October 30, 2013
The Common Sense Show
I have come to believe that America is poised to experience food riots. I have further come to believe that these food riots will precede riots which will likely occur when we have a banking holiday imposed on the American people. Congress is complicit with the Obama administration in cutting food stamp benefits for 50 million Americans with virtually no warning. On the surface this is reckless. The government is reducing life-sustaining benefits for a population which is conditioned to not seek out critical solutions to their daily problems. Learned Helplessness
In 1967, Martin Seligman’s seminal research was published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology entitled, Failure to Escape Traumatic Shock. Seligman’s experiment led to the term often used today to describe why poor people do not take obvious steps to climb out of their poverty-stricken circumstances.
In Seligman’s dog study, he used dogs that were shocked and at first, demonstrated the ability to escape.
In the second phase of the experiment, when a barrier was erected, repeated shocks to the dogs led to them passively accepting the shocks.
In the third phase, when the barriers were removed, one would expect the dogs to return to escaping the shocks. Stunningly, even when the animal could see a clear path to escape, they continued to passively accept the shocks, hence the development of the “learned helplessness”. The dogs had been conditioned that their actions made no difference in the outcome, hence the term, learned helplessness.
Learned Helplessness and the Poor
Learned helplessness explains why so many poor people remain in their circumstances day after day, year after year and generation after generation. After so long, the recipients of Federal welfare programs such as food stamps have learned to become totally dependent on the government for their sustenance and as a result they become conditioned that their actions make no difference to the quality of their lives. Their life decisions become grounded in believing that success is rooted in luck which explains why the poor play the Lottery with far greater frequency than any one economic group.
MORE AT THE FOLLOWING LINK: http://thecommonsenseshow.com/2013/10/30/obamas-hunger-games-is-a-prelude-to-martial-law/
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