By Dr. Charlie Palmgren

“The most beautiful and most profound experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all true science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe is as good as dead.” – Albert Einstein

Summary of Previous Material

Wieman shared the view point of Kenneth Boulding and Arnold Toynbee. “We are living in postcivilization. The transition from tribal life to civilization was brief in the sense that 8,000 years was brief compared to the preceding million years of a human-like existence and the following million years of postcivilization.”

This is a very different view from those of us living and thinking in centuries and decades, let alone those thinking in years, months or weeks, and those in weeks, days and hours or in the common vernacular, pay check to paycheck. We are living in what was Henry’s, Fitz’s and my future. This reminds me of the 1985 movie Back to the Future. The difference is that I’m in the future attempting to re-experience the past and follow it forward to today.

We now see whether or not we chose CI or whether we opted for another way of life that Henry warned could emerge. Did we, as he suggested, choose “a fuller, more free and extensive form of creative communicating where each individual learns more from others…[that] expands our valuing consciousness?” Or, did we move in the direction of “anarchy and chaos, with an increase of coercive power and control?” You be the judge. You are living in Henry’s future.

Wieman as a prophet:

When President Biden and others suggest our 2024 election is about the survival of democracy, it is not an exaggeration. Even those living from paycheck to paycheck are becoming aware of the importance of our current election process. It is important to remember that the current polarizations in our political world are a product of democracy itself. Wieman wrote in 1968 the following.

“Perhaps this brief period of democracy we have had in a small part of the world during the past two centuries is coming to an end. Even in our democracies the concentration of privilege in the hands of a few has only mitigated, not basically changed. We seem to be moving in a time when wars will no longer be fought by men with guns but with complicated and technical instruments operated by experts.”

Does this statement ring a bell? Throughout these pages remember Henry is writing in the early 1960’s. He is writing about what is in his future, which is now our present. He was describing our drones that were operated by technicians hundreds to thousands of miles away.

However, thanks to AI and supercomputers we need fewer technicians as the machines have become self-learning machines capable of making their own decisions. We’ve been entertained by social media showing us how we take target practice shooting down our enemies’ missiles and drones. Is it war, entertainment, ignorance, stupidity and/or possibly moral and ethical failure on our part? In the current version of democracy, it’s anyone’s and everyone’s personal choice in the midst of moral and ethical relativism. Henry said; “Industry under automation may become the monopoly of a ruling few”

Three Companies Control 88% of The Largest Corporations in the U.S. BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street are the largest shareholder positions in 40% of all listed U.S. corporations and 88% of S&P 500 firms. They are the largest owners in 438 of the 500 most significant American corporations that include Amazon, and Facebook. These 438 co-owned corporations account for approximately 82 percent of S&P 500. Alphabet Berkshire Hathaway (Warren Buffett), Amazon.com (Jeff Bezos), Facebook (Mark Zuckerberg), Walmart (Walton family), Oracle (Larry Ellison), Comcast (Roberts family) and Kraft-Heinz (Berkshire Hathaway and 3G Capital).

Remember it’s Henry’s future and our current reality. And now let’s get more granular. Wieman continues.

“Science is now being used to devise methods for enforcing a brainwashing ideology by which the great majority are made to think, feel and act as the privileged few demands, enslaving the minds of the many more completely than the minds of ancient slaves.”

The ancient slaves understood they were the victims of slavery. Our modern version of enslavement is couched in a belief that each of us choose our personal form of enslavement without understanding it as a form of slavery. Human manipulation has become an unconscious art of hyper suggestibility, which is similar to hypnosis, to engage in what Vance Packard wrote about in his 1957 book The Hidden Persuaders. He described Madison Avenue as getting people to “buy things they don’t need, at a price they can’t afford, to impress people they don’t like.” I suggest Big Pharma, along with big business, have refined these techniques to an art form and that they are manipulating people into asking their doctors for drugs and therapies they don’t necessarily need.

They got so good at it that drug companies were forced to inform the public of the side effects of their chemicals. In response, Big Pharma became more proficient at distracting and manipulating the attention of the public. Chamath Palihapitiya, former Facebook VP of User Growth stated; 

“The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops we’ve created are destroying how society works.”

Sean Parker, founder of Napster and former Facebook president said; 

“The thought process that went into building these applications, Facebook being the first of them, … was all about: “How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible? It’s a social validation feedback loop… You’re exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology … [The inventors] understood this, consciously, and we did it anyway.”

Chamath Palihapitiya, former Facebook VP of User Growth: 

“The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops we’ve created are destroying how society works.“

Tristan Harris, former Google Design Ethicist: 

“There are a thousand people on the other side of the screen whose job it is to break down the self-regulation you have.”

Reed Hastings, Netflix CEO: 

“You know…when you watch a show on Netflix and you get addicted to it, you stay up late at night…we’re competing with [your] sleep…we actually compete with sleep. And we’re winning!”

To me these are good examples of the culture game and the culture wars. Henry anticipated such possibilities with his term “brainwashing”. We are seeing the refinement of these in 2024 real time. It’s worth repeating what Henry said above

“Science is now being used to devise methods for enforcing a brainwashing ideology by which the great majority are made to think, feel and act as the privileged few demands, enslaving the minds of the many more completely than the minds of ancient slaves.

Slaves of ancient times knew they were slaves. Many of us assume we’re making our own decisions. Are we? In your mind, which form of slavery is the more dangerous? Henry continues;

“All this may indicate we are reverting to the ancient system, prevalent throughout almost the whole of civilization, wherein, the privileged few gathers to themselves the benefits of social organization while the masses are controlled in such a way that creativity will sink to a minimum.”

For Wieman, creativity that will sink to a minimum, is our innate, instinctual and intrinsic capacity for engaging in CI. Then Henry says something incredible. 

“This outcome is not inevitable [is he kidding me?] It can be prevented if [humankind] can be made to see the danger of it.”

How hard could/can that be? Seems simple enough, right? In my next entry I’ll pick up right where I’m leaving off. All of Henry’s quotes above are found on page 154 in RI.

Love you all,

Dr. Charlie Palmgren