Friday, 31 August 2018
'Round Mid-night
The Black Prince
- Spock,
One of the other things I’ve learned as a social scientist…I’ve been warned about this by, I would say, great social scientists…is that
I thought about that an awful lot, thinking about how to remediate social systems. Obviously, they need careful attention and adjustment. It struck me that the proper strategy for implementing social change is to stay within your domain of competence. That requires humility, which is a virtue that is never promoted in modern culture, I would say. It’s a virtue that you can hardly even talk about. But humility means you’re probably not as smart as you think you are, and you should be careful. So then the question might be, well, ok, you should be careful, but perhaps you still want to do good. You want to make some positive changes. How can you be careful and do good? Then I would say, well, you try not to step outside the boundaries of your competence. You start small, and you start with things that you actually could adjust, that you actually do understand, that you actually could fix.
I mentioned to you, at one point, that one of the things Carl Jung said was that modern men don’t see God because they don’t look low enough. It’s a very interesting phrase. One of the things that I’ve been promoting online, I suppose, is the idea that you should restrict your attempts to fix things to what’s at hand. There’s probably things about you that you could fix, right? Things that you know aren’t right—not anyone else’s opinion: your own opinion. Maybe there’s some things that you could adjust in your family. That gets hard. You have to have your act together a lot before you can start to adjust your family, because things can kick back on you really hard. You think, well, it’s hard to put yourself together. It’s really hard to put your family together. Why the hell do you think you can put the world together? Because, obviously, the world is more complicated than you and your family. And so, if you’re stymied in your attempts even to set your own house in order—which, of course, you are—then you would think that what that would do would be to make you very, very leery about announcing your broad-scale plans for social revolution.
It’s a peculiar thing because that isn’t how it works. People are much more likely to announce their plans for broad-scale social revolution than they are to try to set themselves straight or their families straight. I think the reason for that is that, as soon as they try to set themselves or their families straight, the system immediately kicks back at them—instantly. Whereas, if they announce their plans for large-scale social revolution, the lag between the announcement and the kickback is so long that they don’t recognize that there’s any error. You can get away with being wrong, if nothing falls on you for a while. It’s also an incitement to hubris, because you announce your plans for large-scale social revolution, stand back, and you don’t get hit by lightning, and you think, well, I might be right, even though you’re seriously not right. I might be right! And then you think, well, how wonderful is that? Especially if you can do it without any real effort. Fundamentally, I believe that that’s what universities teach students to do, now. I really believe that. I think it’s absolutely appalling and horribly dangerous, because it’s not that easy to fix things, especially if you’re not committed to it. I think you know if you’re committed, because what you try to do is straighten out your own life, first, and that’s enough.
I think the New Testament states that it’s more difficult to rule yourself than it is to rule the city. That’s not a metaphor. All of you who made announcements to yourself every January about changing your diet and going to the gym know perfectly well how difficult it is to regulate your own impulses and to bring yourself under the control of some ethical and attentive structure of values. It’s extraordinarily difficult. People don’t do it. Instead, they wander off, and I think they create towers of Babel.
The story indicates that those things collapse under their own weight, and everyone goes their own direction. I think I see that happening with the LGBT community. One of the things I’ve noticed that’s very interesting is that the community is, in some sense…It’s not a community. That’s a technical error. But it’s composed of outsiders, let’s say. What you notice across the decades is that the acronym list keeps growing. I think that’s because there’s an infinite number of ways to be an outsider. Once you open the door to the construction of a group that’s characterized by failing to fit into a group, then you immediately create a category that’s infinitely expandable. I don’t know how long the acronym list is now—it depends on which acronym list you consult—but I’ve seen lists of 10 or more acronyms. One of the things that’s happening is that the community is starting to fragment in its interior, because there is no unity. Once you put a sufficient plurality under the sheltering structure of a single umbrella, say, the disunity starts to appear within. I think that’s also a manifestation of the same issue that this particular story is dealing with.
So that ends, I would say, the most archaic stories in the Bible. I think the flood story and the Tower of Babel story outline the two fundamental dangers that beset mankind. One is the probability that blindness and sin will produce a natural catastrophe, or entice one. That’s one that modern people are very aware of, in principle, right? We’re all hyper-concerned about environmental degradation catastrophe. That’s the continual reactivation of an archetypal idea in our unconscious minds—that there’s something about the way we’re living that’s unsustainable and will create a catastrophe. It’s so interesting because people believe that firmly and deeply, but they don’t see the relationship between that and the archetypal stories. It’s the same story: overconsumption, greed, all of that, is producing an unstable state, and nature will rebel and take us down.
You hear that every day, in every newspaper, in every TV station. It’s broadcast to you constantly. That idea is presented in Genesis, in the story of Noah. So one warning that exists in the stories is to beware of natural catastrophe that’s produced as a consequence of blindness and greed, let’s say. The other is, beware of social structures that overreach, because they’ll also produce fragmentation and disintegration. It’s quite remarkable, I think, that, at the close of the story of the Tower of Babel, we’ve got both of the permanent, existential dangers that present themselves to humanity already identified.
Wednesday, 29 August 2018
Negotiating w. The Darkness
Scavenger
Tuesday, 28 August 2018
That's Why it's Called "Challenging Behaviour".
Monday, 27 August 2018
Teach Me
Our Good Justice
The Spirit of The Dominance Hierarchy:
Constable Crane! This is a song we have heard from you more than once.
Now, there are two courses open to me.
The first, is to let you cool your heels in the cells until you learn respect for the dignity of my office...
I beg pardon.
But why am I the only one who can see that to solve crimes, we must use our brains, assisted by reason, using up-to-date scientific techniques?
Which brings me to the second course.
There is a town, two days journey to the north in the Hudson Highlands.
It is a place called Sleepy Hollow. Have you heard of it?
I have not.
An isolated farming community, mainly Dutch.
Three persons have been murdered there, all within a fortnight.
Each one found with the head [hand gesture] lopped off.
Ichabod Crane :
Lopped... off?
The Spirit of The Dominance Hierarchy:
Clean as dandelion heads, apparently.
You will take these experimentations of yours to Sleepy Hollow, and there you will detect the murderer.
Bring him here to face our good justice.
Will you do this?
I Shall.
Remember, it is you, Ichabod Crane, who is now put to The Test.
Get Out
Prof. Charles Xavier :
Get Out!
Cry "Havok!" And Set Free The Bitches of War
Saturday, 25 August 2018
Please Call Me Rey.
" I was the separated wife of
The Crown Prince of Earth and Heaven,
The Heir to The Throne,
The Next and Future King -
I was a problem, fullstop.
Never happened before, what do we do with Her?
She won't go quietly, that's The Problem.
I'll fight to The End, because I believe that I have a role to fulfil.
And I've got two children to bring up. "
Members of The Divine Quaternity :
Isis (AIR) -
The Queen of Heaven
Osiris (FIRE) -
Heavenly Father
Sleeps a Lot During The Day
Lord of The Underworld
Set (EARTH) -
The Dark Brother,
Prince of Darkness,
Lord of All The Earth
Nepthys (WATER) -
The Dark Sister,
The Hidden Power,
She Who Must Not Be Named
The Great Mother -
Intensely Black
Bare Bosom
Super-Abundance of Darkness
awaken, and immediately finds itself to be in expression of it's full and whole potential power-potency, strength and level of ability and skill.
She was born and raised - much as you and I - with a baseline Power Level of around 1.0 -
Departing at last from Jakku dials Her all the way up to 11.99
She needs no period of training,
or tutelage and apprenticeship,
and has no need of a Master to teach Her.
BILLY:
REY:
MURRAY:
(Murray laughs, but Rey gets one from her bag.)
Time's Champion :
REY:
The greater part of the text consists of a hymn to Osiris, which was probably composed under the XVIIIth Dynasty, when an extraordinary development of the cult of that god took place, and when he was placed by Egyptian theologians at the head of all the gods. Though unseen in the temples, his presence filled all Egypt, and his body formed the very substance of the country.
The last paragraph of the text contains an allusion to Isis, the sister and wife of Osiris, and mentions the legend of the birth of Horus, which even under the XVIIIth Dynasty was very ancient, Isis, we are told, was the constant protectress of her brother, she drove away the fiends that wanted to attack him, and kept them out of his shrine and tomb, and she guarded him from all accidents.
The news of the death of Osiris was brought to Isis, and she at once set out to find his body.
At length she found the body, and with a piercing cry she alighted on the ground.
The Pyramid Texts say that Nephthys was with her that
"Isis came, Nephthys came, the one on the right side, the other on the left side, one in the form of a Hat bird, the other in the form of a Tchert bird, and they found Osiris thrown on the ground in Netat by
his brother Set."
The late form of the legend goes on to say that Isis fanned the body with her feathers, and produced air, and that at length she caused the inert members of Osiris to move, and drew from him his essence, wherefrom she produced her child Horus.
This bare statement of the dogma of the conception of Horus does not represent all that is known about it, and it may well be supplemented by a passage from the Pyramid Texts, 1 which reads,
"Adoration to thee, O Osiris.
The doors of Heaven are opened to thee,
Thy elder sister took thy body in her arms, she chafed thy hands, she clasped thee to her breast [when] she found thee [lying] on thy side on the plain of Netat."
And in another place we read :
"Thy two sisters, Isis and Nephthys, came to thee,
Thou hast union with her, thy seed entereth her.
The above words are addressed to dead kings in the Pyramid
" They see me as a threat of some kind, and I'm here to do good: I'm not a destructive person.
I think every strong woman in history has had to walk down a similar path, and I think it's the strength that causes the confusion and the fear.
Why is she strong?
Where does she get it from?
Where is she taking it?
Where is she going to use it?
Why do the public still support her?
When I say public, you go and do an engagement and there's a great many people there. "