Responsibility for words

July 1, 2005 | Share/Save

Responsibility for words gnostic

In previous iterations of this site (1996-2000) the content consisted almost entirely of passages quoted from others. I was particulary fascinated by the way that speculative physical descriptions of the origins of the universe seemed to mesh with, and complement, the ancient gnostic myths about the origins of the universe.

My fear was that if I pointed out and described and analyzed it in my own words, people wouldn’t believe me - but if I presented it in the form of a Burroughs-style cut-ups, people could make the leap themselves and draw their own conclusions. I also was not sure what these strange symbolic parallels meant. Is science just anothe r mythology? Does the human mind dislike ambiguity so much that it needs to project structures onto all of the data it encounters? (e.g., Dali’s Paranoiac critical method).

Since I’ve returned to the web, I’ve begin to think that one of the reasons (among others) that I dropped out around 2000 or so was because - well, how do I want to put this? - I originally didn’t want any responsibility. I was glib. I wanted to ask questions but not neccessarily answer them. I didn’t know why these parallel structures existed but I knew what I did want - to be a trickster.

To blow people’s minds, right? And the role of the trickster is to act as a sort of cultural solvent, to dissolve the structures of ideologies and perceptions so that reality can be reconfigured in a more healthy way. The trickster doesn’t hang around to start passing down new rules and regulations, he undermines the foundations of the old order so that a new one can be born and hits the road.

But being a trickster outlived its usefulness after a while. Today’s liberation is tomorrow’s prison - you can’t live your life in a constant uproar of questioning. Somewhere you need to plant your flag and decide what your values actually are, even if they’re contingent.

So I decided to come back and see if it was possible to communicate with people. And I have been very gratified to discover that I actually did influence some people in a positive way. I didn’t even think anyone even understood what I was trying to do! And I have also discovered that there are things I believe in now too, although I have new questions.

A lot of my new questions now revolve around ethics and action. When is it ethical to act and what are the parameters for ethical action? I do think there is a lot of wisdom in simply planting your flag and declaring your purpose as Zach has done here.

A big part of the purpose for my return is based on things I hadn’t anticipated until I opened my mouth and started trying to hash them out in a public forum again. The big questions now are: what is evil, where does it come from, how do we react to it?

Jeremy Puma made a comment in one of my posts to the effect that evil was objectification, dehumanization, seeing people as objects:

evil is the objectification of the individual’ the internal transformation of the other into object. it’s looking at kids as mere playthings to be sacrificed or raped, looking at iraqi villagers as numbers in a column, looking at employees as red lines below a profit margin.

So while far greater minds than I have tried to define evil and good, let me offer something contingent if I can say what I really believe in: Evil is control, domination, fear. Evil is treating people as means not as ends. Evil is denying the humanity of the other or even of the animal or the rock. All life is one, the spirits sing in every ear, the trees and rivers themselves dance. I know this and Charlie does too.

Two most horrifying movie moments:

1. the scene in Ken Russel’s The Devils where the French King forces protestants to dress up as blackbirds and then shoots them as they are released from cages.

2. The scene in Requiem for a Dream where Jennifer Connelly shows up to a party being thrown by a heroin dealer and discovers SHE is the evening’s entertainment.

The horror… the shock. I swear I swore off porn for a good three years after watching that movie, I couldn’t fall alseep until 5 in the morning.

So, evil is dehumanization and objectification - the use of others in an instrumental way. But I know have something else to add to that - evil is also a failure of responsibility, an unwillingness to take responsibility not only for ones actions but for ones words.

My proccess, the way I follow things, ideas, trains of thought, is to follow links and pop in on other peoples blogs and make silly unitelligible statements, OK? And I will often start spouting off before an ideas has even been fully resolved or pursued to its logical conclusion for me, e.g., the gnostic status of St. Charlie Manson.

He did erase the line between myth and reality, symbol and body, imagination and fact. And as starroute pointed out , that may be the only level we need to understand evil on sometimes.

At the same time, however, the universe does require that we say what is real and what is not real sometimes too. That we take a stand and not become (as Soctt M. Peck called it) “People of the Lie.”

Part of this stance would involve elaborating on what dehumanization is and how it actually works and strengthen ourselves for to the task of confronting it. And what it REALLY is, not just as a symbol. Zach of alchemical braindamagedoes that well, as I’ve noted. I threw in my own 2 cents there and so will repeat the same thing here:

Once we define evil then we can and have to fight it. And the basis of the evil that is behind the archons and the war and child molestation and everything else is dehumanization. And it is what Wilhelm Reich called the “emotional plague,” the opposition of death-lovers and order-fetishizers to the messy spectacle of creation and movement and birth. And so as a living being it is not only my responsibility to speak the truth as I see it but also to take responsibility for my words and toughen myself up and prepare for thebattle, because it is the only one worth fighting:

“Those who are truly alive are kindly and unsuspecting in their human relationships and consequently endangered under present conditions. They assume that others think and act generously, kindly, and helpfully, in accordance with the laws of life. This natural attitude, fundamental to healthy children as well as to primitive man, inevitably represents a great danger in the struggle for a rational way of life as long as the emotional plague subsists, because the plague-ridden impute their own manner of thinking and acting to their fellow men. A kindly man believes that all men are kindly, while one infected with the plague believes that all men lie and cheat and are hungry for power. In such a situation the living are at an obvious disadvantage. When they give to the plague-ridden, they are sucked dry, then ridiculed or betrayed.”

“It is high time for the living to get tough, for toughness is indispensable in the struggle to safeguard and develop the life-force; this will not detract from their goodness, as long as they stand courageously by the truth.

. . . Anyone who wants to safeguard the life-force from the emotional plague must learn to make at least as much use of the right of free speech that we enjoy in America for good ends as the emotional plague does for evil ones. Granted equal opportunity for expression, rationality is bound to win out in the end. That is our great hope.”

Listen, Little Man! by Wilhelm Reich

So can I liberate anyone else? Probably not. Maybe the only thing I can do is try to liberate myself, whatever that means, make a return to the battlefield, try to define myself in an honest way, strip away the bad, celebrate the good, stop playing dead and lead by example.

If nothing else, I have been delighted to discover that other people do sometimes understand me, which is something I had given up on. I do share a mutual language and understanding with other humans, whether they are buddhist dominatrixes or Thelemic Mormons or Zen Witchdoctors or anything else. It is worth trying to communicate, to use language, to reach out to others with a bridge of words and see if they touch me back. We’re all in this together, for better or worse , so fuck, it’s worth it to try.

A huge and sincere thanks to the 3 or 4 people who are reading this and have been providing me with most excellent and useful fedback. I will try to live up to my responsibilities, whatever those may be.