Excellent article by Jonah Lehrer of the New Yorker.

"I know so much I don't know where to begin" http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/frontal-cortex/2012/06/daniel-kahn...

Which is related to "Smart people don't think others are stupid": http://sivers.org/ss

My experience is that I cant tell someone what I think the truth is and expect positive results. I can only present information that may excite them to discover the connections I think are important. A person who discovers something is more likely to become active than a person who is told they were wrong about something.

The difference between the two outcomes is directly related to the way information is presented. Is it adversarial or interesting?

Occasionally people can agree on the input to a function and the function specification, and they will regard the answer as true, but only the experience of evaluating the facts can really convince a person. Just telling them does not work.... and it shouldn't.

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/09/psychologists-mental-health-quest...

The 9/11 Commissioners and Other Officials Don’t Believe the Government

The 9/11 Commissioners and congressional investigators into 9/11 themselves don’t believe the government’s description of events.

Much of the world doesn’t believe the official story.

Mental Health Professionals Say that Questioning 9/11 Is the Sane Thing To Do

Many mental health professionals have concluded that the official version of 9/11 is false, and that those who believe the official version suffer from defense mechanisms. For example:

On 9/11 Truth Awakening I posted a blog about "The Backfire Effect" which I have seen referenced in a few other places.  Here are some excerpts.

There is an interesting article: “The Backfire Effect“, by David McRaney, cross-posted on OpEdNews with the subtitle: Why Showing People the Truth Sometimes Makes Them Believe BS Even More.  This is interesting not just because of the article, but the reaction in comments that follow.

One day, he decided to talk to people on the subway...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0oHlX8Kmxk

Please let me know what you think about this, honestly i still felt hesitant to release this but I decided to do it anyway to see your reaction and where I should go next with my work. I recently been through a hard time in my life and I am trying to find myself through expressing myself, if I am on the wrong path let me know.

Featured by Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun Times:
http://twitter.com/ebertchicago/status/52810577935990784
http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/being-here/talking-to-people-on-the-subw...

The Psychology of 9/11, An Interview with Ken Jenkins

Live internet radio interview today at 2pm (pacific)

I will be guest hosting for Carol Brouillet on her weekly show, Community Currency, and interviewing Ken Jenkins on the Progressive Radio Network

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/community-currency/

If you have questions for Ken or I, please email me at:

marin911truth (at) gmail (dot) com

We may also do some call in toward the end of the hour.

Hope to get some good feedback from all of you.

Be well and enjoy the day!

John William Wright

[edit -LW] - Here are links to the Ken Jenkin's article we mentioned on the show:

http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20090506155958670

http://911blogger.com/news/2009-05-06/truth-not-enough-how-overcome-emot...

Archive of show: http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/community-currency/2010/10/1/comm...

Are+Americans+Too+Broken+by+Corporate+Power+to+Resist?
We need to take a look at what forces in American society are preventing people from being able to resist tyranny and dehumanization.

By Joan Brunwasser and Bruce E. Levine
March 23, 2010

Editor's Note: The following is the transcript of a recent interview with Bruce E. Levine by OpEd News' Joan Brunwasser. Levine is a clinical psychologist and author of Surviving America’s Depression Epidemic: How to Find Morale, Energy, and Community in a World Gone Crazy (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2007).

Joan Brunwasser: Back in December, you wrote 'Are+Americans+a+Broken+People?+Why+We've+Stopped+Fighting+Back+Against+the+Forces+of+Oppression.' Could you tell our readers about your theory?

Washington's Blog
Monday, February 22, 2010

Biologists and sociologists tell us that our brains evolved in small groups or tribes.

As one example of how profoundly the small-group environment affected our brains, Daily Galaxy points out:

Research shows that one of the most powerful ways to stimulate more buying is celebrity endorsement. Neurologists at Erasmus University in Rotterdam report that our ability to weigh desirability and value doesn’t function normally if an item is endorsed by a well-known face. This lights up the brain’s dorsal claudate nucleus, which is involved in trust and learning. Areas linked to longer-term memory storage also fire up. Our minds overidentify with celebrities because we evolved in small tribes. If you knew someone, then they knew you. If you didn’t attack each other, you were probably pals.

(I stumbled upon these great analyses of human behavior, and found some remarkable similarities to the in-fighting going on in the truth movement. Recommended reading -- SnowCrash)

The Three Faces Of Victim
Whether we know it, or not, most of us react to life as victims. Whenever we refuse to take responsibility for ourselves, we are unconsciously choosing to react as victim. This inevitably creates feelings of anger, fear, guilt or inadequacy and leaves us feeling betrayed, or taken advantage of by others. Victim-hood can be defined by the three positions beautifully outlined in a diagram developed by a well respected psychiatrist, and teacher of Transactional Analysis, named Stephen Karpman. He calls it the “drama triangle”, I will refer to it as the victim triangle. Having discovered this resource some thirty years ago, it has become one of the more important tools in my personal and professional life. The more I teach and apply the victim triangle to relationship the deeper my appreciation grows for this simple, powerfully accurate instrument.

(...)

"Reason and experiment have been indulged, and error has fled before them. It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself." --Thomas Jefferson

THE BATTLE FOR BELIEF : A SOCIOLOGISTS RESEARCH IN 9/11 ARGUMENTATION — MICHAEL ARMENIA

We are at war, and one of the most critical and dangerous frontline is not in Afghanistan, Iraq or Iran. Rather, it is the battleground within the human psyche. Individual and collective minds are waging psychological warfare in what promises to be one of the most intense struggles in American history, if not all of human history. How do we communicate the truth about the events of 9/11 to those who have been deceived by the operation and its cover-up in the media? Are logic, reason, and science enough?

OpEdNews

Original Content at http://www.opednews.com/articles/Why-the-resistance-to-9-11-by-Carol-Wol...

June 15, 2009

Why the resistance to 9-11 truth?- UPDATE

By Carol Wolman

This paper was first published in Feb. 2007. It received over 100 comments at op-ed news, and I’m still getting requests from people who want to make comments, so I’m reposting it.

President Obama is continuing the 9-11 coverup. Meanwhile, more and more professionals- architects and engineers, intelligence officers, health care workers- are giving speeches denouncing the coverup, and circulating petitions to have a new, impartial investigation focusing on the question which was never asked the first time-

WHODUNIT ???

Mr Swami has very kindly sent me the proofs for the article. Since it remains unpublished I will not upload the article and provide a link. What I have done here is an edited list of the 17 statements and the mean rating (in brackets) presented to participants entitled "9/11 Conspiracists Beliefs" scale

(The collapse of WTC7 was not included in the scale):

1 = Totally False
9 = Totally True

The World Trade Centre was destroyed by explosives (2.81)

The World Trade Centre were brought down by controlled demolition (2.90)

Aircraft were controlled by the US military (2.93)

Mobile phone calls were fabricated or not made at all (3.27)

Exercises were intentionally held on 9/11 to deliberately confuse military personnel (3.29)

The US military were ordered to stand down (3.44)

The Pentagon was possibly hit by a missile (3.50)

Intact windows and lack of debris prove the Pentagon was not hit by a plane (3.51)

Reports of hijacker still alive prove that others were responsible (3.51)

The US Govt allowed the attack to happen so it would have an excuse to achieve foreign and domestic goals (3.71)

United Flight 93 was shot down (3.76)

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2009/05/conspiracies-and-martha-mitchell-...

John Mitchell was the Attorney-General during the Nixon administration.

His wife - Martha Mitchell - told her psychologist that top White House officials were engaged in illegal activities. Her psychologist labeled these claims as caused by mental illness.

Ultimately, however, the relevant facts of the Watergate scandal vindicated her.

In fact, psychologists have now given a label - the "Martha Mitchell Effect" - to "the process by which a psychiatrist, psychologist, or other mental health clinician mistakes the patient's perception of real events as delusional and misdiagnoses accordingly".

The authors of a paper on this phenomenon ( Bell, V., Halligan, P.W., Ellis, H.D. (2003) Beliefs About Delusions. The Psychologist, 6 (8), 418-422) conclude:

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2009/05/psychologists-weigh-in-on-911.html

A new article in U.S. News & World Report quotes a couple of psychologists, one sociologist and one historian to argue that people who question the government's version of 9/11 are prone to false thinking.

Initially, remember that, while there are many honorable psychologists and psychiatrists, psychologists helped to create the U.S. torture program, and actively participated in it.

These polls numbers provide data to back up what historians and social engineers already knew; a 9/11-type attack would rouse patriotic fervor and suppress dissent. It's not evidence 9/11 was allowed or made to happen, but it's evidence that many among the "elite" would have understood the likely effect of a 9/11 would be a license for war and draconian domestic security measures- and that with a few layers of plausible deniability, they could insulate themselves blame and consequences- if there were public and Congressional support for inquiries. FDR and LBJ were given similar license after Pearl Harbor and the Gulf of Tonkin, and "mainstream" criticism doesn't address FDR's plan to provoke the Japanese, or US foreknowledge of the attack plans (Stinnett), or that the Gulf of Tonkin 2nd incident never happened (NSA docs).

http://www.openleft.com/diary/12820/real-and-threatened-terrorism-boosts...
Real, and threatened, terrorism boosts self-esteem
by: Chris Bowers
Mon Apr 13, 2009 at 14:36

Hello community,

Often times, opponents of the 9/11 truth movement will try their methods of armchair psychology at analyzing 9/11 truthers, claiming that we WANT to believe that 9/11 was an inside job. They claim that we believe the "real" truth (official story) is just too boring. John McCain made this charge in his foreword to the Popular Mechanics propaganda book.

Over at JREF, an entire thread is dedicated to asking about the experiences of "former truthers," people who were briefly on our side but were then swayed back to official story belief after having read Popular Mechanics, 911myths(dot)com, etc. A forum regular there, Parky76, says+the+following:

___________________________________________________________________________
i remember how scared my mom was when i spouted all the conspiracy theories at her. she was not happy at all that i was saying all these things.

i text messaged my ENTIRE family: "i have seen a new video, which shows compelling evidence, that our own government was responsible for 9-11!!"

i got zero responses...=)

Enjoy.

Cheers,

www.BBC5.tv

A symposium is being held in Jersey City July 1 on how to teach 9/11; while i pity the teachers that will attempt to teach the OCT to a generation avidly embracing the internet and wise to reality, critical thinking and the corporate govt/media conflicts and agenda, it is disturbing seeing well-funded attempts like this to indoctrinate the younger generations, the future of our nation, our posterity with evil lies. Similar to ABC's Path to 9/11 attempting to team up with Scholastic- they failed on the joint venture, i think- due to public outcry. Submit your comments if you have children and you care about the quality of their education, or if you don't have kids and just care about the health of society and the future of humanity.

http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/jersey/index.ssf?/base/news-10/12147154874...

Educators and 9/11: Learning to teach the unthinkable
Sunday, June 29, 2008
BY RUDY LARINI
Star-Ledger Staff

It's right there, tucked away in the pages of newer American history textbooks, along with the American Revolution, slavery and the Civil War, two world wars, the Great Depression, the civil rights movement and Vietnam.

(Part One of a Two Part Series on Denial, Part Two will be on Overcoming Collective Denial to 9/11 Truth)

Carol Wolman, MD

Ken Jenkins

Chuck Millar

Listen Monday, June 9th, 2008, 10 pm- midnight (CST) to Questioning War-Organizing Resistance on the WeThePeopleRadioNetwork.com and to our guests- Carol Wolman, MD, Ken Jenkins, and Chuck Millar on Overcoming Individual Denial to 9/11 Truth.

My recent essay Twilight of the Psychopaths http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/home/Frontpage/2008/01/02/02073.html generated a whole lot of discussion. That conversation will continue on Dynamic Duo Friday, 2/15/08, 4-6 pm CT, http://www.gcnlive.com Network 4

I will be interviewing Laura Knight-Jadczyk, a pioneer in the application of ponerology (the study of political psychopathy) to 9/11.

Laura edited Lobaczewski's book Political Ponerology, which argues that the tendency of psychopaths to rise to the top of power hierarchies sometimes gets out of control, leading to the infection of the body politic and the development of a psychopathic state. That, according to Lobaczewski, is what happened in Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia; and, according to Laura, it is happening right now in Bush's USA. Check out Laura's interview: http://www.sott.net/articles/show/148141-The-Trick-of-the-Psychopath-s-T...

Laura has warned me that she is a controversial figure in the 9/11 community, which is fine with me--as you may have noticed, I don't shy away from controversy.

Call-in number: 1-866-582-9933

From: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19272.htm Democracy Is a Beautiful Thing
By William Blum

This is why it's so important for all of us to continue "preaching to the choir" and "preaching to the converted". That's what speakers and writers and other activists are often scoffed at for doing -- saying the same old thing to the same old people, just spinning their wheels. But long experience as speaker, writer and activist in the area of foreign policy tells me it just ain't so. From the questions and comments I regularly get from my audiences, via email and in person, and from other people's audiences as well, I can plainly see that there are numerous significant information gaps and misconceptions in the choir's thinking, often leaving them unable to see through the newest government lie or propaganda trick; they're unknowing or forgetful of what happened in the past that illuminates the present; knowing the facts but unable to apply them at the appropriate moment; vulnerable to being led astray by the next person who offers a specious argument that opposes what they currently believe, or think they believe. The choir needs to be frequently reminded and enlightened.

More and more psychiatrists and psychologists are recognizing that the government's 9/11 story is crazy, and its supporters are in deep denial: http://georgewashington.blogspot.com/2007/05/psychiatrists-and-psycholog...

And thanks to the free flow of information on the internet, more and more people are learning that they are being ruled by psychopaths: http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/home/Frontpage/2008/01/02/02073.html

But despite these hopeful signs, the Soviet-style abuse of psychiatry continues as yet another American dissident and 9/11 truth supporter has been incarcerated because he thinks 9/11 was an inside job.

Last year it was Mike Cook, who spent most of 2007 imprisoned in various federal penitentiaries because of his belief that 9/11 was an inside job:
http://mujca.com/gulag.htm Mike is free and looking forward to a better 2008--he was my second hour guest on my New Year's show, 1/1/2008:
http://mp3.wtprn.com/Barrett08.html

http://georgewashington.blogspot.com/2006/10/carrot-and-stick.html

Exposing the evidence which proves that 9/11 was an inside job is not enough. Believe it or not, that is the easy part.

Why? Because you can cite all the facts in the world, but unless the person you're talking with has some motivation to really listen, the facts will bounce off your listeners like bullets off a Kevlar vest.

Psychologists tell us that unless we give people a reason to want to know the truth about 9/11, they won't be open to changing their mind.

Indeed, some very smart people have said that propaganda is not aimed at actually convincing people, but of giving an excuse for people to believe what they want to believe.

Why Will People Want to Know the Truth?

The Shock Doctrine

Here is a book and short movie on Naomi Klein's view of the psychology of the NWO and how they use it to control us. The movie clip is only 6 minutes but right on target in my opinion and about the subject we need to dominate...

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

This film and book discuss the CIA’s experimentation with using electric shock to break people down. Yet, the more important point of these works is that a broader “shock” to the systems of a people as a whole, like say 9/11, can have the kind of impact the CIA was searching for in their tests, one that breaks down a whole society and makes them so fearful they are open to nefarious suggestions.

http://www.shockdoctrine.com
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/09/12/the-shock-doctrine/

Digg It... http://digg.com/politics/The_Shock_Doctrine_3

I had a bunch of 9/11 truth debates recently, and there is one tactic I find to be useful that I wanted to share. It is simply trying to structure your debate so that your opponent has to prove a point. For instance, if the debate is all about you having to prove that 9/11 was an inside job, then they can just ignore you, or choose not to believe facts. If the debate is about them trying to prove something -- for instance, that bin laden did 9/11 -- then you can use your knowledge to shoot them down, and to prove that they are just a dumb sheeple who doesn't know anything and who needs to wake up ASAP.

Originally published in Global Outlook magazine and reprinted in Truth Jihad
http://www.amazon.com/Truth-Jihad-Epic-Struggle-Against/dp/0930852990
my essay "Apocalypse of Coercion"
http://mujca.com/apocalypse.htm
is getting a reputation as THE major statement on 9/11 as psy-op. It has even been made into a major motion picture--well, sort of:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6131142214433741484&q=apocalypse...

Now it's making the rounds in Czechoslovakia:

Hi Kevin,

Greets from Venice, Italy. Good news: your article was published in the major Czech internet journal Zvedavec:
http://zvedavec.org/clanky_2167.htm?rok=2007
The audience is well above average and the rating is excellent 1.4 on a 5 grade scale.

Almost immediately it was adopted by the Czech movement "NO-TO-BASES", which is fighting against the building of the US army bases on the Czech soil:
http://www.nezakladnam.cz/index.php?id=236
The article was also adopted with several other journals and bloggers.
For example:
http://petkovastudna.blogspot.com/2007/07/pro-poslouchme-co-nm-eknou-o-1...

The Journal of 9/11 Studies proudly publisheses a peer-reviewed article by Laurie A. Manwell, M.Sc., which deals with overcoming psychological barriers regarding 9/11 truth. The title is: Faulty Towers of Belief: Part I. Demolishing the Iconic Psychological Barriers to 9/11 Truth. http://journalof911studies.com/volume/2007/FaultyTowersofBeliefPart_I.pdf

A reviewer (Professor) from the University of Waterloo stated:

“This is an excellent paper. The material is convincingly
presented; the argument becomes increasingly intriguing and persuasive
as it moves along…. The real strength of this paper is that it lays out the
complex issues without flinching from the overwhelming differences that
prevent sane discourse on the "truth" of 9/11, while at the same time
maintaining such equanimity.
“The importance of this approach can't be overemphasized. Unless
we get beyond the problems so thoroughly identified in this paper,
how, for example, can we talk about the three towers of the World
Trade Center falling in so short a time, just as though they were a
nicely controlled demolition…?”

Liberty’s New Husband

At the end of an era there were two beautiful sisters, one named Liberty the other named Conscience. Conscience was not as strikingly beautiful as Liberty, but the little she lacked in beauty she more than made up for with intellect.

Liberty was wealthy, honest, and her incredible beauty radiated from within. She was courted by an urban cowboy who went by the name of Awesome Powers, but no-one knew who he really was. Awesome’s friends called him AP, and once Liberty and Awesome were married, Liberty called him AP too.

AP earned a modest income by clearing brush from the neighbours’ yards. However, AP appeared to have unlimited resources arising from business arrangements with his friends and his father’s connections. Besides AP’s brush clearing business, the group of friends controlled many other businesses and had all kinds of mysterious and complicated financial dealings.

Liberty thought she would live the good life with AP.

...continued

Sorry if this is a repost!

My experience of the debunkers is that they appear to have this personality type in SPADES

Here's where you start on Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authoritarian_personality

Here's a reading list on the Authoritarian Personality some directly about the affects of 911 on the right Wing Authoritarian Personality available from Academic Libraries

Baars, J. and P. Scheepers (1993). “Theoretical and Methodological Foundations of the Authoritarian Personality.” Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 29(4): 345-353.
This article provides a history of the theoretical and methodological contributions, particularly Erich Fromm's, of the sub-syndromes of the concept of authoritarianism and the relationship of his work to the classical study by Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson and Sanford.

Christie, R. (1978). “Authoritarian Personality - Adorno,Tw.” Human Nature 1(4): 90-93.

We are bombarded on a daily basis with persuasive arguments. Understanding how to assess these arguments is critical to insure that the population is well informed on important issues. Two routes of persuasion have been identified, central and peripheral(Petty and Caccioppo, 1986).

An example of the central route would be of a chess master recommending a move to someone. They base the move off of logic which assesses all of the pieces on the board. The central route is based off of facts.

An example of a peripheral route would be when Bill O'Reilly throws around words such as anti-patriotic when he attacks someone like Rosie O'Donnell. The peripheral route relies upon influencing individuals emotions through cue words, attractiveness of the person proposing the argument(the only thing Michelle Malkin has going for her), or citing quantity over quality ( "50 experts said so!" vs. "1 expert" where the 1 expert is using quality arguments and the 50 are using weak arguments.).

I wrote this letter to the BBC in protest of their obvious propaganda piece against the social dis-order group known as 9/11 truth.
I thought it would make for intersting discussion into the motivations and why some people can not bring themselves to question the convential
wisdom of the 9/11 myth. Interestingly if you read Freakonomics, the author makes a point about convential wisdom, that also hits on the same theme,
it goes something like this:

Convential wisdom does not and most of the time is not the absolute truth, it is a version of true that most people can understand.

Here is my letter,

Dear Mr. Smith

Why ask something if you already KNOW the answer?

You see the power to conform is so powerful that well meaning people like yourselves will rationalize actions and decisions on the subconscious level to
avoid asking questions that go against these powerful forces to conform.

Here is an Interesting analogy:
Did you know how a flock of birds all decide at once which way to fly, some scientist have even proposed theories that birds have a mental telepathy,