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This blog discusses ideas, drafts and papers about the whole spectrum of systems theory and anything else that concerns the WissTec R&D Services UG.

24.5.2021 - Social Systems Security 7:

Narcissism and Mass Murder Justification Ideologies:

(By Eike Scholz)

In this post it will briefly be illustrated why some knowledge of psychology, in particular of cluster B personality disorders and behavioral patterns related to narcissism, is important to be able construct sound and secure social systems. For example, by avoiding hiring psychologically unfit personal for positions with access to significant power.

The fundamentally problematic pschosocial patterns, commonly observed in relationships with narcissistic individuals, are the following: For common mass murder justification ideologies the pattern is identical. It has two parts:
  1. A structural setup given by:
    • The golden group, with the common examples:
      • The aryans
      • The proletariat
      • The capitalists
      • Christians
      • Muslims
      • Atheists
      • White people
      • Women
      • Men
      • "Us"
    • The scapegoats, with the common examples:
      • The Jews
      • The capitalists
      • The proletariat
      • Christians
      • Muslims
      • Atheists
      • Black people
      • White people
      • The old white male
      • Men
      • Woman
      • "Them"
  2. A social dynamics part given by:
    • Some leader, or group of leaders, constructs a basic ideology around the golden group and scapegoat categories. The leader is not necessary part of the golden group, as historical examples show. The leaders then goes after some individual of the scapegoats to "solve" a problem and assert dominance. After that everyone knows not to mess with the leaders, since they are powerful and willing use force.
    • Simple gaslighting is used by the leaders to hide, that punishing the scapegoats has actually no effect with respect the associated problems.
    • The inability of the leaders to admit errors in judgement, will then result in a step-wise escalation of the punishments of the scapegoats. If not countered, this escalation spiral will continue until the scapegats are dead, as many colletive and individual historical examples show.
As often observed for individual narcissists or pychopaths, only raw power, that is the credible threat of, or actual severe consequences can stop this spiral.

It should be noted, that this article does not claim, that the above pattern is the only way to create mass murder justification ideologies. Further, its not "the narcissists", that are the problem, but leaders, that exploit the above psychosocial pattern. Its not about what people are, but about what they do. If you, for example, want to reduce the number of murders, you go after the murderers and not after some proxy/scapegoat group.

Sadly, in the large scale, that means that a world without military and war can not exist, since every type of leader can in principle exploint the above pattern. As for crime we can only hope to manage this dark side of human nature sufficiently. Actually, given the existence of weapons of mass destruction, we must, if we want to secure the long term survival of our species.

As a corollary, it possible to deduce, that scapegoats are likely to get murdered, if neither them self nor allies can put up a credible threat of retaliation against attacks justified as just punishments. If you wonder why the state of Israel maintains a strong military and tight connections to the USA, this corollary is basically the answer. Jews are simply the scapegoats for too many groups and their strong military is used as argument to scapegoat them some more - of course.

In the end scapegoats or their allies must use power to stop the above escalation spiral. As a consequence, hiring personal with narcissistic personal patterns into positions of power will make your organization part that escalation spiral, which has no other function then to ensure the social dominance of the scapegoater. This will degrade the ability of an organization to perform as intended, since scapegoating by definition does not solve any problems, but it will create enemies. Well, it will create enmies, unless the scapegoaters can kill them all, which explains the title of this post.

This escalation dynamic is also the reason why the WissTec R&D Services UG performed some confidential weapons systems development, that is not related to the prior posted "Sprave" assault-alingshot prototype which is our idea of a joke weapon. To get allies you have to give something in exchange.

19.2.2021 - Social Systems Security 6:

Nazi "Logic":

(By Eike Scholz)

This is a common type of fallacy, that really should be avoided. It was prominently used in Nazi ideology, but it is much more common. Despite of Godwin's law the name is chosen to make it easy for ideologues of all sorts to drop the bullshit this kind of "logic" is.

Nazi "logic" is a deontic logic fallacy, that consists of three steps:
1.) Reasonable Judgment:
All \(x \in X\) should \(Y\).
2.) Ideological Narrowing:
All \(x' \in X'\) under consideration are in \(X\).
3.) Fallacy of Attribution:
All \(x' \in X'\) should \(Y\) .
The formal problem is, that usually \[ \{\ x' \in X'\ |\ x' \text{ is not under consideration }\ \} \setminus X \ne \emptyset \text{ .}\] In words: Usually there are \(x'\) in \(X'\), that are not under consideration, not in \(X\) and for which it is not true that they should \(Y\). (Update: Fixed text in the formula! 😅 )

Observable Examples Cases:
  • Nazis and the Jews.
  • Racists and other races.
  • Feminists and the "masculine".
  • Communists and the bourgeoisie.
  • This post. Making it a sound argument is left to the reader as an exercise.

    • Why is this post in this list? Well, consider the entailed argument:
    1. All ideologues committing this fallacy should stop this kind of bullshit.
    2. Of all ideologues, the feminists under consideration condemn the masculine and judge, that masculine humans should atone for their wrongdoing and/or wrongbeing.
    3. All feminists should stop this bullshit.
    The fallacy of attribution in this case is unsound only for the reason, that in order to stop something, you need to have to be doing it. It is a kind of "When will you stop beating your wife?" situation, when the questioned actually may not beat his wife ever.

    This particular example shows, that the line between Nazi "logic" and sound argumentation is sometimes just the line between careful and not careful wording and/or listening. That, given the way the Nazis rose to power, should not surprise anyone. The German voters did not listen carefully. They apparently thought, that the condemnation of the Jews by the Nazis is just lazy wording - lazy wording similar to the way feminists are put into the list above.

    Thus be careful with ideological narrowing. Due to natural variation, there are too many fellow human beings in any large population, who actually like domination and causing related harm and pain. For them any kind of ideology is just a welcome excuse to indulge in their dark desires - without fear of losing their face or severer consequences. That is what one primarily observes, if looking at historical atrocities justified by ideologies. The ideologies served their purpose well in that case, just not for those who created or followed them to crate a, in their view, better world.

    A certain type of follower can be worse for an ideology than any external adversary could be. Every ideology based group, that was unable to control this kind of follower, failed in the medium to long run. Often after inflicting immeasurable suffering and pain for the pleasure of those who like to indulge in that.

    In an age of technological proficiency, that is easily sufficient to produce weapons of mass destruction, it will be a question of global survival to learn to handle potent ideologies with adequate respect and maturity, since those who suffer for the pleasure of others may have nothing left to lose.

    The road to hell is paved with good intentions, as the saying goes.

    25.1.2021 - Important Announcement:

    Contact Information Updates:

    Please do not use email to contact us. Use Threema, WhatsApp or WeChat. We have severe problems with spam causing email system failures and a lot of valid communication gets suppressed as spam.

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    Update: IONOS "issues" fixed. Had been a misleading error message.

    All posts of this month.