Monster Food, Off-Loading Karma, and Wiggin' Out From Mind Parasites (1.12.11)

We're still reflecting and expanding upon Bolton's statement that "children automatically share in the moral merits and demerits of their parents, and indirectly those of the society they belong to." While this seems to make children "less than human," it actually means that they are human right from the start, in that they are engaging in psychic transactions with those around them, probably even in the womb -- and it is through these psychic transactions that we become -- or fail to become -- who we are. (I wish I had time to get into some of the fascinating cutting-edge research into pre-natal consciousness, for example, here and here, or here, for what looks like a more popularized application of the ideas.)

An important point is that these psychic transmissions are projected back and forth from parent to child, within the fluid and boundary-less transitional space between them. For example, a hungry or frightened infant cannot imagine the absence of anything, only the presence of something bad. This "bad object" is projected into the good mother, who transforms it into the experience of a soothing good object, which the child internalizes. Please don't to be too literal, but try to imagine it in a more poetic and less mechanistic way. In a way, it's easier to think about when something goes wrong in the relationship -- say, a depressed or otherwise emotionally unavailable mother -- which will result in the inability of the baby to metabolize and transform his bad objects, which is how they gradually "solidify" into enduring mind parasites. What to do with them?

Psychotherapy is one way, but that's only been in existence for a hundred years or so, and even then it usually only proceeds on a pretty superficial basis. Most people end up dealing with them in a pathological way, either through the development of symptoms or through acting out. To greatly simplify, you could say that a neurotic mostly keeps his mind parasites to himself, while the person with a Personality Disorder (i.e., Borderline, Narcissistic, Paranoid) inevitably involves others in his or her psychodrama. If the world were filled only with neurotic people, it would pretty much be paradise, or as close as you can get to it on earth. This is because neurotics mostly hurt themselves and maybe disappoint or frustrate others, but they aren't sadistic or murderous, and are mostly prone to distorting reality in less significant ways, like unconsciously confusing your wife with your mother, not Jews with Satan or President Bush with Hitler.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that if you even know you have mind parasites with their own agendas, you are more evolved than around 99% of the humans who have ever lived. Most of the real wholesale evil in the world is obviously caused by failure to recognize the existence of mind parasites and consequently projecting them into others for their elimination. Imagine if Yasser Arafat could have paused for a moment and pondered the question, "why do I hate Jews so much? Where did that come from? And why the hell am I displacing this hatred from the real bad object, which is Islam? And why am I attracted to young men? Could it be because of the Islamic fear and degradation of women? Or was it because I was so indulged by my mother that I'm afraid of being devoured by her vagina? Yeah, that's probably it."

Liberals, of course, want us to understand the terrorists. But one of the first things I learned in my psychoanalytic training is that real empathy has nothing to do with reinforcing someone's delusions just to make them feel better. Rather, it must involve things like confrontation, interpretation, clarification, etc. So the most empathic thing you could do for a bin Laden -- for the whole Muslim world, for that matter -- is to confront them with the truth of which they are so desperately in need, for a mind deprived of truth still "needs to eat," but it will feed on lies, which in turn creates a monster. Lies are monster food. All monsters feed on lies. They are the lie made flesh.

Hitler could not have been the monster he was without a steady diet of outrageous lies with no connection whatsoever to reality. Stalin, Castro, Arafat, Pol Pot, and all the rest of the 20th century monster club -- all were soulless zombies because of their fidelity to the Lie which created them. In this regard, you can certainly see how ideology becomes a substitute religion rooted in the satanic eucharist (or "dyscharist") of ingesting the Lie. Once the liar is in place, he needs a steady diet of more lies in order to maintain himself. Conversely, he will respond to truth in the way a vampire reacts to garlic or a Clinton to media scrutiny.

So, just as grace enters the human plane "from above" and then recirculates in unpredictable ways, even causing it to operate in people who specifically reject the very possibility, the Lie works in the same way. The Lie is a kind of anti-grace, as it were, which also circulates in the psychic economy and which will be picked up by susceptible host-minds. One of the primary tasks of the MSM is to propagate these parasites in a rapid and efficient manner to the most weak and susceptible minds. This is why there can be a huge shift in the populace based upon whom a few mouth-breathers in Iowa think should be president. Obviously, no rational person would change his mind on that basis, but the people called "independents" are, more often than not, better described as the "confused" and "easily manipulated." There is nothing admirable about them, any more than there is something admirable about Switzerland maintaining its neutrality in World War II.

In fact, the media would do us all a great service if they would stop flattering these weak-willed people with the term "independent." Rather, they should say something like, "it's a huge battle between McCain and Obama for who can pick up the most confused and easily manipulated voters. Obviously, these people could go either way, since they are so emotional and illogical, and have no core principles. The Clinton campaign is hoping that the former president -- the unsurpassed king of manipulation -- will be able to sway the results."

Now, back to the mind parasites. Bolton makes a very provocative statement where he writes about their potentially positive function, if not taken in isolation from the total human -- even cosmic -- system. That is, "having children may be a way of off-leading one's karmic debts. Those who dislike this doctrine usually ignore its equal implication that rewards earned by the virtues of ancestors must also be inheritable." Thus, the act of inheriting life at all must mean inheriting both goods and evils from the ancestors, and to expect to receive only good is a result of sentimentality (emphasis mine).

Let's take the example of the depressed mother who is unable for whatever reason to appropriately respond to her infant. She herself is afflicted by a mind parasite that is causing her depression, or addiction, or whatever. Where did it come from? In all likelihood she has no idea, as she's never thought about it, certainly not in any systematic way. Therefore, her only way to process it is by doing to her child what was done to her, effectively projecting the parasite into her child, who may or may not be able to deal with it in his life.

I cannot tell you how often I have seen this and similar scenarios play out through the generations. Most psychologists see a few patients over a longer period, but the nature of my work in forensic psychology means that I see a lot of patients -- especially including patients you'd never otherwise see in the mental health system -- for a short but intense period, in which I review their entire life. You'd be surprised how often they tell me things that they have shared with no one else in their entire life. As a result, I have a somewhat unique vantage point on the mind parasites and their inter-generational transmission. I can see how they differ in different cultures and different nations, and the differing strategies for dealing with them.

It always reminds me of that opening scene in Blue Velvet, where the guy is mowing his beautiful suburban lawn, but then the camera draws closer and closer, until you can see all the subterranean monsters that dwell just below the surface. I grew up in that kind of place. Only some 20 years later did I learn, for example, that my best friend's father, who lived next door, was molesting his two little sisters for years. Or how the wife of the Christian fundamentalist family who lived next door on the other side was having a torrid affair with the Deacon.

Other parasites were more visible. For example, there was the young Mormon (which made it all the more surprising, not to mention comedic) couple who lived across the street. One day they got into a fight, and the wife tore off his toupe and threw it on our roof. The man had to sheepishly slither over like some kind of sheepsnake and ask if he could borrow our ladder to get his hair off our roof. I still remember the distinct look in my father's face, which wordlessly said that's not a proper man. I vowed then and there that no woman would ever steal my wig:


So, what's our lesson today? I guess we'll get into that tomorrow. But let's allow Bolton to provide a hint: The gradual accumulation of real power results from "the progressive exhaustion of the hostile reactions which were occasioned by one's own negative potentialities and the ones which one had inherited."

By the way, someone out there needs to do his duty and buy my book and stop being a cosmic freeloader. I'm obviously not in this for the money, but it's not good for your karma to mooch so much daily bread. At the moment, it's down to #440,112 on amazon, and that's a little embarrassing, not just for me, but for the whole transdimensional order. Let's not tarnish the Coon brand. Or if that's impossible, let's at least keep the sucker in print! Remember, our fundraising goal for 2008 is for Bob to actually see the mythic royalty check which has thus far eluded him. BTW, if there's still a market for signed copies with your own personally inscribed insult or limerick or both, I suppose I could always purchase some more copies from my penurious publisher, Ebeneezer & Sons.