An Ignorant Slogan: “Don't Be Evil”

 
Atlas Shrugs posted the other day on the evil Google does. Or as she said, “The Eeeeeeevil Google Does”.

Linking to Filou’s blog, Views on World Affairs, she noted what many of us have seen since Google first started doing its news bit. That is, Google is a fellow-travelling, sympathizing Islamist-gospel spreader. When it was Red Communism, we called such folk pinkoes. I think the appellation fits Google to a T. Only it is Hezbollah, not Moscow, which calls the Google tune.

When they first started up the news section, I signed up for Google Alerts on Muslim women. Shouldn’t have bothered. What you get is non-news and little meaningful mention of what is really happening to women in Iran or India or Pakistan. Today’s list was the usual MSM blather. Here’s one story from the section; it doesn’t differ much in tone or motive from the rest:

ISLAM AWARENESS WEEK (From today’s Hartford Courant)

Though Islam is viewed by many as a faith that restricts a woman’s freedom, four of every five converts to Islam in America are women, says Jane I. Smith, who has studied the experiences of American Muslims in general, and American Muslim women in particular.

Smith is one of several scholars attempting to dispel stereotypes and misconceptions about Islam this week during the first “Islam Awareness Week” at Trinity College.

Bridging the Gap: Islam’s True Colors” includes daily events through Friday that explore topics ranging from the controversy over images of Muhammad to the pressures faced by Muslim students on college campuses.

Just what we need, more awareness of this predictably p.c. meme. Don’t you wonder who paid for it? Yawn or puke, your choice.

Here’s what Filou said:

What a rude awakening this morning. As I opened my Google News, the source of a main article regarding the Middle East was Hezbollah’s Al Manar…Since when the is the news agency of a major terrorist organization considered a mainstream news source? When will Google start acting in a responsible fashion and stand by its “No Evil” principle?

But the wording of their "principle" is inherently flawed, and thus cannot be adhered to. By now, we all know Google’s fatuous motto, “Don’t Be Evil.” When I first saw that slogan — is it the shorthand for their mission statement, maybe? — I was taken aback by the enormous ignorance it took to come up with this phrase. Whoever dreamed up the wording is woefully uninformed about how the mind works.

The New Agers learned something in their quest for…well, for a number of things, but mostly self-improvement. And it is an awareness that spiritual teachers have always known. The monkey brain inside all of us — the one which you have to put to constructive use or it will undermine all your good intentions — listens to what we tell ourselves in a very selective manner. If we propose an affirmation for ourselves, the worst thing we can do -- the foremost thing guaranteeed to sabotage our effort -- is to start with “don’t.” You see, the monkey mind ignores the negation and moves on to the meat of your proposal. So “Don’t Be Evil” is translated into…you guessed it: ( ) “Be Evil.”

Google, if it wanted to be effective, would have said “Do Good.” Were they wise, the word ‘evil’ would not have entered into the equation.

Many of the Ten Commandments contain “don’t” statements in the form of “thou shalt not.” It shows how truly ancient this list is, and how it probably evolved from very simple proscriptions like, “no kill,” or “no lie” — things that would make community life tolerable. However, also notice that “Honor thy father and thy mother” and “Keep holy the Sabbath” are positive rules, so the process was alwys maturing.

Judaism evolved from there into a more complex relationship with others, including the need to provide for the anawim, the poor. Christianity, in its two commandments, is phrased in the positive: “to love God with your whole heart, and your whole spirit, and your whole mind, and to love your neighbor as yourself.” A lifetime project.

The notion of using positive ideas to change how one thinks is a technique that Roberto Assagioli, an Italian psychiatrist, used to help his patients cure various addictions, or disorders of the will. One method he used, much like the nuns who made those unruly boys write repetitiously on the blackboard after school, was to have a patient choose a passage from Scripture or literature to write repeatedly, every day, for hours on end, for months at a time.

This practice worked for many, much as Sister Benignus’ order to write on the blackboard “I will sit still and listen in class” worked on some of the recalcitrant middle school boys. Of course, the person giving the assignment has to have some of moral authority with the person assigned to the task, or the monkey mind will skew it every time. Such is the nature of the will.

Some will dismiss this as “re-education,” but that’s what the MSM and their cabal have been doing for generations. I, personally, would like to dig up Walter Duranty of the New York Times and give him a good, bone-rattling shake for his years of lies and propaganda about Soviet Russia. That facile reporter from The Courant, above, could use some help… at least she’s still breathing.

Google is another matter. They’re big, powerful, and despite their best corporate intentions, they have a malevolent slogan driving them.

“Don’t Be Evil” indeed. They seem to be following only the last two words of that statement. Sister Benignus could tell them a thing or two about change and motivation.