gestalt temperament
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Report From The Council of Post Apocalyptic Psychiatry
Following is a report from the field by an anonymous researcher invested in the tenets and philosophy as drawn by the Council For Post Apocalyptic Psychiatry:
Take every devastated Sunday morning ruined by hangover or drug use that you have ever known, compile it as extended metaphor, and apply it to the spirit of the surviving populace's yearnings. It is evidenced foremost that we carry the themes of post-apocalyptic landscapes within our minds, sometimes conscious and raised to the interpretation of the world in the manner that a banner relates to surges of wind, sometimes pressed like shrapnel into the machinery of our subconscious. You can see evidence of hoarding instincts in the soft mercenary actions of deluded citizens of the former republic, just as you witness survival sickness in conscripted laborers living out their time within the shackles of bondage. Ideals and mercies are hard to come by in this strange world, with freedom and love remaining rare ribbons. For some reason, perhaps based in our biology, the inhabitants of this wasteland continue to abide by the absurdities of bygone ages mingled with an overarching compulsion to survive.
I met the family at a reconstructed house by the shipyards, where the ballistic missiles had plummeted into harbor cranes and oil tankers in order to cripple trade. I could tell immediately that there was something peculiar in the house itself, for it had been constructed along pre-war lines that denoted former values of symmetry in architecture and proficiency in labor. But yet it had been made from debris, with its porch constructed out of a dissected shipping container and it's sidings evidencing the use of yacht hulls. A woman in a cocktail dress waved politely from the porch, beckoning me to come in. This was, as a formality, rare and charming, given the propensity of other survivors to behave with apathy or thinly veiled homicidal impulses. I followed her motion, curious.
"I want to show you what we have been doing," she said, as I followed her into the house. I was immediately overwhelmed by symbols of great wealth in the post-apocalyptic era, things such as functioning clocks, a door that led to a well-stocked kitchen, and electricity provided by an actual working generator. "We have, in our way, been rebuilding the world here." She gave me a relieved look when I smiled, than proceeded to act coy. "Of course, we have been ridding ourselves of unnecessary things as well."
I met her husband Mark and her child Logan. They struck me as oddly vulnerable, open in conversation and distanced from the verve of ruin and struggle. Mark claimed that he had indispensable knowledge of engineering and architecture, for he was old enough to have been among the last wave of graduating students from the former trade schools. He said he had spent five years on the house, with his only defense of the land being redistributed signs that claimed dangerous levels of radiation were in the area. He told me that fortunately, they had used clean bombs only on the area, and that the crater the house straddled ended up serving as a suitable basement.
They treated me to a banquet of vegetables and fresh fruit, which had been harvested from the woman's (Teresa) multiple gardens spread across the region. I had not tasted crisper apples in my pre-war days, and felt eternally grateful and indebted to them. I reached into my rucksack to offer canned green beans in exchange for the favor, which they surprisingly declined, saying that they were fortunate and understood where others weren't.
As our discussions ranged from the scattered attempts of the old government to reconstruct itself, our talk eventually fell on the subject of belief and religion. Teresa had been scavenging at the former university archives nearly two miles inland, and had much to say on the topic as pertaining to biochemistry.
As a disciple of the Council of Post Apocalyptic Psychiatry, I was invariably intrigued and considered it my good fortune to be able to benefit from her dissemination of knowledge.
"Dopamine," she said "was an often maligned and abused biochemical. It was insubstantially linked to socially undesirable behavior occurring among the alienated and misunderstood, for whom there was no outlet of sublimation of desires existent in capitalist society. They possessed dopamine, just like you and me, which nearly half of the brain maintains as a neurotransmitter that is actually responsible for such things as learning and belief."
"These poor people were subjugated by the development of drugs that destroyed their ability to experience dopamine, which also gives palpable expression to joy and well-being in life, as well as maintaining the role of a reward mechanism in the brain during the experience of agreeable circumstances. They were forced to live in controlled environments, without the benefit of a belief-causing agent designed to instill meaning."
"Suffice to say, it can be evidenced perhaps that the distribution, function, and real world evidence of dopamine function within people who were attracted to the role of psychiatrist was completely abnormal and delusional in the manner in which some sane people are known to be. This is evidenced in the fact that they were able to view a multitude of forms of human experience as disease, which is a completely unfounded belief given that it is experience itself that shapes our conceptions of disease, not the other way around. Furthermore, historical evidence bears out the fact that the mad have contributed more to the overarching understanding of life than have psychiatrists, particularly with in the realms of art and literature."
"However, my main point relates to the notion that since we have been fortunate enough to be given a clean slate, and that I fully believe that dopamine and its invocation of belief remain today a key component in the human puzzle. Everywhere you look there is evidence of an overriding incredulous nature, as though the annihilation of belief in the possibilities of the everyday were a fact of human disposition. Our construction and gardening projects would not be possible, however, if it were not for some burgeoning belief in the finer qualities of humanity and its capacity to overcome challenges while remaining integrated amid the environment. It is therefore my assertion that the survivors of this wasteland called the Earth investigate dopamine-releasing situations in order to cultivate it as an experience, in order to instill in themselves and others the potential for revolutionary changes based on a religion of the self that lends itself to experiences of euphoria along with redefined consciousness of matters of the mind that have long since been stagnating. I guess what I am saying is that it is about time that we began positively building on facets of our biochemistry that have long since been neglected."
I was sufficiently taken aback by her speech, for it seemed that I had possessed many Old World understandings in terms of biochemistry myself. While it took time to settle, I could see in this family threads of reconstructed hope and love that had long since been languishing within the crevices of the wasteland, where people remained on the verge of utter criminality with only their own self-interest preventing lapses into barbarism. Certainly, their generosity and benevolent attitude did much to instill in me a renewed spirit that acted favorably upon my sense of well-being as I bid them goodbye and walked out of their remarkable oasis.
Take every devastated Sunday morning ruined by hangover or drug use that you have ever known, compile it as extended metaphor, and apply it to the spirit of the surviving populace's yearnings. It is evidenced foremost that we carry the themes of post-apocalyptic landscapes within our minds, sometimes conscious and raised to the interpretation of the world in the manner that a banner relates to surges of wind, sometimes pressed like shrapnel into the machinery of our subconscious. You can see evidence of hoarding instincts in the soft mercenary actions of deluded citizens of the former republic, just as you witness survival sickness in conscripted laborers living out their time within the shackles of bondage. Ideals and mercies are hard to come by in this strange world, with freedom and love remaining rare ribbons. For some reason, perhaps based in our biology, the inhabitants of this wasteland continue to abide by the absurdities of bygone ages mingled with an overarching compulsion to survive.
I met the family at a reconstructed house by the shipyards, where the ballistic missiles had plummeted into harbor cranes and oil tankers in order to cripple trade. I could tell immediately that there was something peculiar in the house itself, for it had been constructed along pre-war lines that denoted former values of symmetry in architecture and proficiency in labor. But yet it had been made from debris, with its porch constructed out of a dissected shipping container and it's sidings evidencing the use of yacht hulls. A woman in a cocktail dress waved politely from the porch, beckoning me to come in. This was, as a formality, rare and charming, given the propensity of other survivors to behave with apathy or thinly veiled homicidal impulses. I followed her motion, curious.
"I want to show you what we have been doing," she said, as I followed her into the house. I was immediately overwhelmed by symbols of great wealth in the post-apocalyptic era, things such as functioning clocks, a door that led to a well-stocked kitchen, and electricity provided by an actual working generator. "We have, in our way, been rebuilding the world here." She gave me a relieved look when I smiled, than proceeded to act coy. "Of course, we have been ridding ourselves of unnecessary things as well."
I met her husband Mark and her child Logan. They struck me as oddly vulnerable, open in conversation and distanced from the verve of ruin and struggle. Mark claimed that he had indispensable knowledge of engineering and architecture, for he was old enough to have been among the last wave of graduating students from the former trade schools. He said he had spent five years on the house, with his only defense of the land being redistributed signs that claimed dangerous levels of radiation were in the area. He told me that fortunately, they had used clean bombs only on the area, and that the crater the house straddled ended up serving as a suitable basement.
They treated me to a banquet of vegetables and fresh fruit, which had been harvested from the woman's (Teresa) multiple gardens spread across the region. I had not tasted crisper apples in my pre-war days, and felt eternally grateful and indebted to them. I reached into my rucksack to offer canned green beans in exchange for the favor, which they surprisingly declined, saying that they were fortunate and understood where others weren't.
As our discussions ranged from the scattered attempts of the old government to reconstruct itself, our talk eventually fell on the subject of belief and religion. Teresa had been scavenging at the former university archives nearly two miles inland, and had much to say on the topic as pertaining to biochemistry.
As a disciple of the Council of Post Apocalyptic Psychiatry, I was invariably intrigued and considered it my good fortune to be able to benefit from her dissemination of knowledge.
"Dopamine," she said "was an often maligned and abused biochemical. It was insubstantially linked to socially undesirable behavior occurring among the alienated and misunderstood, for whom there was no outlet of sublimation of desires existent in capitalist society. They possessed dopamine, just like you and me, which nearly half of the brain maintains as a neurotransmitter that is actually responsible for such things as learning and belief."
"These poor people were subjugated by the development of drugs that destroyed their ability to experience dopamine, which also gives palpable expression to joy and well-being in life, as well as maintaining the role of a reward mechanism in the brain during the experience of agreeable circumstances. They were forced to live in controlled environments, without the benefit of a belief-causing agent designed to instill meaning."
"Suffice to say, it can be evidenced perhaps that the distribution, function, and real world evidence of dopamine function within people who were attracted to the role of psychiatrist was completely abnormal and delusional in the manner in which some sane people are known to be. This is evidenced in the fact that they were able to view a multitude of forms of human experience as disease, which is a completely unfounded belief given that it is experience itself that shapes our conceptions of disease, not the other way around. Furthermore, historical evidence bears out the fact that the mad have contributed more to the overarching understanding of life than have psychiatrists, particularly with in the realms of art and literature."
"However, my main point relates to the notion that since we have been fortunate enough to be given a clean slate, and that I fully believe that dopamine and its invocation of belief remain today a key component in the human puzzle. Everywhere you look there is evidence of an overriding incredulous nature, as though the annihilation of belief in the possibilities of the everyday were a fact of human disposition. Our construction and gardening projects would not be possible, however, if it were not for some burgeoning belief in the finer qualities of humanity and its capacity to overcome challenges while remaining integrated amid the environment. It is therefore my assertion that the survivors of this wasteland called the Earth investigate dopamine-releasing situations in order to cultivate it as an experience, in order to instill in themselves and others the potential for revolutionary changes based on a religion of the self that lends itself to experiences of euphoria along with redefined consciousness of matters of the mind that have long since been stagnating. I guess what I am saying is that it is about time that we began positively building on facets of our biochemistry that have long since been neglected."
I was sufficiently taken aback by her speech, for it seemed that I had possessed many Old World understandings in terms of biochemistry myself. While it took time to settle, I could see in this family threads of reconstructed hope and love that had long since been languishing within the crevices of the wasteland, where people remained on the verge of utter criminality with only their own self-interest preventing lapses into barbarism. Certainly, their generosity and benevolent attitude did much to instill in me a renewed spirit that acted favorably upon my sense of well-being as I bid them goodbye and walked out of their remarkable oasis.
Friday, June 10, 2011
Fixing the Past: How Ancient Civilizations are Undermining America
I've got a bone to pick with the mummified ruins of ancient civilizations. I'm certain that many of you out there harbor similar sentiments, and are loathe to express them due to current conceptions of what constitutes "politically correct" speech. I write this in the spirit of refreshing honesty, as things have certainly reached a boiling point in this nation in regards to the taboo subject of race, and it is my belief that these words will spark true change for the better.
America, as those Scythian-loving liberals are wont to call it, is a "melting pot" of different cultures and races. I would say that America is indeed a pot, but that it is rather melting in a chaotic furnace whose flames have been stoked by unacceptable tensions caused mainly by Babylonian immigrants and Sumerian ne'er-do-wells who have taken advantage of our great nation's open policy of acceptance and sullied the great spirit on which our country rests upon with open appeals to harmfully coddling policy measures such as Visigoth affirmative action and free health insurance for low-income Phoenicians. This, my friends, cannot stand. We can no longer pander to the adz-makers and spear-throwers of society who openly detest all that is modern about America, and I urge the government to quit offering welfare to Etruscans who come here just to live off the fat of our hard-earned tax dollars while contributing nothing but hordes of their own progeny who make our public schools dangerous and who have made the streets of the inner city unsafe with recent explosions in the number of reported drive-by-slingings.
But yet, the poor and under-civilized peoples of yesterday are not the only threat to American prosperity. Time and time again, I have heard with marked anger about the nefarious dealings of the Assyrian bankers, who only support their own while foisting foreclosures on earnest citizens like you and me. We could perhaps overcome this through collective and righteous action were it not for the lies of the Byzantine-run media, which has kept us invariably divided in the fight to oust the scourge of archaically-inclined foreign hordes who belong not in this great and vast land of opportunity, but rather in its overlooked history books. Ideally, however, I would have these people placed not in historical documentation, which our children are known to avidly consume, but rather would cast them into the hallways of dependable American amnesia, where they would languish and be forgotten by antediluvian minds who only wish to get through their day without having to hear from some Indus Valley scumbag about how his people were the first to domesticate sheep.
On the subject of history books, I read with ample horror the passages on these parasites in my child's school text, which is nothing but lurid propaganda designed to credit useless Mesopotamians with inventions and accomplishments that in reality, were far beyond the capabilities of their worm-infested brains. To read that the sickening Sumerian fruit vendor who rips you off on grapes had something to do with the creation of the wheel AND writing is really too much for any red-blooded American to stomach, and let it be said that any mention of the Peloponnesians is enough to make the most jaded and iron-stomached among us vomit in disgust. Don't even get me started on the Ptolemaics, the Spartans, or the Cretans, who I whole-heartedly believe are responsible for the souring of our precious young minds with deviant considerations of empire expansion.
It is time that we set our most brilliant scientific minds to work on a time machine that would send these plagues of society back to the time-periods from which they rightfully came, so that we may effectively put the past behind us without having to give a shit about who invented agriculture or algebra, so that we may never have to witness primitively dyed clothing, and so that we may breathe free and easy in a utopia that lives in the present amid fantastical modern achievements such as Crocs and the neutron bomb. This is to say emphatically that the whore of history has seduced its last young mind, and that we will no longer tolerate the opinions of the people who first formed democracy or who formulated rudimentary concepts of exchange value in a surplus-based economy. America is first and foremost about progress, symbolized by great recent achievements such as engagements in two endless foreign wars, corporate psychopathy, along with boasting both the highest infant mortality rate and largest prison population in the industrialized world. It is time we deported troublemakers and got back to the time-honored traditions of giving marijuana offenders disproportionate punishments and allowing our government to murder people with the death penalty, while insuring that the under-educated are well-armed within the scope of the Constitution and that public discourse centers around celebrity scandals. It is high time we availed ourselves of trash from the past, and centered our attention once again towards developing piratical economic policies while wrecking the environment, so that our grandchildren may know a drab wasteland free of the influence of polar bears and equality.
America must move forward. So get out there and smash some cuneiform tablets in the spirit of patriotism, break some amphorae, and blow up some Egyptian obelisks. Hang a sign that says "Koine Greek not spoken here," refuse to wear sandals, and above all, never barter.
America, as those Scythian-loving liberals are wont to call it, is a "melting pot" of different cultures and races. I would say that America is indeed a pot, but that it is rather melting in a chaotic furnace whose flames have been stoked by unacceptable tensions caused mainly by Babylonian immigrants and Sumerian ne'er-do-wells who have taken advantage of our great nation's open policy of acceptance and sullied the great spirit on which our country rests upon with open appeals to harmfully coddling policy measures such as Visigoth affirmative action and free health insurance for low-income Phoenicians. This, my friends, cannot stand. We can no longer pander to the adz-makers and spear-throwers of society who openly detest all that is modern about America, and I urge the government to quit offering welfare to Etruscans who come here just to live off the fat of our hard-earned tax dollars while contributing nothing but hordes of their own progeny who make our public schools dangerous and who have made the streets of the inner city unsafe with recent explosions in the number of reported drive-by-slingings.
But yet, the poor and under-civilized peoples of yesterday are not the only threat to American prosperity. Time and time again, I have heard with marked anger about the nefarious dealings of the Assyrian bankers, who only support their own while foisting foreclosures on earnest citizens like you and me. We could perhaps overcome this through collective and righteous action were it not for the lies of the Byzantine-run media, which has kept us invariably divided in the fight to oust the scourge of archaically-inclined foreign hordes who belong not in this great and vast land of opportunity, but rather in its overlooked history books. Ideally, however, I would have these people placed not in historical documentation, which our children are known to avidly consume, but rather would cast them into the hallways of dependable American amnesia, where they would languish and be forgotten by antediluvian minds who only wish to get through their day without having to hear from some Indus Valley scumbag about how his people were the first to domesticate sheep.
On the subject of history books, I read with ample horror the passages on these parasites in my child's school text, which is nothing but lurid propaganda designed to credit useless Mesopotamians with inventions and accomplishments that in reality, were far beyond the capabilities of their worm-infested brains. To read that the sickening Sumerian fruit vendor who rips you off on grapes had something to do with the creation of the wheel AND writing is really too much for any red-blooded American to stomach, and let it be said that any mention of the Peloponnesians is enough to make the most jaded and iron-stomached among us vomit in disgust. Don't even get me started on the Ptolemaics, the Spartans, or the Cretans, who I whole-heartedly believe are responsible for the souring of our precious young minds with deviant considerations of empire expansion.
It is time that we set our most brilliant scientific minds to work on a time machine that would send these plagues of society back to the time-periods from which they rightfully came, so that we may effectively put the past behind us without having to give a shit about who invented agriculture or algebra, so that we may never have to witness primitively dyed clothing, and so that we may breathe free and easy in a utopia that lives in the present amid fantastical modern achievements such as Crocs and the neutron bomb. This is to say emphatically that the whore of history has seduced its last young mind, and that we will no longer tolerate the opinions of the people who first formed democracy or who formulated rudimentary concepts of exchange value in a surplus-based economy. America is first and foremost about progress, symbolized by great recent achievements such as engagements in two endless foreign wars, corporate psychopathy, along with boasting both the highest infant mortality rate and largest prison population in the industrialized world. It is time we deported troublemakers and got back to the time-honored traditions of giving marijuana offenders disproportionate punishments and allowing our government to murder people with the death penalty, while insuring that the under-educated are well-armed within the scope of the Constitution and that public discourse centers around celebrity scandals. It is high time we availed ourselves of trash from the past, and centered our attention once again towards developing piratical economic policies while wrecking the environment, so that our grandchildren may know a drab wasteland free of the influence of polar bears and equality.
America must move forward. So get out there and smash some cuneiform tablets in the spirit of patriotism, break some amphorae, and blow up some Egyptian obelisks. Hang a sign that says "Koine Greek not spoken here," refuse to wear sandals, and above all, never barter.
Thursday, June 9, 2011
The sky was hot and cold and full of glare. Their voices stabbed at the air between the front and back seats. Her voice was calm, smoothing the static. She tried to sound hopeful, to force all that she wanted from the afternoon into clear round words. She spoke of bridges and birds and uncoiling line and the boy whined, “There will be too many people there! They’ll think you’re crazy.”
Why, she thought, should birds being hung from an iron railing, to sway in the wind over the train tracks, be considered crazy? She understood that she would not be invisible as she stood on the bridge, but was it crazy to want to be uninvisible for a few minutes, to reach into a bag and to draw out a bird, to let a child’s hands draw out the monofilament and fish the open air for a moment…?
She considered an essay put forth by the Council for Post-Apocalyptic Psychiatry, which explored the relationship between social etiquette and the manifestations of mental illness.
…when one is expected to adhere to social norms of action that are repetitive,impersonal, and driven by external forces rather than internal forces, the individual becomes constrained. In that state of constriction, there exists an anxious tension, as well as the associated emotional states of frustration, sorrow, and feeling a 'little pissed that the world is so fuckin’ square.'
Freedom of expression in the post-apocalyptic era is codified by cultural compartmentalization of societal roles and their function of maintaining the illusory landscape of scripted participation. Even artists are, in their acceptance of relegation to the tidy constructs of cultural diversity, subject to constricted self-expression.
The Council has found that the inflexible and often oppressive criticism which is prevalent in this post-apocalyptic age serves to limit and reinforce our roles as they are prescribed by race, socioeconomic status, and clan values. When one diverges from the expectations of his or her group, they are actively or passively ostracized. Often, the initiation into an ostracized state involves the use of pathological labeling and mental health indictment.
Defining as "crazy" the failure to adhere to prescribed course of action has proved to have a deleterious effect on the mental health of post-apocalyptic citizens. In order to avoid the dehumanizing isolation imposed upon those deemed "crazy," many people have sought to become invisible within their roles, fulfilling the expectations assigned to said role so thoroughly that any aberrant personality traits are cloaked by acceptable mannerism and endeavor.
It has been found that, over time, the social brutality of forced invisibility results in clinically significant increases in maladaptive and sociopathic activity, such as watching television, compulsive accessorizing of role through over-consumption of material goods, self-harm through ingestion of toxic foods, and diminished desire to imagine a world other than this one.
Saturday, June 4, 2011
What is the purpose of leaving presents for strangers? A small length of wire, twisted into the form of a bird in flight, a curious scroll attached, the desire to surprise someone who you've never met - these are the components of bewilderment.
The economy of gifts is governed by occasion and perceived worth. Presents are a powerful tool in reinforcing our roles as consumers and participants in material culture. Thus, offerings that are of questionable value and without specific recipient represent a dynamic new generosity characterized by an invitation to see the world as pointless, strange and lovely.
At first glance, these small sculptures appear to be garbage.
It is only upon closer inspection that one discovers their true form.
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