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Leadership by the Paranoids
I just finished reading Philip K. Dick’s Clans of the Alphane Moon. The story revolves around a small distant moon which was formerly used by the Terran (Earth) officials as the site of a massive mental institution. A war happened and administration of this facility got lost in the shuffle, and the inhabitants became autonomous forming their own society divided into clans based on the various mental illnesses. The following passage I thought was highly relevant to today’s society. This passage is spoke by Dr. Mary Rittersdorf to the CIA simulacrum accompanying her to Alpha III M2, Dan Mageboom:
“Leadership in this society would naturally fall to the paranoids, they’d be superior individuals in terms of initiative, intelligence and just plain innate ability. Of course they’d have trouble keeping the manics from staging a coupl… there’d always be tension between the two classes. But you see, with the paranoids establishing the ideology, the dominant emotional theme would be hate. Actually hate going in two directions; the leadership would hate everyone outside its enclave and also would take for granted that everyone hated it in return. Therefore their entire so-called foreign policy would be to establish mechanisms by which this supposed hatred directed at them could be fought. And this would involve the entire society in an illusory struggle, a battle against foes that didn’t exist for a victory over nothing.”
“Why is that so bad?”
“Because,” she said, “no matter how it came out, the results would be the same. Total isolation for these people. That would be the ultimate effect of their entire group activity: to progressively cut themselves off from all other living entities.”
That was published around 1964 but rings truer than ever today, if I don’t say so myself.
- Branding the “Long War”
- Bush is the leader of a cult.
- Satanic Capricorn energies
- Jachin and Boaz
- Three of Clubs (or, “Let the ships on your horizon take you far out into unknown seas”)
- Prev: Amish Time Travel
- Next: W. Signs My Mitt
March 4th, 2006 at 11:34 pm
For anybody interested, here is a synopsis of Clans of the Alphane moon, although I’m sure it would be more enjoyable just to read the book itself:
http://www.galaxyezine.com/stories/reviews/snop004.html
March 5th, 2006 at 9:45 am
Near-total identification with a group or movement + obsessive reinforcement of the demarcation between self and other.
Identification is like a lobster trap, you don’t know you’re in it until you are stuck, or like a Chinese finger trap, you can only escape by ceasing to struggle. If a trap is designed to hold you tighter the more you struggle, then it has the implicit function of holding you less tightly the less you struggle. The natural, lowest-energy state of the whole trap/finger complex is release and freedom, only the active (frantic, unthinking) participation of the trapped can maintain the bind.
March 5th, 2006 at 1:26 pm
Did anyone else notice this subtle (or not so subtle, maybe) transition in Dubya’s speaking from saying the “War on Terrorism” to the “War on Terror” — and how, due to his texan drawl, it always sounds like the “War on Terra”? It has always hit me that way and made me a tad uneasy.
March 5th, 2006 at 2:32 pm
I haven’t read Dick’s Clans of the Alphane Moon, but I have read Poe’s The System Of Doctor Tarr And Professor Fether 1850, and based on your brief description here, they share a very similar central theme. Poe’s account take place in a mad-house in the south of France.
March 5th, 2006 at 5:23 pm
It’s not the War on Terror anymore. It is now the War on Extremism.
And if the last 6 years have taught me anything about politics in this country, it’s that changes like that aren’t accidents.
March 5th, 2006 at 6:02 pm
[…]
Branding the “Long War”
In the comments to a recent post, a reader named Allison pointed out […]
March 6th, 2006 at 12:34 pm
I love Clans. As far as I’m concerned, Lord Running Clam, the telepathic slime mold from Ganymede, is one of the finest literary characters ever set down on paper.
What’s interesting about this to me is that you always think that these Neocon jerks and warmongers are like sociopaths or psychotics, but Dick saw them as what they really are, which is fearful and frightened.
March 6th, 2006 at 1:20 pm
Essentially, sociopaths or psychotics are fearful and frightened, in m’eye view. Something terrible has happened to cause them to feel isolated and, moreover, to fear those from whom they are isolated. Hobbes’ War of All Against All appears to be a view for psychopaths and makes kmee wonder if the whole of civilization ain’t suffering from this problem.
Skiddoo?
March 7th, 2006 at 7:15 am
i think being born is trauma enough for humans to be fearful and frightened. being raised by parents is strike two and then of course education finishes the job. the common theme in all of this is that we are all human and that the only way to escape is to resonate with the lowest energy state. we can only free ourselves individually. society and culture are like the chinese finger trap. the more you pull and struggle, the tighter it gets. consuming media makes you struggle more and you have to consume more media to get more information, because someone told you that you were supposed to know stuff…………….but why?
March 7th, 2006 at 12:24 pm
damn, alistair: you throw wise clouds in m’eye sky. good points to consider.
skidoo.