The Rebel Yell. The Agenda To Classify Anti-Authoritarianism As A Mental
Illness
Levine identifies the process of "learned helplessness" as one of the primary factors that has
led to society feeling broken, demoralized, hopeless and defeated. He cites an experiment involving dogs where both
groups of animals were subjected to electro-shocks, wherein one group of dogs was able to stop the electro-shocks
and the other was not. The dogs not able to stop the shocks moved into passivity and depression, and even when
presented with the opportunity to escape did not even try to take it because they had learned helplessness.
Levine compares this to national elections, where people vote for either Democrats or Republicans but still
end up with the same consequences, or don't vote whatsoever but still end up with the same consequences. "That's
learned helplessness," explains Levine, "No matter what you do you're going to get that same degree
of pain."
Bruce Levine
Clinical
psychologist Bruce Levine is the author of Common Sense Rebellion and Surviving America's
Depression Epidemic. He regularly deals with "anti-authoritarian" clients who would be diagnosed by
the health care authorities as suffering from "oppositional defiant disorder" or ADHD, and helps
them to deal with adjusting to their societal, work or school environment without rebelling in a
self-destructive manner.
In a psychiatric context, Levine explains how successful political
movements like the American Revolution and the more recent populist uprising are historically led
by people who have individual self-respect, something very much lacking in today's society, as well
as collective confidence and trust in one another. "When you're living in a society that breaks
people's self-respect and breaks their bonds of trust with one another, it makes it very difficult
to have any kind of democratic revolutionary movement," remarks Levine.
Prisonplanet.tv's interview with Bruce Levine: The
Rebel Yell
Levine identifies the process
of "learned helplessness" as one of the primary factors that has led to society feeling broken, demoralized,
hopeless and defeated. He cites an experiment involving dogs where both groups of animals were subjected to
electro-shocks, wherein one group of dogs was able to stop the electro-shocks and the other was not. The dogs not
able to stop the shocks moved into passivity and depression, and even when presented with the opportunity to escape
did not even try to take it because they had learned helplessness. Levine compares this to national
elections, where people vote for either Democrats or Republicans but still end up with the same consequences, or
don't vote whatsoever but still end up with the same consequences. "That's learned helplessness," explains
Levine, "No matter what you do you're going to get that same degree of pain."
Levine compares the apathy and the lack of demonstrations against the 2000 election
fraud controversy in the U.S. to similar examples in Mexico in Iran, where millions of people protest even though
in doing so they are risking their lives. He identifies debt as a central contributor to people's apathy and how
populations are broken. Unlike previous generations, every young person who leaves education is now saddled with an
average of $20,000 of debt, and so are petrified of losing their job or having their benefits taken away, thus are
far less likely to go out and protest against the system that holds them in bondage.
Three other major factors that have broken an entire generation of
young people are the influence of television, the education system, and the mental health profession. Because kids
spend all their spare time watching TV and playing video games, they are losing their interest in reading, points
out Levine, the perfect cocktail for an authoritarian regime that needs helpless, dumbed-down victims who will
tolerate any amount of intellectual and political disengagement. In turn, by forcing children to read books they
are not interested in, schools discourage kids from becoming individual readers and restrict their capacity for
critical thinking.
School is an authoritarian pacifier, states Levine, while television also teaches
young people that the only way to get entertained is through some authority. Meanwhile, kids who rebel become
victims of the mental health industry, an inter-personal police force where the pacifying weapons are medication
and drugging. Any form of individualistic behavior is increasingly being characterized as aberrant, warns Levine,
as part of the process of suppressing a general rebellion against the status quo, as the list of mental disorders
listed by the American Psychiatric Association grows and grows with each re-issue of the DSM Manual, which is the
bible for the mental health industry.
Levine explains how prior to 1980, there was no "oppositional defiance disorder"
listed in the DSM Manual, and how psychiatric conditions listed in the manual are for the most part added for
cultural and political reasons, not for genuine health concerns. As we have documented, the process of identifying
those who question authority as mentally ill is rooted in some of the most brutal authoritarian regimes in history.
Critics of the state were branded mentally ill and sent to psikhushkas – mental hospitals – in the former Soviet
Union.
Speaking on the subject of the most common mental illness - depression - Levine notes
how the condition was very rare as recently as 25 years ago, but that since an industry grew up around bombarding
people with medication, over-prescription of depression became a very lucrative business, with normal human
behavior being medicalized as a form of depression. However, perhaps the major reason for skyrocketing rates of
depression is the cultural shift towards social isolation, lack of support and lack of community, with around 25
per cent of Americans now living alone and 25 per cent also saying that they now have no confidants whatsoever in
their life whom they can trust and receive empathy from, a figure up from just 10 per cent in 1980.
FALSE LEFT/RIGHT PARADIGM
A false left-right paradigm is essentially two opposing groups who give the illusion of
hopelessly polarizing worldviews but in reality, they share common goals in the overall scope of things (such as
the direction of our country towards a global system). Usually these groups disagree on smaller divisive matters,
which maybe real, to manipulate and rally the public behind one side or the other. The basic idea behind this
practice is to keep people divided, powerless, and to maintain overall influence within their sphere. The Roman
Empire was experts at this tool and although they no longer physically rule, their concepts still live. The false
paradigm masterfully uses important issues like abortion, gay marriage, entitlement programs, etc. to distract the
masses while they bulldoze bills, executive orders, contracts, etc. that usually constrict our freedom and destroy
the sovereignty of our country.
"I have found that, to make a contented slave, it is necessary make a thoughtless one. It
is necessary to darken his moral and mental vision, and as far as possible, to annihilate his power of reason. He
must be able to detect no inconsistencies in slavery; he must be made to feel that slavery is right...." --
Frederick Douglass
The Minds of
Men - Official Documentary by Aaron & Melissa Dykes
-
T r u t h s t r e a m M e d i a
Premiered Dec 16, 2018
GET $5 OFF when you order the DVD, use code SUBPROJECT119 @ TheMindsofMen.net (includes extras: extended interview,
deleted scene, behind the scenes featurette and trailer).
"I freed a thousand slaves; I
could have freed a thousand more,
if only they knew they were slaves."
Only the vigilant can maintain their liberties, and only those who
are constantly and intelligently
on the spot can hope to govern themselves effectively by democratic procedures.
"A society, most of whose members spend a great part of their time,
not on the spot, not here and now and in their calculable future, but somewhere else, in the irrelevant other
worlds of sport and soap opera, of mythology and metaphysical fantasy, will find it hard to resist the
encroachments of those who would manipulate and control it.”
