ilya_shambat2004{at}yahoo.com wrote:

> My friend Chris K., who used to post on alt.angst, alerted me of a
> phenomenon called the externalization of costs. Externalization of
> costs consists of economic entitites catering to one set of people
> making other people shoulder the ecological, medical or political
> burden of the production. So that, for example, the people who leech
> out gold in Indonesia with mercury, while they can deliver the gold
> to the West cheaply, devastate large tracts of nature and poison the
> villagers who live there. The people who log or ranch in the
> rainforest kill people who live there; the people who used CFC's
> caused holes in ozone layer that sickened many people; etc.
>
> Based on this concept, I, with education both in economics and in
> psychology, suggest a different concept. That concept is:
> Externalization of psychological costs. The meaning of that concept is
> making certain people carry the psychological trash that societies,
> communities, countries and individuals put out.
>
> In more familiar terms, externalization of psychological costs is also
> known as scapegoating, demonization, character destruction and simple
> bullying. It is essentially the case of a society relieving itself on
> a person or set of people - a set of a society defecating on
> individuals, classes or other communities - and, as they are covered
> with - socially manufactured manure - shoving them into the sewers.
> This takes place in many societies I have seen, from University of
> Virginia to rural South to Midwest to Portland to, well, the Internet.
> Any time someone has any idea in their heads that at all differs from
> the lie that passes in the society as sanity or righteousness - any
> time someone has any propensities or desires that at all differ from
> the lie that the society, claiming to derive its validity from
> fulfilling the human nature, reflect an aspect of human nature
> different from the one the society overbearingly espouses as human
> nature - any time someone has any gift, any interest, any capacity for
> insight that has the ability to see through the social morass - they
> become branded as outcasts or as evil, and the whole weight of society
> presses on them.
>
> It has been my experience that, if a man is put into such a position,
> the society tries to imprison him or send him away; while if a woman is
> put into such a position, the society tries to entomb and destroy her.
> And when I remove the woman in that position from her society, the
> society as such collapses. There follows a lot of threats, abuse and in
> many cases violence. I say in many cases; because for as long as
> America remains in any way true to its founding principles, police can
> be rightly employed to fight off the overbearing near-totalitarianism
> of the entities, wherever they may be, on the Right or on the Left,
> that has appropriated for itself the concept of ethics and social
> construction at whatever costs and in whatever manner.
>
> I rejoice doing the work of removing scapegoats from cultures. It is my
> patriotic duty as an American citizen to ensure that, in a nation whose
> government is designed to prevent official oppression, unofficial
> oppression does not take form in the name of society or
> communitarianism or left-wing Neo-Puritanism or any other pretext for
> would-be fascists. I hope more conscientious people perform the same
> duty, and in so doing end all dishonesty, oppression and hideousness in
> America and make this country what its founders intended for it to be.
>
> Ilya Shambat.
>

Sorry mate, but this is not new.

If you check out some of the anti-psychiatric
writings of the sixties and seventies you will
find similar remarks.

The basic point is that many pspychiatric
patients have found themselves the emotional
dustbins of family and society and eventually
show signs of breaking down.

Some writers have even refrred to clinical
psychologists and psychiatrists as carrying out
a kind of garbage collection service for society.

D.


--- UseNet To RIME Gateway {at} 3/8/05 12:08:12 AM ---