pt. 51

"The team then injected a virus into some of the mice that inserts a gene called GluR4 into mPFC neurons. GluR4 amplifies transmission of electrical signals – a key step in strengthening connections.
Up the ladder

When the dominance tests were repeated, previously subordinate mice that had received the virus were propelled to the top of the social ladder."

this goes toward the fictional idea i am working on about language being a virus from outer space (based on the famous quote from william s burroughs.) it's not at all unreasonable to posit higher language as developing out of a mutation, it makes sense in terms of evolutionary theory, if you take an internalist perspective a la chomsky, where the idea is that at around 100,000 years ago give or take a chiliad or a myriad or three, one mutant happened. one mutation happened that made him intelligent, creative, etc. this trait ends up being so advantageous that it spreads like wildfire. all of the products of a higher collective consciousness are rooted in this and develop once the creativity mutation spreads and the new species emerges.

so that part i have down. i'm working on a fictional world and stuff but a lot of it will be realistic, which is to say completely insane. not as insane as reality but you know. anyway so now i know how to say it. the virus enters the organism and inserts a gene which is then passed down through the generations. for a long time the idea was that these kind of things could not be passed down, this was considered lamarckian fallacy. however, there have been studies like this one and another one, this one specifically on the heritability of post traumatic stress that seem to show that things that conventional evolutionary theory thought couldnt be passed down actually can be.

that the serotonin uptake of future generations can be adversely effected by the trauma of their progenitors is important and meaningful, as a lot of the other discoveries that will probably happen also will be. i mean, this really sheds light on my reread of the genealogy of morals, which i am almost done with. man i love that one. some of it is outrageous or ridiculous but some of it the power is so undeniable, the insight almost blinding. i want more like that. to that end i am getting back into dostoevsky. starting with the possessed.

pt. 50

note to self. refer back to this article for riff on burroughs' "language is a virus from outer space." with the angle being that language was caused by a mutation but the mutation was caused by a virus that injected a gene into the human code. the article linked to this text involves mice who are infected with a virus which then inserts a gene that causes submissive mice to become dominant, socially. while mouse social orders outside of kafka are much simpler than human social orders, this was not always necessarily so. in fact human social orders did not become so much more complex than nonhumans' until humanity proper evolved, due to mutation caused by infection.

pt. 49

there are a few books that i read and reread and that i think about a lot and perhaps try to imitate in my own writing, and with these books, the ones that really change me, it's like even when i'm not reading them i'm still reading and rereading them, that i have internalized my experiences of them, and remember them as essences, and as books, and stories, and remember so much that is not simply the hard memory of the actual verbiage.... but certain scenes, or ideas, or characters.... and i learn to read my own life by way of the stories that have become such a part of it.

the worst is when you do that with a book that you read when you were young and then you read it later and you realize it sucks lol.

pt. 48

"The novelist with Christian concerns will find in modern life distortions which are repugnant to him, and his problem will be to make them appear as distortions to an audience which is used to seeing them as natural; and he may be forced to take ever more violent means to get his vision across to this hostile audience. When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax a little and use more normal ways of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock — to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the blind you draw large and startling figures."

-- flannery o connor


i'd like to work with this notion of shock but think that i need a radically different definition of what is shocking. i mean, i dont feel that it's about sex and violence, though those may be a part of a shocking narrative. what i really want to do, in a general way, that i dont know how to do really, is to create a shock effect by pointing out that which is obvious but that which people are, en masse, choosing not so see, sub- or semi- consciously or whatever.... this notion of denial in certain relationships and situations, that's an easy example, but everyone knows about denial, and i think that within the greater delusion the concept of denial and a lot of our concepts of reality, perception, and mental illness, that within that greater delusional culture, there is a knowledge that everybody is in fact insane and that the only reason why it's okay is that it is practiced by the majority, but this knowledge never quite takes leave of us even though we suppress it and repress it in ourselves and others, and it tends to build.... and we release and tame the energy by way of both spontaneous (not consciously structured in advance) and ritual (structured in advance) scapegoating. we're in the process of creating a mass delusion that will be as delusional as any religion but with the element of god taken out. but god is just being scapegoated as a means of reinforcing our notions of ourselves as "realistic" and non-delusional, he's a sacrifice meant to redeem us of the original sin of religious delusion, but this is obviously superstition, and we are obviously more defined, in this day in age, by the superstitions that shape our actions (/nonactions) in a way that we prefer not to talk about, as it is often obviously inconsistent with what we say about ourselves, which is considered "self expression," while our actions are not.... because there is this quality everywhere of words and images taking over everything and creating a replacement for reality that is obviously very false but that people just go along with for a lot of complex and fascinating and hilarious and terrifying reasons.

i feel like i should finish reading the anti oedipus and get back into the genealogy of morals and rene girard to get the coherent theory together. re: girard.... mimetic desire is one of the things that is obvious about social behavior and we see it but we suppress our knowledge, which causes pressure to build, which we blow off by scapegoating people for being unoriginal in their desires or expressions....

pt. 47

redefining freedom in the service of control:

"for the absence of order among nations is becoming less and less tolerable. This fact imposes on us, in our own interests, the responsibility of world leadership."

click text to read original document. it's from an old internal memo from the architects of post ww2 policy.

"At the ideological or psychological level, in the struggle for men's minds, the conflict is worldwide."

this document is an essential part of the biggest advertisement coup of all time. the co option of the word and concept "freedom" by Power. it's about how if we are going to run the world, we have to do so in the name of freedom, because the insidious red threat is trying to do it in the name of slavery...

and to this end, everything must be controlled. instability anywhere, "the absence of order among nations" is intolerable, and because of this we must take over the world. this is transparently self serving and yet these were all intelligent men with no little into human psychology and yet there is an absence of self awareness, or even more than that, the presence of a delusional ridiculousness, made terrifying by the fact that it was written by actual people in power. it's not just that these people are assholes, which is bad enough. it's that they're fools. so you cant trust them not to fuck things up, which makes them more dangerous. in the same manner in which an animal who spooks easily can be more dangerous than one who is predictably aggressive.

the thing is, if you read through the strategy outlined here, so much of it ties into how the words freedom and choice are used all the time by everyone, because of how the usages of this memo have made their way into ordinary language. so that there are all these usages of freedom and choice, oh and liberty, which are about the freedom to make money. look at milton friedman's use of the word freedom, which he equates primarily with property rights. it's all about capitalism and private ownership. so the plan, which is still in effect, is that the word freedom is an advertising slogan for a control freak foreign policy (which the intolerable instability of other nations has thrust upon us) and for capitalism in general.

there is a whole subculture in washington devoted to how we should use the word freedom. look at what george bush did with it. you put the terrorists where you had the communists and you say that they hate our freedom, just as the communists did, and you use this justification to strip away people's civil liberties in the name of protecting them from those who threaten to take away their freedom, and even though none of those who are said to threaten that freedom actually take it away from you, and the people who are saying that they are protecting actually do take your freedoms away from you, and do a lot of stuff to other people in your name, and in the name of your freedom....

if i find the time i will go through that document more thoroughly and write about it. there's so much in there ripe for commentary. just look at the repetition of variants on freedom in the first sentences of most of the paragraphs. fucking ahabs.

pt. 46

interesting angles on recent themes from around the internet and the greater world



why does the mind dream of someday capturing its own dreams?

google, facebook, identity, names, power, control

there is so much in the power of the name and we do not often acknowledge how little there is to it because we are still not tuned into the subconscious superstitions that drive us. i should try and write about them.

pt. 45

my friend celina from the internet and a few other places back on earth. the is the queen of psych so she moved from texas to scotland, where a queen can get her proper respect.

relevant thread at the public discussion forums at www.cormacmccarthy.com discussing mindless violence vs. the violence of the mind, where the name might be considered an act of the violence of the mind, but the breakdown of the identity system seems like mindless violence

there is some error here that is hard to account for and i think it's funny just because of the themes in the material recently discussed.