December 22, 2024 - Personal blog of Rick Giles

Beyond Learned Helplessness

November 21, 2020

By NZB3

Anarchists are opposed to the Noble Lie (Plato,) the treating of people as Means to an End (Kant.) We want people to be actors in their own lives, creators of their own character, masters of their own destiny. We don’t want you to be People Farmed by rulers who think they know what’s best for you.

The technology for getting people to obey has come a long way since the days of crucifixion. We don’t hang, draw, and quarter or even publicly execute enemies of The State. We don’t even transport them to Australia! It’s now far more subtle and done in ways George Orwell wrote about in Animal Farm and 1984.

Such a technique has just been covered by VJM in his post, Learned Helplessness…

” Learned helplessness, as the name suggests, is a particularly abject form of conditioned apathy. In Clown World, it’s everywhere.”

“It is by so inducing a state of helplessness that the ruling class manufactures acquiescence. With their psychological hold then established over the population, the ruling class can do as it likes without interference.”- Clown World Chronicles: What Is ‘Learned Helplessness’?
Learned Helplessness explains, to a major extent, why we don’t resist the rulers of Clown World. Understand that and you understand much of what’s going on but that’s far from all. What about anyone left over who is not drowning in apathy?
For anyone left over after Learned Helplessness who still has hope or energy there are still some more cards to be played! The State that cannot destroy human energy need only misdirect it into useless things.

Get the public to think their votes or petitions matter. Get them to think they’re making a difference when they like or share someone else’s expression. Get them to think they won something when a sports team won something. Tell them they’re a hero because they had a short shower or didn’t eat meat or wear a face mask or don’t wash their car! Get them to let off steam with letters to the editor or talkback radio, a protest march. Get them to believe some inquiry (Royal, ideally) is going to sort things out if they’ll just shut up for years on end…but then it comes to nothing…get them to complain to the Broadcasting Standards Authorty but by the time a judgement comes the angry will have cooled off. Get them to hope some Member of Parliament or their Private Member’s Bill is going to save the day any minute now….

If they weren’t there we would have created them
Maybe, it is true
But I’m resentful all the same
Someone’s got to take the blame
 I know that this is vitriol
No solution, spleen-venting
But I feel better having screamed
Don’t you?
– Ignoreland; Rem
Such things are all opiates for the masses. That’s the State. The Matrix! Government is just a little bit of it. An effect. If it wasn’t there our Statism would have created it.

Then, there’s us. Anarchists are the only ones with eyes open.

—
Image ref. Advertising paid for by Auckland ratepayers that tells them they’re a “hero” for making sacrifices of water.
Note: This is a Slave Culture Hero but a far cry from the sort of K-selected heroism that used to be reserved for heroic recognition.
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