Is Science the Last Religion?

August 18, 2007 at 4:51 P.M., letters began to be deleted as I was working on this draft, frustrating attempts to make progress on this essay. I do not believe that a person can refute my arguments by obstructing and frustrating my efforts to set them down in writing. This continuing censorship and psychological torture through frustration efforts (combined with so much worse) is the opposite of the scientific and philosophical spirit of inquiry. It may be a kind of admission of intellectual bankruptcy.

Spacing in this essay has been affected by hackers. Over the past 336 days 73,631 viruses have been aimed at my computer. Close to 1,000 intrusion attempts per day have been made during some weeks over that same time period, nearly all of them coming from New Jersey, some from government computers, perhaps assigned to judges or justices. The same "errors" have been inserted and corrected by me in some essays as many as forty to fifty times.

The goal of these efforts is not only to discourage writing efforts by me -- after torture and rape makes such efforts essential to emotional survival -- but to destroy a set of opinions challenging a false and pernicious world view that is dominant among America's so-called "educated class." These censorship efforts will be combined with forced impoverishment (an "embargo"?) and slanders intended to destroy personal and professional life. Objections to such treatment will allow for labelling me as "antisocial" or "in denial" and "hostile." A desperate effort will be made to discover or create offenses against political correctness by me that will serve to legitimate these crimes and atrocities.

August 31, 2007 at 9:24 P.M. numerous attempts to enter my msn account have been obstructed by hackers. I am blocking:

http://view.atdmt.com/MON/iview/msnnkss07600
http://view.atdmt.com/iview/msnnkhac001160x600
http://view.atdmt.com/iview/msnnkhac001728x90

What are you afraid of? There is never a guarantee that I will be able to write again. If I am unable to do so -- if my computer or access to any other computer becomes a problem -- then I will do my best to write somewhere, somehow, even if it is only on a brick wall. I live in a society that, publicly, guarantees freedom of expression and human rights to everyone, where political and legal officials nevertheless, secretly, use psychological techniques, technology, and mass marketing "methods" to manipulate and control persons -- preferably without their realizing it -- and sometimes, in the worst places, they do much more terrible things.

I believe that these dangers to American liberties are every bit as worrisome as international terrorism. They are a kind of terrorism, even when corrupt officials happen to be Democrats. If you have ever seen the almost sexual bliss distorting the features of a person deliberately inflicting pain on another human being, you will never be the same again. If you have the misfortune of being the victim on whom that pain was (and is) inflicted, then you will never be entirely free of it. However, you will always prefer even that suffering to the condition of the person inflicting suffering on others for pleasure. (Numerous errors have just been inserted into this text and corrected.)

What I feel is not so much frustration as sadness and bewilderment at the pointlessness of so much human cruelty.

September 4, 2007 at 10:37 A.M. I find new "errors" inserted in this essay since my last reading of it a few days ago. I will do my best to make the same corrections as often as necessary. Regrettably, this will slow down other writing projects. My discussion is based, mostly, on the following sources:

Mary Midgley, Science and Poetry (London & New York: Routledge, 2001), pp. 1-19, 79-88.
Charles Hampden-Turner, Radical Man: The Process of Psycho-Social Development (New York: Anchor, 1971), pp. 1-213.

A Hermeneutics of Freedom: "Hot Chocolate, No Whipped Cream."

I roll out of bed planning to head over to my local Dunkin Doughnuts coffee emporium. This elegant establishment is about a block away from my New York residence. I ask Jeeves, my butler, to lay out my weekend attire. We take turns in the butler role. I opt for soft khakis, a polo shirt with a discrete and minute emblem of an ape defecating on my chest (it's my own label), placed just over my heart. I slip on my leather loafers leaving the socks at home. Dark glasses -- to discourage autograph seekers -- complete the outfit. I purchase my newspaper with all the news that (liberals believe) is fit to print along with The Wall Street Journal, for the editorial page and display purposes.

During my one block morning stroll there will be dozens or hundreds of messages delivered to me, not all of them friendly or simple and easy to decode. A woman's perfume, as she stands next to me at the bodega ("What's a 'bodega,' Charles?"), her hair cut, even her shorts tell me: First, she's from the mid-west or "elsewhere" and is probably a student or young professional in New York; second, she has a graduate-level education and comes from a good home ("thank you, that's fine"); third, she's visiting a strange planet with weird brown people because, back in Wisconsin, everybody knows everyone else and looks the same; fourth, she likes this visit, because she's interested in anthropology; fifth, all of the magazines on the shelves are screaming messages about America's paranoia and sexual obsessions, which she pretends not to notice. Such things are not discussed in pleasant company back in Wisconsin or Idaho.

I am not surprised that Jack Finney's Invasion of the Body Snatchers is about to appear in yet another movie version, this time starring Nicole Kidman. Communists have been replaced by terrorists, we know, but the deeper subtexts in that very disturbing work will be ignored by reviewers, also undiscussed will be the philosophical issues that the movie reflects and addresses. "There is no philosophy in The Matrix: Reloaded," opined David Demby of The New Yorker.

We are fortunate indeed to be instructed by such learned people about cultural and political matters. Naomi Klein's recent lecture carried on "Democracy Now" (one of my favorite news programs) brought tears to my eyes. Adam Gopnik's article discussing Philip K. Dick is best passed over in silence. Francis Fukuyama has nothing to worry about since Ms. Klein failed to understand what he said in his first book or why he said it. Anybody been to Long Island this summer?

Directly ahead of me is a huge sign on the side of a bus -- "Jason Bourne is back in New York!" The most significant religious symbol for many people in contemporary America is immediately ahead of me, the "Golden Arches" of McDonald's hamburger heaven, evoking the tablets of the law carried by Charlton Heston -- I mean Moses -- down from Mount Sinai: "So let it be written, so let it be done."

Huge signs invite me to sue my neighbors, using the services of "Mr. Rosman" ("litigation with a smile!"), a church down the street has a cross-shaped relic of the 9/11 tragedy on the front lawn. I always nod my head out of respect when I see it. As I cross the street, I see beautiful garments -- often much more beautiful than things sold in very expensive stores -- garments from India or China, Africa and Latin America -- placed on display in sidewalk stalls.

To see a woman I adore in one of those dresses made in India or China, in those colors and that inexpensive sidewalk jewelry, as we head off for a lunch in the park before attending a free performance of a Shakespeare play, then coffee in a special coffee shop with classic Opera recordings playing background music is a dream that never leaves me. The entire evening may cost no more than $20.00. The average couple sharing an evening together in Manhattan will spend that much or more on a cab ride to their destination. ("God is Texting Me!")

These inexpensive and lovely clothes are made, mostly, by women. They come from factories found in the poorest parts of the world. They are filled with the sweat of those lives and with their creative energies, as artifacts. However, because they are not expensive, they are not valued. I bought my daughter a small purse made by African women in Israel, sold at the wonderful Jewish Community Center (JCC) -- I think that's what it's called -- in Manhattan. You don't have to be Jewish to visit. She loved it more than any other handbag or purse I have ever given her. It is simple and beautiful with a residue of the life-hopes of the woman who made it.

A homeless man opens the door to this "Doughnut Paradise," offers a cheerful comment on the weather. He gets some money from me. Most people ignore him. I find it fascinating to ponder the semiotics of this encounter. This man has adopted the form and manner of the New York "doorman." All the fancy buildings in the city, especially the great hotels, feature splendidly attired doormen in uniforms worthy of German field officers in World War II, doormen whose mission in life is to bow and offer pleasant tribute to the thin and bejeweled matrons (of both or all genders) entering their multimillion dollar "homes" in Manhattan or equally pricey hotels.

Many of these doormen or -women are African-Americans or Latinos and Latinas. They tell me that the money (and sometimes other perks) can be really solid in that job, and "it ain't gonna kill ya." This homeless guy has figured out that people want to feel important, like those Upper West or East Side swells, so he behaves like the classic New York doorman. His tactic pays off. He gets good money in that spot. Perhaps it says something about his society and what has brought him to such visible agony that it is this humble and somewhat grotesque role that he is expected to play in life: "Yes, sir. Lovely day. You looking fine!"

My friend, Sam, has become an organ grinder's monkey because it is what he has been taught that he is by a racist society. At some point, this man stopped fighting the bullshit and died, spiritually, and now something that looks human, some small remnant of what used to be a person opens doors and smiles, commenting on the weather for us "rich people." Most of the censorship I am struggling against is aimed at turning me into something like that man. ("'The Stepford Wives': A Movie Review.")

No doubt my homeless friend is now fully "adjusted" to the role and status allotted to him in America. Unfortunately, I will not be adjusted to such a prescribed role, not even if it comes with the "status" of an "attorney." I will not bend or break or abandon my views because you -- America's or New Jersey's political-criminal elite -- have decided that my opinions and the learning and reasoning justifying them are not permissible for someone "like me" to put on display, usually at the cost of your far less "well-reasoned" and well-informed views. No wonder this essay and essayist are under attack. My greatest offense has always been who and what I am. Tough. My identity is not negotiable. My selfhood cannot cannot be tortured out of me.

He catches my eye. We smile. The message is: "I'm doing what I have to do with these people." My unspoken response is -- "me too." I dig in my pocket: "Here's some of what I have and thanks for not putting on the act with me. I think and feel what you think and feel." I know that he understood every word of that unspoken message. The sadness briefly seen in his features is a reversal of the mask of cheerfulness that he wears most of the time. That mask must get heavy on his face. He knows that he doesn't need the mask with me. There's just silence and a painful smile. We both say, silently: "I know what you're feeling." There are a lot more like us out there, getting angrier by the day. Closing off opportunities for expression may not be wise. (See my essay on the philosophy of Charles Taylor and the problem of recognition.)

I will never become violent or commit a crime because I will not give my torturers the pleasure of inducing or producing such conduct in me, despite their best efforts. Racists wish to produce violence in you, as a minority male, so they will be confirmed in their opinions of you and in order that their crimes against you may be excused in their own minds at least. Be a model citizen. Speak daggers to them, but use none. It helps to remember that the moral level of torturers and government censors is always roughly equal to what you scrape off your shoe, especially in New Jersey. In fact, in New Jersey much the same may be said of Superior Court judges. (See my forthcoming essay "Mark Baber and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey" and "Sybil R. Moses and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey.")

Dunkin Doughnuts' employees have been issued new uniforms designed by someone with the old ABC tv show "Happy Days" in mind. A retro-faux-fifties-happiness is conveyed by mostly Latina and Indian women in tan polo shirts and paper hats, like children at a birthday party in 1957 caught in a time warp and placed in this demented setting: "America runs on dunkin!" Right. (An "error" was inserted in this last sentence since my last reading of it only a few hours ago.)

Two posters greet us as we enter this establishment: on my right is a woman smiling like an idiot and offering us a doughnut (vagina); on my left is another woman holding an ice cream cone, two scoops (penis). Charming. Pornography with your coffee and doughnut?

On my way back home, I stop at the Botanica downstairs at my building, catering to all of my spiritual needs. I purchase a small wooden statue of Ganesha, also a crucifix. I often see archetypal images from different parts of the world (some are very beautiful). I read the messages conveyed by those images. Sometimes these messages mean the exact opposite of what the proprietor supposes. I don't have the heart to tell him any of this. Some of those statues and images are meant to convey very unpleasant wishes. Perhaps I will send some of these art objects -- the ones conveying curses -- to New Jersey's well-fed judges. Visits to the MET museum should feature pauses at the famous canvases containing multiple messages, some of which are deliciously nasty.

"Primitive man had to see himself surrounded by a circle of forces -- demons, gods, friendly forces, impersonal forces. If I think of a primitive walking through a forest, I expect his movement to be different from ours. If we pass through the woods on an easy trail, we walk; if it's not open, we bushwack. But the primitive may have stopped before a certain tree and bowed. Before another, he may have lain prostrate, even abject, on the ground; where there was familiarity with a relatively modest divine force, just a nod of the head as he passed by. That was no more than was required unless the tree gave an indication that it was annoyed. How did it speak? By many shades of distinction in the rustling of its leaves."

Norman Mailer goes on to point out:

"If we accept these suppositions, then consciousness had to be more intense for the primitive. He was always a protagonist. His day was heroic or ghastly. For what does it mean to be a hero? It requires you to be prepared to deal with forces larger than yourself. Terrified and heroic, it is no wonder that the life span of primitive man was shorter than ours."

The Spooky Art (New York: Random House, 2003), p. 148.

Most people are oblivious to these signals and symbols, except for the obvious commercial ones, which are ignored. Many New Yorkers seem to be sleepwalking. The more educated people claim to be, the more likely it is that 90% of what is communicative or symbolic around them will be ignored or not seen at all. Life will be ignored. Art will not be seen or appreciated, especially when it is found in unexpected places. People make themselves stupid. Incidentally, in an era threatened by terrorists, this lack of feeling is the opposite of intelligence. Most of what the CIA will need to know about people who mean to harm us will not be found in a lab report. This information will not be detected by a satellite. Luckily, we can rely on the wisdom and astonishing intellects of persons like Anne Milgram, Esq. to keep us all secure. ("Another Mafia Sweep in New Jersey and Anne Milgram is Clueless.")

The so-called scientific approach in the social sciences and professions is about not being distracted by the "irrelevant" (like life), in order to focus on discrete, atomic propositions, usually directed at specific "issues" and "problems" to be dealt with in a "professional" manner. "What's the bottom line?" "What's on the bar exam?" "What is the specific research agenda?"

There is an ideology, falsely associated with science, of exclusion and diminution instilled in young people by the educational and political establishment. This is part of what is meant by the suggestion that "scientism" -- a kind of religion of science which is destructive of the spiritual and aesthetic capacities of humanity -- is now triumphant in America. Hence, the wars against traditional religions. The result is adding both to the unhappiness reported by Americans and to our troubles in the world. This is something else that is not seen. Our dominant methodology in the social sciences works for some purposes, not for others. American scientism is producing a condition, among a materially and culturally rich people, of spiritual destitution.

Unfortunately, hackers have altered the spacing of paragraphs in this essay as proof of America's undying commitment to free political expression for all dissidents, everywhere -- except New Jersey.

You cannot understand the mind and emotional core of a person, even when they are captured in art, by placing such items under a literal or figurative microscope because your relation to what you seek to understand is part of what you must appreciate. You getting this, Tuchin? Is Diana busy raping an unconscious woman? Have New jersey's judges been interrupted in their thievery? Please feel free to carry on.

"The existential knower cannot by definition practice the traditional scientific detachment. He is studying relational facts, and the attempt to detach himself could destroy these. Even where he is observing the mutuality of others, the source of his insight will run dry with the source of his concern, since his own feelings and powers of identification are important clues to the shared human condition. If man exists he inevitably influences what he studies, and his only choice is to become aware of what he contributes to the relationship and to ensure that it facilitates the developmental process in which he himself is involved." (Radical Man, at p. 33.)

The response to these accusations will be a quotation from Richard Dawkins and the shout: "I am against the war!" Me too. I am also against theft in New Jersey politics and many tortures in that state that has been controlled by Democrats since long before Iraq and Abu Ghraib. I am against interference with religious or other philosophical expressions of people by party hacks or "experts" presuming to tell others what to believe or how to live. I don't like people destroying my written work. Curiously, I object to being tortured. Finally, I have a reservation or two about mafia/mob involvement in politics, whether it is Cuban-American or Russian organized crime is irrelevant. Italian-Americans have mostly moved on to the much more evil work of making movies and lots of money in business.

I don't want your opinions of me or your approval in New Jersey's legal circles. I don't want your friendship. I don't want to associate with you. I don't want to "cooperate" with you. I am not interested in your opinions on any subject. Your hypocrisy at the New Jersey Supreme Court sickens me. I want my rights.

Millions of people are saying exactly this in every way that it can be said to American officials: "We respect and want science and technology; we also respect and need religious wisdom and meaning." Any questions? The judicial robes that you are wearing on the New Jersey Supreme Court are a lie. New Jersey's justices are living a lie. Every day that the cover-up of these atrocities continues is a further befouling of your oaths and the institution that you serve. Ethics? You're kidding, Mr. Rabner?

I will comment on the new scientism, which has reached epidemic proportions today, offering some suggestions about what we can do to improve things, only to return to Dunkin Doughnuts for a "croissant" by way of conclusion. A hermeneutic circle? As New Jersey's new attorney general (Anne Milgram) might say, "Whatever."

"Scientific materialism asks us to believe in a world of objects without subjects -- and since we are subjects asked to do the believing -- that proposal makes no sense." (Mary Midgley)

I am not an electrical appliance. I am not exclusively a material object to be fixed from the outside by replacing external visible parts. To be sure, I am a material entity. I have a body. This body needs maintenance and repair. I am, however, more than this body. I am conscious, aware, sentient. It is certainly true (as far as we know) that without my body, there will be no sentience; no awareness; no experiencing nature. However, it is a profound error to suppose that my experiencing nature or the rich technicolor subjectivity that I am, as a freedom in the world, is reducible to what is observable, externally, and therefore alterable from the outside.

An "error" -- previously corrected by me -- has been reinserted in this essay. I have now corrected it once again. I want you to have a feel for my writing experience.

To view another human being in exclusively external terms, as a thing, is to dehumanize that person. It is a terrible insult and injury which is also stupid if your goal is to understand him or her. Among the "things" that I am is a moral subject with legal rights and fundamental dignity, including autonomy. Rights and dignity, however, stand in the way of scientific "control." I am not something to be "controlled" by you or anyone in a free society. The essence of the scientific religion is the assumption by self-professed "scientifically rational" types of authority to control, improve, instruct defective or inferior non-criminal "others." The same error is committed internationally, at the level of foreign policy, with disastrous consequences which we see all around us. ("Terry Tuchin, Diana Lisa Riccioli, and New Jersey's Agency of Torture" and "What is it like to be tortured?")

"When science spreads its mantle of prestige over all of those aspects of social life which lend themselves most easily to observation, then outward behavior and appearance are elevated above inner conviction. It is no use for Martin Luther King to declare movingly, 'I have a dream that one day men will be judged not by the color of their skins, but by the content of their characters;' as any proponent of the scientific method will explain, content of character and dreams are extremely inferential and represent at best 'soft data.' In contrast, skin color, ethnic group, income position and role in the organization, property and concrete behavior are all visible, measurable and therefore the potential ingredients of a science. There are twenty research programs which deal with physical externalities for every one that attempts to explore the depths of human feelings and experience."

Notice the key point:

"We know from the every day social judgments that we make of people that their external appearances are not only misleading, but often trivial compared with deeper knowledge of their character."

Radical Man, p. 10.

Science focuses on such externals and quantifiable material, then dismisses or denies (at least, some "scientists" do) the importance of all that is excluded by this so-called scientific approach, such as purpose or meaning. The glories of scientific achievement and the world-view accompanying science that made those glories possible must not obscure the equally glorious achievements in the non-scientific realms of subjectivity (humanities, religion) leading to very different objective truths.

Science must not lead us to forget all that art and religion have accomplished. Yes, religion has caused warfare and inquisitions. But then, science has created gas chambers and nuclear weapons. In both instances human choices are to blame for the evil to which each kind of knowledge has been put. The fault, dear Brutus, is in ourselves -- not in our stars, microscopes, or libraries.

Much the same may be said today concerning behaviorist psychological techniques and all externalist social science which, perhaps with good intentions, have become instruments of hideous tortures or ways of misunderstanding human beings that are brutally destructive of human psyches: "The habit of scientific analysis has led investigators into the 'Humpty Dumpty dilemma.' ..."

What is the "Humpty-Dumpty dilemma"?

"... Humpty Dumpty not only labeled social reality unilaterally and arbitrarily, 'the question is which is to be master, that is all,' he finished up in thousands of fragments which no one could put together again."

Radical Man, p. 12.

"Humpty Dumpty' is the external material subject postulated by contemporary social science in America: a body with a brain, but only the illusion of a mind; conditioned by advertising and political slogans; molded by economic pressures and sociological categorizing; subject to complete comprehension and control in terms of stimulus and response. I suggest that this construct is a far more unreal and much less useful model than Kant's "transcendental ego." It is also unlivable and evil because of its brutal reductivism. ("Behaviorism is Evil.")

This so-called "scientific" image of what persons are and of the scientifically rationalized society horrifies millions of people in this country and all over the world. I can see why so many feel this way. America is not best thought of in such terms. America may best be found in its organic documents, like the Constitution and Declaration of Independence. The American idea is that you are not a "thing" to be conditioned from the outside by paid "experts" in torture chambers, but a priceless locus of rights and dignity whatever your economic status may be. American foreign policy reflects these values in foreign aid -- which was just offered to Mexico after terrible storms -- and (paradigmatically) in the post-World War II "Marshall Plan." That's the United States of America, Marshall Plan not Abu Ghraib. I hope. ("Manifesto for the Unfinished American Revolution.")

The homeless men and women in our city streets are a powerful criticism not of those values at the heart of the society, but our failure to live up to them and (often) of the cover ups and hypocrisy that accompany such failures. My subject is science as religion and the ominous spread of scientism. What is scientism? What objections can be made to the universalizing of scientific method, particularly in the areas of human subjectivity? I will focus on three issues: 1) neutrality; 2) observation; 3) control.

A. Scientism.

William Barrett comments:

"What is this peculiar phenomenon we call scientism? It is not science, any more than the shadow is anywhere identical with the substance of a thing. Nor is science ever evidence of scientism. At most, science merely serves to heat up the imagination of certain minds -- and they are not few -- who are too prone to sweeping and unqualified generalizations in the first place. Scientism is pseudoscience or misinterpreted science. Its conclusions are sweeping and large, and therefore sometimes pretend to be philosophical. But it is not a part of philosophy, if by philosophy we mean the effort to think soberly within the restrictions that human reflection must impose for itself. No; scientism is neither science nor philosophy, but that peculiarly modern invention and malady -- an ideology. [A religion?] And as such, along with other ideologies that beset us, it has become part of our modern culture."

Death of the Soul: From Descartes to the Computer (New York: Doubleday, 1986), p. xv.

1). neutrality.

The posture of detachment, "professionalism," indifference adopted by self-defined scientific types is helpful when examining the objective processes of nature, but inhumane when observing the meaning-systems and all products of the "life-world," especially when such entities exist to injure people. This scientific attitude is the indifference of the observer at a trafffic accident who takes no action to help victims because by observing and taking careful notes, he can learn exactly how long it takes the victim to die and how that dying takes place. "We can learn from ya." Right, Tuchin? ("What is it like to be tortured?")

For any healing professional to adopt such an attitude is the negation of the concern and empathy dictated by medical tradition for centuries in every civilized society. This Mengele-like scientific "observer" of human suffering is a new horror in the contemporary world that arrives with the totalization of scientific control in the nightmare societies of the twentieth century and beyond. Even worse are persons -- like Tuchin and Riccioli -- who cause suffering to victims or collectivities in order to "learn" how persons suffer. Worse is any judge or tribunal allowing such cruelty to take place or making it possible for others to be brutalized in such ways in order to perfect methods of social control. ("Stuart Rabner and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey" and "Deborah T. Poritz and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey.")

Only one newly-inserted "error" is not too bad. 

2). observation.

The omnipresence of observation is the death of privacy. Technology has intruded the observing eye of Big Brother everywhere in our societies. If you can see the Empire State building in Manhattan, then you can be sure that you are on screen in a tape being made somewhere, by one of the hundreds or thousands of cameras capturing people's lives (without their consent) every day, from every angle, for the benefit of government agencies and corporate masters. America is a reality show and every single person in the country is Kate Winslet or Leonardo Di Caprio -- not for fifteen minutes, but 24 hours per day, seven days a week.

Every casual conversation, kiss, weekend plan made in a whisper on the sidewalk can be captured on videotape and replayed by men and women in blue suits and uniforms for purposes that have nothing to do with you or your life. Persons are raped in institutions, tormented in indescribably horrible ways for purposes never disclosed by "scientists" incapable of the minimal decency of an introduction or explanation. The resulting emotional damage is discussed in seminars by these monsters. We find ourselves living inside a moral dungeon derived from nightmares shared by Kafka, Orwell, Foucault and maybe, Peter Handke. Apes do not seem to object, so why should we? Are we not apes of a larger growth and nothing more? Are we not "rats on a carousel"? "Sacks of protein and water," Larissa? "Slaves?" ("Master and Commander.")

I am sure that my Internet research and writing is monitored. I have lost count of the number of hackers and government computers accessing these blogs. No consent, warrants, identifications are needed. Welcome to the People's Republic of the United States. Incidentally, these enhanced security methods are accompanied by criticisms of other countries, like China and Cuba, as violators of human rights. ("Psychological Torture in the American Legal System.")

3). control.

Science as religion -- like all political ideologies -- is aimed at controlling or eliminating the inner lives of persons, total dominance, absolute subjectivation or acculturation. Persons are to be molded to purposes which are not their own in order to achieve "socially desirable objectives" as defined by these faceless and nameless "others." Spirituality and creativity are powerful and uncontrollable forces in the human psyche. Hence, they are to be eliminated or directed in harmless paths -- towards pop culture, obscenity as opposed to erotic art, mindless consumption.

Spacing has been affected by New Jersey hackers again, as new "errors" were inserted and corrected. ("Fidel Castro's 'History Will Absolve Me'" and "Babalu and Free Speech Too!")

The Grand Inquisitors of the scientific-corporate-governmental establishment aim at creating a Winston Smith-like servile, sub-human subject, grateful for his conditioning, thoroughly defeated and submissive to the instructions of power, never presuming to ask annoying questions or challenging authority. Ironically, civil libertarians and liberals in America are often the greatest defenders of this ideology of scientific control, usually without realizing what they have unleashed on the world. ("New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System" and "What is it like to be tortured?")

"The scientists and the promethean engineers, these lieutenants of the technocracy have done the most to transform our culture into the push-button Tower of Babble we inhabit. They have habituated us to apocalyptic vistas."

Theodor Roszack defines the new scientific-religious notion of "reality":

"Matter, we have learned, is a vibrant jelly of energy; the universe a burst balloon of galactic fragments; thought itself a mere feedback in the cerebral electronics; life a chemical code soon to be [and by now] fully deciphered; all seeming law nothing but the large-scale likelihood of basic chaos. No absolutes. Nothing sacred. Any day now homunculus in a test tube -- cyborgs made to order -- interstellar tourism -- the doomsday bomb. [Oh, joy!] Why not? What is possible is mandatory?"

Sources (New York: Harper-Collophon, 1972), pp. xv-xvi.

Efforts to write this essay have been obstructed by hackers, difficulties with my security system, letters deleted from this essay as I worked on earlier drafts have become routine aspects of my writing experience. (I just corrected another "error" inserted in this last sentence.) Uncertainty and anxiety as well as disgust accompany my efforts to create my work, every day, because I expect unwelcome company at my computer. I think this proves much of what I am saying. ("How censorship works in America.")

On August 20, 2007 at 9:13 A.M. I am blocking, once again, http://view.atdmt.com/iview/msnnkhac001728x90... (NJ)

People engaging in these efforts to censor and destroy protected speech in deliberate violation of criminal laws in order to further injure a person, who has been deeply hurt already by such tactics, will no doubt go home and pet their dogs, read their newspapers in the evening, enjoying "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" on television without detecting any moral issues arising from their oppressive conduct. (Spacing has been affected again.)

What have you become? What are we not seeing about the moral reality before our eyes and why are we not seeing it? Is morality an illusion, for you, only because morality is not quantifiable? Are you or your relationships "quantifiable"? Does this explain your antipathy to religion, romantic love, or all altruistic ideals? What do we not see that the rest of the world sees all too well about Iraq and Guantanamo, also about ourselves as a nation? How would we react to efforts to condition our reactions and national policy on the part of other nations pursuing their national interests with disdain for our self-determined goals and values?

One more "error" to be corrected today. Words removed and restored.

"If the choice is between a clenched fist, machines, gold, or Christ -- I choose Christ." (Malcolm Muggeridge)

An old-fashioned humanistic psychiatrist interviewing Herman Goering at Nuremberg was struck by what was missing in the personality of the "Reich Marshal" (Unfortunately, spacing has been altered, again):

"... Goering was a 'brilliant, brave, ruthless, grasping, shrewd executive.' He also found Goering charming, persuasive, intelligent and imaginative. The one characteristic that set Goering apart from the urbane personality ... was his complete lack of moral discrimination, his absence of any sense 'of the value of human life.' [human suffering?] In this Goering was as candid as in all else. When [the psychiatrist] asked him why he had ordered the murder of his friend Ersnt Rohm during the purge of the SA on 30 June 1934, Goering stared at him as if he were 'not quite bright,' and replied, 'But he was in my way ...' "

Richard Overy, Interrogations: The Nazi Elite in Allied Hands (New York & London: Penguin, 2004), p. 149. ("'The Prisoner': A Review of an AMC Television Series.")

Goering's engineering bakground had prepared him for such instrumental challenges. Murder was simply a "means and ends problem" of a technocratic sort to be "resolved" without squeamishness. From a scientific perspective "valuing" neutrality, there is no basis for disagreeing with this attitude. At the point when scientific method reaches this level of disconnection from human meanings and purposes in order to become totalizing, science has become a kind of religion.

If science is to compete with traditional religions and ethical systems -- not as a means of providing knowledge to serve human values developed elsewhere in the culture, but as the only source and legitimator of action in the State -- then I will opt for more traditional value systems to guide meliorative efforts. Better flawed religious institutions and attempts to face honestly the mysteries of life than the denial of those mysteries by self-professed "scientists." As an agnostic and free person, I will choose the example of Christ over Dr. Mengele any day. ("An Open Letter to My Torturers in New Jersey, Terry Tuchin and Diana Lisa Riccioli.")

I apologize to readers for the deformations of this work (and of my life) by hackers or "experts" affiliated with New Jersey's mafia-controlled government. This form of censorship and induced frustration is a crime and unconstitutional. This is known to the authorities. The applicable laws are simply not enforced. Please see again: "What is it like to be tortured?"