As the Crow flies...

A group of crows has learned to recognise an apparently dangerous human, and to harass that person, simply because their neighbours and parents harassed them too. Learning from each other helps the crows respond to unfamiliar threats.[1]

Authoritarian Personality Type

This type of individual is characterized by three attitudinal and behavioral clusters which are interrelated.

1) Authoritarian submission - a high degree of submissiveness to the authorities who are perceived to be established and legitimate in the society in which one lives, or the peer group with whom one is involved or works. Naturally, if many of one's peers are personality disordered - and there is a high probability of that being the case in any field where authority over others is to be had - then one is inculcated into submissiveness to psychopathological ideation.


2) Authoritarian aggression - a general aggressiveness directed against other people that are perceived to be targets according to the established authorities as defined in number 1.


3) Conventionalism - a high degree of adherence to the traditions and social norms that are perceived to be endorsed by society - or one's peer group - and its established authorities, and a belief that others in one's society should also be required to adhere to these norms. Once again, if the traditions and social norms are established by authorities with control agendas, everything is corrupted from the top down.

According to psychologist, Robert Altemeyer, "authoritarians tend to exhibit cognitive errors and symptoms of faulty reasoning. Specifically, they are more likely to make incorrect inferences from evidence and to hold contradictory ideas that result from compartmentalized thinking. They are also more likely to uncritically accept insufficient evidence that supports their beliefs, and they are less likely to acknowledge their own limitations." (Robert Altemeyer, Right-Wing Authoritarianism, University of Manitoba Press, 1981.)[2]

 

Want Some More APTness?

The Myth that was Masada - Masada is increasingly being understood as part of that “modern dance of politics and archaeology.” Archaeologists understand they are interpreters, rather than just restorers of a pristine past. As a 1993 Learning Channel show on Masada stated, “Every archaeologist is in a sense a myth-maker, contributing by his discoveries to the creation of a shared, national story of the past.” [3]

Wal-Mart: 50 Years of Gutting America's Middle-Class - Sam Walton opened the first Walmart store in Rogers, Arkansas, 50 years ago this month. Sprawled along a major thoroughfare outside the city's downtown, that inaugural store embodied many of the hallmarks that have since come to define the Walmart way of doing business. Walton scoured the country for the cheapest merchandise and deftly exploited a loophole in federal law to pay his mostly female workforce less than minimum wage. [4]

Notilia

[1] Proceedings of the Royal Society B, DOI:10.1098/rspb.2011.057, published New Scientist, 2 July 2011, No2819

[2] Extracted from "The Golden Age, Psychopathy and the Sixth Extinction" essay written by
Laura Knight-Jadczyk and pubished at SOTT.net.

[3] The Myth that was Masada, observations of Jay Gary PhD, Foresight Coach, March 30 2002

[4] Wal-Mart: 50 Years of gutting America's middle-class, observations of Stacy Mitchell-Otherworlds, July 2 2012.
Image of a murder of crows flew over from Follow the Piper, a blog kept by an adorable and somewhat opinionated basenji in Kansas City.