To Be an Expert Is to Be an Expert on the Subject, Not What It’s About
Audio = Stream from the bar; download from the dots
08/02/1991
Summary = See below
Condensed News Items = See below
News Item Gallery = jcap 1991-03-04 -0850
Transcript = None
Key Words =
Summary
#850 Aug 2, 1991 – 1:00
Notes by TK
Kvroot to :25. To be an expert is to be an expert on the subject, not on what the subject is about. What the subject is about is its Primary Level World basis. Expertise applies to Secondary Level World, not Primary Level World; this is a form of displacement process. Secondary Level World discovery is simultaneously a process of invention, creation, since Secondary Level World subjects don’t exist to be discovered.
All results of the collective thought process become themselves a displacement; civilization takes on the aura of another entity with its own life, e.g., “nature”, culture, society, etc., and it is taken by the ordinary mind as prior to man in sequence, as if civilization created man.
The News
As pertains to routine, incoming info, one man says he considers all mail junk mail.
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One guy got so good at this that neither he nor his friends began to notice. …(Know what I mean?)
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A further example of the unassailable, indefensible nature of the factual world: They are sick who say they’re sick.
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Just think, boys and girls, if it weren’t for Captain Irony, trains would have to go all around the world just to turn around.
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A man who can properly mispronounce certain important words can, in certain circles, go quite far.
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To big parties and reunions for his creatures, this one reality would only bring a black & white camera.
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An ole man told a kid, “Remember: If you don’t see a difference, there is a difference.” He wiped his mouth, and said, “Wait, let me try it again: If you don’t see a difference, there is a difference.” (And the young child was grateful for the clarification).
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One ruler announced that anyone in his kingdom who used an adjective “had to prove it.”
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The announcement caught them all by surprise: “The man who invented sarcasm has come and gone.”
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Through a daring combination of miniature electronics and microsurgery, one man had a Fast-Forward button implanted in his brain; it worked, but it proved redundant.
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If irony is the name-of-the-game, just think what the big boys in the sky boxes upstairs must call the score-keeping!
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And from the trusty-ole (yet, crusty-ole) mail bag comes this letter from a viewer: “Dear Kyroot: It seems to me that sometimes your little stories and comments get far too complicated and convoluted (and I might add that my brother-in-law was put into a mental hospital for criminally misusing the word “convoluted” — not, I suppose, that that has any bearing on what I was saying). Yours Sincerely.”
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In social relations as well as business ones, it can prove unprofitable to all parties for one to bring up what they may have done for the other in some past transaction.
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One god told his little creatures that he was setting up a new service for them, a “Letters To The Editor” department (and under his breath muttered, “Anything’s better than all that caterwauling I get now.”)
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In city reality, as long as you can’t come to definitive, factual conclusions, you can’t come to the end of the road.
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From the Insurrectionist’s Dictionary: “Being civilized: The mental ability to see 3 as 2.” …(Lexicological footnote: Earlier children’s editions gave the word “civilized” as being: “The ability to do what you don’t want to.”)
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Fable: And the day came when the Threes took up arms against their oppressors, the Twos; …(no, not quite, but it gives a nice “add-on” touch to the previous Kyroot).
Without any doubt (in case you had any doubt), two quite ordinary people can stand in the same place and one smell decay and the other growth.
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Ordinary memories are like a faithful anchor on a sunken ship.
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One young kid (who some of the local shrubbery thought has a “smart mouth”) asked, “If a man can have ‘time on his hands,’ can he have ‘space on his shoes’?” …(Put in your own epilogue.)
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(Ponder this): One man’s best known words were: “I can’t begin to tell you how many times I’ve said the same thing!”
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A Secret Subversive’s Bedtime Story For De Kiddies: There was once a man who pretended to be happy when he knew he wasn’t; there was another man who pretended to be sad, and didn’t know. Moral: Go to bed!
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A newcomer to court was advised by one of the old retainers, “The way to stay in His Grace’s good graces is to bow a lot, bring gifts, and have an alibi.”
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Trying to determine what is true and what is not by the ordinary mind is akin to separating wheat from chaff via an I.Q. test. …(And a quick-witted viewer writes: “Why is it — why is it, I say, that everything that sounds important to me also soon sounds critical? Yours Sincerely, etc.” Well, Kind Viewer, since I am not going to apparently respond directly to your question, may I instead suggest that you closely monitor the real time exploits of Captain Irony in your neighborhood.)
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One chap insists that he (in such words as “neighborhood”) deliberately uses the incorrect “i before e, etc.” sequence.
…(Well, I can’t say — I’m not from around here.)
Just think — besides the silent, primary world, if man didn’t have the verbal, secondary one, he could not be making such distinctions as this one. …(A quick mind can bypass the need for Creation Stories and see that man himself lives and is such a scenario every day, in that without his thoughts, the present, necessary, secondary world would not exist.)
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In some instances, the memory-race between blood and cold beer is too close to call.
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One god advertised “Goods and Services,” although he knew he’d only have to deliver on one count.
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The more civilized you are, the more you want to let your words do your talking for you.
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After hearing him out, the five dimensional said to the three, “I know what you’re saying, but there’s nothing I can do for you — directly.”
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In case your Dance Card Of Worry is not filled, scribble this one in: ‘Tis reported that the battle intensifies between the Hordes Of Sugar and the Legions Of Fear. …(And now, a Human Interest item in today’s news: Only children, the intellectually crippled, and the extremely bored and stupid have any interest in the outcome of city skirmishes. …[And His Grace, The Duke Of The Direct, instructed his driver thusly: “On you go now, and pay ye no mind to those adjectives.”])
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One ole seasoned veteran of the neural wars told his kid as he sent him off for his final city education: “Remember to mentally major in some area you thoroughly dislike; in that way, if you ever receive any honors and recognition, you’ll feel no doubts you deserve the mutherfuckers.”
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So as to get a jump on the next decade (and on everyone else), this one group has announced as their Official Credo: “Words don’t start wars — tongues do.”
Being funny once is no proof of anything
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One guy wore his brain like a badge of honor. …(Well, that is, he did until the clasp on the back fell off.)
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There is a difference between what a man did and what he is remembered to have done; this has nothing to do with “faulty memory,” and is no evidence of things awry. …(No matter what they appear to hold in common, a horse is not an equestrian’s Handbook.)
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While not forgetting their common ancestry, ask yourself: If there were no operational differences between man’s basic, silent world and his verbal, secondary one, why would there be the two? …(In this subversive mythology, one of the more important new gods goes by de name of Claushus de Gradual.)
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A man in a coma is everybody’s friend.
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Even while the weather continues to favor Captain Irony, his admirers find no escape from the Retribution Of The Philistines.
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Perhaps the saddest complaint of the season was contained in the snippet of conversation I recently overheard in the city — said the speaker, “You know, for years I trusted my brain and treated it just like one of the family…”
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Anyone besides a revolutionist who actually wants to sail away is nuts.
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One guy told his partner, “If you have adjoining rooms, you can have adjoining thoughts.” (And his mental bud was about as taken with this idea as I suspect you will be — but such is the nature of Sheraton and shared thought.)
Once upon a time (over in a place where they still believed in “Once upon a time”), they told a tale of the day when the numbers became all agitated and frightened for fear that men were about to “see through them.”
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A cousin of one of the park philosophers says that “Men only do what Life tells them to do, and — Hey! — even Life can have a bad day.”
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Drawing his magnificent sword, Prince Thickaruss proclaimed, “Stand aside, you words, my instant quarrel lies not with you — it is the blood of the numerals, today I seek.”
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All the cliches you ever heard are true — but two — (and they don’t want to say any more than that).
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Another viewer writes in to say that he “likes what he hears on our show,” but doesn’t know what it is that he “hears on our show.” …(He later thought to himself, “Is that the difference between being a viewer, and being on the show?” …[One of the marching picket signs just over the ridge proclaimed, “The airwaves are free — the brain waves are free — the Neural Network is large enough for all programs.])
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In discussing a recent event, the kid had noted several possible causes, both internal and external, and mentioned that it could be some of them, any one of them or even all of them, and concluded with a semi-rhetoric “Yes?” To which the ole man replied, “When a man reaches your level, the answer is always ‘Yes.'”
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One guy had more fun in his own mind than in anyone else’s — what a mind!
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Conversation between salient peaks in the city: “If you don’t ride the range on a horse, you don’t need a saddle.” (Response): “Hell! If you don’t ride the range on a horse, you don’t need a horse!” …(On dark and cheery nights around city chump-fires, there are those who claim that Captain Irony has an immortal, warrior friend — “Super-Obvious.”)
Peering into a curious, cerebral corner, one kid said, “I want to live where Hamlet is real, and Denmark fable.”
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Another “Subversive’s Law And Migraine Giver”: There is a difference between the basic, silent world and the verbal, secondary one, but all it amounts to is the ability to say that here is a difference. …(Additional grammatical reminder: There is no such phrase as “but all it amounts to is.”)
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If you don’t have your own private, personally developed vocabulary to use in dealing with yourself, then you’re still conversing with a semi-stranger.
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Okay, try it this way: One man’s poison is half as expensive as two men’s.
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It is told of one exotic rebel whose mind worked at such an intensity that various drugs trembled at the sound of his name. (…and Kyroot added: Later generations also recounted tales of his brother, who, in carrying on the tradition, reached a pitch to where he trembled at the very sound of his name.)
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Tip For The Day: If a squirrel answers — hang up.
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There are two futures; the basic, primary one, and the secondary version, and if you worry about the secondary future, you can always get a job.
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Okay, boys and girls — time to get serious and have a Real Life Beddy-Bye Story: The more you think about someone, the better you can dislike them.
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Regarding his own mental machinery, one chap remarked, “If its sheer quantity doesn’t get you, its total lack of quality will.
As the ole sorehead and his kid undertook the Big Parting, the elder sobbed, “Don’t forget — don’t write unless it’s to complain.”
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According to one source outside the city: “Being civilized is being able to truly say ‘I’m sorry,’ and not mean it.”
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One of the D.I.’s at rebel camp told a platoon of fresh recruits: “Okay, listen up: Right now the difference between how you normally think and this is whatever you think it is.” He paused a few moments for them to reflect on this, then said, “Okay, throw some dirt in your eyes and take off your boots — it’s time to roll.”
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At odd moments, Captain Irony could sometimes be heard sort of singing to himself, “Oh, I can’t lose with the stuff I use,” and one day a young admirer asked, “Captain, sir, just what is the ‘stuff you use’?” and he replied, “Why, that’s easy — everything, my boy — everything.”
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To the truly radical mind, the harder something is to identify, the easier it is to spot.
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And yet another viewer writes as follows: “I believe that the Kyroots read on each night’s show were either written five thousand years ago, or else earlier that day.”
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And I have a final letter tonight — one I’ve held back for some time; in it a viewer asked: “Just what is the significance of beginning each of these little stories and comments with the phrase ‘…and Kyroot said:’?” I can only yearn that by now you understand that there is no significance.
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In this one universe the Rule Of Thumb was: “Hey! Take care of your thumb.”
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