The Pretense of Intensity
Video does NOT contain the first 5 minutes of aphorisms that is on the audio below.
February 13, 1989
AKS/News Item Gallery = jcap 1989-02-10 (0457)
Condensed AKS/News Items = See Below
Summary = See Below
Diagrams = None
Transcript = See Below
Summary
Jan Cox Talk 0457 – Feb 13, 1989 ** – 1:28
Notes by TK
Kyroot to :04
The allure of the exotic is a cellular-level drive to invade, explore new areas of the brain. It is a kind of hunger, emphasized in spiritual seekers who have no clue in which direction to seek. When experiencing the hunger of old City dreams for self-improvement, the Real Revolutionist remembers its cellular-level origin and significance, defuses its power.
The common saying: “It’s all in your head, it’s all mental” is unsatisfying to everybody. It is impotent and therefore entirely proper to the City. The “verbal big bang” of every creation story (in the beginning was the “word”) which in time has become modern life, is always seen as an involution, a degeneration rather than the obviously favorable, relatively inexpensive churning, complexing, flowering of growth.
Men’s internal musicians are like the band on the Titanic, bickering about what should be the theme song played as the ship sinks.
A Weapon: to resolve a vexing problem, instantly deliver the dilemma into the silent partner’s hands while you concern yourself with some intriguing, challenging, but irrelevant train of thought.
Regardless of what you do or don’t do, almost everything will be somewhat better in the morning. Nobody is wired-up to have a continuing awareness of this near absolute rule. The corollary is the “forget it” theory. It is complex because nobody in the City can do it.
To have a “human problem” is not to lack adequate info, it is to lack adequate energy. The pretense of intensity is the necessary intensity-energy for a Real Revolutionist. This must be seen, accepted and used by the Real Revolutionist. Life will not produce the necessary intensity, you must do it.
And Kyroot Said…
I do wish they’ll finally see this clearly, say it, and be
done with it: EVERYone’s a child of the times.
***
The problem of “free will” concerns no one until the
question of profit arises.
***
Trying to say goodbye isn’t worth the effort.
***
After a particularly tricky interlude, one partner said to
the other, “You’ll be the death of me,” and the partner replied,
“I hope you mean that figuratively,” and the partner replied,
“YOU hope!”
***
One city-ite said that the idea of “Garbage in, garbage
out” was surely one of life’s most discouraging, but that
thankfully at least it didn’t apply to man.
***
You can’t really call man intelligent until he discovers for
himself that even the most simplistic forms of talk are necessary
energy conversions.
***
One city bohemian confided to his coffee house crowd that he
only sought to produce art that would fall into a position
securely between grandiose and rubbish.
***
Part of man’s job here is to make things animate…only man
can turn iron into an engine.
***
A man who can tell time doesn’t need a watch.
***
Overheard one would-be city thinker, pondering on the
general nature of life, declare in sweat drenched tones, “I am
more and more inclined to believe that there may be only one game
in town.” …Don’t know how it may effect him to realize that
there may be only one town.
***
All serious, soft-science-theories should be shot without a
trial. (Ah, but such are the pleasures and nose bleeds of the
city-wide city wherein justice for the complex is always just
around the corner.)
***
Remember, in your private conversations with yourself is the
one area in which there are no constraints on flattery, and no
limits to hyperbole. (And let the cry of a contented people be,
“Spread it on, Your Grace, spread it on.”)
***
A Sorehead’s Rhyme Of The Month:
Dirty tricks,
And dastardly deeds
Are not so called,
When they succeeds.
***
You could say that, to himself, a revolutionist’s past is
all metaphors — at best.
***
The free don’t need an alibi.
***
The true intellectual circus superstar would be he who could
properly make nouns and verbs lie down and roll over together.
***
A cynic’s just a sorehead with a degree, and a critic’s just
a cynic with a job.
***
One difference between men and their gods is that the latter
know how to properly pretend.
***
One other city sorehead noted, “‘Tis at least some comfort
to realize that even though not all art is art, or all truth,
truth, you CAN rely on the fact that all shit IS shit.”
***
The victor doesn’t need a good memory.
Transcript
#457XY
2/13/89
I’m going to talk some more regarding the indigenous
generally having no particular value. Let’s get down to
what-this-is: in every example you can make up, the call of the
non-indigenous, the lure of the exotic, is based on this: the
drive at the cellular level in man’s nervous system to move into
and explore unsettled regions of the brain.
That’s the basis of exotic allure — from that springs all
other allures. Old intelligence tries to explain this phenomenon
in other ways, telling you all the reasons why someone wants to
move to a new place, adopt a new set of beliefs, or find a new
sexual partner. But all of that springs from the cellular level’s
drive to move into new areas. Built into the nervous system at
the most basic level is the desire to move into unexplored areas,
not simply to new places “out there” — to new countries — but
also to move to new areas of the brain.
Consider: Why is Life arranged this way?
Lewis and Clarke’s exploration of North America, the
Spaniards’ explorations in South America — all were
manifestations of a hunger at the cellular level. Picture the
American settlers during the time of the Oklahoma land rush.
Homesteaders, waiting in line for the gun to go off so they could
grab new territory. At the cellular level, in you, you’ve got
that kind of hunger. Even people in the middle of the bell curve
of humanity have this hunger, and at the extremities, the hunger
is even worse. People feel the hunger, but they never know where
to go with it.
Imagine what the land rushes were like. You line up — the
gun goes off at noon — and you can run like hell to whatever ten
acres you want to grab, and it’s yours, free. Imagine, people who
had nothing, running toward brand new, unexplored regions. Many
many people lined up and waited for days, ready to go. At the
cellular level, for some people, the feeling is just like that.
The hunger will drive people to take drugs, meditate, give away
all their belongings, leave the country. All those activities are
attempts to find new unexplored territory.
You’re at the starting line. The government has announced
they will let people run at noon tomorrow. You’re waiting for
what seems like forever, excited, anticipating the new land.
Inside your nervous system, your cells are asking, “Where is
tomorrow’s Oklahoma territory?” And they never get an answer.
If you can remember this as you continue to have far-away
dreams, there is great potential, great practical down-home
benefit. Whatever the nature of your dreams — sexual, financial,
social — does that about cover it? — you could benefit
individually, secretly, by keeping a continuing awareness of the
basis of this hunger you feel.
You’re looking at a National Geographic dreaming about
visiting Europe. Simply remember that even though at the ordinary
level you could explain your great desire to go to Europe, at the
cellular level your own nervous system is standing at the starting
line. There are no rules posted, your cells don’t know for sure
when the gun will go off, but they’re waiting.
Molecules in you are standing around, looking up at the sun,
wiping their faces, kicking the dirt, wondering what’s going to
happen next. You could specifically remember this when you
experience any of the old thoughts regarding self-improvement or
change. And I’m not just referring to those dreams that could
apparently be easily, physically fulfilled. Go beyond that to all
the old dreams you’ve never questioned, about how you should be
different. Some of your old ideas of what you “should” do, what
you “should” be like, have not been supplanted, even by This
Activity.
So remember what the basic, cellular-level allure of the
exotic is. It’s got nothing to do with getting rich, traveling,
or finishing your college degree. All of those longings spring
from one place, right inside your skull. You’ve got some cells in
there crying out for the new Oklahoma territory. “Open it up, let
us in, let us homestead the new land!”
If you can begin to actually feel that, you will have a
different view, a different feeling, about self-improvement and
all forms of change. I’m not saying you’ll stop wanting to
change; the basis of that desire is Life attempting to grow at the
cellular level. Down at the most basic level that can be
described is the desire, the hunger, to move into an unexplored,
unsettled area of your brain. Which, of course, is everybody’s
brain — Life’s brain.
In the past when I gave you something like this to remember,
I would say that “to Remember this in a proper way” would have an
effect. I meant something particular when I said that. And yet,
when the something you’re remembering is really foreign to the
human thought processes, you actually can’t IMproperly remember
it. Because you either remember, or you can’t remember. You
can’t improperly remember, “All right, my wanting to change is the
cells wanting to get into new areas.” You can hardly remember
that at all.
There was a line I heard back in the 60’s — the 1960’s, that
is. The line was, “It’s all mental.” Those words were spoken
with a psychodelic feel, in a druggy 60’s background. I’m sure
most of you either heard the line or, god forbid, said it.
“It’s all mental.” You know, it is. All of the things that
seem to be obviously separate from your own mental processes:
somebody you hate at work; the wrecked car in your driveway; the
spouse you’re tired of. At that level, it’s not unfair to say
that it IS all mental. There is a way in which all of what seem
to be singularly human problems — I mean problems other than
life-threatening, physical ones — ARE “all mental.” But I’m not
saying that all problems are psychosomatic (what a great word) or
psychological. I’m saying, if not for the thinking process —
being “mental” — you could not have human problems.
I bring this up as a side-step to the idea people throw
around now: “It’s all in your mind.” No one pays the idea any
attention. If a friend says that to you, you may halfway agree,
but your admission changes nothing. To simply say that all human
problems are in the mind has no far-reaching validity. That is,
there’s no danger of that idea having any effect in the city.
Notice, many people say that and it hasn’t hurt anyone yet. The
idea may be a potent bomb, but the damn thing has never gone off.
Yet, people keep talking about how the idea.
Would you believe that at the cellular level Life can have
its little joke at human expense? These cellular agitations are
continually going on, and people come up with such things as,
“Hey, it’s all mental.” One cell says to another, “I don’t know
why we’re waiting here at the starting line. Why don’t we just
settle down, some of my family cells are back in New York.”
Another cell says, “Don’t worry about it, it’s all in your mind.”
I’m going to pick up a piece of the string from two nights
ago. I’ve decided the title of this will be, “The One Sentence
Theory.” Now, you’ll have to ignore this title, because where I’m
going to point is a little less than one sentence.
Are you aware that all successful religions and mythologies
have some variation of the Genesis story in the old testiment
about, “The Word.” All of them say something like, “In the
beginning was the word.” At first, everything was chaos. And
what divided up chaos into order — what got things going — was
The Word. In all the stories a word — the word — got everything
going. So my “One Sentence Theory” should really be called a “One
Word Theory,” but I like the first title better.
I saw a store called, “Your Choice, Five Dollars.” I haven’t
been in the store, but I have these pictures: You go in and the
store’s just like any other notions store, and everything’s marked
with regular prices — $4, $l2, $20. So you go up to the cashier
and point to the sign over the door and say, “But that says ‘Your
Choice, Five Dollars.'” And the cashier says, “Yeah, that’s our
name.” You say, “But…” And she says, “That’s just the name of
the store, you didn’t think…” Of course, this kind of thing
could never happen in Life.
So, the “One Sentence Theory” is just like the “Your Choice,
Five Dollars” store. I like the sound of that name, and you’ll
just have to remember I’m really talking about the one word
theory.
Throughout the molecular memory of man, there has been this
“one word” that starts everything rolling. One word apparently
was sufficient. Now Consider this: The stories always note that
one word put everything in motion, but after that there’s no
discussion — no full coverage — of how man has built that one
word into millions. If we were talking in musical terms, you
could say that no one notices how man has turned a one-note riff
into a symphony, if not a cacaphony, of different sounds.
If I tried to hold a philosophical discussion on this
subject, the participants might say, for the sake of discussion,
“Yes, in some way god set things in motion and then man muddied
the waters.” They might say that indeed, things are not as direct
and pristine as the gods intended. In the “Garden of Eden,” there
were no taxes, no alarm clocks, no disco. (Those of you fond of
disco, don’t write to me. I’m don’t really think disco’s dead,
only sleeping.) Man left the Garden and ran amok: from the
Garden of Eden to Detroit, that’s the march of progress as far as
man’s concerned.
The stories don’t comment directly on how man took one word,
one molecule and turned it into all kinds of things. Man extended
the city limits: in the process, he cut down trees and paved over
some parts. The result was Detroit. The stories don’t comment on
this. The comment is not made directly, they don’t see any
connection. Man took one note and turned it into every possible
note you’ve ever heard. But there’s nothing in the nervous system
of man-in-general that has had the need to bring the story up to
date. Increased enrichment is not taken into consideration.
I suggest that there is individual benefit in having a
continuing recollection of what I’m presenting as the “One
Sentence Theory”: that everything that has ever been said came
from one word; every sound came from one note; all histories,
theories and accepted facts came from the initial one sentence, or
one word.
If you had that kind of recollection, what would that do to
what appear to be the serious intrangencies of human life? You’re
continually in the midst of some kind of soap opera affair — your
inlaws are annoying you, your business partner’s cheating you —
suffering over what might happen or what you did last week. Soap
operas rely so smashingly on non-stop verbalization, which makes
them cheap to produce since they don’t have to spend much on sets
or location shots. In a soap, they just keep talking and talking.
“You look worried.” “Well, I am a little.” “Are you still
worrying about what happened last week?” “Yeah, I’m still
worried.” Soaps recycle the same dialogue over and over. Now,
can you recognize the parallel between that and your own thought
processes? Consider how cheap all that dialogue is to produce.
You could say the ordinary intellect has a soap opera mentality,
churning up the same stuff over and over.
How about a quick consideration of some potential “TWE’s”
(“To What End” might things be so arranged):
Consider the “One Sentence Theory.” Everything, from
philosophical examples to myths and religious stories, throughout
history everywhere is based on around this idea. The verbal Big
Bang is what I’m talking about. Indeed, in addition to a physical
“Big Bang,” the universe went “Bang” and out of the bang came
everything that has ever been said. And, as was believed by
Bertie Russell and some of his cohorts, if you could take one
sentence and pare it down from atomic to molecular levels, you
would get down to the truth. Take each little sentence and tear
away all of the superfluous garbage and human emotions, and you’ll
get down to the level of the Big Bang — everything reduced to its
original intent.
If you could look at this from a certain viewpoint, the
possible purpose of verbalization is for man to churn things up.
If indeed everything arose from a single sentence — if, from out
of the Big Bang came everything — or man made a symphony from one
sound — for man to make the one sound more complex is NOT a
questionable undertaking. From a certain view, there is a growing
complexity and there is nothing wrong with that — it’s certainly
not an example of devolution.
I could almost make it sound as if we could make fun of it,
being sarcastic or critical: “Alright, the gods started it all,
there was the Garden of Eden, the one word, the Big Bang, and
everything was fine. And look how man has messed it up!” We
could play along the lines of saying, “We all need to go back to
being Noble Savages, we all need to be like Adam and Eve and cut
out all this superficial civilized crap. It’s just giving us
ulcers!”
That sounds right at your ordinary level. At that level, you can
easily believe that civilization is making us sick, giving us
ulcers.
It’s easy to get people’s attention in the city by talking
that way. It won’t change their lives, but it is real easy to get
their attention. You could stand up on a soap box shouting, “Back
to the bushes! Back on all fours, nude and eating berries.”
People passing by with suits on will say, “Boy I wish I could, but
I got to go…” YOu can get people to listen to a certain amount
of that, but…
You should notice, anything that appears to be detrimental
can be seen in the opposite way. In the Garden of Eden people ate
natural foods and had no worries about air pollution. And back
then everyone just naturally dropped dead at age 24. Similarly,
your sorehead, cynical, city intelligence can look at anything
apparently beneficial and go, “What a joke.” Nothing’s sacred:
motherhood, apple pie. In the city they recently found out apple
pie can kill you because of the chemicals used to preserve apples.
Anything can turn into its own anathema. To believe one way
or the other is to be a blind man who’s crippled as well. It is
all the same. To be able to Remember that is to remember not to
be held captive, internally, by one-sided, ludicrous examples, no
matter what ordinary intelligence may tell you.
There is some basis, somewhere, to the human nervous system
wanting to have stories such as “In the beginning was one word,
god said ‘bang’ and from that one word everything else has
blossumed.” From a city view, Remember, “No matter what old
intelligence tells me, there was in the beginning one word and
from that everything else has blossomed.” There is no judgmental
aspect to it. It’s simply that there is a missing part to such
cellular-based stories.
In the beginning was the one word, the one noise, and man has
now recycled, rearranged, made up new chords, new theories of
harmony so that what was once dissonant is perceived as harmonic.
All of this is a flowering from possibly the one word theory, the
one word beginning. It is man’s job to complexify — and any
passing notion that man is running amuck with this is mistaken —
man cannot run amuck by making things more complex.
There are things that Life does through man that come and go.
There are things that Life tries for awhile and then goes, “No.”
And the thing then goes away. It might show up in history books
and you might think, “Whatever happened to that group of people
and that experiment they were doing for awhile?” Those people are
off somewhere with Elvis, eating hamburgers.
As long as things are becoming more complex they are
expanding. Things can get so complex in certain ways, so
seemingly dangerous, that they seem to be almost self-defeating.
Sometimes things get really complex, then disappear. A group of
people can become very complex; then one day Life coughs, spits,
and that’s the end of that group. Sometimes wars seem to clean up
certain lines, groups of people, that were becoming very very
complex.
But you’re making a poor, tired, dumb mistake — you’re back in
the hands of city intelligence — to listen to your cells and cry,
“Life’s going down the tubes.” That just means YOU’RE going down
the tubes, if you seriously entertain thoughts that man’s
increasingly complex life is in some way devolution.
TWE — To What End — is man in charge of taking the one word
and making it into longer, more complex sentences — taking one
note and making a symphony? One purpose is to spread, to recycle,
to transfer energy and make it available to more people. Life is
growing, getting bigger; the earth, the universe is getting
bigger.
To carry this TWE, consider the story of the Titanic. As the
story goes, the band (being British) was so well-trained that they
stayed in their tuxedos and played on until the ship sank.
Carrying this metaphor to its watery end: people take the
one-note riff and debate which song they should play as their ship
goes down. Written all over your face is, “Titanic.” Your
internal musicians have argued for 60 or 70 years about what your
triumphant, glorious, final song should be. As you stand by the
rail and your ship slowly sinks, the debate about what your final
number will be keeps you distracted and stirs up energy.
How about something that you can find immediately practical?
There is the partnership with two apparent “yous” inside. (I am
threatening to pull that “partnership” description out from under
you someday soon, but we don’t go into that just yet.) Here is
something to use practically. Take the partnership as it appears
to be: there are two thinking things in you, two “me’s” that seem
to be thinking two things. For example, when people say, “I’ve
got to get up earlier in the morning,” what they are saying is
that there is someone to listen.
Everyone talks to themselves. You do this on the basis that
there is apparently something else in you that listens. And it
also answers. You should all be able to see that this is true,
internally, even though it’s difficult to remember because it
seems to be you. You have got to see that the two ears and
tongues are true in you, without this who would you be talking to?
Otherwise, it would be monologue.
Here is what you should use before I change the noun idea of
the partnership. Regarding human problems — you have to be
thinking about the problem or you wouldn’t have the problem, (not
possums, problems). Remember, the problem is gone unless you
think about it. So, in the partnership there is the partner not
thinking about the problem (the “silent partner”) and the active
partner (the “talking partner”) that is thinking about the
problem. If you have a problem, what you should do, instantly, is
take that problem and let the partner that isn’t thinking about it
— the silent partner — have the problem.
Turn the problem over to the silent partner; then you think
of anything but the problem. Trust me, this will work. Try to
think something that is intellectually stimulating or challenging:
“How deep is the ocean?” “How far is a light year?” Do math in
your head; do something. But turn the problem over to the silent
partner. Take the problem and say to the silent partner, “You
take care of it.” Not sarcastically; just tell the silent partner
that is listening to you saying what you’ve got to do to work on
this problem while you think about the size of the universe, or do
the multiplication tables times 13.
This method is based upon a neural, biological reality that
is not understood, not used, but necessary. Do I have to point
out the obvious? You haven’t been doing anything with the
problem, that’s why it’s been going round and round, going
nowhere. So just turn to the silent partner and say, like James
Brown used to, “Take it!” And then you go off and think about
anything but that problem. This is a very practical little
weapon.
There is another aspect that is practical, and you can take
note of it now and your whole nervous system can note it but can’t
remember it. It is this: Regardless of what you do or don’t do,
almost everything will be better in the morning. And that covers
a wide spectrum all the way from fears to the big three H’s,
health heartbreak and hangovers. Something will finally kill you
but, the famous advice from doctors to “take two aspirins can call
me in the morning” isn’t bad advice. Generally speaking,
everything is going to be some better in the morning.
Almost everyone could agree with that, but notice nobody is
wired up to have any continuijng recollection of it. You’re not
wired up to remember that. (And if you do not remember it, if you
do not use it, then you don’t know it.) Remembering that would
intefer with the churning action of your account; it would
interfer with the normal hunger and agitation of your own brain
cells.
Just remember, even if you dont’t know of any action to take, just
know that if you take a nap, and wait until sunrise, in the
morning almost everything will be better — and yet who can
remember that? You might think you can put it a plaque over your
bed, but you would just forget it’s there. You could describe the
room that holds it and forget it’s there.
Your brain cells might say, “Let’s do something about this,
let’s do something new!” (Of course, what they’re calling
“something new” is the same old stuff.) But just remember, if you
wait until morning, it will be better. “But no, something must be
done, some action must be taken!” “What?” “Well, I don’t know.
Something.” If you know what to do, do it. But no matter what
you do or don’t do, everything will be better in the morning.
Does anyone see any relationship between that and turning over all
your problems to the silent partner?
Another corollary is “Hey, forget it”. It appears to be more
simplistic, but it’s not. To say forget it, is not more
simplistic, because who can do that? In the city that wouldn’t
work, because who could do that in the city?
Something else which all of you could use is: For all
revolutionary purposes, if you think it’s hard getting through
life, if you still feel you have some problems, it’s not just that
you are lacking infomraiton to put together or calculate a new
plan of action. Look at it another way: you are lacking the
energy. You cells may be telling you that you don’t know what you
do, and I could sketch maps about it, but I could also say that
it’s a matter of energy. In one sense, it has nothing to do with
information — it has to do with energy. The brain cells think
they don’t know what the necessary knowledge is (just as the
squatters running out to get land didn’t know where they were
going), but it is the energy, the ability to move that will get
the cells (squatters) away from the homestead line.
For revolutionary purposes and for a few unordinary people to
be able to deal with ordinary problems in life, you need to see,
accept and use the fact that ofttimes the pretense of intensity is
the necessary intensity that you need. In the city, would that
fly? Not even if they understood it, I’m not ever sure you heard
the sentence. But for a revolutionist, when necessary, the
pretense of your intensity has to become the intensity. From city
level this seems to be dangerously insane; in the city it would
be, but they would forget about.
Everyone keeps waiting for increased intensity, and on some
nights you get enthused, and I encourage you to go forth and
revolutionize more. On non-meeting nights you think, “I’ll run,
I’ll throw away my TV.” What you are looking for is intensity,
because you’ve got enough energy to do what you need in life, but
you are waiting for damned magic. You keep waiting for me to
enthuse you every night as good as I do some nights.
You have got to use this: it’s not a cheap trick, it is an
expensive trick, or it’s not even a trick. You have got to
pretend. The intensity comes about through a pretense of
intensity. You can wait around forever for someone to give you a
Farrari, according to the Alabama law of averages. It is the same
kind of belief to wait around for new, increased intensity, which
will get you over your tiredness or a problem.
You’ve got a good example of this in me. Anything else you
are waiting for is like a priest waiting for a bus. For
revolutionary activity, and also “out there,” the necessary
intensity is coming about through the pretext of intensity. The
pretext becomes the needed intensity. I can make it verbally
cruder than the pretense of intensity, but that conveys it. You
aren’t waiting for the muses to sing the song in your ear, or the
drugs to kick in, or magic from without, since there is no
without. The magic is in your cells, but you’ve got to get them
going. You’ve got the potential to agitate your cells or you
wouldn’t be here.
I’ve just told you what to do. What the hell are you waiting
on? Life is not going to produce the intensity that people dream
of. Maybe you have a dream and wake up feeling you’ll learn the
secret by going to Tibet. It is simpler to catch a bus to Tibet
than to do the intensity. So you are waiting for the gods to give
you more energy, and you believe you are destined for great
things, but you wonder why they won’t give you more energy. It
isn’t available, life doesn’t need a lot a people to do This, so a
great pool of energy isn’t just lying around. So where is this
intensity going to come from?
“Where do I start?” I just told you, the pretense of
intensity becomes the intensity. You think maybe you’ll think
about it before you go to bed if you have the energy. Only in the
city do they believe that faking something isn’t the same as doing
it.
The intensity, that which becomes the necessary intensity
starts off as the pretense of intensity. So those of you waiting
for the muses to wrap you in their arms, you are going to wait a
long, long time. You would be better off waiting to get rich. In
the city, you are much more likely for the city to give you some
energy to save for a nose job or to become sheriff. But if you’re
waiting for something to inspire you to do This, you are in for a
long, long winter. But, on the other hand, the intensity is
always just a pretense away…