Good Evening Friends,

Well, we seem to have rambled far and wide away from our ORIGINAL conceptual project of reconciling religion and humanism.

Recall that I suggested and tried to argue that the ancient masters, the original founders of the world's great religious and spiritual systems, were keen naturalistic observers of human nature and the world around them; and their observations and analyses were religionized, if you will, by the only interpretative framework available at the time.

By drawing on the ideas of Slavoj Zizek, I hope I have adequately shown, in a limited space, that we "believe" more than we think we do, more than we appear to do.

Taken together, I think we can conclude that: religion is not as religious as religion thinks it is (and this is not a criticism of religion) and secularism is not as secular as secularism thinks it is.

I hope that the line between religion and reason, faith and atheism (agnosticism, atheism), belief and non-belief (though I tend to think there is no non-belief) is not as clear to you as it may have been before we started these reflections.

Next time we shall try to apply what we've discovered in saying a word about capitalism. This may take some time. We must keep in mind the fundamental ontological and phenomenological ideas about Existentialism, namely: consciousness is not what it is but what it is not; and man is the desire to become God.

Hopefully, we will be able to make some relatively novel observations about capitalism and the causes of crisis in the system, historically, as well as recently.

Good Night.

wingedcentaur

Question: What are the ideological roots of patriarchy?

Answer: A system of belief that we, men, had been very much interested in maintaining.

Question: Which is?

Answer: The belief, to be held by our womenfolk, that we, men, were more capable, courageous, noble, intelligent, heroic, altruistic, and the like, by far, than we really are. The belief that we are flawless.

Question: How did and does this play out in the workplace? What is behind the sexual harassment women face there and what about the ghastly statistics we hear about concerning women and rape in the military?

Answer: These are the actions of a very small minority of men, hopefully, which are nevertheless, an expression of the general resentment of men that our women now see us at home and at work, and therefore see us in all our inglorious bumbledom, our flaws, our imperfections, our various failings. Work is no longer a sacred space for men. We can take this further: If we cannot be angels, then we will be demons! After all, who was Satan but previously an angel called Lucifer, pushed out of heaven, preventing from exercising the "good" as he saw it.

Question: What about adultery?

Answer: This dynamic definitely brings into focus one of the submerged reasons why men cheat on their wives and girlfriends. Imagine a fifty-three year old white man who is a photographer. He is married to a woman whose a licensed CPA. They have been married for decades and have four grown children, who are out of the house, so the couple may be feeling "empty house" syndrome.

His wife loves him. She may even still be In-Love with him, if he's lucky. She respects him. She admires him. She tolerates him in all his bad habits (i.e., leaving toenail clippings all over the place, snoring and farting in his sleep, etc.).

But one thing she is not is IMPRESSED with him. That is to say, that she does not look at a man to whom she's been married for twenty five years with the same wide-eyed wonder and amazement that she may have done some thirty five years ago...

when he was graduated in the top five percent of his class...

when he was the ace reporter on the school newspaper....

when he was the best player on the chess team, the secret weapon of the debate team, and when he was captain of the golf team...

when he was student body treasurer...

when he was voted Most Likely to Succeed...

..... but a twenty year old, buxom, corn-fed, as they say, blond young woman up from Nebraska, working as a bartender, working and waiting for her "big break" as an actress/model..... might!

It is not primarily the flesh he wants or needs but a new altar, a new person to worship his idealized self image.

Question: Women also commit adultery.

Answer: And for many reasons, as men do. But I will say, as I have said before, that women - according to family therapist, John Bradshaw, are particularly prone to what he calls Narcissistic Deprivation. A woman sufferer of ND did not get the non-judgmental, uncritical, unconditional "love" from her own mother that she required. She did not look into her mother's face, as an infant, and see - herself, as is necessary. Instead she looked into her mother's face and saw her mother looking into her baby's face in search of herself. She might spend herself looking for herself in many ways throughout her life and this may have some bearing on her relationships and sexual behavior.

Women are more vulnerable to this than men, because they do not have the degree of workplace validation, and other forms of external justification, available to men. This narcissistic deprivation of women is paralleled by the male need to have someone, at least one person on this planet believe the he is INVINCIBLE.

Interviewer: Thank you very much for talking with us.

Guest: The pleasure was all mine.

wingedcentaur

Friends, Slavoj Zizek speaks of belief as being projectable and transferrable, kind of like a carbon credit I suppose. What is a carbon credit, by the way? What is this whole "cap 'n trade" market-based policy proposal on global warming?

It is a system of belief transference or belief projection, isn't it? I can pollute because the other guy's gonna be twice as clean. This is what it comes down to, and note, once again, how supposedly "irrational," "illogical" ideology underpines the supposedly rational, logical, dispassionate, efficient market.

Individuals do not have to believe. But they can invest others with belief. They can project belief onto others, thereby allowing the structure of belief to function. Zizek gives as an example the film, based on the Edith Wharton novel, The Age of Innocence.

It seems that Daniel Day Lewis played the male lead. His character was married to Winona Ryder and his character had had an affair with Michelle Pfeifer. Winona Ryder's character died in the movie. Lewis's character then gets ready to marry Pfeifer's character.

However, before he can do so he learns that his deceased wife, Winona Ryder's character, had known all along about his affair with Michelle Pfeifer. At this point Lewis is crushed and he cannot go through with marry Michelle Pfeifer. And this point is the end of The Age of Innocence, his belief in Winona Ryder's innocence and, perversely so it might seem, his own.

He could behave dishonorably as long as he thought his wife believed he was being honorable. His "innocence" comes from the fact that he obviously thought of himself as a "good guy." Otherwise it would not have been so important for him to cast a projection of this idealized good guy unto his wife. Follow?

If he did not think he was a good guy, he wouldn't have cared what his wife thought. But few people who have ever passed through this life have ever thought of themselves as self-consciously evil, have they?

However hard people may try to execute a psychological fission of their Selves (Jekyll and Hyde), the creature always returns to his master. Daniel Day Lewis's character tried to split himself into two parts, his good and bad parts, one that was cheating on his wife and one that was not cheating on his wife.

The same way that Jekyll could not ultimately slough off Hyde, we can say that if Winona Ryder's character had died without having learned of her husband's affair or if Lewis had never learned that his wife had known of it, his innocence would have been preserved and he would have been able to marry Michelle Pfeifer.

But the revelation that Ryder had known, was the Lewis's Jekyll's confrontation with the inescapable Hyde, and the onrush of the knowledge that they are the same. It is the confrontation of the Self with the Self.

This brings me to one more topic I'd like to touch on before calling it a night: the ideological root of patriarchy.

wingedcentaur

Good Evening Friends,



It is not necessary that we go into detail about structures of justification. We know what they are. We've been talking about them.



Man exists without justification. Because this is so we have created and we maintain structures of justification. What I mean is that - whether or not God exists and for our purposes we may put this question to one side - no divine extraterrestial authority provides direct feedback to us about our actions and the way we live our lives.



We try to convince that we live according to some "universal" principle or another; and the extent to which we are "successful" in life is the extent to which we believe we have acted in accordance with some vague universal principle, that we are doing the "right thing."



Money is an important structure of justification. The amount of it we have and the extent to which we can make the outside world think we are more successful than we are by upward class mimicry, that I have already said something about.



We should never underestimate the extent to which ideology is invested in economic theory (even separated as it is from politics these days), whether we or those who hold forth on economics for a living, are consciously aware of it or not.



For example we can ask: What precisely is the difficulty in getting living wage legislation enacted in the United States of America?



Answer: the difficulty is ideological.



Remember that Man is the desire to become God, as Jean-Paul Sartre said. Just one of the ways our behavior reflects this is the way we all, in our limited ways (all the classes of people) try to mimic the economic pharaohs of our society, who, themselves, are trying to mimic God in their extreme focus on wealth accumulation ("He has more money than God." - recall this idiomatic expression, as we talked about?).



Therefore, one's success and wealth (as well as the extent to which you can "fake it till you make it") is symoblic of his nearness to God. And one's nearness to God is symbolized by his success and wealth. This is so whether we are talking about a nominal atheist or "person of faith."



In fact, Slavoj Zizek gave another great talk, which naturally can also be found on the Internet, called "Why Only an Atheist Can Believe." He juxtaposes an atheist against the fundamentalist. He says that fundamentalist really do not believe. Their so-called belief is too concentrated, to oversimplify.



As I said before, we can concur by asking if the fundamentalist really believes, what need is there to maintain such elaborate structures of justification.



So, if tomorrow living wage was the law of the land for all those jobs called "McJobs" (or something like that) like working in Starbucks, the mall, or something like that, being a cashier or waitress somewhere, everyone else would feel under spiritual threat.



While no one is suggesting that a check out clerk in a supermarket would under such a scenario or "should" receive the same salary as a third grade teacher or a professor of literature, this makes no difference. If workers at McJobs were to receive a living wage tomorrow, everyone else would feel their position or nearness to God devalued in relative terms.

They would feel - although not able to articulate this - as though they were not as near to God as they thought they were. This would be quite traumatizing psychologically. It is humankind's desire to become God, I think, which lies at the root of the hierarchical nature of society in general.

People do not believe that someone working at Starbucks, forty, fifty, sixty hours a week on a regular basis, should make enough, with that one job, to meet all your expenses and have enough left over for modest luxuries - because... well, its Starbuck's! The third grade teacher and professor of literature, police officer, and firefighter would feel like they were being dragged down to a lower level.

This is so whether we're looking at an atheist or believer. Its irrational but true nevertheless. This is the ideological root of the opposition to living wage, and indifference to same on the part of "most" people, covering the entire spectrum of mainstream so-called left-right-center political opinion.

Perhaps I'll talk more about this another time. In the meantime, remember these two contradictory, paradoxical ideas. Man is the desire to become God (the ultimate source of justification) and Man exists without justification ("God" or an extraterrestial tutor).

I'm not saying that God does not exist, but effectively, God really does not exist, with respect to providing justification. Follow? Good.

There's one more point I'll take up before retiring tonight.

wingedcentaur

Good Morning Friends,

Humankind, in or out of religious belief, exists without justification. Because this is so we have created and we daily maintain structures of justification. But since we have no external justification we are condemned to be free.

Remember I told you that I heard Slavoj Zizek say that (a saying he picked up from somewhere): If God exists everything is permitted (extreme freedom); and if God does not exist then nothing is permitted (extreme restriction).

This is a seemingly paradoxical notion, to be sure. But there is something to it. You will recall that I made a sports analogy in support of it. I suppose agnosticism and skepticism represents a moderate, centrist position between the "extremes" of faith and atheism.

Slavoj Zizek gave a talk, which can be found on the Internet, called "Why only an Atheist Can Believe." He says, counterintuitively, that fundamentalists do not believe. We can almost concur by asking of fundamentalist: if they really believe, why do they maintain such elaborate structures of justification (in terms of dress code, liturgy, prayer rituals, diet in some cases, and the like)?

What are structures of justification? Let's talk about it next time.

wingedcentaur

Good Evening Friends,

I hope that I have argued, semi-persuasively, the visible, demonstrable truth of Jean-Paul Sartre's assertion that: Man is the desire to become God. I have argued that this is a long-standing human tendency stretching far back into antiquity. I have argued that one of the ways this tendency manifest itself is in our habit of engaging in mimicry of the upper classes. And to the extent that our credit limit allows, all of us chase after those ultimate economic pharaohs who sit at the top of our society.

They, themseleves, struggle to acquire divine wealth ("He has more money than God."). Therefore, we, in trying to emulate - again to the very paltry degree that we are able - these economic pharaohs, are - ourselves, the bottom ninety-nine percent of society - striving for divine wealth, trying to mimic heaven.

I claim that money actually means a lot more to us than we know, far more. This is saying something given the extent to which we are consciously aware, we know that money has risen near the level of elemental importance to the species as oxgen.

Another thing that the French Existentialist philosopher, dramatist, novelist, social critic, and activist, Jean-Paul Sartre, wrote and said was that: Man exists without justification. What does this mean?

I think it means that "God" or some other extraterrestial "objective" authority does not pay us personal visits, put "his" arm around our shoulder and say something like: "Hey there, Bob! Listen, I just stopped by to encourage your to remain steadfast, to stay on course. You are taking your life in the right direction, making ME proud and honoring MY NAME, and so on and so forth. I want to give you particular kudos for the way you handled that knotty moral and ethical problem on Tuesday last. Your solution was a nice application of the principle I set forth in (fill in Biblical, Koranic, Talmudic verse, or whatever here). The only slight criticisms I would make are: you could pray more, you've been slacking a bit on the tithing, and you want to watch the purity of the pork products you consume. But all in all, I'm here to tell you: 'Bobby, you da man!!'"

This does not happen. Sartre explicitly represented atheistic Existentialism. But a lack of justification is part of the human condition in and out of supernatural belief. It is important to be very clear about this point. Believers and non-believers alike, as well as those in the middle, exist without external, "objective," extraterrestial validation. We seek and occasionally get the good opinion of others but this is not enough. They are puny, earth-bound humans like ourselves, they are not "objective," they lack the proper "perspective," and so on and so forth.

In Genesis, in the Bible, after Adam and Eve are expelled from the Garden of Eden, and forced to wear clothes and work for a living, God seems to have withdrawn from the world and the presence of human beings, except for the occasional prophet who enjoyed occasional direct communion with the divine (but this communion was of a formal, vaguely "telepathic," remote nature, nothing like the informal, casual, immediate and intimate connection previously enjoyed by Adam).

We can say that when Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden, humankind, as a whole, was condemned - along with the host of other condemnations heaped upon the species - to live forever in doubt (that there was an extraterrestial presence that duly noted our existence and works.

It is not insignificant to note that there are far, far fewer people who experience "direct communion with God" than there had been in previous centuries. I have seen persuasive arguments that there are both nutritional and sociological reasons for this. Of course, it is not "God" they come in contact with but a higher part of themselves, as I believe I mentioned before (see Gopi Krishna's book, The Secret of Yoga fom the Religious Perspectives series).

You know, the Garden of Eden expulsion perfectly symbolizes the nutritional and sociological reasons for the decline in mysticism, the separation from God.

The apple: nutrition - better nutrition means that the body is under less distress, less prone to hallucinatory experience.

Adam and Eve's disobedience of God's injunction not to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil: the way in which humankind seemed to take God less and less seriously - but yet the heart grows fonder in his absence. And this brings us to another point.

Since Man exists without justification, Man is condemned to be free, as Sartre also said. Man is condemned to be free. 'Condemned' is a word we have from the English translation of Sartre's writings, but condemned is the right word, nevertheless. But we'll continue next time.

wingedcentaur

Good Morning and Merry Christmas Everyone and Happy Holidays in whatever way you all celebrate them!

Friends, yesterday we were discussing class mimicry. People have always thought of themselves as successful, largely to the extent that they could mimic the socioeconomic class just above themselves.

It seems to me that we see this in the burial customs of the ancient Egyptians. Concrete hopes and striving for literal immortality was a critical component of Egyptian civilization. Great care was taken to mummify the body and preserve the internal organs, so that after death the spirit could recognize and return to the body, reanimating it for use in the afterlife. The idea was that one could pick up where he left off with his life in the terrestial plane.

The tombs of the kings were, of course, the most elaborate as they were trying to reflect directly as possible, the glory of their gods. Private individuals did this depending upon their financial means. The kings strove for the gods, and other people strove to emulate those above them on the class scale.

All of them wanted to be as king-like as possible. The kings were trying to be as god-like as possible. Therefore the overarching purpose of Egyptian burial customs, on the total societal level is to be as god-like as possible. As we said last time, Jean-Paul Sartre said, "Man is the desire to become God."

This desire to become God is visible in the simple reality of the world market in black market goods (apparel, shoes, and the like) and in the more legitimate department store "knock off" brands of the high fashion seen on the runways of Paris, New York, and Milan. The idea, to the extent that one's credit limit allows, is to acquire various acoutrements, gadgets, to "talk a good game," in the way you describe your lifestyle to coworkers, casual acquaintances, and strangers, in order to: make yourself seem richer than you are; to make your life seem more interesting and fuller than it really is; and so on and so forth.

Part of this present economic crisis is associated with lax availability of easy credit. But to my way of thinking this is a convenient scapegoat for an ingrained human tendency - not irreversible, I hope, but deeply entrenched. By the way, I almost forgot to mention: what is the meaning of those social courses we used to hear so much about in the late eighties and nineties, that purported to instruct single young women in the art of attracting and "landing" a rich husband.

The idea is that she should present herself as more prosperous than she is, so as not to make the rich man uncomfortable. It is a part of anecdotal wisdom that the best way to get a job, or get a loan, or some other desired resources, is to paradoxically seem not to need these things.

But who are the modern pharaohs we follow or try to mimic today, this crisis in the political economy notwithstanding? Warren Buffet, Donald Trump, Rupert Murdoch, Bill Gates, etc. It is they and people like them, to whom the idiomatic expression, "He has more money than God," is applied.

It is the representation of God as an economic competitor and rival. But we needn't go that far for our purposes.

Therefore, all of us, as we pursue consumerism, acquisition, and consumption, we are mimicking our modern financial and economic pharaohs, who are trying to mimic God; and so we are all trying to get more money than God. And in this way, again, at least in the financial and economic sphere, we realize the validity of Sartre's statement that "Man is the desire to become God."

If all of this is true, then what are we to make of the interdenominational "prosperity gospel" movement in American Christianity? I would refer you to an excellent book on this by Sarah Posner called "God's Profits."

But is the prosperity gospel really a distortion of Christianity? It certainly is not a distortion of human nature. By human nature I do not mean an eternal characteristic of the species, but rather a tendency in the human species that is nevertheless deeply ingrained, and has been for centuries, which is embodied in the idea that "Man is the desire to become God," in the ways we have been discussing.

To be continued

wingedcentaur

Good Evening and Seasons Greetings to you all! I hope you all eat too much, sleep too much, laugh too much, and love too much; but that you do not spend too much.

Friends, it is a fact of history that throughout the entire span of the recorded chronicle of the existence of the species on this Earth, that the extent to which one could mirror the socioeconomic class just above himself, was the extent to which he felt successful. We can see this very clearly in the keeping-up-with-the-Jonses aspect of the burial customs of the ancient Egyptians.

The king, at the very top of the socioeconomic hierarchy, was officially thought to be operating by divine authority, either he was divinely appointed or even the blood offspring of the chief god of the pantheon. As such he or the royal apparatus worked very hard to make his life on the terrestial plane a replica of that of the gods in their realm - so as to impress his subjects and foreigners alike with his glory, and so on and so forth.

The most significant expression of this was the tombs of the kings. As you know, the entire ritual apparatus and ceremonial framework was designed to ensure his continued existence in the afterlife, his immortality. Of course, all provisions were given to make sure that one could continue on just as he had on the terrestial plane.

To the extent that they were financially able, private individuals also had tombs built for themselves and their bodies preserved after death, so that their spirits could return to them after the individual had "passed on," and resume the life they had lived on the other side.

Certainly rich high officials did this, as well as other wealthy persons. I don't know this for a fact, but I'm sure that even the most humbe person did his best to arrange some kind of afterlife apparatus for himself. We might compare this to an airline trip. There's first class, second class, coach, business class. The king's and the royal family's, as well as the high officials might be classified as "first class" funerary arrangements.

Wealthy merchants and government bureaucrats were probably what we would call in the "second class." Artisans, shop keepers, landlords, big-scale farmers, and skilled workers might make up what we would call the "business class" section of the flight into immortality. Everybody else would fall into the "coach" class.

Of course there were those who could barely maintain their survival in this life much less make provision for the next.

Here's the point: the kings were striving reflect the way of life of the gods; high officials were striving to reflect the way of life of the royalty, who was striving for the gods; the merchants, government bureaucrats, were striving to reflect the way of life of the high officials, who were striving to mimic the royalty, who were striving to mimic the gods; the artisans, shop keepers, landlords, big-scale farmers, and skilled workers were striving to mimic the wealthy merchants and government bureaucrats who were striving to mimic the wealthy merchant class, who was trying to mimic the high officials; who was trying to mimic the gods.

We know this is so because the dynamic is perfectly in operation today, as I will discuss tomorrrow. But let me leave you with this: so said Jean-Paul Sartre "Man is the desire to become God."

Until next time,

wingedcentaur

Good Morning Friends and Seasons Greetings to you all,

I suppose we should note the fact that the G20 countries have concluded their climate change summit in Coppenhagen and... and.... and.... My sense of it is that the meeting fell flat. Nothing like the reductions in CO2 emissions were agreed to that scientists tell us are necessary, and so forth. Of course, its a shame the way we burn up fossil fuels and can't let the dinosaurs rest in peace.

But for me the tragedy of climate change is not the way we use too much energy or waste too much energy. Its not the way we don't recycle enough plastic and tin and paper and so on and so forth. Yes, its a shame the way corporations illegally dump their various waste products into bodies of water that have an almost sacred reverence for people in developing countries around the world, causing disease, birth defects, and the like.

The tragedy is not the massive deforestation of the Amazon and other places. Its not the poaching of various animals on the protected/endangered species list. And on and on. The hits keep on coming.

The tragedy of our climate challenge is the way we waste human beings. I think I mentioned this before. Some people work as sanitation workers (garbage haulers). Some people work as window washers of those high-rise buildings hauling themselves up on those rickety scaffolds. I believe some people work in sewers (if The Honeymooners is still relevant - remember Ralph Kramden's friend Norton?). Some people work as waiters in restaurants. Unless their transitory "students" or "actors," they have to make their living serving other people.

Some people work in animal slaughtering plants to get the meat ready that we buy from the supermarkets and consume in fine restaurants. Some people have to work as security guards, as I once did. Frankly, I think companies used "security" guards as a vanity acoutrement. Yes, there was a lot of talk about post-9/11 and the need for... for... for.... increased security, I guess.

Some people are needed to do marginal farm laboring tasks that... let's face it, that only undocumented workers seem willing and desperate enough to do. The very structure of society sustains a type of development that creates a structural necessity to have legions of people servicing it on the margins.

To me it is a humanist injustice that such jobs exist. And their existence is the wall up against which the pronouncements of politicians run. As I said before, take the policy of former president George W. Bush in education, "No Child Left Behind." It doesn't matter that Bush is a conservative Republican. It wouldn't matter if he was a Democrat, Independent, or member of some other party.

The system needs to leave millions of children behind through various ways, of course. It can be no other way and yet the system must give upward mobility to a small sliver of persons in order not to lose all rhetorical credibility.

We are talking about more than capitalism or neoliberalism. We are talking about what I heard one socialist activist refer to as the world capital system which preceded capitalism by thousands of years. I will talk more about this next time when I reintroduce the idea of Absurdity from Existentialism.

Until next time.

wingedcentaur

Good Morning Friends,

Did you know that there is more than one way to make a toilet?

No? Well there is. I refer to talk that Slovenian philosopher, Slavoj Zizek gave at Google. You can see the lecture at Authors@Google and type in his name. He talked about many things concerning the nature of belief, of course.

But one of the things I honed in on was the bit about toilets. It's vulgar, as he, himself, pointed out but consider the following. Not being a world traveler, I had no idea that toilets were made in different ways beside the "standard," American.

According to Zizek, in France the toilets are made with the inner hole at the back. This is so that excrement drops straight down, to the back, and immediately out of sight. Remember that.

In Germany (at the time he gave the talk he said that fifty percent of the toilets are still made this way) the inner hole is actually in the front. The matter travels under your nose on its way to oblivion. In other words, one is actually confronted with it.

In America, as Zizek says, "it doesn't matter where the hole is," because matter floats before it is flushed away. If I understood Slavoj Zizek correctly, German and French toilets don't have water in them. I have to say, as an American, I do, even now, find this a bit of a start. This goes to show how we can take things for granted.

In these three types of toilets we have three different means of waste disposal. He claims that we are literally confronted with ideology (which I think of as a subset of the broadly defined study of philosophy) every time we flush the toilet, we manifest ideology.

Zizek asked informed people concerned with such matters, why toilets are made in this way. The respondents always advanced utilitarian answers, as though it was a matter of "common sense." But obviously it cannot be since others also believe their way is "common sense." There really is the question of who is right when we talk that way.

These answers were unsatisfactory to Zizek, who asked himself: In what other context had he heard of such a trinity?

About two hundred years ago - early 1800s, somewhere in there - there existed a popular idea that there were three defining paradigms that epitomize and symbolize European civilization as a whole.

1) France
politically: leftist, revolutionary actually
preferred sphere of action: politics

2) Germany
politically: conservative
preferred sphere of action: literature, arts, philosophy, etc. - culture

3) British/later American
politically: centrist or center-left, pragmatic
preferred sphere of action: economics

Friends, therein lies the connection. France has a radical, revolutionary tradition and so it is only natural, then, that that country would make their objects, including toilets in such a way to reflect this. Excrement is immediately "liquidated," removed from sight at once.

Germany has the conservative, reflective tradition, as we have noted. So their toilets were made that way. The matter passes right under one's nose on its way to oblivion.

I don't know if he was kidding or not, but Zizek said that it was a part of German hygienic practice to periodically examine one's stool as an indication of health.

The British and American paradigm is more pragmatic, hence the matter neither goes forward or backward (one might say right or left depending on your perspective relative to the toilet bowl), and thus the matter floats in water cutting down on the smell and then it is flushed and the waste drops straight down the center.

Slavoj Zizek says that when he presented this analysis to, presumably, informed people concerned with such matters, that they admitted that as "crazy as it sounds," it is the only way to describe the different ways of building a vulgar structure such as a toilet.

Ideology (philosophy) influences all of us whether we are aware of it or not. This fact - and I consider it a fact - can be good, bad, and indifferent but is always real. This is so not only in the "abstract," our behavior, our belief system, and the like. This is also so in the down-to-earth matters of everyday concern.

Philosophy (ideology) informed whoever invented the modern toilet in these three places. And the builders and installers of these toilets mold ideology itself as much as the porcelin in making the toilet and fitting it to the plumbing apparatus and fitting it within this or that particular house - architecture: most of us more readily understand how architecture manifests ideology.

I have said before and will probably say again, as I say now - that everyone alive right now and who has ever been is/was either a philosopher of one kind or another, either theoretical or applied, even if they are not aware of it. You are all aware of the example I like to use of the bodybuilder, who may actually be a professional academic philosopher as well as bodybuilder; but the activity of bodybuilding is one of applied philosophy, as I have described it before.

wingedcentaur

Good Evening Friends,

Now we can talk about toilets - hopefully. I bet you thought I was kidding when I wrote that there can be no toilets without philosophy, and conversely, no philosophy without toilets. I was not. What I am interested in, here, is the way that ideas (and not ideas for specific objects) eventually become objects.

"Philosophical" ideas may not have "practical" value at the moment but they often end up "solidified" into "real" contributions to the world of concrete human knowledge, and they even become solidified into simple concrete objects - like, say, toilets, for one example.

Now, the folks developing such theories and popularizing them and teaching them do not know always know what objects these ideas they will fashion. These ideas eventually lead to the creation of objects of everyday use as well as various structures, political, economic, architectural, etc., which are used be "hard-headed," practical, "no nonsense," individuals who have no time for "head-in-the-clouds" speculating, and therefore incorrectly believe that these objects and structures have their origin in what they think of as practicality.

In other words, they conceive a false dichotomy between sky and earth.

The rejoining of sky and earth is what our project to reconcile religion and psychology is all about. I have been trying my best to indicate that religion was the abstract exploratory apparatus ("philosophy") that gave rise to our understanding, in many ways, of modern psychology (practical results).

The philosopher should realize that he is as much a workman as the carpenter, who is as much a weaver of ideology as the so-called intellectual, the philosopher. The bodybuilder is a weaver of ideology (philosophy) in that the pursuit "gropes for the infinite," weaves the ideology of perfect physical self-manipulation. I call bodybuilding that remaking or shaping of You as a work of art, sculpture.

Even if the bodybuilder uses steroids, the exercise is still philosophically pure. The issue is not the illegality or "immorality" or "unethical" behavior of taking these drugs. The issue is the molding of oneself, his body as a work of art, the sense of being able to sculpt it like clay. We have heard much about the side effects of steroids but I think for those who take steroids it comes down to the question put to Achilles: Do you want a long life or a glorious one?

Steroid takers choose a glorious one.

Slavoj Zizek rejoins sky and earth for us with his theoretical conception about the connection between ideology and toilets.

But since it is past eleven o'clock at night, I will go for it tomorrow - promise. Without preamble I will begin talking about toilets.

wingedcentaur

Good Morning Friends,

Now we can talk about toilets, ideology and toilets. Here is where we look at this idea of Slovenian philosopher, Slavoj Zizek. Actually, we don't want to examine the idea as much as simply express gratitude for it.

There was a time when I was unclear about the value of philosophy. There was a time when I thought this world had moved beyond it - as Zizek puts it, there is the widespread view that we are living in a "post-ideological" age.

I suppose by this we meant that: A) philosophy had run its course and was now like Latin, an obscure discipline to be studied by academics for its own sake, an expression of the leisure of the bourgeoisie; and B) our actions and politics are governed now by practicality, pragmatism, indeed, "facts."

If I had it to do over again I would have majored in philosophy, got a Ph.D and taught somewhere. Its a living, of course but I worried about its limited appeal or at least lack of promotion of philosophy for a wider appeal. There was a time when I wished that I possessed a more practical skill set.

There was a time when I wished for a talent for computers or working with tools or cars or something like that. I remember wanting to be able to do something that was "undeniable," something that provided undeniable value.

This computer I am using is something of clear, undeniable value. No matter what your "philosophy" or ideology, or what political party you belong to, no matter if you are a "progressive," liberal, conservative, "Independent" (not a real political party, by the way), Libertarian, Democrat, Republican, and so forth, this computer is of singular, undeniable value to all of you.

This was what my thinking was like long ago. But ideology, philosophy is disputable. Obviously, people make a living communicating a certain ideology to an audience that is receptive to it, whether by Internet in various ways, television, radio, newspaper columns, and the like. You go about living in your "echo chamber," being echoed to and echoing to your particular "masses," and everything's fine, I guess.

There was a time when I had longed to have been born sometime in ancient Greece, when the great philosophers lived (Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, etc.). Part of their greatness, it seems to me, came from the relative newness of the ideas they talked about. Now these things are "old hat."

Yes, I should have majored in philosophy, full speed ahead and simply gone on to teach at university. But this implies a certain constraint of the publication of philosophy, a communication of academics to academics, per se.

But what about the garbage hauler? What about the taxi driver? What about the people who clean the rooms at the hotels? What about the people who work in the chicken slaughtering plant? And so on and so forth.

Some people say that the work done in a university is "not for everyone." We may examine that sentiment in more detail at a later time. But this "not for everyone" is in itself an ideology that underpines world society. After all, if "education" were "for everyone," then who would our garbage haulers, high-rise building window washers, chicken slaughtering plant workers, the taxi drivers, the security guards (I once had the pleasure of being one), and so forth be.

George W. Bush rolled out the "No Child Left Behind" education bill. But millions of children MUST be left behind in order for our society to function along these line. That is the unescapable contradiction of not only or even capitalism necessarily, but rather the much older world social and economic system of organization that is much more fundamental, and upon which capitalism was built - I think, rather reluctantly at that.

Anyway, people who talk about what is not "for everyone" will, of course, say that foregoing "higher" education need not mean that people have to be consigned to "marginal" ( I want to make clear that I am not calling the people who do these jobs "marginal" Marginal are the jobs that many of us are structurally compeled to do) jobs.

They can point to examples of people who did not go to college and yet through "training" or even "re-training" got good, high-paying jobs working with technology and so forth. Granted but these are exceptions that prove the rule. The system must allow a modicum of "upward mobility," but not too much to play havoc with the social order, which is namely the division between those of us who must sell our physical labor power for a wage - a low one at that - and those that get to "write [their] own ticket," as it were, by selling their perceived "intellectual" bona fides to do work that is more prestigious and better paid and benefitted and very much less physically taxing.

Anyway, we were meant to be talking about toilets. And we will. We are going to spotlight how practical is not as practical as practical thinks it is, and how speculative is not as speculative as speculative thinks it is - a formulation I gave before.

wingedcentaur

Good Evening Friends,

Folks, before moving on to toilets we must first make sure we're clear about my (as far as I know) theory of the motivation of the sociopath. He enables himself to do murder (particularly of family members) by trying to split his Self (yes, capital S) into two parts: the innocent, good part and the evil, guilty part.

The phenomenological mechanism we saw in the movie, Secret Window (with John Turturro and Johnny Depp) was precisely what the sociopath desperately try to bring about. This is the infinite direction toward which they grope.

What about love? What about their feelings for their friends, family, lovers, husbands, wives , parents, and children they kill? Do they simply not have human feelings, or is something in them "missing," as is implied in the popular media?

I said that they manage to compartmentalized their feelings into their "good" avatar quite apart from the "dark half."

Also: remember how we talked about there actually being three personalities at work in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: Hyde, Jekyll, and (to generalize for the sake of speed) Hyde-Jekyll, the form of Hyde with the moderating conscience of Jekyll in operation.

We used this to conceive of a tripartite psychological apparatus in operation within the sociopath. The "lover." The "killer." The "lover/killer," a fusion state that, generally speaking makes murder seductive, almost sexually satisfying.

This indoctrination takes place both upon the sociopath, herself, as well her would-be partner-in-crime. This duel indoctrination dynamic definitely took place in the movie, Body Heat with Kathleen Turner and William Hurt. "Matty," (Turner) convinced herself and Ned Racine (Hurt) that killing her rich husband promised a kind of erotic satisfaction in and of itself - her "lover/killer" personal.

I would roughly compare this dynamic with the way television advertising had once worked to persuade people that smoking cigarettes was "cool." Seriously. And by the way, given what we know that the cigarette companies knew - back in the fifties - about the hazards of smoking, we were really be told something like: slowly killing yourself is way cool! Think about that.

Where does "Mr. Hyde" come from in the first place? I think, here, the analysis presented by Mr. Bradshaw in his book, Family Secrets, and in his work generally. I think his conception of "Narcissistic deprivation" is helpful. ND is something usually associated with a woman, the mother, especially if she's a stay-at-home mom.

We talked about what ND is, the non-mirroring of Self in the face of the mother, such that he cannot get his narcissistic needs met, thus enabling him to develop a positive self-image, to oversimplify, feel "loved." Such a child grows into a man or woman who spends his or her whole life trying to get what the mother had not been able to give, in a variety of dubious ways. But, Mr. Bradshaw says, this is a "wound that must be grieved."

A mother who subjects her child to Narcissistic deprivation seems like a perfectly "loving" woman to her child, indeed, she dotes on him. But this doting takes the form of trying to mold the child into what she wants him to be, not what he wants to be. A component of this is that she will usually signal to the child, in subtle but unmistakable ways, that certain behavior is unacceptable: like anger, for instance.

In his book, John Bradshaw confesses that this is precisely what happened to him with his mother. When he got angry he saw that his mother became upset - not at the source of his anger. Not even at the way he was responding to whatever it was, judging his reaction either to be too little or too much. No, his mother became upset at the very fact of his anger.

His becoming angry, apparently was out of line with her image of him, of what she wanted him to be. So he suppressed and denied his own anger. But it did not go away, of course. Bradshaw quotes Carl Jung in saying that whatever is deemed unacceptable in me, splits off and becomes more savage.

Bradshaw says that his suppressed anger became rage later in life, when he became a husband and a father. He would have rage attacks, raging at people, "not often but enough that it was impactful." Frothing at the mouth stuff.

Finally, the reason the sociopath goes through this convuluted internal psychological process because he does not feel comfortable personally or directly expressing anger in general, much less the kind of anger one might act upon. Again, this was precisely the dynamic at work in the movie, Secret Window.

Writer Mort Rainey (Johnny Depp) wanted to punish his wife for having had an affair. A character that turned out to be a part of him, Shooter (John Turturro) did all the things "Mort" had wanted to do but didn't have the "stomach" for.

There is a great scene in the movie when Rainey seems to be seriously coming undone to put it politely. He asks "What's happening to me?"

Shooter comes down the stairs of Rainey's country house saying "Oh, I think you know. I think you got a real good idea."

Rainey: You're not real.

Shooter: Me? I'm real, Mr. Rainey. I'm real cause you made me. You thought me up. Gave me my name. Told me everything you wanted me to do. I did them things so you wouldn't have to. Didn't have the stomach to do it yourself, but you knew I did."

"Shooter" killed Rainey's dog, and burned down the house that the writer's ex-wife lived in, and two men, before he killed his ex-wife and her new husband. At this time, though, Shooter and Rainey became intergrated and the writer came to accept the Shooter part of himself and be glad for it. Such a person might easily kill again.

Not so with Matty Walker (Kathleen Turner in Body Heat). I think once her rich husband was done away with and the money was safely and solely in her hands, she had no need to kill again and wouldn't have.

wingedcentaur

Good Evening Friends,

Without philosophy there can be no toilets; and without toilets there can be no philosophy. I will, shortly, discuss Slavoj Zizek's theory about the connection between ideology and toilets. As you know, I have given a very broad definition of the term 'philosophy.' I have called philosophy (which we think of a synonymous with imagination, the soaring spirit of speculation) the unmanned space probe of concrete human knowledge.

Simply put, what I mean by this is, for example, the airplane had to be imagined first before it could be designed and built.

I have called philosophy an intellectual activity that is about something I have called "groping for the infinte." I conceived that little phrase under the influence of the ideas of Jean-Paul Satre, the late, great French Existentialist philosopher, - as I understand them - who imported an idea into his system from "the most discerning ethicists," who had shown, to his satisfaction, that most of our actions strive for a purpose well above and beyond their ostensible object.

In other words, when we do a thing, it is not about the thing in and of itself. I have given examples. The activity of the bigamist is the attempt to create the perfect wife or husband by accessing the best characteristics of two or more people. Remember I gave the example from the television Star Trek Voyager, when Tuvak, the black Vulcan and the ship's cook, a being called Neelix had a "transporter" accident and fused into one being.

Something like this, we said, is the impossible, infinite the result the bigamist is reaching for and which he would bring about if he could. This is what I mean when I say that the bigamist is groping - unethically to be sure - for the infinite.

I also gave the example of the bodybuilder. Why do people do this? Why do they spend many, many hours everyday working out, targeting specific muscle groups at specific times, in specific ways, with specific routine, and hold to a specific diet, in order to be able to expand their bodies to four times the average human density and definition of musculature?

We said that they do this in order to try to tap into a universal sense of being able to exercise complete control over one's own body, to be able to sculpt one's body with the mastery of... well, a sculptor. In this way the bodybuilder gropes for the infinite. If not for this deeper intrinsic journey the activity of bodybuilding absurd, meaningless.

Now, not only is it rather incumbent upon all of us to be philosophers - especially during times of crisis like these we are living through - to analyze and deconstruct old assumptions governing our everyday lives, as well as those of our political, economic, and social arrangements.

But all of us are, in one way or another, philosophers - either theoretical or applied - in that all that we do gropes for the infinite. At very least we all manifest ideology (which I will also use synonymously with the idea of philosophy) everyday. This brings us to the matter of toilets.

But first let me say the following: speculative is not as speculative as speculative thinks it is; and practical is not as practical as practical thinks it is. The speculative and the practical need each other. The practical needs the speculative to save it from ridiculousness. The speculative needs the practical in order to save it from triviality and irrelevance.

Ultimately the speculative must have objective ends that have a bearing on the lives of everyday people. Philosophy must be available to and, indeed, is embedded within the truck driver, waitress, cab driver, plumber, and the like as well as the Harvard intellectual.

We'll talk about toilets next time.

wingedcentaur

Friends,

Remember the Susan Smith case? A young single mother of three had drugged her children and left them in a slumber in the back seat of the car, which she ran into the river to drown them. But she appeared on national media, crying, saying that her children were missing, had been kidnapped. I believe she said that a tall black man had carjacked her, got her out of the vehicle, and drove away with her kids in the car.

This was in the early nineties. Later the truth came out and we learned that Ms. Smith had become involved with a man who did not want children. She had tried to split herself into the innocent mother who loved her children very much and the dark force the took them away from her. This attempted psychological fission was thwarted by the investigation which nailed down her guilt quickly.

Remember one of the chilling statements that came out of the Vietnam War era, We had to destroy the village to save it!?

It seems to me that Munchausen by Proxy syndrome must work this way. The mother must destroy the child in order to save him. She must save him in order to destroy him. And on and on. But that's enough of that.

Please think about this for next time: Without philosophy there can be no toilets; and without toilets there can be no philosophy. Seriously.

Until next time,

wingedcentaur

Good Evening Friends,

I am of the opinion that the sociopath, as we have defined the term, is not without a conscience or "soul." They have human feelings and even "love" the people they kill, which is why they go to such lengths to escape the guilt of what they have done by trying to split into at least two personas (the "innocent" one and the "guilty" or evil one who "actually" committed the deed). They try to slough off the evil half once the deed is done and they have gotten what they wanted in the first place, which necessitated the death of his intended victim.

I ask people about the movie, Body Heat, with Kathleen Turner and William Hurt. Why did the femme fatale, Turner, try to kill her lover and co-conspirator in homicide, Hurt (of her rich husband for the insurance pay out)?

The usual response is greed. Turner's character was greedy. She wanted all of the money for herself. She didn't want to share the spoils with Hurt's character. My problem with this is the following: an attractive woman like Matty Walker (Turner's character) would presumably not going to spend the rest of her life alone (let us set aside the notion that she may have had a secret husband somewhere). Therefore she would end up "sharing" the money with someone.

Hard to believe though it may be, she may have wanted to marry and start a family. The money she got, its origin disguised of course, would come into play in establishing her new life. The sexual chemistry between this Matty Walker and Ned Racine (William Hurt) was electric in my opinion. It's too bad they couldn't end up together - from the point of view of sexual chemistry not morality!

People say to me that Matty never loved Ned. She was using him from the start and had always intended to do away with him. I can accept that she was using him from the start. I can accept that she had always intended to do away with him from the start and keep all the money for herself.

But it is also possible, at the same time, that "she" really loved poor Ned. How can this be?

Remember, she had to eliminate Ned because she could never be innocent again while he lived, as we have discussed. But if she loved him, why didn't this love preclude her from trying to kill Ned? Because she put her love of Ned to one side, more precisely in the "innocent" half of the Self, which she tried to split into two halves.

This has noting to do with her "evil" half, which she would have surely mythologized to herself (let us be clear about that) as an unfortunate, darkly invasive force totally external to herself which "took" her Ned away from her.

"Matty" is trying to encompass all the benefits of: loving Ned sincerely, lovingly manipulating Ned into conceiving (she made Ned think it was his idea) and executing a plan to murder her husband, and the feelingless evil creature or dark force that tried to kill Ned.

Note that I have given three elements:

1) the innocent lover - "Matty Walker" who really loves Ned.
2) the fused lover/killer - this union is necessary to ennabling Matty to convince Ned to kill her husband; the killer part of the persona provides the necessary ruthless impetus needed to inspire the needed ruthlessness on the part of her pawn, Ned, to effect the planned murder of the rich husband; and the lover part is necessary to reassure Ned that if he does this he and she, Ned and Matty will be "free," rich, and live happily ever after together.
3) the killer - the ruthless force that will do away with Ned after he has outlived his usefulness, and which the lover will try to mythologize as a darkly invasive force that stripped her of her true love (an attempt to set up a justificatory apparatus of "plausible deniability").

It is interesting to note that in one of the editions of Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, there is an introduction by a fellow called Vladimir Nabokhov, which is an adaptation of a lecture he gave on the short novel. Nabokhov points out that there is such a tripartite structure at work concerning Hyde and Jekyll. There is not two personalities, there are actually three.

A. Jekyll the "good" (but he was never entirely good)
B. Hyde the "evil"
C. Jekyll/Hyde fusion aspect - the form of Mr. Hyde guided, more or less, by the intelligence and sensitivity, the mind of Dr. Jekyll.

I will go into this dynamic in more detail when we talk about the novel, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

This dynamic is present, I think, in all sociopaths, as we have defined the term. This pattern is present in all the movies concerning sociopaths: To Die For (Nicole Kidman), Double Indemnity (Barbara Stanwyck), Body Heat (Kathleen Turner), Insomnia (Robin Williams - it was the lover/killer William's character that killed the girl and it was the lover/killer that confided his secret, the fact that he murdered the girl to Al Pacino's character, a Los Angeles homicide detective, and tries to manipulate him into helping him get away with it), Secret Window (Johnny Depp), etc.

In The Godfather II Al Pacino as Michael Corleone acted specifically like a sociopath when he ordered the execution of his brother, poor Fredo. It was the lover/killer that tried to lure Fredo into his clutches when they make their escape from Cuba while the dictator is being overthrown by Castro. It was the lover who had grabbed Fredo by the sides of his head and "I know it was you, Fredo. I know it was you and it broke my heart."

It was the lover/killer who told Al Neri that he didn't want Fredo killed while their poor mama was still alive. But remember that scene when a crestfallen, broken down Fredo is led into his brother's presence at their mother's funeral and they embrace? Remember that look Michael gave Al Neri? I am haunted by that look to this day. That look was given by the pure killer!

Interestingly, it is in the third Godfather novel (yes, there are three Godfather novels: two of them written by Mark Winegardner with the permission of the Puzo estate) in which the precise motivation is given for Michael's order to kill Fredo. It has to do with Tom Hagen, the Corleone sons adopted brother, the German-Irish lawyer and consigliere of the Corleone (mob) Family. The fear = greed = violence equation holds.

Michael was fearful of Tom's disapproval if he failed to act decisively and with unwavering "justice" with regard to a "traitor." If anyone of you are familiar with the first Godfather novel, recall the scence near the very end of the book when Tom Hagen goes to convince Kate, Michael's wife not to leave him and to return to New York. He gives a justification for the things Michael had needed to do as the head of the most powerful mafia family in the country, if not the world, including avenging his brother, Santino's (Sonny) death.

Tom basically told Kate that if Michael had not done the things he had done, then this "Don Corleone" would have been shirking his duty to not only his immediate blood family but all the associates and members of the greater Corleone Family.

Michael had always been "greedy" for Tom's good opinion of him. And therefore, when it came to the Fredo situation there was only one thing to do.

wingedcentaur

Good Evening Friends,

We are still talking about the sociopath, as distinct from the pragmatic career criminal and the "psychopathic" serial killer. Unlike the latter two criminal types, the former pursues crime, by and large, as a means to an end, not an end in and of itself. There is another characteristic that I want to emphasize.

As we have said before, the sociopath, unlike the serial killer or proud career criminal, is not personally comfortable committing violence but does so to achieve a specific long-term goal. Let me repeat that, they are not personally comfortable committing violence - which is why they always try to split their Selves into at least two parts in order to escape from the guilt. They try to split themselves into the good half who would never do such a thing and the bad half who can do whatever is required without hesitation.

And then, they believe that they can slough off the dark half once their purposes are achieved. This is why the short novel by Robert Louis Stevenson continues to be so valuable and instructive in projecting a precise extreme analogy of this psychological dynamic on the part of the sociopath.

More next time.

wingedcentaur

Good Morning Friends,

Something quick before I shove off to work. As you can probably tell by now, I am resistant to the idea that the sociopath "lacks a conscience." I reviewed, last time, a bit of what we've been discussing concerning the somewhat, excitingly fluid nature of identity. For the most part I have argued that this is a natural, positive, and necessary process. Remember we determined that there is no Self without others in much earlier posts. Sometimes it is counterproductive at best and harmful, if not checked by diligent self-examination or "defragmentation," to use a computer term.

Here's my question: If the sociopath only pretends to feel, how can anyone tell this from outside observation, and if it is somehow determined that he does not "feel," are we sure that he is not merely asserting feelingless(ness) after the fact - after his crimes have been revealed? Remember the Donovan's Brain analogy from last time. The disembodied brain had become so powerful that it could and did communicate with Dr. Patrick Cory telepathically.

It, the brain, told Dr. Cory things about his past, shared memories with the scientist. It also could and did make Cory forget things - like how he had his wife committed to an insane asylum to get her meddlesome presence out of the way.

I am saying that the "peer pressure" (using term imprecisely) apparatus we have been discussing serves to make the so-called sociopath think that he does not or never had had "human feeling."

But why and how would anyone make some people think that they do not "feel?" Remember, the sociopath is presented to us, the public, as people almost born without a conscience and therefore capable of anything!

Of course, most people - I hope - do not deliberately set out to deceive people into thinking they do not feel. On the other hand, we could say - from the point of view of Existential ethical analysis that this is precisely the role of Satan in Christian mythology: to make people think they do not love God and God does not love them and to trigger the fear = greed = violence trigger causing people to "sin." Maybe. Maybe not.

But a dysfunctional family/organizational apparatus may serve to produce this effect. I am going to refer to John Bradshaw's book, Family Secrets and what he calls "Narcissistic deprivation." This effects a parent, who himself or herself, get their Narcissistic needs met by their parents for whatever reason. Such a parent has a kind of "wound" in their soul and will set their own children to meet those needs that should have been met by their grandparents. Follow me?

Bradshaw says that the primordial experience of an infant's life is looking into the face of, usually his mother, and seeing himself. We need someone to admire us, to love us unconditionally. But what happens when the child looks into his mother's face and does not see himself, rather he observes her looking at him in search of herself. In his book, John Bradshaw says this was precisely his childhood experience.

Such a child becomes his mother's "little man," a kind of surrogate husband. He then, obviously suffers from Narcissistic deprivation. Bradshaw says that he had found, in his work with many celebrities and in himself, that he spent decades of his life doing public appearances, lectures, appearing on media, getting applause, sometimes standing ovations, and searching the thousands of faces in the audience - for himself and not finding himself.

Narcissistic deprivation is a "being wound" that needs to be grieved. And so on and so forth. We'll talk about that next time. I will try to persuade you that the application of this dynamic in family relations can set up a feeling-suppressing mechanism known as a "lack of conscience."

Once this happens, then the 'normal' fear = greed = violence operation can come into play. In other words, the so-called sociopath has sufficiently distances himself from his family in order to be able to do violence against them.

There's something else. Remember to, from the examples we discussed about the movies "Body Heat" with Kathleen Turner and William Hurt and "Secret Window," with Johnny Depp and John Turturro, that the sociopath tries to split her Self into two parts: this innocent half and the dark half, if you like. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

To be continued,

wingedcentaur

Good Evening Friends,

We are talking about sociopaths, as distinct from the "pyschopathic" serial killer or otherwise supposedly "rational" career criminal. Remember, we have established that the sociopath, as we have defined the term is a person who will move from a position of law-abiding citizenship into the domain of crime, only as a means to an end not an end in itself. But for our purposes, sociopaths are not insane in the usual sense of the word.

Let me briefly address the question of the sociopath's "lack of conscience," in that they do not feel the love, family warmth, loyalty, and friendship, etc, that they are "supposed" to feel. This supposed lack therefore somehow allows them to commit horrific acts of violence against their family members.

Let me refer back to a central ontological principle of Existentialism/Buddhism, as I understand it: consciousness is not what it is but what it is not. Consciousness, therefore, cannot apprehend itself as an object. The "mind" is a fluid thing.

It is not possible to maintain a feeling, emotion, or mental state indefinitely or even as long as we would like no matter how hard we try. This principle also makes us aware, as we have discussed before, that there are times when we don't even think with our own minds and feel with our own hearts.

Remember we examined an episode of the original CSI: crime scene investigation unit crime drama with lead investigator Grishom. We looked at the show involving a young woman of average size who got engaged to a young man who was abnormally short, a "dwarf," was the unfortunate term used.

We talked about how the woman admitted to herself the attraction she felt for the young man, despite implicit societal prohibition. We also speculated that perhaps she was not exactly aware of the nature of her attraction to the young man.

We made the counterintuitive point that she had, in fact, harbored a physical/sexual attraction for men of that type, shorter than herself - and indeed, the shorter the better, and this despite the societal message that she was to desire someone "tall, dark, and handsome," in this case, emphasis on the "tall" (taller than herself, as is fairly typical of the phenotypical relationship of men-women couples).

This is a naturalistic existential view, as I understand it, applied to this situation. We raised the possibility that the young woman may have told herself things like: "I fell in love with him despite his appearance," or "I looked past his appearance," and so forth.

We rejected such sentimentality as inherently insulting to the young man in question. I don't know if I made this clear before, but if she had attributed such altruistic motives to herself just before entering the marriage, then there is two contradictory motives at work: 1) she rejected the societal message about what kind of man she was supposed to marry and made her own decision, making her choice existential in nature (ethically speaking); 2) she had fallen prey to the standard, conventional, societal but wrong analysis of her own motives in marrying her young man, namely because of her "good heart."

Attraction is both physical and mental, a package deal. We do not fall in love with disembodied spirits. We fall in love with bodies perhaps containing "spirits" or "souls." Our preferences do not always conform to the Greek-inspired ideal.

If she did not have such an altruistic self-conception of her own motives in the beginning, she might well become "infected" with them through peer pressure, as we discussed. People constantly telling her how "good-hearted" she must be to marry a "dwarf." The fact that she is completely turned on by this type of guy might get lost or distorted. And in time she may come to think of herself as having extended a kind of charity to her young man by marrying him - in time, the process would be very subtle and slow-acting, I would think.

This "infection" would change her in a subtle but concrete way. It would substantially change the way she interacted with her husband, even if they could not identify the cause. The weight of everyone else's wrong analysis and opinion of your actions can "infect" you like a virus. An outer invasion of your own motivation matrix, as I once put it. In this way, you, in a sense, do not know where you end and the rest of the world begins.

Not knowing where you end and the rest of the world begins.

You will recall that I offered this as a possible explanation of why so very many Hollywood/celebrity marriage end up in shambles. It is the weight of living life in a fishbowl, constantly in the public eye. Why should this be so? Because, as we have indicated previously, observation is not just a passive activity. Observing phenomena changes it.

The weight of societal opinion can make you think and feel things, to a certain extent, things you, yourself, naturally and organically, think and feel. Conversely, the weight of societal opinion can make us "forget" (not using the word precisely) or not feel and think things that you actually do think and feel. The power of suggestion is at work, to put it crudely.

I was going to skip this but let me analogize the matter this way. Donovan's Brain was a 1930s radio play starring Orson Welles which was based on a novel by Curt Siodmak. Dr. Patrick Cory was a scientist obsessed with keeping a disembodied brain alive. He did several experiments that failed.

But finally fate intervened to show him where he had erred. William H. Donovan was one of the victims of a plane crash nearby and the county physician appeals to Dr. Cory to help. You see, one of the victims, namely William H. Donovan, is still alive, and he can perhaps be kept that way if they operate immediately.

At this point Cory has what Oprah Winfrey used to call a "light bulb moment." The monkey had been dead when he had extracted its brain and tried to keep it alive. This is a mistake he doesn't intend to make again!

Yada, yada, yada, and he extracts the brain and successfully keeps it alive. In fact he is so successfully at keeping Donovan's Brain alive, that the brain grows and mutates (aided by Cory's methods which he used to experience more clear, direct communication with the brain) and develops impressive psychic powers.

Through the faculty of telepathy Donovan communicated with Dr. Cory and told the scientist things about his past life. The communication became so complete that Cory started smoking cigarettes - the same brand as Donovan! Cory started using an expression of Donovan's: "Sure, sure, sure." Dr. Cory was roused from a hypnotic trance in which he was found to be writing Donovan's name over and over again - with his left hand just like William H. Donovan.

The brain was eventually able to establish utter physical control of Dr. Cory for limited periods of time. He made Dr. Cory committ his wife to an insane asylum to get her out of the way because she was asking uncomfortable questions - and made her forget this. Cory committed his wife to an insane asylum and forgot that he'd done it because the brain made him forget.

When Cory's friend, another medical doctor, and his son, ask him about the whereabouts of his wife, he says, honestly that he doesn't know. Cory thinks that she just walked out on him. The other doctor, beginning to suspect that Patrick had something to do with her disappearance says that since the brain communicates with him, tells him things about his life, mightn't the brain also be able to make him forget things.

This is the dynamic I am describing. The weight of societal opinion can make us think and feel, falsely, and cause us to "forget" or suppress our own individual, organic thoughts and feelings.

More next time,

wingedcentaur

Good Evening Friends,

We were talking about sociopaths. We are given to understand [through the medium of true crime dramatizations on television] that sociopaths "lack a conscience," because they seem so easily to be able to exercise the ultimate violence of those nearest and dearest to them. We are told by the consulting psychiatrists these shows often feature, that sociopaths do not feel certain normal human emotions.

Since they do not feel certain things but know that they are "supposed" to, they put on an act, pretending that they feel love, honor, friendship, loyalty and the like, when they do not. Remember the case of Susan Smith? She is the one who drowned her young children in a lake, having drugged them first and put them to sleep in the back seat of her car. Certainly, something must be "missing" from her psychological make-up.

Is there some "birth defect" at work in the mind-body connection of the sociopath (criminally insane?). I am not going to attempt to argue this logically. I believe I said, once, that I am not at all skilled at logical argumentation. But are we sure that the "act," the alleged play acting of sociopaths professing feelings of love, intimacy, and friendship, and the like, is an act?

But how could this not be the case? Surely these people are flawed in a way that medical science has not yet pinpointed and found a way to cure.

Do sociopaths "feel" love, friendship, and all the good things normal people are supposed to feel?

I am not in a position to say definitively that they do, despite their subsequent actions; but I don't think it has been adequately established that they do not. My thinking is that the so-called sociopath (and by the way, we are distinguishing these from the more traditional pyschopath, the serial killer who works on a much broader canvass, whose actions are not at all limited to violence against familiars, i.e., "Son of Sam," "Jack The Ripper," "BTK," and so forth, who are not included in my analysis) is that "basic" criminal whose actions are motivated by the simple fear = greed = violence trigger.

Remember, it is the criminal who engages in crime as a means to an end rather than an end in and of itself. It is the latter, to my way of thinking, that is the most fascinating criminal type. This is because unlike the bank robber or drug dealer from poor, "inner city," severely disadvantaged backgrounds, or even the serial killer who may have honed his skills in his youth by vivisecting small animals, it is not always clear, even in retrospect, as to what precisely will stimulate the sociopaths descent into murder.

And therefore we cannot identify them (by way of statistical probability - the way we can say that neighborhoods with seventy percent unemployment, no availability of public services to speak of, particularly education will likely donate a plurality of its young people to the machine that is, what some people call the "prison industrial complex").

With sociopaths, as I am using the term, background is no predictor. If I'm not mistaken, Scott Peterson came from an upper middle class background. He played golf in high school. Such young men and women, we are given to understand, had not usually been the victims of childhood abuse.

However, they have always come to a point in their lives of extreme desperation of one sort or another. This triggererd the fear which gave rise to greed - which they were empowered to exercise due to their soocioeconomic status and innate "charm." They then commit murder, which their charm and "respectability" shield them from the suspicion of having committed, for a time until the evidence against them becomes overwhelming.

Next time I will address the question of what the sociopath is supposed not to fee.

wingedcentaur

Good Evening Friends,

Last time we ended with the question: what is a sociopath? Let me start by saying that I am groping in the dark on this one. I feel like this will be one of the shakiest parts of my analysis. But nothing ventured, nothing gained, as they say.

Last time we established a formula: fear = greed = violence. We talked about all violence being an attack on belief in some way. As I have said many times before and will probably say many more times henceforth, greed always comes from fear. In order to exercise greed rather than just feel it, one has to have a certain degree of power to appropriate onto oneself more than is his due, to forcefully take from others. We talked about some situations of desperation in which the "thief" has no power and therefore cannot actually be considered greedy.

For this reason we concluded that the criminal is harder to define philosophically than legally.

What is a sociopath then?

I will not be able to give a complete answer to this question, I 'm afraid. But let's consider the type of criminal that is presented to us as a sociopath. It is a certain type of criminal type, whom we have already talked about a while back. A sociopath, as we are given to understand the type, is not a bank robber, or white collar swindler, or cat burgular, or mugger, not even the rapist or pedophile is presented to us as particularly sociopathic or psychopathic.

These and other kinds of criminals will be found to have psychopathic tendencies or personalities - some of them by a clinical standard. But these are not presented to us with SOCIOPATH as their basic identity, their defining essence.

Think about it, it's the Scott Petersons, the Susan Smiths, and Menendez brothers of the world that are presented to us as sociopaths. I will not disagree with this characterization. What do these people have in common? They have committed murder against their own wives, parents, and children.

The deliberate victimization of family members in this ultimate way is considered beyond the pale of the ordinary criminal, who is thought to be not quite that heartless. The ordinary criminal usually victimizes strangers.

I'll pick this up tomorrow.

Good Night,

wingedcentaur

Friends, the French Existentialist philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre wrote that "Man exists without justification" and therefore is "condemned to be free." I may go into fuller detail as to what those statements mean at another time. But what we get from that is the idea that we must inquire about the implications our actions have for everybody else in the world.

What if everybody in the world acted as you do. Collectivity is far more important in the absence of "justification" (from God). The notion actually makes more sense than the way I am presenting it, but it is related to an idea about "God" I heard.

It is the counterintuitive idea that: if God does not exist then nothing is permitted; and if God does exist then everything is permitted. This is so because of "sin" and "salvation" and divine "forgiveness." One can live a deliberately profligate, degenerate life, literally breaking all ten commandments, "repent", and then be forgiven and allowed the ultimate prize of admission to heaven after death.

You know what this reminds me of? Basketball or any organized sport. A team can have a losing record and perform terribly for most of the season. But if they get it all together in time, get their ducks in a row, as it were, and win just enough game in the end to qualify to play in the finals. And if they're good enough and lucky enough, they will be "redeemed," win the championship, get into heaven, and the record books.

With this analogy have we profaned and degraded the divine or have we unduly amplified the significance of sports? In other words, have we trivialized life or have we given cosmic precedence to sports and diversion in general?

Is this merely a falsehood we have asserted in this blog post, or is it a dynamic that actually takes place in our society? Some might argue that the latter is so, and I don't think I could disagree with them. I'll just let the matter rest there.

Trivia question: What NBA team had the worst regular season and still went on to win the title?

To continue then, when you are the victim of "identity theft," your belief in the inviolability of your uniqueness has been compromised. All someone has to do is steal a few numbers from you in some way and suddenly they can enjoy all the benefits of your fantastic credit rating, all the benefits of being YOU without the burdens.

Occasionally it can take years for a victim of identity fraud to get his "good name" back and he is interested in taking measures to insure against future violation - to insure that this time the system will bloody well know who he is, and so on and so forth.

All violence, of any kind, is an attack on belief in some way.

All violence is an expression of greed: greed for money; greed for fame; greed for power; greed for social status, praise, public approbation; greed for love...

Bigamy, as we have examined the phenomena can be thought of as greed for love; it is the desire of the bigamist to have the "perfect" mate with the proper mixture of qualities - remember we talked about bigamy with the analogy of the Star Trek Voyager episode in which Tuvak, the Vulcan, and Neelix, the ship chef and alien from a species whose name I don't remember, had a accident in the transporter and fused into one being Teelix or Nuvak....

Bigamy can also be thought of as greed for personal security. I remember a Mary Higgins Clark novel in which one of the main characters was a bigamist (suspicion had been in the air that he might have also been a murderer, but he wasn't) and for whom an amateur but convincing psychoanalytic explanation: he had been abandoned by his parents as a very young child. As an adult he sought to make sure that he always had a "home" to go back to. He was hedging his bets.

Greed comes from fear. Greed is the fear that you have to constantly accumulate just to keep from losing what you already have. It's the fear that if you don't keep expanding, growing, accumulating you will be swallowed up like a minnow or pilot fish by a whale, literally or figuratively. It is the fear that if you were to lose all of your money and material possessions, there would be nobody around to pick you up when you fall face first in the gutter, destitute, perhaps clutching a crack pipe.

But people who live to add dollars to dollars, walk around knowing the price of everything and value of nothing, are probably right. You find yourself living in that great, big mansion on the hill all by yourself.

What does it mean, the expression "he has more money than God"? It means that "he" is almost unimaginably rich in concrete terms. Those words are also an expression of envy. The person saying it would, of course, like to have "more money than God." This is a statement I have previously called an expression of the desire to "grope for the infinite."

God cannot be poor presumably, therefore the stock broker, or hedge fund guy wants to make it as impossibel for himself to be poor as it is for God to be poor. It is a bit easier to fall into destitution in America than any other developed, capitalist country with no public healthcare plan....

And so forth. Greed is an attempt to fill an unfillable hole in your "soul," which is like a cosmic black hole. The more matter you dump into it... well, it doesn't actually matter, the black hole just sucks it up.

Greed presupposes a certain level of accumulation and ability to grasp. You cannot be greedy without a certain amount of power to start with.

Fear = Greed = Violence. Therefore all violence comes from fear. Does this mean that all criminals (purveyors of violence) are motivated by fear?

First of all, it depends upon your definition of "criminal." The category is easier to define legally than philosophically. The man who steals a ham to feed his children is technically a "criminal" but for our purposes he is not, since his action cannot be said to have been motivated by greed, because greed presupposes a certain degree of power to grasp more than what is your due.

A man who is reduced to stealing a ham to feed his children, cannot be said to be very powerful. Nor can undocumented workers from Mexico, "criminals," be said to be greedy.

What is a sociopath? We'll look at that next time.

wingedcentaur

Good Evening Friends,

We continue with our merest summary of a thunbnail sketch of the tip of the iceberg of the ideas of Slovenian philosopher, Slavoj Zizek. It could hardly be otherwise in a blog. After all, he has had a long career of involvement in radical left politics and has written more than fifty books on history, religion, philosophy, political theory, and the like, and he appears to continue to be going strong. We are interested in his theory of belief.

We said last time that we would try to apply them to the so-called sociopath and crime and punishment. I said that I wanted to use the formula: fear = greed = violence. I want to say something about violence today. Actually, Dr. Zizek had written a book called "Violence," which, unfortunately I have not had the chance to read yet. So I am unfamiliar with how he develop his thesis about violence, but I will deal with violence as an attack on belief.

Violence of all kinds, physical, emotional, financial (in the form of fraud), is an attack on belief. When a man walks down the street at ten o'clock at night and is mugged, his belief that an honest man can walk down the street without being preyed upon by criminal "scum." We feel even more violated because our virtue has clearly not shielded us from harm.

When a woman "cheats" on her husband, she has committed violence against him. She has attacked not only his, but their shared belief in the integrity of their love. Indeed (barring situations in which the husband may be physically and/or verbally abusive to her, or otherwise married her under false pretenses, or something like that) she has committed an assault against LOVE itself.

Last time I ended by posing this question: If a husband is In-Love with his wife and she is merely, hopefully at least, In-Desire with him, as we have defined these terms ad nauseum, and she cheats on him with another man with whom she is truly and actually In-Love, as we have rigorously defined the concept, has she honored love or dishonored it?

I just said that she has definitely committed violence against him, his belief in the integrity of their love. It is their (his and her) shared belief in their interity of their love that has come under assault. Remember, we said before that individuals do not have to personally hold beliefs in order for them to function.

We can say that the husband personally believed in their love (he was In-Love with his wife), and the wife did not personally "believe" in their love as he did (he was In-Desire with her husband). But by marrying him she participated in the construction of the systemic belief in love governing their relationship.

She had agreed to act as if she were In-Love with him, for whatever reason. Let us assume that this couple have no children. We don't want to bring simple guilt into this. She "loves" her husband, of course. It could also be that she is not aware that she is not In-Love with her husband - until her true heart's desire inflames her heart, in the form of some handsome nature photographer or something.

As I mentioned before, I do think there is still some confusion about the difference between love and desire. Narcissus was not confused, however. He was, in my opinion, monastically clear about it.

On the other hand, maybe the woman did understand that her feelings for her husband are not at quite the same pitch as her husband's for her. Then why did she marry him? Perhaps because of the statistical rarity, as I had previously suggested, of the mutuality of the In-Love state in every cohabitating couple. If everybody waited for those with whom they are precisely In-Love with (and I am not talking about a mystical "ONE YOU WERE MADE FOR!"), then we as a species might almost never reproduce - again for reasons I mentioned before: war, starvation, dislocations, unemployment, industrial accidents, effects of climate change, and so on.

But since the aligment of two hearts is so rare, shouldn't she leave her husband for the other man? Isn't she almost duty-bound to do so "in the name of love?"

If I believed that love was something that exists outside of the human species as an "objective" reality handed down to us and modeled for us by "God," then I might say yes. But since I believe that what we call "love" arose as a unique component of our evolution and an apparently necessary emotion for our survival, I think of it as more fragile than I would if I thought it was an objective force like gravity.

Because I believe this is so, the belief in Love seems critical. In short, I think that if we were to atomistically focus on billions of personal feelings and wants and whims apart from a shared (if not personally felt) belief in love, it would be difficult to have a stable society.

to be continued.