Operant Conditioning, Path Dependency and Societal Revolution, Part 4

This is the last part in a four-part series. Part 1 discussed the principles of Operant Conditioning and Path Dependency. Part 2 looked at what happens when philosophy and religion are blocked or obscured in a culture and the vacuum this lack creates. This vacuum opens the way for a dark, controlling philosophy that erodes virtue and replaces it with controlled behavior and expectations. Part 3 is the beginning of a research plan to explore who/what is behind current operant conditioning in the US today. It ended with a preliminary hypothesis:

The vectors [developed in Part 3] indicate a deliberate effort to create a large, powerful corporatist state that limits liberty and seeks to control the populace rather than help it prosper and grow the republic.

Even though we have not performed the analysis, we can still develop three scenarios based on the hypothesis. This is like the military’s course of action development and wargaming. Results from scenario analysis will then feed back into the research plan. The scenarios are:

(see: Defending the Republic scenarios for more thoughts and details on scenarios)

In Part 3, I noted a free republic requires an educated and informed electorate that engages in critical thinking to make decisions that reinforce and nourish liberty and prosperity. Regardless of the scenario, I am certain that we need to teach critical thinking and provide unbiased information to citizens to make effective decisions. Education and a free press are vital to a free republic. And both are in trouble now in the US.

So let us review some actions I think are required now regardless of scenario. Even in the second scenario, we need to preserve our vital basis.

• Education Reform. I suspect that the core of education reform is two-fold:
  • Remove education for the control of unions and bureaucrats.
  • Reform education content and delivery to meet the objectives of the P21 concept.
• Free media. I suspect that there are few, if any, media sources that are bias-free. Citizens need critical thinking skills to evaluate media sources.

Education reform and a free media are critical tasks. In military decision-making, organizations must accomplish a critical task regardless of the course of action. Moreover, like the serpents twining around the winged staff in the caduceus, these two tasks are intertwined and reinforce each other.

This citizen caduceus provides the skills and tools to assess operant conditioning from a variety of sources and determine an effective response to promote liberty and prosperity. This is not a liberal vs. conservative issue. It is a citizen issue. We need responsible and ethical voices from both sides to temper and balance each other to find effective solutions to the problems of modern society. In theory, Compassionate Conservatism sought a balance. But to be honest, it never truly took off.

We need a truly non-partisan clearing house of ideas, concepts and critically data and information presented in balanced manner with potential biases and assumptions. Ideally, this organization will complete the research plan and gather the data required to test the hypothesis.

Why do we need to do this? Because we have lost the art of constructive debate. Both sides rely on far more on opinion and biased interpretations of events. Bost sides are guilty of manufacturing “facts” that support the opinions. Otherwise it is like the Central Pacific Railroad and the Union Pacific Railroad working to their own plans and never meeting with the Golden Spike that united the nation.