Pantechnicon; Champion Teutsch

A. Hello I'm Frank Fitzmaurice and welcome to tonight's edition of Dan technic on GBH radio's nightly magazine on arts entertainment and ideas for a new wing. Coming up on tonight's program WGBH commentator Louie Lyons is here. Plus later on in the show we'll be hearing from a psychologist from California who's written a book with the rather modest title from here to greater happiness or how to change your life for good. That's all coming up later on tonight's edition of ban technicolor. First let's turn now to WGBH radio's Louie Lyons who has some further thoughts on the recent Supreme Court decision on the death penalty. Now here's Louis Lyons. The death of discussion of the Supreme Court decision on the death penalty may

be because press and public are as divided and uncertain as the court itself. The five cases before it brought 24 separate judgments. Or it may be that the bicentennial weekend had so committed press space and editorial assignment that the complicated decision Friday afternoon came too late to go into. It's a very mixed bag that in part changes the court's 3:55 judgment of 1972 and in part reinforces it. In 1972 the court divided three ways. Four held the death penalty unconstitutional as cruel and unusual punishment forbidden by the Eighth Amendment. Two disagreed totally upholding its constitutionality. The other three held the balance. They found the death penalty in the Georgia case before them chosen is typical of very many was applied so capricious lay an arbitrarily even freakish way their word as to violate the Constitution. Since then 35 states have

passed new laws seeking to set standards acceptable to the court. Friday the court passed judgment on five cases chosen to represent these 20 have failed to meet its tests are still unconstitutional. Fifteen satisfy a constitutional requirement. The court dealt with three examples that they found followed adequate standards from Georgia Texas and Florida and two was a mandatory sentencing they struck now from Louisiana and North Carolina. And yesterday added Oklahoma and vacated 62 death sentences in these three states before adjourning for the summer. Again the divisions were such as to fragment the court. But this time two fragments joined to form a majority on the basic issue. The death penalty is not of itself or need not be unconstitutional. Only Brennan and Marshall dissented from that. They declared that the death penalty is no longer morally tolerable in civilized society. But they spoke in vain

For held that the states that have applied a uniform standard to deny discretion to juries by making the sentence mandatory have satisfied the Constitution. But again the judgment of the court is written by a group holding the balance. Stuart of the old Warren court writes the decision that becomes law with the support of Powell of the Nixon appointees and Stevens the new man who replaced Douglas. They decided that the penalty can be constitutional but only if the law lays down certain objective standards as guidelines for judges and gives them discretion to consider mitigating circumstances. For they say the North Carolina law prescribing a mandatory death sentence fails to replace arbitrary and capricious jury discretion with standards that guide regulate and make rationally reviewable the process for imposing a sentence of death. The fall insisted the mandatory sentence has met the constitutional test by

eliminating jury discretion. How white of the all caught and bug a black man and Rehnquist of the Nixon group the languages whites he twitched the supporters of the Stewart decision for muddled reasoning. But the three in the middle have muddled through to a prescription by which states may legally apply the death penalty for first degree murder modeled or not. The three admit the difficulty of their decision. Recalling the 1972 ruling they say we now hold that the punishment of death is not invariably violate the Constitution. They concede that the Eighth Amendment must draw its meaning as Earl Warren said from the evolving standards of decency that mock the progress of a maturing society. You know that sounds as though they were going to join Brennan and Marshall. They pulled back. For they are required they say to consider objective indications that reflect the public attitude toward the death sentence. These as they see it the punishment

must not be excessive. It must not involve unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain. It must not be grossly out of proportion to the severity of the crime. In short as was said long ago it must seek to make the penalty a crime. Judges may not act as legislators to fix the specifications for this they say those are peculiarly questions of legislative policy. This was also said of one man one vote. But the Warren Court overrode Frankfurt is that my mission. But they were getting into a political thicket. The four who up hold the mandatory sentence secures a three year hold the balance of inconsistency in saying the validity of a legislative act must be presumed. But then insisting on applying restraint on the legislation. Stuart's opinion recall is that four years ago the argument against the death penalty rested on standards of decency. But these four years he says have substantially undercut the assumptions for that argument. They don't say he doesn't say how but he does say

why it's now evident that a large proportion of American society continues to regard the penalty as an appropriate and necessary sanction. The chief evidence adduced for this is that 35 states have tried to legalize the death penalty. The decision does not specifically say that what has undercut the case against the death penalty in these four years is the horrifying rise in wanton killings. But that has been a main cause of these legislative actions. The legislative debates express public outrage at senseless killings by dope fiends and mindless thugs who kill as casually as they pick a pocket. And for the same no reason Stewart's decision makes no specific reference to the rising murder crime. But he notes the death penalty is said to serve two principle social purposes retribution and it turns to the much debated question whether the death penalty deters he finds the evidence is inconclusive. But in pot

capital punishment as an expression of society's moral outrage at particularly offensive conduct Stewart says this may be unappealing to many but it is essential in an ordered society that asks citizens to rely on legal process rather than self-help to vindicate their wrongs. Well that's the case for retribution. Brennan says he's deeply concerned that Stewart's decision seems to justify retribution for its own sake the taking of human life says Brennan because the wrongdoer deserves it is a denial of the basic concept of human dignity. The Stewart decision concedes that attitudes toward capital punishment have been a changing concept evolving standards have been away from the death penalty for 150 years or more he said. He says the court is required to consider the public attitude. Mr. Dooley held that the Court follows the election returns. Stewart says we must presume

the validity of a legislative act so as long as it is not cruelly inhumane or grossly disproportionate to the crime involved. But the court must exercise restraint on legislative power. He uses strong language to strike down the North Carolina law that makes the death penalty mandatory. It's not enough to eliminate the unbridled Jared just question and standardless sentencing found in the 972 decision. The mandatory sentence treats all persons convicted of a designated offense he says as members of a faceless undifferentiated mass to be subjected to the blind infliction of the death penalty. The automatic death sentence Stewart says has long been rejected as unduly harsh and unworkable a rigid at least twice since the revolution. Sure it's at least since the revolution. Juries have with some regularity disregarded their oaths and refused to convict where a death sentence was the automatic consequence of legislation he

says since the middle of the last century demonstrates that the aversion of jurors to mandatory death penalty laws is shared by society at large. He finds a prime deficiency with the mandatory law is that it has withdrawn all discretion from the jury including mitigating circumstances. This the court rejects consideration of the character and record of the convicted and the particular circumstances is constitutionally indispensable. The fall on the right practically hoop at that. As to considering the character of the defendant. White says. Surely a state may not be forbidden to conclude that the commission of certain crimes establishes the criminal's character to be such that he deserves death. But the Stewart decision prevails to require objective standards. But how has moral outrage reversed public opinion to put the case for the dignity of man and the worth of human life

on the innocent victims of senseless killing. Of course nothing in the decision requires a state to enact the death penalty. There has been no execution in the United States for nine years or in Massachusetts for 30 years. But no governor here has permitted an execution. The movement against the death penalty goes back to colonial days in Pennsylvania and New Jersey under Quaker influence. Maine abolished the death penalty in 1837. It was a major issue in the 1840s mission going to Bali in 1846 short island in 1852 Wisconsin in 1853. In the Civil War period the abolition movement was suspended but it won in Iowa in 1872. Many new western states abolished it before statehood as later Alaska and Hawaii did in one thousand fifty seven. In the 68 Vermont West Virginia and Mexico and New York joined in wiping capital punishment off the statute. A referendum on it failed in Colorado in

Massachusetts Delaware abolished it in 1958 but restored it in 61 after a particularly Highness murder since 1972. Governor Thompson in New Hampshire has pushed through it s and the Massachusetts legislature passed one but the governor's veto was upheld in our state Supreme Court. Capital punishment has been an issue in Europe at least as long as in this country in general abolition has made advances in peace time in periods of domestic quiet but lapsed during wars or periods of violence Luxemburg and in one in 1821 no way in one thousand five. Belgium has kept it on the books but never used it. After the Second World War the Netherlands Germany Iceland abolished it and Italy for the second time after muscling had restored it. Britain abolished it in eight thousand nine hundred sixty five. Mexico has had no executions for 30 years or Venezuela for over 100 years. The death penalty does not exist in most of Central America in Canada and Canada. The

question is now the court's acceptance of legislative reaction to moral outrage will doubtless put a damper on the abolition movement in this country and lead more states to enact reenact the death penalty under circumscribed conditions. Such a move has already been launched in the master's legislature. Some personal thoughts from WGBH commentator Louis Lyons returns on Friday's pan technic on with our full review of the week's news. Coming up next then taking a gun we have an interesting interview with a psychologist from Hollywood. His name is champion Kate toit's Ph.D. and he and his wife Joelle Marie toit you've written a book called From here to greater happiness or how to change your life for good. Exclamation point. Or rather the modest title if we may say so for our book about the his

psychological techniques which he practices in Hollywood so let's talk with Champion K. toit's Ph.D. about his new book and exactly what he's talking about from here to greater happiness. Dr. towards your goal the book from here to happiness or how to change your life for good which is a pretty massive kind of claim for what's not really a terribly long book. I could show you a fan mail we have and this is really true. Many people write you have managed to get in that short space. What many about lodge volumes have not come to in fact book came into being it may interest you. As a result of a dream. Yeah I went to school to find out what makes me tick what makes other people tick and what to do about it myself. And I didn't learn very much in psychology classes and even in medical studies I wanted that eventually becoming a push assist. When I practiced and I was in space and I was in all kind of fields of science and technology but I still kept wondering about myself and other people. And then I had wonderful wife

Ernie. I learned more about myself in the first five minutes that I learned than I learned in psychiatry in psychotherapy and in graduate school and we for seven days and for seven years I experimented DNA it's in our selves and wind up with a book which is now from here to greater happiness and in fact my dream was that one day somebody would be able to sit down in a few hours learn about themselves and others and then know exactly what they can do with themselves from this moment on and that's what our book is really all about. OK what are the specifics of the technique What did you and your wife learn we learned that nobody starts to own hang ups. They came down the line through the genetic parameters of man. So if you have a pattern the procrastination. If you have had a not finishing important project if you have a pattern of drinking or failing or being broke don't blame yourself. It came from somebody way before you who didn't solve that problem and passed it on to you. What how did how did you determine that. But of course been. A bone of contention and phonology for something that's right. We

used ourselves as guinea pigs and our friends and we found there was a very definite mechanic involved in the stealth core is the DNA the DNA is a very complex molecule which up to now was considered to be merely the bearer of hereditary information by the physical body. But we found out it contains information about personality and behavior character 6 and also about and says Joe and who it's which the individual inherits is and just like he's proved preprogrammed before abort before birth. I do have to kind of body has an eye color so he has these personalities and most people are robots Frank repeating history until they become aware and learn how to change their life so that's why we have Winnie taking stock and found it possible to take more than 10000 documented people whom we have to study and change our life for good. They come from every field of endeavor are from every age group and it's working. It workable hypotheses.

Well how are you able to relate. Your own work your own discoveries if you will in DNA or with other people's problems. OK very simple. Let's assume they give you a typical penis of a man who was a dwarf a midget and he was a Chicano and he had a great sense of inferiority and he was a state aid for the blind and he was consciously trying to help himself. He went to school he worked very hard but he never got out of his pattern until he came to office I was able to show him dad. His family had a sense of dependency which came down the line. There was a grandfather who had been dependent upon his dad and I was a transference from generation to generation of this dependency pattern and he was now a dependent this present member of his family and under state. Then when he became aware of that and he was willing to be reprogrammed we establish for him a program of self-sufficiency. He could have stated for the blind he had to take a job to do many things which he initially rebelled against because most of us feel comfortable carrying on our old ways. If you are progressing either if you are born late you

will continue to be late all your life and feel comfortable being so even though everybody else will be exasperated with you so he was retrained and he is now the master of his life he is now engineering coordinator front of the largest companies and in the nation. He's married and he certainly has everything but depend. He is very self-sufficient he got more pay raises than anybody else and this willingness to help himself and to be redirected has actually reached has actually changed the DNA in him because we are constantly being bombarded by these impulses from within which is in the DNA in the body cell. But we also are communicating with that body and our action in a new way. Our systematic action in a way then in turn modifies its DNA so that we are eventually going to have a new computer inside it was because our DNA is a computer which is computed by. And such strong learning we just passed on until it's changed so we're all able to do something about ourselves. And if your particular problem is what I would happens to be look at

it first analyze it and then realize that you can do something about it. Even a tendency to die prematurely is transmitted genetically. We had one man come to our office who had a great fear he was 33. He was a screenwriter and no meal in his family had lived beyond 35. So we designed a program for him my wife and I my wife is the one who which and who pulled me out of my traditional way of thought which was handed down in the schools to me and we as steps remember him and this man lo and behold is now 39 and his brother who was two years younger who also had that same fear is now thirty seven though these two other first in their family to break the age barrier who we all in our own way have a tendency to repeat history. And this we can stop doing once we become aware of this and do something in the new way in any systematic action. Any new habitat and Ken will eventually be recorded

deeply within us and become automatic and then go on to our children. I was never aware that we are capable of changing our own genetic codes as you suggest that we can. You're saying we can change the way that double helix DNA looks because it's a very complex molecule and I don't mean for the for the benefit of the average listener who may not be interested in genetics because that's because it's a pretty hopeless science when you're told it's fixed and it forever will be the same. It is not true every second we modify its DNA and we have proof for instance. When blacks Knighton get skin color without benefit of intermarriage for instance with whites. And when the Japanese become taller in body build and when the second third son in the family is taller than his older brother always that that's no coincidence. The desire of the ancestor is recorded in the brain and part imparts an impetus to the DNA and changes it forever.

So we are able each day of our mental activity. If we all wear it in a very specific way to reprogram ourselves that's what we teach people to do. And therefore we have actually had was also without being medical doctors now in cancer cases in many cases to produce permanent results. Which medical science believes so far to be impossible. Because we do proven I have diagrams to prove this. If you wish to see them to show how environment and DNA through the conscious and into communicate in a very specific way. And once we become aware of this fact then we will watch very carefully what we think about what we talk about and what we concentrate on because all of this is deeply caught in the mass. That's why we say medical doctors have a tendency to we would do it in the end the bodies the deceased of their patients or the person who concentrates on accidents has a tendency to become more and more accident prone. The person who can read on the other hand and health and wealth and the other thing has a tendency to we would use that word till we are able to say what it will be pay attention to concentrate on. We have a

tendency do we do we do it. So that's our weather. Talk about either sex stories of my clients not the tragic ones and we are the first to bring to the attention of the National Safety Council which is now becoming accepted that. There are predictions of holiday action in total tended to bring them up tended to bring them about rather than diminish them because they said so many people killed. He said Why don't you publicize the fact that so many millions 197 friends of all. Million the list this week and why and then three out of 40 or 400 get killed and the beginning there was rather an orthodox but now more and more scientific opinion is agreeing with that. You've used the word reprogram a few times to describe the system of training. But you have been dealing with patient subjects. What could we get that word out of the way reprogramming has a bit of a sinister overtone to what we meant. We educate actually we educate the individual. Once we become aware and Frank that we have this power by our thinking by our speaking about concentrating to actually produce events in the

being that we actually are creating them. Then we come to a kind of you know we not only become respectful of our great power but you can do something about it and we can we are we educated in a new way and once one member in a family of a mother a father or even a child learns this they influence everybody around them in a new way. For instance if you have a sense of being criticized by everybody and even though you you don't know anything that's necessarily wrong you are compelling other people to criticize you whether it's a teacher or a spouse or even a stranger. But once you realize that these people are not there to dis frustrate you but merely to cooperate with your believing criticism then you begin to change that belief and do something about it as we tell you to do in our book from here to greater happiness and produce a new way of life with yourself and that being so we are in a very specific way. The son of a solar system in which every person evolves around us like a planet we in turn our planets are on their solar system. So when we see that all human interaction then highly predictable

and therefore also changeable something which was probably really to be impossible. And in scientific research as I have done it as a physicist and as a geneticist it is possible to trace this with the position that if we determine the flight of a missile in orbit we are all of the upper stages of a multi stage missile. And I will always worse design a pre-determined long before we were born. But once we know that we can change our orbit and go into a new one. So we can go from fear to confidence or from sickness to health or from poverty to prosperity and from frustration to happiness. How do you go about first determining the parameters of your own individual makeup of each of us have continual ups and downs in our lives how do we determine which is the real part of our our makeup if you will whatever bugs you the most. What I wear is really frustrating to you whether it's your marriage or your job or your financial position or your help. Whatever it is that is a clue right there to

whatever problem you hear the solve because we are here in this earth not just to have find but to learn how to overcome obstacles not only but to master them to have to minyan over them. So whatever we're building in that very program which bugs you is it's illusion that it's a wonderful thing that every problem has a solution to it and that this illusion once we find it enables us to go on to the next target. Our attention so we give the person the tools we don't solve our problem for them because if you solve a kid's problem or if their mother hen tries to help the baby chick out of the shell deadbeat you're just going to die. You don't stop people from but you should tell them that you can solve it and you show them how but they got to do it. And so when you know what your problem is let's say it's a problem of being not finishing important projects at sea college or you didn't finish the job if you're fired or you don't have a tendency not to finish your marriage. Even that is not coincidental. That has something to do with and sister all difficulties they never conquer them.

So when you start with that as we teaching our book you take three problems a day and solve them. If it's just making phone calls if just making certain writing certain letters or reading whatever you want to read. If you discipline yourself and you build up a pattern of completion in the leased area then gradually your vigor of having will also be broken. And from this moment on then you can have a new life. But this particular thing. And there are housewives who teach and I'm you know I'm dealing with every type. They start maybe at this very moment making the soup right there at the other for unwilling or unable call in anything that's go into it all is not their own ESPN signals these interruptions. And once she understands as she can say no sorry if you were to be interrupted and finish what she starts. And so for that matter so here's the businessman who is planning a sale. In the midst of that he is interrupted by maybe his wife having an accident or an employee quitting and even though

he curses fate believing all these things came about to do him in. They do not they are merely cooperating with a pattern which came way down the line of people being interrupted or whatever their pattern may be. So we can say knowing what that individual's bugaboo is he can from that moment on and do something about it and change it. There is another pallet which is very common of people wondering why when it comes to promotion when it comes to even a little thing like seating in a restaurant being seen in the restroom somebody always pushes ahead of them. And they are not aware that they were number two or three in their family and their kind of people. So the moment you know that and we are very quick in spotting this right and a procession and a list we are having all the method that is very quick to judge the omitted. It is possible to actually discipline that person to be number one. Well you heard it here first folks and maybe nowhere else it's called from here to greater happiness or how to change

your life for good by a psychologist who has a practice out in Hollywood. He's name is champion K. toit she wrote the book with his wife Marie choice and the whole thing is published by price stern and Sloan of Los Angeles. And that's it for tonight's edition of anti-God. Thanks for being with us. I'm Frankfurt's Maurice. We're on the air seven nights a week here on GBH radio with bad technique on. We're on weeknights at 6:30 and weekends at 5:30 every night. AFTER ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. Thanks again for joining us and have a good evening.