Anything in Secondary World Can Be Replaced by Seriousness
Audio = Stream from the bar; download from the dots
09/30/1992
Summary = None
Condensed News Items = See Below
News Item Gallery = jcap 92111 -1031
Transcript = see below
Key Words =
The News
92111- 9
…and Kyroot said:
Even Great Deeds, described, can sound treacherous.
92111-10
…and Kyroot said:
A man sitting near the front window down at the Ole Sorehead’s Bar & Grill
Says that last night he dreamed that to higher evolved creatures in the universe,
Human thoughts were like “urine specimens”;
(He expressed some gratitude that he awoke before this “went any further.”)
92111-11
…and Kyroot said:
Anything in the secondary world can be temporarily replaced by talk — permanently, by
seriousness.
92111-12
…and Kyroot said:
One uncharted basis of the dread of death is in man’s resistance to have
His “I” separated from the “Not-I” of the rebel equation.
92111-13
This after dinner definition from Kyroot:
Civilization: The turning of processes into things — things into processes.
92111 – 14
…and in response a gentleman offers up his view on the same matter:
“Civilization,” (he says): “Being damn near ‘nouned’ to death.”
92111-15
…his little brother later added: “Don’t forget the modifiers.”
92111- 16
And Captain Ferdinand Magel-root stood on the bow and declared:
“Only real DUMB planets have just a north and south pole!”
92111-1 /
After they translated that note you found under the floorboard it turned out to say:
“A rebel’s mind is like a hurricane having tea.”
92111-18
…and Kyroot said:
Art begins in the basement, but is hung upstairs.
…and Kyroot said:
Creativity owes more to hormones than to any of the fancier things you’d probably first guess.
92111-19
Man’s secondary intellect ripped off its cape,
Grabbed the microphone from the announcer,
And growled directly into the camera:
“When I get my hands on the obvious I’m gonna stomp it into oblivion!”
921 ’11- 20
…and Kyroot said:
Growth is dominant and never repentant;
Only the crumbling submit to remorse.
92111-21
A Kyrootian Klue to “things in the city”:
The less meaningful it is — the more organized it must be.
…(Why do you think mans’ institutions are so institutionalized!)
92111-22
…and Kyroot said:
If the ordinary are handcuffed to their past, the revolutionist has the situation reversed.
92111-23
Just to be sure — one old man punched the kid and said:
“You DO understand that thoughts are necessary food for the nervous system, don’t you?!”
92111-24
“It’s the game!, old chap! — it’s the game!” cried the rebel coach,
“Trophies rot.”
92111-25
And now,
For a Kyrootian Update for all of you getting our private monthly newsletter:
The reason that, “The world’s big enough for everybody,” is that everybody CAUSES it to be.
92111-26
…and Kyroot said:
The psychiatric notion of “talk therapy” arose from the construction of the first
elevator shaft.
92111-27
An ole sorehead told his neighbor:
“Everybody actually speaks in a code …….as if that makes any difference.”
Thrilling Theological Upgrade: Hell is where you live next door to yourself.
Upon being apprised of this sectarian notation, the ole sorehead’s cousin reacted:
“I be thrilled — but not enough, however, to move.”
92111-28
…and
Another ole sorehead down the street says:
“I had to abandon religions with all their talk about being ‘born again’
Once I realized that intellectually I was still PRE-partum any way.”
(The Ole Sorehead’s Lobby contacted us to say that they felt they were presently being Upstaged metaphorically by buildings, and that although they didn’t understand why —
They still of course, just standing firmly on old burr-brained principles — didn’t like it.)
92111- 29
Okay, (said Kyroot, never being one to give up without some kind of fight)
Let’s try it again — like this, this time):
Intellectual happiness is being a deaf farmer with cataracts.
92111-30
…and Kyroot said:
The Majesty of oneself rules over a movable kingdom.
92111-31
From Kyroot — The Second Verse: To what is creativity a threat?
92111-32
An assistant to the manager pointed out:
“As concerns how things are important in the secondary realm:
Some things are ‘extremely important’
And some things are more extremely important than others.”
92111-33
…and
A certain city observer observes:
“Graft, fraud and bribery are what makes the secondary world possible — that along with a
Constant re-naming of the ‘Water Diet.'”
92111-34
One man wrote down the history of his mind as follows:
He says at first he called it The Great Scream Machine,
then The Mean Machine,
then The Dream Machine,
then The Scheme Machine,
then The Machine,
and now he says he just calls it, “Great.”
921 1 1 -3 5
(A little city gossip while we wait):
One guy said: “It’s FUN-N-N to think you might be dying.”
…(He later said it was probably about time to re-do his definition of the word, “fun.”)
92111-36
As the two lads skipped rocks on the city park pond one of them said:
“If birds had binoculars their aim would improve.”
And the other replied:
“But if elephants could fly, what assistance would they require?”
Moral: Drop it, or get out of the way.
Moral-Moral: Shit, or duck.
Later, the lads’ father said: “That’s one of the grand things about having two ‘I’s.'”
92111-37
For your Method’s File – another rebel’s tip from Kyroot:
Speak of events — not actors;
Think in terms of activities, and not you — the self-referring,
“personal-point-of-view” watching them.
9 2 1 1 1 -3 8
And yet another breath-taking episode in that Certs-crushing action-packed series:
“Believe It, Or Watch Professional Wrestling!”:
Everyone else says they want to know — but don’t;
A rebel does, but doesn’t say anything.
Next week in this same time slot we’ll be temporarily replaced by the new show:
“Go Figure, Or BE A Professional Wrestler!”
92111-39
A viewer says:
“You don’t fool me’
…You’re just trying to trick me into thinking in some kind of new way
…That I can’t quite identify….
…But still…….
92111 -40
And now a story, entitled: “Modern Times Are Just As Modern As They Can Be”:
A man moved up on a deserted mountain top,
Then one day life knocked on the door and cooed: “Is anybody HOME-E-E???”
92111-41
“What is it that I really seek?” thought one man, “To change, or to change my expectations?”
92111-42
…and Kyroot remarked:
A chief told his son:
“The successes of the city and the achievements of the revolutionist are two different things And there is no useful way by which to compare the two.”
92111-43
As the afternoon got cooler a man sat and thought:
“If destruction never apologizes then why does attempted positive change do so?’
The upper areas of one man’s nervous system told him:
“You can watch that Kyroot show if you want to,
But don’t start asking ME questions like that!”
92111-44
…and Kyroot said: Rebel thought is so light that it is hardly adequate for carbon copies.
92111-45
Someone writes:
“Dear Miss Etiquette: Are the dynamics of men trying to ‘help one another’
Related to the dance dogs do with fire hydrants?”
Dear Sir: Is that any kind of question to ask a LADY?!
9211-46
…and Kyroot noted:
Morality is the diffusion of primary passion.
92111-47
The man across the table stated:
“Without friction man couldn’t swallow, screw, or sleep.”
And this so irritated the other man across the table that he stayed up all night.
9 2 1 1 -4 8
While attempting to explain to his son how thinking worked,
His father stamped his foot on the ground and said:
“Take a hint: You don’t think our home planet is round just by accident, now do you?!”
92111-49
…and Kyroot said:
Most people find a magnet with three ends confusing, and will switch channels.
92111-50
…and Kyroot, (sitting in for the mayor), said:
You KNOW you’re civilized when mere death won’t do,
But rather must be “death-with-a-funeral!”
92111-51
From the “Alarming Annals” comes this, “Morality Play In Two Acts”:
For attempted spite, this one man died;
Then to REALLY piss ’em off — he came back!
*De End *
92111-52
A priest, a politician, and a philosopher, over after dinner mints,
Were privately discussing the question:
“If you construct your own world do YOU also have to live in it?”
92 1 1 – 53
Whenever one man would look at himself and his fellow rebels, he would smile and think:
“What are secret ‘best friends for?”
92111-54
…and Kyroot said:
The heart of man’s intellectual responsibility is to feed the future,
And in this regard it is not so much a matter of him ‘learning from mistakes”
As it is him deserting today as soon as night begins to fall.
92111-55
A fellow at the bar mused aloud:
“Who is dumber? — the candidate, or the electorate?”
And the bouncer thought:
“It continues to surprise me how many bad dancers wanna bad mouth the band.”
(Reminder: Those who criticize help subsidize; And:
All back-biters are underwriters.)
“Yes”, gaffed the Large One, “I may not can paint, but I can spit!”
“Ah yes!”, agreed the Small One, “And FINE spit it is!”
92111-56
…and Kyroot said:
The new guitar in town,
After surveying the scene,
Told his kid:
“Around here, if you can play licks — you can think.”
92111-57
…and someone noted:
A man who can live in multiple time zones simultaneously
Understands fully that justice is universal — indignities, local.
…and someone asked:
But aren’t you just describing the revolutionist mind again?!
92111-58
When it came his time to take the podium this one chap stood and so cited:
“There’s nothing atomic
Not finally comic.”
And upon returning to his seat someone said to him:
“What you just asserted regarding the primary world
Would only be so in the secondary;
You surely knew better — why did you do it?”
“I couldn’t come up with another rhyme.”
…And thus — (tramp, tramp) — does the poetic world of man — (tramp, tramp) —
March forward — (tramp, tramp) — just like a dazed proctologist on stilts — (tramp,
tramp).
92111-59
The rebel lifer told the incoming city recruits: “We don’t take credit cards — of ANY kind!”
92111-60
Just as the sun peeked over the horizon,
The man threw open his French doors,
Stretched to full height,
Sighed deeply and said:
“The really great thing about being-alive is that
You’ve got your choice — you can like it or not.”
92111-61
…and Kyroot said:
Everyone lives a parallel existence,
But if you ever begin to think of it as that,
It becomes relatively meaningless.
92111-63
…and Kyroot said:
Doing the revolution is like quitting whatever job you have now
And trying to go to work for a company that nobody knows the name of
(and trying to KEEP it that way)
9211 -64
The Philosopher of the Ole Soreheads Wandering Tribe
Sat down by the campfire and shared with his fellow travelers this insight:
“Good news is such-h-h a drag.”
92111-65
…and Kyroot said:
Even though a revolutionist is obviously a physically local creature like everyone else,
His thinking must certainly be otherwise.
9211 1-66
Then Kyroot unveiled, “A Legend Never Told”:
When men initially tried to understand what was going on, they failed — and most gave up.
92111-67
A Kyrootian Kaution:
Stupidity can always mistake itself for what it thinks it seeks.
92111-68
…and Kyroot inquired:
If being sick is an acceptable excuse for dying — what then is its connection to living?!
92111-69
City Rhyme For Today:
“Institutions have DNA,
Its name is man — what’d you think? “
92111-70
And someone in the vicinity of Kyroot’s office sent over this to be read on the air:
“An Unexpected And Totally Unnecessary Mental Health Tip:
“All psychological problems are caused by seriousness.”
…(And the totally unavoidable corollary:
“And serious people can’t seem to help it.”)
92111-71
…there’s one chap who keeps. track of his own state of well being by this method:
He says that as long as he can spot ideas more foolish than his own, he knows he’s alright.
92111-‘
A bit of intellectual erotica: One man propositioned himself.
2111-73
One day a city and a man’s nervous system got in an argument;
They both claimed that the other was a metaphor for themselves; …
(Boy! talk about a couple of bozos!)
9 2 1 1 1 -4 4
Okay, some romantic lore: Every man’s greatest love is habit.
92111-75
One guy’s advice:
“Hey!, you wanna be famous? — imitate somebody famous!”
…(Boy!, talk about your bozo advice!)
92111-76
More from “Kyroot’s Unaccredited History Course”:
Before the brain came along the stomach only ate out of fear.
9 2 1 1 1 – 7 7
An example of
How the life of the secondary world protects itself:
It’s almost impossible to show a man with no sense of humor that he has no sense of humor.
92111-78
“I’ve been thinking about some of what you’ve been talking about,” says a guy to Kyroot,
“And the way I see it is that if men didn’t make out like there was more to their mind
Than there is — there wouldn’t even be what little bit there is now.”
9 2 1 1 1 -19
…and Kyroot said:
One of the striking characteristics of the secondary is its ability to ignore the obvious.
92111-80
…and Kyroot noted:
In the city,
When it comes to problems,
There are those who’ll talk about them, and those who’ll offer to treat them,
But only a revolutionist is actually interested in CURING the bastards.
9 2 1 1 1 – 8 1
…and Kyroot said:
No thought ultimately counts, but individual.
9 21 1 1–82
A man who’s been watching these programs has this to say:
“Now I don’t know which upsets me the more:
Finding out that those I thought should be serious about what they do in life, aren’t — OR, Discovering that everybody else IS!”
Another of “K.’s Helpful Hints”: No one is as silly as he who takes others seriously.
…(And Kyroot admitted: I know this can be uncomfortable,
but everything non-serious always is.)
921 1 1-83
…and Kyroot said:
There are two levels at which men may see and state the obvious:
One is rude and disruptive,
While the other was the inspiration for the Submarine Service.
92111-84
…and Kyroot noted:
A revolutionist plays along-with the city’s sense of order & propriety — but that’s ALL.
95111-85
In the early morning woods
The rebel looked down at his reflection in the pond and reflected on himself:
“If life is a tournament then you realize what this means?! — Inner Urban Warfare, my friend.”
92171-86
And from our viewing audience comes this letter:
“You don’t fool me! — This neural revolution thing is just one more attempt to
Keep from dying!”
92111-’51
One ole man said: “Dumb people are happy people.”
And the kid cried: “I want to be happy!”
And the ole man replied: “It may be too late.”
921I7-88
The Blunt Man said: “Let’s be blunt! —
The antidote for EVERYTHING — whether you care for it or not — is silliness!”
92111-89
The Look-Out Man leaped up and said: “Look out! —
What bulls do to cows, man does to himself …..and vice versa!”
92111-94
… and The Understatement Man states: “Being a revolutionist is an education in itself.”
TRANSCRIPT
Tape #1031 9/30/92 Trans by Terry Copyright J. M. Cox 1992
The first 2 Kyroots are connected so I am going to read them both. And Kyroot said: All laws, even scientific, are shackles and blinders, even if they work. And Kyroot said: All popular ideas started out as prunes.
As those are connected, it’s obvious I don’t have to make any additional comment. Alright, think about it then. Popular ideas — not scientific, not important… (well they could be important because when it gets down to the level of ordinary collective wisdom of humanity, you can now find even graffiti dealing with Einstein’s equations, it is now popular idea, forget whether people understand it)… Kyroot simply points out that all popular ideas of whatever nature, artistic, social, scientific, psychological — they started out as prunes.
I know you laughed, some of you have a very low threshold for humor but if you are past that, consider the fact, they started out as prunes. You can laugh and say, “How ridiculous.”
“Oh yeah, then what did they start out as?”
Popular ideas, ideas that finally become, in the widest possible range of connotations of the word “popular,” if they didn’t start out as prunes, what did they start out as?
And Kyroot said: Anything in the secondary world can temporarily replaced by talk; permanently by seriousness.ó This is an expansion on several things — the basic fact that there is no such thing as the secondary world without talk. There is no such thing as civilization without talk. There is no such thing as any singularity — man apropos a hippo — without talk.
We’ve been through some of this but it is meaningful, not just for me to promote Kyroot’s definition of it. Ever since we’ve had civilization, people have been trying to define what civilization is. All the way from saying civilization in a sense was agriculture, had not man begun to plant food in one locale rather than wandering about, he would never have had time to sit down and think, “I believe I’ll become civilized and quit spitting on people.” It’s been described as civilization being equal to the arts. That, “It was only when man began to have some notion of decorating his cave….” Or that civilization is operationally equitable to religion. That until man began to have dreams of gods and some sense of morality… all of that has some basis.
But all of that can be swallowed by the great “talking” fish. Or the great “talking” whale can swallow all smaller fishes because there is no agriculture, there is no art, there is no religion until man’s nervous system got up to the penthouse. Until it got up into the frontal lobes and thought, “Wow, I can talk.” Until it could do that, there was no such thing as civilization. There were no manifestations of it. There was no operational difference, if we are going to play the game of sequential, 3 dimensional evolution, between man and a baboon (or an attorney).
If you are going to see this in a certain way, you’ve got to remember we are now talking about the fourth “S” after shelter, sustenance, and sex — the primary world, all of it’s smaller engines. Looking at the primary world as being man before he was civilized and he was no more than a baboon, a Neanderthal man… if he had no talking intellect, then at that point, the same things kept him alive that kept baboons alive — sex, protecting himself from the environment, and sleep. The thing then required is what amounts to a fourth “S,” since it works out that way in English, speech.
Keeping this in mind, back to the Kyroot: Anything in the secondary world can be temporarily replaced by talk. What this gets to, unless of course you are serious and sane, is in the secondary world… when you first hear that you might think, “Anything can be replaced by talking about it in a different way.” Whatever it is to begin with in the secondary world can be replaced by talk. You could say, “To take a work of art, to take a symphony, to take the church, to take the Socialist theory of the state… that cannot be simply replaced by talk, it would have to be replaced by something of a similar genre or ilk.” And it does not. Because it can be replace by talk period.
But then you’ve got to realize, “Wait, that’s no great news flash because it is all talk to start with.” Regardless that the state may have soldiers and may own buildings, regardless of the fact that the symphony may be written down in a score, it may be for sale on a CD, it may have a physical manifestations, it can be replaced by talk. Because that’s all it is to begin with — once you realize it is all a manifestation of talk.
If you don’t like that, imagine: could Beethoven have written music if he could not talk? Could any art be done, could anybody play politics, could anybody do anything without talk?
No matter how it may appear to an ordinary, untrained, civilized mind, anything in the secondary world, anything man has that is unique to him is an offshoot, is absolutely beholden to talk.
So if you then say, “You are just saying one piece of art can be replaced by another or Christianity can be replaced by Islam,”… it can be replaced by talk. The specifics of it are irrelevant. Unless of course you are ordinary and then it’s not irrelevant. That’s why a Christian will punch a Muslim in the mouth. Because for the ordinary it’s not irrelevant. Or a socialist will say, “Get those fascists away from me.” To them it’s serious. But it’s talk.
Kyroot goes a little further: Anything in the secondary world can be replaced… permanently by seriousness. Once you understand that, part of what we were trying to talk about last time… seriousness will cover up almost anything. If the talk doesn’t seem to do it…. If you are not physically assaulting a Buddhist, trying to turn him into a Hindu, if you are specifically trying replace his name for religion with yours, it doesn’t matter what… all you have to do is get super serious. “You made a mistake being a Buddhist, you should have been a Zoro..zoras…astrian.”
The other guy might say, “You can’t even pronounce it.”
If you remember from last time, the guy who put his faux pas foot into it trying to describe the current unpleasantness in the Balkan regions — all you have to do is get super serious. You can jump on the guy verbally, “What does it matter whether I can pronounce the name properly; it is the teaching, the spirit that counts.” All you have to do is be serious. I don’t mean you will necessarily convert him to your religion but at least he will give up trying to argue with you. Because seriousness will eventually, permanently replace anything if you push it far enough.
Any of you who are interested in the “hobby” of history, if you look in a certain way, much that civilized, reasonable people consider to be gross, inexplicable anomalies in history… people take historical movements, political, economic, religious movements… “Group A over here was pushing right along, helping civilization move forward and then Group B came along, obviously less “kempt,” less “couth,” less intelligent and in some way overcame Group A.”
It’s just a hobby but by talk, people will dissect these events in a myriad of ways. But what if you looked at it this way: Group B simply “over serioused” Group A. Because seriousness will eventually, permanently (for that time) replace whatever it wants to. There is nothing in the secondary world that will withstand extreme seriousness.
You might take this to a ridiculous extreme, “It’s always the real aggressive who are the most serious. It’s the serious who are most ready to go out and die and turn themselves into cannon fodder.” I always like doing that because ordinary will go, “What does that mean?” What it means is: you are not listening. Because as far as they are concerned they just proved their point and, may I suggest, there is an alternate view. Not to them because they go, “What?”
Seriousness cannot be withstood by secondary minds. But historically or even within ones lifetime, sociologically, psychologically speaking, people say, “How could one person adopt this attitude? How could a person submit to this cult? How could one reasonable person become a communist? How could a person who had been at one time a decent, god fearing Jew become a Christian, a Baptist at that?” You can look at their position and say, “That is weird; it makes no sense sociologically or psychologically. Your child should not have turned out this way. It’s just inexplicable.”
That is just a hobby, to say it’s inexplicable. It’s just a hobby to say, “How could this happen?” To go along with the hobby, they can rightly say, “This should not have occurred in a reasonable situation. The dynamics of one idea or theory against another… this person was sane, their background was sane and decent. They should not have fallen for this.” Are you following; you can take their view — at that level it is absolutely inexplicable with a capital “IN.”
Except for this: in the secondary world, nothing will withstand extreme seriousness. And if any of you want any further proof of this (the secondary world of course always in a sense is just the paint job on the car)… look at it this way, if you find any fault with that, let’s move down to the basement, the primary world. Then you should immediately see that in the primary world, there is not even a question about anything resisting seriousness. If a tiger meets a wildebeest and the tiger is hungry, (that is a serious matter) and the wildebeest tries to tell the tiger a joke… tries to do a funny dance and the tiger is seriously hungry (which qualifies as being serious), who will prevail?
How about this? Two tigers run up on a wildebeest and one of them is hungrier than the other; who is going to win? Generally the one who is more seriously hungry.
It is not that far removed into the secondary world but there are reasons for the mind not to look at it that way. And part of the basis Kyroot went into the other night: if people understood what is going on, what is going on wouldn’t go on any longer. So people do not… should not… (as you know this is not to win people over to this kind of thinking)…. People are not supposed to think about it that way. It is supposed to be part of the hobby. People discussing, after the fact, historically, psychologically, sociologically, politically, “Why would one group act in a way which, to our reasonable view, is patently not in their best interest.” On the basis of that game, people are correct in saying, “It is absolutely beyond our comprehension.”
It is. Except for this: seriousness prevails. And if ordinary people had any reason to listen to this, they would take my terms metaphorically, “In the physical world, whoever is the most serious will win.” To ease it up a bit, how about sports? Whoever is the most serious will train the hardest. Assuming that 2 runners, 2 pole vaulters are more or less equal, whoever is the more serious will win the gold. Whoever will go out there and run, run, run. Train, train, train. Steroid, steroid, steroid. People will go along with that, perhaps. “I see what you are saying.”
There is something deeper in this, pointed out in a Kyrootthe other night: everyone is born a different height, everyone believes there is an ideal height even though they can’t agree on what it is. That is what this is.
People will agree that in the animal world, seriousness will prevail. And, to take it a little higher, into the world of sports, they would say, “I can see what you mean about the more serious of the athletes.” Ordinary minds would go along perhaps that far and say, “Into that low level, you are right, metaphorically at least, the more serious will prevail.” But then the ordinary mind, as it is supposed to, will dig it’s heels in. If you try to push it up out of the metaphorical basement into the arts, the world of the mind, theories, laws, morality. Up here [the head] nothing will withstand extreme seriousness.
You can be serious, a religion or political system can be as serious…. But if something else comes along that is more serious, the original seriousness cannot withstand it.
Except the ordinary mind will not accept that. Another Kyroot tonight was pointing out one of the striking characteristics of the secondary world is it’s ability to absolutely ignore the obvious. This is not an attack; it is a sterling, striking, “most excellent” characteristic… it’s ability to be oblivious, ignore the obvious. It has to.
Three of the Kyroots tonight were connected. The first was yet another Definition of civilization: the turning of processes into things and things into processes.ó And in response to this, Another gentleman chimes in, he describes civilization as being damn near “nouned” to death. And his little brother then added, “Don’t forget the modifiers.”ó I’m sure most of you here… most of the ones wherein Kyroot gets into modifiers bring about a brief timeout where everyone can relax and go…. I bring this up as a word to the wise, a subtle warning to those of you who ignore modifiers. You are playing around with the power of speech. You are getting distracted saying, “Who cares about that?”
And Kyroot said: The Majesty (the royalty, that which runs ones own internal, intellectual you-know-what)ë rules over a moveable kingdom.ó May I suggest to you, this refers back to the idea of the difference that which is local and that which is universal — universals being paradigmatic, indigenous to a 3 dimensional universe. Man is local at his singular level. Human thought is local. That is why man must be a continually self-referring mechanism. That is why a man must continually tell you what kind of guy he is. It’s not through stupidity or some type of deranged self importance. It is the only way he can stay stabilized. It is the only way he has a point of view of any sort. It is the only way the intellect can work; it’s to be local. It is local to his planet. It is local to his civilization. It is local to his religion. It is local to his culture and above all, it’s local to… what?… him.
Because everybody’s attitude at the ordinary level is, “Who cares what anybody thinks except what I think? And I don’t even care what anybody else thinks.”
Another person might ask, “Do you actually think that?”
“I said it didn’t I?”
“I’m not sure I agree with you.”
“What do I care?”
See, now we are getting somewhere. We are getting civilized. And don’t say, “It sounds like they are on the verge of fisticuffs.” That is being civilized. Before men could talk they killed each other. They did until after the first few times and one guy told another one who was about to go kill someone at the next cave, “Bleah, unk.” Meaning, “It will make you sick.” So if you can’t eat him, what is the sense in killing him.
Did any of you hear the history (in another Kyroot) the guy gave of the development of his own mind? He started out calling it the great scream machine, then the mean machine, then the dream machine, then it was the scheme machine. That is what I am talking about right now. It is the evolution of man, man becoming civilized.
Taking the ordinary view of how civilization has worked, men originally killed each other so they could eat each other, but I’m assuming (just follow me) they didn’t taste real good. Even now, in finer restaurants, you don’t find that much human meat on the menu so let’s assume they didn’t… ugh. Then they quit killing each other except over sex and over, “You are in my cave,” — the basic 3 S’s of the primary world. But you can’t even call it murder. They had to start talking before they could do each other harm. I know some of you will say, “You don’t call killing somebody harm?” Oh, alright. But that’s not real harm. If somebody kills you, what are you going to do? Yell, “Hey, I’ve been harmed?” No.
There was another Kyroot the other night, which, I noticed, nobody requested, where it was pointed out …to a civilized man, there are worse things that can happen than being killed.ó There are. The further down you are in your own nervous system, the more you live in the basement… is where the slasher movies, horror movies, even Edgar Allen Poe… people like him were made famous by bricklayers. From people who live in the basement; from people back down the evolutionary food chain. Because that appeals to them. “God, what if that guy with the chain saw jumped out… he’d kill me.”
But notice… I would guess, I’m not an expert but my guess is, if they took surveys in theatres where slasher movies, Steven King movies, all that stuff were showing, you would find very few atomic scientists or people with Ph.d.’s in the audience. It’s not good or bad, they have their own game going. It’s part of the process of civilization moving…. The point I was trying to get you to see is true in you: it’s only down in your own nervous system and, out in life, it’s only those further down the intellectual food chain… to them, the worse thing that can happen to them is death. But the more civilized you are, you are not even interested in that. Even the greatest funerals are held by the lower classes (as it is normally called).
The more civilized at the ordinary level (I’m not talking about someone with a revolutionary sense of thinking), the more intelligent, the higher up the city food chain, the less a person is afraid of death. Which, for one thing, is why religion begins to peter out the more educated people get. Because the more educated you are, in the secondary world there are worse things than death. I’m sure there people striving for a Nobel or Pulitzer next year who, if the had their choice of being killed or having somebody successfully dispute their research… they would be ruined…. You do hear me, there are people who would literally… sane people, people of repute, heads of their departments at Harvard or Oxford, if they were literally faced with that would probably say, “Kill me. I cannot have somebody ruin my reputation. Sixty years and this close to a Nobel Prize and just because I fudged….” Whether they did or not is beside the point. If they are faced with being killed or being ruined, “Hey, shoot me.”
The local aspect was the basis of this Kyroot. The majesty of ones self rules over a moveable kingdom.ó If you are ordinary, the kingdom does not seem moveable though. That’s why tyrants don’t want to leave town. You can explain it by saying a tyrant doesn’t want to leave because the people might stage a coup de tat while he is gone. I know it always fits. But up here [the head], this thing doesn’t want to leave town. You can’t trust it. If it leaves town… it’s like the old philosopher, I think she was a waitress at that truck stop in Alabama, she used to say she couldn’t go along with letting her mind wander off because she was afraid it wouldn’t come back. (I know some of you don’t care for philosophical humor.)
This, at the very crudest level, with an ordinary person the king up here [the head], the tyrant, cannot wander off because… the waitress was telling some truth; if your mind wanders off and doesn’t want to come back and sit down correctly, you can end up in a home. Or worse yet, they could make you a waitress at a truck stop.
If your mind is not on a ramble, if you cannot wander off, if your kingdom is not moveable, you are a tyrant. But you can’t ever leave. That is, you cannot ever consider any other ideas (and all the obvious things). You are stuck with it. You are civilized; you are sane. You are probably middle class. You are the sinew, the muscle, the heartbeat of the world. (God bless you one and all.) Bye.
[Extra comments]
And Kyroot offered this caution: Stupidity can always mistake itself for what it believes it’s seeking.ó That is too good. Think about it. It is connected to one of the last things we were talking about last time we were taping. About how it would only be a wet person who would ask to be dry. Which seems to be obvious even to idiots like us. But then you’ve got to say it’s not going to do any good for the stupid to look for information because they are stupid. They will admit it offhand, “I’m ignorant, therefore I want to learn, I want an education.”
But then your ordinary mind will say that is proof they are not just run-or-the-mill stupid because, “A man is only stupid who doesn’t know he is.” Your ordinary mind might say, “A man who says he is stupid and wants to be non-stupid… that’s proof positive he is not stupid.” Verbally it is, so what.
If he is stupid what are you going to do for him, give him binoculars? Kyroot already covered that in the one about the kid who said, If birds had binoculars their aim would improve.ó Could be, but the other kid said, Yeah, but if elephants could fly, what assistance would they need?ó Lest you thought that was just some crude joke, which I know you people didn’t, you could look at a revolutionist almost as being a flying elephant in the intellectual sense. Everybody else is like birds flying around looking through binoculars, “I s— on ignorance but I keep missing it. If I had binoculars, I could hit them better.”
There were 2 addendums to that, one of them was a moral: Drop it or get out of the way. That is, you play pigeon or play the pigeon’s target. The moral moral got more to the point: S— or duck.
Thinking that additional education or knowledge is going to help when you are stupid is like believing that if birds had binoculars, their aim would improve. It is back to the Kyrootian caution: Stupidity can always mistake itself for that which it thinks it seeks. You don’t want me to ruin that any more. Just think about it. Stupidity can always mistake itself for the very thing it’s looking for.
If you think about it for a minute, does that help the addendum “drop it or get out of the way?” At first you say, “It’s saying either be the pigeon or be the one the pigeon is dumping on. It can’t be both. It’s either addressing the pigeons or the people who might be under the pigeons but it can’t be both.” Yet it is. Stupidity can always mistake itself….
Alright, now that we are off video, I can hold metaphors and torture them even further. What if birds, playing the metaphorical role, even symbolic role, of ordinary people seeking additional knowledge, information, intelligence… what if these birds try to more efficiently zero in on that which they are attempting to dump on? Stupidity, their faults… improve themselves. So what if birds got binoculars, or got real good glasses; bombsights for those of you with military…. What if they got better so they could just s— on whoever they wanted to and they did, and it turned out to be them.
[Jan reads the last 5 Kyroots with no comment.]