Zaphod

Maybe Zaphod is saying that only non-egotistical geniuses can radiate love in
any real way, only those who have survived the death of ego can even express
love well enough to resist the force of fascism.

Love is easily conventionalized so expressions must have "the power of love"
in order to be strong enough to work against convention or inertia. If we
are stagnated in ego there is no way for us to know what love is, or how to
express it beyond the cliche.

Love would also be the requirement for us to know whether we are listening,
trying to be worthy of being listened to, and without the deep cruel
evolution of love as a constant state everything we do to try to change
others or make change more possible is just bullshit.

Egotistical expression luxuriates in self, and tends to come from people who
are unduly happy with themselves out of narcissism or delusion. Hence the
sin of pride, self-sufficiency, is the chief cardinal sin. Pride=ego, pride
goeth before a fall, ego is the false sense of security labeled "koros" in
ancient Greek tragedy.

I wonder if a week in the Millennium Hut would be enough for me. I have
always been sort of willful and suspicious of people who tell me to give up
my ego. However, to be able to function in society or any complex system
like human expression you can't have that wall of ego blocking you. If you
can't cross over it you are useless.

You also just lose all sense of the human I think. M. Scott Peck called it
"cathexis," we become attached to things and the things dominate our
perceptions and the nature of our deepest self. We get chained down, cease
to function, make endless errors.

Maybe Zaphod is correct that my postings are in the main self-indulgent
bullshit bred of a dysfunctioning mind incapable of love or judgment or
action. Certainly my view of the practice of granting indulgences is also
based on the insidious pathology of particular expressions or images whose
only appeal, only use, is to the ego-only human. So for me as a person or
psyche to get all happy about myself is the kiss of death. Egotism poisons
our ability to love, or "know anything," to express and listen in a way that
is wholesome for the human mind as an organ or system of organs capable of
love.

Zaphod is saying that even a tiny mote of egotism, which might be considered
a disease or fixation of the ego, can pollute or infect everything. Egotism
actually thinks it has transcended egotism and is on the golden highway of
genius, but ego is always there in the system ready to calcify like a
kidneystone. That other thing, love or meditation toward enlightenment,
always has to go back in there and dissolve the ego. Hence the idea that
only the humble are mighty, because they are not chained down by the sins and
enfeeblements of power.

One story of our species could be that nature used to be strong enough to
check our egos all by itself. Our intelligence fell under sexually selective
pressure that favored expressive ability ordered by love and altruism. We
also became smarter in general somehow, learning technical or instrumental
powers in addition to love-based expression. One could say that it was a
selective pressure toward love that tempered or restrained the value of
violent or emotionally disconnected faculties.

Love versus technology? Could be. I've read that serial killers can be
incredibly smart and skillful, but the whole problem they have is that they
are like ego-only. Psychopaths or people who torture little animals etc. are
unable to perceive other beings as existing at all, and only enjoy the power
to break or cause suffering, self-assertion gone wild. Art or skill or
technology might be said to be the ultimate avenue for the diseased ego to
pursue itself. That's the old Faust story I presume.

As for the merit of what Zaphod said about me, I certainly can't disprove it.
I guess I feel that to a degree she is correct that my attachment to ego is
killing me and rendering my art-activities or posts worse than useless,
offensive to those who are capable of loving intelligence and a shabby waste
of anyone's time. Sometimes I think of how heroism requires boastfulness,
and how the boasting is just the human way of cementing one's fate and
staking one's value on achieving some task. (I read that idea in a book
about Beowulf, and how his boasting was that of a Christian hero, not tainted
by pride but merely the way a warrior must use her talent without false
humility, which is often the mask of cowardice).

My boasting and blustering on list about being the Hulk and all might be some
kind of disease of the ego, as Zaphod says. I find it self-deprecating, to
say I'm the Hulk, you all might be surprised to know. No serious artist that
I ever heard of would make idiotic boasting so regular a habit; in my opinion
this is partly because artists have to present an image of being egoless or
beyond ego. This can breed pollution and rot, in the same way that the
celibacy of priests is often (and arguably, in origin) only for show.

Zaphod says I am polluted by ego, degenerate, foul, and riddled with sin, a
setback to love and beauty and peace anywhere. I'm a weak-ass fronting bitch
in many ways so something tells me she is correct. Something else, maybe the
devil, tells me not to fear the reaper and that I am just as god made me. I
like to feel giddy and care-free which no US writer or artmaker in 2002 has
any right to be, one might argue, because there is no time left. I.e. it is
reactionary to indulge XY euphoria.

Anyway, there's a lot to sort out. Shelley said "keep thy heart light, lest
it make thee sink/ when hope has kindled hope and lured thee to the brink."
He was evil too perhaps, certainly self-indulgent of his imaginative
inclinations and imagination in general. I try to take his expression with a
grain of salt, I know some of the major objections.

I don't think Zaphod will discuss any of this with me. She uses a lot of
negative reinforcement. It's kind of my own problem. I have to insist
however that she might be hellishly wrong about me, the meaninglessness of my
posts, the degeneracy of my soul, and some other aspects of reality. Even if
she's wrong or being unfair, it can't be all bad to say what she did.
Actually it could be all bad, like turning away an angel from the door.

If that's the case I'll see everyone in hell I guess.

Max Herman
genius2000.net

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