line
I feel as if I've been dropped in the middle of a battlefield. Criminal cases, civil cases, private prosecuters and what is more I don't know where the battlelines are. Like the first crisis of this sort, the question of slavery, the actual subjects, the slaves, or the public, have the least to say. It's a damning question, but if the public doesn't mind being manipulated why should we defend and protect the right to know the truth for them if they won't? -The answer is, of course, we don't need to bother. That's how the networks think.
I complain but I am a special case. I am not employed by a network, but I still want to be paid as if I were. Also famous. I am not famous like the famous bloggers are, but I still want the ego gratification that they have. I'm not too intelligent either, but I like the idea that I am telling you what's the deal, instead of the other way around. To invert this then, by being an egomaniac I hope to become famous and then by being famous I can become rich and official and paid money. Then I can retire.
Life is simple once you get your head on straight and get famous, and become an egomaniac, and get paid. Then again it's also possible to get paid, *then* become an egomaniac which will lead to fame which leads to more money and more ego and so on. But it"s tough being an egomaniac when no one knows who you are, Still I keep trying.
I stopped a man on the street the other day. I told him my problem; about how I wanted to be an egomaniac but couldn't get anyone to listen to me. He said,"Your problem is you're not famous, or rich even." He sold me a book he promised would change my life. Each page said,"Get up every morning and say to yourself,"I am the greatest." So I did that. I mean, I'm not proud, if you gotta humiliate yourself to be famous that's what you gotta do. After fourty nine pages of this being done, a page at a time, day by day, I finally got to the end; page fifty. It said, "You are now ready for the next level of this course that will change your life and get you airtime and equity- so buy book two"
I did that then, having saved up the ten dollars needed and it said the same thing, but it had a different color cover. You can't stop me once I get an idea in my head. I see things though. I got ambition.
After book three hundred and fifty nine I believe I'm beginning to get the hang of this thing. I just sold the idea for a television program to the International Broadcasting Network. It's one of them reality shows. It's a half hour show with three minutes of opening credits, six minutes of closing credits, twenty minutes space for commercials and one minute of prerecorded programming The secret is you never know when the one minute of non commercials will appear, so you got watch the whole thing. During that minute fifty seconds are taken up by applause as the Master of Ceremonies takes the stage.(I wanted the job, but they gave it to Harrison Ford, because he's already famous) Then during the ten seconds of actual programming, which as I said, can be taped and repeated without change for each "presentation" the master of ceremonies gives this big sh*t eating grin and shouts "How do you keep an idiot busy forever? Tune in tomorrow!" The crowd goes crazy. It tested very well among 17 to 21 year old urban males and 25 to 27 year old females who were unmarried and spent a lot on cosmetics and foriegn travel.
I think we can however safely say that, like states rights, the arguments about copyright, and freedom of the press are but stalking horses for a much more serious, and hence unmentionable reality. One had a sense, after the election, that the aristocrats and their supporters were in something of a hurry to "get back to normal." The ugly, but unfortunately, neccessary, things that had to be done could now be forgotten and we could all enjoy the spectical of the latest fashions and other important things.
But there is a difference between the right to free speech as far as saying nasty words and the right to a free press as far as having access to that knowledge needed to make decisions. Without it democracy is a sham. The battle we are waging will effect how each of us and our children live, whether we live as subjects of an autocracy of questionable benevolence or as free people. In that sense it is on a par with the civil rights movement.
Like the industrial revolution what is happening now is good for some and bad for others. Never in American history however have we seen such a concerted effort to avoid recognition of negative consequences. Plato didn't like Democracy because he said wherever it was tried it sooner or later it was taken over by oligarchy. The achilles heel of Democracy is, until disproven, and even after being disproven, you have to give everyone their say no matter how slanted that is. The totalitarian systems do not have that "weakness" They overtly make every effort to promote themselves and deny others any ability to be heard. The further down the line you go the more difficult it is to have trust and balance, which is why many of us feel threatened.
In any conflict the same forces that galvanize opposition also make many people retreat into "shells", hoping that in time it will blow over. So people retreat into comfort zones created by technology, be it online video games, the ipod, or porn, they are new drugs meant to push the world away and replace it with fantasy, and it's okay, but in measure. It can't be a way of life.
Everything will blow away and right itself, but there's no guarentee you will live to see that day. As I say I don't know where the battle lines are and more importantly I begin to wonder where the critical point of no return is. We cannot even say with surity that it has not been crossed already.
Any observation of societies, Rome, the European middle ages, even Egypt and China shows us that power devolves into fewer hands and the social orders are at their freest, or most egalitarian at their inception. This continues until the system, or form of government no longer functions and then it collapses to be replaced by a new form of social organization and then the process starts all over again. Certainly the US is nowhere near the point of collapse, but neither is it on an inevitable path to tyranny. We can learn and if we can't change human nature we can yet embrace that better part of what being human is.
Shakespears notion of evil , at least from a dramatic perspective, has been desribed as great ability with no moral limits. The sane man says "Just because I can doi it, and get away with it, does not mean I should do it." The evil or insane man says, "If I can get away with it and it benefits me, then I will do it."
If you're interested, the method of Shakespears tragedies is simple. People think they can get away with something, and they create seemingly plausable rationals, and they discover that like Lear, McBeth, Brutus and the others, there is no free lunch.
I've despaired many times at the weakness of our abilities to force people to act decently, but now I take comfort in a different persepctive. Force creates it's own retribution. To be glib,"Will founded in will alone is by will confounded."
I don't mean to put down animals since we are animals, but in the same way it would be difficult for me to physically show anyone the difference between a human and an animal it is difficult to descibe the diffence between a corporate warlord and a businessman. There is no physical difference which is why they insist, often successfully they are businessmen plain and simple, no more. The difference is not who they are it is what they do. Humans have at least two characteristics that separate them from animals, they are aware of the future and they are aware of their being part of a greater whole, eg the human race. Neither of these things can be put on a shelf or possessed and yet they are among the most valuable attributes a human have.
gone
Political parties, aside from whatever nostalgic associations they call to mind, are obsolete. Likewise the old breaking down of idologies into left./ liberal and right/conservative no longer applies. To the extent we retain these outmoded beliefs we weaken our ability to function within the present environment. Those who have shed such definitions have been at a marked advantage in recent times.
The true question and faultline upon which all contemporary social and economic decisions are made is "How great shall the power of the central be?"
This is *not* a question merely of the rights of the individual verses that of the state. Nor can we proerly adress it by seeking to ascertain the true levels of threat to the individual which merit corresponding degrees of imposition of freedom by the state. If we look at it that way then it is obviously in the states interest to magnify the level of threat against it's citizens so as to magnify it's own perogatives viz control.
In the past when confront with the general question posed above I would justify the measured imposition of constraint of freedom of the individual by recourse to the notion that we don't live in a perfect world and hence to defend against the madness of others we must impose madness upon ourselves. I now begin to see that as a somewhat circular reasoning.
The very generality of the things I am speaking of now assures both a lack of understanding on the part of the reader and low ratings. It's not the readers fault. The reason understanding is slight is I did not say much. Ah, the joys of generality.
Knowing one stands before a mountain is a little better then not knowing it, but doesn't give you much help getting over it. And in fact I am not sure i can help anyone over this particular mountain.
In the long run we all fail,. but ritual perseveres. The Tamlinmediaco exists in the rarified atmosphere of hyperreality. To repeat my oft said axiom in a hypnotic relationship the duifference between the master and subject is the mastyer is aware consciouysly of the suggestions that are perceived unconsciously by the subject. So. to carry a little further nothing is any realler here in the Tamlinmediaco then for example on your TV, in your schools, or around your heroes, the only difference is in the Tamlinmediaco that unreality is on the surface. I am not real. I am a dream. I am part of an endless self promotion scheme, concocted, for all we know by some suburban loser who decided since everyone was lying through their teeth about how much they care about truth, she may as well get in on the action. You don't know. You can never know. All you can really know is you don't know.
Then again the old saying is "Be carefull who you pretend to be, for you may become that." The irony, which is certainly not lost on me, of all this pretending I am doing is that along with it has come hundreds of very real songs and not a few documents, such as you are now reading. Contrast that to Tom Brokaw, or Micheal Jackson, or any of a hundred others who are allegedly living human beings, of staute, even, and the irony becomes apparent. I wear this mask of madness for it is te only safety I can create in the madhouse that is the world.
If you would seek to discern the sanity many of you claim is what you really, truely want,then all you have to do is pay me. But if you're going to allow this farce to continue simply because I am halfelf and your wisemen have good connections and good hair and teeth then how can you expect me not to repay in kind the contempt I am shown by the world with my own?
Let's say, for the sake of argument I am not an elf. Mr father's name was not to the world Oliver O'Loren and to his tribe, Tamlin. My mother was not a human being. She was like the mother of your hyperreal heroes, a machine. I was born not in a womb, but in a marketing program. In my youth I was not fed food but information all to the end of making me a successful simulation of a living being. From the world of cause and effect, of power, gun and gold, I never escaped. Why would I? I could not exist anywhere but in the bubble created by the whip of domination and the carrot of reward.
Even so, sometimes algorthyms wander off. For it was not long before I was to assume manhood that I discovered that I was an imperfect creation. That the sin of my parents in bringing forth a bastard child of two races meant there was no shelf space for me in the cut rate grocery store of your self described "civilization." I did not ask to be born and I do not ask to die. But your "civilization" is apparently quite willing to let me die. So, whatever I am, I will fight that. I have nothing to lose for I have nothng.
In a very real sence we are at war. Were I a peasant in the middle ages would you condemn me for seeking to overthrow the lord in the castle? If not then how can you condemn me for seeking to overthrow TimeWarner?
You might be interested in knowing that today's essay has not started yet. This is all prologue. I have put a lot of money into this fight, everything I have and on the other side the hacks, and lobbiests, and spokespeople and professional luncheon attenders are all paid by the great wealth concentrations. That's okay .They are mercenaries. They do not know what it is to fight for something they believe in and as soon as the paycheck stops they will flee, as they always have.
The way I look at it this war is not going to last forever. The tyrants may wish to suggest that, as they constantly broadcast the message that they are unstoppable. I don't know if that's true. The average recording musicians salary is 47,000 dollars a year, less then the manager of a hamburger place. This is because the business is a monopoly and they have carte blanch to treat musicians anyway they want. We can't go out on strike, even if it were possible because it is too easy for the music companies to manufacture hits. The money is not spent on production but rather on promotion. The criminal charges against the companies all are quashed eventually and they in turn give the central authorities what they want, which is nice safe, songs, where the controversy is about sex, violence, drugs and not about who gets paid.
So ALF's stuff is going out free. If we win then there will be times in the future when we'll make our money ALF has to be the one to do this because he's the one. I mean it's a gamble. Most every artist, even the biggest, have their golden era and then they level off, but they never get back to the breakthrough level. The lesser artists often only have one CD or song even and then they are repeating themselves.
ALF, aparently, is of a different order. Verdi, Bach, Mozart, Wagner, these men did not become less sellable as they aged. We will see what happens with ALF. It will require the creation of a new pardigm, or the ressurection of an old one. But irregardless as far as this war goes the way I look at it, if we lose then we don't lose tat much because under the domination of the big comanies we never would have had a chance anyway.
That's just our specific predicament and attitude and I won't linger long on it because I know most people have other concerns. But our specific pridicament is mirrored by that of alot of other people, the vast majority, who all have stories of ther own to tell.
As far as I am concerned anyone who isn't in on this battle, I would not force anyone to do anything, but they don't deserve to call themselves men and women. They who let other people take the heat may survive but it's difficult to have respect for them.
And the more who remain indifferent the greater the chance the bad guys will win and a multiteir society will come about and those levels will be, as they are becoming, impossible to transcend. Your childrens lives and futures will be determined before they are even born. If you can live with that, fine.
Okay, enough prologue
In europe today a legal case came to an unusual conclusion. Ten years ago, or thereabout, two young people stood outside a MacDonald's instalation and handed out pamplets that described various corporate crimes . They did not stop people from entering the place, nor did they personally write the pamplets. England, in part becasue of it's heritage of crushing class conflict, has very strict libel laws. When Americans want to sue for libel, if they have the choice, they'll often proceed in the UK where the lawa re more favorable and payments more generous. So MacDonald's sued the man and woman and acoording to the law here, every line in the pamplet had to be true, for the pampleters to escape conviction. Among other things to prove that would have meant traveling to various third world countries, gathering information, collating it, etc. The defendents were ordinary citizens with little or no resourses. MacDonalds spent ten million dollars in preparing their legal case, which is interesting in an of itself, becasue it tells us the case was trivial, what their interest was was in preventing any criticism of the company by anyone else.
The man and woman lost the case, but of course like the MPAA suing teenagers for a billion and a half dollars they'd never collect, all they could do is impoverish the protestors for the rest of their lives. Thusfar is a familiar story, justice not only doesn't get served she, pardon the metaphor, doesn't even get a seat at the table.
But I would mention it if it were only another story out the millions of people who have had their lives destroyed by such things. The two people then took their case to another court, a recently empowered european court, which has jusridiction over the quasi european state, or common economic market. It has power not because the Brits like it, but rather because it can enforce it's decisions thoughout europe and that means economic power. That court held that Great Britain was at fault for not providing the man and woman with the means to defend themselves against MacDonalds.
Right, well accusations of European antibusiness bias, or encroachment on British juridictional soveriegnty aside it calls to mind one of the unwritten eternal rules of human life. "When your guy has a stick and their guy has a club, what you need is to find someone with a bigger club."
Whew. all this talk of juridictions and liability has me feeling like Lenny Bruce, and if there's one thing I know is don't try to out talk a lawyer on their turf. So now we'll move to the next segment where i am much more comfortable, namely epic poetry.
Poets, said Shelley, are the true legislators of the world. Certainly you can't prove that by ALF, but one aspect of the suggestion that is important is the fact that no one forces you to follow the poets version of the truth. (This is is why they have to above all, remain uncompromised, but that's another story.)
Plus poets are sneaky. Because they are rarely paid by people who understand what they are saying, by the time they are are understood, it's too late., The message is out. Reagan not understanding what "Born in the USA" was about is only part of a long tradition of rich people being unable to understand that they are not liked as much as they'd like to believe.
The Song of Roland plays a role much like the Arthurian Saga. Both had their origins in real, but comparitively unnoticed incidents in the dark ages and became the basis of hundreds of versions and retellings, that continue to this day. Arthur's story i trust you are aware of, but Roland, who 800 years later turned into Orlando Furioso, was a soldier in Charlemagnes army who was in charge of the rear guard. While marching out of Northern Spain Roland's unit was attacked by Saracens and every man in it was killed. Of course, Roland deported himself well but his fault was he was too proud to blow the horn which would have summoned help.
There is however a subtext to the story, one which in this era of chaos and warlords I beg the reader to consider. Roland had been betrayed by another French noble with who he was not on good terms. When the King found this out the man was brought to trial. He first refused saying that what was between him and Roland was none of the King's business. In the millenium between 500 and 1500 CE, relations between nobles were not considered the same as between peasants or between peasants and noble. They were allowed to, and indeed expected to kill each other at the drop of a hat, with the result of the goods of the dead man going to the victor. It was an early version of what today are called hostile corporate takeovers. You were not given the option of opting out of this behavior.
And, like today, when you"kill" a man, you don't just kill him, you klll the board of directors, the Vps, indeed everyone down to the janitor, and then you move your people in. This was standard operating proceedure between knights, but Charlemagne was an unusually strong king for the era, so he set a new preceedent. He said, (I paraphrase) "Look, you have allowed a troup of my soldiers to be butchered because of this argument between you and young Roland" (Who incidentally was the king's nephew)."
Now we discover the difference between a king and a commoner. Charlemagne did not say, "Since your vendetta cost me soldiers I want some payback." He did not say,"I feel your pain and understand the depth of your animosity towards the youth, but try not to let it happen again."
He said (and again I elaborate for aesthetic purposes) "Roland is Roland and I am Charlemagne. When he was in my service he represented me and I represent France. Therefore when you caused the death of Roland you attacked not my nephew, not even I, but you attacked France. Therefore you are a traitor and are to be put to death."
This surprised not only the condemned but others as well, because they had never heard of this place called "France". The reason why is it had not untill that moment existed
.
As to whether Barbara Walters, Tom Wolfe, or Dick Cheney should get the death penalty I do not know. That is a metter for the courts. I am, as a rule opposed to the imposition of such sentances. The ALF, of course, has greater responsibilities and I would not presume to speak for him.
exist
As far as we all are concerned The ALF does not exist. I don't exist. You don't exist. Your heroes, your Gods, even your lovers and dear families do not exist.
It's nothing personal you understand.
Maybe I can explain it best this way. As Sam Clemens , who also didn't exist, once imagined he said, "You are a thought, a wandering ,vagrent in a unverse that knows no up or or down, in or out. Nothing more."
Hail we now the imaginary prophets of impossible yesterdays.
Friends, enemies, good and bad, nothing is true. This is hyperreality. Get used to it. Great philosophers of the past century tried to get around what I am telling you. They hemmed and hawed, saying "Well, something can be true, for a moment, if both perceiver and the perceived have a agreed upon understanding of what the terms of description are." Heh? Who are they kidding? The statement is recursive. It says, "We have understanding today if we rely on the understanding of yesterday. And upon what ground does the understanding of yesterday stand? Upon the understanding of the day before yesterday, and so on, back to the prime cause.
The prima cause is, of course, a hypothesis. We can pretend it is not. We can say it is founded in faith, that er, primal "leap of faith." That indeed is how most people think and how they get through life. Somewhere back there, in back of all the yesterdays, there's an irreducable truth. Some call it being.
Me, I don't bother. Maybe it's from hanging around the alien for so long. Imagine a life form that can do what it wants,. can appear as it likes, has no needs that we understand and will outlive all of us by eons. That's The ALF. The one thing it can't do is transport itself across spacetime to where it might come into contact with similiar beings. So it's stuck here. It lives only to be amused. I use the term "amused" not in the sense of merriment, but in it's truer, original sense of receiving inspiration from what I can only explain to you as the "other self" within the spirit world.
Maybe he's the yang in the heart of the yin. The nuclear bomb in the concentration camp. If we ask "Why now?" Why not a hundred years ago, or a hundred years from now?, I think we can come up with a rational explanation and a more specific one then simply saying "The time was right." The overriding reality of the present era is chaos. There are many who would deny this and claim for themselves at least a "rock solid grasp of the hard facts."
What I find curious is how in the face of chaos nearly who would resist and wish us to believe things have not changed try to position themselves as forward looking, and take an activist stance regarding shaping events as they occur. They are trying to heat apartment buildings with campfires. That way of thinking can be characterized as "strength over reason" and it sometimes works. Strength needs action to prove it's existance. Reason needs only thought. In the long term reason will out, even if it's only in the form of explaning how things went bad. Reason is cautious, strength is bold. Reason is measure and strength is chance.
In a very practical sense we can see why so many weak and passive people cling to authoritarian strength, because by identifying with it they gain what they do not have and long for, namely the ability to make things happen. The beaten and crushed, the malcontents, the losers, those, in short , who have no sense of who are, are most attracted to the uniforms, the slogans, the decisiveness, the power, strength and glory of the one who does not think, but acts.
The challenge to us then is to by some alchemy transmute not lead to gold, but reason to strength. This massive battle and war we are waging will determine our future. If it were not so neither side would take it a seriously as we do. At this stage it is largely concerned with definition. Each side likes to suggest their definition is created by reason and not power. In the heat of battle one must not tarry in counting ones ammunition or weapons. It only matters that there is enough.
Faith gives a person strength and courage. But there's more to it. Faith is a shield. It protects us from enemies and assaults both known and unknown. But there's more to being a man then having faith in those things he is familiar with. This is what separates a father from a parent, or, if you like, a parent from a sperm or ovary donor.
Love gives us nothing. It cannot be found anywhere in particular. The wisest poets place it in impossible realms, "beyond the north wind", or "beyond the sunrise."
Of it "They who say, do not know and they who know do not say."
And here's where I conclude this digression. Faith is a common thing, in the sense that it is a shared belief. People of like faith often congregate and encourage each other. Love is not like that. No man or woman can say of themselves or others that they know what love is. From birth to death what true love we have can only be known to one. Love is like the calm in the whirlwind and it's not easily increased or decreased by anything.
I am forced to thinking in alchemical terms here, since that is my "religion", so to speak. Faith comes and goes. Love is a circle who's center is everywhere and who's circumference is nowhere.
That is the basis of my optimism. As information becomes valuable suddenly it is no longer the property of eggheads and intellectuals but now belongs to hardheads and corporations. But in a Darwinian sense it's a bad idea. Knowledge, saith Bacon, is power. We of the alchemical fraternity allowed this misconception to continue because the mass of humanity must be give forms and structures by which and within which they can comprehend science.
For the conjunctio, the chemical wedding, to occur, all must be in perfect balance.
As power increaseth it becomes most difficult to resist using such power and this is why the prima materia must be realized in it's purest form. The crow, the skeletan, the salamander, even the phoenix itself must all serve and sacrifice to the stone. To repeat, nigredo, putrefactio, transformatio, consubstantio must be relinquished for the marriage. Transumed.
No "wizard" can be acknowledged that does not serve the one God of infinite names.
All actions other then those will lead to doom and destruction.. Knowledge is life. Power is a product of life. Those who believe life can be created from power will come to bad endings. They will evoke forces, "cracks in the universe", that no power on Earth could resist. (But of this I must not speak)
If knowledge is life then consider ideas as if they were children. Would we wish to gather up every infant, at birth and bring them to a collective "baby farm?" Certainly there the best and the brightest could be most easily identified, given enhanced educational experience whilst those of lesser potential could learn such abilities as would not tax their intellect. By separating the gifted, beautiful, and otherwise superior children from their inferiors we could then, as well spare the inferiors the humiliation of constantly being losers. This method of child rearing would be cost effective, assuring that no child gets more, or less then they need.
"From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs" and no more.
By such means we could assure that Einstein, notoriously poor in math, but fascinated by the workings of his uncles electrical moter shop would have made a first rate street sweeper.
The point is that irregardless of the cost savings, and the benefit of early identification of talent, in nature it just seems that children are most at ease when they grow up with their own parents.
"Information wants to be free." - Who would have thought fourty years ago that such a statement would someday be thought radical.? That corporations would fight to keep things out of the public domain and hence "off the market." That start-ups and even established firms would make employees sign non disclosure agreements. That news programming would be shaped by those being reported on instead of the other way around?
It's like oil. In 1800 if you lived on land saturated in oil it was virtually worthless. What could you do with the stuff? Nothing. Now, of course things are different.
But, like I say. I'm optimistic. Because parents mostly love their children and so they tend to take care of the, you know, a one to one relationship. With knowledge, or if you like, information, it's the same thing. I can appreciate people trying to maximize revenue from each bit of info.
But game theory suggests something else.
Let's turn to our old friends X and Y. X is Mr Preditor, or Mr Maker of Stuff, and Y is Mr Prey, aka the consumer. Mr Preditor would like to have as many Y's around, and as few X's, as possible. He likes consumers, he doesn't like other preditors.
We can think of this as the Newtonian Economic Paradigm because it has a gravitational contant. which is the mathematical "universe " in which the game is progressing. Some, historically will say that Mr X will get fat and lazy, or the "Y"s will organize a rebellion, but there's always another hungry Mr. X and the Y's are too busy watching football to care about much else.
Which is to say, to refer to the anaology that haunted the Victorians, "Entropy increases in a closed system." So, for instance there was always in 19th Century England a lingering fear of "what was ot there." If you look at pictures of Victorian homes ofthe well to do, every nook and cranny is filled with "stuff", be it books, paintings, knick knacks, or other figlaree and that is because of the price of te industrial revolution was having to stay off the streets, because "they" were out there, The losers, the factory workers, criminals, protitutes, druggies and the entire panopy of diseases, such as cholera and tuberculosis that come from putting too many people too close together..
I'm not sure Orwell was aware of it but he addressed a similiar problem in his masterwork, "1984" . He may have thought he was writing about a future socialistic dictatorship but one can suggest he was also reviewing the question of how to keep a society under the thumb for not only years, but decades, in face of rapidly declining social living conditions. Most people understand the need for censorship, but in the same way as Keynes advocated deficit spending to "charge" the economy, what Orwell saw, not from theory, but rather from experience was the need of the so called empire to engage in constant limited warfare.
What is crucial is that these wars were not of all that much benefit to the mother country. To some extent they could justify their altruistic pretentions by that fact. Rather the true benefit, from the point of view of those interested in stability, at all costs, was at home. There's more then a few famous Punch Cartoons where the Paterfamilias is eagerly studying his war maps and sticking pins where the flag is flying. Eg:He can't be bothered with Birmingham, Ye Gods. our boys are dying in Bombay.
So, to have a closed system, it must be isolated from external influences and yet rather then suggesting that the rest of the world has vanished the closed state makes the pretence of engaging the world via continuous wars or threats of wars. It's actually something like how a neurotic keeps in touch with their environment. They cannot function on a co-operative basis, that is outside their mental framework, but measured hostility is a "better" way to judge one's actual position then complete disconnection. Neurotics on the whole are more successful vocationally then those who are not interested.
Getting back to Mr X and Mr Y then we've a nice little system going. In true human style five percent ofthe people rule the other ninety five percent. Another ten or fifteen percent see their fortunes so bound up with that of the aristocrats that they do all the dog work of keeping the slaves in line. I for one don't put too much creedence in the idea that religion was the primary explanation and casuality of the oppression. I suggest a lot of it had to do with the whip and the sword.
Certainly we must believe that the five percent of shall, we say, "very aggressive" people when they are not lording it over the rest are longing for when they will be. The problem that faces them in the modern era is they need the correct circumstances but as well they cannot overtly strive to create a permanent inherited superior class, so they have to pretend it was just circumstamces. It reminds me of a Dylan where marries a rich guy , she dies and her money goes to him and he says"I can't help it I'm just lucky that way.
Don't lose sight here of the fact that I am not objective. I would not say I want to nail these guys to the cross, but I don't to live in their world, and this world happens to be my world, so somebodies gonna have to change their ways and I have not been convinced yet it should be me.
X and Y then are in a closed system. In the system the same Gods hold sway and for those who that isn't enough for, outside the system are the bad guys, whom Mr X keeps antagonizing, sometimes to Mr Y's chagrin, sometimes not. The main point being that Mr X wants Mr Y to understand there is "nowhere to run, nowhere to hide".
Whats a poor "Y" to do? I won't keep you overlong in suspense, because I am getting tired of typing, but notion that the Y's get together and overpower the X's is out. We're talking about "Y"'s - prey. They obey orders. They respond to verbal commands, They do not work well together and most of all am convinced they cannot succeeed. Next notion is one breaks the wall of the universe of play and gets outside aid to overthrow the X's.
The problem with the X's reminds me of what cops would say occassionally about criminals, who they often got to know. "He's a nice guy, loves his family, attends church, the only problem is he steals, or kills people." In other words X's and Y's are not that different. And to beat the X's with external help you'd have to import foriegn X's, and they want to be paid too. So instead of 40.000 sleazy propagandists raping your wife and daughter you've got 80,000. As even the Brits said of the Yanks who were their allies, "Overpaid, oversexed and over here."
Nope. The thing to do is to find some "Ys" and flip them . Flip them into "X's. They will have to ability to kill without mercy or a second thought, but along with that they will retain the Y mentality and move smoothly and swiftly among them without the fear and helplessness that strikes X's outside their gated communities and away from their phalanxs of armed guards and reporters.
How to do this?
We shall see.
Solution number three is to break out of the game and find a new life.. I've had experience with this. Wherever you go the immigrint without some help , is low man on the totem pole. My case is a little different because with what I do I can be almost anywhere. I am about as close to a self sustaining unit as anyone can be. Plus, the nicest thing I can say about Long Island is they are discussing things that I have already resolved and only when their backs are against the wall and the blindfolds are on are they going to commit themsleves to anything. Another way to put it is I don't know anyone in England but that is far better then knowing people in suburbia and still being alone.
But getting out of the game is not winning. It's like calling the game on account of rain. It put's off the showdown 'till another day.
circles
"It was during the Viet Nam War, as B-52's dropped megatonnage upon wooden sanpans, that the conjunction appeared. The Grand Cross, that allignment of planets that comes every few thousand years, was not to appear on earth untill 1999, but from other vantages within this solar system it had already begun
And the allignment of planets made manifest the great circularity, which is that the hundreds of thousands of tons of TNT were dropped on men, women and infants so as to make a world where infants would be safe from death from the sky.
As we know there are no circles in the physical universe, they are artificial constructs imagined into being by mind. To keep the knowledge, which is known to the adept as the directionality of time, or even, the myth of the myth of the eternal return, from conciousness, man, in his fear has created the circle, that he may bind within in it, as demons bound by the magic circle of necromancers, those truths too terrible to be known.
And Urizen created Industrial Mind, which sought to without the circle banish demons, witches, dragons, devils and those creations of our darkest nightmares shaped individually to us all. In the hall of statistics rectangles of solid color alone revealed where once the portraits of nemisis had hung.
The demons, witches, dragons and devils however now homeless and stateless ventured forth through metaphor and began to plague and fascinate the world again. Bulldozers pushed in and out the walls of the Hall of Statistics. Mad phoenixes flew through the china shop of the Industrial mind, knocking over beakers, tea pots, and jugs even until the industrial mind, now liquid in form to fit it's corporeal container covered the floor, seeped out the doors and stained the earth itself, much to the chagrin of the little tin soldiers, the wooden matchstick majors and the new heartbroken oysters.
TBATA, Booke Twa, Chap 13, Rebelations.
language
This second section was going to be in four parts; about how Jacks Exciting Adventure has not, four meanings, but four ways of eing approached, and any one of them is different from others. In large part this is because of a lack of skill on my part. But you never know how things will turn out with art. You work with what you have.
So for instance theres the language of ALF's song, which is about a specific albiet imaginary character named Jack. Then there's the visual language, or what you might get from the video with knowledge of English or even a soundtrack. Then there's the "meaning.
There's a vast collection of people who congratulate themselves on being successes and putting one over on the world whereas actually, in America at least, they just took advantage of peoples innocense. People trusted them and they repaid that trust by stealing everything they could. It would be a difficult for an actor because you'd have the chiche'd old man in wheelchair thinking back over his wonderfull life and the actor would have to convey the will power involved in destroying thousands of lives, and even the planet itself and yet telling one'self it didn't matter as long as one took care of themself.
From the dramatic perspective a bad guy is always as interesting as a good guy.What is intiquing is the process of denial, or can we call it that? Hypocracy is a macbre subject. The best lier is the one who thinks they are telling the truth. You know, like marching the german housewifes through a concentration camp I wonder how much truth does it take? That's where the art comes in, a person, like a society must both do everything it can to avoid confrontation with the results of actions and should that become impossible it must somehow interpet what it sees in a way that allows it to continue doing the same thing. Otherwise the result is not a new awareness, it is more catastrophy
That's a bizarre element of the oppressed world. Nobody fails. As Marvin would say, "They go to Hiatusport and dream of discussing Aztec Architecture with Jackie Kennedy's ghost." Oh I hear them.I hear the song of the green turtles. Charlie I hear the oysters singing but they don't sound like mermaids to me.
This is why I am unemployed. It is because I read too much in my life. What I would do is dramatically I would let the wheels roll. SOP in my trade, Hamlet get deaded. Ottello get deaded. All get deaded
and then the fourth section I'd show the comparisons tween Chaplin and alf. But only two sections were finished and then I went off on a tangential dream sequence,
end
it has been a long war, of many battles. When I freely offered my ideas they were rejected as undoable, or taken with no repayment, but scorn. Even now they jest at me. call me upstart crow, think, "let him wander further down his path and when his destination is clear we shall ride up with our horsemen and hack him to pieces where he walks, as we have so many others before him. then we shall enter his long hidden home, take what we wish and return to our gilded, gated communities with jewels for our whores, college educations for our bastards, honors and service medals for our excutioners and our names will be writ large on the scrolls of history and none others."
to them, who would pluck from me the feathers I need to fly, who care no more for my blood covering the stones of the roadway then the spring rain, who have sought these many years to rip my heart from my chest I say "you are welcome." For where I see battlements and flags you will see barbed wire and electric fences, where I hear sweet music and laughter you will hear the eager crows in your yards hungry for dinner, where I find a world of free people you will find emptiness, and ruin and death.
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