DIANETICS TODAY

     Page 104

     "The key note of all synthetic valences is that a character has
been developed or created more or less out of whole cloth, possibly
with some small foundation, but certainly with exaggeration, which
puts into existence a being who never breathed or coughed or spat.

     The police and newspapers are continually doing this.  You
actually don't know whether criminals who have been arrested by the
police and tried in the newspapers were the people who were arrested
or not, since they are assigned a synthetic valence and are condemned
to be very bad people indeed.

     Of course some of these criminals were or are bad, but the
chances are that amongst this legion of people arrested and tried in
the newspapers there were some who were quite deserving men and whose
actual character and behavior did not even vaguely compare with the
represented character.

     We have a flagrant case of synthetic valences when newspapers and
other public media and even word-of-mouth gossip begin to tear to
pieces anyone's character and put in its place some synthetic
understanding which was never a real person.  In this way we begin to
believe there are many more bad people in the world than there are.

     In my own experience with bad men - and I have met several of
various nationalities - I have seen some men who could put up a rather
ferocious front, but I have never found one of them totally lacking in
human warmth.  Yet were I to read the newspapers and popular books on
such people I would begin to believe it would be possible for a
complete demon to exist who would never respond to any decent impulse.
Yet I have even argued bandits into a more amenable state of mind.  In
other words, you can actually create an effect on almost anybody.  The
synthetic valence is an effort to tell you and others that beings can
exist who are so bad that no effect can be produced on them.  Of
course this makes everybody subservient to them."

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Homer Wilson Smith     The Paths of Lovers    Art Matrix - Lightlink
(607) 277-0959 KC2ITF        Cross            Internet Access, Ithaca NY
homer@lightlink.com    In the Line of Duty    http://www.lightlink.com

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Homer Wilson Smith     The Paths of Lovers    Art Matrix - Lightlink
(607) 277-0959 KC2ITF        Cross            Internet Access, Ithaca NY
homer@lightlink.com    In the Line of Duty    http://www.lightlink.com