The Mustering of the SoulMarine - or - dharma and Who?

Ok, the semester is over, time to evaluate what was learned, time to process the intel and see what the reconnaissance mission brought back.  There’s a fair amount to wade through, and the ancillary data is rapidly becoming very interesting indeed. Since there were no casualties beyond wear on the boots all and all the mission was worth the price (although in dollar value that price is grossly inflated over the last run, but go figure... education is a business, the commercial side of the academics, and the current mission statement of that business is to remove a college education from the average American’s dream as just to damn expensive for what is gained... they’re not fooling me on that point, they’d like to reestablish their elite status after what the G.I. bill of WW2 fame did to it).

The last essay was submitted last Wednesday per instructions by email, so, should this post pop up on a plagiarism search? Hi  Mr. Instructor B, hi as well to Dr. D. Sorry to get your hopes up but yea, Cyranos DeMet is my pen name and I can prove it.

As I’ve said in more than one post the purpose of the reconnaissance was to get a feel for what part, if any, the education system is playing in the spread of the perversions consuming the American culture.  Well, let’s just say they’re damn sure not doing much to oppose it.  Why do I think that?  Several factors.  The first was walking on campus and over the very first cup of student union coffee finding in the campus paper an editorial by a psych student proclaiming himself a gay-tolerant Christian followed not an hour later by the instructor walking into the classroom blowing the same thought with enough personal derision to make me think of a berserk Aegis system (Navy fleet air defense) firing on every passing cloud.  He was putting A LOT of lead in the air. 

But that was just the first day, and kind of peripheral to my cause anyway.  I have no real grievance with the gay folk, not for simply being homosexual, particularly if it’s a psychiatric thing and not psychological.  It’s more difficult, but you can be homosexual and still be a good person.  Not an issue to me if the Oklahoma State Cowboys want to accept the New York kind of cowboy, the New York cowboy just like the Yankee women will figure out soon enough they don’t need to be terrified of the size of that thing in the local cowboys’ hip pocket.  Contrary to their travel agent’s innuendo it’s actually a can of snuff, not a condom.  Anyway, enough sarcasm, I’ll call that even for what I had to sit through the first day with a strait face (puns fully permitted).  What I won’t call even is what happened at the end of the semester. 

The course covered three philosophers from history: Socrates, Descartes, and Hume.  Product delivered as promised.  But the fourth, an asshole by the name of Krishnamurti, was a totally different matter.  He wasn’t presented as had been the others, he was proselytized.  The two posts previous to this one elaborate on one event, feel free to scan them if you’re of a mind to know the back story, but in any case never have I read anyone who does a better job of cutting the foundations out from under any and every form morality, or the personal ethics which must support morality at the social level, than does Krishnamurti.  I spent a couple of hours today reading Wiki articles concerning the religions and customs of Krishnamurti’s homeland, and no, I don’t think what was presented represents any realistic interpretation of those, just in passing overview the contradictions were obvious.

What makes me extremely suspicious concerning the ethical parameters of OSU, or at least the philosophy department, is that Krishnamurti was first presented to the class AFTER the student evaluations had been submitted to the department, and that is a most troubling thing.  If Krishnamurti was solely the instructors choice for the syllabus then presenting him after the evaluations would leave the department blind concerning student reaction to both material and instructor; or, regardless if Krishnamurti was presented to the class by tacit permission of the department or by the will of the philosophy department of Oklahoma State University then the department accepting  the student evaluations a full month before the end of the semester simply screams of a fully plotted effort at plausible deniability on someone’s part.  Not good, not good at all.  The last time I was enrolled some ten years ago the student evaluations were all filled out during the last week, after the course was essentially complete.  What allowed what I observed to go down unchallenged?

It was worth the inflated price of the course to learn the name of at least one of my enemy’s resources, because after reading the full damn book of superbly crafted and very subtle lies credited to Krishnamurti I’m rather convinced he’d be well received if not already fully revered as a justifying authority by the operatives of my prime enemy BDSM.  Pretty obvious the philosophy department of OSU isn’t likely to be much help.  Think I’ll tag a bounty on who is talking to who, let the Baker Street Irregulars do their thing, for all I know that department may well be a crossroads for several local abscesses of that mode of thought, it would be nice to fill in a couple of more nodes in the surveillance grid.

Next time in it will be the psychology department, after what I saw there last time, what I saw in philosophy this time, think I’d be wise to have some insurance (in other words, make provisions to blow the whole business to the public winds via a couple of guys I know who work for the local television stations should I get leaned on… perversion on campus is always good for a sweeps week segment, and a boatload of universities including this one are already in hot water on that score).  Anyway, what’s beneath the fold is the essay I turned in whence came the first part of the title of this post (the other portion concerning the concept of dharma from the mornings Wiki readings)... free to read if you’re curious.  Later gang, I gotta go finish the debriefing.

How do you know that you can or need to be better? In other words, what thought makes you think/know that you and the world aren't perfect already? In other words, according to Krishnamurti, explain what is dangerous about the pursuit of respect and being a second-hand person? In what way is this what you 'know'? How do you think being free of this knowledge would be a helpful thing?

For readability Krishnamurti’s words will be cited in italics, and as before the source of the citation identified by page number and a decimal approximation of the quote’s position on the page as it appears in the student text.

To answer the question posed is to speak to the state of the world from the perspective Krishnamurti presented in various lectures later edited into the book Freedom From the Known by Mary Lutyens, it is to speak from the state of the world as it was seen by my generation in our youth, it is to speak of the consequences of the errors embedded in the old and the migrations and mutations of those errors into the new, the world of today. 

This essay is being written to satisfy the requirements of an academic class giving an introductory overview of what is called classic philosophy, thoughts recorded by the thinkers of antiquity that helped shape the modern world.  Several facets of Krishnamurti make his presence in such company extremely questionable, first among them his own words:  “It is important to understand from the very beginning that I am not formulating any philosophy (emphasis mine) or any theological structure of ideas or theological concepts. ⁽¹⁾  It seems to me that all ideologies are utterly idiotic.” (page 16.2)  I will take Krishnamurti at his word, and proceed accordingly.

Krishnamurti targets the often unperceived impact of the social on the thought structures of the individual, the inherited and interlocking patterns of belief and assumption that form the framework of a life within any given culture or society, patterns that all to often do as much to limit a life as enhance it.  The word “targets” was chosen with deliberation, for Krishnamurti  presses an attack against the social, the old, the known, with the passion of a crusader waging a holy war of liberation, or in the case of Krishnamurti himself perhaps better said a patriot seeking revenge by waging covert cultural warfare against an occupying foreign invader, or some mixture of both. 

Sadly, as with so many revolutionaries the battle to unseat the errors of the old takes such priority as to leave little thought for what will fill that place upon victory, what is needed to replace what was destroyed to install the new order into reality, structures that to be successful must be shaped by a full understanding of the functional value of the destroyed structures wherein were found the errors of the old order. 

I, like everyone else, am a product of the transition from the old to the new to the now.  This progression is not the product of any intent of mine, nor of any social structure or tradition, it is simply the result of living in linear time and as such should be understood in the same frame of reference as all the other consequences of the interface between the internal first reality of a self aware life and the environments of the second (external) reality shared in common with all other creatures.  This fact is easily perceived, and yet western cultures give this self evident truth little thought. It is upon this simple and yet most generally unperceived fact which the Brahmin warrior Krishnamurti based his offensive against the cultures that had invaded and despoiled his own.

Where I find Krishnamurti’s perception accurate and in many ways pertinent to the cause of improving the state of humanity I equally perceive his assertions as  malicious agents of entropy, as are all weapons of war, mutating, transforming and amplifying the errors of the old that they be transferred, perhaps inverted but yet still the same error, into the future still active to work harm on some segment of humanity from within the common thought.  I do not subscribe to Krishnamurti’s vision and take great exception to the manner he uses to present his thoughts, ⁽¹⁾ a style obviously derived from the religious dogmas of the world intended to produce a state of undefined guilt and insecure confusion (the Roman Catholic church has nothing on Krishnamurti in that regard!) easily manipulated by social entities, dogmas Krishnamurti’s early mentors taught him to wield with great skill while grooming him to seduce the world.

Key to Krishnamurti’s vision, and a key element in the question posed, is the state of life Krishnamurti mockingly refers to as “second hand people.”   Krishnamurti asserts the following:  “For centuries we have been spoon-fed by our teachers, by our authorities, by our books, our saints. We say, 'Tell me all about it-what lies beyond the hills and the moun­tains and the earth?' and we are satisfied with their descrip­tions, which means that we live on words and our life is shallow and empty. We  are second-hand people (emphasis mine). We have lived on what we have been told, either guided by our inclinations, our tendencies, or compelled to accept by circumstances and environment. We are the result of all kinds of influences and there is nothing new in us, nothing that we have discovered for ourselves; nothing original, pristine, clear.”  (page 10.2)

The passage above is a fine example of a weapon Krishnamurti habitually uses while prosecuting his war, the tactic of cum hoc ergo propter hoc between the obvious, but shallow, truth of the first section ending in …we are satisfied with their descriptions…  followed by the quite unproven blanket assertion …which means we live on words and our life is shallow and empty.  In the remainder of the statement Krishnamurti reinforces the message of the first portion by arbitrarily assigning a diminutive status equivalent to that of mindless drone to any and every human being drawing sustenance or satisfaction from one of the most defining characteristics of being human: the ability to communicate an abstraction be that abstraction a delusional imagining or a fully accurate perception of reality beyond the obvious. 

With these assertions Krishnamurti opens what in military parlance is called a pincers campaign, the first strike of a multi-pronged attack where to defend against the first is to leave oneself vulnerable to any of several other equally devastating attacks.  

If the first column of Krishnamurti’s attack is his assault on the sum value of human society and culture, any and every concept which might be transferred individual to individual by the process of communication in the service of education, then a second column (of many such columns) is an assault on another foundation concept critical to both  civilization and sanity: the concept of respect.

To influence the function of respect is to influence a powerful sentiment, for respect is the common element linking the image an individual’s holds of the inner self to the image held concerning the society wherein that individual resides.  To debilitate one function is to debilitate the other in the same stroke, for contrary to Krishnamurti’s underlying assumptions* respect is not an attitude of subservience or compliance to some authority figure, be that figure an external entity or a belief, an attitude of the inner self imbibed from an external source, but rather an attitude governing the individual’s initial attitude on approaching any matter of a perceived difference between whatever is known of the existing self and any other perception of reality .  Respect is therefore a truly critical function to maintaining a peaceful society, but it is an even more critical function in the formation of sane and stable individuals within that society.

*(Krishnamurti revealed his true attitude on the subject of respect when he said: “Society is so constructed that a citizen who has a position of respect is treated with great courtesy, whereas a man who has no position is kicked around.”  (page 40.4)  By this statement Krishnamurti sets respect as a coercive function of society (those dealing with the citizen in a position of “respect” compelled to offer courtesy beyond what is offered to others), be it the external society of day to day life or the internal image of society impacting within the individual in response to some thought.)    

For any individual to change, to grow and mature, is just as much a matter of that individual respecting a new and different state of affairs as a potentially viable way of life as having that individual accept without prejudice another’s religious beliefs.  This I’m sure Krishnamurti knew full well when he slandered the concept of respect and respectability as being nothing more than an emotionally enforced bondage to some socially mandated status quo by saying the following:  “It is a most extraordinary thing that although most of us are opposed to political tyranny and dictatorship, we inwardly accept the authority, the tyranny of another to twist our minds and way of life.  So if we completely reject, not intellectually but actually, all so-called spiritual authority, all ceremonies, rituals and dogmas, it means that we stand alone and are already in conflict with society; we cease to be respectable human beings.  A respectable human being cannot possibly come near to that infinite, immeasurable, reality.” (page 16.7) 

A bold statement on Krishnamurti’s part, very bold in light of the fact his entire campaign is based upon doing exactly what he just accused society of doing!  Consider the pivot point, the jaws of Krishnamurti’s pincer attack revealed by this statement. 

Should a person who sets any degree of truth to Krishnamurti’s assertions determine they wish to change, challenge or improve any existing parameter of their life they are caught solidly between the stigma of being a “second hand person” (should they look for an example from which to pattern the new) or becoming a person unworthy of respect (and, since respect is the same function within the inner self as is in the outer reality of the social finding their self respect compromised as well) should they not and yet persist in their intent.  Krishnamurti left no exceptions on this point.  Take for your template Siddhartha Gautama or Jesus of Nazareth no matter, to pattern any part of your life after theirs demotes you to the status of a second hand person, degraded, once used and now discarded, a member of a subservient lower class; or, take no template, reject the experience of mankind and be forever unsure of your own inner self to the detriment of your life and every life yours might touch.

Krishnamurti’s tactic is a finely crafted weapon of cultural warfare, well crafted indeed.  And like all well crafted weapons of that form of warfare it is, for it must be, based upon a truth large enough to carry the lie imbedded within.  The paragraphs above give my perception of the weapon itself, and yet in justice (and to satisfy the specific question of this test) I should equally speak to the truth upon which the weapon was mounted, for Krishnamurti’s perception was no less astute than that of say Karl Marx, to reject the truths they might present in the process of rejecting any errors of conclusion or weapons grade lie is to exponentially amplify the degree of damage done be it accidental or deliberate, for truth is truth and truth lost or ignored will always be damaging to any level of human life from the individual to the social to the full collective entity of mankind, which in the final analysis is perhaps the most dangerous of Krishnamurti’s weapons.

 The second hand life is indeed the most common of all lives, and for good cause.  The vast majority of lives are structured in the vocabulary provided to the individual by the parameters and beliefs of some form of social entity: a religion, a nation, a trade or profession, a cult or a perversion.  These lives are not, of necessity, lives degraded or diminished but rather are lives structured in what might best be called a compatible format to the society wherein that life will be lived, the proportionate justifications of the life set to match the proportions of the social elements internalized as part of the self definition. 

The trap of respectability, as Krishnamurti dubs it, is a consequence of the interface between the various social elements which provide a portion of the vocabulary of self definition to any given individual.  These elements of the collective co-exist within the macroscopic society on the tolerance enabled by respect, but when examined at the individual level they are not homogenous nor even fully compatible in the demands they place while bartering with the individual for the right to use their vocabulary as part of the individuals self definition.  In fact they are quite often mutually exclusive much to the distress of the individual.  Krishnamurti most likely understood this relationship, as indicated by his statement: “The outward social structure is the result of the inward psychological structure of our relationships, for the individual is the result of the total experience, knowledge and conduct of man.” (page 13.4)

It is simple logic to understand that the larger and more diverse a life the greater the number of interfaces between the various facets of that life the individual must bring to some form of balance, the more interfaces incorporated the larger the loading upon the individuals’ ability to hold stable some number of diverse and potentially incompatible concepts, the larger the loading on the function of respect. 

The trap of respectability then resolves as a limiting factor on the diversity of the individual, for to grow is to incorporate a wider self definition incorporating a larger percentage of the human experience, at some point the individual can no longer hold respect for the differences incorporated into the self and must either cease to grow, holding ground in some degree of discomfort at the limit of his ability to reconcile those differences (a situation sharing much in common with the active force of The Peter Principle of management theory); or, diminish in retreat to within the scope of what internal respect can support; or, take the third and most dangerous option: seek the assistance of the very society which created the conflict in the first place.

When an individual takes the third, and sadly most common, option they are held solidly in the jaws of the trap of respectability.   Each of the competing elements within that individual is not prone to giving ground to another, the collective entities which provide the individual his vocabulary of self definition are living things that must, as all living things do, compete for sustenance.  For a collective entity the sustenance provided by any given individual is proportionate to the percentage of the individual hosting that specific social definition as a portion of their self definition, and it is that competition between the collective entities (the unwitting individual a helpless pawn caught up in a larger conflict) that produce what Krishnamurti aptly describes (building himself an ethical cat of perhaps as few as nine tails to use as guilt driven intimidation to induce people within range of his weaponry) as “…this society, based on competition, brutality and fear…” (14.25) and “…we have contributed to it in our daily lives and are part of this monstrous society with its wars, divisions, its ugliness, brutality and greed…” (14.6).

The trap of respectability can only be broken by understanding, not the self as such, but the source of the concepts and associated vocabulary used in the cause of defining the self, and the associated price to be paid for using that which was created by another.  With such understanding in place a human may walk where they will and grow to the greatest level of complexity they desire and yet not fear the trap of respectability, they have the option of basing their self definition on concepts of their own creation compatible with, but free of, societies’ demands.

To answer the question of how I know I can be better than I am is easy, it is easy to demonstrate that neither I nor the world I live in is anywhere close to perfect, and rather than duplicate what has already been written? On this matter if no other I will accept Krishnamurti’s words.  There is no doubt, none, that Krishnamurti accurately describes the current state of human societies, to say otherwise would be a foolish attempt to contradict visible reality.  But equally, by his most accurate assessment Krishnamurti himself offers the proof there is ample room for improvement in both the individuals (of which I am one) and the various collective entities which exist in a symbiotic partnership with the individuals, the sum of those relationships being what is called the societies of man.  So long as the words agreed upon as an accurate description are all words set to the negative side of the human condition, and so long as those words all have antonyms?  Then there is room to do better.

Unlike Krishnamurti I do not espouse the ideal of all existence reduced to a zombie-like pinhole focus on the un-focusable moment of “now” to the exclusion of all else, the sad state of the human condition held comfortably (and in infantile selfish cowardice!) utterly unchanged outside an individual’s field of perception, but rather subscribe to the ideal of a society of self aware individuals courageous enough to shape their “now” (and as a consequence influencing the “now” of their society) into the best possible “now” that may be arranged from the converging wave-front of both experience and environment fully and rationally understood from below the euphemisms society employs to obscure its’ own ignorance of itself, that wave-front of the human condition perpetually expanding out of the old into the new into the now, those moments immediately preceding the now, those moments that are not so very old lived in an environment essentially, even if in the most minute of increments, changed for the better. 

Krishnamurti and I have quite independently crossed much of the same terrain in our respective quests, and I like Krishnamurti fully appreciate the irony of the trap of respectability.  Where we differ is in what is to be done about this situation.  But that should not be so surprising given that I hold that Krishnamurti had NO benign intention, but rather was waging cultural warfare against the weakest of the parameters of the societies that had invaded his own.  The longer I consider his thought the more I conclude a great deal of the moral degeneration seen in the western cultures across the last fifty some years should be charged against Krishnamurti’s thought, the corruption and perversion of everything from sexuality to business ethics standing as circumstantial evidence approaching valid proof of the effectiveness of his attack.  

Since I see Krishnamurti as the aggressor in a war of revenge waged against my culture and my society allow me to introduce myself in the same context.  From the tradition of Socrates, the first real philosopher we studied, Socrates, first-shirt of the original SoulMarine who stood guard over the wisdom and ethics which were the glory of ancient Athens I say the following to Krishnamurti’s influence:

I am Sgt. Cyranos DeMet of the Third Expeditionary SoulMarine and I will take death before the dishonor of embracing the evil and corruption you promote, you lying life leaching freak.  Semper Fi, dungheap… Bring it.