HOW DO I LOVE ME? LET ME COUNT THE WAYS

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The great counseling psychologist Carl Rogers once objected to the religious doctrine that humanity’s problems arise from excessive self-love—a.k.a. pride, the foundation of the seven deadly sins. In his experience, most people instead “despise themselves, regard themselves as worthless and unlovable.” As the comedian Groucho Marx once jested, “I wouldn’t want to belong to any club that would accept me as a member.”

Actually, most of us have a good reputation with ourselves. In studies of self-esteem, even those who score relatively low will fall in the midrange of possible scores. Responding to statements such as “I have good ideas” or “I am fun to be with” with a middling “somewhat” or “sometimes” will mark you as having low self-esteem. In every one of fifty-three countries studied, the average self-esteem score was above the midpoint of the scale’s range of possible scores.

High self-esteem scores are but the first pointer to one of psychology’s most provocative, life-relevant, and oft-replicated findings: we humans commonly exhibit self-serving bias. We perceive ourselves as better than most and explain events in self-enhancing ways. If that doesn’t surprise you (Rogers’s belief notwithstanding), consider how this phenomenon lurks in the human psyche, starting with the better-than-average phenomenon.

The sixth-century B.C. Chinese philosopher Lao-tzu said that someone “who is sane [will never] over-reach himself, over-spend himself, over-rate himself.” If so, then nearly all of us are a little insane.

Name any subjective and socially desirable dimension—intelligence, looks, health, tolerance, insightfulness, job competence, morality, and so on—and I will guarantee you that most people will see themselves as better than the average person.

The humorist Dave Barry had that idea: “The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion, economic status, or ethnic background, is that, deep down inside, we all believe that we are above-average drivers.” Indeed, drivers—even most drivers who have been hospitalized in accidents—believe themselves to be safer and more skilled than the average driver.

A sampling of other research findings:

Competence: In surveys, 90 percent of business managers have rated their performance as superior to that of their average peer. The same is true of college instructors, more than 90 percent of whom have rated their teaching as better than average. Eighty-six percent of Australians rated their job performance as above average; only 1 percent rated their performance as below average. And most surgeons believed their patients’ mortality is lower than average. When merit raises are distributed, many workers will surely feel mistreated with an average or even below-average reward. And when most people in a group believe they are underpaid and underappreciated, given their “better-than-average” contributions, disharmony and envy will surely result.

Ethics and virtues: “How would you rate your own morals and values on a scale from 1 to 100 (100 being perfect)?” In a national survey, 50 percent of respondents rated themselves 90 or higher; only 11 percent said 74 or below. Thus, most American businesspeople saw themselves as more ethical than the average businessperson. Most Dutch high school students rated themselves as more honest, persistent, reliable, and friendly than their average peer. And most folks saw themselves as more likely than others to give to charity, give up their bus seat to a pregnant woman, or donate blood. University students reported they are more likely (90 percent) than their peers (75 percent) to vote in an upcoming election, although only 69 percent actually did. (Their predictions of others’ behavior were more accurate than their self-predictions.)

Health: Most people viewed themselves as healthier than most of their neighbors. And most college students believed they would outlive the actuarial prediction of their age of death by ten years—a finding that Freud foresaw in his reputed joke about the husband who told his wife, “If one of us dies, I shall move to Paris.”

Attractiveness: Is it your experience, as it is mine, that most photographs of you don’t quite do you justice? One clever experiment showed people several faces—one their own, the others being their face morphed with those of less and more attractive faces. Asked which was their own real face, most folks identified an attractively enhanced version of their actual face.

Effort: As a general rule, group members’ estimates of what fraction of the effort they contribute to a joint task will usually sum to more than 100 percent. In a survey of heterosexual married partners, 49 percent of husbands estimated that they did half to most of the childcare, while only 31 percent of their wives agreed. And while 56 percent of the husbands said they do most of the cooking, 70 percent of the wives said they did.

My wife and I used to pitch our dirty laundry each night on the floor next to our clothes hamper. The next morning, one of us would move the clothes into the hamper. When she suggested I not leave this mundane task to her, I thought, “What? I already do it 75 percent of the time!” So I asked how often she thought she picked up the clothes. “Oh,” she replied, “about 75 percent of the time.” And we wonder why some happy honeymooners mature into aggrieved spouses?

Social skills: I first stumbled across the better-than-average phenomenon when noting a peculiar result buried in a College Board survey of 829,000 high school seniors. Asked to rate themselves in “ability to get along with others,” almost none (less than one-half of 1 percent) rated themselves below average. Sixty percent rated themselves in the top 10 percent. And 25 percent put themselves in the top 1 percent.

So, we all live in Garrison Keillor’s fictional Lake Wobegon—where “all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.” The Lake Wobegon effect, as I have called it, is strongest for traits that are not just socially desirable but also subjective: for social skill more than for math ability; for honesty more than running speed; for leadership skill more than singing ability.

We not only tend to see ourselves as better than most; we also explain good and bad events in ways that protect or enhance our self-regard. “Victory finds a hundred fathers but defeat is an orphan,” wrote the Italian diplomat Count Galeazzo Ciano, words later echoed by John F. Kennedy. That’s an apt summary of many dozens of experiments. In each, people have accepted credit when informed they’ve succeeded, attributing their success to their effort and ability. But when told they’ve failed, they attribute the result to something external—perhaps bad luck or the “impossible” task.

In real-life settings, athletes credit themselves for victories and more often attribute losses to bad breaks, bad refereeing, or the other team’s exceptional performance or dirty play. And those better-than-average drivers? On insurance forms, they have explained accidents as “An invisible car came out of nowhere, struck my car, and vanished,” or “As I reached an intersection, a hedge sprang up, obscuring my vision, and I did not see the other car,” or even “A pedestrian hit me and went under my car.”

Students similarly sustain their positive self-understanding by accepting responsibility for successes and verbally distancing themselves from failures. “I got an A on my psych test,” but “The professor gave me a C on my lit essay.”

Situations that blend chance and skill are made-to-order conditions for these self-serving attributions. When I win at Scrabble, it’s confirmation of my vast verbal reservoir. When I lose, it’s because “Who could do anything with a Q but no U?”

So, when business profits soar, CEOs welcome large bonuses for leading their companies to success. And when their companies lose money, well, “It’s what one would expect in a down market.”

Self-serving attributions feed bargaining impasses, worker-management disputes, and marital disagreements. While managers often blame disappointing results on workers’ inability or indolence, the workers will more often attribute the underperformance to poor management or an excessive workload. And it likely will not surprise you to know that divorced people usually attribute most of their marital problems to their partner.

To some extent, self-serving bias is a natural result of how we observe and process information. I could more easily picture myself putting the dirty clothes in the hamper than all the times I didn’t. And my wife, too, was surely more likely to notice and recall her own actions than mine. But our biased perceptions also reflect our self-enhancing emotions. As much research shows, we’re not just cool information-processing computers; we’re motivated to find self-affirmation—to boost our self-image. Given a generic description of our personality based on a test or even our astrological sign, we’re likely to find it credible—when it is favorable. Flattery feels factual.

Ironically, this bias is so potent that, as the Princeton social psychologist Emily Pronin observed, people’s “bias blind spot” even leads them to think themselves less vulnerable thanaverage to self-serving bias, which they more readily see in others. In politics as in relationships, others, we agree, are biased, but we are more objective. We are not so different from the Pharisee who prayed, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people.”

I hear you objecting, “But I often hear people putting themselves down, and I sometimes feel inferior myself.” Indeed, all of us some of the time feel inferior when comparing ourselves with those a step or two higher on the ladder of looks, grades, or income. And some of us much of the time—notably those suffering from depression—do not exhibit self-serving bias. In experiments, depressed folks do not see themselves as better than average or shirk responsibility for failure. They are, in the words of one prominent researcher, “sadder but wiser”—a phenomenon that clinical researchers call “depressive realism.”

Self-serving bias is social psychology’s modern story of pride. Although pride often goes before a fall, there’s adaptive wisdom in moderate self-serving bias. Some self-disparagement can be subtly self-serving. Putting ourselves down can elicit reassuring words from friends: “I wish I weren’t so ugly” may elicit “Oh, come now, you’re so cute.”

Believing in our relative superiority also emboldens us to venture and potentially succeed where others fear to go. The opposite—doubting our relative competence and social skill, and blaming setbacks on ourselves—undercuts our potential for leadership or success.

Even so, self-serving pride is often perilous. In a debate with Carl Rogers, the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr argued that humanity’s original sin—its fundamental flaw—is excessive self-love, pretension, and pride. Self-serving pride leads us to disparage one another. The flip side of assuming credit for our individual and group achievements is blaming the seemingly less deserving poor for their poverty and the oppressed for their oppression. (...)

In one of his eighteenth-century sermons, Samuel Johnson recognized the phenomenon: “He that overvalues himself will undervalue others, and he that undervalues others will oppress them.”

How Do We Know Ourselves 

David G. Myers 

Nandakovāda Sutta - Advice from Nandaka

1. THUS HAVE I HEARD. On one occasion the Blessed One was living at Sāvatthī in Jeta’s Grove, Anāthapiṇḍika’s Park.

2. Then Mahāpajāpatī Gotamī together with five hundred bhikkhunīs went to the Blessed One. After paying homage to the Blessed One, she stood at one side and said to him: “Venerable sir, let the Blessed One advise the bhikkhunīs, let the Blessed One instruct the bhikkhunīs, let the Blessed One give the bhikkhunīs a talk on the Dhamma.”

3. Now on that occasion the elder bhikkhus were taking turns in advising the bhikkhunīs, but the venerable Nandaka did not want to advise them when his turn came. Then the Blessed One addressed the venerable Ānanda: “Ānanda, whose turn is it today to advise the bhikkhunīs?”
“Venerable sir, it is the venerable Nandaka’s turn to advise the bhikkhunīs, but he does not want to advise them even though it is his turn.”

4. Then the Blessed One addressed the venerable Nandaka: “Advise the bhikkhunīs, Nandaka. Instruct the bhikkhunīs, Nandaka. Give the bhikkhunīs a talk on the Dhamma, brahmin.”
“Yes, venerable sir,”.the venerable Nandaka replied. Then, in the morning, the venerable Nandaka dressed, and taking his bowl and outer robe, went into Sāvatthī for alms. When he had wandered for alms in Sāvatthī and had returned from his almsround, after his meal he went with a companion to the Rājaka Park. The bhikkhunīs saw the venerable Nandaka coming in the distance and prepared a seat and set out water for the feet. The venerable Nandaka sat down on the seat made ready and washed his feet. The bhikkhunīs paid homage to him and sat down at one side. When they were seated, the venerable Nandaka told the bhikkhunīs:

5. “Sisters, this talk will be in the form of questions. When you understand you should say: ‘We understand’; when you do not understand you should say: ‘We do not understand’; when you are doubtful or perplexed you should ask me: ‘How is this, venerable sir? What is the meaning of this?’” “Venerable sir, we are satisfied and pleased with the master Nandaka in that he invites us even with this much.”

6. “Sisters, what do you think? Is the eye permanent or impermanent?” —“Impermanent, venerable sir.”—“Is what is impermanent suffering or happiness?”—“Suffering, venerable sir.”—“Is what is impermanent, suffering, and subject to change fit to be regarded thus: ‘This is mine, this I am, this is my self’?”—“No, venerable sir.”

“Sisters, what do you think? Is the ear....the nose...the tongue...the body...the mind permanent or impermanent?”—“Impermanent, venerable sir.”—“Is what is impermanent suffering or happiness?”—“Suffering, venerable sir.”—“Is what is impermanent, suffering, and subject to change fit to be regarded thus: ‘This is mine, this I am, this is my self’?”—“No, venerable sir. Why is that? Because, venerable sir, we have already seen this well as it actually is with proper wisdom thus: ‘These six internal bases are impermanent.’”

“Good, good, sisters! So it is with a noble disciple who sees this as it actually is with proper wisdom.

7. “Sisters, what do you think? Are forms…sounds…odours… flavours…tangibles…mind-objects permanent or impermanent?” —“Impermanent, venerable sir.”—“Is what is impermanent suffering or happiness?”—“Suffering, venerable sir.”—“Is what is impermanent, suffering, and subject to change fit to be regarded thus: ‘This is mine, this I am, this is my self’?”—“No, venerable sir. Why is that? Because, venerable sir, we have already seen this well as it actually is with proper wisdom thus: ‘These six external bases are impermanent.’”

“Good, good, sisters! So it is with a noble disciple who sees this as it actually is with proper wisdom.

8. “Sisters, what do you think? Is eye-consciousness… … ear-consciousness…nose-consciousness…tongue-consciousness… body-consciousness…mind-consciousness permanent or impermanent?” —“Impermanent, venerable sir.”—“Is what is impermanent suffering or happiness?”—“Suffering, venerable sir.”— “Is what is impermanent, suffering, and subject to change fit to be regarded thus: ‘This is mine, this I am, this is my self’?”—“No, venerable sir. Why is that? Because, venerable sir, we have already seen this well as it actually is with proper wisdom thus: ‘These six classes of consciousness are impermanent.’”

“Good, good, sisters! So it is with a noble disciple who sees this as it actually is with proper wisdom.

9. “Sisters, suppose an oil-lamp is burning: its oil is impermanent and subject to change, its wick is impermanent and subject to change, its flame is impermanent and subject to change, and its radiance is impermanent and subject to change. Now would anyone be speaking rightly who spoke thus: ‘While this oil-lamp is burning, its oil, wick, and flame are impermanent and subject to change, but its radiance is permanent, everlasting, eternal, not subject to change’?”

“No, venerable sir. Why is that? Because, venerable sir, while that oil-lamp is burning, its oil, wick, and flame are impermanent and subject to change, so its radiance must be impermanent and subject to change.”

“So too, sisters, would anyone be speaking rightly who spoke thus: ‘These six internal bases are impermanent and subject to change, but the pleasant, painful, or neither-painful-nor-pleasant feeling that one experiences in dependence upon the six internal bases is permanent, everlasting, eternal, not subject to change’?”

“No, venerable sir. Why is that? Because each feeling arises in dependence upon its corresponding condition, and with the cessation of its corresponding condition, the feeling ceases.”

“Good, good, sisters! So it is with a noble disciple who sees this as it actually is with proper wisdom.

10. “Sisters, suppose a great tree is standing possessed of heartwood: its root is impermanent and subject to change, its trunk is impermanent and subject to change, its branches and foliage are impermanent and subject to change, and its shadow is impermanent and subject to change. Now would anyone be speaking rightly who spoke thus: ‘The root, trunk, branches, and foliage of this great tree standing possessed of heartwood are impermanent and subject to change, but its shadow is permanent, everlasting, eternal, not subject to change’?”

“No, venerable sir. Why is that? Because, venerable sir, the root, trunk, branches, and foliage of this great tree standing possessed of heartwood are impermanent and subject to change, so its shadow must be impermanent and subject to change.”

“So too, sisters, would anyone be speaking rightly who spoke thus: ‘These six external bases are impermanent and subject to change, but the pleasant, painful, or neither-painful-nor-pleasant feeling that one experiences in dependence upon the six external bases is permanent, everlasting, eternal, not subject to change’?”

“No, venerable sir. Why is that? Because each feeling arises in dependence upon its corresponding condition, and with the cessation of its corresponding condition, the feeling ceases.”

“Good, good, sisters! So it is with a noble disciple who sees this as it actually is with proper wisdom.

11. “Sisters, suppose a skilled butcher or his apprentice were to kill a cow and carve it up with a sharp butcher’s knife. Without damaging the inner mass of flesh and without damaging the outer hide, he would cut, sever, and carve away the inner tendons, sinews, and ligaments with the sharp butcher’s knife. Then having cut, severed, and carved all this away, he would remove the outer hide and cover the cow again with that same hide. Would he be speaking rightly if he were to say: ‘This cow is joined to this hide just as it was before’?”

“No, venerable sir. Why is that? Because if that skilled butcher or his apprentice were to kill a cow…and cut, sever, and carve all that away, even though he covers the cow again with that same hide and says: ‘This cow is joined to this hide just as it was before,’ that cow would still be disjoined from that hide.”

12. “Sisters, I have given this simile in order to convey a meaning. This is the meaning: ‘The inner mass of flesh’ is a term for the six internal bases. ‘The outer hide’ is a term for the six external bases. ‘The inner tendons, sinews, and ligaments’ is a term for delight and lust. ‘The sharp butcher’s knife’ is a term for noble wisdom—the noble wisdom that cuts, severs, and carves away the inner defilements, fetters, and bonds.

13. “Sisters, there are these seven enlightenment factors through the development and cultivation of which a bhikkhu, by realising for himself with direct knowledge, here and now enters upon and abides in the deliverance of mind and deliverance by wisdom that are taintless with the destruction of the taints. What are the seven? Here, sisters, a bhikkhu develops the mindfulness enlightenment factor, which is supported by seclusion, dispassion, and cessation, and ripens in relinquishment. He develops the investigation-of-states enlightenment factor… the energy enlightenment factor…the rapture enlightenment factor…the tranquillity enlightenment factor…the concentration enlightenment factor…the equanimity enlightenment factor, which is supported by seclusion, dispassion, and cessation, and ripens in relinquishment. These are the seven enlightenment factors through the development and cultivation of which a bhikkhu, by realising for himself with direct knowledge, here and now enters upon and abides in the deliverance of mind and deliverance by wisdom that are taintless with the destruction of the taints.”

14. When the venerable Nandaka had advised the bhikkhunīs thus, he dismissed them, saying: “Go, sisters, it is time.” Then the bhikkhunīs, having delighted and rejoiced in the venerable Nandaka’s words, rose from their seats, and after paying homage to the venerable Nandaka, departed keeping him on their right. They went to the Blessed One, and after paying homage to him, stood at one side. The Blessed One told them: “Go, sisters, it is time.” Then the bhikkhunīs paid homage to the Blessed One and departed keeping him on their right.

15. Soon after they had left, the Blessed One addressed the bhikkhus: “Bhikkhus, just as on the Uposatha day of the fourteenth people are not doubtful or perplexed as to whether the moon is incomplete or full, since then the moon is clearly incomplete, so too, those bhikkhunīs are satisfied with Nandaka’s teaching of the Dhamma, but their intention has not yet been fulfilled.”

16–26. Then the Blessed One addressed the venerable Nandaka: “Well then, Nandaka, tomorrow too you should advise those bhikkhunīs in exactly the same way.”

“Yes, venerable sir,” the venerable Nandaka replied. Then, the next morning, the venerable Nandaka dressed...(repeat verbatim §§4–14 above, as far as) …Then the bhikkhunīs paid homage to the Blessed One and departed keeping him on their right.

27. Soon after they had left, the Blessed One addressed the bhikkhus: “Bhikkhus, just as on the Uposatha day of the fifteenth people are not doubtful or perplexed as to whether the moon is incomplete or full, since then the moon is clearly full, so too, those bhikkhunīs are satisfied with Nandaka’s teaching of the Dhamma and their intention has been fulfilled. Bhikkhus, even the least advanced of those five hundred bhikkhunīs is a stream-enterer, no longer subject to perdition, bound [for deliverance], headed for enlightenment.”

That is what the Blessed One said. The bhikkhus were satisfied and delighted in the Blessed One’s words.

Social Sciences as Sorcery by Stanislav Andreski - Foreword

To forestall any possible misunderstanding, I must state emphatically at the outset that I neither accuse nor even suspect anyone mentioned by name in this book of deliberately concocting a stunt, disseminating falsehoods knowingly, or of being prompted by a desire for dishonest gain or an advancement obtained through corruption. A renowned author would have to have a most extraordinary character (indeed, he would have to be in a way superhuman) to be able to write prolifically in the full knowledge that his works are worthless and that he is a charlatan whose fame is entirely undeserved and based solely on the stupidity and gullibility of his admirers. Even if he had some doubts about the correctness of his approach at some stage of his career, success and adulation would soon persuade him of his own genius and the epoch-making value of his concoctions. When, in consequence of acquiring a controlling position in the distribution of funds, appointments and promotions, he becomes surrounded by sycophants courting his favours, he is most unlikely to see through their motivation; and, like wealthy and powerful people in other walks of life, will tend to take flattery at its face value, accepting it as a sincere appreciation (and therefore confirmation). Rather than among noted writers, cynical charlatans can be found among manipulators who write little or nothing, and whose egos are consequently not invested in any particular notion or approach, and who do not care, therefore, which gimmick they use to milk fund-dispensing bodies. Although I know one or two individuals of this kind, none of them is mentioned by name - which would not only entail unprovable imputations of motive, but also be beside the point, as my task here is to combat wrong ideas . . . not to compile a list of shady academics. Even individuals of this type, moreover, find hard-boiled cynicism difficult to sustain and normally end by persuading themselves of the value of whatever they are doing, because nobody likes to admit to himself that he is making a living by unworthy means. In any case, the most deadly agents of cultural infections are not the brazen cynics, but the sectarians prone to self-delusion and the timorous organization men anxious not to miss the band-waggon, who unquestioningly equate popularity and worldly success with intrinsic merit. As the present book deals with the phenomena which must be judged as undesirable from the standpoint of intellectual progress, the references to the literature are as a rule derogatory. This does not mean that I believe that nothing of value has been produced; but one cannot write about everything at once, and this is a tract rather than a treatise. Numerous positive contributions to knowledge are cited in my previous publications, and many more will be mentioned in other books which are in preparation, particularly if I live long enough to write a general treatise. I argue on the pages which follow that much of what passes as scientific study of human behaviour boils down to an equivalent of sorcery, but fortunately there are other things as well.

Why Foul One's Nest?

To judge by quantity, the social sciences are going through a period of unprecedented progress: with congresses and conferences mushrooming, printed matter piling up, and the number of professionals increasing at such a rate that, unless arrested, it would overtake the population of the globe within a few hundred years. Most of the practitioners wax enthusiastic about this proliferation, and add to the flood by writing exultant surveys of their crafts 'to-day', readily affixing the label of 'revolution' to all kinds of most insignificant steps forward . . . or even backwards; and sometimes even claiming to have crossed the threshold separating their fields from the exact sciences. What is particularly dismaying is that not only does the flood of publications reveal an abundance of pompous bluff and a paucity of new ideas, but even the old and valuable insights which we have inherited from our illustrious ancestors are being drowned in a torrent of meaningless verbiage and useless technicalities. Pretentious and nebulous verbosity, interminable repetition of platitudes and disguised propaganda are the order of the day, while at least 95% of research is indeed re-search for things that have been found long ago and many times since. In comparison with half a century ago, the average quality of the publications (apart from those which deal with techniques rather than the substance) has declined in a number of fields. Such a far-reaching verdict naturally calls for evidence, and much of the present book is devoted to supplying it. But perhaps even more interesting than to prove is to explain; and this is the second task of this book, the third being to offer a few hints on how this sorry state can be, if not remedied, at least alleviated.

I shall, among other things, try to show how the bent towards sterility and deception in the study of human affairs stems from widespread cultural, political and economic trends of our time so that the present work can be put under the vague heading of sociology of knowledge, although 'sociology of non-knowledge more correctly describes the bulk of its contents. As such an attempt ineluctably leads to the question of vested interests, and entails imputation of unworthy motives I hasten to say that I know very well that logically an argumentum ad hominem proves nothing. Nevertheless, in matters where uncertainty prevails and information is mostly accepted on trust one is justified in trying to rouse the reading public to a more critical watchfulness by showing that in the study of human affairs evasion and deception are as a rule much more profitable than telling the truth. To repeat what has been said in the foreword, I do not think that the argumentum ad hominem in terms of vested interests applies to the motives of the inventors of fads, who are much more likely to be doctrinaires and visionaries so wrapped up in the cocoon of their imagination that they cannot see the world as it is. After all, in every society with widespread literacy there are people writing all conceivable kinds of nonsense. Many of them never get as far as the printer, and among those who pass this hurdle, many remain unread, neglected, or quickly forgotten, while others are boosted, acclaimed and idolized. It is at the level of the process of social selection, which governs the dissemination of ideas, that the question of their subservience to vested interests is more germane. The general problem of the relationship between ideas and interests is one of the most difficult and fundamental. Marx based all his political analyses on the assumption that social classes uphold ideologies which serve their interests, a theory which seemed to be contradicted by the fact that no believer will admit that he has chosen his tenets for their value as instruments in the struggle for wealth and power. Freud's concept of the unconscious, however, implies what knight be described as the unconscious cunning - the idea which has been developed in a form especially applicable to politics by Alfred Adler. If such mechanisms of the mind can produce unconscious subterfuges and strategies in individuals' behaviour there is no reason why they should not operate on a mass level. But by what kind of evidence can we back imputations of this kind? What makes the problem even more difficult is Pareto's convincing point that the ruling classes often espouse doctrines which usher them along the road to a collective demise. The mechanisms of selection (emphasized by Spencer), which weed out 'unfit' patterns of organization, normally insure that only those social aggregates endure which cherish beliefs which bolster up their structure and mode of existence. But, since disintegration and destruction of collectivities of all kinds and

and sizes are just as. conspicuous as their continuing survival, Pareto's view (or model, if you like) is as applicable as Marx's. A satisfactory theory will have to synthesize these valid partial insights and transcend them, but this is not the place for such an attempt. In the present essay I cannot go beyond imputations, resting upon circumstantial evidence of congruence between systems of ideas and collective interests, of roughly the same degree of plausibility (or vulnerability) as the usual marxist assertions about the connections between the contents of an ideology and the class interests. The chief intellectual shortcoming of the marxists on this score is, firstly that they restrict unduly the applicability of their master's key concept only to groupings (i.e., social classes) which he himself has singled out; and secondly that (naturally enough) they will not apply this scheme of interpretation to themselves and their own beliefs. Every craft, every occupation - no matter whether shady or even downright criminal - gravitates towards the principle that 'dog does not eat dog'. The ancient and exclusive professions - such as law and medicine - emphasize this rule to the point of endowing it with the halo of a fundamental canon of ethics. The teachers, too, ostracize those who openly criticize their colleagues and undermine their standing in the eyes of the pupils. As with all other human arrangements, this custom has good and bad sides. Without something of this kind, it would be difficult to maintain the friendly relations required for fruitful co-operation, be it in a workshop, an operating theatre or a boardroom. By consistent tripping one another up and in mutual recriminations people can not only make their lives a misery but alio condemn their work to failure. Since a patient peace of mind and the chances of recovery depend to a considerable extent on his faith in the physician - which in turn depends on the latter's personal reputation as well as on the status of the profession - the effectiveness of medical care would be gravely impaired if practitioners fell into the habit of denigrating one another. Likewise the teachers who undermine each other's standing in the eyes of the pupils will end by being unable to teach at all; given that the adolescents are normally prone to disorder and the number of those with a spontaneous desire to learn always remains small. On the other side of the balance, however, there can be little doubt that the appeal of the 'dog does not eat dog' principle derives its strength less from an altruistic concern for fruitfulness of the work - except in so far as this makes life easier - than from the quest for collective advantage, be it pecuniary or honorific. By strictly enforcing occupational solidarity, the medical profession has not only attained affluence which in most countries is grossly out of proportion to its relative level of skill - not to speak of the extremely advantageous immunity from punishment for incompetence and negligence - but has also been able to procure for its members a substantial psychic income by putting them in a position where they can play God, regardless of frequent shortcomings of knowledge and intelligence. True, members of the medical profession enjoy an especially favourable position because they handle people at their weakest: when they are afraid and in need of a solace; reduced to the condition of patients - a very revealing word which goes far to explain why in so many public hospitals (at least in Britain) the front entrance is reserved for suppliers of the services, while the customers have to sneak in through the back door. The lawyers too manage to boost up their prestige and income by couching documents in needlessly abstruse language, designed to impede a layman's understanding, and to compel him to resort to costly legal advice. Among the suppliers of services of immediate utility to the consumers, the custom of refraining from mutual criticism merely serves as a shield against responsibility for negligence and a prop for monopolistic gains; but when it comes to an occupation which justifies its existence by claiming that it is dedicated to the pursuit of general truths, an adherence to the 'dog does not eat dog' principle usually amounts to a collusion in parasitism and fraud. Businessmen who do not feel squeamish about admitting that their main goal is to make money, and whose occupational ethics consist of few moral prohibitions have less use for dissimulation than those who earn their living in an occupation ostensibly devoted to the furtherance of higher ideals; and the higher these are, the harder it is to live up to them, and the greater the temptation of (and the scope for) hypocrisy. Honesty is the best policy for the purveyor when the customer knows what he wants, is able to judge the quality of what he gets, and pays out of his own pocket. Most people can judge the quality of shoes or scissors, and hence nobody has made a fortune by producing shoes which immediately fall apart or scissors which do not cut. In building houses, on the other hand, the defects of the work or the materials can remain concealed for much longer, and consequently shoddiness often brings profit in this line of business. The merits of a therapy, to take another example, cannot easily be assessed, and for this reason medical practice has been for centuries entangled with a charlatanry from which it is not entirely free even to-day. Nonetheless, no matter how difficult it may be to evaluate a physician's or a lawyer's services, they clearly minister to concrete needs. But what kind of services does a philosopher or a student of society render, and to whom? Who cares whether they are worth anything or not? Can those who care judge their merit? And, if so, do they decide on the rewards or bear the cost? Doubts about the worth of their services are seldom entertained by the practitioners; and if ever raised, are promptly warded off with invocations of professional standards with their presumptive power to ensure integrity and progress. Looking at this matter realistically, however, one can find few grounds for assuming that all the professions inherently gravitate towards honest service rather than monopolistic exploitation or parasitism. In reality it all depends on what kind of behaviour leads to wealth and status (or, to put it another way, on the link between true merit and reward. To analyse various types of work from this standpoint would provide a useful programme for the sociology of occupation, which might lift it above its present level of uninspired cataloguing. Seen from this angle, the social sciences appear an activity without any intrinsic mechanisms of retribution: where anybody can get away with anything. Criticising the prevailing trends and the top people may be profitable if done with the backing of a powerful pressure group – perhaps a fifth column subsidized from abroad. But unfortunately, the contours of truth never coincide with the frontiers between embattled parties and cliques. So, a free thinker can consider himself lucky if he lives in a setting where he merely gets cold-shouldered rather than imprisoned and called 'a pig who fouls his nest' - to use the felicitous expression which the Soviet police chief, Semichastny, applied to Boris Pasternak. Whether exhortation helps much may seriously be doubted, for despite centuries of inveighing against stealing and cheating, these misdemeanours do not appear to be less common nowadays than at the time of Jesus Christ. On the other hand, however, it is difficult to envisage how any standards whatsoever can continue to exist without some people taking upon themselves the task of affirming them and preaching against vice. As one could spend a whole life and fill an encyclopaedia trying to expose all the foolish antics which pass for a scientific study of human conduct, I have limited myself to a few influential examples. In any case, demolishing the idols of pseudo-science is relatively easy, and the more interesting and important task is to explain why they have found and are finding such a wide acceptance. I do not envisage that this blast of my trumpet will bring down the walls of pseudo-science, which are manned by too many stout defenders: the slaves of routine who (to use Bertrand Russell's expression) 'would rather die than think', mercenary go-getters, docile educational employees who judge ideas by the status of their propounders, or the woolly minded lost souls yearning for gurus. Nevertheless, despite the advanced stage of cretinization which our civilization has reached under the impact of the mass media, there are still some people about who like to use their brains without the lure of material gain; and it is for them that this book is intended. But if they are in a minority, then how can the truth prevail? The answer (which gives some ground for hope) is that people interested in ideas, and prepared to think them through and express them regardless of personal disadvantage, have always been few; and if knowledge could not advance without a majority on the right side, there would never have been any progress at all - because it has always been easier to get into the limelight, as well as to make money, by charlatanry, doctrinairism, sycophancy and soothing or stirring oratory than by logical and fearless thinking. No, the reason why human understanding has been able to advance in the past, and may do so in the future, is that true insights are cumulative and retain their value regardless of what happens to their discoverers; while fads and stunts may bring an immediate profit to the impresarios, but lead nowhere in the long run, cancel each other out, and are dropped as soon as their promoters are no longer there (or have lost the power) to direct the show. Anyway, let us not despair.

From the book Social Sciences as Sorcery
Stanislav Andreski

Review of Gideon’s Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad

I am wholly unqualified to assess Gordon Thomas’ 1999 work Gideon’s Spies as a history of Israel’s intelligence agency Mossad. Not only did I know little about the topic going in, but, given the murky and sensitive nature of the subject matter, I must assume that Thomas could publish only what the Mossad allowed him to publish—leaving out information that could harm or embarrass the agency or Israel itself. Further, given that people who work for intelligence agencies are by definition professional liars and conspirators, there is no way of telling how much of Thomas’ reporting is true. Sure, he does due diligence with his research and often reports events that can be verified through multiple sources. But when he secures interviews with Mossad agents, active and retired, or when he relates events that only this or that particular Mossad agent could have experienced, was he always given the whole truth? Who knows?

What I am qualified to assess, however, is the book’s readability and its value as non-fiction. In both cases, Gideon’s Spies succeeds well enough for an endorsement. It’s tightly written, suspenseful, evocative, and in parts utterly fascinating. Unless you possess secret information because you are A) a Mossad insider, B) an intelligence community expert, or C) an enemy of Israel that Israel hasn’t managed to kill yet, you will learn a lot from this book and walk away with a more realistic understanding of human nature. At least that was the case for me. As for a discourse on the just or unjust nature of Israel’s occupation of Arab lands or of Zionism itself, that is beyond the scope of this review. So is assessing the justice or lack thereof behind the Palestinian cause against Israel. My goals for this review are not so noble, nor so grand. Instead, I wish to summarize the main points of the book, retell some of the juicier bits for your enjoyment, and describe in detail newspaper magnate Robert Maxwell’s relationship with Mossad, which Thomas covers extensively. Maxwell, as most of us know, was a Mossad operative and the father of Ghislaine Maxwell, the former associate of the late Jeffrey Epstein, whose ghost has been in the news a lot recently.

(...)

What follows in Gideon’s Spies is episode after episode which reveal beyond all else the ruthlessness, duplicity, and meticulousness of the Mossad. Explosions, assassinations, kidnappings, political intrigue, sexual entrapments, false identities, tapped telephones, dangerous undercover missions in the dead of night—it’s all there. This is real “spy vs. spy” territory, but the Mossad gives it its own sociopathic dimension. It’s basically Machiavelli meets the Old Testament. For instance, Mossad often incited disturbances or planted black propaganda in Arab countries not to fend off a certain threat but simply to sow distrust among the Arabs. They would also “kill both sides,” an expression coined by senior Mossad spymaster David Kimche. In the 1980s, the Mossad aided the Kurds in revolting against the Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iranian regime, while simultaneously supplying arms to Tehran. Did they have good reasons to do all this? Or were they simply getting bored in Tel Aviv? When TWA flight 800 crashed in 1996, killing 230 people, Mossad’s division of psychological warfare (Hebrew acronym: LAP) blamed it falsely on Iran or Iraq. The FBI wasted many man-hours sussing that one out.

(...)

Despite being a thrilling read, Gideon’s Spies sheds little light on some of the burning mysteries of today. Aside from the Mossad’s potential connection to the Kennedy Assassination or Jeffrey Epstein, many of us would also like to know whether they were behind 9-11, as Wyatt Peterson recently claimed. I also explored the Israel-9-11 connection a couple years ago at Counter-Currents, as well as transcribed Carl Cameron’s banned Fox News coverage of it from December 2001. Unfortunately, none of this circumstantial evidence can be found in Gideon’s Spies. Given its publication date, it’s unlikely that it would be.

Throughout, Thomas maintains a measured respect for the Mossad that does not jeopardize his journalistic integrity. He’s not anti-Semitic, but nor is he servile to Israel or Jews. He may betray a slight pro-Israeli bias, but it’s nothing beyond the pale for a mainstream journalist in 1999. He’s also perfectly willing to expose all that is ugly, cruel, dishonest, and frankly sleazy about the Mossad. He would have to, being their biographer, despite what respect for them he may hold. In the 1990s, former Mossad operatives Ari Ben-Manashe and Victor Ostrovsky had each published books revealing insider details which severely damaged the agency. For example, Ostrovsky alleged that the Mossad had actually plotted to assassinate President George H. W. Bush in 1991. Could Gideon’s Spies have been a Mossad attempt at damage control? Who knows? Again, it’s not beyond the realm of possibility—especially considering that Thomas weirdly ends his book not with a proper conclusion but with the prediction that with all its failures, the Mossad is always one SNAFU away from having a new director general appointed. Was this uncharacteristically soft landing a way of humanizing the Mossad?

My reading of Thomas however leads me to one rock solid conclusion—that Israel is not and never was an ally of the United States. From the very beginning, it was monitoring Americans and stealing from Americans. Thomas reports:

In a report to the Senate Intelligence Committee, the CIA had identified Israel as one of six foreign countries with “a government-directed, orchestrated, clandestine effort to collect US economic secrets.”

And not just economic secrets. Military secrets, computer secrets, nuclear secrets, sexual secrets, any secrets, really—all of it was on the table. Perhaps the most telling evidence of Israel’s perfidy—worse in my opinion than the attack on the USS Liberty—was how the Mossad knew damn well that the 1983 attack on American marines in Beirut was going to happen. They were supposed to inform the CIA and didn’t. Even worse, they were live monitoring the bomb-laden vehicle as it plowed full speed into Marine headquarters, killing 241 service members. According to Victor Ostrovsky, a Mossad officer callously said afterward of the Americans: “They wanted to stick their nose into this Lebanon thing, let them pay the price.”

Now, to be fair, no one should resent the Israelis because the Mossad is good at what they do. Gordon Thomas certainly doesn’t, and good on him for that. I am sure the CIA has done some nasty things to Israel as well. I have no doubt the CIA bugs and monitors Israelis every chance they get—in the US and abroad, in embassies, and in Israel itself. Of course, they should. Further, if the Israelis ever have something worth stealing, I sincerely hope the CIA would filch it as remorselessly as Israel has filched from the United States. I’m sure that law and ethics are little more than fanciful luxuries in the cutthroat world of spy vs. spy. Therefore I am willing to give wide latitude to the Mossad. But when billions of dollars move in only one direction in the relationship between America and Israel, that’s when we should start resenting the Israelis. It’s one thing to lose your secret stuff to talented spies; that comes with the territory when you run a country. It’s something else entirely to lose your secret stuff, while getting your pocket picked, while listening to your pocket-picker whisper sweet nothings about how he’s your greatest ally, while this same pocket-picker wants you fight his battles for him, while this selfsame pocket-picker is willing to smear you as a Nazi if you dare run your mouth about any of this.

It doesn’t take a hardened anti-Semite or anti-Zionist to see how abusive and one-sided this relationship is. And although I’m sure this wasn’t Gordon Thomas’ intention, this is the conclusion one cannot help but draw after reading Gideon’s Spies.

https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2025/08/24/review-of-gideons-spies-the-secret-history-of-the-mossad/

Mossad & 9/11

https://www.unz.com/article/israel-did-9-11/

https://www.counter-currents.com/2023/01/the-banned-fox-news-report-on-israels-role-in-9-11/

Spencer J. Quinn →

* The CIA likely doing “nasty things to Israel as well”, you say? The Mossad is probably running that organization as well. As well as anything else of importance in their de facto American colony. They are clearly riding their Anglo/White milk herd fight into the ground.

The Manipulated Man by Esther Vilar

 From Author's Introduction 

People often ask me if I would write this book again. Well, I find it right and proper to have done so. But seen from today's perspective, my courage in those days may only be attributable to a lack of imagination. Despite all I wrote, I could not really imagine the power I was up against. It seemed that one is only allowed to criticise women on the quiet — especially as a woman — and could only expect agreement behind closed doors.

As we women have, thanks to our relatively stress-free life, a higher life-expectancy than men and consequently make up the majority of voters in Western industrial nations, no politician could afford to offend us. And the media is not interested in discussing the issues involved either. Their products are financed through the advertising of consumer goods, and should we women decide to stop reading a certain newspaper or magazine as its editorial policy displeases us, then the advertisements targeted at us also disappear.

After all, it is well established that women make the majority of purchasing decisions. However, I had also underestimated men's fear of re-evaluating their position. Yet the more sovereignty they are losing in their professional lives — the more automatic their work, the more controlled by computers they become, the more that increasing unemployment forces them to adopt obsequious behaviour towards customers and superiors — then the more they have to be afraid of a recognition of their predicament. And the more essential it becomes to maintain their illusion that it is not they who are the slaves but those on whose behalf they subject themselves to such an existence.

As absurd as it may sound, today's men need feminism much more than their wives do. Feminists are the last ones who still describe men the way they like to see themselves: as egocentric, power-obsessed, ruthless and without inhibitions when it comes to satisfying their instincts. Therefore the most aggressive Women's Libbers find themselves in the strange predicament of doing more to maintain the status quo than anyone else. Without arrogant accusations, the macho man would no longer exist, except perhaps in the movies. If the press stylise men as rapacious wolves, the actual sacrificial lambs of this "men's society", men themselves, would no longer flock to the factories so obediently.

So I hadn't imagined broadly enough the isolation I would find myself in after writing this book. Nor had I envisaged the consequences which it would have for subsequent writing and even for my private life — violent threats have not ceased to this date. A woman who defended the arch-enemy — who didn't equate domestic life with solitary confinement and who described the company of young children as a pleasure, not a burden — necessarily had to become a "misogynist", even a "reactionary" and "fascist" in the eyes of the public.

Had not Karl Marx determined once and for all that in an industrial society it is us, the women, who are the most oppressed? It goes without saying, doesn't it, that someone who did not want to take part in the canonisation of her own sex is also opposed to equal wages and equal opportunities? In other words, if I had known then what I know today, I probably wouldn't have written this book. And that is precisely the reason why I am so glad to have written it.

**

The Slave's Happiness

The lemon-colored MG skids across the road, and the woman driver brings it to a somewhat uncertain halt. She gets out and finds her left front tire flat. Without wasting a moment she prepares to fix it: she looks toward the passing cars as if expecting someone. Recognizing this standard international sign of woman in distress ("weak female let down by male technology"), a station wagon draws up. The driver sees what is wrong at a glance and says comfortingly, "Don't worry. We'll fix that in a jiffy." To prove his determination, he asks for her jack. He does not ask if she is capable of changing the tire herself because he knows — she is about thirty, smartly dressed and made-up — that she is not. Since she cannot find her jack, he fetches his own, together with his other tools. Five minutes later the job is done and the punctured tire properly stowed. His hands are covered with grease. She offers him an embroidered handkerchief, which he politely refuses. He has a rag for such occasions in his tool box. The woman thanks him profusely, apologizing for her "typically feminine" helplessness. She might have been there till dusk, she says, had he not stopped. He makes no reply and, as she gets back into the car, gallantly shuts the door for her. Through the wound-down window he advises her to have her tire patched at once and she promises to get her garage man to see to it that very evening. Then she drives off.

As the man collects his tools and goes back to his own car, he wishes he could wash his hands. His shoes — he has been standing in the mud while changing the tire — are not as clean as they should be (he is a salesman). What is more, he will have to hurry to keep his next appointment. As he starts the engine he thinks, Women! One's more stupid than the next. He wonders what she would have done if he had not been there to help. He puts his foot on the accelerator and drives off — faster than usual. There is the delay to make up. After a while he starts to hum to himself. In a way, he is happy.

Almost any man would have behaved in the same manner — and so would most women. Without thinking, simply because men are men and women so different from them, a woman will make use of a man whenever there is an opportunity. What else could the woman have done when her car broke down? She has been taught to get a man to help. Thanks to his knowledge, he was able to change the tire quickly — and at no cost to herself. True, he ruined his clothes, put his business in jeopardy, and endangered his own life by driving too fast afterward. Had he found something else wrong with her car, however, he would have repaired that, too. That is what his knowledge of cars is for. Why should a woman learn to change a flat when the opposite sex (half the world's population) is able and willing to do it for her?

Women let men work for them, think for them, and take on their responsibilities — in fact, they exploit them. Yet, since men are strong, intelligent, and imaginative, while women are weak, unimaginative, and stupid, why isn't it men who exploit women?

Could it be that strength, intelligence, and imagination are not prerequisites for power but merely qualifications for slavery?

Could it be that the world is not being ruled by experts but by beings who are not fit for anything else — by women? And if this is so, how do women manage it so that their victims do not feel themselves cheated and humiliated, but rather believe themselves to be what they are least of all — masters of the universe? How do women manage to instill in men this sense of pride and superiority that inspires them to ever greater achievements?

Why are women never unmasked?

Portnoy’s Complaint: A Goyische View

ATTACK! CERTAINLY does not want to establish a reputation as a pander for the skin-flick trade, but we are going out on a limb just once and recommending that all our readers see the movie Portnoy’s Complaint.

Actually there’s very little skin to be seen in this flick, although it is decidedly pornographic. The peg on which the film is hung is a young Jew’s problem with masturbation.

Fixation on Genitalia

If the viewer can stomach the peculiarly Jewish fixation on genitalia and human excretory functions which pervades the film, there is a reward for him: namely, a fleeting glimpse at the traditional Jewish attitude toward Gentiles — or the goyim, as Portnoy and his family would say.

The nationally syndicated film reviewer, Rex Reed, reacted to Portnoy’s Complaint with the indiscreet statement: “This film will make many people think Hitler was right about the Jews.”

Talmudic Prejudice

For example, there are disparaging remarks which Portnoy’s parents repeatedly utter about Gentiles: “goyische crooks” and the like. The viewer, of course, is supposed to believe that is only because they are old-fashioned, religious Jews, who have been brought up on the Talmud and can’t help themselves. Young Portnoy, in contrast, is a “liberated” Jew, who has no truck with the anti-Gentilism of his parents — almost.

The careful observer will see the true attitude of the “liberated” Jew more subtly — and, presumably, unconsciously — expressed by the Jews who created this sickening film and the book on which it is based, in their diverse portrayals of two of its characters: the empty-headed, degraded Gentile girl, or “shiksa,” Mary Jane, and the upright, self-confident Jewish girl, Naomi.

Joys of Yiddish

This word “shiksa,” used several times during the film, tells a story of its own. It is one of those Yiddish words, like “schlemiel” or “schmuck,” formerly used only by Jews out of earshot of the nearest Gentile, which today are openly flaunted in mixed company — and have even become part of the vocabulary of “avant-garde” Gentiles.

Some Yiddish words stem from Hebrew; most, like “schmuck,” have German roots. A particularly interesting feature of Yiddish words is that a great many of them have double meanings. “Schmuck,” for example, means “ornament” or “decoration” to a German; to a Jew it means “penis.”

A Piece of Meat

“Shiksa” has a Hebrew root which means “abomination,” “something unclean” — specifically, a piece of “unclean” (non-kosher) meat, like a pork chop or a slice of ham.

The use of the same word to designate a Gentile girl and a piece of “unclean” meat may seem to many only a harmless, private Jewish joke. It’s no joke, though.

Consider the more commonly used Yiddish word, goy (plural: goyim), meaning “Gentile.” It comes directly from the Hebrew, where it has two meanings: (non-Jewish) “people” or (non-Jewish) “nation” — and “cattle.”

It is interesting to browse through the Old Testament, substituting “goyim” for “nation” wherever that word appears. For instance, “The goyim who refuse to serve you (Israel) shall perish; yea, those goyim shall be utterly wasted” (Isaiah 60:12). It brings home a little more clearly the burning hatred, the bottomless contempt of Jew for Gentile — a hatred and contempt which stretch from the time of Isaiah to the present.

Not for Goyische Eyes

Usually Jews have kept these feelings carefully concealed, although one would think the Old Testament sufficiently explicit to give the game away. The Talmud is much more explicit — so much so that it is scrupulously guarded from prying Gentile eyes. Thick-witted, good-natured brutes though they be, even Gentiles might take offense at the blatant expression of hatred in the Talmud.

It is all the more curious, then, that in the past few years the Jewish Establishment has so recklessly let its guard down. Why a picture like Portnoy’s Complaint when there are so many other sick (and safe) topics they could have used for a porno-film?

Ritual Murder*

And why have they let the book Gehlen: Germany’s Master Spy go on sale as a paperback at newsstands all over America, when that book reveals (on page 133) that the Jewess, Hilde Benjamin, chief justice of the postwar Soviet regime in East Germany, delivered all her thousands of death sentences according to the Jewish tradition for ritual murder of a Gentile, with Talmud, candle, and all?

We Don’t Count

Why the increasing tendency in the mass media to rub our noses in the private little world of Jewish humor, Jewish perversion, and Jewish folkways — almost as if the media existed for their benefit alone, and we just didn’t count?

Has their contempt made them careless?

Not really. During the next few months a million or so goyische “cattle” will pay their $3 apiece to see Portnoy’s Complaint, and 99 percent of them will laugh at all the places they’re supposed to laugh, think only what they’re supposed to think, and walk out when it’s all over no more aware of what’s going on in the world — and no more caring — than when they walked in.

But Portnoy and his tribe had better watch out for that last one percent.

* * *

* A documentary paperback reveals Jewish hatred and vengefulness against Germans expressed through Talmudic ritual murder. None of the hundreds of American GIs who witnessed the scene in May 1945 will ever forget the little park in the Berlin suburb of Lichterfelde where the corpses of 30 German children between the ages of three and nine were found hanging upside down from trees by cords strung through their heel tendons. Their throats had been slashed and Hebrew letters daubed on their naked bodies with blood. News of the horrible atrocity, which had been committed by Soviet Jewish troops, was suppressed and Army news photographers’ film confiscated, on orders from Eisenhower’s HQ.

Dr. William L. Pierce

From Attack! No. 14, 1972 transcribed by Anthony Collins and edited by Vanessa Neubauer, from the book The Best of Attack! and National Vanguard,

Frans de Waal, the high-profile Dutch primatologist and writer, who is the most frequently quoted authority on the species, has never seen a wild bonobo

 

(...)

Bonobos are remarkable, Wind told me, for being capable of “unconditional love.” They were “tolerant, patient, forgiving, and supportive of one another.” Chimps, by contrast, led brutish lives of “aggression, ego, and plotting.” As for humans, they had some innate stock of bonobo temperament, but they too often behaved like chimps. (The chimp-bonobo division is strongly felt by devotees of the latter. Wind told me that he once wore a chimpanzee T-shirt to a bonobo event, and “got shit for it.”) (...)

The Washington Post recently described the species as copulating “incessantly”; the Times claimed that the bonobo “stands out from the chest-thumping masses as an example of amicability, sensitivity and, well, humaneness”; a PBS wildlife film began with the words “Where chimpanzees fight and murder, bonobos are peacemakers. And, unlike chimps, it’s not the bonobo males but the females who have the power.” The Kinsey Institute claims on its Web site that “every bonobo—female, male, infant, high or low status—seeks and responds to kisses.” And, in Los Angeles, a sex adviser named Susan Block promotes what she calls “The Bonobo Way” on public-access television. (In brief: “Pleasure eases pain; good sex defuses tension; love lessens violence; you can’t very well fight a war while you’re having an orgasm.”) In newspaper columns and on the Internet, bonobos are routinely described as creatures that shun violence and live in egalitarian or female-dominated communities; more rarely, they are said to avoid meat. These behaviors are thought to be somehow linked to their unquenchable sexual appetites, often expressed in the missionary position. And because the bonobo is the “closest relative” of humans, its comportment is said to instruct us in the fundamentals of human nature. To underscore the bonobo’s status as a signpost species—a guide to human virtue, or at least modern dating—it is said to walk upright. (The Encyclopædia Britannica depicts the species in a bipedal pose, like a chimpanzee in a sitcom.)

This pop image of the bonobo—equal parts dolphin, Dalai Lama, and Warren Beatty—has flourished largely in the absence of the animal itself, which was recognized as a species less than a century ago. Two hundred or so bonobos are kept in captivity around the world; but, despite being one of just four species of great ape, along with orangutans, gorillas, and chimpanzees, the wild bonobo has received comparatively little scientific scrutiny. It is one of the oddities of the bonobo world—and a source of frustration to some—that Frans de Waal, of Emory University, the high-profile Dutch primatologist and writer, who is the most frequently quoted authority on the species, has never seen a wild bonobo.

Attempts to study bonobos in their habitat began only in the nineteen-seventies, and those efforts have always been intermittent, because of geography and politics. Wild bonobos, which are endangered (estimates of their number range from six thousand to a hundred thousand), keep themselves out of view, in dense and inaccessible rain forests, and only in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where, in the past decade, more than three million people have died in civil and regional conflicts. For several years around the turn of the millennium, when fighting in Congo was at its most intense, field observation of bonobos came to a halt. (...)

Twenty years passed before anyone attempted to study bonobos in the wild. In 1972, Arthur Horn, a doctoral candidate in physical anthropology at Yale, was encouraged by his department to travel alone to Zaire; on the shore of Lake Tumba, three hundred miles northwest of Kinshasa, he embarked on the first bonobo field study. “The idea was to gather all the information about how bonobos lived, what they did—something like Jane Goodall,” Horn told me. Goodall was already famous for her long-term study of chimpanzees in Gombe, Tanzania, and for her poise in the films made about her by the National Geographic Society and others. Thanks, in part, to her work, the chimpanzee had taken on the role of model species for humans—the instructive nearest neighbor, the best living hint of our past and our potential. (That role had previously been held, at different times, by the gorilla and the savanna baboon.) At this time, Goodall had confidence that chimpanzees were “by and large, rather ‘nicer’ than us.”

Horn’s attempt to follow Goodall’s model was thwarted. He spent two years in Africa, during which time he observed bonobos for a total of about six hours. “And, when I did see them, as soon as they saw me they were gone,” he told me.

In 1974, not long after Horn left Africa, Goodall witnessed the start of what she came to call the Four-Year War in Gombe. A chimpanzee population split into two, and, over time, one group wiped out the other, in gory episodes of territorial attack and cannibalism. Chimp aggression was already recognized by science, but chimp warfare was not. “I struggled to come to terms with this new knowledge,” Goodall later wrote. She would wake in the night, haunted by the memory of witnessing a female chimpanzee gorging on the flesh of an infant, “her mouth smeared with blood like some grotesque vampire from the legends of childhood.”

Reports of this behavior found a place in a long-running debate about the fundamentals of human nature—a debate, in short, about whether people were nasty or nice. Were humans savage but for the constructs of civil society (Thomas Hobbes)? Or were they civil but for the corruptions of society (Jean-Jacques Rousseau)? It had not taken warring chimps to suggest some element of biological inheritance in human behavior, including aggression: the case had been made, in its most popular recent form, by Desmond Morris, in “The Naked Ape,” his 1967 best-seller. But if chimpanzees had once pointed the way toward a tetchy but less than menacing common ancestor, they could no longer do so: Goodall had documented bloodlust in our closest relative. According to Richard Wrangham, a primatologist at Harvard and the author, with Dale Peterson, of “Demonic Males” (1996), the Gombe killings “made credible the idea that our warring tendencies go back into our prehuman past. They made us a little less special.”

(...)

Though de Waal stopped short of placing bonobos in a state of blissful serenity (he acknowledged a degree of bonobo aggression), he certainly left a reader thinking that these animals knew how to live. He wrote, “Who could have imagined a close relative of ours in which female alliances intimidate males, sexual behavior is as rich as ours, different groups do not fight but mingle, mothers take on a central role, and the greatest intellectual achievement is not tool use but sensitivity to others?”

The appeal of de Waal’s vision is obvious. Where, at the end of the twentieth century, could an optimist turn for reassurance about the foundations of human nature? The sixties were over. Goodall’s chimpanzees had gone to war. Scholars such as Lawrence Keeley, the author of “War Before Civilization” (1996), were excavating the role of warfare in our prehistoric past. And, as Wrangham and Peterson noted in “Demonic Males,” various nonindustrialized societies that were once seen as intrinsically peaceful had come to disappoint. Margaret Mead’s 1928 account of a South Pacific idyll, “Coming of Age in Samoa,” had been largely debunked by Derek Freeman, in 1983. The people identified as “the Gentle Tasaday”—the Philippine forest-dwellers made famous, in part, by Charles Lindbergh—had been redrawn as a small, odd community rather than as an isolated ancient tribe whose mores were illustrative. “The Harmless People,” as Elizabeth Marshall Thomas referred to the hunter-gatherers she studied in southern Africa, had turned out to have a murder rate higher than any American city. Although the picture was by no means accepted universally, it had become possible to see a clear line of thuggery from ape ancestry to human prehistory and on to Srebrenica. But, if de Waal’s findings were true, there was at least a hint of respite from the idea of ineluctable human aggression. If chimpanzees are from Hobbes, bonobos must be from Rousseau.

De Waal, who was described by Time earlier this year as one of the hundred influential people who “shape our world,” effectively became the champion—soft-spoken, baggy-eyed, and mustachioed—of what he called the “hippies of the primate world,” in lectures and interviews, and in subsequent books. In “Our Inner Ape: A Leading Primatologist Explains Why We Are Who We Are” (2005), he wrote that bonobos and chimpanzees were “as different as night and day.” There had been, perhaps, a vacancy for a Jane Goodall figure to represent the bonobo in the broader culture, but neither Hohmann nor Kano had occupied it; Hohmann was too dour, and Kano was not fluent in English. Besides, the bonobo was beyond the reach of all but the most determined and best-financed television crew. After 1997, that Goodall role—at least, in a reduced form—fell to de Waal, though his research was limited to bonobos in captivity. At the time of the book’s publication, de Waal told me, he could sense that not everyone in the world of bonobo research was thrilled for him, “even though I think I did a lot of good for their work. I respect the field workers for what they do, but they’re not the best communicators.” He laughed. “Someone had to do it. I have cordial relationships with almost all of them, but there were some hard feelings. It was ‘Why is he doing this and why am I not doing this?’ ”

De Waal went on, “People have taken off with the word ‘bonobo,’ and that’s fine with me”—although he acknowledged that the identification has sometimes been excessive. “Those who learn about bonobos fall too much in love, like in the gay or feminist community. All of a sudden, here we have a politically correct primate, at which point I have to get into the opposite role, and calm them down: bonobos are not always nice to each other.” (...)

For a purportedly peaceful animal, a bonobo can be surprisingly intemperate. Jeroen Stevens is a young Belgian biologist who has spent thousands of hours studying captive bonobos in European zoos. I met him last year at the Planckendael Zoo, near Antwerp. “I once saw five female bonobos attack a male in Apenheul, in Holland,” he said. “They were gnawing on his toes. I’d already seen bonobos with digits missing, but I’d thought they would have been bitten off like a dog would bite. But they really chew. There was flesh between their teeth. Now, that’s something to counter the idea of”—Stevens used a high, mocking voice—“ ‘Oh, I’m a bonobo, and I love everyone.’ ”

Stevens went on to recall a bonobo in the Stuttgart Zoo whose penis had been bitten off by a female. (He might also have mentioned keepers at the Columbus and San Diego zoos who both lost bits of fingers. In the latter instance, the local paper’s generous headline was “ape returns fingertip to keeper.”) “Zoos don’t know what to do,” Stevens said. “They, too, believe that bonobos are less aggressive than chimps, which is why zoos want to have them. But, as soon as you have a group of bonobos, after a while you have this really violent aggression. I think if zoos had bonobos in big enough groups”—more like wild bonobos—“you would even see them killing.” In Stevens’s opinion, bonobos are “very tense. People usually say they’re relaxed. I find the opposite. Chimps are more laid-back. But, if I say I like chimps more than I like bonobos, my colleagues think I’m crazy.”

At Lui Kotal, not long after we had followed the bonobos for half a day, and seen a duiker run for its life, Hohmann recalled what he described as a “murder story.” A few years ago, he said, he was watching a young female bonobo sitting on a branch with its baby. A male, perhaps the father of the baby, jumped onto the branch, in apparent provocation. The female lunged at the male, which fell to the ground. Other females jumped down onto the male, in a scene of frenzied violence. “It went on for thirty minutes,” Hohmann said. “It was terribly scary. We didn’t know what was going to happen. Shrieking all the time. Just bonobos on the ground. After thirty minutes, they all went back up into the tree. It was hard to recognize them, their hair all on end and their faces changed. They were really different.” Hohmann said that he had looked closely at the scene of the attack, where the vegetation had been torn and flattened. “We saw fur, but no skin, and no blood. And he was gone.” During the following year, Hohmann and his colleagues tried to find the male, but it was not seen again. Although Hohmann has never published an account of the episode, for lack of anything but circumstantial evidence, his view is that the male bonobo suffered fatal injuries.

On another occasion, Hohmann thinks that he came close to seeing infanticide, which is also generally ruled to be beyond the bonobo’s behavioral repertoire. A newborn was taken from its mother by another female; Hohmann saw the mother a day later. This female was carrying its baby again, but the baby was dead. “Now it becomes a criminal story,” Hohmann said, in a mock-legal tone. “What could have happened? This is all we have, the facts. My story is the unknown female carried the baby but didn’t feed it and it died.” Hohmann has made only an oblique reference to this incident in print.

These tales of violence do not recast the bonobo as a brute. (Nor does new evidence, from Lui Kotal, that bonobos hunt and eat other primates.) But such accounts can be placed alongside other challenges to claims of sharp differences between bonobos and chimpanzees. For example, a study published in 2001 in the American Journal of Primatology asked, “Are Bonobos Really More Bipedal Than Chimpanzees?” The answer was no.

The bonobo of the modern popular imagination has something of the quality of a pre-scientific great ape, from the era before live specimens were widely known in Europe. An Englishman of the early eighteenth century would have had no argument with the thought of an upright ape, passing silent judgment on mankind, and driven by an uncontrolled libido. But during my conversation with Jeroen Stevens, in Belgium, he glanced into the zoo enclosure, where a number of hefty bonobos were daubing excrement on the walls, and said, “These bonobos are from Mars. There are many days when there is no sex. We’re running out of adolescents.” (As de Waal noted, the oldest bonobo in his San Diego study was about fourteen, which is young adulthood; all but one episode of oral sex there involved juveniles; these bonobos also accounted for almost all of the kissing.)

Craig Stanford, in a 1997 study that questioned various alleged bonobo-chimpanzee dichotomies, wrote, “Female bonobos do not mate more frequently or significantly less cyclically than chimpanzees.” He also reported that male chimpanzees in the wild actually copulated more often than male bonobos.

De Waal is unimpressed by Stanford’s analysis. “He counted only heterosexual sex,” he told me. “But if you include all the homosexual sex then it’s actually quite different.” When I asked Hohmann about the bonobo sex at Lui Kotal, he said, “It’s nothing that really strikes me.” Certainly, he and his team observe female “g-g rubbing,” which is not seen in chimpanzees, and needs to be explained. “But does it have anything to do with sex?” Hohmann asked. “Probably not. Of course, they use the genitals, but is it erotic behavior or a greeting gesture that is completely detached from sexual behavior?”

A hug? “A hug can be highly sexual or two leaders meeting at the airport. It’s a gesture, nothing else. It depends on the context.”

At Lui Kotal, the question of dominance was also less certain than one might think. When I’d spoken to de Waal, he had said, unequivocally, that bonobo societies were dominated by females. But, in Hohmann’s cautious mind, the question is still undecided. Data from wild bonobos are still slight, and science still needs to explain the physical superiority of males: why would evolution leave that extra bulk in place, if no use was made of it? Female spotted hyenas dominate male hyenas, but they have the muscle to go with the life style (and, for good measure, penises). “Why hasn’t this levelled out in bonobos?” Hohmann asked. “Perhaps sometimes it is important” for the males to be stronger. “We haven’t seen accounts of bonobos and leopards. We don’t know what protective role males can play.” Perhaps, Hohmann went on, males exercise power in ways we cannot see: “Do the males step back and say to the females, ‘I’m not competing with you, you go ahead and eat’?” The term “male deference” has been used to describe some monkey behavior. De Waal scoffs: “Maybe the bonobo males are chivalrous! We all had a big chuckle about that.”

Hohmann mentioned a recent experiment that he had done in the Frankfurt zoo. A colony of bonobos was put on a reduced-calorie diet, for the purpose of measuring hormones in their urine at different moments in their fast. It was not a behavioral experiment, but it was hard not to notice the actions of one meek male. “This is a male that in the past has been badly mutilated by the females,” Hohmann said. “They bit off fingers and toes, and he really had a hard life.” This male had always been shut out at feeding time. Now, as his diet continued, he discovered aggression. “For the first time, he pushed away some low-ranking females,” Hohmann said. He successfully fought for food. He became bold and demanding. A single hungry animal is not a scientific sample, but the episode showed that this male’s subservience was, if not exactly a personal choice, one of at least two behavioral options.

The media still regularly ask Frans de Waal about bonobos; and he still uses the species as a stick to beat what he scorns as “veneer theory”—the thought that human morality is no more than a veneer of restraint laid over a vicious, animal core. Some of his colleagues in primatology admit to impatience with his position—and with the broader bonobo cult that flattens a complex animal into a caricature of Edenic good humor. “Frans has got all the best intentions, in all sorts of ways, but there is this sense in which this polarizing of chimps and bonobos can be taken too far,” Richard Wrangham said. Hohmann concurred: “There are certainly some points where we are in agreement; and there are other points where I say, ‘No, Frans, you should go to Lomako or Lui Kotal, and watch bonobos, and then you’d know better.’ ” He went on, “Frans enjoyed the luxury of being able to say field work is senseless. When you see wild bonobos, some things that he has emphasized and stretched are much more modest; the sex stuff, for example. But other things are even more spectacular. He hasn’t seen meat-sharing, he has never seen hunting.”

“I think Frans had free rein to say anything he wanted about bonobos for about ten years,” Stanford told me. “He’s a great scientist, but because he’s worked only in captive settings this gives you a blindered view of primates. I think he took a simplistic approach, and, because he published very widely on it and writes very nice popular books, it’s become the conventional wisdom. We had this large body of evidence on chimps, then suddenly there were these other animals that were very chimplike physically but seemed to be very different behaviorally. Instead of saying, ‘These are variations on a theme,’ it became point-counterpoint.” He added, “Scientific ideas exist in a marketplace, just as every other product does.”

Extract comes from the article:

Swingers Bonobos are celebrated as peace-loving, matriarchal, and sexually liberated. Are they?

By Ian Parker

A Critical Examination of Bhikkhu Bodhi's Critical Examination of Ñanavra Thera’ s “A Note on Paticcasamuppada”

INTRODUCTION

It is good to notice that Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi is very independent intellectually, and he doesn't hesitate to criticise even the Lord Buddha and Suttas:

Here what he writes in the commentary to Brahmajala DN 1:

Just as a fisherman casting his net over a small pond can be sure that all fish of a certain size will be caught within the net, so, the Buddha declares, whatever thinkers speculate about the past or the future can with certainty be found within the net of his teaching.

Whether the sutta, in its present form, really does succeed in matching this claim is difficult to assess. On reflection it seems that many views from the history of philosophy and theology can be called to mind which resist being neatly classified into the scheme the sutta sets up, while other views can be found which agree in their basic credo with those cited in the sutta but appear to spring from causes other than the limited number that the sutta states they can all be ultimately traced to. Some of these will be noted when we turn to a separate discussion of the individual views.

While some scholars may admire such intellectual independence, average Tathagata's disciple will rather attribute it to lack of knowledge of the Four Noble Truths which knowledge includes recognition that "ultimately the number of views" spring from indeed very limited number of causes, namely one: sakkāyadiṭṭhi.

“As to the various views that arise in the world, householder, ‘The world is eternal’ …—these as well as the sixty-two speculative views mentioned in the Brahmajāla: when there is personality view, these views come to be; when there is no identity view, these views do not come to be.”
SN 41: 3

Generally Lord Buddha was quite sceptical about intellectual independence of his disciples, and discourage it:

“Bhikkhus, for a faithful disciple who is intent on fathoming the Teacher’s Dispensation, it is natural that he conduct himself thus: ‘The Blessed One is the Teacher, I am a disciple; the Blessed One knows, I do not know.’"
MN 70

So what it is, that Venerable Bodhi, doesn't know? In his Critical Examination, Venerable Bodhi admits that he doesn't understand suffering:

An unbiased and complete survey of the Nikāyas, however, would reveal that the problem of dukkha to which the Buddha’ s Teaching is addressed is not primarily existential anxiety , nor even the distorted sense of self of which such anxiety may be symptomatic. The primary problem of dukkha with which the Buddha is concerned, in its most comprehensive and fundamental dimensions, is the problem of our bondage to samsāra—the round of repeated birth, aging, and death.

An unbiased and complete survey of the Nikāyas, however, reveals that "the distorted sense of self" is precisely the very problem of dukkha, not understood by the puthujjana.

“This world, Kaccāna, is for the most part shackled by engagement, clinging, and adherence. But this one [with right view] does not become engaged and cling through that engagement and clinging, mental standpoint, adherence, underlying tendency; he does not take a stand about ‘my self.’ He has no perplexity or doubt that what arises is only suffering arising, what ceases is only suffering ceasing. His knowledge about this is independent of others. It is in this way, Kaccāna, that there is right view. SN 12: 15

Since Bhikkhu Bodhi so openly admits here his lack of understanding what constitutes suffering in Dhamma, our Critical Examination could stop here. It is so, because it is not scholarly paper, and the only aim of it is to encourage reader to develop faith in Venerable Nanavira's writings. However let's us point out one more obvious contradiction of Dhamma, in Bhikkhu Bodhi's "examination".

Bhikkhu Bodhi:

While the two triads are expressed in Páli by the same three compounds—kāyasankhāra, vacīsankhāra, cittasankhāra—Ven. Ñánavīra overlooks a fact of prime importance for determining their meaning: namely , that in the Suttas the contexts in which the two triads appear are always kept rigorously separate. The definition of the three sankhārā found in the Cúllavedalla Sutta, and elsewhere in the Canon (at S IV 293), does not occur in the context of PS nor in a context that even touches on PS. This particular definition of the three types of sankhārā—kāyasankhāra, vacīsankhāra, cittasankhāra—always occurs in the course of a discussion on the attainment of the cessation of perception and feeling (saññávedayita-nirodha). It is intended to prepare the way for an explanation of the order in which the three types of sankhārā cease when a monk enters the attainment of cessation.

Do we understand Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi properly? Is he really trying to teach us that cessation of sankharas isn't related to dependent arising? Even if so, there is no reason why we should not prefer Suttas, which indeed teach us that there is direct relationship between stilling of all sankharas and the cessation of dependent arising.

It is hard for such a generation to see this truth, that is to say, specific conditionality, dependent arising. And it is hard to see this truth, that is to say, stilling of all sankhaeas, relinquishing of the essentials of existence, exhaustion of craving, fading of lust, cessation, Nibbāna. MN 26

Or even more direct affirmation of strict relationship between the attainment of the cessation of perception and feeling and nibbana or cessation of dependent arising:

But the Blessed One has said: “Whatever is felt is included in suffering.” Now with reference to what was this stated by the Blessed One?’”

“Good, good, bhikkhu! These three feelings have been spoken of by me: pleasant feeling, painful feeling, neither-painful-nor-pleasant feeling. These three feelings have been spoken of by me. And I have also said: ‘Whatever is felt is included in suffering.’ That has been stated by me with reference to the impermanence of sankharas. That has been stated by me with reference to sankharas being subject to destruction … to sankharas being subject to vanishing … to sankharas being subject to fading away … to sankharas being subject to cessation … to sankharas being subject to change.

“Then, bhikkhu, I have also taught the successive cessation of sankharas. For one who has attained the first jhāna, speech has ceased. For one who has attained the second jhāna, thought and examination have ceased. For one who has attained the third jhāna, rapture has ceased. For one who has attained the fourth jhāna, in-breathing and out-breathing have ceased. For one who has attained the base of the infinity of space, the perception of form has ceased. For one who has attained the base of the infinity of consciousness, the perception pertaining to the base of the infinity of space has ceased. For one who has attained the base of nothingness, the perception pertaining to the base of the infinity of consciousness has ceased. For one who has attained the base of neither-perception-nor-nonperception, the perception pertaining to the base of nothingness has ceased. For one who has attained the cessation of perception and feeling, perception and feeling have ceased. For a bhikkhu whose taints are destroyed, lust has ceased, hatred has ceased, delusion has ceased.
“Then, bhikkhu, I have also taught the successive subsiding of sankharas.

So much for Bhikkhu Bodhi's understanding of Dhamma. Unfortunately in the case of sankharas, Bhikkhu Bodhi fails even on the level of objective scholarship. In his commentary to MN 9 he writes about kāyasankhāra, vacīsankhāra, cittasankhāra:

In the context of the doctrine of dependent origination, formations (sankhārā) are wholesome and unwholesome volitions, or, in short, kamma. The bodily formation is volition that is expressed through the body, the verbal formation volition that is expressed by speech, and the mental formation volition that remains internal without coming to bodily or verbal expression.

But he does so without giving the Pali names of these sankharas, so the reader is likely to be measled taking venerable translator opinion which contradicts Sutta definition of these sankharas as valid, reliable and trustworthy. Bhikkhu Bodhi thinks, that he is wiser than Suttas, and refuses to follow simple logic that if kāyasankhāra, vacīsankhāra, cittasankhāra appear in the context of the attainment of the cessation of perception and feeling and as well in the context of dependent arising it must mean that there is a vital connection between these two subjects. But as a scholar he should at least to provide the Pali names of these sankharas, so reader can think for himself.

In his commentary to SN 12 : 2 Bhikkhu Bodhi writes

This triad of saṅkhārā should not be confused with the triad discussed at 41:6 (IV 293,14-28, also at MN I 301,17-29). I have added “volitional” to the present set to distinguish them from the other, though the Pāli terms are identical. The latter triad is always introduced in relation to the cessation of perception and feeling and is never brought into connection with dependent origination.

So Pali terms are identical but since "terms are identical" distinction between kāyasankhāra, vacīsankhāra, cittasankhāra and kāyasankhāra, vacīsankhāra, cittasankhāra quite obviously exist in Venerable's translator mind, and is determined by his (mis)understanding of Dhamma. Perhaps "confusing" kāyasankhāra, vacīsankhāra, cittasankhāra for just kāyasankhāra, vacīsankhāra, cittasankhāra as Suttas define them, would contradict Bhikku's Bodhi view, so we read prohibitive "should not". But perhaps it would be much easier just to give up our own view, if it is in direction contradiction with Suttas, than to adjust Suttas to our own view? In Dhamma we call it abandoning of ditthiupadana. 

It looks like Bhikkhu Bodhi in his eagerness to criticise what he doesn't understand, has forgotten that Pali scholarship has some specific qualityies absent in other forms of scholarship:

“Bhikkhus, there was once a foolish Magadhan cowherd who, in the last month of the rainy season, in the autumn, without examining the near shore or the further shore of the river Ganges, drove his cattle across to the other shore in the Videhan country at a place that had no ford. Then the cattle bunched together in mid-stream in the river Ganges, and they met with calamity and disaster. Why was that? Because that foolish Magadhan cowherd, in the last month of the rainy season, in the autumn, without examining the near shore or the further shore of the river Ganges, drove his cattle across to the other shore in the Videhan country at a place that had no ford.

“So too, bhikkhus, as to those recluses and brahmins who are unskilled in this world and the other world, unskilled in Māra’s realm and what is outside Māra’s realm, unskilled in the realm of Death and what is outside the realm of Death—it will lead to the harm and suffering for a long time of those who think they should listen to them and place faith in them". MN 34