Politics | Charles Konia, M.D.

The Breakdown Of The American Two Party System

The breakdown of the two party system began with the anti-authoritarian transformation of American society around 1960. Pseudo-liberal/communist politicians succeeded in infiltrating and taking over the Democratic party. This brought abut a shift in the American political mainstream to the left of center. Because of this shift, there was no longer a far left in American politics, only a far right. Republicans who were on the political right reacted to this shift by forming a party of their own, the Conservative party. Politics became ideologically polarized. The relationship between pseudo-liberals and conservatives became one of antagonistic opposition.

The anti-authoritarian transformation resulted in an explosion of social problems such as the breakdown of the authoritarian family with all of its catastrophic consequences. People were helpless to cope with this breakdown and many looked to politics for solutions. With no knowledge of the depths of humanities problems, politicians took over and posed as liberators caring for the public. This situation gave rise to socio-politics. But politicians can never provide answers to people’s social problems. In fact, it is their very helplessness that is a major part of people’s problems, their inability to deal with their personal and economic problems in a healthy manner.

Today, an increasing number of independent and responsible people are becoming fed up with politicians and the politics of both parties and their makeshift and self-serving solutions. According to a Harris poll, the number of people who called themselves Democrat or Republican declined in the past several decades. During the same time, the percentage of “independent” voters increased. Democrats dropped from 49% to 35% and Republicans dropped from 31% to 28% while independents rose from 20% to 28%.

The tragedy is that there is nowhere for dissatisfied voters to go. Desperate politicians keep coming up with the same outworn solutions by providing socialistic remedies to the dependent and helpless masses while the independent people’s disillusion with politics grows.

Nothing will change for the better until people start looking within themselves for the source of their problems and not to external sources such as politics. Then it will be possible for people to help themselves.

June 23, 2011
Categories: Politics, Social Sciences . . Author: Charles Konia, M.D. . Comments: Leave a comment

The Importance Of Experiencing Fear

Experiencing the emotion of fear (biophysical contraction) is a vital function for individual and social survival. This is true for all animal species including humans. Because of the presence of armor, many humans have lost the ability to experience fear as a reaction to danger. In them, it is either distorted and felt as anxiety or it is not felt at all. In fact, today’s anti-authoritarian society is in a state of a chronic, false sense of well-being ( biophysical expansion), individually, economically and politically.

Anxiety is a symptom of an underlying emotional disorder. This is the reason that fear including its distorted manifestation, anxiety, is avoided by almost everyone at all costs. Since people are unwilling to look inward for the source of what is disturbing them, they look outward and blame their personal emotional problems on external sources. Or, they avoid feelings entirely and are left being out of touch with themselves. One way to avoid anxiety is to extinguish any uncomfortable feeling with the help of medication such as prescription or street drugs. Instead of rejecting these drugs and tolerating their uncomfortable emotions, which would be a healthier reaction, many look to drugs as a panacea. People’s avoidance reaction to experiencing fear and anxiety is, in fact, the real reason for the popularity of marijuana and the power behind the political push to have it legalized.

Another way to avoid disturbing feelings is through the defensive use of the intellect. According to this approach, everyone (including those who are forsworn to destroy people’s freedom throughout the world if they have the opportunity), is viewed as harmless or well-intentioned. Therefore, fearing them and taking appropriate defensive action is not rational or is unnecessary.

To the contrary, the inability to experience fear renders individuals as well as society as a whole defenseless. History has repeatedly shown that emotional plague-ridden individuals will sooner or later appear and take advantage of other people’s vulnerability to usher in a catastrophe on an individual or social scale.

June 18, 2011
Categories: Politics, Social Sciences . . Author: Charles Konia, M.D. . Comments: Leave a comment

Making Sense Of Politics

In order to make sense of politics one first has to think functionally and have an understanding of the three basic layers of the bio-psychic structure of armored humans: the biological core, the destructive middle layer and the superficial layer or social facade. Otherwise, one is likely to throw one’s hands up in frustration and walk away from what is happening.

All political interactions occur from the social facade. However most political activity originates from the destructive middle layer while the biological core, the source of every constructive social endeavor, is not represented at all in social life. To make matters worse, most people operate in politics as if the destructive middle layer, the source of human evil, did not even exist. It’s as if the emperor has no clothes: all political activity is believed to occur and can be addressed satisfactorily in a rational, parliamentary fashion from the social facade. This charade, expounded mainly by the political Left, continues to have tragic consequences while the political Right, having nothing better to offer, finds itself following in the same path.

This is the unfortunate state of affairs in politics today. It is the reason that American society is falling apart and that the survival of America nationally and internationally is increasingly becoming a matter of chance. People in political power remain ignorant of the underlying dynamics of the biological forces, both healthy as well as destructive, that govern social life. What is more, there is no indication that they are in the least bit interested in learning about them. “Politics as usual” is the rule.

The world is fortunate to have knowledge that can potentially reverse this dangerous decline in social conditions. The subject of politics is discussed extensively in my upcoming book, “Neither Left Nor Right”.

May 21, 2011
Categories: Biological Sciences, Politics, Social Sciences . . Author: Charles Konia, M.D. . Comments: 2 Comments

The Mechanistic And Mystical Views On Human Sexuality

Differences in the world views of armored people’s mechanistic and mystical thinking are apparent in every area of human life including human sexuality. When applied to living functions, mechanistic and mystical thinking are distortions and serve as a defense against seeing things as they really are. These views generally correspond to the thinking of the political Left (mechanistic thinking) and the Right (mystical thinking).

When applied to human sexuality, mechanistic thinking seems to be able to investigate every aspect of human sexuality in minute detail from different varieties of pre-genital sexual activity to the hormones, neurotransmitters and brain centers that are involved in sex. After all of the studies, little if anything new has been learned about the sexual functions of emotional life. Mystical thinking, on the other hand, focuses on terms such as “love”, “energy” and so on that have no physical basis.

Both views contain serious distortions. They ignore the existence of the physical biological energy that is capable of providing the basis for understanding every aspect of the human sexual function. Knowledge of this energy, which was discovered by Wilhelm Reich around 1940, continues to remain off limits to those who think mechanistically or mystically through their armored character structures. Through bio-electric experimentation, Reich found that the charge at the skin surface increased during states of pleasure and decreased during states of anxiety. He concluded that there is a real physical energy involved in these differing emotional states. The emotions of pleasure and anxiety correspond to different directions of energy movement; from the center of the organism to the periphery in pleasure, from the periphery to the center in anxiety. From clinical investigation he concluded that the sexual orgasm in the relatively unarmored organism functions like a safety valve to regulate its energy economy and by so doing prevents the build-up of energy that can lead to every form of human pathology, medical, social and psychological. However, in most armored people the regulatory function of the orgasm is disturbed and this is why they cannot recognize it’s functional importance in maintaining emotional and physical health. The current mechanistic-mystical views on human sexuality are the inevitable result of armored thinking.

May 15, 2011
Categories: Biological Sciences, Child Rearing, Medical Sciences, Politics, Social Sciences . . Author: Charles Konia, M.D. . Comments: 1 Comment

Natural Authority, Compulsive Authority And Anti-authority

The emotional plague thrives on confusion by generating more of the same. The mix-up around the significance of authority is an important example. As a result, there is no general understanding of the distinction between the social function of rational and irrational forms of authority.

This distinction depends on recognizing the three layers of the human bio-psychic structure: the biological core, the secondary destructive layer and the surface or superficial facade. Rare in armored society, natural authority originates from the biological core and is directly expressed without distortion through the surface. It serves to maintain healthy forms of social life.

The transformation of Western society from authoritarian to anti-authoritarian occurred around 1960. The typical form of authority in authoritarian Western society of the past was compulsive authority. Through repression, it was directed against both impulses from the biological core (healthy) and pathological (destructive) impulses of people. Despite its shortcomings, the authoritarian social order largely preserved the authority of individuals. The repressive focus of compulsive authority on healthy versus pathological life depended on the rigidity of the particular authoritarian society.

Anti-authoritarianism is the typical form of authority in today’s liberal, Western societies. It developed as a result of the breakdown of the past authoritarian social order and its necessary replacement with centralized (State/collective) authority. Primarily opposed to any form of individual or local authority and healthy expression from the biological core, anti-authoritianism originated from and is in the service of expressing impulses from the secondary destructive layer of armored human beings. Core contact is completely absent. Today’s anti-authoritarian social order is directly responsible for the qualitative disintegration of every form of social life.

April 12, 2011
Categories: Politics, Social Sciences . . Author: Charles Konia, M.D. . Comments: 2 Comments

What Is Required For The Democratization Of Islamic Countries

In his article “Confronting Gadhafi Is Not Enough” (Wall Street Journal, March 19-20, 2011), Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair writes that the reason why Islamic countries have not achieved democratic status is “because cultural and social modernization has not taken place in these countries and proper religion has been perverted to breed fanatics, not democrats.” This answer although correct does not go far enough and it underestimates the enormous depth of social problems confronting Islamic countries.

My book “The Emotional Plague, The Root Of Human Evil” identifies the steps that must be taken before any legitimate form of democracy can develop in Muslim countries. These steps which must originate from within the people themselves are the following:

1) Identifying and social sequestering of emotional plague characters on the political Left and Right.

2) Discouraging tribalism.

3) Emancipating women.

4) Separating the Islamic religion from the State.

5) Eliminating sex-negative practices in child rearing and the hateful mystical indoctrination of young people in principles of Islamic Fundamentalism.

These are monumental tasks that will take generations to accomplish even under the best of circumstances. Despite the revolutions that are currently taking place throughout the Muslim world, it is illusory to think that any legitimate form of democracy can ever be established in Muslim countries. Having lived under severe authoritarian repression for centuries, Muslims have no experience in democratic self-governance. The present tyrants will be replaced by others who are likely to be more repressive that the current ones. Iran is an example. Following Iran, Turkey, one of the few secular Islamic countries, is rapidly moving toward re-Islamization.

It must be generally recognized that the energy source of the emotional plague – human destructiveness toward others- and the formation of every kind of totalitarian state ultimately resides in the helplessness of the masses, their mystical longing to be cared for by those in power and their thwarted sexual frustration that can quickly turn into social rebellion through Western-style political causes.

April 5, 2011
Categories: Child Rearing, Medical Sciences, Politics, Social Sciences . . Author: Charles Konia, M.D. . Comments: 1 Comment