On Coercion

I was flipping through an old magazine recently.  It had an article about Mao's China during the "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution" - perhaps the largest exercise in mass indoctrination ever attempted.  For years tens of millions of Chinese were subjected to constant threats and harangues by ideologues in an attempt to create the 'new socialist man'.  You see, the Marxists believe that man is tabula rasa - a blank slate that can be filled with whatever the social engineers deem 'correct'.  The GPCR was an attempt to wipe the slates of 800 million Chinese clean  and fill them with Maoist thought.

Yet within a few short years of this most magnificent of coercions, the same Chinese who lockstep chanted "Mao is the great Helmsman" and rhythmically shook his little red book, had turned into the world's  greatest capitalists - speculating with abandon in Shanghai condo developments and riding in stretch Mercedes limousines.

How could this happen?  How could the most intensive education and behavior modification in the history of the world be overturned simply by the death of one old mass murderer?  How could all of those years of indoctrination turn to nothing?  What had gone wrong?

I didn't really understand the answer until I was required under the terms of my divorce to go to a court mandated class on 'parenting'.  You see, the legislature of the Great State of Missouri, in its infinite wisdom, decreed that anyone divorcing with minor children must submit to reeducation or be punished.

When I made the appointment to go to the class the lady on the phone warned me not to be late.  Ok, I said.  The class was at the Shrewsbury Community Center - I had a hard time finding it but made it with three minutes to spare.  No problem.  Only there were no signs and the center was a rambling facility.  Finally, after five minutes of searching I found the class:  sign-less, on the top floor, in the last classroom at the end of the last corridor.  I ran up:  2 minutes late:  "I'm sorry, sir, you're late, you can't go in...and be sure you bring $100 next time, you'll have to pay for that class and the missed one."

I looked in the class through the window:  the woman in charge was droning on to thirty or so bored adults, virtually none of whom were paying any attention to her.   So why would people suffering the pain of divorce with all of its poverty, chaos, and emotional agony give up their precious time and money only to ignore some mental health 'professional' telling them how to be parents?

Simple:  they were coerced.  Fail to go to the course, fail to pay the woman her money, fail to sit in the class and ignore her barking and the state would punish them.  Why?  For what?  Because.  The State has the gun and we have to take it.  How did such a pointless and cruel result come to pass?  Surely our leaders would not pile burdens that have no point upon people already bowed down by divorce, would they?  But the mental health 'professional' lobby is very strong in our state and they have persuaded both the 'family values' right and the 'therapeutic reeducation' left that what us marital 'losers' really need is to be told how to raise our children.

No doubt many of the participants in my (erstwhile) class had relational problems and could have benefited from coaching on how to be a better parent.  But it was obvious that virtually none of them were paying any attention whatsoever.  Indeed, the ones most in need of the training were the ones most likely to ignore the instructor.  This is when it hit me:  it's the coercion, stupid.  Just like the Chinese who threw off their 'New Socialist Man' personas the second the guns were no longer trained on them, these American divorcees were responding in the time honored manner of the coerced everywhere.  They were in effect saying:  "you can move my body, take my money, even compel my lips to say your lines but you cannot, you will not rule my mind."

And this is the crux of our criminalized 'mental health' state isn't it?  All of the punishment and threats and coercion and 'therapy', all of the guns in people's backs can cause a lot of words to be spoken, a lot of money to change hands.  But it cannot reform men or redeem their souls.

Because we will not be saved at the point of a gun.