The Philosophy of Obedience
Catherine O’Driscoll
There was an interesting documentary on TV a few years ago in the UK. It was presented by Sheena McDonald and described the five steps required for tyranny to take place. Tyranny is described in the dictionary as, “absolute power cruelly administered; oppression; cruelty”. The programme could just as easily have been described as the way in which those in authority over us, or who wish to influence us, exercise mind control over us - and how we let them!
We are living in tyranny if we are not allowed to think and act for ourselves. If we are coerced into following veterinary procedures because a man in a white coat told us to do it; and if we feed biologically inappropriate food simply because the people selling the food have £millions to spend on advertising, then we are living in tyranny.
Step 1 to Tyranny: Us and Them.
(myth: vets are superior to other human beings)
This step involves the creation of divisions in society. An academic on the programme experimented with this for many years. She told the children in her classes that people with blue eyes were superior to people with brown eyes, and watched the children respond to this information. The blue-eyed pupils treated the brown-eyed pupils extremely cruelly. The brown eyes believed they were inferior and got very upset. It’s amazing how the human mind can lead us astray. We think something is true, and we act on it with utter conviction - and yet the mind can be so wrong. (The heart, however, is far more reliable an indicator.)
I have watched several groups of professional people fall under the spell of the 'Us and Them' myth. I socialised, for example, with a group of people who were solicitors and barristers. It seemed to me that the wigs and gowns, and grand balls and back-slapping ceremonies were designed to ensure that the lawyers felt superior to 'them' - the ordinary public.
Vets are the same, I'm afraid. Vets routinely bash their clients on the basis that we are ‘Them’ (those who know nothing) and vets are ‘Us’ (members of an elite group whose word is to be taken without question. According to most vets, dog owners are uneducated, and the observations and experiences we have with regard to raising healthy dogs should not be listened to.
The Us and Them myth is also why pharmaceutical and pet food companies give so much money to veterinary and medical teaching establishments. This makes commerce 'Us'; they are welcomed with open arms, and consequently become so much more believable.
Step 2 to Tyranny: Obey Orders
(myth: you cannot/ must not use your knowledge to help your dogs. If you do, you fall foul of the Veterinary Surgeons Act.)
The programme explained that every society needs the majority of the people to follow the rules. But where are the boundaries to that obedience? An interesting experiment was shown, where an apparently healthy looking young man went through a train asking people to give him their seat. 50% of the people complied. The young man then went through the train with a man in a uniform, again asking people to give up their seats. 100% of people complied. The presenter explained that people can be made to act by figures in authority - without asking why.
A man in a white coat tells us to vaccinate our dogs every year. We rarely ask why . . . until our dog dies. ‘They’ know better than us . . . until we realise they don’t.
All over the world there are examples of blind obedience leading to human rights abuses. A scientist on Sheena McDonald’s programme said, "Over the course of human history, there have been more crimes committed in the name of obedience than have been committed in the name of disobedience".
When your dog is killed by a vaccine, or infected with arthritis, epilepsy, cancer or any of a number of immune-mediated vaccine-induced diseases, why is it that ‘those who know better than us’ and exerted pressure on us to obey their orders, never pick up the tab, or admit responsibility unless forced?
Step 3 to Tyranny: Dehumanise the Enemy
(myth: animals are less than human)
Rwanda was cited as an example on the programme. Here, a popular radio station started saying that members of the Tutsi tribe were less than human. They were cannibals, etc. There was a flow of dehumanising language from the radio about the Tutsis.
People were then asked to obey an authority to take actions against their conscience. Those who were not Tutsi began to attack Tutsis. Indeed, they were urged to attack the Tutsis by the country’s leadership. If the leader says he will be responsible, apparently nice human beings experience relief that they will not be blamed for their actions, and are capable of committing atrocious acts. If they are ‘Them’, and you are obeying orders, and ‘they’ are less than human, it is easier to close your eyes and not feel the pain of the victim.
The famous electric shock experiment was recounted on the programme. Here, members of the public were invited by men in white coats to take part in an experiment. A man was asked questions and given an electric shock when he got the answer wrong. Members of the public administered the shocks, which got more powerful with each successive wrong answer. The 'victim' screamed louder and louder - but because the man in the white coat told the members of the public to continue, they invariably did. (The victim was an actor - he would have died if the experiment was for real.)
The presenter explained that we need an ideology to make people believe that what we are being asked to do makes sense. (A man in a white coat tells you it's for experimental purposes, to help humanity.... so you administer the shock.)
Quote from the programme: "Evil starts with very small steps and increases in small increments. It's easier to harm others if they are seen as less than human.” Research has shown that veterinary students arrive in college as animal lovers but as their years in college progress, they become more and more desensitised to the sentience of animals. Veterinary training makes animals objects.
Vets are able to vaccinate annually, despite the evidence of harm caused by this, because they are following several ideologies:
a) They know more than us. (Us and Them)
b) They have been taught to respect the establishment that trained them (which is reliant upon commercial funding), and to disrespect the clients and animals they serve, as well as any healing modality that does not follow the conventional model.
C) A vaccine ideology: some must suffer to protect the whole (‘only a tiny minority of dogs suffer adverse vaccine reactions’).
‘If the leader says he will be responsible, apparently nice human beings experience relief that they will not be blamed for that action.’ This is precisely why vets will vaccinate annually: they will be protected by their governing body if it goes wrong. It is also why so few homoeopathic vets have stopped vaccinating - because they are on their own if they don’t vaccinate and it goes wrong. It also explains why conventional science accepts that ‘some’ suffer adverse reactions, but has taken no steps whatsoever to adequately quantify how many ‘some’ stands for.
Step 4 to Tyranny: Bystander or Dissenter?
(myth: you are not a nice person if you speak out to protect your animals)
A scientist on the programme said, "Gross abuses of human rights only occur in the context of relative silence". Freedom of speech is the cornerstone of every civilised society. A tyrannous regime oppresses the dissenter. This is why complementary healthcare professionals have such a hard time, and why only a few brave men and women have had the courage to speak out.
What of the vets who know that vaccines are harmful and keep silent? What of the immunologists and virologists in our teaching establishments who know the truth but keep their mouths shut for fear of losing their careers and the college’s commercial sponsorship? What of the people who know that pet food is harmful and keep silent?
According to the programme, being a bystander is one of the most essential ingredients to maintaining a tyranny. Quote: "If enough people say no, this is wrong, regimes can be brought into line".
Quote: "When people feel they have some kind of relationship to a stranger, they are more likely to help them".
Quote: "It's when people don't get involved when they see any kind of injustice, that the injustice is allowed to continue".
Are you a bystander? Or do you get involved?
Step 5 to Tyranny: Exterminate
(myth: annual vaccination is necessary and safe)
Once steps 1, 2, 3 and 4 are in place, it is but a short distance to Step 5. Quote: "The ability of ordinary people to do evil acts is part of our psychology". Quote from a Rwandan: "Crimes were committed against us by our neighbours, teachers, school mates".
If a dog is killed by a vaccine, the owners are rarely told. If a child is killed by a vaccine, the parents are rarely told. So great is the disaster, that the blame is often attributed to the victim: it’s the parent’s fault; the breeder’s fault, the dog owner’s fault.
Laws are supposed to be made by the people for the protection of the people. But where are the people? They are mostly keeping silent and allowing those with vested interests to make or influence the laws.
Five Steps to Freedom:
1. Understand that there is no Us and Them. We are all one. God made man, and he made the animals - we come in all shapes and sizes but we are all children of God. You don’t need to have a University degree to be able to understand the truth.
2. Take responsibility. Do not obey orders just because someone in authority tells you to do it. Think.
3. Understand that no-one is less than human. Our animals have taught us that they have thoughts, feelings, emotions, souls. This is why they are so dangerous to those who would tyrannise us. When you understand that even an animal is a sentient being, then you cannot dehumanise another human being.
4. Do not be a bystander. Speak out. Foster relationship with strangers. If you see injustice, act. Don't be frightened - it doesn't hurt. (Well it does a little, but it hurts more to be silent.) "All it takes for evil to thrive is that good men and women do nothing".
5. Practice harmlessness. Refuse to harm another living being, irrespective of any ideology that appears to support you causing harm.
Unless we consciously take these five steps to freedom, there is nothing to distinguish us from the people who, given different circumstances, attacked their neighbours, built concentration camps, or allowed tyrannical regimes to flourish. We have to get involved.
You see, it isn’t enough to protect ourselves and our dogs . . . these words could not be read without the paper they rest on, and we cannot exist without the environment we inhabit. Our dogs, the trees, someone else’s child, you . . . we are simply cells in the body of our planet. We all need each other to survive.
Back to:
Complementary Healthcare
A to Z
Catherine O’Driscoll
There was an interesting documentary on TV a few years ago in the UK. It was presented by Sheena McDonald and described the five steps required for tyranny to take place. Tyranny is described in the dictionary as, “absolute power cruelly administered; oppression; cruelty”. The programme could just as easily have been described as the way in which those in authority over us, or who wish to influence us, exercise mind control over us - and how we let them!
We are living in tyranny if we are not allowed to think and act for ourselves. If we are coerced into following veterinary procedures because a man in a white coat told us to do it; and if we feed biologically inappropriate food simply because the people selling the food have £millions to spend on advertising, then we are living in tyranny.
Step 1 to Tyranny: Us and Them.
(myth: vets are superior to other human beings)
This step involves the creation of divisions in society. An academic on the programme experimented with this for many years. She told the children in her classes that people with blue eyes were superior to people with brown eyes, and watched the children respond to this information. The blue-eyed pupils treated the brown-eyed pupils extremely cruelly. The brown eyes believed they were inferior and got very upset. It’s amazing how the human mind can lead us astray. We think something is true, and we act on it with utter conviction - and yet the mind can be so wrong. (The heart, however, is far more reliable an indicator.)
I have watched several groups of professional people fall under the spell of the 'Us and Them' myth. I socialised, for example, with a group of people who were solicitors and barristers. It seemed to me that the wigs and gowns, and grand balls and back-slapping ceremonies were designed to ensure that the lawyers felt superior to 'them' - the ordinary public.
Vets are the same, I'm afraid. Vets routinely bash their clients on the basis that we are ‘Them’ (those who know nothing) and vets are ‘Us’ (members of an elite group whose word is to be taken without question. According to most vets, dog owners are uneducated, and the observations and experiences we have with regard to raising healthy dogs should not be listened to.
The Us and Them myth is also why pharmaceutical and pet food companies give so much money to veterinary and medical teaching establishments. This makes commerce 'Us'; they are welcomed with open arms, and consequently become so much more believable.
Step 2 to Tyranny: Obey Orders
(myth: you cannot/ must not use your knowledge to help your dogs. If you do, you fall foul of the Veterinary Surgeons Act.)
The programme explained that every society needs the majority of the people to follow the rules. But where are the boundaries to that obedience? An interesting experiment was shown, where an apparently healthy looking young man went through a train asking people to give him their seat. 50% of the people complied. The young man then went through the train with a man in a uniform, again asking people to give up their seats. 100% of people complied. The presenter explained that people can be made to act by figures in authority - without asking why.
A man in a white coat tells us to vaccinate our dogs every year. We rarely ask why . . . until our dog dies. ‘They’ know better than us . . . until we realise they don’t.
All over the world there are examples of blind obedience leading to human rights abuses. A scientist on Sheena McDonald’s programme said, "Over the course of human history, there have been more crimes committed in the name of obedience than have been committed in the name of disobedience".
When your dog is killed by a vaccine, or infected with arthritis, epilepsy, cancer or any of a number of immune-mediated vaccine-induced diseases, why is it that ‘those who know better than us’ and exerted pressure on us to obey their orders, never pick up the tab, or admit responsibility unless forced?
Step 3 to Tyranny: Dehumanise the Enemy
(myth: animals are less than human)
Rwanda was cited as an example on the programme. Here, a popular radio station started saying that members of the Tutsi tribe were less than human. They were cannibals, etc. There was a flow of dehumanising language from the radio about the Tutsis.
People were then asked to obey an authority to take actions against their conscience. Those who were not Tutsi began to attack Tutsis. Indeed, they were urged to attack the Tutsis by the country’s leadership. If the leader says he will be responsible, apparently nice human beings experience relief that they will not be blamed for their actions, and are capable of committing atrocious acts. If they are ‘Them’, and you are obeying orders, and ‘they’ are less than human, it is easier to close your eyes and not feel the pain of the victim.
The famous electric shock experiment was recounted on the programme. Here, members of the public were invited by men in white coats to take part in an experiment. A man was asked questions and given an electric shock when he got the answer wrong. Members of the public administered the shocks, which got more powerful with each successive wrong answer. The 'victim' screamed louder and louder - but because the man in the white coat told the members of the public to continue, they invariably did. (The victim was an actor - he would have died if the experiment was for real.)
The presenter explained that we need an ideology to make people believe that what we are being asked to do makes sense. (A man in a white coat tells you it's for experimental purposes, to help humanity.... so you administer the shock.)
Quote from the programme: "Evil starts with very small steps and increases in small increments. It's easier to harm others if they are seen as less than human.” Research has shown that veterinary students arrive in college as animal lovers but as their years in college progress, they become more and more desensitised to the sentience of animals. Veterinary training makes animals objects.
Vets are able to vaccinate annually, despite the evidence of harm caused by this, because they are following several ideologies:
a) They know more than us. (Us and Them)
b) They have been taught to respect the establishment that trained them (which is reliant upon commercial funding), and to disrespect the clients and animals they serve, as well as any healing modality that does not follow the conventional model.
C) A vaccine ideology: some must suffer to protect the whole (‘only a tiny minority of dogs suffer adverse vaccine reactions’).
‘If the leader says he will be responsible, apparently nice human beings experience relief that they will not be blamed for that action.’ This is precisely why vets will vaccinate annually: they will be protected by their governing body if it goes wrong. It is also why so few homoeopathic vets have stopped vaccinating - because they are on their own if they don’t vaccinate and it goes wrong. It also explains why conventional science accepts that ‘some’ suffer adverse reactions, but has taken no steps whatsoever to adequately quantify how many ‘some’ stands for.
Step 4 to Tyranny: Bystander or Dissenter?
(myth: you are not a nice person if you speak out to protect your animals)
A scientist on the programme said, "Gross abuses of human rights only occur in the context of relative silence". Freedom of speech is the cornerstone of every civilised society. A tyrannous regime oppresses the dissenter. This is why complementary healthcare professionals have such a hard time, and why only a few brave men and women have had the courage to speak out.
What of the vets who know that vaccines are harmful and keep silent? What of the immunologists and virologists in our teaching establishments who know the truth but keep their mouths shut for fear of losing their careers and the college’s commercial sponsorship? What of the people who know that pet food is harmful and keep silent?
According to the programme, being a bystander is one of the most essential ingredients to maintaining a tyranny. Quote: "If enough people say no, this is wrong, regimes can be brought into line".
Quote: "When people feel they have some kind of relationship to a stranger, they are more likely to help them".
Quote: "It's when people don't get involved when they see any kind of injustice, that the injustice is allowed to continue".
Are you a bystander? Or do you get involved?
Step 5 to Tyranny: Exterminate
(myth: annual vaccination is necessary and safe)
Once steps 1, 2, 3 and 4 are in place, it is but a short distance to Step 5. Quote: "The ability of ordinary people to do evil acts is part of our psychology". Quote from a Rwandan: "Crimes were committed against us by our neighbours, teachers, school mates".
If a dog is killed by a vaccine, the owners are rarely told. If a child is killed by a vaccine, the parents are rarely told. So great is the disaster, that the blame is often attributed to the victim: it’s the parent’s fault; the breeder’s fault, the dog owner’s fault.
Laws are supposed to be made by the people for the protection of the people. But where are the people? They are mostly keeping silent and allowing those with vested interests to make or influence the laws.
Five Steps to Freedom:
1. Understand that there is no Us and Them. We are all one. God made man, and he made the animals - we come in all shapes and sizes but we are all children of God. You don’t need to have a University degree to be able to understand the truth.
2. Take responsibility. Do not obey orders just because someone in authority tells you to do it. Think.
3. Understand that no-one is less than human. Our animals have taught us that they have thoughts, feelings, emotions, souls. This is why they are so dangerous to those who would tyrannise us. When you understand that even an animal is a sentient being, then you cannot dehumanise another human being.
4. Do not be a bystander. Speak out. Foster relationship with strangers. If you see injustice, act. Don't be frightened - it doesn't hurt. (Well it does a little, but it hurts more to be silent.) "All it takes for evil to thrive is that good men and women do nothing".
5. Practice harmlessness. Refuse to harm another living being, irrespective of any ideology that appears to support you causing harm.
Unless we consciously take these five steps to freedom, there is nothing to distinguish us from the people who, given different circumstances, attacked their neighbours, built concentration camps, or allowed tyrannical regimes to flourish. We have to get involved.
You see, it isn’t enough to protect ourselves and our dogs . . . these words could not be read without the paper they rest on, and we cannot exist without the environment we inhabit. Our dogs, the trees, someone else’s child, you . . . we are simply cells in the body of our planet. We all need each other to survive.
Back to:
Complementary Healthcare
A to Z