THE NEW FEDERALIST

March 16, 1992

Pages 6-7

American Almanac

Pragmatism: How America's Identity Was Corrupted

by New Age Psychologist William James
by Mary Louise Khouri

EIRNS/Philip Ulanowsky

Economic collapse, homelessness, and the destruction of the next generation

by the radical counterculture: all tolerated by the American population as
part of "being practical."
As a psychologist, I have often wondered whether perhaps there exists some
peculiar cultural and ideological axiom, embedded in the psyche of Americans, that is largely responsible for our aberrant behavior as a nation. After a
great deal of research, I have become convinced that pragmatism is just such
a flaw.
As Funk and Wagnalls dictionary defines pragmatism, it is "the philosophy
that ideas only have value in terms of their practical consequences." They
give "practical" as its synonym, and refer to the Greek word pragma, meaning "thing done," as its derivation.
Americans have always been practical people, known for having a "can-do"
attitude toward getting things done no matter what the obstacle. People have
come to accept pragmatism as something reasonable and all-American.
However, if one accepts the idea of being pragmatic, he is implicitly accepting all kinds of dangerous underlying assumptions he would probably not
accept, were he cognizant of where these assumptions could lead him.
Pragmatism was created as a very important part of the "New Age" movement begun as an international effort at the end of the last century. The New
Age was an existentialist movement which Hitler and Mussolini brought to
politics, and eventually the rock-drug-sex counterculture brought to America. As the American facet of this, the philosophy of pragmatism was
concocted by Anglophile William James at Harvard (1861-1907). It was a
continuation of Great Britain's historical commitment to stamp out Christian
republican values in North America, as a precondition for restoring a oneworld empire modeled on pagan imperial Rome. Spawned earlier in the
European salons of Madame de Stael, the New Age strategy was to promote
"Romanticism."
This paved the way for the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, the mentor of
the Nazis, and for many other forms of irrationalism. Pragmatism appeared
in America around the same time that the "New Age" was spreading
Darwinism, eugenics, and general cultural pessimism. James was a strict
Darwinian, who applied the law of the jungle"survival of the fittest"to
human beings, and added the notion that the end justifies the means. Thus,
pragmatism, as a form of Social Darwinism, helped Americans become more

amenable to the idea that certain races of men are more "fit to survive" than
others, and should therefore "naturally" rule over the inferior ones.
In the eyes of the aristocracy, these "lower races" as James called them,
should only serve as subjects or slaves, or even better, be culled from the
human herd entirely.
Mussolini's Pragmatism
The philosophy of the fascists was exactly the same Social Darwinism (the
"master race") and "whatever works" approach. As William Yandell Elliott
documents in his Pragmatic Revolt in Politics: "The observers who have
commented upon Fascism have agreed upon one thing at least, that its
method is essentially pragmatic. Mussolini attributes his own intellectual
shaping to William James. . . . For pragmatism, a myth is true so long as it
works. Mussolini offers himself as the new Caesar, to lead Italy once more
to the day when Rome will become 'the center of the world.' If he can
capture the imagination of Italians and inflame them with his dream, he feels
that he can govern with consent."
Mussolini loved to use the word force in explaining his program; he asserted that the use of fear and force are justified by national economic
necessity. This is merely pragmatism's "the end justifies the means" as
James stated: "To develop a thought's meaning, we need only determine
what conduct it is fitted to produce; that conduct is for us its sole significance." Or as he later says in Pragmatism, truth is relative: "Build therefore
your own world."
According to James, the fascist-syndicalist state, as Mussolini called it, "had
seized on the pragmatic test of efficiency . . . and repudiated all responsibility to representative democracy." Wages, hours, prices, etc., "were subordinated to the collective 'necessity' as it is interpreted by a strong-willed
Fascist oligarchy which recognizes no rights and imposes all duties." In
1928, Elliott wrote that "fascism has come to mean to the popular imagination just this application of pragmatism to politics."
Since truth, for the pragmatist, is "relative" to whatever works for the
gratification of one's individual biological survival, the door is open to
irrationalism in everythingeconomics, religion, art, etc. With the
introduction of pragmatism, the "free enterprise" system of Britain's Adam
Smith could also be sold to Americans as only "being practical" about how
to prosper.

"Being practical" was perverted to mean doing anything in the name of

making money, in the service of one's petty, hedonistic will. Pragmatism
was a perfect echo of what Adam Smith had said earlier about the economy,
that man should concern himself only with pursuing pleasure and avoiding
pain, and let God worry about the consequences for overall society.

William James (right) and younger brother Henry look over a gallery of their
cothinkers (left to right): Thomas Huxley, Bertrand Russell, Adolf Hitler,
Friedrich Nietzsche, and Satanist Aleister Crowley.

Pragmatism is also explicit in its praise of Gnosticism. It espouses the use

of alcohol and drugs for gaining "mystical" experiences. Satanist Aleister
Crowley's manual, Magik in Theory and Practice, mandates William James's
Varieties of Religious Experience as required reading for all self-respecting
Satan worshippers. It was Crowley who recommended that "a male child of
perfect innocence and high intelligence is the most satisfactory and suitable
victim" for human sacrifice for gaining magical power. After all, as James
professed, if you "willed to believe" in such magical powers in order to gain
what you need, then you're perfectly free to choose so.
William James's promotion of irrationalism in the guise of just being pragmatic, did the most to soften up Americans to accept British radical liberalism of the Benthamite variety. In directly attacking natural law, or universal
truth, his life's work was dedicated to legitimizing every form of perversion
from psychic research and drug experimentation, to all varieties of Satanic
Gnosticism.
James's Background
Born into a tremendously wealthy family which was already deeply involved
in the mystical Transcendental Movement of New England, William James
naturally became a kook of the worst kind. The James family had always
been the political and social allies of the British empire, and belonged to the
blueblood circles of Cambridge and Boston.
William James's father, Henry, Sr., had suffered a complete nervous breakdown resulting from his deep involvement with British intelligence while in
England. Like his father, William hated modern industry and science, and
advocated a return to the primitive nature-worshipping forms of society. He,
too, was plagued continually with bouts of suicidal depression.
Discounting that he had taken hallucinogenic drugs since he was 15, James
attributed his depression to the fact that he had not yet "found" himself or
what he was supposed to do in life. He claimed to have solved this problem
by asserting the pre-eminence of his "irrational will."
William James's paternal great-grandfather, "William of Albany," had
aligned himself with the patroons of the Dutch West India Company. Along
with "Prince" John Van Buren (who married Albany's daughter), the Roosevelts and the Muensterbergs, they were the political and social allies of the
British empire, especially the Balfours (Cecil family) who dominated much
of British government, military, and intelligence institutions. The James

family became established in this country through land grants from this
Anglo-Dutch banking empire.
William's father, Henry James, Sr., was an extravagant eccentric who
professed to be a heretic and mystic. He was a follower of utopian socialist
Charles Fourier, the forerunner of the idea that society should be comprised
of small, independent socialist communities in an idyllic state of "natural
and unspoiled divinity," much like the hippie communes of the 1960s.
Henry, Sr.'s most intimate friend was Ralph Waldo Emerson, the most
famous transcendentalist of the time, who praised Henry as "the best man in
New York City." It was Emerson who in 1842 went to the James home to
give his blessing at William James's birth, becoming William's godfather.
Henry's friends were the ideological predecessors of the "one-worlders" of
the New Age movement today. In 1844, Henry, Sr. had gone to England to
visit John Stuart Mill and others of the British intelligence community where
he was "vastated," his euphemism for brainwashed. Dr. J.J. Garth (an Aryan
master race theorist) helped Henry Sr. overcome his nervous breakdown by
introducing him to spiritualist Emmanuel Swedenborg's "live with the
animals" philosophy.
The James family was part of a high-level British intelligence operation to
inject superstition and irrationality in America. The British connections
continued and deepened with William and his younger brother Henry. For
William, taking drugs, mediumistic trances, and seances with the dead were
standard fare. The James family's acceptance by "all the finest families of
Boston and Cambridge," indicates that the Anglo-American bluebloods were
promoting such countercultural ideas from the beginning.
British aristocrat Bertrand Russell, the foremost genocidalist of the 20th
century, enthusiastically endorsed William James as the "natural aristocrat."
"Dirty Berty's" first wife was from a wealthy family (Logan Pearsall Smith)
closely allied with William James.
James was especially depressed while studying Kant and struggling with the
philosophy of his father, whom he idolized and had difficulty understanding.
"I have grown up," he wrote, "from the example of my Dad . . . [with] a very
non-optimistic view of nature. . . . I have regarded the affairs of human life
to be only a phantasmagoria, which had to be interpreted elsewhere in the
Kosmos into its real significance. . . . When I felt like taking a free initiative,
suicide seemed like the most manly form to put my daring into."

James also became involved in the Gaia cultnow popular among radical
environmentalistswhich asserts that the Earth is a living beingMother
Earth. James wrote: "Your individual will becomes so harmonized to
nature's will as cheerfully to acquiesce in whatever she assigns to you,
knowing you serve some purpose . . . which will never be revealed to you."
He also admired the philosophy of Charles Peirce, writing "a man's happiness depends on his feelings . . . the objective significance of his most
pleasurable feelings."
James attacked the German classical poet and dramatist Friedrich Schiller
for believing that man, if ruled by his sensual feelings, could never achieve
true freedom. In his concentration on himself and his own feelings, James
admits that he had become callous to the feelings of others. He wrote:
"Nature and life have unfitted me for any affectionate relations with other
individuals . . . I may not study, make, or enjoybut I can will." While
fighting off another nervous breakdown in 1868, he said that among those
who had had the most profound effect on him were the racist Oliver Wendell
Holmes. William had received his M.D. in 1869 when Holmes passed him
through his exam with only one question.
In early 1870, James wrote to his brother that his eyelids were inflamed "by
an overdose of chloral, a new hypnotic remedy which I took for the fun of
it." These were the events surrounding the beginning of his psychical
research. He claimed to have finally gotten some relief from his depression
upon reading Renouvier, and asserting the "irrational will" as the solution to
the paradox between determinism and free will. He embraced Renouvier's
assertion of free will as the "sustaining of a thought because I choose to
when I might have other thoughts."
At about this same time, William and his friends formed the Metaphysical
Club at Harvard which, though it was supposed to represent all points of
view, was heavily dominated by Empiricists. The only difference was that
James and a few others argued in favor of including the spirit world as an
empirical phenomenon that human physical senses can perceive, though it is
not susceptible to rational explanation. This led to a fixed debate between
Empiricism and Empiricism with magic.
James at Harvard
During this process, the distillation of William James's ideas became
popularized as the household American wordPragmatism.

Appointed professor of physiology at Harvard in 1872, he remained there for

the rest of his career until 1907. In 1878, he was invited to John Hopkins
University by Dr. D.C. Gilman to lecture on the "brain and the mind."
During this lecture series, James further elaborated on his view of the human
will: "The willing department of our nature dominates both the conceiving
and the feeling, or in plainer English, perception and thinking are only there
for behavior's sake."
At this time, William's younger brother, Henry, Jr., was living in London,
writing pornographic novels and plays, and debauching with patrician
Thomas Huxley. Huxley took credit for creating Charles Darwin, and his
grandson, Aldous Huxley, brought the LSD counterculture to California.
Henry, Jr. was famous for loving "feudal families, old castles, and formal
manners"another natural aristocrat!
Sister Alice was no less a typical James family member. As a psychotic
lesbian, dying in London in 1892, she received advice from James that
would be echoed resoundingly in the "Hospice" movement of today: "Save
yourself from bodily pain, if it can be done. You've had too much of that.
Take all the morphia, or other forms of opium if that disagrees, you want,
and don't be afraid of becoming an opium-drunkard."
In 1873, James's nervous instability forced him to temporarily leave Harvard
to study with Helmholtz, Hering, and Wundt in Germany, all the while
remaining under the influence of psychotropic drugs.
William met his wife, Alice Gibbons, in 1876, while attending the "Radical
Club," a Unitarian ministers association formed to "find ways to make the
religious experience more spiritual." Unitarianism, founded in the late
seventeenth century, promoted pluralism and attacked the conception of
universal truth.
The entire James family had a morbid preoccupation with death. Robertson
James, another brother, said of their mother's death: "We have all been
educated by Father to feel that death was the only reality, and that life was
simply an experimental thing, and for this reason . . . we have taken Mother's
going as such an orderly transition. None of us would recall her for we feel
that we are more near to her now than ever before, simply because she is
already at the goal for which we all cheerfully bend our steps." Their father
starved himself to death at this point, saying he was tired of this life and

wanted to become "all spirit," and of course none of his children tried to stop
him.
In 1882, James returned to Europe again, where he studied with the
prominent psychologists of the day: Remy, Delboeuf, Stumpf, Munk,
Ludwig, and Hering. While in London, he joined the "Scratch Eight" ("Old
Scratch" means Satan) a philosophical-psychological group founded by
Edmund Gurney. Gurney and Sidgwick (members of British intelligence's
Cambridge Apostles grouping) had founded the Society of Psychical
Research which practiced every form of spookery imaginable. Pre-Raphaelite feudalist John Ruskin, racial purification theorist (who coined the term
"genetic"), William Bateston, and Cambridge Apostle Sir William Pollock,
were all members of the Psychical Research Society. Bateson's son Gregory,
would also become a prime mover in the future California LSD culture.
Pollock and Supreme Court Justice Oliver W. Holmes were the main forces
behind establishing British freemasonry in America. Pollock was given his
title by the British crown for services rendered in support of the Confederacy
during the American Civil War.
At the invitation of Richard Haldane, James also became associated with the
Aristotelian Society. It was during this time that he developed the concept
of the "stream of consciousness"that one's consciousness is a constantly
flowing river of feelings. "Feelings are the germ and starting point of cognition, thoughts the developed tree," James wrote.
In 1884, James founded the American Society of Psychical Research
(ASPR), with Richard Hodgson as secretary. On assignment in India,
Hodgson was transferred by British intelligence to directly "manage" the
affairs of both ASPR and James. In 1890, Harvard commissioned James's
Principles of Psychology. By 1893, he was elected president of the British
Society for Psychical Research, and president of the American Association
of Psychologists. So the British were controlling "mainstream" psychology
in America, not just the "spookier" end of it.
By the mid-1890s, psychical research was James's main preoccupation. His
chief project was completing a Census of Hallucinations in the United States
for the British Society of Psychical Research. As the first mass profiling
operation conducted on the American people, it set the stage for the
introduction of the MK-Ultra campus LSD experiments of the CIA and
British Intelligence in the 1960s.

Clockwise from top left: James's top student,

Gertrude Stein, poses with lesbian lover Alice B.
Toklas, inventor of the marijuana brownie, at a
New Age cult center in France; self portrait of
Pablo Picasso, discovered and promoted by Stein;
another of Picasso's Modernist efforts at portraiture; a closer look at Stein; transcendentalist
Ralph Waldo Emerson, godfather of William
James.

One of James's students, Gertrude Stein, helped him do his profiling by

"testing the reaction of the average college student in a state of normal
activity, and in the state of fatigue induced by their examinations." James
practiced what he preached about the primacy of the feelings. When Gertrude Stein refused to take her final exam by stating: "Dear Professor, I am
so sorry but really I do not feel like an examination paper in philosophy
today," he gave her the highest mark in the class! Gertrude Stein became the
American version of Madame de Stael, promoting all the New-Agers in art
and literature (Picasso, T.S. Eliot); and she credits James as her mentor.
Stein also became a cult idol for the 1960s sexual revolution because of her
life-long lesbian relationship with Alice B. Toklaswho invented the marijuana brownie. Among James other students were W.E.B. DuBois, and not
surprisingly, Teddy Roosevelt.
During his last trip to Europe, near the end of his life, James met with Bertrand Russell, H.G. Wells, Carl Jung, and Sigmund Freud. All but Freud
were undeniably known to be racial purists, genocidalists, and Nazis in their
own time.
With such an irrational evil belief structure, it is no surprise that James was
at the brink of suicide most of his life, took drugs, adored the psychopathic
personality, talked with the dead, and participated in seances with darting
tables flying around the room. Nor is it shocking that he and his entire circle
of family and friends were hard core racists, since social Darwinism was an
attempt to provide "scientific" approval for racism and against the sanctity of
human life.
At Harvard, James merged the departments of physiology and philosophy,
naming the new department psychology. In 1890, he wrote America's first
textbook in psychology, The Principles of Psychology, in which he laid out
his major thesisthat man is nothing more than a clever beast.
Throughout his tenure at Harvard and his numerous trips to Europe, James
collaborated with the racists and Satanists of the Anglo-American establishment. He worked closely with British intelligence to launch psychical research in America, and he conducted America's first mass psychological
profiling operation. He taught his brand of radical liberalism and irrationalism to the students who would later become the leading sponsors of environmentalism, Modernism, and the rock-drug-sex counterculture in general.

The Philosophy of Pragmatism

Just what is the world outlook which the American population has swallowed in the guise of "being practical"?
The philosophy of Pragmatism is a combination of Social Darwinism and
Empiricism. Empiricism asserts we can know only what our physical senses
perceive. Social Darwinism asserts that man is just the smartest of the
animals, nothing more. In his Principles of Psychology, James states clearly
that man's neurological functioning, as well as his conscious abilities, are
motivated solely by the practical desire to pursue pleasure and avoid pain.
He believed man was just a phylogenetically "more complex" clam! James
praises Aristotle and Darwin in describing man's thinking ability as simply a
selecting agency for choosing what he feels will meet his instinctual needs.
This is what James terms "reality." In other words, the brain is merely a
more highly developed tooth or clawanother biological mechanism to
ensure man's physical survival.
Since pragmatism asserts that truth does not exist as something universal
and knowable, James decried the fact that: "Reason's task has been to make
truth universal." For James, only man's animal-like urges and emotions are
knowable; therefore, these emotions and urges exist, and human reason does
not.
This is not an original concept. Aristotle claimed that man's mind is a tabula
rasa and that knowledge is only that which an individual gains through
physiological sense perception. Knowledge, therefore, is merely the sum of
one's day to day experiences. Therefore, the existence of new ideas created
by the human mind is denied, or at least mystified.
To James, the task of philosophy is to mediate between different opinions
about such strictly "private" matters as the idea of what truth is. He regretted that this mediation required the use of words; he even lamented that
people were compelled to spell the same!
In James's system of thinking, truth itself is relative. Therefore, if one needs
to believe in a human soul or mind, he can do so, but only through what
James describes as a Kantian "blind leap of faith."
These ideas have been in direct opposition to the philosophical trend of the
great humanist and Christian thinkers since the time of Plato. Christian
humanist thought recognizes the creative powers of the human mind as the

crucial distinction between man and beast. The proof of the assertion that
man exercises creative powers, and thereby improves upon the universe lies
in the fact that human society has been able to sustain an ever-increasing
populationwhich no animal species can do. If the human mind were not
distinctly creative, man would still be hunting and gathering in competition
with the stronger and faster baboons.
The Christian concept of imago viva Deithat all human beings are created
in the image of the living Godexpresses this fundamental difference
between man and animal; we are creative, as is our Creator; animals are
not. Such an eternal and divine quality in man means that every individual
human life is sacred; the good that an individual accomplishes effects
countless generations to come and gives moral purpose to his life. The
emotion of love for the Creator and consequently for mankind as a whole
(agape) is that which enables man to make these creative discoveries.
Therefore, one cannot eliminate a human being because that person is
physically or mentally defective. If one denies the sacred quality in man,
then one opens the floodgates to all forms of enslavement of the "weaker" by
the supposedly biologically "superior." By denying the sanctity of human
life, wasn't it practical for the Nazis to work 11 million "useless eaters" to
death in the name of national security and a New World Order? Likewise,
the Pragmatists of the British Royal family would agree today that genocide
in the undeveloped sector is merely a "practical" solution to the problem of
bringing too many people in to a world where there are fewer resources to
support them.
That is why the British oligarchy produced the creature called William
Jamesto introduce their brand of philosophy in America, to destroy the
Christian humanist philosophy of our Founding Fathers who understood that
human creativity, embodied in continued scientific and technological
progress, would always define the expanding limits of the "bounty of
nature," and therefore support an ever-growing human population.
In terms of economics, pragmatism made it easy for Americans to accept the
philosophy underlying Adam Smith, the very "free trade" policy we fought
the American Revolution against! Smith's economic theory is exactly the
same as James's statement that the "practical difference" between choosing
one belief over another was its "cash value," and that the "cash value of
matter is our own physical sensations" of pleasure or pain. Thus, capitalism
came to mean "freedom" for deregulation of virtually everything, the lawless

"all is permitted" trend of drugs, usury, and unbridled speculation in the

economy.
Pragmatism in Theology
This bestial view of man naturally led James to assert pluralism in theology,
and to stress its most irrational forms. Pragmatism insists on the Gnostic
belief that there is no rational connection between the spiritual and physical
worlds. For James, anything spiritual is by definition unintelligible and
mystical.
Pragmatism equates faith in God with irrationality, whereas the Christian
idea of the spiritual is synonymous with rationality. Young's Analytic
Concordance reports that the New Testament uses the same Greek word
Logosto mean both Holy Spirit (the Word) and Reason: "and the Word
was God." (John 1:1); "And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us"
(John 1:14)".
James classes Leibniz's "monad" as a material thing, and therefore Leibniz
as a materialist. He said he wanted to convince the Leibnizians to become
mystics, his trouble was his inability to explain how the "brain world" and
the "soul world" influence one another. So to keep his experience based
psychology out of metaphysics, he posits a "psycho-physical parallelism,"
where the linkage would forever remain a mystery.
Pragmatism equates Kant's "leap of faith" to Plato's belief in abstract ideas.
James attacked Plato for "grudgingly admitting sensation's existence but
who trampled it into the dust as something corporeal, non-cognitive, and
vile."
On the question of good and evil, James asserts that good is accomplished
"by force of will." He asserts that the question of how religion enables man
to face difficulty or death is and always will remain secret. He praises the
growing "liberal Unitarian movement" for promoting the idea of "nonexistent evil," and notes with glee that this "healthy-mindedness" movement
was sweeping Europe and America just like Darwin's theory of evolution.
James clearly understood that his pragmatism served as the basis for New
Age movements in culture and religion. He mentions several "new thought"
and "mind-cure" movements which had "poured over America:" (1) Emersonianism, (2) faith healing and other Pentacostal manifestations and (3)
New England Transcendentalism, all of which had led to a "religion of

nature that has entirely displaced Christianity for a large part of his
generation." The nature religions James promoted believed that if you
completely trusted your personal pleasure-pain guide, then anything and
everything is "Absolutely Good."
James had actually begun his work on religion with a series of lectures on
demonic possession. One of his more inspired students on this subject,
Aleister Crowley, helped found the British branch of the Satanic Thule
Society, the Order of The Golden Dawn. For James,"the world is made
richer for having the devil in it."
In James's own words, the practical approach to evil is not to "reason about
it," but, to do as the evangelical Christians do: "evil is merely to be transcended and forgotten." James believed that the Lutheran "salvation by
faith" alone, and "mind cure" both effect a change for the better in people,
by "reversing the rules laid down by the 'moralist' who believes in 'works.' "
By making truth relative, pragmatism destroys any universal standard of
good and evil. Thus, the Christian idea of morality through works is explicitly attacked as oppressive and authoritarian. It is no wonder then, that
James would say in his Varieties of Religious Experience that while modern
man may think animal and human sacrifice is abhorrent, once upon a time it
met the needs of society: "Men worshipped gods who required human or
animal sacrifice because such 'fruits' were valued and required by them.
They were worth something to the people personally."
James's explanations of the spiritual are also a direct attack on the classical
idea of the unity of natural science (Naturwissenschaft) and art (Geistenwissenschaft). His is a diabolical twisting of the notion of this union, by
claiming that both science and art are "explained as a natural outgrowth of
animal intelligence;" i.e. both are produced by the instincts.
For James, art, such as drama and opera, is just a milder form of mystical
experience, of emotional escapism. But since the poor can't afford such
entertainment, James encourages them to use alcohol and drugs. "Drunkenness is the great exciter of the 'yes' function in man," he writes. "It makes
him for the moment one with truth. . . . To the poor and unlettered it stands
in the place of symphony concerts and of literature." It's no wonder American culture has been reduced to bread and circuses, like ancient Rome.
James said at one point that music and science, or "so-called civilization"
should not be forced onto the "lower races" (sic) because this is "tantamount

to early Islam spreading its religion by use of the sword." This is exactly
what the liberal cultural relativists say today: Don't give classical culture
and science to the little people of the Third World, it would destroy their
primitive pagan cultures! Keep them in a backward, i.e. starving, powerless
state, and tell them they can only be truly happy in this supposedly natural
condition.
Aristocrats like James of course would never conceive of elevating the
unlettered to appreciation of Schiller or Beethoven. Giving them such
freedom of mind would make them capable of creating a better life for
themselves. Poverty in and of itself is recommended by James because it
supposedly keeps one humble, pure, and therefore more susceptible to
control by the aristocracy.
A prime form of entertainment for the lower classes, James asserts, is
psychotropic drugs. Never attempting to hide his own drug abuse, James
unabashedly recommends "nitrous oxide and ether, especially nitrous oxide,
when sufficiently diluted with air, stimulates the mystical consciousness in
an extraordinary degree. Depth beyond depth of truth seem revealed to the
inhaler. Some years ago I myself made some observations on this aspect of
nitrous oxide intoxication." It was so wonderful, said James, that some
people would scream to be killed rather than be allowed to come back from
such a trip.
James described mysticism as a psychotic experience of "deep knowledge"
that is "completely inarticulate" and where one is grasped by a higher
power." This is pure gnosticism. For James, the ultimate experience is
devoid of any reality testing, or sense of self. The supernaturalism these
states offer is what he refers to as "twice-bornness" for those who experience
it. These "born-again" experiences "break down the authority of the rational
mind, and open up other orders of truth."
In Varieties of Religious Experience, James praises the advantages of the
"psychopathic personality" coupled with a "superior intellect" as the
"hallmark of religious genius." Mystical literature, he said, proves that
music is the best element by which we are spoken to in this way. It would
be interesting to see what mind-altering rhythms are in these mystical
writings, and if they are similar to today's rock music of the counterculture
and fundamentalist sects.

To James, the most important step forward in psychology and in his psychic
research, came with the discovery of the unconscious in 1886. "If there be
higher spiritual agencies that can directly touch us," the possession of the
subconscious was the "dreamy subliminal door ajar" to make such a thing
possible.
In pragmatic terms, any belief, religious or secular, is just whatever you
"Will to Believe" which was the title of the lecture which had made him
widely acclaimed. All perversions are justified in the name of the arbitrary
will to fulfill one's animal needs. Therefore, pragmatism ultimately comes
back to the instincts as the "bottom line" to even the ability of man to assert
his will: "Unless we have divinitory power, we cannot foresee what movement lies within our power;" therefore "No one can perform a voluntary act
for the first time."
Obviously, pragmatism does not solve the paradox between necessity and
free will. The great thinkers of western civilization recognize that God's
universal laws (truth) exist. To this way of thinking, the human will is not
arbitrary; man conforms his will to the will of the Creator, always with the
betterment of future generations foremost in mind. In this way man is truly
free, because he takes joy in pursuing the progress of mankind, and in so
doing thereby also meets the necessities required for survival of the human
species as a whole.
By promoting the irrational bestiality of pragmatism, the British hoped to
degrade the minds of Americans, and thereby eventually snuff out the most
powerful force for progress and freedom in the world. America's philosophy
had been epitomized by the likes of Gottfried Leibniz and Benjamin Franklin, both of whom promoted the idea that by using, not rejecting, one's
powers of reason, one could discover universal law as reflected in scientific
progress, which could continually make the world a better place in which to
live.
Conclusion
As the American school of psychology, pragmatism became the tool by
which the British hoped to forever maintain social control in the United
States. By accepting pragmatism, Americans came to tolerate all kinds of
deviant behavior in their government and in themselves.
Currently the Anglo-Americans' financial empire is rapidly collapsing, and
their response is to impose the most brutal forms of austerityin the name

of pragmatism. In March 1991, Time magazine's cover story featured "The

New Pragmatism"an article about government budget cuts. It read like a
death warrant for America's poor, elderly, and disabled.
Pragmatism, by its negation of the primacy and sacredness of human life,
has rationalized for Americans the violation of natural law and the spread of
suffering heretofore not seen on the globe. And, as history has taught us, a
society that deprecates the value of human life, loses it moral fitness to
survive, and will not survive. So for the sake of our nation and humanity, let
us be truly practical by thinking in a non-pragmatic way: The next time the
government, or your neighbor, tells you it's only "practical" to pull the plug
on grandma in order to save on health costs, or to tolerate increasing
unemployment, homelessness, and starvation in the name of balancing the
federal budget, remember that billions are being squandered on bailing out
the bankers. The next time the government requests that your son give his
life to restore a slave-owning monarchy in the name of a "New World
Order," remember the decadent world order against which the American
Revolution was fought. Reject William James's evil pragmatism and start
thinking like an American again.