Tower of Babel - Alpha Pub

118 Pages·2009·0.29 MB·English

by  Richard W. Wetherill

tob_cover.qxp 6/30/2004 2:03 PM Page 1
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HUMANETICS a

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Today our world suffers from
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That affliction is caused by
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hidden distortions of logic.
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Those distortions are fixed,
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We all have distortions, and
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Humanetics exposes the exact
nature of those distortions.
It shows their causes, their
results, and their remedies.
It constitutes a new science
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of perfective thinking, here
reported for the first time.
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TOWER OF BABEL
BY
RICHARD W. WETHERILL
AN OUTLINE OF HUMANETICS

HUMANETICS
Today our world suffers from
warped and twisted thinking.
That affliction is caused by
hidden distortions of logic.
Those distortions are fixed,
inflexible tools of thought.
* * * *
We all have distortions, and
they cause all our mistakes.
* * * *
Humanetics exposes the exact
nature of those distortions.
It shows their causes, their
results, and their remedies.
It constitutes a new science of
perfective thinking, here
reported for the first time.
SEVENTHPRINTING
COPYRIGHT© 1952, 1979, 2004
BY
RICHARDW. WETHERILL
All Rights Reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced or copied in any form or
by any means without written permission.
THE ALPHA PUBLISHING HOUSE
PO Box 255, Royersford, PA 19468
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Contents
1. THE BASIC THEORY OF HUMANETICS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2. HOW WE INSTALL OUR DISTORTIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
3. HOW OUR DISTORTIONS AFFLICT US . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
4. HOW WE CORRECT OUR DISTORTIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
5. OUR UNSUSPECTED MENTAL POWERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98

Chapter 1
The Basic Theory of Humanetics
CLEARLY our world is in trouble. With all our graft and
corruption, our selfishness and cupidity, our lusts and
overindulgences, our endless killings on highways and in
battle, our dissensions and conflicts, our innumerable other
examples of foolishness and the difficulties which result, we
can hardly call ourselves collectively stable and sane.
Despite our spectacular material and industrial progress,
we are lost in confusion. Our leaders advance from crisis to
crisis in a world seemingly built of crises. Over all our
tribulation hangs the ominous threat of the atom bomb—and
worse.
Somehow we have let ourselves get out of adjustment.
Everyone knows that our human and social sciences
have lagged far behind the advances of our physical
sciences. Seemingly we know more about atoms than about
ourselves. Our physical sciences gave us the atom bomb,
and the atom bomb is unbelievably dangerous. But the only
reason we had to develop the atom bomb, and the only
reason it is dangerous, is that we have not successfully
applied objective intelligence to the problem of getting
along with and among ourselves.
What is the result?
In our confusion and strife, living under the shadow of
impending disaster, wearing the dull yoke of confiscatory
taxes, laboring in exchange for a ticket to nameless future
7
8 Tower of Babel
distresses, men and women are individually and collectively
frightened. They are frustrated and disturbed. They have
ailments demanding a constant succession of miraculous
new drugs and medical techniques, despite which we find
ourselves alarmingly short of doctors, hospitals, and
especially mental institutions.
How can we achieve correct adjustment?
We hear that we need a rebirth of morality and a return
to simple old-fashioned honesty and virtue. It is true; we do.
But that sort of talk has been going on a long time with little
effect, for the simple and obvious but apparently hitherto
unnoticed reason that almost every person already and quite
literally considers himself both honest and virtuous.
That creates a deadlock.
We all know our world has a disease. Many of us think
we know how to cure the disease. But each of us thinks only
others are infected. Consequently each of us is emotionally
allergic to his share of the cure.
That perpetuates the deadlock.
Each of us will discuss the faults of others, sometimes
quite loudly, but seldom will anyone discuss his own. Each
of us vigorously proclaims that he is perfectly willing to
discuss his own, if pressed hard enough, but, even then,
what he means is that he will deny them. No matter how
overwhelming the evidence of his errors and mistakes, he
cannot listen to it without getting irritable and resentful and
excited and hot-tempered and irrational. The harder he is
pressed, the more resistance he throws up, a fact any person
can check for himself by applying it to the nearest human
being.
That strengthens the deadlock; apparently little can be
done about it.
Perhaps the quickest way to get into trouble with another
The Basic Theory of Humanetics 9
person is to suggest that there is something wrong with his
logic or his morals. As an almost universal reaction, he
throws up impenetrable resistance. He thus makes it
impossible to correct what is erroneous in his thinking, and
he does not suspect that his resistance is exactly
proportional to his need for correction.
He is quite effectively insulated. He cannot successfully
be approached in a conversation, because the conversation
invariably goes to pieces for emotional reasons. He cannot
successfully be approached in a book, because he throws the
book aside the moment it becomes personal.
Thus is the deadlock protected and prolonged. Thus are
we sentenced to vicious perpetuation of its deadly negative
influence, evidence of which is daily paraded in our public
press. Desperately we need a formula to break the deadlock
and restore our sanity. Among all our millions, no person
has raised a voice of significant suggestion. No person has
known what to say—at least, no person who could get
general attention. That is a sad state of affairs.
Something must be wrong with our intelligence—and
something is.
That some strange blight afflicts our intelligence has
long been evident to every discerning person. We have not
known the nature of that blight. We have not known how it
does its nefarious work, nor how it can be exterminated and
its damage corrected.
That brings us to our topic.
Humanetics shows how we got into our predicament,
and why we could not get out of it. It explains why we could
not get a rebirth of morality and a return to old-fashioned
honesty and virtue. It shows why each person is flatly unable
to recognize his crucial errors and mistakes. It explains why
he is sincerely amazed when accused of them, and why he