Thinking, a Re-creation of One’s Self at the Secondary Level
Condensed AKS/News Items = See Below (ck OCR)
AKS/News Gallery = jcap 1990-02-21 (0677)
Summary = See below
Diagrams =
Transcript = See Below
Summary
#677 * Jul 23, 1990 * – 1:02
Notes by TK
Kyroot to :06. There is nothing going on at the cosmic level that is not going on in man. Men continually seek to demarcate their territory, plant a piece of themselves in the mind of other men. Men are driven to invade each others’ minds via talk. Talk approaches the attractive power of sex. The constant conflicting activity of man’s Secondary Level World is a de facto cross-fertilization of energies among men; it is form of homogenizing of mankind.
This is the stuff of growth itself. People attempt self-evolution , self-recreation via demarcation of other people’s intellects. Note that people talk about changing, much more than they actually change. Men exist, at least partially in the minds of other men. Connection to: no man is better than he believes his neighbor believes him to be. Consider the internal application: the cross-pollination of talking to yourself: thinking. It is a re-creation of one’s self at the Secondary Level.
AKS
02/21/90-(1)/
…and Kyroot said:
To keep a City,
Strong, stable, and aggressive, Never select a ruler who can Understand a metaphor.
…(The general who’s a poet, In war time will blow it.)
02/21/90-(2)
Kyroot said:
While fire is a,
Local phenomenon,
Found in all areas,
Kindling is nowhere indigenous.
(Short Version: All words,
Are imported.)
02/21/9(1(3)
…and Kyroot said:
“No, I’m sorry son,
But having a headache, Is not the same as,
Having a head although,
I for one, Do not see, Why not.”
02/21190-(4)
…and Kyroot said:
The first voice said, “It’s hard to be terrific and nice.”,
Second voice added, “No, it’s hard to be wonderful and humble.”, A third voice intruded by noting, “But it all pales before the
difficulty of being dumb AND intelligent.”
02/21/90-(5)
…and Kyroot said:
Another little City catch is that, Everyone wants to be famous,
But no one wants to be assassinated.
02/21/90-(6)
…and Kyroot said:
Alert, Alert –
Road Warning ^f The Week:
Danger;
Space Up Ahead,
And,
Time Not Far Behind.
02/21I90-(7)
…and Kyroot said:
You may keep,
The same nose,
Ears and lips,
Yet find new portals for eyes.
02/21/90-(7.5)
…and Kyroot said:
One of my fairly far flung correspondents writes To say that
“If the human mind ever figures out
What life is really Men will be either Surprised.”
all about
greatly relieved, or
• … (Later in this communique He ponders the possible Connection between Relief and surprise.)
02/21/90-(8)
…and Kyroot said:
You may forget,
Deities, fears,
Floods and death;
It is but,
An additional dimension,
That makes all the difference.
02/21/90K9)
…and Kyroot said:
Why produce undue sweat?,
Reputations are, Bought and sold;
The marketplace has just yet,
To become visible.
02/21/90-(9.5)
…and Kyroot said:
The thing about
Continually telling
“What kinda guy you are”
Is that you tend to become one.
02/21/90-(10)
..and Kyro at said:
The lad inquired,
“Why is it, Papa,
That a bone will break all at once,
Yet will heal only by degrees?”;
The ole man pondered this a bit and replied,
“First you tell me why it is that,
‘Questions come short,
While answers fill eternity’?”,
(The kid subtlety looked off,
Into the ravine of his own canyons,
“I’s afraid he’d say that.”)
02/21/90-(11)
…and Kyroot said:
In City affairs,
There are deals you can initiate, Whereby others lose,
And you gain nothing.
…(Although this is not,
A full picture of justice,
It still doesn’t hurt to, Remember the sketch.)
02/21/9’1(12)
…and Kyroot said:
In,
I will assume,
A torted attempt to be encouraging,
A certain father,
Told his uncertain son,
“Have no fear, dear,
Time will wait –
Even back up,
For stragglers’:”
02/21/90-(13)
…and Kyroot said:
Cited one dude,
“If you couldn’t,
Go backwards,
Who’d wanna,
Tell time,
In the first place.”
02/21/90-(14)
..and Kyroot said:
Why is it, you figure,
That things can be,
Satisfactorily divided into twos.
And then likewise,
Into threes.
02/21/90<15)
…and Kyroot said:
1 heard a guy, (Well, 1 think,
Over near a tree, He said, “chance”; It was so dark,
Over near the park, It was hard to tell.)
Nearly say,
That he sometimes,
Looked upon man as,
“The Theatre Of Chance.”
02/21/90-(16)
…and Kyroot said:
Amidst the heat and fumes,
Of the apparent,
Endless little and large,
Travails of City existance,
One fellow up and suddenly said,
“Hey,
Life,
Is just a hobby.”
02/21/90417)
…and Kyroot said:
Wearing his,
Spiffy new sardonic suit,
This one fellow says,
“Looking hack over my life,
At times even I must admit,
To being impressed,
At how little I’ve done,
With as much as I had yes, impressed indeed.”
02/21/90- (18)
…and Kyroot said:
You might care to remember, Even ruminate,
On the fact that
All those fears mortal, And unique to man,
Are City, and secondary.
02/21/90-(18.5)
…and Kyroot said:
There is nothing going on
At the atomic, cosmic, or animal level That is not going on in the mind of man.
02/21/90-09)
…and Kyroot said:
There is a certain,
Smelly – I mean, small,
Cult over in a far corner,
Who believe that one can,
Without long range ramifications,
Change one’s middle name.
02/21/90-(20)
…and Kyroot said:
When you know how,
To be your own,
Editor’,
Researcher,
And Collaborator,
Then if your,
Manuscript won’t make it,
Your footnotes will.
Transcript
677 ed 7/23/90 Steve M. (c)Copyright 1990 J. M. Cox
INTELLECTUAL CROSS-POLLINIZATION
Welcome again to another episode of “Electric Sociological
Sing-and-Think Along”. Let me remind you that there is nothing
going on at the atomic, cosmic, or animal level that is not going
on in Man. That is a physically, organically and minerally
correct fact.
Specifically, let us go back to those great teachers the
canines. Just as dogs materially mark off their spatial
territory (as does Man at a certain level), Life has Man doing
likewise in the area of other people’s minds. Now people do mark
off physical territory — by the way they stand, by the way they
walk and posture. This has been noted, and it is a reality, but
of very little importance. You people are too civilized for
that. We have not had much success, you might note, attracting
arch-typical brick layers to This. Or armed robbers. Or out of
work dictators. Marking off territory on that level is quite
real, but not what I am speaking about.
But there is an area wherein men and women mark off
territory, not at the spatial level, but in the psyche of other
people. Specifically in the nervous system, and
super-specifically in the intelligence of other people. Via talk.
It is talk as a kind of verbal urine. This is something that has
never been noted on our planet until now. (And now we’re in for
it.)
Once you see it, there is no doubt about it. People talk to
one another, and part of what is going on is that they are
verbally “raising their leg” and attempting to mark off an area
in the other person’s mind as theirs. You do it to others, and
they do the same to you. Human intercourse consists of people
offering to each other what? Their opinions, their
disagreements, and above all, accounts of “what kind of guy I
am.”
In the secondary world, Life has placed in intellectual Man
a drive to get into other people’s minds. It is as strong as the
primary drive to get into each other’s pants. If you do find an
area in the world wherein talk is not as powerful as sex, then
you have found an area where the secondary world has yet to take
a stronghold. In our day and time, sex is still powerful, but
would it be absolutely incorrect to say that talk itself — of
all forms — is now of almost as much interest between the sexes
as screwing itself? The primary act of sex still has to take
precedence, of course, to keep the race going. But notice that
people take as much time or more to talk about “dining” — what
place to go to, what they feel like eating, who to go with — as
they do to eat. The same goes for sex and the other primary
activities. But this talk is serving a purpose: it is not just
social cement. It is not just innocuous verbal byplay that
people do to kill time before they die. There is something quite
specifically going on.
It is going on at a level that the ordinary intellect cannot
see and would never think of. The ordinary conversations, the
swapping of opinions, the disagreements are attempts to mark off
territory in the other person’s mind. That is, to mark off an
area that they will remember.
You say something like, “Yes, I used to be a follower of the
Wool religion. I grew up in it, went to Wool schools and all
that. But I’m going to tell you what: I found out that the Wool
religion is tied up in a conspiracy with sheep herders in Spain.
And they’re going to try to take over the world and wreck the
economy.” And the other person says, “Huh, I never heard that.”
And you say, “You mark my words.” It works best if it’s some
portent of evil things to come. That’s another reason why all
news seems to be bad news. Predictions of dire consequences are
like a smellier, more potent, verbal urine than a namby-pamby
observation. To effectively mark off territory, the talk has got
to be poignant, “meaningful,” or threatening.
I mean this literally: By your words you are attempting to
mark off an area in another person’s brain so that they will
remember you. They may think that they remember something you
said . If they do remember, you have done a verbal pee job on a
certain place in their brain and you own that corner. That one
little piece. Every time they now hear the word “conspiracy” or
“Wool religion” they remember what you said. They may remember
you as a crank, but you have still in a sense marked off a
territory in somebody else’s mind which you now own. Let’s say
they responded, “You know, even if you can’t afford it, most
counties have free psychiatric clinics. I’ll be glad to drive
you over…”, and now every time you think about the Wool
conspiracy you remember him looking you dead in the face and
bringing up the possibility of psychiatric care. Do you
understand that the other person has also marked off a place in
your brain?
There is another kind of outsider’s view of all this. It
has to do with the diversity of Man’s opinions. From certain
City views it is an apparently unprofitable diversity. Life has
some men saying that there are too many views — that we should
have one language, or a one-world government and then we would
not be fighting over boundaries and political theories. Such
ideas are not all that new. But now consider that the diversity
of Man at the secondary level — the conflicting desires and
interests, the continual wrestling between people about their
views — comprise a most complex and comprehensive cross-
pollinization of cerebral energy. The attempt to mark off an
intellectual territory in someone else, and them doing it to you,
and them doing it to someone else, and you doing it to somebody
else, is a kind of continual cross-fertilization. It is the
ultimate drive toward a kind of intermarriage. Of everybody.
There was this guy who once said, “Why else would Life have
invented chocolate and vanilla unless it wanted to find out which
one was best?” Rather than talking of “outgrowing” conflicting
beliefs, can you not see that diversity of opinion is growth
itself? It is as though life has thrown out — through man’s
nervous system — every possible flavor. Not just chocolate and
vanilla. Everyone on this planet has in some way a slightly
different song to sing about “the kind of guy I am.” Assume that
everybody’s song is slightly different. Do you not see the rich
field from which Life can ultimately harvest? And people are
cross-pollinating one another. It doesn’t matter that they
dismiss your opinion as idiotic drivel, either. They may leave
in disgust, and you might say that the pollinization didn’t work
— but you missed it. It’s not the same as a little bee flying
into a flower and extracting pollen. That is, trying to change
the flower’s mind. There is no exact parallel to the case of
people talking. If you are talking and somebody is actually
listening a little bit, cross-pollinization is occurring.
Something happened. Your name will come up later and the
guy will say, “Oh no. Not him. Is he still trying to peddle
that theory about the Wool conspiracy?” It is not open to three-
dimensional standards about what’s working and what’s not
working. It’s all working. If it’s in operation, it’s working.
You don’t have a choice. And the ordinary intellect cannot
refuse to be cross-pollinated. “Nobody’s going to cross-
pollinate my brain” — could be, but there it is!
It is a non-animal, intellectual process of natural
selection. It’s as though we’re all chickens, and Life throws
out every possible kind of chicken food to see what will happen.
To see which chickens survive. Which get fat; which get skinny;
which get sick — according to which ideas they eat. That,
literally, is one description of the history of Man. And the
ideas, please note, seem to be exempt from any straight-line
phenomenon. Some ideas that seem true then become false. An
idea may seem healthy and serves to fatten the chickens, but a
hundred years later it is starvation wages. Nowadays it’s often
faster than that. There is a survival which feeds the secondary
world, and it has to do with which particular areas are being
marked off by what particular group trying to do it to some other
group. It doesn’t have to be on a wide range; it can be
happening in one locale.
Each person, on the individual level, is attempting to
develop and even re-create themselves through this same marking
off process. That is, through the impression that they
apparently make on other people’s minds. I have mentioned that
Man “creates” the secondary world after his birth in the primary
world. Without Man, there would be no world of Man — no
secondary world. That should be self-evident. Raccoons would not
begin to dig ores from the ground, domesticate cattle, build
technology. Everything we have came out of the ground, of
course, no matter its sophistication. So when I say that Man
“created” the secondary world, you have to take “created” in
quotation marks. Man is a small-time god: he is creating the
secondary world. And some part of it is now stuck with you, for
good or bad. They may think you’re a nut, or they may think
you’re okay. It doesn’t matter. A dog doesn’t care what the
bush thinks after he pisses on it.
In that same sense, there is a way in which you can see that
the attempt to mark off an area in someone else’s intellect is an
attempt to help re-create yourself . I’ll make it easy. Think
about this, because people do it: people talk to one another
more about themselves changing than anybody actually changes. Do
they not? Does everybody who says they’re going to lose weight,
lose weight? I don’t think so. Does everybody quit drinking who
talks about quitting? I don’t think so. Etcetera. And I’m not
pointing out the “frailty of Man.” No no no. Because it’s
nothing to criticize: it’s not the frailty of Man.
Do you understand that if you run into an old friend and
tell them, “I’m going to quit drinking,” and he says, “Good for
you” — a piece of you got re-created? Don’t miss it. Don’t
say, “Well, that’s just some kind of lie.” It doesn’t matter
even whether he believed you or not. The point is, you have
marked off some space. Nothing is being wasted. Energy is being
transferred, and it has nothing to do with what people in the
City are pleased to call “the truth,” “reality,” or “lies.”
Remember where we started tonight. I didn’t say “to mark off
territory that is true.” Or, “good territory.” To make an
impression on another intellect is beyond all of that. “But he
marked off territory by lying to the other guy.” That’s right,
some urine is of great value and some is not.
I surely do not have to rub your nose in the bush, do I? An
ordinary intellect can hear this to a certain point, but it
cannot accept that an impression is an impression whether it was
made by a “lie” or not. And if that’s all you are wired-up to
hear, there is no response to it. At that level, you’re right.
Lies are different from truths. But be that as it may, friends
and neighbors, if the person finds out later that you did lie,
the territory will be marked off even more definitely than it was
before. If they get upset about it, it’s like it now is raining
verbal urine on them. Now they have really marked you down. You
have staked out a firing pattern in their brain, and it is a form
of re-creating yourself. They may have a good or bad opinion of
you, but either way they now think more of you than you actually
are.
Men exist, especially in the secondary world, at least
partially in the minds of others. A variation might be easier to
see. I’ll use an old maxim: “No man is better than he believes
his neighbor’s opinion of him is.” (And don’t write me about
ending a sentence with “is”. That’s the way people talk who
believe that kind of stuff.) There is a quite hard, five
dimensional scientific basis to that. It is not a “psychological
principle.” It’s not just an axiom. If all you had was a run-
of-the-mill secondary intellect, you could not bear being a true
hermit. That is, you could not bear to live in isolation. (And
it doesn’t count to want to be a hermit when you’re thirty years
old, by the way. You have to start out and be a hermit when
you’re two or three.) Ordinary intelligence can not stand the
isolation. Because it is a physical fact that you exist
partially in the minds of others. Without that, you would not be
complete at the ordinary level.
Thus, almost everything you say at the ordinary level — and
almost everything said to you — is anything from an attempt to
reinforce a previously marked off area (a part of the speaker
that lives in your mind) to increasing that area. That is what I
mean by re-creating: the person tells you what new they have
done. Every time you see an old friend and the two of you swap
stories about yourselves, you each re-create yourself in the
intellect of the other. You get bigger — and not just by having
gotten a PhD since you saw your friend last. Part of the growth
is in the fact that the territory you had marked out in his mind
has now expanded.
The idea that diversity and conflict of opinion is
unprofitable is not true. It is a continual strewing out of
fertilizer. It is cross-pollinization. Everybody is attempting
to intellectually screw everybody else. That drive is just as
strong as the physical sex drive, and if you don’t see that,
you’re not going to see anything. In a sense it is even stronger
nowadays. Sex is not all that hard to come by anymore. People
might call it psychological seduction, but as we say in technical
talk, you can’t have no “psychological” without no “verbal.”
It’s just not that hard to go to bed with someone anymore, but
first there is the verbal foreplay. Territorial foreplay. First
you establish who you are in the other person’s mind by telling
the other person what kind of guy or gal you are.
Right now, that marking off of territory is at the heart of
the growth of the secondary world. But notice how easy it would
be to take all this as a sarcastic commentary about humanity:
“You’re right, modern people are just a bunch of intellectual
squirts. They don’t know what the hell they’re doing.” That’s
not what this is saying. Life knows exactly what it’s doing.
Everybody is telling everybody else what kind of guy they are —
but it’s not worthy of attack.
And, as always, instead of worrying about all the
conversation out there, could we look internally? Are you going
to tell me that you don’t do that to you? You do. You have to,
to think at the ordinary level. The nervous system would not
chemically operate were you not attempting to cross-pollinate
yourself. That is, “to pull yourself together. To get smarter.
To understand what’s going on. And, of course, to correct
anybody who has a false opinion.” And you do all that in your
own head.
Everybody is re-creating themselves internally. That’s what
keeps the secondary intellect running. That’s what keeps the
stadium full of people : cheering, playing the game; the bands
come on, the bands go off; but no matter where you look you are
always wearing the same uniform. It’s always the same game going
on, and the score is never final. Well, except…ahem…for the
big score coming up, when they seem to take you off the field.
But we don’t want to go into that. Up until then, it’s the same
game over and over and over. “Two more innings and it’s
finished,” but the “two more innings” get further and further
away.
I think I’ll just stop. Around here we know there’s no such
thing as “dead air”. Hark — I hear someone silently telling me
what kind of guy they are. And god, is it boring. Oh, I meant
“meaningful.” Hello? Hello?