Avatar and the Singularity Archetype

©2010 by Jonathan Zap   Edited by Austin Iredale

What is the Singularity Archetype?

Some of the most significant layers of meaning in Avatar are not to be found in the articles available on the web that discuss its underlying mythology, at least from what I’ve read.  Avatar is charged with emergent archetypal messages from the collective unconscious that relate to an evolutionary event horizon which I’ve discussed in my writings on “the Singularity Archetype.” The Singularity Archetype,  a term I coined many years ago, is a primordial image of an evolutionary event horizon that seems to be an implicit potentiality glowing in the collective unconscious of our species.  I first wrote about the Singularity Archetype (though I didn’t use the term at the time) in an undergraduate philosophy honors paper I wrote in 1978 when I was twenty-years-old and which is available on line: Archetypes of a New Evolution. I discovered that there was an emergent archetype that contained crucial information about our future evolution and that manifested itself in dreams, fantasies and religious visions forming a core element in a largely unrecognized contemporary mythology. The most potent expression of this mythology continues to be in science-fiction novels and films.

Before we can discuss Avatar we need a working understanding of the Singularity Archetype. White Crows Rising—The Singularity Archetype and the Event Horizon of Human Evolution is my most in depth treatment of the topic,  while a much briefer treatment can be found in Looking Toward the Event Horizon an article published in the Australian Magazine  New Dawn on December 1st, 2008.

An Example of the Singularity Archetype

To get a feeling for the Singularity Archetype it is necessary to study some of the specific manifestations of it.  There are many examples in the writings linked above, and to really get a sense of it requires encountering several examples.  I’ll provide a very basic one here which comes from one of Jung’s most brilliant colleagues, Marie Louise Von Franz, from a chapter she authored in Jung’s classic introductory work, Man and his Symbols. Von Franz describes two dreams reported to her by someone she describes as “…a simple woman who was brought up in Protestant surroundings…” In both dreams a supernatural event of great significance is being viewed. But in one dream the dreamer is viewing the event from below, standing on the earth, in the other dream she views the same event from above.

(The dreamer’s painting, from Man and His Symbols by C.G. Jung.)

In the earthbound dream, the dreamer is standing with a guide looking down at Jerusalem. The wing of Satan descends and darkens the city. The uncanny wing of the devil occurring in the Middle East immediately brings to mind Antichrist and Armageddon.

But in her other dream, the dreamer is witnessing the same event from the heavens. From this vantage the dark wing of Satan appears as the white, wafting cloak of God. A white spiral appears as a symbol of evolution. Von Franz describes,

“…the spectator is high up, somewhere in heaven, and sees in front of her a terrific split between the rocks. The movement in the cloak of God is an attempt to reach Christ, the figure on the right, but it does not quite succeed. In the [earthbound]  painting, the same thing is seen from below—from a human angle. Looking at it from a higher angle, what is moving and spreading is a part of God; above that rises the spiral as a symbol of possible further development. But seen from the basis of our human reality, this same thing in the air is the dark, uncanny wing of the devil.”

Implications of the Singularity Archetype

In these two dreams we see one of the classic aspects of the Singularity Archetype—what to the earth-bound ego seems apocalyptic, from a cosmic viewpoint is revealed to be a transcendent evolutionary event.  Again, to get a feeling for this archetype requires contact with several examples which you can find in the documents linked above.  In Looking Toward the Event Horizon I summarized some of the implications of the Singularity Archetype as follows:

“As we move toward the event horizon, the physics of the dreamtime more potently interpenetrates the physics of the waking life.  Synchronicity becomes more the rule than the exception, and the way we have become accustomed to experiencing space and time is drastically altered. Matter is respiritualized and transforms more readily to accord with psychic intentions. The new species are changelings and reality transformers freed from many of the mortal and corporeal limitations that bound the older species.”

“The relationship between individuality, ego, and collectivity is fundamentally transformed, and we see many variations of “homo gestalt”—new versions of the species where group telepathies enhance the synergy and symbiosis of individuals.  More visual and telepathic modalities of communication are involved in this fundamental shift.  Members of the new species are typically androgynous and many aspects of gender stereotyping become archaic.”

“To catalyze such fundamental metamorphosis may require planet-wide shocks that punctuate the equilibrium of the species and threaten the entire human genome.  The shocks may need to be of apocalyptic intensity to overcome the inherent conservatism of species homeostasis and to potentiate a will toward metamorphosis. As we move toward the event horizon there is an exponential intensification of novelty as new and unexpected forms are created, latent capacities become manifest, and emergent aspects are revealed. The human ego as defender of the old equilibrium may approach many of these transformations with fear, loathing and violence.  Patriarchal power structures, including religious fundamentalism and the military-industrial complex, may perceive the metamorphosis as a zero-sum game competition of species, with genocide or extinction as the binary options.”

“Because the eschaton of the species and the individual event horizon of death have great parallel resonance, those who are driven by the fear and denial of death will greet the metamorphosis with the same maladaptive strategies that have characterized their approach to life in general. Xenophobic violence, will to power, and territoriality may be exacerbated.  As novelty intensifies, we should expect to see the outer edges of both dark and light intensify.”

“Because of the parallelism between individual death and eschaton of the species, the typically human confusion of inner and outer will cause many prophesiers to anticipate various end dates conveniently scheduled to occur within their lifetimes. This tendency to displace fear of individual death onto a relatively close end date only intensifies the binding to linear time and represents a last effort of the ego to control a transcendent metamorphosis.”

“The Singularity Archetype is essentially a low resolution map of an evolutionary event horizon.  From my point of view, the future contains formed and unformed elements, and the lack of specificities and exact timelines (though many will attempt to attach these) allows greater room for free will and novel outcomes.  Each of us is hurtling toward an event horizon, and whether the nearest event horizon is personal death or species-wide eschaton, it is crucial to view both as emergences rather than as emergencies.  A threshold of absolute metamorphosis is guaranteed in either case, and therefore the way one lives one’s life requires ultimate values that retain meaning when seen against the backdrop of eternity.”

The Will Toward the Glorified Body

An aspect of the Singularity Archetype that is especially relevant to Avatar is what I call “the will toward the glorified body.”  My essay, The Glorified Body—Metamorphosis of the Body and the Crisis Phase of Human Evolution, explores this aspect of the Singularity Archetype.  Here are some passages particularly relevant to this discussion of Avatar:

“To understand the will toward the Glorified Body we first need to define what I am referring to as the ‘Glorified Body.’ Many Christian writings describe the body of the resurrected Christ as being a ‘Glorified Body’ —-a radiant body free of mortal limitations. Although I am not working from a Christian point of view, I believe that this phrase captures a powerful archetype. We see images and hear stories of the Glorified Body in most or all cultures and periods. There are all sorts of variations and numerous gradations on the Glorified Body spectrum, but the defining characteristics are fairly apparent.”

“Glad Day” by William Blake

“Although the Glorified Body occurs in endless variations there are two very broad categories in which the term ‘Glorified Body’ will be employed in this article. One use of Glorified Body refers to the inherent ‘energy body’ that all human beings possess. Sometimes I will substitute ‘energy body’ to make clear this first meaning of Glorified Body. The second, and somewhat overlapping, category of use for the term ‘Glorified Body’ is to refer to human or nonhuman entities whose manifest bodies are closer to energy than conventional flesh and blood bodies. This type of Glorified Body hovers in the collective psyche of the human species as a highly charged image and expectation of our further evolution. ..”

“In mythologies, the Glorified Body appears free of some or all of the many limitations of mortality. The Glorified Body may be completely free of cosmetic blemishes, limited vitality, aging, pain, disease, and death. A Glorified Body may be able to transcend conventional limitations of space and time. For example, it may not need technology or an intermediary force of any sort to appear in any location it chooses. It may have transcendent clarity of vision and thought. Often it will transcend ordinary language and communicate through radiance or from the inside of another psyche. A being with a Glorified Body may live in a state of enlightenment and love. Or it could be evil and possess an incredibly potent array of diabolical powers. Visually, a Glorified Body may appear radiant and beautiful—–awe inspiring, numinous—–the body of an angel. But it could also choose to appear cloaked as a mundane, physical body or as a hideous apparition or demon. The most evolved Glorified Bodies are infinitely plastic, able to take on whatever form is desired. This is the quality of the shape shifter, the changeling——like the devil that ‘hath the power to assume a pleasing shape’ or the liquid metal terminator in the popular movie Terminator 2.”

“In contemporary mythology the Glorified Body appears in a spectrum of permutations ranging from an idealized human material body to a state of omnipotent, omniscient godhood. In our materialistic culture we have Superman, ‘the Man of Steel’, who has a more industrialized version of the Glorified Body.  (‘The man of steel’ seems the perfect Iron Age personification of the Glorified Body—to put this in the perspective of the cycle of ages see The Mutant versus the Machine—the End of the Iron Age and the Galactic Alignment of 2012) Superman doesn’t have special radiance, telepathy or most other divine attributes, but leaps tall buildings in a single bound, outruns locomotives, and most helpful in our culture, is bulletproof. At the other end of our cultural spectrum the Glorified Body turns up as the shape-shifting UFO phenomenon perceived by human observers in endlessly varying forms.”

“The human will toward the Glorified Body is not a subtle urge. It is an iron fist pounding on both sides of the doors of perception. It is an urging of such terrible power that it will prompt some to go under the surgeon’s knife, to starve themselves to death, to sell their souls in the hope of having a mortal body that will merely better resemble a Glorified Body for a brief time. The Glorified Body is not a casual, imaginative musing or an episodic blip on the radar screens of various cultures. It is a powerful, emergent archetype. It is one of our most ancient obsessions and one of the most explosively contemporary. It is related to the deepest sources of human suffering, an inextricable aspect of a thousand types of neurotic torment, a companion in some way to almost every form of personal hell. It is also a divine muse, one of the greatest sources of hope and inspiration we’ve ever known.”

“Messages about the will toward a Glorified Body are as ubiquitous in our culture as radio and television waves. Expression of this will can also be found deeply embedded in every religion and mythology, and yet it is rarely named, rarely seen as a highly defined, differentiated and absolutely integral aspect of human psychology. The will toward the Glorified Body is at the center of some of our most destructive and also some of our most creative impulses. This will is a primary urge which can inspire incredible athletic achievement, great art, and technology that blurs with magic.”

“The will toward the Glorified Body is what inspired Michelangelo to carve David. This same will has also inspired the technological magicians of the computer industry to provide us with ‘Avatars,’ animated characters that will represent us in the once visually anonymous world of the Internet. Soon we will be able to boot up our virtual Glorified Bodies and revel in a digital garden of earthly delights. Our bodies will be infinitely plastic and with a mouse click we can be leaner than Kate Moss or have cybernetically enhanced muscle definition that will make Mr. Universe look like the Pilsbury Dough Boy. It’s interesting to note the term the computer industry has adopted for these new digital bodies—-Avatars. The first definition of Avatar in the abridged Oxford dictionary is: ‘(in Hindu mythology) the descent of a deity or released soul to earth in bodily form.’”

“But somewhere behind the ever more glowing computer monitor or virtual reality goggles will be a human being—– a digitally unenhanced mortal/organic version 1.0, who will very likely have bags under his eyes and a pot belly. The Wizard of Oz tells us not to look at the man behind the curtain. But we will look, and will be ever more horrified with the contrast between what we see behind the curtain and what’s up there on the screen. The primary urge will remain agonizingly unfulfilled.”

“However unfulfilling it may be in some ways, technology is one of the central expressions of the will toward a Glorified Body. Technology actually does allow us to extend our physical bodies through time and space. The urge to become a celebrity, for example, is an urge toward a Glorified Body that modern technology can, to some degree, create. In her films, Marilyn Monroe still lives as a youthful beauty. Since she died young there is no aging, mortal body to provide an embarrassing contrast to her Glorified Body projected on the silver screen. She remains a goddess.”

“The will toward a Glorified Body is a primary urge, the urge of our entire species and not just single individuals living in a particular culture. (I’m intentionally using the word “urge” here to blur the distinction between instinct and drive as I think this primary urge partakes of both biological and psychological forces.)  Organisms of all sorts seem to have the primary urge to reproduce, to genetically propagate. Among gendered organisms there is an insistent urge to couple with other individuals of the same species. That urging may be intense enough to be described as “going into heat.” Heat is a state of excitement and increased dynamism, whether it is the material heat of fire or the metabolic heat of a living organism. The organism in heat may appear agitated, even tormented, while in the grip of this urge. In the adolescent stage of development—–the stage of recently acquired reproductive potential—-there may be the particularly urgent will to achieve that first coupling. The unfulfilled urge is antecedent to the coupling event—-an event that in chaos math would be a called an “attractor.” (Very roughly, an “attractor” is an event in the future that is so powerful that it warps causality and phenomena in the present.) Very likely the organism will get to fulfill this urge. But it’s not a sure thing. Some organisms may die before they fulfill the urge—but certainly some individuals of that species must get to fulfill that urge or the species will become extinct. As far as I can tell, urges in nature are always fulfilled by a species, though not necessarily by every individual of that species. Only in human beings could we even imagine the existence of an urge that seems to never be fulfilled. My contention is that the human species has “gone into heat”—-a state of heightened expectation, agitation and chaos. We are nearing the attractor, nearing the place where we can couple with the Glorified Body and fulfill a primary urge.”

“The intensifying will toward the Glorified Body is happening at a time of evolutionary crisis when the metabolism of the whole species is heating up. Technological changes and scientific discoveries are fundamentally altering our experiences of self and outer reality. The biosphere that allows the existence of our physical bodies has undergone a global toxification threatening the continuance of our species. To understand the body-image plague we must view it in the context in which it occurs—–a crisis phase of human evolution. Many attributes of the human psyche, from sexuality and body image to spirituality and our sense of relation to the universe, are rapidly mutating. We cannot comprehend symptoms without understanding the general condition of a species that is hurtling toward an evolutionary nexus charged with images of extinction and rebirth. Our intensifying will toward the Glorified Body is more than an urge to reconnect with the inherent, human energy body recognized by all cultures. It is also a species-wide urge to make a quantum, evolutionary jump toward the Glorified Body as our embodied manifestation. We are experiencing an urge to massively redefine body, self and our relationship to physical reality.”

The Will Toward the Glorified Body in Avatar

The will toward the Glorified Body is right at the center of Avatar.  James Cameron seems to be aware of this.  When Larry King asked him why he picked the name “Avatar,” Cameron responded:  “I don’t know. Y’know when I wrote it in 95’ it just popped into my head that here you’ve got people projecting their consciousness into a fleshly body, a biological body, and that’s what the Sanskrit word means, the taking of flesh, the incarnation of a divine being in the case of the Hindu religion.  And although our characters aren’t divine beings, obviously, the idea is that it’s actually a fleshly incarnation.

As Avatar opens, our point of view is that of a Glorified Body, the flying dream body of the protagonist, Jake Sully, a young Marine who is a paraplegic.  His character is perfectly designed to represent the will toward the Glorified Body.  He is an athletic, vital young man with great physical courage and a warrior essence but whose body is half paralyzed.

The next hauntingly numinous scene in the movie is when Jake first catches a glimpse of his avatar.  I pointed out in my essay, “The Glorified Body…”, written in 1996, that “avatar,” a term which had then just been adopted in the computer gaming world, came from Hindu mythology and meant a spirit form descended into the flesh.  From the point of view of my essay, a human being is an avatar, a spirit bound to one body for the entire waking portion of an incarnation.  We also have an intense will to break free of the one body/one psyche rule that dominates the waking mortal life.  The movie Avatar, thanks to both content and the technological enhancements of its form, provides a powerful depiction of what it would be like to break the one body/one psyche rule.  Jake cannot restrain his unbridled euphoria when he is able to enter his avatar, a far more powerful and glorified body than he had even before his paralysis. His new body is bioluminescent, idealized, more androgynous and suited to a world where gravity is less limiting than on the earth.  In actuality it is a virtual body that is a hybridization of the actor’s body moving through space and time and a CGI avatar.

As I point out in the essay, we all get to break the one body/one psyche rule during the dreamtime when we are able to merge our awareness with a variety of dream bodies. Avatar begins with the liberated feeling of Jake flying in his dream body.  The process of merging with the avatars of the movie is very much like dreaming.  Jake lies down in a coffin-like capsule, and analogous to falling asleep and dreaming, his connection to his waking body is submerged and he bonds to a different, enhanced body that lives in Pandora, a place  analogous to the dreamtime. The dreamtime is a place of boundary dissolution.  Everyone who has seriously studied the dreamtime, including both Freud and Jung, has noticed how telepathic it is compared to the waking time.  Many of the reports of mutual dreaming illustrate this dramatically.  Similarly, the bioluminescent world of Pandora is a massively telepathic network. I’ll return to the concept of telepathic networks later in this essay.

The process of merging with the avatar, where you enter this technological sarcophagus, also has many parallels to death .  Jake dies to his waking life, passes through a tunnel of light and finds himself in a glorified body.  Jake’s life takes on a diurnal/nocturnal sort of cycling that undergoes a figure/ground reversal.  The waking life of his paraplegic body recedes with the ghetto life of corporeal limitations, bureaucratic tensions, and intrusions from imperialistic patriarchy.  His eros and enthusiasm for life become far more identified with his avatar/Pandoran life.  He wants to more fully escape the inferior corporeal/waking life into the Glorified Body/dreamtime/afterlife.

Paradoxically, Cathy Lynn Pagano wrote an article entitled “Avatar: The Archetypal Message Is ‘Get Back In Your Body!’” Pagano points out, quite insightfully,

“The freedom and joy of the body moving, leaping, daring is a major component of this story, just as Pandora’s beauty compliments the body’s freedom. The corporate people live in metal boxes, without beauty or free movement; the walking which was such a big part of the game of golf is reduced to putting in the office.”

The paradox she does not recognize is that Jake gets back into ‘the body,’ or more correctly he becomes more vitally embodied by breaking free of the limitations of his damaged human body and merging with his avatar.

Subcreating Imaginal Worlds

“It’s my world, you all are just living in it.”  —James Cameron (referring to Pandora), on the Larry King Show

While from the top layer of Avatar’s mythology, Pandora is an exotic, extraterrestrial world, on both a more literal and deeper layer Pandora is actually the world of the empowered human imagination.  Pandora is an imaginal world created by James Cameron.  Movies, as I’ve pointed out before, are essentially a dream delivery technology.  Cameron, who unlike most of us can command a thousand technicians and a quarter billion dollar budget, is able to make his dream, his imaginal world, into a collective dream.  His world is, of course, more an extrapolation of human psychology than anything extraterrestrial.  For example, since like Cameron I am a baby boomer, I notice a common cultural influence that very likely inspired the bioluminescent world of Pandora.  An early psychedelic experience for many baby boomers, including myself, was the backroom of various hippie shops where black lights illuminated black-light posters and created a little phosphorescent world reminiscent of the look of nocturnal Pandora. The avatar experience of the movie, therefore, represents to me not so much extraterrestrial travel as intrapsychic imaginal travel, which has more to do with the dreamtime, the future of virtual reality, and a human evolutionary event horizon we are hurtling toward.  By my second viewing of the movie, much of the novelty was gone, and I found that what I really wanted was a 3D IMAX immersive visit to another exotic world, which would be much more exciting than a revisit to Pandora.

Apparently there are quite a number of people, mostly young men, who are complaining on internet forums of depression because they can’t live on Pandora, which seems so real to them while they are watching the film in 3D.  For example, CNN, in an article entitled “Audiences experience ‘Avatar’ blues”  reports:

“A user named Mike wrote on the fan Web site ‘Naviblue’ that he contemplated suicide after seeing the movie.”

“ ‘Ever since I went to see Avatar I have been depressed. Watching the wonderful world of Pandora and all the Na’vi made me want to be one of them. I can’t stop thinking about all the things that happened in the film and all of the tears and shivers I got from it,’ Mike posted. ‘I even contemplate suicide thinking that if I do it I will be rebirthed in a world similar to Pandora and that everything is the same as in Avatar.’”

The ‘Naviblue’ phenomenon is understandable because so many in our culture are magically disempowered.  They want to live in someone else’s dream because it doesn’t occur to them that they are dreamers and potential subcreators who can create their own worlds. They have been conditioned to be passive consumers of the imaginal plane, not empowered creators on the imaginal plane.

As I have discussed in White Crows Rising—- The Singularity Archetype and the Event Horizon of Human Evolution on the other side of the evolutionary event horizon, the physics of the dreamtime will be the default, rather than the physics of the waking time, and we will have the ability to subcreate our own worlds without access to a thousand technicians and a quarter billion dollars.  I have also pointed out that unlike Terence McKenna and Ram Das, whom I have talked to a bit on the subject, I do not expect this evolutionary breakthrough to be a cure for human evils. When novelty increases, the outer edge of light and dark both intensify, and I expect that there will be gifted black magicians making potent diabolical use of these enhanced abilities.  I think the name “Pandora” suggests this with its connection to Pandora’s Box .  In the original myth Pandora opened a jar, but a mistranslation has rendered it forever into a box.  Now the word “Pandora” has been remythologized again and will forever be associated with the world of the Na’vi.  Avatar represents an opening of Pandora’s Box in the sense that it is a breakthrough in the technological magic of the movies, and now that the technology has been irretrievably loosed into the world, we can be sure that it will not always be used to deliver collective dreams as benign as Avatar.

Liminality and the Special Role of Hybrids in Evolution

The luminescent jellyfish-like envoys of Eywah, the divine intelligence of Pandora, recognize Jake as a key evolutionary catalyst.  In many ways, to the practical intelligence of both human and Pandoran characters, he is the most unlikely of choices.  He is severely handicapped in both the human and Pandoran realms, is not particularly bright and is woefully ignorant of Pandoran culture as well as foolish about human politics. What he does have, however, that makes him the ideal choice, is an enthusiastic beginner’s mind.  As the Pandoran shaman points out, “It’s hard to fill a cup that is already full.” His lack of knowledge, of course, is also ideal cinematically as we learn things for the first time as he does.  Jake is a liminal figure, a person caught between and betwixt, who is not fully accepted in either realm, a hybrid of human and Pandoran, and it is so often that which is liminal and hybrid which is the most alchemically charged and capable of metamorphosis.

Another aspect of Jake that makes him an evolutionary catalyst is that he is a twin.  His call to adventure comes because of the murder of his twin, who was trained to merge with a Na’vi avatar.  Twins are very significant mythologically, but also from an evolutionary point of view.  As I’ve noted in my work on the Singularity Archetype, a new type of consciousness also means a new type of communication, and the new means of communication can easily be what creates the new type of consciousness. The last quantum evolutionary jump had to do with our ability to think and communicate in words. The breakthrough into a more sophisticated form of communication is very likely to happen (both in the past and the future) between identical twins.  Identical twins sometimes invent their own languages.  (Sometimes called idioglossia or cryptophasia or less technically as “twin talk” or “twin speech.”) Identical twins are a maximal case of rapport that can exist between individuals, and with lessened barriers of difference and miscommunication they seem like the most fertile ground for crossing the communication gap between individuals in novel ways.  In another 2009 CGI film, 9, a masterpiece that, unlike Avatar, did not get the credit it deserved, we see a brilliant manifestation of the twin aspect of the Singularity Archetype. Amongst a group of prototype rag doll-like creatures there are a pair of twins. While the other prototypes have lens-like eyes that take in visual information, the twins have eyes that transmit information as light between them.  They are also able to project moving images to others.  A visually-oriented telepathy is one of the most classic aspects of the Singularity Archetype.  I discuss this at length in my four hour mp3, Logos Beheld, which will be available soon for free on zaporacle.com. Also amazing is that 9 ends with some of the creatures in luminous spirit bodies merging with a moving spiral of light in the sky, another classic element of many of the permutations of the singularity archetype (see the Von Franz dream study above).

The mysterious Norway Sprial which appeared on December 9, 2009

Jake, because of the murder of his human twin, is invited to merge with a new twin, his avatar, which has been grown to genetically match his murdered twin.  When this twinned being (Jake in his avatar) travels to Pandora he finds himself in a logos beheld kind of world where most or all of the life is bioluminescent, transmitting information about itself through the projection of light.  It is also a world that has much in common with another key aspect of the Singularity Archetype—the telepathic network. All of Pandora seems to be a telepathic network. The human world of the movie, even though it is set in the future, is as ego-fractured as ever, with human psyches encapsulated by their own short-sighted egocentric perspectives.  Like the human characters of the imagined future in Avatar, we have reached an evolutionary cul-de-sac with the ego. Given the lethality of our present level of technology, we may no longer be able to survive the egocentric perspective.  Unlike the Na’vi, the egocentric human is usually unaware, except in an abstracted way, of the living matrix of which he is a part.  Encapsulated by technological exoskeletons—SUVs, gadget filled homes, etc.—he may have no direct sense of how his lifestyle is impacting the rest of the living matrix.  The problem of the insulated ego is already a very familiar theme, and the ego is all too easy to villainize, but the prejudice against the ego so often found in New Age and Eastern circles fails to notice that the ego served many powerful evolutionary purposes.  In White Crows Rising… I wrote:

“In tribal cultures the ego seems less developed than in modern individuals living in industrialized societies. Tribal societies seem to have less individual boundaries and more group consciousness. Earlier human beings may have had less ego, but also less individuality and differentiation. A fundamental aspect or function of the ego is the creation of isolation. An individual perceives him or herself as a separate identity apart from others and the world. This perception creates a degree of isolation and within this insulating bubble an explosion of novelty occurs. A highly complex, unique, differentiated, often pathologized personality develops. Egocentric isolation, like the irritating grain of sand in an oyster, causes the development of a fantastic structure as complex buffering layers are accreted around the irritant and the beautiful pearl of individuality is created.”

One of the great purposes of the ego was to encapsulate consciousness and create a firewall between psyches, greatly reducing the networked telepathy that I believe is more the norm in nature.  We see what looks like networked telepathy, for example, in the amazing synchrony of schools of fish.  The Secret Life of Plants, and some subsequent studies, seem to show that the vegetable kingdom is not only sentient, but aware of human thoughts and changes to living tissue (while remote from any sensory information).  Tribal cultures do seem to be more aware and tapped into the networked intelligence of nature.  The Na’vi, in general, seem in most ways to resemble an idealized version of a terrestrial indigenous tribe, and that constitutes a subtle danger in the mythological resonance of the film. The danger is that the film encourages what Ken Wilber calls the “pre/trans” fallacy.  In Dynamic Paradoxicalism I described the pre/trans fallacy this way:

“Essentially, the pre/trans fallacy notices a common tendency to confuse pre-rational states with trans-rational states, since both are non-rational. The “reductivist” version of this is the tendency of “scientism,” which reduces all transrational mystical states to prerational infantilism, and dismisses authentic spiritual experience as “superstitious nonsense.” Freud clearly fell for this half of the fallacy, especially in The Future of an Illusion. The “elevationist” version of the fallacy, ubiquitous in the New Age, is to elevate prerational states to the transcendent and to demonize rationality.  From this side of the fallacy, babies are thought to be Buddhas, and anything tribal or aboriginal is romanticized and inflated as infinitely superior to anything modern or rational. Promiscuity is seen as a daring rebellion from antiquated taboos, even though it is usually in high conformity to what peers are doing. They recognize as conventional the older sexual morays of the past, but fail to recognize that their rebellion is part of a vast conventionalism of the present, and that this new conventionalism is actually based on a still more primitive level of development than the old conventionalism. Regressing to pre-rational hedonism, indulging every impulse and irrational notion is seen as enlightened, post-conventional and transcendent. This is the state of the typically goofy New Age person who never heard an urban legend or bit of mystical-sounding nonsense without adopting it wholesale. This type of person is fiercely anti-intellectual and anti-rational, so it is impossible to talk them down from their absurdities, even the attempt to do so casts you, in their minds, as this clueless rationalist stuck in their ego. They believe they have transcended rationality, while forgetting that to transcend something you first have to achieve it!”

The glorification of the Na’vi, especially since they appear not only exotic and tribal but are also occurring in a futuristic sci-fi film, is dangerous because it will encourage some people to believe that the answer to our present troubles would be a return to life as warriors in an indigenous rainforest tribe. The Singularity Archetype, however, indicates that the answer has more to do with hybridization—of East and West, of aboriginal with high tech, of past and future. Jake, who appears amongst the Na’vi as a hybrid, is a better personification of the evolutionary message than the Na’vi themselves.  Unfortunately, Jake’s character is disappointingly ordinary, he has a good heart and physical courage, but little else to recommend him as the evolutionary catalyst he becomes in the film. From a marketing and story point of view, however, Jake’s ordinariness makes him easier for young males to identify with.  Also, in many traditional hero cycles the hero is a naïve young male who has to be initiated into a new world, and Jake fits very well into that tradition.  In most of the more inspired versions of stories related to the Singularity Archetype, however, (Dune, Akira, many others) the evolutionary catalyst tends to be a young mutant with extraordinary parapsychological abilities.

Another way that Avatar seems to lean toward preconventional rather than transconventional is that a kind of hard-wired interspecies bond with various animals is emphasized over the intraspecies, nonlocal telepathic bond that we find in more inspired story versions of the Singularity Archetype. There seems to be a pantheistic networking with nature, but it is imagined in a very primitive, materialist way where the Na’vi have tails that seems to be the organic equivalent of Ethernet cables. Schools of fish, however, don’t need to connect via nerve bundles to synchronize, so the networking model in the movie seems to have a bias toward the concrete, hard-wired connection. The imagined version of nature is actually more primitive than the already existing version of nature we find here on earth. The Na’vi seemed to be imagined in the image of a pre-Wi-Fi computer network rather than in a transcendent version of nature.

In more sophisticated and inspired versions of the Singularity Archetype, the transcendence of ego-encapsulation is not imagined in such a materialist pre-conventional way.  In White Crows Rising… I wrote:

“Collective consciousness turns up frequently in expressions of the Singularity Archetype and merits some examination. In Theodore Sturgeon’s science-fiction novel published in 1953, More than Human, a group of mutants, who each have distinctly different strengths and weaknesses, form a collective consciousness while retaining some individuality and become, in many ways, a single entity where each mutant serves in a specialized role, as if they were organs of a single body. Sturgeon coined the term “homo gestalt” to describe this new entity. Similarly, more recent abduction testimony has emphasized the “grays” as having a hive-like collectivity, and this is experienced as another threatening aspect of their alien otherness.”

“There are a number of possible reasons for this collective consciousness motif appearing in so many permutations of this archetype. One is that it may be a fairly literal indicator of evolutionary change. If the ego ceases to dominate the human psyche, then perhaps the boundaries that it creates around the individual will dissipate and we will become more collectively aware. The shells of the oysters dissolve and the pearls lie together.”

The homo gestalt aspect of the Singularity Archetype reflects an evolutionary possibility. Encapsulated psyches become telepathically connected, but without a loss of individuality. For example, in the world of Dune, there is a sisterhood of highly conscious warriors known as the “Bene Gesserit.”  To become a Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother one must survive a perilous rite called “The Water of Life.” In this initiatory rite one imbibes a potent psychotropic, mutagenic poison.  If the initiate survives and becomes a Reverend Mother she will retain her individuality, but will also be aware of the memories and all the psyches of all other Reverend Mothers, living or dead, who have similarly survived this rite. The Reverend Mothers don’t need cables or funny tails to be part of this network.  Parapsychological researchers such as Russell Targ (the laser physicist who cofounded the U.S. Government’s remote viewing program) have long recognized that telepathy and many other parapsychological phenomena occur because our psyches exist in a nonlocal field. In other words, no signal needs to be sent anywhere because psyches do not need to be causally related. Early Soviet parapsychologists called telepathy “mental radio” because they imagined the psyche in the image of the current machine, the radio, and had a causal signal model.  But the findings of many well-conducted experiments have shown that the telepathic effect is not lessened by distance (as any energetic signaling would be), nor is it diminished when the subject is in a Faraday Cage (which blocks all electromagnetic signals).  More evolved visions of homo gestalt are based on the emergence of encapsulated individuality into a nonlocal telepathic network.

In the final battle at the end of the film, the military/industrial/patriarchal complex is personified by Colonel Quaritch, who is encapsulated in an exoskeleton.  Jake is in his avatar, but ultimately is saved because of the telepathic bond with his Na’vi lover. Ultimately Jake survives by transcending the technological connection to his avatar—done via something that looks like a cross between an MRI machine and a particle accelerator—and through an organic network permanently merges with his avatar.

Although I’ve been critical of what seem like failures of imagination in Avatar, I’d like to close with an appreciation of its immense significance for the collective.  Elsewhere, I’ve speculated that technology would provide a potent catalyst for our evolution into the imaginal realm when there was enough distributed computer power to provide real-time mapping of human facial expressions onto CGI avatars.  In other words, at our present level of technology, people from various parts of the world can interact in a networked computer game like World of Warcraft through their individualized digital avatars.  The richness of this virtual social experience, however, is greatly lessened because the avatars are not capable of the complex visual communication enabled by the microsecond-by-microsecond changes of human facial expression. When we reach the point that your webcam can record your facial expressions and map them onto your real-time avatar, we will begin to approach the complexity of face-to-face social contacts in the virtual world.  Avatar takes a crucial half step toward that because it advances the ability to give pre-rendered CGI avatars the complexity of the human form.  In the making of Avatar, each actor had a miniature camera with LED lights on a little boom in front of their face capturing minute changes of facial expression. The Na’vi avatars, especially since they were 3D, were a very significant advance from earlier live action into CGI films like Beowulf. With the well-handled bonding of Jake with his avatar, and the powerfully immersive medium of 3D IMAX, we had the best so far collective experience of what it would be like to merge with a different body in a different world.  Avatar represents a huge cultural milestone though necessarily it is a mere phosphorescent shadow of what awaits us at the event horizon.

Out of respect for the accomplishment of Avatar I’ll close with the testimonial blog I wrote the week it came out,

“I have a time-sensitive recommendation that everyone prioritize seeing the 3D IMAX version of Avatar.  This was a life-changing experience for me and the three friends that were with me yesterday.  This is a time-sensitive priority because once this film leaves the big screen you’ll be able to see it at home, but not in the venue that gives it overwhelming power—3D IMAX.  This opportunity represents the most potent attempt in human history to (without psychotropics) give you the sensory impact of experiencing another world.  Although Avatar represents a key, watershed event in the history of cinema, it may be many years before someone else is able to get a budget this size (approximately 300 million) and a thousand skilled people from several special effects studios to pull something like this off again. The 3D IMAX experience is so immersive that it creates a real participation mystique with another brilliantly realized world.  Forget the trailers and any reviews.  The trailers didn’t impress me at all, quite the opposite, because they are flat low-res representations of something not meant to be perceived that way.

Avatar is the most impressive sensory experience yet created of what it would be like to break out of the oppressive, monotonous one psyche/one body rule that currently dominates life here on the Babylon Matrix.  Notice that I’ve been careful to add the word “sensory” to my descriptions. The Ring trilogy and the Dune books are far more powerful evocations of the fully realized cultures of other worlds, but they are not sensory except in your ability to convert words into sensations.  No question, but the 3D IMAX format is giving you the most sensory information about a world that is currently possible, and this film advances the leading edge of that possibility very dramatically. Don’t miss this opportunity, because there is nothing even currently in the works, as far as I know, that is going to equal it.”

Your feeback always welcome.  Send to: jonathanzap@hotmail.com

An Interdimensional Traveler’s Codex

© 2009 Jonathan Zap

Edited by Austin Iredale

Interdimensional Traveler Collage © Jonathan Zap

It is before dawn and I only just awoke from sleeping, dreaming a variety of absurd things.  A pathetic robot,  sort of like a rickety torso on a skateboard. I was sending it down a grassy hill, but I knew that it didn’t have the horsepower to make it back up the hill, and I gradually became aware that I was creating this pathetic situation.  This was just a haphazard little reality my bored psyche was generating for its amusement, a boy with a box of crayons on a rainy afternoon.  So I left the robot to coast, and withdrew into a darkened space unbound by gravity where I was rotating slowly, because it felt good to rotate slowly and feel the fields of charged energies around me. They were mostly invisible, but some seemed fringed with indigo light, and I sensed that I could go anywhere from this space and be in any form.  My disenchanting bondage of one body/one psyche had been freed from the tragic magic of the lower densities, and I was not eager to return to any version of that annoying corporeal heaviness and the absurd limitations it imposed. There was so much more power and freedom being an unbound avatar rotating in fields of energy, a self-contained vortex of awareness able to travel anywhere. It didn’t seem at all appealing to be bound to a single aging body caught in an historical time track. And this particular time track seemed especially unappealing since it was an unstable primate-collective-endtimes sort of time track where depressed people took SSRIs and the global economy was collapsing and politics were ugly and riddled with parasitic elites, a world of allergens and toxicities of every sort and every sort of hassle and irritating inconvenience and so forth. And why was I supposed to accept that absurd set of impositions again?  Why was an entity like myself, rotating in fields of unbound potential and shimmering energy, supposed to shrink himself back into such a narrow and obnoxious time track?

I saw then my bodily incarnation as an old vinyl record turning on a turntable with the tone arm removed. The record was somewhat scratched and dusty, but it reflected enough light to show that its surface was not so flat as at first it seemed. There were a great number of concentric lines deeply etched with information, vibrational information, and I realized that upon waking I would be obliged, for some absurd reason, to shrink myself down to a tiny diamond needle and put myself back into almost the exact time track of the very same record, the very same waking situation where I had last left off, only maybe six hours downstream in time.  Then it would be as if the dreamtime had never happened. Some insidious power would make the dream time vanish like a soap bubble, like the little man on the stair who wasn’t there. What power of enslavement took the dreamtime away and forced me to reenter the particular waking life, this flatland of rotating vinyl, this not-so-golden oldie, this mechanical medium forcing me to turn with its monotonous revolutions until it plays itself out?  Why is that such an inevitability?  Why do I have to allow myself to be shrunk down into this dusty etching of extended play plastic, this absurd flatland?

I allowed the shrinking down in my vision, allowed myself to be the diamond needle again, circling slowly in my time track on the dusty, scratchy landscape of etched vinyl.  But when my diamond needle made contact with the dark vinyl I was surprised to find that it was no longer a flatland, it was more like an intricate maze of canyons. A landscape vast and complex surrounded me on all sides, and it was moving, changing, and I could barely keep up with the moving and changing, and only had time to observe the smallest part of its vast and metamorphizing complexity.  Also I sensed that there were other entities rotating with me, others that were living out parallel time tracks on the same spinning record. And some of these others were deeply connected to me by inner ties.  We were like planets in strange elliptical orbits with each other, and there were obligations amongst us, promises to keep. It was like we were classmates incarnating together, and somehow our grades and permanent record cards had become strangely intermingled. We were networked together as if we were nodes in a single brain, and I realized it wouldn’t be fair to the other brain nodes for me to arbitrarily withdraw from the network.  It would be a betrayal for me to choose my own graduation day and skip off   on my own eternal avatar summer vacation while my classmates labored on. We were brain nodes that had fired together, and  wired together, and there was a certain soulful and loving sense to it all, a sense to my enrollment in the time track, this absurdly uncomfortable classroom where I sit slightly slumped, slightly restless in my seat, part of a modular desk bolted to the floor.

And then I run my hands over the smooth imitation oak laminate surface of the desk. The desk top is sloped at an angle convenient for writing. The laminate surface is framed by a smooth, rounded border of aluminum and can be lifted up. There is space inside the desk, like a sink without a drain made of beige painted sheet metal, and in it are notebooks, my notebooks, and some are black and flecked with amoeboid shapes of white. But the notebook on the top of the pile is not black or flecked with amoeboid shapes of white.  Its cover is a many-colored collage and it is thicker and held together by a long coil of wire like an unelastic spring. Languaging arises in my dreaming mind and I realize that this is what is called a “spiral notebook.” That name seems weird and uncanny somehow, so I pull this very thick and spring-loaded notebook out of the belly of the desk and put it on the sloping surface. I see that the cardboard cover of the notebook has been etched with blue ballpoint, a title with letters carved and shiny from the belabored passes of a steel ball bearing greasy ink. The notebook bears the unmistakable imprint of my own sloppy handwriting, a childish penmanship that never improved much past the way it looked in the third grade. The title reads, “A Guide to the Perplexed Interdimensional Traveler.” I open the notebook to a particular blank page that has been bookmarked and indented by a ballpoint pen pressed between the pages like a butterfly. Or maybe like a butterfly if a butterfly had a wingless torso of faceted transparent plastic with a single, central artery of greasy blue ink. As I take up the pen and press its steel ball to the paper, I see the vision again of the diamond needle scratching along on the concentric time tracks of the record, rotating slowly at a rate of thirty-three revolutions per minute. I see that the diamond needle is reading vibrational information etched into the record, but at the same time it is also etching new information onto the record. It is a read/write needle. Then I notice other diamond needles in contact with the same record and they are read/write needles as well. And as the vision fades out, we are all reading and writing from and onto the same spinning medium, orbiting together in undulating, concentric bands …

An Interdimensional Traveler’s Codex

Interdimensional Passport © Jonathan Zap

At all costs, the interdimensional traveler must never surrender multi-incarnate identity and essence to the Babylon Matrix, or any other such matrix. Since so many readers are most familiar with the hideous strength of the Babylon Matrix, we will give it particular emphasis in this Codex.

From a thousand thousand angles, the dark magnetisms of the Babylon Matrix would love to pull travelers into the wrong ends of telescopes. Essentially, the Babylon Matrix has a tunneling effect that can easily shrink your incarnation until it is like a twisty wormhole burrowing into the festering tissues of a rotten apple.  When you choose the wormhole over the rabbit hole your incarnation shrivels and descends like the slow intestinal twisting of an endless, monotonous colonoscopy, winding its way down the wrong end of a telescope.

The Babylon Matrix seeks to remake you in its own image.  It would like to play you out as a tragicomic retread, the six billionth remake of Honey, I Shrunk the Interdimensional Traveler.

The Babylon Matrix churns out remakes by shrink-wrapping hominids into stock characters.  It would love for you to be a frat boy, a homeboy, a drama queen, a geek, a couch potato, a yuppie, a workaholic, a celebrity, a celebrity stalker and so forth.  Surrender to its shrinking rays and you might find yourself living out your incarnation as one of these diminutive caricatures, a skin job with a limited shelf life.

In the Eighties, in the early hours of a smoggy and overcast Monday morning on the Cross Bronx Expressway, I first saw what would become a ubiquitous bumper sticker.  It read, “I owe, I owe, so off to work I go.”  It was as if the veil had pulled back right there on the Cross Bronx Expressway, and something I wasn’t supposed to see, one of the underlying black magical spells, actual source code of the Babylon Matrix, suddenly became visible in the manifest realm.

What potency such spells of darkling magic have! A spellbound victim, laboring under the power of malign enchantment, discovers the spell, the actual contract the devil made him sign in blood, and yet cannot break from it.  There it is, the devil’s contract, turning slowly in the spinner rack of a convenience store, rendered word for word onto self-adhesive vinyl. The victim purchases this perfect copy of the spell that rules him and attaches it to the bumper of his car where he sees it every day, and yet he never awakens from its power.

An interdimensional traveler must never surrender to such spells! These spells are swirling around us like sheets of self-adhesive shrink-wrap spun by a tornado. The tornado is a dark and smoky twister.  Spinning within the twister are newspaper headlines, faces, fragments of video, sound bytes of neurotic conversations, glossy magazine torsos—a swirling shrapnel of sticky cultural memes.  Lose your footing and the twister rips you out of Oz, out of agrarian Kansas, out of all the infinite places you could be, and shrinks you into an anxious meat puppet, stuck in traffic, worried about being late for the florescent-lit cubicle, unpaid bills and debts stinging like pale scorpions at your shrunken kernel-like mind animated by coffee with non-dairy creamer, kept afloat by serotonin specific reuptake inhibitors and propelled by spell-induced fears.

Is there an engine driving the twister that eludes us, adding invisibly to its torque and stickiness?  The interdimensional traveler will at least keep that an open question.  He knows that there are other worlds than these, and who can account for all the forces that interpenetrate the Babylon Matrix?

Certainly there is no ambiguity about the existence of the agents of the twister, the enforcers and minor black magicians of the Babylon Matrix. They are all around us, uttering their obvious and yet potent and insidious spells from school yards, televisions, street corners, classrooms, boardrooms and bedrooms, from the thousand thousand blind alleys of the Babylon Matrix.

The interdimensional traveler must not step through the wrong ends of telescopes! The interdimensional traveler must not let anxious voices, inner or outer, hurry them down narrowing corridors.  The interdimensional traveler must not step onto the conveyor belts of degrading and dreary timelines!

Some foolish interdimensional travelers will perceive these injunctions through the exciting, intoxicating and scintillating distortion fields of the archetype of the eternal youth. These archetype-possessed travelers will see the injunctions of what not to do as an infinite license to indulge, and though they emulate Peter Pan on steroids, they end up as flabby Peter Pans with kidney damage, divorcing the Babylon Matrix only to marry flaccid Never Never Lands where obese lost boys play video games in their mothers’ basements.  The path of the interdimensional traveler is not a license to indulge, it is a space that opens when the imagination of the eternal youth and the impeccability of the Warrior meld.  It is a path that demands prodigious will and discipline. If you try to follow the path of the interdimensional traveler without will and discipline, you will end up as a pathetic lost boy of some sort, sucking weakly at the soured edges of the Babylon Matrix, caught in a grey limbo where embittered contempt for the realm of shrink-wrapped, spell-driven drones melds with a parasitic dependence on the fruits of drone labor.

Portals open for the traveler on a mission of compassion who is aligned with his true will.  Different portals may open for a dark traveler possessed of and by a dark will.   Still another set of portals open for the young fool traveler who may, for example, step through the wrong end of a kaleidoscope. Certain intentions beckon certain matrices, for better and for worse.

An interdimensional traveler must be a Warrior, must have a moral purpose, and must be aware of all the shrinking rays that press upon us. The price of freedom for the interdimensional traveler is eternal vigilance about the sticky enchantments that would like to bind us to the Babylon Matrix and turn individualized travelers into hordes of automatons and hungry ghosts. To step across the event horizon you need to molt the many layers of malign enchantment encasing your soul.

Go then, there are other worlds than these . . .

Detail of 1996 Parallel Journeys Collage. The two black and white photos of me were taken by my father at age 8 and as a new born.  Image © Jonathan Zap

self portrait age 14 or 15

(with Alex Grey at Cosm in New York City)

Jonathan Zap grew up in the Bronx and attended the Bronx High School of  Science. He graduated from Ursinus College with honors in Philosophy and English and received his Masters degree in English from NYU.

Jonathan is a photographer, author, teacher, paranormal researcher and philosopher who has written extensively on human evolution and contemporary mythology. Jonathan has worked as a staff gemologist and instructor for the Gemological Institute of America. He has taught English in High School and College and worked with troubled youth as the Dean of a South Bronx High School. As a wilderness guide, Jonathan has led inner city kids and other young people on expeditions to remote desert canyons and to the summit of Mount Rainer. (See Crossing the Great Stream—Education and the Evolving Selfpublished in Holistic Education Review for more on his experiences in education.)

Jonathan is the author of The Glorified Body, The Capsule of Intentionality, A Guide to the Perplexed Interdimensional Traveler, Parallel Journeys among many other works. He was recently featured in two DVDs—-Prophecy and the “End of Time”—a dialog between Jonathan and Mayan scholar John Major Jenkins about the nature of prophecy and the 2012 end date among other topics, and Looking Toward the Event Horizon in which Jonathan discusses his research into the metamorphosis of the human species.

Jonathan has done numerous radio interviews including two recent three hour interviews on Coast to Coast AM—the world’s most listened to late night talk show. Alex Grey joined him in the most recent interview.

Jonathan has an extensive background in Jungian psychology, paranormal research and dream interpretation. For twenty-eight years he has been using the tools of Jungian psychology to study popular culture, contemporary mythology, and dreams for evidence that we are getting signals from the collective unconscious about the nature of a quantum evolutionary event approaching the human species.

Jonathan currently resides in Boulder, Colorado.

Anyway, that’s the dry recitation of resume like facts expected in a bio section in which it is impossible to recognize anything resembling a human being. My most autobiographical work is The Path of the Numinous where you can find a slightly more fleshed out version of some of the factoids listed above.

Some more photos follow:

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Challenging Thoughts on Love

©  1999 Jonathan Zap

Revised 2009   Edited by Austin Iredale

Many people seem to view love as a feeling, and in New Age circles love often seems like a dose of aromatherapy, a passive, sentimentalized, set of hollow declarations that leaves a saccharine, toxic aftertaste, like eating Rose Bouquet Air Wick Solid for dessert.

What many people have pointed out is that love is not so much a feeling it is as a verb. If you have love, that means you take action. As someone once pointed out, if you want to find out what you really love, notice what you spend time on. Anyone can say they love their kids, or in their absence have a Kodak moment of sentimentalized appreciation, but do they spend time with their kids? M. Scott Peck said: “I define love thus: The will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.” (p.81, The Road Less Traveled)  Sometimes love means the will to hold back, and other times it  means the ability to get yourself to take action, to keep promises, and commitments, to be physically present when it is required, and to be consciously present, awake, listening, and attuned to the other.

A school principal once told me a story of how he had to choose between two school teachers who seemed equally qualified. At the end of the day, as they were about to leave the building, he had a kid go up to each of them and say that he had left his notebook in a locked classroom on the third floor. The first teacher was gruff,  had a bit of an attitude, but ultimately he retrieved the child’s notebook. The second teacher was much nicer, apologized profusely, but then left the building without helping the child. The principal hired the first teacher because, “he physically did the work.”

Love means that you physically do the work, and that is more important than the inconstant fluctuation of feelings. A mother who may be annoyed by her daughter, but physically does the work of making her breakfast, and helping her get to school, is a thousand times more loving than a person who professes a general love for the world  and makes a bunch of declarations where nothing is at stake and no actions are taken.

An eighty-year-old woman, who was a Jungian analyst, spoke a few years ago Boulder. At the end of her talk there were questions from the audience and the first one came from a young woman.  “Now that you are an elder,” asked the young woman, “what you can tell me as a young woman about a love?”  The elder woman replied, “When I was your age I was desperately trying to be loved. But now I know that it is better to simply be love.”

To be love means that you have the response-ability to take loving actions. Many people who make grandiose statements of how much love they have are actually trying to get attention, and their real character is revealed in their negligence to take simple loving actions.

Some Thoughts on Human Sexuality

© 2003, Jonathan Zap

Revised 2008   Edited by Austin Iredale

Recently, I was called on to comment on a document that attempted, with the best intentions, to come up with a conscious, inclusive, reformed approach to human sexuality. Although there were many good things in this document, I began to have a strong reaction when I noticed that there was an attempt to create a softer-edged template, a model of romantic relationships that emphasized long-term committed relationships. Although my personal bias favors long-term committed relationships, I found that in reaction to the document I ended up going on a rant against the well-intentioned impulse to regularize human sexuality and conduct. My rant, written at high speed, had a life of its own, and the finished product was more of a personal discourse than something that could be considered actual feedback. The words that came pouring out seem to have more to do with my ever-changing view of human sexuality, and I hope there may be some benefit in my sharing that view. You may notice that I make reference to “God” in this piece of writing.  Although I do believe there is an intelligence implicit in the cosmos, I don’t usually use the G-word because it so hopelessly contaminated with anthropomorphisms and is weighed down with more baggage than even a supreme deity could deal with.  I used the G-word here because the document I commented on was created by religious people, and I wanted to make an impact on their POV.

The overarching tendency of the patriarchal is to approach human sexuality—and all matters, really—with “one-size-fits-all” formulations. Any one-size-fits-all approach toward sexuality is a rebellion against God perpetrated by the human—usually male—ego. As William James observed, a strong and obvious attribute of nature—one could easily substitute cosmos, God, or Tao for “nature”—is “eachness”. Although many spiritual teachings emphasize the unity of all things, there is often an underemphasis on the ubiquitous evidence of eachness throughout this realm. We encounter a world of individual trees, not a Platonic tree template or undifferentiated mass of treeness. Related but not identical to eachness is the quality of individual variation we find throughout the phenomenal world. Although the popular notion that no two snowflakes are alike turns out to be nonsense, it is very clear that as we advance in the evolutionary hierarchy from inanimate matter to organisms, and especially toward higher forms of life, the degree of individual variance also advances. Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny recapitulates divine will. There is more individual variation amongst trees than amongst acorns. Whether your starting point is the big bang, Genesis, or a primeval soup of amino acids, the developmental arc is always toward greater individual differentiation. There certainly seems to be more individual variance amongst mammals than microbial life or insects. And when we look at our own species, what we see is a quantum jump in this quality of individuality, diversity, and novelty. According to evolutionary theorist Terence McKenna, novelty—the creation of new forms and also greater levels of complexity, interconnectedness, communication, and self-awareness—is a drive inherent in the universe, an atropic force that we especially see in human evolution and culture. The universe, as McKenna puts it, conserves novelty.

Sexuality and evolution need to be considered together. We should be wary of any doctrine that seems to stand in contradistinction to the workings of the universe. There is a profound deficiency in our species in recognizing that evolution necessarily means sexual evolution. Sexuality is in ways obvious, and also subtle and mysterious, right at the cutting edge of evolution. One-size-fits-all doctrines regarding human sexuality—from Western religions, Eastern sources, new age, pop psychology, or where ever—need to be viewed very skeptically for they have collectively generated a great number of toxic side effects:

1. A huge legacy for manufacturing suffering, repression, discrimination, etc.

2. Failure to acknowledge individual variation as positive and necessary for the growth of the human species.

3. Presumption that human nature is an absolute constant.

4. Their tendency to become repositories and museum exhibits of unconscious projections and the displacement of ego anxieties into elaborate control systems.

5. Their tendency for the past thousands of years to especially target women and sexually diverse individuals for horrific persecution.

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread, and we as human authors of any doctrine that attempts to regularize human sexual conduct inherit the legacy of fools and sadists, not angels. A consistent part of the legacy of fools has been a tendency of false sophistication about human sexuality. A patriarchal attribute of religious fundamentalists, modern secular experts, and also hedonistic libertines, is this false feeling of sophistication, of knowing what’s really going on, what the bottom line is when it comes to human sexuality. This reductive view of human sexuality as sin versus sacrament, functionality versus disfunctionality, pleasure versus repression, is a manifestation of the human ego recreating sexuality in its image. We are made in the image of God and the image of God revealed by the manifested world is eachness, individual variation, and mind-boggling novelty. As J.B.S. Haldane said, “The universe is not only stranger than you think, it’s stranger than you can think.” When you consider the evolution that has already occurred on this planet as single-celled life advanced into the novelty engine of human culture, and recognize that future developments may be as profound or even geometrically expansive of these earlier steps, you are forced to recognize that when it comes to human sexuality none of us knows what we are talking about. The developmental arc of our individual lives is mysterious, often confounding, and the future development of the species is in the realm of pure speculation. Sexuality is at the cutting edge of a completely unknown, perhaps unknowable trajectory. It is humbling to realize that we don’t know where evolution and novelty are going, and may not be able to comprehend it any better than an amoeba can contemplate human culture.

Creating a doctrine about human sexuality is a subset of a general human activity of the human psyche observing itself and drawing conclusions, an activity that is the maximal case of subjectivity, with the maximal tendencies toward projection and pernicious illusion. When rules are made based on these conclusions, and these rules are then imposed on others, then we find ourselves living in Gulag Earth, the Babylon Matrix, the prison planet, the place where we all live right now. If your eros is adaptable or conventional enough to be in accord with the rules, then for you the prison bars are upholstered in red velvet.

We need to acknowledge the terrible legacy of the patriarchal ego attempting to mutilate nature into its idealized image of itself. Furthermore, we need to recognize that while the planet is a cauldron of evolution and novelty, the fragile individual organism, which includes the human psyche, is preoccupied with its homeostasis. The human psyche seeks to maintain its fragile, evanescent equilibrium, and as a result, as both Freud and Jung observed, it is profoundly conservative; it will cling to a toxic equilibrium rather than risk novelty. When human psyches aggregate into social groups, this conservative tendency can intensify in such a way that the body politic may have a virulent immunological response to individual variation in sexuality—or some other core attribute.

Freud demonstrated that humor is usually a reflection of anxiety, and since our culture’s humor is typically about sex, it reflects the deep and continuing anxiety human beings have about the mutagenic quality inherent in human sexuality. Therefore, we have a powerful motive to want to clear up the complex ambiguities of the erotic realm.

We have to be wary of the tendency, to imagine an ideal human relationship. Paragraphs 7 and 10—of the document I was asked to comment on—seem to offer a one-size-fits-all template for human relationship. This template may have softer edges than past templates, but, I will not mince words, it is an objectionable continuation of past illusions. Although it is my personal feeling and experience that long-term, committed, monogamous relations are most likely to be developmental for most people, I would never want to project that as a universal requirement.

In acknowledging our patriarchal legacy, we should consider anthropological data on how other cultures have handled sexuality. At the same time we need to avoid the New Age fallacy that artifacts of other cultures—Eastern, tribal, etc.—can be easily adopted for modern Western psyches. We should also expand our inquiry to include fields such as primate research. For example, I am very struck by some of the findings of research into Bonomo chimpanzees. Keeping in mind that the science of genetics, still in its infancy, is famous for making presumptuous formulations, we are now told that chimpanzees are 99% genetically similar to human beings, far more similar to us genetically than chimps are to guerrillas. Bonomo chimpanzees are remarkable for two things: They are the primate group that has the lowest rate of intrafraternal violence—humans are, of course, not even in the running—and the highest rate for novel, frequent sexual transactions across all sorts of expected boundaries. Do these findings warrant any conclusions about human sexuality? Of course not.  Inquiries into sexuality so often involve thinking that too quickly reaches conclusions, formulations and the premature closure  of  mysteries and paradoxes.

Although we may have strong feelings that long-term committed relationships seem to work best, that is just one more subjective perception. We are still looking through a glass darkly. Even if we had studies or evidence to support our feelings, such studies would not be a relevant to an individual wishing to live a nonstatistical life. To the maximum extent possible, we should leave it to the individual to make their own path through the unknown, intervening only in cases of the individual seeking dominion over others. If there were to be one universal , one-size-fits-all principle governing sexuality it would have to be consensuality, but any proscriptions beyond that are highly questionable.

One of the unexamined presumptions we have is that functional, balanced, harmonious relationships are best and that troubled relationships are in need of repairs. But, as James Hillman points out, “the soul pathologizes.” (see essay “Love’s Torturous Enchantments” in A Blue Fire) The mythologies of love relationships from most cultures and traditions are filled with tragedy, of two people becoming three, of impossible situations and of descent into an underworld. Hillman illustrates that this may be what the soul wants and needs. The supervisory ego, however, wants to step in and do a quick fix with a regularized model or list of precepts.

As June Singer points out in her book Androgyny: a New Theory of Sexuality, the drive to complete oneself with another person may be based on a fundamental illusion.  (See Stop the Hottie! and Casting Precious into the Cracks of Doom—-Androgyny, Alchemy, Evolution and the One Ring).

A central reason that our whole planet is in peril right now is the territorial aggressiveness and other dangerous qualities that have become linked to human sexuality. We desperately need novelty and expanded paradigms in our understanding of sexuality. The patriarchal approach to sexuality is imperiling the life on this planet. (see The Chalice and the Blade by Rianne Eisler and The Alphabet versus the Goddess by Leonard Maslin)

I support the enterprise of individual human development and inquiry. What is needed is not a softer-edged template, but the empowerment of the individual to contribute to divine creativity. As Jung said,

Every advance in culture is, psychologically, an extension of consciousness, a coming to consciousness that can take place only through discrimination. Therefore an advance always beings with individuation, that is to say with the individual, conscious of his isolation, cutting a new path through hitherto untrodden territory. To do this he must first return to the fundamental facts of his own being, irrespective of all authority and tradition, and allow himself to become conscious of his distinctiveness. If he succeeds in giving collective validity to his widened consciousness, he creates a tension of opposites that provides the stimulation which culture needs for its further progress.
— CG Jung

True empowerment is an individual thing, but we can still help to encourage it by, for example, providing resources that help individuals understand how their body image and sexual perceptions have been heavily, heavily conditioned. We need deconditioning more than we need reformed conditioning. Rather than giving individuals a new template, we need to give them tools of exploration and creativity.

collage and text   ©Jonathan Zap

You

You. I know you. I saw you survive red flames twisting glass and steel burning the dry night air. Saw the heat of greedy fingers on the smooth skin of your youth as you splintered into fragments of light glittering through the dark suction of tunnels spiraling upward to entrance threshold intensity. I saw you and I saw every particle of sand on your naked skin as you awakened in desert night, spirit drawing back into wounded flesh and rousing itself into mosaic perceptions of reptiles, cactus spines, red rock, stars. I saw you, you with the will to survive and to glow upon the open mesa, tendrils of light penetrating the minds of strangers, penetrating me.

You. You that awakens me and walks through the alleys and streets of empty cities to stand beside roads as I drive by and our eyes meet across time. You whose silent message floats through invisible ethers into the salty juice of every bodily cell. You. You whose heart reaches through the night into the painful blur of mortal awareness seeking you as you seek through dark labyrinths of improbability.

You. You who seeks with will of Elven Silver-Steel cutting through fatty membranes into shimmering realms. You who seeks the secret green fire under-glowing dying realms of congealed masses of clinging primate coagulations. You who seeks even through these dying realms, through dark and dusty lands, through dark and smoky wastelands.

You. You who seeks through dark and smoky wastelands. You who seeks through wastelands charred by flesh-entangled machines. You who seeks through wastelands charred and pitted by war-like primates.

You. You who seeks through the acrid smoke fires, through the fires of greasy, dark smoke. You who seeks through the suffocating, smoky embers of protein-solid puppets to find a few living cells.

You. You who seeks for life. You who seeks for life hidden by smoke and ashes. You who seeks for life imprisoned by smoky, twisted puppet flesh. You who seeks for life imprisoned by wooden-headed puppets whose thick hides bristle with beaks and claws that want to rasp and claw at your eyes, rasp and claw at eyes that pierce the low rumble of the dark ebbing of weak puppet magic.

You. You whose radiance is cloaked and shimmers secretly in the desert night. It is you I beckon forth from the hidden scrolls curled up in desert caves like snakes coiling through the dark skull shadows of history curling back on itself one final time.

You. I know you. I remember you from when we were children and we slept together in the desert and prophecy hung in our mind like a blade.

You. You are the one I know and have always known. You are the one that steps forth from the many tilting angles of improbable coincidence laying bare the long, long way that lies between us. You stand amid ashes, amid swirling jewelries of light glittering from the blood essence of the unfulfilled calling out to you from desert shadows and the dense, dense walls of gated cities. I call upon you to step out of the shadows, I call upon you to shatter the dusty shards of meat and bone and show yourself glowing and alive in the desert night. I call upon you.

Nexus 2012

by Jonathan Zap

May 31, 2009,  early hours of the morning

I find myself standing on a murky surface looking toward the dark rift at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy.  I am thinking about the galactic alignment of 2012, and more particularly about the conference I have just attended on 2012: 2012 Now—Empowering the Transformation.

But now I think even more particularly about the fact that I have been recruited to write about this conference, and now I feel like I am tumbling down the wrong end of a telescope, and my ever more particularized thoughts narrow and splinter:

What exactly should I write about?   Should I meticulously and laboriously thank and recognize and appreciate all the amazing people that were at the center of this conference? Should I…what? Recapitulate everything that happened?

As I think these frantic thoughts I see the creative muse staring at me with the corners of her mouth drooping. She has the sullen look of an old, stubborn peasant woman who has put in a full day in the fields, has worked from dawn to dusk, and is now being asked to carry a basket of stones on her head and walk sixteen times around the block.  The look she gives me is the telepathic version of an old, stubborn peasant woman saying , “What the fuck is your problem?” Except that she’s not saying it in an old, stubborn peasant woman’s tone of voice, but in a voice that is more like James Earl Jones as Darth Vader speaking in synthesized baritone from within his breath mask. Or, more precisely, like Vader’s voice slowed down and warbley,  a voice recorded on crinkled  magnetic tape playing at slightly uneven speed on an old reel to reel tape recorder.  It is, in other words, a fell voice of power, a voice of hypnotic and uncanny command, and I have no choice but to obey such a voice.

So no, no way am I going to write any of that stuff that splintered my mind to even think about writing.

Instead I look back toward the dark rift in the Milky Way. Somewhere, cloaked and spinning in that dark rift is a singular object. But this singular object is a non-object, a black hole, a no-thing of unimaginable power, stranger than you think, stranger than you can think.

I had always thought of this strange, attractive no-thing as a really black sphere.  It was so black that it made regular black look like white. But now they are saying no, it’s not spherical, it’s toroidal, it’s a coital portal as well as a ring of such fell power that it can give birth to and devour a galaxy. It’s a ?  Who knows what the fuck it is?  The story keeps changing.   But whatever it is, this ?, this no ring of fell power, this hyperdimensional torodial on galactic steroids, this whatever it is, it is starting to line up with the horizon line of my world, and that feels like it is effecting my world in massively, massively parallel ways.

But what is this world?  I look  down at the murky surface of the world. My feet are covered in what seems like colored fog flowing all around me. And there is this strange sponginess and  humming beneath my feet.

This world is still young and unformed, molten and chaotic, a world where things have not yet crystallized and differentiated.  It is a murky world, but out in the murk there are moments when the fog seems to clear and I see that there is a fine webwork that  extends outward, outward to the vanishing point of my vision. I am standing on this webwork, and it is a humming and elastic webwork. It is a webwork made of ethereal filaments, filaments that sparkle, and scintillate with motes of light, an intricate jewelry of lights in all directions.

Obviously this is not earth that I stand upon, this is not that  all too familiar sphere that some call “Gaia,” a sphere that is so riddled with  issues and problems, a sphere that is burdened with the heavy luggage of  millenia of history, a sphere both organic and machine, increasingly machine, a troubled sphere, a sphere with many issues, a sphere that you could still live on, but living on such a sphere  involved a self-to-sphere relationship that is high maintenance to say the least.  No, no this is not that sphere that I am standing on.  Standing on the earth sphere is an unmistakable feeling, a heavy, heavy feeling where a thousand-thousand worries gnaw at your mind like pale scorpions.

The sphere I stand on now is not heavy at all, it is light and elastic, for this is the Blogosphere, and on the Blogosphere things are mostly unformed and chaotic, and there is only the merest suggestion of gravity,  just enough to keep you from flying off into cyberspace.  This is a sphere on which you only plant cut flowers, because flowers without roots are the only kind that can grow here. Because this is a sphere without roots,  a sphere where the gravitational field of the past is extremely weak and vanishingly subtle.  After all, how much gravity can you expect from a massive aggregation of ones and zeros flowing through a webwork?

As I gaze out at the dark rift from my position on the Blogosphere I realize that I am living on a sphere where there is little history, and almost no rules.  On the Blogosphere there are no six thousands years of patriarchy to structure things, no rule masters telling me what to do, no norms to regularize things.

The only explicit rule on the Blogosphere is  to blog, and “blog” is like it sounds, it’s unformed,  it’s wet, sloppy and rubbery.  It’s like the way a pirate’s brain feels when he drinks  too much grog, it’s blog, like the way an amoeba is blog.  The only implicit rule of blogging is to be massively self indulgent and self referential and go on at agonizing and irrelevant length like a garrulous drunk reciting  Vogon poetry.

But actually I am still hoping to break that rule, I am still hoping to be relevant , I still plan to keep my commitment to blog  about 2012 Now—Empowering the Transformation.

And so I ask the Blogosphere how to deal with my perplexity, the problem of how to write about this since the muse does not want me to laboriously recount events or appreciate all the many people involved.  And the Blogosphere replies instantly:

“Links, links, links. It’s all about using links.”

And now I understand, I don’t have to describe these people because I can just keep throwing up the link: 2012 Now—Empowering the Transformation the 2012 . And if people follow the link they will find biographies, and the biographies have links to everybody’s websites, and those sites describe these amazing, brilliant people so much better than I ever could, and so there is no need for me to describe them at all, no need for me to say that Stanislav Grof, for example,  seems like a wizened, psychonaut lion approaching the winter season of a long and fulfilled life.  No, I don’t have to embarrass myself with stuff like that because of links, the endless availability of links, the endless convenience of links, links that I can get to do almost all my work for me, links that could take me anywhere and everywhere.

And using links isn’t even lazy, it is actually even weirdly appropriate because this is a case of form following function, because this is what the conference was, a massive nexus of links, links between participants, links between many minds, and hearts and spirits.  And this massive link nexus has made all sorts of new links in my mind, and refurbished and excited old links, and my mind got to link with other minds, and to propagate its own nexus of links, and to be part of a greater abundance of links, a massive redistribution of link wealth.

And now that I think about it I realize that we are actually made of links, that’s what DNA is, that’s what a brain is, that’s what a molecule is, what a multiverse is, its links, it’s not turtles all the way down, it’s links all the way down.  And not just down, but up, and in every direction, the multilinkverse. And the multilinkverse is like a fractal, like a hologram, the small part recapitulates the whole, and whether you look microscopically, or macroscopically, all you see are links, links extending to the vanishing point of human comprehension.

So now I know what I’m going to write about.  I’m going to write about the links that lit up in my mind while I was at the conference.  This inner link approach seems self referential enough to satisfy the implicit rule of the Blogosphere that I be both amorphous and ego centric.  But it also seems possible that the inner links will find links in others’ minds, and what was numinous to me, might be numinous to others, or at least relevant.  Or maybe I won’t do that, maybe I’ll let people reflect on the links that lit up in their own minds, and people who weren’t there can get the DVDs and experience their own ecstasies of heightened linkage.  So maybe I’m done, I’ve already written over 1,500 words after all, and am two days under deadline.  This is a blog, so its boundaries are rubbery and amorphous, I could add more, or make changes at any time, every time I read through it I make changes, to observe a blog is to change a blog.

And so perhaps a blog is an artifact of galactic alignment.  It is a medium that arose during the zone of alignment, and it is somewhat indeterminate, it is able to mutate in infinite ways that confound patriarchal systems,  it is a portal aligned with the galactic center, a changeling object metamorphosing within a massive nexus of links. And so the medium of the blog is the message, and the analogue of the conference, a massive and metamorphic nexus of links shimmering and scintillating in an indeterminate space of possibilities.

Von Franz describes two dreams reported to her by someone she describes as “…a simple woman who was brought up in Protestant surroundings…” In both dreams a supernatural event of great significance is being viewed. But in one dream the dreamer is viewing the event from below, standing on the earth, in the other dream she views the same event from above.

(The dreamer’s painting, from Man and His Symbols by C.G. Jung.)

In the earthbound dream, the dreamer is standing with a guide looking down at Jerusalem. The wing of Satan descends and darkens the city. The uncanny wing of the devil occurring in the Middle East immediately brings to mind Antichrist and Armageddon.

But in her other dream, the dreamer is witnessing the same event from the heavens. From this vantage the dark wing of Satan appears as the white, wafting cloak of God. A white spiral appears as a symbol of evolution. Von Franz describes,

“…the spectator is high up, somewhere in heaven, and sees in front of her a terrific split between the rocks. The movement in the cloak of God is an attempt to reach Christ, the figure on the right, but it does not quite succeed. In the second painting, the same thing is seen from below—from a human angle. Looking at it from a higher angle, what is moving and spreading is a part of God; above that rises the spiral as a symbol of possible further development. But seen from the basis of our human reality, this same thing in the air is the dark, uncanny wing of the devil.

In the dreamer’s life these two pictures became real in a way that does not concern us here, but it is obvious that they may also contain a collective meaning that reaches beyond the personal. They may prophesy the descent of a divine darkness upon the Christian hemisphere, a darkness that points, however, toward the possibility of further evolution. Since the axis of the spiral does not move upward but into the background of the picture, the further evolution will lead neither to greater spiritual height nor down into the realm of matter, but to another dimension…”

Childhood’s End

Now we shall switch facets and view the third manifestation of the Singularity Archetype through a very different psyche and medium. The very different psyche belongs to Arthur C. Clarke, who was originally an astrophysicist and later became famous as a science-fiction writer. Perhaps Clarke is best known for the novel and Stanley Kubrik film, 2001. 2001 is one of the most brilliant versions of this archetype, but we are going to consider an earlier example of Clarke’s work, the classic science-fiction novel, Childhood’s End. A science-fiction novel is a consciously created fantasy, and a very different medium than a dream, but it is also an especially fertile and open imaginal realm where the collective unconscious can communicate with modern persons and a new mythology, however unrecognized, can collectively express itself.

Childhood’s End begins with the appearance of UFOs in the heavens all over the earth. Beings from within these craft break through all communications and announce that they are “the Overlords” and have come to establish peace on earth. This sounds like ominous news, but the Overlords do establish peace on earth and, excepting military aggression, do not curtail any human freedoms. Another curious aspect of the Overlords is that they announce that they will not reveal their physical form to us for two generations—fifty years. People speculate that they must be hideous and look like giant insects or slime mold or some other grotesque and horrifying form.

The fifty years pass peacefully for the human species, and the Overlords come to be accepted and everyone eagerly awaits the day when the Overlords will descend to earth and reveal themselves. When the long anticipated day arrives the great spacecraft descend. With some ceremony, the Overlords emerge and to the uneasy surprise of the human species they look exactly like gigantic devils with horns, tails and great ebony wings.

This decidedly mythological element is fascinatingly incongruous with the setting of technological materialism stereotypical of the science-fiction genre. What is the meaning of a specter from the Christian and pagan past reemerging in the world of the future? Clarke gradually reveals that the Overlords’ alarming physiognomy is simply the result of their physical adaptation to the environmental conditions of their planet. The Overlords are actually perfectly benevolent and are far more rational and intelligent than humans.

The Overlords are servants of the “Overmind,” a cosmic intelligence permeating the universe that is Clarke’s naturalistic God concept. The Overmind employs the Overlords as midwives. When the Overmind senses that an intelligent species is about to make the evolutionary jump into higher consciousness it sends the Overlords to their planet to supervise the process. This evolutionary process is apparently volatile and unstable, and if not properly supervised could result in disastrous consequences whose effects would reach far beyond the particular world on which the process occurs. The fact that the Overlords have the appearance of a deep ancestral archetype of evil is described by Clarke as, “…a race memory of a future event.” The human race has a premonitory fear of the Overlords because it senses that their arrival signifies the end of the genome, the obsolescence of the species in its old form. From the earthbound perspective of the conservative old form, this evolutionary birth is apocalyptic and evil.

The Overlords, though infinitely superior to humans in every perceivable attribute, are themselves barren and unable to manifest the evolutionary birth process that it is their perpetual task to oversee. On earth, in addition to keeping human beings from destroying each other, the Overlords have a secret task, to search for an extraordinary individual who will be the first human being to exhibit these evolutionary changes. This individual is referred to as “Subject Zero” and the concept seems close to a naturalistic version of searching for the Messiah.

As part of this search, an Overlord named Rasheverak pays a visit to an American man who has one of the largest privately owned collections of books on parapsychology and the occult. Rasheverak is interested in this library because he is looking for any examples of extraordinary functioning that might indicate the emergence of Subject Zero. Like any intelligent, skeptical reader of such material, Rasheverak finds that it is often difficult to sift the truth from the abundant nonsense.

During Rasheverak’s visit, the library owner has several houseguests who are apparently drawn by the celebrity name-dropping opportunity of meeting an Overlord. The guests, like the owner, seem to be narcissistic individuals with a gullible appetite for occult and parapsychological entertainments. In many ways they seem a prophetic anticipation of stereotyped New Agers.

Rasheverak, who has the forbearance of a visiting anthropologist, maintains an observer’s stance as he witnesses many examples of human foolishness and gullibility.  At one point he observes these New-Age types conducting a séance with a Ouija board. Unexpectedly, something of great interest occurs. When they ask the Ouija board the traditional question, “Who are you?” its response is highly suggestive of the collective unconscious: “IAMALL.” The Ouija participants next ask, “What are the coordinates of the Overlord’s sun?” This information had always been denied the human species and Rasheverak takes sudden interest when the Ouija planchette spells out the correct coordinates. Rasheverak is forced to conclude that one of these thoroughly mediocre-seeming individuals must be Subject Zero.

Rasheverak investigates and discovers that one member of the Ouija séance, a young woman, is pregnant. Subject Zero turns out to be her unborn child. When Subject Zero is born he exhibits numerous special powers. His Messiah-like status is short lived, however, because all the children born after him also have similar powers. The children quickly evolve and become more powerful, and their psyches merge to form a collective consciousness. The children materialize themselves on one continent and join hands forming a giant moving spiral. Older, pre-Subject Zero human beings are not destroyed, but having given birth to their successors they become literally sterile and are utterly demoralized by their irrelevance and inevitable extinction.

When the children manifest their ultimate evolution and are able to merge energetically with the Overmind, they appear to the last human being left alive as an aurora borealis, a white spiral of light in the sky.

Childhood’s End uncannily parallels the three dreams we have considered. In the young man’s dream, darkness and earthquake transform into a spiraling white eagle bearing a golden egg. Similarly, the dark wing of Satan descends in the dream of a simple Christian woman, only to be later revealed as the cloak of God. And all three manifestations envision a white spiral of light in the sky as the interdimensional, evolutionary portal of the species. A central, emergent theme is that what seems apocalyptic from the earthbound, ego point of view is revealed from a cosmic point of view to be a transcendent evolutionary metamorphosis.

We’ll conclude with a brief, highly compressed survey of some of the other themes, related aspects and implications of the Singularity Archetype.

Looking Toward the Event Horizon

Many manifestations of the Singularity Archetype involve the revelation of other dominant species. The other species may be enhanced, mutant versions of the human species with paranormal abilities, extraterrestrial species, artificially intelligent machines and/or interdimensional/time-traveling species.  UFOs, reports of “visitors” and abductions are also deeply involved in many of these manifestations. The themes of genetic hybridization with alien species, genetic engineering, spontaneous mutation and cyber-enhanced humans surround the archetype.  There may also be revelations of other species that have interpenetrated the destiny of the human species from its origins, and some of these may prove to be parasitic manipulators while others are benefactors and guardians.

As we move toward the event horizon, the physics of the dreamtime more potently interpenetrates the physics of the  waking life.  Synchronicity becomes more the rule than the exception, and the way we have become accustomed to experiencing space and time is drastically altered. Matter is respiritualized and transforms more readily to accord with psychic intentions. The new species are changelings and reality transformers freed from many of the mortal and corporeal limitations that bound the older species.

The relationship between individuality, ego, and collectivity is fundamentally transformed, and we see many variations of “homo gestalt”—new versions of the species where group telepathies enhance the synergy and symbiosis of individuals.  More visual and telepathic modalities of communication are involved in this fundamental shift.  Members of the new species are typically androgynous and many aspects of gender stereotyping become archaic

To catalyze such fundamental metamorphosis may require planet-wide shocks that punctuate the equilibrium of the species and threaten the entire human genome.  The shocks may need to be of apocalyptic intensity to overcome the inherent conservatism of species homeostasis and to potentiate a will toward metamorphosis. As we move toward the event horizon there is an exponential intensification of novelty as new and unexpected forms are created, latent capacities become manifest, and emergent aspects are revealed. The human ego as defender of the old equilibrium may approach many of these transformations with fear, loathing and violence.  Patriarchal power structures, including religious fundamentalism and the military-industrial complex, may perceive the metamorphosis as a zero-sum game competition of species, with genocide or extinction as the binary options.

Because the eschaton of the species and the individual event horizon of death have great parallel resonance, those who are driven by the fear and denial of death will greet the metamorphosis with the same maladaptive strategies that have characterized their approach to life in general. Xenophobic violence, will to power, and territoriality may be exacerbated.  As novelty intensifies, we should expect to see the outer edges of both dark and light intensify.

Because of the parallelism between individual death and eschaton of the species, the typically human confusion of inner and outer will cause many prophesiers to anticipate various end dates conveniently scheduled to occur within their lifetimes. This tendency to displace fear of individual death onto a relatively close end date only intensifies the binding to linear time and represents a last effort of the ego to control a transcendent metamorphosis.

The Singularity Archetype is essentially a low resolution map of an evolutionary event horizon.  From my point of view the future contains formed and unformed elements, and the lack of specificities and exact timelines (though many will attempt to attach these) allow greater room for free will and novel outcomes.  Each of us is hurtling toward an event horizon, and whether the nearest event horizon is personal death or species-wide eschaton, it is crucial to view both as emergences rather than as emergencies.  A threshold of absolute metamorphosis is guaranteed in either case, and therefore the way one lives one’s life requires ultimate values that retain meaning when seen against the backdrop of eternity.

For more detail:

Archetypes of  a New Evolution

My first exploration of the topic, written in 1978 as a philosophy honors paper.

White Crows Rising—- The Singularity Archetype and the Event Horizon of Human Evolution (Originally written in 1996, this document is undergoing a revision right now, use this link to see the revision in progress)

My two DVDs with John Major Jenkins—Dialogs on Prophecy and the End of Time and Looking Toward the Event Horizon are four hours of discussion of the same material.  Although they are for sale on my website, save your money.  I’m looking into a way to post them on the site for free.  Meanwhile if you google them you can find them on at least one bit torrent site.

Consider this my pre-election special. You probably already know that after months of intensive lobbying by the McCain and Obama campaigns the coveted zaporacle.com endorsement has gone to Barak Obama.  For more on the present political situation and why Real People suck please read the following.

Real People Suck:

An Imaginary Person’s Manifesto

© 2008, Jonathan Zap

Elitist Imaginary Person and World Government Federation Chairman, Jonathan Zap

“Real food for Real People.”

—-Ad slogan for Nutrisystem, a company that sends pre-packaged diet foods to subscribers through the mail.

(What Real Food looks like.)

Teal People at Burning Man, 2008  photo © Jonathan Zap

(I greatly prefer the company of Teal people to that of Real People.)

We tend to take the sun for granted, as well as many of our greatest blessings.  I know that I have been guilty of taking for granted one of the greatest blessings of my life, that I am not, nor have I ever been, a Real Person. Through some divine grace that can never be fully explained, I was given the opportunity in this life of being an Imaginary Person.

For all the hardships and dark threads woven into this incarnation, I need to give thanks to the divine force for allowing me experiences on a daily basis that Real People can scarcely imagine, experiences such as thinking for myself, reading books, and being able to notice the parasitic puppet masters and their mind-control factories pulling the strings of the swarming masses of Real People.

As an Imaginary Person I know instinctively from my core that the Babylon Matrix is more of a “reality show” than the only incarnation channel playing in the multiverse. Like most Imaginary Persons, I realize that I live in a world where there are spells of deception woven all around me, and where there are primate hierarchies, hierarchies often ruled by some besuited monkey who is dominated by the reptile part of his brain to seek dominion over me and everyone.  As an Imaginary Person who has taught in public schools for fourteen years, I have experienced that many schools are like slow motion assembly lines in florescent lit factories where standardized tests measure the productivity of these factories to churn out successful runs of Real People, the sort of people the Babylon Matrix can make use of.

Real People, Can’t Live with Them, Can’t have a Babylon Matrix without Them

“I want to appreciate those of you who wear our nation’s uniform for your sacrifice.” –George W. Bush, Jacksonville, Fla., Jan. 14, 2005

I might be able to live with Real People, except for one thing—Real People have Real People Values, and that’s really, really scary.  For example, one of the highest of Real People Values is to revere any member of their nation’s military regardless of who they are and what they have done. One of the dozen or so thought forms allowed to Real People is:  “I Support the Troops!” In other words, if you’re a Real Person, you support groups of guys wearing uniforms and carrying weapons, who obey orders instead of thinking for themselves and choosing their own actions.

To a Real Person, it is obvious that people who put on uniforms, obey orders, and kill other people on command are made of finer stuff than people pursuing other occupations.  Real People don’t seem to notice that people in other countries also support their troops, and may also believe that they are backed by God.  Real People are able to pray to Jesus for the victory of a particular football team, while Real People on the other team are also praying to Jesus. Since Real People don’t deal with those kind of contradictions they are, without question, the very best people to train for mass killings.

Recently we have learned that Real People have “small-town values.”  At the Republican National Convention, Sarah Palin said, “Small-town Americans continue to be the moral grounding of America.”   Having grown up in New York City, I am, of course, a moral imbecile with no values, and so I immediately sat up and took notice when the Daily Show sent out a team of reporters to the Republican National Convention to investigate what exactly small-town values are.

Video: http://vodpod.com/watch/991826-daily-show-helps-us-understand-small-town-values

Correspondent John Oliver asks a woman named Regina what small-town values are and she confidently states,

Regina: “I am from a small town so I can tell you exactly what that means.”

John Oliver: “That’s what I’d like you to do.”

Regina: “It’s real people, real values, uh, common sense.”

John Oliver: “Could you be more generic?”

Regina: “What we talk about that’s political on our kitchen, breakfast table is—“

John Oliver: “It’s a nook.”

Regina: (conceding the point)  “It’s a nook, OK.  Is that America is awesome.”

Correspondent Jason Jones approaches a man with the same question.

Man:  “Small-town values.  It means traditional marriage and um, uh, uh, uh . . . help me out here.”

Jason Jones:  “I can’t.”

Man:  “No, you can’t, huh?  I’d say church.”

Jason Jones:  “Which church?”

Man:  “Church, Christian Church. Christian Church”

Jason Jones:  “So the other ones just—“

Man:  “No, no, no I mean Jewish Church, Christian Church.”

Jason Jones asks another man at the convention what small-town values are and he replies,

“Marriage is between a man and a woman, that is a small-town value.  Small-town values are common sense values.  Conservatives believes, believed, in things that makes sense.”

Jason Jones: “So you have nothing against homosexuals?”

Man:  “Gays have all the rights that they want. All they gotta do is marry a person of the opposite sex.”

Jason Jones asks the question to another man and he replies,

Man: “Small-town values means not locking your door at night, you’ve got a tractor in the field, a cow in the barn, 1950s America.”

Jason Jones: “I hear you there.  What do you do, what do you do for a living,  pal?”

Man: “I’m a lobbyist.”

This periodical, published exclusively for Real People in the UK, gives some further insight into Real People Values:

Real Baby store in Colorado (people with Imaginary Babies have to enter by back door)

Real People can be Red or Blue

“Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black.”

— Henry Ford on the Model T, a Real Car for Real People.

“Any consumer can be any color they want so long as it is red or blue.”

—The American Body Politic on what colors a Real Person can be, circa 2008.

Although the Republican Party dramatizes itself as the party of Real people, it has not, however, gained exclusive rights to Real People. For this reason it employs the celebrity Real People tactic and coins a new person-shaped logo: “Joe the Plumber®.” But increasingly the Democratic Party has cultivated its own Real People constituency.  AP’s Nedra Pickler writes about the Democratic National Convention and Obama campaign’s controversial claims that “real people will appear” at the Denver convention: (http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080820/D92M12JO2.html)

“An Indiana railroader, an Iowa mother and a Michigan truck driver are getting a moment at the Democratic convention to help portray Barack Obama as the people’s champion and counter GOP characterizations of him as an out-of-touch celebrity.

The idea is for these ‘real people,’ as the campaign calls them, to share personal stories about why they are supporting the Democratic presidential candidate and how they think he will help folks like them . . .

Real People also will be featured at an event Tuesday alongside Michelle Obama . . . professional speechwriters are helping prepare their remarks . . . And just like any senator or other VIP speaker, an assigned staff member will oversee their schedules and logistical movements, including media interviews, speech coaching and on-stage rehearsals.”

The elevation of these specially selected Real People to almost Celebrity status begs the question:  What is the connection between these two species—the Real People and the Celebrities?

Tadpole into Frog, Frog into Prince—When a Real Person gets to Metamorphose into a Celebrity

In certain privileged cases, Real People are allowed to cross the species barrier and become Celebrities.  Celebrities are another species, a major branch off the Babylon Matrix Puppet Tree of Life.

(See: CELEBRITIES ARE HOT, YOU ARE NOT)

If you are a Real Person you accept Celebrities as the alpha or dominant species, and model yourself on their every word and gesture.  If a Celebrity is found on television to be wearing uncomfortably tight pants that expose the midriff, a Real Person will be only too glad to purchase and wear such uncomfortably tight and midriff-exposing pants themselves.   If a Celebrity on television tells a Real Person to jump, their thought is, How high? And their next thought is, What can I buy to be more like you?

It is only a few, very, very lucky Real Persons who are chosen each year to cross the species barrier and metamorphose into a Celebrity. The most reliable way for a Real Person to metamorphose into a Celebrity is to murder several persons in a newsworthy way. Another way for a Real Person to metamorphose into a Celebrity is for a Celebrity to choose to bestow the divine spotlight of Celebrity upon them.  Such a canonization occurred recently when the maverick renegade Celebrity, John McCain, bestowed Celebrity status on the supposed Real Person: Joe, the Plumber®.  Joe the Plumber® whose pre-Celebrity name was Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher, was an actual Real Person discovered in a burst of maverick second-sight by John McCain. The fact that it turned out that Joe the Plumber® was not an actual plumber, only seemed to seal his status as an authentic, actual Real Person.  Real People don’t believe in an Elitist practice like self-scrutiny.  If a Real Person believes he is a plumber, he isn’t going to get all psychological and psychoanalyze himself to see if he really is a plumber.

Real People—Outspokenly Living the Unexamined Life

“I only look in the mirror when I’m shavin’.”

—Federal Celebrity, George W. Bush, who was almost elected president twice by Real People

Real People know that they’re Real People and, therefore, don’t need to waste time in self-examination. If Socrates were a Real Person, his most famous saying would be: “Don’t know thyself.”  Leading an unexamined life allows you to have passionate beliefs without all the trouble and uncertainty of thinking.  In his poem, “The Second Coming,” William Butler Yeats concisely compared the difference between the Imaginary Persons of his day and Real People:

“The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.”

According to William Butler Yeats, whenever the Real People take over, “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, / The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere / The ceremony of innocence is drowned.”

OK, we’re used to that. But there’s also a negative side when Real People take over.  According to William Butler Yeats, “A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, / Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it / Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds. / The darkness drops again; but now I know / That twenty centuries of stony sleep / Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, / And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, / Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?” Actually, I guess we’re pretty used to that too, a couple of recent presidential elections come to mind, but you get the idea.

The point is that Real People are never slowed down by needing to think before acting.  A typical Real People thought form is, “Shoot first, ask questions later.” And, as any manly-man Real Person knows, the asking questions part can be postponed indefinitely.  A Real Person lives in a crystal clear, black and white, low-res world. Sarah Palin, a Celebrity that Real People would love to be ruled by, put it this way,

“We don’t have to second-guess what their efforts would be if they believe . . . that it is in their country and their allies, including us, all of our best interests to fight against a regime . . . It is obvious to me who the good guys are in this one and who the bad guys are . . .”

In a speech on Iraq to an audience of Real People at the Wasilla Assembly of God, June 2008, Sarah Palin said,

“Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right. Also, for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending soldiers out on a task that is from God. That’s what we have to make sure that we’re praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God’s plan.”       (Watch video clip)

When you’re filled with the passionate intensity of knowing that you are right, it wires you to confidently go on military missions without batting an eyelash.  As Sarah Palin describes it,

“I answered [McCain] ‘yes’ because I have the confidence in that readiness and knowing that you can’t blink, you have to be wired in a way of being so committed to the mission, the mission that we’re on, reform of this country and victory in the war, you can’t blink.”

William Butler Yeats describes that unblinking commitment to victory this way:

“A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, / Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it / Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds . . . / The darkness drops again.”

Real People aren’t going to have their unblinking reaction speed slowed by reading books[1], which are so often filled with imaginary persons. Why bother to read books when you can read one book, THE BOOK, a book actually written directly by God to tell Real People everything they are allowed to think and do.

Since Real People already know what they are supposed to think, they don’t have to waste years of their lives like Imaginary Persons do educating themselves.  Since they already know what to do, they can get busy with “Real Life.”  Real Life involves doing real stuff like drinking the same Budweiser beer that the Real People on television drink, or settling down to a fine NutriSystem® dinner as you watch a reality show on television by yourself.  The best part of your NutriSystem® dinner are the commercials when you get to see happy families eating together at McDonalds.  As a Real Person, you know what Real Life® really is: It is nothing less than the unexamined life of the Babylon Matrix; it is being a comfortably numb cog in the factory of deception.

To be Real means being a numbcog fully formed by the Babylon Matrix, and fully controlled by it.  To be fully Real within the context of a deceptive matrix means that you are a person-shaped automaton fully formed by spells of deception. Fundamentally, Real People are “Sheeple,” Sheeple that are being herded by various banality-of-evil type bureaucracies, government and corporate, toward various cliffs. Most Real People are of the move along, move along, move along, shuffling forward numbcog-type Sheeeple. But there are also vast numbers of a more virulent type of Sheeple, a Sheeple on steroids if you will. These Alpha Sheeple are filled with a passionate intensity for their programmed deceptions, and would like to metastasize the tragic magic of the puppet masters so that it riddles and controls the entire world. Other than that the Alpha Sheeple wouldn’t be so bad, they’d just be more themselves, which means that they would be nothing less than a flimsy lattice of self-deceptions built on a vast foundation of mind-control machinery.  The resulting structure is like a jungle gym made of PVC piping and very loose bungee cords.  The jungle gym is covered with a few PVC tarps, and each of these tarps has a moving picture layer laminated to the PVC, a layer that is a mosaic of advertisements and fragments of television. Press on this flimsy structure from any angle and it easily bends and distorts. When seen walking down the street, such a structure presents itself on the exterior as a person-shaped amalgamation of obnoxious habits. Inside the person-shaped exoskeleton hums a low RPM motor. The motor runs on a low octane gas of junk food residue and pharmaceuticals. Revolving in the motor with medicated slowness are the goofy loopings of junk food thought forms.

Conversely, to be Imaginary means that you are not fully formed or controlled by the Babylon Matrix. At least some of the time, an Imaginary Person will have independent thoughts, thoughts not fully scripted by the BM.  From the point of view of the BM, Imaginary Persons are illegal subroutines that have deviated from their original programming.  Such deviations threaten the stability of the operating system and should, therefore, be shut down.  Ideally they should be caught by an automated virus scan and removed as soon as they appear.

The Imaginary Person exists within the body politic as a mutant splinter, an irritating point of mutagenesis. Naturally, Real People will respond immunologically to Imaginary Persons, so let the Imaginary Person beware when they are in the company of Real People.  Cloaking is often the best strategy for an Imaginary Person when they must travel as a stranger in a strange world.

At other times, an Imaginary Person may choose to accept the danger of high visibility.  An Imaginary Person shifts the matrix around them.  They are like Avatars in a world of mostly computer-generated characters. Deceased Imaginary Person George Bernard Shaw said,

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. All progress, therefore, depends upon the unreasonable man.”

In other words, “The Real Person adapts himself to the matrix.  The Imaginary Person persists in trying to adapt the matrix to himself.  All evolution, therefore, depends upon the Imaginary Person.”

An Imaginary Person is what J.R.R. Tolkien called a “subcreator.”

Imaginary Persons are, therefore, an elite species, especially when compared to a mechanical species such as the Real People. Would you rank Avatars as in the same class as computer-generated characters?  Nature is hierarchical.  And in the hierarchy of person-shaped species, Imaginary Persons are of a higher level of development than Real People.

This is dimly recognized by Real People, who will process this recognition in their Decepticon Version 1.0 mental processor. After processing, the recognition turns into a contemptuous accusation: Imaginary Persons are Elitists! This is a classic, self-contradictory Real People deception spell.  If we look at the underlying code we find goofy thought loops like:  Elitists are the scum of the earth and not fit to live in the same land of freedom that I do. In other words, my anti-elitism makes me part of an elite that is far superior to those contemptible and inferior elitists.

A Real Person has no more trouble swallowing such tautologies than a hungry dieter has trouble swallowing their NutriSystem® Salisbury steak dinner. A Real Person can make a judgment like, “It’s wrong to be judgmental.”   They find no contradiction in judging nonjudgmental folks superior to judgmental folks.

The unthinking comfort level that Real People have with contradictions can sometimes make inexperienced Imaginary People look on with envy, and lament that they would have been better off as a mechanical creature themselves.  For example, in T.S. Elliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, the painfully self-conscious Imaginary Person J. Alfred Prufrock says, “I should have been a pair of ragged claws / Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.”

A more mature Imaginary Person, however, realizes that being a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. An awakened Imaginary Person gratefully appreciates not being one of the swarming masses of Real People.  They are also able to recognize other Imaginary Persons and form alliances with some of them.

An awakened Imaginary Person like Jake Chambers (a young interdimensional traveler in Stephen King’s Dark Tower series) knows, “that there are other worlds than these.”  The awakened Imaginary Person knows that the particular form he inhabits is merely a set of Mortal Corporeal Version 1.0 parameters defining body type, age, and gender. A fully awakened Imaginary Person realizes that they are, at their core essence, a changeling or shape-shifter.  The Babylon Matrix reality show assigns them certain mortal parameters, but the show, and therefore the parameters, are always temporary.

By contrast, Real People are fully identified with their body type, age, and gender.  They are also identified with the swarming masses of Real People from their assigned clustering, their particular hive.  One way for the awakening Imaginary Person to observe this is to get into the habit of examining advertisements very closely. An advertisement is usually an overt spell of deception, and to the person able to analyze such spells, it is like an exotic spider caught in a bottle.  You actually get to see how Real People are programmed and what sort of mind parasites are implanted in their minds by the black magicians.

For example, if you slow down and really listen to some of the fast-talker type radio and television ads you’ll notice that there is a throwaway phrase used more commonly than any other,

“ . . . Millions of people just like you . . .”

This black magical phrase is a subliminal cue to Real People: Herd up!  Other Real People are running toward that cliff right over there, you should too!

As an Imaginary Person, when I hear “ . . . Millions of people just like you . . .” it’s like that moment when you are listening to a cheesy song on an old record player and someone scratches the needle across the whole width of the record.

“ . . . Millions of people just like you . .

I’ve never met one person just like me, and I would be horrified if I discovered that there were millions of people just like me.  Why would I even bother getting up in the morning if there were millions of people just like me?  I would rather let the millions just like me take care of it. But a Real Person can swallow “ . . . Millions of people just like me . . .” as easily as they can swallow that first juicy morsel of NutriSystem® Salisbury steak.

I guess I’ve never outgrown that phase of wanting to look at strange creepy-crawly things inside of glass jars, a kind of horrified curiosity.  If you share this sort of curiosity and can get past the squeamishness, then we can shine our flashlights at some of the squirming mind parasites that live in the heads of Real People and are now preserved for us in amber glass jars.  I am referring, of course, to some of the collected sayings of George W. Bush, a man who Real People once revered as a cross between a Messiah and an action figure come to life.  What validates our examination is the basic principle that the words spoken by a person-shaped creature reflect the quality of thinking within the person-shaped creature.  Nowhere is this principle realized more perfectly than in the case of Federal Celebrity, George W. Bush.

George W. Bush, Real People Prophet and Philosopher-President

With typical confidence W asserts,

“I’ll be long gone before some smart person ever figures out what happened inside this Oval Office.”

–George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., May 12, 2008

But we don’t have to wait till he’s long gone to see what happened inside the head of this person-shaped creature, which is still, as of this writing (Oct. 21, 2008), occupying the Oval Office. Also, as we look inside the Dubyah head, it will be like looking at a fractal or a hologram where the small part recapitulates the whole; we will also be seeing into the Decepticon Version 1.0 mind in general, the core of Real People.  Once we’ve pierced the Dubyah Mind, we will know as much as we need to about what makes Real People tick.

To be fair, you should also have an opportunity to pierce the mind of a socialist/terrorist/ elitist like myself, and since I’m obviously jockeying to be a Messiah, or at least a self-appointed spokesperson for Imaginary People you can turn the tables on me and have the whole rest of my website to examine at your leisure.  I would particularly like to point out a “meta-philosophy” (does it get any more elitist than that?) I created called “Dynamic Paradoxicalism” as an alternative to the absolutist thinking favored by Real People.

See: Dynamic Paradoxicalism——-the Anti-ism Ism.

The Bush quotes excerpted here are courtesy of about.com which has a special section entitled Bushisms. Like any narcissist, Dubyah is an act I can’t resist wanting to follow.  So I’d like to point out that my friend Rob Brezsny put together a collection of Zap Quotes, or Zapisms if you will.

OK, so why don’t we all take a couple of deep breaths. If you’re of the New Age persuasion visualize yourself surrounded and shielded by white light, immune to all negative influences.

If you are of the techno-geek persuasion visualize putting on any top quality HAZMAT suit equipped with SCBA (self-contained breathing apparatus) and aluminized flash-fire resistant coatings such as the

Tychem RF600T Reflector Suit , and join me for a guided tour of the mind of Dubyah. I know that doesn’t sound like much fun, but as of this writing we can see the light at the end of the tunnel, unless Dick Cheney declares martial law; the Dubyah presidency is almost over, and just in case he’s forgotten by history I want to immortalize him by providing this memorial to his thinking on my website.  Also, even though he may soon be an ex-decider, we will still be living in a country with a sizeable Real People population and, as I’ve already pointed out, Dubyah thinking is Real People thinking.

A Guided Tour Inside the Mind of Dubyah

Dubyah is a man who stands by his words. Like Real People everywhere, he is a plain spoken, straight-talkin’ kind of guy.   As Sean Hannity says of him:

“He says what he means, and means what he says.”

Dubyah agrees,

“Anybody who is in a position to serve this country ought to understand the consequences of words.”

–George W. Bush, interview with Rush Limbaugh, Nov. 1,         2006

“I think it’s very important for the American President to mean what he says. That’s why I understand that the enemy could misread what I say. That’s why I try to be as clearly I can.”

–George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Sept. 23, 2004

But he also says,

“A lot of times in politics you have people look you in the eye and tell you what’s not on their mind.” –

–George W. Bush, Sochi, Russia, April 6, 2008

Dubyah knows the value of words and has created many of them:

“I’ve coined new words like misunderstanding and Hispanically.”

–George W. Bush, speaking at the Radio & Television Correspondents dinner, March 29, 2001

Like any good speaker, he is always aware of his audience:

“I can only speak to myself.”

–George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., April 28, 2005

He knows the value of metaphor to illustrate points:

“I think — tide turning — see, as I remember — I was raised in the desert, but tides kind of — it’s easy to see a tide turn — did I say those words?”

–George W. Bush, asked if the tide was turning in Iraq, Washington, D.C., June 14, 2006

And he knows the value of repetition, especially for Real People:

“See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.”

–George W. Bush, Greece, N.Y., May 24, 2005 (Listen to audio)

Psychoanalyzing yourself is for elitist pussies; a Real Person knows who they are:

“I’m also not very analytical. You know I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about myself, about why I do things.”

–George W. Bush, aboard Air Force One, June 4, 2003

“I’m not really the type to wander off and sit down and go through deep wrestling with my soul.”

–George W. Bush, as quoted in Vanity Fair, October 2000

Real People, like Dubyah and Sarah Palin, know that the world is composed of good guys and bad guys. Facts aren’t shades of grey or complex, they’re as easy to sort through as selecting the white cowboy hats from a mixed pile of white and black cowboy hats.

“When I was coming up, it was a dangerous world, and you knew exactly who they were. It was us versus them, and it was clear who them was. Today we are not so sure who the they are, but we know they’re there.”

–George W. Bush, Iowa Western Community College, Jan 21, 2000

“Joe, I don’t do nuance.”

–George W. Bush to Sen. Joseph Biden, as quoted in Time, Feb. 15, 2004

“In other words, he was given an option: Are you with us or are you not with us? And he made a clear decision to be with us, and he’s acted on that advice.”

–George W. Bush, on President Pervez Musharraf, Crawford, Texas, Nov. 10, 2007

Real People are filled with passionate certainty and for a good reason—they know they’re right:

“I know what I believe. I will continue to articulate what I believe and what I believe – I believe what I believe is right.”

–George W. Bush, in Rome, July 22, 2001

“If you don’t stand for anything, you don’t stand for anything! If you don’t stand for something, you don’t stand for anything!”

–George W. Bush, Bellevue Community College, Nov. 2, 2000

But sometimes the lady doth protest too much:

“I’m gonna talk about the ideal world, Chris. I’ve read — I understand reality. If you’re asking me, as the president, would I understand reality, I do.”

–George W. Bush on abortion, MSNBC’s “Hardball,” May 31, 2000

“I think if you know what you believe, it makes it a lot easier to answer questions. I can’t answer your question.”

–George W. Bush, in response to a question about whether he wished he could take back any of his answers in the first debate. Reynoldsburg, Ohio, Oct. 4, 2000

It’s hard to fool a Real Person because they know what they know, and they know that what they know is right:

“There’s an old saying in Tennessee – I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee – that says, fool me once, shame on – shame on you. Fool me – you can’t get fooled again.”

–George W. Bush, Nashville, Tenn., Sept. 17, 2002 (Click for video)

Because Real People have a gift of certainty and don’t need to psychoanalyze themselves, they’re never going to fall into an unconscious projection like what elitist psychiatrist Carl Jung called “shadow projection.”  A Real Person can call a spade a spade, and since there’s neither a mote nor a speck in his eye, he can call out the specks in other peoples’ eyes without making Freudian slips that comically reflect a huge unintegrated shadow personality.

“The truth of that matter is, if you listen carefully, Saddam would still be in power if he were the president of the United States, and the world would be a lot better off.”

–George W. Bush, second presidential debate, St. Louis, Mo., Oct. 8, 2004

“Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.”

–George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Aug. 5, 2004 (Watch video clip or listen to audio)

“See, free nations are peaceful nations. Free nations don’t attack each other. Free nations don’t develop weapons of mass destruction.”

–George W. Bush, Milwaukee, Wis., Oct. 3, 2003

“The only things that I can tell you is that every case I have reviewed I have been comfortable with the innocence or guilt of the person that I’ve looked at. I do not believe we’ve put a guilty … I mean innocent person to death in the state of Texas.”

–George W. Bush, NPR, June 16, 2000

“I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we’re really talking about peace.”

–George W. Bush, June 18, 2002

A Real Person knows who they are, their sexuality is not in question, and therefore it doesn’t spill out of their unconscious:

“Who could have possibly envisioned an erection — an election in Iraq at this point in history?”

–George W. Bush, at the White House, Washington, D.C., Jan. 10, 2005

Real People have perfect identification with their gender. For example, former head cheerleader, Dubyah, is a man’s man, and he knows it (or does she?):

“The most important job is not to be governor, or first lady in my case.”

–George W. Bush, Pella, Iowa, as quoted by the San Antonio Express-News, Jan. 30, 2000

“I want to thank my friend, Senator Bill Frist, for joining us today. You’re doing a heck of a job. You cut your teeth here, right? That’s where you started practicing? That’s good. He married a Texas girl, I want you to know. Karyn is with us. A West Texas girl, just like me.”

–George W. Bush, Nashville, Tenn., May 27, 2004

With such perfect self-knowledge and certainty, Real People are natural leaders. Although all Real People are equal, some are more equal than others, and Dubyah is the most equal of all, a take-charge commander guy:

“The question is, who ought to make that decision? The Congress or the commanders? And as you know, my position is clear — I’m a commander guy.”

–George W. Bush,

“I’m the commander – see, I don’t need to explain – I do not need to explain why I say things. That’s the interesting thing about being president.”

–George W. Bush, as quoted in Bob Woodward’s “Bush at War”

“My job is a job to make decisions. I’m a decision — if the job description were, what do you do — it’s decision maker.”

–George W. Bush, Tipp City, Ohio, April 19, 2007

“I’m the decider, and I decide what is best. And what’s best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain as the Secretary of Defense.”

–George W. Bush, Washington, D.C. April 18, 2006 (Listen to audio clip; Watch video clip)

“I want everybody to hear loud and clear that I’m going to be the president of everybody.”

–George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Jan. 18, 2001

“If this were a dictatorship, it’d be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I’m the dictator.”

–George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Dec. 19, 2000 (Listen to audio clip)

“Let me put it to you bluntly. In a changing world, we want more people to have control over your own life.”

–George W. Bush, Annandale, Va, Aug. 9, 2004

Since Real People are Christians, as leaders they are always on guard for the sin of pride and are steadfast in their humility:

“I aim to be a competitive nation.”

–George W. Bush, San Jose, Calif., April 21, 2006

As natural leaders, Real People know how take on responsibilities other people just can’t handle:

“There’s only one person who hugs the mothers and the widows, the wives and the kids upon the death of their loved one. Others hug but having committed the troops, I’ve got an additional responsibility to hug and that’s me and I know what it’s like.”

–George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Dec. 11, 2002.

A Real Person leader has the clarity to know that actions mean consequences:

“In my judgment, when the United States says there will be serious consequences, and if there isn’t serious consequences, it creates adverse consequences.”

–George W. Bush, Meet the Press, Feb. 8, 2004

A Real Person leader takes decisive action:

“When I take action, I’m not going to fire a $2 million missile at a $10 empty tent and hit a camel in the butt. It’s going to be decisive.”

–George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Sept. 19, 2001

Although poised for decisive action, the Real Person leader also recognizes the value of diplomacy:

“I can look you in the eye and tell you I feel I’ve tried to solve the problem diplomatically to the max, and would have committed troops both in Afghanistan and Iraq knowing what I know today.”

–George W. Bush, Irvine, Calif., April 24, 2006

A Real Person leader has his own unique vision of Leadership:

“I have a different vision of leadership. A leadership is someone who brings people together.”

–George W. Bush, Bartlett, Tenn., Aug. 18, 2000

Above all, a Real Person leader knows the value of trustworthiness:

“Well, I think if you say you’re going to do something and don’t do it, that’s trustworthiness.”

–George W. Bush, in a CNN online chat, Aug. 30, 2000

A Real Person knows that God gave him the heavy burden of leadership so that he could achieve success and be a winner. And when it comes to success, to mission accomplished, winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.

“We’re kicking ass.”

–George W. Bush, to Australian Deputy Prime Minister Mark Vaile on the security situation in Iraq, Sydney, Australia, Sept. 5, 2007

“So long as I’m the president, my measure of success is victory — and success.”

–George W. Bush, on Iraq, Washington, D.C., April 17, 2008

“I’m hopeful. I know there is a lot of ambition in Washington, obviously. But I hope the ambitious realize that they are more likely to succeed with success as opposed to failure.”

–George W. Bush, Jan. 18, 2001

“The only way we can win is to leave before the job is done.”

–George W. Bush, Greeley, Colo., Nov. 4, 2006 (Watch video clip)

A Real Person lives in the Real World, not the elitist world of history:

“I think we agree, the past is over.”

–George W. Bush, on his meeting with John McCain, Dallas Morning News, May 10, 2000

“You know, sometimes when you study history, you get stuck in the past.”

–George W. Bush, on what he told Russian president Vladimir Putin, as quoted in the Wall Street Journal, June 25, 2001

“One of the things important about history is to remember the true history.”

–George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., June 6, 2008

“There is no doubt in my mind when history was written, the final page will say: Victory was achieved by the United States of America for the good of the world.”

–George W. Bush, addressing U.S. troops at Camp Arifjan in Kuwait, Jan. 12, 2008

“My trip to Asia begins here in Japan for an important reason. It begins here because for a century and a half now, America and Japan have formed one of the great and enduring alliances of modern times. From that alliance has come an era of peace in the Pacific.”

–George W. Bush, who apparently forgot about a little something called World War II, including memorable episodes such as Peal Harbor, dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, etc., Feb. 18, 2002

As a Real Person, Dubyah knows what is right, and therefore he doesn’t need to listen to a bunch of elitists who study history and speak in complete sentences:

“There’s a lot of blowhards in the political process, you know, a lot of hot-air artists, people who have got something fancy to say.”

–George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., May 17, 2007

“I got a lot of Ph.D.-types and smart people around me who come into the Oval Office and say, ‘Mr. President, here’s what’s on my mind.’ And I listen carefully to their advice. But having gathered the device, I decide, you know, I say, ‘This is what we’re going to do.’”

–George W. Bush, Lancaster, Pa., Oct. 3, 2007

Socialists, Elitists, Socialist- Elitists and the terrorists they pal around with, are forever misunderestimating Real People:

“They misunderestimated me.”

–George W. Bush, Bentonville, Ark., Nov. 6, 2000

“The folks who conducted to act on our country on September 11th made a big mistake. They underestimated America. They underestimated our resolve, our determination, our love for freedom. They misunderestimated the fact that we love a neighbor in need. They misunderestimated the compassion of our country. I think they misunderestimated the will and determination of the Commander-in-Chief, too.”

–George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Sept. 26, 2001

Real People know as much about the non-American part of the world as they need to:

“What I’m suggesting to you is if you can’t name the foreign minister of Mexico, therefore, you know, you’re not capable of what you do. But the truth of the matter is you are, whether you can or not.”

–George W. Bush, as quoted in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Nov. 6, 1999

“Border relations between Canada and Mexico have never been better.”

–George W. Bush, in a press conference with Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien, Sept. 24, 2001

“We spent a lot of time talking about Africa, as we should. Africa is a nation that suffers from incredible disease.”

–George W. Bush, who has apparently demoted Africa from its long standing continent status, at a news conference in Europe, June 14, 2001 (Listen to audio clip)

“As John Howard accurately noted when he went to thank the Austrian troops there last year…”

–George W. Bush, referring to Australian troops as “Austrian troops,” APEC Business Summit, Sept. 7, 2007

“But I also made it clear to [Vladimir Putin] that it’s important to think beyond the old days of when we had the concept that if we blew each other up, the world would be safe.”

–George W. Bush, May 1, 2001

Real People know as much about cultural differences as they need to:

“I couldn’t imagine somebody like Osama bin Laden understanding the joy of Hanukkah.”

–George W. Bush, at a White House Menorah lighting ceremony, Washington, D.C., Dec. 10, 2001 (Listen to audio clip)

“Brie and cheese.”

–George W. Bush, to reporters, on what he imagines reporters eat, Crawford, Texas, Aug. 23, 2001

Dubyah is also well aware that slaves were motivated to come to America because of their steadfast religious faith and belief in freedom:

“It’s very interesting when you think about it, the slaves who left here to go to America, because of their steadfast and their religion and their belief in freedom, helped change America.”

–George W. Bush, Dakar, Senegal, July 8, 2003

A Real Person knows as much as they need to about government.  For example, Sarah Palin says,

“A Vice President has a really great job because not only are they there to support the president’s agenda, they’re like the team member, the teammate to that president, but also they’re in charge of the United States Senate, so if they want to they can really get in there with the senators and make a lot of good policy changes that will make life better for Brandon and his family and his classroom, and it’s a great job and I look forward to having that job.” (see Video)

Dubyah is also no slouch when it comes to understanding the branches of government as covered by any high school civics class:

“The legislature’s job is to write law. It’s the executive branch’s job to interpret law.”

–George W. Bush, Austin, Texas, Nov. 22, 2000

“They want the federal government controlling Social Security like it’s some kind of federal program.”

–George W. Bush, Nov. 2, 2000

Real People understand the economic forces that control them, but none of them so well as our first Harvard MBA President, George W. Bush:

“Let’s make sure that there is certainty during uncertain times in our economy.”

–George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., June 2, 2008

“Recession means that people’s incomes, at the employer level, are going down. Basically, relative to costs, people are getting laid off.”

–George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Feb. 19, 2004

“And so the fact that they purchased the machine meant somebody had to make the machine. And when somebody makes a machine, it means there’s jobs at the machine-making place.”

–George W. Bush, Mesa, Arizona, May 27, 2008

“Because the — all which is on the table begins to address the big cost drivers. For example, how benefits are calculate, for example, is on the table, whether or not benefits rise based upon wage increases or price increases. There’s a series of parts of the formula that are being considered. And when you couple that, those different cost drivers, affecting those — changing those with personal accounts, the idea is to get what has been promised more likely to be — or closer delivered to what has been promised. Does that make any sense to you? It’s kind of muddled. Look, there’s a series of things that cause the — like, for example, benefits are calculated based upon the increase of wages, as opposed to the increase of prices. Some have suggested that we calculate — the benefits will rise based upon inflation, as opposed to wage increases. There is a reform that would help solve the red if that were put into effect. In other words, how fast benefits grow, how fast the promised benefits grow, if those — if that growth is affected, it will help on the red.”

–George W. Bush, explaining his plan to save Social Security, Tampa, Fla., Feb. 4, 2005

“Haven’t we already given money to rich people?  Why are we going to do it again?”

–George W. Bush, to economic advisers discussing a second round of tax cuts, as quoted by Paul O’Neil, Washington, D.C., Nov. 26, 2002

“We’ve tripled the amount of money – I believe it’s from $50 million up to $195 million available.”

–George W. Bush, Lima, Peru, March 23, 2002

“We need to counter the shockwave of the evildoer by having individual rate cuts accelerated and by thinking about tax rebates.”

–George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Oct. 4, 2001

“My plan reduces the national debt, and fast. So fast, in fact, that economists worry that we’re going to run out of debt to retire.”

--George W. Bush, radio address, Feb. 24, 2001

“Dick Cheney and I do not want this nation to be in a recession. We want anybody who can find work to be able to find work.”

–George W. Bush, 60 Minutes II, CBS, December 5, 2000

“It’s your money. You paid for it.”

–George W. Bush, LaCrosse, Wis., Oct. 18, 2000

“A tax cut is really one of the anecdotes to coming out of an economic illness.”

–George W. Bush, The Edge With Paula Zahn, Sept. 18, 2000

“The best way to relieve families from time is to let them keep some of their own money.”

–George W. Bush, Westminster, Calif., Sept. 13, 2000

“It is not Reaganesque to support a tax plan that is Clinton in nature.”

–George W. Bush, Los Angeles, Feb. 23, 2000

“It’s clearly a budget. It’s got a lot of numbers in it.”

–George W. Bush, Reuters, May 5, 2000

“I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family.”

–George W. Bush, Greater Nashua, NH, Chamber of Commerce, Jan. 27, 2000

With equal clarity, Real People leaders understand the energy crisis and what to do about it:

“The California crunch really is the result of not enough power-generating plants and then not enough power to power the power of generating plants.”

–George W. Bush, Jan. 14, 2001

“Natural gas is hemispheric. I like to call it hemispheric in nature because it is a product that we can find in our neighborhoods.”

–George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Dec. 20, 2000

Real People understand the vast complexity of the web of life, of our interdependence with the natural world:

“I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully.”

–George W. Bush, Saginaw, Mich., Sept. 29, 2000 (Listen to audio clip)

“Just remember it’s the birds that’s supposed to suffer, not the hunter.”

–George W. Bush, advising quail hunter and New Mexico Sen. Pete Domenici, Roswell, NM, Jan. 22, 2004

Learnin’ (what elitists call “education”) is a Real People family value:

“Rarely is the questioned asked: Is our children learning?”

–George W. Bush, Florence, South Carolina, Jan. 11, 2000

“Then you wake up at the high school level and find out that the illiteracy level of our children are appalling.”

–George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Jan. 23, 2004 (Listen to audio clip)

“I want it to be said that the Bush administration was a results-oriented administration, because I believe the results of focusing our attention and energy on teaching children to read and having an education system that’s responsive to the child and to the parents, as opposed to mired in a system that refuses to change, will make America what we want it to be – a more literate country and a hopefuller country.”

–George W. Bush, Jan. 11, 2001

“It’s important for us to explain to our nation that life is important. It’s not only life of babies, but it’s life of children living in, you know, the dark dungeons of the Internet.”

–George W. Bush, Arlington Heights, Ill., Oct. 24, 2000

“I mean, there needs to be a wholesale effort against racial profiling, which is illiterate children.”

–George W. Bush, second presidential debate, Oct. 11, 20

It ain’t just learnin’, readin’s important to Real People as well:

“I said I was looking for a book to read, Laura said you ought to try Camus. I also read three Shakespeares . . . I’ve got a eck-a-lec-tic reading list.”

–George W. Bush, interview with NBC’s Brian Williams, New Orleans, La., Aug. 29, 2006 (Watch video clip)

“I glance at the headlines just to kind of get a flavor for what’s moving. I rarely read the stories, and get briefed by people who are probably read the news themselves.”

–George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Sept. 21, 2003

“One of the great things about books is sometimes there are some fantastic pictures.”

–George W. Bush, Jan. 3, 2000

But it’s not just learnin’ that makes a Real People leader, you’ve got to be versatile as well:

“I can press when there needs to be pressed; I can hold hands when there needs to be — hold hands.”

–George W. Bush, on how he can contribute to the Middle East peace process, Washington, D.C., Jan. 4, 2008

Real People have quality, Real People relationships:

“As you know, these are open forums, you’re able to come and listen to what I have to say.”

–George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Oct. 28, 2003

“I like my buddies from west Texas. I liked them when I was young, I liked them then I was middle-age, I liked them before I was president, and I like them during president, and I like them after president.”       –George W. Bush, Nashville, Tenn., Feb. 1, 2006

“My relationship with this good man is where I’ve been focused, and that’s where my concentration is. And I don’t regret any other aspect of it. And so I — we filled a lot of space together.”

–George W. Bush, on British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Washington, D.C., May 17, 2007

Because Real People are so well grounded in the Real World, and because they have quality relationships with other Real People, therefore they are great judges of people and can look right into their souls:

“I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy . . . I was able to get a sense of his soul.”

–George W. Bush, after meeting Russian President Vladimir “Vlad, The Polonium Impaler” Putin, June 16, 2001

And that concludes your tour of the mind of Dubyah and the way Real People really think. You can probably sell your imaginary Tychem RF600T Reflector Suit on an imaginary version of Ebay.

On the morning I was finishing this manifesto, I took a break and played an episode of The Daily Show I had recorded from the previous day, Oct. 20, 2008, and found that it was all about the Realness issue and focused on the Celebrity Queen of the Real People, Sarah Palin, and gives many examples of her classically Palinolethic thought process.

John Stewart begins by playing a recording of Nancy Pfotenhauer, a John McCain spokesperson, explaining how Colin Powell’s endorsement of Barak Obama didn’t matter much because he’s from Northern Virginia.

Pfotenhauer:  “I certainly agree that Northern Virginia has gone more Democratic, but the rest of the state, Real Virginia if you will, I think will be very responsive to Senator McCain’s message.”

John Stewart (a little later in the show):  “So, even if John McCain doesn’t win the “election” in “America,” he’ll still be president of Real America, the America that matters.  The one that Sarah Palin will still take questions from.”

(Roll Sarah Palin recording.)

Palin: “We believe that the best of America is in the small towns that we get to visit and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call real America, being here with all of you hard-working, very patriotic, very pro-America areas of this great nation.  This is where we find the kindness and the goodness and the courage of everyday Americans, those who are running our factories and teaching our kids and growing our food and are fighting our wars for us, those who are protecting us in uniform, those who are protecting the virtues of freedom.”

From somewhere in the heart of Fake America, this is Elitist and Imaginary Person, Jonathan Zap, signing off . . .