When I was a kid growing up in Zambia we used to go visit a local zoo/nature reserve outside Lusaka called ‘Mundawanga’. I privately called it ‘Mundawanka’ because the Vervet monkeys were always masturating…
and would look you bang in the eye while they were at it.
There were a dozen or so males of various ages in a cage the size of your living room, all with their dicks out…..
all day…
every day.
In their cramped and unnatural captivity, all pressed together in a space not suitable territory for one, they had found a neurotic solution to their claustrophobic situation. After all, as every good Vervet knows, the correct behaviour when encounetring someone having a wank is not to encroach. Leave them alone and let them get on with it.
Space and separation…
which is good..
But rubbing yourself raw…
not good.
The monkeys were also great thieves. Loss of territory had led to loss of honour, relatedness and rules of engagement. Everyone was fair game. Woe betide any young child with a bar of Aero who thinks he can go put his fingers through the mesh and hang on the wire cage. They know about pockets and will fleece you something rotten.
The Single System system, concentrated power in concentrated space, is just like that monkey cage. They all have their dicks out and will rob you in a heartbeat.
Concentrated power in concentrated space breeds paranoia throughout the cage and the need for space which, barring despair, only compulsive behaviour will give you.
Back in the day, some Pacific Islanders ritually killed their kings once in a while. Any one who wanted to be king could nominate themselves. One would be chosen and for a year he would enjoy all kinds of inflated priviledges and being above the law…..
until your twelve months is up.
Then you get handed a sharp knife. Sometimes you get to have sex at the shaky end of a log pile.
And then they start over..
which seems like a very sensible thing to do.
Culturally, the killing of the king brought fruitfullness to the land and life to the people. Psychologically, it induced an encounter with the archetype of Kingship itself, for anyone can step forward. It would be both terrifying in its awesome power and seduction, overwhelming with its fantasy of limitless possibility, acrid with the fumes of death…
…like Galadriel’s encounter with the Ring.
which is why we prefer the Single System system whether its skull cap or dog collar. We can depend upon it to help us suppress our experience of numinosity for the sake of our ontological security.
‘Religion is a defense against the experience of god.’ CG Jung.
We need our all-powerful and oppressive Caesars who constantly behave as though they were above the law, like Gods, so that we need not differentiate too closely between what to render to one and what to render to the other. We do this despite the loss to our own inner journeying and the raw rub of eternally marking time that this will cost us.
It is our version of the Vervet’s neurotic solution. The loss of inner creative space that is the price of abdicating a personal relationship with Psyche leads to endless masturbation, thievery and the kind of frenetic apathy, the aggrieved restlessness that is the curse of any child who is both intruded upon by a parent/state/zoo keeper whilst simultaneously being abandoned by it….
the monkey in the equation develops a quite understandable conscientious objection to reality.
Any moment that might still retain a bit of it must be evaded with all speed..
‘and so he mounts his horse and gallops furiously in every direction… ruthless in the destruction of potentials that must mature in their own form and season..’ F Wickes.
The effect on relatedness and creativity is catastrophic….
I once lived in a tiny English village in which there was a little old lady with a title and a massive house. She had been raised in a cage even more gilded than mine. Her capacity for relatedness was shot to pieces. She was a millionaire but the neighbour’s kids had to pay to use her tennis court. I fixed her flat tyre for which she immediately thrust a bottle of wine at me, unable to bear the bonds of simple co-operation. I had to be paid off directly.
Her grasp of other’s needs was catastrophically warped. A local man found a disraught motorist at the side of the narrow lane that wound steeply up through the village. He was clearly distressed.
‘Are you all right?’
”No, I broke down at the foot of the hill but a little old lady offered to tow me up.”
‘Oh dear, you didn’t accept?’
”Yes.”
‘Much damage?’
….. All the energy that might have gone into something nourishing builds up and turns back on whatever, or whoever, is handy. The dissociated potential has grown horns and a tail. Genuine feeling or inspiration gets dumbed down into moods, knee jerk reactions and wild low gear ratios.
though the smooth and satisfied surface of the inner millpond that is the inheritance of God’s chosen people remains unruffled.
But without being affect-ed, there is no affect-ion.
No being rooted in love.
and so we too become masturbating monkeys having passed up…
‘the troublesome germ of individual king/queen ship.’ F Wickes.
Around about the time that humanity started caging monkeys they also started caging kids.
sacrificial dormitories.
Mine really did have cages on the windows. Grenade screens. Our pre-eminence as the kids of the White elite rulers made attack from African terrorists (people who didn’t like us taking over their country) a very real threat. I spent many a night standing guard over other sleeping teens, armed with a lee-enfield .303 rifle and listening for any sound.
Bling has this tradition of sending the kids away, as a display of wealth and obeisance to the centralised power. The very real suffering involved propitiates the Gods and eases parental paths to greatness.
Children become fetishistic objects sacrificed on the altar of Bling. Inner Nobility is projected onto glittering others and then chased after. And you do it yourself. You buy into it. I remember my initial pride and the look in people’s eyes when I told them where I went to school. The lurch of respect, the sage nodding, the rush of power whilst simultaneously knowing, completely and entirely, that it was a crock of shit.
where we wanked and stole.
If not each other’s stuff then each other’s pride and dignity, tutored in deception and some being more equal than others.
We think we’re a child friendly society but along with the chihuahua…
”we have the fairly universal civilised belief that a child’s impulses need to be curbed in order to make him social.” J. Liedloff.
This is germane even at the liberal end of the spectrum. We have the basic..
”assumption that the child has an antisocial nature, in need of manipulation to become socially acceptable.” ibid
When this fails, Freud’s infantile sexuality theory sets the seal on the stupid thing breaking itself. Parental influence and cages are written out of the equation. The Church loves it because it chimes so well with original sin. And so for the first time in two thousand years Church and Science agree on something.
You are the bad seed.
So that’s how you will grow.
But not as fast as we can build correctional facilities to house yo’ ass.
