Prometheus Rising (9 page)

this idea as monstrous. We will not attempt to decide that difficult

question here, since any attempt to decide what aspects of

behavior are genetic and what are learned after birth always

descends into ideological metaphysics in the prevailing absence

of real data. We say merely that, whether or not you or I were

born with a predisposition for one quadrant, all organisms are

born with a predisposition for
imprint vulnerability,
and the

imprint, once set in the neural circuitry, acts as robotically as any

genetic hard-wiring.

How imprints can be changed will be discussed as we

proceed. The exercizes in each chapter are intended to make

imprints a little less rigid, a little more flexible.

The top two quadrants of the Leary grid—Friendly Strength

and Hostile Strength—correspond roughly to what Nietzsche

called
Herrenmoral,
the ethics of ruling classes. Indeed, Hostile

Strength is the embodiment of Nietzsche's "Blond Beast," the

primitive conqueror-pirate type we find at the dawn of every

civilization. This is what Nietzsche also called the "animal" or

"unsublimated"
form of the Will to Power.

(Friendly Strength on the other hand does
not
correspond,

except very slightly, to Nietzsche's
"sublimated
Will to Power."

To find that we will have to wait until we come to the Fifth

[Neurosomatic] Circuit—the stage of Conscious Evolution.)

The bottom two quadrants—Friendly Weakness and Hostile

Weakness—correspond to Nietzsche's
Sklavmoral,
the ethics of

slaves, serfs and "lower"-caste or "lower"-class persons

everywhere. Nietzsche's concept of
"resentment"—
the hidden

revenge motive within "altruistic" philosophies—claims there is

an element of hostility within even the Friendly Weakness side

of the grid; i.e., in conventional "Christian ethics," as typified by

the image of "gentle Jesus, meek and mild." This paradox—the

Friendly Weakling is a Hostile Weakling in disguise, the Flower

So
Prometheus Rising

Child a potential Mansonized robot-killer—reappears in modern

clinical parlance as the concept of "passive aggressive."

Occultists in their strange jargon describe these types
as

"psychic vampires."

This is why Nietzsche claimed that St. Paul had destroyed the

evangel
(good news) of Jesus and replaced it with a
dysangel

(bad news). The evangel of Jesus, as Nietzsche saw it, was the

sublimated Will to Power,
the path of conscious evolution to

Superhumanity. The
dysangel,
the bad news, created by St. Paul

was traditional
Sklavmoral—
"Slaves, obey your masters," but

nourish your
resentment
with the firm belief that you are "good,"

and they are "evil," and you will eventually have the pleasure of

watching them burn in hell forever. In Nietzsche's analysis, all

Marx added to this was the idea of burning and punishing the

Master Class here and now instead of waiting for "God" to

attend to the matter
post mortem.

The same analysis appears in e.e. cummings' unforgettable

couplet on the Communist intelligentsia of the 1930s:

every kumrad is a little bit

of concentrated hate

It is interesting, in this connection, that Nietzsche dropped

"psychological" language from his books as he went along and

replaced it with "physiological" language. For instance, in his

later works, such as
The Anti-Christ,
the
"resentment"
within

slave-morality (conventional Christianity) is diagnosed as a

physiological reaction characteristic of certain physical types.

Nietzsche was on the right track, but lacking neurology he

looked for the physical basis of these processes in genetics alone.

Imprinting theory suggests, on the contrary, that such physiological

Bottom Dog reflexes are created by specific triggers at early

moments of imprint vulnerability.

But they are nonetheless all-over-the-body-at-once and hence

physiological. Any Method Actor knows this and his body will

swell physically if he is playing a strong character and shrink if

he is playing a weakling. Rod Steiger, in particular, actually

seems taller or shorter depending on whether he is playing a Top

Dog or a Bottom Dog.

Prometheus Rising 81

Remember again that all these categories are for
convenience

and that nature has not employed the sharp boundaries that we

use in our models of nature. Thus, with Leary's 1957 schemata,

we can further sub-divide our 4 types into 16 types with 4

degrees of each, for a total of 64 sub-types.

In the next section, to simplify what may be growing too

complex, we will reduce everything again just to the interactions

of the first two circuits.

Any system for describing human behavior should be flexible

enough to be extended indefinitely, and should also still contain

meaning when reduced back to its fundamentals.

Since we all contain a territorial-emotional circuit we need to

exercize it daily.

Playing with children is one good exercize—especially if you

play with large groups, in which case you will have to referee

mammalian territorial disputes. Swimming, jogging or whatever

else appeals to you is good, to keep the muscles from feeling you

are trying to starve them. Trying to "psych out" somebody else's

emotional state is one of the best exercizes for this circuit, and is

very educational in general. It activates the old mammal centers

in the thalamus where body-language communicates emotional

signals.

A good General uses this circuit to "psych out" what the

enemy General is planning. A good mother uses it, vice versa, to

figure out what baby's howl means in each particular case.

Advanced work with this circuit, involving some hazards in

personal relations, would involve such games as learning to bully

somebody if you've never been able to do that before, learning to

submit docilely if you've never been able to do
that
before, and

learning to express anger appropriately and letting go of it when

it is no longer necessary.

It will be observed by the thoughtful or visually-oriented

readers that each "extreme" type can be expressed on the Leary

Grid as a very off-center pie-slice:

82
Prometheus Rising

Obviously, an ideally "balanced" person—that is, one not

robotized and able to adjust to circumstances as they arise—

would not be so off-centered. Such a person would be able to

move a little bit into each quadrant "according to the times and

seasons" as the Chinese say, but would basically maintain a

centered detachment between all of them. She or he could be

graphed as a circle:

The dark inner circle would represent the adamantine individuality

of this ideally detached person—detached from robot

imprints. The grey circle would represent the ability to move out

into each quadrant in times when that was necessary.

Circles of this sort, called
mandalas,
are widely used for

meditation in the Buddhist tradition. Often they are cornered by

four demons who evidently, like the Occidental lion, bull, angel

and eagle, represent the extremes to be avoided.

Prometheus Rising

..
.being humus, the same returns.

— James Joyce,
Finnegans Wake

EXERCIZES

1. Whenever you meet a young male or female, ask yourself

consciously, "If it came to hand-to-hand combat, could I beat

him/her' ?" Then try to determine how much of your behavior is

based on
unconsciously
asking and answering that question via

pre-verbal "body language."

2. Get roaring drunk and pound the table, telling everybody in

a loud voice just what dumb assholes they all are.
1

3. Get a book on meditation, practice for two fifteen-minute

sessions every day for a month, and then go see somebody who

always manages to upset you or make you defensive. See if they

can
still
press your territorial retreat buttons.
2

4. Spend a week-end at an Encounter Group. During the first

half-day, try to intuit which quadrant each participant is coming

1 Opiates and
small
does of alcohol seem to trigger neuro-transmitters

characteristic of Circuit I breast-fed tranquillity.
Large
doses of alco
hol

often reverse this and trigger neuro-transmitters characteristic of

territorial struggle. Note the anal vocabulary of hostile drunks as their

alcoholic intake increases.