What would George Orwell have to say about English conversation schools in Japan? Read on!
The Conversation Teacher as Battered Wife by Mortimer Snavely Women who suffer in psychologically abusive, brutal relationships are people who live with practicing sadists. A woman in such a situation typically treats her insane partner as if he were amenable to reason. A person not persuaded by the force of logic operates on the principle of the logic of force. This is characteristic of sadists. Such people are not credible. Trying to talk rationally with a man who will beat you up if a Coke bottle finds itself in the burnables trashcan is an exercise in wishful thinking. After giving his wife a black eye for
her untidiness, such a man might alternate between a whimpering
demand for forgiveness and raging insistence that she provoked
him, and that she, not he, is the problem. Such women find themselves
questioning their own sanity. Their lives are one long nightmare.
They must develop a self-destructive psychology to exist in
it, even at the cost of their lives. Men with no experience in mental health
work find it beyond belief that in such relationships, it is
the woman who is most defensive of her sadistic master. What
these well-meaning men do not understand is that in adapting
to a nightmarish existence, the victim has been coerced into
a small domestic cult. The woman is physically unable to confront
the man, and is psychologically unprepared to deal with insanity.
Through psychological friction, abrasion, and sledgehammer blows,
her will and self-esteem are ground away, and she loses the mental
ability to leave or shoot the bloodthirsty bastard. How that happens, and why many conversation teachers in Japan find themselves in approximately the same mental state, wondering if they are insane or if the lunatics have taken over the asylum, are the subjects of this essay. The bosses of many conversation schools
are like abusive husbands. For every disaster and dishonest
act, the management demands absolution from those wronged, and
at the same time makes passive-aggressive assertions of being
provoked, or intimations of offense at having to answer questions
that impugn its dignity. Never mind that no sane, honest person
would do such things, such questions are not to be asked. Not
only is the crisis of the moment someone else's
fault, but also the management is sacrosanct. Its behavior is
not to be questioned. To take just one of the more outrageous
examples, a very low level student is sold a 500,000 special
course of eight one-hour lessons that will make him 'fluent' in English.
He pays his money, and is assigned as a private student to any
teacher free at the moment. The teacher is not told of the client's circumstances, he's
just instructed to do a good job. After the eight lessons, the
student obviously hasn't improved his English much, and is irate
at the company. The company becomes irate at the last teacher
who taught the last lesson of the series for not doing a good
job. In what respects the lesson was faulty are not explained.
Only by accident can the facts in the matter be known, a year
later. Take another, even more insidious case.
Employee regulations forbidding fraternization with students
are understandable. What is not understandable is management
of a certain Tokyo school telling female students that all the
male teachers are unmarried and looking for girlfriends. Management
then encourages those same females to ask male teachers out for
dates. Inquiring later of the student as to the result of those
encounters, if the teacher did not take the female out he is
made to feel like an unfeeling cad for unstated reasons, and
threatened with dismissal for "insensitivity." If he did take her out, he is fired. If we respond to such mercenary sadism
negatively, then we are the ones with a mental problem, or we
are accused of ethnocentrism, racism, or Japan-bashing. Anti-Japanese
feeling is called the real problem, instead of the school's need to ruin the lives of both its teachers
and students to stay in business. Such managerial behavior is similar to Al Capone's, a famous Chicago gangster, or Nurse Rached's, the Head Nurse in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Neither a management style reminiscent of a jovial, sadistic mob-boss, nor of a calculating, sadistic psychiatric nurse, are appropriate to a school, however loosely the term is applied. How They Get Away With It: Behavior
Modification Initial orientation to a conversation
school is a lot like military basic training. Behavior is modified
to produce a uniform, predictable personality in which obedience
should become second nature. It takes the United States Armed
Forces anywhere from six to twelve weeks to produce such a personality.
Conditioning an adult, or even a post adolescent, to a new system
of reward and punishment takes a long time. A conversation school
expects the same results in less than two weeks. How do they
do it? Just as a basic trainee's living environment is utterly alien, so too
is the new foreigner's. The basic
activities of daily living, such as sleeping, eating, and bathing
all require instruction. Going from point A to point B requires
extensive instruction. For all practical purposes, the basic
trainee and the new foreigner are blind, deaf, and dumb. The
basic trainee and the new foreigner are both metaphysically disoriented.
Existence is unintelligible. Without instruction, the senses
are unable to provide the consciousness with sufficient information
to make intelligent decisions. Reliance on arbitrary authority
is required to satisfactorily accomplish the most mundane activities,
such as buying a train ticket. Having a pleasant conversation
with a peer is virtually non-existent. Most relationships are
hierarchical. Social equality becomes extremely rare. Merely arriving in Japan provides much of the fundamental behavior modification of military basic training, namely a predisposition to implicitly trust those with authority, which, for the new foreigner, are those who know how to do simple activities. Further behavior modification by the conversation school can be accomplished very quickly. Further Behavior Modification: Not
Quite Brainwashing Leon Festinger is a psychologist who
studied apocalyptic doomsday cults. He wanted to find out how
cult members coped when the world didn't
end. In order to maintain meaning in their lives, they had to
think that they were acting according to their values. A contradiction
Festinger described as "Cognitive
Dissonance Theory" had to
be overcome. Festinger listed three components of cognitive dissonance:
1) control of behavior, 2) control of thinking, and 3) control
of emotion. As he noted, "If
you change a person's behavior, his
thoughts and feelings will change to minimize the dissonance." Briefly stated, when basic components
of a personÕs identity, that is,
the thoughts, feelings, and actions conflict, then those components
in opposition will change to minimize the contradiction. A human
being can only handle so much conflict between these three components.
In military basic training, in cults, and in many conversation
schools, this conflict is used to control thought, emotion, and
behavior. Steven Hassan, in Combating Cult Mind
Control, lists control of information in addition to Festinger's roster. Controlling the information a person
is able to perceive restricts a person's
ability to think for him or herself. An idea is only as good
as the information on which it is based. Control of information
is essential to control of thought. Behavior control, emotion control, thought
control, and information control are braided together into one
total rope. This rope serves as a psychological leash: stray
too far, and one may be choked into obedience. LetÕs untangle the strands, remembering that if one
of these components can be controlled, then the other three tend
to follow. When a place to live depends on the guarantee of an employer, it is fairly easy to dictate the employee's working hours at whim and who his or her neighbors are. In the context of the cho nai kai, or "Village Association," the easiest thing in the world for an employer to do is keep his or her employee under twenty-four hour surveillance.
Anticipating the possible negative reactions
of those in authority, which in rural settings can literally
be everyone one knows, generates, in extreme cases, thought blocking.
The conversation teacher must develop what George Orwell called
"protective stupidity," the ability to stop any controversial idea before
it becomes fully articulated. Logical fallacies are not perceived,
analogies are not grasped, the most basic protests against the
demands of the company are misunderstood, or ideally, produce
boredom. The person thinks only "happy thoughts" about the job. The company becomes truth embodied.
All information is processed in this context, and whatever thought
takes place is regulated in this context. If, nonetheless, any
negative thoughts emerge, guilt and fear weigh in to maintain
control. Like a battered wife, a person in this situation cannot
perceive the cause of these feelings and blames him or her
self for anything bad that happens. They can even express heart-felt
gratitude when their "shortcomings" are pointed out. There are two further uses of fear: one,
external enemies are created, usually taking the form of other
schools, and this creates a hostility and suspicion of other
foreigners who probably work for them. The possibility of a social
life outside of the job is further restricted, if that were possible.
Second, there is the fear of punishment
by the company for not "working
hard enough." Phobia internalization,
the most powerful emotional control tool possible, can produce
panic attacks at the very thought of leaving the job, or in the
case of the battered wife, leaving the bastard. As Alan Bloom
pointed out, "...the most successful
tyranny is not the one which uses force to assure uniformity
but the one that removes the awareness of other possibilities,
that makes it seem inconceivable that other ways are viable,
that removes the sense that there is an outside." Of course, none of this can work very
well without information control, but by dominating a person's time, access to any other intellectual universe
becomes problematic, and the thought control produced by behavior
control helps the person reject anything that makes them feel
"troubled." It should be obvious by now that the
psychological leash produced can choke a person as effectively
as if it were made of leather. For all intents and purposes,
people in such situations, like a lot of conversation teachers,
like abused wives, are more imprisoned than if they were in jail.
They are in psychological solitary confinement. They have been
deprived through psychological violence the ability to digest
any critical information they may encounter. The four behavior patterns listed express
themselves in several ways that indicate the nightmare condition
of mind control. Mind control is the defining characteristic
of cults, of totalitarianism, of sick marriages, and of some
conversation companies. It's a coercive
process resulting in the destruction of prior beliefs and values.
It is calculated to fragment individuality and personal independence
so they may be swept away and replaced with a counterfeit personality
mass-produced for the organization. The difference between this process,
called "thought reform" by Chinese Communists, and brainwashing is that
in the latter the enemy is easily identified. Prisoners in North
Korean, North Vietnamese, and Red Chinese POW camps suffered
physical torture and starvation as well as solitary confinement,
relentless political indoctrination, and interrogation. Thought
reformers appear to be one's closest
friends, using guilt and anxiety to control their victims instead
of rubber hoses and cattle prods. In Thought Reform and the Psychology
of Totalism, Robert J. Lifton lists eight psychological themes
to identify a thought reform/brainwashing environment. Each of
these features induces a particular emotional state. As he writes,
"In combination they create
an atmosphere which may temporarily energize or exhilarate, but
which at the same time poses the gravest of human threats." Some of these themes apply to some conversation
schools . Lifton sees Milieu Control, the control of human
communication, as the bedrock upon which the entire thought
reform environment depends. By controlling everything that the
individual sees, hears, reads, writes, and says, thought reformers
are able to penetrate the individual's
inner life and eventually control the individual's communication with the self. As consciousness engineers, thought reformers
need to bring the human soul under total surveillance. They see
no need to make this a secret. The identities of the observers
are irrelevant. All that is necessary is that everyone knows
that someone, somewhere, is watching. In Japan this is easy to
do. The police keep dossiers on every resident in the country,
and in rural areas, through the cho nai kai, octogenarian
women can find useful work, like Madame DeFarge, by keeping tabs
on everyone. Often the organization itself prohibits
any activity outside of work which may or may not interfere
with working hours: political activity, including going to the
Embassy to register to vote, religious services on weekdays,
week nights, or weekends, working for other schools part-time,
taking private students, all may be proscribed. One conversation
school even stipulated that the applicant contract to obey all
the laws of all the countries in the world. Other ways to control
milieu include requiring that employees monitor and report on
one another, and forbidding teachers to look at their evaluations,
which are essentially vague questions graded in an equally vague
and arbitrary manner by unknown persons. Teachers have little time to ponder these
things. They are kept in a constant frenzy of activity. A tremendous
amount of time is spent in tedious busy work and absurd detail.
Endless meetings, training sessions, report writing, and motivational
pep talks leave one exhausted. Very little remains to contemplate
the exact nature of the forces dominating the teacher's every waking moment. Patterns of behavior and
emotion are thus generated which superficially seem to have happened
spontaneously. This can have an eerie, unworldly effect on the
new teacher, striking terror into his or her very soul. When this belief evaporates, or when that trust has never existed, the mystical nature of the manipulation cannot provide emotional satisfaction. A person in this state develops what Lifton calls the psychology of the pawn. Unable to escape these forces, which seem to emanate from everything that has mass and occupies space, the victim devotes his or her entire psyche to adapting to them. He or she is able to anticipate pressure from sectors of the environment, usually through the expert reading of body language, to infer possible problems, and is able to ride the psychological tide in such a way as to 'go with the flow,' rather than oppose it. He or she becomes adept at manipulating others to divert negative forces.
People like this are easy to hate, so
easy, in fact, that they often hate themselves. They appear
cheerful and sarcastic, and seem to have the strongest and healthiest
of personalities. In fact they are deeply resentful: of the milieu,
of the manipulation, of their employers, of their victims, and
of themselves for having allowed others to rob them of the ability
to act independently and express themselves truthfully. Some conversation schools use what Ayn
Rand called The Cult of Moral Grayness to control people.
The assumption is that all people are ultimately unwilling to
make moral choices. By making plain that it makes no attempts
to be intentionally moral, the organization attempts to avoid
being marked as immoral. Heavy use is made of evasive, contentless,
vague concepts such as harmony, compromise, and unspecified cultural
differences. These become the moral yardsticks, and the measure
of virtue is the degree to which one is willing to betray one's deepest convictions in their name. Strength
of character is a heinous sin. To work in the thought reform environment of many conversation schools in large cities is to bathe in a moral hog wallow. This also has a controlling effect. Habitual drunkenness and tedious, mechanical, bland promiscuity prevent people from making moral judgments. An alcoholic who cheats on his wife with three other women and a fourteen-year-old girl is unable to judge anything. Besides being mentally ill, such a person is empty, shallow and vulgar. He has very little impulse control. He can gain moral sanction only in an amoral environment. He must go to work, he must be a pawn, because he depends on the company for psychologically necessary validation. Without classes to teach the next day his borderline psychotic behavior would quickly land him in a psychiatric hospital, jail, or the morgue. The Altruistic License to Lie, Cheat,
and Steal In profit-motivated schools, pathological
behavior will get one fired. A conversation school motivated
by thought reform is pathological to begin with, and has uses
for sick behavior. Company booze-ups, which last from nine or
ten in the evening to nine or ten in the morning, are excellent
examples. We are not talking about normal Christmas office parties.
A thought reforming organization inverts
the beneficial effect of having a drink with one's comrades. Instead, it becomes primarily an
act of symbolic surrender, an expression of merging the individual
with the organization. Group drunkenness helps thought reformers
to totally expose organization members. Ego boundaries become
blurred. The boundary between what one wishes to keep private
and what one wishes to make public becomes blurred. Using alcohol
and camaraderie, the organization can learn everything possible
about the life experiences of individuals, their thoughts, their
passions, their fears, and most especially, their weaknesses.
A person's psychological buttons
are quickly discovered, and later are pressed incessantly to
further manipulate his or her feelings and behavior. All this
may be explained as 'team building.' Teamwork is a part of every day life.
Fun, friendship, love, and laughter require cooperative relationships
which reward the individual on a purely reciprocal basis, whether
the reward is winning a football game, being driven home after
a few drinks too many, holding hands with a sweetheart and gazing
at the moon, or enjoying a good joke with oneÕs
pals. Fusion with a group is entirely different.
It is utterly contrary to human nature, and to be experienced,
an individual must change the very way he or she perceives, learns,
and behaves. The essential human questions, namely, "What is real?"
"What is true?" and "What is
good?" must be answered in a
manner entirely opposite to all natural thought. Where once one's senses identified the external world, the person fused with a greater entity relies on the group to identify facts. Where innate reason once guided learning, the group now decides what knowledge is and how it may be acquired. Of course, self-interest no longer guides morality, but rather self-sacrifice. The organizational mentality of thought
reforming schools is hard to understand. Some correctly opine
that this behavior produces zealous idealism, and fanatic devotion
to the community. Others, observing blatant deception and thinly
disguised intimidation, discern utterly unscrupulous expediency
devoid of any principles or morals. The subject of the organizational
dynamics of conversation schools usually produces extremely heated
debate. The dichotomy is artificial, however.
Both views are correct. These are just the opposing poles of
the same ideological magnet. They are the inevitable products
of the one unified idea: the worship of the group. The only difference
is in the division of selfless, altruistic labor, and here is
where the whole business gets ugly. Altruism establishes the ultimate goal
of these organizational dynamics, namely, the good of the whole,
and the primary moral model of self-sacrifice for that group.
It does not define what the good of the group is however, or
what sacrifices are needed, or when and where they must be made.
Those are necessarily open questions. The good of the whole is
anything the group decides or whatever sates its cravings. Of
course, it may change its mind or its inclinations, so whatever
it decides today it may reject tomorrow. And of course, the future
is uncertain, so whatever works one day may be rejected the next.
Thus, no option, however virtuous or vicious, may be proscribed.
Altruism sets the end and gives a blank check to any means to
achieve that end. Thus, there is fervent commitment to duty,
and also absolute amoralism. That is why thought reforming conversation
schools simultaneously produce idealism and unscrupulousness.
Altruism defines the ideal Superficially, thought reforming organizational
dynamics routinely produce contradictory, surrealistic imperatives.
"Self-sacrifice is an absolute
necessity/There are no absolutes."
"The group represents virtue/Virtue
is a myth, might makes right."
But the clash is only skin deep. The real flesh and blood of
the animal is in the utter helplessness of the individual. The
group operates on the principle that the good of the whole is
the highest morality, and can sacrifice anyone it wants. Because
the group is above moral principles the individual is utterly
helpless, and anyone or anything can be sacrificed at any time. This is why there is no contradiction between altruism and amoralism. The combination allows the group to be both infallible and totally unpredictable. Now we can see how altruism turns morality into nihilism. The causes of this intellectual universe
have been detailed previously. The effects are the most pernicious
imaginable. Any possibility of independent thought is erased
and the only behavior possible is that dictated by the management.
Blind obedience to the strongest is the only possible option. How is it possible, after one's thoughts have been reformed, for a person to
resist any command, no matter how absurd or immoral? If he or
she notes that the decree goes contrary to his or her personal
goals, happiness, or comfort, there is no defense, for altruism
requires sacrifice for others. Perhaps a policy causes misery
and grief to others. Altruism again steps in, noting that the
injured party must learn to sacrifice for others. Should the
policy violate the conscience, altruism leaps to the fore, insisting
that moral judgment does not stem from the individual, but from
the group. Perhaps the policy violates the laws of God and humanity,
or the individualÕs own remaining
personal convictions. Altruism overrides such quibbling, because
whatever works, as determined by the school, is right. A thought reformed altruist who truly
understands altruism knows what is required of him or her. One
does not express oneÕs self, one
does oneÕs duty. Personal desires
are not pursued, but sacrificed. Moral questions are not raised,
but the pontifications of the group are blindly accepted. Moral
principles are abandoned, and the self adapts to the eternal
capriciousness of the management, as it defines the purpose of
the employeeÕs life and every detail
related to its purpose. The altruist is characterized by the
renunciation of self in the fullest sense. Morality is renounced
for the greater good of the whole, personal judgment in the name
of authority, and conviction, in the name of flexibility. All
this requires mind-sacrifice, which removes fact and thought,
as well as reality and reason, from the organizationÕs path. The result is self-sacrifice, and thus
morality disappears also. Individual self-assertion is destroyed
root and branch. What a remains is a dreadful mood of ÒWho am I to know?Ó
and even more monstrous, ÒWho am
I to know what is right?Ó The only
possible answer is ÒYou are nothing.
The group, the management, knows best.Ó
This is inherent in the concept of Òthe
corporate family.Ó The desired behavior
is an infantile tendency to do whatever one is told, and to indulge
whatever momentary impulse that might expand the schoolÕs size or prestige. Executives of such schools, who thrive
in the altruistic universe, must occasionally be tempted not
to lie, cheat, or steal, but we must remember that they have
learned how to virtuously resist temptation. People who have
learned, in the name of altruism, to reject morality, are usually
recognized as Grateful Dead lunatics, New Age charlatans, Hare
Krishnas, doomsday cult religious fanatics, street gang members,
Ku Klux Klansmen, Nazis, Communists, or drug dealing organized
crime families. The essential moral creed is absolutely identical:
We're something really
special. The rules donÕt apply to
us. Since this creed sacrifices the individual
mind to abstract, collective cravings, people are reduced to
zombies or puppets. Their minds get fried by ideology instead
of cocaine, and they wind up just as addicted, if not more. The
junkie's every thought is controlled
by dope. Likewise, the group controls the true altruist's every thought. Not to belabor the obvious, but it should
be apparent that there is nothing here that can be remotely considered
rational. Indeed, since the individualÕs
ability to determine right from wrong has been destroyed, necessarily
the individual's ability to determine
reality has been destroyed, also. For the group, in the final
analysis, would have the individual deny his or her own eyes
and ears. Appearances, that is, the evidence of
the senses, are imagined to hide a deeper, ulterior reality,
which obviously has no objective basis in fact. ÒRealÓ reality,
which the individual is denied the right to perceive, is unknowable.
Something deeper than the senses and reason is required to perceive
and comprehend it. "Real," that is, unknowable, reality, is whatever the
group decides it is. Effectively, one is required to see and
hear only what one wants to see and hear, or, more precisely,
what one is wanted to see and hear. Effectively, one is deaf
because one has ears, blind, because one has eyes, and mad, because
one thinks clearly. One speaks gibberish because one uses words
that have precise meanings. Essentially, reality is held to depend
on the internal consciousness. External facts are irrelevant.
Rather, a turning inward, a consultation with group ideological
imperatives, impels one to construct a "real(!)" reality according to these subjective dictates.
Moods and feelings thus become the tools of cognition. Reality
is whatever one wants it to be, or more correctly, whatever it
is wanted by the group to be. Need I point out that wishes do
not give birth to horses, regardless of howsoever much they are
needed or desired? As George Orwell pointed out, if a person thinks that he or she is floating, and someone else thinks that he or she sees the other person floating, that person is not floating. Both are hallucinating. Both are insane. Likewise, if someone insists that the computer used to write this essay is really a cheeseburger, there is no conceptual dispute that can be resolved through rational persuasion. The issue is one of mental health. This is a difference that cannot be resolved by the force of reason. The Inefficacy of Rational Persuasion No way exists to convince a lunatic of
anything. People who are not crazy can change their minds through
rational persuasion, but one cannot convince a psychotic that
the cute morning TV anchor woman is not sending him secret messages
of undying love coded as the morning traffic report. This process
of denying reality is the defining feature of madness. It is
what makes insanity insane. In the insane universe cause and effect
is neither perceived nor considered. There is a complete severance
between action and reaction, sometimes to the point that sights
and sounds that do not exist are seen and heard, and solid objects
are not. People who act as if such a universe were real, sooner,
rather than later, become dangerous to themselves and/or others,
or become unable to take care of themselves, or a combination
of all three. Virginia law requires that anyone involuntarily
hospitalized in a psychiatric hospital on a green warrant must
have a sanity hearing before a judge, represented by legal counsel,
within 72 hours, where one or more of these three conditions
must be proven before the patient can be committed to a psychiatric
hospital by the Court. There is only one reality, the reality
that obeys the laws of cause and effect. It is a fact of reality
that some people violate these laws and bring themselves serious
grief, or bring serious grief to others, or both. It is a fact
that evidence is not acknowledged by these people and that they
do not understand the difference between madness and sanity.
It is a fact that there is no way to reach agreement with such
people about what is real. They do not recognize the validity
of argument or observation. They regularly gibber or lie as
a means of explanation. "Truth will out," as the old saying goes, but it may take a long
time to uncover. Deceit is only useful as a delaying tactic,
and is not used as much as plain gibberish. Gibberish has tremendous
oppositional value for some people, because it is literally irrefutable.
If, for example, the argument that something is true because
"Their heads are green and their
hands are blue, and they went to sea in a sieve," there is no immediate way to logically refute
this. Let us again make the observation that
this essay is being written with this computer. Let us again
propose another person saying that such is not the case, that,
instead, a cheeseburger is being eaten. Basically, this assertion
cannot be refuted. Is the observation that something is being
written with this computer incorrect? No. Is the person making
the observation that something is being written with this computer
dumber than the person making the observation that something
is being eaten? No. It means that no stronger argument exists
than that something is being written with this computer. It is from such subjective quagmires
that managerial equivocations concerning undisputable facts,
like 'left'
and 'right,'
'up'
and 'down,'
and 'black'
and 'white'
arise, like a cloud of malarial mosquitoes, spreading a bizarre,
diseased fever of unreality. This is also why the plainest language
falls on deaf One of the things necessary for people
to relate to one another freely without coercion is that there
must be agreement about what constitutes reality. There must
be agreement that a computer is one thing and a cheeseburger
is another. There must be agreement that A is A. The disagreement
about whether or not the computer is a cheeseburger will not
be resolved through "philosophical
speculation," but through psychiatric
medicine. If the illness is because of inherited bad brain chemistry,
then lifelong medication may have a profoundly therapeutic effect.
If the problem is brain damage, there is less hope. If the problem
is bloody-mindedness, a condition in which people seek only to
coerce, not convince, others, there is no hope. In the rational, moral universe, A is
A. When people agree upon what constitutes reality, the obviously
true is its own best argument. Evidence speaks for itself. To
the mentally ill and the bloody-minded it does not. Many conversation
teachers are particularly vulnerable to the gibbering rationalizations
of their bosses, to the point of their own destruction, because
they are unable or unwilling to understand this. Much intellectual and emotional currency
is squandered in useless attempts to obtain even the smallest
agreement on insignificant facts. Any statement of fact is followed
with a "yes, but..." relating to an entirely subjunctive proposition
irrelevant to the situation at hand. Superfluous possibilities
and insane protestations to existence are considered as valid
as actual fact. It is then inferred that rationality
is an entirely accidental characteristic of Western civilization,
and that those that adhere to it are intolerant at best, and
racist, at worst. Babbling that no seven year old would take
seriously, lame excuses, and pathological reactions to momentary
impressions are considered to be intellectual insight of the
highest order. Because there is no way in the non-schizophrenic
world to discuss the proposition that existence does not exist,
or that non-existence does, the inability of rational people
to refute nonsense is considered to be proof of the validity
of prattling lunacy. Many conversation schools practice insane
policies and are run by psychopathic sadists and borderline psychotics
who think that they are entitled to do whatever they want at
anyone else's expense. These same
people consider themselves to be geniuses. They imagine that
they are challenging the 'rigidity' and 'intolerance' of the fact that two and two always make four.
As Kocher observes, "In fact
they are not challenging anything and are not capable of challenging
anything. There may be challenge in the sense of aggravation,
but this is not the same as challenging intellectual content." The evidence of the senses is irrelevant
to them. Regardless of how lucid the observations are, the chatter
continues, and whatever issue under discussion remains unresolved.
There is no way to penetrate their deranged thinking. Talking
to them is challenging. So is talking to the psychiatric patient
convinced that coded love messages are being televised to him
on the morning news. The best way outside of the hospital
to relate to lunatics is to recognize them as crazy and quickly
leave their presence without saying a word. This sometimes means
quitting the school without notice. No rationality is owed to
lunatics, and no morality is owed to sadists. Too many new teachers
are unable to recognize madness, however, and do just the opposite.
When the sick individual they're
still talking to remains impervious to their arguments, they
feel stupid and bad about themselves because they imagine that
somehow something could be said that will convince. They need
to understand that they may as well be trying to tame a wasp.
They are wasting their time and will get stung. If escape is impossible, then physical
force is necessary to maintain personal safety, for example,
if one quits, has no access to a telephone to call the police,
and cannot leave the premises because someone is blocking the
door. This qualifies as kidnapping. Other times may include
unknown people invading one's dwelling
unannounced. Both of these things happen to conversation teachers.
Unfortunately, many teachers have been
so twisted themselves by the thought reforming process of their
schools that they need serious professional psychoanalysis, and
are unable to offer token resistance, or even perceive anything
wrong. They have been paralyzed emotionally. They are unable
to experience anger without repressing it. Their thoughts have
been so reformed that they have convinced themselves that in
all situations "understanding" the sadistic irrationality of their bosses will
make their anger disappear, which is impossible. Instead, because
they are unable to recognize anger as a healthy response to being
shafted, and they live in permanent depression, saddled by unearned
guilt, thinking themselves bad people because they still have
hostile thoughts when they are lied to, abused, swindled, sexually
molested, stolen from, and worked to exhaustion by their employer. Anger is usually portrayed by psychological
predators who wish to immobilize their prey as something that
is never a valid response to anything. Anger isn't mindless rage. It isn't
sadism. It's the natural reaction
of a healthy mind to a situation that threatens its well-being.
Properly understood, anger is a healthy result of well-founded
fear. When fear is correctly processed, anger will bring about
an appropriate response. It may mean taking a wrongdoer to court.
It may mean running for the nearest hole in the ground. It may
mean knocking down a thug. It may mean writing essays. If not sublimated into anger, fear immobilizes
a person. Anger mobilizes. Anger is there to protect you. The
anger of a healthy person is the result of the knowledge, not
the feeling, that something is seriously wrong, that he or she
is being wronged, or has been wronged, and that if something
is not done soon, he or she will be wronged further. If the
wrong happens through the deliberate deception or through the
incompetence of others, anger multiplies itself. Thought reformers want us to think that
anger is never justified, that with "understanding" anger (and also, by the way, the behavior it
mobilizes) will disappear. They want us to understand ourselves
to death. They want to eat us, but they want us to cook our own
minds first. They want to deprive us of the mental tools necessary
to fight or flee from them. This is done by using many scholarly
sounding words to rename concepts. Lifton describes this as Loading
the Language. George Orwell called it "giving credence to pure wind." Abraham Lincoln, describing an opponent's political rhetoric, observed that the smallest
thoughts could be put into the biggest words. They well understood
that language is the vehicle of thought. Words express concepts.
Organizing words constitutes language. Organizing them rationally
constitutes thinking. Controlling what a person sees, hears,
reads, writes, and says is necessary to penetrate a person's inner life and manipulate communication with
the self. Anger can be repressed and inverted if the loaded language
is internalized. For example, wanting a straight answer to a
straight question is re labeled as being intolerant of ambiguity.
Thinking clearly is an inability to see gray areas. Evasiveness
becomes tolerance for ambiguity. Strength of character becomes
stubbornness. All these terms are designed to destroy
confidence in rationality and generate feelings of uncertainty.
When such feelings are internalized, a person now using this
language becomes very vulnerable indeed to the effects of managerial
gibberish. When one can no longer 'call
a spade a spade,' one cannot correctly
identify threats, is unable to distinguish rational apprehension
from irrational phobia, and is also mentally prevented from reacting
in a rational way. Whereas a person who wants a straight
answer to a straight question will not give credence to evasion,
idiocy or irrationality, a person tolerant of ambiguity will
try to understand the point of view of an irrational person.
But irrationality can never be understood. That's its defining feature. That is what makes it
irrational. Thought reformers imagine that it is
no longer necessary to face the truth, and manipulate the language
to express that concept. Prior concepts will adapt to that language.
When appropriate behavior becomes relabeled as intolerance for
ambiguity, or rigidity, or whatnot, one is repressed from reacting
appropriately to having one's place
of residence broken into. Instead, the language helps generate
a controlling milieu, the identifying characteristic of which
is dogmatic banality. In this deadly dull, banal, insipid world,
dealing with truth is not considered necessary. No one can be confronted with anything.
Nobody reacts to anything. Inevitably, a person in this world
will perceive that if no reaction is happening, then there is
nothing happening to react to. At times, the staff and teachers
of some conversation schools resemble nothing so much as patients
on Thorazine in a mental health ward. They have flat, controlled
affects and follow rituals in everything they do, including peeling
oranges. There is no spontaneity in their behavior. They are
nothing but obedient. It is impossible to imagine them getting
angry about anything. This is milieu control on steroids, mind
control to the highest degree. Sane teachers, fed up with relentless
weirdness, often find themselves negotiating in such an environment.
But management has set the rules of the exchange. Under the banners
of company culture, welfare of the students, harmony, cultural
understanding and the like, management does what it generally
wants to as long as it can fabricate gibbering assertions in
their defense. The teacher usually gets reamed, unless he or
she asserts him or her self as necessary for the sake of psychological
and financial self-defense. We Have Met the Enemy, and He Is Us Does anyone seriously believe what the
managers of these schools say? Certainly not. Nobody rational would
at any time. What these people regularly tell us is so absurd
as to constitute insults and drab contempt. But we usually attempt
to discuss issues with them as though the assertions and the
people making them were logical and open to rational persuasion,
usually knowing full well deep down that there is no honesty
or sincerity in them. The only valid refutation to this gibberish
is its self-evident insanity. We attempt to reason with people
who will deny us our pay and then complain of our lack of loyalty,
as if they were people with integrity rather than pathological
liars and borderline psychopaths. Why do we do it? We do it because it
is the only method we have of dealing with people who need to
be incarcerated, but like battered wives, we are powerless and
have no leverage. Thus, we continue to politely explain ourselves,
arguing the inarguable with poisonous swine who not only do not
care about the suffering they cause, but look at the exchange
with bemused contempt and ridicule. When we treat sadists and psychopaths
as if they were credible, we reduce ourselves to their level
of insanity. We dignify and validate insanity. We participate
in a theater of the absurd, in which we lose contact with reality
and mental health. A quick psychological sketch of many
conversation school personnel indicate symptoms characteristic
of very serious mental health problems. ItÕs
not an issue of culture, but of uninhibited lying without hesitation,
of a lack of rational behavior control, of a lack of insight,
of an absence of personal remorse, of a lack of conscience, of
shallow personal relationships, of an absence of any sense of
importance in personal priorities, and a feeling of special personal
entitlement. They exhibit what was once called psychopathic
personality with megalomania in the form of delusions about their
own superiority and specialness. These delusions indicate hatred
for people, whom they consider expendable. They also believe
themselves so mentally superior to others that they are entitled
to manipulate anyone and everyone they know. Thus they exhibit
contempt for humanity, for law, for reason, and anything that
obstructs their sense of special significance. Beneath their
guise of sanity they are dangerous psychopaths because they have
no internal moral or rational limits that govern their behavior
or intent. They have rejected their own humanity and are obsessed
with power and control. They are capable of rationalizing and
doing anything. People like this exhibit not so subtle
contempt for other human beings. No one who respects others would
lie so brazenly. These people show deep paranoia. When their
obvious sadistic patterns are observed, they cl aim that such
observations are persecution. These sick individuals imagine
themselves the oppressed victims of every person living in Japan
who has personal character and mental health. They consider anyone
not blind or insane, possessing an IQ over 90, a mortal enemy.
The extent to which they will coerce people depends solely upon
the ability of their victims to resist. Their survival depends
on how well they can drive their employees crazy and cynically
manipulate their students. Anyone defending these psychopaths
must necessarily be as crazy as they are. When I was admitting patients to a locked psychiatric ward fifteen years ago, an initial interview with such a person would generally have indicated that homicide and suicide precautions were in order, such a person being so untrustworthy that he or she would have needed to be placed under constant observation. These days, since many younger foreign residents of Japan apparently consider borderline psychotic narcissism and irresponsibility attractive features of working in conversation schools, I am considered intolerant by some for not considering mental illness as characteristic of Japanese civilization, and for holding eikaiwa managers and employees accountable to objective standards of mental health. The Lunatics Have Taken Over the Asylum The atmosphere of many schools is a cruel
mirror of a locked psychiatric ward: psychotic, but without therapeutic
intervention. The people who manage these schools are deranged,
and are aided by their deranged staff underlings. They are utterly unfit to control their
own lives, completely irresponsible, but they know this. Through
a sadistic, psychopathic mental process they consider themselves
fit to control the lives of others. Their only purpose in life
is to yoke teachers with the responsibility of keeping the entire
insane organization in business. To people who practice good mental hygiene,
personal responsibility is vital. Mentally ill people find personal
responsibility impossible to practice, and so describe it as
an intolerant demand from those who don't
"understand." Responsibility is threatening to those who want
to seize control of everyone they ever meet and drag them down
to their level of insanity. As teachers, we need responsibility.
We need it to teach in pleasant surroundings that stimulate the
learning process. We need responsible entrepreneurs and responsible
administrators. We need people who act like responsible adults,
who are serious about education, people who command our respect,
people we can trust. What we usually get instead are sick
mind games to find out whose personal problems reverberate with
the dominant mental illness. That mental illness is a sadistic
psychopathy, and people who have it quickly identify new teachers
and students as predators identify prey. Because it is incorrectly
described as cultural in origin, because it has been sanctified
with scholarly sounding language, because it is oblique and subtle,
and because it is psychological rather than physical, it is
hard for many teachers see through the verbal camouflage. These bloody-minded sadists are rarely
confronted, and violate elementary norms of decency unchecked.
Left to themselves they revel in an orgy of sadistic glee until
their organization collapses under the weight of its own contradictions
and destroys everyone with whom it comes in contact. Everything
they do has a sadistic ulterior purpose, and when that is understood
suddenly everything begins to make perfect sense. If the reader teaches in such a school
and questions his or her own sanity because the mind rejects
what the senses cannot deny, be assured that you are not insane.
What you are experiencing really is happening. Also, remember
that trying to reason with crazy people will make you feel ready
for the rubber room yourself. If the reader has been trying
to say that everyone at school is insane, and hasn't found the words, you're
right. The words appropriate to the process you're trying to describe are found in extremely
dense books about abnormal psychology and totalitarianism, and
you've probably been too busy living
to read them. If the reader works in such a school and hasn't figured it out by now, this essay demonstrates
that the three following statements are true: Staying Sane "All this makes sense," the reader may venture, "but
get to the point, for heaven's sake.
Is there hope, or should I just go slash my wrists?" Kocher suggests the following: "Whether we survive is going to
be determined by whether
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