Zen Fascism

“Noh-Varr’s power was expressed not in the service of the status quo but as insurrection and anarchy. More frightening than his destructive capabilities were his beliefs.

We imagined our hero’s creed as a strange, unthinkable, untranslatable mix of seeming opposites, described in the text as “Zen Fascism.” We’d all seen what ray guns and flying saucers could do, but what if the alien had a belief system so seductive, so powerful and ultimately corrosive that it could destroy our own social structures? In a move that seems prescient, Jones and I had him attack Manhattan, burning the words FUCK YOU into the street grid, big enough to be read from space.

The third issue introduced Hexus the Living Corporation, an alien entity that arrived on our planet in the form of a mysterious logo. Hexus would root itself in a small office space somewhere and start spawning recruitment flyers —“DO YOU SINCERELY WANT TO GET RICH?”— to attract employees, who would then be swiftly assimilated into its workforce. Hexus traded up to bigger and bigger headquarters as it proceeded through its lifecycle. It was a naturally occurring “wild” corporate intelligence, a superpredator that began to gobble up the market territory of our own synthetic corporations, like Fox and AOL, on its way to devouring our planet’s entire resources before sending out its spores in the form of spaceships carrying Hexus flyers. In the end, Noh-Varr defeated the creature by leaking its secrets to its competitors, who then tore the pretender apart on the international stock exchange. 

With her beloved Noh-Varr banged up in an inescapable superpenitentiary, which he’d vowed with a smile to transform into the “CAPITAL CITY OF THE NEW KREE EMPIRE,” Oubliette was pictured in the bombed ruins of Disneyland with Donald Duck lying facedown behind her, while the voice of Horus echoed loud and clear:

“THIS IS THE END OF THE WAY THAT WAS. COSMIC JIHAD HAS BEGUN. YOU ASKED FOR THIS.”

A horrified President Bill Clinton stroked his chin, perhaps suspecting he wasn’t long for office:

“… IT WAS THE WAY SHE KEPT SHOOTING THE POOR DUCK GUY IN THE BACK LIKE THAT. I DON’T BELIEVE I’LL EVER FORGET THAT IMAGE.”

And in hindsight, Marvel Boy, like The Authority, seems almost to be a transmission from a very different world that was waiting for us all across the millennial barricade.”

Excerpt From

Supergods

Grant Morrison

Know Thyself

I feel like The Ghost 

of a Total Stranger

Took a charter flight to London. 

Took a cab to the city centre. Hostels are pretty ugly.

I'm staying at Home House, the most beautiful hotel in the world.

A couple of Brits take me to Camden Street, 

I flirt at Virgin, then follow girls with pink hair.

I wandered around trying to get laid until it started to rain.

I go to Rem Forum, but it's gay night.

I find the one hetero girl in the place.

At Home House, I strip her clothes off and we fuck.

Met the world's biggest DJ, Paul Oakenfold, 

wrote my mom a postcard I never sent.

Bought some speed, smoked a lot of hash 

that had too much tobacco in it.

Saw the Tate, Big Ben, ate weird English food. 

It rained a lot so I quit for Amsterdam.

The Dutch know English, which was a relief.

I cruise the Red Light District, 

visit a sex show, smoke a lot of hash.

Meet a Dutch actress, we drink absinthe 

at a bar called Absinthe. 

Museums were cool.

Bought a lot of pastries, ate waffles.

Bought some coke, met some blonde 

that reminds me of Lara, gave her 100 guilders.

I come between her tits even though I'm wearing a rubber.

Afterwards we talked about AIDS.

I wake to the sound of a wino singing.

I pretend to ice skate around Centraal

Station. Trade songs with a Kiwi girl.

Then split for Paris by train.

I climb the Eiffel Tower for only 7 francs.

Went to a Ford Model party, 

hooked up with a Romanian model.

She chugs my cock, which is good.

Went shopping. I think she gave me mono.

Drove a Ferrari, made out with a Dutch model.

Almost became roadkill crossing the street.

Oakie invites me to Dublin so I catch a flight. 

He lets me spin discs with him.

Irish girls are as small as leprechauns.

One strips for me in the bathroom of a club.

I steal some stout at the Guinness factory.

I fly to Barcelona.

Too many fat American students.

Dropped acid at the Sagrada Familia, which was a trip.

Cruised up the coast, but had no more acid.

Some girl rings me so I let her listen to the church bells.

It was beautiful, but there are no girls there so I went to Switzerland.

Took the Glacier Express, which was beautiful.

Euro Pass to Venice, where I met a hot girl 

who speaks better English than I do.

She's living on $5 a day.

My hotel room costs more for one night 

than she's spending her entire trip.

I ditch her and hook up with a couple who want a threesome.

Too much tension, but they 

offer to drive me to Rome.

Traffic is bad. The wife turns out to be a freak, 

the guy starts to wig out on me.

We stop in Florence, a bomb goes off and I lose the weird couple.

Ended up in Rome. Just like LA, but with ruins.

I went to the Vatican, stood for two hours to 

get into the Sistine Chapel, which looks fake.

I meet two underage Italian girls who I try to talk 

into fucking each other while I jack off.

I work out. 

I meet some guy who says he knows me. 

He's a fag so I lose him.

I try to fart and instead shit my pants.

Back in my hotel room, I masturbate.

That night I dream about a beautiful girl 

half in water, stretching her lean body.

I wake well rested and masturbate in the shower.

I go back to London and hang out in Piccadilly Circus.

I swap shirts with a Cambridge chick.

Hers was an Agns B, mine a Chanel.

She acts prudish, but is really wild.

She barely looks at my abs.

I drop some acid and get lost in the subway.

I meet a girl who lets me jack off on her 

as long as no come gets on her coat.

We get stoned listening to Michael Jackson 

and next morning I wake up talking to myself.

I barely make my plane back to the US.

I feel like The Ghost of a Total Stranger.

Then I ended up back here.

I am so there when school is out!

You don't even know!

No, I do know.

You don't know until you do know

and you have to go there to know.

Still fucking that girl from Hawaii? Page?

No, I gave up on that shit. She had issues. 

I moved on to this chick named Candice. She's great.

 Does she fuck like a racehorse?

Yeah! You know it, brother!

I met a girl.

Did you score some hot poon?

It's not about that.

No, it's about...

It's about good times and cuddling up [!]

She's a fag hag, right? 

It's cool because they're fun and they like to dance!

I tell you, Victor,

I think I'm in love with this girl.

She's sweet...she's pure...she's innocent.

She's a virgin.

How young is she?

Is she out of the car seat onto my meat?

If she's bleedin', I'm breedin'!

If there's grass in the field...play ball!

Old enough to pee, old enough for me!

SWADESHI

SWADESHI

[A Paper read before the Missionary Conference, Madras, 1916.]

It was not without much diffidence that I undertook to speak to you at all. And I was hard put to it in the selection of my subject. I have chosen a very delicate and difficult subject. It is delicate because of the peculiar views I hold upon Swadeshi, and it is difficult because I have not that command of language which is necessary for giving adequate expression to my thoughts. I know that I may rely upon your indulgence for the many shortcomings you will no doubt find in my address, the more so when I tell you that there is nothing in what I am about to say that I am not either already practising or am not preparing to practise to the best of my ability. It encourages me to observe that last month you devoted a week to prayer in the place of an address. I have earnestly prayed that what I am about to say may bear fruit, and I know that you with bless my word with a similar prayer.

After much thiaking I have arrived at a definition of Swadeshi that perhaps best illustrates my meaning. Swadeshi is that spirit in us which restricts us to the use and service of our immediate surroundings to the exclusion of the more remote- Thus, as for religion, in order to satisfy the requirements of the definition, I must restrict myself to my ancestral religion. That is the use of my immediate religious surrounding. If 1 find it defective I should serve it by purging it of its defects. In the domain of politics I should make use of the indigenous institutions and serve them by curing them of their proved defects. In that of economics I should use only things that are produced by my immediate neighbours and serve those industries by making them efficient and complete where they might be found wanting. It is suggested that such Swadeshi, if reduced to practice, will lead to the millennium. And as we do not abandon our pursuit after the millennium because we do not expect quite to reach it within our times, so may we not abandon Swadeshi even though it may not be fully attained for generations to come.

Let us briefly examine the three branches of Swadeshi as sketched above. Hinduism has become a conservative religion and therefore a mighty force because of the Swadeshi spirit underlying it. It is the most tolerant because it is non-proselytising, and it is as capable of expansion to-day as it has been found to be in the past. It has succeeded not in driving, as I think it has been erroneously held, but in absorbing Buddhism. By reason of the Swadeshi spirit a Hindu, refuses to change his religion not necessarily because he considers it to be the best, but because he knows that he can complement it by introducing reforms. And what I have said about Hinduism is, I suppose, true of the other great faiths of the world, only it is held that it is specially so in the case of Hinduism. But here comes the point I am labouring to reach. If there is any substance in what I have said, will not the great missionary bodies of India, to whom she owes a deep debt of gratitude for what they have done and are doing, do still better and serve the spirit of Christianity better by dropping the goal, of proselytising but continuing their philanthropic work ? I hope you will not consider this to be an impertinence on my part. I make the suggestion in all sincerity and with due humility. Moreover, I have some claim upon your attention. I have endeavoured to study the Bible. I consider it as part of my scriptures. The spirit of the Sermon on the Mount competes almost on equal terms with the Bhagavad-Gita for the domination of my heart. I yield to no Christian in the strength of devotion with which I sing "Lead kindly light" and several other inspired hymns of a similar nature. I have come under the influence of noted Christian missionaries belonging to different denominations. And I enjoy to this day the privilege of friendship with some of them. You will, perhaps, therefore allow that I have offered the above suggestion not as a biased Hindu but as a humble and impartial student of religion with great leanings towards Christianity. May it not be that "Go Ye Unto All The World" message has been somewhat narrowly interpreted and the spirit of it missed ? It will not be denied, I speak from experience, that many of the conversions are only so-called. In some cases the appeal has gone not to the heart but to the stomach. And in every case a conversion leaves a sore behind it which,, I venture to think, is avoidable. Quoting again from experience, a new birth, a change of heart, is perfectly possible in every one of the great faiths. I know I am now treading upon thin ice. But I do not apologise, in closing this part of my subject, for saying that the frightful outrage that is just going on in Europe, perhaps, shows that the message of Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of Peace, had been little understood in Europe, and that light upon it may have to be thrown from the East.

I have sought your help in religious matters, which it is yours to give in a special sense. But I make bold to seek it even in political matters. I do not believe that religion has nothing to do with politics. The latter, divorced from religion, is like a corpse only fit to be buried. As a matter of fact in your own silent manner you influence politics not a little. And I feel that if the attempt to separate politics from religion had not been made as it is even now made, they would not have degenerated as they often appear to do. No one considers that the political life of the country is in a happy state. Following out the Swadeshi spirit I observe the indigenous institutions and the village panchayats hold me, India is really a republican country, and it is because it is that that it has survived every shock hitherto delivered. Princes and potentates, whether they were Indian born or foreigners, have hardly touched the vast masses except for collecting revenue. The latter in their turn seem to have rendered unto Cæsar's what was Cæsar's and for the rest have done much as they have liked. The vast organisation of caste answered not only the religious wants of the community, but it answered too its political needs. The villagers managed their internal affairs through the caste system, and through it they dealt with any oppression from the ruling power or powers. It is not possible to deny of a nation that was capable of producing the caste system its wonderful power of organisation. One had but to attend the great Kumbha Mela at Hardwar last year to know how skilful that organisation must have been, which, without any seeming effort, was able effectively to cater for more than a million pilgrims. Yet it is the fashion to say that we lack organising ability. This is true, I fear, to a certain extent, of those who have been nurtured in the new traditions. We have laboured under a terrible handicap owing to an almost fatal departure from the Swadeshi spirit. We, the educated classes, have received our education through a foreign tongue. We have therefore, not reacted upon the masses. We want to represent the masses, but we fail. They recognise us not much more than they recognise the English officers. Their hearts are an open book to neither. Their aspirations are not ours. Hence there is a break. And you witness not in reality failure to organise but want of correspondence between the representatives and the represented. If, during the last fifty years, we had been educated through the vernaculars, our elders and our servants and our neighbours would have partaken of our knowledge; the discoveries of a Bose or a Ray would have been household treasures as are the Ramayan and the Mahabharat. As it is, so far as the masses are concerned, those great discoveries might as well have been made by foreigners. Had instruction in all the branches of learning been given through the Vernaculars, I make bold to say that they would have been enriched wonderfully. The question of village sanitation, etc., would have been solved long ago. The village Pancha yats would be now a living force in a special way, and India would almost be enjoying Self-Government suited to its requirements and would have been spared the humiliating spectacle of organised assassination on its sacred soil. It is not too late to mend. And you can help if you will, as no other body or bodies can.

And now for the last division of Swadeshi. Much of the deep poverty of the masses is due to the ruinous departure from Swadeshi in the economic and industrial life. If not an article of commerce had been brought from outside India, she would be to-day a land flowing with milk and honey. But that was not to be. We were greedy and so was England. The connection between England and India was based clear upon an error. But she does not remain in India in error. It is her declared policy that India is to be held in trust for her people. If this be true, Lancashire must stand aside. And if the Swadeshi doctrine is a sound doctrine, Lancashire can stand aside without hurt, though it may sustain a shock for the time being. I think of Swadeshi not as a boycott movement undertaken by way of revenge. I conceive it as a religious principle to be followed by all. I am no economist, but I have read some treatises which show that England could easily become a self-sustained country, growing all the produce she needs. This may be an utterly ridiculous proposition, and perhaps the best proof that it cannot be true is that England is one of the largest importers in the world. But India cannot live for Lancashire or any other country before she is able to live for herself. And she can live for herself only if she produces and is helped to produce every thing for her requirements within her own borders. She need not be, she ought not to be, drawn into the vortex of mad and ruinous competition which breeds fratricide, jealousy and many other evils. But who is to stop her great millionaries from entering into the world competition ? Certainly not legislation. Force of public opinion, proper education, however, can do a great deal in the desired direction. The hand-loom industry is in a dying condition. I took special care during my wanderings last year to see as many weavers as possible, and my heart ached to find how they had lost, how families had retired from this one flourishing and honourable occupation. If we follow the Swadeshi doctrine, it would be your duty and mine to find out neighbours who can supply our wants and to teach them to supply them where they do not know how to, assuming that there are neighbours who are in want of healthy occupation. Then every village of India will almost be a self-supporting and self-contained unit, exchanging only such necessary commodities with other villages where they are not locally producible. This may all sound nonsensical. Well, India is a country of nonsense. It is nonsensical to parch one's throat with thirst when a kindly Muhammadan is ready to offer pure water to drink. And yet thousands of Hindus would rather die of thirst than drink water from a Muhammadan household. These nonsensical men can also, once they are convinced that their religion demands that they should wear garments manufactured in India only and eat food only grown in India, decline to wear any other clothing or eat any other food. Lord Curzon set the fashion for tea-drinking, and that pernicious drug now bids fair to overwhelm the nation. It has already undermined the digestive apparatus of hundreds of thousands of men and women and constitutes an additional tax upon their slender purses. Lord Hardinge can set the fashion for Swadeshi and almost the whole of India will forswear foreign goods. There is a verse in the Bhagavat Gita which, freely rendered, means masses follow the classes. It is easy to undo the evil if the thinking portion of the community were to take the Swadeshi vow, even though it may for a time cause considerable inconvenience. I hate legislative interference in any department of life. At best it is the lesser evil. But I would tolerate, welcome, indeed plead for a stiff protective duty upon foreign goods. Natal, a British colony, protected its sugar by taxing the sugar that came from another British colony, Mauritius. England has sinned against India by forcing free trade upon her. It may have been food for her, but it has been poison for this country.

It has often been urged that India cannot adopt Swadeshi in the economic life at any rate. Those who advance this objection do not look upon Swadeshi as a rule of life. With them it is a mere patriotic effort not to be made if it involved any self-denial. Swadeshi, as defined here, is a religious discipline to be undergone in utter disregard of the physical discomfort it may cause to individuals. Under its spell the deprivation of a pin or a needle, because these are not manufactured in India, need cause no terror. A Swadeshist will learn to do without hundreds of things which to-day he considers necessary. Moreover, those who dismiss the Swadeshi from their minds by arguing the impossible forget that Swadeshi, after all, is a goal to be reached by steady effort. And we would be making for the goal even if we confined Swadeshi to a given set of articles allowing ourselves as a temporary measure to use such things as might not be procurable in the country.

There now remains for me to consider one more objection that has been raised against Swadeshi. The objectors consider it to be a most selfish doctrine without any warrant in the civilised code of morality. With them to practise Swadeshi is to revert to barbarism. I cannot enter into a detailed analysis of the proposition. But I would urge that Swadeshi is the only doctrine consistent with the law of humility and love. It is arrogance to think of launching out to serve the whole of India when I am hardly able to serve even my own family. It were better to concentrate my effort upon the family and consider that through them I was serving the whole nation and if you will the whole of humanity. This is humility and it is love. The motive will determine the quality of the act. I may serve my family regardless of the sufferings I may cause to others, as for instance, T may accept an employment which enables me to extort money from people, I enrich myself thereby and then satisfy many unlawful demands of the family. Here I am neither serving the family nor the State. Or I may recognise that God has given me hands and feet only to work with for my sustenance and for that of those who may be dependent upon me. I would then at once simplify my life and that of those whom I can directly reach. In this instance I would have served the family without causing injury to anyone else. Supposing that every one followed this mode of life, we would have at once an ideal state. All will not reach that state at the same time. But those of us who, realising its truth, enforce it in practice will clearly anticipate and accelerate the coming of that happy day. Under this plan of life, in seeming to serve India to the exclusion of every other country, I do not harm any other country. My patriotism is both exclusive and inclusive. It is exclusive in the sense that in all humility I confine my attention to the land of my birth, but it is inclusive in the sense that my service is not of a competitive or antagonistic nature. Sic utere tuo ut alienum non leedas is not merely a legal maxim, but it is a grand doctrine of life. It is the key to a proper practice of Ahimsa or love. It is for you, the custodians of a great faith, to set the fashion and show by your preaching, sanctified by practice, that patriotism based on "hatred killeth" and that patriotism based on "love giveth life."

THE NIGHTMARE

“Are you sure,' asked his companion, 'that this is the nineteen-eighties?'

The Doctor looked around. 'Which nineteen-eighties did you have in mind?'

Conversations that never happened.

“I began to dream absolutely unbearable dreams. 

My dream life, up to this point, had been relatively uneventful, as far as I can remember; furthermore, I have never had a particularly good visual imagination. Nonetheless, my dreams became so horrible and so emotionally gripping that I was often afraid to go to sleep. I dreamt dreams vivid as reality. I could not escape from them or ignore them. They centered, in general, around a single theme: that of nuclear war, and total devastation – around the worst evils that I, or something in me, could imagine:

My parents lived in a standard ranch style house, in a middle-class neighborhood, in a small town in northern Alberta. 

I was sitting in the darkened basement of this house, in the family room, watching TV, with my cousin Diane, who was in truth – in waking life – the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. A newscaster suddenly interrupted the program. The television picture and sound distorted, and static filled the screen. My cousin stood up and went behind the TV to check the electrical cord. She touched it, and started convulsing and frothing at the mouth, frozen upright by intense current.

A brilliant flash of light from a small window flooded the basement. I rushed upstairs. There was nothing left of the ground floor of the house. It had been completely and cleanly sheared away, leaving only the floor, which now served the basement as a roof. Red and orange flames filled the sky, from horizon to horizon. Nothing was left as far as I could see, except skeletal black ruins sticking up here and there: no houses, no trees, no signs of other human beings or of any life whatsoever. The entire town and everything that surrounded it on the flat prairie had been completely obliterated.

It started to rain mud, heavily. The mud blotted out everything, and left the earth brown, wet, flat and dull, and the sky leaden, even grey. A few distraught and shell-shocked people started to gather together. They were carrying unlabelled and dented cans of food, which contained nothing but mush and vegetables. They stood in the mud looking exhausted and disheveled. Some dogs emerged, out from under the basement stairs, where they had inexplicably taken residence. They were standing upright, on their hind legs. They were thin, like greyhounds, and had pointed noses. They looked like creatures of ritual – like Anubis, from the Egyptian tombs. They were carrying plates in front of them, which contained pieces of seared meat. They wanted to trade the meat for the cans. I took a plate. In the center of it was a circular slab of flesh four inches in diameter and one inch thick, foully cooked, oily, with a marrow bone in the center of it. Where did it come from?

I had a terrible thought. I rushed downstairs to my cousin. The dogs had butchered her, and were offering the meat to the survivors of the disaster. I woke up with my heart pounding.

I dreamed apocalyptic dreams of this intensity two or three times a week for a year or more, while I attended university classes and worked – as if nothing out of the ordinary was going on in my mind. 

Something I had no familiarity with was happening, however. I was being affected, simultaneously, by events on two “planes.” On the first plane were the normal, predictable, everyday occurrences that I shared with everybody else. On the second plane, however (unique to me, or so I thought) existed dreadful images and unbearably intense emotional states. This idiosyncratic, subjective world – which everyone normally treated as illusory – seemed to me at that time to lie somehow behind the world everyone knew and regarded as real. But what did real mean? The closer I looked, the less comprehensible things became. Where was The Real? What was at the bottom of it all? I did not feel I could live without knowing.

My interest in the cold war transformed itself into a true obsession. I thought about the suicidal and murderous preparation of that war every minute of every day, from the moment I woke up until the second I went to bed. How could such a state of affairs come about? Who was responsible?

I dreamed that I was running through a mall parking lot, trying to escape from something. I was running through the parked cars, opening one door, crawling across the front seat, opening the other, moving to the next. The doors on one car suddenly slammed shut. I was in the passenger seat. The car started to move by itself. A voice said harshly, “there is no way out of here.” I was on a journey, going somewhere I did not want to go. 

I was not The Driver.

I became very depressed and anxious. I had vaguely suicidal thoughts, but mostly wished that everything would just go away. I wanted to lay down on my couch, and sink into it, literally, until only my nose was showing – like the snorkel of a diver above the surface of the water. I found my awareness of things unbearable.

I came home late one night from a college drinking party, self-disgusted and angry. I took a canvas board and some paints. I sketched a harsh, crude picture of a crucified Christ – glaring and demonic – with a cobra wrapped around his naked waist, like a belt. 

The picture disturbed me – struck me, despite my agnosticism, as sacrilegious. I did not know what it meant, however, or why I had painted it. Where in the world had it come from? I hadn’t paid any attention to religious ideas for years. I hid the painting under some old clothes in my closet and sat cross-legged on the floor. I put my head down. It became obvious to me at that moment that I had not developed any real understanding of myself or of others. 

Everything I had once believed about the nature of society and myself had proved false, the world had apparently gone insane, and something strange and frightening was happening in my head. James Joyce said, “History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.” For me, history literally was a nightmare. I wanted above all else at that moment to wake up, and make my terrible dreams go away.

I have been trying ever since then to make sense of the human capacity, my capacity, for evil – particularly for those evils associated with belief. I started by trying to make sense of my dreams. I couldn’t ignore them, after all. Perhaps they were trying to tell me something? I had nothing to lose by admitting the possibility. I read Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams, and found it useful. Freud at least took the topic seriously – but I could not regard my nightmares as wish-fulfillments. Furthermore, they seemed more religious than sexual in nature. I knew, vaguely, that Jung had developed specialized knowledge of myth and religion, so I started through his writings. His thinking was granted little credence by the academics I knew – but they weren’t particularly concerned with dreams. I couldn’t help being concerned by mine.

They were so intense I thought they might derange me. (What was the alternative? To believe that the terrors and pains they caused me were not real? Nothing is more real than terror and pain.)

 

Much of the time I could not understand what Jung was getting at. He was making a point I could not grasp; speaking a language I did not comprehend. Now and then, however, his statements struck home. He offered this observation, for example:

“It must be admitted that the archetypal contents of the collective unconscious can often assume grotesque and horrible forms in dreams and fantasies, so that even the most hard-boiled rationalist is not immune from shattering nightmares and haunting fears.”

The second part of that statement certainly seemed applicable to me, although the first (‘the archetypal contents of the collective unconscious”) remained mysterious and obscure. Still, this was promising. Jung at least recognized that the things that were happening to me could happen. Furthermore, he offered some hints as to their cause. So I kept reading. I soon came across the following hypothesis. Here was a potential solution to the problems I was facing – or at least the description of a place to look for such a solution:

“The psychological elucidation of... [dream and fantasy] images, which cannot be passed over in silence or blindly ignored, leads logically into the depths of religious phenomenology. The history of religion in its widest sense (including therefore mythology, folklore, and primitive psychology) is a treasure-house of archetypal forms from which the doctor can draw helpful parallels and enlightening comparisons for the purpose of calming and clarifying a consciousness that is all at sea. It is absolutely necessary to supply these fantastic images that rise up so strange and threatening before the mind’s eye with some kind of context so as to make them more intelligible. Experience has shown that the best way to do this is by means of comparative mythological material.”

It has in fact been the study of “comparative mythological material” that made my horrible dreams disappear. The “cure” wrought by this study, however, was purchased at the price of complete and often painful transformation: what I believe about the world, now – and how I act, in consequence – is so much at variance with what I believed when I was younger that I might as well be a completely different person.

I discovered that beliefs make the world, in a very real way – that beliefs are the world, in a more than metaphysical sense. This “discovery” has not turned me into a moral relativist, however: quite the contrary. I have become convinced that the world-that-is-belief is orderly: that there are universal moral absolutes (although these are structured such that a diverse range of human opinion remains both possible and beneficial). I believe that individuals and societies who flout these absolutes – in ignorance or in willful opposition – are doomed to misery and eventual dissolution.

I learned that the meanings of the most profound substrata of belief systems can be rendered explicitly comprehensible, even to the skeptical rational thinker – and that, so rendered, can be experienced as fascinating, profound and necessary. I learned why people wage war – why the desire to maintain, protect and expand the domain of belief motivates even the most incomprehensible acts of group-fostered oppression and cruelty – and what might be done to ameliorate this tendency, despite its universality. I learned, finally, that the terrible aspect of life might actually be a necessary precondition for the existence of life – and that it is possible to regard that precondition, in consequence, as comprehensible and acceptable. I hope that I can bring those who read this book to the same conclusions, without demanding any unreasonable “suspension of critical judgment” – excepting that necessary to initially encounter and consider the arguments I present. These can be summarized as follows:

The world can be validly construed as a forum for action, as well as a place of things. We describe the world as a place of things, using the formal methods of science. The techniques of narrative, however – myth, literature, and drama – portray the world as a forum for action. The two forms of representation have been unnecessarily set at odds, because we have not yet formed a clear picture of their respective domains. The domain of the former is the “objective world” – what is, from the perspective of intersubjective perception. The domain of the latter is “the world of value” – what is and what should be, from the perspective of emotion and action.

The world as forum for action is “composed,” essentially, of three constituent elements, which tend to manifest themselves in typical patterns of metaphoric representation. First is unexplored territory – the Great Mother, nature, creative and destructive, source and final resting place of all determinate things. Second is explored territory – the Great Father, culture, protective and tyrannical, cumulative ancestral wisdom. Third is the process that mediates between unexplored and explored territory – the Divine Son, the archetypal individual, creative exploratory “Word” and vengeful adversary. We are adapted to this “world of divine characters,” much as the “objective world.” The fact of this adaptation implies that the environment is in “reality” a forum for action, as well as a place of things.

Unprotected exposure to unexplored territory produces fear. The individual is protected from such fear as a consequence of “ritual imitation of the Great Father” – as a consequence of the adoption of group identity, which restricts the meaning of things, and confers predictability on social interactions. When identification with the group is made absolute, however – when everything has to be controlled, when the unknown is no longer allowed to exist – the creative exploratory process that updates the group can no longer manifest itself. This “restriction of adaptive capacity” dramatically increases the probability of social aggression and chaos.

Rejection of the unknown is tantamount to “identification with the devil,” the mythological counterpart and eternal adversary of the world-creating exploratory hero. Such rejection and identification is a consequence of Luciferian pride, which states: all that I know is all that is necessary to know. This pride is totalitarian assumption of omniscience – is adoption of “God’s place” by “reason” – is something that inevitably generates a state of personal and social being indistinguishable from hell. This hell develops because creative exploration – impossible, without (humble) acknowledgment of the unknown – constitutes the process that constructs and maintains the protective adaptive structure that gives life much of its acceptable meaning.

“Identification with the devil” amplifies the dangers inherent in group identification, which tends of its own accord towards pathological stultification. Loyalty to personal interest – subjective meaning – can serve as an antidote to the overwhelming temptation constantly posed by the possibility of denying anomaly. Personal interest – subjective meaning – reveals itself at the juncture of explored and unexplored territory, and is indicative of participation in the process that ensures continued healthy individual and societal adaptation.

Loyalty to personal interest is equivalent to identification with the archetypal hero – the “savior” – who upholds his association with the creative “Word” in the face of death, and in spite of group pressure to conform. Identification with the hero serves to decrease the unbearable motivational valence of the unknown; furthermore, provides the individual with a standpoint that simultaneously transcends and maintains the group.

THE ACCUSED

Dean Keaton :

Keaton always said, 

‘I Don’t Believe In God, 

But I’m Afraid of Him —’

Well, I Do Believe in God;

and The Only Thing That Scares Me —

is Keyser Soze....

Our Lady of Mercy :

Now, what happened after the line-up?

The Desk Sergeant told me he couldn't release you. 

Can you believe that?

You weren't even charged!

New York police.

I want pictures taken of your face.

I'll take 'em to the DA first thing.

The Accused :

Forget about it.

Our Lady of Mercy :

No! I'll have this in front of a Grand Jury!

The Accused :

Look, I don't wanna talk about it, Edie. OK?

So what did Fortier and Renault say?

Our Lady of Mercy :

They need more time to think about it.

The Accused :

Dammit! More time for what, Edie?

No matter how you cover my tracks, 

they'll still find out about me.

Our Lady of Mercy :

Give me some credit. I got you this far.

Let's go to the Grand Jury. 

The Accused :

It won't stop!

Look, it's never gonna stop, period!

By next week every investor in the city's gonna be walkin' away from us.

It's finished.

I'm finished.

Our Lady of Mercy :

Don't give up on me now, Dean.

The Accused :

It's never gonna stop.

Our Lady of Mercy :

I love you.

The Accused :

They ruined me in there tonight.

I love you.

Do you hear me?

The Accused :

What?

Our Lady of Mercy :

All right.

Let's just go to my place.

We'll worry about this tomorrow.

Let's go.

The Accuser :

Fenster and McManus had a cagey proposition.

A fast jump, high risk, long money.

We all knew it could be done.

The way I figured, to do it wrong meant killing.

To do it right took five men.

Five men meant Keaton.

Keaton took convincing.

New York's Finest Taxi Service.

The Accused :

Bullshit.

Bullshit.

They don't operate any more.

The Accused :

McManus has a friend in the 14th Precinct.

They're coming out for one job.

They're picking up a guy smuggling emeralds. McManus already has a fence.

The Accused :

A fence? Who?

Some guy in California named Redfoot.

The Accused :

I never heard of him.

You have to come.

The Accused :

What's it to you whether I do it or not?

The Accuser :

They don't know me. 

You do.

They won't take me unless you go.

The Accuser :

Look at me. I need this.

Oh, you're telling me you don't need this?

Is this your place?

I'm not knocking you. 

You got a good scam going with this lawyer...

Sorry.

The Accuser :

It's OK. It's OK.

The Accuser :

You say it's the real thing, that's cool.

The Accused :

You OK?

The Accuser :

I was outta line.

But they're never gonna stop with us. 

You know that.

As clean as you could get, they'll never let you go.

This way we hit the cops where it hurts and we get well in the meantime.

You sure you're OK?

I'll be all right.

Look, I... I sometimes get...

The Accuser :

Forget it.

I'll probably shit blood tonight.

The Accused :

So... how do they wanna do it?

The Accuser :

McManus wants to go in shooting.

I say no.

The Accused :

Fenster? Hockney?

The Accuser :

They're pretty pissed off.

They'll do anything.

I got a way to do it without killing anyone, 

but they won't let me in without you.

The Accused :

Three million?

The Accuser :

Maybe more.

The Accused :

No killing?

The Accuser :

Not if we do it my way.

New York's Finest Taxi Service was not your normal taxi service.

It was a ring of corrupt cops in the NYPD that ran a high-profit racket driving smugglers and drug dealers round the city.

For a few hundred dollars a mile you got your own blue and white and a police escort.

They even had business cards.

After a while somebody started asking questions and the service shut down.

Since then Internal Affairs have been waiting to catch them in the act.

That's where we came in.

The Betrayer,

A Treacherous Blue Meanie Guard :

So, how was the flight?

A Thief :

Fucking great.

Will this get me to Staten Island?

The Betrayer,

A Treacherous Blue Meanie Guard :

You kidding me?

This'll get you to Cape Cod.

The Accuser :

McManus brought us the job. 

Fenster got the vans, 

Hockney supplied the hardware.

I came up with how to do it so no one got killed.

But Keaton? 

Keaton put on the finishing touch.

A little "fuck you" from the five of us to the NYPD.