appendix 3

project quantum cyclops

-will be shifting gears here  for awhile

          rather then write au public and refuse comment i'll write in a more ordinary, for me style and and comments you have are welcome - for now use the email  kwitzatchhaderatch@gmail. com account
 and when I get a chance   I set something up more convient


Too bad about the chap  from brooklyn   find myself thinking if will blake can et Tom paine out of england then we should be able to do something about  extraordinary renditions


                - later    -  a
      


   Long live the revolution   -Norma Deren






         Several years ago I introduced a hypothesis which has held up fairly well. It suggests that our understanding of the physical world is paralleled by our epistemological   concepts.  So you have the rigid world of Aristotle, and the Gods, - then in the time of Locke we understand how "Truth"  could be shaped by the means of perception  - the tabula Rosa,  which in turn could be compared to the gravitational constant of Newton.
       In 1905 Einstein suggested that  both perceived and perceive r were in flux and this soon led to the suggestion that we could know either location or direction, but not both.

        Quantum information theory is a strange bird indeed, as anyone with the slightest knowledge of it will testify.

        It is as if by transmitting one letter of the alphabet we would be able to convey an encyclopedias worth of information.

         The problem, which I make no claim to be able to solve, is how to find the correct original unit out of a near infinite number of possibilities, or perhaps an infinite number of possibilities.

           As it stands however such challenges need not be undertaken if world domination is our simple goal. 

       Here's the kicker  - as technology amplifies the data field it consequently simplifies the amount of information needed to be transmitted in order to effect a response, in particular from the human population.  In other words  in dealing with a school of fish or a floock of birds in flight you no longer have to convince each one of them oof the direction you want them to go. All you have to do is "convince" the point bird.

       To draw the quantum analogy further consider a wall of doors. Each of the hundreds of doors has a number on it.  You wish to convey a great deal ofinformation but your means of doing so is limited.  What you do is tell the bird the right door to open - so it only need to know one thing even as it provides the receiver with a wealth of info.

     The problem facing mankind today is just this. IT is a two pronged sword.We control the masses by controlling the lead birds in the flocking behavior; behavior which has been made possible by the uinbiquitous presense of media.  And in turn we control any contrary messages  by arresting people in extreme cases - but ignorance has a subtler and vastly more effective way of advancing it's purposes.

    It simply refuses to admit the validity of anything that opposes it's core principles.  The NRA, which I do not oppose offhand, suggested that the way to prevent mass killing of schoolchildren was to arm five year olds and give them lessons in shooting. They did not understand how  out of place this seemed to be to most people.

     In my own life, in a case that I've seen happen to many others as well, I began as something of a writer researcher  who worked for the government and as I continued learning I became less employable as the years went by. My understanding was not the understanding that gets paid for.  I was not saying what the employers wanted to hear.

      Or consider the case of Reagan. He's a guy, whatever you may think of him that provokes widely varying reactions from the public. some see him as the savior, others as a monster, and It's save to say neither side is being duplicitous.

     The key factor here is that, as in the case of politics and business as well, technology favors market domination, which means it does not tolerate differences of opinion  - the gun and the bow and arrow may coexist for awhile- but not for long.

Principia Hypnotica

Principia Hypnotica

or “Right before our eyes”

Ah, tia a rare, rare tyme that beginneth eyes in such cauld pragmatismics and the moos shift, cow eyed, dawning anew.

But hey, when you've written as much as I have, you'll do almost anything to kick start the ,little grey cells and to antagonize “The white bull.”

And that goes even so far as the following. (This makes not the lightest pretext to being of an artistic nature.)

About a month ago hurricane Sandy rolled through the northeast. It was especially unpleasant inasmuch as no one wanted to admit it, but it is one of the first major climactic events to hit the northeast since the collapse of the economy. Obviously economies don't crash over night.

It takes a long time usually and then what happens is something happens and the usual response is not there.

Before proceeding further in understanding what happened it's useful to call forth an axiomatic truth – the rule of hypnocratic advocacy. This law states that in human society the more money a person makes the less will they allow it to become the focus of attention. The converse is also true which means the less money one makes, eg the more poor they are, the more self interested will be their claims of monetary demand.

This means the CEO will insist that he works to serve the public, to do good and for a transcendent awareness of progress, whereas the janitor will insist that *he* works to pay the bills and feed his family. The CEO is interested in the spirit of man, in God's purpose here on earth, in promoting morality and family values, whereas the janitor wants to know when he will be paid.

Hypnocratic advocacy is so commonly understood it need no further definition. Indeed it is so commonly referred to in explaining economic events that one can hardly imagine a world view without it. Galbraith used to refer to the Orange County Paradigm. When teaching in the California University system he often had die hard right wing independent conservative students, such as are known to exist out there. When the professor heretic-ally mentioned the fact that their entire way of life and existence was contingent upon a series of levies and waterways that brought water, at no small expense, to the valley, he was immediately corrected, being informed that in that case it was not liberal, big government economic planning that established the multi-year, mult-billion dollar projects – but common sense!

If you had read this blog for a few years you'd know that part of the reason for it's inception was to avoid a sense of loneliness. Nearly everyone I knew growing up moved away a long time ago. Thos who stayed did so mostly because they were economically beyond the needs to earn a living. They, by and large did not see much purpose in my hanging around and made that evidently clear.

I likened my being in the northeast in the 80's and 90's to Churchills situation in the 20's and 30's – there was a bad thing happening. It was growing and could have been controlled fairly easily, but there were too many people with too much to gain from that control not being put into place. The irony of both our conservatisms is that our faiths were in the end put at the service of conserving those good and lasting things of the past, things which the newer self proclaimed conservatives seem hell bent on destroying.

One of those friends of mine that held out against the tide for a long time eventually gave up and moved to Florida whereupon his economic situation immediately took a turn for the better. What happens is every two or three years, like clockwork, a hurricane moves through and devastates the area, and then, like clockwork, the government votes multiply billion dollars to rebuild the area until the next time a hurricane comes along.

So when the rains come, he celebrates. Of course we're talking about half million dollar homes and the numbers are not that large. Katrina was the exception and merits a book or two on it's own.

When Wendy hit the northeast it was a different situation. Subways were flooded, entire communities washed away and most of all the shear numbers involved were staggering. Million of people were dispossessed, many of them who had just begun to get on their feet after the crash of 08.

I must call the readers attention to something.

We purportedly value hard work, initiative, effort, persistence and the like. If something good is to happen to a person we'd like that something good to result from the person themselves. I have no problem with this but hasten to remind the reader that most often when something bad happens the individual has nothing to do with bringing it about.

Listen , the Tamlinmediaco has never been of the newspaper perspective that implies that somehow, if the public is made aware of something, it can be corrected. Call that the optimistic scenario. Nor do we believe that making fun of things from a pseudo elite perspective is going to do any good. Amazing how little do tyrants care about sarcasm.

We're hackers and in this case it means finding ways to avoid or minimize the collapse of the empire- but we're not going to stop it.

And weakness and strength are two very problematic concepts.  Sun Tsu knew what he was talking abuot when he said the strong should appear weak and the weal appear strong.  Ask the cop in the patrol car what will get you a ticket and the answer is – aggressiveness. People seek power because they have problems and if you understand how that works you can control them. We used to speak of mind hacking, or social engineering. This is when by purporting to be one person or another you can gain knowledge.

Knowledge is a language. If you know how a line engineer talks you can call a dispatcher and they will co-operate with you. Most people however don't have these skills. To some extent we're at a period like that of the advent of the Masons. A lot of early hackers were phone phreaks and that's nearly unheard of today.   In the same way the early Mason were Mason in spirit so too today we have a lot of Kackers in spirit. People dedicated to learning things

The key is not to threaten anyone and what is more to massage their egos. So may regard it as humiliating, but in the final analysis we are not fighting to survive the attack of other humans, we are fighting attacks by improperly coded machines. The drone that takes you out because of a spelling error is not to be blamed.

What can hurt a great deal is when we seek to communicate with someone new and they regard that as an attack. If a girl has been raped, you may not know it, but the minute you enter her personal space she will panic. The odds of this happening with an “authority figure” are slim, but put yourself in their place. Forget previous notions of power mad fiends – think of the authorities another way.

They like to see things work. Many of them feel they are taking a cut in pay in order to do something for the public benefit. It is not uncommon for public employees to wonder about and calculate how much more they've be making for the same work in “the private sector.”

Classically you see the case of a cop who experienced a brutal childhood and they take conscious comfort in thinking to themselves that they may just prevent such miseries from happening in someone elses life. Or maybe they are working out issues. Suffice to say you never know for certain what will trigger an attack. They could be shaking the bushes. They could be looking for a promotion, or win an election.

So the northeast has been told, once again that, it's priorities are o the bark burner. The region wants about 60 billion dollars, but, contraries to promises no action has yet been taken. With these things it takes a long time just to get started. And one speculates that in several months te issssse. The simplle truth is non of the states voted republicann in the pres election so why do they expect pauonoooo

Here I begin to become somewhat apprehensive. As a general rule, as much as possible I don't write anything that I think might be commonly available anywhere else. This isn't possible but it's something to strive for, if only to keep my own interest piqued.

And of course there's always that time of disillusionment when we discover that what we had thought to be our personal discoveries had been made by others, sometimes millions of others, at the same time. In addition to that one of the overt purposes of the Tamlinmediaco is to discover the semi-hidden levers that trigger psychological response. Most of us know what a meme is, and understand the concept of going viral, but few of us can deliver such packages on a consistent basis.

The one who could do that could conceivably rule the world, or at least be a hell of an advertising man.

To follow this path we've done a great deal of research into the ways people communicate, and in particular the ways that the underclass communicates with itself. The Brits during the Norman conquest provide good examples, as do the African Americans during their long bondage in slavery and after.

It has become more and more apparent that the dismissal of conceptualizations as “myth” does a disservice to the complexity and depth of these beliefs. Immediately one could think of the developmental myth the fairy tale that teaches a child a lesson, on a practically unconscious level, then theres the social myth wherein one group is held to have a characteristic, or series of characteristics , then there is “the law”, a series of practices that become customs and are eventually codified into jurisprudence.

One could suggest that the previous one hundred years have either seen an abandonment of myth, an explosive growth of myth, or even both things at the same time. Certainly myth in the religious sense is no longer adhered to as strictly as it once was, but we have replacements, propaganda, and advertising that provide subjects with new needs and fears.

As well and indeed one can always resort to the irreducible – to aggression – to the use of mythical formulation for the purpose of enhancing one persons genetic positioning in the gene pool at the expense of others.

I find it amusing that in the case of one of mankinds early myths, that of the garden of Eden and the snake rarely does anyone consider the story from the snakes point of view. I know I have. It would be impossible to maintain ones perspective without doing so. The long and the short of it is the snake hates God. To the fate of the human race it is indifferent. To some extent it knows that it cannot give God the blues, but it figures its worth a try,

What is the difference between the snake and God? God understands what it is to be a snake but the snake has no idea of what it is to be God. God pities the snake and no matter what it's crimes would not have it forever banished from the universe ( something easily enough done) the snake consumes itself in hatred and wonders each morning that it still has form and content.

So, to review briefly, the last century, roughly beginning with Freud, has brought to mind the notion that myth is an outgrowth of biological processes as they are perceived by the mind and psyche. There are opposites, dialectic realities such as warm and cold, day and night and life and death that make this easy enough.

Along with the biological processes, that for intents and purposes we may regard as constant, there is also a technological aspect of life that is effecting, at some speed, the development and maintenance of the organism, (the human being being of our primary interest.)

Man being self defined as “the creature that uses tools” (homo sapiens)

whatever man made circumstances that effect the way he gets things done can be loosely described as technology; for instance, the placing of a yoke on a horse, the use of sails on a boat, or in modern terms the replacement of printed money with credit cards. As well the social structure plays a large role' in how humanity gets along.

This brings us to a class of myth that may be referred to as the Paradise Lost Syndrome. It insists that all technology, whilst useful, removes us from nature and thereby imposes a cost on life. By these lights the country is always cleaner and more peaceful then the city, the businessman is always of purer intent then the politician and ultimately the individual is less corrupt then society.

However you look at it these distinctions are not valid. There is no dividing line between the city and the country or between the individual an society. Yet, I can vouch for this. As a youth I spent several years hitch hiking around the country and met many a person who was adamantly opposed to venturing into the city. In one case a truck driver had relations in the New york area and he would on an an annual basis drive the family to spend a few days with them, but he himself would spend those days in a motel, safely ensconced outside the wicked temptations of the city.

There is another story, one I've told before, but one that needs to be understood if only because of the number of false explanations that people grasp. I am also going to tell it in a convoluted way, not because I understand why, but because I don't. This is because given the choice of seeing through a dream or seeing through reality I would choose the dream. It is somehow more complete.

My father had a somewhat wealthier background then most of the kids in his neighborhood. It was a status the family was unable to keep but as a boy and young man he was able to associate with people in the then upper class neighborhood of Amityville. Thus when he was able in later life he insisted my family move to Locust Valley on the north shore of Long Island, a place my mother, a short squat Italian looking woman, was never comfortable in.

The town next to us was Glen Cove, which despite having the vaguely Scottish name had a large Italian contingent. One who lived there was Thomas Pynchon. We're about the same age. He may be a little older. Our lives, other then the fact I had multiple hospitalizations, were not that dissimilar. Both of us worked for the government initially, he in missile guidance, I in criminal justice and then, interestingly both of us choose a life of obscurity.

To understand this one has to know the evils of suburbia. At the time at least the best way to deal with them was to hide in basements and attics, smoke dope, and listen to music. In what can only be described as a bizarre way we lived the lives of the rural gentlemen. I won't deny that it was isolated and we paid a heavy price as time went one because when the cats away the mice will play, and because we could not be bothered to take a hand in our communities, bad people found their ways made smooth.

That said let's not kid ourselves. Both the immediate rulers and those further away had no interest in seeing our causes advanced. It is no secret that the northeast was unable to protect itself from the southern strategy of Richard Nixon. Having forced the south to accept the black man as a human being it became our task to pay the price once we lost the whip hand.

I've never met Tom but here's why I mention him (other then the fact he's a book writer person) His family was mentioned in Nate Hawthorns book “The House of Seven Gables.” Nat, furthermore was the grandson of Judge Hathorn who was the man that had all those women and children killed in Salem Village.

Nate changed the family name because he was not proud of what had happened. What is interesting is the same Puritans who were later on insist on emancipation of the Negro were those who burned women at the stake for being witches. I reminds me of the proclivity of generals and business leaders to commit suicide. Likewise the Japanese, who tend to take things seriously, practice sempaku.

Over the three centuries since then there have been several explanations. Bread mold that turned hallucinogenic is one, and many of the explanations concern the deep stains of puritanical conscience.

Giving all due deference to defense lawyers, who after all make their living by somewhat strange explanations, in order to determine truth, or at least probability we have to ask ourselves how often in similar circumstances there were similar out comes. This means we must look for the unique causality.

As it happens there was one. Thanks largely to the failures of the monarchal systems Europe had been in religious warfare for centuries. The puritans had had enough. They were convinced if only they were left alone they could make a heaven on earth of only them and their God.

At the first opportunity then they came to America and lo and behold it was very good. The first few years were rough but the land was good, the game was good and there were no taxes what so ever. The preachers were the big shots and they got all the easy action.

But time went on an soon the people in the waterside communities started to flourish as well. These were, by Puritan lights, “bad people” - to wit people who danced and sang on sundays, people who who played skittles, people who drank and people who engaged in commerce on the Lords Day. There was a terrible thing about all this however. God, instead of laying down his almighty wrath on the sinners instead rewarded them. The sinners became rich!

The great puritanical experiment, which had seemed on the edge of success, and which so many had hoped and prayed for for so many years was on the verge of failure. As in past similar cases the priests arranged for ritual sacrifices to be held and they were, to it was all to no avail.

The sinners came forth, and fifth. From their hovels and from their brothels, from the sewers of europe and the opium dens of the fast east they came, distorting the purity of pure devotion, on and on they came, never ceasing, always wanting money, wanting sex and wanting more money.

And yet we cling to the notion that in the country all things are natural – as made by God.

But it just ain't so things are more or less the same all over.

Tamlin

The Forgotten Generation

            Like many of us, winter time provides me an excuse to curl up with a book and let the world go by. The feeling of the last few years in the publishing industry is that fantasy lit is no longer genre, it is now fiction but after spending ten years in the mother lode of the UK I have lost my taste for it. There's Tolkien and that's about it.

                     I picked up a copy of the Complete Grimms Folk tales the other day and must confess that I now read it in a new and comprehensive way. Folk tales are not so much didactic in the sense that they instruct us how to live, as they are logical. Bottom line – they make sense and their ultimate goal is to lead us from childhood to maturity. Anthropologically speaking the tales come across as case studies.

Also I tried ordinary adult fiction, which is mostly crime and mystery stories. The formula is recognizable right off the bat. Even Ludlam and Le Carre', both of whom I've read and enjoyed extensively, tend to stay in the same world for each novel.

                  Incidentally I tried Caleb Carr's new fantasy and was disappointed. He seems to be trying to emulate the dungeons and dragons books of Weiss and Hickman, but he doesn't have the gift for it.

And he's a fine writer as evidenced by his earlier novels. Without some sort of a moral message a book is just words. (The Message of the D&D books incidentally is that technology and magic are virtually indistinguishable.)

                     What I can read, if it's done well, is historical fiction. Victor Hugo's Hunchback of Notre Dame is unfortunately known to most only for it's story of the doomed love triangle of the beauty, the handsome hero and the beast, but the actual novel goes in to great detail about 16^th Century Paris that add immeasurably to the impact of the story.

                         So I'm reading “The Silver Eagle” by Ben Kane and so far so good. What contextualizes the entire story is it is about a legion on the frontier that for various reasons, has not played a large role in the scheming that went on between Julius Caesar and his rivals.Apparently it's part of a series of books about  the lost legion - an imaginary legion that wanders about, keeping true to the codes of the vanished republic.

                 It triggered something.

For many years I've tried to come up with a phrase that would describe the people that grew up in the time and place I did. Twain invented “The Gilded Age.” Hemingway came up with “The Lost Generation.” In order for this to work, of course, others have to see the point.

What is more there has to be an opposition- a cadre of people who are vehemently and violently opposed to my interpretation. There were people who thought the long cycles of boom and bust that Twain called the gilded age were great and so the other name for the era is “The Gay Nineties” Likewise the era after the first world war, when mankind began to realize that he was part of a huge killing machine and that the killing machine was totally indifferent to it's victims brought about what we could at the very least call a vast disassociation.

                     The empires fought to preserve their status but it was no longer needed to cloak their ambitions in religious or moral garments.

                  As Claude Rains was to say thirty year later in Casablanca “Shocking, simply shocking”

                    The phrase “The gilded age” was to receive new life ten or so years after it was coined.

Two enterprising Broadway songwriters wrote “Only a bird in a gilded cage.” Which was about the sad condition of the beautiful young woman we know today as the trophy wife. The eighteen nineties mirrored the nineteen eighties closely. The yuppies of the day lived fast, dressed well and spent most of their time in the effort to impress a big shot.

                  The lost generation (1920-1940)  were so because it finally hit them; the first world war demonstrated that there was no rhyme nor reason to nationalistic politics other then “get the money up front.” The most concise explanation anyone ever came up with was to say of the leaders “they had to do something because they were afraid to be seen as doing nothing.”

                  I'm not sure I can even hold that against them. I'll let you in on a little secret, one gained by yours truly at no small cost. Remember I have some experience in this writing game. The secret is when sanity fails then try a little madness. When truth falls sloppy dead then try coincidence, because here's another secret. The guy next to you is no smarter then you are. They're bluffing - just like you. Truth is whatever you can get away with. An authoritative tone of voice, good posture and a clean suit goes a long way towards winning any argument.

               It might help, as well, to consider the greek idea of the daemon. It is that confidence that enables one to stroll forth into the lions den confident in the awareness that the lion is just an overweight pussy cat. Where does it come from? Who knows? It can come from madness and megalomania, as in the case of dictators, or, as Freud suggested, it can come from a loving mother.

Without it we are not even in chaos. We are simply lost. We are defined by our opposition.

Remove the opposition and there's, as the expression goes, “hell to pay”

As I said, much of the most interesting stuff by Hugo is edited out of the abridged editions of his works. If and when you read what I am about to say, or hear of it somehow, I have little doubt that the first few paragraphs here will be tossed aside. Well, don't blame me! I tried. I really did.

Hemingway’s lost generation, between the big wars, seemed to be having a lot of fun but nevertheless for the average people, suffice to say it was business as usual. The poor got shafted and the rich got richer. It was the roaring twenties after all. Do the Charleston! Do the Black Bottom! Shake that black bottom for me Mamma!

The fact of the matter is that soon artistic hegemony would shift from east to west over the waters. A salient moment was “The King of Jazz”, an early color film staring Paul Whiteman and Bing Crosby. It was by no means jazz, but like the confidence man it suggested it was and the Europeans had lost enough faith to believe it.

It's easy to say that American culture is an oxymoron, like military intelligence. The great American art form however is not Jazz – it is advertising, which can be defined as “the art of telling people what to do.”

Finally then we come to my bid for immortality. We are not the lost generation. We are the generation that seeks escape from being found. Being found means being controlled. The art of telling people what to do has come round to it's eventual origin – the art of telling people when to die.

Reagan, of course, was the AntiChrist. No one can argue with that. And to see through the devils whiles we must first of all forgive him. He who hated his father. He who hated his children. They must firstly be forgiven for it is not them to blame but circumstances.

Before we can forgive the devil we must see the greatness in him. We must face the fact that his promises were not lies – not in the true sense of lies. He, like the devil, delivered what he promised. As to the side effects, the destruction of the American way of life, well that's another story.

So, for his generation, or many in his generation who were old people between 1980 and 2010 you won – you won the lottery big time. Taxes were slashed and entitlements expanded. We know this. It is not rocket science, and as well the questions as to what to do now are not going to go away. But I ask you to take a moment and consider not the future, which is unknown, nor the past, which is subject to interpretation, but the recent past.

It is a curious (read, “malevolent”) fact that pure hatred is not the best way to do harm to those we would destroy. As Frank Herbert said, “To make something stronger, attack it.” Overt hatred alerts our allies. More to the point it alerts us that we are threatened and must take counter measures.

True evil is far too wise to allow this to happen. It shakes our hand as we enter the house of death. It commiserates with us as we sadly explain our state. It would like to help us, but it has a better idea – it will allow us to help ourselves!

So I consider that legion of roman soldiers wandering around the empire. Many of the members are well trained. The thing is to consider that when the Gilded age came to an end it was done by Teddy Roosevelt, who was not a businessman, and not a politician. He was a law man. Any man with sufficient resources can, as the Romans would say , “hire Greek Brains” to do their publicity work. What was needed was to see the opposition not as businessmen, but as criminals, and there was and remains a strong desire in us not to do so.

What the criminal values above all is loyalty to himself. The problem with capable people is that they do not become capable by being loyal to petty tyrants. So what is to be done with them?

They must be cast aside. Recall a good percentage of why Napoleon was so successful against central European armies at first is not only that his armies were good, but that the opposition was terrible, and especially terribly led – primarily by people who gained their commissions via bribes

In order to give strength to my definition I have to limit it. I am talking about the generation that came of age between 1970 and 2000 - yup the baby boomers. At the same time they were at the front of every advertising campaign – the heart – the actual people – was lost. They were and are the Forgotten generation. Nixon's cannon fodder.

The lost generation was bewildered. The Forgotten generation was, some would say, intentionally befuddled. Whatever the case, whether abdication or coup, for a comparatively small amount of silver they have squandered their birthright and handed their futures over to others who have little interest in the good of all.

It is odd. Like it or not we have moved on and what is done is done. A great deal of writing gives hints of portentous events just around the corner but in this case the die is cast.

It is agony to watch one's future slip away. I won't kid you. I saw it happen, or felt that was so. The long days and nights in the wasteland. “Get a life” shouts the clown. “ha ha I'm dying”- the teardrop explodes “good for you, good for you. Good for you,” says the broken doll.

The mere mention of the phrase “Forgotten Generation” however does not in an of itself give you reason to care about, or consider the ramifications. One of the better ways to do that is to consider an example from what I call “intermediate zen.”

Zen is well known as a primarily wordless method of enlightenment. Masters look askance at so called zen cook books. If such pronouncements are paths to omniscience then what is poetry? Nevertheless if it is your calling to write pooetry then by all means – write away!

Another paradox is the term “mystic”. The word itself sounds like mist and the practitioners often surround themselves with obscurities while the goal is always to attain that clarity of mind that allows for true perception of reality.

The danger and difficulty of the above two misunderstandings is that they attempt to apply a qualitative analysis to something that resists it. To apply a quantitative analysis is also impossible – (How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.) - but at least with a quantitative description the absurdity is more obvious.

Right, well, lets's jump to it. The Lost Generation and the forgotton generation are two diffirent things. There's a teleoplogical aspect at play here – meaning where ddo the terms com from and where are they going. To use our old friends I'll give the example of the void and nothing.

Nothing is that which once had thingness” whereas the void never did. In that sense the “nothing can be traversed, reverse engineered while the void, never having descended to form, cannot. At the risk of sounding absurd nothing therefore can be understood whereas the void cannot. In the same way confusion can theoretically be straightened out whereas chaos cannot. If it can changed to order then it is not chaos in the first place. One might suggest that the difference between the two states of reality is the presence of a foothold in both confusion and the “not thing”.

Nevertheless the two, like being lost and being forgotten are in daily life, similar.

The first world war was not the first to kill tens of thousands of soldiers a day, but it was the first to allow the killing to be done, aided by technology, by a handful of men. This had to raise questions in mens minds as to whether it was actually a determinant of correct rectitude, or the will of God. The early novels of Aldous Huxley bring out , for the first time, the sense of uselessness in the individuals confrontation with organized society. His world presented a different outcome from that of H.G. Wells.

Wells was famous for his deus ex machina – the hand of God that appeared at the last moment to save the day. Huxley had no such illusions.

My use of the term “forgotten generation” for the upper middle class between 1970 and 2010 is not perfect but it has several justifications, which I will describe.

Although I am an American the era and effects happened across much of the industrialized world. Beginning with the revolutions and slogans of the seventies – the cohorts marched in similar ways, through indifference, to the neo-conservatism of the 80's and 90's and finally to the economic collapses of the end of the era. What I describe then, like the economic world had transcended borders.

This era also coincided, roughly with my adult working life. I was born in the tail end of the baby boom and hence got little benefit from it. It was sort of like knowing a woman who was free with her favors and courting her for awhile only to discover that she had repented of her previous ways and was now saving herself for Mr Right.

As well there is no denying a generational role' in what transpired. Much of America lived on credit cards for decades and when the bill came due – it was someone elses problem. The same held true with the welfare states of southern europe.

In the nineteen twenties, prior to the depression of the thirties there were plenty of indicators that all was not well in Happyland. Even in the isolated sinecures of Wall Street there were plenty of people who were able to avoid the disaster by getting out in time. This situation replicated itself almost exactly in the first decade of the twenty first century. Call it a propensity to gamble if you like. More cynically one would have to suggest that it was necessary to perpetuate the myth that the Stock Market was functioning as it was intended to do and was not a criminal enterprise. That too remains with us today.

There's a question theologians have asked for thousands of years. When the Israelites

were freed they went back to Israel, a walk, even with women and children that ordinarily would take a few weeks at most. It took them forty years.

Little explanation is given and so the theologians suggest the reason for the long walk was that after their sojourn in Egypt the Jews had lost the ways of freedom – they had become used to letting others do their thinking for them and they to learn to think for themselves before they could return to the promised land.

God was aiding them even as it appeared he was holding them back.

In our story however there remains a critical difference between the lost and the forgotten. The Lost generation after the first world war knew not where to go. Their Gods had been broken on the altars. They split apart. Prohibition was righteous allegedly , yet it led to gangsterism. The Stock market led to the depression.

There is wide consensus that the great flaw of America is racism, and yet one wonders if not in a nation of so diverse a population there is not an ongoing desire to find and identify the low man on the totem pole. Like in professional boxing where one can trace the history of immigration from Germans to Irish, to Italians and finally to blacks who were effectively place out of order due to racism.

The myth is that the market system finds the most capable people and rewards them. Is it not possible that it also finds the weakest and exploits them? We know how that's done. We simply look at those we wish to disappear and we look right through them!

The problem of course is that at the end of the day they are still with us – waiting patiently.

It makes us feel uncomfortable, but not uncomfortable enough to do anything about it

As the case may be at some point however we have to take responsibility for circumstances as we allow them to be, and indeed , as we create them. The explanation that one was “just lucky” begins to wear thin after awhile.

One of the major problems that faces us today is the assignation of blame, or responsibility. It extents from the concentration camp keepers who were “just following orders” to the corporate lawyer that seeks to minimize culpability for the malevolent actions of his firm.

And in truth, should we reach even further beyond the mere legal contingencies that govern financial and social interactions and travel to those myths and preconceptions upon which life rests we must facr the daunting truth that Mickey Mouse, a creation loved far beyond that of any organic creature is not a living entity. The Mouse is a false god and those that die for it die for nothing.

It seems a trivial distinction yet it is a question that cannot be permanently solved for the simple matter that the false god, like the devil, pays us and the children of the real deity are a burden.

I for one have never consciously shirked or shied away from admitting this terrible truth – which is that doing good does not make sense. Logically it is the murderer, the rapist and the thief that are the superior ones in this world. Once understood though I find myself freed from the need to demonstrate any false truths about immortality, decency and justice. Not only that but I am not about to second guess god.

I had thought that it was only a temporary thing, brought about by technological change, that led to the delusions spread so completely in America. Now I doubt that.

In any event one of the truisms of systems is the systems reality becomes the only reality. The depth of the reality however can be astounding. I have suggested overtly and covertly that many of the American economies difficulties have their origin long ago in the pre civil war era and it was not for awhile until the actual motivations began to reveal themselves.

One can find it singularly amazing how long power lasts. In the north shore of Long Island where I lived for years there were many families that came to wealth in providing for the civil war, over a hundred years prior. Likewise when the two hundredth anniversary of the French revolution was celebrated the majority of the people in charge of the festivities where descendents not of the hoi poll oi but of the Aristocrats!

I have worn peoples ears down complaining about that horrible day when Reagan was inaugurated, but other, older, and perhaps wiser heads point out that the processes that would weaken the northeast were already at world in for instance “the southern Strategy.” The thing is I was sort of on the cusp of event. I have been to the Carter White house but the Senatorial office I had best connections with, Damato, did not inspire confidence and indeed was soon removed from office.

They , and consequently me, suffered from a universally Long Island misconception, which is that it is the center of the world, which it is not. Plus the kind of local politics that had in some ways benefited the region was becoming outdated in favor of sound bites and international issues.

Realistically though there's no shame in admitting that in a football game the other guy beat the hell out of you – and that's what happened to us, with the caveat that wall street was given a free get out of jail pass. Realistically as well, my situation was not that of the majority of people in the region. As I've noted before nearly my entire graduating class in high school (The honors track) moved west as soon as possible. I had medical concerns that kept me from doing so.

For the people in the service industries, the contractors, the restauranteurs, the plumbers etc, there was basically little change since the owners of the houses were staying put. I did what I could to seek out opportunities, but there was, and presumably remains a predominantly illicit character to business on the island. ( Note I no longer live there.)

Churchill once again, brings us the far eastern adage of the man riding the tigers back who discovers that riding the tiger is one thing but getting off is quite another thing, This is the situation the local Republicans found themselves in the other week. I am searching for an analogy.

As a man this is the one that comes to mind first.

A young woman marries an old millionaire and insists she loves his sense of humor, his wisdom, his kind kindheartedness and so on. The man discovers her cheating and calls into effect the prenuptial agreement, which the girl challenges.

Under testimony in court the woman says that while she did love the hubby for his many good qualities, actually she married him for his money.”

So now, after decades of nonsense about the rising tide lifting all boats it's a fair cop, as they say in the UK – the southerners are gonna whup yo ass!

&    That will be the subject of the next article

Ps who are the forgotten generation?

Ask Micheal Moore

a Good Patch

     This that follows in an introduction to two essays, connected   by subject that summarize some of the less obviously material of the past year or so.    Like much science one gos in expecting one thing and comes out with something else. I went in to the first essay ready for the standard muckraking class warfare diatribe and came out realizing that the foolish things of the past decades, the wars, the refusals to accept governmental responsibilities hurt the upper middle class more then anyone else    and it was they who were looking most eagerly for gain    This group I have labeled "The Forgotten Generation."

        The  second essay probably should be called the meta myth of technology.  For many years, as is fairly standard, i regarded the city as the initial technological achievement of man kind and yet , like most, I refused to see that it, itself was an instigator of mythical processes.

              The use of hypnotism to control the masses is called the hypnocracy and ths this second essay is called the Principia Hypnotica   - It suggest that the dichotomy between rural and aurban life is a false on even as it seem so real in the red and blue states

                              Paul McCartney once referred to the process of songwriting as more or less a consistent thing wherein every once in a while “You run into a good patch.” Essay writing is not that different. I suppose I should be grateful I am not a mathematician or physicist, since their explorations, contingent greatly upon mental power alone, often recedes at the grand old age of thirty.

Something of the wonders of prodigy does of course remain. Freud regarded the discovery of the unconscious as his life's primary achievement. The years spend in consideration of “the technological effect” might in some ways be comparable it that the discoveries were of a general nature. To some extent they mirror my very very earliest work, which concerned itself with the effects of recessions on criminal activity.

The best way to understand was as a “rolling” effect. Immediately upon the onset of recession petty crimes, crimes of opportunity and such survival endeavors, and only after several years did the frustrations of poverty lead to the violent crimes. Fortunately in the US recessions did not, in thepast, last that long, and as well there was always the option of moving somewhere where conditions were better.

As regarding the net boom and the crash of 2000 essentially we can suggest that technology empowers a few at the outset and then, eventually the rest of society catches up. For instance the advent of radio empowered the propaganda of the third reich, but as to whether that could happen again (also subsequent to ww1)is not at all certain. Again we see evidence of one of the prime characteristics of conditioning, namely the effect of temporal repetition.

The two essays to follow also seem valid. One may suggest that the quality and quantity distinction is foolish because one way of determining the qualtiy of something is the number of relations it has to other things.

And the kicker, immediately, in these essays is they explain current happenings in ways that are not currently en vogue. I jest that I wish I could draw them out over ten or twenty essays and maybe that's the secret of getting paid because I am certain the essays to follow will not be as pertainent.

Be that as it may be firstly there is a great deal of discussion about the class war, about racial conflict we seem less eager to discuss, As my mentor Albert Jesson , used to say, “something happened.” Rather then seeking the causality of what we believe has happened it might do us better to seek the effect. I refer to those who actually have seen their actual lives negatively impacted.

As a would be class warrior I am a little saddened to see that the average person making a hundred thousand a year will pay seventeen hundred dollars more in social security and hardly anyone is noticing. The irony, though I'll certainly week no tears is although the effect of whatever happened since 1980 has been to lower taxes the upper middle class did not get a good deal.

Like the indians of Manhatten the wise guys in the upper brackets got a little something – but they gave up a great deal, and what is worse for them is not that the situation has gotten out of hand they will pay even more. As the con artist says “You can't cheat an honest man”

And even for those among that group who like to think of themselves as at least vaguely ethical they found themselves taken along for the ride.

These are the one's who believed that the standard of living would raise forever. I call them the forgotten generation. I've had a good deal of experience in recent years, in food kitchens, and library and have seen them in great numbers – people who make a good impression, people with good hair and teeth who believed that would carry them through – and they are lost.

The second realization is right before our eyes but we don't see it. I didn't see it for fifteen years yet the facts were before me constantly.

Like Mumford and others for me the advent of the polis was the defining moment of technos. Somewhat foolishly I allowed a duality to linger in my mind where there was no justification. In short myth explains the city to the country and the country to the city.

                  The myth of Elvis is the clean cut country boy, not too smart,, but real polite and heterosexual, as opposed to all those harlots, them dancing girls exposing their bodies on the street for money and engaging in fornication.

                          That Jefferson died broke and fathered a half dozen bastards does change our admiration for him. Hamilton on the other hand is a footnote.

The mind my friends, like love, is strange.and the interplay of the ethos of country and city show this. IT can be taken further even, eventually we are speaking of the individual and society and the individual, realizing that society doesn't recognize it's omniscience feels pain in the presence of society.

I am not speaking philosophically here – I am speaking of the biological organism

How sweet to be a cloud - yes, yes, yes

                     All the other stuff, the class conflict, the sexual and racial conflicts, immigration – you name it – are all  quite possibly  subterfuges and until that which is hidden from ourselves is revealed we shall suffer from a seemingly causeless alienation from ourselves.