Propaganda: the spreading of ideas or information to further or damage a cause.
The first thing that must be done to make propaganda effective is to undermine established authority or create a new authority. The authority of chiropractic is not, as some would maintain, D.D. or B.J. It is our chiropractic philosophy. If it were D.D. or B.J., chiropractic would be nothing more than a cult. It is true that the majority of the chiropractic philosophy that we have today was given to us by them. However, they are no more our authority than are Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, et al. the authority in our country. The U.S. Constitution is our country’s authority, Most of the Constitution, actually the very basis for it, was given to us by these men. We must decide whether the basic philosophical concepts such as personal freedom, individual rights and responsibility, and limited government are worthwhile principles that should be preserved. The Founders of our country debated that issue 230 years ago and we are still debating it today. Since 1780 we have said that they are worthwhile. The overriding “major premise” was that ”all men are created equal.” The Founders knew that physically, mentally, socially, and emotionally all men were not created equal but they wanted to create a nation with laws that would make men equal under those laws. No one would be above the law for any reason (hence the blindfold on the symbol of Justice). They also knew that they and the people who came after them would be imperfect so they developed a system with the means to amend this rule of law and also create a balance of power (the three branches of government), rather than an absolute authority . The creation of those laws and the balance of power also had to reflect the Major Premise and the objective of the country’s creation. There are those who are trying to undermine that balance of power by giving too much weight to one branch or ignoring and changing the intent of the U.S. Constitution. The country’s Founders were not perfect. They made mistakes, not in the Document itself but in the application thereof. Perhaps the greatest example is ignoring the principle of personal freedom among a certain segment of the population. We learned a very painful lesson in the process of correcting that mistake, one that cost the lives of over 400,000 Americans in the War Between the States.
What does this have to do with chiropractic and the success of propaganda within the profession? We must decide where our authority lies and how propaganda undermines that authority. The first question we must answer is whether our authority lies in the men who gave us the objective and the philosophy or is it inherent in the objective and the philosophy itself? There are certain factors from which we can draw inferences. First and foremost are the writings and actions of D.D and B.J. We must use B.J. as our primary source inasmuch as D.D. wrote and published only one book and he did not “discover” chiropractic until 15 years before his death at age 65. Even so, the philosophy of both D.D. and B.J. indicates that they recognized a universal authority greater than themselves, although they never indicated that their philosophy came from a supernatural mechanism, i.e. inspiration. Their philosophy was clearly the result of one or more of the three methods of perception: empiricism (experience or the use of the senses), rationalism (reason), or faith (authority or belief in God). D.D. used empiricism and rationalism; B.J. empiricism, rationalism, and faith. Just as the Founders of the U.S. had an overarching principle and basis for the country, that of freedom, personal responsibility, and limited government, the Palmers had a basis for the establishment of the profession. They include the following concepts:
1. Chiropractic is unique. It is different from medicine and religion. This prompted B.J.’s famous pun, “Christian Science is all mind, never matter. Medicine is all matter, never mind!” Chiropractic incorporated the philosophy of the metaphysical.
2. The uniqueness is in the concept of the innate intelligence of the body and the removal of a physical interference to the expression of the metaphysical (innate forces).
3. The means of accomplishing the above is by correcting vertebral subluxations.
4. The 33 Principles, i.e., the Law or Constitution as the authority.
5. The objective that chiropractic includes nothing more, nothing less.
The success of propaganda within chiropractic is largely the result of successfully condemning the credibility and the actions of the Founder and the Developer. That is not difficult since the Founder was a bit eccentric and the Developer was a strong autocrat who tolerated nothing but his way of doing things. There are a number of chiropractors who abandoned the Palmer model and worked against both it and B.J. Granted, most of them became mixers and their antagonism toward B.J. and the chiropractic philosophy can be discounted on that basis. However, if they had not abandoned the message because of the man who knows how much better off we would be today?There are others never again heard of who abandoned true chiropractic, doing nothing to strengthen the movement because of their disagreement with B.J. Last, but not least, there are many, perhaps thousands, who stayed straight but drifted off into obscurity because they could not tolerate B.J.’s personality. They went off and did their chiropractic thing but did not want to be involved in chiropractic politically or organizationally. They did not want to work in the shadow of a dictator, even if under most circumstances he was considered a benevolent one. We have seen the same situation in modern times, the result of personality conflicts have hindered the progress of chiropractic and often pitted “straight against straight.” The redeeming quality of modern objective chiropractic is that it does not base its foundation upon personalities like D.D., B.J., Reggie, or Sid. Its foundation is based upon our objective; upon the concepts just outlined. It is not personality-driven. It is principle-driven. As long as we can agree on the arguments presented by the framers of our chiropractic objective, particularly D.D. and B.J. themselves and their philosophy, set aside the personality issues, remove the rare examples of their slipping, which is the only legitimate area for argument and discussion, we can keep the propaganda to a minimum and stultify any success that it might otherwise have.
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I’ve been pondering how necessary it is to reveal WHERE we are coming from to the chiropractic world in order to “further the cause of chiropractic”. There is an obvious “evolutionary” process to the philosophy with its stable science of 33 sound foundational principles. It’s about TRANSFORMATION into WHAT it is…. without subluxations INSTEAD of with subluxations. It is we WHO choose to participate in the transformation of others, our very own life and of life itself. WHAT a privilege that is!!! Here are some of my thoughts about WHERE we come from. –
– Until recently, chiropractors WHO choose to practice the chiropractic objective, have never been forced to ask themselves, “By WHAT authority we say the things we do, OCs? How do we know these are not just OUR ideas?
WHY should we believe in WHO we choose to be? Those are completely legitimate questions. So, I began to go deeply into the nature of the authority of chiropractic. As a result, it is me WHO chose to chart our own growth, our own tradition, our own lineage… I came up with several foundational sources. I am presenting them to you in a somewhat logical order. –
– THE LINEAGE OF OBJECTIVE CHIROPRACTORS. –
– “TextBook” of the Universe. –
– We have to begin with the first textbook of chiropractic which is the observation of the universe itself — that there is organization in the universe revealing to us: “A universal intelligence is in all matter and continually gives to it all its properties and actions, thus maintaining it in existence”. If we don’t learn to honor, respect, and learn from the universe — the natural world — it is very unlikely we are going to know how to read the subsequent textbooks — the written Green Books and Blue Books with respect, appreciation and in an open way. So, we have to start with the first textbook of the universe, which is the observation of the world itself. –
– DD Palmer, BJ Palmer, RW Stephenson. –
– DD and BJ were the first two Chiropractic Visionaries. A lot of chiropractors don’t like DD and BJ and it is understandable. Like us, they both had their good days and bad days. They both made statements that could be interpreted in a remonstrating way, a sort of finger-shaking way… yet, not in the majority of their writings. We have to admit that both DD and most specially BJ were thinkers of the greatest magnitude. –
– RWS filled the void in Chiropractic literature. He wrote the first Chiropractic Text Book. The one great accomplishment that RWS has done, has been to compile the many principles of chiropractic into a systematic and organized manner, building them up as building blocks from the major premise and logically using deductive reasoning to teach WHAT Chiropractic is and WHAT Chiropractic is not… The 33 principles are THE stable foundational platform of chiropractic science which applies to the entire universe. –
– The Green Books interpreted from an ADIO worldview. –
– Many time Chiropractors have downplayed the Green Books. Even our term Palmer’s books could imply that they are out of date, that they don’t apply anymore. That’s WHY it is preferable to call them the Green Books. As objective chiropractors, it is we WHO choose to acknowledge that the Green Books are foundational to Chiropractic Philosophy and Practice, as it is important to get the whole chiropractic philosophy first, in order to understand the chiropractic objective, and secondly, it is we WHO choose to recognize that traditional chiropractic philosophy is the ultimate blueprint worldview. It DOES absolutely right and it entirely misses the point — at the same time — just as straights and mixers and every other “brand” does. –
– The key to a truly expansive interpretation of the Green Books is to read them through the eyes of an ADIO worldview. Without an ADIO worldview, you don’t have self-critical thinking. You simply have group thinking. It’s WHEN you put the developer of Chiropractic (BJ Palmer) together with self-critical thinking (ADIO worldview), then you have the best of the Green Books, which is found in books like “Chiropractic Text Book”, “Chiropractic Philosophy, Science and Art: WHAT it does, HOW it does it, and WHY it does it”, and “The Great Divide”. –
– CHIROPRACTIC PHILOSOPHY, OBJECTIVE OF CHIROPRACTIC AND OBSERVATION WITHOUT CONDEMNATION OF THE FLOW OF LIFE –
– We, chiropractors, have often forgotten that observation without condemnation is objective, function as objective and remains objective. It describes WHAT is going on as it is going on! Chiropractic philosophy has been formative of our entire life vision and we now live in a time that enjoys the fruit of immense observation scholarship from all aspects of chiropractic. –
– The main, and really only, thing that observation without condemnation adds to ADIO worldview, is the expression of “innate force” of the innate intelligence of the body; that innate intelligence adapts universal forces and matter providing instructive information to LIVING matter, and any remaining gap between living matter and intelligence are overcome moment by moment. This rearranges life expression so much that it ended up becoming its own profession; whether or not observation without condemnation intended that or not, we do not know. –
– Yet this on-going and uninterrupted Flow of Life allows observation without condemnation to be a teacher for all ages and all worldviews, as it reveals to humanity the possibility and reality of “full expression of the innate forces of the innate intelligence of the body” in our very own existence. –
– Palmer Clinical Controlled Research and Electroencephaloneuromentypograph. –
– The Clinical Controlled Research is referring to the teachers that emerged largely in the 1940’s and the 1950″s. Since they would have been closer to the source, we can somehow trust their experience. It’s amazing when you go back to the earlier chiropractors, we find a version of chiropractic that in many ways is more focused, and yet more broad, than the profession we have now. It’s very surprising. –
– Even though, it is not logical to attempt to prove the mental impulse with physical means, we can see why it is important that we’ve got to return to the sources on a regular basis, NOT as an aspect of authority, simply with a particular emphasis upon those WHO have a lot to say about observation and transformation. –
– The “Old Timers” –
– The “Old Timers” were honestly not referred to that much, since they just told little stories. These stories seemed like harmless anecdotes, and we wanted to go ahead with serious chiropractic. Yet, in the last 30 years, there’s been a rediscoverry of the absolute simplicity of their message and the fact that it isn’t concerned about the issues that we’ve been concerned about in past few years. Remembering Dr. Lyle Sherman telling stories of stupefying magnitudes that happened under his directorship of the BJ Palmer Sanitarium and Drs. Earl Taylor, Stephen Duff Sr., Clay Thompson, Virgil Strang, Clair O’Dell and many more, all of them having rubbed shoulder with one another and BJ himself. They were humble chiropracTORS having experienced ADIO worldview in their lives. –
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– Thom Gelardi, Reggie Gold, Joe Strauss. –
– Of course, the chiropractic objective emerged from the science of the 33 principles of chiropractic, the evolutionary process of chiropractic philosophy through its refinement and the experience of deductive reasoning from an ADIO viewpoint. Chiropractors love Chiropractic itself, lesser known are our intellectuals, who took the genius of Chiropractic and tried to interpret it in an academic and philosophical way that could be respected in the universities and colleges. –
– The three that most influence the birth of the chiropractic objective are: Thom Gelardi who founded Sherman College of Chiropractic some 12 years after the life of BJ. Reggie Gold WHO chose to be a part of founding the philosophy department at Sherman, a charter founder of ADIO Institute of Straight Chiropractic in Pennsylvania and the founder of Spinology. Both Gelardi and Gold knew BJ personally having graduated in the late fifties before his death in 1961. –
– Joe Strauss was also a charter founder of ADIO Institute of Straight Chiropractic and then authored the Blue Books, refining the understanding of chiropractic, (among them, seven Blue Books called: “The Green Books Commentaries”) and several other books as well. –
– The thinking of Gelardi, Gold, and Strauss is not just pivotal in the evolutionary process of Chiropractic; many are finding these three teachers very, very helpful as we RENEW the practice of Chiropractic and and get it back to its sources. –
– Observation without condemnation of all areas of life. –
– We know the term “observation without condemnation” is still new or strange to many people. It simply means our ability to read the moment, to read reality without condeming it or make interpretation of it. It’s a way that is not exclusionary of the part that we don’t understand. And it takes practice to learn that. It’s the best descriptor of high level thinking… when you don’t split everything up according to WHAT you like and WHAT you don’t like. You leave the moment open to be ADIO and you let it speak to you. It is central to the reform of the practice of chiropractic, to our own philosophical progress, and really to building a necessary bridge between life and it’s expressions (individual and social) in order to further the cause of chiropractic and give it to the world. –
Experience of ADIO vs Learning ADIO
Learning ADIO worldview is usually distinguished from experience of ADIO worldview.
Learning refers to principles’ correctness, whereas experience refers to right practice. What we see with Objective Chiropractors is not an emphasis upon verbal principles, instead it is an emphasis upon practices and ADIO viewpoints that, if you do them (not think about them… DO them), you end up transforming your worldview.
As I said many times before, we don’t think ourselves into a new way of practicing; we practice ourselves into a new way of thinking. In other words, do it long enough and it will transform your way of thinking. –
– The discovery of the chiropractic objective late 1990’s. –
– The chiropractic objective, as we know it today, was not formulated until almost 1999. There’s a reason for that: the notion didn’t exist in our consciousness. We all missed it completely, beginning with DD and BJ. We just didn’t get it! We only saw the “cure” of deafness and the possibility of getting sick people well in a natural way without the use of drugs and surgery. When Reggie came along and wrote his Ph.C. thesis “The Triune of Life”, he began to chart out what the chiropractic objective was and that chiropractic is NOT an alternative to anything. And in very short order, after that, this became obvious to many wise chiropractors throughout the world. –
– Reggie was the one WHO most influenced our Chiropractic profession regarding the chiropractic objective. That’s WHY we speak of it as a discovery of the chiropractic objective. It was right before us and we could not “see” it, especially after Chiropractic became legislated as a legitimate part of the “disease” (health) care system in all the States of the US. When you’re a part of a system of pain, symptoms and disease treatment, you can’t “see” non-therapeutically. You have to be therapeutic to treat pain, symptoms and diseases with Chiropractic in a natural way. So after the last State legislated Chiropractic, chiropractors and government pretty much created a “natural alternative” to treating diseases without drugs and surgery. It is easy to understand that the chiropractic profession would move in that direction in order to be accepted in the ranks of the “healing professionals”. Chiropractors needed to justify their own validity in the treatment of disease. –
– Scientific evidence from the Universe. –
– We’re living in a really amazing time. When we were students, the common perception was that science and philosophy were at odds. In the last twenty or twenty-five years, that has radically changed. Now, as we come to understand the nature of the cosmos (things like space, darkness, relationships, and energy), we’re finding that many of the principles of chiropractic are being confirmed by the new science. –
– It makes sense: if truth is one (which it has to be, in order to be truth), then all of us are just approaching that truth from a different angle. Science is reading it at one level, and chiropractic philosophy is reading it at another. Yet, we’re both looking at the same reality, even though, science only articulates WHAT it sees… WHY you may ask? Scientists do not know HOW to use the knowledge of WHAT they see. They lack the wisdom needed which comes from the ADIO world view of chiropractic philosophy. OCs are the ones WHO choose to really give science its due, and to give science the credit it deserves for naming things in ways that will allow many people to know and appreciate the ADIO world view and everything. Scientists today are often validating, in different language, what the chiropractic philosophers always understood from the stable foundational platform of the science of the 33 chiropractic principles.
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