Keith Hudson wrote:
>
> Le Pen's success in being voted in as one of the two candidates for next
> month's Presidential election in France is headline news in every single
> one of our newspapers this morning (and, I'm sure, in French newspapers
> too). The headlines proclaim a sense of amazement and shock that this crude
> anti-immigrant right-winger should have had so much success so far.
[snip]
> I'm amazed and shocked that newspapers and politicians are -- apparently --
> amazed and shocked.
Maybe they are "putting on an act"? Or maybe they
actually believe the patriotic sentimentality that
seems to pervade the present social situation, especially
after "911".
[snip]
> All this shows that many opinion moulders who should know better don't have
> much idea about the essentially tribal nature of our species. This in-group
> out-group behaviour is one of our strongest genetic traits. We'll never
> lose it. If the present cultural differences subside, then we'll invent new
> ones.
[snip]
If this is true, then we are not just empirically doomed by
population eutrophy/hypertrophy, but doomed *essentially*, since
tribes like to maintain their identity negatively
through fighting other tribes, and now, increasingly,
instead of having sticks to beat each other over the
head with, they have "weapons of mass destruction".
Is in-group/out-group a *genetic* trait? If so, is it like the
genetic trait in a certain species of grasshoppers which causes
them to physiologically change under crowded conditions
to become hoarding "locusts"? I think it is more like the
latter, and that, if we can get persons into situations which
unambivalently foster *higher values*, then they will not
"express" [in a biological sense, fot there is nothing
honorifically expressive about it!] their otherwise
latent hoarding genetic component.
If our species is *essentially tribal* in nature, then
have I really risen above that species by developing
a visceral repulsion to crowds?
But I will acknowledge that I perceive in myself --
and I attribute this to my only equivocally human[e] childrearing --
the fascination with the mob even in myself, but, of course,
this confession will not be welcomed by the sentimentalists,
because they want to restrict this to spending billions
of dollars searching for bits of bodies in the
rubble of the World Trade Center and waving flags over
it/them, and not the thought that they too might participate
in a new avatar of Nazism.
Insofar as I feel "screwed", I find myself feeling
sympathetic with either the reds or the brownshirts or --
mirabile visu! -- with *both*! Insofar as I feel
I have "space" in which to elaborate my creative
interests, I find myself repulsed not only by
both the reds and the brownshirts, but *also* by
both the conservatives and the liberals -- by all
*groups*, and by representative "democracy", which is
a democracy only of the representatives (which
bothers me *so much* because I am not one of them).
"Tribe" at least sounds like the German "Trib", which I
believe was Freud's term for "instinctual drives".
Every parent and schoolmarm and Roman Catholic priest
believes we can "sublimate" our instincts. Some Hindus
(or at least some Hindus sometimes)
even believe that we can *transfigure* them.
Practice makes perfect! Next time you even hear the
word "tribe", try to feel just a little nausea. Associate
the massing of warm squirming human bodies adulating
[whatever] with the
massing of grasshoppers and cancer cells. "It works
if you work it."
To help, here's a recording
of a swarm of human locusts: Arab women ululating
(requires Real Player) -- to me it is the
most horrific sound human beings can make:
http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/womenululating.ram
--
But, I also recognize that there
are some persons who had childrearings in tribal
conditions which were more "successful" than mine.
Those persons need to distinguish between their tribe
and others that are not so nurturing, and they also
need to ask what bulwarks their tribe has put in
place to keep it from becoming ugly like so many
others?
I see no reason to destroy what can be
saved -- but even this thought will not give
comfort to those who cannot believe the successes
of "the right", because, among the things I
would try to save and repurpose for our benefit
the medical records of the
World War II German and Japanese doctor-torturers,
which it is sentimentally correct to
believe should not be used because they
were the result of things which are "unthinkable" [but
not, of course, impossible...]....
The sun will be coming up again here in Chappaqua soon,
for another day....
Another day, another dent.
(--Irene Katcher)
Vale! (Good wishes for your journey through this day
and into its sequelae!)
\brad mccormick
--
Let your light so shine before men,
that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
<![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Visit my website ==> http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/
