O'bama's Oratorical Style Employs Hypnotic Induction From NLP

[Selene]

I have not finished this paper, but it corroborates, so far, what I have been coming to believe over the last eight (8) years of listening to his patterns of speech and his actual scripted teleprompter orations.

"Obama’s speeches intentionally contain:

- Trance Inductions

- Hypnotic Anchoring

- Pacing and Leading

- Pacing, Distraction and Utilization

- Critical Factor Bypass

- Stacking Language Patterns

- Preprogrammed Response Adaptation

- Linking Statements/ Causality Bridges

- Secondary Hidden Meanings/Imbedded

Suggestions

- Emotion Transfer

- Non-Dominant Hemisphere Programming

Obama’s techniques are the height of deception and psychological manipulation, remaining hidden because

one must understand the science behind the language patterns in order to spot them.

This document examines Obama’s speeches word by word, hand gesture by hand gesture, tone, pauses, body language, and proves his use of covert hypnosis intended only for licensed therapists on consenting patients.

Obama’s mesmerized, cult-like, grade-school-crush-like worship by millions is not because “Obama is the greatest

leader of a generation” who simply hasn’t accomplished anything, who magically “inspires” by giving

speeches.

Obama is committing perhaps the biggest fraud and deception in American history.

Obama is not just using subliminal messages, but textbook covert hypnosis and neuro-linguistic

programming techniques on audiences that are intentionally designed to sideline rational judgment and

implant subconscious commands to think he is wonderful and elect him President.

Obama is eloquent.

However, Obama’s subconscious techniques are shown to elicit powerful emotion from his audience and

then transfer those emotions onto him, to sideline rational judgment, and implant hypnotic commands that

we are unaware of and can’t even consciously question.

The polls are misleading because some of Obama’s commands are designed to be triggered only in the voting booth on November 4th. Obama is immune to logical arguments like Wright, Ayers, shifting every position, character, and inexperience, because hypnosis affects us on an unconscious and emotional level. To many people who see this unaccomplished man’s unnatural and irrational rise to the highest office in the world as suspicious and frightening and to those who welcome it, this document uncovers, explains, and proves the deceptive tactics behind true “Obama

Phenomenon” including why younger people are more easily affected."

More to follow...

Adam

[BaalChatzaf]

I have not finished this paper, but it corroborates, so far, what I have been coming to believe over the last eight (8) years of listening to his patterns of speech and his actual scripted teleprompter orations.

"Obama’s speeches intentionally contain:

- Trance Inductions

- Hypnotic Anchoring

- Pacing and Leading

- Pacing, Distraction and Utilization

- Critical Factor Bypass

- Stacking Language Patterns

- Preprogrammed Response Adaptation

- Linking Statements/ Causality Bridges

- Secondary Hidden Meanings/Imbedded

Suggestions

- Emotion Transfer

- Non-Dominant Hemisphere Programming

Obama’s techniques are the height of deception and psychological manipulation, remaining hidden because

one must understand the science behind the language patterns in order to spot them.

This document examines Obama’s speeches word by word, hand gesture by hand gesture, tone, pauses, body language, and proves his use of covert hypnosis intended only for licensed therapists on consenting patients.

Obama’s mesmerized, cult-like, grade-school-crush-like worship by millions is not because “Obama is the greatest

leader of a generation” who simply hasn’t accomplished anything, who magically “inspires” by giving

speeches.

Obama is committing perhaps the biggest fraud and deception in American history.

Obama is not just using subliminal messages, but textbook covert hypnosis and neuro-linguistic

programming techniques on audiences that are intentionally designed to sideline rational judgment and

implant subconscious commands to think he is wonderful and elect him President.

Obama is eloquent.

However, Obama’s subconscious techniques are shown to elicit powerful emotion from his audience and

then transfer those emotions onto him, to sideline rational judgment, and implant hypnotic commands that

we are unaware of and can’t even consciously question.

The polls are misleading because some of Obama’s commands are designed to be triggered only in the voting booth on November 4th. Obama is immune to logical arguments like Wright, Ayers, shifting every position, character, and inexperience, because hypnosis affects us on an unconscious and emotional level. To many people who see this unaccomplished man’s unnatural and irrational rise to the highest office in the world as suspicious and frightening and to those who welcome it, this document uncovers, explains, and proves the deceptive tactics behind true “Obama

Phenomenon” including why younger people are more easily affected."

More to follow...

Adam

There was once a post-card artist from Austria who had similar skills.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Mikee]

I have not finished this paper, but it corroborates, so far, what I have been coming to believe over the last eight (8) years of listening to his patterns of speech and his actual scripted teleprompter orations.

"Obama’s speeches intentionally contain:

- Trance Inductions

- Hypnotic Anchoring

- Pacing and Leading

- Pacing, Distraction and Utilization

- Critical Factor Bypass

- Stacking Language Patterns

- Preprogrammed Response Adaptation

- Linking Statements/ Causality Bridges

- Secondary Hidden Meanings/Imbedded

Suggestions

- Emotion Transfer

- Non-Dominant Hemisphere Programming

Obama’s techniques are the height of deception and psychological manipulation, remaining hidden because

one must understand the science behind the language patterns in order to spot them.

This document examines Obama’s speeches word by word, hand gesture by hand gesture, tone, pauses, body language, and proves his use of covert hypnosis intended only for licensed therapists on consenting patients.

Obama’s mesmerized, cult-like, grade-school-crush-like worship by millions is not because “Obama is the greatest

leader of a generation” who simply hasn’t accomplished anything, who magically “inspires” by giving

speeches.

Obama is committing perhaps the biggest fraud and deception in American history.

Obama is not just using subliminal messages, but textbook covert hypnosis and neuro-linguistic

programming techniques on audiences that are intentionally designed to sideline rational judgment and

implant subconscious commands to think he is wonderful and elect him President.

Obama is eloquent.

However, Obama’s subconscious techniques are shown to elicit powerful emotion from his audience and

then transfer those emotions onto him, to sideline rational judgment, and implant hypnotic commands that

we are unaware of and can’t even consciously question.

The polls are misleading because some of Obama’s commands are designed to be triggered only in the voting booth on November 4th. Obama is immune to logical arguments like Wright, Ayers, shifting every position, character, and inexperience, because hypnosis affects us on an unconscious and emotional level. To many people who see this unaccomplished man’s unnatural and irrational rise to the highest office in the world as suspicious and frightening and to those who welcome it, this document uncovers, explains, and proves the deceptive tactics behind true “Obama

Phenomenon” including why younger people are more easily affected."

More to follow...

Adam

I may be more sensitive than most to verbal cues but when I heard Obama (in 2007) for the first time I got chills. His up and down, clipped delivery and the inflection at the end of his sentences has a "begging" quality, as if he's talking to children. He is obviously lying in virtually everything he says. He is a sociopath, he speaks for effect, truth has nothing whatever to do with it. Facts have no place in his worldview, it is all ideology. I have not been able to understand why other people I talk to don't hear the same thing in his voice. I can't stand to listen to him. I have to say, in 2008 when I learned that 2/3-3/4 of "objectivists" did not vote against Obama I almost gave up completely even visiting these forums. Not that a fraction of a percent of the population makes much difference. Obama has lived up to my expectations of him.

http://rebirthofreas...ns/0175.shtml#7

[anthony]

I had zero preconception of Obama when he first hit TV screens, but his delivery - not his content, then -

made me uncomfortable. Even allowing for the style over substance common to most politicos, I told a friend -

this man's a narcissist. I'm wryly amused that lately I have read one or two US commentators voice the same opinion.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Adam,

If you are reading the same document I read a few years ago (and consulted more recently for some unrelated stuff in my own work), take about half of it with a lump of salt. About half is worth considering (and well worth considering) while the other half is the same old crap--a partisan sell where facts are not an issue.

Here is the document (it's a pdf):

An Examination of Obama’s Use of Hidden Hypnosis Techniques in His Speeches

I'm almost sure this is what you are reading. The person who wrote this went so far overboard, this thing is only taken seriously by the fringe. And that's a damn shame because he (or she or it--whoever wrote it) was on to something.

But why kill with the truth when you can overkill with a lie? That's, unfortunately, the mentality behind this study. And the progressives have been all over it because of the boneheaded parts.

That's also one of the reasons I have not commented much on it. But for the record, here's a video of a zealot who is still too young to be sophisticated. When he gets boneheaded, he's really obvious. But because of his young age and his recent study of hypnosis, his guile is on the surface and his sincerity is more prominent, so this is actually a somewhat decent discussion of some of Obama's covert presentation techniques.

Don't forget one thing. Covert persuasion doesn't work on a zap-'em-real-good basis. Abracada and the person is clucking like a chicken. It doesn't work like that.

It is an accumulation of instances and events. One person from the MLM world I watched once (a guy named Mark Hoverson) gave the best metaphor for it I have heard to date. It was so good, it's almost an explanation. He was talking about a sale, but you can adapt the analogy to endorsing a political view. He said it's like a seesaw with you at one end and the prospect at the other. Then you put one instance on your side. Then another. Then another. As you do this, the seesaw starts going down on your side and the prospect starts going up. When you reach a certain tipping point, you don't need to use any kind of forceful language. The guy comes tumbling down toward you. (Hoverson actually said the guy's money, but you know what I mean. )

So... yeah... there is some NLP stuff with Obama's speeches. But there is some Lakoff framing, some Alinsky deception, some Chicago backroom wheeling and dealing while saying the opposite in public, and several other covert manners of communicating--including just plain-old copycating of other speeches. And don't think Obama hasn't devoured books like Lend Me Your Ears: All You Need to Know about Making Speeches and Presentations by Max Atkinson, a bible for political speech-making.

Obama also appeared at a moment where people were sick at heart with the weapons of mass destruction screw-up, the economy suddenly going haywire and so on. Bush trashed his credibility with a lot of moderates. Obama, piling the covert persuasion techniques on top of each other, sounded like a good clean choice to them--even better than Hillary at the time.

To make matters worse, McCain, who could have beaten Obama, blundered badly by taking off to Washington in the middle of his campaign like a super-duper superhero to save the economic day, only to thud like a sack of potatoes falling off a turnip truck. People, sick of Bush, looked that that and had only one thought: more of the same.

So Obama's techniques had a receptive public in the moderate middle at the time--and that's more important than it seems when analyzing this stuff.

Michael

[Selene]

Michael:

Yes. I recognized the similarity from your posts. The similar semantics..."anchors," etc.

I have been employing a different technique in reading a certain type of documents for the last year. I go to the last paragraph and "read backwards" up to the opening paragraph.

I particularly use this with legal decisions, studies and this type of document. My hypothesis is that it interrupts the persuasive attempt and permits me to see if the evidence and reasoning supports the conclusion.

Additionally, as in this case, the hyper partisanness [spelling, new word ???] and religious mantras just jump off the page.

Thanks.

Adam

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Adam,

There is another thing I want to mention.

Don't forget the time and true ages-tested technique of putting plants in the audience to sound off at certain times in the speech or on some kind of cue.

For instance, "Yes We Can!" chanting might be started by a group of plants on a visual cue from Obama--where the analyzer thinks the visual cue is an NLP anchor that triggers the audience to chant the phrase (from pre-learned covert induction in other speeches).

I happen to think it's both, with the plants helping establish the anchor in the first place. But I think the audience follows the lead of the plants and the visual cue reinforces this. Without the plants, I'm not so sure the visual cue would work. In other words, I suspect the cue makes it easier for the audience to chant "Yes We Can!", but it doesn't get the ball rolling.

I thought of one other thing I wanted to mention this morning, but it has escaped me right now. I will mention it later when I remember.

Michael

[Selene]

Michael:

Good point. I have used plants in local rallies to "prompt" the crowd.

I would agree that on their level, they would have to use plants to "anchor" the "prompts." In terms of the imaging that they wanted to convey to the masses through the medium of television.

Television has the tactility of a "cool" medium [McLuhan] as well as what he referred to as the narcotizing effect of television, by which he meant the numbing of the rational mind into a compliant mode.

Prior to his insights, "The Narcotizing Effect" meant as Paul Lazarsfeld and Robert Merton noted when commenting on Dysfunctional Media that:

In addition to the functions previously noted, the media perform a dysfunction, as identified by sociologists

Paul Lazarsfeld and Robert Merton (1948). T

hey created the term narcotizing dysfunction to refer to the

phenomenon whereby the media provide such massive amounts of information that the audience becomes

numb and generally fails to act on the information, regardless of how compelling the issue.

Interested citizens

may take in the information, but they may make no decision or take no action. Consider how often the media

initiate a great outpouring of philanthropic support for natural disasters or family crises documented on local

news stations. But then what happens? Research shows that as the tragedy is prolonged, viewer fatigue

begins. The mass media audience becomes numb, desensitized to the suffering, and even starts to conclude

that a solution to the crises has been found (Moeller 1999). The media’s narcotizing dysfunction was identified

over 50 years ago, when just a few homes had television and well before the advent of electronic media. At that

time, sociologists felt this dysfunction was going largely unnoticed, but today it is common to point out the ill

effects of addiction to television or the Internet, especially among young people.

This is a different kind of narcotizing effect that O'bama employs, it is hypnotic and gives the viewer a compliant numbness that motivates them to action on election day.

Adam

[syrakusos]

1. Gilgamesh made the people build the walls of the city.

2. "These are not the droids you are looking for."

[Jerry Biggers]

NeuroLinguistic Programming has come under a lot of criticism from psychologists and other academics as being unverifiable and as lacking experimental corroboration. See, for example:

http://en.wikipedia....ific_evaluation

and http://www.skepdic.com/neurolin.html

[Brant Gaede]

Oh, I think the idea is not that he's effective that way, but that he knows and uses techniques that show he's trying to be.

Hasn't affected me. I'm not voting for him.

--Brant

I'm voting for Obama

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Jerry,

NLP is an strangely compelling bird with a bunch of branches. I have looked into this over the years because, well, I seem to like this kind of oddball stuff. Go figure.

The two sources you cited have some serious problems when they go into their respective wholesale dismissal parts. For instance, look at this quote from Novella's article in The Skeptic's Dictionary (the same one you linked to):

Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) is one of many New Age Large Group Awareness Training programs.

Pure hogwash. NLP can be used in an LGAT program, but it is not one of those programs.

If you are going to criticize something, starting an article with an incorrect statement of that magnitude is not a good idea. It's like saying Objectivism is one of several Satanic cults founded in the USA in the 20th century, somewhat like Scientology. After a person makes a definition like that, would you have any interest in reading further?

But let's let Novella further show off his nuanced discourse. Here is a quote two paragraphs down from the first one:

It is a difficult to define NLP because those who started it and those involved in it use such vague and ambiguous language that NLP means different things to different people.

So which is it? LGAT or "different things to different people"? Only Novella knows for sure and he ain't sayin'.

Anyway, I'm not going to defend NLP, take apart that lame essay or even take apart the Wikipedia article (which is far better--far, far better--but still has some oversimplified bias problems). I'll just make a few observations.

1. I believe there is a lot of hostility from the science and academic world to NLP because Bandler and Grinder have publicly trashed traditional and academic psychology much in the same manner as Rand did academic philosophy. They still do it. Like Rand, they also decided to work in the free market rather than academia. These are two sins the academics find hard to forgive.

2. NLP is best understood as an approach rather than a codified system. Several codified systems have emerged from this approach, some good and some awful. When people bash NLP, they are usually bashing one of these codified systems.

Here is the NLP approach in a nutshell: Modeling and imitation. Nothing more.

You find someone who is highly skilled at something. You hang around him, observe him for a long period of time and ask him a lot of questions about how he does this and that to get his results. You try to imitate stuff yourself. Then you take your observations and experiences and start trying them out on other people to see if they can develop such skills in a more targeted manner--without all the trial and error the master who was modeled had to go through. This is where the codification starts--meaning you keep what works, discard what doesn't, write it up and make a system.

That's it.

3. The first people Bandler and Grinder studied were Fritz Perls (Gestalt therapy), Virginia Satir (psychotherapist specializing in family therapy) and Milton Erickson (covert or conversational hypnosis). But you can use the NLP approach to learn guitar, become a better athlete, improve shooting firearms (in fact, the USA armed forces use it for this--Wyatt Woodsmall, for example helped develop NLP for military use) and all kinds of things.

The early emphasis on psychotherapy and hypnosis came about quite by accident.

Richard Bandler, a computer geek, musician and part time hippie at the time worked at all kinds of odd jobs. He was hired to make transcriptions of films and audios of the recently deceased Fritz Perls and try to compile books from the mess (which he did). Here is an account of those days that gives the flavor of the times and how the NLP approach actually works in practice (from a brief history of NLP):

It all began with Richard Bandler who at the age of 17 was very interested in music and helped put on rock concerts. He was asked by the wife of Dr. Robert S. Spitzer to teach their son Dan how to play the drums. Becky Spitzer was impressed by Richard's interest in philosophy and the intellectual approach he used for teaching music.

The Spitzer's had a cabin in the country near Santa Cruz, and when Richard switched his studies to the University of California, Santa Cruz, he became a caretaker of the property and built himself a small place on the property. It was in Dr. Spitzer's cabin that Richard first met Virginia Satir at a family reconstruction she was doing for an Israeli friend. Dr. Spitzer was also president of Science and Behavior Books and asked Richard, who was working there, to audio tape and transcribe a month long workshop Virginia Satir was to conduct in Canada. Richard spent several months transcribing the audio tapes and, after a while, developed many of Virginia Satir's voice patterns and mannerisms. He said that this was how he learned music by listening to the work of someone he admired over and over again until he sounded just like the person he was imitating. This was a form of deep identification process.

Richard Bandler also helped edit Fritz Perls’ last manuscript which was published as "The Gestalt Approach." Science and Behavior Books published another book "Eye Witness to Therapy" which was essentially a transcription of teaching films made with Fritz Perls. Richard spent weeks wearing earphones while watching the films, making certain the transcription was accurate. He came out of this having adopted many of the speaking and acting habits of Fritz Perls. Apparently, the habits were so convincing that Robert Spitzer found himself accidentally calling him Fritz on several occasions.

Since Bandler had always been a hustler (of the shadier sort), he started up some Gestalt therapy groups of his own on college. No qualifications. No certification. Nothing. He just opened up shop and started.

John Grinder was an ex-Green Beret who had a facility for language. This was a valuable part of his skills in the Army when he was parachuted behind enemy lines. After he came out, he decided to pursue language to see if he could make a career of it. He looked around for the best college he could find and came across Noam Chomsky. So he got Chomsky's linguistic knowledge, but also Chomsky's politics. He ended up as a college professor and started teaching at the same university Bandler was going to. Bandler kept bugging him to come to one of his Gestalt therapy meetings to see how linguistic stuff could apply. Grinder finally went and the whole shebang started.

4. The odd pseudo-scientific sounding language of NLP comes from the skills of the founders, not from any attempt to ape science. Bandler was a computer geek. Grinder was a linguist of the Chomsky sort. When writing about their modeling observations, experiences and the routines they dreamed up that they were trying out on their guinea pig friends (many who, like Robert Dilts, David Gordon, etc., later became professional NLP trainers), they grafted onto it the technical jargon of their respective disciplines. They didn't have technical words for what they were doing, so they used what they knew.

5. Nobody ever talks in detail about the split-up of Bandler and Grinder, but I have a theory. The first is that Grinder didn't care much for booze and drugs and Bandler simply went off the deep end, especially with cocaine. But the second, and more serious, is that Bandler started teaching NLP to the Army and Grinder, the Chomskyite, was totally anti-military by this time.

6. Aggravating this, if you want some real criticism of NLP, don't piddle around with these small-time sources you cited. Go for the dirt because there is some real dirt to be had. For example, here is a link to the Google Books version of Mother Jones Magazine of February-March 1989. Scroll to page 22 and try to enlarge the page so you can read the article entitled "The Bandler Method" by Janet Wooley.

Bandler and/or his drug dealer friend shot a prostitute up the nose--yup, a bullet, not blow--and killed her. Corine Christensen was the daughter of a cop, too. Threatening to shoot people during lectures was part of Bandler's presentation schtick back then.

So what happened at the trial? He got off. Unanimously acquitted by a jury after 5.5 hours of deliberation. The case is still unsolved. He used every NLP covert hypnosis trick he knew of on the jury and he had, let's call it, certain "friends" in the military. But read the article if you can. It's a hell of a mess, but one hell of a story.

There's other stuff, too. For some reason you won't get this kind of material from armchair academics who like to bash NLP. But it's all on public record.

Anyway, I find the whole area of NLP fascinating. The good, the bad and the ugly. There's a ton-load more I could write about, but life is short and NLP is long.

The main thing to consider is that you will find both real deal and snake oil in the NLP world. Neuroscience is actually helping sift through all this. Mirror neurons and work on neural pathways explain and corroborate a lot of the stuff in it that does work. But the snakes will bite if you get near them (even ones that give out certification). So you have to learn what works and what slithers and there is no standardized way of doing that yet. NLP is still in its infancy.

But that's par for the course with any new field, no?

Michael

[william.scherk]

The Skeptic Dictionary (book and website) is written by Robert Todd Carrol, not Steve Novella.

Steve Novella's blog entry (at Neurologica) is cited at the bottom of the Carrol's NLP page at SkepDic linked above, as 'new' ... Neurolinguistic Programming and other Nonsense. Novella's article is a good place to start sifting the actual research on NLP.

In my opinion, NLP may have been mis-classified as 'New Age Large Group Awareness Training.' Yet it started in group seminars, it is hustled to groups, and it depends on group attendance to make the big money for its hustlers.**

It is easy to dismiss criticisms of NLP as 'bashing,' or to assume, snidely, that tests of its claims are without substance. This leads to giving NLP a benefit of the doubt which it does not deserve. After 30 years(!) of hustling NLP, there is no evidence that it does what it says it does. In the words of one of those quoted at SkepDic:

"...after three decades, there is still no credible theoretical basis for NLP, researchers having failed to establish any evidence for its efficacy that is not anecdotal."

Personally, I find it odd in the extreme that rational folks (or self-labeled rational folk) have a hard time reasoning through all the craptastic 'new paradigms' that promise much and deliver little but unsubstantiated claims. NLP is just another example (like TFT) of something that is promoted and marketed without the least attempt to prove its efficacies. It troubles me that Randians -- ostensibly fans of reason, critical thinking and sober evaluation of premises -- can be so easily gulled by pseudo-scientific grifters.

And that is the bottom line. NLP makes claims, a lot of claims, sweeping claims, exceptional claims. But it does not deliver the supporting evidence that any of its claims are true. Added to the unsavoury hucksterism, fissions, lawsuits, power-grabs and the whole murky tableau of NLP derivatives, what is it that attracts the gullible? I would say, in a word, magic. A rather un-Objective thing, I would think.

_________

**

Edited July 26, 2012 by william.scherk

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

The Skeptic Dictionary (book and website) is written by Robert Todd Carrol, not Steve Novella.

William,

It must be the quality of the water people who want to scapegoat drink. I never said anything about the site. I talked about the article. Yet here you are stating this fact as if you were correcting an error I made.

But here's the problem. You then state:

Novella's article is a good place to start...

In other words, Novella did write the damn article and no correction was needed.

I've heard this kind of insinuation called spin...

But... whatever.

I guess that's just what people do when they have something they want to point their finger at and spit on.

It is easy to dismiss criticisms of NLP as 'bashing,' or to assume, snidely, that tests of its claims are without substance.

This is not my position at all. Your words betray an all-or-nothing us-against-them attitude of the finger pointer trying to force a false dichotomy on an explanation.

Did I say there was snake oil in the midst of the NLP world? By golly, I think I did. (I could elaborate on it, too, but I find the part that works far more interesting.)

But then, my thing is critical thinking, not mudslinging based on media tales and pet intellectual clique gossip.

I don't have a problem with ALL criticism of NLP, but I certainly have a lot of issues with Novella's criticism. In the manner you are framing this, all one has to do is say something bad about NLP and that automatically puts him above the need to adhere to things like logic, evidence, etc. And God forbid someone call bashing by an agenda-driven sloppy writer, uhm... bashing.

That's pure dichotomy crap speaking. (Which, I admit, you do not display very often.)

This leads to giving NLP a benefit of the doubt which it does not deserve. After 30 years(!) of hustling NLP, there is no evidence that it does what it says it does.

Sez who? You? Novella? Your beloved pundits?

Yeah... I've heard this meme before, but it's baloney. The memers like it, it makes one sound so very learned and superior, doesn't it? One don't even have to read anything beyond some favorite pundits and one can feel pretty sure he can pose as an expert on this stuff. Then he can look down his nose at the fruitcakes and scratch the self-absorbed vanity wart on the point of it.

But there is a small problem. There is all kinds of evidence. You kinda gotta read, though...

Here's a good source if you can find it. I'm presenting it, not because there isn't plenty of other stuff. But because I happen to own a copy of this book--and, I have to own up to an evil subtext. I want to dig into the prejudice a little bit with some sting, so the example I am going to give has Tony Robbins (the firewalking guru) on staff (waaaaay back when he was a student and beginning to study this stuff).

Unfortunatley the book is out of print as Woodsmall is no longer emphasizing his military work. He's now making money on the lecture and information product circuit, which I know is a terrible sin, but there it is... He should be grovelling at the feet of government regulators or academic committees, right?

The book is from 1988 and is called The Science of Advanced Behavorial Modeling by Wyatt Woodsmall (ISBN 1-892876-05-1).

Just to make sure we are talking about NLP, let me note that the title of Chapter Nine is "Neuro Linguistic Programming."

But my exerpt is from Chapter Two - "Results of Advanced Behavirial Modeling in the Federal Government." The section I am quoting is just one section of many similar ones.

Army Pistol Project:

Modelers: Dr. Wyatt Woodsmall, Richard Graves, Robert Klaus, Dr. Paul Tyler, John Alexander, Dave Wilson and Anthony Robbins

The two best .45 caliber pistol shooters in the world were modeled. Both were Sergeants in the United States Army Marksmanship Training Unit. One was the National Champion and the other was the Interservice Champion. Their beliefs, values, strategies and physiologies were elicited. Suggestions were made to them as to how they could further improve. In the next match after applying these suggestions one shot the most bull's eyes in his marksmanship career and the other was able to break out of a six month slump and regain his previous form.

With the information obtained from the two experts the Army's Standard Combat Pistol Training was modified. The time of the training was cut from four days to two days, and changes were made in the curriculum to include the installation of proper physiology, the removal of dlsenabling beliefs and installation of supporting ones. and the installation and rehearsal of the mental syntax and sequence of the experts.

A test was conducted with a test group taught by Advanced Behavioral Modelers and a control group taught by the Army Marksmanship Training Unit. The test group was able to qualify 100% of the trainees while the control group was only able to qualify 80% Further, the test group did this in half the time of the control group, used one third as much ammunition per trainee and produced three times as many experts. The officer in charge of the Army Pistol Team described this program as "the first significant advance in pistol training since World War I."

Lots and lots of tests with control groups in lots and lots of sections of that book. To be fair, I don't know where the Army records are located, but there is enough data in this book that they can be easily found if someone has contacts there, or if some reason they become needed.

I could go on and on. For every fruitcake you present, I could present the "solid evidence" that you claim by proxy that does not exist. But I'm not going to play that game. Both exist, fruitcakes (including cons) and solid evidence.

That doesn't sit well with the narrative, does it? I know. That's not the way it's supposed to be. (I swear this reminds me of Al Gore claiming--with all due emphasis--in An Inconvenient Truth that ALL scientists agree that global warming is manmade, even as a bunch of scientists were screaming to the four winds that this was crap.)

And being from an Objectivist perspective, as you well note, I certainly should have listened to my betters and taken them at their word rather than looking for myself. But I have this terrible habit of wanting to see things for myself. I've tried to cure myself of it. God knows I've really tried. But I just can't be a monkey-hear, monkey say zombie for as hard as I try.

Call it a personality defect.

There.

I've given change in the same coin I received.

Now can we leave the snark behind and discuss this like adults?

And for God's sake, let's use our own minds, not parrot those of agenda-driven pundits.

Keeriiiist...

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

As an additional comment, that BrainFit device looks interesting. Usually brainwave entrainment is done with sound.

I wonder what brainwave entrainment has to do with NLP, though.

Just because Bandler is endorsing it?

If he endorsed Corn Flakes, would that be NLP, too? Breakfast NLP? Something like that?

Apropos, see here for a list of some peer-reviewed stuff on brainwave entrainment.

Michael

[william.scherk]

The Skeptic Dictionary (book and website) is written by Robert Todd Carrol, not Steve Novella.

I never said anything about the site. I talked about the article. Yet here you are stating this fact as if you were correcting an error I made.

Yes. You said "Novella's article in The Skeptic's Dictionary" and you pulled a quote. But Novella did not write that quote, Michael.

____________________________________

You first raised the issue of NLP in post #5: "there is some NLP stuff with Obama's speeches."

Jerry Biggers noted that NLP is subject to criticism in post #10, and gave two links. One was to a portion of Wikipedia's article on NLP, specificially the section on validity under 'scientfic evaluation.' The second link was to Robert Todd Carrol's site The Skeptic Dictionary, specifically the entry on NLP.

You responded to Jerry in post #12:

look at this quote from Novella's article in The Skeptic's Dictionary (the same one you linked to):

Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) is one of many New Age Large Group Awareness Training programs.

So, yeah, you made a mistake.

But here's the problem. You then state:

Novella's article is a good place to start...

In other words, Novella did write the damn article and no correction was needed.

Nope.

I wrote that Robert Todd Carroll was the actual author of your mistaken 'Novella quote'.above. I wrote that Novella's actual article, linked at the bottom of Carrol's SkepDic entry, the article at his Neurologica blog, is worth reading.

I've heard this kind of insinuation called spin...

But... whatever.

But, whatever what? You misread the SkepDic entry as having been written by Steve Novella. It was not written by Novella. I pointed that out. What is the big deal?

I guess that's just what people do when they have something they want to point their finger at and spit on.

Using the principle of Linguistic Charity, I assume that you mean that I, me, WSS, William is indulging in 'spin' because I want to point my finger at and spit on something.

Certainly I will point to criticisms of NLP, and I may even harshly criticize NLP features (particularly its crass hucksterism and its disengagement from criticism). I might even express my contempt for ('spit on') statements and claims I find grossly irresponsible.

But in this case, Michael, I meant to correct your misreading and fold it into my concerns. If you think correcting you is spin and spit, not too much more I can say.

An early examiner of NLP is clinical and forensic psychologist Michael Heap. In his 2008 article on NLP he says better than I can say what is so important about the (therapeutic) claims:

Knowledge is power. Anyone making these kinds of claims is making a claim for some kind of power. With power should come accountability. Accountability in this case is making the evidence available for public scrutiny. Exactly how were the observations made? What exactly was observed – can we look at the data please? How was the reliability of the observations established? How were the data processed in order to arrive at the conclusions? And so on. None of this is disclosed to us.

The kind of claims he meant are the specific claims made by Bandler and Grinder, cited in his article -- claims of efficacy, observational claims, solid generalizations, claims about the workings of the mind.

Another reading of Heap's remark makes even clearer what accountability means. This is a paraphrase of Heaps from the article Neuro-Linguistic Programming: Cargo-Cult Psychology?

As Heap (2008) points out, knowledge is power and anybody making claims about being able to help with serious disorders or improve learning efficiency is making a claim for some kind of power. However, with that power, there must be accountability through public scrutiny. The lack of evidence for such claims means that the most rudimentary test of accountability cannot be addressed. In addition to this, if NLP is just a communication model, what special abilities does obtaining a certification in it bestow upon an individual which allows them to meddle in education issues and serious medical conditions?

In relation to dealing with vulnerable (indeed perhaps desperate) people, the claims of unqualified practitioners are extremely worrying. The precise nature of a ‘qualification’ in NLP is difficult to ascertain with many organisations offering impressive sounding training from ‘Diplomas’ up to ‘Master Practitioner’. Precisely who accredits these ‘qualifications’ though? Who is responsible for externally examining and moderating them? How are they regulated? And how long do they take? The latter point is key with training courses i nNLP being offered over a period of as little as two days. Consider the training required to become a Chartered Clinical Psychologist — a British Psychological Society- (BPS-) accredited first degree is needed, followed by three years of doctoral-level training within the National Health Service. Entry to the doctoral courses is fiercely competitive and so successful applicants have usually worked as psychological assistantsfor a number of years. The whole process is regulated by the BPS (NB in 2009 the Health Professions Council will becomethe regulator), who in addition to setting the framework for ethical practise, have a discipline and complaints procedure that is crucially administered by independent non-psychologists. Such a system ensures that individuals are not only appropriately qualified, but are publicly accountable for their actions. Similar training is required to specialise in the other professional areas of psychology (health psychology, educational psychology, counselling psychology, forensic psychology,occupational psychology and sports psychology) with a mini-mum of six years training. An individual presenting themselves as being a ‘Master Practitioner’ in NLP is giving the impression of having acquired a high level of training, yet it is an unregulated ‘discipline’. A code of conduct has been set out by the Association for Neuro-linguistic Processing, yet worryingly it contains the following disclaimer:

The Code does not assume that individual Members possess particular levels of skill in any specific area; it is important, therefore, that users of Members’ services do satisfy themselves that the person they are working with is appropriately skilled

To put the onus of responsibility onto the individual seeking the service is scandalous. What basis do they have to satisfy themselves that an individual is qualified in the face of impressive sounding claims and ‘qualifications’?

These reflect my concerns, and have been part of my concerns and research into bad therapy and bad psychology. This was my beat during the Memory Wars.

Now, I may return to your arguments, such as they are, but I really do not know how best to respond to such items as "pet intellectual clique gossip," "armchair academics who like to bash NLP", "monkey-hear, monkey say zombie," or directives to use my own mind -- not "parrot those of agenda-driven pundits."

Who is the agenda-driven pundit(s)? Novella? (if you "have a lot of issues with Novella's Carroll's criticism" or have a bone to pick with his presumably bad 'agenda,', well, maybe one day you will get around to spelling them out in relation to the actual argument he, Novella, lays out)

As for "the memers" and their dratted "memes" about evidence for claims ... what can I say? It seems you cover over your ignorance of these arguments with extemporaneous insult, you wave them away in annoyance and flabby generalities. That is not useful to figuring out where the snake oil ends and a putative active agent begins, where anecdote ends and where rigorous testing begins.

To my eyes, to my understanding Novella is an ally of reason, of sober examination, and he has reason on his side if and when he recommends tossing out shoddy and unsupported claims. If you class him (along with Carroll) as an agenda-driven pundit, I am troubled at your prejudice.

I do not think you have yet read Novella's article at Neurologica, or know who he is, what his profession is, or much about him and his work or "agenda" is at all. I think you do not reallly take seriously the congent and logical criticism of NLP that Novella puts forward in his article.

It seems to me that you may 'like' something about NLP, and that you may have some entrenched notion that a murky part of it 'works.' As with your non-attention to the details of the earlier discussion of the Five Minute Phobia Cure, I just do not yet see any close and informed engagement with the issues as stated by critics. Instead, to paraphrase Stephen Leacock, you go charging off in all directions.

Edit: I inserted a link to Heap's 2008 paper.

Edited July 26, 2012 by william.scherk

[Brant Gaede]

Stay away, everybody! The elephants are fighting!

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

William,

When I was real young in the backwoods of the Appalachian mountains, I would walk in the open fields. As was custom at the time, I went barefoot.

A child is not the most careful person in the world and I was no exception. Sometimes I would step in a cowpile. What a thing to have branded into the back pages of my memory.

The sensation of that warm goo oozing up between my toes is indescribable. Sensuous comes close, but that still doesn't nail it. The pleasure hits before you even have a chance to think, "Ewwww!"

It just feels really, really good. Unforgettable.

Still, you don't want to go home and walk through your house with all that shit on your feet.

On the Carrol/Novella thing, I just stepped in it big time. Sorry. You are right and I am wrong.

Yet it feels good in that old cowpile way.

I should feel bad, not good. And that has given me pause...

There are several issues in your last post I want to address, but I don't have time this morning to go into them. This includes why I feel repentant about the fact I messed up and the irony of my own sloppiness as I was pointing my finger calling someone else sloppy (I'm pretty pissed at myself for both) while simultaneously feeling delight at the warm ooze between my toes.

I will deal with each issue in a separate post. That will probably make it easier to discuss them. And if I don't get to all of them immediately, well... this is a discussion forum, not a publication with deadlines.

More later.

Michael

[william.scherk]

Michael, thank you. I too have stepped in shit before, barefoot, giant cow flaps, and I too liked it.

It seems likely to me that we share essential doubts and skepticism about similar aspects of the larger NLP world, about what you called "snake oil." Certainly there is a difference in our styles of analysis, how we approach ideas in psychology, but it doesn't mean that we do not share core values in reason. I believe we do share a wide intellectual territory, but we tend to forage in different patterns. That is good. I think I made a rather slurry metaphor earlier, likening us to guys with hammers and chisels, chipping away at a block of stone to uncover -- a la Michelango -- the sculpture within. Discussion, argument, rhetoric, all tools to get at the thing within.

You are right that Novella (and Carroll) have an agenda. But I think they themselves are better placed to tell us explicitly what their agenda is, from their own statements. In simplistic terms, each hews to what we could call "the Skeptical agenda." This is not the dead Greek know-nothing philosophy staggering through the modern world like an avenging Mummy that freaks Tony out, but the modern Skeptical movement`s central orientation. In a nutshell, a rather flinty anti-Sasquatch show-me attitude towards all comers ...

In sum, I do not find NLP to be dangerous, not dangerous in the same measure that I found in the terrible excesses of psychotherapy during the height of the Memory Wars. The recovered memory practitioners dealt with much more vulnerable clients than I think NLP does, and NLP simply does not have the wagonload of untrue and unproven precepts that RMT imposed on clients (with the risk of false memory). There is no equivalent to Bennett Braun or Judith Peterson or Renee Frederickson in the NLP movement. In many ways NLP offers a kind of therapy-light, with generalized outcomes promised -- better cognition, more success, greater self-actualization. This does not resemble the goals and targets of RMT. No one has sued an NLP practitioner for destroying their lives through bad therapy. Moreover, the RMT bullshit was fully incorporated into coercive institutions like (fully-insured in-patient) Trauma (MPD/Dissociative) Wards and led by otherwise professionally-regulated and fully-credentialled clinicians.

So, on balance, in comparison, NLP is relatively benign, to my eyes. It promises a better life in the future, but does not impose any horrifying alternate reality (such as Satanic Cults) in the present on those who fall under care. RMT was strong, with a very strong (and wrong) mandate. NLP is weak -- in the sense of no central Politburo (as the RMTers had in collectives like the ISSD), no dogmas that were encapsulated and honed in dire professional standards and procedures. RMTers were very influential with cadres of otherwise 'mainstream' professionals, and developed its own central (bogus) verities that ruled in certain clinical settings. This is very much different from the smoggy buffet of choices in the NLP-ish marketplace. NLP is much more diffuse in its precepts.

As for the hucksterism and over-reaching of the varied 'brain-wave entrainment' software tools, you might be interested in Novella's attention to this file. He has had a number of sober, rational exchanges with adherents, and publishes the exchanges. Here, again, there is a 'lite-ness' to the therapeutic factor, a more modest claim than in the adverts I posted above. If there is some real hoodoo in there, some real `good hex' NLP`-only ingredient that 'works' reliably, that reliability will emerge from research. There is a rational edge to inquiries. See the modest sums arrived at by both Novella and his interlocutor Tina Huang, Ph.D. Director of Research at Transparent Corporation here - then contrast that to the rather exhuberant marketing performed by its sales force. This is the Transparent Corp product first critiqued by Novella. Huang agrees with Novella that the frickin' marketing is out of control and not supported by her own research.

http://www.youtube.c...h?v=cJB2wy_wrL8

Seriously, if there is some real hoodoo in NLP or entrainment, we could put a useful hex on discussion here, solve the ratio of snake oil/real hoodoo, and wrap this up without any rampaging elephant knock-on damages, "monkey-hear, monkey say zombie" notwithstanding. Maybe some other less aggressive elephants could come back into the clearing we have left.

Cordially,

Edited July 26, 2012 by william.scherk

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

William,

I am finally getting to this and there is something I want to address above.

It's the blanket mental load included in the term "hucksterism."

My question: is a huckster an evil creature?

How's that for philosophy?

It may sound funny like that, but take a look at what people (mostly intellectuals) say when they criticize someone or something that is gaining in popularity. They talk in disparaging tones about hucksterism or bash the hucksterish part of the matter. This is especially true where different viewpoints are on the table. Everyone thinks hucksterism is sleazy--at best. Right? Thus, condemning a huckster is safe ground. Or so they think.

That even goes to the personal level here in O-Land. Want a hoot?

There is a confused (albeit sincere) bonehead in our neck of the woods named Joe Maurone. He's the guy who betrayed Chris Sciabarra and helped Perigo and Hsieh try lynch Chris in public a few years ago. (I still get irked when I think of that sad-ass episode.)

He runs a Google blog and back on January 11, 2010, he wrote an article about me: Carny Huckster Incarnate: Michael Stuart Kelly. Unfortunately, if you try to go to that link now, you will be greeted by a message that you have not been invited to read the blog, so you have to request permission first. That must be new, but I don't mind. Nobody goes there anyway. If you don't want to ask for an invitation or you get denied, you will still be able to read a cached version for a while--see here--but that link will not last for long.

So you see my predicament. I'm obviously a huckster hucking up a huck-storm in hucksville, but I have to listen to people talking about how evil hucksterism is.

What to do?

Woe is me...

What to do?

Incidentally, the behavior Maurone criticized me for was opening dialogue to Muslims--LM in particular. He made it clear that he did not approve of anyone engaging in civil conversation with Muslims on an Objectivist board. (I'm pretty sure he would have no problem with someone harshly condemning them to their faces.) I guess I'm just not a good little ole' scapegoater like this dude wants all true-believing Objectivists to be.

I hope you get to read the piece since his twisted rationalizing is a wonder to behold. He tried to equate my opposition to bigotry to P. T. Barnum. And he got both wrong.

For instance, he took strong issue with me saying that Objectivists are "slaves to reality." He apparently left his classic Objectivism behind in his mental kneejerk since the phrase, "Nature to be commanded much be obeyed," permeates Objectivist literature. It's so frequent that I really don't have to provide a quote. It's not used as much as "A is A," but it's in the same ball-park.

Let's do a little third-grade logic for the conceptually challenged, though. This is more for the mental-kneejerkers than for the third-graders. So work with me, now. Work with me...

If you must obey something, it is your master. That makes you the slave to it.

Clear so far?

Now to the point. Man must obey reality. That's "Objectivist," right? Well, that means reality is man's master. Thus, man is a slave to reality.

Ta-daa!

Anyway, it's a boneheaded piece and I won't go into it--except for one more point. I'm far more interested in the concept of hucksterism per se than what a weak-minded person wrote about me a couple of years ago.

Normally, being a huckster means hustling people for money in a pretty blatant manner and delivering something worthless in exchange. A kind of low-level market deception.

And it's on this point where Maurone's effort bridges to my interest. He got Barnum totally wrong when he wrote:

... suckers are still born every minute.

He didn't specifically attribute Barnum with that phrase when he wrote it (actually a paraphrase because of the word "still"), but he implied the attribution by the general tenor of his article.

The problem is that Barnum would never say or feel anything like that. He had the utmost respect for his customers and always strove to give them one hell of a show, in other words Barnum constantly over-delivered in value. His attitude was more along the lines of "customers are born every minute." Some people even think he said that particular phrase a lot. Here's a Wikipedia article for easy reference (but I suggest further reading if you are interested): There's a sucker born every minute.

This points to a problem both within Objectivism and among intellectuals at large. Let me start with Objectivists. But first let me qualify that by saying I am not talking about all Objectivists, just the sanctimonious moral condemners. The assholes. I call the problem blatant hypocrisy.

Out of one side of their mouths they will extol the virtues of capitalism, but out of the other side they will condemn as a "huckster" one of the greatest entertainment entrepreneurs the world has has ever known. You will never see a person who does this actually run a business, though. That would mean he would have to use his brain. Hell, he has Ayn Rand for that. He is far more interested in telling others how to live than doing something himself. He's a moral condemnation junkie, not a producer. And, by Galt, he needs his fix!

Now for the intellectuals (I mean intellectuals in general as they appear in our current culture).

Ah... me... such children...

Man, do they look down on hucksters. You hear it all the time.

But where would these great thinkers of the world and contributors to mankind's intellectual heritage be without the "hucksters" out there selling their books and events? And selling them every day of the week? Especially if the thinking class can't toady their way into political power somewhere?

Broke and without an audience, that's where.

But there's a deeper issue--wealth creation and the human mind.

There's a view among intellectuals I have come across in several places. Some claim that the modern consumer is a new concept in humanity. Before modernity (say, the 19th century and earlier), people generally needed stuff like food, clothing, etc., and others produced and sold it to them. The world and markets were simple. Those were the good old days.

But consumerism came along and screwed up everything. Consumerism was basically invented by master manipulators like Edward Bernays (who put his uncle Sigmund Freud's ideas to good manipulative use) and it is maintained these days by "hucksters." That's the view I have encountered. (I could dig up links, but I am sure you have seen something similar out there. Bashing consumerism is pretty common.)

In this sense, they actually mean marketing and advertising. They also mean the enormous wealth people have and have access to, but I never see them own up to that part.

You might be surprised to learn that I somewhat agree with this, at least the operative part (without the condemnation). I can't think of anyone who actually needs most of the stuff he has acquired over his life. Yet everybody acquires mountains of crap (along with good stuff, of course).

Why?

The answer is simple and it goes to the heart of consumerism. Marketers (i.e., hucksters) covertly appeal to subconscious values and manipulate innate subconscious processes. They wed these efforts to their products. You get crowd control and people buy oodles. That's how it works in a nutshell. And, boy, does it work!

But is this a good thing?

I believe so.

It's a way to create a demand for a product where there was none before. And that directly translates into jobs and wealth. If you remove that artificially created demand, you remove the entire business that goes with it. Obvious, no? When you create a new demand, you have to have a new business to supply it. That means money and jobs. And if the demand grows (vertically within the market for the same product or horizontally to other areas), the business grows. More money and more jobs.

But look at something else. Do people really buy stuff they don't need because they get brainwashed? Or is something else operating?

I have an idea. Do you want a real good metaphysical reason to buy tons of junk? Here is a great one.

It's fun.

I mean that literally. Fun makes for great metaphysics when discussing human nature. It makes the universe so friendly! I think it's marvelous that human beings create wealth with fun as the main demand driver.

It's fun to buy cool stuff and it's fun to try to resolve a serious problem by buying a silver bullet. (Hyped products that offer instant solutions are called "silver bullets" in marketing.) There's other fun, too. It's fun to think about attractive people. It's fun to try to emulate the awe you see on the face of actors in a commercial when they open a wrapper. It's fun to sing the jingles when you dig out a thingamajig you bought. I could go on all day about how much fun it all is. I'm serious.

Hell, P. T. Barnum knew that. He helped create the process.

But I'll make a qualification. Hucksters in the bad sense actually do exist. Con men selling snake oil and sky hooks. They are not as numerous as the finger-pointers would have you believe, but they are there. So you have to include caveat emptor (buyer beware) as part of learning how to enjoy all this fun.

Also, covertly appealing to the subconscious is the only way propaganda works. That's not so good. That often means war. Literally killing people. Maybe that's the evil yang to the fun yin in covert persuasion.

And this leads me to a question, one I will end on.

Why is P. T. Barnum generally considered morally corrupt among intellectuals and Mao held up as a great leader? Both provided jobs, I guess. But one provided laughs and thrills and temporary escape into imaginary wonder while the other butchered millions of innocent people out here in harsh cruel reality.

Why is the huckster considered evil, but the politician and scapegoater good--or at least "understood"? By intellectuals, including Objectivists?

But that's not fair because Mao's stuff is contrary to Objectivism, you say? Hell, read any Objectivist board. Yeah, they think Mao was evil, but you will also find lots of people talking with great enthusiasm about deploying nukes--especially on Muslims. So what's the difference? An innocent person is just as dead regardless of who or what killed him. That goes for mass killing, too.

So which is morally superior? Mao or Objectivism-sanctioned nukes?

Let's do some huckster-thinking backstage. What to call this? What indeed?

Hey, I know!

Same crap. Different brand name.

To me it's a no-brainer.

I'll take P. T. Barnum any day.

So step right up, folks...

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I have an observation on the slave to master metaphor for a metaphysical level. I got a clue that led to my thinking from somewhere, but I don't recall where. (It was a new-age thing I saw in passing as I was bopping around random Google searches.)

The way God is always portrayed on Objectivist boards (at least in the things I have seen) is as some kind of entity "out there" which is different than the "me in here." The individual is one thing, God is another, and even the time-space background is another. But there is a different concept where God is everything, including time and space and "me in here."

This concept is the one I equate with the way Objectivists view reality. And I believe many religious people hold this same view.

God--or reality--in this concept is everything. So, to me, it doesn't matter what word you call it. All. Everything. Oneness. Universe. Reality. God. Whatever...

And that means being a slave to it is not accurate on an operational level. If it is everything, you are part of it, not separate from it.

The metaphor only works if you are talking about someone who believes the random thoughts in his mind can bend reality (the "out there" kind) to his wishes and whims. In that sense, you most definitely are a slave to reality. Even Objectivists with a chip on their shoulders daring reality to knock it off.

If you defy reality and want to do things like walk off a cliff to prove you can walk on air (and I mean without any kind of device), reality will punish you and even kill you just like the most sadistic slave-master of old. Reality says you cannot walk at certain places, that you must obey its laws or face the consequences. You have no other choice.

I get the impression my critic in the post above holds--on a deep level, although I doubt he would ever admit it--that he is one thing and reality is another.

That, to me, spells religion in the most primitive sense.

Michael

[Selene]

Fine point Michael:

I have made that argument. I also make that argument with anti-industrial "environmentalists" who view the "Environment" as a separate totality/also Godlike, with man as a separate and unequal element.

Simple Venn diagrams show that absurdity.

Adam

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I just reread Post 20.

Wow.

I was on one helluva roll.

Sometimes I just love me.

The reason I reread that post was I received a message on my Facebook page from Joe Maurone. He mentioned that I referenced his article about me and the only place I could think of was Post 20. So I found it on a search and took advantage of the opportunity to reread it.

I haven't really gotten into Facebook enough to keep up with its constantly changing privacy policies, so I don't know if Maurone's message is viewable by the public. I suspect not. At this moment in time, I really don't care. I don't like Facebook all that much.

But since Maurone had no compunction about sharing private correspondence from Chris Sciabarra--correspondence specifically intended to remain private--with some very nasty people who tried to damage Chris in a boneheaded shameful campaign on SLOP, and then shared it with the whole friggen' world (you can see the mess on SLOP here and rebutted on OL here and a few other places), I can't possibly imagine him objecting to me posting on OL his private Facebook message to me .

Well... maybe not so. There's no dirt in his message, so he might be confused why someone would want to make it public.

(All right, all right, that was catty. )

At any rate, I'm only posting it because it reflects on the substance of my ultra-fine Post 20.

Hello, Michael. I'll keep this brief.

I noticed that you recently referenced the carny huckster blog I did on you, and that you posted the link to the version of a blog I no longer use. As a courtesy, since you linked to a deleted blog, I'm letting you know that the post is still on the Objectivish blog, but in an edited version. I edited the original back in April of 2011, to take out the "huckster" bit, to focus on the Islamic topic, instead. Long story short, I went too far; it was too much. I know what you think of me; and you'll make of this what you will. I wrote what I wrote, I don't expect you to ignore it, or forget it. That said, I didn't realize that it was still on the other blog, before the blog was deleted. But if I had realized the old version was still up, I'd have deleted it, because, again, it went too far.

http://objectivish.b...bjectivist.html

Did I read an apology here?

No?

Maybe?

Technically not really?

Heh.

That's what Objectivism does to fragile egos. They act like they have to swallow a bigass bullfrog to be able to croak out an apology. Where I come from, you don't need a formal philosophy to be a man and own up. There's no shame in it. So if an apology was intended, I accept it. (And I hope he reconsiders his contempt for American business and marketing heroes.) I'm still pissed about what he did to Chris, but one thing at a time. And if no apology was intended, fuck him. What the hell's he doing writing to me?

To be clear, I did not link to a deleted blog at the time. The page I linked to was still popping up on a Google search of my name, but when you clicked on it, you went to a gateway page with a message that you needed an invitation from Maurone to see it. I did not see any Google search result for the altered article back then, but I did not look too hard for anything else, seeing as how the huckster article was on page one of Google's search results.

So that's that. There it is for what it's worth, should it be worth anything to anyone.

At least I got some value from it, After rereading my post, I think I really should start compiling some of this stuff, fleshing it out and reworking it into a book.

Michael

[blackhorse]

I hear ya', Michael. Unfort, too many "Objectivsts" are notorious for exercsing nearly zero context, kindness, or even forgiveness. At the risk of sounding to crass, it is a rampant type of douchebaggery that is all too common within the movement's adherents.