Tag Archives: power

ON LABEL SLAPPING

what does it mean to be a ‘holocaust denier’? let me answer this really funny question someone put forward on facebook the other day in the mature and level-headed, soft-spoken way that I imagine a rabbi would:

i’ll open my answer move in the unfailing socrates way. what do they / you mean by ‘holocaust’? what do you / they mean by ‘denier’?

holocaust means ‘burning a sacrificial animal alive’, according to traditional scripture, doesn’t it, so if this term is used in connection with the deportation of people into forced labour camps, whether by the hundreds of thousands or by the millions, and the subsequent execution of these victims (whether all, most or some of them) then I can’t see what ‘holocaust’ has anything to do with the topic. the term with its biblical overtone from what I understand would make more sense applied to the things to come for ‘herded’ mankind, (or for the duped and ‘scapegoted’ mankind at least), things that the bible describes as ‘consumed by eternal fire at the end of days’. they walk in there alive and ‘willingly’.

so as far as i’m concerned, the term used in public at the time of the catastrophy of hoarding off ‘unwanted citizens’ (intellectuals, pagans, astrologers, jews, gypsies, upright thinkers, system critics, etc) of hitler’s fascist brownshirted mickey-mouse regime into soviet style ‘gulags’ (although they were apparently somewhat less evil than the soviet ones) was the also biblical term ‘pogrom’. pogrom means genocide, doesn’t it?

now genocide, as the scholar knows, is the necessary ancient method of attaining power for the future to come according to thousands of years old lawbooks for power (sun tsun, …). no emotions come into play here. it’s simply a law that was followed through in history each and every time. if you want to change the rules, change the game, and bring your subjects over to your side, you have to kill everyone connected to the truth of passed-down tradition, everyone who knows what you’re really up to. everyone who could possibly get in your way. there’ve been book burnings of all available traditional scholarship and death penalty on ownership of these material thosands of years ago in china. the law goes so far as to no only kill all ‘dissidents’ but all of their family too and everyone who ever listened or sympathized to those ‘dangerous’ views. stalin was pretty harsh killing all of his former friends as soon as he came to power. mao was probably the most ardent power player of all, though, killing 100 million of his own people during peace times, only to come to power and then changed official history and killed the remaining rest of cultural heritage in order to thoroughly stay there. in this light, the hitler geezer was probably puny. the story goes round that the soviet intelligentsia was deported to gulags, then fed to the pigs and the pigs were then brought back to the ‘believing followers’ who feasted on them. who was behind the soviet revolution and then the ddr and ussr government lurking as shadows? you do your homework. it’s certainly not safe to speak about this in the world that we live now.

yet despite all of this, and regardless of fema concentration / deportation camps built all over america and secret underground cities and government compounds dug everywhere in the world – has any regime in history ever resorted to anything as evil as live organ harvesting? romans were brutally slaughtering both christians and jews, and obviously all other ‘dissidents’ or simply sympathizers and families of the last murdered rulers – and the follow-up empire of roman-catholics certainly let their imaginations run wild in their witch hunts and torture chambers, but all their utterly depraved imaginations never took such dark turns as to cut out organs of healthy falun gong practitioners while they’re still alive and plant them into the pious party member next door whose crooked belief was certainly the main reasons to make his body sick in the first place …

thought you have seen the face of the ‘devil’?

—

now as to ‘denial’. some bank guy once told me, “all the people who max out their credit cards simply live in denial”. so for me, the word denial actually can be equalled to ignorance. and ignorance, what is ignorance? maybe the opposite / dialectic meaning of the word sheds light. the more or less opposite meaning of the word, I think, is ‘truth seeker’, or in other words the pursuer of knowledge that would allow them to transcend their being to a better and more enobled plane within the universe.

which brings us to the topic of what dictatorships really and truly want. they want to call the shots over mortal man, rather than they themselves deciding about what’s good and bad for their moral, spiritual and cohabital improval of their experienced ‘reality’. that’s why the first thing to make sure is to insert themselves into our belief systems and repackage / re-brand our understanding of ‘nature’. everyone who holds true ancient knowledge about history, nature and the cosmos must be eliminated first when attaining power (and if they’re really dead serious about it – everything associated with these ‘security threats’), in order to build up a construct of lies to reshape their envisaged warped future. and this is the main reason, from what I can see, why the jews have repeatedly been persecuted by ‘political bastards’ (as were likewise all other cultivators who didn’t bend over for their new preposterous wannabe masters, like wiccas, shamans, elders, philosophers, etc). that some of them were engaged in weird black magical practices and therefore expelled from certain countries was just another factor (a factor of ‘protection’ within a country that always still remained in force amidst a balance of goodness and evil) but the main factor, in my view, was that the ‘officially’ rolled-out belief structure of most governments was (from behind and underneath, so to speak) undermined by their unwavering faith in tradition and scripture. so-labelled ‘witches’ in the so-labelled ‘dark ages’ (and all the elders and priesthoods of any conquered land) were equally wise men and women who simply didn’t ‘buy the shit’ (official version of ‘reality’). maybe some of them did kiss the devil’s arse. but i’m positive the majority of them didn’t. all people with true knowledge of nature and any of the archivers of true tradition were thus inevitably at the forefront of segregation, scapegoating and persecution – and to be put to death via genocidal raids and ventures.

so to make it clear here and henceforth. I sympathize with the jews and deeply respect them for the main reason that they only regard the lord of heaven as their true master. no other worldly master will ever be able to tell them what they should ultimately be thinking and doing with their lives …

if all men and women would be that way, politics would disappear like a ridiculous miracle but what instead would come to the fore, is the dark reality of the ‘struggle for relevance’ between each and every person, something that the gods who arranged all of our history up to this very point certainly can only laugh about and that opens up an entirely new paradigm of reality that equally holds within the potential danger of complete destruction.

yet this time, at this turn of historically arranged reality-unfoldment, the destruction is entirely self-inflicted. the grand universal law of free will and fundamental freedom of belief has never been tampered with by any however malevolent and powerful divine entity. if on a scientific multidinensional level, everyone creates their very own reality (or little universe), then where do you go, if what you create for yourself is not in tune with the law that is actually governing the unfathomable intricacies of a universe around (above and below) you – not to mention the possibility of a ‘new unverse’ / new universal aeon? doesn’t free will only mean that while enmeshed and ensnared by worldy delusion and chaos, only what your heart, ultimately and fundamentally, truly desires really matters in the end? really has a ‘core existential’ impact?

—

so then, if we are truly free to choose what we truly want within a divine cosmic framework, what does it mean to be doing ‘the right thing’?

well, i’d humbly suggest – all you experts and scholars and people of renown who’ve lost their innocence and humility through climbing the worldy ladder: maybe you should acknowledge, rather sooner than later, that you’ve been outwitted by forces, also human forces, that are simply smarter than you. the only thing is that they remained shrouded in darkness, not craving the limelight of worldy renown and attention, and thus will not have revealed this to you.

the checkerboard of the chess game is the symbolic ground that the masons walk on. mastering the middle path between blackness and whiteness is a challenge that the daoists conceptualise with their famous ‘yin-yang’ symbol / logos.

one chess expert once explained to me that white, having the advantage of the first move, is always the winner – unless it makes some sort of ‘mistake’ (position in relation to material). that’s why the real pros need to play tournaments, constantly changing their sides to determine who’s the stronger.

it would be a funny thing, wouldn’t it, if one were to play a game and let black do their opening move first.

I can’t help but wonder what the world would be like in such case :)

london, spring 2019

NO HOME

[ about notions of home, real and imagined ]

this has been written for a christmas open mike session at crisis skylight, a place in london that offers ‘help’ for people without a ‘proper’ home. what’s happening there is basically courses, lots and lots and of them, which you’d think is a good thing. on one hand it is. but if you turn up as someone like oneself, who could basically teach at least five of those courses to a higher standard (drawing, art, writing, psychology, mindfulness, qigong, piano, etc.), then all they can do is turn around and persecute the persecuted. i’ve been thus put in a position of segregation within the ‘shelter’. i’m not killed, but ignored, which is the professional way to deal with ‘unwanted elements’ these days, to use a nazi lingo for illustration purposes …

anyway. i’ve managed to get on the list of acts after lots of hassle. and i’ve managed to get on stage after lots of hassle and clowns guffawing to whittle precious time away. then i read, saying, i don’t usually do readings anymore and i don’t usually write essays anymore. in this light, this is for you. appreciate or don’t, it doesn’t make a difference. we’ve long long passed this stage as a writer :)

obviously, exactly when the juicier bits started to happen “… then anyone could just walk into your local council, open a suitcase with banknotes and say, “listen, mate, here’s a deal for you. Look at what you could do around here with all of this. Our guys bring in state-of-the-art knowledge and technology //// !!! ///”, i got cut off by management on grounds that i take too much time. the clown in charge confirmed and ushered the next set of clowns in. and i said, “it’s alright to silence me. i’m very used to it. but it is your time that is running out, not mine.” and i left the farce behind. maybe some of the gathered audience understood what’s going on and that’s what my performance was all about.

over and out.

I

It used to be said that the home is where the hearth is. It was, for the most part of human history, the centre of living, the always welcoming source of food, warmth and communication. Entire Greek cities used to be centered around the original fireplace laid down by their respective founders. It had to be kept burning as the flickering symbol of a flourishing society for as long as the city that grew around it existed.
But things progressed, obviously, and after many decades of petty struggles and questionable achievements, as the new centre of home has now established itself a mighty piece of flashy machinery. The television. So much for the ‘evolution’ of mankind.
Yet how is it that increasingly less of us even have a home, let alone hearth or television? Why do we face being outcast and tumbling? Why are we increasingly lacking our most deep-rooted needs? Aren’t even dogs better off, these days?
Certainly, having no home is the main reason why we’re gathering here today, around this substitute hearth of an open mike session, which for the time being impresses on us the archaic warmth of group safety and belonging comfort. A communal social hearth such as this, including the catered neat choice between veggie and meat burgers, can at least temporarily give us the illusion that we’re still part of the human race. But be careful. Don’t think too much. Take your medication. Be happy. You’re all so great. Poor buggers. Thank god, I’ve still got my job. “It’s a jungle out there” (original quote from a food-serving Barclay bank volunteer). A business plan tailored for people ‘in need’ that is based on fashionable, board-room-savvy condescension. No one tells you the truth. The show must go on. Something to laugh about. Bread and games. Let them continue. A marvellous choice of learning opportunities. Reality is just too complex. Where to begin?

II

Well, reality is indeed complex. Why the fuck have we run out of homes, for Christ’s sake? There are many layers of answers, way too many to spell them all out here in a few passing words. But let’s just hint that Christ has indeed something to do with it. Or better, the Barabbas bunch of gangsters. And – the proverbial ‘fallen state’ of Woman. Buried in matter. Adam’s first wive. Zeus’ shunned wive. Hearth keeper. Life Giver. Coming Home. Womb. Bridal chamber. Holy of Holies. Alchemy. Helpmeet.
But of course, on the concrete asphalt level, ‘religion’ has nothing to do with it. So who’s to blame? Well, we’ve all come to know meanwhile about ‘new world order’ and a global imprisonment into the invisible framework of world government. Orchestrated from above the even topmost echelons of international governments – Masonic lodges and their executive bodies of secret services, banks and corporations – the fulfillment of ancient prophecies was a task that most kings and emperors readily subscribed to. Little did they seem to know (or at least didn’t want to) that whenever humans entertain certain plans, on another layer of reality there are always higher plans within plans at work, and deception always lies within deception, so that any human endeavour inevitably faces the same insight that Napoleon is said to have had after being shattered, “the best laid out plans of men and mice often tend to go awry.” Who knows who you are really sleeping with? Is there anybody you can truly trust? Can anybody trust their own selves even? Why bother carving “Know Thyself” into the frontispiece door-beam of Delphi’s oracle?
Invisible and for the most part unrecorded deceptions or seductions were actually far more significant for the writing of human history than otherwise visible and readily recorded wars or disasters. Sex, Concubines, bedspring whispers, clandestine promises and outright temptations. Back-stabbing, jealousy, malice? What about money? Britain was apparently far more successful in ‘colonising’ the world than the Dutch, French, Portuguese and Spanish together, because Henry VIII (when he wasn’t too busy with all his six wives), decided to simply set up shops, not only fortresses, wherever his Britain deforesting fleet ventured – ie, it is far more efficient (or ‘professional’ to use a modern term) to conquer with trade, not with armour. Whether friend or foe, it doesn’t make any difference. Powers’R’Us, either way.
So, historically, any king needed to be careful. Attachment to money has always been considered to be an enormous problem in spiritual-philosphical circles. Do you know, did any Camel ever make it through the needle-hole, in the end? In ancient Greek democracy, involvement with money was an insurmountable obstacle to being allowed any political voice. They even went so far as to use forced exile for anybody with ‘too much money’ or who leveraged their money in such a way that was antithetical to the commonly shared sense of human, dignified living.
A successful constitution of any country meant that money needed to be kept ‘in check’. It had to be issued, monitored and spent, whether at home or abroad, with respect, virtue and wisdom.

III

Thus, we’re returning to the asphaltic core of our present home problem. If money is the only bottom line within a chilly ‘evolutionary existence’ (the whole ‘survival of the fittest’ crap), then anyone could just walk into your local council, open a suitcase with banknotes and say, “listen, mate, here’s a deal for you. Look at what you could do around here with all of this. Our guys bring in state-of-the-art knowledge and technology, and you and your mates never have to worry about money again. Plus – all your people can be made happy overnight – you know what I mean? What more do you want? Employment opportunities and lots of changes everywhere. There’ll be massive changes even, transforming not only lives but entire communities. There’ll be a buzzing climate of progress everywhere. And when we’re through with this, you’re not at all the same poor, insignificant borough, county, nation or state anymore, but you’re happening. You’re truly leaving your mark. History will never forget you. You’re in the ‘book’, man.”
Naturally, you won’t tell them that once your infrastructure is set in place you’re running the whole bloody circus, monopoly style, controlling all shots and markets, and it is any integrity that might’ve been still there in your town or borrow, that’s now become history. Essentially, if you take the money, the majority of your people will be finished. Everyone with a brain and any halfway decent spiritual-philosphical education knows this. But here’s the catch: if you say no, you’ll be dead, either real or at least career-wise, and somebody else will be chosen instead. If Coca-Cola can’t swallow your new promising drinks brand, the same batch of money will stomp you into total invisibility. In other words, whatever your choice, whether you take the money or say no to it, it’ll always work for those ‘powers’. So the outcome is simply inevitable. Sounds inconceivable?
Yet this is exactly what has happened. It happened all around the globe, in fact, sometimes more openly, sometimes more covertly. More openly, economic hit men hired by the CIA and the World Bank have already blown their whistles, claiming what they did should certainly be illegal but, sadly, is not. Simply put, the world does not belong to the ‘people’ anymore, or, rather anything ‘human’. It belongs to something else, instead. There’s a machine in charge whose gears are continuously turning.

IV

Let’s wrap this up with a few exemplary words: If you still own a virginal farmland, while all your neighbours have already evolved their businesses through irreversible subscription to genetically sturdied crop, it is not the only thing discomforting that your closest neighbours’ soils can never be made pure again. If the wind blew one of their seeds onto your land, the company owning the rights for that dodgy crop can actually sue you. Thus disown you from your own land ‘just because’. Now that’s some catch-phrase of ‘disenfranchising’ for you.
But hang on, the comical farce goes on and on, though. Back in the Thatcher / Reagan days, they made-up the term ‘Neo-Liberalism’ which in fact meant taking all possessions from you, the ‘people’ – amenities like gas, electricity, transport and water – and deliver them into the hands of their greedy corporate mates. They thought anything with the word ‘liberal’ would go down well with a detested, liberty-craving populace.
And the catch phrase ‘emerging markets’ de-facto meant to rape all third-world countries by putting alien shit in place and suck them dry as quickly and phenomenally as possible. It’s just great. Lots and lots of investment opportunities for anybody who’s got the cash. Look, people, something emerging. Pop, Pop, and here, look, some more. And all so noble sounding. Pension and hedge funds. Progress everywhere. That’s what the old pensioner farts back home have been asking for, isn’t it? We’re just doing our job, what’s wrong with that? Just snort the coke, mate. Get a life, loser. Long-legged hookers soaking bean-counting digits at arm’s length.
Curtains up. Homelessness London, Christmas 2015: Now that the emergence-job’s finished and third-world nations are pretty much done for, of course, anything on this planet that might still be left emerging, is hitting home now. Homeless-littered America has already done that a while ago. So it’s now Europe’s turn to proffer some of the things left ‘emerging’. Groundwork has been laid most satisfactorily. Mega-cities and systematic centralisation are simply a great base for no-risk investments. After all, the more people who need them, the more promising are the profit-margins for all those so-called ‘homes’ or ‘offices’. Not to worry about old laws of supply and demand anymore, since no one needs to live there anyway. The capital has bypassed all purpose and reason. The capital is henceforth and forever-and-ever rated thousands of times higher than anyone who is merely human.

V

What else is there left to do other than laugh about the madness of man and their self-righteous and stiff-necked ways? “Do I take pleasure in the death of the wicked? Rather, am I not pleased when they turn from their ways and live?”, recites Ezekiel. So it’s not that we haven’t been warned, is it?
But let’s again not get into religion. It really doesn’t go down well, these days, and besides, we certainly feel that praying isn’t enough anymore. Let’s remain instead crystal-clear and aboveboard scientific. Free Masons, like most secret societies, all share a belief in what they call ‘the Tradition’. What they mean by that is lost knowledge that had existed before the flood. The treasuring, researching and passing on of such knowledge is called ‘Gnosticism’. In the past it was simply unthinkable to be an artist or writer if you weren’t initiated into the Gnosis. It should be clear by now, even without being religious, that this place is most definitely not run through big-bang-anarchic Chaos. Not only behind every religion, but also behind every major corporation, secret service and bank, there are always kind-of Gnostics at work. What is happening right here and now, as well as everything else that might be happening, including ‘emerging’ terrorist plots, is all being monitored and recorded. Washington computers are churning microchipped gears overtime. Since we ourselves are also ‘cultivating’, treading the path of Great Dao, Masons do of course at the very least respect us, if not openly acknowledge. What they detest are the ‘we are we’, or the Barabbas / Cain crowd.
Everyone knows that Buddhas don’t punish people. A Buddha’s starting points is always compassion. There might’ve been the odd occasion where Artemis / Diana shoots one of her arrows straight through the heart of one rotten-to-the-core mortal. Zeus smashed his flash only towards some fellow Gods on rare occasions. To most of us, it seems clear that the way of heaven to deal with ‘bad’ people works somewhat different:
“Oh my god, how great you are. Here, have some more credit.” It’s really hard to turn back once you’re dead-set on a road to ruin. This tells us that individuals are not destroyed but rather led down, further and further, towards the sinister path of complete self-destruction. For an entire populace, they might find themselves, due to continued denial and ignorance, boxed-in to the point of having no room left at all to navigate any further. They might find themselves, through their own choosing and doing, facing a black hole ‘at the end of it’. And that, also, is heavenly annihilation, rather than having anything to do with ‘evolution’.
In Daoist thought it’s really hard to free oneself, or rise up, from a cosmic tide that is sheer enormous. It’s already hard enough to even recognize that you’re trapped in a waning tide when everyone near you is also trapped in the same decaying tide. In the same Daoist view, sand running through an hourglass can be taken as a beautiful, non-digital example of what modern quantum physics refers to as a time-space or space-time. Karmic debts, deviations from the Dao, quite clearly accumulate. Pay back later, pay more – inn’it? It appears to be a clean-cut law and universal principle.

VI

Putting things back in perspective again. Home and cultivation. Reality and polite-ics. Cultivators aren’t afraid of hardships, of course. Yet if there’s anything left for a humanity to speak of, it there’s any remotely human argument, the pre-condition for any human living and its full scope of human expression within all our social engagements, it is of course, to have a home. Also Aristotle, 2300 years ago, felt that the core cell of any prosperous kingdom is a healthy household or family.
Standing here, rootless, lonesome and lost, holding on to the somewhat cold, not all-too welcoming hearth of a substitute group ‘family’, things have fallen apart beyond redemption, haven’t they? For truth and integrity, there is simply no Ersatz. Rather than gracing with talent and beauty her own kingdom and chosen King – why has Woman been working for somebody else instead all this time, metaphorically speaking? Well, here we go, another full circle. So what is it, really, that ultimately constitutes home? What is a womb? What is a cave? What does it all mean – castle, palace or mansion? What about bathroom? Living-room? Bedroom? For us homeless, all of these have become merely dreams and fancy bubbles. Yet are we not, by having faced rock-bottom, having seen the asphaltic core truth of it, the actual ‘real people’ in this crazy world?
Within the Unfathomable, it is certainly not too late for miracles to happen. Everyone is still taking their true stance right now, openly and sincerely, while not capable of seeing the actual fabric of the cosmos with their very own eyes. As long as this present realm is still under the ‘spell of delusion’, as Buddhist thought puts it, there is still time to wake up and perhaps glimpse our true homes, homes that surely are in other realms, better realms, more pure and holy. And who knows, in this way, by glimpsing them, we can successfully create a decent dwelling place, at least for the time being, in this, however transitory, dimension as well? ‘Own’ a lovely household-family? Reclaim our birth-right, a place of welcome to lay down our head with human dignity?
It is doubtful, though, whether we’ll ever see anything about any of this on telly.
Therefore – do not believe the hype. In fact, don’t even touch it.

Yours truly,
draft magazine

London, Christmas 2015

SALON KITTY

[a contemplative review. appeared in FLUX magazine 65: ‘sex, lifestyle, death’]

SERIOUS FREAK SEX

 

THIS IS A serious movie. Very serious. Quite sad, in a way, that it has somehow ended up in the ‘porn’ pigeonhole, or even in the so hysterically called ‘exploitation’ niche (as if the rest of the movie industry were in fact based on altruism :). This complete misconception certainly stems from the nerve it hits, which with its dark, shocking cocktail of power and sex reverberates deeply in our collective psyche, so that people could easily feel intimidated, even ashamed of themselves, for possibly opening up to it – perhaps even liking it – and they therefore have to resort to scapegoating it instead. Another reason could be its blatant political impact, its shrill post-68 outcry of anger against a continuously repressive environment, which might have been simply ‘too much’ for many political corners and therefore reason enough to belittle and suppress it.

In any case, for those who haven’t seen the film, briefly the plot: In a 1936 Berlin, the Nazis have the splendid idea to set up a high-class brothel, in order to spy on its clients and gather all sorts of embarrassing information about them. The idea involves not to use professional hookers and then train them in ‘intelligence’ but instead to opt for girls, as suggested by ‘himself’, the Fuhrer, who display an unshakeable faith in national socialist ideology – and then train them in both, servicing sex and sucking off vital political clues. So far, all of this actually happened. Brass then wrote a story of true love in-between where one of the girls, Margherita, falls for a German pilot and he really falls for her, too. But he’s subsequently being annihilated by the Nazis after telling his lover about his decision to surrender to truth instead of killing another bunch of people for a mere political lie. This is all centred around the strangely elevated power freak Wallenberg who’s in charge of setting up the whole thing. Within his underlying, secret belief not in ideology at all but purely in power, he also feels that he can find love through blackmail and sexual enslavement. In the end, as it is usually the case with power, the sword has always got two sides and it is only a matter of time until it eventually turns against him.

With Salon Kitty Tinto Brass unfolds an eerie tale of messed-up and messing-up people, stuck in their manmade human tragedies, as they play along ‘games’ related to power, in a world of blind belief, hatred and fear. The naked human, whether physical or psychological, is the canvas upon which the wickedness and perversion of the political agenda unfolds. The seamless interweaving of cabaret songs, seedy boudoirs, Nazi stuff, true love and ‘fucked-up’, explicit sex scenes is absolutely priceless. As a director, Brass’ psychological insights and attention to emotional details are staggering and not many in the industry can claim to see equally far – or deep for that matter (except perhaps someone like Todd Solondz with Happiness, Palindromes and Storytelling or Julia Davis with her powerful British comedy series Human Remains and Nighty Night).

FRAMEWORK FOR FUCKING

THE MOST FRIGHTENING aspect of Salon Kitty is its depiction of how sex can be ‘institutionalised’ so bloody easily, in order to meet any whatsoever surreal political ends. If it hasn’t already been before, in a movie like this it becomes perfectly clear again that romantic / sexual love is the ultimate system-subversive trait of us humans and therefore has to be carefully kept in check. Sex / love can be ‘allowed’ or ‘sanctioned’ only within a particular framework for fucking which political (slash religious) systems hand down to its people. Of course, somewhere down the line, love in itself is such a deep-rooted force that it always has to be at least insinuated as an incentive to carry on with our lives. Like winning the lottery, it is the dream-come-true for those of us who’re really ‘lucky’ in life, whilst in reality it hasn’t got much to do with luck at all, but mainly emotional health, confidence and maturity. But even health and maturity, in a screwed-up, viciously grinding-away system, does not guarantee fulfilment of such an actually modest human need. You could easily end up on a meat hook instead (like Margherita’s lover) because your jealous comrades scapegoat you for their own political and therefore personal failure. Or quite literally as a ‘hooker’, a neurotic repetitor, if you erratically attempt to escape the world of your brainwashed parents. Since whether you do what they tell you or just the complete opposite doesn’t make much difference in terms of the psycho-mechanical laws of destiny.

The scene where the women are being lined up in the huge Nazi gym, saluting naked with Heil Hitlers, before the SS guys are marched in to test their feasibility for providing uninhibited sexual favours, while the ‘authorities’ play some demented propaganda tunes on the grand Steinway, is easily one of the most startling I’ve ever seen. It is being closely followed by another one (censored for most of the movie’s history) where some of the girls undergo further testing in sterile, kafkaesque prison cells, having to please all sorts of ‘real freaks’ in order to show their blind determination to the political cause. Sometimes, having been born into a ‘liberate’ climate, the impact of blatant political force is quite easy to forget. And yet, even today, in a way we still are trapped in a world of sexual / emotional abuse – and that is exactly the deep nerve this movie is hitting. Only that today, instead of concentration camps, socialism / communism / dictatorship and brainwashing / propaganda, the abuse is being masqueraded as broken homes,capitalism / consumerism or one of the many other contemporary ways of abuse / prostitution for economic, corporate, personal, political, intellectual – or even religious ‘causes’.

But the most underlying message of Salon Kitty is how power, in the end, will always be corrupting people, why power is so attractive to already corrupted people in the first place – and above all, why it is so incredibly sad, for power-freaks having to resort to killing, breaking and raping in order to create the illusion that they are being loved by someone (or even by many, haha) – although they deep down bloody well know that this is not at all the case. Obviously, there is an element of power involved in any form of sexual attraction – taken, being taken et cetera – but the separation between sex and love, in other words the assertion of power to achieve intimacy with another person, is psychologically an irresolvable dilemma. Perversion, or better ‘deterioration from core humanity’ (for when it comes to sex itself, according to Brass, there is no such thing as perversion) is without a doubt the ugliest manifestation of our tragic human condition. Its mechanics compel that anything healthy and pure must be defiled and destroyed in order to keep the dream / madness alive, feed it with ever more blood and despair.

Perhaps therefore the movie for its time did go too far, and this is the reason, why after his hassle with trying to make Caligula work, Brass left any political messages completely aside in his later work, almost overnight, in order to put his attention entirely on sex itself with the production of real, honest Erotica in which he purposefully avoids “using sex as a metaphor for something else”. For such a talented person as Brass this must have been quite a radical step to take. But in another way also probably quite a reasonable one. Sexuality has just been repressed for too long throughout our history and keeping this repression alive is what provides some of the strongest hooks for any system built mainly on power. What is therefore needed, more than anything else before ‘real’ political awareness can happen, is plain simply sexual / emotional healing. And this is exactly what Tinto Brass’ later work offers. The permission to explore sexual / emotional self-expression for those of us who’re kind of stuck in boring or otherwise institutionalised love lives. Once we are free to open up fully to the right person, at the right time, without getting hurt or abused or otherwise ‘fucked’, we can still dig out another movie milestone from the dusty archive, Michelangelo Antonioni’s incredible Zabriskie Point (which is, interestingly enough for such a cinematographic masterpiece, very difficult to get hold of at the time of writing) and proceed with matters of personal political responsibility from there.


 

London, April 2008
© 2008, all rights reserved


THE FUTURE OF POWER AND LOVE

[an early paper on new world control and the change of dynamics between the sexes]

 

 

INTRODUCTION

  

MOST OF THE time when we talk about the future, or envisage it on hardcopy and paperback, we mainly look at the visible changes, at what happens tangibly in the world around us. will it be closer to the collective dream of a bright, sun kissed UTOPIA or – the prediction of choice – rather be inclined towards a somewhat darker, DYSTOPIAN reality? either way, hardly anyone looks at the invisible changes which are taking place within the individual and the collective psyche of western, urban, post-sex-and-the-city-watching, singlehousehold-celebrating women and men. it is those below-the-surface changes which this paper wants to focus on first before it moves on to discuss the more obvious visible changes thereafter. it is going to have a look at the present stage of the primordial battle between the sexes from the viewpoint of both molecular biology and systemic psychology and will then attempt to predict where it could all go. only after a proclaimed paradigm-shift have we got a reasonable chance to understand those visible, obvious changes which are currently taking place around us. it will have fundamental implications on how we perceive ourselves as human beings in the future, on what it means to us personally and collectively, to be born into this universe and into the sex we’re genetically pre-programmed with – and ultimately what human relations and emotional interactions really mean to us. this paradigm-shift will affect the way how we live our everyday life in western civilisation more than any technological framework which as it presently seems will attempt to control and record our every movement and thought in the future. instead of submitting to a life of slavery and despair we will learn to detach and take for granted that there is no short-cut or quick-fix in this life, no lottery win or dream partner, to achieve an utterly subjective concept of HAPPINESS and BEAUTY. and that after all, personal growth and the unfoldment of our core potential is all we can strive for in a world where everyone is stuck in their very own psychological / karmic prison. it will be clear to each and every one of us that the universe presents itself in all its futility on a day-today basis and we’re continuously challenged to appreciate its beauty throughout the course of our lifetime – despite the incomprehensibly dark feeling that perhaps after all, perhaps within nature itself, in the midst of our dreams about peace, freedom and love, it might as well be all about power and we’re asked to find out where we stand on this and then go ahead and deal with it, be political, take responsibility.

I – THE INVISIBLE CHANGES

 

THE BOTTOM LINE of contemporary SYSTEMIC PSYCHOLOGY is that on the most visible layer of human experience we’re all monkeys with passports and bank-accounts trying to patronise each other into submission. the individual starting or stand point of the females and the males, hereby, differ completely, so that dependent on the genetic code we carry inside, we’ll have to familiarise ourselves with quite a specific set of rules in order to be able to compete in such an unsettling ‘reality’. the major key to successfully climbing the pecking order is not so much violence but sexual attraction. the females would try and seduce the coolest and sexiest male within any given system while the males would try and be seduced by as many sexy and cool females as possible.

looking at the same situation through the eyes of MOLECULAR BIOLOGY, we’d find ourselves trapped in an even deeper and darker scenario. there’s a gene called SRY sitting on the male Y-chromosome whose task it is to make itself as seductive as possible by ‘running away and hiding’. it’s the fastest evolving gene of all, apparently. the opposite gene, named DAX, sitting on the female X-chromosome, attempts to attach itself to this attraction and as soon as it manages, would try to eradicate this genetic advantage. this seems, as we presently see it, to be the main ‘game setup’ of ‘human evolution’ – at least on the ‘monkey plane’. the implications of acknowledging such information as the actual building blocks of our societal structure are obviously numerous and vast.

we become thus brutally aware that we’re all totally alone in this world and pretty much openly at war with everyone else – without actually wanting to be. the imminent question arises, what does friendship, career, relationship and success really mean to us, personally? in the midst of the struggle to be the ‘best’, most of us would never let go of the mysterious subterranean urge to be nice and kind to each other. where does it come from? how can it work? we’re thus continuously being challenged to create structures throughout our lives which are solid and strong while they still allow us to relate to others without jealousy, fear or dependency. we eventually discover that only by being free from any emotional hang-ups can we affiliate with other people respectfully and affectionately and therefore build lasting, secure bonds between us, based firmly on trust.

but until then there’s still a long way to go. at present, most of us interact with each other on a ‘neurotic’ default level, thus perpetuating a CYCLE OF ABUSE. we’ve all been ‘damaged’, down the line, which means that while we were growing up, someone forcefully overstepped our extremely fragile boundaries and ‘broke’ us. we then either react submissive regarding to those injured character traits (we’re repressed) or we begin to stand up against it and find in turn other repressed victims to patronise – we’ve become repressors ourselves (compensating stage of the cycle). either way, we’re not capable of confidently claiming the respect we deserve from other people around us while we’re also not ready to give them their dues in return. we don’t self-assert ourselves successfully enough to receive nice, healthy feedback from nice, healthy people around us. the abusive cycle is essentially creating a prison we feel we’re trapped in forever. it becomes increasingly clear, the older we get (unless we’re losing the plot beforehand :), that the only way to escape it, is through INTERNAL EMOTIONAL HEALING.

II – THE VISIBLE CHANGES

 

IN THE OUTSIDE world, meanwhile, the grip of THE SYSTEM is becoming tighter and tighter as we speak. on the agenda is an infiltration of THE PRIVATE, enforced with a surplus of knowledge and technological superpower. politics will start and end here, by evaluating the threshold on how far we really want THE SYSTEM to penetrate and control our PRIVATE LIVES.

THE RIGHT will thereby argue that we have not to worry about it, because THE SYSTEM, by firmly taking control of what is happening within the realm of its borders, will provide us with the security we’re craving for in a world where we can’t even trust our own neighbours. it’s just so much easier to get on with emotionally deadening family life as long as there are scapegoats next door to blame for the misery of this unsettling and loveless existence.

THE LEFT, on the other side, will claim that we don’t actually need any additional structures, designed to further regulate us private citizens. cctv-monitored cities, passports, bank accounts and national insurance numbers are already enough information we’re prepared to give away, for the system to affect our day-to-day lives. we want to be in charge of our destiny as much as possible ourselves. and if we then also step a bit more onto the GREEN side of the political spectrum, we want it to even pay for the damage been done to us already. we’d feel that therapy has got to be one of the basic needs democracy has to cater for – and it better be a good one, either.

at present, there’s still room for speculation about how far the next rollout of power will carve into the private sphere. will there be compulsory identity cards issued at birth or as soon as we renew our passports? will they be also storing an imprint of our DNA? perhaps it’d be quite handy when finally medicine has come up with proper stem-cell organ reproduction? or would it just serve the evil interests of sleazy insurance corporations, hooked-up 24/7 to the main government computer? shall there be a centralised database, storing each and every move we make, book we buy, person we love, touch, talk to? are we actually being informed as to what extent those plans have been put in place already? at the moment in the UK, journalists’ emails circulating amongst intellectuals are the only reliable source of information the public is getting concerning the actual scope of those about-to-be-signed-off ID-cards.

apparently the current proposal will see cards with an iris-scan, a photograph and our fingerprints stored on and they will be connected to a centralised database, inconspicuously called the NIR, for ‘national identity register’. this database will hold records about every citizen and will have unlimited spaces for whatever further details of our lives to be added, without the need for a further act of parliament. we will be able to swipe them through card-reading terminals, pretty much like the credit-cards we’re already using, where they can be checked against the carrier in realtime. if we buy alcohol or cigarettes or prescription drugs, shopkeepers will be obliged by law to verify our age / eligibility by giving our cards a good swipe. if we apply for a loan, a driving license, a mobile phone, an internet connection, we’ll have to hand over our cards again. on top of this, all data collected about us can be linked to any other private card-issuing company-computer which on its own is allthe-while busy gathering even more vital information about us, like supermarket loyalty-cards already do, for instance.

however and whenever all those far-reaching plans will actually be put in place, the final scenario is pretty obvious. we’re all going to be utterly tracked and screened by THE SYSTEM, and it’ll be only a matter of time, until these unimaginable powers shift enough towards THE RIGHT, for our destiny of living a life in blatant, unmasqueraded slavery to become an obvious reality. how much we’ll by then be able to retain some last sense of freedom will depend largely on how well we’ve been able to take all our invisible, psychological changes on board, in the meantime.

III – THE CONFLICT

 

A LOT OF the issues raised in PART I have already become noticeable in western mega-cities like london and new york. in a world where women have finally become autonomous – economically as well as emotionally – getting laid as a man by abusing your power will increasingly not work anymore. within this new paradigm (if not, in a way, always), women are now calling the shots. if they decide to sleep with a man, they essentially ‘buy into’ this person, take him ‘on board’ of a new breed of establishment (a female one, for a change). he’s then ‘loved’, he’s basically INSIDE THE SYSTEM. he’s got a fair chance to reproduce and therefore, at least genetically, ‘live on’. if the women, on the other hand, reject him, they’re throwing him back ‘outside’, where he’ll stay put and improve his seductive advantage, until eventually some other woman comes along who’d find herself attracted. this new empowerment of women is going to be a massive responsibility and they’ll therefore have to thoroughly learn how to deal with it, preferrably from early childhood. the type of men they choose as their sexual partners exclusively defines which genetic traits are going to make it into the future. and since they’ll also spend time with their men, apart from mating, they’ll also happen to merge with some of their experiences and judgements. they therefore not only genetically, but also politically, are discerning a certain course the future is about to take.

PUSSY IS therefore quite clearly POLITICAL.

in terms of the primordial power struggle between the sexes, the sheets will be onceand-for-all balanced. women have now the blatant power of CHOICE whilst men have in turn the power to BE CHOSEN. this adds up to ZERO, baby. no power games at all in any sexual transactions – only love, the pure language of the heart. sounds quite amazing. the future reality for both of us then, men and women, might therefore be that a few men will have to ‘serve’ several women (whatever that means in regards to the actual ACT of love :), while many men might be alone, though. (in a way, this is something that has always been going on, below the ‘visible surface’ of marriage). on the other hand, a few women might have to share their men also with other women – basically creating harems where women would be in charge. such outcome would blow apart big-time the somewhat childish hollywodian / paulinean idea of husband-and-wife-cells, compulsively churning out new children. but if the concept of family doesn’t work anymore, what will replace it? perhaps the hippies were right and we’ll live in big communes together, raising our kids through shared part-time motherhoods (fatherhoods?).

in terms of the system, perhaps through being online, through ‘realising’ our lives across the world wide web, so to speak, we already live in such communal villages. perhaps due to a newfound netiquette, a climate in which we confidently display our intimate secrets to other open-minded people all over the world, everyone will know everything about everyone else – including the publicly available genetic code. perhaps then, secrets are simply not that important anymore. and perhaps the power derived from knowing and abusing those secrets will thus eventually cease.

but most importantly, the current framework of economic power and cultural brainwash will lose its prominent face completely. within the whole excitement about individual freedom and uninhibited self-expression, it will totally crumble, as media and advertising simply won’t work anymore. who cares about the pleasures obtained from buying that drink, that magazine or that wrinkle-cream when everyone’s acutely aware that this is just not the way how it works, is it? we’ll thoroughly know at that stage what power can makes out of people whose ego is so hopelessly crooked that they’re slithering down into the neurotic abyss. we simply won’t buy into any more propaganda – despite the fact that we’ll most certainly still be force-fed with it, by both cynical, doomed governments and sad, coke-snorting tycoons alike who simply refuse to give up until the bitter end.

IV – THE SOLUTION

 

EVENTUALLY, the discussion about our chances against ‘evil world dominating powers’ will become more and more futile, since any attempt to control other human beings straight away loses its grip as soon as everyone’s detached enough from purely mechanical day-to-day interactions of the ego. in the new cultural climate, it will not be possible anymore, for people to patronise and bully each other. even the threat to nuke them, to anyone with the slightest trace of a brain – even an evolved monkey-brain – becomes utterly ridiculous. let’s therefore hope that whichever political wind we subscribe to in the future, that in bed no-one won’t opt for the ignorants to be made love to and at the table there’ll always be room for discussions, however painful and devastating they might turn out for some of the participants.

for any healthy individual, at the end of the day, the only real goal in life will be to make this world a place which works for everyone. of course, it is clear that there’ll always be an unequal distribution of money and resources, simply due to the ‘random’ nature of the fractal we’re all tied to, forever extracting and expanding through time and space. we have to accept the fact that some of us have just been given more beauty, gifts, money or health and that there’s obviously no one to blame for this. we’re only CODE / MIND / CONSCIOUSNESS, floating freely through an UNFATHOMABLE TIME-SPACE UNIVERSE. perhaps there is something like a PROGRAMME at work, governing all, who is there to say? in a society where life is  about individual and collective growth, feelings like envy and jealousy lose simply their meaning. whether some database tracks and records us or not, we’re able to build-up genuine networks with other individuals, perhaps also tracked and recorded, based on trust, respect and attraction. it is only unadulterated and unconditional bonds that connect us, down to our spiritual core. we’re all stars now. but in the tragic frailty of life, we’re all failures at the same time, as our time keeps slowly expiring.

perhaps in the far future, we might come up with ways to extend our lives on an as yet unimaginable scale. on the other hand, dying seems to be inherent to anything living. our sun will eventually die. but then again, perhaps there is an AFTERLIFE? or perhaps, by the time our sun dies, we’ll have found a way to spread the WORD, LIFE, the CODE into yet another galaxy or dimension and thus live-on ‘forever’, wherever ‘infinity’ leads us. whether we’ll land in a neighbouring or a parallel REALM remains to be seen, though. we might not be able to use our swipe-cards to get through the alien customs but we’d probably still want to make love until the morning dawns again.

London, July 2006
© 2006, all rights reserved