Sunday, 31 July 2022

Men of Fire

 

Polly (put The Kettle on) :
Have done it Doctor, did you really find something…?
 
The Cosmic Hobo :
…oh, Polly, I only wish I had.
 
….why not make some coffee 
to keep them all happy, 
while I think of something.
 
Polly (put The Kettle on) :
(tenderly touches him on the shoulder)
Alright.

….it’s The SUGAR
That’s Why it only affects some people —
not everyone takes it.

 
Male Organism 
Not Suited to Induce Other Males 
 
It is frequently reported that homosexual relations are prevalent in that type of boys’ school called a “public school” in England, and a “private school” in the United States. 
 
I have had occasion to observe one or two such relationships. 
 
In the cases which have come to my attention an older, stronger boy has compelled a young and much weaker boy to give him erotic pleasure, as well as to perform many other services of an appetitive nature for the benefit of the older youth. 
 
In such cases as these, the emotional response of inducement on the part of the older boy wins for him a greater total amount of pleasantness, both appetitive and erotic, than that which can be obtained from mere teasing and torturing of younger boys. 
 
Moreover, the younger boy’s combined submission and inducement attain for him a certain amount of Freedom from being made the object of dominance response. 
 
The older boy in these affairs usually protects and favours, in various ways, the boy who submits to him. Frequently he not only refrains from hazing or tormenting the younger boy, but also prevents other boys from doing so.
 
In this type of behaviour, therefore, we may see a certain amount of inducement expressed by a male subject free from control of dominance.
 
The Limitation to such relationships seems to be a physiological one.
 
Since neither the body nor the emotional development of the younger boy is suited to act as an effective stimulus to the passion of the stronger youth, the dominance of the younger boy yielding to dominance of the older boy becomes a matter of compliance by the weaker one rather than submission.
 
The older boy as environmental stimulus, in short, evokes motor stimuli stronger than the motor self of his companion, but, for the most part, antagonistic to it.
 
Thus, the stronger youth becomes an adequate stimulus to compliance but not to submission. The younger boy yields, not because he enjoys the relationship as such, but because it seems to be to his appetitive advantage.
 
“That’s a LOT of Baseball Cards….."
 
The compliance of the weaker boy, in turn, makes itself felt by the would-be inducer, and the inducement fails to produce sufficient pleasantness to be long continued.
 
From this sort of relationship, however, both boys frequently emerge with an unusually complete appetitive development, and with a transfer of inducement into adaptation to, and control by appetite.
 
In other words, the older boy has learned that he can use inducement to obtain services and pleasures which would otherwise be beyond his reach.
 
The younger boy, also, has been taught that by a compound response made up of inducement and submission expressed toward a stronger companion, he can obtain protection, gifts, and perhaps advancement in school activities of various sorts.
 
In the cases I have studied, at least, both boys entering into such a relationship, tend thereafter to use the primary emotional response of inducement not for its own sake nor for the completion of a true love response, but rather as first aid in furthering the ends of active and passive appetite or both.
 
This use of inducement, as we shall have occasion later to observe, constitutes one of the most unfortunate of personality developments. 
 
Normal Adult Male Transfers 
Inducement From Sadism to Business
 
The element of inducement in males who have not had experiences of homosexual type, nevertheless, tends to follow a somewhat similar course of development. The behaviour called “cruelty” toward other males continues to be expressed in some degree throughout adult life. Business men, as well as men engaged in professional and academic life, appear to obtain a certain emotional pleasure by means of imposing hardships and minor torments upon other males who come under their authority. And this same type of pleasure is still more obviously manifested when failure of another man is reported, even though this individual is in no sense a rival. Criticisms or attacks made upon another male appear to be enjoyed without restraint by most men, and it would appear that the dominant or appetitive satisfaction in disposing of a rival fails to account satisfactorily for the entire response. There exists, in addition, a certain emotional gratification (captivation emotion) in the thought that the person attacked is thereby subjected to the subject himself as well as to all other persons who witness the attack. With the normal and fairly successful business man, however, these occasional enjoyments of perverted inducement response must be strictly limited to those occasions when the subject’s own appetitive interests can not be injured by indulging in enjoyment of the other person’s enforced subjection. Daring late adolescence there is indication that dominance, compliance and their appetitive combinations develop very rapidly with male subjects, until appetite may be said to exercise undisputed control over the average male’s emotional responses. With this maturing appetite comes the suppression and limitation of inducement expressed in forcefully bullying and injuring other males. The youth begins to discover that he cannot afford to alienate other males who may later serve his interests in one way or another, no matter how insignificant these persons may seem at the time when he has an opportunity to subject them injuriously in some way. For instance, one boy may successfully dominate another lad of the same group during athletic competition or competitive seeking of the same class office or scholastic prize. The natural tendency of the male following such successes seems to consist of an expression of open triumph over the rival, with perhaps a certain patronizing condescension expressive of the defeated one’s subjection to the superior strength of the more successful boy. The triumphant boy does not regard this defeated rival as an enemy or antagonist. In fact, the whole pleasure of the inducement response would be turned to indifference were the other boy regarded as a real antagonist. To enjoy this type of victory to the full, the defeated male must still be thought of as a friend, though a friend of inferior strength and position. It soon transpires, however, that the defeated boy has reacted to the openly expressed superiority of the successful youth by becoming a real enemy. Perhaps, at a subsequent election of class officers or in the course of academic relationships, if the two boys are taking the same courses, an occasion arises where the formerly successful youth needs the support of the boy whom he has been treating as an inferior. He finds this support is not forthcoming. The formerly defeated youth now responds with dominance to the previously controlling dominance in the other boy’s behaviour and the formerly triumphant youth suffers accordingly. I studied several instances of this type, and found that in these instances only a few such experiences were necessary to lead to a splitting off of inducement from open dominance, and the initiation of a new pattern of behaviour in which inducement was used to further the ends of appetite instead of thwarting them. In other words, instead of giving free rein to the pleasantness of injurious subjection of other boys the subject quickly learned to use inducement to acquire and regain their appetitive assistance and service. Inducement in Business This system of emotional organization, wherein inducement is used as first assistant to active appetite, forms what may be called the extensor muscle of modern business. Selling goods is a clear cut example of this type of composite emotional response. The salesman not only stimulates the appetitive mechanisms of his prospective customers by impressing upon the buyer the financial advantage which these particular goods hold for him, but he also uses a considerable amount of “personal appeal” to the buyer. That is to say, the salesman endeavours to impress the buyer with his own qualities as a good fellow and reliable person. And if the prospective customer allows himself to become sympathetic the salesman may even make an open statement of his own personal needs and desires in winning the patronage of the merchant to whom he is talking. All this consists of rather clear-cut, active inducement behaviour, on the part of the salesman. In itself such behaviour has no connection whatever with the intrinsic merit or usefulness of the goods to be sold. Yet, no business man to-day doubts the importance of such inducement technique in effecting sales. Even printed advertisements which do not, of course, enable the seller to appear personally before the buyer, contain as large an element of inducement as it is possible to convey with the help of words, pictures and suggestions of both form and colour. Pretty girls are depicted extending the article to be sold invitingly toward the reader of the advertisement. The concern manufacturing the product advertised is symbolized as the family’s best friend, or as the generous saviour of humanity in distress.
 
Another form of what might be called substituted inducement, commonly found in advertisements, is the attempted identification of the advertiser with some member of the prospective customer’s family, who is represented as inducing the reader of the advertisement to buy the product advertised.
 
For instance, a picture of a baby may be shown with the heading:
“Bring happiness to your child, buy this cuddly, dimpled baby doll!”
 
Or a picture of two attractive children sharing a bottle of soft drink,
may be displayed with the legend: “Let your children enjoy these taste-tempting drinks”.
 
In nearly all selling methods of modern business some element of inducement can be found directly or indirectly expressed, over and above the appetitive appeal contained in descriptions of the intrinsic values and delights of the goods themselves.
 
This use of inducement response as a servant of appetite emotion tends to be learned by the average male about the time of sexual maturity. Thereafter, he limits more and more the use of inducement in enjoyment of the captivation of other males, and extends its use further and further for the purpose of procuring appetitive benefits from other people of both sexes.
 
Confusions Between Inducement and Dominance
 
The behaviour just considered, which might aptly be styled the evolution of male inducement, serves only to illustrate the tendency which all males exhibit, at times, to confuse and intermingle dominance and inducement responses.
 
The integrative element which is identical in dominance and inducement is the superiority of the motor self over the strength of the motor stimulus.
 
The integrative difference between the two responses consists in the fact that an adequate stimulus to dominance emotion is antagonistic to the motor self while adequate motor stimulus to inducement must remain in alliance with the motor self.
 
If there appears to be the slightest doubt as to whether the person who constitutes the environmental stimulus is willing to accept the rĂ´le of inferiority to the subject, then the average male organism immediately tends to react to the individual in question as to an antagonistic stimulus.
 
The “boot-licking,” or utterly servile attitude which male underlings of great men so frequently find it necessary to adopt, in order to retain their positions, furnishes dependable evidence of the tendency just referred to.
 
If the assistant or employee inadvertently manifested, at any time, behaviour which impressed his chief with a possible superiority of strength on the part of the supposedly inferior male, the employer would feel immediate necessity for reducing his employee’s strength to a level obviously lower than his own.
 
This emotional purpose, again, is a common one both to dominance and to inducement responses; but since dominance is the prevailing male emotion, the employer almost invariably seeks to educe his subordinate’s strength by action antagonistic to the other man’s interests.
 
He may reprimand him before others, decrease his pay, or discharge him. 
 
I have observed many instances of each of these methods used by males in Authority to reduce the strength of a subordinate. 
 
Nor are such methods limited to business or other appetitive relationships where there may be, in most cases, some actual opposition of interests between chief and subordinate. 
 
In The Home, a Wife or Son may be “put in their place” by this method. 
 
Deliberately cutting and insulting remarks may be addressed to The Wife. 
 
A Son who shows any tendency to dispute the superiority of a “successful” father is likely to receive more definitely injurious treatment. 
 
Physical abuse, cutting off a son’s allowance or privileges, or even (in one actual case) causing the son’s arrest and sentence in juvenile court, may be used as methods of reducing the “uppishness” of The Boy. 
 
All these courses of action are dominant and not inductive methods of reducing the strength of the person regarded as inferior to the subject, since all these methods of treatment disregard utterly the interests and well being of the person thus treated. 
 
Were inducement the prevailing response, the actions of The Father, or person in Authority must have been kept in complete alliance with the welfare and happiness of the persons subjected. Had this been done, and true inducement actually exercised, the inferior persons must have been induced voluntarily to reduce their own strength to a required degree, in order to accept completely the control of the inducer. 
 
Most males, who appear to possess very meagre development of inducement emotion in pure form, would regard such a task as utterly impossible. An average male is prone to remark “the only way to show the boy his place is to beat him within an inch of his life”. 
 
Often the sentiment expressed is more violent than the action which follows, but the two are usually similar in nature. Whenever another person’s strength is to be reduced to a level inferior to a man’s own, the person is treated as An Opponent and dominance takes the place of inducement in nine cases out of ten.
 
 
Hans
Very well. (hangs up)
 They're coming
Now we'll see how these Russians 
deal with a crack SS division. 
 
Erich
(putting his cap on
Er.... Hans.... 
 
Hans
Have courage, My Friend! 
 
Erich
Yeah. Er.... Hans,
I've just noticed something. 
 
Hans
(looking through binoculars)
These Communists 
are all cowards! 
 
Erich: 
Have you looked at
our caps recently? 
 
Hans:
(lowers binoculars)
Our caps
 
Erich: 
The badges on our caps.
Have you looked at them? 
 
Hans:
What?... No... A bit. 
 
Erich:
...They've got skulls on them. 
 
Hans:
Hm? 
 
Erich:
Have you noticed our caps have actually got
little pictures of skulls on them? 
 
Hans:
Er... I don't, erm... 
 
Erich:
Hans... are we the baddies?
 
Later, Erich still can't get over the fact that
the skulls seem to imply that
he and Hans are on the wrong side
of Good and Evil:
 
Hans:
Well — maybe they're the skulls of our enemies! 
 
Erich:
Maybe. But is that how it comes across?
I mean, it doesn't say next to the skull, y'know,
"Yeah, we killed him, but Trust Us,
this guy was horrid"! 
 
Hans:
Well, no, but— 
 
Erich:
I mean, what do skulls
make you think of?
Death. Cannibals. Beheading.
Erm... Pirates... 
 
Hans:
(brightening)
Pirates are fun!
 
Erich:
I didn't say we weren't fun,
but, fun or not, Pirates
are still the baddies.
I just can't think of anything
good about a skull!
 
Hans:
What about….
pure Aryan skull shape? 
 
Erich:
Even that is more usually depicted
with the skin still on!
Whereas The Allies—
 
Hans:
Oh, you haven't been listening 
to Allied propaganda?
Of course, they're gonna say 
we're the bad guys!
 
Erich:
But they didn't get to
design our uniforms!
And their symbols are all,
y'know, quite nice!
Stars, stripes, lions, sickles... 
 
Hans:
What's so good about a sickle? 
 
Erich:
Well, nothing, obviously,
and if there's one thing we've learned
in the last thousand miles of retreat,
it's that Russian agriculture
is in dire need
of mechanisation! 
 
Hans:
Tell me about it! 
 
Erich:
But you've gotta say,
it's better than a skull!
I mean, I really can't think of anything worse
as a symbol, than a skull! 

Hans(thinks
A rat's.... anus? 

Erich
Yeah. And if we were fighting an army 
marching under the banner of a rat's anus, 
I'd probably be a lot less worried, Hans! 

(Hans puts a cigarette in his mouth and sets down an ashtray — shaped like a skull. As he absorbs this, he and Erich see one of their comrades drinking out of a mug with a skull on the side, and another knitting a scarf with a skull pattern

Hans: 
...Okay. So... 
(he and Erich suddenly bolt from the table and run for it)

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