Resistance Becomes Words, Thus Becoming Meaningless
The following recordings are from Jan’s final years, when his voice was diminished and he spoke in a low whisper. Some listeners may find these tapes hard to listen to, or difficult to understand. Thus, as another option, transcripts are being made and will be posted.
Otherwise, turn up the volume and enjoy! Those who carefully listened to Jan during this period consider that he spoke plainly and directly to the matter at hand, “pulling out all the stops,” as he understood that these were to be his last messages to his groups, and to posterity.
Summary = See below
Edited Transcript = See Below
Condensed News = See below
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Key Words =
Summary
5/21/04:
Notes by TK
Have you ever considered how much of your life is composed of resistance? Resisting organisms invading your body or resisting other humans transgressing your physical/mental space, etc. As you mature, the resistance is increasingly of intangibles—other people’s ideas—with that resistance taking the form of words/thought.
What real impact on your life would it have if you were to stop all this resistance? None whatsoever! A man would be fundamentally unchanged in what he is, regardless of all abandoned resistance. The removal of all conflicting ideas and resistance thereto would make no difference to a human life—even though life as it is currently evolving would screech to a halt! The ordinary cannot see this. (46:32) #3150
Notes by DR
Jan Cox Talk 3150 The immune system gives resistance to intrusions by actions in the body, later it is resisting territory and resisting assaults on person and property. The body is on duty 24/7 resisting disease. Then when you become civilized, look at how much time is spent resisting something that has no material reality, sports, religion, politics, or morality. Your brain, just like your immune system, resists. If you’re not going to resist what is there to say? A large part of people’s lives is taken up with resisting others words. Tell me what you think so that I might not like it. Then we’ll have something to talk about.
What if you’re from religion X and you just accepted Y, what difference would it make? None. If you’ve got an answer for that you’re crazy. I’m sorry, you’re asleep. If all resistance to opposing ideas stopped, what difference would it make to them in their lives? None, and no one can see. It’s being asleep, being of ordinary mind.
Transcript
05-21-2004 #3150
Edited by S. A.
Have you ever considered what a large part of your life consists of resisting? Your body is continually engaged in physically resisting all sorts of bacteria, germs, toxins that are trying to get in through your nose, through your mouth, through your skin. Your immune system is built to recognize that which is alien, that which is dangerous, that which is foreign to you. Internally, your immune system resists all sorts of unhealthy cell growth and other activity. If you were living in less civilized conditions, you might be physically resisting intrusion onto your territory—people coming into your cave, or your house, or the place where you store your crops. Nowadays, you might be physically resisting many different types of assault on your person and on your property, such as people intruding into what we call your personal space—somebody getting in your face or pushing you.
If you look at the progression of man individually and collectively, then when an individual reaches adulthood, and after humanity starts to become civilized, very little of the personal lives of civilized people is taken up with resisting other people physically. Instead, there is a new form of resisting. You begin not only resisting germs or cellular anomalies in your body, not only physically resisting other humans trying to take your mate, your food, your money, your property, your land. You start resisting things that have no material substance.
Your body remains on duty twenty-four hours a day throughout your life, resisting disease, but once you are an adult civilized person, look at how much of your mental, your emotional, often even your verbal time is spent resisting things that have no material reality. You resist what other people say, even when their words are of no particular consequence. Somebody says, “Boy, don’t the Mets suck this year!” You respond, “No, the Mets are going to do OK. They’re still a great ball team.” There are a thousand and one other items, such as someone else’s taste in music or books, that people resist verbally just to be sociable. Men also expend effort and words resisting ideas that they take to be of true importance, such as politics, morality, and religion.
People all over the world are quite vehement and passionate in their resistance to other people’s religions. A man who is a follower of Religion X will resist all other religions to varying degrees, but in the same way. It should strike you almost immediately whether this is a valid description. Imagine that your mind, your personal self, is a follower of Religion X. If you were an ordinary person with ordinary religious convictions, and somebody walked up to you and said, “Come join Religion Y. Religion Y is the only true religion,” then inside of you, something would transpire that is not at all dissimilar to the actions of your immune system. Those words would barely enter your ear and reach your brain, a few millimeters away. The part of your brain that seems to be your religious self, your spiritual self, would immediately resist those words. “Oh, no, you’re wrong. Religion Y is a false religion.”
This could just as well be an ordinary person who is a follower of Political Party X hearing about Political Party Y. Somebody says, “Political Party Y, boy, they’ve got the complete wrong picture of man politically. All of their ideas couldn’t be more incorrect!” That person’s brain would immediately generate resistance: “Political Party Y is the only party with worthwhile ideas!”
It is a fact that you spend a large part of your life as a civilized person resisting things that have no material reality. People will kill, will go to war, will engage in terrorist activity, because of their resistance to someone else’s religious, political, cultural, or nationalistic beliefs, even though those beliefs, ideas, and teachings have no material reality. No one’s religious belief can beat you up. No matter how deeply held are a man’s religious or political beliefs, he can get right in your face, he can preach, he can wave his arms, he can shout about how Religion Y, or Political Party Y, is the right party, the right religion, and how yours is a religion for suckers. He can call you an idiot, an infidel, a fool, but no matter how passionately he may say that, how deeply felt it may sound, his beliefs can never shove you. They can never bloody your nose. They can never do you any harm. And yet, the more civilized people are, the more likely it is to find them threatening each other with bodily harm over their resistance to the other’s beliefs.
What I want to direct your attention to is that civilized people all over this planet—leaders of countries, spokesmen for religions, cultural commentators—are rattling swords and making verbal threats over non-material ideas and beliefs. Ordinary people do not talk about resistance on that basis. They do not look at resistance that clearly, which is another story. Ask yourself, why does no one specifically point this out when they’re talking about religion or politics? Why is what I’ve just described never noted?
Look at your own ordinary mind, the ordinary thoughts and feelings that you grew up with. You should be aware that when you are in an ordinary state of mind and feeling, a tremendous amount of your time is spent resisting other people’s ideas during discussions, when reading a newspaper or book, or when listening to the radio or TV. Sometimes you resist verbally, but more often you probably resist silently, in your head.
Say that you live in Maryland, and you pass a billboard from the Maryland Baptist Association. You’re not a Baptist. You’re not even a Protestant. You’re driving by yourself on a freeway, glancing around, and you read a billboard. “The Baptists of Maryland cordially invite you to join us in fellowship with God this Sunday.” In response, from your nervous system, from what seems to be your feelings, but certainly from the talking part of your brain, you suddenly resist that message—something you read on a billboard!
You know how that goes. You can hear it in your own head. You may be thinking of some Baptist you used to know whom you disliked. You may have it in for all Protestants. Let’s say you’re a Catholic, a Jew, or a Muslim. A deranged little Woody Woodpecker in your head reads that sign and starts, “Yah, yah, yah. Yammer, yammer,” about Baptists, or about Christians. You resist!
I’ve pointed this out in other commentaries. You resist messages on bumper stickers going past your car—“You’ll never take my gun away!” If you’re not a pro-gun person, you resist pro-gun people. Or you may think, “Anybody that would have such a bumper sticker has got to be some low-rent redneck,” and you resist rednecks because you associate them with guns. You may resist people with bumper stickers and guns. “They’ve got to be dumb. They ought to get them off the road!”
If you are a political animal, you know how much your ordinary mind and feelings resist words in the newspaper, or sound waves coming out of your television. Some senator makes a comment about taxes, about going to war, and you resist it. “He’s wrong! His views are wrong!” That senator is not there pushing you around. He’s not there literally stealing from you, physically taking money out of your pocket, but you resist his comments about a proposed increase in taxes, using time your mind could have spent doing something worthwhile.
If you keep up with politics, I’ll bet that there are a bunch of senators or congressmen that you passionately resist. Just as soon as they mention one of those people’s names on the radio, and before you even hear the politico’s words, your mind says, “That fat, ugly fool!” You don’t even know what he said, and you’re already resisting.
People take this sort of thing seriously. They call up radio talk shows. They write to the newspapers. They stand around the water-cooler at work, or in a bar, and they passionately resist. They might say that they are discussing a subject, but the discussions are all resistance against what they view as an opposing force, or in this case, an opposing ideology.
One man says, “Did you hear what the president said today? He’s finally on the right track.” I can predict what will happen next. So can you. As soon as that person makes a statement, suddenly another man’s face lights up, and he’s poised to speak. You can bet your money that he’s going to resist what the first man said. He might say, “Yes, I agree.” But if he’s not going to resist, what else can he say?
Think about that, because that alone could wake you up, but nobody ever notices. Resistance is as important as talk is. Why is it that if you don’t resist what somebody just said, you’ve got nothing to say? If you’re standing in a group of people, having a casual conversation, and somebody makes a comment about anything—sports, art, music, politics, morality, religion—if you do not resist their comment, the conversation will die. But you don’t have to think about resisting. Resistance against an opposing force is automatic.
I should note that there can be more than one opposing force, but there is always a primary opposing force, and most resistance is focused on that primary force. In our political system, opposing forces would include the Libertarian Party and the Green Party, but resistance would tend to be focused on the Democratic or Republican parties, which would be the primary opposing forces.
Imagine that all of your life you’ve been a passionate Protestant. Your family has always bad-mouthed the Pope. If somebody says, “Did you hear what the Pope said today,” you get ready to resist. You get ready to speak. You take a quick sip of your beer, or your coffee, so you can set it down, because you know you’re going to say something. You haven’t even heard what this other man is about to say about the Pope. You’re getting ready. You clear your throat. You’re about to resist. Now imagine that you’re a passionate Catholic, so passionate that you consider the Pope, and everything he says, infallible. In that case, you’re not going to say a word.
Simply put, a huge part of an ordinary civilized person’s cultural, intellectual, and emotional life is spent resisting other people’s ideas, or more specifically, resisting their words, because if they don’t put their ideas into words, the ideas can’t be resisted. “Tell me what you think, so that I might not like it, and then we’ll have something to talk about.” That is the punchline. Do love it, hold it, embrace it, as I do.
This is why I sometimes take so long to do the setup before I get to the point. I hope that, as I describe a scenario in a variety of ways, the realization is able to permeate your nervous system, permeate your consciousness. In this case, I hope that you begin to say to yourself, “Yes, my ordinary self’s life and everyone else’s lives in large part consist of resisting other people’s ideas.” Just listen to people. Read what they write. Look at the movies they make, and the TV shows. The dramas. The editorials. Scrutinize their everyday conversations. Then look inside yourself, and realize how much of your life is taken up either verbally or silently resisting other people’s ideas and words. Groups of people—nations, cultures, religious groups—resist other groups.
If you were a passionate adherent of Religion Y, what difference would it make if you quit all resistance to Religion X, and just accepted it? What difference would that make in your life? None! Assuming that you accept my last statement, how likely do you think it is that if I tell an ordinary person what I just told you, they would agree with me? Ordinary people would say, “That’s not true. If I change to another religion or another political party, that would make a huge difference in my life.” They would say that I couldn’t be more wrong.
I hope you understand that in a sense, I’m playing with reality. But imagine someone who is a passionate Democrat, such that any time they hear any idea that’s attributed to Republicans, they resist it. No matter what the idea is, as soon as they hear it, they resist it. “No, that’s not true! No!” You probably know somebody like that. At his workplace, this passionate Democrat routinely has political conversations with a passionate Republican. Every day, the two men dance the same old verbal tango. They’re not about to hit each other, but they argue heatedly about the latest Congressional battle between the Democrats and the Republicans. Over and over, the Republican complains, “The Democrats’ idea of taxation is to take everything from the rich and give all that wealth to the poor. That is unfair, but it’s what Democrats have always done. If they totally had their way, it would wreck the economy, put a halt to every entrepreneurial effort, and destroy our spirit of individualism.” Over and over, the Democrat rebuts the Republican’s argument. What if one day, the Democrat said, “I give up. I accept what you just said.”
What if one day, a Catholic in a similar situation said to the Protestant he argues with, “OK I’ll adopt Protestantism. I’ll become a Protestant.” What difference would it make in his life? He says that he could not be a more passionate Catholic, that his religion means the world to him. Take his word for it. Now, if he gave up his Catholic faith for Protestantism or Judaism or Islam, regardless of what he says would happen to his life, what would happen to him? What difference would it make to him? To what he is? None!
Am I wrong again? Heavens, is there no end to my foolishness? Assuming, however, that you understand what I am saying and that you realize this on your own, how can that not change your whole state of mind? Your ordinary mind will resist what I am saying, though, and immediately claim that it can see a hundred ways that a man’s life would be different if he gave up his religion for another religion.
I ask you again to spend a few hours considering what would change for you if your ordinary mind chose to give up one of its cherished beliefs. Assume, for example, that your mind says that the Republican Party is the right political party for you, the only one that you should support and vote for. Imagine that you gave that up and just quit resisting. Anybody who internally says they are a Republican feels the rightness of Republican beliefs. They intellectually support Republican views. But what if they quit resisting the Democratic Party’s views, gave up being a Republican, and became a Democrat? What difference would it make to them? None. Changing their political party would make absolutely no difference. If you’ve got any other answer for that, you’re asleep.
I am going to leave you with a wide-angle view. Seventy years ago, Hitler pushed the world into the Second World War with his claim that Germany needed more room. That was the point, Hitler said, of invading Poland and Czechoslovakia, and he claimed that the land he invaded was actually German land that had been illegally taken from Germany at the close of the First World War. The point is, the last time there was a large-scale threat to world peace was back in the 1930s when Hitler claimed the need for actual, tangible land. Nowadays, although there are occasional skirmishes here and there, for the most part, countries have given up fighting over land and borders. Instead, the biggest threat to world peace is the resistance of so-called “wrong” ideas—one religion against another, such as the conflict of Islamic beliefs and Western beliefs, or one political ideology against another, such as the conflict between the Western model and the Chinese model.
The looming specter of conflicting ideas that haunts civilized humanity is like a fog hovering above the planet with its fangs bared, blood dripping from its teeth. What if everybody quit resisting? If you took away all resistance to these conflicting ideas, would it make any difference to anybody? No, it would not.
Of course there is a tiny little problem. If that actually happened—if all resistance ended—then life as we now know it would fall apart. That still does not belie what I just said, that if all resistance to conflicting ideas suddenly stopped, and everybody said, “Pffff, I give up. I’ll just agree with you, and say you were right,” then there would be no difference at all in their life.
Has anybody ever noticed this? Of course, the real question is, can they see this? The answer is no. But if you can’t see this, then I’m sorry but you’ve wasted whatever time and effort you have invested in trying to wake up. Because you can see it, but not with your ordinary mind. Yet this is something that is of world-wide significance. Next to staying alive, these political and religious ideas and the like seem to be the most important parts of life, but if you gave up your support of them, it would not make a bit of difference in your life. Yet no one can see this. You can not see it.
What else do you need to know about ordinary consciousness and being asleep? What else other than that everything that you believe is wrong? If you gave up and said, “OK, I accept the primary religious or political idea opposing my religious or political idea,” it wouldn’t make a bit of difference. None! If you can see that head-on, it will wake you up. You can stop believing in all of the ideas that you now hold, and you will realize, “Nothing’s changed—other than the fact that I’m now free.”
Jan’s Daily Fresh Real News (to accompany this talk)
A TRAVELING DRUMMER TRIED TO
PUT IT IN THE POCKET , BUT THE CITY NEVER COULD FIND THE BEAT
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Syncopated Thinking In A Strict Time World
MAY 21, 2004 © 2004: JAN COX
Those Who Need Symbolism Explained Will Never Grasp It
_______________________________________________
The way you know you are in the city is that those around you believe that
a man can be both ordinary and an artist:
man’s collective venue for the curious acclaiming of the mundane.
All routine art begins with the word: “I” and ends with a whine;
if in that locale you will not speak of your troubles — you are no artiste;
yet for the few (roaming outside the city in the unsettled neural territory):
ordinary thinking and the creative spirit are mutually exclusive;
the ultimate art of the man who realizes what is really going on
is not in the expression of his personal experiences,
but in his understanding that they were not all that personal.
In his promotion of fairness & clarity, one man refuses to ever have the last word,
or to even recognize that such exists (for that matter).
Those asleep always give up — and why not? — what have they got left to lose?!
One man likes to think of his extraordinary understanding as being brought to him: Courtesy of Conroy’s Automotive Supermarket.
(A pleasure he says he cannot explain, but after all:
how much of extraordinary understanding can be explained?!)
Note: Anything that explains a lot
usually explains more than a lot care to have explained.
Only the independent thinker never gives in — he has everything to lose.
In one land the people so progressed that an irrefutable defense to all civil, criminal,
and ecclesiastical charges was the response: “My hormones made me do it.”
(Due to such actions, their civilization flourished and dominated their planet
for well over five hundred hours.)
The sleeping always give in — that’s part of the job description.
To ordinary minds, confined to a 3-D perception:
what is presented as justice — always seems lame.
Because of the sensitivity that comes with being civilized and citified:
men find it unacceptably harsh to confront the fact that vanilla is just as inevitable
as is chocolate.
To ordinary consciousness the sweetness of incorporeal conflict
comes with its natural ability to stomp down decisively on one end or the other
of an imaginary éclair it pictures lying on the floor.
To be awake to what is actually going on is being able to see who-&-what
steps on who-&-what, and clearly grasp all that the stepping doesn’t amount to.
Top Of The Brain Topographical Curio.
If you do not have a mind you have independently developed for yourself, the one you do have has two distinct features: it is difficult to change — and easy.
News Of War Time.
The real nervous-system-rebel never surrenders — not to words or ideas he doesn’t.
The Intangible Sports Section.
In the battle between the critics and the creative:
if you present, show or appear on city stages, galleries or pages you can never win.
Of Collateral Note:
The prizes awarded there consist of the right to continue playing the pointless game.
The weak always give in — what else can they do?!
Definition.
Institutions: The breeding grounds for collective infections.
(“It is not so embarrassing to suffer Dopey’s Syndrome —
if you are in the constant midst of Dopeys —
plus: everything seems to sort of, make-sense.)”
Note: It is for this reason that the travel of ordinary citizens is restricted:
take an average mind too far out of the city, away from its established residence,
and its very perception of reality starts acting strange.
One man opines: “You can define yourself — out-of-business! (Thank god)” he adds.
After deciding to start a new religion which would be truer to its original purpose,
one man concluded that the first necessity was for a new name to replace: Religion, one which more accurately conveyed its raison d’être;
but further consideration made him realize that no such word existed:
thus was he forced to forsake the affair.
There is a place where all records are kept — but no one can get in.
One chap tried to tell himself: “Those who cry about the inevitable”
might also do so about the evitable.
(And who was it that was recently saying: people talk too much?!)
Standard info food is adequately cooked by just blanching.
The final-word regarding every city affair can reverberate indefinitely;
there is no set shelf-life on fragmented, incomplete data.
After the king discovered that the rebel leader could not be bribed or frightened,
he hired people to follow him around & laugh at anything he said concerning his activity
(which took care of that little problem in short order).
The Poetry Of Prison Life.
Into each cell,
some idea of escape must fall,
but regardless their form,
they all must fail — and serve the same, never-stated purpose.
If you seem okay,
and you act all right,
but still stay sick long enough,
the others will think you’re a lingerer.
Supplemental Fact: In the city: everybody is a lingerer.
Spot the superfluous word in the following sentence:
“There are obviously human exceptions to this rule.”
Acceptance of collective thought in your mind is the supreme addiction.
(And only for the few: destructive addiction.)
To the ordinary minds : words can truly mean a lot —
but never as much as they believe.
Update Of Some Conventional City Wisdom.
Every one realizes just enough about every thing to be kept harmless.
The rebel cowboy rides habit ‘til it don’t sweat no mo’.
One guy had a dictionary and set of encyclopedias and it still didn’t do him any good.
(“God bless ‘em: who but the super sophisticated look to entertainment for benefit.”)
One purpose of city officials and institutional spokesmen is to make pronouncements which, merely by being announced, seem meaningful and binding.
There is: public cleverness, and: private talent:
one results in power and wealth — the other in real art.
Report From The Battlefield.
Neural belligerency turns into an unrecognized form of trench construction
(also a related consequence):
It’s tricky for a distracted mine field layer to re trace his steps out of his work place.
(Obviously the full headline to that story should have read:
Report From The Faux Battlefield, with you undoubtedly now able to
remember continually that all conflicts in that area of mankind’s collective mind
are staged events.)
Nourishment On The Farm.
The predisposition to be your natural born self is the beginning of all slop.
To defend your ideas is to redefine suicide.
The confinement natural to all things in life only becomes an actual prison
when those therein begin to talk about it and take it personally.
On one planet: nothing not essential is influential
if it is not thought of, and thus spoken of solemnly.
“Where is this world?”
No place deadpan enough to be describable.
To promote your ideas is to hurl stink bombs into the wind.
And in one land they are so behind the civilization curve that they cannot afford either
a religion, or a particular way of critically-thinking-about-life, so instead:
they just issued an Official Warning (which will always get the job done).
Ordinary men cannot piss on (sorry, that should have said: pass on):
Ordinary men cannot pass on any information without some reference to their self.
Those in captivity have no sense of rhythm.
Then there was this one chap who finally turned to himself and said:
“Look! — if you don’t want to hear me talk about what-kind-of-guy I am —
don’t keep hanging around here!”
Everyone has a city twin brother (who is not really related to him) — and:
one guy DID stop hanging around the here in question.
J