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.



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