In his article “The Origins of Political Correctness” which appeared in volume 43, number 2 issue of The Journal of Orgonomy, Bill Lind describes political correctness as “the disease of the century,” the distorted expression of Marxist ideas translated from economics into cultural terms. Although correct from an historical standpoint, his understanding of the origins of political correctness are limited to the more superficial socio-economic realm. It does not take into account the powerful biological forces residing in people’s depths that have rapidly made political correctness the dominant form of morality in twenty-first century America.
The transformation of social armor from authoritarian to anti-authoritarian that began around 1960 was accompanied by a corresponding change in the structure of individual armor. Prior to that time, in most adults armor was contained in the skeletal muscles. With the transformation of social armor, a shift occurred in the pattern of armor of young people from the musculature to the brain. Ocular armor increased at the expense of muscular armor in a large segment of the adult population. This shift resulted in a dramatic change in the way morality was experienced and expressed.
The authoritarian morality of the past originated to a great extent from muscular armor. Its function was to preserve the authoritarian way of life. With the shift of individual armor from the musculature to the brain in a large number of young people there occurred a qualitative change in morals. Authoritarian morality with its absolute distinction between right and wrong based on emotional feelings became replaced by political correctness, an expression of a qualitatively different kind of morality originating exclusively from the brain.
Functioning to establish the anti-authoritarian social order over authoritarianism, the morality of political correctness is a highly infectious and pernicious manifestation of the emotional plague because it appeals to people’s intellect and it is well rationalized as being for the common good of everyone.
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An understanding of the true and original meaning of the word “authority” is necessary if people raised in (or affected by) an anti-authoritarian society are to have any chance of understanding the devastating consequences that have already occurred as a result of this transformation from authoritarian society.
I had the good fortune to attend Dr. Harman’s presentation many years ago on origins of the word “authority”. At that seminar, I learned the following: 1) the root of the word authority comes from “author” 2) the word “author” comes from the Latin and old English words meaning “to create or originate” 3) That there is rational and irrational authority.
Having grown up in Canada and the U.S. in the turbulent 50’s, 60’s and 70’s, I assumed that all authority was bad, abusive and repressive. The seminar was an eye opener but it took me decades to see how the combination of my early difficult childhood experiences in the 1950’s coupled with the dramatic transformation to anti-authoritarian society in the 60’s and 70’s help solidify my indoctrination into the belief (in spite of what I sensed to the contrary) that “authority, by definition, was bad”.
This is but one example of the destructive effects that anti-authoritarian society has had on the words and terms necessary to understand life and the way people function.
I do not think that my experience of growing up during the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s is very unique. Most of the people I meet in my daily life (family and friends included) suffer from some of the same distortions and misinterpretations about life that they learned growing up and living in an anti-authoritarian society.
So much work and effort needs to be done today and in the future in hopes of clarifying the true and historical meanings of the many of the key words and terms that you use in your book, articles and tweets which have been changed, undermined and distorted by the advocates of anti-authoritarian society over the last 60 years.
If the meaning of the words and terms used to describe and explain the emotional plague to the public are not properly understood, there is a great likelihood that those words and the truths that they hold about life will miss their intended audience of decent and clear thinking people (especially the younger generation whom, for the most part, have never experienced life in a truly authoritarian society).
The distinction between rational authority that originates from the biological core and compulsive or neurotic forms of authority that originates from the destructive, secondary layer is essential. Our task is to make this distinction known to the general public.
In a vicious downward cycle, the rise of the drug culture, “full of promises”, in the “60”s in western civilization contributed in great measure to the increased armoring of the ocular segment/brain of the original users as well as their children and grandchildren who suffer by virtue of their parents’ more limited capacity for eye contact from birth on. Current normalization of drug use, either their own, friends, parents, teachers, or other authorities adds injury to injury.
This movement from the authoritarian to the anti-authoritarian began with Socrates in the West and the attempt to bring everything to consciousness, a review, an attempt to eliminate double standards and hypocrisy, morally speaking.
Instead, this attempt to create that ideal human to create a Utopian society has failed because the “well-educated” intellectualized human has simply succeeded in hiding his complexes behind a web of ideas, polemics, straw men and intellectual taboos.
Many of the young today have no experience of deep feeling that we used to get from religious stories, or from the great works of Western culture, in books and film. It is enough to look at the emotional/feeling desert of today’s cinema to verify that.