Prometheus Rising (17 page)

large element of accident (within genetic parameters). Society,

everywhere, without understanding this theory, understands

enough
pragmatically
about imprinting processes to attempt to

program each individual for his or her assigned role. Hence,

traditional girl-rearing is different from traditional boy-rearing,

so that women
will
have more Circuit II "sensitivity." Again

Women's Liberation, like modern child-rearing, arrived only

when we were evolutionarily ready or nearly-ready for it.
The

traditional system worked in traditional societies.

Similarly, class structure, like the caste structure in an insect

hive, works to produce the "right" imprints in each class. The

third circuit of the servile class or proletariat is imprinted chiefly

for manual dexterity, while the same circuit in middle-class or

ruling-class children is imprinted for verbal, mathematical or

other symbol-using skills

Democracy has been less than a total success—and the intellectual's

half-shamed cynicism about democracy is justified—to

the extent that traditional society did not need, could not use, and

in many ways discouraged the development of high verbal

("rational") skills in the majority of the population. That is,

concretely, most people are not encouraged to be very smart, and

are rather heavily programmed to be comparatively stupid. Such

programming is what is needed to fit them into most traditional

jobs. Their bio-survival circuitry works as well as that of most

animals, their emotional-territorial circuitry is typically primate,

and they have little third-circuit "mind" to verbalize (rationalize)

with. Naturally, they usually vote for the charlatan who can

Prometheus Rising 143

activate primitive bio-survival fears and territorial ("patriotic")

pugnacity. The intellectual looks at the dismal results and continues

to believe in "democracy" only by an act of Blind Faith

similar to the way beliefs in Catholicism or Communism or

snake-worship are maintained.

Again, the traditional system
works,
for traditional society. A

mass made of people who have intense curiosity about why

Beethoven went in for string quartets after the Ninth Symphony,

or whether Kant really refuted Hume satisfactorily, or what the

latest quantum theories
mean
in relation to Determinism and

Free Will, is not a mass that will easily be led into dull, dehumanizing

labor at traditional jobs.

Why did Adlai Stevenson lose to Ike Eisenhower, George

McGovern to Tricky Dicky Nixon, etc.? It was the Wrong

Address problem again. Stevenson, McGovern and other darlings

of the intelligentsia were speaking to the third circuit, which is

not very highly developed in most domesticated primates yet.

Eisenhower in his Fatherly way, and Nixon in his bullying Big

Brother way, knew just how to push the right Second-Circuit

emotional-territorial buttons to get a mob of primates to follow

them. They were genetically programmed alpha males, in ethological

terms.

Similarly, the Moralist (i.e., the Adult Personality who has

imprinted heavy Ethical imperatives on Circuit IV) is often totally

unable to communicate with the scientist or technologist. The

Moralist may even decide—many already have—that the scientist

per se
is "inhuman." In fact, morals are fairly irrelevant to

the Third Circuit analytical mind, which is the brain function the

average scientist has imprinted most powerfully. To the third

circuit, the only morality is accuracy, the only immorality is

sloppy thinking.

Again, the rise in "social conscience" among scientists is happening

only when it was evolutionarily necessary that it happen,

i.e., after Hiroshima. If it doesn't seem to be happening widely

enough and quickly enough, well, the same can be said—also in

error, I think—about modernizing education and childrearing,

about Women's Liberation, about racism, etc. The rebellion

against all the follies of the past is succeeding, and will continue

to succeed, only as we evolve into a society which needs
each

144 Prometheus Rising

human to function well on all circuits.
We are moving with everincreasing

speed, into such a society.

What the impatient radical forgets is that many of the

"injustices" of the traditional primate society were not even

perceived
as such by the best minds of 1000 years ago or 100

years ago, or in the case of institutionalized sexism, even 30

years ago. If we can see injustice and absurdity in many age-old

institutions, it is only because we are evolving out of robothood,

at precisely the point in evolution when it is necessary for us to

become smarter and more sensitive on all circuits.

Each of us has a "favorite" circuit—that is, a circuit that has

been more heavily imprinted than the others. Miscommunication,

misunderstanding and general misjudgment of one another is

vastly increased by the fact that few of us know about these

levels of circuitry, and
we all tend to assume that the person we

are interacting with is on the same circuit we are.

Thus, there are narcissistic (oral) first-circuit types in every

social group. Present them with a problem and they will immediately

look for somebody else to handle it, since the oral stage is

robotically imprinted for dependency. (Or, if they have imprinted

hostile weakness instead of dependent weakness, they will

explode into anger—infantile tantrum—raging that a problem

exists and that it has been imposed on them.)

A second-circuit type, in the same situation, will attempt to

frighten the problem away by barking and blustering at it,

mammalian-fashion.

A third-circuit type will try to reason out the problem. This is

the best approach
only
with problems that are themselves rational,

i.e., "How do you make this machine work?" It can be blind,

and futile, when the "problem" is another human being acting

out one of the more destructive second-circuit rage programs.

("The liberal is the one who leaves the room when the fight

starts," somebody once said. Third-circuit types are most confused

and feel impotent when second-circuit mammalian politics

takes over the scene.)

A fourth-circuit type will try to be rational (third circuit) and

to sense the emotional dimensions of the problem (second

circuit) but will basically try to impose a
moral
solution: "Now

this is the decent, fair thing to do..." This may or may not make

Prometheus Rising
745

sense to the third-circuit Rationalist, looking for objective

justice; and it will usually make no sense at all to the totally

second-circuit type dominated by emotionalism and territoriality.

What is true of the group is true of the individual. While we

all have our favorite circuit, and tend to see that circuit as

"superior" to all the others, we can be pushed out of it by shocks

or stresses, in which case we jump to another circuit.

The most robotic Rationalist will descend to the first circuit,

eventually, if threat to bio-security is forcibly enough presented

on the screen of consciousness. And, if prevented from "leaving

the room when the fight starts," the Rationalist will even descend

to second-circuit mammalian howling and barking, under sufficient

pressure. (Oliver Wendell Holmes referred to this as "the

hydrostatic principle in controversy," whereby the fools drag

everybody down to their own level.)

The most robotic Emotionalist may also move up to the third

circuit, temporarily, if a problem remains intractable to every

form of emotional bullying or con-artistry.

All of us will move into fourth-circuit Parent role or Super

Ego—even little children will do it, imitatively—if it seems that

the only way to get what one wants is to appeal to tribal morality:

"Why, it would be
positively, indecent
not to do it the way

Grandfather would..."

"Give us the child until he is five, and we will have him for

life," bragged some 18th Century Jesuit. The Jesuit order of that

time, as Aldous Huxley later noted sardonically, educated

Voltaire, Diderot, and the Marquis de Sade; obviously their techniques

of brain-programming were not perfect. Nonetheless,

most people in most societies do grow up as fairly accurate replicas

of the previous generation. Most children educated by the

Jesuits have remained Catholics. Most children of Democrats do

not
become Republicans. Etc.

Considering the wide variety of philosophies available to any

of us—nudism and Buddhism, scientific materialism and snake

worship, Communism and vegetarianism, subjective Idealism

and Existentialism, Methodism and Shinto, etc.—the fact that

most people remain in the same reality-tunnel as their parents,

does indicate that acculturalization is a mind control process. We

are all giants, raised by pygmies, who have learned to walk with

146 Prometheus Rising

a perpetual mental crouch. Unleashing our full stature—our total

brain power—is what this book is all about.

There is a Zen story (very funny—ha-ha) about a monk who,

having failed to achieve "enlightenment" (brain-change) through

the normal Zen methods, was told by his teacher to think of

nothing but an ox. Day after day after day, the monk thought of

the ox, visualized the ox, meditated on the ox. Finally, one day,

the teacher came to the monk's cell and said, "Come out here—I

want to talk to you."

"I can't get out," the monk said. "My horns won't fit through

the door."

/
can't get out...

At these words, the monk was "enlightened." Never mind

what "enlightenment" means, right now. The monk went through

some species of brain change, obviously. He had developed the

delusion that he
was
an ox, and awakening from that hypnoidal

state he saw through the mechanism of all other delusions and

how they robotize us.

EXERCIZES

1. Recreate
vividly
in imagination your first orgasm. To what

extent do you still use the same accessories (stimuli) to turn you

on?

2. Try to change your sexual imprint. See if you can reach

orgasm by some method that has been taboo or unthinkable to

you before.

3. Imagine that you are Rev. Jerry Falwell. Explain to an

imaginary homosexual why his sexual imprint is "sinful" and

should be changed at once. Include instructions on how to

change it.

4. Imagine that you are a Gay man or Lesbian. Explain to

Rev. Falwell why you will not or can not change your sexual

imprint to please him.

5. Read Margaret Mead's
Sex and Temperament in Three

Primitive Societies.
Then write a five-page proof that the taboos

in our tribe make more sense objectively than the taboos of the

tribes she studied.
Be serious about it!

Prometheus Rising I4J

6. Choose the viewpoint of the Samoans in Dr. Mead's book

above. Write a five-page proof that their taboos make more sense

than those of our society. Be serious about it.

7. Re-read the paragraphs about the giraffe and the gosling.

What does this tell you about your sexual imprint? What is your

jeep or your ping-pong ball?

CHAPTER
NINE

MINDWASHING & BRAIN

PROGRAMMING

We have certain preconceived notions about location in space

which have come down to us from ape-like ancestors.

— Sir Arthur Eddington,
Space, Time and Gravitation

149

The greatest Utopian possibility before us is also the greatest

dystopian terror.

We are learning more and more about the pragmatics of
brain

change:
how to alter anybody's brain so as to set them in a totally

new "reality." Visions of
1984
and
Brave New World
lurk in

this very concept.

But we are also learning how to change our own brains—

learning to use them for fun and profit rather than for misery and

robothood. Visions of Super-Humanity are implicit in any perception

of what this means.

The brain can be tuned, like a TV, to turn off any channel, and

to bring in a new channel. This is what the veterans of the 1960s-

1970s Neurological Revolution know. This is the major threat,

and the major promise of our time.

Consider the alternatives.

CYANIDE AND SYNCHRONICITY

In November 1978, I was in Seattle to see the 10-hour play

which Ken Campbell had made out of the three
Illuminatus!