiority of the socialist system. Dissenting (honest) scientists were sent to the Gulag or worse.

In the modern world of government-financed science, groupthink in both funding agencies and in laboratories plays a powerful part. If the scientist does not play to the prevailing expectations of the financing agency and the power-clique controlling scientific publishing, he may lose his grant, his lab, his ability to publish, and his livelihood. Scientists generally understand the rules that must be obeyed to get along.

That is why it is so fascinating when scientists are willing to go against the prevailing winds -- because that is when scientific revolutions and paradigm changes tend to happen.

Most scientists willing to publicly go against the climate orthodoxy of doom, are retired from active grant-seeking and publication in journals. With nothing to lose, they are free to speak out. But a few active and outspoken climate researchers are beginning to speak out against the closed and closed-minded nature of the orthodoxy. As the influence of these brave persons grows, the ability to restore the scientific method to climate studies at large also grows.

Can you think of some other areas where political correctness prevents or obstructs the open examination and discussion of scientific issues? These are the things that one rarely sees in the media. They are things that most persons have been conditioned not to mention or discuss. They are those things and ideas which must not be named.

But ideas do tend to get around in the era of tweets, social media, and new technologies.

Always focus on falsifiability, when looking at a scientific theory or idea. How could you prove it wrong? What near-term predictions can you make based upon the theory? If your predictions are set to fall on the year 2100, how can that "science" be called falsifiable in the year 2011?

Fake science avoids the risk of being tested. Fake science tries to shut down debate, using underhanded tactics and means. Fake science hides in a faux consensus, ignoring the fact that true science is not about taking votes to reach a final conclusion, or reaching a final, beyond-debate agreement in committee.