Philosophy






Any change of cultural direction has, of course, philosophical implications.




The Upper Class


Are Role Models Important?

Has the time finally arrived for us to reconsider the advantages and disadvantages of a class structure in society? Have we now the objectivity provided by decades, no, centuries of denigration of the upper class, to consider what's lost and what's gained with and without an upper class.
It goes without saying that a society must dispense with a feature, when it can no longer remember its reasons for creating it in the first place. It appears to be dead weight and no doubt many of societie's creations do turn into just that. If it is not so much dead weight, the problems that led to its creation will reappear and it can be re instituted.
So, what problems do we have that flow from the lack of an upper class? What were the gifts to society, provided by the upper class at great expense to the rest of society?
The US is the best place to inspect this question. It was the first country to be established with the notion of the classless society in mind. It was a new country and therefore lacked the need for the destruction of an existing upper class, as was the case in other places such as France and Russia. The upper class is therefore more dead here than anywhere else. On the other hand, the immigrants from Europe brought with them expectations based on their experience of the upper class in the old country, and we therefore retain traces of those expectations, but they are fading fast.
The upper class, having no need to spend mental energy on material needs, has time to develop other aspects of their personalities. They can concentrate on concepts like the ideal form of human development and relationships. If we look back on the art of the Western World, we can see manifestations of those ideals. The aristocracy of Europe in the eighteenth century projected those ideals and we can observe them in the art of those times.
For instance, they chose to display themselves in elaborate and formal clothing. They were very concerned with formality in etiquette, not only at state functions, but also in their every day life. They were distinguished by their intense concern for family values and religion. And their concern with honor was an overriding preoccupation. Their great failing was their tendency to deny class movement. Having attained distinction in these areas, they were unwilling to allow the lower classes admittance into their society except when forced.
It is also clear when reading a book like Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy, that there was great desire in the lower classes to break into their society. Certainly, one of the motives, perhaps the greatest motive, was to acquire financial security, but from Anthony Trollope's books there appeared to be other motives as well.
The upper class seemed to supply a goal for the rest of us. They, with their well publicized life style, supplied a model for us to emulate. A dream, towards which we could aim in the development of our own lives. In our dissatisfaction with our own families, we could dress as nearly like them as possible, we could pretend their manners were ours, and we could adopt the honorable life and the concept of the gentleman and lady as the ideal towards which we would strive. The lessons we thus provided for our children were profound influences on their dreams and aspirations.
Now, we should look at what has transpired in our society in these areas as we have destroyed the upper class and freed people to move about within society at will. First, it would appear that we have become a goalless society. Our children wish only to successfully complete college, so that they can have as good a chance as possible at a large income. Having achieved that, what do we aim at next? Material comforts and conspicuous consumption appear to be all that society can offer.
Honor is no longer important. Success in the achievement of a high income appears to be much more important to most of us. Style in appearance and manners are seldom emphasized. This can no doubt be admired in a democratic way, but the quality of life is the big loser.
We are wont to belittle the upper class for their apparent hypocrisy, but was that all there was to it? They would appear to have been compelled to expose to the world only the image that they admired. Could it have been that this was the price society exacted from them for their comforts?
Is the freedom we prize the freedom to dismiss the honorable as a goal not worthy of our attention? Can we survive without honor? This will mean that we will have to lock our doors, distrust our neighbors, be constantly on guard against the unscrupulous, since, without honor there are no scruples. This will mean there is no need to contain our sexual desire, since we will have no concern for the pain we condemn our partner to. This will mean that we will allow any form of entertainment since we will be concerned only with our own self gratification and have no thought of the result of our own degradation on our family.
This will mean that the well being of our descendants pales into insignificance next to our desire for ecstasy.
This will mean drugs, pornography, and teenage pregnancy. This will mean jails filled to overflowing and a continuously rising crime rate. This will mean America in the late twentieth century.



Violence in America


Creativity as a Destructive Force


Violence in America and elsewhere in the Western World, is on the rise. Washington DC is now known as the murder capital of the world. Emergency rooms in all major cities are filled to overflowing on a daily basis. Murder has come from the Agatha Christie parlor games of the early part of the century to a state of daily occurrence in all cities of size in America and to the state of common occurrence elsewhere.
The causes cited are judicial softness by the right and gun control by the left. The judiciary, while not as tough as in the past, has managed to fill the jails to overflowing, while the gun lobby points out that Wyoming, with no gun control has a much smaller problem than New York, with the toughest gun controls in the country. Thus, we are doubtful about these areas as sources of the problem. They are undoubtedly symptoms, and could be related if we knew the actual source.
To understand the problem we must accept some well known attributes of sexuality. Masculinity is active (aggressive) and as we can see from God's gender, the source of creativity. I would also go further in claiming that with the bringing of masculinism to the forefront of human psychology as has been done in the West (Moses, Christianity, formal education), a positive need to create is established that must be fulfilled. A need as basic and demanding as sex or hunger.
This doesn't sound so bad at first, but that is because writers and readers know of many means of expressing creativity. But what of those without the training necessary to express it in one of the disciplines created for that purpose? What about the large segment of the population with minimal education and no outstanding physical talent? How are their needs met?
In the past, this need was met in the final recourse of creativity. The social fabric of society. Their little piece of that fabric, their family, they used as the creative medium. This, of course, required that they have authority within the family so that their creativity could be expressed. In other words, they laid down the rules by which their family operated. Most, only passed on the rules given them by their parents and religious leaders. Some few made up their own, no doubt to their eventual regret. But they established the rules for their families and that satisfied the need.
Today, due to the rise of feminism, most fathers have no authority in the family. If they attempt to make a rule, it is broken by a family recognizing their father's powerlessness. The father therefore turns to other options. The easiest answer is drugs, in which his powerlessness can be forgotten for a time. After that, gangs offer an older style society, where physical power can be manifested and guns can be used to make up for physical inadequacy, and where rules can be established and enforced.
I think the time has come to ask the hard questions of feminism. How much are we willing to pay for feminine freedom? How much are they going ask us to pay? Do we have to accept the suicide of African American masculinity?



Wake Up!


Compassion and the Law


Editor
The Daily Mississippian

Editor,
This letter is a wakeup alarm. We have had three high profile trials in recent months that have resulted in jury deliberations when no evidence, as I understand the word, was available. In both the William Kennedy Smith and Mike Tyson trials, prosecution went forward even though there was no independent evidence beyond the accusations of the complainant. In a recent decision in North Carolina in a child molestation case the only evidence was the testimony of four to seven year old children after three years of preparation by social services.
From my training at the hands of L.A. Law, I believe independent corroborative evidence is required before a case that involves one person's word against another can be can sent to the jury. Failing to provide that evidence requires the judge to rule that no case has been established and therefore a directed verdict of innocent must be the result.
In the case of very young children, their evidence has not been used in the past because of their inability to distinguish between reality and fantasy and their tendency to say what they perceive is wanted of them, for a reward (a smile).
Since judges are allowing these cases to go to jury they are effectively saying that jury opinions are valid even in the absence of evidence. This is a dangerous trend and I think it not unreasonable to conclude that these judges are politically corrupt. That is they are altering decisions based on their personal political wishes rather than adhere to the rules of evidence.
Since I am not legally trained I would like to hear from some apolitical legal scholar on this question. Political opinions wouldn't be useful here.
Let me say that I have no idea whether the accused was or was not guilty in any of these cases. I think it rather likely in at least one. But, watching people sent to jail when there is no credible independent evidence, is a chilling sight, no matter what the crime.
An independent condition has arisen at Harvard Law. A rather crass parody of The Harvard Law Review was written with reference to a murdered feminist who had been published in the Review after her death. Her article, while unfinished, criticized the American legal system for lack of compassion. This has led to the usual argument about freedom of expression except when a criticism of feminist political heroes or goals is at issue.
Harvard Law is certainly deserving of this kind of turmoil when, after appointing a political zealot like Mr. Tribe to a lifetime position at the head of the most influential law school in the U.S., it finds that same Mr. Tribe saying that something seems to be wrong with the legal system in America when this sort of thing can occur. I would suggest to him that something is wrong. We have invited anti-law persons like him into the profession, and this is the result.
Compassion, while an admirable human quality, is worthless as a tool in determining governmental policy. Since it is irrational, and produces a desire to minimize suffering, it can't be used by a rational system based on punishment for members that don't conform to the rules. Of course if you have decided to give up on civilization, then this is a suitable path to follow.
The conflict between compassion and the law goes back at least to Jesus and the Mary Magdalene episode, and probably much further. But Jesus didn't recommend destroying the legal system to allow for compassion. In fact, when this idea was suggested to him as it was repeatedly, he treated the suggester like the simpleton he was. My interpretation would be that he asked individual humans to adopt a compassionate attitude towards sinners. I wholeheartedly endorse this suggestion. However, they remain sinners. Only God can forgive them.
The recent Rodney King episode is another example of judicial failure. The videotape of police beating a man in an effort to subdue him preparatory to taking him into custody, gave the impression that the police used more force than was necessary to the task at hand. The case was brought to trial and to the dismay of many the police were acquitted. The correct question to be asked here is should the police have been brought to trial? The answer is no. The police were using tactics required of them by their profession. The only question is one of degree, therefore, since no permanent harm was done, this question could better be handled at the administrative level. The police have a wider range of latitude of action than ordinary citizens for obvious reasons. The result of taking the issue to trial has been seen. I suggest that if the officers had been reprimanded and deprived of their jobs and paychecks for a period of time, the desired result would have been obtained and no disorder would have ensued.
The question then becomes why did the trial occur? The answer surely is that the prosecutor thought the benefits outweighed the risks. What benefits? Fame and fortune for the lawyers. The final question then is: in what way can we avoid allowing publicity to distort the legal system?

Joe Schiller



Death


A Rational View of the most Crucial Issue Raised by the Bible


Paul, in first Corinthians, says "For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive." He gets this from the Garden of Eden story in the first instance, and from the gospel in the second.
This statement causes great divisions in society because we are seemingly required to believe that which all rational experience denies, that there is some sort of life after death. The response to this issue varies from those that profess and believe that our physical bodies are to be resurrected, here on earth, at some point in the future, when Christ reappears, to reincarnations of lesser and lesser substance until we reach those that conclude that what arises after death is a vague and invisible spirit that many contend inhabits our bodies when alive. Beyond that are the disbelievers.
I think we must concentrate on the first part of the statement, "as in Adam." In what sense did Adam bring death into the world?
According to the Eden story, Eve ate from the forbidden apple at the instigation of the snake and prevailed upon Adam to do the same. At that point, they realized they were naked. This is key. A new realization arrived at that moment. Therefore, we conclude that the mental state was changed. A sense of this kind of change can be had via some kinds of drugs. Mescaline, for example is used in this way by some Native American tribes. In any case, a new entity came into being in the minds of Adam and Eve. There were then two in each mind, one was the person acting out the life of each, while the other was an observer, and a critic of the actor.
We also exist in this state. We all can remember asking the question, "Why did I do that?" From this it must be concluded that the observer and critic is the entity we identify with in our mental makeup. So, this person observes the action, and in time is able to predict some occurrences. For instance, he can see that all die, and therefore concludes that the observed entity, including the observer must die. Death therefore comes into the world at that point, not existing previously, because there was no observer to see it.
We can see that animals exist in this state. None of them creates this observer within themselves and none therefore predicts the future and therefore has no notion of death. Perhaps they experience sadness at the loss of their mate, but no idea of death clouds this experience.
The second point that Paul makes is that Christ defeats death. This because he rises after death and tells us that we followers will do the same. Paul says therefore that in Christ all shall be made alive. That is to say in the future. He goes on to say that Christ will "put down all rule and all authority and power." We can say that due to the advent of the mental observer in us all, power and authority were created. Having the power to predict, we observe that two sharing the same opinion are more powerful than one, and by extension many sharing the same opinion will be much more powerful yet. So, Christ will defeat this phenomenon. He will in a word, end civilization at some time in the future. Well, nothing goes on forever, so most of us can easily see that in the natural course of events, civilization must surely die. The issue then comes down to when this might be expected, and in what sense Christ is responsible for it.
I say that masculinism, the ideology based on law, and the religion of Moses, develops into feminism when Christ arrives and tells us that, unless we are sinless, we cannot impose the penalties in the law. He thereby aquaints us with compassion, the measure of all things feminine. But, the power of masculinism abates very slowly, and continues to inspire Christians to the point of causing the rise of education and then science and then technology.
Now we see however, that technology has turned against us. If we continue our current course, we must expect the loss of many species we depend on for survival, change in the atmosphere, perhaps the weather, and many consequences we have not yet imagined. We seemingly cannot change our course because of the number of humans that exist, which continues to rise. Unless the human population can be controlled, we must expect that Paul's prophesy will be fulfilled and that it will be a consequence of Jesus' teaching.
Some may say they doubt Jesus has done us a favor, but how else can we overcome the error of Eden. All who carry the error must die or be transformed if our species is to change into one without this error. We can also say, perhaps more rationally, that, when confronted with a brain large enough to have excess energy, we found ourselves with the problem of what to do with it. We had to do something, because of boredom. The first idea that occurred was that we should discover how to exploit the contents of the world. As with many first ideas, this was a bad idea. When our population has declined enough, man will ask himself this question anew and, perhaps answer it better.



Notes on The Closing of the American Mind


Dr. Alan Bloom, in his book The Closing of the American Mind, makes it clear that we cannot expect the philosophers to come to our aid in trying to understand feminism. First, he describes what has occurred in recent years in academia, and then says that it is clear on reading the old masters that they predicted exactly what has happened. He implies that they caused it. Since philosophy is the creature of masculinism, and exists within it, it will assume that the boundaries of the masculine culture are coincident with the boundaries of the universe. It will not occur to them that there could be another cultural model with completely opposite values.
He does make one reference of interest about the conflict between masculinism and feminism. He points out that both Nietzsche and an anthropologist named Ruth Benedict identified the basic conflict between the Apollonian and Dionysian cultures. Apollo is identified as the law giver and the Sun god. Dionysius is the god of the grape and inspiration. From this it can be inferred that Apollo is the precursor of Moses, the father of masculinism. Dionysius has no obvious descendent (unless it is Timothy Leary) because we live in a masculine culture. Dionysius is the god of drugs which gives us understanding about why we have such a proclivity for drugs in our culture.



Sex and the Media


After reading in The Daily Mississippian about a woman who writes about sex, I began wondering why media productions containing a lot of sexual material are generally of entertainment value only and literature generally contains no, or very remote references to sex. I'm not saying that literature doesn't concern itself with sex, it demonstrably does, but it deals with it in a much different way. To set up a frame of reference, let us say the works of 19th century writers of fiction such as Tolstoy and Trollope are identified as literature, while TV soaps are entertainment. That is to say literature is identified with material that concerns itself with the human condition on an intellectual level, it tries to understand and represent in print the motivations of humans. Entertainment, on the other hand is interested in passing the time pleasantly, and the one aspect of life that entertains almost all is sex.
My thesis is that sexual interest is incompatible with intellectual interest. That is, as sexual interest rises, one's intellectual capacity decreases.
One can test this of course empirically, supposing one has a method of measuring expendable energy, but suppose we attempt to approach it analytically. The thesis would be true if the same energy were required for maintenance of the ego complex as that required for sexual activity. In fact one could add sports as a possible energy sink. If the same energy is required for sports as is required to maintain the ego, then intellectual activity would be expected to decline when one is expending a lot of energy running say.
Perhaps there is only one sort of expendable energy available to us and we can use it for what we will. This seems to fit experience. This would mean that intellectual activity would be noticeably more difficult as the energy requirements of sports became more intense. Obviously, at some levels one can do both. But, presumably one would do less well at catching a ball if he is thinking at the same time, and on the other hand running while studying would be expected to produce bad results. This seems to conform to experience. It seems to me that every dropped pass in football happens when the player is hearing footsteps, as they say. It is less obvious that studying while involved in other activities erodes the effort, but most would, I think agree.
So, presumably this generalization could be extended to sex. It can if sex requires the investment of significant energy. I think most would agree that it does. So, if a writer includes sexual material in his productions that are explicit enough to arouse the sexual interest, that energy will not be available to the ego or intellect to apply to the thinking process. That being the case, presumably both the writer and the reader would be less efficient intellectually when dealing with material that appeals in this way. That is to say, the writer would be less able to write about complex questions at the same time that sex was being considered at a detailed level (unless the writer was not sensitive to sexual fantasies,) while even if the writer could produce the material, average people could not appreciate it, because the complexity would be missed due to the loss of intellectual capacity in the reader.
I would say the thesis, while unproved, is demonstrated well enough to demand provisional acceptance.
This leads one to wonder at the rising level of sexual material in the media at the same time that test scores among the school aged have declined in our country. In fact one could easily question the value of sex education in the schools, if it has at the same time the effect of reducing the intellectual capacity of the students involved. Perhaps sex education should occur in some other setting.
If one can realize that masculinism is the home of intellectualism, and in fact the ego complex is itself masculine, whether it occurs in a woman or man, then the conflict that faces us becomes apparent. We wish to enhance feminine values as a country and a culture but we wish to compete in the world marketplace at the same time. We won't be able to do either as well as we could wish. I can't produce enough material in the space of a column to be convincing on this, but, we were something else before we became feminists and while we were, the growth of the university system and science occurred.



Sexuality


Sexuality can be viewed in terms of the splitting up of nothing. In order for there to be something, one must split nothing into equal and opposite pairs. Having split apart the sexes there is an attraction created. The pairs wish to be joined together again. To keep that from happening it will be necessary to form the sexes in such a way as to make recombination impossible, otherwise there is no creation. On the other hand it is necessary that procreation involve both halves so that the created being share in the completeness of the whole. So, sexual desire is not just the desire to procreate, and is not just for the pleasure of erotic experience and orgasm. At bottom it is a desire to be rejoined with one's other half.
There is a spectrum of sexuality. One can be arbitrarily far from sexually neutral. The degree of desire for reunification will be proportional to the distance one is from neutral. All things being equal, one would expect to be attracted to an opposite sex partner that is just as far from neutral on the other side.
It would appear that physical sexuality is reflected in the mental sphere. If these aspects (physical and mental) of sexuality do not coincide, unusual mixtures could result. Persons with physical attributes of one sex and mental characteristics of the other. In a word, homosexuals.



Sexual Disfunction

Can our Society be Reasonably called Sexually Disfunctional


I was recently asked by a coed why I had not written a column recently and wishing that I would. Since I have a fan out there and the issue of public support for homosexuals has arisen, I feel that this is an opportune time for such an event.
The issue of homosexuality in a civilized society is a thorny one indeed, on which idealists on both sides can reasonably disagree. However, what we are discussing is the changing of rules that have lasted for thousands of years. To think that they are meaningless and irrelevant now is at least seemingly arrogant.
I suggest that it is not unreasonable to conclude that our society can now be called sexually dysfunctional. I base this suggestion on the rising incidence of rape, child molestation, unwed motherhood, and father desertion, not to mention violence in general, especially that involving guns, which may express this problem in the Freudian sense.
These phenomena have occurred concurrently with the rise of feminism in our times. Feminists are also responsible for the effort to support gays as coequal members of society. By feminism I refer to the feminist drive for political power, not the more admirable efforts in the field of environmentalism.
During this same period the arts have emphasized reality depiction, as opposed to the representation of ideal scenes, as was more common before the modern era. This has led to more or less explicit representation of sexuality in the media.
I would like to suggest that a society that represents sex in very flattering terms in the media and also compels its females to express their independence by withholding sex for any reason they find compelling, and demands that males respect this arbitrariness is going to have sexual problems.
I would further suggest that we all ponder the physiological facts of life. Males generate sexual fluid which must be expelled from the body in some way from time to time. Females operate under no such compelling biological condition. Biology demands that the species be renewed through sexual union and we are in no position as a society to rebel against that demand. To do so would be to rebel against ourselves.
In these circumstances females can cooperate, as they once did, or we can self destruct as a society. No other result should be expected. One is reminded of the recent castration ceremony at State. Does anyone remember why this abhorrent practice is necessary? Does anyone fail to understand the nature of the demonstration?



Feelings


Comparison with theThinking Ego


The unusual feature of the human intellect, and the one that distinguishes humans from other species is the critical function. That tendency to inspect our feelings and to criticize them. For example, a woman notices an attraction to a man who she informs herself is ineligible because of his background or economic status. Discrimination, in a word. Our feelings are provided to us in a constant stream, resulting from every sensual input and every thinking reaction. Feelings are rational, since they discriminate and are comprehensible (You feel that way because...) The questions are: what is the basis on which feelings arrive in negative or positive form? Who or what is the generator of these feelings? Is the intellect capable of judging feelings?
The first answer is that feelings judge experiences on the basis of survival of the species. This is true because they emanate from the unconscious, which is not a personal possession of the ego, and therefore will identify itself with the species rather than the individual. The ego, on the other hand will consider itself to be an individual and survival for it will be the survival of the individual. This explains why one can get self destructive feelings.
The question of whether the ego can judge the feelings leads to the conclusion that it must do so with great care, since ignoring feelings would presumably lead to weakening of the species if done on a wide scale.
This realization, leads to some conclusions relative to other species fairly near (in the Darwinian sense) to the human species. Presumably, the difference between a horse and a human is that the horse, lacking the ability to concentrate to such an extent as to allow for the creation of an ego, therefore considers itself to be the environment. That is, it perceives no boundary between itself and the environment. It therefore passes no judgments about its feelings and acts on them accordingly. Its awareness, therefore, must be presumed to be similar to our own, and its ability to learn will be commensurate with the size of its brain, assuming brain size correlates with power of concentration.
To the extent we act on the basis of our feelings, we are feminist. This is because the ego is a creation of masculinity, and is due to its desire for order. Thinking, the hallmark of the ego, is a masculine function.
The first instance of judging one's feelings occurred in The Garden of Eden. Eve's desire for sensual pleasure overrides her feelings which would inform her of the bad judgment a rebellion against God is. Interestingly, the religion then comes along which devotes itself to the development of the ego, thereby adding immeasurably to the sum total of that rebellion. Perhaps the reason is a recognition that we cannot go back, if we are to free ourselves from this error, it must be by going forward.



Freedom of Religion

Editor
The Mississippian

Editor,
Today's opinion page is so full of confusion I find it a duty to try to dispel some of it.
The letter from one T.L. Ketchum, a graduate (presumably) of Ole Miss is so confused it left my head swimming. He is upset because of noise in the Union when he is trying to concentrate. Certainly, this is an annoying experience, but one most of us learn to accept as the price of our social system, among other things.
Mr. Ketchum however, suggests that it is a gross violation of his right to freedom of religion as guaranteed by the Constitution. He interprets this freedom, as have many, to mean freedom from religion. I doubt this was in the writer's minds but is a logical extension. Of course freedom from religion carried to its logical conclusion will mean that we will have to deny ourselves any religion at all. No doubt many will accept that.
Mr. Ketchum also implies that his discomfort is a result of the recent political correctness fad. This is a confusion of the first water. The PC movement is propaganda in support of the liberal notion of the possibility of the lamb and the lion lying down together in our times. As such it is much more in tune with Mr. Ketchum's desire to be free of the din of religious entertainment than it is at cross purposes with it.
Ms. Pace entertains us with her revulsion for the pig hangers. The only thing she says of interest is the comment about sacrifice. Do you suppose that our slide into ignorance and unconsciousness has come to this? The revival of sacrifice as a means of bringing about a desired event?
At the bottom of the page Messrs. Tyer and Norton entertain us once again as they vilify our chancellor. It escapes me how they conclude that the Chancellor is responsible for the fact that the legislature is unwilling to fund us any better than they do. Actually the Chancellor has done very well in this area since he is responsible for the many programs designed to attract private money in compensation for the lack of government money.
Finally, a comment on the confused Ms. Roseanne Barr. She of "Let's vilify our parents" fame. Clearly, Ms. Barr is unstable, did you see her presentation of the National Anthem? She must be very insecure and in need of positive strokes from her current "friends". Those in desperate need of support for their contention that parents are molesters and unworthy of respect. The hysterical movement to expose child molesters of the last ten years or so is surely among the most despicable trends in memory, and surely capable of doing great damage to society before it is put away with the other humbug in some trunk in the attic.
Joe Schiller



Heaven

January 18, 1991
Editor
The Mississippian

Editor,

In response to Robert Burnett (North California Viet Nam Vet) I thought the following appropriate:

When we get to heaven there won't be any homeless.
When we get to heaven there won't be any war.
When we get to heaven people won't torture each other.
When we get to heaven there won't be any Ethiopia.
When we get to heaven there won't be discrimination.
When we get to heaven the sexes will be equal.
When we get to heaven there won't be any sexes.
When we get to heaven people won't cheat.
When we get to heaven there won't be anything to cheat for.
When we get to heaven people won't kill.
When we get to heaven we will be dead.

Joe Schiller



On The Acts of Men


It is interesting to ponder just what is the meaning of my current feelings that a) I alone understand the threat of feminism in our times and b) that I wish I could explain to my peers just what it is that I know. While pondering this thought, I am led to admit that others feel the same about their pet discoveries, even the feminists. They feel that they have discovered this long lost information about the relationships between men and women and if they could just get it across to others they would inevitably agree. They or I may be correct, but converting a listener means transferring to them all the knowledge that one has that contributes to one's feeling of certainty on a particular issue, much of which has been forgotten.
So, it is practically impossible to change anyone's view of basic philosophical tenets. They are too complicated. Even a president. In this sense we are but observers.



Fairness


The Philosophical Problems with Fairness


Fairness has come to be the final measuring rod for decision making in our country. The pursuit of fairness is carried on from day to day in hopes of creating a better society from the ashes of the old. This is a doomed hope. Fairness is also used by minorities as a tool to weaken existing institutions in hopes of creating a climate more favorable to the groups they represent. More success is experienced here.
Fairness is a concept that envisions no advantage to any group in all competitions. This seems desirable on the surface but it should be examined more closely. Consider the example of a building. If one wishes a grand building, one must choose an artist to design it. Choosing an artist, however, is not fair. To be fair, one must choose at random, draw lots, therefore one must expect that the building will be produced according to average concepts of what a building should be. To be fair in allocation of money, one must attempt to distribute the money evenly. This will mean that no one will have very much of it and the result will be that all buildings must be built at the minimum cost. This will mean that the buildings will be of low quality, since low quality is cheaper than high.
Complete fairness is an extreme idea. It is exactly as extreme as complete unfairness. All extreme ideas produce extreme results because they disallow some form of being. Extreme ideas are therefore best confined to small areas of existence, since the larger the area the more difficult it will be to bar a particular form of existence.
One must consider where fairness is called for and where it can be dispensed with. In choosing whom to give advantages to, we come upon the area of most difficulty. To do this properly, one must consider the goal of the activity and choose to promote that goal. If the goal is to teach fairness, then choose fairly. But if the goal is to advance the cause of mathematics, then choose those that demonstrate a gift in mathematics.
Our national life has brought us into a conflict of irreconcilable opposites in this area. Politically we wish to be fair. Economically we wish to promote technological talent. To resolve this problem we must limit our fairness to those areas in which we do not wish to compete, or in which we wish to accept average results in favor of fairness.




The Classless Society


Editor,

The platitudes in the paper about bottle throwing will have no discernible affect on the character of students attending this institution. All it does is display the hopeless ignorance of the writers regarding human actions and motivations. In fact, it is so stupid one is driven to the conclusion that it is simple manipulation. What really is at work here is that our liberal leaders, in the name of the great classless society have created exactly that. A society having no class at all. What do we mean by "class act"? We mean to emphasize that while class may result in discrimination in some cases, it is also responsible for the restraint people show in public.
If you don't want discrimination, and you spend your time propagandizing for that goal, don't complain when your students appear to lack class.
There isn't a particle of difference between the students here or at Alabama, or at Michigan State. They all are pitifully lacking in class.

Joe Schiller



Opposites


"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times," begins A Tale of Two Cities by Dickens. How can it be, at one and the same time, both? Because of the little understood nature of opposition. Opposites are such that enhancing one detracts from the other. This is comprehensively true. There are no exceptions. Another thing that is comprehensively true is that the Cosmos (I like this term better than Universe, for no particular reason) is made up of a large number (infinite?) of items that vary spectrally. For example you can be tall or short, dark or light, strong or weak, ebullient or taciturn, light or heavy, fast or slow, and so on perhaps forever. That is, we are all made up of a large, perhaps infinite, number of these qualities. But, if you wish to be darker, then your lightness will be diminished. If you enhance your goodness, then your evil will decline. Where it goes is another question of some interest. We can, perhaps say that the Cosmos is defined by adjectives and adverbs.
So, what does Dickens mean? He seems to say that from one point of view it was the best of times, and from the other the worst. He was referring to the time of The French Revolution, so the times were extreme. So, what points of view is he thinking of? Well, surely it is the worst of times when so many human beings are being beheaded, blood is flowing in the streets, vigilantes are out of control, and no one is safe. After the revolutionaries got rid of the upper class, they were dispatched by the new government. So it was a time of mayhem and murder as a daily diversion for many.
Dicken's book revolves around the dangers faced by an innocent nobleman, whose father, however, was guilty as sin. The remarkable thing about the relationships described is that they are motivated by such good will that a modern reader is driven to conclude that Dickens was hopelessly optimistic about his London peers.
This conclusion is perhaps wrong though. From the stories I have heard about The Great Depression, Americans were never so kind to one another. This is understandable; when a great threat bears down on one and all alike, the shared suffering will provide a common experience of a transcendental nature that will bind the experiencers together. For a time, as long as the threat exists, and to a constantly declining degree as time goes by, minor differences between people will fade into insignificance as they help each other to overcome the common threat. Try this test out, if you have not already; start talking about World War II with someone who experienced it as an adult. If you talk for very long, I think you will leave with the conclusion it was the highlight of that persons life. This seems contradictory, and is commonly explained with the suggestion that we only remember the good things. This is patently untrue, I remember the bad experiences of my life only too clearly.
My conclusion is that very bad experiences, by their very nature call into being very good experiences. The compensation is built into our world. Therefore, have a care as you pursue good experiences. The reverse is just as true.
From this same realization, we can also conclude that a time of widespread affluence, with no generally perceived external or internal threats (the hydrogen bomb doesn't count, since it is such an abstract threat, most can only believe in it abstractly,) such as we have had since World War II, or at least since Viet Nam, will be a time when we can also not expect that closeness with our fellow man experienced in times of peril.
Most of us have never experienced any kind of serious threat to our survival, and certainly no shared threat. We therefore have no experience of what Dickens is referring to. Only those old enough to remember when the victors of The Great War were unknown, have had this experience, and we are surely poorer for it.
Should there be a depression in our future, therefore, we should not fear it. It should be welcomed as an opportunity for a new balance to be achieved.



Causality


Did Rape Cause Civilization?


I believe in causality. That is, I believe that for every event, there is a cause. I suppose it is conceivable that something could happen spontaneously, but no empirical evidence exists that it has. Except possibly the Big Bang.
Therefore, I believe that there must be a cause for civilization! This article considers the possibility of rape as that causative factor.
Consider nature. By and large, rape seems to be the natural method of impregnating females. Of course it can be said that the female secretes odor producing chemicals which attract the male and therefore cause impregnation to occur, but that is not the point. The act of copulation is the event of significance and that event is undeniably under the control of the cock in my chicken yard. Perhaps this cannot be extrapolated to other species, but perhaps it can. All non humans seem to operate in the unconscious state all of the time. Even humans seem to operate in this mode much of the time.
So, what motivated Eve to eat the apple? I think it was the desire to escape rape. God's paradise was not good enough for her, because it contained rape and so, the snake, her own negative side, whispered into her ear that if she ate the apple, that is applied her mind, she could consciously devise a strategy with which to defeat rape and thereby make a near perfect world, perfect. But, as can now be seen, the whole system was interdependent, and changing anything in a permanent way, will ultimately change the whole as adaptation forces a new equilibrium.
Looking over history at human's who changed things in such a way one thinks of Moses, Christ, those scientists and technicians who brought in the industrial revolution, but all of them rely on the woman who thought of the rule concept. The first act of human creativity. As such it was a theft of the prerogative of God. Of course God would have to contain such an outbreak of evil, and so He did. However, one could also say that concentrating to this extent activates mental contents in such a way as to bind them together into an entity that we call personality and that has a life of its own, thereby separating itself from the rest of God's creation. Or, you could say that there was a price to pay, awareness of everything was traded for knowledge of nothing along with the ability to create.
The scheme she came up with was the system of taboo. Certain acts were declared to be taboo, and this meant that they could not be performed, and if they were, the transgressor would be punished. This, of course, presupposes a feminist culture, which one is driven to conclude is the natural state of affairs for primitives.
This system of taboo, was so effective in altering the rhythm of the culture that it was used repeatedly to end other annoyances, until a whole canon of taboos was built up over time, producing what we would call a culture, with rituals and hierarchies and the other trappings of culture. Enforcement was arbitrary though, which was a whole new problem, leading to despots.
And this was the way humanity lived, until Moses. Moses, of course, introduced the written law, and therefore the concept that led to lawyers, educators, science, and technology, in a word, masculinism. Masculinism, unfortunately, has led to population growth and pollution of the environment on a massive scale. Sufficiently large to suggest that it will fail, which, should we survive, will send us back to feminism.



Evil



A Review of Elusive Evil by John Updike, The New Yorker, July 22, 1996.

This essay starts out by following Lyall Watson's ("Dark Nature: A Natural History of Evil") look about the modern world for signs of evil and identifies it in both human acts of cruelty, especially among children, and in nature. This is not a propitious start, since we must, on philosophical grounds exclude nature from any contact or association with evil. Nature has no choices and therefore cannot be evil, since choice is an essential element of evil. It may indulge in activities, were they being done by humans, we would adjudge evil, but in the absence of conscious choice, they must be excluded.
The author uses the phrase, "...the ruthlessness of natural selection..." To view natural selection as ruthless, and therefore having at least the appearance of evil, is to betray a subjectivity too grand to allow for a thoughtful opinion about the nature of evil. This is common to humans who have the great failing of identifying too profoundly with their own individuality to the extent of failing to realize the greater importance of their species, without which they themselves are meaningless. Natural selection, of course, aims to improve the survival potential of the species, the greatest good identifiable to any species.
The author then goes off into a long analysis of a book by the psychoanalyst, Carl Goldberg ("Speaking with the Devil: A Dialogue with Evil"), which he starts off by belittling but none the less follows quite closely as a guide to evil in humans. This produces a too narrow focus on evil in individuals, I would say, to produce any useful generalization about the concept of evil. It would seem that we should be able, in a feminist age, to use some objectivity as we inspect an ancient Judeo-Christian concept.
After Dr. Goldberg, the author moves on to Columbia professor, Andrew Delbanco ("The Death of Satan: How Americans Have Lost the Sense of Evil"), who seems mainly to make an impossible plea for retaining the Devil. His books are, therefore, an exercise in nostalgia, though perhaps worthwhile to refresh one's memory regarding what was once thought to constitute evil.
The author next considers the Salem witch trials. This is deadly to any vestige of hope we might have had that something original might be included in this essay on the subject of evil. The author is bound to present the conventional feminist wisdom that this was a unique outburst of evil proceeding from the supposed guardian of mankind against evil, the church. This theory must be discarded as soon as one reflects that the same event has been replayed repeatedly in recent times in this country in the guise of child molestations, child molestors being the new witches of the late twentieth century. The best example is the case in North Carolina, in which the administration of a child care center is accused and convicted of the most ridiculous crimes on the say so of coached children. An exact replica of the Salem event, I would say.
The author finishes up with the feminist author, Elaine Pagels' "The Origin of Satan". This is clearly the analysis of an outsider and one who lays the blame(?) for Satan at the door of the Gospel writer, Mark, which she concludes is the main reason for the persecution of Jews ever since. This is naive. Blaming the Jews for the death of Christ is a rationalization allowing gentiles to persecute Jews and therefore acquire an edge in their competition with them, which, in the absence of pogroms, they could not hope to win. They could not hope to win because the Jews had a 2000 year head start on them in the development and exploitation of masculine virtues.
So, this essay doesn't do well in its assigned task. None the less, feminism does provide us with an opportunity to redefine, more accurately, just what is meant by the term evil. What Mr. Updike is discussing, should more rightly be termed unpleasantries. Acts that offend him but which cannot be judged evil by him because he presents no definition of the term and therefore cannot expect to apply it with any precision. Evil, I would say, can be defined precisely, and the method should be to observe its presentation in the source book, The Bible, and from that to look at its long term effects to reach a conclusion.
The most simple method would then be an analysis of The Ten Commandments, which are as a group the most concise definition of evil in existence. They are not an abstract generalization, though, presumably because that form would not have had the desired effect. I believe we are free to generalize them, though, and that generalization should be that evil is any human activity that reduces or would reduce should the act be widely replicated, the survival potential of the species. So, for example, should murder be widely adopted as a method of resolution of conflict, we would necessarily be concerned about our chances, as a species, for survival. To see this most clearly the species should be imagined to be the size of a small town. Adultery, due to its potential to provoke violence should be seen in the same light. For the Jews, loss of their ideology, which made them unique would be tantamount to national suicide, even if all members of the society survived. Theft, widely practiced, would also be expected to dissolve the culture, since it would work against the accumulation of wealth and therefore the creation of an upper class, whose conservatism is the main bulwark against the inevitability of change.
Finally, though the author doesn't explicitly state it, one of the questions included in his essay is the following: Why is the concept of evil in decline and should that fact lead us to worry? This question exists at this moment because of the apparent rise in the incidence of crime, particularly among youth. They are most affected by the ideological change we are experiencing, since they cannot remember any other world, as can the older citizens among us. So, to be more precise: Is the feminization of the world, including as it does the minimization of religion, leading to the release of the entity defined by the old masculinist concept of evil and are we likely to be at risk, if so?
The short answer to this question is yes. The longer answer is, however, that it is an inevitable part of the transition from masculinism to feminism and will have to be endured, with or without worry. The problem lies in reducing the importance of morality and its consequences while at the same time advertising all of the methods of immorality and their rewards. Eventually, this advertising will disappear and lacking knowledge of immorality, no grand moral shield will be necessary.



Judgementalism

One of the great problems confronting us just now is the incessant judgment of masculinists and feminists of each other. It is normal for humans to pass judgment, since the essence of humanity is to be a finite being with a point of view and therefore capable of comparing one object with another. But, when feminists and masculinists judge one another, they compare one another to a background that they don't share. That is to say that masculinists compare feminists to the moral and ethical construct created from the Judeo/Christian world view which is not a part of feminism and feminists judge masculinists on the basis of a not fully developed feminist world view containing as its major element compassion, which is included in Christianity but is not its major element.
Thus, feminists must be judged by feminists and masculinists by masculinists. To do otherwise is to err by comparing apples to oranges as the old saw has it. They can be compared, of course, but only on characteristics that they share. Apples and oranges are roughly the same size, and people are people. But, morality as defined in an ideology positing the existence of sin cannot be useful in judging a being that doesn't accept the notion of sin as being meaningful.
In a masculinist world, which idealizes conscious awareness and therefore places before the individual all of the errors of judgment that can befall a human being, a moral filter of imposing proportions is a necessity, in order to keep its members from failing too grandly by pursuing an attractive error in judgment. In a feminist world in which consciousness is no longer admired and in which its members can reasonably be expected to bypass judgmental errors by never seeing the possibilities, no such superstructure is needed or wanted. One of the problems with moral models, such as that offered by Christianity, is that it identifies each moral failing and places it before its members, thereby increasing their conscious awareness. A great good in their view. But, for a feminist this is tantamount to showing a fox a trap with an attractive morsel of food in it. Were the trap never shown, no possibility of falling into it would obtain.
Of course our problems are part of the transitional nature of current experience. Most of us are raised in the Christian model, more or less, and then, when we attain to the ability of passing judgment we are faced with all of the choices feminism presents in its criticism of our masculinist past. It would be easier to start afresh, but that is not possible. So, the feminists are at pains to point out the violations of compassion inherent in the masculinist competitive model, devised as it was, to identify the best that humans have to offer in hopes of using it to create an admirable model of civilization for us to aspire to. In so doing, the feminists must needs allow immoral activities in order to avoid judgmentalism and therefore condemn their followers to the suffering that is an inherent part of bad judgment.
To create a fantasy of an ideal feminist world we have but to observe the animals, who never indulge in immoral behavior, and ask ourselves why this is so. It should be apparent that the possibilities of immoral behavior never occur to them. They can be called promiscuous, but it would be an error to do so. They pursue sexual contact only when procreation is likely, and therefore, attend to the survival of their species, a highly moral act. From this observation it should be clear that, were we to discard our laws, which are at pains to point out every immoral act a human can indulge in, then the expectation would be that most humans would never consider most immoral acts. Some would, of course, but, by failing to advertise the fact, it would not be expected to spread.
Many will respond that humans aren't animals. A doubtful rejoinder. But humans are different, as are all species, one from another. However that may be, many human cultures have flourished without laws: the Polynesians or American Indians for example. So, it cannot be reasonably argued that laws are necessary to life. What they are necessary for is the creation of a societal model. The emphasis is on creation, so that what we have here is creativity at work. There is nothing inherently wrong with this, it is just that it has already been done and another of the features of humans is the constant perception of suffering and the desire to move on to another sort of culture that won't include so much of it.
In pondering what sort of culture includes the greatest amount of suffering, I would have to say a masculinist one with a weak moral code, such as the one we are experiencing at this moment. Since the possibility of a return to a strongly masculinist culture with a viable moral code is probably impossible, (try returning to your youth) we should probably forge ahead into the new feminist world at flank speed.
What that will mean is the dissolution of the media, in order to contain the spread of immorality. Of course some forms of media are worse than others. If we could get rid of movies depicting immoral behavior, this would certainly have the most immediate and pronounced effect. Failing to teach our children to read will eventually do away with the rest of it.
These are policy decisions, not those that can be effectively acted on by individuals. Competition is an ever present challenge.




Ethics and Morality

As with every other ideological concept in these times, ethics and morality are being reconsidered in a very widespread way. The general notion of morality in our culture has come to mean The Ten Commandments, which have great meaning to masculinists and much less for feminists. Ethics in its current meaning amounts to the avoidance of acts which, while legal, are optional and have the effect of harming others. For example, spreading negative rumors. The dictionary definition of morality is relating to principles of right and wrong in behavior, while ethics are defined in terms of morality. Neither of these is very useful.
Morality is usually thought of in terms of good and bad, so, to start with, perhaps it would be well to define these. Good, in the dictionary, involves: favorable character, sexual attraction, being free from injury and commercially sound. From these we will notice a list of attributes that conduce to long life and happiness, so that in general, good should be defined in that way. Good for the culture will be somewhat different, since long life and happiness for the culture may mean death for the individual, thus the death penalty. To appreciate how unusual are our times, with overpopulation survival of the individual is now becoming toxic to the species.
Ethics rises above the level of concern of morality and relates to quality of life rather than strict survival, though quality of life will have an impact on survival, in the long term.
With this preamble, I would like to suggest here that we might be able to come up with a generality that describes morality and that advances our understanding of it. I will propose the generality and then test it for conformity with The Ten Commandments.
The generality I propose is this: to be perfectly moral, one must pay the full price of one's acts, preferably at the moment of acting, but certainly before death. To do otherwise would be to steal from another human being, and this is the essence of acting immorally. As a colloquialism we can say that to be moral, one must avoid short cuts.
Now, The Ten Commandments are:

1. Thou shalt have no other Gods before Me.
(Establishing the one true masculine God.)
2. Make no graven images.
(This would amount to another God.)
3. Thou shalt not take the Lord's name in vain.
(This would tend to devalue the concept of God.)
4. Remember the Sabbath.
(Establish the periodicity of worship necessary to maintain a clear concept.)
5. Honor thy father and thy mother.
(Establish a social order.)
6. Thou shalt not kill.
(Avoid stealing life.)
7. Thou shalt not commit adultery.
(Avoid stealing sexual satisfaction.)
8. Thou shalt not steal.
(Avoid stealing of any kind.)
9. Thou shalt not bear false witness.
(Avoid stealing meaning.)
10. Thou shalt not covet.
(Avoid the preliminary feelings leading to stealing.)

So, the first four are aimed strictly at the establishment of the one true religion. The next is concerned with establishing a societal hierarchy with the aged at its head. The rest are all concerned with stealing. Stealing life, sex, goods, and meaning, in order of importance. To further generalize we can say that The Ten Commandments are concerned with a) establishing a particular religion, that of the one, masculine God, and then using it to b) establish an age based social structure and further c) to establish that morality is essentially concerned with avoidance of stealing, or, failing to pay for one's acts, or taking shortcuts. One may be led to ask why the emphasis on age? The answer is clear when one notices that awareness is an important value here, and the aged have the most.
To further clarify this, we should concentrate on the act of payment. Of what does it consist? Payment amounts to giving back equivalent value for what one has gotten. This is most noticeable in the area of work. Since work is measured in terms of money we are very careful to see to it that for all of those capable, they should have according to their contributions to society in terms of work. This is not our only recompense, however; in some cases the worker receives satisfaction. To the extent that he does, his salary can be adjusted downward. Compensation is much less precise, but no less important in relations between people. Should one take care not to harm one's neighbors, they will tend to avoid harming him, since to do otherwise would be to establish debt, and only the naive, who don't yet know that all debts must be paid will lightly incur debt.
The most obscure indebtedness occurs between God and man. This is what is meant by sin. One can violate the state of equilibrium between God and man, and find oneself thereby in debt to God. This possibility is the grand preoccupation of Christianity, and the worship service is provided to instruct believers in methods to maintain equilibrium with God. I believe it fully accurate to teach this form of indebtedness, but, The Ten Commandments don't deal with it. To become indebted to God, one must steal from Him that which is His. In our relations with one another we are, in the first instance stealing from one another. The obvious example of stealing from God will be exploitation of the environment. The most obvious case of this is oil. We are exploiting the work of others, (those beings whose life was devoted to making oil), and therefore can expect to pay in the future. This is well known by environmentalists and therefore the fear of global warming.
It is interesting to consider morality in terms of the main spectrum of life. That spectrum is the one that proceeds from nature to God. We can say that nature epitomizes the life of unawareness and manifestation. That is, nature manifests herself at every opportunity and in every variation and is mostly unaware of herself. She is therefore pure, in that there can be no immorality if one cannot see the opportunity. On the other hand, since God is the opposite of nature, we can say that He is completely aware and does not manifest himself. He is, therefore also pure, since immorality cannot occur in the absence of action. (We can strengthen this argument for the existence of a knowing God, by noting that, since the cosmos is made from nothing, or better said, is nothing, everything that can occur, will occur.) Only humans are, therefore, capable of immoral behavior, since only they can at once see and act on what has been seen.
Finally, why are morals more important to masculinists than feminists? Because masculinists are worshipers of God and therefore in the business of raising awareness, which comes with the danger of abusing moral rules, placing the awareness of immoral acts in the hands of beings not sufficiently aware of the consequences of them. In a feminist world of declining awareness, the danger recedes. From this dissertation, if accepted, we will see that the question of morality and abortion will come down to whether the fetus is an individual, since, if so, his life has been stolen by the mother immorally, but, if not, if the fetus is actually a part of the mother, the only immorality that can obtain is the possibility that mutilating one's body is theft from God, assuming He to be the actual owner of our bodies.



Conformity

One of the spectra along which people choose positions to hold is the conformist/non conformist spectrum. This spectrum is apparently one of those that applies to humans only, as a matter of choice, but can be seen in animals due to malformity or injury. Since this feature is frequently noted and commented upon, we can assume subjecting it to spectral analysis will inform us about the nature of humans.
At the conformist end of the spectrum, all members bend their efforts to enhance similarities while at the same time reducing or eliminating differences. This tendency is most noticeable in the visual impact of the practitioner, that is: body decorations, clothes, housing, credentials and relationships. At the other end of the spectrum, residents magnify differences while at the same time they hide similarities. So, the question will come down to the motivation for these kinds of behavior.
To consider some examples: in some places, perhaps all, the notion of rebel is venerated. Those who attain to this label are revered and glorified. The American Confederates and in Mexico the revolutionaries that succeeded in establishing the current government are examples. Some revolutionaries lose their appeal in time, for example some of the French and Russian socialists, but that would seem to be due to their extreme orientation, so that degree of non conformity is important. Non conformity is very important in the arts, because of the need to avoid duplication of the product of some other artist, while at the same time avoiding such extremity as to be incomprehensible to the audience.
From the behavior of students in universities, we can say that the need for non conformity peaks during these years, while from the behavior of middle aged corporate employees, we can assume that the need for non conformity has dramatically declined since college. So, a conformity curve would start at neutral at birth and steadily rise until graduation and entrance into the job corps, and then steadily decline until death.
From the occurrence of the Beatniks and the Hippies, we can conclude that the need for non conformity will be increased during periods of political polarization as is easily seen today, particularly among musicians. These non conformists take on the characteristics or demonstrate the values of the liberal ideology that is contending with the conservative ideology for dominance. Non conformity will, it appears, usually identify with what it perceives to be the future, rather than the past, but the reverse does occur, just more rarely, and seldom with the seriousness of liberal non conformity.
The form that non conformism takes varies with the creativity of the human pursuing it. The least creative will usually satisfy themselves with alterations in clothing or body decorations or taste in music, while the most creative will attempt some sort of artistic expression. We can notice that any form of cultural popularity will be opposed by the non conformist as a means of expression of his non conformity and will produce cultural conflict. We can expect that the more intense the cultural popularity, the more extreme will be the non conformist reaction.
The question of motivation will force us into psychological speculation, no other avenue being open to us. We should probably start from the undoubted fact that people alter their personalities due to perceived survival advantages. So that, since conformity can be said to be natural, it being indulged in by all children up until puberty, and that non conformity as a form of conformity is very noticeable immediately after puberty, and that the psychological challenge of puberty is to establish oneself as a unique member of the most desirable subgroup of peers one can identify and has some chance of success with, we can conclude that a very noticeable need to all humans is that they perform a unique task during their life. Not that the particular task itself is so important, just that it be unique.
It is as much as to say that, were we to find that we exactly matched another human, we would have to conclude that one of us was redundant. This suggests that humans know, on some level, that they are searching out a new space to inhabit. That we all know that our current space cannot be expected to continue to be available to us indefinitely. Thus, to maximize the search potential of humanity, each member should perform some unique exploration.
This logic becomes reversed when we join a corporation. That is because one of the functions performed by corporations is the exploitation of technology, and conformity of members enhances the potential for the success of the corporation.
As life progresses, there is a noticeable tendency towards conformism in most. This will be because of the human tendency to psychological uniqueness accruing to each due to his unique exploration of life and the reflection of that life in his personality. As that uniqueness becomes more and more pronounced, most will react to it by displaying their conformity in their life style. This is due to the perception that too great non conformity will result in rejection by the culture as in the case of criminals. This feature of human life, we must assume, reflects the general conclusion that humanity is led, to some extent, by its leaders along the most likely path to success, and that that path is not easily perceived. This is only common sense, since, if the path was easily seen it would already be exploited and the space it represents, filled.



Objectivity and Propaganda

The questions to be addressed here are: Why do people indulge, to extreme in these times, in propaganda of whatever orientation in preference to objective analysis? Is the preponderance of propaganda over objective analysis new, or is this typical of civilized life? But first, we will have to demonstrate that the thesis is true.
To do that, I would ask a question I have frequently asked before. How is it that we discuss feminism continuously without ever mentioning masculinism, its obvious opposite? In the case of the objective presentation called "The Mysterious Origins of Man" on NBC, why did it provoke personal attacks on the producers? Why is it that I, in attempting to discuss human population in an objective way, am expelled from a forum devoted to that exact purpose?
By objective discussion it is meant here, treating the subject as an entity outside of my personal experience and having no impact on my personal life; that is not taking into account any personal preferences I might have regarding validity and ultimate consequences and suitable reaction to it.
First we must acknowledge the difficulty here. We are inescapably part of the entity, humanity, experiencing the problems under discussion and therefore have a stake in whatever reaction is chosen. None the less experience shows that reaching accurate understanding requires the fair and impartial presentation of the facts, and that personal preferences regarding reactions, being based on subjective realities cannot but obscure the facts.
A second difficulty I have encountered is the argument that there is no such thing as objectivity possible to humans. This is, of course, arbitrary dismissal of facts one finds uncomfortable because no rational basis for their dismissal is to be found. If objectivity were not possible, there would be no word for it. This is a very frequent defense, taking many guises in the process.
The third problem that arises is the realization by the debater, that being wrong will result in his having to discard favorite generalities that he has relied on for many years to make decisions about his actions. This will immediately suggest to him that he may have been wrong in the past and the painful prospect of having to "eat crow" (in these circumstances I recommend to the reader Winston Churchill's famous rejoinder to a question about his having to eat his words to the effect that he had done so many times and found them quite tasty). It must be emphasized that these considerations need never rise to the level of consciousness and probably don't. They can be felt much earlier on and acted upon and consciously avoided before they rise to the level of thought. That is to say that we can recognize an idea that we don't wish to think about before it becomes conscious and avoid it. This is the essence of the notion of repression occurring in Freudian and Jungian psychology.
With these ideas in mind, I think it clear why propaganda is preferred over objectivity. I think it obvious also that propaganda is simpler than objectivity, so that fear of complexity also plays a role here.
So, the final question then is: Are these times more prone to propaganda than former ones? I think the answer to this is yes. The reason is that in former times questions up for debate did not challenge the basic structure of human life. Judeo/Christianity has dominated so completely for a thousand years and longer that it hasn't been seriously questioned until now. For those that did question it, they had no idea of discarding basic features of life, like the status of men relative to women, or the prospect of discarding intellectualism altogether, or the loss of technology. Those that do consider discarding Christianity have, no doubt, consoled themselves with the notion that since large segments of humanity live very well without it, why not them? And never considered that their personal dismissal of Christianity is in no way similar to cultural dismissal of it. In the first case everyone about continues to live in the same old predictable way, in the second, one cannot predict the parameters of life in the indeterminate future. Not even when that unpredictability is likely to arise.



Symbolism as a Spectrum

Dictionary: A symbol is something that stands for or suggests something else by reason of relationship, association, convention, or accidental resemblance.

1. Objective description:

The representation of an object or event in words having only material meaning.

2. Symbolic description:

The representation of an object or event in images having another meaning in a different context. Why this works is another question, the answer to which is shared attributes. Thus, as Freud pointed out, if we dream of smoking a cigar, we can surmise that the cigar represents a penis. The advantage of this method is to allow the inspection of other attributes to see if they are also shared, which is frequently the case.

3. Allegory:

A fictional story representing facts about life difficult to represent in any other way. For example, Bhagavad-Gita, an Indian text that describes the experience of battles by a prince in company of a guardian spirit, in which individual events represent other typical events in the growth of the individual spirit.

4. Myth:

A fictional story representing events in the lives of the gods. The gods themselves are symbolic representations of complex aspects of life, for example, Mercury the messenger represents the human need to communicate.

5. Fable:

A fictional story representing simple truths about lives in which the characters are generally animals living in the style of humans. For example, Alice in Wonderland.

6. Parable:

A fictional story representing ordinary events in life in such a way as to instruct the listener, generally about spiritual matters as in the parables of Jesus.

7. Fairy Tale:

A fictional story representing humans in conflict with evil forces, for example Sleeping Beauty.

8. Dream:

A symbolic representation of current events in an individual's life in which all characters and objects are symbolic representations of the dreamer.

The above list is in the way of identifying a representation spectrum. As with all spectra, it identifies two extremes and various points within tending from one extreme to the other. In this case, the normal method of representation is in terms of symbols, as can be seen from dreams, which, despite their profundity, might reasonably be characterized as archaic thought forms. From this point, humans move progressively towards more objectivity, by which it is meant that the objects are represented as themselves without the need to resort to similar objects which can stand for them.
Life can be characterized as a progression along this spectrum, wherein an individual has no means of communicating except by symbols in the beginning, and progressively acquires objective evidence as life goes on. The ability to objectify would seem to be limited to humans, so that we can surmise that humans have a unique mental capacity which provides this capability. That capacity is, I would say, the ability to concentrate to such an extent that other objects in the world are seen to be distinct from the subject.