The Emperor Augustus, an autocrat who in my judgment sought to project "friendly strength."
Chapter Four seems quite interesting, although some of the exercises do not seem practical to me.
I enjoyed the discussion of the four quadrants, and the suggestion that all of us should try to be "a little less rigid, a little more flexible." I liked the G. Rattray Taylor table, and it seems to me that culturally we are in a Matrist period. It also seems to me that the Democratic Party has become more "Matrist" while the Republican Party has tended to be more "Patrist" and authoritarian. The discussion of Nietzsche's concept of resentment and e.e. cumming's couplet Communist intelligentsia "every kumrad is a little bit/of concentrated hate" seems relevant to the current left on Twitter in 2021.
I have my doubts about some of the exercises. If RAW is serious about telling us to "Get roaring drunk and pound the table, telling everybody in a loud voice just what dumb assholes they all are," well, I'm just not going to do that.
But I did watch a Three Stooges video, "Woman Haters" on YouTube. And while I don't plan to visit the "Lion House at the zoo" any time soon, I do have two "lions" in the house -- two cats -- and the male Siamese is very dominant, and constantly harasses and chases the female Torty, so that's something I can observe every day. And newspapers tend to have strong hierarchies, so I ought to be able to observe that when I go into the office this week.
3 comments:
Terrific post. It does seem reasonable to get roaring drunk once in one’s life, in a safe setting. The Earth Will Shake shows the risk of getting roaring drunk even once.
The rise of the Moral Majority would seem to have placed the American right-wing in a permanent state of patrist values. Considering that patriotism comes from the Greek patris, I guess this should be unsurprising.
Wilson uses Abbot and Costello to effectively demonstrate the seemingly eternal struggle of existence in Illuminatus!.
I like your substitution for the lion house. Our cat Cookie, at least in her relationship with the other cat, comes from the direction of "hostile weakness." She doesn't want anything to do with Outis and complains loudly when the younger cat is overly excited. Outis herself would probably best be described as coming from a place of "hostile strength" a lot of the times as she seems to enjoy tormenting Cookie. However, both cats are very sweet towards us but are also strong enough to let us know when they have a problem (usually when we sleep too late past their breakfast).
I can't imagine you pounding on a table Tom. It might be worth it for the comic incongruity. You can always just get some maddog 20/20 and yell at your cats. (A reference to the now-deceased "Mother God," Amy Carlson who was filmed getting hammered and screaming at a cat that it was a whore. She seemed like a real delusional piece of shit.)
Chapter 4 explains Leary's famous line, "politics is best discussed on all fours."
Perhaps the exercize to get roaring drunk means to do it retroactively? I suspect that most people who come across it have been roaringly drunk at least once, I know I have multiple times in my partying years. The exercize brings back those memories, if one has them, and the feeling of dominant C2 awareness. I never had the inclination to call people assholes but probably thought it.
We have a "lion" living with us too. She is a long-haired cat who got terrible dreads she wouldn't let us brush off so he we had to get all her hair shaved off. They left hair on the neck, head and legs, so she had a mane and looked like a small lion. The cat barber called it a lion cut. I observed her body movements carefully now that she wasn't a ball of hair and I could see them.
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