Sunday, 24 January 2021

What Would Riker Do?



The Beard is an 
Ancient and Proud Tradition.




RIKER :

You get some rest? 


PICARD :

Oh, I tried. I'm worried about My Pilot. 

That he didn't make it. 


RIKER :

What have you gotten yourself into, Jean-Luc? 

Can you tell me? 


PICARD :

No. I never wanted you to get involved in any of this, Will. 

Coming here was a desperate impulse. 

I regret it already. 


RIKER :

Copy that. 

I'll stick to making pizza. 

I'm just thinking how great it would be if Ignorance of Danger was all it took to keep it away from The People We Love. 

he smiles, as the tears begin to whell up inside of him ]


PICARD :

That's not what I was saying. 


RIKER :

[ He sniffs and shakes it off -- back to Business ]

Smell that. Antarean basil. 

Grows like weeds around here. 

Everything does. 

The Soil has regenerative powers, 

which, is why we came here, of course. 


[ He spots his daughter, exiting the house with her new friend in tow ]


Wild Girl of The Woods! 


KESTRA TROI-RIKER,

The Wild Girl of The Woods :

I'm taking her to see The Garden. 


RIKER :

Ah. Allamalan val peresta o manal. 


Dr. SOJII ASHA :

Vo peresta melinĂ s andlif. 


KESTRA TROI-RIKER,

The Wild Girl of The Woods :

She read Thad's Viveen dictionary. 

All of it, in, like, two minutes. 


RIKER :

Two minutes? That thing's 300 pages long. 

[ Gives the teenage newcomer his attention ]

Hmm. We haven't met, Soji.

[ Offers her his hand, covered in flour.

I'm Kestra's Dad. Will. 


Dr. SOJII ASHA :

Hello, Will. 


RIKER :

Hi. 


PICARD : 

Commander Riker and I served together on the USS Enterprise. 

[ TWO of Them, actually. But who's counting? ]


KESTRA TROI-RIKER,

The Wild Girl of The Woods :

And you were The Greatest Captain ever, I heard. 


RIKER :

[ Not embarrassed, by this - ]

The Greatest Captain ever

Where'd you get that nonsense?


KESTRA TROI-RIKER,

The Wild Girl of The Woods :

From you.


RIKER :

From me? Well, I must have been drinking at the time. 

Could you tell your mom we could use some more tomatoes. 

[ Give Sojii his attention once more - bows in courtesy ]

Nice to meet you. 


PICARD :

Speaking of drinking, may I? 


RIKER :

Please. 


PICARD :

[ He pours and takes a glass of wine from the bottle on The Table. ] 

Thank you. 

RIKER :

So, I'm just gonna speculate 

and Say Out Loud what I've been Saying in My Brain. 

You don't have to tell me anything

How's that sound? 

[ This man is a Poker Player par excellence. ]


You're worried about cloaks. 

That says Romulans. 

And the level of anxiety and fear for our safety, tells me Tal Shiar


Next, you're not the one that's on the run, 

it's her


But Why? 


What has poor Soji done to incur their wrath? 

Could it have anything to do with the fact... 

That she's clearly an android? 


And not just any android. 

I'd recognize that head tilt anywhere

Kid's got Data in her DNA. 

And that's why you're here. 


How am I doing? 


PICARD :

Not bad, for a pizza chef. 


RIKER :

Now I understand why you wanted to keep it a secret. 

Classic Picard arrogance. 

You get to make the decisions 

about who gets to take the chances and who doesn't, 

and who's in The Loop, and who's Out of The Loop. 


And, naturally, 

it always ends up with you

Well... That's fine, 

on the bridge of your starship, Captain. 


But you're dealing with a teenager now, more or less. 

That can be an extremely humbling experience. 

Frankly... I'm not sure you're up to it


PICARD :

Perhaps I'm not


RIKER :

There you go. 

Baby steps. 


PICARD :

Baby steps.




The poker scene was added to the script when it was running short.


[Riker's quarters]

(the poker game is in full swing, and Beverly is dealing)


WORF: 

Commander, is it your intention to continue to grow your beard?


LAFORGE: 

Actually, I'm not sure yet. 

Why, Worf?


WORF: 

I am just asking.


CRUSHER: 

Seven card stud, one-eyed jacks are wild.


RIKER: 

Frankly, Geordi, I like the beard.


LAFORGE: 

Thank you, Commander.


CRUSHER: 

You know, I have always been a little suspicious of Men with Beards.


WORF: 

Why is that?


CRUSHER: 

I don't know. 

It's as if they're trying to hide something.

[ horrible and disfiguring scarring acquired during wars, dueling, hunting and fighting, usually. ]


RIKER: 

Hide? Don't be ridiculous, Doctor. 

The Beard is an Ancient and Proud Tradition.


LAFORGE: 

Some of the most distinguished Men in History have worn beards, Doctor.


CRUSHER: 

I know. But after the razor was invented I think beards became mostly a fashion statement.


WORF: 

I'm not concerned with Fashion

To a Klingon, 

A Beard is a Symbol of Courage.


RIKER: 

I think it's a Sign of Strength.


CRUSHER: 

Sure, and of course, 

Women can't grow beards.


LAFORGE: 

Doctor, it sounds to me like you feel beards are nothing more than an affectation.


CRUSHER: 

I do. But there's nothing wrong with that. 

I mean, women wear makeup and nail polish. 

I just think it's time you men admitted it.


RIKER: 

My beard is not an affectation.


CRUSHER: 

Oh? Well then you wouldn't mind shaving it off.


RIKER: 

I could lose it in a minute. 

I've just gotten used to it.


CRUSHER: 

Okay, then why don't we up the stakes a little? 

And if I win, all off you shave your beards off.


LAFORGE: 

Wait a minute, wait a minute. 

What if you lose? 

What are you going to give up?


CRUSHER: 

I'm open for suggestions.


RIKER: 

Well, I've always wanted to see you as a brunette.


CRUSHER: 

Oh, I did that once when I was thirteen. 

I couldn't change back fast enough.


RIKER : 

That makes me even more curious....!


CRUSHER : 

Fine. If one of you wins, 

I become a brunette. Are we on?


LAFORGE: 

Yeah, yeah, we'll take that bet.


CRUSHER : 

Looks like you have the hand to beat, Commander.


LAFORGE: 

Two hundred.


CRUSHER: 

I'm in two hundred.


RIKER:

Geordi.


PICARD : 

This is the Captain. 

We have arrived at the Tyran system. 

All senior staff to the Bridge.


CRUSHER: 

Wait!


RIKER: 

Sorry, you heard the Captain. 

Duty calls. I guess we'll have to do this some other time.




Jonathan Frakes commented

"It was a little heavy on technobabble, but all things considered I think that show came off quite well." 

However, he was disappointed that there was no callback to the poker scene at the end of the episode. 

"We should have seen the result of the bet the characters made. 

Either Gates [McFadden] should have been a brunette or we should have been sitting in the chair about to be shaved. 


I don't know why they would lay it out as a red herring and not have it pay off in some way – 

as if no one was watching the show."

The Hidden Princess



“I’ve been trapped inside a Sentient Cave!

You ever been trapped in Sentient Cave?

It’s a DARK PLACE That KNOWS Things..!!”






She’s The Captain’s Daughter AND The Admiral’s Daughter — and because she’s The Captain’s Daughter, they •can’t• get rid of her.....

You can banish a wayward son —
A banished daughter, without support, will quickly lapse into prostitution.

You HAVE to Deal with Her Rebellion.



You can easily organize The Evidence to suggest that there is an Aeon of Horus occurring now. Where Systems are being taken-down, where everything’s being Questioned and Audited, and The Past is subject to Major Revision. 


So, there’s also some fun to be had in thinking “Ok, if this is actually playing out in some symbolic fashion, then what might the Aeon of Ma’at look like, artistically?’

And to me it looks like the rise of marginalized voices, it looks like more women coming into the discourse. It looks like trans people coming into the discourse. It looks like all the opportunities for groups who were disempowered by the Patriarchy, who couldn’t speak before to have their say.

Ma’at – What would her signature disease be? Well it mightbe a distributed network, a viral malady that could attack All of Humanity. What would happen if She emptied The Houses of The Old Gods as a Show of Possibility? 

You remember at the height of the first lockdown, all the churches were empty, all the sports stadiums were empty, all the mosques were empty, all the temples were empty. So, the Dad god had nowhere to go.


In Britain, I know, and I’m sure in America, there was a strange uprising of praise for care workers. People would go out every Thursday here and bang on pots and pans and basically thank the nurturing spirt, this caring spirit, for its very existence. It was a very religious, ritualistic thing that we were all doing. That’s Ma’at right there. 


Then there’s Mother Nature with hurricanes tearing down borders, storms ravaging everyone’s homes. It all suddenly makes sense in a new context if you use the filter of Ma’at to look at The World. 

For me, I’ve found some creative applications for it, like in Brave New World and the Wonder Woman comic that I’ve done.


Let’s talk about Magick. How does one get better at it?

GM: By doing it on a regular basis! It’s like a martial art or a musical talent. 

If you dedicate yourself to Learning and Practice, if you read other magician’s accounts, if you Pay Attention, then you start to notice details that the less engaged will miss and this allows you to do things that other people may regard as magical or even supernatural. 


Just like a stage conjurer, or a great guitarist, or a gifted actor or artist can do. It’s just about really paying attention and Doing The Work to see What Happens. 

It’s just a way of looking at things in a fresh light and then working with this augmented version of reality in ways that can appear supernatural. 


One of Magic’s main attractions involves bringing things Into Being, from the conception or thought all the way to solid materiality. 

Making The Insubstantial tangible.



What advice do you have for the magicians out there who have a story to tell and want to storm the reality studio?

GM: Tell a different story. Tell a fresh story that speaks to its times and the people around you. A story that offers possibilities, exit strategies, rather than apocalypse and ruin. I can’t see that there’s anything else…

In the Wonder Woman book I’m doing, for instance, I’ve actively avoided writing the boy hero story that’s so ubiquitous as to seem inescapable —  the familiar story of the One, the champion, the Joseph Campbell monomyth thing that drives so many Hollywood movies and YA stories. We’ve seen it. The Lion King. The callow youth loses mom or dad, or his comfortable place in the tribe, and he has to fight his way back to save the kingdom from its corrupt old leader, before claiming the captive princess and becoming the new king and… ad infinitum. The Circle of Life if it only applied to boys. I thought, where is the mythic heroine’s story? In Ishtar Rising, Wilson talks about the myth of Inanna, and how she goes down into Hell and has to give up everything of herself to gain the wisdom and experience she can bring back to her tribe. Privileging the network rather than the sovereign individual.

And so, as I thought about the differences between the hero’s and the heroine’s journey, it gave me a bunch of different modes to work in. Finding ways to avoid telling the boy hero story again was quite liberating. It just gave me a bunch of new ideas, an interesting new way of telling stories that didn’t rely on the framework of the hero’s journey that Campbell talks about.

Playing the devil’s advocate here. Today there is a lot of fervor around identity, and there is one strong of thought that people can never truly understand what it is like walking in the shoes of others. Some may ask why a white man would seek to tell the story of a woman, from her perspective, instead of just sticking to what he knows, being a man. 

How authentically real is that character or story, etc.?


GM: It’s important to air these feelings for debate. I must admit, with all respect, that I completely disagree with the idea that we cannot understand one another.

Firstly, there’s a major obvious problem about coming at things from this perspective — if fundamentally, we cannot truly know or have any meaningful opinion on what it feels like to be X, then we may as well stop listening to anything anyone else has to say about their personal experience, on the basis that it can only be irrelevant to our specific lives!

If I can never truly understand you without walking in your shoes and vice versa, what’s the point of listening or talking to anyone about our experience? What’s the point of writing stories, or protesting, or making art if experience cannot by its nature be communicated and understood by anyone who has not shared the experience of the artist, or the writer?

I think we all know it doesn’t really work that way in the real world. We don’t need to be a thing to have some understanding of how it operates. People can be great veterinarians without personally experiencing the day-to-day inner lives of dogs and cats. I can read Solzhenitsyn and shed empathic tears for the inmates of the Gulag without having to reprise their exact experience.

To think otherwise might be, I suspect, a symptom of narcissism painted into its inevitable corner, its private echo chamber – destructive, divided, atomized, individualistic to the point of self-abnegation – and indicative of late stage Osiris pathology.

And you know, we actually do understand one another in so many ways. We can imagine what it’s like to live someone else’s life –— or we can have our imaginations enflamed by well-told tales of other people’s lives and thrill to the ways they resonate exactly with our own lived experience. As a writer, I know this to be true.

We’ve been observing one another’s behavior and drawing conclusions since the dawn of humanity. People aren’t so complicated or new that the basic functions remain a mystery. All our plays, poems, songs and stories are a record of our attempts to understand ourselves and one another. The fact that Greek drama or Shakespeare still speaks to us is evidence that basic human nature has remained fairly consistent for thousands of years.

We figured one another out a long, long time ago.

And ultimately, I’ll say again, we are all the same organism. What we’re seeing is ring fingers fighting with thumbs, eyelashes screaming that eyebrows can never understand them! To point that out is probably an anathema in this current time of narcissistic inflation but it will be understood as a fact of nature in the end.

Maybe I’m wrong and we’re all fucked because humans are a kind of cancer-creature and our only purpose is to destroy each other and all other lifeforms on our planet… there’s still time for Agent Smith to be proved right!

I think everyone should have to imagine what it’s like to be someone else. We can all learn from one other but that means communicating; that means starting with the assumption we do have a common basis for genuine understanding even if our specific circumstances can never be repeated or totally understood by anyone other than ourselves. We all hurt, we all feel joy, we all get turned on, or scared. We all experience loss, and lack of self-worth and feel badly treated by the world at times.

And I understand why everyone should talk and tell stories from their own position you know but it’s also very useful – and a major human talent –  to imagine how other people feel and consider how the world might look through their eyes.  

And you do that by staying informed, listening to voices even when you disagree with them –—and by employing empathy and imagination to put yourself in their place as best as you’re able.

These are difficult times. I’m not a guru. I don’t know what to say to make it all better. There’s seven in a half billion people and it often seems they all fucking hate each other! Yet they all want everyone else to agree with their tiny, restricted, localized points of view. And they’ve all got a piece of ground to defend against perceived foes. I get it, but ultimately, we’re all one thing, one massive organism that’s going through difficult growing pains at the moment, so maybe we need to start thinking about what makes us alike, rather than different.

I hope so

GM: Well, this is part of the boiling process. Capitalist consumer culture has clearly reached its limits and we either advance to a more efficient, stable, less suicidal and aggressive engagement with other people and our environment or we go extinct as a species, taking all the whales and tigers and gorillas with us, before we even figured out how to talk to them and hear their stories! There are few options remaining.

The current questioning, the judgmental audit of where we are and how we got here, is a Horus thing. We can only hope we sublimate from here via Ma’at into something more nurturing and sustainable.

It is a hot moment. Temperatures are rising, Artic ice caps are melting at an alarming rate, and people may be unconsciously registering all that, and doing a horrible job at it. Instead of dealing with one’s own sense of panic, constriction, and fear it looks like many people are just running hot.

GM: I feel like every word we say is now a potential indictment, you know. The last malignant thrashing of the passing Aeon of Osiris. The echoes of the Inquisition, accusations of ‘wrongthink’, the return of Original Sin, the demonic glee taken in any stumble or falter from the approved path seems almost mediaeval. It’s terrifying. The potential for misunderstanding is almost infinite and its almost fated that we will struggle to abide by rules that grow ever more authoritarian and specific every day. Again, all that feels to me like the last ferocious attempts at asserting its fading power by the Osiris energy of the last 2000 years, now gone rotten and unsustainable but trying harder to keep everything and everybody under increasingly deranged levels of control in every area of our lives.

Writers and artists can find more reasons to stop their expression than ever before it seems. The voice of criticism and judgement is easier to find these days, just doom scroll through various social media sites and it’s all over the place.

GM: I regard it all as new input. As tough as it is, there’s an excitement. It’s making me think, it’s making me question myself and my assumptions, it’s making me write different things. I love ideas that challenge my thinking — even if I don’t agree with them in the end.

 

What are your thoughts on Simulation Theory these days?

GM: I was reading New Scientist recently and one of the correspondents on the letters page threw out this random idea that really resonated with me.  The writer was saying that if we live in a simulation then perhaps the world in the past was not as detailed or as high fidelity as it we experience it now! There have been upgrades, developments. In computer game terms, think of the difference between Space Invaders and Red Dead Redemption 2!

And I thought, wow, wouldn’t that be funny if, you know, those medieval painters with the flat landscapes and no perspective, what if they were accurately representing an earlier, more simplistic iteration of our simulated reality? What if they were simply portraying what the world actually looked like in the early stages of the simulation! What if these artists were recording what they saw and that’s how it looked?

Suddenly I saw the history of art in a whole new light! I thought how cool it would be if the cave paintings at Lascaux represented caveman reality perfectly – that’s how the simulated world really looked in an early development of the simulation when we were all just stick figures with antlers and the animals were sketchy semi-abstracts…

I love that idea; that the simulation is becoming more complex and well-rendered as it goes along – and we can see where it’s been.

It almost seems like it will become harder to break the Matrix as it becomes more refined, nuanced and easier to mistake for reality. It is interesting looking at the Simulation theory with the idea of calling it a metaphor for the same thing that the Gnostics came up with.

GM: Yeah, the idea that the universe is a counterfeit created not by god but by some sort of underling of god… that was the gnostic idea. It’s not so much about breaking the Matrix, I feel it’s more about learning to work with it. In the movie, once Neo figures out how it works, he becomes a magician, a superhero. The counterfeit world in the movie seems much more fun than the real one.

 Can magic be a useful tool for navigating VR and AR in IRL?


GM: Yeah, because magic is just about adding meaning or enchantment to the environment and to your life. Magic spices up everything; it’s like hot sauce! Once you add magic, the universe comes to life and starts to dance with you. If you choose to be an exploiter, a black magician, it’s more like a lap dance but otherwise it’s a tango! As I’ve said before, it’s easy to add magic to things. If you decide a certain stone could use some magic power, then carry it with you long enough and it will become first a good luck talisman and will finally accrue the significance and meaning of a Holy Grail if it’s given enough time and attention. So, the more meaning you can add to experience, the more magical it will seem. It’s not difficult or ‘occult’ at all. Magic makes everything more exciting, rich and alive and that’s its job. The more magic you can create around something the more special your interaction with it will feel. 



Nature Will Be Served




DRACULA :
You're withholding information.
I'm giving you everything.

Blood is Lives.

Everything is in The Blood, Zoe, 
if you know How to READ it.
Do you know How to Read it?

VAN HELSING :
You couldn't read mine.
You choked on it.

DRACULA :
I remember the flavour, though.
Um... what IS that?

You're...
You're fast, you're clever, driven.
But driven by what?

Agatha was always trying 
to Save Everybody, but you...

You hold yourself apart.

Friendless.
Loveless.
Childless.

Compromised. 
Corrupt, even.

Ahh!
Zoe Helsing, there's 
a Shadow on Your Heart.

I've sampled this bitter bouquet before, 
and these days, I believe, you call it...

SHE HISSES

..cancer.

That's why your blood was poison to me.
You're Dying

Saturday, 23 January 2021

This Makes Everything Different, Boy.




"The Old Man's Dead.

I'm Sorry."


“There’s this Simpsons episode, and Homer downs a quart of Mayonnaise and Vodka. 
 
And Marge says, 'You know, you shouldn't really do that.’ 
 
And Homer says, ‘That’s a problem for FutureHomer. I’m sure glad I’m not that guy.’ 
 
It’s so ridiculous and comical. But, ok, you see we have to grapple with that.  
 
The You That’s Out There in The Future is sort of like Another Person, and so figuring out How to Conduct Yourself Properly in relationship to Your Future Self isn’t much different than figuring out How to Conduct Yourself in relationship to Other People. 
 
Then we can expand the constraints. Not only does the interpretation that you extract have to protect you from suffering and give you an aim, but it has to do it in a way that’s iterable, so it works across time, and then it has to work in The Presence of Other People, so that you can cooperate with them and compete with them in a way that doesn't make you suffer more. 
 
People are Not That Tolerant. They have Choices
 
They don’t have to hang around with you; They can hang around with any one of these other primates. 
 
So if you don’t act properly, at least within certain boundaries, you’re just cast aside. 

People are broadcasting information at you, all the time, about How You Need to Interpret The World, so They can tolerate being around you. 
 
And you need that because, socially isolated, you’re insane, and then you're dead. No one can tolerate being alone for any length of time. 
 
We can’t retain Our Own Sanity without continual feedback from Other People. 
 
It’s too damned complicated.  
 
You’re constrained by Your Own Existence, and then you're constrained by The Existence of Other People, and then you're also constrained by The World.  
 

"... We can't just ignore him."

 

Boy, Wonder "....?"
Why doesn't he tell Us some Great Secret or show Us A New Tool or A Weapon same as Shining Ones are supposed to?

SURLY :
When he speaks, it's like a flowing River.

Not Words at all.

I say We call him 
Man of Bats.


Boy, Wonder "....?"
...if Old Man's Dead, who'll 
teach me The Songs?

How will I ever Be a Man?

Da-Man :
This makes EVERYTHING Differnt, Boy.

Take His Belt, see if he follows.

We'll find out if Shining Ones get HUNGRY.




"And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat."




"Oh, yes—women share food. That’s a very strange thing, because most creatures don't share food. If you’re a wolf, and you bring down something in a hunt, you eat your fill. The dominant creatures eat their fill, and if there’s some left over, the subordinates get to eat, too. But that isn’t how human beings work: we share food. And you can imagine how that evolved: lots of female creatures share food with their offspring—you don't need much of a twist in that, from an evolutionary perspective, until you start to share food with not only your offspring, say, but with your mate. That’s another way that you entice a mate. It’s like, we’re going to be better together than alone. Well, that’s the offering of the fruit. What’s the self-conscious part? Well, here's part of the bargain: I'm going to wake you up, partly because you need to be woken up, and partly because I have this infant that needs some damn care. So you bloody well better be awake, and part of the bargain is that I’ll offer you some food. In response, we’re going to make a team, and that’s the human deal. That’s why we’re, more or less, monogamous, and why we, more or less, pair bond, and why something approximating marriage is a human universal. It’s cross-cultural.


You can find exceptions, but who the hell cares? Really, who cares? You look at the vast pattern…Well, and the price we pay for having large brains is that we’re very dependent, and it takes a long time for us to get programmed. Because of that, we need relatively stable family bonding, and that's basically what we’ve evolved. You don't get that without making men self-conscious. Male creatures—why not impregnate and run? I mean, why the hell not? Really, no kidding. That’s the thing to think about: it is not why men abandon their children that's the mystery: it’s why any men ever stick with them. That’s the mystery. You just have to look at the animal kingdom. The simplest and easiest thing is always the most likely thing to occur. It’s the exception—long-term commitment—that needs explanation.


Section VI

TIMESTAMP

"She took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. And the eyes of both of them were opened—" implying that before that they were closed "—and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons."


That’s so interesting. Their eyes are opened, which indicated that they weren’t to begin with. Whatever God created to begin with was kind of blind, but not—blind in some strange way. They weren’t wandering around in the garden and bumping into trees. It was some sort of metaphysical blindness that’s been removed by whatever has just happened. Whatever’s just happened also made them realize that they were naked. Ok, so what sort of eye-opening is that? What does it mean to realize that you’re naked? It means to realize that you’re vulnerable. That’s what people discovered. It’s like, uh oh. We can be hurt.


So you’re a zebra in a herd of zebras, and there’s a bunch of lions around there laying on the grass. You don't care. Those are laying-down lions. Laying-down lions are no problem. It’s standing-up, hunting lions that are the problem. You're not smart enough to figure out that laying-down lions turn into standing-up, hunting lions, so you’re not, like, building a fort to keep the lions out. You’re just mindlessly eating grass. You’re not very awake, but that's not what happens to human beings. Human beings wake up, and they think, we’re vulnerable—permanently. It’s never going away. It’s the recognition of that eternal vulnerability.


What happens? The first thing they do is clothe themselves. Well, what happens when you're naked, and when you need protecting from the world? You're all wearing clothes. Why? Well, we’ve been doing that for a very, very long period of time. It’s tens of thousands of years, at minimum. In fact, you can track, more or less, when clothing developed by doing DNA testing on the kind of lice that cling to clothes rather than hair. We have a pretty good idea of when clothing emerged, and of different types, as well. But the point is that they’re naked, and they think that’s not so good; we’re vulnerable. Their eyes are opened enough so that they become self-conscious, and they recognize their own vulnerability. The first thing they do—the first step of culture—is to protect themselves with something from the world. You protect yourself from the world, and from the prying eyes of other people.

This is a book by Lynne Isbell: Why We See So Well. "From the temptation of Eve to the venomous murder of the mighty Thor, the serpent appears throughout time and cultures as a figure of mischief and misery. The worldwide prominence of snakes in religion, myth, and folklore underscores our deep connection to the serpent-but why, when so few of us have firsthand experience? The surprising answer, this book suggests, lies in the singular impact of snakes on primate evolution. Predation pressure from snakes, Lynne Isbell tells us, is ultimately responsible for superior vision and large brains of primates-and for a critical aspect of human evolution."


That was tested recently. Psychologists have known for a long time that people can learn to fear snakes, but they discovered in primates a set of neurons—Pulvinar neurons—which are specialized. "Pulvinar neurons reveal neurobiological evidence of past selection for rapid detection of snakes." That's from 2013. So the snake definitely woke us up.

Color vision as an adaptation to fruit eating in primates. It’s not by accident that women make themselves look like ripe fruit to be attractive to men, right? And that’s also not sociocultural in origin.

"And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden."


That’s interesting. What's the implication? Prior to being woken up—prior to recognizing nakedness and vulnerability—there is no reason for man and woman to hide from God. Why are they hiding from God? They're naked and vulnerable. 


Ok, so think about this — think about this: 

Imagine that you have the capacity to live truthfully, courageously, and forthrightly. Just imagine that, and then imagine why you might not do that. 

How about fear and shame? How would that work? Well, let’s say that the idea of living forthrightly, truthfully, and courageously is analogous—given what we already know about these stories—to walking with God in the garden. What stops people from doing that? What stops people from hiding? Well, it’s their own recognition of their own inadequacies. They look at themselves, and they think, how in the world is a creature such as I, with everything that’s wrong with me, supposed to live properly in this world?


What do you hide from? Well, you go home, and you sit on your bed for five minutes and ask yourself what you have hidden from in your life. Man, you’ll have books of knowledge reveal themselves to you in your imagination. Well, why are you hiding? It’s no bloody wonder you're hiding. It’s no wonder that people hide. That's the thing that's so terrifying about this story. We woke up and we thought, oh my God, look at this place. There is some serious trouble here, and we’re in some serious trouble, and we’re not what we could be. And so we hide, and that's what the story says: people woke up, became self-conscious, recognized their own vulnerability, and that made them hide from manifesting their divine destiny. It’s like, yea. That’s exactly right.

I love this part of the story. It’s so funny, and we could use a little humor at this point. 

"And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, "Where art thou?" 

And Adam said, "I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked." 


So, in case there was any doubt about that, that's why. 


"And God said, 


"Who told thee that thou wast naked? 

Did you eat of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that you should not eat?" This is where Adam shows himself in all his post-fall, heroic glory: "And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat."


So that's man. Again, there's a modern feminist interpretation of the story of Adam and Eve that makes the claim that Eve was portrayed as the universal bad guy of humanity for disobeying God and eating the apple. It’s like, fair enough. It looks like she slipped up, and then she tempted her husband, and that makes her even worse—although, he was foolish enough to immediately eat, so it just means that she was a little more courageous than him and got there first.


It’s Adam who comes across as really one sad creature in this story, as far as I'm concerned. Look at what he manages in one sentence: First of all, it wasn’t him; it was the woman. Second, he even blames God! It wasn’t just the woman—and you gave her to me! "And she gave me of the tree, and I did eat." It’s like, hey, Adam’s all innocent—except now, not only is he naked, disobedient, cowardly, and ashamed, he’s also a snivelling, backbiting fink. He rats her out like the second he gets the opportunity, and then he blames God. That’s exactly right. You go online, and you read the commentary that men write about women when they're resentful and bitter about women. It’s so interesting. It’s like, it’s not me: it’s those bitches. It’s not me: it’s them—and not only that, but what a bloody world this is in which they exist. It’s exactly the same thing. It’s exactly the same thing, and it is absolutely pathetic.


"And the Lord God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat." Well, at least she has a bloody excuse. First of all, it’s a snake. We already found out that they're subtle. Second, it turns out that the damn snake is Satan himself, and he’s rather treacherous. So the fact that she got tangled up in his mess is, well, problematic, but it’s a hell of a lot better excuse than Adam has.

"And the Lord God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life"—and snakes, by the way, are lizards that lost their legs, just so you know—"And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel."

I love these pictures. They’re so smart. And again, strip the religious context from them and just look at them for a second. What do you see? You see the eternal mother holding her infant away from a snake. See it, down there? Crocodile, snake—everything predatory that's been after us for like 60 million years. The reason we’re here is because of that. That’s why it’s a sacred image.


This one I like even better. Down there there's something like the moon, and then there's a reptile down there that Eve’s stepping on. This is really old, and I showed you this before, but I think it’s so cool. She’s coming out of this thing that’s like a hole in the sky. It indicates the eternal recurrence of this figure. It’s an archetype. The potential out of which she is emerging is all musical instruments, back here. And so what the artist is representing is the great, patterned complexity of being, and the emergence of the protective mother from that background, protecting the infant, eternally, against predation. It’s like, how can that not be a holy image? If you don't think it’s a holy image, then there isn’t something wrong with the image: there's something wrong with the perceiver.

"Unto the woman he said"—God’s just outlining the consequences of this, right now. It’s like, ok, well, now you’ve gone and done it: you’ve woken up. This is what's going to happen—"I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee."


It doesn’t say he should. It says he will. And why "in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children?" Well, when you develop a brain that big, so that you can see, it’s not that easy to give birth anymore. And then you produce something that’s dependent beyond belief—that’s one of the things that you could say dooms you to precisely this. So that's Eve’s punishment for waking up. And Adam, "Because thou hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life." What's that? It’s the invention of work.


"Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to three; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field."


It’s the invention of work. What do people do that animals don't? Work. What does work mean? It means you sacrifice the present for the future. Why do you do that? Because you know that you're vulnerable, and you're awake. From here on in, from this point, there's no return to unconscious paradise. I don't care how many problems you solved so that today’s ok. You’ve got a lot problems coming up, and no bloody matter how much you work, you're never going to work enough to solve them. All you're going to do from here on in is be terrified of the future, and that's the price of waking up. That’s the end of paradise, and that’s the beginning of history, and that’s how that story goes.

"In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. And Adam called his wife’s name Eve; because she was the mother of all living."

"Unto Adam also and to his wife did the Lord God make coats of skins, and clothed them"—that's William Blake, by the way—"And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:"

"Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life."

One more thing, and then we’ll stop. Adam and Eve are tempted by the snake; they eat the fruit; they wake up; they realize they're naked; they realize that they’re vulnerable; they realize the future; they realize they're gonna die; they realize they’re gonna have to work; they realize the difficulty in conception, and the fall of humankind from unconscious paradise. Ok. That makes sense. What about the knowledge of good and evil? What in the world does that mean?


The Mesopotamians believed that human beings were made out of the blood of Kingu, who was the worst monster that Tiamat, the Goddess of chaos, could imagine and then produce. So their idea was that there as something deeply, deeply, deeply, demonically flawed about humanity. That's their conception, and it’s out of that same milieu that these stories emerge.


So what does opening your eyes and realizing your vulnerability have to do with the knowledge of good and evil? I thought about that. I really thought about that. I gotta tell you, I thought about that for like 20 years, because I knew there was something there that I could not put together. At the same time, I was reading things. I'm going to tell you something truly awful, and so if you need a trigger warning, you're getting one. Believe me, I do not give trigger warnings lightly. I'm going to tell you something you’ll never forget.


This is what Unit 731 used to do in China. It’s a Japanese unit during the 2nd World War. As far as I can tell, they did the most horrific things that were done to anyone during World War II, and that's really something. So this is what they did: They took their prisoners and put them in a position so that their arms would freeze solid. Then they would take them outside and pour hot water over their arms. And then they would repeat that until the flesh came off the bones. They were doing that to investigate the treatment of frostbite for soldiers. You can look up Unit 731 if you want to have nightmares. So that's Unit 731. That’s human beings. Someone thought that up, and then people did it. What's knowledge of good and evil? Here’s the key, man: You know you’re vulnerable. No other animal knows that. You know what hurts you, and now that you know what hurts you, you can figure out what hurts someone else. And as soon as you know what hurts someone else, and you can use that, you have the knowledge of good and evil.


Well, it’s a pretty good trick that the snake pulled, because it doesn't look like it’s exactly the sort of thing that we might have wanted if we had known the consequences. But as soon as a human being is self-conscious and aware of his own nakedness, then he has the capacity of evil, and that's introduced into the world right at that point.


Here's the rest of the story: So there's the snake, right, and you’re some tree-dwelling primate. The snake eats primates, and that sucks, so let’s watch out for the damn snakes. Then your brain grows, and you think, wait a minute. There’s not just snakes—there's where snake live. Why don't we just get the hell out of the tree, hunt down the snakes, and get rid of them? Those are sort of like potential snakes, and so the snake becomes potential snake. It’s the same circuit that you're using to do this thinking. You get rid of the damn snakes. It’s like Saint Patrick chasing them out of Ireland. No more snakes. Everything is paradise. It’s like, no, no, no. That’s not how it works, at all.


You’ve got human snakes. You’re a tribe, you’ve got tribal enemies, and you’ve got to defend yourself against the human snakes, right? Maybe your empire expands, and you get rid of all the human snakes. Then what happens? They start to grow and develop inside. You get rid of all the external enemies and make a big city, and all of a sudden there's enemies that pop up inside.


The snake isn’t just the snake in the garden, and the snake isn’t just the possible snake, and the snake isn’t just the snake that's your enemy. The snake is your friend, because your friend can betray you. And then it’s even worse than that, because you can betray you. So even if you get rid of all the outside snakes, you’ve got an inside snake, and God only knows what it’s up to.


That's why the bloody Christians associated the snake in the garden of Eden with Satan. It’s unbelievably brilliant, because you gotta think, what's the enemy? Well, it’s the snake, and fair enough. But, you know, that's good if you're a tree-dwelling primate. If you're a sophisticated human being with six million years of additional evolution, and you're really trying to solve the problem of what it is that's the great enemy of mankind…Well, it’s the human propensity for evil, right? That’s the figure of Satan. That’s what that figure means—just like there's a logos that’s the truth that speaks order out of chaos at the beginning of time, there’s an antithetical spirit—the hostile brother. That’s Cain to Abel, which we’ll talk about next week—that's doing exactly the opposite. It’s motivated by absolutely nothing but malevolence and the willingness to destroy, and it has every reason for doing so. That’s what’s revealed in the next story, in Cain and Abel: the first glimmerings of the antithetical spirit outside of this strange insistence by the Christian mystics, let’s say, on the identity between the snake in the garden of Eden and the author of all evil himself.