Truth, Force, Fear -- Which Will Win Out?
by Mary W Maxwell, LLB

I happily live in the so-called "truth community." It used to be small but seems to be growing at a quick pace these days. It consists of whistleblowers, conspiracy theorists, and anyone who feels that he/she has an accurate view of "what is going on out there," and especially "how to make truth win out."

Horace, Margie, and the Apple Sauce

This article isn't meant to argue for any specific cause. But as we may need to refer to a simple model, let's imagine a guy named Horace being the whistleblower. What is his truth? He used to work for JoMo Company, which produces apple sauce for babies. He says he saw Margie sneaking a few drops of nicotine into each jar.

Horace overheard her tell her friend that she gets double pay, and that the money comes to JoMo Company from the boss at the Bingo Cigarette factory. The plan is to make kids nicotine dependent.

In short, JoMo and Bingo are both doing something bad which the public ought to be told about, pronto. The practice should stop and maybe the players be punished. That would take a lot of effort by Horace.

To assign proportionate weights to truth, fear, and force in this case, we'd want to know, about Horace: Does he need to keep his job as his only hope of survival? Is he the brave type? and Are there many supporters of Horace, such as mothers of babies?

On the other side, the non-truth side, we'd have to consider such things as: How much profit might Bingo make by turning kids into smokers? How well-networked are the managers of JoMo and BIngo with other businesses? Does that network control the local politicians and the media?

It's obvious that financial desperation and/or cowardice on Horace's part will skew the math to "little chance of success" for truth. Clearly, high-profit stakes for the baddies, and solid networking may make them dare to clobber Horace for whistleblowing. (A lot of whistleblowers get into car accidents.)

Granted, everything doesn't always go according to plan. A strong religious group could come in on the side of the babies, a madcap prosecutor might pull out a warrant for the arrest of Margie. But most likely, fear and force will win.

Love of Trends, and "Whatever Is, Is"

In the apple-sauce whistleblower's case, word might gradually spread. It gets mentioned on the Internet and soon everybody is aware that at least one food processor is adding nicotine to baby food. Yet the typical reaction is not "Hey, let's lynch mob these Bozos!" Rather, it is quiet resignation: "Maybe we should just get used to reality. Money talks. Politicians are, well, you know, politicians. The world is going to hell." Etc.

So we don't need to do the basic calculation for each individual in the population: "How brave is she?" "Is money her top priority?" The phenomenon of lying-for-profit has already gained general acceptance! So activists get told "Don't be an idiot trying to change the world."

A human brain takes in its surroundings and acts accordingly. I don't see much happening in the boxing ring between truth and falsehood, do you? We in the truth community think we see some action, but it hasn't amounted to real changes being made.

If anything, each month and year brings additional falseness by the decision-makers at the top. Since I am not a psychologist, I can't explain this clinically, but informally I chalk it up to "expectations." We think we know what will happen, and we behave accordingly. All of us.

Plus, maybe this is a separate motivator: we are conformity-minded. Deviating in any practice, even the way one combs one's hair, is automatically frowned upon. Reputation is everything.

Follow my logic: Sure, there are "good" and "bad" out there (at least I see stuff as being good or bad), but neither the goodies nor the baddies perform according to what's good and what's bad. They simply do on Thursday what they did on Wednesday. They are living up to expectations. Everybody assumes "Whatever is, is."

Fear, Force, and Freeze

Some of the problems that we're aware of today, and which are necessarily very frightening, have to do with sheer force. It's one thing to fear a neighbor who bullies you and might even punch you, and another thing to fear bombs falling, or gangs stabbing people in the subway, or government troops breaking into your home.

Two features of contemporary force should be noted. One is bigness. The nation I live in, the US, has a third of a billion people. Man, that's big. The other feature, as everyone knows, is technological advancement. Even before they sprung AI and transhumanism on us, the techno stuff was mindboggling. How can a satellite direct my taxi driver perfectly? How can apartment complexes spring up in a matter of weeks? How can my bank know what shade of lipstick I buy?

Again, it seems we are motivated by something without realizing it. In this case, fear. I venture to guess that the population has switched its "freeze" response on. Remember how we were taught that an animal, confronted with a foe, may either fight or take flight? Later it was realized that there is a third option, both for animal and man. It is called the freeze response. You just halt.

How could that not be a widespread response today, as we are told to expect terrible things. I see people removing themselves mentally from the realistic issues. They just put their feet up and watch a movie. Or get bogged down into work. Or start to believe magic is coming soon. Those options freeze the thought process. Zzzz.

Recap

I started this discussion by looking at the odds of truth winning out over lies. The model case was that of Horace the apple-sauce whistleblower. To predict his success, we needed only to ask: how desperate for survival is he? how brave? how well-supported by interested parties? And, on the other side, how much wealth might the nicotine dependency furnish to the apple-sauce contaminators? Can each bad guy count on the loyalty of his fellow businessmen, and has business sufficiently seized our political institutions ?

I then changed the focus away from those measurements of truth's chances, to a couple of general psychological predispositions that interfere with logic and morality: 1. the tendency to go with the trend : Whatever is, is. And 2. Non-conformity is painful; don't stick out.

Next, I called up the matter of fear and the option to freeze. Fear is naturally increasing today because the presence of force is more noticeable -- 2024 is the first year in which I inspected my front door to picture how the troops might knock it down! Also, fear reflects the growing size of society. Our normal, biological sense of how many people we have to deal with, is reckoned in the dozens or hundreds, not in the billions. Finally, it was suggested that, confronted by force and bigness, our 'solution' has mainly been to freeze.

Conclusion

Hey, excuse me. Did we come this far in human history only to say that things are so awful we can't handle them? Do our Olympic gold-medalist cerebral exercises leave us able only to shrink from reality?

I don't think so. But I do think the next move on the intellectual chessboard has to incorporate awareness of all the above factors -- the subjection of society's welfare to the ambition of the few; worship of current trends, the urge to conform, an incoming tide of fear (thanks to technology as well as bigness), and the instinct to freeze rather than solve a daunting problem.

Long story short: merely counting how many good Horace's there are does not tell us whether society will flourish, or will cave ignominiously to destruction. Some philosophers need to come out of the woodwork and figure out how we might proceed.

For now, though, a note to Margie -- For Pete's sake stop putting nicotine in the baby food.

-- Mary Maxwell, LLB, is author of "Re-union: Judging the Family Court."

Note: I'd like you to see how things get twisted, as reported in a video by my friend Pastor Paul in Australia. He is in danger of prison time because he published the name of a trafficked child, after the TV and everybody else had already done so. Watch: https://gumshoenews.com/punishing-the-rescuers/