Prometheus Rising (20 page)

imprints. That means that the subject continues to be

fed (maintaining first-circuit oral dependence) while the secondcircuit

ego is attacked in every manner possible. A point-bypoint

comparison of the techniques of a Synanon "gamer" and

U.S. Army drill sergeant, for instance, would show astonishing

similarities, since the basic message is dozens and dozens of

variations on "You are all
wrong.
We are all
right.
It is extremely

unlikely that somebody as
wrong
as you will become
right,
ever,

but we will try to teach you." The anal vocabulary of territorial

status is, of course, employed extensively. The ideal subject may

almost forget his or her name and become conditioned to answering

to "You asshole, come here."

The sense of bottom dog helplessness can be escalated by

periodic doses of real terror. One of Charlie Manson's famous

sayings was "Fear is the great teacher," and every brainwasher

would agree ardently. In communist countries (as dramatized in

Costa-Gravas's fine and factual film,
The Confession)
a favorite

trick is to take the subject out of his cell, march him to a courtyard,

place a noose about his neck, and convince him he is about

to be hanged. The relief, when this turns out to be a bluff, creates

ideal imprint vulnerability. A variation in my novel
Illuminatus!

has the victim persuaded he has been poisoned, dumped in a coffin

and the lid slammed upon him. Those who have been initiated

as Mark Master Freemasons will recognize at once that the same

technique is the "mark that you will carry to your grave."

166 Prometheus Rising

Among the Zuni Indians, the male at adolescence is kidnapped

by masked "demons" who carry him away from the tribe

(away from mother and other imprinted security figures.) He is

dragged out into the desert and threatened with whips. Then the

masks come off, revealing his maternal uncles, and in that

moment of imprint vulnerability the tribal "secrets" (the local

reality-tunnel) are explained in a way that leave an indelible

mark on his consciousness. Similar rites of passage are found in

all tribes, few as cleverly designed as this one. Symbolic and

diluted versions survive in Bar Mitzvahs and Confirmation

ceremonies in our local mega-tribes.

The rebirthing of the second circuit is (relatively) complete

when the Bottom Dog subject begins to seek, sincerely (not

hypocritically) to win the approval of the Top Dogs. This, of

course, only begins as play-acting; the skilled brainwasher

knows that, and does not really object. With subtle reinforcement

the play-acting becomes more and more genuine. Edmund Burke

noted long ago, and every Method Actor knows, that you cannot

make three dramatic gestures of rage in a political speech, without

beginning to feel some real rage. You cannot make three

gestures of submission without beginning to feel really submissive.

(This is the psychology of the "company man," who truly

identifies
with his employer after years of obedience.)

The draftee first tries to please the sergeant, to avoid further

humiliation and punishment. Gradually, he genuinely
wants
to

please the sergeant, i.e., to prove he is not
all wrong
and is "good

enough" to be a soldier. Patty Hearst undoubtedly pretended to

accept the SLA reality-tunnel at first, and gradually found the

presence becoming more and more real.

This process is accelerated by a system of occasional rewards,

as the subject more and more often
emits
(as the Behaviorists

would say) the desired behaviors. Since people are more complicated

than Behaviorists know, it is necessary to vary this with

occasional punishments for "insincerity," or "backsliding," so

that the subject learns that
after
the initial stage,
it is not enough

to pretend to accept the new reality-tunnel;
to escape further

humiliation, ego-loss, terrorism and permanent Bottom Dog

status,
one must begin to accept it sincere/y.
After the imprint of

helplessness had been made, this conditioning and learning will

Prometheus Rising 167

proceed fairly smoothly, especially if the Chief Brainwasher's

confederates reinforce it with encouragement, support, and

general "reward" (for sincere submission) and contempt, disappointment

and general rejection (for insincerity or backsliding.)

Reimprinting the third semantic circuit can now follow easily.

The human brain is capable of mastering any symbol-system if

sufficiently motivated. Some people can even play Beethoven's

late piano music, although to me this is as "miraculous" as any

feat alleged by psychic researchers; people can learn French,

Hindustani, differential calculus, Swahili, etc. ad. infinitum—
if

motivated.
When the first circuit security needs have been

reimprinted and second-circuit ego-needs have been hooked to

mastering a new semantic reality-tunnel, that tunnel will be

imprinted.

At this point a certain amount of arbitrary nonsense is of great

value. That is, the new reality-tunnel or symbol-system (like the

old one) should contain pitfalls (gross violations of previous reality

tunnels and common sense) so that the subject can be accused

of backsliding (being "all wrong," after all) and thereby incited

to try harder to become part of the new reality-tunnel.

Thus, Jehovah's Witnesses may not accept blood transfusions,

even if their life depends on it: harder still (since all mammals

have an instinct to protect their young) they must reject blood

transfusions for their children, even if the children die of this

neglect. A Roman Catholic woman may not be divorced even if

her husband comes home drunk every night, beats her up and

gives her VD. In the U.S. Marines, a recruit who commits the

hideous crime of calling a rifle a "gun" must walk around the

base with his rifle in one hand and his penis in the other reciting

to everybody he meets, "This is my rifle/This is my gun/This is

for fighting/This is for fun." Theosophists were once required to

believe that there is a hole at the North Pole going down to the

center of the earth; Manson required his followers to believe the

hole was in the Mojave Desert. Nazi Party members were asked

to believe that the lion is an Aryan animal and the rabbit non-

Aryan. Etc.

The neurological and sociological function of such

"nonsense" (which makes the Rationalist gasp in shock) is to

sharply segregate those within the new reality-tunnel from those

168 Prometheus Rising

outside. This makes for group solidarity, group-reinforcement,

and a strong sense of alienation and discomfort when on rare

occasions it is necessary to talk at all with those outside the

brainwasher's semantic system. The group must ensure, of

course, that this alienation is experienced as "superiority." Those

who are outside the reality-tunnel must be perceived as "all

wrong"—just as the subject was, before being brainwashed.

Drugs can be, and have been, used to fine-tune these processes,

but the general neurological principles are powerful enough

that it is quite likely that many famous cases of brainwashing

were accomplished as above described, without any drugs at

all—e.g., the American soldiers who confessed to war crimes

which they evidently had not committed, the loyal Communists

who confessed to Trotskyite conspiracies which seemingly never

existed, etc. It takes very few weeks for most armies, without

drugs, to convert a civilian into a soldier, even though the two

species are as different as Roman Catholics and Shintoists.

In one of my Immortal Novels I describe a religious cult

called Loonies, founded by one Neon Bal Loon, in which members

pray in pig-Latin while standing on one leg like storks. This

is considered satire, but any would-be messiah who understands

the above principles could create such a cult easily; and the

members would soon have a quite sincere sense of superiority to

those outside that reality-tunnel.

Cults and outlaw terrorists generally follow the above procedures

by further rewiring of the fourth, socio-sexual circuit.

(Governments usually leave that circuit alone, since government

agents are largely puritanical-authoritarian and afraid to get

involved at all with raw Eros.) It is no secret that the most

powerful secret society of the middle ages, the Knights Templar,

forced recruits to participate in both blasphemy and sodomy. Just

as the deliberate nonsense of all cultish third-circuit semantics

isolates the group from the rest of society, this initiation separated

the Templars from the rest of Christendom; the alienation

could easily be conditioned into a sense of superiority. The Mau-

Maus in Kenya also insisted on one act of homosexuality to

break the new member's previous conditioning toward heterosexuality

and monogamy. Other cults, some quite well known,

Prometheus Rising 169

attempt to repress sexuality entirely—another way of breaking

the statistically normal imprinting of the fourth circuit.

The Manson Family insisted on what might be called, oxymoronically,

compulsory free love. The Army serves normal amative

bonds and casts the subject into a world where compulsory

celibacy alternates with whore-house adventures and, quite often,

the rape of enemy women, with homosexuality as an everpresent

hidden option. A current American guru, Da Free John,

imprints his subjects for lifelong monogamy, almost like the

outside U.S. culture, but is indifferent as to whether these pairings

are heterosexual or homosexual. Whatever variation the

cult-leader may choose, what makes for successful "separate

reality" is that it be in some respect outlandishly different from

that of the major society.

The easiest way to get brainwashed is to be born.
All of the

above principles then immediately go into action, a process

which social psychologists euphemistically call
socialization.

The bio-survival circuit automatically hooks onto or bonds to the

most appropriate mother or mothering object; the emotionalterritorial

circuit looks for a "role" or ego-identification in the

family or tribe; the semantic circuit learns to imitate and then use

the local reality-grids (symbol systems); the socio-sexual circuit

is imprinted by whatever mating experiences are initially available

at puberty.

The subjects may not come out of this process ready to

murder women and children, like the graduate of boot camp, or

even willing to believe that Charlie Manson was both Jesus and

Satan simultaneously, or willing to spout New Left slogans while

robbing banks. The subjects come out of normal "socialization"

depending on where and when they were born
as Eskimo

totemists, Moslem fundamentalists, Roman Catholics, Marxist

Leninists, Nazis, Methodist Republicans, Oxford-educatedagnostics,

snake worshippers, Ku Kluxers, Mafiosos, Unitarians,

IRA-ists, PLO-ists, orthodox Jews, hardshell Baptists, etc. etc.

The universe or existence, is obviously large enough and

complex enough and the ego self-centered enough, that all of

these reality-tunnels are capable of "making sense," to some

degree, to those imprinted/conditioned to accept them. It is also

obvious that most of these reality-tunnels contain elements so

I JO
Prometheus Rising

absurd that everybody
not
imprinted/conditioned by them looks

at them with astonishment and dismay, wondering "How can a

rational person (or peoples) believe such rubbish?"

What the Thinker thinks, the Prover proves...
whether you are

living in a Christian reality-tunnel, a Mansonoid reality-tunnel,

an Immortalist reality-tunnel, a vegetarian reality-tunnel, a

Rationalist reality-tunnel...

Everybody has the only true
true
religion.

Earlier, we quoted some words from Persinger and Lafreniere:

We, as a species, exist in a world in which exist a myriad of

data points. Upon these matrices of points we superimpose a

structure and the world makes sense to us. The pattern of the

structure originates within our biological and sociological

properties.

Prometheus Rising 171

It is to be hoped that this makes more sense to the reader now

than it did at the beginning of our enquiry.

The function of the domesticated primate brain, insofar as we

have described it up to this point and leaving out the higher,

newer circuits, is to serve as an "organ of adaptation" in Freud's

phrase. Specifically, the oldest, most primitive, most mechanical