(I feel i must write something down here before i go crazy. Feel free not to read on, it's just the ramblings of a madman....)
So i had a thought, on the other days 'wake up its above zero degrees and not raining' run, here in Glasgow Scotland, about where actually do our personalities come from? i.e. what makes you, you?
I'd been thinking about this ever since i lost my personality in an Ayahuasca session (see here ) albeit temporarily. I still was around, i just wasn't me any more. My ego, my self had gone awol.
So when someone comes to you and says 'well you can't say that because no-one says that anymore' or 'you can't call him that anymore, its not cool' Then, dear friend feel free to smile, as that person is no more than an empty husk, mimicking an opinion that his environment made him think is correct. He or she doesn't know what they are saying is correct any more than a dog knows to sit when he's told.
Back in the old days, when people hunted in tribes and there was no TV, no schools, mass media, or internet blogs to mould and programme peoples personalities, people did things differently. Your average tribe had a belief system that they were born into, and you didn't really need to be witty and charming to woo the love of your life into bed, you just did it. You didn't have a personality. Simple.
Skip on a few generations, and you have the all encompassing power of mass religion. Think about how people exposed to hardcore Judaism, Islam or Christianity differ in personality from you, simply because thats what they have been exposed to, thats what they reflect.
But now, in the post monothist west, from the very day you are born, there are competing value systems attacking you and attempting to get you to 'join their tribe' - and most of them not very good for you. This means that nowadays, everyone has an Ego. A 'personality'. Or do you?
Lets look at a few things that mould a personality -
1. The majority of the population in some countries still have an idea that 'well i'm American/Scottish/Canadian/Japanese/English so i should act decently (throwback from organised religion?) but what of Latvians? Estonians? Moldovans? Russians? Chinese? do you guys think you should act a certain way because of where you are from? (can you imagine it.....i'm Nigerian so i feel i should scam you somehow)
2. One other main influence on people is still the family, and the upringing. 'i cant do it because its the way i was brought up' is a common excuse i've had from nice girls who i've tried to kiss, since time immemorial.
3. Religion. This doesn't apply to most people in the west - since there is a moral vacuum, which is either taken up by fake 'consumer religions' like Satanism or Scientology or Wiccan and whatever the bad guys will make up soon with media backing to brainwash the masses into Armageddon (did you ever read 'ape and essence' by Aldius Huxley? the world gets nuked and the survivors end up worshipping the devil) Anyway, as followers of Reverend Jim Johnson will tell you (he led the infamous 'cult of the damned' where they drank arsenic laced 'kool aid' in Guyana and they all died) It can be an all powerful influence on people's personality, far stronger than 1 and 2, and as your average suicide bomber will tell you, far more dangerous. Basically when it gets like that, it's just simple hypnotism.
4. Mass Media and the resultant peer pressure. The lack of religion in the west, and the lack of influence of 1,2 and 3 has led to a generation of 'lost children' looking for something to believe in, looking for something to do.
Total cannon fodder for the mass media.
This is the new religion, and its agenda serves as direction for millions. This is where your goatee bearded clown at a dinner party will pretend to defend the right of women to go to work naked if they so wish. Not because he's thought it through, because he was hypnotised by a documentary on it, and it was presented by a 'guy like him'
Children and teenagers are particularly vulnerable, since often their idiot parents are either divorced, never married, or don't care enough, so they get the hardest sell into the system. Peer pressure to conform with that ensures a vast unpaid police force to keep the fashion/message like this or like that.
If you aren't 'on message' you are nobody. Just look at smoking and drinking and as a teenager. Pressure is enormous to do it, but why you are doing it, nobody actually knows.
So if we have a generation of adults weaned on TV rather than values, then what? their 'personalities' are simply reflections of what marketing hypnotists want them to be. Easily malleable Zombies - a marketing mans dream. If you don't believe me, go and ask the opinion of anyone in the rat race - middle managers, council workers, office receptionists, shopkeepers....
Sadly, and frustratingly, you'll soon be able to pidgeonhole them to the point of predicting how the rest of their lives will go, because their whole pointless lives are merely a reflection of what is around them - i.e. mass media and what their peers think of them (with, if they are lucky, the dwindling semblance of an upbringing)
So, unlike 100 years ago - who controls the mass media controls the world.
So what if the agenda of the (very few) owners of the mass media was malign?
Right now we see the US mass media brainwashing a whole country to forget about them stealing all their money. And that Libya is a bad dictatorship all of sudden (since they're pulling out of Iraq and Afghanstan, a new bogeyman is needed to distract the populace from their current bankruptcy. )
And who loses here - the poor average Libyan in the street, who's economy is being ravaged because of NATO intervention, thats who.
So you ask an average Joe american his opinion (i have done so, with everyone i met at the casinos there) and it seems his 'personality' is so non-existant that he's quite ok to turn up at 'ground zero' , and chant 'USA' like a zombie, when the news tells him that the culprit is dead.
In other words - he is so dead inside that he will act on something that the media tells him to act on, not on something he has experienced or has any knowledge about.
And if the media chose not to report about something (for example the total media blackout of Ron Paul's Presidential Campaign) then he remains blissfully ignorant in his world of hamburgers, baseball and Oprah Winfrey.
So there you have it. The fact that you follow Rangers or Manchester City, like healthy eating, and enjoy Yoga, and the odd glass of white wine, is not your opinion, or your personality, it's a product of your influences and the environment around you. Your choice of friends is relative to mutual media exposure (i.e. you'll be drawn to people who reaffirm your belief system) , of partner, of love, is merely a chemical reaction combined with environmental factors, as it the number of children you have. So, for most of us, our ability to make decisions of our own are limited to nothing more important than the menu in Starbucks.
But this leads to a deeper thought - who controls that environment ultimately? Are we, the sheeple, being sheparded into a new age, that we don't have control over? Has this happened before, i.e did we have an 'advanced civilisation' , some atlantis, before, and a 'fall of man' into barbarism resulting from a few people enslaving the population and ultimately destroying it and themselves? will it be different this time? The Hindu Vedas, the story of Gilgamesh, from thousands of years ago, are all about nuclear war in the dim and distant past.
The only conclusion I can come to on this quite spurious philosophical argument is that perhaps there is somewhere in every human a seed of genetic memory from all history, hidden away in the DNA (where we, in theory hold a vast shared memory of our history since we were apes and before) and so such a vast range of perspectives can come out, that now and again throws up genius, and truly inspirational people who can direct us in a way that is positive for the human race and doesn't involve destabilising and then economically enslaving innocent 3rd world countries. Maybe thats our only hope.
Anyway, any contrary opinions welcome.
On that note i'm off outside, its a beautiful day, for a change...
So i had a thought, on the other days 'wake up its above zero degrees and not raining' run, here in Glasgow Scotland, about where actually do our personalities come from? i.e. what makes you, you?
I'd been thinking about this ever since i lost my personality in an Ayahuasca session (see here ) albeit temporarily. I still was around, i just wasn't me any more. My ego, my self had gone awol.
So when someone comes to you and says 'well you can't say that because no-one says that anymore' or 'you can't call him that anymore, its not cool' Then, dear friend feel free to smile, as that person is no more than an empty husk, mimicking an opinion that his environment made him think is correct. He or she doesn't know what they are saying is correct any more than a dog knows to sit when he's told.
Back in the old days, when people hunted in tribes and there was no TV, no schools, mass media, or internet blogs to mould and programme peoples personalities, people did things differently. Your average tribe had a belief system that they were born into, and you didn't really need to be witty and charming to woo the love of your life into bed, you just did it. You didn't have a personality. Simple.
Skip on a few generations, and you have the all encompassing power of mass religion. Think about how people exposed to hardcore Judaism, Islam or Christianity differ in personality from you, simply because thats what they have been exposed to, thats what they reflect.
But now, in the post monothist west, from the very day you are born, there are competing value systems attacking you and attempting to get you to 'join their tribe' - and most of them not very good for you. This means that nowadays, everyone has an Ego. A 'personality'. Or do you?
Lets look at a few things that mould a personality -
1. The majority of the population in some countries still have an idea that 'well i'm American/Scottish/Canadian/Japanese/English so i should act decently (throwback from organised religion?) but what of Latvians? Estonians? Moldovans? Russians? Chinese? do you guys think you should act a certain way because of where you are from? (can you imagine it.....i'm Nigerian so i feel i should scam you somehow)
2. One other main influence on people is still the family, and the upringing. 'i cant do it because its the way i was brought up' is a common excuse i've had from nice girls who i've tried to kiss, since time immemorial.
3. Religion. This doesn't apply to most people in the west - since there is a moral vacuum, which is either taken up by fake 'consumer religions' like Satanism or Scientology or Wiccan and whatever the bad guys will make up soon with media backing to brainwash the masses into Armageddon (did you ever read 'ape and essence' by Aldius Huxley? the world gets nuked and the survivors end up worshipping the devil) Anyway, as followers of Reverend Jim Johnson will tell you (he led the infamous 'cult of the damned' where they drank arsenic laced 'kool aid' in Guyana and they all died) It can be an all powerful influence on people's personality, far stronger than 1 and 2, and as your average suicide bomber will tell you, far more dangerous. Basically when it gets like that, it's just simple hypnotism.
4. Mass Media and the resultant peer pressure. The lack of religion in the west, and the lack of influence of 1,2 and 3 has led to a generation of 'lost children' looking for something to believe in, looking for something to do.
Total cannon fodder for the mass media.
This is the new religion, and its agenda serves as direction for millions. This is where your goatee bearded clown at a dinner party will pretend to defend the right of women to go to work naked if they so wish. Not because he's thought it through, because he was hypnotised by a documentary on it, and it was presented by a 'guy like him'
Children and teenagers are particularly vulnerable, since often their idiot parents are either divorced, never married, or don't care enough, so they get the hardest sell into the system. Peer pressure to conform with that ensures a vast unpaid police force to keep the fashion/message like this or like that.
If you aren't 'on message' you are nobody. Just look at smoking and drinking and as a teenager. Pressure is enormous to do it, but why you are doing it, nobody actually knows.
So if we have a generation of adults weaned on TV rather than values, then what? their 'personalities' are simply reflections of what marketing hypnotists want them to be. Easily malleable Zombies - a marketing mans dream. If you don't believe me, go and ask the opinion of anyone in the rat race - middle managers, council workers, office receptionists, shopkeepers....
Sadly, and frustratingly, you'll soon be able to pidgeonhole them to the point of predicting how the rest of their lives will go, because their whole pointless lives are merely a reflection of what is around them - i.e. mass media and what their peers think of them (with, if they are lucky, the dwindling semblance of an upbringing)
So, unlike 100 years ago - who controls the mass media controls the world.
So what if the agenda of the (very few) owners of the mass media was malign?
Right now we see the US mass media brainwashing a whole country to forget about them stealing all their money. And that Libya is a bad dictatorship all of sudden (since they're pulling out of Iraq and Afghanstan, a new bogeyman is needed to distract the populace from their current bankruptcy. )
And who loses here - the poor average Libyan in the street, who's economy is being ravaged because of NATO intervention, thats who.
So you ask an average Joe american his opinion (i have done so, with everyone i met at the casinos there) and it seems his 'personality' is so non-existant that he's quite ok to turn up at 'ground zero' , and chant 'USA' like a zombie, when the news tells him that the culprit is dead.
In other words - he is so dead inside that he will act on something that the media tells him to act on, not on something he has experienced or has any knowledge about.
And if the media chose not to report about something (for example the total media blackout of Ron Paul's Presidential Campaign) then he remains blissfully ignorant in his world of hamburgers, baseball and Oprah Winfrey.
So there you have it. The fact that you follow Rangers or Manchester City, like healthy eating, and enjoy Yoga, and the odd glass of white wine, is not your opinion, or your personality, it's a product of your influences and the environment around you. Your choice of friends is relative to mutual media exposure (i.e. you'll be drawn to people who reaffirm your belief system) , of partner, of love, is merely a chemical reaction combined with environmental factors, as it the number of children you have. So, for most of us, our ability to make decisions of our own are limited to nothing more important than the menu in Starbucks.
But this leads to a deeper thought - who controls that environment ultimately? Are we, the sheeple, being sheparded into a new age, that we don't have control over? Has this happened before, i.e did we have an 'advanced civilisation' , some atlantis, before, and a 'fall of man' into barbarism resulting from a few people enslaving the population and ultimately destroying it and themselves? will it be different this time? The Hindu Vedas, the story of Gilgamesh, from thousands of years ago, are all about nuclear war in the dim and distant past.
The only conclusion I can come to on this quite spurious philosophical argument is that perhaps there is somewhere in every human a seed of genetic memory from all history, hidden away in the DNA (where we, in theory hold a vast shared memory of our history since we were apes and before) and so such a vast range of perspectives can come out, that now and again throws up genius, and truly inspirational people who can direct us in a way that is positive for the human race and doesn't involve destabilising and then economically enslaving innocent 3rd world countries. Maybe thats our only hope.
Anyway, any contrary opinions welcome.
On that note i'm off outside, its a beautiful day, for a change...
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