Not being able to go against an official rule -turns human beings into sheep.
This phenomenon became the most powerful force that shapes human life.
We learn from early youth not to go against what is acceptable.
That is how 6 million Jews went almost with no resistance to be killed, and how all Germans got drafted (in one way or another) to a terrible war – also with no resistance.
There have been several experiments is social psychology in the u.s.a. which shed light on this cleavage to herd mentality, here are the major three that shed light on how easy it is to turn the attitude of people from humanly motivated – into socially dictated: How easy it is to lose the humanistic approach and become a screw obeying automatically to the greater social machine:
So we seek security in the herd-society. We were conditioned to obey to authority and to herd-mentality, both are official authority almost as the current replacement for God or its messengers. Society are now the mentors, and they are demanding immediate obedience.
And so, when the whole world is hit by the coronavirus, people obey to a confused and conflicting instructions, despite the apparent disorientation they get. Because this is their conditioning – to obey to authority and to behave like the majority.
But no one in the ruling hierarchy knows what is going on with the Coronavirus, no one has a clue. The virus is not letting anyone categorize it, the medical department is completely lost, (and no one would admit it because it might cause panic, and downgrade of their high medica-social status). But on the other hand no one has the guts to get up and announce clearly: the king is naked, i.e. no one up there, in the ruling departments, knows what is going on. In this case the medical profession is bankrupt, it has no clue what so ever. This specific type of epidemic did not happen before and thus there is no data, and doctors with no researched data are like the blind leading the blind, like in Portuguese author José Saramago: Blindness
Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1568) The Blind Leading the Blind..
Medical people only know about what happened before, but are lost without a script. And here they are not in front of a known script, they are in front of the unknown, and in their studies in the University no one taught them how to deal with the unknown, they know how to repeat what was researched, but no one taught them how to approach what is not a known phenomenon, something they have no knowledge or any data about. And this is the challenge for a doctor, not to associate the symptoms to known disease, this is easy, but to stand in front of an unknown phenomenon, and through a process of clever questioning – he is looking for the thread, with which to try and touch the core, the reason for the complaint. In other words, to adopt the stance of a detective.
They never learned to be detective; approaching the truth totally in the dark, by not giving up, standing in front of the unknown motionless, unmoved, until they can say: “Open sesame, so that the Ali Baba’s cave will open.
The medical detectives have no prior knowledge, but they should not be based in what they already know, on the contrary – they must obtain the skill of approaching what is not known, being lost, seeing no horizon in the near future. With great persistence, but with great curiosity and thirst for understanding.
To be detective, is to learn to work with questions so they would lead to more and more questions, be based only in the questions and resist the strong pull from pretending know it all –answers. The only way in front of the darkness of the unknown is persistence, until they can get the art of opening an unknown secret, and turn it into a conscious understanding.
They need to learn to work with what they don’t know and acquire the skill of exposing the truth hidden in it.
The amount of truth existing in what we know is about 0.001 in relation to what we don’t know, so most truth is within the unknown, and without the skill of tracing in it the glowing flair of the hidden truth – we will continue to rely on the collective overused knowledge and its authority.
For it is not a big deal putting illnesses that you know into categories, the challenge is to be able to approach unfamiliar symptoms and by a penetrating dialogue, and persistent questions – turning them into meangfull understandings.
The Coronavirus is a great enigma, nothing in their studies in medical school prepared them for it. The doctors appear incapable to deal with it. Because they only learned to memorize existing knowledge, and the pandemic is not included in their studies, they never learned how to deal with an unknown epidemic. Being able to do this is a high skill and art. It must be done by dialogue, through insisting questions. Until the thread is in their hands, and from there on, the road for discovery of what is hidden in the unknown – is open, and great revelation is coming.
Example of dealing with the unknown knowledge: in conversation one can listen and focus on what is being said, or he can concentrate on the informal language, on how it is being said, the timing of what is being said, and most important: what should be said and is avoided from saying.
We need to put our trust on dialogue and questions, and not to be discouraged from paradox and a polarized conflicts. In fact, every contradiction, opposites, conflict, things that don’t make sense, –this apparent difficulties are in fact not a sign that here the road is blocked, (and so go and search for another road), but actually this are the signs that behind them is the door to the hidden truth or meaning. Behind this paradoxes – lays a whole dimension of truth, living where it loves to lives in the most – in the unknown.
In the unknown universe people need to let what they don’t know guide them in what they think they know and turn it upside down.
We insist to approach what we don’t know with what we know, this is a waste of time, for we should not want conformation to what we already know, what we should want is to be pioneers of hidden knowledge, able to move into the darkness of the unknown by developing night vision. Detective work with the unknown is like soldiers laying in an ambush at night, they lay on the ground for about 8 hours, no word is said, and they are in front of the unknown, ready, every little Russel, move, or sparkle of light – puts them in immediate alert. They have no knowing, only to be totally focused tuned and open to what is hidden in the darkness.
What we don’t know covers almost everything we meet, yet we are educated to pay attention only to the narrow strip of what is known, and if it doesn’t fit to what we know – they are thrown out of the camp.
What we need is not more people that will be a ‘working archives’ of knowledge, stuffed to the brim with incredible amounts of what is known. Whereas what we are very short of is trained detectives, trained to approach what is not known, and having the ‘touch’ the feel, he has intuition, about the direction where the truth might be.
One of the great detectives of all times was Sherlock Holmes, created by British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. He was an expert in looking into the unknown and finding in it things that other people would not even dream about. Here they are looking at peaceful country cottages, Watson marvels at their peacefulness, but Sherlock doesn’t look at the beauty of the scene, he relates to the unseen (o the possible crimes that could be committed in this peaceful houses); that which is not obvious (the nice houses and gardens).
“Good heavens!” I cried. “Who would associate crime with these dear old homesteads?”
“They always fill me with a certain horror. It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.”
“You horrify me!”
“But the reason is very obvious. The pressure of public opinion can do in the town what the law cannot accomplish. There is no lane so vile that the scream of a tortured child, or the thud of a drunkard’s blow, does not beget sympathy and indignation among the neighbors, and then the whole machinery of justice is ever so close that a word of complaint can set it going, and there is but a step between the crime and the dock. But look at these lonely houses, each in its own fields, filled for the most part with poor ignorant folk who know little of the law. Think of the deeds of hellish cruelty, the hidden wickedness which may go on, year in, year out, in such places, and none the wiser.”
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892)
Sherlock Holmes in “The Copper Beeches” (Doubleday p. 323).3
To conclude:
We get dazzled by the bright lights of the seen and known worlds, but this known is but a fraction from what there is, and most of the reasons that appear in the known, are well hidden in the dark, and without good detective work, the treasures of truth and its reasons – remain hidden in the great unknown.
Gabriel