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Opinion: Resisting our natural inclinations

This is a follow-up to an article from Monday that you can find here.

It is hard to argue that some of the cultural rot we are witnessing today is not the same as Calhoun’s mouse utopia. For example, we are living out the consequences of a radical feminist movement, led by women who believe they are oppressed victims of societal patriarchy. Social roles have been reversed, and a large segment of America’s female population has set aside motherhood for high-paying corporate careers.

This movement has also argued that abortion is an absolute right, and in the most extreme cases, some argue that abortion up to the moment of birth is acceptable. America’s male population has become emasculated as women are increasingly filling the role of provider. Seventy years ago, young men under the age of eighteen were willing to storm the beaches of Normandy in defense of an ideal.

Today, many of them hide behind a cloth mask, shaking in their boots over a virus. Men have also abandoned their role as providers and protectors, leaving many vulnerable women to raise their families alone. Instead, they wander aimlessly, wondering what their purpose is, as terms like toxic masculinity, and the #metoo movements have targeted the very essence of what it means to be a man.

We are also witnessing a slow, but definite spiritual death, as the ideals many of us grew up believing in have been targeted and destroyed by deliberate lies and fabricated misperceptions, which bring discredit upon our culture. Finally, America’s welfare system has created generations of people completely dependent on the system, not knowing how to earn a living on their own, their wills are completely broken by not having to do so.

Calhoun’s experiment started from the premise that everything the mice needed was provided for them. There is plenty of evidence that shows people lose the desire to work if their basic needs are met. If people are making more through government welfare programs than through working, they will probably opt for welfare. We see this happening with the COVID-19 payouts today.

One of America’s greatest welfare expansions started under President Johnson’s (D) Great Society program. This program deliberately paid benefits to families in need that were more than they could earn working. This created generations of dependency. Many people attribute Johnson’s welfare programs to high rates of poverty and fatherless homes found in the Black community today, as they were considered a high priority in the program. Whether the creation of dependency was deliberate, or an unanticipated consequence is unsure.

He was a Democrat who believed government should play a larger role in people’s lives, and his program had long-reaching tentacles into almost every aspect of society. Is there a relationship between his Great Society program and what was known about Calhoun’s experiments? There is reason to believe there could be.

The very premise of Marxism is that man can be remade in the communist image. This requires breaking him down into a state where he is ready to accept a new society. Marx himself was once a devout Christian who, for unknown reasons, became angry with God and went about the work of destroying his creation. As he said in the Communist Manifesto, his purpose was to dethrone God in the minds of men. His philosophies are a direct attack on man’s will. It is man’s nature to care for himself first. When the fruit of men’s labor is taken from him and redistributed elsewhere, he loses the drive to work. Just as he does when he is given what he needs without having to earn it for himself.

Finally, the value we place on our culture and national history is being ripped away from us. Our children are being taught they are racist simply for being white, and capitalism is being equated with greed and selfishness. COVID-19 is bringing in a new era of virtue signaling and social shaming, as those choosing not to wear a mask or get vaccinated are being portrayed as selfish, uncompassionate people who do not care for others. Just like the mice who have lost their purpose in the controlled environment, we too are losing our sense of self, not knowing what it is we stand for anymore. This doesn’t apply to everyone, of course, but the waters are being muddied, for sure. 

Nathaniel Branden writes in his essay The Psychology of pleasure, found on page 43 of Ayn Rand’s The virtue of selfishness, that men’s values can be defined, or taken from the work they perform, or the culture they partake in. A lack of pleasure, according to Branden, or rewarding experiences which offer stimulation and a sense of accomplishment, will result in the eventual erosion of a man’s soul and his drive to achieve anything at all.

Rand goes onto argue that the fundamental life force of any society is the philosophy which drives it. Rugged individualism, and the idea that we can achieve our dreams based on our own efforts, is the fundamental value we share as Americans. This is the common value the Marxist’s attack in a deliberate attempt to discredit our culture.

The following is a quote from a college textbook called Using Critical Theory.

“Marxist theory points out, however, that our belief in the American dream blinds us to the reality that a vast number of people have not had and do not have equal opportunity in education, employment, or housing due to such factors as, for example, their gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic class. And worse, the American dream leads us to believe that poor people who are unable to significantly improve their financial status must be shiftless and lazy or in some other way undeserving of decent living conditions. After all, the American dream tells us that all it takes to make it in America is hard work and determination, and that those who do not make it, have only themselves to blame.”

This is what they teach our children to believe.

Final thoughts

Are we like mice? Is man just another animal who can be herded into large populations centers and controlled? Will simple manipulations of the environment dictate our choices and behaviors to the point where we have no control over ourselves at all? This is the belief dominating the behavioral sciences, and most studies of our behavior are done with this preexisting bias. Skinner, for example, believed that the human child, through scheduled reinforcements, could be programmed to exhibit any behavior desired, just like any other animal. Operant conditioning, theoretically, is being used to program our kids into believing their culture is backward and evil.

We are certainly not, just another animal. I think what needs to be understood, however, is that man’s will can be broken, and that it takes a conscious decision every day to resist the forces that are attempting to break it. Mice are not men. They have no capacity to reason or look to the causes of their circumstances.

For example, they cannot sit back and conclude that the situation they found themselves in was because everything was provided for them, or a consequence of a choice they made. They simply respond according to their instincts. Men have instincts as well, but are we driven by them, or are we governed by something else? Christians believe in God and a moral absolute. We have it within ourselves to make decisions beyond what instinct tells us to do. When the moral absolute is broken, and the concept of right or wrong no longer exists, men become much more susceptible to behavioral manipulation.

The moral foundations of our country, and the integrity of our culture, have been under attack for decades. Christian prayer was removed from the schools and replaced with Darwinism as the explanation for man’s origins. The theory of evolution places no value on human beings beyond what value we assign to ourselves. Men are no longer looked at as providers but oppressors, and motherhood is something no longer cherished, but looked upon as a burden. Something standing in the way of a woman fulfilling what God had intended. The current generation is lost, having no connection to the values we struggle to uphold, and no desire to preserve the country we love.

Calhoun said his experiment could lay the groundwork for understanding the problems facing mankind. That is perhaps one of the biggest problems. When men are looked at as animals it becomes justifiable for the tyrant to mold man to his own liking. The results of the mouse experiment were due to deliberate controls placed on the environment. What is the difference of providing mouse Utopia with all the food and water necessary for survival, and paying welfare benefits greater than an individual could earn through working? In a word, nothing.

The Marxists believe our choices are dictated by our environments and consequently, our behaviors are controllable. Only by affirming our faith in God and resisting the inclination to let instinct control our choices, do we stand a chance of not ending up a human rat-trap. This is the difference between the spiritual and natural man.

Content syndicated from TheLibertyLoft.com with permission.

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