The Kubrickon

[Elliott Jonestown]

Nice find guruilla! Not a smoking gun no, but the Ken Adam link definitely raises questions, makes more connections.

[Elliott Jonestown]

So I'm back and ready to write the conclusion post I mentioned before. This is probably my last long, detailed post on this topic, though I plan to hang around and once in a blue moon post links or quick thoughts. The thinking and writing effort required to give the issues full attention is too much at this time given my other goings on. The post will be organized as a list of conclusions I have drawn.

1. No Monolithic Kubrick Viewer: As will be a theme in this post, and as been a theme in the recent back and forth, to understand many things discussed we must use a spectrum, not a fixed either/or. For starters, I think we all agree there as many different types of Kubrick fans/viewers/cultists. Some might be inspired to view Kubrick films because they're film buffs or students. Others might be caught in the trap of "the cult of Kubrick" and unable to hear certain critical voices. But it's clear there isn't one type only.

2. Culture can be Redeemable: Yes, Culture is a cult, but what kind? Some of the culture is certainly vapid and life force draining and psychologically manipulative. Other cultural items can rejuvenate and vivify. I suspect a single piece of culture can do different things to different viewers depending on the "set and setting." By the way, I do not see a dichotomy between good and bad cult. My post was specifically about a varied spectrum of cults. I intentionally used the term spectrum. On one end of the cult spectrum are Jonestown style, sinister cults and on the other, cults that develop around works of art that have inspired. All different kinds of cults lay in between. Most cults have a mixture of "goodness" and "badness." I think Culture is synonymous with Humanity in that unless you want to pull some kind of Benett Freeman, you're going to be dealing with it. Even Benett will have his own culture in his tent city. There is no outside of culture. And because culture can help humans develop, self-actualize, and grow spiritually, then, on it's face, adding to the culture with new and interesting work could benefit others. To me it's all about motive. If you want to add to the culture to help others and inspire goodness, then the work is redeemable. If you're trying to add to the culture for your own ingratiation, then the work will reflect that motive. Again with most culture creators, there's probably a mixture of motive. If the Kubrick theory is correct that he wanted to tip off sex cults for the benefit of humanity, then his EWS addition to film culture would have been a "positive" one in my view. Even if one person gets a personal benefit (like guruilla's friend who had his anti-military hunches confirmed by Kubrick) then I say the artifact is at least partially redeemed. I advocate we abandon the search for a final, total ruling on whether or not art, or an single work of art, is all "good" or all "bad."

3. Kubrickon is not about Kurbruck: As guruilla closed his last post: "it's not about Kubrick." As he says, he developed Kubrickon by using Kubrick as a specific example of a larger criticism. Its seems the Kubrickon is really about cultural manipulation at the hands of powerful people and includes the psychological effects art has on individuals.That's why parapolitical research is a key component to any Kubrickon/Culture-con research. guruilla's most recent post about the moon landings is a great addition to the ongoing research.

4. Subjective Viewpoint is Important: We can all agree that the viewer's personal experiences is a determining factor in how culture might be manipulating him. It isn't about the amount of time spent. So for instance, that shawnfella spent months on his website, doesn't itself make him an example of a victim of a con. We don't know his "quality of his attention." His project could be a life-affirming project for him and others. That guruilla wasn't inspired in a beneficial way by the site doesn't mean others were not.

5. SM can be a Useful Tool: Again, for some individuals SM can be apart of the their embodiment, grief work, trauma recovery, turning inward. It has been for me. I don't agree with guruilla's near total condemnation SM as a spiritual bypassing technology. I do agree that it might be that for some, but so might washing dishes (obsessive cleaning) or meditation (getting lost in altered states) or yoga (for similar reasons as meditation). What guruilla seems to be advocating is the idea of balance and staying open to the idea that one's tightly held beliefs could be wrong. Any aware person will let go of things as he grows. I agree with guruilla here. I would abandon in a second SM or Kubrick or the Liminalist podcast if I decided those cultural artifacts held me back. We do outgrow ways of thinking and our interests do change.

---
By the way, guruilla's distinction between inside the body and outside the body to me is a false dichotomy. When are we every not both inside our psyche and out in the world (each being inextricably linked to the other)?

And guruilla's notion that ideology can be hidden in Kubrick or SM or the Liminalist or other cultural artifacts is a one I take to heart. My advocacy is for a constant criticism of nearly everything I think, read, say, take in, no stone left unturned.

[Elvis]

Just to be clear, SM means synchromysticism?


Oh, and thanks for writing up your conclusions. I haven't read all of the long posts here but that was a good summation.

Also I hope you will indeed stick around and post on the forum.

[guruilla]

Since EJ has stated this is his final response, this will probably be mine also, unless/until someone else picks up the discussion. I will focus exclusively on the points which I disagree with.

2. Culture can be Redeemable: Yes, Culture is a cult, but what kind? Some of the culture is certainly vapid and life force draining and psychologically manipulative. Other cultural items can rejuvenate and vivify. . . .There is no outside of culture. And because culture can help humans develop, self-actualize, and grow spiritually, then, on it's face, adding to the culture with new and interesting work could benefit others.

This may be a question of having too vague definitions of what culture is. I think most of us cannot imagine existing outside of culture, but that doesn't mean it does not exist. This is Joseph Chilton Pearce, whose views fairly closely match my own:

Culture survives only by our attempts to improve it. And it preserves itself or perpetuates itself by convincing us that we must improve culture at all costs, and the truth of the matter is culture cannot be improved and it should never be sustained. But it’s sustained by our attempts to make it work right. And every facet of contemporary life, leaving nothing out at all, every facet of life is simply an adjunct of culture, and culture is the enemy of the true biological nature of the human being.

Culture depends on violence. Culture breeds violence. And culture thrives on violence. . . . culture preserves itself through violence. And of course all of this is very anarchy… it’s anarchistic. It’s anti-cultural. To be anti-cultural is to be virtually anti to every single aspect of what we think of as civilization. . . . And our natural biological system is designed to constantly evolve and rise above the limitations and constraints of our current state. Blocking this, you have only one reaction in the human being, and that is violence. So we either transcend or we start imploding and destroying ourselves.

The establishment is never changed. Whether it’s a technological establishment or not makes no difference. Culture functions as culture, which is based on fear, and blocks our biological unfolding. And that’s right across the board; I find no exceptions to that whatsoever. Culture never absorbs the new ideas cropping up within it that would lead to transcendence. It kills them off. Now what you end up with… culture can wear a million different faces. It can take on all these trappings. But its underlying basis of fear, anxiety, and self-defense, defensiveness is always there. That never changes.
https://auticulture.wordpress.com/2013/ ... on-pearce/

As a proviso, I would say that culture does not so much block our biological unfolding as contain it and, in most cases, redirect it down (self-)destructive paths. But logically this must be part of a larger, more unfathomable natural process. I would tend to view culture as more of a matrix/chrysalis which consciousness can be transformed within, and so move beyond what we know of as biology (tho we may still be biological beings).

In other words, it may not be possible or desirable to exist in some state where no external culture exists (i.e., human groups); but it is both possible, and I think essential, to remove all traces of culture from our interiority. And yes, there is a difference between inside and outside, as long as we are talking from a biological perspective at least. To say there isn't is to make the grand leap to us-as-awareness (God), in which case, we would then be free from culture. So as long as we are within culture and culture is inside us, the inside/outside dichotomy is an essential and meaningful one, just as no organism would survive if it didn't know the difference between itself and its environment.

Again with most culture creators, there's probably a mixture of motive. If the Kubrick theory is correct that he wanted to tip off sex cults for the benefit of humanity, then his EWS addition to film culture would have been a "positive" one in my view. Even if one person gets a personal benefit (like guruilla's friend who had his anti-military hunches confirmed by Kubrick) then I say the artifact is at least partially redeemed. I advocate we abandon the search for a final, total ruling on whether or not art, or an single work of art, is all "good" or all "bad."

I doesn't have to be about good or bad: that itself is an enculturated viewpoint that assigns value to the notion of aesthetics and social influence. This is one of the basic values I am questioning. Entertainment is instruction and instruction is ideology. We can think that we find meanings in culture (for me, Taxi Driver, Wild Bunch, Blue Velvet), but those meanings eventually come to be seen as (mostly) false meanings because they can't accurately represent my inner experience of reality, they can only approximate it. So movies like that helped create a customized, localized chrysalis of identity (cultured self/ego) for me, from which I am slowly emerging. Their usefulness is contingent on their eventually being seen as useless. Then what's left is sentimental attachment, which I freely own up to.

I can't agree about EWS, obviously, or that just because a work affects someone somewhere, this somehow gives it intrinsic value. A person can experience an epiphany while watching the Flintstones, it doesn't matter, any real insight comes from the inside, and triggers relate to that person's own psychological formation and history. One point about Kubrickon that has been largely overlooked is that if art can be reduced to a scientific method, it can also become totally independent of any deeper psychological exploration occurring at a personal level. Such works can still affect viewers, because they are doing so by using subtly manipulative methods rather than by allowing for a resonance between the maker and the audience. The value to me of movies like Taxi Driver, Wild Bunch, Blue Velvet is exactly that they show (or seem to) artists working through their own psychological issues in a way that is chaotic but coherent. Kubrick movies do not have this element of an individual, or group of individuals, wrestling with demons, IMO; they are worked out and seem designed to educate, enlighten, or improve the viewer.

Another question I'd raise regarding a work's value is what were the circumstances of its making? Kubrick was known to make his cast and crew quite miserable during the shoot, because, after all, he was a genius. I think the misery shows in the movies. On FMJ, after filming for however many months and having gone months over schedule, Matthew Modine wanted to take an afternoon off to be at his son's birth. Kubrick refused, and told Modine, "Your son won't even know you are there."

If we accept that "art" can come out of this sort of behavior, and that it somehow transcends and justifies the circumstances of its making, then it may be time to reevaluate how meaningful or important "art" really is. Culture and violence work together. So is FMJ really an anti-violent work if Kubrick was committing violence against people close to him in the making of it?

As he says, he developed Kubrickon by using Kubrick as a specific example of a larger criticism. Its seems the Kubrickon is really about cultural manipulation at the hands of powerful people and includes the psychological effects art has on individuals.That's why parapolitical research is a key component to any Kubrickon/Culture-con research. guruilla's most recent post about the moon landings is a great addition to the ongoing research.

Actually this is only partway to the Kubrickon thesis; the main part (that of harvesting awareness) hasn't really been addressed much, except by tapitsbo.

4. Subjective Viewpoint is Important: We can all agree that the viewer's personal experiences is a determining factor in how culture might be manipulating him. It isn't about the amount of time spent. So for instance, that shawnfella spent months on his website, doesn't itself make him an example of a victim of a con. We don't know his "quality of his attention."

This can be gauged by observing the work. This is exactly what transmits. Obviously the time spent on something doesn't indicate anything except the time spent on it What signifies is how much substance there is at the end of it. When a communicator ("artist") is being transformed by the act of communication, this itself is communicated. Ditto when this is not happening.

My point about the subjective viewpoint is that it is essential in the SM exploration (and in any other), otherwise it is just a racking up of syncs with no underlying context or meaning except to the person racking, who vainly presumes that, because it is meaningful to them, it must be to others. This is one definition of obsession.

To reiterate a point made to AOC at the Moon Hoax thread:

This is a problem with syncs in general, that we look for them when we are looking for confirmation, and so confirmation bias increases the likelihood of finding them. Simply put, there's no good reason to presume that syncs can't be generated by the part of the unconscious (the guardian) that wants to mislead us, as well as by the deeper soul. Same with channeled materials and every manner of "woo."

I don't agree with guruilla's near total condemnation SM as a spiritual bypassing technology. I do agree that it might be that for some, but so might washing dishes (obsessive cleaning) or meditation (getting lost in altered states) or yoga (for similar reasons as meditation).

Absolutely. Anything that becomes a belief system is already on its way to being a trap. As soon as something becomes a movement, it ceases to move. If Liminalism ever catches on, you won't see me advocating it. BTW, I have a friend (Phil Synder) who had a near-enlightenment experience while washing dishes. That was as close as he got to starting a movement (around dishwashing).

To be blunt, and admittedly deliberately provocative, I think SM has gone from being a useful (but inessential) tool of psychology to a way for guys to play with themselves without getting into too much trouble.

[Elvis]

This culture aspect interests me a lot, so I hope you'll indulge me a little.

Elliott Jonestown wrote:
2. Culture can be Redeemable: Yes, Culture is a cult, but what kind? Some of the culture is certainly vapid and life force draining and psychologically manipulative. Other cultural items can rejuvenate and vivify. . . .There is no outside of culture. And because culture can help humans develop, self-actualize, and grow spiritually, then, on it's face, adding to the culture with new and interesting work could benefit others.

I absolutely agree with the above. Why? Partly because I read Patterns of Culture by Ruth Benedict. I'm not widely read in cultural anthropology, some college courses, Turnbull and the Pygmies, etc. but to me, Patterns of Culture is an illuminating exploration and explanation of culture.

Benedict concludes that you couldn't do so much as get out of bed in the morning without a culture. She kind of demolishes the idea of "human nature" and attaches the greatest importance to which traits are emphasized in a culture, from amongst an almost unimaginable variety of possible traits.

Have either of you read it? I ask because—

This may be a question of having too vague definitions of what culture is.

Myself, I can't imagine human beings living on Earth together without a culture. (But I'm going to give it some more thought now.) I can't decide whether Joseph Chilton Pearce's definition of culture is too narrow or too broad; he's not talking only about 'our' culture, is he? It makes sense if he's talking only about 20th century capitalist materialism, but I doubt he is. If, rather, he means any culture, then his assertions seems flatly incorrect (given the evidence) and just don't make sense to me.

This is Joseph Chilton Pearce, whose views fairly closely match my own:

Culture survives only by our attempts to improve it. And it preserves itself or perpetuates itself by convincing us that we must improve culture at all costs, and the truth of the matter is culture cannot be improved and it should never be sustained. But it’s sustained by our attempts to make it work right. And every facet of contemporary life, leaving nothing out at all, every facet of life is simply an adjunct of culture, and culture is the enemy of the true biological nature of the human being.

Culture depends on violence. Culture breeds violence. And culture thrives on violence. . . . culture preserves itself through violence. And of course all of this is very anarchy… it’s anarchistic. It’s anti-cultural. To be anti-cultural is to be virtually anti to every single aspect of what we think of as civilization. . . . And our natural biological system is designed to constantly evolve and rise above the limitations and constraints of our current state. Blocking this, you have only one reaction in the human being, and that is violence. So we either transcend or we start imploding and destroying ourselves.

The establishment is never changed. Whether it’s a technological establishment or not makes no difference. Culture functions as culture, which is based on fear, and blocks our biological unfolding. And that’s right across the board; I find no exceptions to that whatsoever. Culture never absorbs the new ideas cropping up within it that would lead to transcendence. It kills them off. Now what you end up with… culture can wear a million different faces. It can take on all these trappings. But its underlying basis of fear, anxiety, and self-defense, defensiveness is always there. That never changes.
https://auticulture.wordpress.com/2013/ ... on-pearce/

When he says, "Culture never absorbs the new ideas cropping up within it that would lead to transcendence," I just don't understand where he gets that (in a 'multicultural' definition of culture), it doesn't fit the facts. If he wrote, "would result in transcendence," that would be different, but he seems to be declaring that there are no possible traits a culture might select for emphasis which would lead to transcendence, i.e. that not even a step toward transcendence is possible. (Now I suppose we have to write ten pages defining 'transendence'.)

No one could make a movie outside of a culture, no one could get any meaning watching a movie outside a culture, and because culture informs the social ecology and is unavoidable and indespensable, attempts to eradicate it from our interior selves seem both impossible and, to me, undesirable.

A culture, whatever traits it selects for emphasis, becomes a tide against which it's hard to turn, especially given the characteristics of group behavoirs. That said, the biggest "aha" ("of course!") I got from Ruth Benedict and "Patterns of Culture" was,

"no civilization has in it any element which in the last analysis is not the contribution of an individual."

(I think I'll put that back in my signature line.)

[guruilla]

Thanks Elvis. Glad someone is interested. So now we are moving into "The Question of Consciousness" and, more specifically, the question of identity-self.

We are semantically challenged here because language itself (the primary delivery device for culture) demands a subject "I," so whenever we talk about existence beyond the self (transcendence) and/or beyond culture, we end up contradicting ourselves and reaffirming the thing we are attempting to reject.

Benedict concludes that you couldn't do so much as get out of bed in the morning without a culture. She kind of demolishes the idea of "human nature" and attaches the greatest importance to which traits are emphasized in a culture, from amongst an almost unimaginable variety of possible traits.

I suppose a flip answer would be, without culture there would be no bed to get out of. Of course encultured individuals writing books for their culture are likely to argue that culture is the be-all and end all of human perceptual possibilities. And when the only counter-example is either a back to nature argument (feral children) or a spiritual one that is ipso facto unverifiable (no one can really know if enlightenment exists without experiencing it, so the testimonies are of very limited use), the temptation is naturally just to throw up our hands and say, "This is all there is, Peggy Lee!"

Yet some of us know that this is not the case. Or at least believe we do. And then we write books for and of our culture, arguing that culture is without inherent value or meaning.

Here's a long quote, from just such a piece I wrote, on autism, that might help clarify:

Is there an alternative to culture, socialization, and mimesis? Is there a real revolution that doesn’t simply spin the vicious circle one more time, but finally squares it and gives rise to a whole new configuration?

The answer may be right in front of us, so obvious that we fail to notice it. As was my wont as a writer, when in doubt I went back to the root of the matter. What did “culture” even mean? I found seven meanings attributed to the word, of which one stood out from all the others (emphasized).

1. a particular society at a particular time and place
2. the tastes in art and manners that are favored by a social group
3. all the knowledge and values shared by a society
4. (biology) the growing of microorganisms in a nutrient medium (such as gelatin or agar)
5. a highly developed state of perfection; having a flawless or impeccable quality
6. the attitudes and behavior that are characteristic of a particular social group or organization
7. the raising of plants or animals

The reason I am not a political writer and never will be (which is also the reason I can only approach political events metaphorically) is that my bias is towards a biological point of view. It is not the body politic but the politics of the body that interests me.

There is a groundbreaking 1977 book called Magical Child, by Joseph Chilton Pearce, which I first read in my early-thirties. As it happened my wife had an old copy of it on our shelves and I began to read it while working on an early draft of this section. I only read the first few chapters, but what I found there was of striking significance. On page 49 of the book, Pearce cited studies showing how “so-called random movements immediately co-ordinated with speech when speech was used around the infants” (emphasis added). These and subsequent studies further revealed that “each infant had a complete and individual repertoire of body movements that synchronized with speech: that is, that each had a specific muscular response to each and every part of his culture’s speech pattern” (emphasis added). By adulthood, Pearce added, “the movements have become microkinetic, discernible only by instrumentation, but nevertheless clearly detectable and invariant. The only exception found was in autistic children, who exhibited no such body-speech patterning.”

If Pearce’s summation is accurate, the idea of culture as a kind of learned social language might be more than just a figure of speech. Culture could literally be language, and vice versa, making spoken language a delivery device for culture. It would be similar to how an operating system runs a computer (via code) or a virus adopts a host: culture would “install” itself in the human organism through language!

The idea is not especially new. It has been around in philosophical circles, and more recently science-fiction ones, since the early days of both. William Burroughs wrote about “the word virus,” and Philip K. Dick took the idea further still, anticipating probably the most famous development of the idea, the movie I most identified with in my thirties (even to the point of writing a book about it), The Matrix. If, outside of philosophical and fictional speculations, there is a solid biological basis for the idea that our experience of reality is merely a language-based construct, then the notion of culture as a kind of biological invader becomes the logical progression of that insight.
...
If human beings have a similar, more advanced, internal guidance system to animals, then learning by imitation—adopting the social language of culture—might not be as essential to our survival as we think. There might be much less of a need for culture, or for externally shaped group arrangements, than we have been programmed to believe, at least at a biological level.

I wonder if perhaps a better, more specific question would be, is communication possible without culture?

From the same piece:

From the research I’ve done over the years, I know that autistic types don’t respond well to socialization. Perhaps better said, they are resistant to culture. A study by Arthur Aron (Professor of Psychology at Stony Brook University) and colleagues, for example, states that “highly sensitive individuals” are not influenced by culture at all in their cognitive responses. “Our data suggest that some categories of individuals, based on their natural traits, are less influenced by their cultural context than others,” says Dr. Aron. . . . “Also, how much they identified with their culture had no effect. It was as if, for them, culture was not an influence on their perception.”
http://phys.org/news192128380.html

Extreme cases of autistic children are apparently without any form of culture (even tho they are born into one). They cannot communicate with their caregivers or with any encultured human beings because encultured human beings are incapable of recognizing their attempts. (Until there is some sort of breakthrough, I mean, and communication being what is received, not what is intended.) But does this mean that they cannot communicate at all? And if we hypothesize that some autistics communicate with each other non-locally, and even with neurotypical humans unable to distinguish the messages from their own sensations or thoughts, in a similar way the dead are sometimes said to communicate, via apparently non-sensory methods (or perhaps far subtler senses, just say), does this automatically mean they have a culture?

Is consciousness as a medium to exist within also equivalent to culture? I don't think so. I think it is more a case of "the devil we know," that what a culture-created identity self cannot conceive of, must be assumed not to exist.

When he says, "Culture never absorbs the new ideas cropping up within it that would lead to transcendence," I just don't understand where he gets that (in a 'multicultural' definition of culture), it doesn't fit the facts. If he wrote, "would result in transcendence," that would be different, but he seems to be declaring that there are no possible traits a culture might select for emphasis which would lead to transcendence, i.e. that not even a step toward transcendence is possible. (Now I suppose we have to write ten pages defining 'transendence'.)

I think of culture as a parasitical organism that takes from its host the nutrients it needs to survive. So, in our current capitalist culture (which for all we know may be the "natural" shape which all human cultures take, once they grow large enough), what seems to occur is that new ideas that might lead to transcendence are incorporated into the culture in such a way that they can be neutralized, while at the same time, used to imbue the culture with novelty, and so keep it replenished. This is a fascinating (to me) model, because it provides a non-conspiratorial basis for understanding how something like the counterculture (or punk later) seemed to be offering a genuine alternative to culture (and to be at least offering steps towards transcendence), but turned out to be just another "psy-op" ~ not by the CIA but by culture itself.

No one could make a movie outside of a culture, no one could get any meaning watching a movie outside a culture, and because culture informs the social ecology and is unavoidable and indespensable, attempts to eradicate it from our interior selves seem both impossible and, to me, undesirable.

I can see how you might feel that way if eradicating culture led to a baby-like state in which we couldn't recognize cultural symbols or communicate with anyone. But I don't think it is the case that freeing oneself from the language-cultural implant is going back to a previously pristine state, but forward to a new state in which we can still recognize cultural symbols without believing in them, just as one can still function as a self without believing that the self is real.

To use a probably too-easy example, when Thomas Anderson unplugged from the Matrix, he still had memories of his false life and could even return to it. But he could never again identify with it because he now had a reference point outside of the matrix. Same with culture.

It might be akin to talking with someone about a movie they saw which you never did, and which they identified with so strongly that they took it for their life. You may not be able to directly relate to the story they are sharing or to their identification with it, but you can imagine what it might be like and you can still relate to them as human beings, even tho they are internally defined by culture and you are not. This is my best guess about what enlightenment (removal of the cultural identity-implant) might be like.

"no civilization has in it any element which in the last analysis is not the contribution of an individual."

Yet can an individual contribute to any civilization, except so far as they have internalized their culture and are transmitting essentially the same meanings and values, i.e., by functioning not as individuals (individuated beings) but as aspects of the group mind? And if they did, how would their contribution be recognized?

Also, isn't the whole notion of an individual a modern cultural concept?

[Elliott Jonestown]

Hi Guys, I'll definitely be sticking around and posting. I just won't feel an obligation to engage in a conversation with as much energy and detail. I'll be in and out when I can. If another thread grabs me and demands a similar commitment of energy, I'll consider making that choice then.

Certainly if I find new info, I'll intend on bringing it here to share.

One thing, guruilla, when I read sync book 2 and read your essay about the second matrix, I remember thinking: "right on, this guy has a very needed critical take." I am by no means a dyed in the wool synchromystic. To me it's one tool among a basket of them. I find myself highly critical of the SM crowd that tends to dismiss parapolitcal research or "conspiracy" exploration. Having talked to AOC on Always Record, and knowing a little about shawnfella's advocacy, both are advocates of the parapolitcal angle. Others in the SM scene are not as much interested. Either way, if someone has a reason to live and wake up and feel engaged with their life, more power to 'em.

The idea Elvis mentions is closer to what I feel to be true, that is: the goal is not getting outside of culture (which is inevitable) , but instead to examine what aspects a particular culture has chosen to emphasize. Then we can create cultures that are more healthy, loving, non-toxic, healing, etc. Awareness breeds choice, and this is true in the context of cultural creation/navigation.

In terms of the harvesting issue, I am interested in your take guruilla, but the off planet entity parts you said will come out later. I figured your theory wasn't ripe for discussion. In terms of AI harvesting human activity, we have facebook, smartphones, twitter, etc.that are undeniably and admittedly harvesting and manipulating human psychology. If harvesting were to be explored in detail, Kubrick films aren't the place I'd begin.

[Iamwhomiam]

I don't know that I could agree with Pearce's view of culture, especially this I disagree with, "Culture depends on violence. Culture breeds violence. And culture thrives on violence. . . . culture preserves itself through violence."

Perhaps it would be better to say that the clash of cultures, whereby one attempts to supplant another with its own, creates and fosters violence.

I believe he's confused wealth with culture, too. The wealthy do not seek to improve culture, they seek to make themselves evermore comfortable and do little to improve the culture of those providing them their wealth.

I do not believe the USA has ever had any defined culture. Our armed forces do maintain a military culture, though.

[Elvis]

We are semantically challenged here because language itself (the primary delivery device for culture) demands a subject "I," so whenever we talk about existence beyond the self (transcendence) and/or beyond culture, we end up contradicting ourselves and reaffirming the thing we are attempting to reject.

I more or less agree there, but I think a sense of self is part of being a human being, and it's the same for many (other) animals; my cat absolutely has a sense of self—she has a personality. We talk to each other but obviously there's a pretty huge language gap. But transcending that barrier is the love the little furry mammal and I share. I do think transcendence is possible, in fact I think it's the goal of human existence, but not its purpose, if that make any sense. I think, tell me if I'm wrong, that what you propose is to transcend human existence—which is the end, but the means is the human experience.

I suppose a flip answer would be, without culture there would be no bed to get out of.

It's not flip, and I almost added those very words, but skipped them for brevity.

Of course encultured individuals writing books for their culture are likely to argue that culture is the be-all and end all of human perceptual possibilities. And when the only counter-example is either a back to nature argument (feral children) or a spiritual one that is ipso facto unverifiable

Again, I say, you can't write a book outside of a culture. I totally agree that language and culture are inexorably tied together. And I'm not saying (can't speak for Benedict) that "culture is the be-all and end all of human perceptual possibilities"—not at all! As far as I'm concerned, not even the sky is the limit.

(no one can really know if enlightenment exists without experiencing it, so the testimonies are of very limited use)

I'll just say, not for the first time, that the only kind of experience, at least for humans, is subjective experience. And our materially-obsessed culture gives short shrift to—de-emphasizes—that notion. That aspect of the dominant 'reductive' culture, the discounting of subjective experience, is actually a block to transendence (and probably not completely accidental—though I don't see the Kubrickon as an exponent of that particular emphasis).

Culture could literally be language, and vice versa, making spoken language a delivery device for culture. It would be similar to how an operating system runs a computer (via code) or a virus adopts a host: culture would “install” itself in the human organism through language!

Of course language and culture reinforce one another, to the degree they are even separate things, and I love the computer analogy here, but it makes my point: ever try running a computer with no operating system?

What did “culture” even mean? I found seven meanings attributed to the word, of which one stood out from all the others (emphasized).

1. a particular society at a particular time and place
2. the tastes in art and manners that are favored by a social group
3. all the knowledge and values shared by a society
4. (biology) the growing of microorganisms in a nutrient medium (such as gelatin or agar)
5. a highly developed state of perfection; having a flawless or impeccable quality
6. the attitudes and behavior that are characteristic of a particular social group or organization
7. the raising of plants or animals

The reason I am not a political writer and never will be (which is also the reason I can only approach political events metaphorically) is that my bias is towards a biological point of view. It is not the body politic but the politics of the body that interests me.

That's fascinating, a different and important angle, and the Petri-dish analogy is valid, but I don't think it follows that we should banish culture, rather than (yes) improve it. More than ever before (that we know of), humans have a wider self-awareness and better understanding of cause and effect in the universe, insights that could and should allow us to consciously improve the dominant culture—to transcend its oppressive traits. But those same 'tools' are quite effectively and deliberately turned against transcendence (and 'us) to stifle it (and 'us).

You can probably guess that my definition of culture would fall more closely along the lines of 6.—"the attitudes and behavior that are characteristic of a particular social group or organization."

I most identified with in my thirties (even to the point of writing a book about it), The Matrix.

Still haven't seen it. The DVD is three feet from me right now; maybe someday.

Extreme cases of autistic children are apparently without any form of culture (even tho they are born into one). They cannot communicate with their caregivers or with any encultured human beings because encultured human beings are incapable of recognizing their attempts. (Until there is some sort of breakthrough, I mean, and communication being what is received, not what is intended.) But does this mean that they cannot communicate at all?

You've probably heard of Jacob Artson; I posted about him and Plutonia responded about it here: http://rigorousintuition.ca/board2/view ... 5&p=443029 ; the story I posted is here. Jacob went from no communication to writing eloquent essays about what it was like for him before he was taught (patiently, by a brilliant teacher) to read and write.

Here's another case, a boy named Daniel (though the blog linked seems to be commercial, Daniel's story is interesting nevertheless).

I suspect there's a key to be found there, in that our culture could learn and benefit a great deal from the autistic experience, but alas the culture of conformity sees autism as some kind of natural "mistake" and tries to just get rid of it. This is just a hunch; I'm not qualified to make too many pronouncements about it.

I think of culture as a parasitical organism that takes from its host the nutrients it needs to survive. So, in our current capitalist culture (which for all we know may be the "natural" shape which all human cultures take, once they grow large enough),

That point is worth noting, but I think it's a form of the dreaded 'historicism' which says, 'we'll never change, so dont bother to try.' As far as the idea that "culture as a parasitical organism," I can't quite see it that way, and much prefer the 'operating system' metaphor. But to get to the point:

what seems to occur is that new ideas that might lead to transcendence are incorporated into the culture in such a way that they can be neutralized, while at the same time, used to imbue the culture with novelty, and so keep it replenished. This is a fascinating (to me) model, because it provides a non-conspiratorial basis for understanding how something like the counterculture (or punk later) seemed to be offering a genuine alternative to culture (and to be at least offering steps towards transcendence), but turned out to be just another "psy-op" ~ not by the CIA but by culture itself.

Obviously the CIA et al. went to some lengths to neutralize the '60s counterculture but I'm not one who believes it was all a government psyop. Rather, because it was so genuine, it had to be compromised and snuffed out posthaste, re-purposed as nostalgia and repackaged as hippie Halloween costumes.

It brings to mind another book and author I'm always going on about—The Making of a Counter Culture by Theodore Roszak. which if you haven't read, I think you'd find interesting if not illuminating. Roszak (who coined the term 'counterculture') devotes a good deal to society's (Roszak would say technocracy's) neutralization of "dangerous" ideas. I cannot recommend this book enough.

Elvis wrote:
No one could make a movie outside of a culture, no one could get any meaning watching a movie outside a culture, and because culture informs the social ecology and is unavoidable and indespensable, attempts to eradicate it from our interior selves seem both impossible and, to me, undesirable.

I can see how you might feel that way if eradicating culture led to a baby-like state in which we couldn't recognize cultural symbols or communicate with anyone. But I don't think it is the case that freeing oneself from the language-cultural implant is going back to a previously pristine state, but forward to a new state in which we can still recognize cultural symbols without believing in them, just as one can still function as a self without believing that the self is real.

I'll give this more thought, and highly recommend another Roszak book, Where the Wasteland Ends — Politics and Transcendence in Post Industrial Society, which followed a couple years after Making of a Counter Culture. He talks about the role of symbols (and even myths) in human existence, how they've been drained of meaning, and why humanity needs to embrace their meanings. (I have to confess some not-understanding of all that; I need to re-read it and also dig into some books I've found that deal with those questions.)

Yet can an individual contribute to any civilization, except so far as they have internalized their culture and are transmitting essentially the same meanings and values, i.e., by functioning not as individuals (individuated beings) but as aspects of the group mind? And if they did, how would their contribution be recognized?

There are independent thinkers and outliers, and their effects on the culture can range anywhere from outright revolutionary to something more akin to the "butterfly effect." I praise your inquiries because: you're one of them! Thank you sincerely.

Also, isn't the whole notion of an individual a modern cultural concept?

I'd say no. The ancient Greeks were, by and large, intensely ego-driven.

Well, Professor Peabody just dropped by, we're gonna get stoned and talk about all this.

[guruilla]

Before I respond to some of these very interesting points, here's the JCP podcast link with transcripts to get a fuller idea of his perspective which I can't do justice to with a few quotes:

http://podcasts.personallifemedia.com/p ... ce-biology

Then we can create cultures that are more healthy, loving, non-toxic, healing, etc. Awareness breeds choice, and this is true in the context of cultural creation/navigation.

Culture survives only by our attempts to improve it. And it preserves itself or perpetuates itself by convincing us that we must improve culture at all costs, and the truth of the matter is culture cannot be improved and it should never be sustained. But it’s sustained by our attempts to make it work right.

The interviewer makes an interesting summation about culture, that it

is always one step behind. It’s consolidating that evolutionary step that has already been made, and then trying to make a fortress or a home out of it, to preserve some kind of stability or security against the inbuilt evolutionary pattern of change that we’re continually seeking, transcendence and to go beyond limits, as human beings. But the establishment, once in place, feels threatened by that and plays upon the fear of change and instability in the human consciousness of the masses, if you will. And then we have prophets that arise, whether they be political in nature or spiritual or both, such as Jesus, or Buddha, or whatnot, who ‘break the egg’, if you will, of the cultural container. And these are the people that lead the way to a higher transcendent vision, which then the culture can reconsolidate around. And it reminds me of Schopenhauer’s great dictum that “the truth always merges… or e-merges in three phases. First, it is ridiculed. Secondly, it is violently opposed. And third, over the dead and forgotten bodies of those who articulated it first, it becomes co-opted and claimed by the establishment as its own.”

JCP distinguishes between culture and civilization:

Well first of all I would say that we have no civilization. Elkhonon Goldberg, one of our most brilliant neuroscientists, in fact he came from Russia as a very young man… and Goldberg has been concentrating on the pre-frontal lobes, which is the latest evolutionary structure in our brain, right behind our forehead. It’s the largest part of the brain. Essentially brand-new in its current state and function, in evolutionary history. And if you look at what the real thrust of the pre-frontal lobes is to rise above and go beyond the limitations and constraints of the other three parts of the neural system, the reptilian brain, the old mammalian brain, and the neo-cortex, our brain of intellect and creativity and so on. The pre-frontals lie vastly beyond those, as a way of moving beyond all of that. And so we find that what is happening… he uses the term, Elkhonon Goldberg uses the term ‘the pre-frontal lobes and civilized mind’. The full development of the pre-frontal lobes and you have civilization in its truest sense. The blocking of it, and you have culture. So what you’re dealing with are clashes of cultures. But they’re simply one form of culture clashing with another, all of which is culture expressing its sustaining force of violence itself. Culture always produces violence. It can only be sustained by violence. Thomas Jefferson said, and surely this is about as unpatriotic as you can get, Thomas Jefferson said, “Periodically, the tree of liberty must be watered by the blood of tyrants and patriots.” That is, culture produces its tyrants and it produces its patriots, and it survives on the bloodshed thereby. This is not civilization. So far, we have blocked civilization, which is the outcome of transcendence, and we block it through the cultural effect and are not aware of what we’re doing.

[guruilla]

I think a sense of self is part of being a human being, and it's the same for many (other) animals; my cat absolutely has a sense of self—she has a personality. We talk to each other but obviously there's a pretty huge language gap. But transcending that barrier is the love the little furry mammal and I share. I do think transcendence is possible, in fact I think it's the goal of human existence, but not its purpose, if that make any sense. I think, tell me if I'm wrong, that what you propose is to transcend human existence—which is the end, but the means is the human experience.

I also have a close bond with a cat (male), and yes we share a language of love. I would also say that he has self-awareness, that is, that he is on an individuatory journey with me. But I don’t equate self (or Self) itself with the constructed identity which is the cultural implant. On the contrary, it is the false self that prevents us from realizing our true selves, and this is something I don’t think my cat has to wrestle with. As for whether having a false self is part of being a human being, it certainly is at this time, just as a chrysalis is part of being a caterpillar. But it is not intrinsic either to the caterpillar or the butterfly’s being. It’s a transitional medium. The false self, as I understand and experience it, is a defense mechanism within the psyche brought about through unbearable trauma. It’s when the brain gets locked into a fight-or-flight response. Culture, according to Pearce, both stems from this reptilian arrested development and sustains it by keeping us in fear mode, unable to move out of it. It’s like a chrysalis that’s designed to sustain its own existence and keep us trapped inside it. The matrix, exactly.

Regarding our purpose being to transcend human experience, in this context I would say our purpose is to have a true human experience, not to transcend anything but to fully embody what we are, beyond, before, and outside of culture (and even before biology). So what we are experiencing now isn’t human experience in a full sense (the way our cats experience cat experience). It’s a kind of dissociated, trauma-based simulation of it.

Again, I say, you can't write a book outside of a culture. I totally agree that language and culture are inexorably tied together. And I'm not saying (can't speak for Benedict) that "culture is the be-all and end all of human perceptual possibilities"—not at all! As far as I'm concerned, not even the sky is the limit.

So then what we’re exploring now is the question of whether we think that what we are is a human being perceiving, or perception happening via a human being. I lean strongly towards the latter: what I am is perception, perceiving. That’s all I actually am because that’s all I can ever know for absolutely certain. So while perception can be filtered through cultural imprints, hampered and even deadened by them, it can’t ever be reduced to those filters, any more than a human being locked inside a prison of social identity can be reduced to that identity (though we may believe it).

I'll just say, not for the first time, that the only kind of experience, at least for humans, is subjective experience. And our materially-obsessed culture gives short shrift to—de-emphasizes—that notion. That aspect of the dominant 'reductive' culture, the discounting of subjective experience, is actually a block to transcendence (and probably not completely accidental—though I don't see the Kubrickon as an exponent of that particular emphasis).

I agree that perception is always subjective because without a subject to perceive, nothing is being perceived. But then there’s the question of what is the subject. If the subject becomes perception itself, then the subjective becomes also objective, because what’s perceiving is the totality of perception-awareness. There is nothing outside of it (no outside, only inside).

As a side point, it’s interesting how the subjective voice was largely introduced into academia via feminism, and was a seemingly positive cultural step towards understanding reality. Yet now that same subjective voice has taken over the throne once occupied by objectivity, and is asserting the same totalitarian rulings: whatever I “feel,” is absolute truth, and no amount of facts, biological, psychological, historical, or whatever, can change that. It is like relativism + subjectivity have become the new objectivity, and now there is no society, only the individual with all his or her whims and neuroses. Yet the individual is completely controlled by external, social values (by the imprinting of trauma), and so s/he only expresses the unconscious of the group, never their own deep truth.

That's fascinating, a different and important angle, and the Petri-dish analogy is valid, but I don't think it follows that we should banish culture, rather than (yes) improve it.

Why would you want to improve the conditions within the matrix? Isn’t that exactly what the control system wants, to keep us comfortable, while also keeping us busy trying to fix things on the inside (rearrange the furniture), so we don’t ever suspect there’s a possible existence outside (outside of the values imprinted into us by trauma, i.e., the violence of culture).

More than ever before (that we know of), humans have a wider self-awareness and better understanding of cause and effect in the universe, insights that could and should allow us to consciously improve the dominant culture—to transcend its oppressive traits. But those same 'tools' are quite effectively and deliberately turned against transcendence (and 'us) to stifle it (and 'us).

I think it’s inherent to the tools themselves. The fundamental values we do not question, such as knowledge, progress, happiness, individuality, humanity, and so forth. And I am naming some of the more apparently positive ones now!

You can probably guess that my definition of culture would fall more closely along the lines of 6.—"the attitudes and behavior that are characteristic of a particular social group or organization."

And attitudes and behaviors change, yet one that remains constant is the notion that the values we hold today are more enlightened than those of the past. It’s logical to assume that, since we look back on our forefathers (and mothers!) as being at best misguided, at worst dangerously deluded, the same must also be true of ourselves.

I suspect there's a key to be found there, in that our culture could learn and benefit a great deal from the autistic experience, but alas the culture of conformity sees autism as some kind of natural "mistake" and tries to just get rid of it. This is just a hunch; I'm not qualified to make too many pronouncements about it.

I don't know if I am any better qualified for self-identifying as on the spectrum, but IMO your hunch is correct. And the autism phenomenon is a useful microcosm to see how culture operates, by finding scapegoats to sacrifice and bind the community together, to replenish it with blood, figurative or literal. The sacrificial victim is eventually deified, as happened with Native Americans and is already happening with autistics (TV shows about how they are connected to God, etc.). I think this is just what culture (the traumatized defense system) does.

That point is worth noting, but I think it's a form of the dreaded 'historicism' which says, 'we'll never change, so don’t bother to try.' As far as the idea that "culture as a parasitical organism," I can't quite see it that way, and much prefer the 'operating system' metaphor.

Not that we will never change, but that culture will never change and that it isn’t meant to. It functions exactly as it is supposed to. There are always a few individuals who are able to individuate from it (even if we never hear about or from them). For the rest, there is the fate of the coppertop. The notion of a collective humanity “out there” is itself a cultural one, we only need, and can only ever, interact with and serve the individuals we encounter. There are so many unquestioned assumptions about this, at base of which is the assumption that we even know what we need, much less what others need, and that we are supposed to “help” others get what we think they need, in order to feel good about ourselves. What that ends up like is not the Starship Enterprise but ~ US foreign policy!

The second point about the parasitical organism is certainly a thorny one, and connects directly to this:

In terms of the harvesting issue, I am interested in your take guruilla, but the off planet entity parts you said will come out later. I figured your theory wasn't ripe for discussion.

It’s as ripe as the people who come to the discussion are. I am definitely wary of talking about nonhuman or off-planet entities, even though at some point something of this sort seems almost necessary to continue discussing how human culture could have such a seemingly anti-human agenda. But I think the place to start is, once again, with trauma and the fragmentation of the psyche, how this leads perhaps literally to a division within the soul, when parts of us become autonomous and hostile to our greater development.

Obviously the CIA et al. went to some lengths to neutralize the '60s counterculture but I'm not one who believes it was all a government psyop. Rather, because it was so genuine, it had to be compromised and snuffed out posthaste, re-purposed as nostalgia and repackaged as hippie Halloween costumes.

For me it is both, but closer to the social engineering angle. I think there was certainly a genuine emergence happening (it’s in the planets, and I don’t suppose anyone is going to blame the CIA for moving the planets, though they could have invented astrology). I think the emergence was also foreseen by very powerful, intelligent (or at least cunning), and farseeing (and maybe long-living) individuals, and that an elaborate (counter-)cultural machinery was created in order to redirect that emergence into carefully selected and cynically promoted symbols, memes, and movements. So then it was both the real thing and the imitation. What is poison to the many can be homeopathy to the few, anyone who is able to discern enough to apply the right dosage.

The Making of a Counter Culture by Theodore Roszak. which if you haven't read, I think you'd find interesting if not illuminating. Roszak (who coined the term 'counterculture')

I had the book but I didn’t manage to read it. Not reading much of anything these days except online.

He talks about the role of symbols (and even myths) in human existence, how they've been drained of meaning, and why humanity needs to embrace their meanings.

Ironic, as I have been taking something like the opposite position at this thread, re: SM, that symbols have been overly imbued with meaning and that, in order to discover our own meaning, we need to turn away from symbols (knowledge) and move into subtler, less systematized forms of knowing. Not we as humanity, but we as in you and I, currently having this conversation.

There are independent thinkers and outliers, and their effects on the culture can range anywhere from outright revolutionary to something more akin to the "butterfly effect." I praise your inquiries because: you're one of them! Thank you sincerely.

I thank you right back for that, especially in the current RI environment. It puts me in the strange position of debunking my own efforts in order to stay true to my argument. The way I reconcile that conundrum is by reminding myself that, while part of me certainly wants to have an effect on the culture and be recognized by it (if only to make a living), another, deeper part recognizes that this is not only not the primary goal, but is 100% meaningless except as a means to the actual end, which is to reach and connect to human souls lost in the same Maya realm as I am, so we can together move towards the exit hatch.

Either that or hang out with some bros while the world burns.

I'd say no. The ancient Greeks were, by and large, intensely ego-driven.

Have you read Julian Jaynes’ Bicameral Mind? He suggests that the ego as we know it was mostly unformed back in those days, hence the Greeks described decisions as being moved by the Gods, external forces.

But the main point wasn’t so much that the concept of individuality is a modern one, but that it is a cultural one. At least that MY opinion!

[Elvis]

Short on time now, but thanks, and—

Elvis wrote:
The Making of a Counter Culture by Theodore Roszak. which if you haven't read, I think you'd find interesting if not illuminating. Roszak (who coined the term 'counterculture')

I had the book but I didn’t manage to read it. Not reading much of anything these days except online.

—here ya go: http://musicandhistory.wikispaces.com/file/view/makingofacounterculture.pdf


I really think you might dig it.

[guruilla]

I don't know that I could agree with Pearce's view of culture, especially this I disagree with, "Culture depends on violence. Culture breeds violence. And culture thrives on violence. . . . culture preserves itself through violence."

Perhaps it would be better to say that the clash of cultures, whereby one attempts to supplant another with its own, creates and fosters violence.

This is why Rene Girard's work is so interesting. Cultures go to war with other cultures precisely in order to direct the internal violence outwards so that it doesn't destroy the community. But scapegoating also occurs within communities and is absolutely essential to maintaining the stability of the group. So it's literally true to say culture preserves itself through violence, through scapegoating and sacrifice (which means "to make sacred").

The reason we are able to ignore this reality within our own culture is that we do not see the scapegoat as an innocent sacrifice, but as a criminal element that must be removed. We never think about how any element that arises within our culture or community is integral to it, however undesirable.

I believe he's confused wealth with culture, too. The wealthy do not seek to improve culture, they seek to make themselves evermore comfortable and do little to improve the culture of those providing them their wealth.

I would say the wealthy seek to improve culture, just that it is according to their own ideas. The same applies to the poor. The Ku Klux Klan were social/cultural reformers. As were the Nazis. It is only a difference of degree. What's common to all social reform-oriented groups and individuals, from what I have seen (including at this forum recently) is that: a) they will use violence, subtle and covert or open and direct, to get others to capitulate with their beliefs and to ostracize those who reuse to; b) they are not interested in finding the truth, but only in asserting the arguments and interpretations that will further their social reform goals, to create "a better culture."

So I think JCP and Girard were 100% right about it. Culture sustains itself through violence, and the primary justification for the violence is an ongoing attempt to reform and perfect culture.

[Elvis]

What about, say for example, Gandhi and Martin Luther King? Didn't they make some improvements?

Nonviolence has only existed as a word since the early 1900s when Gandhi coined it. Making "not violence" a thing seems like a worthy improvement.

[guruilla]

What about, say for example, Gandhi and Martin Luther King? Didn't they make some improvements?

Nonviolence has only existed as a word since the early 1900s when Gandhi coined it. Making "not violence" a thing seems like a worthy improvement.

Look around and you tell me. Are we a less violent culture because we have conceived of the idea of non-violence?

Gandhi was Oxford-trained and pals with Betrand Russell. Smells like a social engineer to me.

For the record, I'm not averse to activism per se. Like many other activities it can be integral to individuation, participating with one's social environment in ways that stir things up, internally and externally. You could even say I am being activist at this forum. But when the motivation is to change social structures and/or what people believe, it never ends well. Or rather, it never ends, period.

The point isn't about whether social reform is good or bad, the point is understanding why the underlying principals of society (inequality, etc) never change, and why they probably never will.

Also wanted to address this:

I do not believe the USA has ever had any defined culture. Our armed forces do maintain a military culture, though.

And yet it is the only country that has given rise to a negative noun, the term un-American. There is no such thing as un-English or un-German. This is because Americanism is an ideology unto itself. To say "I am an American (dammit)!" is much more than an identification of nationality. It brings with it a whole set of values, i.e., a cultural imprint. I'd even wager this relates to how America is the most violent country in the world, both internally and externally (foreign policy).