Comments on: Leadership by the Paranoids

By: hebrides

hebrides — Tue, 07 Mar 2006 17:24:57 +0000

damn, alistair: you throw wise clouds in m’eye sky. good points to consider.

skidoo.

By: alistair

alistair — Tue, 07 Mar 2006 12:15:08 +0000

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?

By: hebrides

hebrides — Mon, 06 Mar 2006 18:20:45 +0000

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?

By: jp

jp — Mon, 06 Mar 2006 17:34:39 +0000

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.

By: Branding the “Long War” - Pop Occulture

Branding the “Long War” - Pop Occulture — Sun, 05 Mar 2006 23:02:26 +0000

[...]

Branding the “Long War”

In the comments to a recent post, a reader named Allison pointed out [...]

By: prnsqlr

prnsqlr — Sun, 05 Mar 2006 22:23:21 +0000

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.

By: McCoy

McCoy — Sun, 05 Mar 2006 19:32:19 +0000

I havenâ€™t read Dickâ€™s Clans of the Alphane Moon, but I have read Poeâ€™s The System Of Doctor Tarr And Professor Fether 1850, and based on your brief description here, they share a very similar central theme. Poeâ€™s account take place in a mad-house in the south of France.

By: Allison

Allison — Sun, 05 Mar 2006 18:26:38 +0000

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.

By: prnsqlr

prnsqlr — Sun, 05 Mar 2006 14:45:22 +0000

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.

By: Tim Boucher

Tim Boucher — Sun, 05 Mar 2006 04:34:52 +0000

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