First Pick
A brief first chapter
The same year Brock Chisholm began his tenure as the first ever Director-General of the World Health Organization, he published a psychiatric work titled “The Psychiatry of Enduring Peace and Social Progress.” (Chisholm, 1946)
In it, Chisholm asked, “What basic psychological distortion can be found in every civilization of which we know anything?
Answering his own question, he asserted, “There is-just one… morality, the concept of right and wrong.”
Such a sentiment was emblematic of a general theme; Chisholm’s conviction that morality was simply a hinderance on the road to the “rational use of intelligence,” an assertion which, in the context of Chisholm’s particular milieu of international elites, was atypical only in its candor.
Chisholm’s fervent view was that the recent history of the first half of the twentieth century made his upper-crust cohort fully justified in assuming monolithic control, by forceful means if necessary. On page 18, Chisholm explicitly stated as much, declaring, “We should not tamely submit to the unpredictable and ununderstood cycles of wars, and prosperity and depression, and wars again. There is something to be said for taking charge of our own destiny, for gently putting aside the mistaken old ways of our elders if that is possible. If it cannot be done gently, it may have to be done roughly or even violently.”
While easy to miss given the breakneck speed at which Chisholm pivots from “gently” to “roughly or even violently”, a perhaps comparably revealing part of the passage is the phrase “unpredictable and ununderstood”. Despite thereby publicly asserting that his peer group hadn’t understood what had transpired in the preceding half century, Chisholm nonetheless advocated forcibly uprooting anything in the way of placing his class of learned internationalists in power, so they might compel others to obey them in their endeavor to tackle problems that, per Chisholm, they hadn’t actually managed to comprehend.
The entire document is a fascinating case study in elite psychology, from the tortured logic whereby the atomic bomb justifies Chisholm’s admittedly “never yet been undertaken successfully” utopian vision as humanity’s only viable option, to his ardent insistence that guilt is the cause of virtually all of man’s interpersonal troubles with no evidence cited. This is before one even gets to Chisholm’s repertoire of methods for dealing with “potential” threats not being limited merely to “ruthless” suppression, but also to psychiatric methods of “prevention” which should extend to no less than “millions” of people who don’t realize they need treatment. The apparent deficit of psychiatric care for immediate, direct treatment needs, let alone the broader mandate of “prevention,” according to Chisholm, already required “shorter, more effective techniques” such as “Shock, chemotherapy, group therapy, hypno- and narco-analysis, psycho-drama, and even surgery”. (Use of these “more effective techniques”, by Chisholm’s own insistence, wasn’t to be limited to trained psychiatrists either.)
Chisholm recognized there would likely be those who resisted his proposed agenda, but had already come to grips with the fact that some such “martyrs” would have to be “sacrificed to the cause of humanity.”
On the whole, the book reads as something of a cross between Freudian psychobabble (with guilt substituted in for sexual repression as the root of all evil) and the famous Maoist cry to destroy the “Four Olds”.
Cynics consider it little wonder Chisholm was selected to lead the WHO.
Of course, more relevant to today than Chisholm’s attitudes are those of the World Health Organization’s current leadership, the foremost of whom will be addressed in the coming pages.
While even a cursory look under the WHO’s shiny hood of fawning puff pieces reveals the breathtakingly scandalous saga the world has come to expect of UN agencies, in keeping with the limitations of time and space, the following investigation will be restricted largely to developments in pandemic policy since around the turn of the century, as this is the arena in which the organization stands poised to make its Great Leap Forward.
Throughout the following work, the reader is encouraged to at all times ask the question considered crucial to any inquiry since the days of Lucius Cassius:
Cui bono?
Who benefits?
(In the immortal words of Abbot of Abbot and Costello: “I’m not asking you—I’m telling you.”)