The Auto-authoritarian

My thoughts one morning after a sleepless night regarding media, and the perception of authority in the media. Free to disribute or publish elswhere. Please contact if used.

The Auto-Authoritarian

Man, oh man. I always wondered in my youth how Hitler pulled what he did on the German people. How he could convince the the population that they were the master race, convinced the nation the Fatherland was threatened by "terrorists" from Turkey, while Annexing Poland and Invading Austria, Belgium and France. Or how the Emperor of Japan remained the supreme and unquestioned ruler of an entire empire. It was a mystery to me. Now in my own country, in our so-called "Homeland" a strikingly similar wave of self-importance and self-righteousness has cast a shadow on our people. Most average working folks don't see it. Not at all. Not in the least. Much like the average working German or Japanese of days long past. It's as if a section of the brain which contains reason were removed. An ailment I have recognized and named. We are currently a nation of auto-authoritarians.

Here's a first stab at my would be Webster definition of auto-authoritarian.

au.to.au.thor.i.tar.i.an: noun: 1. A self-operating involuntary reflex favoring absolute and unquestioning obedience to authority without self-regulation. 2. A place where nothing is questioned in respects to authority.

"Our language is the reflection of ourselves. A language is an exact reflection of the character and growth of it's speakers". It's a quote, but for the life of me I can't remember who's. Send me and email if you know. I expect I'll loose sleep over this one dammit!

And so it goes.

In my youth, I have to admit I hated English Lit. I remember complaining about these stupid books my teachers insisted I read. You know the ones, Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm. Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, Asimov's I, Robot, Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron. All of which I despised mainly due to the fact that I was comfortably convinced after reading the lot, I lived in the Greatest Nation on the Planet, a benevolent nation. A nation of relatively smart and well meaning people and all of a sudden the Russians were our friends. Progress! A future for the planet! How positive, how hopeful I was at the time of my graduation from High School in 1987. Nothing resembling anything in THOSE books apply to today's world (of the late 80's). I'm 34 now and wish I could go back in time, so I can thank the few teachers who forced knowledge and ideas into my youthful, unwilling, so certain mind. Also so I can buy stock in Apple.

From these books, which mostly have to do with totalitarian governments, I gain points of reference. Back in 1984, when I read "1984", I thought it was lame, and I much rather liked the David Bowie song by the same title. Ironically, these days I work in Television, and witness blind devotion to... well, basically anyone on TV by the mass viewing audience. Bradbury's work about burning books is a drastic example, however the FCC is in no way a moral authority on the people which stems from the same line of thinking as 451. Vonnegut nailed it with Harrison Bergeron where our hero is allowed to remove a device which limits intelligence the majority of the population is forced adorn. If you prove to be too smart in this society you are eliminated (killed). Harrison testing high and being spared of this end, eventually learns he can turn this device off for everyone in the society, old to young and does so, locking himself into a futuristic audio-video station, exposing to the entire population for the first time to beauty, culture and Jazz until forcefully removed. Harrison Bergeron is also a movie if you're not much into reading. Back to Orwell with Animal Farm, from which I have gathered that even a well intentioned revolution such as our own which gave birth to the USA can grow rotten with greed and corruption. I attribute Asimov's I-robot to my Mac, which is antiquated and severely out gunned by todays standards, still works, is my second brain the size of a universe, and my plastic pal, thankfully not manufactured by the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation. It's a Mac not a Marvin but since I've been mentioning great authors, here's to you Douglas Adams, I miss you terribly. On a side note, I interviewed Ray Bradbury some years ago where he spoke of computers and their users as "men playing with pinball machines" he insisted "you can't be creative with computers" following up with "people are wasting employers time and money talking to people from around the world". Thanks Ray, noted but dismissed. Hello world. ;-)

Here is the back-story on my auto-authoritarian hypothesis.

Following the 2nd Bush election, I was grasping for reasoning of the outcome on a human level. I know people cheat, and there may have very well been a great deal of fraud in Ohio and other states. Pay me as much as Condoliza Rice or Diabold and I'll boldface lie right to your face as well. Affluence and greed do the worst things to the best of minds. It's human nature as far as I can tell. No one is exempt. Pay me a shit-load of money and you'll never hear from me again. Maybe.

Continuing on.

Fist off, I air a a commentary series on my station http://www.upstartradio.com called "What they don't tell you" from indy station KRFP in Moscow Idaho. In this commentary entitled "The Wanton Empire", host Jody Paulson describes a friend explaining to her mother about how we are posturing to go to war with Iran, to which, the mother said "Good, we should bomb them!". The commentary was dated Monday 2/15/05. On the previous friday 2/12/05, I had a short conversation with someone I consider a friend, fellow Celt and Guinness aficionado. I like and respect this person and reeled with disbelief when I heard him say basically the same thing. "I think we should slap Iran around!" Now, this person is not stupid. On related issues he's quite on target, and I couldn't make heads or tails of how I should react. I had to work this out somehow. I knew my friend was talking without thinking, and most likely knows nothing of the politics in the region. I figure it's most likely he's been listening to those so-called experts on Fox or MSNBC. I thought to myself, "There has to be a name for that" and began to think about authority and how people see it.

In an earlier rant I was working hard at coming to grips with an anomaly I couldn't quite understand. The same friend, fellow Celt and Guinness aficionado had consistently ignored a simple aspect of our job that makes machines keep time with each other. Aside from the fact we've worked well together and I've been in the same line of work for 15 years, which he well knows. For some reason there was a mental block preventing my advice to penetrate. I realize now I was perceived in no way the "Authority" on the subject. He needed to hear the same info from someone with the right logo on his T-shirt. I put two and two together and came up with a hypothesis.

I don't recall people being that way just a short, few years ago. I've witnessed a gradual escalation of people stepping in line, giving away freedoms and privacy to something unseen and unsaid. What comes to my mind is work done by physiologist Ivan Pavlov. Pavlov proved that upon external stimuli, the body changes physiologically. The dog hears a bell, salivates and knows it's time to eat creating excitement in the creature. It's programming of a sort. Humans are no exception to this rule. Upon experiencing a traumatic event, in Pavlov's dog's case, a flood which he was isolated from the world for a time, old programming was discarded to make way for the new set of circumstances.

On the morning of 911, 2001 our nations program was re-written and our consciousness, rebooted. Enter a new stream of information, in the place of a bell we have the word "Terrorism". This word makes anything possible in the worst ways. Namely, it creates fear. The hypothalamus kicks out CRF inspiring the pituitary to release the hormone ACTH touching off the adrenal gland to dump gluco-corticoids into the bloodstream, changing glycogen to glucose for fuel. The physical outcome is an increased heart rate, heightened level of agitation, anger, forcefulness and fear. When the mind can't cope or find it's source of authority, it shuts down and from that point it's physiological. You can test this theory yourself. Try first talking to your subject about missing weapons of mass destruction... nada, nothing. Then try forcing them to justify torture. A snicker, but not a sausage. Mention corporate corruption, war profiteering, rigged elections and I doubt you will even see a flinch. Start discussing terrorism and watch the sparks fly. "Bomb them all" they'll say. Racial slurs typically follow.

This nature I deem Auto-Authoritarian. Complete apathy until someone rings the bell which sounds like "terrorism". In one great swoop the auto-authoritarians fly down, justify and overlook all of our nations evils because of the terrorists!

The best and worst advice my father ever gave to me was this: "Think!". Only if I had not, I might be happy in an Orwellian sense like much of our country is today. I do "think" however, and with that comes great distress and frustration. A longing for reason and reasons. The basic question "Why?" is so simple yet so complex.

Ask why 911 happened and you'll get an auto-authoritarian response. The company line is "They hate our freedom!". Honestly, nobody knows what the hell that means. Ask "What does "They hate our freedom" mean?". And watch the hypothalamus get busy! The reply in a similar fashion to this is: "In other countries you'd be shot for just talking the way you do!". Mentioning use of our tax dollars leads to that end in other struggling democracy's globally just makes things worse and is not recommended at this time. However, this is my country as it is. I love it with all it's faults, wish it well and will persistently do what I can to someday peacefully force her to live up to her promises.

Rational thinking people will admit, the reasons for 911 go deep and it was a horrible tragedy. It's not a stretch of the imagination to realize auto-authoritarians are everywhere. Bin-laden's got some and so does Bush. It happened in all facets of past human history and frankly, it's a really bad thing (the auto-authoriatarin being a noun) and prevents us as a humans from moving forward for humankind.

American psychologist and philosopher William James once wrote: "A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices”. He never met Bill O'Rielly, but that's exactly what he and the auto-authoritarians who watch those kind of shows are practicing. William James never owned a TV, he died peacefully surrounded by his family in 1910.

If I could make this small contribution. Here is the definition, this is what it does, with a few personal and historical references and possibly some books to consider reading.

The word is auto-authoritarian. It could be an "izm" as well. Try not to be one.

Shawn Lennon
2/16/05
http://www.upstartradio.com