Wet Sidewalks Cause Rain

Hain’t we got all the fools in town on our side? and ain’t that a big enough majority in any town?

~ Mark Twain

My wife and I are very fortunate: we have two automobiles that have the kindest, and most congenial and responsible dispositions. In the years that we have owned them, they have neither gotten us drunk and crashed us into a busload of schoolchildren, nor have they driven us along a freeway at 120 mph, weaving in and out of traffic. I might add that none of our previous cars engaged in any such acts, leaving me thankful that they have chosen not to endanger our safety, or that of our children and grandchildren. Perhaps my wife and I know how to select "nice" vehicles; cars with a pleasant state of mind; unlike those that manage to extend their powers of causation to other drivers.

As I write this article, I am informed that a van carrying Chinese kindergarten children plunged into a pond, killing eleven youngsters. Are we to conclude that Chinese vehicles are more inclined to destroy human life than are those in the West? We do know that there are various substances – such as alcohol, drugs, and tobacco – whose use forces men and women into an irresistible submission to their powers. We are also being told – by those who most of us accept as being more knowledgeable than ourselves (e.g., politicians, academicians, people in the mainstream media) – thatguns also have this capacity to exercise their wills over us; to make us do their bidding.

Why are so many of us inclined to accept the proposition that inanimate things and forces in the universe have the capacity to act through intentionality; to substitute their will for ours, and to make us do things we might never choose to do on our own? The answer to this question can be traced back to the patterned conditioning to which we were subject in early childhood. Like our tribal ancestors, we modern humans embarked on institutionally-defined and centered social systems, and have been conditioned to think of ourselves as extensions of the organizations that have succeeded in setting their purposes above our own. In so doing, we have not only made ourselves subservient to institutions, but have become what David Riesman defined as "other-directed" persons. Truth, moral principles, useful standards of conduct, our sense of being and purpose in life, and all other considerations bearing upon human motivation and behavior, are qualities prescribed and enforced by authorities in the organizational hierarchy.

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