General Interest > Thought Reform

Negative effects of 'Positive Psychology'

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cmack:
The discussion intrigues me.

From a Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness

Later research discovered that the original theory of learned helplessness failed to account for people's varying reactions to situations that can cause learned helplessness.[6] Learned helplessness sometimes remains specific to one situation,[7] but at other times generalizes across situations.[5]

An individual's attributional style or explanatory style was the key to understanding why people responded differently to adverse events.[8] Although a group of people may experience the same or similar negative events, how each person privately interprets or explains the event will affect the likelihood of acquiring learned helplessness and subsequent depression.[9]

...There are several aspects of human helplessness that have no counterpart among other animals. One of the most intriguing aspects is "vicarious learning (or modelling)": that people can learn to be helpless through observing another person encountering uncontrollable events.

...people who suffer uncontrollable events reliably see disruption of emotions, aggressions, physiology, and problem-solving tasks.[14][15] These helpless experiences can associate with passivity, uncontrollability and poor cognition in people, ultimately threatening their physical and mental well-being.

Some other links on the subject:

http://psychology.about.com/od/lindex/f ... ssness.htm

http://youarenotsosmart.com/2009/11/11/ ... plessness/

http://www.noogenesis.com/malama/discou ... sness.html

Ursus:
Key to acquiring the "learned helplessness" was a lack of personal control over what happened or when it would stop. It was a combination of trauma plus lack of control over one's environment. Kinda like being in a program.

From what I've read, the dogs took a lot longer to "recover" than Seligman expected. Which makes me wonder just how much he really understood about the nature of trauma, and the kind of damage he was inducing in these dogs. Moreover, to even undertake such an experiment in the first place does raise certain ethical questions...

You can see how "learned helplessness" could easily be used as a social engineering tool, as a means of disenfranchising undesirables and of reducing their ability to speak up for themselves. It's really a form of behavioral eugenics, sans the politically incorrect scalpel and more overt personal rights violations.

Small wonder the DOD is so interested in Seligman's work.

cmack:

--- Quote from: "Ursus" ---Key to acquiring the "learned helplessness" was a lack of personal control over what happened or when it would stop. It was a combination of trauma plus lack of control over one's environment. Kinda like being in a program.

You can see how "learned helplessness" could easily be used as a social engineering tool, as a means of disenfranchising undesirables and of reducing their ability to speak up for themselves.
--- End quote ---


Or even, to a certain extent, in a public school.

N.O.S.O.B.:

cmack:

--- Quote from: "N.O.S.O.B." ---I'm sure it's a sliding scale too...I mean the Learned Helplessness describes alot of just demoralized, disinfranchised gerneral society on one end of the spectrum...all the way over to programs...

It plays into the Corrective attachment therapy too...where they hold you and don't let go until you accept the dominance of the "captors" or "authority" or "parent figure".....which goes into the infantile emotional state that goes along with regression therapies....

the cocktail is basically everything poisonous for growth....in order to cause "unlearning" or "unfreezing".....so you can be re-programmed...

it seems like the basis of all programs
--- End quote ---

So what's the mindset of the people who run programs? I can't believe they all sit around and try to figure out the most evil, destructive mind control techniques available in order to tear down and do irreparable harm to vulnerable teenagers. In their own minds they have to think that what they are doing is somehow good. Is it really just the ends justify the means? Are they vile monsters who enjoy terrorizing kids or are they True Believers who believe their goals are so worthwhile and noble that any atrocity is justified?

Did C.S Lewis get it right in this quote?

--- Quote --- http://www.orange-papers.org/orange-gulags.html

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

Their very kindness stings with intolerable insult...

To be 'cured' against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level with those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals. But to be punished, however severely, because we have deserved it, because we 'ought to have known better', is to be treated as a human person made in God's image...

And when they are wicked the Humanitarian theory of punishment will put in their hands a finer instrument of tyranny than wickedness ever had before...

The new Nero will approach us with the silky manners of a doctor, and though all will be in fact as compulsory as the tunica molesta or Smithfield or Tyburn, all will go on within the unemotional therapeutic sphere where words like 'right' and 'wrong' or 'freedom' and 'slavery' are never heard...

Even if the treatment is painful, even if it is life-long, even if it is fatal, that will be only a regrettable accident; the intention was purely therapeutic...

But because they are 'treatment, not punishment, they can be criticized only by fellow-experts and on technical grounds, never by men as men and on grounds of justice...

But we ought long ago to have learned our lesson. We should be too old now to be deceived by those humane pretensions which have served to usher in every cruelty of the revolutionary period in which we live. These are the 'precious balms' which will 'break our heads'.
--- End quote ---

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