Filler for fun... Ballerina

“Sir, there is one asset available that isn’t in this plan.”  The lieutenant had that look on his face, the one heroes and dead men wear going into battle.

The General, a weary man weary of the war took in the look, processed, and decided what the hell.  At this stage of things a little insanity might be comic relief.  It had been a long time since he’d properly roasted a junior officer.  He scrunched his face into the look he’d spent a career refining to mean this had damn well better be good.

“So educate us,” he said, nodding to either side at the fifteen senior officers gathered around the planning table.  “Just what have we all overlooked?”  For two weeks he and his staff had been laying plans to mount a desperation counter attack over-hull to open a path through the K’chaing to a dock, hold it open long enough for a supply ship to unload and relieve the siege.  Both rations and ammunition were in desperately short supply.

The lieutenant drew a deep breath and to the confusion of all smiled.  He definitely had the element of surprise on his side.  “Sir, the ballet was aboard when we were attacked.”

Nobody really meant to but every man in the room laughed, the General loudest of all.

As the chuckles subsided the General actually smiled for the first time in recent memory.  “Son,” he said around the last chuckle, “enlighten us here.  Just how in the hell are twenty little girls who are overweight at 45 kilo going to help us make war on 250 kilo monsters who grow their own armor?”

The lieutenant walked forward, picked up a holopointer on his way to the planning table. The others moved aside as he approached.  Honor among the warriors, those in the process of career suicide deserved the chance to make it a clean kill.

“Sir, like this.  Have you ever seen how fast those little girls can fly when they’re not dancing?  I found out they’ve been practicing in the core, that’s where they’ve been hiding.  Sir, they can fly the tubes and we still control the grav generators.  Knock those off line and the whole sphere will be zero-g for a minimum of fifteen minutes before the emergencies can charge up to come on line.  That’s fifteen minutes they’ll have unopposed access between the core and the hull.  The K’chaing ignore the tubes, when we’re geared up they’re to small for us much less them.”

The lieutenant paused for a moment to let what he’d said sink in, was rewarded with a cumulative gasp.  Instantly he had the full attention of every man in the room.

“Interesting that you mention 45kilo sir because that’s exactly the maximum mass their dance belts are designed for and the girls average just a shade under 42kilo.  That’s two  kilo of explosives for payload.”  He lit the pointer, began highlighting locations in the holomap of the station.  “Charges here and here and most importantly here and when they detonate it will vent radian KK to space.  The K’chaing are monsters sir but they’re still air breathers and we’ll still be suited.  Once back in hull we’ll be unopposed.”

“Oh hell yes,” the General said, his grin gone feral.  This was manna from heaven.  “Bring me whichever of the girls is in charge of that crew of sweet creatures, tell her she just got drafted into the Space Marine as a full captain!”

“Yes sir,” the lieutenant said, and chuckled as he turned to go.

“Ok, so now what in the slam fucking hell is so damn funny?”  the General asked.

When the lieutenant turned to face his superior the look on his face was priceless.  “Sir, that means my pacifist daughter is going to outrank me.”

Practical Pirates of an Improbable Penzance …

==originally published 5/22/16==

My mother, with whom I had a totally lousy relationship, always swore that half of my problem (refusing to adopt her paranoid and superstition driven “Tail Gunner Joe” mentality about things) was that she’d “allowed” me to read Atlas Shrugged at to young an age. Sorry mom, but no, that wasn’t what blew your cover (it was your panic over the US and the USSR standardizing the docking rings on their spacecraft did that, but that’s another story). Anyway.

Those who’ve read Atlas Shrugged might remember the name Ragnar Danneskjold from the cast of characters: John Galt’s third roommate in his college days and the least seen of the three lads through the bulk of the tale; Ragnar, the philosopher who turned pirate of the high seas in support of John Galt’s strike-of-the-mind against the parasitic of the political persuasion. He was the one who refunded the personal income taxes (yes, back when the story was written rich people actually paid income tax!) of those whose industries were essentially robbed at gunpoint by the “lib-tard” politicians of their world line,  a refund paid in illegally gotten gold acquired by hijacking “relief” shipments and then selling those shipments to the black markets of those very regions they were headed for in the first place to make sure the goods ended up in the hands of those who needed them rather than in the hands of the political parasites running that part of the globe. Ragnar,  a bit of an anti-hero to most folks’ understanding.

Third Reality of Man Ch 12: Second and Seven

You get four tries, most of the time you'll use three of them and if in three tries you haven't made a ten yard advance to win a new set of downs you'll use that fourth go to give the ball to the other team as far away from the goal you defend as your kicker can accurately punt it.  There are times though when you will use that fourth try,  the saying  "go for it on fourth" meaning do or die on one last try… when you only need inches, when the time clock says now or never, when pride and desperation say it's time for the boys of today to stand forth and aspire to the august company of yesteryear's hero revered for enforcing a noble defense of the greater glory of and blah blah blah.   That sort of thing.  What we American's call "Football" that I've heard the world calls "Grid Iron."  Rules of the game, a bit of flavor and tactics from the game.

So you see, a second (down) and seven (yards to go) is about as common a situation as you're likely to run into.  When the focus is a work such as this  rather than mock combat posturing as athletics a second and seven translates to mean "Ok, theory holds and it works on paper… so what do you have by way of evidence for any of this?  Anything?  Or is this just hot air sans balloon?"

I'm not complaining, that's pretty much how it has to be even though for those who dare put forward an idea those seven yards can elongate into a lifetime of uncertainty.  It's the price you pay to step out on the field of thinkers in the first place.   

You Don't Say 001...

 You Don't Say...  a new series of considered commentary inspired by quality journalism on contemporary subjects found floating through the digital universe.

Title: Why America Abandoned the Greatest Economy in History

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/11/new-deal-us-economy-american-dream/676051/

My reply:

Not a bad offering… particularly for The Atlantic… many pertinent points well taken, but as a “Why” explainer article I don’t see the last pieces of a full picture. There is a HUGE factor left utterly unmentioned, and it is a factor still very much in play today. It is an evolved factor, one mostly ignored in high places and misunderstood in low places. The demise of the United States economy is a consequence of the socio-economic evolution that went on everywhere on Planet Earth (as the planet was recovering from the Second World War) except… huge exception!… in the two champions of the Cold War!!!

The war is over, all our industries are beat to hell and gone… everyone is weary and weak… and we’re not sure those two idiots (US/USSR) are done fighting. The world as was. To survive that world where the United States was an oversize bumbling bully as a producer of consumer goods required the other industrial entities (working quietly beneath the rattling sabers of the cold war), to learn a cooperation never attempted before. Net result? The evolution of the Corporate Neo-Fascist, the current chapter of that organization being the second if not third generation  descendants of the leadership of the industrial coalition formed to compete with the post WW2 Americans!

Not according to Hoyle...

Murphy's Law
Chapter 2 Section 13:
Every job has at least one bitch bolt.

These... are not supposed to end up looking like this.  Very, very annoying when they end up looking like this.  I normally don't mind doing mechanic work, just one of many skills that poverty has inserted into my life.  But that's when things work like they're supposed to, when the fellow before you did it right.  When they get so stubborn that it takes a gross application of brute force to accomplish what should be a simple straightforward little task I do tend to get annoyed.   I don't like abusing my old hands and arms for several hours working an angle grinder up between the frame and the motor mounts to cut a heat seized nut off an exhaust manifold stud.  Just not the way it's supposed to work.  And all for the lack of a nickels worth of anti-seize.   You'd think the bright boys who design such things could have told the guys who make the studs to cast a nice 13mm hex where the little round divot thingy is so if it comes out of it's proper hole in the exhaust manifold (the one where you defend THOSE threads at all costs) while you were trying to unscrew the big nut you'd have something to get a serious wrench on to up the torque on the culprit threads, but no. That makes to much sense.  Oh, well.  Somewhere in purgatory there is a special place where engineers get to repair that which they designed... after it's been in service for a good long while out in the real world.  Ok... this completes this test of the idiot exposure system,  rant complete... back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Third Reality of Man Ch.11: Vorpal Blade Gone Galumphing

Swords are usually involved in grim things, matters of conflict, matters of war.  Not the happiest of subjects. The focus of the series has migrated into one of only a few realms commonly as grim as the reality of a sword: the realms of mental aberration and illness, the realms of insanity.  I'm not sure it is possible to speak about what is insane without sounding crazy.  Not like that's anything new around here, but still, this chapter is probably going to seem a bit off center even for me. Sorry, but at this point I'm afraid it's unavoidable.  Like Sarge said: "saddle up and stay sharp, we're movin' forward."

What brought the expedition to such scary terrain was realizing the possibility, approaching probability in many cases, that an awakening CE could be or would rapidly become vulnerable to the same sort of mental problems that afflict the individual humans upon which its' life is hosted.  Considered in light of the previously discussed circular and symbiotic relationships between the humans and the CE this presents a distinct problem.  

Such a group awakened as history had them positioned would be very much a community of  motherless children, feral children given the assumed nature of their  awakening, children in desperate need of being parented in point of fact.  One of evolutions major challenges, and certainly its' first survival test, is that each truly new thing… as self aware collective entities most assuredly would be, the technology to support their level of life is not half a century old… has no parent to teach it how to survive.

In this case where evolution has moved away from the chemistries of biology to work where the initial building blocks of the new life form are the tech-connected psych elements of the individual humans? The first element evolution would need to refine into some common level of compatibility would be the basic properties of its' new primary raw material.  Which, just for the record, would be the psychological structures and responses of you, and me.  You know, the places where you and I judge sane from crazy by habit as much as by thought.

Given the big picture of evolutions' rate of success and failure?  Light heartedly I'd say "therapist" should be a stable career field for the foreseeable future, even though that's a fool's optimism.  The parameters given assure us the shrinks will be every bit as crazy as their patients, quite possibly more so by today's standards. Shrinks present sanity as something  compliant with, if not defined by, the norms of society as much as anything and the conjecture here is the reference standard of sanity maintained by society gone dysfunctional  corrupt.

Gentle reader, these… are scary thoughts. Examine them at full potential in full perspective and they are easily seen as a fully terrible thought quite comparable to another terrible thought oft seen in the modern world: the idea of the ecosphere of Planet Earth shifting beyond what is survivable by the humans… whose activities were what caused the lethal change in the first place.  

Third Reality of Man Ch. 10: Free and Clear to Navigate

 

The question opened two chapters ago still hangs open: how many, if any, of the psychological foibles and failings inherent to the individual human persona might be or have been inherited into the functional awareness of the newly awakened Collective Entities?  Is it possible for a collective life form to suffer  what in an individual would be called a mental illness?

After some serious skull spelunking on the subject my answer is yes. 

If I am going to say an element of society can awaken as a Collective Entity within the pixel forest of mankind's digital footprint, a unique and living thing in its' own right, then it would be the ultimate case of wishful thinking to assume, or presume, such entities would of necessity be creatures of God-like perfection. Particularly when I know that both the component cognitive nodes (the individual humans who provide a "time share" brain) and the (social) architecture of said nodes that give shape and structure to a collective entity are ultimately the work of fallible mortal humans. By the definitions involved cause and effect reasoning demands the answer be "yes, such inheritances are, because they must be, a very possible thing."

A very possible thing.  Sometimes? Sometimes I do not like working downstream from me. Possible?  Chickens are possible.  Eggs are possible, even pre-chicken.  A lot of things are possible, including circular reasoning accelerating into an ever tightening death spiral of sobriety going down life's drain.  And yet, the question had to be asked, and once asked if you try and dodge your own answer it's time to give up on philosophy and take up competition drinking.  Whiskey, of course. 

The 'Tardation Study: Five by Five

Tardation: a manufactured and artificially installed psychological malady emulating an addicted state of life where irrational political beliefs are deliberately sublimated into a life as the working counterbalance for the equally deliberate creation of a dysfunctional psychology within the victim.

 

With another federal election cycle bearing down on America now is a good time to return to this series. After all, from the get-go the concept of 'Tardation has been that it is a very deliberate and generations long effort, an effort crafted by ethically challenged members of the mental health profession working the will of amoral political power players who always desire (and apparently have acquired!) a reliable mechanism to enforce their will on the thought processes of the electorate that empowers them. 

Essentially 'Tardation resolves as an attack on democratic self rule,  a weapon of Covert Cultural Warfare attacking freedom where true freedom begins: between the ears of the electorate.

Beyond the insult to Democracy, attempting social control on such a scale is a very dangerous thing, it really is.  The long term collateral damages such a weapon might cause in the fabric of society are both massive and beyond  accurately predicting.  Even with the most dystopian efforts of modern digital technology no weapon of covert cultural warfare can be targeted accurately enough to not produce  deep and lasting damages well beyond the original intent of the weapon.  The diluted and distorted forms of the weapon that will inevitably spread friend to friend, pastor to flock, professor to class and, most critically, parent to child set this much closer to fact than assertion. 

Just how bad is the situation? From all evidence floating my 'best guess' is that between five and eight percent of the current population has been exposed to, and is heavily influenced approaching functionally controlled by, the mechanisms of 'tardation.  Where that is a best guess number it is not a WAG (wild ass guess) number. 

Those who know no more social statistics than I do know it is not likely to have been an accident when the good old bell curve… that thirty years ago represented a normal distribution of political  attitudes and orientations … now shows the perfectly symmetrical polarization seen on the American political scene.  The chances for such polarization to accidentally remain so close to balance are approaching zero.  

If the entire curve (median value) shifted one way or another along the axis of that attitude I'd say it was a naturally occurring phenomenon… but to accidentally hold such a balance while increasing the intensity of the extremes?  Kurtosis like that is not very likely to be accidental, not at all.  That five to eight guess is a thumb against the horizon estimate (I've not run the numbers, if you've the ability please feel free to improve my accuracy) of how many individuals would be needed to produce what is seen.

No, the evidence indicates the work of an external force impacting on the system, and more… use of that force has to be equally available to the leadership representing BOTH polarities for their competition to be stalemated to the point of such a balance enduring for the length of time observed!  The fact of the endurance of the situation is solid circumstantial evidence that the force does not originate from within the system.  If one side or the other had originated that force their "first move" advantage would have broken the balance some time ago and the situation, the polarization, would now be reversing back towards a normal, even if heavily shifted, distribution. 

Phaedra and the Pheromones

Originally Published 8/31/11

No, the title of this post does not refer to some obscure 1950's do-wop band. For several years now I’ve been investigating the hidden power of the erotic on the lives of the people I see around me. It is a subtle subject, and not nearly as titillating as some who don’t understand the true nature of the erotic might think. The latest epiphany to come to light from this subject is actually about as far removed from titillating as is possible to get, in point of fact it resides in the portion of psychology dealing with childhood development. I’ve never heard any mention of this being investigated before. Not to say it hasn’t been mentioned, lord knows what I don’t know about the subject would be a much, much larger book than what I do know, but still the thought is new to me, and it goes so very far in explaining a great many things.

Some years ago science confirmed the existence of human pheromones, chemical messengers carrying the current state of life on a scent so subtle it is rarely if ever recognized by the waking mind for what it is. Of course the cologne industry jumped on this new knowledge, the retailers and singles bars incorporated it into their offerings, it ran wild for a bit and then faded into general knowledge. But one place I've never heard of it being considered was in how the subject effects the children who are equally exposed to these messengers (yes, mommies and daddies produce them just like everyone else) in the development of their personality.

Juris... Prudence?

Now Jimmy and Johnny are dual you see,

Dwelling within the same head

And Jimmy had found him a lovely sweet lass

Who delighted in sharing his bed.

But Johnny got jealous and hurt the poor girl

She ran off with Billy instead

Which left little Jimmy in such a sad state,

'Twas not anything that he'd said.

So Jimmy resolved to the law he would turn,

He'd sue for the hurt of his heart

Compel on his other most burdensome days

For affections his other tore part.

Of course Jimmy sought out high counsel,

Hocked half of his savings that way

To instigate motions and plead for his case

In the court of most pertinent say.

The language was fierce in such obsolete words

On the papers the Sheriff would serve

To let Johnny know that his other had turned

Where he'd need hire his own legal bird.

Johnny was shocked right down to his core

That Jimmy would be such a turd.

If a fights what you want I'll give it he said,

Save our life from that sad silly nerd.

Spin down the days, ten months all in all

Before a Judge sat to the case,

Full well took aback to discover in fact

Both parties in one woeful face!

Deep went his thought into justice set right

By a ruling of wisdom and grace,

For he knew he'd be cursed, last going first,

To set precedence in such a place.

The Judge earned his robes, there on that bench

His ruling it stands to this day

Turning back all attacks being filed by the hacks

Representing the great APA.

The bailiff said rise, 'twas fire from his eyes

As justice delivered its' say:

Johnny, he said, you did yourself wrong

So both lawyers you get to pay!

Purely non-partisan Political... or...

 

...concerning Propaganda and the current state of affairs.

I saw something today I never thought I'd see… someone defending the word "propaganda."   To be honest, she was right, the word is quite slandered compared to its' original meanings.  Anyhow, on what she said I posted up a little comment saying I'll be kind to propaganda (as a word) hoping if I  make a peace offering by going  first maybe the world might not be so quick to automatically translate "conspiracy believer" into "conspiracy theorist" and then snigger.  Yea, I know. But it doesn't hurt to hope.  Then, a bit later in the day, I saw another posting (from CBS of all people, link below) that just kicked both subjects, propaganda and theory work, firmly in the tail: I had to speak a bit candidly on that subject.  Since what I said pretty well covers my opinions on a LOT of things I'll repost it here just for the record.

 https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-indictment-jan-6-opinion-poll-2023-08-06/

Fresh come from the article defending propaganda my thoughts on the article above went like this:

Seems like the subject of “propaganda” went by a little earlier in the day. One of the better, perhaps not the best but better, ways of dispensing and installing a belief structure to benefit the minority at the expense of the majority (contemporary weaponized propaganda) is to misdirect the target’s focus onto some other and advantageous point of focus (from the villian's perspective) and away from the real threat/attack… and this so that it is possible to easily shift the blame (for the people’s lack of stewardship and due diligence) that allowed attack_1 to succeed over onto what, if the campaign is successful, will allow attacks_2 through attack_n to succeed as well!

Read the above, again, please, and then look at our current situation where we have corruption flying wing for senility matched against neurotic treachery consuming the fears of the displaced like a death eater living in a mortuary! CAN ANYONE GIVE ME A MORE PERFECT SCENARIO to keep America focused on the wrong thing and looking in the wrong direction while the attacks scheduled for the near future totally destroy freedom where freedom begins, which is ultimately between the ears of the electorate!

There is an easier way to say “Propaganda supported by modern technology utilizing modern psychological methodologies was more than the electorate could turn back, they were assimilated into the Borg with little trouble.” You simply say “the farcebookers got ’em,” get your affairs OFFLINE, and then make sure you’re not where you were and look to your survival supplies… and yes, a gun is on that list, but if you’re serious it’s like in the number 10 to 15 range. Them who think a gun should be number one won’t last all that long.

Needless to say, I’m solidly part of that last 20% the article mentions, the ones ya’ll are supposed to be keeping an eye on. Doin’ my best to make it easy for you.

 

A Sermon set Sideways…

Flower of an Unknown Land

--originally published 4/4/2015--

 

I’ve heard it said that if you’re really interested, willing to wait and watch and keep your mind open that reality will eventually present an answer to most riddles.  The thought of the day has endured for almost a decade now, a delightful tidbit of curiosity that simply refused to fade with the years.  It would seem the old riddle has been renewed with a purpose beyond simple curiosity, and it would equally seem reality has indeed brought me a piece of the answer to that riddle in the last couple of weeks.  Let me build a bit of a framework so this will make some sense.

Most everyone who knows me knows I carry a love for Ms. Alex, the beautiful woman who hosted the muse for me.  She was, and even yet still is, a powerful influence on my life. For all the years since her gift it has been a curiosity to me: how is it that she came to be as she was when I met her? 

With the subject of the year set as happiness I find myself ever more often returning to the example Ms. Alex set for me.  I saw her work magic in the lives of strangers (I’ll go ahead and call it magic, for a convenient handle) that has come to be a reference standard on the subject.  I’ve understood a bit of how her magic took effect on those she took into her focus, but there are other facets of the phenomenon still in search of an explanation.  An understanding of such a thing would be a most useful understanding reaching far beyond the context of simply man and muse.  You see, hers’ was a magic powered by a happiness most unique to her, I’d never seen anything similar before, and it appeared to be in a full and mature form...  the question, the riddle, being of course what components of reality went into creating a contagious form of happiness? 

It isn't one word?... or...

...is there a Research Psychologist in the house?

Ok, it's an old bigotry that got surfaced and, to a degree. broken.  I think I was maybe seven or eight before I figured out that "touchyfeelydamnedidiots" is not one word.  The way my father pronounced the phrase in relation to posturings and intrusions on your personal space the sensualist folks call appropriate made it an easy error for a child.  Nope, not one word.  A phrase. Ok. (*lol* and Pandora in it's infinite sarcasm serves up Robert Plant's "Ship of Fools". Nope. Random play is not random, it's fate's jester). 

But truth told it has been more of a power player for the last couple of years than it should have been in relation to the boy Beam (third roommate and youngest buddy) who I've been mentoring for five years or so. What popped the ancient bias was a thought that crosses a lot of territory, from current events to current technology to deep psychology. Let me report a bit of current events to put a frame around this thought.

In essence for the last three months I've been committed 24/7 to crewing a loonie bin in my living room for one patient with one other hand on staff (his mom).  It's been a rough period, I'm pulling from the combat reserves as often as not.  

Me and Jimmy Durante

Once upon a time I got asked how I came by my pen name, Cyranos DeMet.  I've discovered that quite by accident my pen name is unique, it appears I'm the only one.  Just luck, that was.  Anyhow, my formal pen name is Cyranos DeMet, for a long time it was the only name I was  known by on the internet.  It is an evolved name, actually, and the story of how it came to be revolves, as do several others, around my muse Alex.

The Tardation Study: What Rocks Will Eventually Roll

It’s a great old song, jukebox fave for many decades running,  good chance you know it well.

 “Good golly Miss Molly

 Sure like to ball,

 When you’re rockin' and a rollin’

 Can’t hear yo’ momma call…”

 Even now I’ll turn it up and grin. What’s an open guess is if you know the colloquial meaning of the lyrics. Yup, you guessed it. In America of the nineteen fifties rockin’ and rollin’ was a most literal description of just what it sounds like… good old fashioned enthusiastic get down get after it sex.  Barely twenty years later "rock and roll" was a well recognized genre of music. America went through quite a change across those two decades, and the music of the times reflected them all. Here it is fifty years later and there is still debate on the what's and whys.

Changes… and the consequences associated. Some accidental, some deliberate, some destructive and some benign.  The focus today is the creation of some tool, some convention, to standardize a realistic risk assessment on what comes out the bottom of the machine.  Since most of what will be going in the top to be systematically examined will be things involving some form of change it seems a good time to take note of the concept of "change" as a risk factor.

Very few thing happen instantaneously. There is always a bit of time involved in any change.  From a great many directions it is known the two key factors in the stress associated to any given change is the degree of change... and of equal importance how quickly it happened. You can change the orbit of a planet if you do it slowly enough, you can break a jet fighter if you ask it to change directions to quickly.

Bucket definition… The Three Faces of Love

Why is it the worst of life’s disasters always seem to have Love embedded in them somewhere near the middle?  I mean really, what’s going on with this?    Whatever it is its been going on for a long, long time and no one (not that I’ve ever heard of) has ever made much headway at putting a believable reason to the situation. Love is the positive, the good, Love is what makes it worthwhile, to live in a state of Love what everyone wants, what everyone is trying to achieve, right? 

Right, of course.  And yet everyone also knows that when Love is in the picture is when risk is at its’ greatest, when things get the most disoriented and confusing, when it’s so terribly easy to get lost or worse end up suffering exactly what you didn’t want exactly where you didn’t want to be. Something just isn’t right about this picture.  Ironic, isn’t it? That Love (or perhaps say more properly failures in the realms of Love)  resolve out as such a prime source of so much bitter cynicism?  Sure seems that way to me.

This particular conundrum is quite a set of contradictions, and yet by observation undeniable fact.  As a philosopher such things are among my most fascinating challenges.  How can this be?  I know it is, but how did it happen?  What makes it tick?  This one has been simmering back burner for a very long time.  It’s time to take a swing at it, and with your permission that’s exactly what I propose to do.

Drop the B…

===originally published 5/27/2016=== 

Drop the B? WTF?

That one does not fit. When you drop the B it is possible I might start taking you seriously. Yea, drop the B baby, and I am NOT talking about “The Bomb.”

No, the B I’m talking about is the B in LGBTQ.  It does not belong there. Of all the letters in that bowl of soup the B is the only one that is not (holding true to its’ base definition) a way of life that is, by definition, barren and sterile.  L’s only share sex with other L’s, G’s only share sex with other G’s, T’s have no real potential post transition anyway, they’ve chosen to sacrifice sexual functionality for social appearance, and the Q’s are simply the induction phase, those so damaged by society as to shift ranks into any of the first three just as soon as someone tells them where to go.

But B’s? By definition a B can and will share sex with either gender and are therefore not constrained to be barren as a consequence of honoring what they present to the world as a defining characteristic of their life.

Chapter Nine: Round, like a Circle in a Spiral...

The title of this chapter is taken from the lyrics of the theme song to a fine movie, the Steve McQueen/Faye Dunaway version of "The Thomas Crown Affair." If you've not seen the movie ( I recommend it for a slow Saturday night to be accompanied by a high quality light intoxicant… perhaps a brandy, or a light sativa… pick your poison of preference ) I'll kibbutz this much… it is essentially a case study in the psychology of success… and boredom. 

The trajectory of this exploration has brought us to consider the internal psychology of the various collective entities. The question now in focus is how many of humanities quirks and kinks running out to full blown psychosis might have been inherited by these entities? It is a pertinent question given the relationship between the humans and the CE's. As fares one so fares the other, and as is well known to the mental health profession prolonged contact with any serious degree of mental illness is a risk. Crazy can be contagious. 

 Not surprisingly, these are same folks who will assert to you a good size chunk of humanity is, well, somewhat less than rational sane stable… to put it politely. But I'm afraid it would be fool's errand to ask them what sort of emotional environment the CE's might know or create for themselves. Why? Because for them to acknowledge the idea of CE's, and then consider the potentials for a less than benign circular reinforcement with their clients, their host base? That… would be a run of thought likely to discredit about half of what they think they know about the human side of the equation. For them that would be an utterly unacceptable risk to the emotional security provided by the academically cultivated certainty that allows them to work in the first place. Empathy gives they'd not likely be much help and very likely to attempt a squelch and suppress. 

 Seriously, put such a question in front of them and all you can really expect is to watch them buck like a rodeo bronc sidestepping and sunfishing at any and every opportunity while condescendingly vilifying whoever inflicted the discomfort on them with such a question. They know (admitted or not) just like you do that when you step into circles turning in spirals dizzy is to be expected, and dizzy is not something they can afford to be. So no. 

Well, with the professional crew sidelined to a serious conflict of interest what is left for the do it yourself crew to work with? Well, what we always have of course, which are questions to test the limits of understanding so we know where to start looking for answers that might match. 

LIfe Hack: Jello

 Ok, so it went down like this: the little guy wanted some Jello.  Now, he's not really all that good about asking for some things like treats (and to good about being a pest asking for other things, but that's a different story). If he thinks he can get it for himself he'll just growl and go for it most of the time.  Anyhow, even though he's watched me make the Jello at least three dozen times the whole two cups of boiling water, stir in the Jello and then add two cups of cold water just hasn't quite clicked in for him yet.  I arrived in the kitchen just in time to see the big box of Jello go into four cups of cold water.  He was stirring furiously (splashing Jello for 18 inches in all directions) when I interrupted his endeavor.

The old chem plant days kicked in by reflex.  Jello is great stuff, and it is in it's essence a super saturated solution kind of thing.  Two cups of water just will not hold the big box in solution unless it's right on boiling, and the Jello won't really go into solution even in four cups of cold water, most likely a fair amount of it will remain a fine particle suspended in the cold water.  Translation?  Soupy Jello flavored water at best.   The missing ingredient?  Enough heat to get the whole mess into solution so it could do the whole jelly-ing thing as the solution chilled down in the fridge.  

The experiment that amazingly worked?  Into the microwave it went for about three minutes.  The logic?  Water by itself is slow to heat in a microwave, but the tiny suspended Jello particles?  Maybe, just maybe they'd get hot fairly quickly, heat the water around them and finish going into solution.  At the three minute mark the tubber of Jello-juice was close the same temp as when the two cups of cold hit the two cups of hot.  I stirred like crazy with the whisp for about thirty seconds, put the lid on the whole mess and put it in the bottom of the fridge.  I told the kid, who had just returned to the kitchen to find out if he was really in that much trouble, we had one chance in twenty for it to turn into Jello by morning, and ran him out of the kitchen so his mom could cook some dinner.

He... is a lucky little fart.  Come dawn?  Perfectly set Jello.  Now, I fully and totally recommend following the instructions on the box, but, in a case of cold water duress?  Worth giving it a try.  Good luck.

Chapter Eight: What goes on Behind Closed Doors

“There are things known,

and there are things unknown,

and between are the doors of perception.”

                                                                 __Aldous Huxley

There is, also, a great old country song revolving around how no one really  knows what goes on behind closed doors. Regardless of which quote fits the moment for the collective entities a great deal depends on no one looking through the sort of doors Huxley was talking about. For the CE's even more than a wandering lover keeping those doors of perception firmly closed is an absolute necessity for survival.

Why would that be so?  Why would reality dictate that the humans remain ignorant of the relationships between the CE's and themselves?  When the situation is examined in depth several very good reasons present which impact on both sides of the equation.

To open this chapter I'll ask you to contemplate that in objective fact the relationship between any given CE and the individual humans (who are component nodes hosting its' life-force) is a very straightforward exchange of value: the CE acquires sustenance from the individuals in the form of their loyalty, their compliance and enactment into physical reality the definition which is the foundation of any given CE, in exchange that CE provides to the individuals some component of the self definition which is absolutely critical for a human's psychological survival within a complex society. Quite an easily seen symbiosis. So simple and so easily seen as to be easily ignored.

However like most things that seem simple and straightforward when some minor degree of asymmetry or conflict created by that simplicity gets amplified by it's very ubiquitous nature then what is found is a complexity of daunting proportions.  Witness that all of life is crafted from just six self replicating di-nucleic acids arranged in various patterns of complexity.

It is in that complexity of minor conflicts between what defines and separates similar CE's one from another that the CE's compete for survival and dominance. It is in the foibles of the human personality … the ego and the insecurities, the arrogances and the fears… interacting with those differences where the CE's find the tools and the weapons of their struggle for survival. 

A CE is literally a social creature, and life as a purely social creature is rough.  The situation is complicated enough when only the respective CE's are aware of the full dynamic in play.  Let any significant percentage of the human nodes become fully aware and the individual psychologies would be influenced by that complexity.  The situation would almost instantly becomes quite untenable from the perspective of both players.

Since there will be several CE's defining any individual human any conflict or contradiction between those CE's (particularly if the node has fully internalized them) assures those contradictions are echoed into that individual's psychological structures. Should the node be aware it was the CE's that provided him not only the components of his self definition but equally the source of the conflicts that trouble him the conflict count would go up significantly, particularly as the factors of human physiological emotion enter the mix.

If there are too many contradictions to resolve the individual will suffer, as will the associated CE's.  How could it be otherwise?  From the fate of one the fate of the other is derived, as one fares so fares the other.  It is not such a stretch to understand that the ultimate well being of both sides of the symbiosis is quite dependent on minimizing the incompatibilities, and the first and simplest tactic to accomplish that end is for the nodes to remain ignorant of CE's in the first place.

  And yet, such a thought just introduces another layer of complication into these exploration. By the definition offered each CE would…  just as does it's humans hosts who set the original template of their lives… have the instinct for personal survival, not to mention an ego self, and self importance that mandates the desire to grow and become stronger. 

From the CE's perspective these things are a serious conundrum: those differences which create the dangerous conflicts within the common host are, to them, the very differences that define them as unique living creatures.

For a, any, CE to achieve a significant degree of security would demand that  any moral or ethical differences (at the host level)  between that CE and the foundation definitions of the other CE's present (within their common host) had been eliminated.  The net effect would be to effectively collapse the society of Collective Entities to its' most primal levels… a population diminished several orders of magnitude.  By example, ceReligion might survive, but ceProtestant and all of her daughters most certainly would not.

At the time of this writing it is a very open question just how much of this conundrum is actually acknowledged by the CE's.  Just how self aware are they?

 Judging by the behavior of social forces which show every evidence of defining a major CE they are just as resistant to entertaining such concepts as are the humans whereon their lives are hosted, and for reasons that would run closer to parallel than otherwise. It may well be the humans are not the only creatures hiding behind doors of perception kept most deliberately closed. 

If there is truth to such a thought then another set of concepts must be introduced into the relationship between the humans and the CE's, the recently technology-awakened societies:  what happens if the Collective Entities inherit any or all of the psychological deformities which plague the human hosts from whence they derive their template of existence? 

A terrifying possibility to be examined in the forthcoming chapter "Round, like a circle in a spiral…"

...to be continued...