1
" These ideas can be made more concrete with a parable, which I borrow from John Fowles’s wonderful novel, The Magus.
Conchis, the principle character in the novel, finds himself Mayor of his home
town in Greece when the Nazi occupation begins. One day, three Communist
partisans who recently killed some German soldiers are caught. The Nazi commandant gives Conchis, as Mayor, a choice — either Conchis will execute the three partisans himself to set an example of loyalty to the new regime, or the Nazis will execute every male in the town.
Should Conchis act as a collaborator with the Nazis and take on himself the
direct guilt of killing three men? Or should he refuse and, by default, be responsible for the killing of over 300 men?
I often use this moral riddle to determine the degree to which people are hypnotized by Ideology. The totally hypnotized, of course, have an answer at once; they know beyond doubt what is correct, because they have memorized the Rule Book. It doesn’t matter whose Rule Book they rely on — Ayn Rand’s or Joan Baez’s or the Pope’s or Lenin’s or Elephant Doody Comix — the hypnosis is indicated by lack of pause for thought, feeling and evaluation. The response is immediate because it is because mechanical. Those who are not totally hypnotized—those who have some awareness of concrete events of sensory space-time, outside their heads— find the problem terrible and terrifying and admit they don’t know any 'correct' answer.
I don’t know the 'correct' answer either, and I doubt that there is one. The
universe may not contain 'right' and 'wrong' answers to everything just because Ideologists want to have 'right' and 'wrong' answers in all cases, anymore than it provides hot and cold running water before humans start tinkering with it. I feel sure that, for those awakened from hypnosis, every hour of every day presents choices that are just as puzzling (although fortunately not as monstrous) as this parable. That is why it appears a terrible burden to be aware of who you are, where you are, and what is going on around you, and why most people would prefer to retreat into Ideology, abstraction, myth and self-hypnosis.
To come out of our heads, then, also means to come to our senses, literally—to live with awareness of the bottle of beer on the table and the bleeding body in the street. Without polemic intent, I think this involves waking from hypnosis in a very literal sense. Only one individual can do it at a time, and nobody else can do it for you. You have to do it all alone. "
― Robert Anton Wilson , Natural Law: or Don't Put a Rubber on Your Willy
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" Vimes, listening with his mouth open, wondered why the hell it was that dwarfs believed that they had no religion and no priests. Being a dwarf was a religion. People went into the dark for the good of the clan, and heard things, and were changed, and came back to tell…And then, fifty years ago, a dwarf tinkering in Ankh-Morpork had found that if you put a simple fine mesh over your lantern flame it'd burn blue in the presence of the gas but wouldn't explode. It was a discovery of immense value to the good of dwarfkind and, as so often happens with such discoveries, almost immediately led to a war." And afterwards there were two kinds of dwarf," said Cheery sadly. " There's the Copperheads, who all use the lamp and the patent gas exploder, and the Schmaltzbergers, who stick to the old ways. Of course we're all dwarfs," she said, " but relations are strained. "
9
" Some of these tasks are interesting. Tinkering with machines is fun. Marketing decisions, especially how to manage the Web site and AdWords, are an intellectual challenge. Some are unpleasant but lead to a satisfying conclusion, like nagging customers for past-due payments. (They've always paid me, eventually.) Some are frightening, I can change an employee's life with my decisions about pay rates and whether to hire and fire. And many are just aggravating: the taxes, insurance purchases, legal issues, and some of the employee interactions. Each layer of government, each enormous and indifferent private bureaucracy, requires its own special knowledge: the right form filled out the correct way and filed at the right time. Learning how to complete on type of tax filing tells you nothing whatsoever about how to fill out the next form. One health insurer presents a quote one way, another in an entirely different way, and both require extensive study to determine the best choice. It's like stepping back to an old, old world where every tree, every rock, every stream is inhabited by its own resident spirit, and each needs to be mollified in the correct manner. Or very bad things happen. I didn't start my company to do any of this. I had no idea, when I decided that I would make furniture in exchange for money, that this was in my future. And the strange universe of administration expands as the company grows. "