Sociologists and psychologists have written at length about the price that Western civilization has had to pay, and will go on paying, for technological progress.

Democracy can hardly be expected to flourish in societies where political and economic power is being concentrated and centralized.  The machinery of mass production and global consumerism demands mass distribution, something that cannot be accomplished without expensive centralization.  As production is made more efficient it becomes more complex and costly. Local capitalism, without adequate working capital, loses the competition with corporate capitalism as it attempts to increase production and is gobbled up by larger companies.  Economic power falls into the hands of the few, accomplishing the goal of fulfilling global progress.  Whether controlled by the dictatorship's "state" or democratic "power elite", the result is the same.  True democratic principles are subverted to centralized corporate interests that invariably control the mass media--influencing the thoughts, feelings and actions of virtually everybody. Modern political power, exercised ruthlessly in dictatorships, and inconspicuously in democracies, is inexorably tied to economic growth and technological progress.
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Deteriorating Society
 

Nature has gone to endless trouble to see that every individual is unlike every other individual.  Even hereditary factors may be combined in an infinite number of ways.

"Any culture which, in the interests of efficiency, or in the name of some political or religious dogma, seeks to standardize the human individual, commits an outrage against man's biological nature."

Biologically, humans are neither completely social nor completely independent.  A truly free society can tolerate the few citizens that reside at both extremes but the demands of modern civilization force citizens to chose either the close quarters reality of the ant or the closed off separation of a lobo wolf.

Editor---
 Native societies, developing organically through birth and marriage, utilize the relationships of being related by blood or bond to become an almost sentient social organism.  Organized societies, trying to create a similar organism from an unrelated, disconnected, and uncommitted citizenry, can only hope to distract or confuse its citizens to keep them from noticing the insidious institutions of organization and centralization that become necessary to keep order and provide necessities.  A power that leads inevitably to abrogations of individual freedom--and often, tyranny.
 

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The Culture Of Conformism mostly plagarized from
Patrick Colm Hogan
The Culture Of Conformism
Duke University Press 2001
 

       American moral values, particularly those relating to property and ownership and descendant European property law, have always been peculiarly twisted.  A person of color who steals $100 from a CEO's wallet will certainly be charged with grand larceny and receive a stiff prison tenure, while that same CEO may swindle his shareowners out of millions of dollars and walk away with a slap on the hand.  Obviously America has a social strata or economic cast system that is offended by the poor criminal and entertained by the wealthy one.
       Special protections are offered for those types of ownership that are crucial to the American economic class system. In fact, the framers of the Constitution intended it to be so.  As James Madison said, "to insure that the rights of the opulent minority are privileged, they must hold the reins of government."  He rationalized the fairness of this doctrine because property "chiefly bears the burden of government...(and) in a certain sense the Country may be said to belong" to the propertied elite.
       This is a legal doctrine defined, not by common sense, but by an arbitrary decision made to protect the interests of those Aldous Huxley called  the "Power Elite".  It is surely the byproduct of centuries of royalty, professing the philosophy that those favored by God are intended to be the elite, while those below that station are certainly responsible for their own misery.
       Both liberals and conservatives tend to picture the common criminal as either poor, of color, or both, despite statistics that show white colar crime to be significantly more violent and costly to the society at large.  The FBI counts the costs of burglarly and theft at about 4 billion annually.  White collar corporate crime estimates are put at 200 billion--50 times more.  Yet the FBI does not even characterize as crimes those committed against society such as pollution, procurement fraud, financial fraud, public corruption and occupational homicide.
      The definition of homicide is another instance where western civilization has "decided" to qualify and rationalize the taking of human life in order to stratify the society.  Interpersonal homicide is severely prosecuted while large scale direct murder is declared a monopoly of the state and generally permitted, even glorified.  The US street felony homicide rate is at  estimated at about 24,000 a year, while during the first Iraqi conflict more than 50,000 innocent civilians perished in only six weeks, not counting the hundreds of thousands of indirect deaths and hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqi soldiers.  Americans grimace and blanch at a the terrible tragedy of a local homicide and don't bat at eye at the sight of hundreds of mangled children in a state supported conflict.
     These legal "decisions" have come to be regarded as so natural to our citizenry that they are no longer recognized as the product of "choices" with systemic social results.  They guide an individuals thoughts toward qualifying murder inconsistently.  The killing of innocents is no longer automatically considered murder.  It is a classic case of legal stratification inflencing public consent.  The elite who drive the engine of the industry of war have once again created a buffer of legalise that puts them out of the reach of law and allows the abuse of innocents without accountability.
      This is especially useful to that "Power Elite" when it comes to indirect homicide.  Indirect homicide occurs as a product of the intentional or unintentional abrogation of responsible behavior resulting in hazadous conditions which cause the predictable death of innocent citizenry.  More than twice the number of deaths occur from occupational hazards such as black lung, asbestosis, etc., than die of street homicide each year.  A CEO  murdered by a disgruntled employee would undoubtly result in a criminal prosecution for murder. However, that same CEO might ignore safety concerns and warnings, resulting in employee deaths, with relative impunity.  The company might suffer some fines or civil suits but a murder charge against him would most certainly never be filed.  Despite his knowledge and choice in the matter, intent and premeditation could never be established under the law.  Since the creation of the Occupational Safety and Health Act over 250,000 people have died on the job, but only four people have been held accountable and done time for violations.
       For generations corporations have utilized manipulation and conditioning through advertising to sell consumers products known to be severely detrimental to their health.  Big tobacco is an example that is finally getting noticed by the population but only after causing twenty times the deaths each year than street homicides.  Furthermore, the approximately 50 billion dollars drained from the national economy annually in the resulting health crises has only recently been getting national attention.  As another example, the automobile companies legislative priviledge which blocked for years the inclusion of air bags in vehicles undoubtedly resulted in many thousands of preventable deaths in vehicle accidents.  Both of these examples illustrate the "decisions" made, and then incorporated into legal concepts, to protect business at all costs.  To make the "bottom line" more sacrosanct than the life of  citizens.  It is, after all, the American Way.  A religion of class.

"Every society...involves contradictions between precepts and practices. This is obvious in predominantly Christian countries such as the United States, where Jesus injunction to divest oneself of riches has been perverted into an imperative for the accumulation of wealth, and where the central precept of nonviolence has been twisted into jingoistic militarism..."
 

The most obvious component of ideology is belief.  The first function of ideology is to foster a sense that the current system is right, that it is beneficial and that the alternatives are threatening.  Consent from the public is   crucially dependent not only on what specific views are held to be true, but also what views are considered to be possible, or what claims might be considered potentially true.  Ideologies that depend on consent exist by encouraging possitive beliefs and  influencing debate so as to exclude other beliefs from consideration or discussion.  In todays times, mass media can appear to be open and free to different viewpoint while systematically framing its information and debate to exclude problematic views.  By encouraging beliefs based on erroneous facts that support an individuals predefined systems of beliefs that only serve to be mutually sustaining and confirming.  Therefore, someone who inherently trusts the state and its instiutions has a sense of history and viewpoint that supports that trust, and any subsequent actions or events are examined only in the context of their predefined beliefs.
        A specific example would be the Amherst survey, where Americans were asked to estimate the number of Vietnamese casualties in the Vietnam War.  The median estimate was 100,000, though more than 2 million lost their lives.  Erroneous beliefs like these contribute to a system of beliefs which contain further erroneous concepts such as modern war becoming more humane, and that only a few Iraqi's died in Gulf War bombardments.
        It is easy to see how only a few supporting events can create a pattern which eventually becomes a system of beliefs supportive of one viewpoint and unable to consider the possibility of another.  It becomes a domino theory of beliefs, if one falls, so do the rest.  Few people are balanced enough to be able to face a constant reordering of their beliefs and the values that result from having a consistently open mind.
        Consider the modern views of social systems.  Capitalism and democracy are seen as virtual equivalents.  Communism and socialism are seen as sub categoies of totalitarianism.  Social organizations must be classified into these categories simply because no others are being proposed.  Social democracy, micro capitalist democracy, and benevolent totalitarianism, and tribal consensusalism are unrecognized or misunderstand and are excluded from consideration.  Alternate views are immediately classified as realistic or utopian (unrealistic).  Once an option has been labeled utopian it has suffered the kiss of death.  Social vision is a developing concept for adaptation and evolution in social organization, but there is little place for such a concept in the black and white beliefs that provide the social consent necessary to continue on the present path of forced progress and unrestrained technological development.
 

Religion plays a large part in the politics of consent.  Though there have been notable exceptions, the ideological function of religion is most often consensual.  Religions which encourage participants to detach themselves from the world or aim beyond this world offer primary belief systems which lend themselves easily to the politics of consent.  Walter Rodney noted that the role of Christianity in the colonial dominance of Africa was "primarily to preserve the social relations of colonialism, as an extension of the role it played in preserving the social relations of capitalism in Europe...the church preached humility, docility, and acceptance...preach(ed) turning the other cheek in the face of exploitation", ostensibly to guarantee them a better place in the next world.
      In addition to asking consent of a citizenry, religious views that receive the support of the "Power Elite" invariably end up supporting those in a position of power.  The ability to succeed in pressuring a religion to alter or reinterpret its belief systems to rationalize and justify the actions and intent of the powerful is a primary ingrediant in obtaining the consent of the people.

Establishing Consensual Ideology

      The primary way of passing ideological beliefs which support the culture of consent is by making false statements and by suppressing true statements that may be damaging to the dominant system of ideals.

         The most blatant case of this is censorship.  In the US overt censorship has mostly been confined to war coverage both here and abroad.  Other examples might be news stories that examine dangerous consumer products, suppressed by the influence of a multi-million dollar company or industry.  For example, it was well known in 1860 that the habitual use of tobacco resulted in addiction and health problems, but it wasn’t until the latter half of the twentieth century that commercial interests were defied and the public was informed, through mass media, that tobacco is addicting and harmful.

           Another form of censorship is the choice by media outlets not to air certain news.  Vast amounts of  news important to the society is removed from coverage by the media structure especially when news is too sensitive or to complex for corporate new sources to profitably report.  Studies in a major metropolitan area, Detroit, that only 2 % of local news focused on governement or politics.  In contrast, 50% of nightly news stories covered crimes and disasters, a technique which reinforces many people’s view that their lives are relatively safe and contented.  McManus (1994) reports that “most commercial stations purchase research on how to select, gather, and report news profitably from a small number of consulting firms.”  The word “newsworthy” has come to also mean “profitability.”  This results in common practices across a wide number of stations, and common news exclusions.
        Most news reporting today is passive.  Few organizations have the resources to pay reporters to go out and physically “discover” the news.  They prefer to wait until notified of press releases, interviews, staged coverage, meetings, and the web of wire service and public relation company releases that feed most of the main news providers.  PR companies provide more than 25% of the news in the mainstream press for their paying clients.
These “commercials” are produced so as to be almost indistinguishable from real bonifide news reports.
        “Passive discovery tends to surrender control over the public information stream to powerful interests in government, large corporations and wealthy interests.”  Most of this news is neither controversial nor critical of mainstream policies since its goal is to achieve an economic result rather than to inform or educate the public.  In this way it provides support for the consensual system of beliefs necessary for the preservation of a dominant ideology.

          The same sort of structural limitations on available information exist within the educational environments.  Important political and philosophical traditions from India, China, Japan, the Arab world, and even the Indigenous Americas are largely ignored in eurocentric American institutions of higher education.  The argument is that translated textbooks do not exist or are unavailable, however there are many examples of qualified professors already “in country”.  If asked, these scholars say they would have no trouble providing text materials to accompany their courses, if they were ever approached to teach such courses.  The truth is that American education has one purpose, and that is to indoctrinate American students as deeply as possible with the ideologies and patented beliefs which perpetuate and define the American Mythology, and compliment the culture of consent.

          Confusing semantics and metaphors of indirection are another tool used within the media market to foster consent.  Military information is rife with this vocabulary of misdirection.  Bombing a target becomes acquiring an asset.  The death of civilians becomes collateral damage.  The killing of thousands of enemy combatants is bloodlessly transformed into accomplishing military degradation.  War is changed, via descriptive language, from a bloody, horrific carnage into a clinical, antiseptic, and primarily material technological struggle.

         Contemporary political administrations have become masters of misleading metaphor.  Besides relying on the proven techniques of dehumanizing or demonizing personalities or nations, consistent repetition of sound bites utilizing memorable metaphors has become the primary weapon in mobilizing public consent for political policy.
        When leaders say we are engaged in pursuing or pushing back a particularly nasty foreign leader, they are careful not to mention that this actually means we will conduct a full scale military assault on the general population and infrastructure to accomplish our objectives.  By directing our attention, through metaphor and language, toward a single individual or small group we tend to simplify our imagination of the event to small scale and forget that war touches every citizen, every animal, every plant, and every natural resource that comes within its reach.  The recent war provides a perfect example.  The statement was made; “if Iraq does use chemical weapons it will simply bring down more air attacks on Saddam Hussein’s head.”  The natural inclination is to imagine bombs raining down on Saddam’s head rather than to acknowledge that these air attacks will undoubtedly rain down on the heads of many innocent people as well.
        It is has become an American tradition to utilize the process of over-simplification and conflict personalization for the purpose of rationalizing violent behavior so as the purify the collective conscience of any feeling of responsibility or wrongdoing, should innocents suffer at our hands.  Transferring all of the blame for any subsequent consequences from the victor to the victim has long been a European strategy.  Since the Church  issued the first Papal Bulls putting responsibility for slavery and death fully upon the shoulders of those who might even contemplate resistance to Church authority, western governments have made it a point to identify someone they could point to in order to transfer blame and responsibility for the tragic events we have been party to.

         While there are many sources for information in this country which do propose alternative points of view, it is a well recognized fact that the percentage of citizens who regularly connect with these sources is, in fact, miniscule.  The average American gets their regular information and news from no more than five primary sources throughout their life.  While the actual sources may change, all of these sources presently represent main-stream reporting agencies.
 

One of the more obvious ways to establish the limits of belief, and achieve consent among a citizenry, is to simply avoid reporting or publishing alternative points of view.  Very often this is accomplished by utilizing the tactic that the one who initiates a discussion may influence its scope simply by initially framing the questions, or structuring the debate, so as the force it along a predetermined path, with little opportunity for digression or alternative discussion.  This is a well-known strategy in courtroom dramas where a “leading” question is asked with the intention of eliciting a desired response.
        This is a primary way in which the skewing of polls is accomplished.
If a question is presented in overly simplistic language, or structured so as to limit or exclude alternatives, those being polled are literally herded toward answers which preclude any original or thoughtful alternative.  Those polled believe that they have expressed an opinion, when actually they have been manipulated into keeping the conversation controlled and confined.  Given a reasonable alternative, an answer might be expressed which completely contradicts the one offered in response to a purposefully limited structure.

        The next way that public opinion is formed is through the use of ellipses.  An example of this might be the portraying of an event as a unique historical occurrence to intentionally create a specific emotional, political, or philosophical reaction in the public, without bothering to mention that similar events have previously occurred.  Events which, if known, might significantly influence or change the public’s reaction to the contemporary event.  This is common in today’s press.  The American public’s short attention span, lack of historical perspective and desire for quick sound bites guarantees that political and corporate power brokers can spin events and information to influence public opinion even if they know that the information is false or misleading.  By the time the public finds out, the desired goals will have been achieved and the facts will be buried deep in newpapers or given a cursory mention by the press.
        Burying alternative views or critical observation is another technique in which the news is reported but de-emphasized.  Printing or broadcasting information in a way or at a time when the reader/viewer is distracted by location or proximity can detract from the impact or power of the information.  Public demonstrations or movements are often given this type of treatment if the reporting agency feels that prominent reporting may result in public backlash, sponsor irritation, or economic impacts of any kind.

        One of the primary techniques of public propaganda programs is to insure the regular repetition of an ideal, philosophy, theme, or statement.  The more time, space, and repetition that can be assigned to one subject or claim insures the dominance of that subject or claim in the public mind.  A good recent example might be the contention that Iraq had significant stores of weapons of mass destruction.  Should it be found that this was not the case, if polls were taken of those who originally believed this to be true, few would be found to have changed their minds in the interim. This is the power of the technique of repetition.
         World opinion is formed in just such a way.  Since events transpiring in the far corners of the world are basically unknown to us, we rely on the reporting of news agencies, governments, and heresay to inform ourselves.
If the mainstream sources get most of their news from the same web of information, it follows that most people’s opinions are a product of that reporting.  The best example of this today may be found in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.  Since the predominant opinion found in American foreign policy is supportive of Israel, the press vigorously covers every suicide bomber and tragedy there.  Little is reported of the conflict in Palestine, and when it is covered, invariably the finger of responsibility is directed at the Palestinians.  Without taking a side in the conflict, it is nevertheless obvious to any honest observer that the press has taken an active role in presenting the conflict from an Israeli perspective.   The danger inherent in this is obvious.  If people have no other source of information to base their opinions, the press is not merely reporting the events of the conflict, but are purposely influencing, and even forming youthful public opinions.
         While it is easy to demand that the American adult public take responsibility for their efforts to stay adequately informed, the overwhelming power of rhetoric and repetition in the mass media is the singular vehicle for the formation of the public view.  It is frightening to see how easily and completely it can be manipulated.

          Fundamental beliefs are a primary component of public consent.  In America, the education system, mass media, and entertainment industry are the primary educators.  Family beliefs are still passed from generation to generation, but their dominance and influence is directly in proportion to the amount of supporting or conflicting beliefs inundating them from outside sources.   As an example of the power of these outside influences, one need only ask everyday Americans what they know of the Indigenous Peoples that once inhabited these shores.  The bulk of their knowledge comes from movies, accented by news reports, magazines or newspaper accounts.  Most of their historical information comes from film or television, with a slight bit coming from distantly remembered high school texts.  Contemporary knowledge comes from the news, or if they reside in an area of Native population, personal contact and antecdote.  Despite these sources, the average person is woefully ignorant of the subject.  Myths, stereotypes, exaggerations, lies and fiction comprise most of that knowledge.  If this is the case when determining their knowledge of a local and national history where the information is readily available to anyone, how much can they be expected to know or understand about areas, cultures, societies, populations, governments and issues totally foreign to them?
          In ascertaining these facts, it became obvious that fundamental beliefs, no matter how they are acquired, are the most stubborn and tenacious of all our cherished ideals.   When presented with conflicting opinions, events, or evidence people have been shown to unconsciously misperceive or misremember the information and events in support of their previously dominant beliefs.  Stereotypes, bigotry, fanaticism, and other forms of severely biased opinions always originate within the fundamental belief system.
          Fundamental beliefs continue to gather resonance throughout one’s life and come to represent a powerful shared voice within society.   Experiments have been done (Mahoney) where the fundamental beliefs of psychologists were tested by submitting two experiments for review and publication.  The experiments were identical but whereas one corresponded with the prevalent opinion, the other utilized reversed data tables resulting in a less standard result.  Methodically, the experiments were identical, but the one consistent with the generally accepted view was substantially more likely to be published, proving that currently held opinions are always evaluated more favorably than dissenting ones.

         An interesting component of fundamental beliefs is that almost everyone holds contradictory ones.  This happens as new information is evaluated that, though it conflicts with fundamental beliefs, is recognized to have some currently accepted value or truth.  Typically these beliefs are confined and utilized only in a narrow and limited context, but it is possible to find them coming to the front in general opinions.
         The default belief is, of course, the fundamental one, but either may serve to be the one expressed in any given situation.  An example of this might be the commonly held American opinion that politicians are generally evasive, two-faced, untrustworthy, greedy, and manipulative yet those same Americans may accept, without reservation or qualification, a current administration, government, or individual politician’s policies or statements.
This is common in the American population.  A polite conversation might uncover numerous opinions between the those conversing that are in complete agreement, yet those same people may be deeply supportive of opposing political parties whose policies are in direct contradiction to informally agreed upon positions.

         Another necessary element in establishing public consent for the prevailing viewpoint is the establishment of a heirarchy of expertise.  This structure of expertise is necessary to validate specific opinions and give them additional weight to establish the authority of those offering the ideals.  It is the experts who often define the context and structure of discussions examining alternative or dissenting viewpoint around contentious issues.  Experts are almost always the successful and loyal products of some systemic heirarchy, who have a vested interest in the survival and continuation of the institutions which have rewarded them with an identification in support of their authority.  They are neither impartial nor  neutral when it comes to making a decision that rebukes, contradicts, or indicts the institutions and dominant opinions of their profession.
         The vast majority of experts employed by the mass media, the government, or the larger corporate institutions are themselves government officials, former government officials, scientists on the payroll, or members of government or corporately bankrolled think-tanks.  In contrast, the mass media hardly ever portrays dissidents, revolutionaries, demonstrators, or non-mainstream political party candidates as experts, even though their education or experience may far surpass that of those representing the opposition.
          The system of expertise is often used to disenfranchise or disempower the public on contentious issues.   By confining the debate to a narrow technical scope, or by focusing on broad issues the public can be convinced that the problem is beyond their technical, economic, political understanding.  If they can be convinced that the necessary knowledge or information is inaccessible they can be coerced into allowing the “experts” to decide.  If this happens often enough, the public may become disenchanted, passive, lethargic and apathetic regarding larger national and international issues, bowing to whatever interests and powers can sway the Washington bureaucrats and powerbrokers.

        Despite the fact that people can voluntarily be coerced into giving up their right to free information and balanced and fair reporting of issues, most Americans still have a desire to be heard.
        They want to feel as if they have been consulted.  The government knows that it must make every attempt to pacify the public in this regard.  If they are successful and convince the citizens that their opinions are being heard and considered, the citizenry is far more likely to allow the “experts” their day, and go along with government and corporate decisions.
        Of course only a few examples of this consideration need be publicized.  If each senator or congressman answers, or involves themselves in the concerns of citizens a few times a year, the resulting publicity is good enough to convince the public that the system works and the major policy making goes on being made in smoky back rooms by the Power Elite.
        One of the sacred cows of capitalist democracy is that the views of its citizens are heard, considered, and lent power through the election process.  Most Americans realize that elections have very little to do with major decision-making and policy-making, but the illusion of participation and effect is a crucial part of the continued ratification and consent which the American people authorize in the implementation of policies.
        The election “voice” of the American public is limited to a narrow set of options.  Though high school textbooks and political rhetoric extol the virtues of the power of the individual in government,  the system allows virtually no room for consideration of those opinions except where it allows  the acceptance and consent for predominant mainstream views.

          As we mentioned before, film, television, and the visual media have become important tools in influencing and developing national public opinion.  With so many different cultural, ethnic and socially distinct groups voicing the same opinions on so many diverse and unrelated topics, their power is indisputable.
           Fictitious drama, presented as fact, will often fix in the minds of the public certain images that cannot be expelled, even by contradictory facts. American history students often refer to movies they have seen when asked to relate what they know about historical events such as World War Two, the Vietnam conflict, the assassination of JFK, the Apollo Lunar Landing, and many fictitious biographical stories.  They often have misperceptions and false opinions generated by totally fabricated facts and “history”.   Racial and cultural stereotypes are created, changed, and recreated generation to generation.  White hats and black hat change heads.   Revenge and vigilantism in film is romanticized and encourages at least a subconscious disregard for values and principles endorsed publicly, while acting as a surreptitious conduit for consent should the US decide to act unilaterally to play out a good guy, bad guy scenario.  By dehumanizing an adversary, and with a subconscious acceptance that violence can solve anything, Americans have become the most dangerous people on earth.
          With television prevalent now all over the world, life mimics the visual arts.  Many people learn how to react to life’s problems and events through their passive acceptance of what they see on TV.  Subliminal advertising and influence is becoming more subtle and more powerful.  When it comes to influencing the public to give their consent to the policies of mainstream politics and corporate economics, visual media will dominate the future.
 

Headlines:
US Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia US court ruling issued February 19, 2002

       The court struck down outright an FCC regulation that barred cross-ownership of cable systems and local TV stations in the same media market. It voided and sent back for reconsideration by the FCC a regulation limiting television networks to the ownership of local
    TV stations covering no more than 35 percent of the US market.The regulation, called the National Television Station Ownership Rule, has been in place since the 1940s, when television broadcasting began. Its avowed purpose was to “prevent any undue concentration of economic power” in television broadcasting, in large measure because monopoly control of the media was seen as inimical to democracy.  In June 2003, the FCC again expanded the regulations to allow TV, newspapers and radio to intertwine in ownerships and once again corner larger shares of the public airwaves.

More than 50% of all the news Americans get on tv, radio, and print through the commercial media is either filtered through, or provided by, hired consumer relation firms representing the interests of corporate or government entities.  100 billion dollars a year is spent on generating such "news".  Provided free to news hub sources, it is replacing the time honored system of investigative news gathering.  It is produced so as to be indistinguishable from bonifide news reports.  Democracy depends on  honest and critical journalism  to provide our populace with the information to make informed decisions on issues critical to our lives and future.As multi-national corporate interests now control more and more mainstream media outlets, it become easier and easier to "shape" the opinions of the American Public.
 
 

A Murder Of Minds

          If there is one threat to American Indin culture, spirituality, and social life that we have the power to control in our lives, it is the overwhelmingly destructive influence of television.
           Forget for a moment the fact that there is almost no socially redeeming programming that supports, directly or indirectly, Indigenous mores, values, family relationships, or spiritual responsibility.  Forget that Corporate America commercials demand our complete attention and submission to their parasitic consumerism.  Forget that the glossing over of issues that threaten our survival as a species is accomplished through glitz and glamour, and that technology is deified as an unstoppable tsunami carrying us toward a brave new world of peace, plenty, and fun.  Forget all that and just look at the medium, which is the message.
           The power of television to create as commonly accepted soup of thought, culture, and lifestyle has evidenced itself in only a few decades.  The dreams of television's "potential" were overwhelmed by the power of
the corporate and Federal governments (big business and defense), who immediately commandeered the medium into the service of their needs and whims.
          Jerry Mander, an important source for much of the information in the opinions expressed in this, as well as the last essay, makes these points in his book, Four Arguments For The Elimination Of Television, and adds to it his book, In The Absence Of The Sacred.
          TV isolates people in an artificial information environment.  The process of moving edited images through a passive human brain is significantly different than the process of active information gathering.  We become, in essence, non-cognitive receivers.  But television is not static.  It is an aggressive and parasitic mechanism which enters the mind as an external environment and is assimilated to create an internal mental environment.  It is a technological drug, a mechanical methanphetamine that accelerates the nervous system.  With quick changing images, sound effects, and music to enhance emotional involvement, it stimulates an impulse to react to the artificial visual stimulus presented on the small screen.  Since the body and mind recognize that any actual reaction would be inappropriate, the impulse to react is suppressed.  A repetition of this reaction-impulse-suppression results in stored energy.  If the television is turned off, children will often exhibit frantic or disorganized behavior as their nervous systems begin to try to adapt to a slower, less stimulating environment.  Anyone who watches TV regularly experiences an altered reality where time speeds up, dramatization increases emotional reaction, and a return to non-TV environment causes anxiety and/or nervousness.   We become used to these aberrant feelings and find it difficult to remain calm, to read or be taught, to relate to others, or to feel comfortable with nature.  On the other hand, we feel perfectly at ease with forms of advanced technology which encourage speed and provide large amounts of audio or visual stimulus.
        To feel a part of the natural world requires calm, patience, and an acceptance of the pace at which natural events occur.  It is no wonder that TV-raised children sometimes show no interest in oral tradition, in walks, gardening, doing chores, or just playing outside.  Those types of activities do not offer the same immediate and continually changing sensory gratification that TV, video games, and other forms of visual media offer.
          Non-TV kids are forced into creating activity.  They usually go through a cycle of boredom that demands a creative response, to which they find an acceptable outlet.  TV is a mood-altering drug that provides early training in the acceptance of other kinds of escape-oriented drugs.  We believe it is a building block for drug dependency and consumerism.
           TV also homogenizes those who watch it.  They begin to exhibit the same types of thought processes, imagine the same imagery, and experience the same contextual reality.  It represents a type of cultural cloning mechanism that reorganizes family and community life around its own mono-cultural messages and advertising strategies.
           In Indigenous communities, its effects are devastating.  The glamorization of values and behaviors poisonous to Indin morals and ethics is inevitable, as is the constant rhetoric and hype of consumerism.  Cooperation, sharing, and non-materialism are foreign to the corporations that run the networks.
         Here are some of the more visible effects (as outlined by Mander)
that occurred in Northern Indigenous communities only a few months after their first exposure to television.
           People lost interest in hearing and telling the stories of oral tradition that teach the People how to live.
          They were less inclined to speak their own languages, replacing them with English slang.
          Elders lost their position and status due to youth oriented programming and advertising.
          Self-esteem was diminished due to formulas that define beauty in appearance, shape, and form.
          Habits like drinking and smoking were reinforced as romantic and acceptable.
          People visited each other less, and were less communicative.
          Kids didn't play as much, either alone or together.
          Young people began to resent having to do menial and time-consuming chores.
          Children were not as creative and tended to think in TV-like images or relate to TV characters.
          Children became used to sit-and-absorb learning and were not as interested in Native forms of teaching that required repetition to acquire proficiency and retention.
          People began to use the programs they watched as discussion items, especially as it became a central force in their lives.
          People begin imagining that they had the same problems and desires portrayed by the characters they saw on TV.  Eventually that became true.

      One of the most important things we can do for our youth is to
eliminate, or severely curtail, their access to TV.  Indoors--reading, music, artwork, or crafts are the most creative and stimulating physically semi-passive activities we can participate in.  But any activity that causes youths to stimulate their imagination, or create their own outlets for expression, are superior to passive receptive stimulation. Activity is the most desirable state we would hope for our children, be it inside or out.
       Oral tradition is incredibly powerful.  The environment and context of oral tradition stimulates all the senses.  Our old people were our TV, reflecting and presenting the past, present, and future--in an entertaining,
disciplined way.   Through oral tradition we attained intimacy, affection,
and respect.  Children developed their imaginations, their self-identity, and their sense of worth listening to their Ancient Ones relate stories that conveyed the People's Ways in a natural teaching environment.
          In the absence of television we could see significant results in only a few years.  For those of us who cry about solutions being too complex, here's a relatively simple idea.  It is also one that is easy to envision, but difficult to achieve.  Can we live without TV?   If not, how will we live with it?

What We "Know"

         It's time we got real about this world full of experts, expert panels, scientists, studies, etc. How much of our world view is garnered third or fourth hand?  All we really know is what we have experienced personally in our lives.  We can "adopt" facts, information, ideas, theories, and scientific evidence-(gossip)- until the cows come home. Some of it will prove true,  the rest will lie in piles in the pastures.
        This "age of information" could better be called the "age of commercial and intellectual promotions".  There are multi-national promotional firms who will put together a panel of experts to prove anything you want them to. You’ll read it in the newspaper or see it on the evening news-they guarantee it!  Scientists are as susceptible to payoffs for slanted studies as these PR firms.  The race to acquire a place in the limited budgets and grant processes at Universities and Foundations has eliminated the purity and impartiality of studies.
       The "new science" poses a theory and then attempts to prove or disprove it according to an agenda.  "Junk Science" doesn't just exist in fringe environmental groups but permeates every field and issue today.  Why?  Because many years ago it was determined that the broadcast media could shape, alter, and determine public opinion- “reality”.  If you have a reason to “prove” something, you can find an expert to support your cause.
        That's why we all have such firm and unalterable opinions about everything.  And if your ideas don’t match mine, that means your sources must be questionable or less reliable!
        Grandpa Says-“Be skeptical, question everything. Search for someone whose been there. If you don’t know it to be true personally-don’t form an opinion that affects others’ lives. This is especially true in politics, war, economics, and religion.”
 
 
 

 SCIENCE AND PANDORA'S BOX

           The Internet, cloning, gene-splicing, new viruses, robotics and nano-technology--this is the brave new world of the 21st century.  But despite its glossy sheen, our world civilization, and the exported ideologies of progress, industrialization, and technology only serve to hide evidence of a deeper social deterioration.
           We have all the earmarks of a disintegrating culture.  Our entertainment focuses on violence, sex, and death, while our society demands that we attempt to legislate safety and civility, further and further eroding personal freedoms.  Drug testing, gun control, hate crime legislation and feeble environmental protection laws are superficial attempts to regulate a culture going mad--frantically trying to legislate morals, family stability, common values and purpose.
           This is especially irritating to the descendants of those Indigenous Peoples who were assured that the Anglo Saxon Christian "replacements" for Indin culture, spirituality, and social order were superior to our own!
It never fails to amaze us how easily we have gone from understanding our
dependence on, and having a relationship with, the natural world, to putting all our faith and support on the superficially constructed systems of civilization.  Much of this has to do with the short historical perspective people have today, and with the arrogant pride we humans tend to have in our creative ability.  There is also the Roman-influenced Judeo-Christian belief in the superiority of the human being as a species, evidenced by a continuing martial desire to conquer and control our environment.
           It is this childish fascination with being at the center of everything that causes science to imagine our world as a plaything, to be altered and manipulated at will.  Pure scientists play with their advanced technological toys, experimenting with the building blocks of life with an enthusiastic naivity towards discovery, showing no more concern about the result of their actions than a three year-old with Tinkertoys*.  Hunkering outside those laboratories, human vultures enamored of wealth and power have continually played a game of Risk* with those same Tinkertoys* at the expense of the planet and its children.   It is a mistaken view that these scientists, or at least those who fund them, do not have a clear idea of how new technologies may be used and misused.  Governments and corporations who invest millions, or billions, in a new technology have certainly examined all the possibilities, positive and negative, thoroughly.  Yet public debate is swept aside by rhetoric and hype, always putting forth the advantages, and never thoroughly discussing the potential problems.   The ensuing public silence lends a tacit approval to their endeavors.
         To deny the impermanence of any civilization is to deny history, and
to assume that ours will be an exception is pure arrogance.  But the multi-headed monster we have created from curiosity and avarice is not easily controlled.  Our civilization, and especially those who continue to profit by
its development and expansion, rationalize the immoral and destructive by-products of technology under the pretense that our mono-culture of
consumerism represents the ultimate expression of evolution: the final flowering of Man.  Conversely, they continue to represent Native or Indigenous societies as being on a lower rung of the evolutionary ladder; obsolete and stubbornly in-the-way.  Though everyone seems to take their claims at face value, we know, through the words of our ancestors, that our "primitive" Peoples lived well, had little want and a significant amount of leisure time.
        Every new discovery and advancement is publicized as evidence of that superiority.   The media have become complicit in the struggle to convince everyone that technology is always good and that each new discovery that aids healing, decreases labor, improves safety or drives the engine of economic growth is simply another step toward a world of complete safety, comfort, ease, luxury and immortality.  Just as the world at the beginning of the previous century prophesized a technological and scientific utopia without hunger, sickness, or want--today's corporate, or government giants will everyone to believe that science will solve every problem, especially those it creates along the way.  The final myth put forward regarding technology is that it is the Switzerland of progress, where the agenda is apolitical and in-service to mankind.  In reality, those who pay for the research and development of technological advances (and this includes many of the research scientists themselves) do have personal or corporate agendas-social, political, economic, and otherwise.  They know exactly which direction their "developments" will push society at large, and individuals in particular.
         The complexities of greater technological advancement will demand that society and civilization contract and centralize.  To "protect" public safety and potentially harmful use of new technologies (and investments), police and military control must become more invasive and nationally, or internationally, controlled.
          Indigenous People never talked a lot about freedom but our inherently democratic forms of government, centered around community controlled economics and environmental harmony, supported, without reservation, individual freedoms.   By contrast, those that speak for progress and technology propagandize about freedoms while actually promoting a consumer driven mono-cultural sterility.  That sterility will eventually allow those who direct the consumer culture to require an autocratic centralization of every aspect of culture, society and politics.
         Until the mistakes and miscalculations of our culture of waste and irresponsible technological growth compound to take new and horrendous tolls on our species or our world, science will continue to delve recklessly into projects civilization is ill-prepared to utilize or control.  And those who live for no other reason than to horde wealth and power will continue to take those projects and loose them upon us.
         Here is an all-too-real example.  In July of 2000, scientists tinkering with a newly developed soy hybrid found that they had created a by-product fungus which had the potential to wipe out ninety-eight percent of the world's soybean crop and potentially devastate the entire world's plant life and ecological balance. Then, only ten months later, they created a solution.  Zovirex-10 kills the fungus dead!  Unfortunately some scientists claim that if Zovirex-10 were to seep into the groundwater, it would kill off seventy percent of fish and aquatic plant life, poison thirty-five percent of the human population, and raise the temperature of the sea by seven degrees!
       Dr. Nathan Oberst, Texas A&M Mad Scientist responsible for the cure, made these enlightening comments.  "It may seem dangerous to tinker with nature without knowing the long-term effects, but without the threat of environmental disaster caused by the short-sighted unbalancing of natural forces, how are we to bring about positive change in the world around us?"
      Oberst downplayed the dangers of Zovirex-10 saying, "If this is true, it shouldn't be thought of as a disaster," he said. "Modern science has a long, proven track record of correcting the mistakes it inadvertently unleashes on the world. I'm confident that if the worst ever came to pass, science would find some way to fix it. That's what science does."
      According to Oberst, flawed and dangerous technological advances have helped broaden understanding in all fields of science.  "Just think about the hydrogen bomb, not only was it a tremendous breakthrough in physics, it broadened our knowledge of everything from radiation containment to bomb-shelter construction to hair loss. Science has been coming up with breakthrough after breakthrough to fix the problems that the H-bomb has created. (Except for radioactive waste by-products.--Authors) Without the H-bomb, we would know significantly less about the potential problems associated with the H-bomb."
       He finished with this bolt of lightning.
       "People shouldn't see man-made global disasters as a bad thing. They should see them as scientific breakthroughs waiting to happen."
       We have to find a way to make our objections public, and to challenge the belief that technology is a rollercoaster that cannot be stopped.  We know there are alternatives to the insanity of the point of view expressed above.  The average human being has a better grasp of reality than many of our most creative scientists.  But the average man-on-the-street, and certainly the average Indin, does not believe that voicing their opinion will do much good.  It will require a significant amount of political power to restrain science from its headlong rush toward oblivion, as it might also require a significant amount of individual sacrifice and discomfort for us to learn to live again in a world shifting gears toward a more natural way of life.
 

Science
Aldous Huxley

Contemporary science is presently destroying the very myths that have defined traditional science.  Much of traditional science has sought to find theorums which reduce multiplicity to unity.  Common sense tells us that there are common denominators everywhere, but it is the incredible diversity of creation that stimulates our curiosity.  The "Will To Order" seems to be a process that, while not completely Western in origin, seems to be a primary driving force in contempory civilization.  In science, art, and philosophy, this "will to order" is largely benevolent, except where it entrenches itself in dogma supportive of fanatic notions created and developed in the rich and fertile areas of the human mind.  The "will to order" has proved infinitely more dangerous in the realms of politics, economics, social order and fundamental theology.
 

The Common Thread
John Sulston  2002 Joseph Henry Press Wash, DC

Quotes by Nobel Prize winner John Sulston on the state of science, government and corporate capitalism.

The DNA of an onion looks exactly the same and that of a human being. From a chemical point of view it is exactly the same type of molecule. DNA is the common thread that links every living thing.  (editor--Taken to an even deeper level, every form on the earth is composed of similar elements.  Exactly the same elements form the rock, the water, and the human. The same liquids, metals and minerals, in different proportions, tie Creation together.)

"It brought home to me forcefully that the strength of the industrial lobby in Washington means that no public servant can make statements that imply criticism of a commercial company"
 

"What I found...was that nobody knew what was going on--or didn't believe it.  And I reflected on the power of of public relations.  Those who can afford expensive PR usually get their way--or at least, exert influence beyond what is justified.  Once a point of view has taken hold in the public imagination, it's extremely hard to offset it."

"The commercial and competetive pressures on academics today are alarming.  And if academics are not independent, who will be society's impartial experts?"

"It was not, as I fondly imagined at the beginning, simply a matter of sequencing the human genome and making the data available.  This was naive. I'd thought of the Human Genome Project as being unclutter and altruistic activity, but found instead that others viewed it as a stepping stone on the route to commercial profit or political power.."

"I was forced to realize that in our society one can get into trouble for giving away something that can make money. I began to notice parallet tragedies unfolding...."

"The big transnational corporations are now more powerful than many governments.  Their strength is apparent everywhere we turn, and especially in their collective lobbying in the capitals of rich nations.  Maybe we're moving towards a world where national governments, elected or otherwise, no longer count.  The warning signs are there."

"We are often told that the enterprise of science pays too little attention to the consequences of its discoveries and the concerns of society.  Should scientists see themselves as part of a worldwide non-governmental organization?"  This international fellowship is threatened when people try to walk both sides of the line, mingling scientific contribution with profit-making activity.  The two do not mix well.

"The truth is that companies don't have to behave ethically... In our overly PR-conscious society there is little questioning of a smooth presentation.
Half truth that is branded with a recognized name and laminated to cover the cracks is rated more highly than unvarnished fact."  In the commercial world this is absolutely necessary to maximize their profits.  Individual selfishness is held up as the best way to advance civilization.  Through the process of globalization these beliefs are being exported to the world as a whole, making it not only less just, but less safe.  Nations, too, are unable to take sensible collective decisions when the only rules we know for bargaining are those of competitive greed.  That same greed nearly succeeded in privatizing the human genome, and remains a threat to it.
 
 
  The press, radio, (television), and cinema are an indifferent power, serving as often as a weapon for dictators as it does an indespensible tool in the survival of democracy.  Outlets for the free expression of opinion must also bear the costs of competition and profitability in democratic environments, coming under an economic censorship that is, in effect, as limiting as the political censorship endured under totalitarian regimes.
          Another significant realization, unfamiliar in Jefferson's time, was that there exists a third type of propaganda--one which indulges neither truth nor falsehood but operates specifically to enhance the unreal and the irrelevant.
          This is the media of distraction.  Prior to the evolution of mass media, the distractions of everyday life were limited to special events and holidays, or Holy Days.  Books were not plentiful and literacy uncommon.  To find a western society as distracted as today's, one must return to Rome in its glory days--however even those times did not offer the nonstop proliferation of irrelevant information and demanding distractions offered by the contemporary multi-media world.
 Like the social distractions utilized in Huxley's book, (feelies,etc.), media critics say that this media overload, however innocently it may have come about, is being used as instruments of policy for the purpose of preventing
people from paying too much attention to the realities of social and political situations all over the globe, but particularly in the highly mechanized, highly technological countries.

Entertainment and religion are similar in their ability to distract people from the realities of day to day life.

"A society, most of whose members spend a great part of their time, not on the spot, not here and now and in the calculable future, but somewhere else, in the irrelevant other worlds of sports and soap opera, of mythology and metaphysical fantasy, will find it hard to resist the encroachments of those who manipulate and control it."

 THE ORIGINS OF SCIENCE AND DISCOVERY
Plagarized from Dick Teresi’s book, Lost Discoveries*

          The myth that science is almost entirely Western in origin, is now being exploded by real historians.  By western here, we mean Europe, Greece and Post Colombian North America.  The myth, originating in Germany, is just part of the Euro-centric glamorization of accomplishments which has consumed American society since the middle of the 19th century.
       Generally it is believed that science originated in Greece about 600-146 BC, when the Greeks gave it over to the Romans and it hibernated until the Renaissance in Europe, circa 1500.  This is known as the “Greek Miracle”.
The belief that Peoples from India, Egypt, Mesopotamia, sub-Saharan Africa, China, The Americas, and elsewhere developed fire and then sat around twiddling their thumbs, waiting for Greek magicians to conjure up modern science ranks up there with the tooth fairy.
       Equally astonishing is the belief that no science was conducted from the Greek end to the time of Copernicus-a mere 1500 years.
       The only concession to non-European cultures was a patronizing credit to Islam, which made them the scribes, translators, and caretakers who kept science alive until it was rediscovered by its rightful heirs.
       Western science is what it is because it is built upon the best ideas, data, and equipment from other cultures.
       The Greeks openly acknowledged that their culture had arisen from the result of Egyptian colonization.  Europeans, during the renaissance, accepted that Egypt was the cradle of civilization until the 18th century, when Christians began worrying about the influences of Egyptian pantheism.  The first Aryan racists-Locke, Hume, and others--created their Aryan model in the first half of the 19th century.  They rewrote history to deny the existence of the Egyptian settlements, and as anti-semitism grew, further denied Phoenician cultural influences.  The passing of time refined the Aryan model to establish Greece as distinctly European.  If one wishes to return to a truthful historical perspective, it is only necessary to read, in the Greek, Herodotus and other ancient Greeks.
      This myth has never been stronger than today.  Of the 96 most important scientific achievements in recorded history, noted Science magazine, (1-14-2000), only two were attributed to non-white, non-western scientists!  The first was the invention of zero in India, and the astronomical evaluations of the Maya and Hindus, AD 1000.   The Indians were only given credit for discerning the symbol, rather than the concept of zero.  The Mayans and Hindus were stripped of scientific status by the assertion that their find was for agricultural and religious purposes only.
      Science proclaimed that “Prior to 600 BC…phenomena were explained within the context of magic, religion and experiences, ignoring two thousand years of discovery during which time, among other sciences,
                Babylonians invented the abacus and algebra,
                Sumerians recorded the phases of Venus,
                Indians proposed atomic theory,
                Chinese invented quantitative chemical analysis, and
                Egyptians constructed the Pyramids utilizing significant and highly advanced systems of geometry and mathematical accuracy.

       Francis Bacon said that three inventions marked the beginning of the modern world.  All three-gunpowder, the magnetic compass, and paper and printing-came from China!
       At the time that Science gave Guttenberg credit for the invention of the printing press, Chinese and Korean publishers had been using their machines for two centuries and some Chinese collectors had as many as 50,000 volumes in their collections.
        Even Bacon himself wrote that inventions from China created the Modern World.  Aristotle credited Egypt with developing the mathematical sciences.
        Western scholars, eager to preserve their pre-supposed scientific dominance have consistently changed the rules when faced with the tide of undeniable evidence.  Indian physics, they insist, is meaningless because, though accurate, it was abstract with no empirical date.  Then they turn right around and insist that the Babylonian and Egyptian scientists, who used their discoveries, were simply to be considered unsophisticated craftsmen.
        As time passes however, Western science has been forced to make acknowledgements of correction in its propaganda.  Western scholars once refused to accept that ancient Black Ethiopians had a number system, asserting they were too primitive and unsophisticated. (That word again!)
When ancient letters to Greeks from Ethiopians were closely examined by modern chemical techniques it was discovered that the specific inks used were distinctly African in origin.
       Mathematics and physics are an excellent place to start. Here are some miscellaneous facts:
                  Indians, Babylonians, and Egyptians used Pythagorean triplets to establish right angles in their construction,
                  Babylonians developed a place value system and the Pythagorean Theorum fifteen hundred years before Pythagorus.
                  Mesopotamians kept extensive tables of squares in 2000 BC.
                  In China, Li Hui calculated the value for Pi in 200 AD.  Fu His’s diagrams correspond to Liebnix’s binary mode of arithmetic.
                  Algebra is an Arabic word meaning “compulsion”, compelling the unknown, “X”, to a numerical value.  They also developed decimal fractions.
                    The Egyptians were familiar with Pi and could calculate the volume of a cylinder long before the Greeks.  They also developed the concept of the lowest common denominator and a fractions table that required 28,000 calculations to compile.
                    The Hindu Rig-Veda asserted the law of gravity twenty-four centuries before Isaac Newton.  The Gwailor Numerals 0-9 were invented in India 500 AD.  Indians had basic mathematics, algebra, indices, logarithms,  trigonometry, and a nascent forms of calculus centuries before Liebniz.  Indians calculated the Earth’s age as 4.3 billion years in 500 AD, a number that wasn’t arrived at in the modern world until the twentieth century.  Indians and Mayans developed zero and negative numbers a thousand years before Europeans.  Indians understood that the sun was at the center of the solar system and gravity held the solar system together two centuries before Pythagorus. Arabic numerals were first developed in India.
                   Ibn al Shartir (1350AD) was responsible for writing down two important theorums discovered by other Muslims which allowed Copernicus to revolutionize astronomy by repairing the flawed mathematics of the Ptolemaic systems.  One theorum was devised by Nasir al Din al Tusi and the other by Muayyad al Din al Urdi.  Copernicous avoided crediting them because Muslims were not popular in 11th Century Europe.  The new math of the Copernicus Revolution began in Islamic, not Europeans minds.
                   Sumerians used sophisticated algebraic expressions to solve problems of food distribution and supplies in 1800 BC.
 

       No where is there more phony information than in the area of technology.  The wheel, the stirrup, moveable type and metallurgy all came from lands foreign to Europe.  Sumerians started a textile industry working wool into cloth, and flax into linen.  They had a modern canal irrigation system.  The first freestanding glass was produced around 2500 BC in both Mesopotamia and Egypt.  The Sumerians began writing around 3500 BC.  Their tablets record poetry, lullabys, records of property, animals, medicinal plants, astronomical events and account ledgers.  They devised a standard of weights for business and ran a huge import/export system by land and sea. In 300 BC their architecture was both sophisticated (hah!) and enduring.  Some of their structures exist today.  The Hittites smelted iron and developed gear and axle military machines in 1600 BC.  Assyrians built roads and had an effective postal system in 700 BC.  Nebuchaneezer, the Babylonian King, built the Hanging Gardens Of Babylon.  The roof had a base of lead covered with brick and asphalt.  The garden was watered by screwlike lifts which brought up water from the Euphrates 700 years before Archimedes.  Floating water mills and turban wheels with mounted millstones were used throughout EurAsia, Europe didn’t have anything similar until the mid-12th century.
        One of the common criticisms of these types of accounts is that they were discoveries simply related to necessity, and did not reflect a purposeful attempt to advance civilization through scientific discovery.  Yet while Europe was in the Dark Ages, the Islamic middle east had advanced engineering technologies and encourage pure science that was responsible for the development of mirrors, incremental weights, surveying, hydraulics, military technology and navigation.  Devises for providing hot and cold running water, dredging, oil lamps, elaborate fountains, suction pipes and the earliest use of a crank as part of a machine were all credited to the Banu Musa brothers.
         Many of the basic building blocks of European technology originated in the Middle Eastern river valleys civilizations.  Islam's central location between Europe, Africa, and Asia allowed it to acquire Indian and Chinese inventions as well as improve on Egyptian/Greek technology.
          Much has been made of the fact that while the Native Americas had a number of advanced civilizations, Mississippian, Mayan, Olmec, Toltec, Incan and Azteca-none of them developed the wheel.  Of course it is hardly mentioned that there were no domestic animals capable of pulling such a vehicle!  Yet they were the worlds greatest crop cultivators and plant breeders.  The agricultural impact of the Americas on Europe was enormous and the crops were considered miraculous.  Three fifths of the worlds agricultural crops were first cultivated in the Americas.  Europeans, used to famine and hunger, were overwhelmed by the variety of plants available to them.  Meso-American agricultural strategies supported a pre-disease conquest population of 8-10 million people in the Mayan lowlands alone.  Cities of 20,000-50,000 were common throughout both North and South America, much larger than corresponding settlements in Europe at the time.
Between 450-650 AD, Teotihuacan had between 150,000-300,000 citizens and was among a handful of the largest cities in the world.

        Among the Maya, writing and books complimented their complex calendar system of astronomical events and sophisticated mathematical computations.
         Cortes took Aztec ballplayers to Europe in 1528.  The Toltec-Maya Ball Court has walls 27 feet high.  The playing field is 181 yards long and 75 yards wide.  The acoustics of the stadium are so perfect that one can clearly hear a whisper voiced from one end to the other, almost two football fields away
         Vulcanization of rubber was achieved by 1600, 239 years before Goodyear.  In analyzing the raw latex and vine juice used traditionally, nuclear magnetic resonance spectography revealed unidentified plasticizers had somehow been eliminated in the process allowing the natural polymers to link, a process exactly the same as the one utilized today.   This allowed rubber with specific elasticities to be created by the Olmecs, Aztecs, and Mayans.  There was solid rubber, hollow rubber, rubber bands of all sizes, shapes, widths and thickness.
         They also had obsidian blades, which microscopic examinations reveal to have been the sharpest blades in the world, sharper than modern surgical steel.  Modern surgeons are just now beginning to experiment with obsidian scalpels.
         The Incan road system is 12,000 miles long and comparable only to the Romans as a pre-modern transportation network.  Also, Andean farmers were the first to freeze dry vegetables, freeze drying potatoes.
          Imagine the reaction of the Aztec’s, already familiar with the use of antibiotics, watching the Spaniards praying and pouring hot oil on their wounds!
          Indigenous South America also recognized quinine as a cure for malaria.  15% of the total plant life on earth exists in the Amazon Basin. 16,000 species have been identified as being used by the Indigenous Peoples for their healing properties.  Stimulants, purgatives, and even monoamine oxidase inhibitors were known.  Medicines were used as muscle relaxants, anestheics, fever reducers, as well as for mental illness, fungal infections, nervousness, menstrual aids, and external healing.  Even today’s search for medicines for AIDS have yielded greater results when searchers consulted knowledgeable Medicine People first.  It is now acknowledged that the state of Pre-Columbian medicine was significantly more advanced in the Americans than in Europe at the time and life expectancy was significantly longer.

          China was a treasure trove of invention.  In addition to those inventions and technologies previously mentioned, the Chinese first developed cast iron, porcelain, ship sternpost rudders, canal lock gates, horse stirrups and harnesses, fishing reels, hot air balloons, the seismograph, whiskey, gimbals, umbrellas, crank handles, kites, mechanical clocks, sprocket chains and chain drives, paper money, the iron plow and the seed drill.
         In 1040, the first Chinese formulae for gunpowder was published and used in making incendiary arrows, bullets, catapult bombs, and hand grenades.  Later, the flame thrower or fire-spear was developed.  In 1288, iron barrels utilizing high nitrate gunpowder and projectiles were developed.  The Chinese went on to make guns that shot lead balls the size of coins, led pellets, flames and poison.  36 barrel “cartwheel” guns, mortars and bombs followed soon thereafter.  By the mid-1200’s poison bombs, gas, and fire-oil were created and by 1277 they created land mines.
         These devices began to trickle into Europe by 1300, and the revolution of Knights, brought about by European importation of the Chinese stirrup, were soon being blown to bits by gunpowder and its byproducts.
          Metallurgy and metal manufacturing were a major part of the Chinese military instititution.  The Sung’s "million man army" almost literally ate up iron and steel.
         The Bessemer process of refining steel products was preceeded by William Kelly’s bringing four Chinese steel experts to Kentucky in 1845.  They taught him the process they had used for 2000 years.  The Hau Nan Tzu, published in 120 BC, described the process of removing carbon from cast iron by blowing oxygen on it, a technique surprisingly similar to Bessemer’s “discovery”.  The Chinese also used the Siemens process in 500 AD-it was called the Ch’iwu Huai Wen process.
          As early as the first century AD they constructed suspension bridges, using chains of wrought iron.  It was 1809 before a similar one was created in the west.
         The first completely printed book was completed in China in 868 AD. The Chinese made large print runs for ordinary books, even calendars and horoscopes.  Having been writing since 2000 BC, the oldest Chinese paper is from Shensi Provence and was made between 140 and 87 BC.  It was created from pounded hemp.  The Chinese used paper for clothing, shoes, and toilet paper (which amazed Europeans).  Paper reached India by 700 AD and Islamic Nations by 800 AD.  The Arabs jealously guarded the secret for a time, selling Europeans paper at a hefty profit.  It was the Italians who finally brought paper manufacturing to Europe in the 13th Century.
         When Guttenberg first set his Bible to print, Chinese libraries already held editions of books over 550 years old.
          The Chinese were also responsible for maritime advances, inventing fore and aft rigging, the lateen sail, the sternpost rudder, and watertight bulkheads.  While Columbus was trying to get support for his adventure, Chen Ho sent to India and East Africa fleets of Chinese vessels armed with cannons and manned by many thousands of sailors and passengers.  Were it not for the eurocentric nature of our history, Chen Ho might be regarded as the first and greatest of the maritime explorers.
The Chinese had toothpaste at a time when Europeans barely had teeth!  Mathematics and astronomical calculations were also known in China.  Liu Hui calculated the value of Pi in 200 AD.  Eclipses were recorded and dated as far back as 1400-1200 BC.  4th Century Chinese (as well as 13th Century Arabs) recognized the use of fossils to study history while 17th Century Oxford faculty members taught that fossils were false clues left by the Devil to deceive man.  The K’ao Kung Chi, in 1100 BC, set down quantitative chemical analysis not more than 5% off from modern day analysis.  Mohist physicists set down the law of motion in 300 BC, 2000 years before Newton.  The Shu-Ching, 2700 BC, stated that matter was composed of distinct and separate elements 1700 years before Empedocles.  It also hypothesized that sun beams were comprised of particles, a hypothesis later put forward by Einstein and Planc.  The creation stories of Egypt, India and China all began with a “Big Bang”.  In 500 BC, the Chinese developed their first antibiotic-from soybean curd.  Chinese alchemists were empiracally familiar with the conservation of mass 1500 years before Lavoisier.  Wei Po Yang’s Unification Of Three Principles, written around 140 AD, describes an experiment similar to the cinnabar-mercury-sulfur reaction.  But it was the vessel described that was important.  It is used for melting and subliming different metals and is, at once, similar and more complex than Lavoisier’s pelican.

           Advanced technologies are not the sole property of today’s modern civilization.  Even in 3000 BC, a large technologically advanced civilization existed in India.  Well organized cities utilized terra cotta ceramics and exhibited a huge trade industry.  Uniform buildings had hidden drains, toilets, sewers, bathing rooms in each house, municipal drainage systems featured earthenware drain pipes joined with asphalt.
           Accounts of Conquistadors in the early 1500 Americas described their amazement at the variety of types of spun and woven cloth, the plumbing, sewers, running water, individual housing, huge open markets-offering foods from a thousand miles distant, clean streets, village flower gardens and the preponderance of free time the people seemed to have for family, music, artistry and craftsmanship, ceremony, dance, and gaming.
           Indeed advanced civilizations have occurred time and time again throughout recorded and unrecorded history.  As more and more exploration of the ocean floor is undertaken, we are certain many more civilizations will be discovered that may challenge our ideas of even our present state of advancement.  One fact should be obvious-the present state of scientific and technological advancement owes its successes, not to a few European Greeks, Italians, Germans, English, Spanish and French inventors, scientists, and mathematicians, but to a legion of minds that encompass the Earth.
           It is not science, math, technology, industry, and invention that represent the significance of the European contribution.   Rather, it is the unintended consequences of colonialism, militarism, a huge slave trade and access to new areas of rich natural resources that allowed the concept of progress to develop industrially and technologically to advance the modern methods of science to enhance and serve the goals of profit and power.