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The Hogs of Entropy 0538
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ooooo ooooo .oooooo. oooooooooooo HOE E'ZINE RELEASE #538
`888' `888' d8P' `Y8b `888' `8
888 888 888 888 888 "For Kelly 3-6"
888ooooo888 888 888 888oooo8
888 888 888 888 888 " by Isaac
888 888 `88b d88' 888 o 3/27/99
o888o o888o `Y8bood8P' o888ooooood8
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(#3)
I am not sure but if there was any misunderstanding or a very
wrong picture being painted in any of the letters I have written you. If
there was it was probably me not making that clear or setting the correct
tone of the letter. So, after reading over the letters, I thought I should
add a couple of objective comments, especially if you are a 'rationalistic'
person (I want to stress that I really do not know you and any time I
allude to opinions of you or acting like I do know you they are pure
conjecture).
Read them not like I am talking to you but like I am talking to
myself or like you are listening to my thoughts. (I say the word "you"
many times and I do not always mean the objective "you" the reader. I may
be talking to myself.
Look out for symbolism. Also keep in mind that if I refer to the
ego like in the last letter it is just like I am referring to 'me' in the
third person. I am not referring to 'my ego' as 'my self-validity' or
'self-esteem' (as in the term 'inflated ego'). Now that I look at this
letter, though, I never really even use the word ego, but in the last
letter, I think I said something like 'feeling my ego grow'. Perhaps, a
better word to use there instead of 'ego' is 'persona'.
Also, I think few notes on basic psychology would not hurt.
The psyche is the whole of the mind in the subjective sense and is
made of many components, personalities or functional things that are often
felt or seen in dreams or in psychological texts are personified objects
which are called 'archetypes'.
The unconscious is the 'non-ego' part of the psyche and the ego is
the one usually conscious or 'active' in the conscious state of being or
awareness.
Perhaps Jung can explain the unconscious better:
"Even though dreams refer to a definite attitude of consciousness
and a definite psychic situation, their roots lie deep in the unfathomable
dark recesses of the conscious mind. For want of a more descriptive term
we call this unknown background the unconscious. We do not know its nature
in and for itself, but we observe certain effects from whose qualities we
venture certain conclusions in regard to the nature of the unconscious
psyche."
-- C.G.Jung,"On the Nature of Dreams"
This letter is now flying off course into a stiff, lifeless, almost
scientific, objective text. I almost thought about numbering my paragraphs
and getting serious into concisely explanation of more paradigms and
concepts in psychoanalytical theory. Which I doubt you really care about
and it was not my first objective, which was to paint a real picture of my
mind set and my psychic situation. I felt the best way to do that is with
symbolism and emotion as in the second letter.
Also, I do welcome feedback. I welcome anything that lets me have
a more real picture of your persona. To me you are basically just
projections. (That I can consciously guess are false).
I am guessing that if you actually give me feedback it will be in
the form of inquiry. Just understand that the questions I will have a
hard time answering are 'why I would write this?' and 'why I would you
write this for me?'. I feel the answer lies in the letters themselves.
This is something I was worried you did not understand. But, I guess I
can understand now how you would think it was a test or something. Believe
me when I say that I am always honest to you. I am not trying to test you
or play some stupid game. You probably already know this but I thought I
should still include it to act like a formal disclaimer.
Also understand that some of the reasons I write to you instead of
try to talk to you is because my speech is a lot like my hand writing in
that it is very messy and unpracticed. Sometimes I will say things in a
sarcastic or mocking tone when I mean them to be sincere or a compliment,
and for this reason, misunderstanding and miscommunication often occurs,
especially when it has to do with affecting ones ego-validity or matters
of the emotional realm, which is why I hate to talk to people who have
tendencies to be in one of those mind sets (it is usually one or the
other). Though there is something to be said for the emotional realm. For
the driver or root of all action can be said to be the emotion, as we see
in men or women who are skilled in a men's ways. A man can also be skilled
in the 'ways of woman'. For in that emotional realm he can find that
there lies, perhaps not 'greater understanding' as one would think of it,
but a FEELING of greater understanding and definitely a greater ability to
relate to people and have an understanding of them and there motifs.
Perhaps it is my inability to play on those functions of people's minds
that obstructs my speech and action from conveying the idea I meant to
convey successfully.
(#4)
Perhaps, my objective is to know you. I am not trying to pursue
you in any kind of erotic way. My objective is NOT to start some kind of
romantic relationship. I may find what I am looking for wholly through my
own actions and you will show me something completely indirectly and
passively.
A child turns over a heavy rock to see what is underneath it. The
child may imagine to find a treasure but instead find a world of bugs.
Though perhaps, that world of bugs is the treasure the child was looking.
In this way the child finds the treasure but he also learns what treasure
is.
Why does the child choose one rock of another? Is it because he
thinks that rock is the 'prettiest', or the lightest, or the smoothest?
Is it true that only children turn over rocks? Perhaps they are children
in the sense of those who still require growth or to learn something
subjectively 'basic' about their world. Perhaps, I too need to grow up,
and learn something basic about my world, and the only method of doing
that seems to be an extroverted one.
You are the rock I wish to turn over. What methods do I have to
discover the object called 'Kelly'? More importantly what methods will
work? Kelly is no rock, though. She is not a static, unchanging object.
She is an autonomous object that one can communicate with and the majority
of her behavior can be predicted to be 'reasonable' or 'human-like'.
What is it I want from her? To know her psychic contents and her
ego thoughts. Which, for the most part, is not something that she can
hand to be, or tell me. Thus it would be futile and stupid to approach her
ego and ask for her mind. Not only is it improbably that she will want to
give it to me but from the position of the ego it is an impossibility.
To turn a rock over it must be touched.
I now understand why I ask her "if she 'minds' such and such" for I
do not want to be seen as an aggressor, touching her in a psychic place she
does not want to be touched. Her ego probably feels to be the dominate
psychic force, though, and to admit she would mind getting letters or being
stared at is like admitting she is not the 'master of her fate' or the one
sitting in the captains chair of her own mind. Or perhaps her mind sets up
the illusion she is when in fact she is only steering the wheel while
being directed by the primal forces that command her to live, grow, and
process basic objectives that people usually do in their lives before they
die. But the human ego is a strange thing. As it becomes more and more
conscious it desires to assert its 'worth' or its 'validity' more and
more. At an early stage it is still very unconscious of the why's, who's
and whence's of the internal self for it still has no desire to know them
and will go to great lengths to not see them to keep the illusion it is the
all powerful psychic force when it comes to controlling itself. This is
perhaps why dreams seem so confusing as to why they happen to many people,
and many may spend their whole lives never paying them any attention, or
asserting that they do not have dreams or do, but never really remember
them. This is one aspect of an inflated ego or a narcissist. This type of
ego will 'run away from itself' to its society, its family, or a lover to
'validate its existence'. These types of egos are very stupid and will
feel that all good things come from outside itself. In my opinion they
live a very empty life. Also, to me, this represent America as a
personified object. A society like this is very auto-erotic and values
strange things like pride, glory, and glamour or looking 'attractive' (in
the auto-erotic sense). This is why so many boys want to be football
players and why many girls feel the worst thing imaginable is to be ugly
or 'unsuccessful' (usually one or the other) and why it seems so taboo not
to mow your lawn, which some could argue is a very irrational thing to do.
Perhaps this is why I had become so fond of my own death for
awhile. For my ego, on its attempt to climb back up to the 'lost-world'
of society, was really slipping back into a the dull world I grow out of,
where there are so many definitions of self-worth that I seem to be
invalid to the majority of them. I slip back into a new mode of behavior
I had as a child when in order to 'stay on top' of that social mind set I
had to transcend it and the best method I had at the time was to amuse
people. For when I can make a person go into fits of laugher or pee in
their pants it is like I am in control of them and I transcend them and
there social standards and I no longer need to work so hard to fit into
them. One is no longer manipulated by things that one can manipulate.
Now I have regained my balance on that small rock of real
consciousness, and I can keep my head above the ocean of those
ego-threatening unconscious forces and images that seem to enslave the
people around me. Trying to show them this is like trying to teach colors
to a congenially blind child. This is also how I feel when writing theses
letters, which are perhaps a liberating-opus, showing me the true source
of my disdain for people, the sick feelings I have been getting deep in my
chest, and my behavior to past couple of months, which include: writing
these letters, calling everyone "stupid", and singing the "Ms. Suzy had a
steamboat" song (though that one is a very personal issue).
(#5) "The Psychology of Games"
Dream segment:
I am in a strange concrete structure, which I sense is a couple of
stories below the surface. I walk into a classroom. The teacher is about
forty years of age, a little fat, and a little short. Somehow we get into
an argument about whether I should be here or about my validity in
general. The argument ends when she says something like "You just play
games and could/do not make your own" and I respond "I do not play games
and I could/do make my own". She gets upset, stops talking to me, and
walks away into a hall. I follow her asking "hello?". She ignores me so
I give up and leave.
There are many questions to be answered here to bring the dream
into the realm of 'rational' thought. First, I identify the major
objects: The class room, the students, the teacher, myself. Then, the
events: I enter the class room, the teacher argues with me, I argue back,
the teacher stops and walks out of the class room, I follow her in vane,
the dream segment ends. And last, which I feel may be most important in
this dream is the concepts in the discussion of these mind forms: "You
just play games", "I could make my own".
What is "game"? I feel this is the most important question that
should be answered.
The word game is akin to the French word gaman, amusement.
Webster's base definition is an activity engaged in for diversion or
amusement. Words that relate to it are play, fun, sport, tactic, lose,
win, act, do, move, compete. A game can be said to be anything that is
'played'. In my opinion it is really a term used to describe something
that is done consciously but the true motif for which is directly
unconscious. For example we will describe "life" as a "game", the "game
of life", or we will describe a situation were one is "playing" with
another's ego or emotions when we say we are "playing games with people"
or "playing games with there minds". Children play very social games
which many interpret as a practicing task for preparing for their future
tasks as adults in a very social world. In a stage above childhood,
adolescents play 'competitive sports' in which the ego and its validity or
worth seems to be where the direct motif comes from. The ego which at
this stage is very social oriented seems more to be trying to assert or
enforce its dominance over the psyche with manipulation of the truly
outside autonomous objects 'opinions' or realities. Though, an outside
object of this type does not have to be a real person it can also be
computer simulation or for that matter an ego will work at any pointless
objective to assert itself, such as putting a ball in a hole or solving a
pointless puzzle.
Timothy Leary, Ph.D, seems to have developed a very interesting
concept of "game" in his manual "The Psychedelic Experience" based on the
Tibetan Book of the Dead. I have picked out two passages where he alludes
to his meaning of game.
Passage 1:
Different explorers draw different maps. Other manuals are to be
written based on different models - scientific, aesthetic, therapeutic.
The Tibetan model, on which this manual is based, is designed to teach
the person to direct and control awareness in such a way as to reach that
level of understanding variously called liberation, illumination, or
enlightenment. If the manual is read several times before a session is
attempted, and if a trusted person is there to remind and refresh the
memory of the voyager during the experience, the consciousness will be
freed from the games which comprise "personality" and from
positive-negative hallucinations which often accompany states of expanded
awareness. The Tibetan Book of the Dead was called in its own language
the Bardo Thodol, which means "Liberation by Hearing on the After-Death
Plane." The book stresses over and over that the free consciousness has
only to hear and remember the teachings in order to be liberated.
Passage 2:
Following the Tibetan model then, we distinguish three phases of
the psychedelic experience. The first period (Chikhai Bardo) is that of
complete transcendence - beyond words, beyond space-time, beyond self.
There are no visions, no sense of self, no thoughts. There are only pure
awareness and ecstatic freedom from all game (and biological)
involvements. ["Games" are behavioral sequences defined by roles, rules,
rituals, goals, strategies, values, language, characteristic space-time
locations and characteristic patterns of movement. Any behavior not
having these nine features is non-game: this includes physiological
reflexes, spontaneous play, and transcendent awareness.] The second
lengthy period involves self, or external game reality (Chonyid Bardo) -
in sharp exquisite clarity or in the form of hallucinations (karmic
apparitions). The final period (Sidpa Bardo) involves the return to
routine game reality and the self. For most persons the second (aesthetic
or hallucinatory) stage is the longest. For the initiated the first
stage of illumination lasts longer. For the unprepared, the heavy game
players, those who anxiously cling to their egos, and for those who take
the drug in a non-supportive setting, the struggle to regain reality
begins early and usually lasts to the end of their session.
The word "game" comes up many times in the manual and he will use
it in very interesting ways as when he says "the ego-games" or "a tranquil
state of non-game awareness". But, in passage two we do seem to get a
very clear picture of what he means: "Games" are behavioral sequences
defined by roles, rules, rituals, goals, strategies, values, language,
characteristic space-time locations and characteristic patterns of
movement.
A hypothesis is now formed. When the female teacher says that I
play games see is referring to me 'playing but the rules I should have
learned as a child that one needs money to live, basic manners and socially
compatible mentalities and so on. So asserts that I could or do not make
my own game and I protest saying the exact opposite that "I do not play
games and that I could/do make my own games". Using what we have just
learned from Dr. Leary, one makes his own game but setting his own "roles,
rules, rituals, goals, strategies, values, language, characteristic
space-time locations and characteristic patterns of movement".
Now, is the dream telling me something and if so what? In my
experience of dreams it seems to me that dreams are many times more of a
type of mirror showing the ego the/a situation of the psyche as whole
which includes both ego and non-ego contents. The intellect is also
described or symbolized as a "mirror", as an instrument for showing the
ego an objective view of itself. I already 'feel' like I know what the
dream was 'mirroring' in myself and, it would be hard to describe
completely because the contents of the dream and all the trailing
allusions or associations are personal material. I feel like stopping
here.
(#6)
I have always wished that people had the ability to just push aside
their egos and share their thoughts, and, perhaps more importantly, be
ably to listen to peoples thoughts. A 'normal' person might ask "but
don't we already do that?". This type of person does not understand the
psychology of the ego. A conversation of people who are not interesting
in their childish illusionary validity would be very 'matter of fact' and
the subject matter would be less about themselves or how it affects them,
etc. Perhaps, all of the concepts, notions and points of view I am
alluding to here is very hard to understand or relate to.
Perhaps another reason I write theses letters is because I don't
want to be a hypocrite and keep all of my thoughts and feels to myself.
This is also a personal experiment. Perhaps I am not testing you but I am
testing a new method of communication, a kind of one-sided casual
conversion. Which I can already sense is doomed to fail, but I might as
well still give you these letters for the sake of doing something social
in my life.
I am beginning to realize that I was really only writing these
letters for myself, and it would be almost pointless to give them to
Kelly or someone, and it might even be ego-damaging or it would be like
handing my ego to someone, and if they wanted to they could just smash it
or hurt it really bad. So, even though that fear exists I still feel like
giving these letters to Kelly, because it will be ok if she can not relate
to them or understand them, in which case I just wasted a little time and
a little paper, and it was still good to write down my thoughts for myself.
I have given at least five reasons scattered throughout these
letters and I still don't feel like I know why I am giving you these, and
I am guessing you don't know either, so whatever. If you ask me I am just
going to laugh or something and have no answer for you. I guess I am just
an irrational, foolish person.
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[ (c) !LA HOE REVOLUCION PRESS! HOE #538 - WRITTEN BY: ISAAC - 3/27/99 ]
