The Meaning of It All by Richard P. Feynman Page B

idea. It turns itself inside out and becomes absolutely contrary to the beginning. I believe that the people who start some of these things, especially the volunteer ladies ofAltadena, have a good heart and understand a little bit that it’s good, the Constitution, and so on, but they are led astray in the system of the thing. How, I can’t exactly get at, and what to do to keep from doing this, I don’t exactly know.
    I went still further into the thing and found out what the study group was about, and if you don’t mind I’ll tell you what that was about. They gave me some papers. There were a lot of chairs, you see, in the room, and they explained to me, yes, that evening they had a study group, and they gave me a thing which described what they were going to study. And I made some notes from it. It had to do with the S.P.X.R.A. In 1943 the S.P.X. research associates—which turns out to be the . . . well, I’ll tell you what it turns out to be—came into being through the professional interest of intelligence officers then on active duty in the armed forces of the United States concerning the Soviet revival of a long dormant tenth principle of warfare. Paralysis. See the evil. Dormant. Mysterious. Frightening. The mystic people of the military orders have had principles of warfare since the Roman legions. Number one. Number two. Number three. This is number ten. We don’t have to know what number seven is. The whole idea that there are long dormant principles of warfare, much less that there is a tenth principle of warfare, is an absurdity. And then what is this principle of paralysis? How are they going to use the idea? The boogie man is now generated. How do you usethe boogie man? You use the boogie man as follows: This educational program concerns itself with all the areas where Soviet pressure can be used to paralyze the American will to resist. Agriculture, arts, and cultural exchange. Science, education, information media, finance, economics, government, labor, law, medicine, and our armed forces, and religion, that most sensitive of areas. In other words, we now have an open machine for pointing out that everybody who says something that you don’t agree with has been paralyzed by the mystic force of the tenth principle of warfare.
    This is a phenomenon analogous to paranoia. It is impossible to disprove the tenth principle. It’s only possible if you have a certain balance, a certain understanding of the world, to appreciate that it’s out of balance, to think that the Supreme Court—which turns out to be an “instrument of global conquest”—has been paralyzed. Everything is paralyzed. You see how fearful it becomes, the terrible power which is demonstrated again and again by one example after the other of this fearful force which is made up.
    This describes what a paranoia is like. A woman gets nervous. She begins to suspect that her husband is trying to make trouble for her. She doesn’t like to let him into the house. He tries to get into the house, proves that he’s trying to make trouble for her. He gets a friend to try to talk to her. She knows that it’s a friend, and she knows in her mind, which is going to one side, that this is only furtherevidence of the terrible fright and the fear that she’s building up in her mind. Her neighbors come over to console her for a while. It works fairly well, for a while. They go back to their houses. The friend of the husband goes to visit them. They are spoiled now, and they are going to tell her husband all the terrible things she said. Oh dear, what did she say? And he’s going to be able to use them against her. She calls up the police department. She says, “I’m afraid.” She’s locked in her house now. She says, “I’m afraid. Somebody’s trying to get into the house.” They come, they try to talk to her, they realize that there is nobody trying to