Cultural Survival Skills

Bad Behavioral Contagion: Colorado Pot Floods Other States

Well, I’ll be darned!

Who would have ever thought that if one state legalized the recreational consumption of marijuana and developed a massive industry to grow high-quality cannabis and market it to consumers…..that it would ever spread into other nearby states and beyond?!

Gosh, this would be truly inconceivable……to idiots.

On the other hand, not enforcing the federal drug laws in liberal States, knowing that population drug consumption patterns would spread, or contage, to other states would be yet another in the Obama Administration’s myriad of diabolical strategies to transform (i.e., destroy) America.

Sadly, I conclude that both explanations of this mess are not only compatible with one another, they are both psychologically synergistic and catalyzing to this form of bad behavioral contagion in America. Most folks don’t think of things this way, and this is the reason that America is in its astonishing rate of decline.

Let me clarify.

Both bad and good population behavior patterns can naturally spread to other members of a citizenry because of the psychological principles of modeling and imitation (humans have a natural tendency to imitate others); direct social reinforcement (social approval and acceptance) of the behavior; material reinforcement of  marketing and selling the drugs (cash rewards), as well as the physiological reinforcement that comes with its consumption (getting stoned and escaping stress in ways that are self-defeating). All of this is damaging to the health and vitality of our socioculture. Furthermore, media coverage and word-of-mouth information presents discriminative stimuli (signals that motivate seeking and consuming behavior within a population).

In my opinion, the results of all of this were perfectly predictable for those who understand principles of psychology and are not blinded by radical liberal philosophy.

The population behavioral contagion dynamics discussed above are the reasons that drugs were made illegal in the past and were called a “vice”.

Please see below for documentation of this obvious outcome of America’s progressive/liberal social redesigns.

http://news.yahoo.com/neighboring-states-challenge-colorado-pot-laws-top-u-213445445.html

Now please see the documentation for the predictable tail-chasing rat-race that all of this has stimulated. Now our legal system (law enforcement) is stressed, the court systems are over-burdened, and the matter will bog-down our Supreme court and our entire political local, state and federal political system. Additionally, the costs of all of this wasted energy will be passed to all of us in the form of increased taxes, further stressing all of us.

In my language, when the stresses caused by primary bad behavior contagion (within the population) begin to stress various social organizations and systems, higher-order bad behavioral contagion is plain to see.

When the stress is focused back on general population of in the form of additional tax expenses, the vicious cycle is complete. Higher-order Bad Behavioral Contagion has stimulated more Primary Bad Behavioral Contagion directly back to the individual citizens.

This is the downward spiral, in many forms, that mediates America’s present decline. Can you not see this happening all around you, in its many other forms?

All of this is caused by bad psychological self-management decisions (rule changes) within our own precious socioculture.

Now see Higher-Order Bad Behavioral Contagion in action below.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/12/19/colorado-vows-to-defend-pot-law-against-states-challenge/?intcmp=latestnews

Wake-Up America!

Vote for Rule Changes that will stimulate Good Behavioral Contagion in America!

What are they? For now, know what they are not.

They are not progressive-liberal-socialist-comunist rules and practices.

Vote against these rules and practices at all levels of Government and America will begin a real recovery!

V. Thomas Mawhinney, Ph.D.,   12/19/14

Professor Emeritus of Psychology, Indiana University South Bend