Suggestibility and not-being in modernity

Posted by Guessedworker on Sunday, 16 May 2010 23:46.

According to a Telegraph article today there is a suicide cluster at the vast Shenzhen plant of electronics sub-contractor, Foxconn:

There was another death at Foxconn yesterday. A 21-year-old man with “several” knife cuts fell out of the seventh-floor window of one of Foxconn’s dormitories in Shenzhen.

Foxconn is the Taiwanese company, also known as Honhai, which manufactures Apple’s iPhone and iPod, as well as goods for just about every major technology company, including Sony, Nintendo, HP and so on.

However, the company has been plagued by a series of suicides at its plants, particularly at the enormous Longhua plant where over 400,000 people work.

... the company says it has prevented a further 30 people from trying to kill themselves in the past three weeks alone. Clearly, something out of the ordinary is going on.

What is happening in Shenzhen has the hallmarks of a “suicide cluster”, when the notion of suicide spreads rapidly through a group of people, often teenagers or young adults. Foxconn says it is at its wits’ end as to how to tackle the problem, and has even drafted in a Buddhist monk to try to purge its factories of evil spirits.

Others have said the current generation of migrant workers, who have opted to move from other parts of China to seek their fortunes in the country’s coastal factories, are not as tough as their forbears.

Usually better educated than their parents, they are prone to existential angst when confronted with seven-day weeks and 15-hour days of repetitive manufacturing. The nine Foxconn workers involved in suicide leaps this year were all aged under 25 and had worked for the company for less than six months.

The journalist goes to the trouble of quoting Marx on alienation. But the existence of a cluster suggests memetic activity, not the individually-driven rationalisations of the depressed and damaged.

There are three ways the will to suicide, as a group-confined memetic, can be internalised by susceptible individuals, one for each general type of human mind. The mind in which physicality and sensation predominate requires some pretty blunt instruction. “Go jump, loser!” would do it, providing the psychological state was one of sufficiently profound absence of the subject. That is quite conceivable, given a fifteen hour day of the narrow-range, physically repetitive motions of station activity in Far East electronics production.

In quoting an intern who went undercover at Foxconn, the Telegraph journalist describes an employee of just this type:-

“One worker impressed me a great deal,” he wrote. “His name was Wang Kezhu and he often climbed to the highest places to check the storage, or ran the fastest to get the new cargo. He would yell or shout or sing to release the pressure building up in him. He told me that people got promoted if they had skills, and that he was hoping to learn useful skills. He once applied for a job at an education institute, but when they called he could not understand what they were saying.”

The second mind type, in which emotion predominates, requires a more subtle form of suggestion. Here not literal instruction but repeated inference has the opportunity to play, perhaps, on a sense of desolate loneliness, worthlessness and failure, or of being trapped and deprived of alternatives, of not being able to go on and seeing ahead only going on and nothing else. As the Telegraph journalist says:

Liu [the undercover intern] also wrote about the lack of connections in such a giant factory, with its transient population of workers. “There are hundreds of thousands of workers but they find they come to resemble each other. Dorm mates on different shifts barely get a chance to talk to each other, and even if you have slept in a dorm a few months you might not know the name of your room mates,” described Liu.

“If society is like a net, you can hardly become suicidal if you are in the position of a knot with many layers of connections. But if you have no links, other than on the production line, then you become one single and unconnected knot. Then you get suicidal facing a machine all day and with no way of releasing your anxiety like normal people.”

The third mind type, in which thinking dominates the other two mind functions, can become highly suggestibility when it perceives itself to be deserted by or in opposition to another force or group. So at Foxconn:

“The workers feel their salary is too low. They want to change their life through working hard, but they do not know how to go about making the changes.”

The subject may wilfully misunderstand, suspect, over-analyse and eventually reject what it is told, and very likely see some positive statement in doing the opposite, without thinking through the real implications of doing so. In large aggregates - and Foxconn is certainly that - it doesn’t take much in the way of small movements towards this paranoid state, or those afflicting the two other mind types, to produce pathologies like a suicide cluster. How much less in the population at large, then, does it take to produce the outcomes we, as nationalists, see among our fellow countrymen. Not suicide in the literal sense, of course, but a relinquishment of the collective will to live in favour of a life of not caring, of compliant consumption, of material self-interest, etc.

In our collective scenario the issue of suggestibility and the mind types still obtains, and stands separate from the suggestion itself, in all its venomous and manifold forms. Leaving the latter aside - every nationalist blog pores over them every day - what, if anything, regulates our susceptibility? Well, here’s one answer to that, from the movie Waking Life by Richard Linklater. I don’t think Linklater nailed it, but he got pretty close. Its name, if you are interested, is mechanicity.

Tags: The Ontology Project

Comments:

Posted by PF on Mon, 17 May 2010 02:31 | #

What a strange and interesting choice of article you use to illustrate the point.

Do you see philosophy as containing the possibility of freeing man from mechanicity, on a large scale?

Do we simply wish to overwrite mechanically-derived philosophy on a given topic of some importance, with ‘consciously’-derived philosophy on that same topic?

Posted by jamesUK on Mon, 17 May 2010 02:59 | #

Sounds like human experimentation on the workers MK Ultra style like they did in France.

http://www.smh.com.au/world/cia-accused-of-poisoning-french-village-with-lsd-in-mindcontrol-tests-20100311-q1mb.html

Probably BS but entertaining video on the subject in its modern day incarnations.

http://www.alluc.org/documentaries/watch-real-mib-cia-mind-control-the-online/51989.html

I bet if you dig deeper into this company they will have a shady background

Maybe I missed it but I am surprised MR did not discuss the Machete movie controversy in the US.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDpIt2mf_es

Posted by Guessedworker on Tue, 18 May 2010 00:17 | #

PF,

What a strange and interesting choice of article you use to illustrate the point.

Perhaps. But Emile Durkheim discovered long ago that suicides increase in times of national trauma and decrease in times of peace and general tranquillity. The question as to why we never act on that discovery is begged, is it not?

Do you see philosophy as containing the possibility of freeing man from mechanicity, on a large scale?

No, that’s not at all feasible, which I’m sure you already know. The quality of the liberation lies in inverse proportion to the scale of the subject. Nonetheless, the minimum pay-off at the largest scale - a whole kin-group - would be remission from the pathological effects of suggestion. Properly nourished, the mind will return to health.

As to what “nourishment” and “health” might be, well you already know that, too.

Do we simply wish to overwrite mechanically-derived philosophy on a given topic of some importance, with ‘consciously’-derived philosophy on that same topic?

It all has to come from the root in being, I think. There are no short-cuts. The only serious approach is the fully creative approach.

Posted by Gorboduc on Tue, 18 May 2010 00:58 | #

Been away from technology awhile.

Better stay off it too, I think, as I remembered a similar suicide cluster at Marconi in pre-Internet days.

Here is some info.

Anyone with access to online Times archive should have no problem in looking that one up.

The site I’m linking to, though interesting , is not the most literate:

http://web.archive.org/web/20060115182514/http://www.miqel.com/text/microbiologist-death-mystery.html

Posted by Gorboduc on Tue, 18 May 2010 01:22 | #

I meant to add this:

I’m sure, but can’t check or quote from the supposed source at present, that James Billington’s The Icon and the Axe - which I mentioned some weeks ago as a source of info on early versions of Eurasianism - tells how the first Moscow performances of Hamlet in a Russian translation (c.1830’s) inspired impressionable Russian army officers with a cultic interest in suicide.
“To be or not to be . . ” struck the silly chumps all of a flutter, and they invented Russian roulette as a means of making existential statements about being and non-being.
All very ontological.

Don’t believe too much of what you hear about MK Ultra, or you will end up like this, along of Eustace Mullens:

http://www.whale.to/b/sp/springmeier.html#SOME_OF_FREEMASONRY’S_MIND-CONTROL_PEOPLE

and remember that The Manchurian Candidate (book by Condon, two film versions: the earlier one with Sinatra is by far the better) is meant to be a satirical novel!

Posted by Bill on Tue, 18 May 2010 12:51 | #

I’ve read somewhere, (recently) that the daily dosage of chaotic news administered by the MSM is responsible for millions of depressed people seeking help.

The MSM tell us that it’s the economic climate that is responsible.

Neither can be of much help.

Posted by Wandrin on Tue, 18 May 2010 17:23 | #

There’s also the slow motion suicide of drugs, alcoholism, prescription tranquilisers etc that takes root in areas where for example diversity has destroyed every aspect of community. Underneath every suicide cluster, of whatever cause, there’s a much larger sub-cluster of slow suicide.

I believe this area is of great significance. Our ongoing genocide is a suicide-genocide. The answer is psychological. The political solution is to identify the root of the psychological illness and then utilise politics as a vehicle for a psychological antidote.

Posted by Desmond Jones on Wed, 19 May 2010 07:50 | #

What if the root of the pathology is us? What then?

It’s well known that Chinese suicide rates are disproportionately high. What does the article really tell us? The Chinese are predisposed to bouts of depression?

Posted by Guessedworker on Wed, 19 May 2010 12:51 | #

Desmond: What if the root of the pathology is us? What then?

It is true that, to a greater or lesser extent, suggestibility is a characteristic common to all people. But this is a long way away from the conclusion that “the root of the pathology” is somehow indelibly “in us”, and we are helpless. We are not helpless. Indeed, I would argue before the Industrial Revolution, say, or the two great conflicts of the 20th Century, or before Christianity came to us, we lived under influences that were much more helpful, benign and fitting

But even today there is nothing about the situation that is irredeemable. Suggestibility is like an ever-present intoxication. We have no choice but to drink, for abstemiousness can be possible only in life-long, full consciousness of self, which is super-human and simply not available. However, we could choose to dry out from time to time. We could conceivably sometimes choose the degree of our intoxication. Also, we could choose to be intoxicated by something kinder than metholated spirits.

Posted by Gorboduc on Thu, 20 May 2010 00:05 | #

Mentholated?

Methylated?

Kamikaze.

Seneca and literally 100’s of famous old Romans.

Revisionist account of Masada:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/portrait/masada.html

Suicide not inevitably the result of diversity:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/1500-farmers-commit-mass-suicide-in-india-1669018.html

They’ll be sorry whem I’m gone!

Posted by Desmond jones on Thu, 20 May 2010 00:49 | #

Is “suggestibility” a vestige of an old bicameral mind?

Posted by Gorboduc on Thu, 20 May 2010 01:51 | #

All right, GW.

I call you.

Argue about the

helpful, benign and fitting influences.

Or just start by listing them.

Posted by PF on Thu, 20 May 2010 03:08 | #

Gorboduc wrote:

Or just start by listing them. (helpful, benign, fitting influences)

I will venture to guess what GW meant, and perhaps later he can give you an answer as well.

The main cause of our absence and not-being(in my opinion), which I have also seen GW allude to as a cause, is the development of the symbol system in our brain. Our ideas, our thinking.

Going to try and restate simply a point which I’ve belabored on here mercilessly.

This symbol machine is fricking amazing. It is uncanny; one of the fruits of modern evolution and the only really plausible explanation for such things as moon landings, the discovery of the double helix, the fact that we even have Quantum Theory, etc. etc.

Sit down to watch a sunset. Can you even watch it? Or will you replay the conversation with your girlfriend you just had, your worries about tommorow, bits and pieces of plans and stories and images, which jump in an out. And where is the sunset?

Really, its obscured behind these things. Now imagine that most people literally are not able to face head on a reality so simple as this, without papering over it with a thousand little mental whirrings. Not only are they not able to face the simple reality I described, but they in their whole lives, barely face 1% of their experience head on in this way.

Amazing: almost nothing can be experienced for itself, without the errant calculations of this overgrown machine intruding into the experience of it.

But what if the whole of experience is such that, in order to really experience it, you have to get past all this noise and talk? What if a prerequisite to actually ‘getting the juice’ is to go deeper in? Well, that would then be impossible. Or at least difficult.

If a man can’t have a silent moment with the setting sun, neither can he bring his full self to bear when he is with his kids, his son and daughter. Neither can he reflect on his life with his full self. He will be a fragmented whirring of gears… always making sure that the next upcoming reality is modelled, that the next calculation is made - and in the meantime, the experience of all these things and the massively prolonged life that results from all this planning, is experienced with only a smidgeon of the depth which naturally belongs to it. Giving rise to the feeling, which I at least have acutely, that we are all of us missing something which constitutes the actual experience of life. Something that animals have, and children have, and which, if you could but taste it uninterrupted for 6 months or 2 years or 12 years, would make one contented even with a short life span.

To close the circle of my argument, in prior times it was not the lesser brain development which made this more accessible (according to this theory of mine) - but the smaller social information flow, which caused human beings to ‘sync’ less deeply to one another’s communication, and to develop reference points based more wholly in their own experience - since they cannot chill out all day listening to realistic recreations of the lives of others and gossiping, partly because they have the business of life to attend to and partly because their communication was too unrefined to construct captivating alternatives to lived reality. This is no longer the case for us, and a gifted 12 year old reading a book can enter into alternative worlds for days at a time, powerfully simulating a real experience with the modelling power of the modern white nordic brain. (or what have you, if he is a globule of The Other). In a cruder example, the minds of whole swathes of lower class white women can be entrained using a series of Soaps, sitcoms, and talk shows. How are they ever going to look around themselves and perceive for a moment the uniqueness of their existence, when their brains are crammed to overflowing with all sort of socially justified garbage?

Here is a poem, since we are both fans of poetry, which describes the importance of this:

When I have lost the power to feel the pang
That first I felt in childhood when I woke
And heard the unheeding garden bird who sang
Strangeness of heart for me while morning broke;
Or when in latening twilight sure with spring
Pausing on homeward paths along the wood
No sadness thrills my thoughts while thrushes sing
And I’m no longer the wondering child who stood
So many sunsets past and could not say
What distant voices called from far away:
When I have lost those simple spells that stirred
My being with an untranslated song
Let me go home for ever; I will have heard
Death; I will know that I have lived too long.

Posted by Armor on Sun, 23 May 2010 01:07 | #

About the suicide of the West: We sometimes hear of people committing suicide after they have been harassed at work or bullied at school, especially by non-whites. Their behavior isn’t entirely rational. We would expect the victims to complain more noisily before they commit suicide. As a last resort, they should simply quit their jobs, or refuse to go to school any longer. Even so, if they commit suicide, we will blame the harassers.

In the case of the phony-suicide of the West, we should also blame the harassers, not white people who fail to have the right reaction. We would expect white people to resist the race-replacement policy by voting massively for the BNP, but they are too brainwashed to do so. Anyway, people’s behavior is not rational, and at some point, under the right circumstances, they may erupt in collective violence. It’s not only a question of crossing a threshold. Maybe at some point, the whites will decide that too much is too much. But what we need is a crisis atmosphere to help us escape the mechanicity and start the rebellion. It is also a question of suggestibility. When the atmosphere becomes electric, I think we become more suggestible and more confident in our ability to change things. The revolutionary spirit is contagious, just like suicide and yawning.

There’s also the slow motion suicide of drugs, alcoholism, prescription tranquilisers etc that takes root in areas where for example diversity has destroyed every aspect of community. (—Wandrin)

And there is also the falling birth rate.

Posted by Wandrin on Sun, 23 May 2010 01:30 | #