Bertrand Russell, The Impact of Science on Society, 1953
Page 30:
It may be hoped that in time anybody will be able to persuade anybody of anything if he can catch the patient young and is provided by the State with money and equipment.
This subject will make great strides when it is taken up by scientists under a scientific dictatorship. Anaxagoras maintained that snow is black, but no one believed him. The social psychologists of the future will have a number of classes of school children on whom they will try different methods of producing an unshakable conviction that snow is black. Various results will soon be arrived at. First, that the influence of home is obstructive. Second, that not much can be done unless indoctrination begins before the age of ten. Third, that verses set to music and repeatedly intoned are very effective. Fourth, that the opinion that snow is white must be held to show a morbid taste for eccentricity. . . . It is for future scientists to make these maxims precise and discover exactly how much it costs per head to make children believe that snow is black, and how much less it would cost to make them believe it is dark gray.
Pages 50-51:
Fichte laid it down that education should aim at destroying free will, so that, after pupils have left school, they shall be incapable, throughout the rest of their lives, of thinking or acting otherwise than as their schoolmasters would have wished. But in his day this was an unattainable ideal: … In future such failures are not likely to occur where there is dictatorship. Diet, injections, and injunctions will combine, from a very early age, to produce the sort of character and the sort of beliefs that the authorities consider desirable, and any serious criticism of the powers that be will become psychologically impossible. Even if all are miserable, all will believe themselves happy, because the government will tell them that they are so.
Page 51:
Children will, as in Plato’s Republic, be taken from their mothers and reared by professional nurses. Gradually, by selective breeding, the congenital differences between rulers and ruled will increase until they become almost different species. A revolt of the plebs would become as unthinkable as an organized insurrection of sheep against the practice of eating mutton.
Too bad all it does it get people pliable enough to do what they want, just not competently enough to make the process stated above worth anything. This is why societies fail: people who want way too much control cut off the intelligence of the people who they want to control to the point where control is pointless. Then, if that doesn't work, they pit everyone against one another and they wage war.
"It works the same in every country." The story of Babylon can be summed up as: "it falls."
The dishonesty thing you mention is due to social credit-style interactions imo. People will lie to gain status over you if their life is on the line, real or imagined, truth be damned. If informing on your neighbor gave you a better chance at eating during the Soviet Union, you'd do it not because it was right, but because you would starve otherwise. This "socialist" mentality breeds the love out of people. And love is the only thing that can hold together humanity without it regressing back to some prior animalistic stage of social development. You'll have to love them despite what others, at the behest of the state, have moulded them into.
Bertrand Russell, The Impact of Science on Society, 1953
Page 30:
It may be hoped that in time anybody will be able to persuade anybody of anything if he can catch the patient young and is provided by the State with money and equipment.
This subject will make great strides when it is taken up by scientists under a scientific dictatorship. Anaxagoras maintained that snow is black, but no one believed him. The social psychologists of the future will have a number of classes of school children on whom they will try different methods of producing an unshakable conviction that snow is black. Various results will soon be arrived at. First, that the influence of home is obstructive. Second, that not much can be done unless indoctrination begins before the age of ten. Third, that verses set to music and repeatedly intoned are very effective. Fourth, that the opinion that snow is white must be held to show a morbid taste for eccentricity. . . . It is for future scientists to make these maxims precise and discover exactly how much it costs per head to make children believe that snow is black, and how much less it would cost to make them believe it is dark gray.
Pages 50-51:
Fichte laid it down that education should aim at destroying free will, so that, after pupils have left school, they shall be incapable, throughout the rest of their lives, of thinking or acting otherwise than as their schoolmasters would have wished. But in his day this was an unattainable ideal: … In future such failures are not likely to occur where there is dictatorship. Diet, injections, and injunctions will combine, from a very early age, to produce the sort of character and the sort of beliefs that the authorities consider desirable, and any serious criticism of the powers that be will become psychologically impossible. Even if all are miserable, all will believe themselves happy, because the government will tell them that they are so.
Page 51:
Children will, as in Plato’s Republic, be taken from their mothers and reared by professional nurses. Gradually, by selective breeding, the congenital differences between rulers and ruled will increase until they become almost different species. A revolt of the plebs would become as unthinkable as an organized insurrection of sheep against the practice of eating mutton.
Too bad all it does it get people pliable enough to do what they want, just not competently enough to make the process stated above worth anything. This is why societies fail: people who want way too much control cut off the intelligence of the people who they want to control to the point where control is pointless. Then, if that doesn't work, they pit everyone against one another and they wage war.
"It works the same in every country." The story of Babylon can be summed up as: "it falls."
The dishonesty thing you mention is due to social credit-style interactions imo. People will lie to gain status over you if their life is on the line, real or imagined, truth be damned. If informing on your neighbor gave you a better chance at eating during the Soviet Union, you'd do it not because it was right, but because you would starve otherwise. This "socialist" mentality breeds the love out of people. That's the only thing that can hold without humanity regressing back to some prior animalistic stage of development.