The 'Cannot' Syndrome

Spencer related a remarkable piece of human stupidity, to be seen in everyday life. It said that when a man has no knowledge about, say, molecules or some other very complex physical topic, he would not dream of trying to explain this topic to experts in molecules. He would know that he would be the laughing stock, no applause to be gained. Yet, in the case of a subject, billions times billions more complex and important than any physical subject, i.e. social science, society and mind, everybody is immediately ready to spout his (stupid) opinions in the presence of everybody else, whether mind-scientist or not. The phenomenon is just as flabbergasting today (1985) as it was in Spencer's time. One outcome of this strange phenomenon, is that when one, (a specialist in mind, in ideation-theory of two decades standing) proposes a well-thought-over governing system,

• a fair system,
• a scientific system, and
• not comparable with any contemporary ideology,

one hears as first (and only) reaction: impossible (48) ! World integration and organization ... impossible! Rub out superstition, have a free science ... impossible! When one then asks: 'how do you know what is possible and what not, what have you studied in influence, should not experts in influence (ideation) tell you what is possible and what not?' one is simply wiped from the table. After all, to make it possible depends on making people accept ideas, i.e. influence. The resistance against simple, most fair, all people benefiting ideas is understandable, in some vague way, because even the most un-attached scientific thinker has a natural resistance against new ideas (they attack his person), but to make a pertinent statement about an impossibility without knowing a stitch about the business in hand is sheer stupidity, is stupidity that makes our extermination a certainty. Cannot is what Semmelweis' colleagues said, when he told them that simple hand-washing could save 75 lives out of the hundred birth-giving women that were otherwise doomed. When he showed them an actual drop in mortality in his own clinic from their 75 to 3 per 100, he evoked downright hostility. Women begging for permission to have their babies on the street (which was forbidden in Vienna) knowing that in the hospital they got (were) killed. That was science! The same science of today, with millions suffering from Seneca's disease for life, needlessly (49). Albert Speer, an architect, ignorant of influence (ideation theory), freely discussed the possibility to influence Hitler. He also quotes Mosley (Sir Oswald, the British Nazi, not L. Mosley, 1975) as saying that Hitler did not (try to) hypnotize him. What utter stupid nonsense, as an ideation scientist will know! Why did it take 2000 years to develop the method of printing, out of the well-known principles of printing coins and seals (500 BC - 1500 AD) ? Certainly this had something to do with the cannot syndrome, and superstition, and not wanting to know. It was also because of the wrong people knowing, (the others thinking that they knew) that lenses were in use in the form of a drop of water by ancient coin-makers, that it took thousands of years to develop glass lenses. Certainly a young Xenophon or so, must have observed the magnification by a drop of water on the skin after a swim? Could nobody use the stupid mass-killing for sacrifices, in order to extract an eye and see what is was like? When finally the lens appeared, bacteria were reported and what happened? Nothing ... for 200 years. It then took a Pasteur to state that they did something. He too, had to fight for his possible idea, against the cannot syndrome. When I wrote above that asthma, epilepsy, etc. were curable in an afternoon's time in 1920 (Nancy School) and earlier, ten to one, the reader thought impossible or cannot, i.e. without knowing what he was talking about. Should he take part of my library home (some two meters bookshelf), study it for some time, he'd know better, although not being expert immediately after (see also Ambrose, Baudouin, Brooks, Coué, Erickson, Howe, Kline, Orton, Satow, Schofield, etc., etc.). He, then, would be freed from the cannot syndrome in this particular field, in ideation theory. Heavier than air cannot fly, was known to be a fact even by those who took the trouble of weighing a dead bird. Man still cannot fly, but then, we have the battle of definitions on our hands. What was meant, in those days, was that man could not hope to transport himself through the air. Now, what exactly changed the, not able to fly man, into the able to fly man? A simple change in ideas. First was that it should be possible, second came the technical ideas about reality, its physical laws, that developed machines that man used to be flown in. Only an ideational change! Mussolini stated that no revolution could change the nature of man (Gunther). He knew nothing about mind, like Speer. We can easily change the very (suicidal) nature of man and that is a revolution! In Wyndham it is shown how much of you is you, and how much of you is the others.

But I'm free. I can think for myself. You think you can - but can you really? Every thought of yours is based on somebody's teaching, or a scrap of information picked up from somebody else. One might even say that there is no 'you' - you are no more than a conglomeration of bits of other people.

In Wells' Outlook, the same can be found about the so-called freedom of choice.

What we do as purely spontaneous individuals is hardly more than a narrow choice between prescribed things.

I, here, as mind- (ideational) scientist, state most absolutely that the attainment of a proper world-government is easily to be achieved, nay, should have more chance, than whatever stupidity of today. It only depends on you, your ideation towards others! War, and the extinguishing by environmental destruction; they are physical operations, situations, happenings, so much is certain, but ..., the causes for these, are purely ideational. As in Wells' 'Joan and Peter' every problem in politics, every problem in the organization of production and social co-operation is a psychological problem ... The term psychological, of course, must be regarded to mean (human) mind study. All that is required is an ideational change. For this change, a multitude of decently thinking persons are necessary, ... you! But impossible, not. Hitler showed how ideational change in an entire Volk (60,000,000) was easily possible in ten years time, from good, friendly people, to murderous fanatics. Look at the rapid spread of Christianity, of Islam in History, but also at ... the use of antibiotics in our world. Antibiotics took the globe in only some years. With adequate scientific improvement of the same methods, as all ideologies showed to work, i.e. propaganda (50), (is education, teaching, indoctrination, suggestion, persuasion, ideation, etc.) the change of a planet's population from lunatic-, self-destroying-apes (S. D. A's), into responsible Earth-owners, is far easier than Hitler's achievement, because the latter allowed common sense, human dignity to dissent. We have only human dignity in mind. The idea of a lottocratic world-government, today, can cover the globe in half a year or so. When, in the teeth of facts, a man will sabotage a common sensical organization of human society and a fair sort of government, by saying that it cannot be done, he is guilty of every shot fired, every starving belly, and, his own plus our extinction as well. When ignorant, he should only admit: I don't know. When one knows what is at stake, and also that the solution is possible, one is held to become a world-citizen, a world-man, himself.

For me the alternative was to be a world-man or no man. Wells, The Passionate Friends.