Date: Sat, 27 Jan 1996 19:21:11 -0500  
From: Kenn Thomas <skthoma@umslvma.umsl.edu>
To: orgonomy@jefferson.village.virginia.edu
Subject: Re: Reich, paranoia & conspiracy
Sender: owner-orgonomy@jefferson.village.virginia.edu

>Reich himself offered an explanation for this: the emotional plague. 

I don't see conspiracy and emotional plague as competing theories. 
Conspiracies involving government bureaucracies reflect 
psychological disturbance on a social scale. Conspiracy 
is an expression of emotional plague, almost a symptom. Reich
understood that he was being victimized by conspiracy. Did he
ever say "this isn't a conspiracy, it's just the emotional plague"?

>Nietzsche's specialized usage of his concept of "resentment" 
to describe the hypocrisy of Christian morality in "The 
Genealogy of Morals".) Occam's Razor tells us that the simplest of competing theories should
>be preferred to the more complex, unless we have overwhelming evidence
>to go with a complex explanation.

It is a subjective judgement as to whether or not conspiracy theories
make things too complex or too simple, and that judgement changes from
theory to theory. To me, discussing this in terms of the emotional plague 
helps to explain some of the psychological (and actually quite complex) 
subtext of what actually happened, but the bald surface reality is that the 
government conspired to kill Reich and destroy his work. Occam simple.

I think Jim has brought great clarity to the study of Reich's last days, 
through oral history and field work that have helped expose simple 
historical facts. He's done a great job of seeing consistent but obvious
patterns in the press campaigns, for instance, and has talked to people
who played big roles in Reich's life that no one has talked to before.

>In this case, Reich's own concept of the "emotional plague" is sufficient to
>explain the above facts that you listed.  To say that Rockefeller Interests
>worked with the US government bureaucrats who worked with Communist
>spies to conspire against Reich is a very complex explanation.  Simply to
>say that the arch-enemies of the 50's- capitalists and communists- worked
>together to do _anything_ would require iron-clad proof.  To
>motivate the conspiracy theory of Reich's case over the simpler explanation
>that already explains the facts, it would require overwhelming evidence.
>That is what I have been asking for.

That capitalistic multi-national corporations, behaving like communistic
socialist bureaucracies, work in their own interest to the detriment of
others seems a simple fact of life to me. I don't need "overwhelming" 
evidence to understand how this is played out, although Jim has supplied 
plenty.

kt


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