- Stepping back from genocide
- Awakening the young
1.1 Stepping back from genocide
The first discussion relates to the state of our Western society, beset as it is with obsessions and moral panics, and rushing us all into a police state.
The reader is asked to appreciate that, although some of the best minds are being expressed here, the issues involved are highly sensitive and are coming under severe constraints and even censorship in some countries. In addition, the only reason that we have certain contributions is that their creators have suffered arrest and even imprisonment for past actions and views. Some, with that ordeal behind them still suffer the further burdens of offender registration and the surveillance of parole officers.
Background
The background to this discussion is that in October 2008, Terence, an American,contacted me as editor of the Inquisition21 web site seeking advice about his situation. As an individual in America who had served his prison sentence, he was now facing eviction from the only home he had found and was about to become homeless and shunned under local draconian sex-offender residence restrictions.
He was one of many in this situation, but he was also highly intelligent, well-educated and articulate. I sought advice from a few trusted colleagues, some of whom shared both his background and to an extent his present predicament. I felt that the resulting discussion was so powerful and potentially valuable that with their permission I have published it here with editing only to protect its contributors.
I will begin with Terence’s response to the advice.
Terence’s response
What a fascinating series of rich, intelligent ideas and imagery. Thanks so much for sharing this. I am heartened indeed to see that any words of mine can have stirred up such feeling, and it is also wonderful to feel a part of a vast worldwide movement of those who still value liberty's ‘ever-flickering flame’, as your correspondent so poetically (and aptly) puts it.
(M had written, “The fight for freedom of expression is a fight for the maintenance of the ever-flickering flame of the human spirit.”)
Interesting that he mentions the Communist Party of the early Twentieth Century: although without the exact same ideology, of course, we are surely their modern-day spiritual heirs. This both honours and humbles me. I feel so inferior to some of those spiritual giants who led the way decades ago. Their names should be hallowed and revered, and surely taught with reverence in every school, and my greatest fear, besides present-day loss of liberty, is that their names, their stories, and their significance, might be in danger of being lost forever.
It is worth remembering how much of our legitimate history from only two or three hundred years back we are still struggling to recover and painstakingly piece together (from shadowy remnants and hints merely).
Think of how spiritually-benighted our young ones must be, if the only 'heroes' presented to their sensitive minds are figures such as football-players, or 'celebrities,' or travesties such as the ‘George Bushes’ or ‘Dick Cheneys’ of the world- - -. Is it any wonder, then, that so many of them rebel (almost mindlessly and intuitively), even though they don't yet know what they are rebelling for? They only know that the 'world' that has been presented to them by their keepers and handlers is patently false. Thank God the human instinct for liberty is still at least that much alive. God knows I too went through this same period of denial, rejection, and searching for the Truth, and thank God (again) that through my readings, I managed to discover what earlier pioneers of the spirit had said and done.
Needless to say (and in passing), we must all do our best to not let that desire for liberty become stifled forever in their young souls. And as we all know too well, it is so easy for this to happen.
As you will know, this hidden history of ours, this history of the resistance of the Soul to the overwhelming tide of conformity, oppression (and suppression), is vitally important for edifying us in our own present-day struggles. We gain strength from learning about those who went before us, and how bravely they resisted the mighty Behemoth State--so aptly named by Hobbes as ‘Leviathan’.
If the only real political/spiritual alternatives in the early Twentieth Century in England had been either a crass, spiritually-dead materialism, consumerism, and rampant industrial/militarism (as now), or the Communist Party, and had I then been alive myself, I should think without a doubt I should have unquestioningly had to choose the latter, as being the only truly spiritually-honest alternative. I think it was probably only the terrible excesses of Stalin in the Soviet Union which forever killed this hope for Western Europeans, and seemed so much to rob the movement of much of its core of honest spiritual idealism.
Enough of a history lesson! What we will do today is the important question, no?
Given the seeming unbreakable strength of our respective police-states (on both sides of the Atlantic), I think overt organising is dangerous, unless our true motives be carefully-concealed from prying eyes. And yet, because the enemies always have their spies, even this can be hazardous. The first thing to do is publicly (and constantly) renounce violence as a means of redress.
But I'm certain you good folks have probably already addressed these many issues (and more), and shall thus beg off, with these final words: I think probably the most attractive and most effective means of resistance for us now, given present realities, consists of taking to heart Peter Lamborn Wilson's (a.k.a. ‘Hakim Bey’) concept of the Temporary Autonomous Zone (TAZ), in addition to quietly spreading the truth via the internet, as some of us are now doing. There are young minds out there (those we most need to reach) in vast numbers, who may yet eventually find what we've written, and may yet take heart from it. We may yet live to see an organic groundswell of support grow, for quietly overturning the present rank establishment, and substituting in favour of it the new ‘peaceable kingdom’, the ‘New Millennium’. I truly think this is the only way the new reign of peace can reasonably be achieved. New generations must grow up and not be swayed or cowed by fear (as so many of their elders now are), and once the older, fearful generations have begun to die out (hopefully without too much having spread the cancer of their fearful attitudes to their offspring), these younger generations may yet prove to be our last, best hope. We owe it to them, of course, to try our best to guide them, by word and by example, as best we may, so that hopefully, they will not lose their way among the morass and swamps of fear and despair, so very threatening today.
Though horizons may be dark indeed for us right now, I am heartened by the consideration that liberty's ‘ever-flickering flame’, though perhaps extinguished now and then by our fellow-beings who are too bound by fear to love liberty, nonetheless always continues to spring up anew, Phoenix-like, out of the ashes of its earlier martyrs. This, at the very least, emboldens me to not fail in my duty to future generations, to do my part, in my present little time, and patiently bear up my own burdens, though skies may be dark and terrible storms may threaten. The enemies of the spirit and of the god of Love can only, after all, destroy this feeble and pitiful body: the burning Soul inside (what the ancient Greeks and Gnostics called νοϋς, or mind, which is only a spark or portion of the Universal Geist, or spiritus mundi) will indeed ‘live’ to see another ‘day’, albeit on a different shore, and while here in this 'pilgrim's weary sojourn,' may yet light the way toward liberty, for others yet to come.
With respect as always,
Terence
Editor Much more to follow but readers are urged to read the emerging chapters of the new book Notes from Another Country at Inquisition21.
Responses
From Bryn
I can only respond on the basis of how this affected me: deeply moving, intellectually inspiring and invigorating.
This is most certainly worthy of continued development. My own experience, coming from humble working class origins as I do, is that it is not the 'ignorant masses' who orchestrate fascist witch hunts so much as the educated elite, with all the power of mass persuasion (and rhetorical deceit, which amounts to the same thing) they command. We are ruled by politically correct liberals - fascist liberals - who have slaughtered the main precepts of liberty in the name of 'respect' and 'decency' - everyone must be forced to observe the conventions of (small-minded, petit-bourgeois) 'manners' or face imprisonment.
Illiberal liberalism, intolerant tolerance, one-size fits all politeness codes: all are a travesty of libertarianism, and describe only the frightened, disconnected preoccupations of a remote political elite in search of an electorate. As Camille Paglia once noted, why are snippy neurotics running our lives?
From Wild Goose
Terence’s message is appropriate - and powerful. We are talking about freedom of speech and even a cursory reading should indicate who is on the side of what. Who are on the side of the angels (perhaps literally), a rostrum of great minds and souls from the past and present, and who are on the side of ignorance and prejudice; those unfortunate, tortured souls bent on extinguishing in others that spark of freedom and real life (with its necessarily erotic component) which they have long lost hope of acquiring for themselves. The Nazis are appropriately mentioned in the latter respect.
The fight for freedom of expression is, as said above, a fight for the maintenance of the ever-flickering flame of the human spirit. For the money-makers, the materialists and the Caesar-lovers of this world, the human spirit is an irritant, and a danger. Money-makers. I recently sat doing business with a young Chinese banker. After talking to him for about 22 minutes in a fairly free ranging conversation, I realized I was in fact talking to myself as the society which he came from had removed his brain and replaced it with a cash-register. Materialists. Man is worth more than the sum of his parts. If he were only the parts, by far the most intelligent thing to do would be to speed entropy by dismembering him, i.e. we all lie down and die, now (this has already occurred on a brain-level for many of our contemporaries. They nourish their brain-death maintenance in particular by watching organized sport on television). Caesar-lovers. Sean O'Casey, who as you know was a member of the Central Committee of the English Communist Part, expressed his abhorrence of what he termed the Caesar-State, whether Fascist, Communist or whatever. The Caesar-state is still with us. The latest trick for political criminals being to invent imaginary crimes (such as reading things ‘wickedly’ in the privacy of your home) and then terrify everyone into a state of general compliance by the severity of the punishment dealt out (I see mention of hundreds of years of imprisonment). As, at any given moment, the entire population is guilty, any of its members can be seized, at will, dragged off to prison, and basically be shut up so than nobody can continue to spread the heresy of free reading or image-watching (television, internet, whatever) which of course means free speech.
From Mich
Much food for thought there. It is important to examine the 'state of things'/zeitgeist in terms of history and philosophy, and Terence certainly sees it the way I do. I agree that overt organisation can be dangerous. In Britain MI5 is adept at infiltration and fragmentation of groups. They also have an obsession with finding the 'ringleaders', even if they don't exist, and punishing them (either psychologically or 'legally') in order to 'discourage the others'.
As a Quaker - with strong Gnostic leanings - I was interested in Terence's reference to gnosticism. We place great importance on our 'testimonies' of truth, justice, equality, peace, environmental concern and simplicity, and as such I feel at odds with prevailing society anyway. Recent happenings, though, have convinced me that things are worse than I ever imagined. The ethos of the police and legal system clearly fosters far lower ethical standards than society as a whole - where at least most people mean well, however misguided. We have a long way to go before we can really call ourselves civilised.
I'm also a follower of biophilic ethics (see Erich Fromm), in other words, simply not doing any deliberate harm, and doing what I can, in my small way, to alleviate avoidable suffering. As I see it, most of modern society has been brainwashed to be selfish, suspicious and afraid; it has largely forgotten how to 'live and let live'. It has become 'biophobic' (my word), i.e. shuns life in its truest sense, the very JOY of life. It has been channelled by the 'national curriculum', insatiable consumerism, aimless hedonism, media hysteria, government fear campaigns, etc. into a state of bland, anti-life conformity - where the significant Other has little importance. The people are playing into the hands of the rising tide of fascism.
I think I could have put this a lot better, but, as usual I'm in a library and short of time. Trying to keep alive the 'flickering candle of liberty'
Mich
LUX IN TENEBRIS
From Bryn
It is so appalling that fundamentally peaceful people should have to be roused to war, but this, sadly is the spirit of the times: curl up and die (as the authorities want you to do) or begin the always fallible, always incomplete, reverse discourse. In naming us they have created us; in creating us they have given us some degree of autonomy from their totalitarian control.
From sexual deviance to sexual dissidence: nil desperandum!
Notes from the Underground
At this point, Terence's dispatches began to take on such poignancy and importance that they became a new dialogue under the above title which he chose. They are now another almost unique and powerful contribution to humanity. A man on the sex offenders register in America, evicted from his home, who continues to write to us from public libraries.
November 11 2008
From Terence.
Thought I would write a short note to say that I am still alive. This is written from a local public library.
I have been musing today on the following words of Blaise Pascal, from his Pensees:
Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed. The entire universe need not arm itself to crush him. A vapour, a drop of water suffices to kill him. But if the universe were to crush him, man would still be more noble than that which killed him, because he knows that he dies and the advantage which the universe has over him; the universe knows nothing of this. ...
It does indeed often seem these days as if the ‘entire universe’ is ‘arm[ing] itself to crush’ us. I truly don't know what the answer to this quandary is, if the present generation does not see fit to spare us, except to hope that our memory may possibly be kept alive, and that future generations (perhaps long hence) will benefit from our example (and ill treatment, and bitter experience), to the end of wishing to forever prevent any human beings from ever again being treated so abominably inhuman.
Regards,
Terence
Editor wrote back saying “Did you contact that hotline?” The hotline referred to is that of the RSOL.
P who also read the above wrote “I am truly elated to hear from him - and I can only speculate about what he has been through. What a hero - he's posting his thoughts, despite his horrible predicament - from a library, whilst homeless, rejected and disparaged by the (deeply un-Christian) good and great who supposedly surround him. I have unlimited admiration for his integrity, courage and sheer fortitude. Is there really no one out there who is kind enough, compassionate enough, to offer a good man shelter in a ferocious storm? He may not feel it, but some of us at least send him our love.”
Editor forwarded P’s message.
November 12 2008
From Terence.
Many thanks for you response, and your concern.
I did indeed attempt to contact the hotline, and only a few days had elapsed from that moment to the time when I was expelled into the ‘Wilderness’, so perhaps someone attempted to contact me after all, and I wasn't there to accept the call. I will try again, though with no permanent residence (or telephone), e-mail is now by far the best means to reach me. If they are willing to respond to me via e-mail, then we might actually get somewhere. I have usually been able to (at least briefly) check my e-mails almost on a daily basis, though God only knows how much longer this will continue.
Your friend P's indignation on my behalf both heartens and humbles me. He seems a right decent and kindly chap, above reproach, and a credit to humanity. I feel honoured to have earned such esteem, in any way. As with the ancient 'Gnostics', who too were persecuted out of existence (though for different reasons), we, who are perhaps among the wisest and most humane of human beings (because we too have discovered and worship the god of LOVE, and thus reject fear and hatred, and all the associated baggage), are being exterminated by the brute ‘Philistines' who've succumbed to hatred and fear, precisely because we are too conscientious and humane, to resist their dastardly methods with like methods (and this is perhaps necessary to prevent much of our predicament). And thus we suffer, and are driven underground, and into the literal wilderness, and perhaps may yet find ourselves exterminated. (Though, of course, we certainly hope otherwise.) The optimist in us hopes for a better tomorrow, and that humanity will listen to their ‘better angels’ after all, but the realist in us prepares us for the worst that humanity can serve up. We do, after all, have some truly horrific and alarming precedents on that note. We know that humanity is capable of both great acts of compassion and kindness, and of truly horrific acts of cruelty and genocide. Which ‘angel’ will ultimately prevail in this contest? I am no prophet, to be able to say.
It may seem strange to consider that in the midst of the sorest of trials, I am able to think like this, but that is nonetheless how my brain works. For some reason, I am able to now and then (though not always) step back and view my trials with a sort of cool, rational detachment.
The following train of thought occurred to me just this morning, as I set out on my way to the local library. While I am certainly no trained, professional psychologist, and while the thoughts expressed are perhaps a crude, gross, oversimplification of the reality, I nonetheless feel that the basics are more or less correct:
Most people in our 'Western' cultures (especially America) are (unfortunately) emotionally and psychologically infantile. This infantilism has steadily increased over many decades (perhaps 3-4 generations). The specifics of this could probably be more precisely defined or argued, but I think the basic idea is correct. Extreme societal, cultural, and economic instability and insecurity, of course, only exacerbates this tendency.
Some of the consequences of this tendency toward emotional/psychological infantilism include:
This infantilism, or pathological inability to deal with the (sometimes) harsh realities of life and the world causes tremendous emotional instability, unease, and fear.
These fears cause most people, whether individually, or collectively, as society, or through the mass media and entertainment industry, to create and maintain a massive emotional and psychological self-delusion, in order to shield their infantile egos from the harsh, fear-causing realities of the world.
Anything, therefore, which threatens to disturb this carefully-constructed thought-world of assumptions (often false assumptions) and self-delusion, will be swiftly, fiercely, resisted, challenged, and fought against.
These factors effectively prevent almost all rational dialogue on social justice or fairness, whenever such discussion happens to challenge any of these false assumptions - these assumptions so necessary for the maintenance of the delusional 'thought-world' of humanity - these assumptions (seemingly, as is thought by so many) so necessary for psychological and emotional stability and well-being.
Thus, these false assumptions, and their related self-delusions, and social injustices, not only persist, but are even reinforced, magnified, and made much worse.
Thus also, it can perhaps be seen, that those few, rare persons who happen to be free of this pathological emotional and psychological need to create delusions which shield one from the realities of life, are probably among the wisest and sanest of human beings on the planet. That they are the ones who are among the worst victims of social tragedy and injustice, must be seen as among the worst tragedies humanity has ever inflicted upon itself.
Some or all of this may have been obvious to many for some time now; realising this, I have nonetheless attempted to state the same ideas in a clear, logical, axiomatic format, mostly for my own benefit.
Off now to deal with some of these consequences in a more realistic, immediate fashion.
Regards as always,
Terence.
Editor. Somewhere in his writings Teilhard de Chardin remarks that at any one time the very Universe is held together by the good thoughts of around a dozen individuals. Please contact if you have the correct quote.
This emerging story may resonate with that of another exile – the author of Notes from Another Country at Inquisition21.
Wild Goose
The following points seem to me worth thinking about.
a) The whole situation, ultimately, must be seen in a wider context of power abuse. There can be abuse of children, there can be abuse of adults (for example those hounded for ‘abusing’ electronic images). It is to be expected that as we move toward some form of world government i.e. even more distant and unreachable sources of political and social power, power abuse will increase. Criminal gangs predicate their action on the premise that power abuse is a part of the normal set-up in the world we live in. The abused must show signs of weakness and be inept in defending themselves. Much human political and social organization on our planet during the 20th century illustrates this. Political process frequently seeming to imitate gangland (dictatorships, totalitarian or otherwise but much also in democratic societies, the business world etc).
b) The obvious post-McMartin state power abuse raises inevitably the question of victimless crime (people being apprehended for what they are supposed to be and not for what they do). In the world in which we live there is more than enough crime with victims who suffer to have all victimless crime wiped off the statute books. Self-imposed suffering ultimately should not be considered criminal (whether substance abuse, suicide, drinking yourself to death, abusing your computer screen by looking at or reading things somebody does not want you to see etc).
c) A third line of inquiry would involve a closer look at the hounders. Where do they come from? What are their professional qualifications? How many are old fashioned swindlers (the red Baroness in Belgium) or are stark raving mad (the accuser in the McMartin case who saw the world through a pair of Hieronymus Bosch glasses). How many enjoy the hounding (sadism). There is some evidence of this.
Pause for reflection
So far a number of interesting points have emerged. Amongst these are that most people in our 'Western' cultures (especially in America) are emotionally and psychologically infantile. This creates and maintains a state of fear, an inability to deal with harsh realities and dependency on simple black and white dogmas and on government. It is the ideal social environment for rulers or those grandstanding on moral platforms to control the masses. It is the climate required for the emergence and implementation of fascism.
Elsewhere we refer to the crime that is essential to every inquisition and fascist regime as the crimen exceptum. From the discussion we know see that this is also a victimless crime, or a thought crime. For those who rush to defend the child pornography legislation on the grounds that every image of a child being abused is a child being once again abused, it may be useful to keep in mind that most of the images classed as CP are in fact child beauty, nudity or child erotica, most are not children at all but under 18 year olds, and most so-called child porn is published by the police in the form of stings to entrap people. Finally, any images of real child abuse should be available to help apprehend the abusers, but it is illegal to even produce it in evidence.
Look at earlier examples of the crimen exceptum: being a Jew, a communist, a homosexual, a witch, a heretic. Even today’s ‘paedophile’ is not necessarily a child molester, but one who dares to express a sexual interest in the underaged or have any ‘inappropriate’ physical or even mental contact (such as conversations – ‘grooming’) with them. If molestation was regarded as simply criminal, whether with adult or child, it would return to where it belongs, with robbery, murder and rape, into the catalogue of criminal acts and not exist as a ‘monstrous act’ together with the other crimen exceptums of looking, touching, and fantasising. So, except for molestation, which could be considered as just that, whether for adult or child, it seems that the crimen exceptum has always been victimless, with ironically the accused being the actual victim, and the real criminal being the persecutor and the disingenuous profiteer that support the accusation.
So following on the interesting points made by Wild Goose, we might perhaps make some progress if we first accept that opportunists, both 'illegal and legal criminals' will automatically exploit this situation of the willing masses that want to conform, not think for themselves, and be told what is right and wrong and what to do, and turn our attention to identifying and describing the criminal exploiters, especially those in government, the judiciary, the police and the 'rights and victims' organizations.
We also might benefit from the warning of the author of Notes from Another Country that many of the power abusers are motivated not just by a desire to advance themselves but by something more dangerous - a hatred of what they find within themselves and the need to both disavow this and to project it onto a hated other.
So a useful approach might be to expose this characteristic within the ruling accuser.
1.2 Awakening the young
Hours after Terence wrote the words that follow he was evicted and made homeless. He was a registered sex offender in the state of Georgia, who had served his prison sentence.
“Let the words of Swift forever resound in our souls: "Decani ubi saeva indignatio ulterius cor lacerare nequit; abi, Viator, et imitare, si poteris."
Translation. He has gone where savage indignation can no longer lacerate his heart; go, Traveller, and imitate him - if you can.
Before the state silenced him thus (and his family who actually evicted and barred him), he had been trying to write blogs, which might be read by young people in America. That however cannot be tolerated by the authorities – a convicted and registered sex offender trying to give advice. It’s like allowing a heretic to speak in former ages.
Let us ask the younger reader what this monster might have done. He might have had a relationship with an under-age person. He might have viewed forbidden images on the Internet. He might have been 18 and had an illegal relationship with someone a few years younger. He might have photographed his under 18 girlfriend. In late 2008 the Supreme Court by one vote only avoided bringing in the death penalty for certain acts with his own girlfriend that would have become legal the minute she turned 18. Both Presidential candidates criticized the court’s decision. We could be talking here about you or your boyfriend, and, if you are a girl or a woman teacher, certain acts with an underage boy, even one who might have used force against you if he has since been clever enough to play the victim. This is your world. You are filled with and surrounded by sexual energy at your age, and the state has you where it wants you, because it controls that energy through draconian laws. You are a Jumping Jack if you also let it control your mind. Take a stand!
The young have one great advantage in addition to both their youth and energy. They have more time to become aware of the fascist society we now all live in and also to become aware of how conformist and cowed their parents and so-called leaders and opinion formers are.
One area they need little experience or learning in is that of their own sexuality. This thread is begun with an account of a 17 year old girl American high school student who was not afraid to talk and write about her own sexuality and the taboo subject of masturbation. What is of key relevance in this to this discussion is that here is a young woman who is not afraid to confront and argue against a deeply held moral ideology.
Manifesto of a 17 year old American girl.
PCA responds
This is not a response to Erin's essay above but to the point of having an 'Awakening the young' thread.
One thing I'm thinking is that we are much more repressive than the Victorians. OK, Oscar Wilde was prosecuted, but he 'allowed' that prosecution to happen. He had the option of going to France, where he could have lived the rest of his days in peace. But he (presumably) chose to stay and face the prosecution and the jail sentence that was the probable outcome of it. (Editor. Agreeing, as he also initiated the libel action that ruined him.)
Something else that I might add to the discussion on WIGO. The children are not our future. They will not learn to be more tolerant, they will not learn to correct any of our society's current flaws. Years ago I read a book by Harlan Ellison which collected up some TV reviews he had written for a leftish newspaper. In one review he spoke of how he had gone into a school to talk to the kids - and come out terrified of how conservative and reactionary they were.
Editor
Here is a challenge. Is it a waste of time appealing to the young because they are even more reactionary than their elders?
