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..:: Liberation II / Fascism ::..

By

Alan Schneider

             This  essay will address a secondary aspect of the imprisonment of waking consciousness in the physical human body – the battle for the mind of the individual observer conducted day and night by powerful vested special interest groups around the world.   This is the story of global fascism in the many expressions of the phenomenon seen in the Post Modern social condition today.  It is an ugly, brutal story of deception, oppression, and greed – and one that all lightworkers need to know well.  

           There is within the human genome a sequence of genetic traits that presupposes the individual mind to sadism, that is, to the derivation of fundamentally sexual pleasure from the infliction of pain and discomfort upon others.   Now, to be sure, this tendency is subject to subsequent environmental reinforcement through many social channels – political and military organizations frequently specialize in the identification and further training of those with this inborn potential – but, the point to be asserted here is that this in an inborn, predatory, and naturally occurring feature of certain persons behavior that will tend to emerge in early childhood and thereafter.   I know that there are those who will vehemently contest this point, but my life has provided me with many examples that invalidate their arguments.  Some people are just plain born damn mean, and like it that way. 

            There are even historical manuals of such fascist training operations – The Prince by Machiavelli, and The One Hundred and Twenty Days of Sodom by the infamous Marquiese de Sade (in whose honor Freud coined the term sadism) immediately come to mind as examples of the genre.  In this day, the study of indoctrination techniques has come into the prevue of higher education, with such literary efforts as Beyond Freedom and Dignity and Behaviorism by B. F. Skinner representing the trend in the psychological arena, and Influence: Science and Practice by R. B. Cialdini in the communications venue.  Clearly, the ability to exercise control over others and their decisions is the premier concern of much of our social interaction today, whether displayed in the mass context of media advertising, or smaller local social groups of many kinds and sizes, or on a relational level between friends and associates, or,  finally, on the personal level within ourselves.  The battle for the mind is universal and omnipresent.   Even Yoga and Buddhism, the two most well-intended and benevolent philosophies of my awareness, stress the need for control and discipline over the mind as the means of negating illusion and attaining the truth of conscious perception.   Everyone agrees that something must be done with the mind to render it a valid and useful instrument – the question is what, by whom, and for what end.   

            The native sadists in the world quickly learn to recognize at least two categories of interest among the humans present in their social milieu – potential victims, and potential threats.  Obviously, a potential victim is anyone who does not have an awareness of the threat posed by the sadist, and a potential threat is anyone who does have such an awareness, and is capable of taking appropriate countermeasures.  This balance of factors, in fact, accounts for the great bulk of social interaction, as victims, sadists, and threats jockey around for relative advantages through the mechanism of social game playing.   This phenomenon was very clearly delineated in two books by the social psychologist Eric Berne – Games People Play, and Transactional Analysis, both dated as of this writing, but still extremely worth the effort of locating and reading.  Briefly, social gaming is characterized in this context as a largely covert (and possibly quite unconsciousness) system of interactions that involve a sequence of roles, dynamics, and eventual payoffs (for at least some of the participants).   The payoffs are least present for the victims in the game, and most present for the protagonists.   Berne identified many such inauthentic, manipulative interaction patterns present in social contexts, and actually maintained that, in the absence of psychoanalysis, all social behavior was likely to be more or less game-ridden and largely unproductive for that reason.  

            An instructive example here is the game “Lets You and Him Fight”, customarily set up by one partner in an intimate relationship against another, and by the one who feels shortchanged in the relationship.  This individual will start “shopping” socially for the third party needed in the game scenario – the additional combatant to challenge the established partner.  No matter what the outcome is (unless it involves one or both of the combatants turning their wrath on the protagonist) the protagonist “wins” the payoff by obtaining the gratification of experiencing the physical suffering of the ongoing combat situation for the combatants.  Smart protagonists will be sure to select partners that are substantially less intelligent than they are, reducing considerably the possibility that their subterfuge will be discovered.  An interesting alternative in this game occurs when the protagonist exits the game arena with a third combatant not involved in the conflict, customarily taking a substantial selection of financial and personal resources with them in the process!  A really good (and lucky) LYaHF protagonist can become extremely wealthy as a result of repeatedly leveraging this game on a seemingly endless cavalcade of combatants over a period of years.  I guess that the observation “Everybody knows that the world is full of stupid people” (from the old popular song) is all too true... 

            It can be noted in connection with the above cited example that all of the game players are at least willing to (if not enthusiastically so) embrace sadistic behavior as a key part of the total game scenario, and this is a feature of most social gaming – if there is not a substantial element of malicious intent present to drive the game forward to its outcome, it frequently does not happen, although the caveat here is that no interaction may take place in this case.  Conversely, if there is a significant element of benevolent intent present, the result is customarily authentic (i.e. game-free) interaction among the participants.  This is true as a general tendency in social situations, from the internal “social situation” that I call “me”, all the way up to the mass culture and its defining Post Modern element – the organization.  

            The impersonality of most large organizations lends itself to the type of fundamentally sadistic social gaming outlined above, as quality interpersonal interaction becomes deemphasized in favor of superficial personal advantage and (in reality) individual alienation and isolation.  The materialistic emphasis on all interaction in the West has tended to produce a cultural ambience in which the participants frequently do not even know how to initiate or sustain deep, meaningful communication with each other, and may not even know that such possibilities exist.  When coupled with the regimentation typical of organizations, we now have the basic prescription for fascism around the world.            

            Both the inherent type of sadist, and subsequently the conditioned kind, tend to flourish in fascist organizational settings where the ideal victim/target scenario exists in the form of out-groups that are visibly different within the larger society, and customarily are not well organized enough themselves to mount an effective resistance front.  The sadist is most often quite cowardly, and will not usually assult an apparently powerful victim, preferring (like most predators) to take the easy prey first, on whatever level the social condition of “easy” manifests.  

            The hallmark of the fascist organization is the uniform, effectively, a tribal costume that serves to identify membership and rank within the organization, and establish anonymity in confrontations with out-group victims and possible threats.   The uniform is often accompanied by regimentation exercises such as marching, indoctrination, training sessions, and the all-around Post Modern favorite, team-building.  How often do we encounter the expression “team” today?  I personally experience it daily in the social mass culture where I function.  The team exemplifies all of the primary features of fascism – uniforms, regimentation, indoctrination, training, and the necessary ingredient that cannot be dispensed with – opposing “teams” – hopefully weak enough ones to not represent a serious threat to the team of choice!  Of course, this is not guaranteed, as world history repeatedly illustrates through the rise and fall of organizations, cultures, and entire civilizations, frequently accompanied by inter-cultural strife and military combat.   

            In a sense, the natural occurrence of sadism has at least one long term beneficial result – by ensuring that life will remain a battle, sadistic individuals also ensure that social and personal evolution will progress, and that what stagnates will eventually be eliminated by natural selection, thus maintaining the general health and vitality of the human condition and human genome. What sadists and fascists are so often fundamentally incapable of understanding here is that they are themselves merely participants in the much more expansive dialectical process of change identified long ago by G. F. W. Hegel – thesis, antithesis, and synthesis.   The sadist on any level is inevitably subject to this process (as is all of life) – every victim assaulted is a segment of an emerging antithesis that will eventually congeal into the material form of a threat that cannot be defeated, and in the resultant conflict, the best that can be hoped for is the synthesis of a new, more honest condition – a higher level of truth, as Hegel referred to it.   This process forms the Tao of all conditions and manifestation in the universe.  There can be no indefinite stability as the fascists long for so ardently – no endlessly abundant “feeding ground” of helpless victims present in the absence of substantial threats to their hegemony.   All is change in the material universe, and that feature even carries through to the higher levels of conscious perception – even the Logos exists in a fluid condition of ongoing development as Souls and Oversouls flow into and back from it in the expression of Karma.  It is perhaps the essential Karmic task of the sadist and the fascist to understand and accept this fundamental truth of existence – a very tough lesson for such individuals to assimilate to be sure. 

            The primary working tool of fascist oppression in any setting is the confinement, or, more often, threat of confinement, directed against the physical organism of both victims and various other out-group threats to the fascist in-group of preference.  It goes without saying that at least some of those out-group threats are equally or more onerous and fascistic than the in-group in question – it is the victims that ultimately really take the beating in the totalitarian environment, not the adversaries.   Confinement in this context also embraces many other dimensions – the confinement of the mind by brainwashing and hegemony, the confinement of whole segments of society by the enforcement of class and caste consciousness, the refusal to permit open expression of discourse, belief, and constructive criticism, and so on, but it is the threat of physical incarceration (possibly accompanied by torture, abuse, and neglect) that resides behind them all – truly a smorgasbord of sadistic delights from school master’s switch to the interrogator’s water board!  Are we really free?  Perhaps not... 

            In one of his many cryptically (if cynically) accurate observations, Perls once said that, from his observational perspective in the seventies “It looks like the fascists have just about got it won”, and so much time has elapsed since then.   We still see the struggle everywhere as outlined in this essay – victims, oppressors, and rescuers locked into a seemingly endless conflict with each other, and some brief commentary on this dynamic will form its conclusion.  The victim/oppressor/rescuer triangle is possibly the best representation of the fundamental social game dynamic.   Initially, it appears that a victim is subject to abuse by an oppressor, and then may solicit the assistance of a rescuer to stop the oppressor’s actions, thus liberating the victim.  In actuality – and this has been demonstrated again and again in real time – the rescuer by the definition of the role becomes a new oppressor – of the original oppressor – and this compels the original victim to become the rescuer of the original oppressor by intervening against the rescuer!  The roles involved can rotate endlessly around the dialectical triangle of oppression, and the only egress occurs when any one role player decides to abandon the role in favor of authentic interaction with the other two players.  At this point, the game falls apart, and the others are left with a choice – find a new game venue, or become authentic themselves.  Since becoming authentic involves substantial risk for the individual making this choice, most participants continue to play, yet today, more and more people are choosing to become real and exist in liberation.  

                                                                                - With Love, Alan -

                                                                (Copyright 2009, by Alan Schneider)

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