-Caveat Lector-
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From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: April 1, 2007 12:57:50 AM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: History: A Tragedy about Sociopaths, A Comedy about the
Lemmings Who Follow Them
"The history of the 'great events' of this world
are scarcely more than the history of crimes."
--Voltaire
Colin Wilson: "The history of human society ["civilization"] since
2500 BC is little more than
a non-stop record of anti-social activities -- burglary, assault,
rape and mass-murder."
He concludes, "[Textbook] human history has been fundamentally a
history of crime."
One might add, What passes for the history of "all mankind"
collectively is a catalog of crimes
committed by a minority of persons in "gangs," taking orders from
psychopathic individuals
http://phinnweb.blogspot.com/2004/10/right-man-and-fear-of-losing-
face.html
These excerpts are from Colin Wilson's A Criminal History Of
Mankind (1984, revised 2005).
Here Wilson discusses the interesting psychological concept of the
"Right Man", which might in other uses also be called the "Dominant
Male" or the "Alpha Male", though we are, of course, speaking here
about the negative extremes in behaviour of this human type, not
just ordinary dominance or leadership.
The "Right Men" can be domestic tyrants terrorizing their own
families but they can be found in all fields of life: in business,
politics, art, culture. Everyone must have encountered one: a
dominating boss, school headmaster or teacher, army officer,
father, son, boyfriend, bully.
Essential here is that the "Right Man" must always have his way and
is afraid of losing face above all ("How dare you talk to me this
way?"): anything that might be an indication of his infallibility
or erroneous ways, something that he can never admit.
"The notion of 'losing face' suggests an interesting alternative
line of thought. It is obviously connected, for example, with the
cruelty of Himmler and Stalin when their absolute authority was
questioned. They were both men with a touchy sense of self-esteem,
so that their response to any suspected insult was vindictive rage.
Another characteristic of both men was a conviction they they were
always right, and a total inability to admit that they might ever
be wrong."
"Himmlers and Stalins are, fortunately, rare; but the type is
surprisingly common.
"... 'the violent man' or the 'Right Man' [...] is a man driven by
a manic need for self-esteem -- to feel he is a 'somebody'. He is
obsessed by the question of 'losing face', so will never, under any
circumstances, admit that he might be in the wrong."
[...]
"Equally interesting is the wild, insane jealousy. Most of us are
subject to jealousy, since the notion that someone we care about
prefers someone else is an assault on our amour propre. But the
Right Man, whose self-esteem is like a constantly festering sore
spot, fliers into a frenzy at the thought, and becomes capable of
murder."
"The Right Man is an 'idealist' -- that is, he lives in his own
mental world and does his best to ignore aspects of reality that
conflict with it. Like the Communists' rewriting of history,
reality can always be 'adjusted' later to fit his glorified picture
of himself. In his mental world, women are delightful, adoring,
faithful creatures who wait patiently for the right man -- in both
senses of the word -- before they surrender their virginity. He is
living in a world of adolescent fantasy. No doubt there was
something gentle and submissive about the nurse that made her seem
the ideal person to bolster his self-esteem, the permanent wife and
mother who is waiting in a clean apron when he get back from a
weekend with mistress..."
"The most intriguing insight into the Right Man is the discovery
that he can be destroyed if 'the worm turns' -- that is, if his
wife or some dependant leaves him. <<Consider this in the context
of the sadomasochistic offender/enabler, 'abusive husband and
battered wife' relationship between a tyrannical leader and his
submissive people. Remember, to a demagogue, "The masses are a
WOMAN" --Adolf Hitler>>
Under such circumstances, he may beg and plead, promising to behave
better in the future. If that fails, there may be alcoholism, drug
addiction, even suicide. She has kicked out the foundations of his
sandcastle. For when a Right Man finds a woman who seems submissive
and admiring, it deepens his self-confidence, fills him with a
sense of his own worth. No matter how badly he treats her, he has
to keep on believing that, in the last analysis, she recognises him
as the most remarkable man she will ever meet. She is the guarantee
of his 'primacy', his uniqueness; now it doesn't matter what the
rest of the world thinks. He may desert her and his children; that
only proves how 'strong' he is, how indifferent to the usual
sentimentality. But if she deserts him, he has been pushed back to
square one: the helpless child in a hostile universe.
'Most violent men are failures', so to desert them is to hand them
over to their own worst suspicions about themselves. 'Realise that
most Right Men deserve some sympathy, for they are struggling with
an unbelievable inner horror; however, if they give way to the
impulse to hit or choke, they are losing the battle, are on the the
way to the ultimate disaster... of their subjective universe of
self-justification."
"And what happens when the Right Man is not a failure, when his
'uniqueness' is acknowledged by the world? Oddly enough, it makes
little or no difference. His problem is lack of emotional control
and a deep-seated sense of inferiority; so success cannot reach the
parts of the mind that are the root of the problem."
[...]
"The Right Man hates losing face; if he suspects that his threats
are not being taken seriously, he is capable of carrying them out,
purely for the sake of appearances."
"The central characteristic of the Right Man is the 'decision to
[allow himself to] be out of control in some particular area'. We
all have to learn self-control to deal with the real world and
other people. But with some particular person -- a mother, a wife,
a child -- we may decide that this effort is not necessary and
allow ourselves to explode. But -- and here we come to the very
heart of the matter -- this decision creates, so to speak, a
permanent weakpoint in the boiler, the point at which it always
bursts."
[...]
"He feels he [is] justified in exploding, like an angry god. [...]
-- he feels he is inflicting just punishment."
"What is so interesting here is the way the Right Man's violent
emotion reinforces his sense of being justified, and his sense of
justification increases his rage. He is locked into a kind of
vicious spiral, and he cannot escape until he has spent his fury.
[...] The Right Man feels that his rage is a storm that has to be
allowed to blow itself out, no matter what damage it causes. But
this also means that he is the slave of an impulse he cannot
control; his property, even the lives of those that he loves, are
at the mercy of his emotions. This is part of the 'unbelievable
inner horror.' "
[...]
"This is 'magical thinking' -- allowing a desire or emotion to
convince you of something your reason tells you to be untrue. [...]
Magical thinking provides a key to the Right Man."
"What causes 'right mannishness'? It may be because the world has
always been dominated by males."
[...]
"But then, this explanation implies that there is no such thing as
a Right Woman. This is untrue." [...] the central characteristic of
the Right Woman is the same as that of the Right Man: she is
convinced that having her own way is a law of nature, and that
anyone who opposes this deserves the harshest possible treatment.
It is the God (or Goddess) syndrome."
[...]
"... the one thingthat becomes obvious in all cases of Right Men is
that their attacks are not somehow inevitable'; some of their worst
misdemeanours are carefully planned and calculated, and
determinedly carried out. The Right Man does these things because
he thinks they will help him to achieve his own way, which is what
interests him."
"And this in turn makes it plain that the Right Man problem is a
problem of highly dominant people. Dominance is a subject of
enormous interest to biologists and zoologists because the
percentage of dominant animals -- or human beings -- seems to be
amazingly constant. [...] biological studies have confirmed [...
that ...] for some odd reason, precisely five per cent -- one in
twenty -- of any animal group are dominant -- have leadership
qualities."
[...]
"The 'average' member of the dominant five per cent sees no reason
why he should not be rich and famous too. He experiences anger and
frustration at his lack of 'primacy', and is willing to consider
unorthodox methods of elbowing his way to the fore. This clearly
explains a great deal about the rising levels of crime and violence
in our society."
[...]
"We can also see how large numbers of these dominant individuals
develop into 'Right Men'. In every school with five hundred pupils
there are about twnety-five dominant ones struggling for primacy.
Some of these have natural advantages: they are good athletes, good
scholars, good debaters. (And there are, of course plenty of non-
dominant pupils who are gifted enough to carry away some of the
prizes.) Inevitably, a percentage of the dominant pupils have no
particular talent or gift; some may be downright stupid. How is
such a person to satisfy his urge to primacy? He will, inevitably,
choose to express his dominance in any ways that are possible. If
he has good looks or charm, he may be satisfied with the admiration
of female pupils. If he has some specific talent which is not
regarded as important by his schoolmasters -- a good ear for music,
a natural gift of observation, a vivid imagination -- he may become
a lonely 'outsider', living in his own private world. (Such
individuals may develop into Schuberts, Darwins, Balzacs.) But it
is just as likely that he will try to take short-cuts to prominence
and become a bully, a cheat or a delinquent."
"The main problem of these ungifted 'outsiders' is that they are
bound to feel that the world has treated them unfairly. And the
normal human reaction to a sense of unfairness is an upsurge of
self-pity. Self-pity and the sense of injustice make them
vulnerable and unstable. And we have only to observe such people to
see that they are usually their own worst enemies. Their moods
alternate between aggressiveness and sulkiness, both of which
alienate those who might otherwise be glad to help them. If they
possess some degree of charm or intelligence, they may succeed in
making themselves acceptable to other people; but sooner or later
the resentment and self-pity break through, and lead to mistrust
and rejection."
"The very essence of their problem is the question of self-
discipline. Dominant human beings are more impatient than others,
because they have more vital energy. Impatience leads them to look
for short-cuts. [...] Civilisation, as Freud pointed out, demands
self-discipline on the part of its members. No one can be licenced
to threaten people with carving knives."
[...]
"When the Right Man explodes into violence, all the energy is
wasted. Worse still, it destroys the banks of the canal. So in
permitting himself free expression of his negative emotions he is
indulging in a process of slow but sure self-erosion -- the
emotional counterpart of physical incontinence. Without proper
'drainage', his inner being turns into a kind of swamp or sewage farm.
"This is why most of the violent men of history, from Alexander the
Great to Stalin, have ended up as psychotics. Lacking power over
themselves, they are driven to seek power over others -- over those
who are already weaker and more vulnerable or those who can be made
weaker and more vulnerable through strategies of manipulation and
deception. Without any ability to control their negative emotions,
they become incapable of sustaining any state of well-being."
http://www.ru.org/93taylor.html
An [objective] observer from another planet would probably conclude
that the human race has agreed to some sort of collective suicide
pact, having decided that life isn’t worth living and resolved to
make itself extinct within the next hundred years.
Or perhaps they’d look back at history and come to the conclusion
that this self-extinction was more or less inevitable from the
beginning.
Because we can, in fact, trace the existence of the particular
human group which is mainly responsible for the problems; back to
around 4000 BC, for example, when a group of human beings, later
called the Indo-Europeans, began to branch out from their homeland
in the steppes of Southern Russia.
Most of Europe was then inhabited by Neolithic peoples who, as the
archaeological evidence shows, lived in a similar way to the native
inhabitants of America and Australasia. As Riane Eisler shows in
her book, The Chalice and The Blade, these people were artistic,
spiritual and felt a strong sense of connection to nature. Their
societies were remarkably egalitarian and non-hierarchical, with
women afforded the same status as men. They worshipped goddesses,
and, perhaps most strikingly, there is an absence of fortifications
in their settlements and of warrior images in their art, suggesting
that they weren’t aggressive or war-like.
The Indo-Europeans were different. Archaeological evidence makes it
clear that they were a war-like people who worshipped ‘the power of
the blade’ rather than nature, whose gods were all male and whose
society was rigidly hierarchical and patriarchal. And when around
4000 BC they began to enter the territories occupied by the
Neolithic peoples, the outcome was probably inevitable: they
‘conquered’ <"genocided">the whole of Europe and parts of Asia, and
the old European culture of the Neolithic peoples was replaced by a
new one based on their values.
Over time these Indo-Europeans subdivided into many different
groups: the Ancient Greeks, the Romans, the Celts, the Germanic
peoples and many more. But no matter how culturally divergent they
became they retained the basic Indo-European value system, and
developed similarly patriarchal, hierarchical and war-like
societies, worshipping male gods and developing a concept of nature
as an enemy to be conquered and exploited.
These original Indo-Europeans are the ancestors of modern
Europeans, of course, and of modern North and South Americans and
Australians too. It was their development of chariots and horses as
a form of transport which enabled the original Indo-Europeans to
conquer old Europe, and, thousands of years later, the ship-
building and sea-faring prowess of the ‘Indo-Europeans’ of western
Europe enabled them to cross the oceans to distant continents. And
there, of course, from the 16th century onwards, they destroyed the
native American and Aborigine cultures with the same ruthlessness
that their ancestors had destroyed the old European Neolithic
culture, and replaced them with societies based upon the old Indo-
European ‘dominator’ principles.
This suggests that there was something wrong with the Indo-European
‘state of being’ right from the beginning. Above all, what
characterises the modern American or European (or the old Indo-
European) mentality is a highly developed sense of ego. In contrast
to native peoples like Aborigines or native Americans (and probably
the Neolithic peoples) we experience ourselves as sharply defined
‘selves’ which live inside our brains and our bodies and exist in
complete separation to other human beings and to nature.
Because of this, we’re literally more ‘selfish’—that is, our own
needs and desires are usually much more real and more important to
us than the welfare of other species, the environment as a whole,
or even other people.
And it also means that we tend to live inside our heads instead of
actually in the world. We’re so busy thinking and worrying and
planning that it’s unusual for us to actually give our attention to
our surroundings, which means that the natural <i.e., REAL> world
isn’t as real to us as it is to other peoples who haven’t got such
strongly developed egos.
Perhaps the original Indo-Europeans developed this state of being
because of the hostile climatic conditions in which they originated
—in the steppes of southern Russia— which meant that they had to
develop a certain selfishness and a competitiveness to survive,
which peoples from more pleasant climates didn’t need. And we can
certainly see the roots of our present environmental problems in
this state of being: the lack of connection to nature and the lack
of a sense of the ‘alive-ness’ of natural things, resulting in us
treating nature as something ‘other’ to us which we’re entitled to
conquer, abuse and exploit.
Since the fundamental problem is our state of being, we need to
collectively develop a new state of being to ensure our species’
survival. We need to overcome our sense of ego-separation, develop
a sense of connection to the world and a sense of spirituality — to
develop a state of being similar to that of native peoples and of
the old Neolithic peoples.
This might seem another cause for pessimism. After all, how can we
expect hundreds of millions of people to somehow transform
themselves in this way, especially when it seems that they’ve only
got a very limited amount of time to do it in? But this is one of
the biggest sources of optimism in our present predicament —
because a lot of evidence suggests that such a widespread
transformation actually is taking place.
... It’s evident from the increasing restlessness which seems to be
spreading through our societies. More and more people are, it
seems, finding themselves unable to live the ‘ordinary life’ which
is expected of them, in which they’re supposed to live in exactly
the same ‘life-situation’ for years on end, doing the same jobs and
going through the same daily and weekly routines and restricting
themselves to a narrow range of experience.
There seem be an increasing number of ‘misfits’ or ‘drop-outs’,
people who switch from one job to another instead of sticking to
one career, who go travelling around the world, who find the
routine of work too soul-destroying to put up with and resign
themselves to life ‘on the dole’, alongside the people who continue
to live an ordinary life with jobs and mortgages but feel as if
they’re trapped and ache to break free.
... Studies of life in previous centuries --such as in Colin
Wilson’s A Criminal History of Mankind-- make it clear that our
ancestors were generally more cruel and indifferent to other
people’s sufferings than we are [today].
As Wilson writes, ‘Our present [sympathy] for children and animals
[and the poor and disabled] would have struck an early Victorian as
ludicrous.’ ...
<snip>
However, if the "free market" Republicans have anything to say
about it, in the 21st Century, we'll all be RETURNING to those
"good old days" of child labor, debtors' prisons, limited suffrage,
etc., in Bush's Empire just as in Victoria's.
See what's free at AOL.com.
www.ctrl.org
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