[2Wycked]

In the wintry months of early 1692, two daughters of the local Salem pastor, Reverand Parris, began to have awful fits of bizarre behavior. The two, Abigail Williams (11) and Betty Parris (9), would scream and cry randomly, crawl around on all fours, destroy property and contort themselves in frightful ways. Parris was concerned and had the local doctor examine the young girls. The doctor found nothing medically wrong with them. A pastor of a nearby town suggested to Parris that the behavior was beyond natural and very well could be due to the machinations of Satan.

Salem was a small village situated in what is currently Massachusetts. After the Glorious Revolution in England, many strong Christian Calvinists, self-styled as Puritans, fled Europe and headed for the American colonies to escape religious persecution. Most settled in what is modern New England. They formed many self-governing villages and towns that were based exclusively on their interpretation of the Bible. Children were only taught the Bible and access to knowledge was controlled by pastors and powerful religious leaders. Rules about social comportment were extensive and complicated. Deviations, however slight, were regarded with great suspicion. Salem, itself, was a particularly loathsome town, with incredible amounts of petty disputes and a very heated family feud between the Putnam and Porter families - most likely the impetus for the witch hunt.

At this juncture of American history, Satan was widely believed to have a great and constant presence in the world. Witches were thought to be agents of Satan and sought to target people to advance Satan's agenda - often young girls. Cotton Mather, a prominent religious figure, disseminated a great number of pamphlets in the years leading up to the trials exhorting the real and palpable evil of witchcraft. He detailed the effects of witchcraft and who would engage in witchcraft.

After knowledge became public about the local pastor's daughter's fits, a town meeting was called as more young women became to emulate these two girl's behavior. At the meeting, the young girls would interrupt the proceedings multiple times, convulsing on the floor and screaming at the top of their lungs.

At the outset, three women were arrested - a homeless beggar, a black slave and prominent & poor but unpopular woman who was a member of the rival family. All three violated the codes of Puritan life and nobody bothered to defend them. In court, the three were subjected to intense interrogation for about a week, with the black woman, Tituba, confessing she signed a deal with Satan was an agent of his bidding. This confession sparked an absolute maelstrom in the spring and summer in the village.

The two girls, plus a girl named Ann Putnam Jr., began to level accusations of witchcraft against dozens of people, over 50, and they all were summarily arrested and subject to interrogation over the spring. People who questioned the proceeding were arrested. Any dissent from the process was looked at with extreme prejudice.

In order to prove the accusation, a contentious issue was the admissibility of "spectral evidence." Spectral evidence refers to testimony of the accuser that the accused came to them in the form of a specter or spirit. It was theorized that said power only could be granted by Satan himself to a witch. There was significant debate over the legitimacy and admissibility of the evidence. Cotton Mather remitted a treatise to the court in Salem that spectral evidence should be admissible, but cautioned that it is never sufficient for a conviction.



The court ignored Mather's contention and began to issue convictions based purely on spectral evidence. Accusations continued to pile up and eventually hangings took place on a what would infamously be known as "Gallows Hill." Bridget Bishop was the first person to be hung as punishment. This caused the presiding judge to resign as he grew disillusioned with the proceedings. It was rumored he became an alcoholic as a result of this, but it is just a rumor.

Over the course of the summer in 1692, 19 people were hung, a slight majority of them were women. In September, a man who refused to enter a plea after being indicted was crushed to death after being subject to "peine forte et dure" in which he had heavy stones placed on his body until he either died or entered a plea.

At this point, Increase Mather (Cotton Mather's father & President of Harvard) become a strong critic of the proceedings and refused to acknowledge any legitimacy as to spectral evidence. He had a famous quote, enshrined by Blackstone:

Quote:

"It were better that Ten Suspected Witches should escape, than that one Innocent Person should be Condemned

The Governor of Massachusetts colony, after his wife was questioned about witchcraft, issued a stay on any more prosecutions and executions and formed his own court to try the remaining accusations. All but three people are released and not tried by this court because their indictments were based purely on spectral evidence.

In the aftermath, there was much consternation over the debacle, as many convictions were overturned within the end of decade. Many leaders began to criticize the proceedings and their supporters. As it stands this day, all the convictions have been overturned, all deceased members allowed back into the church and the innocence of all formally recognized.

In order to understand this disconcerting series of events a few ideas need to be reflected upon. First, consider the concept of mass hysteria. I am no expert on this subject, but my reading of this concept is the idea that one person's bad experience or claim of any sort of problem can spawn imitators. We see this the psychology of serial killers, as they often spur vulnerable people psychologically to copy the serial killer's approach. Still, it is common in children & women, as one claim by either group usually results in a many others making the same claim.

A general example of this phenomenon was in 1938 in America when Orson Welles recited a radio dramatization of "War Of The Worlds" that caused a great panic in people that caused much rioting in some cities. As for example with children, it is a common observation to see one child complain about something, receive positive attention and then other children mimic the behavior in order to get the same attention.



A perfect storm developed in Salem with a strong religion that openly feared the influence of Satan, a town divided and young girls claiming to be influenced by Satan. The level of power exerted by the girls was most likely intoxicating to them and they played off the paranoia of the adults in the village. Simultaneously terrified of Satan and also being seen as an agent of Satan, most people stood aside as the accusations piled up and were enabled by the court system. This is why the mass hysteria hypothesis isn't very satisfying, as it ignores the collective psychology of the community.

American Puritans literally are psychological puritans. Moral puritanism is deeply rooted in obsessive compulsive personality disorder. The inability to distinguish between absolute good and evil, the supreme desire for incredible levels of rules & strict enforcement of said rules & inability to understand that there are more approaches to social deviancy than outright punishment.

Consider the young girls. Instead of admitting their personal issues with some of the people they accused, they hijacked an admitted moral concern in society and pretending to better the community through the enforcement of those morals, they ended up murdering multiple people. That is the extreme version of how this mindset works. Unable to admit they have bad & evil impulses, they often hijack the existing rules of society, an organization or informal rules of a grouping of people in order to act out their impulses.

These girls had serious issues and serious problems with some of the women they accused. The cinematic version of this debacle, The Crucible, showed a stable girl who falls in love with a married man and uses the proceedings to get said man's wife executed so they can be together. You will never get these sorts of people to admit that their anger and anti-social impulses are stewing right below the surface.

Abigail Williams, the most notorious accuser, did publicly apologize for her behavior about a decade later. Most likely she grew out of her issues as she aged and was supremely embarrassed for her behavior. Or not. She could have developed a narcissistic complex and sensed the community was against her actions and needed to secure their approval.



The fundamental issue in the Salem Witch Trials was the inability to discern good and evil. It is frustrating because what really fueled the fire of this horrible series of events was the inability of the community to recognize that there is more than pure good and pure evil. Sure, there is much to make of hyper-religious communities, lack of due process and a spineless society that sits by as injustices pile up, but what fundamentally laid at the heart of the issue was the inability to conceive of shades of good and evil.

As the proceedings went on, it became supremely apparent that the court either saw you as good or evil. Once tainted as a potential rule-breaker, you had no hope. You could have been a follower of a supreme order, as one the most respected women in the local church was arrested and executed, but that will never help once the watchful eye of a puritan singles you out.

From a practical standpoint, the people that survived the process were those that confessed outright to an accusation, pleaded for forgiveness and kowtowed to the moral superiority of court. Maybe unintentionally brilliant, but a few people engaged in this process and were spared execution. While some were excommunicated from the church, some just completely suborned themselves to their moral "betters" and were able to survive and live an actual life. In extreme situations like this, that is the best route to keep the skin on your back.

More paranoid people, like myself, would have never admitted guilt and fought tooth and nail against the allegations. I would have done my utmost to fight against every allegation and counter every argument against me. I would one of the first to be kicked off on the gallows. Puritans and paranoids do not mix at all, despite many psychological overlaps.

The gap between the two is over how to make sense of the chaos in their own head. People like me place incredibly great value on honesty, integrity and honor. That is the way of papering over the fact they don't trust themselves. Puritans are just anti-socials who, if they gave into their anti-social tendencies, would devalue their bodies through abusing drugs, sex and poor health. Paranoids rub puritans the wrong way because paranoid's believe adherence to rules based on how people should treat others stands in contravention to puritan's belief that the rules are determined by authority figures, regardless of their efficacy or true morality/ethics.



The legacy of the Puritans and the Salem Witch Trials is staggering. It helped the define the arc of America and, as such, defined the arc of American feminism.

Take rape culture. Much of the belief in this absurd concept is fueled by puritanism. Unable to understand that the world is often morally ambiguous and filled with a litany of people with thousands of different approaches life, they double down on extreme enforcement of rules so they never have to come to terms with this chaos. You will see this in online dating profiles of woman against pornography and rape, as they have curious levels of insight about what "really goes on in porn" or "what really rapists think."

They have that insight not because watch porn or rape people, but because those anti-social impulses are bubbling in the cauldron of their subconscious. They cannot admit they have them. In their world, only the evil and the supremely impure have those impulses. Admitting they have those thoughts already implicates them as violators of the rules and, as such, evil.

Unable to understand just about every person has stray thoughts about rape, violence or any anti-social impulse, they focus on outright ignoring those thoughts. I recall Jimmy Carter talking about how he, as a Christian, has had weak moments when he noticed the size of a woman's breasts. He caught much flak for that. I recall a friend admitting to thoughts of suicide in a prayer group. Most members were horrified he could be thinking of violating God's laws and taking his own life.

These sorts of reactions are emblematic of puritanical approaches to life. Any violation of the rules, however slight, is damning evidence of the evil of the doer.

Feminism is very reflective of this. Like the commenter Sita portrayed on RoK recently, feminists are entirely incapable of admitting to anything but black and white conceptualizations of morality. Either you hate women or you love them. There is zero middle ground, an impossibly massive chasm separates the two. Either you are with them or against them.

That is puritanism. Unable to understand even the strictest enforcement of codes of conduct will do nothing to bury their anti-social impulses and other's anti-social conduct, they live lives of delusion that such wicked enforcement of rules has actually worked. They pursue converts so hard because they need to stomp out people who are pursuing their own anti-social impulses. They supremely fear said people because they represent who they could be in real life. The reasons Christians/feminists go so hard on alcoholics, drug addicts, players, sluts, rapists and the general buckers of society (MGTOW, gays, PUA's & atheists) are because they are threatening to their sense of self.

Authority figures dictating rules to them shores up their sense of self. Never come between a puritan and their rules. You will always be secondary to their love of rules and their enforcement.

As for me, this is just the tip of the iceberg. I will ether feminism under similar analyses, reviewing concept of "gaslighting," "rape culture" and a couple of popular feminist books. Stay tuned.

[Wutang]

I think you might be interested in this post that was made on another forum I frequent. It's barking up the same tree that you were going up on:

http://www.mixedmartialarts.com/?go=foru...9&forum=86

"I consider myself somewhat left leaning, but it's almost impossible to discuss this historical influence with my fellow left wingers. If I say to them, "You know that American progressivism is the memetic offspring of North-Eastern American puritanism and you can trace the same ideas and themes all the way back to the heretical sects of the Protestant reformation?"

"It's also made me see that when the right wing of American politics calls the left "Anti-American" the left's behavior really isn't Anti-American per se. American progressivism is ULTRA American, in the sense they want America to live up to it's original Puritanical values. It's also the most successful non-theistic Christian sect on the planet at the moment, if you want a real mindfuck, ask yourself how many of these progressives are also *atheists* and generally disdain their more neanderthal-esque evangelical cousins on the right and wish they'd be thrown out of politics. In a sense they are prosecuting right wing Christians because of the remnants of their crazed puritanical religion that has turned secular, more than for any atheistic reasons. It's more crazy than any fictional story someone could come up with. "

It's interesting how so many of these progressive SWPL types have WASP backgrounds and the explanation for this in both your post and also the one that I just linked to sounds very plausible.

[Wutang]

Something that both the Puritans of old and their modern secular counterparts have: veneration of sacred cows/ideas that simply cannot be questioned or denied and even the hint of doing either will instantly draw down the wrath of these people. The only thing that has changed is what the cows are. Before it was immutable religious ideas, these days it is ideas about gender, race, and sexuality. What makes these modern Puritans more hypocritical is they like to cast themselves as open minded and progressive without realizing that just like the "inpure" masses, they also are humans and have their own biases and sacred cows. These Puritans may not burn people on the stake anymore but they still use public shaming as a way to enforce their will in society.

[placer]

I think one thing very interesting is how feminists look at rape. To them, a man who goes with a woman to her place (at her consent), makes out with her (again, with her consent), and who gets naked with her (again, with her consent) and then has sex with her (possibly not with her consent) is a "rapist", and should be treated the same as a man who hides behind a bush, grabs a woman he does not know at all, holds a knife to her throat, and tells to have sex with him or he will kill her.

In the black-and-white world of an angry militant feminist, both are the same.

This isn't the only example of our puritan roots affecting public discourse. Look at the public reaction to Anthony Weiner's sexting exchanges or San Diego Mayor Bob Filner's flirting. People don't get worked up like that about people's private sex lives in other countries.

[2Wycked]

(07-26-2013 03:28 AM)Wutang Wrote:  

I think you might be interested in this post that was made on another forum I frequent. It's barking up the same tree that you were going up on:

http://www.mixedmartialarts.com/?go=foru...9&forum=86

"I consider myself somewhat left leaning, but it's almost impossible to discuss this historical influence with my fellow left wingers. If I say to them, "You know that American progressivism is the memetic offspring of North-Eastern American puritanism and you can trace the same ideas and themes all the way back to the heretical sects of the Protestant reformation?"

"It's also made me see that when the right wing of American politics calls the left "Anti-American" the left's behavior really isn't Anti-American per se. American progressivism is ULTRA American, in the sense they want America to live up to it's original Puritanical values. It's also the most successful non-theistic Christian sect on the planet at the moment, if you want a real mindfuck, ask yourself how many of these progressives are also *atheists* and generally disdain their more neanderthal-esque evangelical cousins on the right and wish they'd be thrown out of politics. In a sense they are prosecuting right wing Christians because of the remnants of their crazed puritanical religion that has turned secular, more than for any atheistic reasons. It's more crazy than any fictional story someone could come up with. "

It's interesting how so many of these progressive SWPL types have WASP backgrounds and the explanation for this in both your post and also the one that I just linked to sounds very plausible.

I didn't respond to you last night because I was only on mobile in a hotel and that link only dumped me to the main page, so let me give a brief response.

That roly poly puppy guy is right in many ways, but he omits the psych analysis.

The problem is they attribute it to a religion, instead of a mindset. Certainly American Puritanism descended from Christianity, but it was the radical form brought from England by the, aptly named, Puritans.

Roly Poly guy doesn't talk about the inability to see moral ambiguity that plagues puritanism - which haunts accusations of racism, sexism, etc.

I will be addressing puritanism in my next RoK post on Sunday - about the porn wars of the 1980's. I am still refining my thoughts, though.

[Days of Broken Arrows]

Excellent post. I've also compared feminists and their media lackeys to the behavior of the girls in "The Crucible."

I'd like to add that it's getting worse because of social media. As I've also said, men's Facebook and Twitter posts might be filled with smart-ass comments and songs, but women's are often non-stop shrieking hysteria over whatever the latest media-contrived crisis of the day is:

KOMY!! OMG!! EVIL!!!
STOP HUMAN TRAFFICKING!!!!!
MORE WOMEN ARE ABUSED ON SUPERBOWL SUNDAY THAN ANYTIME!!!!
IF YOU LEAVE A DOG IN A CAR YOU SHOULD GET CHARGED WITH MURDER!!
OMG (THIS WEEK'S EVILDOER) IS CREEPY! ERGO ALL MEN ARE EVIL!!!
FASCIST ANTI-CHOICE PEOPLE JUST WANT WOMEN TO DIE!! DIE!!!!!!!

And let's not also forget the memes that get passed around about deadbeat dads, kidnappers, child molesters and the like. All the above are statistically rare, but in Facebook/Crucible-land, they're 24/7 with women.

This is what my Facebook feed often looks like. And this is why I've found myself defriending more women than men, oddly enough. It never ends and it's always fever pitch about something. And if there's nothing, then they start posting memes about how they're alone because you can't depend on anyone but yourself, etc. It's always a soap opera.

Social media seemed like a great idea when it first emerged. And it was when we all could hide behind handles on places like AOL Online and Yahoo Messenger. But once we were made to show our real identities on Facebook, blogs, and the like, women took to moral preening that's straight out of "The Crucible." If this country comes crashing down, my guess is that it will be because of women and social media.

[Aurini]

Brilliant analysis. Do you have a blog?

If not, you should start one. You don't have to post everyday - but this sort of penetrating analysis shouldn't be lost to the depths of the forum... and I don't want to miss your next piece.

[2Wycked]

^ No, I do not have a blog.

I have considered starting one, but I am content for the moment contributing to ROK. All of these posts will eventually find their way to ROK, just a matter of time.

I will -- eventually -- put all of these posts of mine (in excess of 600,000 words) into a book. Don't know when I will find time for that.

Regardless, thank you for the kind words.

[The Beast1]

Good post 2wicked. Having been to Salem during Halloween, the effects of Puritanism color Massachusets with a dark brush. Liberals in this area of the country are clearly descendents of their puritan past.