Don’t Be Dull
November 7, 1988
AKS/News Item Gallery = jcap 1988-11-04 (0415)
Condensed AKS/News Items = See Below
Summary = See Below
Diagrams = None
Transcript = See Below
Summary
#415 Nov 7, 1988 – 1:21
Notes by TK
Kyroot to :04. (What is it to be always on time, always prepared—a Revolutionist?… no, dull!). The lives of ordinary people need a particular form of energy conversion known as “validation”; approval and reinforcement. It keeps men moving, collected and always talking. It is an internal reassurance that “all is well”. Everybody is constantly asking “How’m I doing?” The YC/yellow circuit can almost hear around the corner; can almost see that things are not as they are thought to be. Life uses man’s need for validation as a constant feedback mechanism to Life itself.
Validation/energy-conversion happens at the cellular level in humans; it results in health. The RR has no need of ordinary validation—attempts to be freed from all influences. Nobody can validate themselves, but everybody tries; that’s what Life requires of man for its purposes. Two unique (1) and singular (2) aspects of Revolutionary govt. (1) it overwhelms without destruction of the previous regime; reflected in the RR’s statement: “I’m right and so’s everyone else”. (2) it is ruled by a silent autocrat; an absolute ruler but silent—i .e., by one who can command by merely looking.
A Revolutionary family would absolutely follow the patriarch’s lead. The dumber a people, the more they need a god. Contemporary example: TV prophets delivering the “Word” to the ‘poor’ (dumb)–but what other choice of audience do they have? It is a validation of required dumbness.
And Kyroot Said…
A pause in the fighting may not mean much.
***
No one should have a hobby smaller than themself.
***
At the calm center of all tornados is a quiet, bloody dance
floor.
***
Nothing succeeds like success, except of course, talking
about it.
***
Only what he now possesses does a Man know to be true. All
else he simply dreams so. (Your present Honda is valid; your
hope for Corvette you imagine so.)
***
From those trees, over near where you’re standing, a voice
cried out, “You and your kind ARE the environment.”
***
All opinions agree in the dark.
***
Life is dumber in general than it is in particular. (Of
course, so’s everything else.)
***
Armistice day should always come on the weekend.
***
Only the imperfect expect perfection.
***
Those with an agenda will never hear the doorbell ring.
***
No gunfire is heard from the cemeteries.
***
A Man with a dictionary may still be a Man, but a pig with a
clarinet is another matter altogether.
***
How is it that to a Revolutionist a story can mean
something, not mean something, and then mean something all over
again? Just for instance: A guy who claimed to love his dog
about as much as a human can love anything always bought the same
kind of food for his canine companion, and when asked about his
insistence on this one particular brand of dog food, he said that
he purchased it because it “looked so yummy to him,” and the
questioner replied that such a reason was spurious inasmuch as a
Man’s sense of the delicious was not necessarily the same as that
of a dog, and even less so merely based on its visual appeal to
the human, no matter HOW much he may cherish his pet. And the
dog’s master replied, “May be, but you’ve missed the whole
point,” which he had, didn’t and then some. How is it, you
reckon, that to a Revolutionist, life can ofttimes mean
something, not mean something, and then mean something all over
again?
***
In the City, anyone who gives you personal advice of any
kind, doesn’t know what they’re talking about.
***
Only the rude ask, “Why?”
***
If it’s “yesterday’s news” it’s YESTERDAY’S NEWS.
***
In a Revolutionist’s world there is no such science as
Pathology.
***
As you skate through life, remember this: The last drop is
always either the best, the worst, or unnoticed.
***
Son finally asks his father, “Do you have any advice for
me?” Father sez, “No.” Son sez, “Good.”
***
Transcript
DON’T BE DULL
Copyright (c) Jan M. Cox, 1988
Document: 415, November 7, 1988
Let me ask you a question. Would you say that a person who is always on time, always prepared — always the same — has the makings of a revolutionist? Or would you say that such a predictable individual is just plain dull?
People ordinarily require a particular sort of energy conversion which I shall call “validation.” Validation is a kind of confirmation, a kind of approval — in a sense it gives force and cogency to what seems to be a person’s life. The necessity for validation helps do several things: it helps keep men in herds; it keeps them moving and above all, always talking. There is an extremely complex nexus in Life that keeps everything interacting, communicating and converting energy. Part of the fuel for such movement is the tacit reassurance that all is well. You can look at all of human conversation as a very necessary form of energy conversion in which the speakers are validating one another. (Do not compare my description of validation with psychological commentary, even though the two may sound similar. Look as a chemist or physicist would. Get down to the level of flows of electrons and not quite perfect conversions of energy.)
You can look internally and see conversation with yourself as an attempt to assure yourself that all is well. And on the external side, you can see the same thing going on. Ignore the things you have heard about people apparently feeding their egos, needing the support of family, lovers, and friends or feeling responsibility to say a kind word to a newcomer. Overlook the words, the whine-o-grams, the, “Are you alrights?” See not words, not psychological explanations, but raw energy moving. Life itself is checking that all goes well and man is Life’s informative apparatus.
People are continually driven to say, “Did I do alright?” “Am I going to be alright?” At City level no one has a choice, everyone has to feel that, “My individual life is important. These questions have to do with me personally.” But what if nothing has to do with you personally? What if Life simply could not see itself were it not for a multitude of perceptions — yours and everyone else’s?
Once, when I said that a revolutionist should not be keeping score, should not be making progress charts of his activities, many of you laughed. At the time you found it silly that someone should have to consult a scale to know if he’s losing weight. But that is about as funny (if you can see with a non-hostile sense of humor) as graphologists analyzing the handwriting of a famous dead person and the press crowing that the results agree with what was historically known about the person. Do you not see that there must be lags and gaps between what people say and what they do, between what they plan and what they actually accomplish? And such gaps are filled with scorecards, charts and bathroom scales. Seeking validation — from a bathroom scale or a person — is one of the necessary governors of energy conversion.
People are continually checking their own pulse, their own blood pressure, trying to look in their own eyes, asking, “Is all well?” The most blatant pulse checking occurs in human conversation. Just listen to how you talk, if left to your own City devices. You are apparently asking for information — “Do you think this skirt is too long?” “Can you recommend a good orthodontist?” — when the unseen, underlying transaction taking place is a request for validation: “How am I doing?”
This continual verbal minuet is a very proper part of City life, and for those living in the City it is NOT an affliction to be cured. I am not here to save everyone from some “unprofitable activity.” Nothing is amiss!! But you need to see the human organism’s requirement for continual validation. People have no choice but to seek validation. Everyone is built that way.
On “The Dating Game” when they ask a man or a woman the question, “What are you looking for in a lover?” a few might respond, “Well, I’d like thighs about the size of a ham hock.” But what about the response that most people are wont to make, “I’m looking for a soul mate, my other half, my missing part.” If you can read between the lines, everyone is saying, “I’m looking for validation for my existence.” To say, “A one-night stand — a physical revel — isn’t enough. I’m looking for a real love affair,” is to plead for an endless supply of validation. Everyone’s “real love affair” would involve lustful attraction, alright — but the brick and mortar of the relationship would be two people validating one another’s lives — “What I say, what I say I think, what I say I feel, what I say I want to do.”
Let’s look at the validation process on a wider scale. (While doing this you have to keep yourself from believing that there is some sort of psychological defect in man. There is not. Anyone can give negative commentary on the nature of man — ministers, rabbis, priests, your aunt, your mother, you — there is a continual flow of criticism available — but that is not the purpose of This.) Let us say that a person could get past the feeling that there are defects in man. This is pretty common — there are people at City level with a gift for seeing that things are not as they appear. Let us say that 1,000 years ago, or a decade ago — it doesn’t matter when — a group of people were assembled in the City to hear a speaker saying that things are not as they appear: man’s not perfect, but the imperfection is not a matter of individual flaws. Something is going on on a much larger scale. The audience could get right up to that corner. People would be saying, “I can almost hear, I can almost taste,” — but they could never go any further — large groups of people in the City never can. The corner that even a gifted City audience can never turn is this: What seem to be individual activities — personal flaws or personal greatness — are only side effects of a greater purpose that humans unknowingly fulfill.
I refer to such a sighting as “going around a corner.” The verbal description can take you to a certain point — then it’s not going any further in words. If it would, I’d just tell you. You CAN use my words as a departure point for your own seeing. People are continually seeking validation from one another for their lives, which is just what they should be doing. Life itself needs man to provide continual reassurance. Information is moving, energy is being converted — not just for our benefit, not just so that you personally will feel better — individual humans cumulatively provide essential information to Life’s own consciousness that all is well.
You don’t seek validation because you are in some way ego deprived. It’s not that people back in the City are insecure softies or cotton brains. This continual exchange of validation is going on everywhere — everyone’s nervous system seeks it. Not just from friends, but from strangers. You could be sitting in your car stuck in traffic and glance over at someone in the next car. Maybe you have mirrored windows and they can’t see you, so you roll down your window a little and you do whatever it is that you are driven to do to make a nonverbal connection. Don’t worry about putting any words on it — you are seeking — from a stranger — validation for your life. This is not a flaw; it doesn’t show that you are sex starved or that you are unsociable — that the only way you can relate to someone is to sit at a distance in another car and strike some kind of Madison Avenue pose. Nothing of the kind. On a larger scale humans are continually sending back information to Life itself that all is well.
People worry, “Should I tell white lies to be kind?” Your mother could say, “I guess I really screwed up, letting that con man take me for all that aluminum siding.” And you tell her, “No, no, it could happen to anybody.” Then in private you might tell your brother, “I really love her, but boy, can she be an El Stupido sometimes.” In the City somebody might point out that you really didn’t help validate your mother’s life, since your reassurance wasn’t honest. Such quibbling over “whether you meant it or not” is invalid once you move into a larger, more complex reality. You told your mother, “Everything’s fine,” she accepted your reassurance, and energy was converted. Validation took place, and any further discussion over so-called honesty is meaningless. Meaningless.
Validation does not have to be an apparently supportive verbal exchange, either. You could tell someone, “I think you’re an idiot!” and that could be validation: “Well, well. I’m not surprised someone like YOU would call me an idiot!”
Science hasn’t stumbled upon this yet, but there is molecular communication among the cells of your body reassuring one another that all is well. And the component cells cumulatively send information back to the organism that is you, reporting that everything’s fine at the cellular level.
From a certain view the Real Revolutionist does not require validation. (At the verbal level this is nearly an untenable statement. It brings up another definition of what This Activity is — that you’re attempting to be as free from all influences as possible, which ain’t possible. Yet that’s what you’re attempting.)
I’ve never said it is possible to be entirely free from ordinary influences. Yet, the Real Revolutionist does not need validation. To correctly and vigorously pursue This Activity, you should not be seeking validation. For starters, bear in mind all I’ve said about uncontrolled talk — and one I’ve never mentioned — uncontrolled listening. A revolutionist should not seek validation through talk or other means. In fact, you should be doing all you can to escape it. And you can escape it — if you’ve got any kind of intelligence. You can tell when somebody’s about to compliment you. You can tell and you should avoid it.
Ordinary compliments are not right or wrong, you’re not being humble, you’re not even being ersatz humble by avoiding them. You should not let people promote you in any comfortable, citified manner. (Which would be practically ANY manner you’ve ever experienced.) I’m not telling you to spend the rest of your life looking around for fear someone may be about to give you an encouraging word. The approach you should take is to be aware that the kind of energy conversion I have been describing is going on all the time and that such validation does not feed This Activity. Never. There is no way any ordinary person can validate you in any manner whatsoever that will further your progress in This Activity.
I have pointed out that a Real Revolutionist doesn’t have any heroes. You don’t have any peers. That’s not the right word because you’re not better than other people. But for somebody else, someone not involved with This, to compliment you means nothing. I don’t care if it was a pope or a president and they said, “I read this book you wrote and I am astounded. You’ve got to be the most insightful person alive on this planet today.” If a compliment from another human in the City means anything to you, I fear for your intelligence. If you can be validated by some other human, you ARE some other human. If your life can be confirmed by an ordinary person, you ARE an ordinary person.
This goes beyond the external. Internally, a Real Revolutionist needs no validation. Do you follow? You don’t need your own approval. You don’t need what seems to be this other you inside to say, “Boy you’re on the right track now!” “Proud of you. Losing weight, cutting down on the sugar, not smoking as much.” “You told ’em. You got ’em that time.” If those voices have any meaning to you, you’re no better off than that thing talking to you. That is, you have gone nowhere in This.
How can you validate yourself? If you could validate yourself, you could have done better. If the thing validating you knew anything — had any power, any intelligence — you wouldn’t have needed This Activity. Nobody’s self can validate them. If it could, even if you weren’t involved with This, you’d be happy. Nobody would need psychiatry and all the liquor stores would close. There’d be no need for religions, drugs or wars. It would be as if Life had run backwards to some kind of deathly peace and tranquility. The gods would look down and say, “Geez, I thought we took care of this after the first day!”
There is nothing in a person at the ordinary level that can validate him. Yet, what seems to be running people? “How am I doing?” But it’s not the mayor of New York asking the voters how he’s doing, it’s you asking you: “How’m I doing? How’m I doing?” What in you can tell you how you’re doing? If anything in you can congratulate you, can confirm you, can give you any form of approval that’s meaningful to you — boy, have I been wasting my time with you!
Let me expand the description of This as a revolution. We have been treating This Activity as real change in you — you acquire a kind of revolutionary government in contrast to what you were initially. Regarding my description of such a revolution, there are two things I want to point out tonight. One of them is unique and the other one is singular.
The first point, the unique one, involves a new government — that is, a new kind of intelligence developing in you. Once this new intelligence starts to develop, you are no longer exactly the same person you were. You may only be a tiny bit different, but you are not the same person any more. This does not happen through City forces being applied. And it is not a matter of pushing the ordinary limits of your elasticity — something else has occurred. So let us say that a new government has taken control of you. The unique aspect of such growth (which is not possible under any other conditions in the City) is that this new revolutionary government can take control and not destroy the previous government. Under no other conditions can the old and new governments exist simultaneously; not apparently “out there” and certainly not “in here.” Otherwise they’d have open bar after Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. Out there, a revolutionary band cannot take over an established government without destroying the old government. No such thing — forget political persuasions or what the partisans were called — has ever happened at any time during history, and you will not see it happening today.
Only in This Activity can a revolutionary band take control and not destroy the previous government. This extends to include any nucleus of people — what appears to be an individual and the other individuals in his life. If you are involved in This Activity, your changing does not require that everyone you know must in some way change to accommodate you. Contrast this with a City-based elastic distortion resulting from a shift in ordinary forces (“change” for short), for example, a recovered alcoholic. What does somebody in the City who has apparently changed require? Maybe the guy used to be a falling-down drunk and now he’s gotten himself back together. But he requires that other governments around him give way. He requires not only that his apparent change be validated — but to correctly validate it his wife must stop drinking, everyone he comes across must listen to the tale of his accomplishment, and his family must vouch for him on every occasion. “Daddy quit drinking, we love him so much.” To varying degrees his apparent change requires destruction of neighboring governments. Other people must give way to validate one man’s elastic distortion, his apparent “change.”
If this is getting too intense, let’s switch back to politics for a second. Say there’s a coup down in Central America. Several little countries are all bunched together and there’s a change of government in one of them. The others all have to validate the new government in order to live with it. If one government is destroyed and replaced by a revolutionary government, the governments of all countries in the immediate vicinity are going be destroyed. (Or, if destroyed is too strong a word for you, stretched.) This is true out there as well as in here. That is why it is so hard to effect any personal change — you try to change one thing and everything else gets stretched. You say, “I want to lose weight.” That is going to affect what time you get up, how much exercise you’re getting, and whether your family’s going to keep eating triple sugar tutti fruitis for breakfast. How long are you going to be able to sit at breakfast while your wife’s having four chocolate doughnuts and you’re sucking on a toothpick? At the individual level (in ordinary people and in you when you’re ordinary) whenever there is an attempted change — whenever a new government’s taking over in one area — you have to destroy, you have to directly affect immediate surrounding governments. There is a kind of destruction of other governments that always occurs when a revolution is carried out in the City.
A little more about the unique part. This Activity — a person undergoing some genetic shift in his own lifetime — is the only instance where you can say, “I’m right and so is everyone else.” You could not have a more clean-cut piece of verbal reality than that. That’s almost as good as, “The world’s big enough for everybody.” It just isn’t possible for anyone in the City to say, “I’m right and so’s everybody else.” (That’s why people dream about there being somebody who can do that — why there are all these stories about superhuman beings who once lived on this planet.) Ordinary intelligence cannot say, “I’m right and so is everybody else.” But that is closer to what This Activity amounts to than pseudo-spiritualism or any kind of religious dream. You might as well fall into absolute scat singing in Albanian. The fact that no nervous system can say, “I’m right and so is everybody else,” brings us to the corner of a 3-D wrap up of the individual streams of validation which occupy people.
All people are singing their personal version of, “Am I alright, am I ok?” Each person looks for positive validation — “You think I will live through this?” “You think I will get ahead?” “You think I will be able to afford a new car?” — and there’s always someone ready to reply, “You’re doing fine.” If you could take all these transactions and go right around the corner, you would then see a summary of the 3-D world. The 3-D world in its entirety tells Life, “Down here, in general, all is well. All is not well all the time, but all is in general well.” The combined flow of everyone’s “I’m right — but not absolutely all the time,” says, “I’m right and so’s everybody else.” That wraps it up. That’s it, but it is not possible for anyone with ordinary intelligence to see so widely. So an ordinary person can’t say, “I’m right and so’s everyone else,” and mean it.
I was going to mention a second aspect of change — the singularity (as opposed to the uniqueness) of this kind of revolutionary government. Not only does the new government not have to destroy the prior government, the new government is ruled by a silent autocrat, an absolute ruler subject to no restrictions and answerable to no one. Such a silent autocrat can simply look, and those at whom he’s looking understand just what it is he wants. (And I’m not referring to some cheap Hollywood rendition, some almost cartoonish situation where a monarch winks at a courtier and one who crossed him turns up dead.) I’m talking about a real king. All he’s got to do is look and his people dig it.
Let’s try this another way: A Real Revolutionist’s family would unconditionally follow his lead. A revolutionist’s family (a revolutionist’s REAL family) would never question the old man’s decisions.
When I use the word “dumb” it’s not an attack on anyone. I am not speaking in the pejorative sense that such a word ordinarily evokes. By “dumb” I mean the inability of people to be as intelligent as some people can be. Now, see what you can do with this: The dumber the people, the more they need a god. This is not as obvious as some of you might immediately assume. Also, this has nothing to do with religion, nothing to do with gods. What this has everything in the world to do with is intelligence.
The dumber the people, the more they need a god. You can find examples throughout history, throughout the world. From prophets to popes to TV evangelists the scene runs like this: The man announces that the gods have sent him there to bring the listeners a message. “Don’t worry about fooling around with the bankers, the merchants, the other so-called religious people, the big shots — the message from our blessed savior is for the poor (which is synonymous with the dumb).” I’ve never heard of any evangelist using the word dumb — they use the word “poor,” and people respond because 96% of the world’s population is poor. I’m telling you “poor” is a synonym for dumb, which is what the would-be prophets really mean.
What choice does any prophet or minister have? (They don’t hear the fallacy in their own words because they are part of the poor. They are part of the dumb. Remember this is not a comment on religion, but a comment on how Life is structured.) Validation is going on between the speaker (who says he’s a mouthpiece for a god) and his audience. What he says to them is, “My message is to you people, not to you-know-who — not to the bankers, the rich, the generals, the politicians — but to the poor (the dumb).” And everyone in the audience agrees. The message sounds right to the audience and right to the speaker. You’ve got to listen quick — this is not any form of sarcasm. What choice have they got? Does a prophet, past or present, really think that he’s going to take such a message and present it to a banker or a prime minister — someone with power — and they’ll go, “I’ve never thought of that! Call in my cabinet ministers, I’m abdicating, I’m giving it all away, I don’t want any more power, take away all these trappings, I’m giving all my money away. Thank you lord, I’m glad I heard this message!” Of course the answer is, NO. (Which is a gross understatement.)
But notice the kind of mass validation going on when such a message is spoken. The words sound just right to the poor (which is almost everybody on this planet). “The gods sent this message of salvation. Look around the audience — we’re all just ordinary folk — no aristocrats here — you know why? We were chosen by our god — he in fact told me, ‘Don’t take this message to the rich and the powerful. No, take it to my little people. The dumb ones. The dumber they are, the more they’re my little people.'” It is a passing of validation, of assurance that at this level all is well. When some religious prophet is telling a crowd of people, “We’ve got to do better,” and his words are going over well, the message that’s going back to Life is, “Yes, everyone’s still sufficiently dumb down here.”
For you to see any of what I’m talking about you have to get your own intelligence up to the corner, to where none of this makes any sense any more. You must get to the point of seeing for yourself what will not go into words — that is, “AHA!” There is blatant simplicity available — all you lack is the ability to think in one more dimension. Remember that no situation consists of “one thing or the other.” Life can punt and receive simultaneously. Life can deal and sit on its own left: “Cards?” “Two.” That’s not possible, is it? You want to bet?
Don’t be dull.