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Why Things Are The Way They Are Self-Direction v. The System by Erica Carle DORRANCE PUBLISHING CO ., INC. PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA 15222 All Rights Reserved Copyright ©1996 by Erica Carle No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system without permission in writing from the publisher. ISBN #0-8059-3944X Printed in the United States of America First Printing For information or to order additional books, please write : Dorrance Publishing Co ., Inc . 643 Smithfield Street Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15222 U .S.A . Dedication For Kyle, Kurt, Luke, Tori, Trey, Samantha, and all their young contemporaries -and in loving memory of Lauren . TABLE OF CONTENTS 1 . About People-Is Anybody Home? 1 2. Building Inner Strength 9 3. Vulnerability of Ignorance 15 4. The Social Engineers 21 5 . Emotional Comfort-Our Primary Motivation 29 6. How Materialism Uses Self Doubt 35 7 . Problems of Self-deficiency 41 8. Goals of the System 47 9. Expectations-Reasonable and Unreasonable 55 10. The Materialist Mentality 63 11 . Red Rover, Red Rover-With Problems Come Over 71 12 . Playing With Bullies 79 13 . Red Rover, Red Rover-With New Values Come Over 87 14 . Red Rover, Red Rover-Let Christians Come Over 97 15 . Red Rover, Red Rover-Education Come Over 107 16 . Red Rover, Red Rover-Let Drugs Bring You Over 115 17 . Red Rover, Red Rover-Let Sex Bring You Over 123 18 . Red Rover, Red Rover-Let Business Come Over 131 19 . Red Rover, Red Rover-Let Women Come Over 139 20. Red Rover, Red Rover-Will You Go Over? 149 ABOUT PEOPLE-Is ANYBODY HOME? CHAPTER 1 ark Twain's character, Tom Sawyer, had as keen a grasp of practical psychology as any present-day, college-educated marketing specialist . Not only did Tom get all the help he Mneeded to make fast work of the odious chore of fence whitewashing, he contrived to have his helpful friends part with their valuables and thank him for the privilege of doing his work . Equally gifted in practical psychology-even as a child-was the real life multimillionaire industrialist, Andrew Carnegie . As a lad he needed help to feed and care for the rabbits he was raising . He told each of his friends that in exchange for his help he could name one of the rabbits after himself . It was an early gleaning of the talent for man- aging people that served Carnegie well in accumulating his vast fortune . Small wonder millions seek to acquire the ability to control the behavior of others . Books, popular magazines, radio talk shows, and TV discussions are filled with instruction on how to please, appeal to, or manage others . One can study psychological techniques to control or manipulate employees, bosses, children, in-laws, parents, spouses, lovers, potential customers, groups, crowds, voters, or anyone who can benefit one in any way . But where does that leave us? If everyone is concentrating on psy- chological techniques to influence and change others, who defends the home front? What is left for us to do for ourselves? With so many manipulators ready to lean on our behavior control switches, does anyone get to manage his own behavior? Or are we engaged in an end- less game of round-robin where everyone derives more satisfaction and profit from controlling others than managing himself? For that matter how do we know whether we can manage our- selves? Amid all the instruction and advice, we could find that we may not have as much personal power or self control as we would like to think. Self-defense, in the sense of controlling our own behavior rather than being manipulated or dominated by others, or totally by circumstance, may be more difficult than we would like to admit . In fact some scholars-especially among those trained in sociology, - 1 - WHY THINGS ARE THE WAY THEY ARE political science, and behaviorist psychology-operate on the assumption that as individuals we have no control over ourselves, that we are like biological robots rather than self-controlled individu- als . All we do, they believe, is determined by material and social caus- es . Heredity and environment account for everything . These scholars deny the existence of will, self-direction, and even individual personality . They say every human action eventually will be accounted for by scientific physical laws . They regard the idea that one's will can influence one's own behavior as troublesome, unscientific nonsense . Auguste Comte, the nineteenth century "father" of sociology, wrote that self-controlled individual personality, if it exists, ought to be eradicated . He sought total management of human society through a system of environmental manipulation and social discipline : We must get rid of personality in every shape, even of the per- sonality of an imaginary being, if we would found a powerful and enduring discipline, in the name of Humanity .' Professor T. H . Huxley (1825-1895), biologist and philosopher, pro- pounded the materialist doctrine that the only thing that can affect matter is matter. He claimed that what we call volition or self-direction is not the cause of an act, but merely its symbol in consciousness . He said we only think we control our own behavior . The feeling of voli- tion signals a state in the brain which is the immediate cause of action . Huxley compared the feeling of volition to the blowing of a train's steam whistle . It signals the start of the train but does not cause it . The modern day behaviorist psychologist, the late B . F. Skinner, followed right along . He said that in order to have a perfect society men should not be expected to control themselves, but ought to be controlled by planned changes in the observable environment . Were these materialists correct? Do we fool ourselves if we believe the thoughts in our minds control the actions of our bodies? Is self- direction just a destructive illusion, a deception, and an unnecessary burden on society? Is there no such thing as self, soul, or a real person? If we deceive ourselves about personal existence, we ought to stop talking about self-control, and there is no use thinking seriously about right, wrong, volition, freedom, or choice . If our actions and reactions are either pre-determined or automatic ; if there is nobody home inside, nothing within us whereby we can modify our own behavior ; if self-awareness is just an illusion-then no one is free in any respect . We are bio-robots being moved by forces beyond our control . - 2 - WHY THINGS ARE THE WAY THEY An Everything is traceable to heredity and environment . We have no real choices . We do only what our heredity and environment compel or allow us to do . No one ought to be blamed for anything called evil, or praised for what is said to be good . It may not be comfortable to contemplate, but it would be a mis- take to cast the mechanistic or materialistic theory aside without investigation . The idea that personality is an illusion and that all behavior can and ought to be scientifically controlled through a planned system, is too widely accepted to be ignored . This accep- tance has a profound effect on education, business, industry, public policy, and the personal behavior of many individuals . There are a great many facts and observations that seem to sup- port the mechanistic theory. Heredity, environment, and automatic activity account for a large portion of our behavior . We have limits and are not totally free, as many people would like to believe . We can- not do whatever we want to do . For instance we have land, water, and air on our planet, but we cannot choose to live under the water like fish or float about in the air like birds . Our bodies are not equipped for either alternative . Our natural dwelling place is on the land, drink- ing the water and breathing the air . We do not have perfect freedom to decide what we will do with our own bodies . We cannot refuse to breathe, drink, eat, sleep, or move- except briefly. Sometimes we can't even choose whether we will cough or sneeze . If something gets caught in our throat, or if the lin- ing of our nasal passages is irritated, the cough or sneeze reflex is activated, and we cough or sneeze in spite of ourselves . Other times-try as we will-we cannot keep from laughing or crying . While we learn to feed ourselves, we do not have conscious control over what happens to the food after we swallow it . Once swallowed, diges- tion of our food takes place automatically. We wouldn't want con- scious control over all of our bodily functions . Imagine what it would be like if we had to supervise digestion or breathing . It would leave time for little else . But what else is there? The fact that our nervous systems operate on reflexive, unconscious, and inborn automatic levels is useful and necessary, but pre-programmed or built-in responses are not our only possibilities . If they were, materialists would be correct and we would be no more than bio-robots whose thoughts and actions are totally determined for us . It would be useless to try to build inner strength or claim areas of self-control, and I would be wasting my time dis- cussing the materialistic philosophy with you . It would not be a phi- losophy, but a fact . We would be living by it as if we were merely ani- mals or robots, even if we did not acknowledge it .