Biological destinies versus the religious/heroic paradigm

All comments on THE TWO ELEMENTS OF MY DESTRUCTION AND RECOVERY - YouTube

All comments on THE TWO ELEMENTS OF MY DESTRUCTION AND RECOVERY - YouTube

 

Mark David O'Connor 9 hours ago

+Jennifer Armstrong Beyond colonialism? We still have the Union Jack on our flag. My grandparents were raised in a once-colonial nation (Malta), and they unwittingly retain much of that psyche up to the present. Even their eating habits are still very colonial. Interesting points about trolls; however, couldn't actively welcoming their attacks perhaps mutate into Christian-like masochism? Too much of a bad thing cannot be a good thing, can it? There should be a healthy balance, one could argue, of offense and defense, of inflicting and being inflicted, of pleasure and pain. Allowing others to habitually beat you up could be interpreted, ultimately, as inward-violence. Unless said attacks really did you little or no harm, and/or, by the right measure, only caused you to grow stronger (eg: gave you valuable insight, rather than only made you angry/sad/explode/implode, etc.)

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Jennifer Armstrong 1 second ago

+Mark David O'Connor I think that is a misunderstanding (about the trolls). Supposing my formative influences are in the 1870s and 1940s, which I would say largely they are, then how is somebody whose psyche was formed in the 1980s or 1990s going to "beat me up"? Even those with an earlier origin, let us say those born in the 1950s, are fairly ineffectual in their attempts. Most of the attacks I've experienced have the formulation, "you are not fitting in." But I know this already and have written books about it, if anyone cares to read them. If the trolls read the books I've written and inwardly digested them (which is almost impossible because they can never fully get the mood of these antiquated times) they would know precisely the manner in which I don't fit in and why and how this fits into historical time. In the mean time (which is all the time) the attacks only make evident the conceptual, social and historical gaps that exist between us. It''s like the more they attack the further away they seem to be, which is reassuring in a way.

Modern people can't attack me effectively because I do not admire their values nor do I wish to be like them. When they attack me, they show me why I am right not to be anything like them.

TUMBULAR 11

Promoting individualism in a sheepish world creates thinkers, they said.  That must be why we were put in prison.  Our thinking had to be contrained and restrained.  Our tumbulation devices may well have been feared, had anybody the inkling of what we hoped they might do.  They were non-linear, organic and realistic, tumbling through the sky and yet not without equilibrium and control, thanks to Otolith.   Our captors said music and sport are part of the puzzle in the human brain. They said, these endeavours are not separate, they are part of the overall equation.  They said, imagination takes us to far more interesting realms yet we hold in esteem those who are stronger and faster. They went on, saying that admiration and participation of everything physical is overriding the cerebral. They then added a note all about balance, asserting that is was in everything and everything must be in balance.

We nodded at them as they asserted their will.  Their demands were so immense that they could have filled the universe with the sounds of their unarticulated yearning.  Yet they were unspeakably vague at the same time.  Theirs was a yearning for eternity, children and happiness.  Ours was to make a structure which retained its power of trajectory through Otolith and contained within its coal black walls all the memories of the 20th century.

We'd put the tumbulation to the test much quicker if we didn't have to cope with these other unspeakable demands, which, to put it frankly were just hurdles to us.  Let the inarticulate ones breed and revel in their demands that others help them to make their world or indefinable balance, but we had work to do and real projections into the jet black sky.

If we catered to everything, they'd break us down again.  They did not themselves know  the meaning of their own requirements, as these were made up of an indescribable yearning.  We imagined they wanted us to take care of their children and bring them up to expect the universe to smile upon them every moment, but it was not smiling on us -- we who were in danger of forgetting our pasts.  It seemed they wanted to make us more like children with their obscure, indefinable idea of a perfect harmony and balance.

We had only one Otolith to work with, that had been brought to us by Noni that one night she had worked her way in.  If it rotted or deteriorated we would lose our chance.  We can't be focusing forever on the children and the harmony.  Something has to give.  This prison cell was starting to smell more and more like shit.

I'd have to set up the computers and get them to work again before they forced us once again to move.  For some reason we were never allowed to stay in one place for too long.

a savage who goes abroad

TUMBULAR 10

More complicated than being seated in a darkened room waiting for a cat.  Even lying in a darkened room with hair infested blankets.  It was more complicated than that.  Half of us had died and it was impossible for us to continue on our own civilisation.  We didn't have the means for that, to invest our energies into generating another culture.  The problem is that the notion of culture itself was losing its traction. The captors held the different view that by sheer virtue of popping out kids they were creating or reproducing a culture for themselves, but we didn't see it that way.  Culture had to be acquired through effort and through the initiation of war.  That was our perspective or it had been before we were captured and put to work, tending to the children of our captors.   Did I mention our view that this was an infantilised society?  All was said to be done "for the kids", but one got the impression that the real kids were the adults who simply refused to grow up.

That was why we suffered.  They were trying to remake us.  As if a hair shirt were not enough, the bedding too was made of hair.  And our pajamas.  A mixture of shit and hair.

It was all for our own good it was said.

I'm not really bitter.  Noni scratched for me the other night on the other side of the door and I am sure I heard her yowl.  It was night so I went over and opened the door,   Before I could reach her she was gone again, into the night.  It was her element and ours and we didn't begrudge her that experience, not at all.

Noni gave us hope when all else failed.  She was to us what God was to the ancient civilisations.  Only more so.   Should she scratch a few more times we would be pleased.

In any case we were put here to reform and would do well to take it seriously.  That's the only way we would get our captives to release us.  First they would train us in their nursery schools, to take care of their children.  By means of this we would relive our own childhood, only in a different, much more tepid mode.   After this we would be trusted with adults, but without ever being allowed to forget that respecting inner childhood was the core part of our reeducation.  And what of adulthood?  Just shit and hair.  And shadows.  And Noni crying in the dark.  This is what we'd been reduced to.

But there were always tumbulations and the expectation that one day our spirits, at any rate, would be released.

TUMBULAR 9

If Noni the cat vanished we were in for some bad times.  Noni was our good omen, our heartening sight in distress for we knew that if she could survive in these conditions, anything could be possible.   Noni was our sign that our proper organic relationship with nature would one day be restored, foretaste of paradise.  Should we feel no sound of rustling in the bush, we heard no gentle pawing, everything in disarray.  How would we latch onto meaning without a rhythm?

A cat's scratching at our door filled our heart-gaping wonder.  Life had not ended, despite the fact that we had given up.   Of meaning, the rhythm.    A sound of meaning.  At the door.

For us, as if fortune has supplied it.   We were down to this now.  Tender playthings of fortune.  Not without needs, but that was to our credit.  Dead then?

We couldn't open the door of our cell.   The light would be intense.

Cats scratch.

We wanted to leap out and hug her.  This also had been outlawed.  The cry of impotence our own.

There had once between men and women who would ride a steely mount.  We risked life and limb in those days and in all sorts of weather.  Now now.  Those realities had been forgotten and people spoke in all manner of ways but not laconically.

I suppressed my feelings, seeing only shadows.   Dark shadows looming on the wall.  A cat's face featured there, but the real cat was outside.  I felt her presence but was denied the possibility to touch her.

Tumbulations were on our mind.  This fateful mode of transcendence.   Fateful because half of us would die under their impact.  Tumbulations returning to Earth were a frightening event, worse than a meteorite strike in many, many ways. We lived under the mental shock of their ricocheting.

And now all I wanted to do was stroke a cat.  This was the pretty reward I'd got for trying to move my way up out of the infantry stage.  To be captured in this way, forbidden action, and have to work solely from one's mind.   The shadows of the mind were sometimes too intense.  

We had to make the tumbulation, and then we would be free, we would free ourselves.  

We'd had things in the past and now we only had things in our minds.   The tunicked characters made sure of that, although we hadn't recognised them yet.  They were our guardians and our keepers.  We were their prisoners of war.

My computer desktop