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Workshop 1

How to approach normal human problems scientifically

HOW INSANITY COULD BE NORMAL

In the conventional collective mind, insanity could neither be normal nor collective. It is commonly understood as an extreme (“crazy,” “bizarre,” “abnormal,” “weird”) deviation from socially accepted thinking and behavior. In conformity to what is normal for society, conventional behavior is the yardstick by which normalcy and sanity are measured. In what sense, then, can socially accepted, collective, conventional, and perfectly normal behavior be considered “insane”?

Normal conventional thinking and behavior could be deemed insane in the mindset of a different society, civilization, and culture. In sixteenth-century European culture, it was normal and perfectly sane to believe that the Earth is flat with the sun and planets around its orbit. It was also collectively considered insane, even highly criminal, to claim that the Earth is a globe and revolves around the sun. In early twentieth-century United States and Europe, the belief that humans evolved from apes was considered insane, ridiculous, blasphemous, and scandalous. Now, the reverse is true; people who proclaim that the Earth is flat and that evolution is a satanic invention are likely viewed as insane in our culture.

The changes between then and now were made by some unconventionally sane and uncommonly courageous individuals who examined reality scientifically rather than accepting the conventions of their time. Following their examples, “Collective Insanity” means thinking and behaving in ways that conform to the standards of sanity in our culture but do not correspond to what would be considered sane in light of accumulated scientific knowledge.

 

THE ABYSMAL GAP

As you may well know, there are hardly any significant areas of Collective Insanity that deny the rapidly developing scientific knowledge in natural sciences. There are no popular alternatives to mathematics, chemistry, physics, electronics, astrophysics, geology, engineering, computer engineering, biology, and others. Regardless of the political system, there are no competing theories about how to manufacture an atomic bomb. The same is true about medicine, which is not considered a “pure” science unlike physics. Yet we would consider practically no alternatives to rushing severely injured persons to the nearest hospital after a car accident. The same applies to cases of cancer, heart failure, and other direct threats to life by natural forces.

Even in addressing global environmental threats, caused by the rapid advancement of natural science with its gigantic technologies, the collective mind provides no alternatives other than what is scientifically sound. Indeed, we must consult scientifically based truths about global warming, pollution, the extinction of living species, and other processes that endanger the survival of life. Only by following the scientific approach can we find remedies such as nontoxic energy sources, ways to prevent damage to our atmosphere, and means of healing the polluted Earth.

Collective Insanity, in contrast, considerably opposes scientific knowledge in the most life-threatening reality caused not by natural forces but rather by us humans. The scientifically sane and the regular practices of social and political life are separated from 21st-century reality by an enormous and abysmal gap that is becoming wider, deeper, and more life-threatening at an accelerating pace. The shocking scientific discovery of twentieth-century physics—nuclear energy—has become nuclear weaponry, in the hands of state leaders whose mindset about war and peace is rooted deep in the Middle Ages when war technology consisted of swords, bows, and arrows.

And that is our problem. Humanity, despite its unimaginable scientific achievements, is now in dire straits. Beginning with the Industrial Revolution, we live in an era of the Abysmal Gap between technological capacity and the human ability to harness it to benefit its survival and prosperity.  

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NARROWING THE GAP: LEAVING COLLECTIVE INSANITY BEHIND WHERE WE INDIVIDUALS CAN

 

Throughout this book, you will find descriptions of Collective Insanity in areas where it is most evident when compared to what would be more consistent with the standards of social science. Saner alternatives will be considered to the level of the individual reader’s practical application. While individual readers could not narrow the Abysmal Gap by themselves, they could become better informed about alternatives to the prevailing practices of Collective Insanity. Individuals could surely work toward becoming less part of the problem—and more part of the solution.

I intend to make practical procedures and tools that move away from the routines of Collective Insanity as clear and easy to use as I can. They should be feasible enough for readers to apply in their lives and affect others. I also hope to facilitate those who'd decide to become active trailblazers in narrowing the Abysmal Gap.

THE SHAKY COMMON GROUND OF SOCIAL SCIENCE

Social science, our standard for defining sanity and Collective Insanity, is notorious for not being as precise as natural science, often being looked down upon not as science at all but as speculation. Social science’s deficiency in precision is first attributed to its objects of interest and research—people—whose many attributes are hidden from the eye in the human mind. Obviously, one cannot observe and count under a microscope motivation, thoughts, the meaning of words, the effects of verbal and physical events in each person’s inner space: beliefs, attitudes, drives, passion, and other human traits. However, such a deficiency is more than offset by one’s own experience. Unless you are a scientist in that specific field, you cannot corroborate or refute findings and theories in astrophysics or brain research, but you can in social and political science.

As a sole example, until quite recently and still today, millions of people believed that the end justifies the means. This belief has not been trivial—it has justified the killing and enslaving of millions of people. One does not have to be a linguist or a general semanticist to see it has been a Collective Insanity unless, of course, you saw with your own eyes, heard, or read a reliable report about some Means sitting on a bench and a beautiful Goal spotted approaching them and proclaiming, “I hereby justify you by this Holy Ideology.” Your simple sense and personal life experience tell you loud enough that “goal” and “means” are words and that in reality, only we living people can justify or not justify the things we or others do.

In writing this book, I realized that I took it upon myself to serve as your guide on a field trip into the terrain of Collective Insanity. That terrain is full of dangers to survival and obstacles to living more harmoniously with our social and natural environment. Collective Insanity also places barriers on people’s road to a better life—a higher standard of Being—which could be achieved by actualizing more of their human potential.

In pointing out such obstacles and describing the dangers, I am determined to adhere to the scientific approach and use its methods and tools. I observe the scientific ethics of minding facts before others’ ideas about them even when the others are the highest authorities on the subject. As a scientist, I value evaluated experience above all other sources of knowledge. I shall not hide any of my doubts and lack of support for my analyses of what is and for my suggestions of what can be done differently

to become more in line with the findings and the spirit of social science.

With that, the shaky common ground of social science comes with the unshakable common ground of the scientific approach to human problems. There it is as solid as in natural science, requiring each person not to blindly accept any truth that any authority proclaims but to test its veracity while regarding their own evaluated experience as the highest authority.

When I was working out how to approach the sickness of society around me, I found support to that anti-authoritarian self-directed understanding of the scientific approach in some highly prestigious academic sources. Michael Polanyi of the London School of Economics and Political Science wrote in his book "Personal Knowledge":

"Personal knowledge in science is not made but discovered, and as such, it claims to establish contact with reality beyond the clues on which it relies."

"It commits us, passionately and far beyond our comprehension, to a vision of reality . . . like love, to which it is akin, this commitment is a “shirt of flame” blazing with passion and, also like love, consumed by devotion to a universal demand. Such is the true sense of objectivity in science. Intellectual commitment is a responsible decision, in submission to the compelling claims of what in good conscience I conceive to be true."

One of my closest teachers, Wendell Johnson, wrote that “the scientific method in that sense is related to everything that somehow centers around the integrity and dignity of the individual.”

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Understanding social science “in that sense” and not in others is so central to me as your guide in this field trip that to prevent losing sight of it I am adding a short report about a true historical event, which has become a precious stone in my spiritual-intellectual treasure box. The source is Galileo Galilei, the man who, in the history of ideas, is remembered as an outstanding pioneer of the Scientific Revolution. His friend, a professor of medicine at the University of Padua, invited the dean and his colleagues to a demonstration he was about to perform. He wanted to demonstrate the truth of his discovery—that the brain, not the heart, is the center of the nervous system. At the time, it was indisputably taken for granted that the nervous system centers in the heart.  Isn’t that amazing? About 400 years ago, the world’s most learned scholars did not know what children in grammar school know today, and you will soon know why.

The professor demonstrated his discovery by dissecting a human cadaver. Afterward, the dean of the medical school told him that his demonstration was extremely convincing. “I myself would believe that the center of nerves is the brain,” he confessed, “had I not, with my own eyes, read Aristotle.”

I feel grateful to the many discoverers and theorists whose works became the supports (the “shoulders”) on which I stand. However, in accrediting and referencing them and others, I do not intend to pose as a conventional academic scholar.

That is so, first and sadly, because academic social science has done little to narrow the Abysmal Gap. Academic social science itself is infested with Collective Insanity as all other hierarchical institutions in which workers, under their superiors’ supervision, must earn their living and compete with others in climbing the organizational ladder. This is something you can readily observe for yourselves, and many highly respected scientists share this opinion. Therefore, forgive me, academic gatekeepers, for not displaying that long peacock tail of references and not assuming academicians’ other postures along their beaten trails. I do not need to live up to your expectations; instead, I must live up to the expectations of my potential readers, who trust their senses. On top of that, much of what lies ahead is an academic void.

Our Problem

The scientific method is applied everywhere in solving problems caused by human needs in real physical world. It is not applied in solving problems caused by us humans, like in politics and human behavior. The result is an Abysmal Gap between the achievement of science and our ability to utilize it for the benefit humanity. That Abysmal Gap is as dangerous as nuclear weaponry in possession of leaders whose mind about war and peace is not different than it was when wars were fought with swords and arrows.

Our Workshop

We shall attempt to narrow that gap by taking the scientific approach to our personal, social, and political problems. In contrast to the Conventional Wisdom of following authorities, we shall develop our skills of being scientific. If you acquire those skills, you become free to work out and believe your own conclusions on the basis of your factual data.

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Science works. Approaching social problems scientifically you become effective and can make a difference.

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