Intro-
As I mentioned this series of essays will not be like the ordinary. In, for instance, newspaper writing the old adage is tell them what the stories about in the first line then, tell them throughout the article what the stories about and conclude with a line doing the same thing. In the present case however, to make it interesting for both reader and the other fellow, the other fellow is not going to tell you what the article is about – maybe not ever! I’ll see how I feel.
This sort of thing is one of the advantages of not being paid. If I were to be paid then sure as shooting you can bet there’d be some chap, or missus, demanding that the story be clear and or the advertiser, overt or covert, gets their shekels worth.
And, but, still furthermore to make the game more interesting yet I will introduce this section with a few cheats – tips that will enable you, maybe, to figure out what I am talking about ahead of the other readers; for doth not the Alienist (Caleb Carr) say, “Context is everything.”
Starting with context, of course, this means two people can say exactly the same thing and mean two different things, and indeed mean the same words to serve two different purposes. This observation is central to language theory. Without it language is useless and we may as well revert to silence as Wittgenstein almost proves.
Consider that somewhat trite saying from AA – “Lord grant me the ability to change what I can and leave alone what I can’t and the ability to tell which is which.” Actually, if you decide you can’t change and am a juicer for life the adage isn’t much good. But it may have virtue in at least one aspect – it raises the possibility of things that we cannot change. I had two uncles who were alcoholics and unfortunately they could not change their past but more to the point, they were not sensitive to the present, which as we all know is the mother of the past.
Another corny adage, one likely to be found in many a German American Kitchen is “We grow too old too late and too late too smart” – meaning that by the time we figure out what is happening to us it is too late to do anything about it.
This sometimes can work to our advantage however. When events occur we have two primary goals. One is that we get our way and the other is that the other guy doesn’t get his way. As an aside for whatever reason I seem to notice nowadays not the skewing of information, or misinformation, but rather the way some things worth knowing don’t appear to rise to the level of information, at least until it is far too late to do anything.
Here’s an important clue, and in fact one that is about as overt as I can imagine. Sigmund Freud, like many others in his era, had his dark moods. Remember that the animosity against “inferiors” in his lifetime went on for years; to the extent that entire sciences and schools were instituted to explain ad nauseam the justness of the cause. These people considered themselves the crème de la crème of intellectual society, selfless, dedicated servants of mankind who worked constantly to achieve a better life for those who deserved it and to kick the sh*t out of the kikes, queers and gypsys.
The rationale was that the best ought flourish and the worst ought be put down. In other words they worshipped at the altar of competition. But like the free market that is never actually free, as long as it exists in time and space, competition need fairness and fairness does not spring out of the ground naturally.
One of the saddest things you’ll ever realize is that there are people who are not going to give you a chance in the first place. They are not going to like you because they have been conditioned not to like you – and who knows but the conditioning may have some origin in cause, but it reminds me of what we we know about, well, specifically, localized myth. Indeed a localized myth is what prejudicial thinking is about, along with whatever benefit said illusion might bestow.
A localized myth is one associated with a specific place usually and it comes about, again usually about seventy years after the occurrence of some dreadful thing. Furthermore, and here’s the mythical aspect, it often gains psychic impetus from some more generalized fear. Classically the scene of a rape is believed to be inhabited by a fairy spirit. This is well known in Europe as the legend of the Virgin Spring and one can suggest that the many Japanese stories of chaste moon goddesses have similar origins.
(In the category of ideas deserving further investigation, having studied , myths of identity and personal behavior for many years (as opposed to creation myths and end of the world stories) one comes to see them as almost primitive versions of what today we call “Case studies”. Sometimes they can be nearly allegorical metaphors describing the adepts “path to enlightenment” but just as possible is the instance where the myth describes a loss of ability and/or circumstance and how that is dealt with.
These loss tales fall into two categories, loss in the course of life, such as menstruation fables, death of parent fables, even poverty stories and those which border on propaganda; encouraging the listener to work hard and face up to the inevitable. The second form here is often associated with Hans Christian Anderson, who’s little girls never do the nasty and wind up dead in snowstorms or stranded on rocks in the harbor.
What I have only thought to consider in recent times is what we might call the proactive aspect of myth. In retrospect I feel a little like a fool - it is so obvious – especially in the case of males and knight errants.
The cult of Virginity has it’s sick aspects. It’s something that slave dealers are interested in – take her – 100% virgin, no chance of disease. All aspects of life, especially sexuality ought be thought out – at least as much as possible and what can happen is the girl refuses to consider that she may be sexually desirable, or may have desires of her own and winds up being the target of the moment – being raped or, subjected to an experience that is little different from rape.
In the case of the male, the so called noble knight it may be noble to die for a good cause, but it’s nice to win everyone once in awhile as well.
Humanity, in it’s never ending quest to name things has a name for soldiers that ride on horseback – knights. The image of the horse and rider goes back to prehistoric times and is global. The horse is the body and the rider is the sole. Bodies come and go being mounted ever anew by the same soul. As well in coarser representation the woman is represented as a horse and the man is the rider because the woman is the less ethereal of the two. She is connected with the earth, through birth among other things, in ways that man will never be.
Now consider Sleeping Beauty. It’s a fairly conventional fairy tale, the point of which is that women mustn’t become sexually active before they are read. In ancient times this may have been when she had her first period, but that’s besides the point. We’ll allow for cultural variation. She sleeps one hundred years and wakes up to find, low and behold, Prince Charming. What is interesting from the point of todays discussion is the good Prince has no idea how close he has been to becoming road kill.
To highlight this, again in standard fairy tale mode, the castle where the princess sleeps is covered in vines and decayed all about. The road leading to the castle is covered with corpses and the bones of all of the princesses previous suitors; those who arrived too early. We can be forgiven if we ask “What’s with this Prince? Can’t he take a hint?”
The prince is, in other words either very stupid or very horny. A third possibility exists however, one so strange yet seeming to fit the facts. The Prince doesn’t care. He is indifferent to death – he may even be a little attracted to it in the same way the Virgin puts herself in potentially problematic circumstances. Both know what is likely to happen. Both have heard the story, and yet, like the sperm swimming upstream, just keep going
Suffice to say, while on the subject of Virgin Princesses, the usual culprit is the parents, the wicked stepmother, and/or the father who banishes the girl to the tower.
I had an Asian (Chinese) girlfriend in high school. Her mother detested the idea of her daughter going out with me because I was white. So the girl was sent to an American School in Paris where she took up with another guy, and they lived the hi life. Meanwhile I was working in factories and anywhere I could find a job. We got together again but it was not the same. Mothers plan had worked.
“How you gonna keep them down on the farm
After they’ve seen Paree?”
“And what did Sigmund say about this?”
To explain it first. The goal of interpersonal conflict is not to fight the fair fight.
The goal is to win. There was no possibility of Jews answering charges against them – there were no charges - there were no crimes – only law and punishment. It was Kafkaesque. The thing with Franz Kafka is you either think he was the most realistic writer of his day, or he was a mad man. He was not a little bit off the mark, because the human race had lost it’s bearings, as it has a tendency to do.
What Freud said was the the victors in the battle for the blessings of life do not win in a fair fight. They win by effectively castrating their opponents. It’s a little like the code of nobility where nobles would only fight the gentry of their own rank, leaving peasants to be disposed of by sheriffs and other legal functionaries.
The psyche remains strange however, even considering or disregarding the existence of a Thanatos (Death) instinct. For instance, (and this is another new idea for me) In the past I could point to the American public and ask them how it was they did not understand their handing of power over to the conservatives. The creation of the legendary one percent didn’t happen over night. It took thirty years of concentrated stupidity – of willful ignorance and disregard for the lives of others. Now all of a sudden we notice this?
To use a phrase I used innumerable times the American swing to the right involved the largest transfer of wealth in human history and we claim not to have noticed it? The Americans today are like the girl who does the half dozen lines with the coke dealer and insists the day after she was raped. Furthermore these smarty pants intellectuals who sat around with their fingers up their butts for twenty years now claim what? – That they were out maneuvered? If Ronald Reagan was as stupid as he seemed to be how come he still managed to screw the public out of hundreds of billions of dollars?
The answer is quite clear. They wanted it that way.
There’s a difference between God and the Devil, they say. They say that if you make amends and are really sorry that God may forgive us our sins and greed and trespassing but the Devil is a more consistent fellow. He always keeps a bargain to the letter of the law. There’s no last minute change of hearts for him. He’s a reliable sort, not a fly by night, like God.
Finally let’s look at something out of the box. What the previous examples both in myth and in historical fact tell us essentially is there’s no accounting for taste. Humans do funny things despite their knowledge of cause and effect. The big happy is the mind. It must give the go ahead. All the Christians in the coliseum had to do was renounce Christ and they’d walk free. During the crusades the same choice was given to non Muslims – convert or die. And sometimes they died and sometimes they converted.
My science, so to speak, among the computer hobbiests, is as a mind hacker. Ordinarily we might call it social engineering but I’m too shy for most of that stuff. In the ,military it’s called Psy-ops and it’s not intrinsically evil. It can save lives. My interest however is in yet another subsection of the science.
It is a very wide subject, ranging from playing rock music at Manuel Noriegas bedroom window, to selling toothpaste, to convincing people to do things they would not ordinarily do such as revealing information. The line in standard hypnosis is that you won’t say that which you wouldn’t ordinarily say, but I find that hard to believe. For that matter I don’t understand why there was such an emphasis, seemingly on physical torture in recent years when drugs are more efficacious.
One suggestion is that the torture was not meant to effect information but rather as a determinant in the actions of those not in custody – but it’s a complicated issue and I make it a point to strictly avoid certain topics – because once you get them in the brain they start churning – one starts playing with them like a chess piece or three dimensional object and thinking of why something would happen, why it would be explained in a certain way. It is not a game for amateurs.
On the other hand it does get easier, I find, to avoid mind clutter and the effects of the data flood. Editing out commercials or simply not watching TV helps a lot. The age fact or contributes – people in their 20’s are always buying things but as you get older you slow down.
The challenge becomes clear. I think that it’s possible something like an Egyptian elite will come into being. I can’t say if there’s going to be a religious component, but the Chinese are thankfully free of it. Not to hurt anyones feelings but religion can postulate some weird things and then have to be dealt with.
The standard hypothesis, if we can call it that, is that the elite will be comprised of the technologically empowered and everyone else will be given tasks difficult enough to think they are living full lives. One of the things that is a touchy subject is this idea of optimum stupidity. I’m not joking. Seriously look at the priority America gives to education and you realize that we don’t think very highly of it.
Consider this. There are public libraries all over the country and they are effectively handing out for free copy written material. They have DVD’s and CD’s and are costing the media industry untold billions of dollars in lost revenue. We must close the libraries now or soon there will be nothing left to read!
I’m joking.
But few societies have every placed a high premium on education. It just makes them too difficult to rule. Our writers and opinion shapers understand this intuitively and that’s why they toe the line when it comes to exposing the public to knowledge that does not fit into the established prejudicial norms. The Bar Association, the AMA, these associations exist for the purpose of keeping the number of professionals at as low a level as possible so as to assure proper remuneration for the survivors.
Something like that will have to be done in the next hundred years. But I’m not giving the whole show away. I’m not charging for this and believe me well I know that the best way to establish credibility is to charge a few hundred for a few pages. I’ve read stock sheers, I’ve read Ester Dysons Version 1.0, Heck, I’ve even read presidential briefings, so I have and idea of how it works.
But I have a few other ideas as well
live long and prosper
glennschaefer
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