Sundays in the City: Then and Now

Living in Manhattan in New York City during the authoritarian era (the 30s, 40s and 50s) life was very different from the way it is today. On weekdays there was a great deal of economic and social activity in the city. But on Sundays, everything became quiet. Sunday was a day of rest. Except for some food markets and restaurants, all stores were closed and business took a day off. The only activities that occurred were social, such as going to church and visiting families, signs of the intactness of a traditional social order

Then things changed. Unrecognized at the time, it was the beginning of a monumental change in the social order. It was the beginning of the transformation of society from authoritarian to anti-authoritarian, a time when all forms of social organization and traditions on every level gradually began to break down.

It was then that the idea of politics as the leftist’s solution to humanity’s problems became connected with the emotional forces that were being expressed by young people. Fueling the transformation was the breakthrough to the surface of powerful forces contained in young people’s yearning for sexual happiness. The term “sexual revolution” that was used by communist ideologues aided the movement. People from the older generation reacted by being stymied and in a state of bewilderment. They had never before experienced anything like this kind of social upheaval in America.

Still unrecognized to most people, this was the time of the breakthrough of the great, destructive secondary layer of armored people, which we recognize as the emotional plague, and the beginning of the end of the social order of the past.

June 29, 2020
Categories: Uncategorized . Tags: , , , . Author: Charles Konia, M.D. . Comments: 2 Comments

The Political Right’s Way Of Promising The Impossible

From an orgonometric perspective, both sides of the socio-political spectrum, the left and the right, constitute the symptom of social armor.  The ideology of the political left is the expression of unlimited social freedom while the ideology of the political right is the expression of the defense against it.  With the anti-authoritarian transformation of society and with the shift of the political mainstream to the far left of center, the ideology of the left is the dominant destructive social force in today’s Western society.  The genie is out of the bottle and there is very little that the political right can offer by way of promises that can arrest the process of social decline.

What is needed to stop the decline is an entirely different way of looking and thinking about the way things are, a way that originates neither from the left nor the right but which takes into consideration the biological existence of human armor that gives rise to humanity’s social and political troubles.

April 4, 2012
Categories: emotional plague, Orgonometry, Politics, Social Sciences . Tags: , , . Author: Charles Konia, M.D. . Comments: 6 Comments

Protest Movements, Then And Now

From a historical perspective, there is an important difference between the protest movement of the  1960s and the current Occupy Wall Street protest movement.  This can be understood as a result of the transformation of society from authoritarian to anti-authoritarian that occurred around that time.  Both protest movements originate from a serious disturbance in the two basic functions of human life, sexuality and work.

The protesters of the 60s were a a product of the authoritarian social order.  Initially, they were a highly idealistic group of young people who wanted sexual freedom  (a core function) and to be rid of the shackles of conventional morality.  Tragically, the movement ended in disaster individually, because most of these youngsters were too disturbed emotionally to achieve sexual happiness and socially, because the movement was taken over and used for political purposes by leftist ideologues.  These  were the reasons for the failure of the so-called sexual revolution.

By contrast, today’s protesters are a product of the post-1960s, anti-authoritarian social order.  Unable to take advantage of the enormous amount of freedom and opportunity that is readily available to them in America, they want the exact opposite.  Many of them evidence a severe disturbance in their work function because the thought of working to have what they want never seems to occur to them.  Instead, they want the security of being taken care of by the government.  In sharp contrast to the earlier protesters, security is more important to them than freedom.  This is the reason that a large majority of these protesters are leftist ideologues.

The Wall Street protesters are an emotionally far sicker bunch than the protesters of the past.  Having no contact with their core, the energy behind their protesting comes entirely from their middle layer as bratty destructiveness.  The last thing that these protesters need is to have their childish behavior encouraged.  This is exactly what the Obama administration seems to be doing.  If economic conditions continue to worsen, as they most likely will if Obama is reelected in 2012, this group has the potential of doing even greater social harm by escalating their interference with public life.

October 20, 2011
Categories: character structure, Politics, Social Sciences . Tags: , , . Author: Charles Konia, M.D. . Comments: 3 Comments

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