The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

How We Are Conditioned To Be Slaves

Every ideology makes statements about human nature.

  • Capitalism: people are greedy;
  • Christianity: people are innately sinful;
  • Confucianism (Confucius original), people are neither good or bad, but pliable;

They make statements about how people should be treated. In capitalism, since people are greedy, they must be motivated with rewards. In Catholic Christianity, since people are innately sinful they must be forgiven, sin is natural. In original Confucianism, they must be trained to be good people.

All systems of learning are also conditioning processes. Take the discipline of economics. Economics believes  the idea that humans pursue self interest, know what it is, and make rational decisions to achieve it.

Studies have shown that there is only one group of humans who reliably act as economics predicts: people with economics degrees.

They learn how to think like an economist, and they make decisions like an economist.

For example, in sharing games.  One person is given, say,  $100 then has to give some to another person. That person decides whether to accept the offer. If they refuse, neither participant gets anything.

Economic theory says that the recipient should accept even a cent: after all, they’re better off than they would have been otherwise. But normal humans don’t do that. The less they are offered, the more likely they are to refuse.

Economics majors, on the other hand, take the offer.

Every discipline is like this. You learn to think like an economist, or sociologist, or political scientist or engineer, or doctor, or… whatever.

But life, overall, is like this.

Think about school. School is a place where you sit down, speak only when called on, do what you’re told, in the way you are told to do it. It is brutal indoctrination in obedience to teacher.

If it doesn’t work with you, what happens? Well, unless you’re very smart, you don’t get good grades. If it really doesn’t work with you, you get kicked out.

Higher education, required for almost all good jobs, cannot be received without good grades.

Indoctrination has failed, you will never have a good job, and thus you will never have power in society.

School exists to teach people to be obedient to power. It exists to make sure that when bosses tell them what to do, how and to be quiet unless boss gives permission, they do so.

Grab the kids at age 6, indoctrinate them while they’re young and almost helpless, deliver the results.

Kids are conditioned to act like employees. Like, frankly, wage slaves.

This is a very effective social system, because it does what it must: it makes sure that people who effectively resist the conditioning don’t get power later on.

The rare exceptions get power by going thru the capitalist system, outside the job system. They are extremely rare, but they are also conditioned, because capitalism has another conditioning set, where if you don’t do what is required to make a lot of money, no matter how bad (see how Bezos, in Amazon, treats his employees or Steve Jobs acted) you will never have a lot of power in that system.

Systems often break down when they either start letting thru the wrong people, or when they stop letting thru too many competent people.

Or they break down when the requirements of the system start producing results so bad it breaks the system (see Climate Change.)

To bring it back, why do Economists act like monsters when they become central bankers?

Because they’ve been trained to act like monsters: to take into account only self-interest. And being long time products of the education system (PhD + school = 22 years or so), they also know that, even if they don’t have a direct boss, they are to do what bosses and teachers would want them to.

After 22 years of conditioning, well, they just do it. It isn’t about rational thought, it’s about conditioning.

Meanwhile, the rest of us, conditioned to be slaves from childhood, sit there at our shitty jobs and just take it even if we’ve broken enough of the conditioning to walk. Because if we don’t, if the conditioning is shown to have failed, well, soon we won’t have a job, and then we won’t have a house or enough food.

This is how successful societies and ideological systems work.

It is also, a small piece of what you will learn in my book, “The Creation of Reality”, which is almost complete its first draft.

More later. In the meantime, you’ve been conditioned to be a slave. Recognize that, but be careful how you rebel, lest you suffer the consequences the masters have in mind.


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41 Comments

  1. Ed

    Amen.

    Part of conditioning is establishing which questions are “silly” to ask–which ones can simply be answered with “because” and the listener has to accept it. Some of my favorites:

    Why is my health insurance attached to my employment status? Why should I have to have a job to see a good doctor?

    Why is capital gains income taxed less than salary income? Isn’t a dollar a dollar and income is income wherever it comes from?

    Why should, in the USA, my ability to have deep pockets to pay for legal costs determine the type of justice I get? Why is “you’ll win, but you’ll spend more in legal costs than you’ll win” even a viable sentence (and one that I’ve had told to me by a lawyer)?

    We have a system rigged to keep us in our places, not challenging the “owners” and not even raising the questions about the system. That’s great conditioning.

  2. V

    Be careful how you rebel; sage advice.
    My whole life was a rolling rebellion; I learned well where the boundaries were and how far they could be stretched.
    Starting with 9/11 stretching the boundaries became almost impossible.
    Today,; a simple infraction or perceived infraction, can get you killed by a militarized police.
    It does not matter if you are armed or clearly not armed; a cop having a bad day will off you in a second.
    If you are a person of color? Almost a guarantee…

  3. Recalling that in all legend lay a kernel of fact, reading the fabrications koran, bible, and torah in larger, historical context with other fabrications lain down in stone it is in fact quite easy to afford “Intelligent Design” a measure of credibility. When chariots with wheels of fire flitting about, vast arks propelling the seeds of life across vast empty spaces, and fathers asking of their wives “be this my son, or that of a “giant?” are lain aside the physical record it isn’t all that far fetched to supposit that at some point in the past half-million years extra-terrestrial travelers – for whatever reason: pure science, sheer boredom, desperate survival, or profit – genetically interfered with the development of the proto-humans they found roaming the savannahs of Northern and Western Africa. Not only are we but fleas agitating the hide of a far greater organism, but some bastard’s abandoned science project, if not cattle, as well. We were bred to be slaves.

  4. Willy

    I’ve read stories and seen videos about sled dogs who cannot contain their sheer excitement at the prospect of the mornings sled run. They may be slaves to the sled, but they sure do seem to love pulling it. I think humans could be bred similarly. No doubt many of us are offspring from previous attempts. But the ideal sled driver also loves his dogs, sees the relationship as a mutual partnership, and is willing to do his part to keep his dogs as healthy and happy as the conditions of that relationship will allow. Other dogs, not bred to pull sleds, would be far less inclined to find satisfaction in such a relationship. Of course wolves.. forget about it. There far too little agreeableness in those genetics to be able to easily exploit.

    But what happens when the sled driver doesn’t care about his dogs? What happens when he rationalizes the poor conditions he places on them? What if he has a pathological need to abuse them, or even enjoys it? Isn’t that what certain laws are for?

    I don’t mind being somebody’s servant, as long as the pay is reasonable, the relationship rational, and I’m not being subject to abuse. But there’s something seriously messed up about the increasingly libertarian “just quit if you don’t like it” attitude. It’s too much like the Roman “just quit life if you don’t like it” philosophy.

    There was that time when the Visigoths tired of Roman lies and abuse and took matters into their own hands, while an apathetic Roman citizenry pretty much just watched. Something bad must’ve really ruined the place.

  5. Stirling Newberry

    It depends on what your condition by.

    I am condition by my daughter.

  6. Synoia

    If it doesn’t work with you, what happens? Well, unless you’re very smart, you don’t get good grades. If it really doesn’t work with you, you get kicked out.

    Yes, in the N American Education system.
    Not so, in the UK education system which I attended, the pressures there were social, not educational.

  7. ponderer

    Brilliant! so glad you are working on a book.
    Schools were little more than slave training when I went. At least there was an opportunity for free thought and rebellious behavior in our “free” time. Today’s children don’t even have that. Constant social monitoring is grudgingly accepted by anyone with a social media account.
    It took me a little while but I finally got why TPTB were so shrill about Trump. They’ve been dumbing down and desensitizing the populace to violence for at least my life time. They don’t think a leftist could pull it off, but a (bloody) revolution from the right has always been a possibility. I think they poopoo Bernie Sanders because he could impact their bottom lines, not actual fear of losing their lifestyles. But, like economists thinking like economists, they are worried one faction of the elite might murder the other half. A Mao Zedong or French Revolution scenario probably hasn’t occurred to them, but a Nazi style purge (because that’s exactly what they would do) is on their mind.

  8. Herman

    I hate to keep banging on the technology drum but tech is a huge factor when enforcing social conditioning. There used to be a lot more wiggle room for the average person when it came to operating as an outsider. Now if you get fired from your job for being a “bad culture fit” or a “troublemaker” (read: not taking crap from your boss) it is easier for employers to gather data and make you unemployable. It is like having the mark of Cain stamped on your forehead.

    Social media is another great way to enforce social discipline as it forces you to curate your online life lest you get in trouble with your employer or the authorities. On top of that, in our society you have to worry about personal enemies doxing you and trying to get you fired and using your social media accounts against you. You could just stay off of social media but then that signals that you are a dangerous freak who is probably “hiding something.” You are damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

    Sadly most people seem to be fine with this state of affairs. They eat up all of these gadgets and apps and do not seem to care that they are increasing the power that corporations and governments have over them. Your typical middle-class type thinks that because they are good boys and girls who did all the right things in life they will be spared the downsides of this system but their time is coming as even white-collar, professional workers are increasingly subject to automation, outsourcing, monitoring, neo-Taylorism, precarious employment and other facets of our hellish world.

  9. Ian Welsh

    Yes, technology is. In general all increases in com-tech (like writing) are anti-liberty.

  10. Dan

    Inaccurate on the Christian theology detail.

    In Western Christianity, everyone carries “original sin.” Perfect holiness (or close to it) is still possible, in Catholic Christianity and definitely Eastern Orthodox Christianity where (as in Judaism) there is no original sin, but most people have a propensity to sin.

    The concept and doctrine of original sin comes from Augustine as an arguing tool against the Pelagians’ much more optimistic view of human nature. Protestantism radicalized this aspect of the late Augustine’s theology, with Luther and Calvin depicting humans as completely abject, helpless, and enslaved to their fallen, sinful nature. The natural world itself and human reason are all aberrant, and the only reason anything works at all or anyone is saved and made holy is by the intruding or preventing grace of God, from outside the system. Therefore, if you are not predestined to be arbitrarily saved, then you are just hosed no matter how hard you try to be good. And there’s no sense of “everyone needs to be forgiven,” because they won’t be! Only a few who are chosen. In Calvinism, sin is never natural, and the whole fallen world is unnatural. Those chosen by God alone are part of the world’s redemption to a restored and “natural” or original state.

    On the other hand, Protestantism developed a somewhat less split up view of people as having a (sinful) body and (more rational, good) soul — even if the duality was upheld, both were bad, but that’s just the way it is so the solution is not to cut off body parts, wear a hair shirt, or take up vows of celibacy — it’s to get married, much as capitalist activity came to be seen as a good way to harness greed in a less bad direction.

    So, a little more nuance there. Christian theologies can paint more and less grim views of human nature, with quite a few variables impacting how it is defined.

  11. Herman

    @Dan,

    I think among the Protestants the Arminians are also more positive about human nature to the point where Calvinists have accused them of Pelagianism or at least semi-Pelagianism. I believe that the Methodists are Arminian in their theology.

  12. Ian Welsh

    I said “Catholic”. That’s why they have confession.

    Pelagus lost. A heretic. I happen to think they Catholics (as usual) chose the wrong side of that theological debate, but hey…

  13. bruce wilder

    I am going to play the dissenter here for a bit. (don’t hate on me, bros!)

    being able to formulate, understand and follow rules is and was a hugely important social pre-requisite to modern life. a democratic politics revolves around arguments over general rules or principles — by itself the notion of “fair play” was a critical advance over the pathological narcissism of “what’s good for me and mine is good(and you I do not pretend to care about — you get close enough and you are my lunch)” every time you drive up to an intersection of roadways, you rely on other drivers obeying posted signs (STOP) and the rules governing right-of-way. people who stage little rebellions put your life and limb in danger. you eat in a restaurant, your health may well depend on the employee actually washing his hands (and hopefully not spitting in your food for spite or amusement).

    it isn’t rules, per se, that make someone a slave. the essence of slavery is having no rights. the slave is not worthy of respect and the slave must be motivated primarily if not exclusively by punishment, in no small part because the benefits generated by the slave’s labor are being siphoned off by the master. the bee has a stinger, ’cause he ain’t sharin’ the honey.

    authoritarianism isn’t about having rules, per se; authoritarianism is about the subordinate person(s) not having any power or even understanding of the rules — the rules are not negotiable for the slave and the reasoning and motivations of the master are opaque.

    no-fly list — I’m sorry, you are not allowed to see it. FISA court — sorry, it’s all a secret. that “agreement” with your credit card company, that software company, your employer, that random website — you “agreed” that you are bound by that 7 page agreement that you didn’t read except that by clicking “install” or “enter” or signing your name you legally acknowledged that you read, understood and accepted that detailed agreement (when, of course, you didn’t read it, nor could you have understood it without professional legal advice) oh, and by the by, your employer, bank, software publisher, random website got you to agree that they could unilaterally and with only a sheer formality of notice (or maybe even without notice) substantively change their “agreement” with you. oh yeah, if there’s a dispute, you bound yourself to accept binding arbitration by an arbiter chosen by and paid by the company. in short, you, as an individual have no rights any business corporation is bound to respect. (in related news, very few, a policeman or a court or a national security agency or a local government is bound to respect either).

    the relationship of leader and followers can be conceived of as an exchange. it can be a fair exchange, in which a potentially large gain can be had by having a leader or manager coordinating a division of labor.

    in a horizontal exchange — the classic market exchange — we naturally suppose that markets resolve conflict — the interests of buyer and seller are opposed; a mutually beneficial bargain may be possible with good will, but one may seek to impose loss on the other in order to improve her own position and relative power can matter. the vertical exchange embedded in hierarchy involves an exchange as well, but by its very nature an imbalance of power is built-in, defined by the nature of the relationship, which is one of submission to discretionary authority enabling an exercise of power growing directly out of disciplined social cooperation.

    the moral right and practical capacity to question authority and demand rationale of process for authority’s behavior is what distinguishes democratic government in an otherwise hierarchical society cum political economy. the slave is the person who can not demand an answer from his supervisor, cannot say, “no”, cannot negotiate the terms of that vertical relationship.

    as quixotic as it may seem to try to keep some boisterous 8 year old quiet behind a desktop in a classroom while the sun shines and the breeze blows just beyond the window, what disturbs me about education and education policy is not that. what bugs me is the factory model, indoctrinating kids as if they were car bodies being dipped in acrylic enamel.

    if people are going to push back, individually and en masse, against their betters, they have to know their betters are not actually better. or necessarily smarter. or good. they need skills. a basic understanding of how rules and procedures can work to produce outcomes. an ability to argue and articulate their own interests in the context of a large and technologically advanced society. politics, which is not simply an exercise of raw power, is an argument about what the rules should be and how those rules should be administered. understanding the rules cannot be the exclusive preserve of elite experts.

    one of the worst things about our system of schooling is the emphasis on credentials and credentialing. if you jump enough hoops, tick enough boxes, avoid offending the great and good, and stay the course, you get the credential and the credential “qualifies” you.

    it is not a coincidence that the right wing demands that their ripe somabitch nominee be acknowledged as “qualified”. he’s “brilliant” we are told. like every other member of today’s U.S. Supreme Court, he went to Harvard or Yale.

    it is b.s. of course, but it epitomizes what has been happening as American society sinks deeper and deeper into sclerosis. performance of leaders can not be evaluated.

    there is less and less institutional support for intelligent criticism of elite performance in the public discourse — the critics cannot find the job in a Media dominated by the ownership and control of giant business corporations and mega-wealthy families — and the target audience cannot find the (real) critics for all the noise produced by the clown shows and perhaps also, for a lack of taste, discernment. Russia, Russia: the Trump Show — all singing, all dancing) has only very limited entertainment value as far as I can see, but maybe it is a matter of taste — but I digress.

    i think economics is partly to blame. neoclassical, mainstream academic economics is our civil religion — taught to millions of college students and business students (and in high schools it has largely displace the traditional civics course — that is telling). economics is taught dogmatically; it has to be, its core doctrine do not stand up well to critical scrutiny. there are two core problems — and I do not think either one is the selfishness complained of in the OP: first, econ 101 describes the economy as a system of markets even though we live in an economy organized by and around hierarchies; second, econ 101 describes a political economy of certainty, that is, of complete knowledge, when, of course, we live in a world of radical uncertainty.

    it is quite a remarkable vision: homo oeconomicus venturing into the market place to negotiate the transaction price that will govern the exchange of a widget for an apple or an iPhone or vacation in Spain or cash dollars or units of credit at a bank with some unlikely and untrustworthy name. the selfishness of Mr. Homo Œ. is purely instrumental, because he knows all he needs to know and so does everyone else involved — no one can hold him up at gun point, or sell him a defective widget nor would he even consider marketing a defective widget — he wouldn’t engage in marketing of any kind; everyone already knows everything, persuasion is not possible or practical.

    there’s a whole line of political reasoning in economics that follows from Hayek’s argument ~70 years ago that said market price conveys enough information to coordinate distributed decision-making in the economy. adjust the price is policy enough. too much pollution? make a market and charge for it. trade imbalance? let the currency appreciate or depreciate or whatever. all Mr. Mr. Homo Œ needs to know is the good of the good and the price and he knows how much he wants to sell . . . or buy, as the case may be. if the price goes up, he buys less; if the price comes back down, he goes right back to buying at the former rate. money is just a numeraire, a unit of account applied in enumerating a price; money itself is “neutral” and has no effects, because people are so perfectly knowledgeable, they see through the maya, the illusion of the money price to the “real” price, the value of the resources and goods foregone as an opportunity cost to produce or acquire the good in question. It is a very hard thing to wrap your head around and once you do, apparently, you may become irredeemably stupid for ever after. That would be a feature, not a bug.

    My point is that for the general public to be politically effective in pushing back against elite self-dealing and corruption, the general public has to have a theory or ideology to organize their critique from the bottom-up. It has to be a reasonably good theory, too, in pragmatic terms: at least the outline of a practical, policy architecture has to be there: things to do that make society and political economy work better, even in the face of resourceful opposition. So, it is supremely useful to the powers-that-be if the official doctrine of how the political economy works not only rationalizes malfeasance, but makes it hard to think about it.

    You cannot think about how hierarchy works to organize the economy if you only think in terms of markets (and purely nominal money) as the organizing template. In dealing with the actual economy, which is organized by money finance and hierarchy in the face of radical uncertainty, neoclassical economics leaves people of good will up the proverbial creek without a paddle.

  14. Ian Welsh

    Nah, people aren’t going to push back, because they spend their entire life being trained not to do so. I mean, this is pretty established by actual results in the first world.

    Moderns really are clueless about how a lot of other lifestyles worked. There was often social surveillance, but when you were alone (or with a peer group) you truly were alone.

    Our current system doesn’t produce the people required to keep the social contract between leaders and followers you want. It has to wait for collapses and crises, and never managed a good social contract for longer than it takes the people from the last crisis to age out of power.

  15. V

    Ian Welsh
    I think you’re closer to today’s reality.
    Crisis seems to be the only real motivator; sans crisis, the status quo continues undisturbed…
    I see most Usian’s as so beaten down they cannot act.
    Acting (taking action) does not even occur to them.

  16. scarno

    Can’t wait to read the book.

    Class under capitalism isn’t just the transmission of inherited accumulated value, it’s also the education of “how to be rich.” What can we get away with? The answer is very different for the low wage earner’s child compared to the petty bourg attorney’s child compared to the hyper wealthy capitalist’s child. And each is taught accordingly.

  17. Webstir

    Having become a first time father 8 months ago … one that, I might add just got the little man cub to bed after his first live concert (the Pixies), I have to say you’re speaking my language Sterling.

    I have always been one to deride home school. Until late.

  18. V

    Webstir

    As John Taylor Gatto (30 years as a teacher) says; if you really love your children; do not send them to public schools…
    I’ve known a number of home schooled children; very impressive kids.

  19. Brian A. Graham

    Ian,

    You would probably enjoy a book written almost twenty years ago written by a physicist named Jeff Schmidt entitled, Disciplined Minds: A Critical Look at Salaried Professionals and the Soul-battering System That Shapes Their Lives. His greatest insight is that maintaining ideological discipline of the profession animates the lives of professionals.

  20. bruce wilder

    Our current system . . . has to wait for collapses and crises

    Like every human social system at least since the beginning of the Neolithic. Do you have a point?

  21. Hugh

    OT The July jobs report presents a complicated picture. Because of how the Establishment is done, most layoffs due to the end of the school year don’t show up until the July report. So Total Nonfarm jobs, that is public and private sectors, (seasonally unadjusted as in what actually happens in a month) declined 1.156 million as compared to my reference year 2014: 1.079 million. When you look at net job creation for the year (the January-July increase minus the December to January dropoff), 2018 is 371,000 vs 2014’s 453,000.

    On the other hand, if you look just at the private sector job creation June to July, this is usually weak. However, this year was unusually weak, only 80,000 versus 168,000 in 2014. January to July, 2018 job creation has been solid: 2.588 million versus 2.304 million in 2014, but net job creation has been essentially indistinguishable between the two years: 2.042 million in 2014 versus 2.002 million in 2018.

    The number of production and nonsupervisory, i.e. non-managerial, jobs continues to increase: 82.50%. There was a bump in weekly pay but we will have to wait until the 12th and the report on real wages to see how much of this actually accrues to this group.

  22. John

    Writing this from my electronic slave collar…on the outer reaches of serfdom in a hidden enclave not far from the imperial capital of our overlords. It’s impossible to get off the slave ship…it is possible to get lost in the herd so that the overseers and enforcers do not notice you. Anonymity is the secret. The current slave system is comprehensive and quite amazing in that most of the slaves enter their servitude willingly bought for cheap totems of status.

  23. V

    John
    A delightful post, full of the real deal; we gladly walk into the ovens of our destruction…

  24. I was in a discussion about restoring labor unions to functional reality, with my position being that the driving factor had to be workers themselves acting in concert, and they they had to be willing to be willing to take the risk to themselves that would be incurred by acting in concert in their own interest and against the interest of those presently in power. Those holding power, I posited, will not willingly give power back to the working class, the workers will have to take that power. This, I finished, was the way labor unions were formed to begin with, and this is the way they will have to be restored.

    I received no agreement whatever, with all in the discussion agreeing that it would require acts of Congress and state legislatures to restore labor unions. We are, indeed, conditioned to be slaves.

  25. Willy

    Most people do mental risk-benefit calculations. Few are brave. Fewer still are brave and wise. But there sure does seem to be a critical mass of angst building. But it’s mostly among the youth. Maybe when the millenials have had enough of their future taken away from them will their boomer parents finally get it and be brave enough to join in.

  26. StewartM

    Ian, I agree on everything you said.

    That is why I cast doubt on whether the experiments like the Milgram experiment showing that people will obey superiors to inflict pain even up to death, in a culture that rewards obedience to one’s social betters from earliest childhood, proves anything about human nature save that our culture’s social conditioning is very effective. Ditto about anything Piaget wrote about childhood development. What can you say is “natural” about human behavior from what we see in such a culture?

  27. StewartM

    Ian Welsh

    Our current system doesn’t produce the people required to keep the social contract between leaders and followers you want. It has to wait for collapses and crises, and never managed a good social contract for longer than it takes the people from the last crisis to age out of power.

    That’s what I replied to RC’s question of “when you guys doing to ‘do something’?” The point is, in most cases, the ruling class has to have driven the country/empire/state into the ditch to the point they are bankrupt and can’t keep up the social control/repression any longer. Then change is allowed.

    With that in mind:

    https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-07-30/the-decline-and-fall-of-the-american-empire

    https://www.livescience.com/63229-losing-earth-climate-change.html

    My conclusion–we’ll have change only after the biggest of train wrecks. And the initial change might well be in the wrong direction (fascism, or similar) before that too makes the train wreck even worse. Ever since the election of Saint Ronald Reagan in 1980, I have believed US would not survive it, and I now believe the disaster will encompass the whole world.

    (Though of course Clinton and Obama share blame because they could have made even modest attempts to repeal Reagan, but did not).

  28. Hugh

    There is a lot of rage boiling through our society across the political spectrum. It is still unfocussed and often directed against those expressing it. As the reasons for that rage aren’t going away and are only going to get worse, the rage is only going to increase. And there is a lot of hope and danger in that.

    For me, it all comes down to asking yourself what kind if a society you want and then asking the people you meet what kind of a society they want. In that, there is a beginning.

  29. StewartM

    Ian Welsh

    For example, in sharing games. One person is given, say, $100 then has to give some to another person. That person decides whether to accept the offer. If they refuse, neither participant gets anything.

    Economic theory says that the recipient should accept even a cent: after all, they’re better off than they would have been otherwise. But normal humans don’t do that. The less they are offered, the more likely they are to refuse.

    I differ about this involving “rationality”. If you offer the other person only 1 cent, then the opportunity cost of losing them losing 1 cent being such a pittance, and he/she might reject your offer and both of you lose. If you offer them $50, then the opportunity cost for them not agreeing to your offer is the same as you would win too, so it’s very likely to be accepted. To me $50 is the most “rational” answer in that even from your purely selfish perspective, it’s the one most likely to get accepted and yet maximize your gain.

    I think that too many of these so-called “rationality” games aren’t about what the most “rational” response is, it’s about “winning”. Case in point–I have a Scientific American article that had a similar game, involving broken identical items that two airline travelers possess, that an airliner was going to offer reimbursement for breaking. Not knowing the price of the item, the airliner rep decides to offer them up to $100, but will choose the lower price offered as the true price, and the person saying higher will get $3 under what the lower price is. If both people offer the same price, they will both get the same price.

    The article said the ‘right price’ to offer was $3. But the reasoning would be that you’d “win” in that you’d get as much more more than the other person. To me the self-evident answer is $100, and no matter what the other person offers, you’ll get at least $3 less. You might “lose” in such a case, but you’ll likely get more than the $3 the article said.

  30. nihil obstet

    I agree with bruce wilder. On another tangent I don’t find people’s characteristics quite so categorical. People fall into subgroups within the society.

    There are those who get the higher education for a good job. Most don’t find it a brutal process. The ones hoping for more intellectual work as researchers, teachers, writers in science, anthropology, literature, what have you, enjoy it. Up through high school in the U.S., the work tends to come easily and is the basis of a lot of self-esteem. Nowadays, the overbuilding of colleges and universities have produced a need to keep students, so there’s a real push to produce “value” in the form of graduates; the students are helped along more than they used to be. The students hoping for good professional white collar jobs may not enjoy it as much, but see it as an investment until they can open their dental office or get hired at a good accounting firm. Most of them have good memories of the freedom and social life of their college years. For both groups, the brutality comes when they try to redeem the education with a commensurate job. The slavery involved doesn’t come from the schooling, but from the means necessary to get what they regard as appropriate employment.

    People who would not continue in school if they could get work without it don’t have the inherent interest that makes them want to adopt the restrictions of classrooms (the inherent interest usually comes from a home life that has stressed such things). However, if they were to undertake any other work, they would spend a fair amount of time learning the work from someone else. Is it more slavery to be in a classroom with other students and a teacher or to be an apprentice to a boss? Or are you freer not obeying someone but ignorant?

    Most people don’t have a goal of having “power in the society” through a “good” job. They want a decent dignified life.

    We are conditioned to live in our society, but the structure of our schooling is a small part of it. The oligarchs are trying to make it more by requiring standardized tests (thanks, Obama), breaking teachers’ associations, and privatizing the schools. Greater problems are the content of the lessons, the overuse of drugs, the ubiquity of advertising, the structures of workplaces.

    A crisis brings the violent end to a society, usually in the form of food shortages causing uprisings. However, notice that several societies have simply collapsed in recent decades, and my guess is that that’s where we’re headed. Even the highly educated (most conditioned) are showing increasing signs of disaffection. In the end, I suspect that we’ll just withhold consent, and something like the Soviet Union collapse will happen. That’s why we need the vision of what we want to follow that Ian’s book is contributing to.

  31. V

    Bill H

    …seems to be the only one who has a clue about effecting change.
    In the early 70’s I worked for Nissan motors regional parts warehouse.
    The management were arbitrary and vindictive towards its employees; so, we met privately and talked to the teamsters union.
    Long story short; we organised ourselves and went union.
    I have read nothing here that gives me one shred of hope. Waiting for the boomers to act?
    That a joke, right?
    You’re waiting for Godot; and you know how that goes…

  32. @V
    In the early 1960s I was standing outside the gate of a steel plant with an axe handle in my hand, stopping trucks and non-union workers from entering. Police said we couldn’t do that and ordered us to step aside. We did nothing of the sort and flattened 18 tires on the next truck that tried to enter. The police threatened to fire on us and we told them to go ahead. “We outnumber you enough that while you are getting some of us we will get all of you.” We came closer to having our demands met than they did.

    Point being, we didn’t sit around begging Congress to do anything for us.

  33. V

    Bill H

    Exactly!

  34. Billikin

    I beg to differ about a few things. The main tenet of Confucianism is “Father knows best.” It is paternalistic to the core. Also, it believes in superior and inferior people. Confucius advised hanging out with superior people and avoiding inferior people. As for educating inferior people, Confucius compared it to plastering over a dung heap. (See the Great Learning, IIRC.)

    Capitalism believes in rewarding capitalists. Others, not so much. In the sharing game you mention, economists may be more likely to take the penny, but they are more likely to offer it, as well. Naive college freshmen are more likely to offer a 50-50 split, and more likely to reject an offer that differs much from a 50-50 split. Supposedly the free market is the center of capitalism, but not in the firm. There the master/slave relationship prevails. Much of modern managerial practice can be traced to the treatment of slaves in the 19th century. In the US, much of the structure of welfare can be, as well. Capitalism grew out of eliminating the commons, which greatly reduced the ability of workers to survive without becoming wage slaves.

    But we agree about your main point. All processes of learning involve conditioning. And school, in most cases, conditions students to be obedient and subservient.

  35. V

    Billikin

    But we agree about your main point. All processes of learning involve conditioning. And school, in most cases, conditions students to be obedient and subservient.

    Without context or qualification, this one does not agree that…”All processes of learning involve conditioning”.
    They do not.
    Forced public education teaches by conditioning.
    True learning has nothing to do with conditioning, or, forced public schooling, for that matter.

  36. someofparts

    What about commonality? That is one of the questions I’ve been wondering about.

    For example, common standards of written English. Everyone in this thread shares that skill set so we understand each other comfortably in these comments. How would we even begin to communicate if someone dropped into this conversation without a minimum level of such skills?

    Entirely aside from questions of conditioning to fill a particular socio-economic class niche, what about the role of sharing a cultural commons in being able to function at all in any community?

    The level of literacy on display in these comments would get you fired if you worked for state government in Georgia.

  37. Willy

    I don’t think that most here are cut from the cloth which is naturally compliant. You won’t see anybody here claiming that some mysterious “Q” is going to magically make all of our fears go away. I’ve theorized that most of that kind needs to hit bottom first, before they’ll take change into their own hands. But that kind usually needs to be led by our kind. We may need to learn persuasion and instigation skills which go beyond mere shaming, or even logic.

  38. It might of value to the discussion of conditioning to revisit the question are we at 1984, or a Brave New World? Jack-booted totalitarian or drugged and distracted fat ‘n sassy skillfully herded cattle?

    The ten year old post I clipped the above from my house concludes …

    Far the more likely thousands upon thousands of cavernous spacecraft, vast slaughter-houses piloted by ravenous vaguely reptilian creatures, replete with horns and folked tail, intent not as benevolent overseers of the demise of this world and our current iteration in human evolution and our children’s evolution onto the next iteration of humanity but as ravenous reptilian creatures… you know, hungry lizards.

    We did, afterall, invite them to “Come Eat!

  39. highrpm

    sop, lucky you not to be in the employ of the state of ga.

  40. someofparts

    well, used to be, but then … you know, literacy

  41. Billikin

    V: “True learning has nothing to do with conditioning”

    We have different definitions of conditioning.

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