Objects of Desire

               It’s September and a new semester is here, at least that’s how I think of it. Being somewhat over educated I can’t help it. Here’s the overview:

                  I try to pitch this at about a second year post grad level. The discipline is somewhat undetermined but would best be though of as a specific branch of psychology. Actually it’s psy-ops without the nasties and as well these manipulations are primarily conceived of in terms of control of one’s own population and not the enemies – so there are constraints and freedoms not otherwise accessible.

It struck me today that I have never, even in the beginning bothered to cover the basic’s of the field. Essentially you must know something of Freud and Goebells as well as the role’ that Reagan played in defining the modern leadership format.   

               Current academic focus is if on anything, obsessed with the loss of myth.  We seem, according to these thinkers, to have either lost the light or it's gotten rather dim. Often they bring Nietzsche in to the picture and specifically mention the dead of God. Suffice to say Nietzsche was at most a bystander at that even and certainly events were leading to such a conclusion. Martin Buber has a nice way of dealing with the problem which postulates a sort of nucleus and electrons meaning I and Thou as the electrons and God as the central unknowable determinant. It's actually quite serviceable especially compared to some philosophies.

            I don't go that deep. As the joke goes I just want to run the world and leave the rule of the universe to the other guy.  My premise then is that the duality of myth and reality to be understood correctly has to be divorced from the notion of cause and effect.  One in other words does not determine the other. They are interrelated at an integral level.  Like mind and body, or nature and nuture, the question as to which is primary cannot be answered  because it is not a question.

               Take my word for it - there's a lot of room for extrapolation from here.  Thought effects reality both figuratively , as in perception and literally as in the case ofm deciding to saym build a building. Reality affects thought as well, conversely. I find it amusing, and somewhat dangerous however when I run into those who demand that there's only realty.

                 Reagan is important not because of what he did – that sort of question is for someone else to answer – but because of his psychological type and how that was manipulated to serve the ends of his handlers. As the saying goes “Flattery feeds a fool” and a glance at the ever confident , ever smiling POTUS tells us the appropriateness of that.

                 But as well, in all the figures we study it is well to remember the admonition of Gotama Budda – “AS the ants crawl across your toes remember each one is a Reagan, and there have been endless Reagans prior to this one, and there will be endless Reagans after this one”

                       My idea of the best learning experience is like having a group of comedians talking show biz around the lunch table – but unfortunately this is not easily arranged.

What I can give you, one on one, is a simulation of the sort of advice a shrink might give a patient. Note this is of necessity hampered since every patients circumstances vary, but then as Tolstoi said, “Every happy family is alike, every unhappy family different.”

So if any of you have had years of psychotherapy and find my comments to be things you’ve already heard before I beg your forgiveness.

As the cliché’ goes then we want to look at familiar things in new ways. As simple as that sounds it contains the essence of personal freedom. Imagine you’re driving from one place to another, there may be a road that will get you there much faster, but you can’t take it is you don’t know it’s there and you may not find it if you don’t look for it.

To repeat one of my by now tiresome axioms, The obscure can be found by anyone, it takes a genius to see the obvious.

This is quite literally true. In paintings we speak of the “invention” of perspective in the middle ages. Prior to that imagery was two dimensional. Why? Did they not see? Sure, but that vision did not make it into the brain. Just like today we might have difficult envisioning the other side of an eight sided object.

Some of these perceptual handicaps we soon outgrow. The young child is fascinated by the game of “peek-a-boo” because for all it knows the world beyond the closed figures has gone out of existence. In a matter of months it outgrows the wonder.

A good deal of the difference between the obscure and the obvious is not based in fact but rather in conditioning. In Reagans world it was obvious that the typical welfare recipient was a woman with a dozen illegitimate children of different fathers who owned a Cadillac.

This, of course was a lie, but it was a convenient lie for those who wished to dismantle the welfare system.

Which reminds me when I say that I expect at least a cursory knowledge of Freud and Goebells in the reader I am assuming they are aware of “the big lie” in the case of Goebells and the description of the subconscious by Freud.

      There was a cartoon by Gary Trudeau called “
In search of Reagan’s mind” and I think of it because his head was such a mess, between the feelings of contempt for his alcoholic, neer-do-well father, and the extreme narcissism, that one ventures in to explaining causality there with great trepidation.

For our purposes it is enough to describe the process by which damaged personalities may be manipulated into demi-gods.

Conversely one might add that it also brings into play the somewhat disturbing notion that *only* those with some sort of mental condition to hide, are ever seen as leaders.

This is somewhat amusing in light of the many books that purport to teach one leadership skills.

Sorry to make this sound so political – I don't regard it necessarily as a good thing but it seems to intrude whether we like it or not.

Where we'll be headed in the next few essays will be the way language shapes knowledge. In other words you can't begin to condition someone to your way of thinking until you have first given them the terms that you wish to impose. It's like a ball game where the notion of victory or defeat is senseless until the basic rules of the game are understood.

My premise will be that one can measure the degree of conditioning in a society by as simple an expedient as counting the number of times certain words appear in the media. Societies , like people tend not to think of themselves as “crazy” until it's too late and the situation has been brought home to them, via exposure to other societies, or people.

But so much for the elementary axioms. From the beginning I have insisted that we at least bear in mind the metaphors of the arcane, mystical traditions. It keeps it more interesting for me and since I neither get paid nor judged it is an open opportunity.

In alchemy and the alchemical opus we hear of the identification, the separation, the location and then the breaking down of belief systems which leave only the essentials which then can join with like essentials for a harmonius universe.

In the Tibetan varient of Buddism we hear of teleportation, levitation, astral projection, invisibility and such, all of which prefigure the means of the modern world by centuries.

Likewise the great scholar of the Hindu texts, Swami Prabuhabta when he translated the Upanishads and the Vedic Hymns insisted on using words like electric house, and radio waves while we know that three thousand years ago these concepts were not around.

Suffice to say what we call something matters. It matters because while the thing being named is what it is the name we give to it becomes immediately subjected to positive or negative interpretation.

Okay, let’s like Macbeth, “jump the world ahead.” (Let’s also hope we have more success then he did though.)

One of the simplest codes we can imagine is to just take each letter and replace it consistently with another letter or number. It’s also one of this simplest to crack. If you know the language the hidden message is in and if it’s long enough out simple examine and compare the frequency of the symbols and match them with the frequency of the letters in the coded language.

This is a “straight” code. In the case of most conditioning the coded language is “bent”. So instance in degrading a polish person you would not call them “a person of polish origin”, it would be much more preferable to call them a “polock” – general speaking the longer the description the more difficult it is to skew the definition.

Along with this goes the fact that the shorter the description is the less information it conveys, but conversely the more emotive content. (Ie Nigger, Spic, Fag)

The use of code phrases thus raises an interesting question. We assume that such phrases as “states rights”, “supply-side economics” are used primarily to mask their actual intentions - in these cases the retention of slavery and the transfer of wealth from one class to another.

However this may be too simplistic an explanation. Adopting the language of behaviorist conditioning lets view the stimulae in terms of positive and negative responses.

We know that by touting dubious economic theories or metaphysical nationalism we avoid the stigma of being called liars, but perhaps too little attention is given to the idea of the charm that attaches itself to coded message.

Part of the reason why is it suggests an “us” and “them”. In this case the “in group” will understand the message, as the poet says, “in it’s true meaning”. If you think back to childhood you may recall that no great appropriation was placed on the young boy who used “curse words.” It was if anything a sign of early maturity.

Also reverting to an even more primitive process the guy who gets to name things is considered to have the power of controlling them. Let’s not forget that the use of prejudicial thinking is widespread and that is because, like violence, it works.

Lose track of that and you may as well give up and go home. It reminds me then of the idea that every defensive weapon is at the same time an offensive weapon. This means that we use coded messages to protect ourselves from having to state our true purposes and as well because they give a greater impetus to the message itself.

In the same way you can crack a code by the mere counting of letters you can crack the social codes by seeing what words appear most often. It was remarked that as the 80’s went to the 90’s businessmen had adopted a new lexicon – one based on the terminology of warfare.

Areas were “saturation bombed” in order to obtain “total market domination” . competitors were strangled, suffocated, or merely beaten to death. Strategic long term plans were devised for regional attack plans.

We can suggest that if anything these plans worked too well. They succeeded in essentially slitting their own throats by eliminating what economists call “demand.”

This leads to a superficially puzzling question which is “Why would a business, or society willingly commit hari kari?”

The usual explanation for this, as well as for acts of selfless self sacrifice is that by the single person sacrificing themselves conditions are allowed to exist that maintains the overall stability of the system. In other words by committing hari kari the warlord allows the rest of his extended family to survive and keep their possessions, which if he rebelled would not be possible.

There may be merit in this suggestion. The problem is that in the ideal, as taught to the population for instance, businesses in a Capitalist system compete against each other and the “losers” go out of business while the ultimate winner is the consumer who gets the best product at the best price.

This is nonsense. As none other then JPMorgan put it “I like a little competition, but
I like a combination (or trust) better”

The enemy and perpetual loser then in Capitalism is the consumer. I don’t come to this conclusion lightly but it’s the only one that matches the facts. Anyone who has been married knows that even in this most sharing of relation ships there are lttle competitions, and there are things that stem from almost exclusively psychological reasons - who gets to drive the car? Who handles the checkbooks, even who gives presents to who.

To take this parallel a little further into a somewhat disturbing dimension when couples who have known each other a long time separate they rarely remarry. They know each others habits too well.

We’ve mentioned here that a similar case occurred during the American revolutionary war. If the great majority of colonists had come from nations other then Britain they well may have been inclined to believe the Brits when they claimed that their “cousins across the sea” would be treated fairly, but such was not the case.

It was to escape British rule that the colonists came to America in the first place and to think they would willingly take up the yoke again is foolish. They had a good idea of the type people they were dealing with, and we need only see the misery and genocide in Ireland in the 1840’s to see what love the mother country bore for her offspring.

I claim no foreknowledge of the future but must suggest that it would not be wise to underestimate the antipathy that has arisen in America towards those who she feels have mistreated her.

And I am not speaking of foreign enemies.

Like the cheating husband who is convinced his wife will never leave him, even at this late date the people in the power centers of Washington and New York, safe in their cocoons, are not aware of the thin ice they tread upon,

That dissatisfaction comes from both left and right only strengthens my premise. After all the left may have raised small cries of disapproval at the policy changes of the past forty years- but they took the money anyway and are as culpable as those who did the actual stealing.

It may be that we will see a repeat of the Teddy Roosevelt administration and things will change – or things may have gone too far. No one knows.

Back in the days when I worked in Criminal Justice we would speak of the terrible trauma visited upon people who’s houses had been burglarized . It was the violation of privacy as well as the loss of personal items.

How much worse must it be when one loses a house through the fault of others – and the others are not punished but rewarded?

Or when one works hard only to lose their livelihood in middle age not because of necessity but because a greater profit could be made overseas?

I think that an awareness may be dawning – I just don’t know if it will come soon enough plus theres no avoiding the fact that someone is going to have to pay – and the poor and the middle class no longer have the resources.

Certainly you can brush me off as just another one of the new breed of fanatics – but doesn’t the number of fanatics tell you something?

I’ve been writing this column for nearly twenty years. I’ve never been paid a dime. I do it because of the discipline. I’ve seen too many brothers and sisters die of drugs, of malaise and of the pain of living as slaves. I may go down but I will go down fighting.

The powers that be have attempted to steal from us the single most precious thing a person can have – their sense that they have the freedom to control their destiny. “No one is to blame” – so they say.

I will say this one time, because the big lie will be repeated ad infinitum

If you take away a persons belief in their own self some will submit, but sooner or later, having nothing left to lose, some will bite back.

tamlin