(1975)
This book was undertaken because of the perceived lack of an
attempt to understand in philosophical terms the meaning of
feminism. It is therefore, an attempt to identify the philosophical
underpinnings of feminism in general and to contrast them with
those of masculinism, in the hope that by so doing, one can identify
the tradeoffs between the two, identify the reasons for the shift in
the philosophical attitudes that shape our lives, and come to some
conclusion as to whether this change is ultimately going to succeed in
what it sets out to do.
It is a cause of great wonder that the philosophical
establishment has not seen fit to supply a discussion of the issues
presented here. After reading The Closing of the American
Mind, I am driven to the conclusion that philosophers are unable
to recognize masculinism and feminism as opposites. That, having
been trained by masculinists and understood their world in those
terms, they cannot see that there is anything else.
I must confess that I am neither a philosopher, psychologist,
anthropologist, theologian, or physicist and I must further confess
that I expound in this book as if I were. This may seem
inappropriate, but perhaps, to be an expert implies a certain kind of
blindness in other fields of study. In this book I intend to identify
where the cosmos comes from and where it is going. Were I a
physicist I would be unable to make such a claim since it cannot be
proven as yet. By training I am a computer scientist, but for the
purposes of this book I am a 19th century amateur, as the
designation was understood then.
As for from whence the cosmos comes, it comes from nowhere.
Since it is an irreducible minimum, it can be nothing less than it is.
To learn more, read further.
At the outset, one must discern some distinctions, so as not to
succumb to the common confusions of our day. The most important
is the distinction between feminism and female. The first refers to
the qualities of femininity as opposed to those of masculinity, which
can reside in a male as well as a female, while the second refers to
gender. The second is the confusion between the rise of feminism in
our culture, a historical trend of some hundreds of years duration,
and the modern feminist movement, a political trend that began in
the 1960s. This book is about the rise of feminism.
To understand feminism, it is necessary to understand
masculinism. This is a seemingly obvious fact, a truism, and yet it
has not been stated in public yet, to the knowledge of the author.
Just as one cannot understand cold except in light of a knowledge of
heat, cannot know left except in terms of right, cannot understand
up in the absence of a knowledge of down, one cannot know
feminism except in terms of masculinism.
Masculinism, in its current manifestation began with Abraham,
and was codified by Moses. It grew, somewhat fitfully for many
centuries, and eventually was made palatable to the gentiles by
Jesus. Its growth then exploded until it reached its peak in the
period of the great musicians, Beethovan, Mozart, Brahms, Handel,
etc., the great artists, Michaelangelo, Rembrandt, Monet, Van Gogh,
etc., and the great writers, Tolstoy, Trollope, Shakespeare, etc., and
the great scientists, Galileo, Newton, Einstein, etc.
The scientists gave birth to the industrial revolution, which now
threatens to destroy humanity utterly. One has but to count the
ways, the pollution of the natural environment is the most obvious
and intractable problem. It occurs because of our ability to create
substances that do not occur naturally and therefore have no place
in the environment, and because of the concentration of naturally
occurring substances in amounts beyond the capabilities of the
ecosystem to deal with. Or war. Any schoolchild can relate the
danger that faces us. Or world economic upheaval, a not unlikely
occurrence since we can't predict from moment to moment what will
be the result of the changes we make in our attempts to patch
problems that occur with greater and greater frequency as a world
economy comes closer and closer. Or an outbreak of pestilence,
never far from our thoughts as we observe the growth of A.I.D.S.
And all of these problems are interrelated such that if one attacks
with any ferocity, it is likely to trigger all the others.
It is also a singular fact that the feminists have accepted the
responsibility for keeping these problems in front of us, and pressing
us to deal with them. They are however unconvincing, since the
solutions they propose do not appear capable of any comprehensive
victory. One must accept on faith that their proposals will
eventually prevail. The masculinists, on the other hand, ask us to
accept on faith that technology will not let us down, another difficult
thing to accept.
The proposal to be suggested here, is that all problems that
threaten us as a species can be dramatically reduced if not
eliminated by the simple expedient of reducing the population. A
small reduction is not contemplated. A very large reduction is called
for. A reduction on the order of two-thirds, or three-quarters.
Perhaps "simple expedient" is not the proper phrase, but it is simply
stated.
Perhaps we should consider the cause of the excessive number
of humans now populating the earth. Of course the primary cause is
masculinism, that is, Christianity. It has been a weapon of extreme
effectiveness in combating the enemies of humanity. But, there is
such a thing as too much success, in this case just as deadly as too
little.
We must now consider the nature of good and evil. Just what in
the final analysis is good? Good and evil are relative things. If
something attacks me, for me it is evil. If something aids me then,
for me it is good. The definition of me can be expanded to my
community or my nation. Or my species.
Taking myself as my species, that which threatens it, is evil.
Simple. My species is threatened by its own success. Too many
humans will be just as deadly as too few. Reduce the problem to a
smaller area. Suppose we inhabited the island of Hawaii only. Just
start sending all humans there. Surely it is clear that we would be
standing on top of one another before long and the islands ability to
support us would be overtaxed. The earth is just another island,
somewhat larger, but no less capable of being overtaxed. In fact
that state was long ago reached, we have postponed paying the piper
by exploiting technological tricks. But it cannot go on for ever. At
some point we must reach the breaking point, and that point is
surely not far distant.
So then, how has technology allowed this genie out of its bottle?
Primarily through the practice of medicine in conjunction with
certain precepts encoded in our religion. Those precepts are that life
is divine and promoting it is good, while destroying it is evil.
Secondarily, the injunction in the Old Testament, that we should
subdue the earth. These values were great goods when
promulgated, but nothing is forever, and these will now destroy us if
we continue to blindly follow them.
So what solution is available to us? Certainly we cannot kill
people, we have been taught by our religion that is morally
despicable. It may, however, be an over generalization to conclude
from that, that passively allowing people to die is also morally
reprehensible. The suggestion to be made here is that our only
salvation lies in severely limiting medical intervention in our lives
and allowing nature to take its course. This is not a suggestion that
an individual can act upon. If continued life is offered it is the moral
responsibility of the individual to accept it. But governments are not
people, their concern is the general welfare, not that of the individual
except where the individual's welfare coincides with that of society.
By withholding medical care, the population would soon be
reduced and the deadly problems facing civilization would quickly
fade into the distance.
Of course the political problems associated with such a
conclusion are vast, and it may well be impossible for humanity to
deal with them. Surely that is true from our current vantage point.
But, the time is fast approaching when our vantage point will be
much better. We will be able to see our approaching end all too
clearly. One hopes it will not be too late.
Having introduced the subject, it is now necessary to justify
what has been stated. The approach taken is to first describe the
genesis of feminism/masculinism, and then to observe the effects on
the major institutions of society. Finally some conclusions are
drawn.
Feminism, is one half of a sexual cycle in the affairs of humanity of
thousands of years duration. Therefore, to get to its roots, one must
start at the beginning, the beginning of everything.
To properly conceive of the nature of the world, or universe, or
an atom, one must close up on the prospects for creating something
from nothing. This is the essential problem as many have
recognized, and it has led to a disbelief in the concept of God for
many, because of the inability of the human mind to formulate any
believable way in which something can be created from nothing.
And yet, people must feel that it is possible since so many spend
their lives searching for the illusive something for nothing, and not
finding it.
The Big Bang Theory, which postulates the possibility that the
universe was created through the explosion of a large primordial ball
at a calculable and not too distant time in the past (several billion
years), is fine as far as it goes, but it begs the question somewhat
since one must then ask where the primordial ball came from. It
also doesn't deal well with whether or not the universe is finite
since an infinite string can have one end though not two, and
therefore the universe may or may not continue to expand forever.
Nothing, or the concept of nothing is the problem. It is a
difficult thing, to imagine nothing. One must start with a picture of
the star filled heavens and eliminate all the galaxies, gas, and
whatever else is floating around out there, leaving space, and then
eliminate the space. It is hard to imagine, but this is what one
means when one refers to nothing. So this is where one must start.
How can one create something from that? Perhaps, it would be
possible to wrest two charged particles from that entity, one positive
and one negative, such that when they once again grasped one
another, there would be, once again...nothing. If that were possible
then that nothingness might contain anything and everything as
long as the sum of everything were nothing. This concept is well
understood by physicists and is described by them in terms of
matter and antimatter, philosophers, on the other hand, fail for
unknown reasons to consider the implications of this concept.
Nothing, by this definition cannot exist unless it is the sum of
everything. This is the essential egg. Thus the primordial ball of the
Big Bang theorists, perhaps, was actually nothing.
The observers of the heavens have also noted that all of the
objects in the sky are traveling away from one another, a fact which
leads to the Big Bang theory in the first place. They have also noted
that the further an object is from us, the faster it is moving away
from us. This is a singular fact having as yet no satisfying
explanation, but suppose that space is growing, everywhere and
always at a constant rate. Objects that are not bound together by
physical ties (gravity) in a relative system would find themselves
further and further apart with each passing moment, while those
bound together in a gravitational relationship would maintain their
positions relative to one another.
Returning to the notion of nothing, if nothing can occur, then this
is a magical universe since nothing is a magical quantity. It
presupposes a nonfinite universe in which everything can and does
occur since, as we can see from mathematics, if there is any remote
chance of a thing occurring then, given enough chances it will occur.
The infinite bag contains everything which includes nothing,
therefore the infinite bag contains nothing. So how can everything
and nothing coexist? Only if everything sums to nothing, in which
case either nothing exists only abstractly or, if the Big Bang theorists
are correct, the primordial ball shrinks to nothing when it collapses.
In any case what one has here is a basic quality of life,
something and nothing, opposites, extremes on a spectrum that are
at once totally different and yet the same. Nothing is made of
everything, because everything sums to nothing. In fact the only
way for nothing to manifest itself is for all the opposites to come
together and put each other out. Presumably this is an unstable
state or else this idea would not occur.
All things exist as an analogy to this basic state of opposition, or
else they would not exist at all. And one can recognize the sexuality
of the situation. The state of nothingness, being abstract is masculine
while the beautiful and terrible chaos referred to as everything is
feminine. These states exist before people, and are essential
masculinity and femininity. The sexuality of people is much less
essential. The opposites exist on a scale or within a spectrum.
Everything and nothing are opposite and coincident ends of a
nonfinite spectrum, and all other entities exist somewhere within
that spectrum as less than everything and more than nothing. This is
the most comprehensive spectrum, there are many more, a nonfinite
number more.
A hydrogen atom would seem to consist of a positive particle of
matter balanced by a negative quantum of energy. The energy and
matter are two manifestations of the same thing as can be seen from
Einstein's equation and are opposite ends of a spectrum. If these
two manifestations could recombine, their product would be nothing.
As it happens, the proton is feminine and the electron is masculine.
There is the spectrum of scale. All things exist at some level of
scale such that they are contained within something and contain
something else. This continues down to the vanishingly small and
up to the incomprehensibly large. From constituent parts of the
atomic nucleus so small that their existence can only be inferred
from their effects to galactic groups, and who knows how much
smaller or larger than that. Or for another example the spectrum of
electromagnetic wavelengths. Short to long. Typical of these
opposites is that one extreme always deprives the other of its
existence, apparently, until it is realized that this extreme is the
same as its opposite, viewed from another point of reference. Cold-
hot. Left-right (physically and politically). Up-down. Fast-slow.
Generally the opposites have no perceptible limits though sometimes
one end of the spectrum can be seen, thus slow would appear to end
at stop.
Creation then, can be visualized as a stage with closed curtain in
the beginning. Creating is the act of pulling the curtain open from
one side and seeing it open of its own accord on the other. The
masculine principle is behind the creation, and the feminine
principle is there waiting to consume that which has been created,
thereby making more room for the masculine to create in.
One view of the universe is as a vast number of opposites, the
most important of which is sexuality. This may be the basic
opposition from which all others spring.
Some languages assign gender to apparently sexless objects.
This fact supplies a means of isolating basic characteristics of the
two sexes. It must be used with care though, since there are many
contradictions. This is to be expected since many objects will be
created with mixed, perhaps evenly mixed sexual attributes.
Ships are commonly referred to as she, as are vases, pots and
pans, and all containers. Therefore one can conclude that the
feminine is basically a container. It attracts things into itself, that is
it consumes, and is made up of what it consumes. That which
radiates therefore is masculine, and creates from itself and is
consumed by the feminine and thereby transforms itself from
masculine to feminine. The feminine is impregnated by the creative
masculine and sooner or later gives birth once again to the masculine
in a never ending process. The circle is thereby completed and the
system is closed. A very large closed system that sums to nothing.
The masculine with its radiation creates light which can be
analogized by consciousness. The feminine consumes light thereby
creating darkness or unconsciousness. Therefore, to the extent we
are conscious we are masculine whether male or female. The
feminine in its indiscriminate propensity to consume creates chaos,
but chaos contains order in the relativity of one part to another.
Thus a crowd in Times Square viewed from aloft is a chaotic mass,
but within that mass very precise social roles are being played out.
Chaos is warm, even hot sometimes and the cold precision of
masculinity is frequently complained of.
Destruction can require great creativity. One example of this is
the destruction of tall buildings in cities, when their neighbors are
not to be harmed by the operation. Masculinity can therefore serve
femininity.
The final home of masculinity is the coldness of outer space or
death, and that of femininity is warm and pulsating life. This can be
seen by inspecting closely the goal of religion. Heaven or nirvana is
peace, the release from the endless cycle of reincarnation. Thinking,
the cold precision of logic, rationality, is therefore masculine and
feeling, the warmth of bodies close together is feminine. Our
feelings will always bring us into conflict with our thinking because
there is no right or wrong in the global sense and thinking and
feeling have different goals toward which they strive. Thinking is
analytic and therefore splitting apart, while feeling is the perception
of connections and therefore bringing together. What is right
relative to thought will be wrong relative to feeling and there is no
escape from that brutal fact. Thus it is with all opposites, the male
and female will be at each others throats forever, it is in the nature
of created things.
Many religions point to the masculine sun and the feminine
moon. This cannot be taken in the literal sense, it would seem, but
perhaps they mean that the sun rules the day and the moon the
night. These are opposites, night and day, and so apparently the
night is associated with the feminine and the day the masculine.
There may be a desire to turn away from this interpretation because
the identification is distasteful to some, but people are products of
their parents, both of them, and are therefore half male and half
female with just a touch more of one or the other to give them their
identifying characteristics. And beyond that there is more than night
and day, there is dawn and dusk and all of the variations so that this
is another spectrum and night and day are just points on opposite
sides of what is best considered as a circular scale.
Symbolically, night represents unconsciousness while day
represents consciousness because conscious means to see, to
comprehend, to understand, to perceive. So that to comprehend is
opposite to not comprehending and to be conscious is opposite to
being unconscious and again this is a spectrum, consciousness and
unconsciousness being two points on opposite sides with all
intermediate points representing some comprehension less than
complete. This spectrum is particularly useful as a prototype
because it clarifies the phenomena of coincident extremes.
Consciousness is defined in terms of unconsciousness. We are
conscious of some part of the totality of being and therefore
unconscious of the rest. If Consciousness were capable of complete
comprehension, the consciousness of God, it would be
indistinguishable from complete unconsciousness.
The feminine, being the consumer, must be expected to consume
consciousness and here can be seen the necessity of attempting to
approach this subject without value judgments. The West values the
masculine principle and has for such a long time that it is natural to
think of consciousness as good and unconsciousness as bad. But from
a higher point of view they are just opposites, neither better or
worse than the other except in a relative sense, and this relativity
must be inspected just now. It may be time to reexamine the notion
that what one doesn't know won't hurt one.
In summary, the universe may be considered to be a chaotic
mass of everything, or nothing, according to the point of view one
takes. God says in the Bible, "I am what am," and I think we may
take this to mean that it is this entity, everything and nothing, both
feminine and masculine, depending on how one views it. God's sex
is a question of great significance to a particular society, and that
society will therefore emphasize the side of God that it finds most
important, even to the extent of branding the other half of God evil.
Nietzsche suggested that there were two orientations toward life
which he labeled the Apollonian and the Dionysian. Apollo was the
Greek god of law, the right hand of Zeus, and therefore the
prefigurer of Moses. In a word, masculinity. Dionysus was the god
of the grape, ecstasy, the unconscious. The Roman version was
Bacchus, somewhat more familiar. We might say the god of drugs,
the modern passageway to ecstatic unconsciousness. This is
feminine. Timothy Leary was the modern equivalent. Read this for a summary.
Trying to understand mind is another difficult task. It is after all
invisible, without apparent form, and the only approach is to attempt
to do it with mind.
First, one must distinguish the personal component from the
general component. This component is the personal memory which,
as it grows, acquires what we are pleased to call personality. It is
the creation of the individual and the environment within which it
resides. It is nonexistent at birth, grows more or less continuously
until middle or old age, enters a static period, and finally decays and
apparently disappears in death. This entity, which we may term the
ego, exists within a matrix, not readily observed, that when noticed,
seems boundless. To explore this entity, called the unconscious, one
has but to make an effort at the appropriate time.
The ego may be defined as the primary conscious complex
where complex is understood in terms of The Complex Theory
of Carl Jung.
To visualize this structure it is useful to attempt to discard
preconceptions and think of reality in an unaccustomed way.
Suppose that events are permanent entities that exist in all
directions and dimensions, sort of like a vast ball that extends to
infinity, made up of small kernels, each of which represents an
event. Neighboring events are very similar, but change slightly so
that this ball may be described as an n-dimensional event matrix
with the events arranged spectrally. The mass contains all events
that ever happened or will happen or could have happened and
exists independently of the experience of them. Further imagine a
stream of energy passing through this mass, encountering some
events and bypassing others, basing its direction of movement
through the mass of events on its experience of the events it has
already encountered. Some forms of encounter result in a loss of
energy because of transference to the event and other forms of
encounter result in a gain due to absorption of the event's energy
deposited in the event by another encounter. The stream of energy
splits occasionally and merges on other occasions, some streams
fading out altogether. The energized events encountered form a long
tail, some of the events glowing brightly due to the degree of energy
transference. The tail resembles the ego complex and consciousness
can be understood as that stream of particles raised to a sufficiently
high energetic state. Unconsciousness is all the rest.
This complex is a mass of more or less charged particles, the
more recently experienced particles being more intensely charged
unless the stream of energy itself has become so weak it no longer
imparts much of a charge to new experiences. This makes more
comprehensible the fact that older people have clearer memories of
the distant past than they do of the recent past. Time can be
understood as the rate at which the energy passes through the event
mass.
With this model it can be seen that there is no need to invest
humans with a physical memory that has to be carried about as in
the case of the computer. Instead memory is the act of moving one's
consciousness back in one's tail to reencounter the event itself. The
further back in one's tail the less energy remains of the original
investment and sometimes the remaining energy is so low that a
reinvestment is necessary to bring it to consciousness.
With the brain no longer required for the memory function, it
can be seen as a device whose primary function is to concentrate
energy much as a nozzle concentrates water. One has to wonder
how the English language came to refer to mental effort as
concentrating.
In sleep the energy stream is much more diffuse than during
the waking hours and amnesia can easily be understood as the
result of an event which completely halts this function of the brain
for a period long enough to cause a discontinuity in the tail.
This model is, of course, far too simple to be very accurate. One
would expect the individual to be the result of several streams of
energy in close proximity and various areas of the stream to be
more or less conscious. The stream would not be expected to have a
well defined border and in this area events would not even be part
of consciousness. Perhaps only at the very center might the energy
level be intense enough to produce conscious awareness.
With each new level of atomic complexity new elemental
properties manifest themselves, sometimes radically different than
those seen before. In the same way with each new level of
molecular complexity new attributes are defined until structures of
such complexity occur that life becomes possible. Thus
consciousness as an attribute of sufficiently energized events and
man, an entity designed to take advantage of that fact.
In any case, consciousness is a special sort of awareness
produced by energizing an event through the act of concentration to
the necessary level of intensity, and the totality of these charged
events may be termed the ego.
The ego is a creature created by man fairly recently and it is
seemingly unique in this world. It is the only act of real creation
ever performed by man and one must have mixed feelings as to
whether it bodes ill or good for the future of the earth. In any case
God, according to the Book of Genesis, did not approve. From the
model it can be seen that other acts we refer to as creative are
really acts of discovery, with the discoveries leading to acts of
transformation.
Before the creation of the ego, we were part of God and lacked
individuality. Just as a hive of bees can be seen as one creature, we
were more a part of a group. Today, we are individuals. The
creation of the ego produced a boundary, just as in the beam of a
flashlight (a good analogy for the concentration function of the brain)
there is a boundary between light and darkness, the act of
concentration creates a boundary between consciousness and the
unconscious. This boundary separates one from his environment
and sometimes the separation assumes the dimensions of alienation.
The unconscious is the container and the nurturer of
consciousness, it is darkness, the unknown, inspiring fear in
consciousness, which recognizes its tenuous condition when
confronted by the unconscious as an entity - vast, with all the moods
of consciousness but raised to a much greater value. The
unconscious is the vast machine of outer space, it is the earth, it is
our own bodies and standing in opposition to this vastness is the
puny little ego.
Consciousness is the creation of the unconscious which nurtures
it, suffers it to exist at all. The unconscious is our mother, terrible
and wonderful as are all mothers. She gives us birth, allows us our
short time and in the end devours us once again. She is
undiscriminated chaos, but contains all order, which we in our
masculinity long for. But the order is relative and transient, and can
be found in any isolated system. As soon as one exceeds the bounds
of the system though, the order breaks down and is lost.
Irrationalities begin to creep in and to escape from them one must
define smaller and smaller subsets until one arrives at the final
statement of masculine order - nothing, the void, ultimate release
from creeping irrationality, except that as with all opposites, when
one gets to the ultimate extreme of one it turns to the ultimate
extreme of the other. As we have seen before nothingness can be
taken apart into its component parts thereby creating the cosmos.
To return to the question of creation, the thing created must
have a space to occupy which must also be created, therefore the
need for destruction and the realization that it is in essence a
creative act. The feminine act of destruction, being the opposite of
creation is really creation from a different point of view, negative
creation, requiring the same dogged perseverance and dedication
that creation does. The need to destroy utterly. The wastes of a
technological society come to mind. Only a society very one-sided in
its development could come to the conclusion that creation is better
than destruction. A society one-sidedly masculine.
The masculine principle is responsible for creation and the
feminine, destruction, and these are two words that stand for
processes. Destruction is essential to creation, it is as if the universe
were completely full and can no longer stand further creation. But
the reality is that, just as without right there is no wrong, without
up there is no down, without destruction there is no creation. Both
are transformative processes, the first transforms from parts to a
unity while the second transforms from unity to a new set of parts.
The Western world has concentrated with undue narrowness on
the act of creation, neglecting the responsibility of destruction
wherever possible and failing to give it its share of energy where it
couldn't be ignored. Thus the tremendous effort devoted to
manufacture while garbage dumps spring into being and make their
own way as best they can. Or sewers that lead to large bodies of
water and then just end. All systems are closed in the end and all
processes are loops. If we create and ignore destruction then nature
closes the loop for us and generally to our own detriment. We can
but foul our own nests, who else is there?
And from the same background we can deduce that the cost of
destruction will be exactly that of creation. This is the final
indictment of the profit system. Profit is only borrowing from the
future. If one does not pay the cost today, then one is borrowing
and the bills will come due in the future.
To return to the flashlight analogy, the only way to explore the
region beyond the light is to turn the light down to the point at
which one can see beyond its beam but not so far down as to
deprive oneself of a conscious connection from what one knows to
what one is learning. This can be done in a variety of ways, perhaps
the easiest of which is to try to capture the experiences at the
beginning and end of the sleep period. These events are referred to
as dreams and are more accurately described as contacts with
unconscious contents. Another way is to weaken the brain and
therefore the ego by sensory deprivation, and a third way is through
the use of some types of drugs, for example marijuana or mescaline.
Finally, exploration of reports of contacts with the unconscious by
other individuals is rewarding. This can be done by reading fairy
tales and myths, both of which are particularly well formed and
reported dreams.
As can be seen from the forgoing, we are possessed of two
minds rather than one. Both use symbolism to perform their
function, that function being transformation. Unconscious
symbolism is however qualitatively different from conscious
symbolism. The symbols of consciousness are small scale. They are
usually characters and are arranged to produce abstract models of
the physical world. Unconscious symbols are large scale. They are
usually complex images, even motion pictures, used to represent
transformative processes. For example the sun might be considered
a symbol for the brain whose function it is to concentrate energy to
form the light with which we create the ego. The ego or conscious
mind, thinks abstractly, a capability that exists because of the
limited contents of the ego, and the unlikely capability of being able
to include or exclude what it wishes from its field of view. That is to
say, just because of the limitations of the ego it is capable of
concentrating on certain highlights of its own choosing. So that one
might say that one uniquely human attribute is the capability of
understanding because of the limitations of knowledge.
The method utilized by the ego is to build a model of the
environment in which it finds itself. Since it is itself a dynamic
within the environment it studies, subjectivity is always a problem
that distorts the process, at least until the model grows sufficiently
complex to account for subjectivity. Understanding is the act of
adding a learned component to the model. It is possible to construct
multiple models at the same time, which produces multiple
complexes, one of which is dominant, though in some persons
multiple complexes of equivalent power become multiple
personalities. It is important to understand that each complex has
its own independent sense of self and must be considered, in
computer terms as an independent processor. From conversations
with patients suffering from this problem it is clear that the
subordinate processors also have access to the sense organs but only
intermittantly control speech. They also seem to have a better
apprehension of the conscious complex that it does of them.
Another way to think of the ego is as an inflated balloon
submerged in a swimming pool. This is a good analogy since it gives
a rough notion of the comparative sizes of the two entities involved
and because it gives an indication about the relative densities of the
contents of each. This analogy also suggests that the shape of the
ego is analogized by a sphere. This is ideally true, but practically
hardly ever is the case. People will overdevelop some areas of their
intellect and underdevelop others for a variety of reasons. For
instance fashion or economic motives will lead them to
overindulgence in a narrow range of experiences. This leads to egos
of unusual shapes, which fact we can thank for the overwhelming
differentiation of intellectual development. This fact is also
responsible for some types of mental disease, because we can quite
easily box ourselves into inescapable situations by becoming
committed to untruths that compel us to ignore certain facts about
reality. This will produce a blind spot which may cover facts
essential to our own survival. Or, in a more mundane case one
might spend so much time developing a trait that is economically
rewarding, that traits that could be socially rewarding may be
neglected until exercise of the neglected skills produces blunders not
compatible with the current persona (social role.) This will lead to
further neglect and magnification of a basically malformed ego.
A more or less symmetrical ego can be maintained though via
one's feelings. This is true because one's feelings are communications
from the unconscious and therefore these underdeveloped areas will
be just those to generate the majority of the feelings we experience.
The mandala, a disc shaped object, is a symbol used by the
unconsciousness to represent the well formed ego, which explains the
use of halos to identify saints.
The totality of mind is certainly an analogy of the physical
universe if not the same thing. They both have the appearance of
nonfinite entities and therefore may be the same one. Matter is
composed of energy existing in various states and interrelated in
such a way as to give it a solidity relative to other energetic masses
(humans) at a sufficiently removed scale. Thus masses of atoms
arranged to represent gold are seen to be solid while the same
energy in the form of sunlight is far from solidity. The experience of
the universe inside of us though, is far different from the experience
of it outside of us. In the one case one contains it all while in the
other he is the merest mote within it, but these may be just two
different points of view of two ends of a spectrum, coincident again
and confusing to the viewer because of his vantage point.
Of the mind, the unconscious is largely common to all, only the
ego is unique to each individual. The interaction between the ego
and the unconscious is at once unique and common, because the
ideas are the same but are represented in different garb according
to the society in which one lives and the extent of one's
understanding.
In the beginning, the modeling function is a process of trial and
error and frequently one discovers the need to discard whole
sections of the model when it is discovered that some basic fact was
misunderstood (a piece of the model was placed erroneously.)
Eventually, trial and error can be replaced by analysis and the
scientific method. Understanding produces a distinctive feeling
when a new piece of the model is put into place. If it is a piece of
sufficiently great importance, the feeling can be one of prophetic
insight. It is sometimes referred to as the "Aha" experience.
If it is true that the mental universe is the physical universe
viewed from another point, one would expect that facts about the
physical universe would have their counterparts in the mental
universe. This seems particularly true in the case of the physical
law stating that for each action there is an equal and opposite
reaction. One must expect to find that for every emotional high
there will be a corresponding low, and for every case of robbing
Peter to pay Paul, psychologically speaking, one must expect Peter to
get his pound of flesh in the end. The realization of this fact can be
very useful in evaluating the true cost of using drugs to induce an
euphoric state. Unhappily it is very difficult to see the causal
relationships between corresponding psychological states since they
can be, and frequently are, widely separated in space and time.
The main problem with the ego is, of course, what is referred to
as egoism or inflation. This is a very interesting phenomenon from
which one can learn much about the nature of the ego and all
psychological complexes. In its simplest terms, inflation is the self
deceit that one's ego is rather larger and more developed than is the
actual fact. Approximate objectivity about the relative size and
complexity of one's ego is only a remote possibility however, and is
achieved by very few and requires a lifetime of unremitting
devotion to achieve. All are egoists to one degree or another.
The most common cause of egoism, that is to say, vast and
unhealthy egoism, is feelings of inferiority. It is a reaction to the sin
of omission and happens in the following way. An individual is
pressured by society or family to develop along certain lines to the
extent of neglect of the normal experiences of childhood. The
individual then is attacked by feelings from those areas he fails to
understand due to his lack of experience and these feelings are
those of smallness since most of the individual's peers are capable in
just the areas where the individual feels least adequate. To
compensate the individual will more and more emphasize to himself
the value of his special areas of over-adaptedness. Eventually he
will have convinced himself that his special skills are more valuable
than the ordinary skills of his peers. And if that fact is not
recognized by his peers then it is their own stupidity that blinds
them.
Unhappily the person who suffers most from egoism will
compensate by teaching his child to be superior in some respect,
usually in an area where the parent is inferior (to compensate again
at one remove) at the expense of ordinary development thereby
producing one more egoist. Happily the pendulum swings less and
less drastically with each generation so that the effect eventually
wears itself out but only at the cost of much human suffering. For
the effects of egoism are far-reaching. It may be that all human
suffering can be traced back to egoism, even disease, because egoism
will lead us to live our lives in unhealthy ways thereby reducing our
resistance to attack from the many hazards we face.
It is endlessly instructive to speculate on the creation of the ego.
The apple in the genesis myth symbolizes consciousness (knowledge
of good and evil,) and the myth suggests that the motivation to eat
the apple came from the feminine aspect of our personalities along
with our instincts (the snake.) It must be realized that all beings
included in our dreams are aspects of our own personalities as
symbolized by other people and animals that we know. The myth
also suggests that eating the apple was a sin, but this is because of
the punishments involved and in a rational universe there can be no
punishments without corresponding sins. The question of motivation
seems easy to understand when viewed in the context of an
overwhelming and dominating matriarchy. What must it have been
like to live in a social structure which valued masculinity only as a
necessary tool in the act of procreation. One thinks of a bee hive,
the males simply drones, their function consisting in satisfying the
needs of femininity because without her the species quickly dies. Of
course the same can be said for the male but he is needed for only
an instant and she for months and years to follow that moment.
It doesn't seem too difficult to imagine the men in this sort of
society longing for some way to establish themselves as more
valuable creatures compared to the females. They must have
wrestled with the problem for eons. With this idea in mind, the cave
drawings of France make a great deal more sense. At any rate this
puzzling over the problem of feminine domination resulted in
consciousness, consciousness being the result of the adequate
investment of energy via concentration in an idea. Instinct
presumably was responsible for the choice of a response to the
problem, puzzling over it, drawing pictures of it on the walls of
caves, when they might have just lashed out at it, which some
undoubtedly did, ineffectively. But the key lay in the apparently
useless thought process, the essence of masculinity. The sin lies in
the act of stealing something from the unconscious. An unconscious
content has been made conscious and something new has been
created. A conscious being exists where there was none before and
it has a price. Nothing is free (for every action there is an equal and
opposite reaction) and the price of consciousness is pain, therefore it
is punishment, therefore a crime was committed and the price is
exclusion as the myth goes on to say. Before, we were part of the
environment, unquestionably a member, included, with all the rights
and privileges pertaining thereto. After the theft, we are
individuals, separate, outsiders, suffering all the pain an alien always
suffers, and in our haste to solve this new problem we only make it
worse by attacking it in the same way, further building up the ego
complex and further cutting off avenues of relatedness to the
unconscious.
This drama is reenacted by each individual to a greater or lesser
extent during the years of puberty.
Insidiously, consciousness seems to work. In approaching it, one
never knows when he has the complete problem in hand. In fact he
never does because all of what is, is interrelated. Nothing stands
alone, and in the process of becoming aware one always feels that
the whole problem is apparent because it is all there, within us,
partly conscious and partly unconscious. The unconscious part is
available through feelings since that is the form communications
with the unconscious takes, so we feel that the whole situation is in
hand. But only a part is conscious and curiously, when one
comprehends only a small portion of a problem it always seems as if
a few modifications to the situation will rectify it straight away.
This is always a red herring. When the modification is made, new
and unanticipated problems, sometimes in remote areas soon arise.
If one continues to research the problem until a large part of it is
made conscious the invariable conclusion is that the best action is no
action since the problem area has already assumed its ideal form.
Civilization is a cascade of problems all arising from one
solution, the establishment of consciousness.
There can be no doubt that the ego is the real accomplishment
of the human species. Its one real creation from which all other
creations flow. It is also the creator of heaven and hell, since there
is no left or right, up or down, without an observer at a point within
the spectrum. Humanity can also be seen as fulfilling the role
toward the earth that cancer holds in its relationship with the body.
That is, having disabled the natural systems that hold the species in
check, it grows unlimited until its host's ability to support it is
destroyed.
Religion and therefore the philosophy which guides our lives is
rooted in sexuality and the religion we have inherited is based on the
development of the masculine principle. This was inevitable and a
necessity in its time and it has been responsible for a great many
gifts in our culture. The question now is whether that time has
passed, and whether continued pursuit of the masculine ideal will
destroy us. There is no doubt that many of the misfortunes that
face us result from the masculinization of the culture.
The masculine philosophy will worship spiritual values which
will lead to cold intellectuality and science, which will lead to
development of technology and will view the earth as an object to
be conquered. On the other hand a feminine philosophy will
worship nature and will rely on feelings to guide it. In the end it
will see the earth as a deity and will be offended by acts that tend
to defile it.
If left unchecked technology will pollute the earth to the extent
of making it uninhabitable by life as we know it. This must be felt
or understood by all before it will be possible to turn away from the
tools that technology provides, in favor of guarding the perfection of
nature.
Eventually the earth will change, as all things do, of its own
accord and with no help from us, but this change will happen only
gradually, leaving time for the organisms on the earth to adapt to
the changing environment in the usual way. But if we allow the
pollutants generated by the development of technology to change
the earth it will happen so rapidly that we will have no time to
evolve, nor will the other organisms that inhabit the earth. The
inevitable result will be a barren and inhospitable environment that
will take tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of years to
reachieve equilibrium and again bring forth life.
The fact is that we and all living things were effectively
designed specifically for the environment that we found when we
arrived on this world. That world did not include the gasses that are
generated when fossil fuels are burned. Those gasses had been
solidified and buried in the earth, deep in the earth in many cases.
Thus we are creating a new atmosphere that we are not adapted to,
and this is only one example. The elements making up our world
are capable of combining to form anything. But we are only adapted
to the special environment we found here when we arrived. Any
change will make the environment less hospitable and any large
change will make it uninhabitable.
This is the danger we face and only a vast change in our thought
patterns fairly rapidly will prove effective in fending off the worst of
this impending disaster. One has only to think of the ways in which
we can succumb to know that time is very short. If we continue to
use fertilizers in the way we do we will extract most of the nutrients
from the soil and since mostly we live in cities, so that the
overwhelming percentage of our waste is put into very small places,
there is no way of getting these nutrients back into the soil from
whence they came. After all, soil is a mixture of rocks of various
sizes and decayed life forms along with the wastes they provided. In
other words life grows out of wastes and death. But we are
depriving the earth of these inputs and therefore the ability to
recharge itself.
To look at another example consider the way in which we deal
with microorganisms that we don't care for. We systematically
poison them out of existence. But these organisms exist because
there is a niche for them to inhabit. If we kill them off the niche
will still exist and will call into existence a new organism. One we
will not be adapted to and just as the cold virus would undoubtedly
do in the Martians if such existed and came into contact with it, one
of these new virus's will sooner or later do the same to us. Or again,
what about the increasing trend towards the introduction of toxic
chemicals into the food chain. The new chemicals we create will
take a very long time to fit into the environment just because they
are new. It takes thousands or millions of years to adapt to new
environmental conditions, but we are creating these new chemicals
at an ever increasing pace and where can we put them. Wherever
we choose, that is part of our environment and since oxygen is one
of the great natural corrosives, sooner or later it will enter the
biosphere and therefore the food chain. We are busily fouling our
own nest at an ever more rapid pace.
To take another example, suppose the massive changes we are
introducing into the atmosphere change the temperature of our
environment by a couple of degrees. Plus or minus, it doesn't
matter. In the one case we are in for a new ice age and in the other
the polar caps melt flooding the earth. Or perhaps the effluents we
pour into the ocean will kill all of a particularly valuable organism,
like plankton which feed most of our fish and renews the oxygen in
the atmosphere. In either case we are dead.
Thus, the masculine philosophy which began with the idea that
the earth was to be subdued, is quickly accomplishing its goal, but in
so doing will destroy that which we rely on for our own survival. If
we are to survive, our attitude toward our environment must
mature and that maturation is to be found in the development of the
feminine principle.
All human cultures begin their existence in the embrace of a
feminine philosophy. It is the default option. That is, if one makes
no effort to develop a philosophy he will find that his philosophy is
feminine. Thus all primitive societies worship the earth in one way
or another as the womb of all life, the mother at whose breast we all
are suckled. The story is told of an American tribe that went to the
extent of constructing an image of a woman out of dirt reclining on
the earth but very large - a mountainous image of the Great Mother.
And any group of artifacts of primitive cultures always has a large
number of stone images of women, usually with their bellies,
buttocks, and sexual organs magnified out of all proportion to the
rest of the figure.
Ritual murder is not uncommonly part of the religion of these
cultures. Typically the prisoners captured in war are used in this
way. They are killed, chopped to pieces and scattered in the field to
assure the fertility for the coming year. Thus, the earth, the mother,
is in need of sacrifices to assure her continued favor; today we call it
fertilizer. We may assume the motive of the priests was oriented
towards the control of egoism in this case. I refer the reader to
Neumann's The Great Mother for a complete treatment of this
subject. The interesting aspect of this ritual is the apparent fact that
the victims of this practice were not violently opposed to it, in fact
approved of it, if they did not go willingly to their own deaths. One
must wonder at this in view of the fact that our reaction would be
completely the opposite. What view of life could produce people
willing to be sacrificed for the good of the group? We must assume
that they believed that their deaths were in fact for the good of the
group. And that is just the significant fact.
The development of the ego creates individuals. People that
have well defined ego boundaries are well aware of the difference
between I and them and place a high value on the I. On the other
hand people with ill defined ego boundaries do not find that
difference so obvious. Thus the people of these primitive societies
were not so much individuals as they were part of a group, and their
well being was identified with that of the group. This is why they
could be willing to sacrifice themselves, and indeed, under the right
circumstances we can be brought to do the same. The group and
therefore we, are better off because of the sacrifice. This is even
more obvious when one looks at more advanced feminine societies
and sees that they invariably recognize the reality of reincarnation.
It is very difficult to recognize this reality when one identifies with
the ego, but if that identification is eliminated, one is left with the
physical body and the family as readily available entities with
which to identify. In both cases reincarnation seems a perfectly
valid interpretation of events.
It is not to be expected that societies that worship feminine
deities will have a feminine ruler. The feminine principle prefers to
express itself by indirect means because of its basic passivity and
therefore tends to manipulation. This is not to say that a feminine
society might not be ruled by a female, but this fact is not important
one way or another. The rule of Elizabeth I over England was a
practical decision. No male heir existed.
The deities worshipped by feminine societies will tend to be
myriad. This is significant and follows from the chaotic nature of
feminism and the emphasis it places on the unconscious as opposed
to the conscious complex. Monotheism is a hallmark of societies
based on the masculine principle. From this it can be seen that in
recorded history there has been only one masculine culture, that
proceeding from Abraham. Of course the act of recording history is
one that will proceed from the development of masculinity.
Feminine societies will not consider it important.
Prehistory, as recorded in the Bible, instructs us that there were
masculine cycles prior to ours. That is the meaning of the Tower of
Babel. A masculine culture conceived the plan to build a tower to
heaven (science?) Eventually the plan failed because of the rise of
femininity, which had the effect of confounding communications due
to the rise of dialects. God apparently recognized that the plan was
ill conceived and departed from the people, thereby allowing the
rise of feminism. Masculinism favors unity, feminism favors
diversity.
The rules governing feminine societies will be the rules of
etiquette. They will be unformulated, implied by every act of every
individual in the society and enforced by vigilantes. The justice is
swift and sure if not completely accurate in its administration. The
great advantage of this form of justice is that it is free to evolve,
being unwritten.
In the West all known societies preceding those dominated by
the Judeo-Christian tradition were feminine. This includes those of
Greece, Rome, and Egypt, and especially our own Druidic culture.
This fact is apparent from the nature of their Gods, myriad and
representing the different unconscious impulses to which humans
are subject. The Greeks and Romans were however, on the brink of
the transformation to a masculine culture, though the Greeks didn't
complete that transformation before their decline. This is readily
apparent from the intellectual work that survives them. Plato,
Aristotle, the great mathematicians and poets must have had a well
developed masculinity to perform their tasks.
The conflict between Athens and Sparta may also be seen in this
light. Sparta based its society on discipline, militarism, and a
communal life style, so that one can expect these to be common
attributes of feminine societies. This also explains why we, when we
speak of our Latin heritage look to Athens and its well developed
intellectuality rather than Sparta.
In current times we can observe the various cultures of man
and try to categorize them in terms of masculinism and feminism.
In the East, all societies are feminist though the Chinese, Indian, and
Japanese appear to be ahead of us in terms of cultural development.
Which is to say that they developed pre technological masculine
societies in the millennia preceding the current one. All aboriginal
cultures (Australian, Javanese, American) are primitive feminist.
The interesting case is the Muslim. This one occupies the geographic
border between East and West and would appear to occupy the
equivalent religious ground. On the one hand Mohammed is the
brother prophet of Christ because he is also a spiritual descendent of
Abraham. Muslim science developed more rapidly than the
Christian variety and decayed sooner, until today the masculine arts
are no longer practiced except insofar as they are stolen from the
West, and culturally they appear more similar to their eastern
neighbors.
It is said that all things carry the seeds of their own destruction.
This must be very true in the case of religions (by very true we
imply that truth is not only relative but spectral in nature, therefore
very little can be absolutely true except in narrowly defined
subjects.) After centuries of feminism a pharaoh came along who
saw things a little differently. This man, Ikhnaton, in about 1350BC,
suggested that the one and only real god was the sun god Ra, who
cast his beams on all, rich and poor alike. This was a revolutionary
idea and only had as good a run as it did because the heretic was a
pharaoh. After his death at an early age, by foul means we must
assume, his religion was quickly sent packing in favor of a return to
the old ways, this being the main contribution of the next pharaoh,
Tutankhamen.
Considering what happened later though, we must assume that
these revolutionary ideas fell on fertile ground, though not in just
the way that Ikhnaton had in mind. At this time the people who
would be identified later as the chosen race of God were enslaved by
the people of Egypt. They were open to the radical new God, not
being favorably inclined to the old gods and goddesses of their
masters, and perhaps these new ideas helped them to organize their
own religious feelings. In any case the new myth was developed by
these people and eventually it was used to organize them into a
viable political source of power. Not surprisingly this called into
being a political leader who, perhaps surprisingly, successfully
defied the authority of Pharaoh. Moses, and perhaps some others,
took it upon themselves to organize and codify the new religion, and
this was the central and significant deed of Moses' life. Not so much
the religion itself, which is largely unrecognizable in its current form,
but the codification of it into myriad rules and laws, whose
centerpiece is the extremely orderly and concise law which we refer
to as The Ten Commandments. This is the work of the orderly god,
the masculine principle - a newly manifested entity on the face of
the earth (at least in western culture) and the far reaching impact of
this event is what concerns us here. And THE WORD is God as
they like to say, THE WORD being the law.
The fact that the law is written down produces a whole new
profession, the lawyers, the interpreters of the law. In the beginning
the interpretation was according to the letter of the law, no thought
having been given to the possibility that the language might not
have the perfection necessary to express the idea behind the law.
There is a dichotomy here. The distinction between the spirit of the
law, which we can take to mean the expression of the perfect
wisdom of the masculine principle, and the letter of the law which is
what results when a human, with all of the limitations of an entity
with a finite understanding of things, this limitation being expressed
in his language, his language being no more than he himself is,
attempts to express an idea in the written language.
Perhaps the Church has felt over the centuries that this
distinction would eventually disappear as the church labored at
studying and reinterpreting the law with the new tools being
developed through the pursuit of the masculine principle. This idea
though, must flow from an imperfect understanding of what is, or
else it is the expression of a man with an ax to grind. An infinite
universe can afford to be made up of all unique cases and thus it is,
therefore laws must be generalizations that do not fit any individual
case perfectly and in some places must be expected to be wild
misfits. This is the nature of the law and to try to claim more
validity for it because of the connection between it and the deity, is
to saddle it with an essential weakness which will, in the end
destroy it. And thus it was done, and so it will be, to paraphrase
DeMille's pharaoh.
The basic attribute of the masculine principle is order, which
order, when carried to its extreme leads to nothing, the essence of
order, and thus the masculine principle resides in nothingness or the
void. It is a spiritual entity separate from the physical or gross
universe, and this place is referred to by the devotees of the religion
as heaven. It is heaven because it excludes the pain and suffering
associated with the life of a physical entity subject to the stresses of
the opposites.
An enslaved people will recognize the value of nonexistence.
The universe of the mind is the closest humans can come to this
heaven, and the subset of the mind we refer to as the ego is
particularly masculine in its opposition to the feminine unconscious
because it is relatively empty by comparison and what contents it
has are relatively orderly since they are acquired by conscious
effort, mainly through association. Consciousness thus is raised to
the level of high value and is associated with good. A close look at
the Mosaic law reveals that it is well designed to cause conflict in
the individual by putting him in opposition to his instincts. This is
the reason for the sexual prohibitions, the conflict thus created will
inevitably lead to suffering in the individual, which will lead to
examination and introspection and the extension of the ego complex.
This is not the only reason for sexual prohibitions, sexual
experience tends to defeat the ego, in fact some Eastern philosophies
teach that the only way to achieve the egoless state (a highly
desirable event in their system) is to achieve orgasm, the two events
occur simultaneously. Another reason is the restraint of disease,
another foe of ego extension.
One of the problems that the ego has is the fact that it is non-
transferable. The unconscious does not suffer from this drawback,
since it is transferable at least by implication. By this it is meant
that adults not only teach reaction to stimulus to their children, they
also teach their understanding of the environment within which
they exist as the reason for the reactions by implication.
Unconscious contents may also be genetically transferable but this is
yet to be proven. The ego though, comes and goes with each
individual and must be rebuilt from scratch each time. The fact that
this new religion is written is of inestimable value in transmitting it
from person to person with reasonable accuracy.
Moses' idea then, is an idea indeed. In fact it is an idea of such
magnitude that to say that it is an inspiration from God is entirely
realistic. In fact the myth about the actual transmission of the idea
from God is in every particular realistic. If one goes up on a
mountain for an extended period with no provisions and with the
kinds of problems Moses had in trying to organize a ragtag army of
slaves into a unified goal oriented society, one would expect just
such an occurrence as the burning bush episode. This would be a
projection from the unconscious which ego creatures are particularly
subject to. One has but to look at a featureless abstract design for a
few moments and note the shapes that start appearing there to
appreciate this fact. These images are residents of the unconscious
which is not readily accessible to us because of the blinding effects
of ego consciousness.
This brings us to Jesus. As a generality, when the gods visit the
earth they live their lives in a particular way. The events of these
lives follow certain rules and include certain events. Thus there is
always a mother figure such as Eve, Isis, or Mary, and two sons,
Cain-Abel, Set-Osiris, Pilate-Jesus. Pilate, because the evil brother
always kills the good one and in Jesus' case mankind did it but
mankind is represented by Pilate. The fact that he is not the actual
son of Mary is inconsequential since Mary represents the great
mother and therefore is the mother of us all.
Anyway the bad brother always kills the good brother who is
reincarnated by or through the magic of the mother to become the
king of the dead (the king of heaven.) The important consideration
is where the emphasis lies. In feminine societies it always lies with
the mother while in masculine societies the son is most important.
Thus Mary starts out to have a very minor role indeed, only slightly
more important than that of Joseph, but with each passing century,
we can see her value rise and in the end she will far outshine Jesus.
In any case as can be seen, Jesus' life was not different from
that of many other incarnated gods, or that of any human since the
gods live the lives of humans, but placing the important events in
relief. So that each of us must expect these events in our own lives
though we may have trouble picking the important events out
unless we pay careful attention and recognize the symbolic nature of
these events both in the lives of our gods and in our own. The
virgin birth, the temptation by the devil, the early success, the denial
and failure, the death of the natural man, and the rebirth of the
spiritual man are significant events. To see these events
symbolically in our own lives, they must be interpreted or related to
real events which will then lead us to see them in a truer light.
The virgin birth is meant to bring us to a recognition of the
miraculous nature of our own incarnation. The earth, our mother,
gives birth to us without the aid of any outside agency, impregnated
apparently by the spirit of God. Eventually we adapt to our
materiality and achieve some modest degree of success which goes
right to our heads and leads us to tempt the devil. This results in
failure and denial by our friends and associates and eventually
ourselves, which leads in its turn to the death of our completely
material orientation and the discovery of the spiritual aspect of our
personalities, and since this event saves us from ignominy and leads
us to new successes we quite rightly view it as a miraculous event.
Jesus, in the sermon on the mount, performs a major
transformation of the way in which the law is interpreted and
administered by the new church. In the beginning he uses his
feelings to interpret the lives of the less advantaged lower strata of
society. From there he goes on to turn inward the judgments
flowing from the interpretation of the law, thereby alleviating the
harshness with which the law is administered, since few of us will
judge ourselves as harshly as we judge others, and finally he
suggests that passivity is the proper response to the evil of others.
The law as brought forth by Moses, is an exceedingly harsh
entity, though perhaps ideally suited to the needs of the Jewish
people at the time of their departure from Egypt. After a few
hundred years it leads to the excesses of the Pharisees and calls
forth Jesus, who changes the effect of the law by shifting the point
of view from which it is viewed away from extreme masculinity
towards the feminine. The application of the law from this point of
view is very different and is made clear by Jesus' judgment of the
adulteress. Thus Jesus, because of the use of his feelings and his
passivity, must be viewed as the first feminist in the modern rise of
feminism.
Jesus continues on his appointed rounds and dies on a cross
which represents a tree (the family tree, to signify the end of
material existence) as does Osiris, and is reincarnated through the
good offices of his mother. To be sure she has a minor role this time
but that is to be expected in the masculine era. Jesus then assumes
his next important role as King of the Dead.
Jesus has thus made the masculine church palatable to the
people of the West who, for the most part in those times, existed in
feminine cultures. Christianity is the bridge to the masculine
philosophy, a philosophy unreachable in its Jewish guise by the
gentiles.
As many more people approach this religion through the Bible,
and therefore in an intellectual and masculine way, they develop the
powers of the ego and eventually this capability is applied to other
things. Philosophy mainly in the beginning, but then philosophy
branches out in many directions and gives birth to science. One of
the early problems of this development lies in the tendency to think
in symbolic terms. This gives rise to multiple interpretations of
events, many more or less true and none dominant over the others.
This is a problem because it means that each individual will follow
the path that seems most promising to him and all of those working
in similar areas arrive at irreconcilable differences in the
interpretation of their conclusions.
Feminine astrology gives way to masculine astronomy, feminine
alchemy gives way to masculine chemistry, but only after many
years of development of the masculine principle and the arrival of
another dominating man, strong enough to eliminate unconscious
symbolism as an intellectual tool.
Christianity spread and grew for 1500 years without pause. It
developed a very structured organization with a man, the Pope (il
Papa, the father,) at its head, his word infallible. This state of affairs
persisted for centuries, the word of the Pope and therefore to a large
extent his subordinates could not be violated. The price in terms of
the ill will of the citizenry towards the church hierarchy was great.
And, as one would guess by hindsight, this condition could not last
forever. The decisions of the Pope inevitably affected some in a
pleasant way and others unpleasantly, therefore it was only a
question of time until someone with enough political power was
adversely affected to the point of causing him to defy the Pope, and
this is exactly what happened.
Henry VIII, king of England at a time when European
civilization was coming into full flower and England was enjoying
unprecedented influence for many reasons, found himself with great
need and desire in a forbidden direction. He wanted a divorce so
that he could marry another, who would hopefully bear him a son
and heir. This was of course forbidden by the church. Every avenue
within the church was explored to no avail, and since the connection
between the government and the church was critical and had to be
maintained, the only course open was to defy the established order
and to look with favor on a new mood extent in the land in those
times. The new mood leaned toward the establishment of a new
church eliminating some of the most undesirable aspects of the old,
mainly the Pope. The significance of this act cannot be
overestimated. Here was an example of a man defying the head of
the most powerful organization on earth, in fact the chosen
representative of God, and apparently with impunity. This lesson
was not lost on the citizens of the Christian countries.
The Pope represented many things, not the least of which was
the sanctity of the position of the father in each Christian family.
Just as the word of the Pope was inviolate within the organization of
the church, the word of the father in each family was also inviolate.
But Henry demonstrated that each son could hope to defy that word
in the appropriate circumstances and eventually this possibility was
realized by the wives also.
At this same point in history another man realized the need to
defy the Pope. That man was Martin Luther. He undertook to
establish a new church outside of the corrupt constraints of the old
one and one of the areas most in need of reformation in his view
centered around the interpretation of the scriptures. He felt that
allowing all manner of interpretations to exist at one time led to a
decay of the authority of the priest and therefore only one
interpretation could be allowed.
Perhaps Martin Luther did not care which interpretation was to
be the authorized one, but from a practical point of view if one is
going to go with only one, that one would have to be the literal one.
It is the most easily described and the most easily defended. After
all one can very easily say that the chosen scribes of God didn't
write down puzzles for every Tom, Dick, and Harry to interpret but
rather they wrote exactly what they meant. No interpretation was
necessary.
The most far reaching effect of this dictum was not restricted to
religion. Since the edict was accepted, for authoritarian reasons we
must assume, by all of the Protestant sects, it had the effect of
teaching a new way of thinking. It led people to look most carefully
at the literal interpretation of the events of their lives, not just at the
literal interpretation of the stories of the Bible. And this approach
had some unexpected pluses in its favor. Suddenly thinkers would
find they could talk to each other much more easily, not having to
reach back to the beginnings of each trail of logic to define their
terms so that their listeners could interpret what they had to say.
And since each had followed very similar logic paths because all
looked most favorably on the literal interpretation of events, they
found it relatively easy to reach the same conclusions that the
speaker had.
The effect of this has been most noticeable in the area of
science. In this field, built up as it is by the efforts of many, it is
absolutely essential that each member of the scientific community
interpret his findings in the same way and describe them for his
counterparts in such a way as to make it possible to reduce
duplication of effort. The problems of communication of very
difficult concepts is bad enough with different languages to contend
with, and it is impossible if the interpretation of each event can be
different. One must keep in mind that all of modern science is built
upon a very few unprovable theories.
The truths of science are not universal truths, since universal
truths are beyond the capabilities of human understanding. But
such things as "the shortest distance between two points is a straight
line," and "for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction,"
are true enough for the purposes they are used. They are relative
truths. They are true in a certain abstraction of reality, and as long
as they are not applied in any larger reality they will serve well
enough. The trick is to know the limitations of these rules, or just
exactly when one is applying them to an area for which they are not
fitted. The shortest distance between two stars is presumable not a
straight line, none being available if space is curved.
So we must look to Martin Luther when we want to point to the
father of modern science.
We should also keep in mind that science is a flower growing in
the masculine field. It is a construction of ideas and therefore not a
physical reality even though its subject is the physical universe and
some of its most obvious effects are material in nature.
The price of scientific thought is the multiplicity and depth of
human experience.
Looking at the modern church in the West, one is tempted to say
that, having given birth to her child, science, she is fast passing into
old age preparatory to passing from human affairs. For many
citizens of the West it is no longer apparent what the value of
membership in the Christian Church is. In fact it would seem that
the church has fallen victim to its own success.
It brought rationality out of the background and made it the
dominant mental reality of our era only to see that same rationality
turn and criticize its own champion where it is most vulnerable, in
the area of its own mystical base. That rationality was nearly totally
successful in its offensive against feminine mysticism which, through
its attacks it forced into an outlaw status and therefore into a
negative manifestation, witches, and then proceeded to drive them
from the land. But, in so doing it also eliminated Mother Nature and
the fairies and ultimately itself since we no longer need it to
interpret these entities for us, they having long since turned into
weak fantasies and occasional nightmares in a rational universe.
And if ghosts and goblins don't really exist, what of the Holy Ghost
and heaven? Too irrational to believe in, I'm afraid, so what do we
need the church for anyway? It is useful as a social institution, but
that won't be enough to save it, United Way will do the same job
more efficiently. It is a good moral shepherd, but the state has
taken over that function, and without heaven and the final judgment,
the threat that the church used has lost its power.
Thus the church finds itself more and more in need of converts
to maintain itself and it must get out there and hustle along with the
rest to come up with those converts. And since what it has to offer
seems less and less valuable with each passing day the effort will
become harder and harder and the church will lose and lose until
eventually it will become an unimportant sect.
In order to compete effectively the church has had to pay
serious attention to the complaints of its members who are not
anxious to lose the advantages of modern moral realities such as
divorce and abortion. In addition as women become more and more
powerful the church finds itself less and less capable of ignoring
their demands for equal rights within the church. After all, if they
do there may eventually be no church.
On the other hand if the church goes along with the modern
trends it will turn into something it is not, so it is faced with
extinction whichever way it goes and nothing can save it. The best
that can be hoped for is that the transition be slow and nonviolent.
There is a great deal of irony in this. Because of the need to develop
rationality, a basically masculine trait, and therefore to use males
for the purpose, we were forced to let the women watch over the
feeling aspect of our lives as a secondary function. As previously
mentioned, communication with the unconscious occurs mainly via
the feelings, thus we say that we don't know why a particular action
is called for but that we know that it is because we can feel it. We
can never be so aware that we can do without our feelings
altogether, and who would want to anyway. But religion is basically
called into being to take care of the feeling that we know not
whence we came nor where we might be going and therefore that we
need to look out for the eventual but inevitable fact that we will be
going. That feeling became more and more remote as we became
more and more residents of the ego and now it exists most strongly
in our women just because they have been the keepers of our
feelings for so many years. Thus they are the ones we must look to
if we are to be brought back into close contact with the mysteries.
But if they become the priests we cannot expect them to point to the
father with whom they have no direct contact. Rather we must
expect them to be the handmaidens of the mother.
It becomes increasingly clear as time goes by that we need
closer contact with the mysteries too. There is an emptiness that
accompanies the loss of connectedness to this aspect of life.
So the new church will slowly see feminine values as more and
more important, while masculine values become less and less so.
These values will be the opposites of those of the old church.
Therefore, since the old church valued rationality, intellectual
activity, education, the ego, the new will value irrationality,
intuition, the unconscious, and these values can be seen everywhere
in the church today - faith healing, speaking in tongues, charisma,
laying on of hands. The old church saw the one God and his Son as
the important figures in the cosmic family. The new will see the
Mother as preeminent among the myriad's of spiritual beings.
The old church was highly organized, the new will be much less
formal. The old church laid down its laws and they were oriented to
produce conflict in the individual, the new will rely on unwritten
rules of etiquette. The old placed a premium on the individual, the
new will see itself as a group. The old was concerned with the long
term at the expense of the short (sacrifice today to assure your
entry into heaven,) the new will be concerned with today's problems
and let the future take care of itself.
In an interesting way the East has been the mirror image of the
West in philosophical development and this is perhaps predictable
because of the workings of opposition. This may be an erroneous
conclusion though since compensations can and do occur in time and
therefore a movement's opposite does not have to exist
concurrently. In any case it does seem that just as the West has
overdone the development of the masculine philosophy, the East has
done the same with the feminine or as an Indian teacher once
remarked, "I'm sure that the East has the medicine needed by the
West, it's just that the East is overmedicated."
Anyway, one can say as a generality that the East is and has
been a feminine society for as long as masculinity has dominated in
the West. The generality is however an oversimplification since the
movement of mankind would seem to be better analogized by a
spiral than a circle. The philosophy of the East is indeed feminine
and transitioning now into the masculine, but their societies are
much older than ours and therefore one would have to say that we
are just entering into the phase of cultural development that they
have just finished.
The realities of life were very different though. The earth itself
seemed much different because of the segregation of East and West,
so that one can hardly expect to see the rise of femininity manifest
itself in exactly the same way. The values will be the same though,
so that one must expect that human life will become, if not cheap, at
least far less expensive, in favor of the group. The use of the earth's
resources will be done with more care as for example, we bow and
apologize to a tree before cutting it to build a shelter.
The concept of Kharma will rule again. If one recognizes that his
child is a new incarnation of himself, and that the acts of one's
current life will define the circumstances of the next, he will have a
care in hopes of rising to the next level of society. The class
structure of society will presumably return, since it was particularly
noticeable in India and China prior to the current period of
transition.
In fact the classless state is closely connected to the socialist
view. A tool in the effort to remove injustice from the world. But it
has one serious flaw. It is inescapable that there is something
intrinsically different between prince and a pauper, Pygmalion not
withstanding. There is no doubt that this is a cultural result, but the
idea that it occurs in one generation is to evade the obvious facts.
However, denying this fact will have the effect of removing upper
class taste from society, by isolating it and not creating any new
members, and waiting until it dies out. But, this brings many
questions to mind. Is the elimination of class structure really good
for society? Did the upper class provide us with something of great
value that we have lost? How about a model towards which the rest
of us can aim? How about a group that can fund institutions that
will not achieve funding in a congress. Cultural institutions, for
instance. Is the entertainment value of the upper class (the English
Royal Family) important? It has been demonstrated that
elimination of the upper class promotes a more even distribution of
wealth. This is undoubtedly good from some points of view, but
culture is a quality of life issue. Is the tradeoff worth it? Might not
a more even handed approach be more valuable?
Reincarnation is a philosophy which is obviously true from
every point of view except that of the ego. We, in the west, fail to
appreciate its significance because of our certainty that the ego is
the only true bearer of a pronoun (surely an egoistic point of view.)
In addition, the realization of life as an endless number of cycles
through a world that never changes in its ability to bring suffering
and tears to bear on our lives ("The wheel of life grinds slow, but
exceeding fine.") has a most satisfying effect on the development of
the ego.
We will come to see that we must pay close attention to what
we eat since we are what we eat, and that our part is to eat and be
eaten along with all other living things, and the impossibility of
escape from that fact. We will soon note that our purpose here is,
far from the conscious experience of life, to produce the magical
substance from which all life grows. And that, that stuff had best be
spread evenly over the surface of the earth rather than in one or a
few spots, since, as is well known, there is such a thing as too much
of a good thing.
Soon we will recognize the unreliability of the conclusions of the
ego and we will turn to more reliable soothsayers such as I
CHING. The difference between these two prognosticators is that
the ego bases its conclusions on what it knows, and since it knows so
very little, this is bound to bring it to grief in the long run, while
I CHING purports to instruct us from the fountainhead - from
the sum of all things known and unknown - from the unconscious.
It is impossible to make a decision that is good both in the long
term and the short. That would violate the principle of opposition
on which the universe is constructed. Any decision must be good
now and bad later or the reverse, or else it has no effect in which
case it is a non-decision or there is a constant flow of good and bad
emanating from it. But the ego recognizes its chances and therefore
chooses to produce the most good as soon as possible and therefore
the most disastrous consequences in the long term. And since the
short term is coming to an end with respect to many big
environmental decisions made at the beginning of the time that ego
decisions could have a large impact on the environment, (for
instance, making this an oil based society,) we must expect to pay
the bill soon.
The trend in government has been towards more and more
structure and organization and away from social classes, with power
moving steadily away from the pinnacle of the aristocracy towards
the masses. Thus we had in the remote past a large number of
Kingships and Principalities, existing in a disorganized and generally
conflict-intensive state. These entities combined slowly to form
aristocracies with power more diffuse but residing in the upper
classes and including a rudimentary civil service. Slowly the power
moved towards these ever more organized civil services producing
highly organized nations with power now in the hands of the middle
class, who controlled the large bureaucracies. At the same time
commercial enterprises, always the domain of the middle class,
enhanced this power as they became more organized.
Now, in our times we see the lower classes organizing into trade
unions and consumer advocacy's with the power to elect government
officials so that they now are the power elite. All of this is
inevitable because of organization, which is a result of the
development of the masculine principle. The maximum amount of
power that can be realized though, is achieved by giving voice to
every human and concentrating those voices in support of a single
organization. This has been largely achieved by the application of the
vote and thus the evolution of political power has moved across the
entire spectrum from one man to all men. But as always, the ends of
the spectrum coincide and all power is the same as no power. When
each man realizes his power as he will when plebiscites become the
dominant political tool (called the referendum in California,) we
must expect a sudden fragmentation. The bottom will defy the top
and each man will become his own authority and too much
organization will have defeated itself by letting everyone see that
there is no special sanctity attached to our leaders, since those
leaders are chosen from amongst ourselves and therefore the views
of our leaders are no more accurate than our own. An aristocracy
provides us with a group from which we can select leaders that we
don't understand. This means that our power to criticize them is
severely limited because we assume that their special and privileged
lifestyle will have provided them with insights we lack. This will
give them a power to lead that common man lacks. Having a
believable leader is a very powerful tool in the very nearly
impossible task of organizing a society of ego bearers, all of whom
have the feeling that they know everything of importance. Lacking
such a personage, we will find ourselves leaderless and go our own
ways in an attempt to achieve harmony in our own lives, ignoring
the disharmony of the group.
This can be seen to be occurring in our own society, we keep
electing new presidents in hopes of finding the one with godlike
inspiration and being disappointed because they always turn out to
be only men as blind as ourselves, so we throw them out of office or
force them to leave of their own accord.
The trouble is rooted in the doctrine of infallibility as
promulgated by the Pope. This doctrine presupposes some special
relationship between the Pope and God and by analogy any male
leader in the Christian world shares in this relationship. Leaving
aside the viability of the doctrine as practiced by the church, it leads
to too high expectations by the people of the West in their
institutional leaders and this is particularly true in politics since it is
too much to ask that the candidates turn down this hero worship
when it is offered by the people. The reason it used to work and no
longer does, is the impossibility of hiding faults because of the
omnipresent press. Our leaders are exposed in each of their failures
to unmerciful publicity, the press even going so far as to induce fake
crises in order to give opportunity for errors of judgment. Since no
human can expect to avoid errors in judgment continuously for years
on end, the result is an inglorious end to political careers and
constantly eroding faith in political leadership.
This trend will continue until interest wanes in the realization
that we cannot trust any man to organize and run our lives
effectively. The only solution will be for each of us to run our own
lives as we see fit. But this will produce a power vacuum which will
be filled by something.
If we look at the examples of feminine societies for a clue as to
the probable organization of a future government in our society it
leads us to expect a trend toward decentralization. Power in
Washington will start dissipating and the governors of the states will
become the most important political figures, but this won't last as
the cities and towns become autonomous and finally the
neighborhoods. In all probability the skeleton of the old structure
will remain but since they will no longer speak for us their power
will be limited indeed.
Again the trend can be seen already in the so-called taxpayer's
revolt. The way to castrate political power structures is to cut them
off at the pocket book since the dollars sent to government are the
real votes. Frustration with an ineffective organization will be the
catalyst. Government will seem more and more powerless to not
only achieve the goals it sets for itself, but to see the reasonable
goals themselves. That is because they will continue to judge events
through the eyes of the old masculine philosophy while events occur
within the context of the new feminism.
The problem with Western governments is that they offer no
goals. A goal oriented society is a happy society. But the goal must
seem achievable in a reasonable amount of time and must be
replaced when achievement becomes imminent. Unfortunately, in a
democracy, there are very few realistic goals that all can subscribe
to. We therefore are reduced to vague generalities such as freedom,
a concept that cannot be clearly defined. Freedom of the press has
been generalized to mean freedom from responsibility to restrict
oneself to some standard of morality, again because in a pluralistic
society no standard is universally acceptable. The result is
pornography of the most comprehensive kind.
Society must face the fact that it has a responsibility to identify
some ideal towards which it strives. This is the creative role of
politics. Without that goal, we are a rudderless ship that will drift
into one disaster after another.
Suppose that the agreed upon goal were to raise happy and
healthy children, (recognizing that a happy adult is contradictory
and destructive) with a view to strengthening our society. Surely
this would provide a better yardstick against which to measure
difficult court decisions than freedom. Freedom granted to one will
inevitably deprive another. The smut peddler is granted freedom to
make money, my freedom to raise a healthy child is diminished.
The structure of the old family is familiar to us all, a strong
patriarch who ran the show with a wife who maintained the
household. Boys trained to assume their roles outside the family as
breadwinners and girls trained for their future lives as wives in the
homes. Men as the leaders in religion, the arts, and sciences, women
as chattels or decorations. But this situation has not pertained in the
United States for years.
Real and apparent power don't necessarily reside in the same
place and haven't here for a long time. The truth of this is most
apparent in property ownership. Because of the divorce rate and the
way the laws have evolved, property ownership has in recent years
moved more and more to the wives. Wives retain custody of the
children in most cases and therefore out of need, frequently find
themselves awarded the real property of the family. Thus the males
go from wife to wife and earn the larger share of the income of the
family, but this income is mostly spent on real property which
remains with the wife in the likely event of a breakup in the
relationship.
That is only one indication that most families here have become
matriarchies. There is no longer a central male authority figure but
there is generally a powerful grandmother because the women
remain and the men don't and the men are therefore unreliable. But
apparent power remains with the men because of tradition while
real power, the power to move people to action lies with the women.
It is exercised manipulatively in order to save the face of the men
and this leads to a great deal of conflict in the family since men don't
realize the true state of affairs until well after they are married. For
children this is also a perverted state of affairs which they find
confusing and shameful since they see that in their own families a
great deal of hypocrisy is required to keep open warfare from
breaking out and they assume this is a more or less unique set of
circumstances, being fooled by the same hypocrisy in the families of
their friends. They are well trained however, and carry on the
tradition in their own families.
The result is alienation and a desire to leave the family home as
soon as possible and if they see the same thing in other families
then they wish to leave the area. There is no solution to this
problem, it is inherrent in the transition that we must undergo, all
we can do is recognize that we are powerless to alter the course of
history when the cycle we are concerned with is one that lasts
thousands of years, thus it is futile to conclude that one must make a
stand against this trend.
In the mean time there is no sure source of power in the family
and the immediate result of this is that no one trains the children
except by default. The father is in too precarious a position because
he knows he is not supported by his wife and if he tries to exercise
authority he may be forced to back down. On the other hand the
wives will not discipline children because it offends them to have to
do it since it is an unpleasant task, they are untrained, and it flies in
the face of the traditional family roles. The result is very little
discipline at all and what there is occurs when the wife uses her
husband to administer justice as she sees fit. From the child's point
of view the father is a tool and the mother lacks the courage of her
convictions. In this situation the family parents look to the schools to
administer discipline, but they are inadequate to the task and
anyway the teachers are only parents with the same problems.
The children know there are problems but cannot but grasp the
opportunity to define their own lives and, being largely unconscious,
they will move in the direction of the feminine principle. Their
parents then will be totally confused by their actions, not
understanding or relating to the feminine principle and the result is
further dissension in the family. All this leads us to conclude that
the family is breaking up though this is probably an erroneous
conclusion, it is only a temporary dissolution that will result in loss
of roots and insecurity.
If we once again turn to feminist societies for a clue to the
probable outcome, we see that the family is as powerful as ever, if
not more so. One is driven to the conclusion that this is an
untenable state of affairs and is therefore transitional as are most
aspects of the feminist political movement.
The goals of feminist politics are exceedingly selfish. They wish
to have freedom of their bodies, freedom to pursue a career,
freedom to chose sexual partners, freedom to run the church, and so
on. Apparently the ideal society from the feminist point of view
would place no restrictions on female activities and would organize
the family and society to provide assurance that no bad result would
flow from this state. Outside of a beehive, no such society has ever
been seen.
Surely a viable political movement needs some more lofty goals
than the satisfaction of all wishes of one member of the family no
matter how naive.
The social structure of the past is also a familiar story. There
was the head of society, the king or queen, an aristocracy that held
ceremonial positions and sometimes positions of political power but
generally were moneyed and therefore were not concerned with
their physical survival, a middle class containing the clergy and the
commercial people and the professionals, and the lower or working
class.
As time went by this class structure was seen to be the source
of great evil primarily because the so-called accident of birth
defined the limitations of one's life style. But, the idea of accidental
birth is a uniquely masculine concept that can only occur when the
ego has taken over the entire identity of the person. The ego is
ephemeral and is lost forever in death, we must suppose, but
whatever leads us to identify with the ego? The body is much more
real and the family unconscious much more instrumental in
determining our day to day actions, and both of these survive
individual death quite well. And neither of these would subscribe to
the accidental birth concept. In the East we would be told to fulfill
our Kharma like good humans and better luck in our next lives.
In any case the social structure was seen as a great evil to be
overcome at the earliest opportunity, and this idea had great appeal
to the younger members of society, offering them a hope of bigger
and better things than those to which they had been born. And so
the idea was used to justify a great many sins and a great deal of
slaughter, until finally the great experiment was undertaken in The
New World - The Classless Society.
The phrase was good for a great many political speeches but the
reality fell rather short of the promise and eventually a new classless
society was launched and called Communism.
The need for this trend is eliminated as soon as the tendency to
identify with the ego is eliminated. And this will occur when we stop
spending inordinate amounts of time building up the ego, with laws
that put us at odds with our instincts, with monuments to the
growth of the ego like the universities, and with books like this one.
When that happens we can expect the reality to return with a rush.
After all the classes were not invented, they are representations of a
reality that we choose to ignore at this time.
According to the philosophy of the East, the only authority
available currently, we must expect to live many thousands of lives
as animals before we can hope for a life as a human and then many
thousands more as a human before we reach Nirvana, when we will
be released from the need to reincarnate. The people living these
thousands of lives are not identical, they are moving along the path
towards Nirvana and our class structure is a representation of that
path. That is, the top of the society is closest to the realization of
Nirvana and the lower classes are furthest away. This is a fact and
no amount of redefinition of the organization of society will advance
us one step along the way.
So, as the organization of government breaks down we must
expect a re-emergence of the class structure of society. The Hippie
movement of the sixties can be viewed as an outbreak of the lower
class. Middle class children, stifled by a society that forced them
into a mold for which they were unfitted rebelled and took up a life
style that they found more appealing, and that life style was the
beginnings of a new lower class in our society. An example of
forcing a round peg into a square hole is universal education. The
idea is that we can eliminate this feature of class structure
(education) by giving it to all. Unfortunately not all are equipped to
accept it. As any mildly interested observer can see humans come
in all shapes and sizes with many capabilities for dealing with the
spirit. One of those capabilities is rationality (masculine) or
irrationality (feminine). This is a spectrum as always and people
exist at all points along it. Thus making education the ticket to all
good things is to reward rationality and penalize femininity.
One problem that we have to overcome is the tendency to look
down on the lower class. It has always been the backbone of any
society in which it is allowed to exist, the foundation that supports
the middle and upper classes. It is no error to view the middle
classes as leaches sucking the blood from a lusty and earthy lower
class that inevitably has plenty of blood to give. The harbingers of
social change always come from the lower classes just because they
are closer to the source of life - the unconscious. They are
unconfused by the opinions and half-baked notions of the ego. They
communicate directly via their feelings which big ego people have
lost touch with and therefore lack trust in. Our feelings proceed
from all that we are, conscious and unconscious and therefore tell us
most accurately how to proceed if we would just trust them.
Unfortunately they come frequently into conflict with our laws and
are therefore repressed. This is perhaps necessary in the short run
but we must prepare to pay the price in the long run.
In any case the outbreak of the sixties was a warning that we
had best heed. It pointed to the areas in which we are most
vulnerable, the unquestioning acceptance of the law, the
dehumanizing aspects of technological development, the trend
towards useless and poisonous foodstuffs, and the over reliance on
the dictates of the ego. The drugs they chose were exactly those that
reduced the power of the ego and opened them up to direct inputs
from the unconscious, and these inputs were revolutionary, which is
why we recoiled in horror and attempted to repress them. But it
won't work, it only requires another crisis in our national life for a
rebirth of the same motives, only next time it will be more intense
and more destructive. The crises are implicit in our life style and
await only time to burst forth upon us.
There is a dichotomy that exists between knowledge and
wisdom. The two do not coexist well, and one is mistaken for the
other more and more frequently. Because a man is learned does not
have much to say about his success in the acquisition of wisdom.
Wisdom, is concerned with that special branch of knowledge having
to do with survival. As such, since the subject of survival is complex
and difficult to comprehend, it is the most controversial form of
knowledge.
Albert Einstein, who was undoubtedly a very knowledgeable
man, can only claim wisdom on the grounds that he survived for a
very long time. But it takes no wisdom to become knowledgeable
about the internal workings of the atom or about the implications of
celestial mechanics.
If life is valuable, and we can assume for these purposes that it
is, then wisdom is the most valuable form of knowledge, and yet it is
so controversial that it can't be taught in schools. Thus the only way
to learn wisdom is to live. Wisdom is to be found in the Bible and
yet it can't be learned there. The best you can do is to experience
life in such a way as to acquire wisdom and if you do, the Bible will
help you express that wisdom in words. All this being the case
though, why bother to express wisdom at all? One can only say that
it is the impulse of the masculine principle that leads us to do it.
Education was begun as a technique used to spread knowledge
of The Word. That is, it was a tool of the masculine church and of
use only to the few who were involved in the development of the
religion. But as time went by and intellectualism grew, the areas of
knowledge grew too and schools became disseminators of the
growing body of knowledge, and it fed upon itself because the
recipients of this body of knowledge saw avenues for its extension
and became contributors to it.
Eventually it grew much larger than the organization that gave
it its birth and even came into conflict with that organization
because it came to see the growing body of knowledge as a
sacrosanct thing in itself and even came up with slogans such as,
"the truth shall set you free," to throw in the face of such doubters
as those who mouthed utterances like, "what you don't know won't
hurt you." The intellectual community organized into a structured
subculture and became such a force in the affairs of men that
eventually the act of educating one's children became an institution
forced on the citizenry by the state. It had thus achieved a degree
of importance in the minds of men difficult to comprehend. One
supposes that it was seen as a civilizing influence and perhaps it is,
depending on what one means by the term civilization.
As technology grew though, it was possible to convince people
that their livelihoods depended on education and so we generally
thought of it as a necessary evil, convinced as we were of the
undoubted future of technology in the life of society. But this
function of education is only a recent acquisition, and one that will go
away if technology goes away, which event we must fervently hope
for. So we must end by concluding that the function of education is
now as it ever has been, to expand the ego and therefore lend power
to the masculine principle in its never ending struggle with the
feminine.
The story today is that, as the feminine principle gains sway in
the community of men we must expect that the meaning attached to
an education will decay and that universal education will die,
another failure in the age old quest for the appropriate life style in
the changeable world we live in. Children have always known that
there was something phony about education, and only remained in
their seats because of an authority that they felt they could not
resist. But those days are gone with the wind, and nowadays the
children know that they can resist, and do so with great aplomb.
The only real successes in the educational institutions anymore are
sports and trades whose value is perceived by the recipients of that
form of education.
If nothing else kills technology this fact will. The schools will
fail to turn out people to carry on the tradition. Of course the results
of this will be far reaching and devastating. We have learned to
make human beings out of oil and to feed them from the same
source. When technology fails to continue to support them the only
result can be that vast numbers of them (us) will die, and when it
comes to that, no one will volunteer, so that we must expect
violence, a great deal of violence until the die is cast and those to die
have been chosen.
Of course cataclysms of this kind are no stranger to the affairs of
men. Nature can be counted on to destroy vast numbers of people
with great regularity, but we can shrug these disasters off as acts of
God and unavoidable. It is a different matter when it comes to man-made catastrophes. These are hard to shrug off. But then this is also
a form of egoism, it falls in the category of "if I can't be God then I'll
be the devil," - after all, the acts of men are natural events, viewed
objectively. And man's purpose may be to transform the
environment into something else for purposes we can't imagine.
The great success of commerce in the twentieth century can be
attributed to two main causes, both of which come from the
development of the masculine principle. On the one hand the
capacity to organize has led to the production line and on the other
technology, which is the practical application of scientific insight, has
led to automation. These two things have produced an
incomprehensibly productive machine.
That sounds good at first blush, but before we hand out the
kudos let us examine the results to see how good it really is. It has
been thought that if we could just produce enough we could
eliminate poverty, which seems reasonable if one assumes that
population will remain constant or will increase at a constant rate.
But this is not the case at all. It takes very little insight to see that
the instinct to reproduce operates very well in an impoverished
condition. In fact it might work better than it does in a well fed
condition, so that as we produce more, what we are doing is fueling
the reproductive machinery and it will always out produce us, so
that this relationship is a little more complex than one would guess.
The effort to produce more and more goods though, produces
more and more environmental pollutants and reduces to an ever
greater extent the raw materials that we use to fuel the machines of
progress. It is a no win situation. We are reduced to hoping that the
environment in the developed nations will be so bad, and selfishness
will rise to such a level that the birth rate will fall and we will have
achieved our goal. But even if we are successful, one has to doubt
that the price is worth the prize.
One of the reasons for the immense productiveness in this
country is, we are told, the free enterprise system. The potential
rewards for creative thinking in the field of commerce are great, and
with so many struggling for them our system cannot but be
successful. But we must remember that the only way we measure
success is by profits so that the potential for perversion of the
desired goal is also great. As long as one can make a profit, he has
succeeded, so the emphasis falls on sales. One can sell any sort of
trash and if successful the prize is there. Thus advertising becomes a
critical activity along with cost reduction, and while it is
undoubtedly marvelous to have 80 million throw-away plastic
cigarette lighters in the world, the cost in lost natural resources and
the environmental impact far outweighs the questionable good of
replacing paper matches.
It may be time to consider whether free enterprise might not be
a system well adapted to a developing nation with a vast geographic
area to settle, but ill suited to a developed country trying to control
its environment and population.
This country has been rich relative to the rest of the nations of
the earth, but one of the problems of the capitalist system is that it
constantly needs new markets to exploit. This problem can be
partially overcome by constantly bringing forth new products and
thereby creating new markets by obsoleting the old ones, but again
the environmental damage is high and the success is only partial
anyway. Another solution is to go after foreign markets. Unhappily,
the result of heavy international trade is not good for rich nations. It
is as if several glasses filled to different levels with water were
interconnected with tubes. Very quickly the levels of water in each
glass become the same, and so it will be for us. Our economy will
decline just as the economies of the rest of the world rise until we
all arrive at some common point. Well, it will undoubtedly do good
things for the guilt complex we suffer as a result of over
consumption.
What we must face up to now is a no growth economy. This will
be a traumatic experience but it is inevitable that recession will
become the norm with only occasional spurts of growth and
compensating periods of depression. England has already reached
this stage and we will not be far behind. The reasons for this are
many and complex but to name a few, the schools, as pointed out
previously will slow their production of scientists and engineers so
that technological innovation will decline. The oil rich nations will
continue to drain off our capital and our own resources will continue
to dwindle making their recovery continuously more expensive. We
are an energy intensive economy and the price of energy must be
expected to shoot out of sight. We have lived through a period
where energy seemed almost free because of the discovery of vast
pockets of oil underground. This will no longer be the case and
anyway the price of oil is only now becoming apparent in terms of
ecological damage. The price will turn out to be high indeed when
the last penny is counted.
Our only real advantage on the world market anymore is the
computer and the technological basis of that machine. Because of the
growth of population worldwide this machine has become the
primary tool with which disaster is staved off. Americans have led
in the development of this technology and continue to do so though
it becomes increasingly clear that the Japanese will be more
effective in producing and marketing the device in the end.
In any case energy is used to produce a machine that consumes
a great deal of energy maintaining records that allow us to control
the production and dissemination of goods and services more
efficiently and effectively, allowing further increases in the
population which will demand further enhancements of these
machines, etc. This is justified in terms of a rising standard of living,
but if we look around we must wonder about that.
We are led back to the question of opposites and to the
recognition that elaboration of the masculine lifestyle will be at the
cost of feminine values, thus each new electronics plant eliminates
an orchard which eliminated a stand of trees or open fields. But this
cannot continue forever, we will not be able to survive when too
many of the natural inhabitants of this world are eliminated.
Art is probably the best record of the history of man available
because it was not intended as an historical record. With a few
generalizations and some specific examples a relatively clear trend
can be seen.
The earliest pictures known in the western world are some cave
drawings in France. These are generally pictures of animals and
sometimes what are referred to as mythical beasts because the
animal obviously didn't actually exist. Mythical beasts always
represent religious ideas because religious ideas always transcend
mundane life experiences and therefore cannot be expressed
through mundane examples.
From a later period in the history of western culture the
Egyptian drawings on the walls of the tombs of their kings were
unarguably also religious pictures. Skipping forward a few hundred
more years one can see that the works of Michaelangelo are largely
representations of the events described in the Bible and in fact
religious ideas dominate the world of the graphic arts until the
Dutch Masters. From this point forward the subject changes away
from religious ideas. Artists shift their attention to ordinary events
in the lives of their peers, and this is not fortuitous. The timing
coincides with the remarkable rebellions against the dominance of
the Catholic Church, by Henry VIII and Martin Luther.
Next the romantic era arrives and the subject shifts to the world
of nature with a great deal of emphasis being placed on painting
technique. Realism arrives as motivational drive. The romantic era
soon fades into introspection and psychotic realities which are soon
followed by political propaganda, cubism, op and pop.
Remembering that the world of the mind and especially the ego
complex are essentially masculine because they are non-material and
in the case of the ego, more or less rationally organized, it is only a
small step to the identification of religion as essentially masculine
and in the case of Western religion very nearly completely so. The
rebellion against the church by Henry VIII was a rebellion against
the dominance of the masculine principle with its emphasis on rules
that, no matter how well intentioned or oriented towards the greater
good of all in the long term, meant suffering for the individual in the
short term. Individual suffering leads to thought due to the effort of
the individual to escape from his pain. This leads to extension of the
ego complex and extension of the ego leads to a more effective
adaptation to the environment (from a masculine point of view,)
because of enhanced capacity for analysis and therefore predictive
ability which means a longer life and further extension of the ego.
This is the desired goal, since the ego must be renewed in each
individual and cannot be passed on genetically.
The rebellion against the dominance of the masculine principle
deprived artists of that source of inspiration for their paintings and
they began casting about for a new source of inspiration. The first
source of inspiration was nature and from there they moved to the
unconscious which, as we have seen, is feminine in the sense that it
is the matrix that gives birth to the ego and is its non-material
opposite. The concentration on the unconscious leads to a
rediscovery of feelings which, according to Jung lie at the opposite
pole from thought and this leads to identification with the poor and
downtrodden, which leads to political paintings idealizing the heroic
qualities of the deprived classes.
Abstracts are undifferentiated patterns and are feminine again
because they lack order and meaning. Op and pop flow from the
same background.
So it can be seen that the idea of a matriarchy slowly giving
birth to a patriarchy which begins with the Jewish exodus and
leading eventually to a new matriarchy would appear to be borne
out by the art of the Western World over the period in question.
The same development can be traced in the world of literature.
Before Henry the dominant form was religious poetry but after
Henry the novel is born, starting with historical pieces and moving
into political dramas. Of course writing is very masculine to begin
with which can easily be tested by checking one's memory of an
idea thought, as compared to an idea written. So, for the future one
would expect a decay of writing in general with books expected to
be written less for insight and more for enjoyment. This trend can
already be easily seen.
The main area of artistic innovation in our times is music, and
the main area of innovation within music is popular or rock. The
most innovative period for rock coincided, not by happenstance,
with the Viet-Nam War.
The masculine principle is expressed in music most obviously by
the symphonic orchestra and the great classical composers. Their
music is mathematically precise and highly organized. Music
though, is basically feminine since it is an expression of feelings.
Rock music is the antithesis of classical since it is discordant, loud for
the sake of loudness, and leads to one's instincts instead of heaven.
Rock music is inextricably connected to drugs so that to grasp
the meaning of rock music one must look closely at drugs and
specifically at marijuana, since it is the most influential drug in the
music business. Marijuana may be a mild brain poison. If so, its
effect is to reduce the ability to concentrate and as a result reduce
the intensity of the barrier between ego consciousness and the
unconscious. The result is a heightened awareness of our senses for
one thing and a tendency to experience waking dreams for another.
Both of these are important to the experience of music. We can hear
the music more clearly and the fantasies induced by the music are
more intense. The effect can be exhilarating.
Many things then, are going on as we listen to rock music. We
are put into direct prolonged contact with our feelings, and for many
of us it is the first time for such an experience in many years.
Pounding rhythm surrounds us in an inescapable way, with all of its
connections with sensuousness and sexuality. The sheer number of
decibels eliminates any possibility of wandering concentration, in
fact because of the chaotic nature of the music and accompaniments
the possibility of any concentration at all, even on the music is
remote. And then the lyrics, largely unintelligible, but
understandable enough to induce fantasies, largely of the listener's
own creation.
When pot is added to this, with its capability of eliminating the
ego except as a passive experiencer, we have a training exercise in
femininity par excellence. We are totally open to the influence of the
unconscious with no vestige of criticality remaining, we are involved
in community awareness as opposed to individual awareness, we are
very nearly totally passive to the experience, and our whole being is
attuned to our feelings. This is the great Mother herself speaking.
It is a religious experience of great power and has replaced the Mass
in the lives of many.
During the Viet-Nam war, rock music achieved a peak of
influence seldom if ever, matched in the history of art. Its criticism
of the war and the western lifestyle in general was piped directly
into the minds of the most influencable of our society and the effect
was traumatic. The music eventually became the underground
communications network of the counter culture and ended as the
most devastating example of propaganda yet seen in the history of
man. Happily this technique cannot be used in a perverse way since
what it amounts to is the stimulation of unconscious contents and
these feelings must exist to be stimulated.
The only other art form to contribute significantly in the effort
to lead us away from intellectualism back towards our feelings has
been the motion pictures. The other art forms have become too
much a part of the intellectual establishment to be valuable in this
context. Beginning with The Graduate, and continuing with
They Shoot Horses, Don't They, Easy Rider, Catch-
22, The Exorcist, The Godfather, and many others
of less stature, the movies have been instrumental in raising the
level of our awareness of feminine values.
The Graduate supplied us with an example of the
establishment at its most repugnant, exposing its hypocrisy,
immaturity, and distraction with material possessions unmercifully.
To supply a contrast with Mrs. Robinson, the movie provided
youthful naiveté and the admonishment that one could
discard concern for the welfare of others and pursue sexual
satisfaction at all cost. In other words, discard concern for the
structure of society and recognize that sexual satisfaction is all
important in male/female relationships. One must keep in mind that
the holder of the keys to sexual satisfaction is the female.
In They Shoot Horses, Don't They, set in the dance
marathon era, the argument was made that money had so perverted
our sense of values that we had become willing to risk anything,
even our lives to obtain it. It also suggested that the establishment
would go to any lengths to exploit our perverse sense of values
without regard for common decency. Finally, the title suggested that
this was tantamount to shooting the noble horse for profit. To place
this in terms of feminism, we recognize that the commercial
structure of our society is a product of the masculine establishment
and the noble horse is Mother Nature. This particular juxtaposition
of ideas exposes us to the feeling of violation of nature, an impious
act in a feminist era.
Easy Rider was a rather straightforward attack on
discrimination as it is understood in the late twentieth century. But
it also suggested that immoral acts (drug dealing, prostitution) were
acceptable by having the hero perform them. Discrimination is the
hallmark of masculinity. Understood in the positive sense it means
development of the discriminatory powers to the level of ability to
discern between the mundane and the ideal. Enjoyment of art is
dependent on this faculty. Again, the masculine law is violated with
impunity and sex and drug experience are represented as ecstatic
and highly desirable. It is also demonstrated that masculinists are
dangerous and irrational in their defense of their values.
Catch 22 was a movie that represented World War II as a
highly dangerous and insane adventure that attracted the most
unbalanced citizens and placed them in authoritative roles. The
movie suggested that an apparently unbalanced man was really the
only sane person left and showed the audience how ridiculous the
world looked through his eyes. A person who has no connection to
the masculine feeling that heroic experience is a grand goal worth
great sacrifice is understandable, but to represent this person as the
only sane person in an insane world is surely somewhat one-sided.
It made a wonderful vehicle for antiwar sentiments however, and
probably was a useful blow for North Vietnam. Of course one of the
main goals of the movie was to supply a large number of cowards
with a suitable rationalization for their cowardice so that they
wouldn't have to face it directly in their own personalities. In fact it
was presented as a virtue requiring great courage. An amazing
example of the endless ingenuity of the ego wishing to think well of
itself.
The Exorcist provided an opportunity to revive the
irrational fear of spirits in an overrational society and The
Godfather suggested that the worst kind of criminals are
actually attractive people that we would admire to know, capable of
the same idealism as we ourselves. So the untouchables are brought
back into the mainstream of American life with the knowledge that
values are relative and we should not impose them on others who
may have other values, perhaps as good as ours.
War is a human experience transcending the opposites. It
occurs in all human societies and probably in others as well. But, as
an institution it has suffered greatly at the hands of the masculine
principle. In fact it has suffered so grievously that we must spend
some time at the beginning just searching out its positive values,
they having been buried so deeply by technology as to be nearly
undiscoverable.
In order to do this we must consider the institution of war as it
occurs in a society bereft of technology. First, wars occur because
neighboring societies come to an unresolvable impasse due to the
social or territorial objectives of one of the societies and its
implications with respect to the other. That is, one society's goals
will be of such value to it and so inimical to the life of the other that
they must resort to war to decide which values are justified to
continue. The roots of these social movements are buried so deeply
in past actions that it is impossible for either society to give them up.
In these circumstances, war is the only alternative and it would be
inhuman to proceed otherwise. From this point of view one must
conclude that God starts wars and men do their best to stop them.
Generals decide on the strategies to be used in wars, but as we
can see from War and Peace, these strategies are largely
useless and foolish so that they reduce to a way that men too old for
hand to hand combat can participate in a ceremonial way as a
reward for well fought battles in the past. To be successful a
general has only to be on the winning side. This side can only be
perceived by philosophers and only by a very few of them, and their
advice is never sought by the generals. The act of war then, comes
down to the hand to hand combat of individuals making up the
armies involved.
Combat exposes men to life of such an intensity that it can only
occur in those circumstances and the feminine principle favors life,
while the masculine principle sees life only as a painful experience
to be ended as soon as practical. Also, the masculine principle tends
to pass judgments while the feminine principle passes none. To her,
all experience is worthwhile and she seeks it out, while he is
reduced to phrases like, "fools rush in where angels fear to tread."
Maturity comes only through the experience of pain and
suffering and war is surpassed by no institution in supplying the
necessary experiences to mankind. And were war to pass from the
affairs of men we would sorely miss the council to be supplied by
the veterans of these conflicts.
War is always fought by men and this must be recognized as a
most effective form of birth control while at the same time assuring
that the men who do propagate will be the best that the society has
to offer, and finally men have a need buried deep within them to
have the hero experience, and war is the only way in which large
numbers of men can get the opportunity.
Now, with these values in mind let us look at what technology
has done for us. In the beginning the damage was only slight, in that
arrows and spears allowed men to fight at a greater distance, but
still it always came down to hand to hand combat. But then bullets
and cannons arrived and we started talking about soldiers as cannon
fodder for the generals, and there is basis in fact for this judgment.
Many soldiers, far from getting a worthwhile experience from war
that might unavoidably result in death, found themselves blown to
atoms before they even sighted the enemy. Now we have come to
the point of murdering vast numbers of people with atom bombs
dropped from planes five miles and more above whatever fighting
there might be.
Because of this trend the possibility of hand to hand combat is
reduced to a minimum thereby eliminating one of the redeeming
features of war. It would also appear that technology has
eliminated the possibility of winning a war for the U.S. at least,
because we are constrained not to use the most devastating weapons
for fear of what that might lead to, and as a result can never
convince our army that our cultural viability is at stake. Their
attitude towards the war thus is not what is required for a winning
effort.
After a tie and a loss in our last two major efforts in this area,
the voters have served notice that the politicians may not continue
to feel free to commit the resources of the U.S. to any new adventure
of this sort, so that there won't be another war for the U.S. unless it
is popularly demanded. The U.S. has been deprived of a tool for the
resolution of a certain class of problems and will undoubtedly live to
regret it, since not fighting has the same effect as fighting and losing.
Technology has thus deprived us of one of the great experiences
available to a man. Happily, the feminine cultures of the world are
teaching us how to pull the fangs from the mouth of technology so
there is hope for the future. If Viet-Nam did anything it
demonstrated that a tenacious feminine culture has little to fear
from technology and decentralization is the key.
The Doctor of Medicine must be seen in our times as the prime
example of the negative effects of technology. In the beginning his
goal, to prolong human life, seemed worthy, though it can
immediately be seen that he is strongly influenced by the masculine
principle and its desire to see the ego last as long as possible on the
face of the earth. But the body is only good for a certain number of
years and this fact is for the greatest good of humanity. In fact,
recent thinking on this subject suggests that the body produces
chemicals that lead to the aging process. This, if true, implies that
death at age 70 is well adapted behavior. That is to say, there is
some problem for humanity that results from too long lives. The
ego, as it grows becomes less and less able to adapt because of the
constant need to rewrite history, as it were. Our memories turn
against us in the end and all the lessons we have been hard put to
learn over the years become useless and even deadly in vastly
changed circumstances. It is as if we were growing a tail which
becomes harder and harder to turn as it grows longer and longer. So
we get the chance to start all over every three score and ten and
sooner if we have done a poor job of construction of the ego in the
beginning.
Saving a life cannot be seen as an act of mercy unless life is
better than death in some way, and according to the principle of
opposition life and death must be seen as opposites on a spectrum,
neither better or worse than the other, only different. We are
confused first, by the effort to judge a condition we do not inhabit
from a condition we do, second, by an instinctual mechanism that is
only a statement of conservatism, and third, by an ideology.
Applying the tenets of our religion to medicine may have
seemed well and good in the beginning when mankind was far from
dominating the land mass of the entire world, but today things are
different. We are in real danger of succumbing to the results of too
much success. The only hope is to recognize the one-sidedness of
our view and then to embark on a determined effort to relearn the
virtues of passivity.
Nature is perfectly capable of maintaining human life within the
constraints of balance with all of the other features of the eco-system, if we can learn to respect her judgment and restrain
ourselves from perverting it whenever, in our egoism, we doubt its
wisdom because that judgment goes against us as individuals. To be
blunt, if we wish to survive in the long run we must allow nature to
kill us when we overstep the bounds of our natural place in the
environment. Doing this is no great problem. One has only to refrain
from altering the judgment of nature by using artificial means such
as drugs to kill viruses, fertilizers to increase growth, insecticides,
herbicides, atomic energy, etc. As can be seen, all of these are just
weapons in the war between the masculine and feminine principles.
Since life is no better or worse than death and must, according
to the same principle contain equal amounts of pain and joy, the
prolongation of life, at best, must be a prolongation of pain as well as
joy. And since those that require the services of a doctor are
precisely those likely to suffer most as time goes by, there seems to
be every likelihood that the doctors are creating human suffering by
undoing the designs of nature.
Doctors must be seen as the prolongers of suffering when they
alter the forces of nature by prolonging the life of a human who has
developed along lines inimical to long life and happiness. All
diseases can eventually be traced to egoism, whether or not it
manifested itself in the sufferer or one or another of his ancestors,
and from this realization we can see the truth to the Biblical
statement that the fruits of the sins of the fathers shall be visited on
the sons.
If the doctor's goal were to prevent suffering rather than to
prolong life, he would turn his attention to the root causes of the
symptoms rather than the symptoms themselves, and in so doing
transform himself into a shaman, witch-doctor, psychologist.
Make no mistake about it, we are being weakened by the
practice of medicine as it has evolved by forcing poor examples of
human life to suffer through it, jerking and dragging as they go, and
propagating like as not in their misery, only to create years of new
misery and all as a sacrifice to the orderly god. The callousness of it
beggars description.
They have turned into Frankensteins and Draculas as they drain
the blood out of one human to pour into another and turn every
patient into an experiment. And all of this is justified on the ground
that life is sacred. Who says life is sacred, and how did they come to
that conclusion? Life has some sacred moments, it also has a great
many profane ones, and most of ours have become profane as one
can see when one looks at what we are doing to ourselves and the
environment in which we live. Life is not sacred as anyone can see
by watching nature discard vast quantities of it each passing
moment, assisted by man for convenience and sport.
The real problem is the survival of the species, not the survival
of the individual. This is a macro level problem. Much more
difficult than the problem of the individual. To assure oneself that
this is indeed the problem, ask whether the survival of the
individual, multiplied by the number of individuals equals survival
of the species. After that, consider the survival of the individual in
a scenario that involves failure of the species.
Survival of the individual coincides with survival of the species
only when danger comes from outside the species. When the
outside danger has been overcome, then the species has a success
explosion which results in a state in which the danger comes from
within the species. At that point survival of the species depends on
shifting from an attitude that requires erring on the side of the
individual when a conflict between the individual and the group
arises, to erring on the side of the group.
In other words, philosophies are also relative. Sticking with a
worn out philosophy is as deadly as relying on any other outmoded
tool. But changing philosophies is very difficult. It requires
reevaluation of every piece of collected information known to the
species in terms of new values. For those with too much acquired
knowledge this will be an impossible task. For those with very little
acquired knowledge it will be very easy. To solve this problem, it is
best that humans not live too long.
Any decision will work to the advantage of something and the
disadvantage of something else. The advantage does not come into
being independently, it must be balanced by disadvantage.
Decisions in favor of the individual are disadvantageous to the group.
With small numbers of individuals a small advantage is acquired
and a small disadvantage accrues to the group. With large numbers
of individuals the reverse will be true.
The results of Henry VIII's rebellion against the Pope were not
long in coming. Soon, revolution became the accepted means of
affecting social change and we were treated, in quick succession to
The English Civil War, The American Revolution, The French
Revolution, The Russian Revolution, and The Spanish Civil War.
These struggles, being inspired by anti-papal sentiment, were
inevitably in support of feminist values. In politics, this meant
opposition to social structure and therefore equality and
egalitarianism. As will be realized, social structure means
organization, a stratification, and therefore an orderliness that
reflects the masculine spirit. Egalitarianism will produce a
disorderly society, and therefore one more in keeping with feminine
values.
The most influential figures in the modern feminist movement
have been Bertrand Russell, Karl Marx, Margaret Mead, and
Benjamin Spock. Bertrand Russell supplied a philosophical basis for
anti-masculinism. First, there was his support for pacifism. War is
not a particular tool of masculinism, but it is used to maintain the
status quo. Therefore, feminists will want to decrease its
effectiveness, since modern struggles will be between feminists and
masculinists. Secondly, his reputation as an anti-metaphysicist
comes to mind. Metaphysics is, of course the very foundation of
Christianity. And Christianity is perceived as the main institution to
be weakened in its influence by the feminists.
Karl Marx offered Communism as a political system. This
system has as some of its hallmarks a denial of religion, a denial of
class structure, and an economic system which attempts to overcome
the inevitability of poverty. The last feature has the attraction of
validating the feelings of human beings when confronted by
suffering, thereby helping to place the feeling function in a primary
position relative to thinking. Its technique is to block the tendency
of capital to accumulate in the hands of private individuals. The
validity of this system seems apparent. There will only be a finite
amount of value produced by any society and if that value
accumulates in a few places it must inevitably deprive those least
able to compete. The value of the capitalist system is well
recognized. Capital is an excellent motivator in causing humans to
spend the necessary mental energy to invent new ways to exploit
the environment.
Margaret Mead suggests that the rules of Western Society,
therefore masculine structure, are responsible for the pain of
individual social adjustment in the West. This is an accurate
judgment. As has been pointed out previously, the pain of social
adjustment is designed to produce wider consciousness.
Benjamin Spock, in his child rearing books, supplies medical
authority for a permissive indulgence by parents towards their
children. This allows children to criticize authority and eventually
to revolt against it. Since he is a medical doctor, his authority is
hardly questioned and he thereby uses the fruits of masculinity to
defeat it.
In the most recent times, the feminist movement has
concentrated its energies on a few main issues. Sexual equality is
intended to further break down the masculine order by upsetting
order within the family. Abortion is meant to free women from the
tyranny of domesticity and give them a freer hand with which to
rebel against their husbands. Life is not sacred in the feminist view,
and abortion provides a path to sexual equality. Protection of the
environment is of course a recognition of the divinity of Nature, and
will aid in weakening the Western economic system by reducing
profits.
It must be recognized that there is a tendency to confuse
femininity with feminism. Thus the modern feminist movement
wants to free women, but feminism is the underlying reality, and if
one inspects feminist societies in the world (India, China), one is
struck by the fact that women are no more free there than they are
here. Therefore we must expect that this is only a transitional stage,
that freedom from domesticity for women is not in the best interests
of humanity and will not survive in the long run. This is only
common sense. It must be obvious to many that freeing women
from the home ultimately works against the children, the final
resource of our species.
The notion that men can be trained to be women is naive. If
they were successful they would just be born as women.
Finally, it is useful to ponder the meaning of The Press in this
context. The Press is overwhelming in its support of feminism. Why
is this the case? Why is there not equal support for both the
conservative and liberal points of view? Conservatism here, is
understood to mean support for the established order, while
liberalism means support for change. Apparently, the specialty of
writing attracts feminists. Writing, on its own is an expression of
masculinity, however the press has been used from the beginning as
a revolutionary instrument ("the pen is mightier that the sword",) a
means by which the weaker can hope to unhorse the strong. It
therefore must be an attractive prospect for those who wish to
overthrow the political elite.
This leads to the perhaps uncomfortable thought that the Bill
of Rights is a political tool created by feminists to wage
protracted war on the institutions of a masculine society. Perhaps it
is more even handed to see it as a political manifestation of a society
that is already far along in its efforts to institutionalize its feelings.
In the end one must recognize the United States as the leader in the
feminization of the West, and this is only appropriate since it owes
its very existence to the rebellious feelings of feminism.
Orwell suggested that by 1984 government might reach such a
state of organization and paranoia that with a technology run wild
they could and would maintain surveillance on all of their citizens to
assure conformity. To interpret this prediction in terms of the
masculine and feminine principles, we would say that he fears such
great success in the development of masculinity that near perfect
organization in government and endless extension of ingenuity in
technology would result. And with these advances, government
would repress femininity to near extinction.
The aspects of paranoia and repression of a very heavy handed
nature, I find easy to believe in, in view of the recent example of the
Viet-Nam era. But Orwell is rather too impressed with technology
and the achievements of government. Government appears less and
less capable of dealing with the manifestations of feminism that it
now faces. The dangers it faces from feminism are, for the most
part beyond its comprehension and its connection with its feelings is
too tenuous to help except in the most blatant areas, such as drug
use. For the most part it is blinded by the positive aspects of
femininity which it tries to encourage never thinking that it must
accept the bad with the good.
Of course it will recognize that it has a war on its hands sooner
or later, but it will find great difficulty in recognizing the enemy and
even when it does, because of its own unconscious commitments to
feminine values that have crept in unobserved, it will be ineffective
in its attempt to deal with them.
Beyond that, technology will never live up to its press releases.
The kind of technology that Orwell envisions would undoubtedly
eventually arrive supposing a continued commitment by the
populace to the sacrifices necessary for the production of vast
numbers of scientists and engineers. But this will never happen, one
has but to look at what is happening in the schools today. The
commitment to pot and rock music far exceeds that to intellectual
pursuits, and this trend will continue at an ever increasing rate. And
these commitments are at odds. Feminine values are irrational and
as time is spent in these pursuits, whatever rational ability is built
up is undercut by being limited to too short a time span to allow it
to grow, until finally the effort becomes too much to continue. For
masculine values to grow, one must develop the proper habits,
which must become so powerful as to dominate one's life.
Huxley suggested that the world would split into two camps,
civilized and uncivilized, or at least enclosed within technology and
natural. Again the government was to become so organized and so
technologically proficient as to be able to control the lives of its
citizens with sex and drugs. That portion of humanity not
participating existed in the natural setting with a life style
reminiscent of the American Indian.
Again I have little difficulty in accepting the possibility of
future regressions to primitive life styles, and even welcome the
idea. The use of drugs and sex to control the populace seems very
likely, in fact it would seem that we have arrived at that point
already, but the degree of control achieved seems to me way beyond
what is possible in the remaining time available to government as
we know it, and neither of these prognosticators foresaw the real
danger of technology, which is pollution of the environment, of
course.
Actually, both of these tracts have been far more effective as
feminist propaganda than prognostication.