The Holy Rage

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

A piece at a time I'm going to reread the entire thread and attempt to put together a more scholarly and thoughtful reply to what people have posted. This will take me awhile as I'm a slow mo.

I thank you all for your replies they are thoughtful and to the point. Don't think that just because I didn't reply to something immediately I'm being dismissive. I respect everybody who's posted to this thread and thank you for your thoughts, even CNO was clearly quite, quite intelligent.

Nullified is quite correct that I'm slow and deliberate by Nature. I will seek to give proper scholarship to the thought in this next part of the write-up.


Edit to add that in the passion of the rant I may have overstated or Miss stated some things.

Getting carried away now and again is important.

[The Wizard Joseph]

I'm under the impression that CNO was looking for a reaction.

What I want is to see the expression on your face when you look at yourself in the mirror.

I've been chewing on this thread off and on for days now. Trying to formulate how to reply without just repeating myself. My word processing ability is also quite limited as I'm using a cell phone. Still working on it. In the meantime I can answer this.

[altered]

Personally, I think Cramulus said it best and summed up what everyone else was saying. I have a habit of saying the same thing in a ton of different ways in case one of them breaks through and makes an impact, it was all just restatement (and in two cases maybe pre-statement?) of his post though.

From the specific posts by others I have read (and I just reread to be sure) I didn't see any particular questions that addressing Cram's post in detail wouldn't answer. If there are some I somehow missed, I think it's only fair they get asked again after you address the heart of the matter.

After all, it's the problem at the core of the thread's less than favorable reaction, and it might save you some valuable writing time and repetitive strain injury to only worry about having one giant post to reply to at a time.

ETA: So it's clear, I meant Cram's LAST big post, that I quoted to agree with wholesale. Forgive me, I'm in bed heading to sleep right now.

[The Wizard Joseph]

Personally, I think Cramulus said it best and summed up what everyone else was saying. I have a habit of saying the same thing in a ton of different ways in case one of them breaks through and makes an impact, it was all just restatement (and in two cases maybe pre-statement?) of his post though.

From the specific posts by others I have read (and I just reread to be sure) I didn't see any particular questions that addressing Cram's post in detail wouldn't answer. If there are some I somehow missed, I think it's only fair they get asked again after you address the heart of the matter.

After all, it's the problem at the core of the thread's less than favorable reaction, and it might save you some valuable writing time and repetitive strain injury to only worry about having one giant post to reply to at a time.

ETA: So it's clear, I meant Cram's LAST big post, that I quoted to agree with wholesale. Forgive me, I'm in bed heading to sleep right now.

I just finished writing my response and will post it next. Much of it is a reply to some of Cram's concerns.

Just good as I can do anyway. I too must go to bed after this.

[The Wizard Joseph]

I'm not really sure where to begin with this. I think I will begin by discussing the concept of the true self, which I claim the holy rage represents in the rant.

One might see the true self as a tree. Upwards among the higher Realms of Consciousness you have branches, foliage, light, and fruit. Cram's concept of the true self seems to dwell here and seek an ever higher vantage point. This is only a part of the true self, the pleasant and productive one.

The part of the true self that I described in this Rant is a part of the roots. They are hidden and ugly. They feed on the most decayed parts of the world and are the most earthy. One might call the trunk between them the ego holding everything together, but I do not want to take this metaphor too far.

The essential point is that one cannot live without the other. They cannot be complete in and of themselves. To truly function together the ego must have a connection to both. The stronger the connection to the roots the greater the foliage and fruit. In turn the upper branches give purpose and Light. The connection to both of these must be strong for the self to grow properly.

The vast majority of the root is hidden in the subconscious and unconscious minds. It is the most Primal and basic of instincts. The entire point of the mattress exercise is to acquaint one with this Primal fully raging self in safety without hurting anyone.

This is why I said think of something, not someone, that has angered and hurt you. I realize that for many that will be a person or type of people anyway. It is possible that this shortcut to tapping into the Primal self is not the most healthy method, but it was what came to mind in the rant. I'm sure there are Marshal forms of meditation that can do this more effectively, but those are not fast and easy and to the point enough for a rant.

There is no doubt that the holy rage is profoundly dangerous, like a loaded gun, as nullified said. I do attest that it can also be a rip-roaring good time if the unleashing is done in a safe manner.

There is in my opinion nothing wrong with enjoying your Primal self. In point of fact I struggled with it during my younger life. I misused it. I will not deny this. Then one day I discovered that sex could be a fine outlet for it. I will not go on at length about this, but the holy primate can definitely be satisfied and even nourished by such activities. This is also Holy, but it's not the Rage which I described in the rant. It's merely a different pathway for the same energy, a different set of roots if you will.

I must also clarify my terms. There is to my mind a difference between retaliation and revenge. The essence of the difference is that revenge is premeditated, while retaliation is a response to something happening in the moment, the Sacred Now.

Your sense of Now is never closer than when your life is in danger. I have had many close brushes with death in my life and know it well. It has nothing to do with plotting or planning as do most forms of Revenge and violence. It is only in this Sacred Right Fucking Now that The Holy Rage can be properly expressed.

And so this excludes retaliation, as I Define it, from such things as slashing tires, responding to an insult with violence, planning and executing a mass murder, or any number of other things that have been brought up ITT. I hope that I have adequately clarified my meaning here.

Lastly I would like to discuss why I call it Holy. In this state the conscious mind loses much of its sense of duality.

There is no right or wrong.
There is only action.

There is no up or down, left or right.
There is only motion.

There is no life or death.
There is only struggle.

There is no fear or courage.
There is only will.

There is no bar stool or conglomeration of atoms.
There is only the flight and impact.

Duality tends to become obliterated at the extremes of consciousness. This is Holy and it happens both at the top of the tree and the bottom, but very different in character.

I will not budge on my assertion that The Holy Rage should be embraced and not feared or shunned. This may mean that some folks disagree with me.

That is okay.

But I wholeheartedly agree that caution approaching such a powerful thing is necessary. I just think that it is profoundly unhealthy to keep it as an enemy, kept "in a cage" and would rather see folks learn of it in the only way that they really can, by direct and raw experience.

But I do not recommend either that you leave it Unleashed at all times. This makes you a naked blade without a Scabbard.

I do hope that some of this is makes sense to you folks and has clarified what I'm talking about.
Best I can do anyway.

[altered]

So it's clear, I always understood what you meant by it's holiness and being part of us. These are things that are, for me, undeniably true and I never questioned. So I hope you won't mind too much if I say nothing about that part.

This, on the other hand, deserves more attention, because I think you missed a spot.

Lastly I would like to discuss why I call it Holy. In this state the conscious mind loses much of its sense of duality.

There is no right or wrong.
There is only action.

There is no up or down, left or right.
There is only motion.

There is no life or death.
There is only struggle.

There is no fear or courage.
There is only will.

There is no bar stool or conglomeration of atoms.
There is only the flight and impact.

Duality tends to become obliterated at the extremes of consciousness. This is Holy and it happens both at the top of the tree and the bottom, but very different in character.

You are absolutely right about it happening at the top and the bottom. But it also happens in the middle.

Any total fucking nerd like me who has spent enough time with video games that offer a lot of control and a very quick punishment for mistakes can attest to a similar sensation at the peak of their performance: I find it easiest to cultivate in the so-called "Soulsborne" games, but I've experienced it in QuakeWorld, Hawken, Insurgency, Ghost Recon: Phantoms, and Armored Core as well. A mindstate where perception and reaction are obliterated and there is only the eternal now, a moment to moment perfect intense awareness of your focal point. You charge headlong into a room not knowing what is on the other side and you cannot be stopped.

Similarly, hard physical labor can create a similar trance state, where the muscular complaints disappear and the nervous system time lag ceases to exist. You aren't there. There is only dirt flying from the top of a shovel, or the clouds of sawdust hanging in the air. Everything is a perfect frozen slideshow of endless moments of complete awareness, like someone singlestepping through the execution of a program while debugging.

Athletes and runners know this state too. Mistakes are not even possible. You cannot mess up, it is a physical impossibility, no obstacle exists. You can't land wrong, you know your environment with utter perfection. The other two I know first hand, but I admit this one is entirely based on the anecdotes of others... and, interestingly, scientific data that the rest is actually not backed up by (yet, that is: it just hasn't been studied AFAIK).

I consider these to be at neither end of the tree. What you describe as the top is more in line with meditation. And at the bottom, I lose awareness of everything and "wake up" (metaphorically — it's more like sensory systems come back online) bruised and battered later on, which doesn't feel much like what you describe above at all.

The video game example is the best example of what makes these so separate from the "top" and "bottom" both, while still describing the same phenomenon.

When you are in these states in a video game, you are not particularly in an angry mood. You aren't using much physical energy, usually — despite the utter chaos of your avatar's actions, you are usually unconsciously economizing motion, doing the bare minimum necessary to continue. On the other hand, you aren't doing what is required for meditation: you are aware of your surroundings, and in fact actively interacting with part of them. I have accepted food and drink in this flow state without breaking it, which neither of the extremes would be truly capable of.

My contention is that the state described is not specific to extremes. It is not specific to anything but a heightened awareness and a momentary consciousness (as in consciousness of moments). Any state that can access this, usually with economy of thought processing and a lot of moment-to-moment variables, can open the door into this mental place.

Having experienced the meditative form, I would further contend that only the Beast is truly different in character. In these others, the static slideshow nature of reality, awareness of perfect moments, lack of strong emotional content are the key, defining features. Aside from the emotion, this seems to describe what you are talking about.

But as I've stated, all I get is lost time and the aftermath, so perhaps I simply haven't "truly" been there (note: I'd be wary of No True Scotsmen if you wish to say that).




Finally, a point I do feel like you missed is that of rationalization, where the ape runs the zoo so to speak. I firmly believe that we can get in an "inverted aspect" where our executive functions are under the control of the monkey brain and the sapient mind is simply providing ad-hoc justification for what King Ape wants to do.

Now, having the two fighting for control isn't a problem per se (we all have those moments where we have to master that monster before all hell breaks loose), but I do strongly feel that letting it go unchecked can only lead to terrible things. In my view, a killer is driven by the Ape, with the rest of them just trying to support the house of cards it's madly dancing on.

This shouldn't be mistaken for a simple lack of impulse control, this is a strongly pathological state where impulses hijack self-awareness and use it's machinery to give themselves a stamp of approval before you ever even see the packaging. It's the counterfeit drug that winds up on the shelf at CVS, you don't even get a chance to make an informed decision until you're lying on your back hoping someone calls an ambulance before you black out. This is the state I worry about when I read the OP.



Finally, to be perfectly clear, I'll summarize using your terms: in my view, awareness of it rather than outright denial, and recognition of its utility and power rather than outright rejection, these are that all-important connection you're talking about. But a tree uprooted and planted back in the soil upside down will die very quickly, it's roots greedily sucking at nutritionless sunlight while the leaves do nothing more than (poorly) support the weight of the rest.

One must keep the roots where they belong.



As said before, I'm trying and failing to sleep, so this might be word salad in the morning. But, this is my immediate reaction, massive hunk of text that it is, and I felt you deserved that.

[The Wizard Joseph]

Nullified I believe that you described a sort of Fallen state that a human can come to. A profoundly pathological condition for which I know of no cure. If the Beast is utterly in control and the rational mind servant to it, then one has in fact "inverted the tree" so to speak. An easy object example of this is our current president. I've met other people in such a condition. They can be quite terrifying because you may not realize what you are dealing with until it is far too late. I don't really want to talk about it. Suffice it to say there are some people who are simply filled with Darkness... Some by Nature, others by choice. It doesn't really matter how you get there. Once you're there I know of no way to redeem such a person.

It's worth noting that I didn't put the capitalization into that. My voice recognition Auto capitalized it all.

[altered]

It works for me!

Yeah, that's the worry. Getting too cozy with the monkey, showing it a bit too much free reign... well it doesn't do things by halves, it goes whole hog, all the cattle, most of the horses, and the cat too if it can reach it. You yourself note that several times. It is ballistic in its motion, only external forces can stop or even perturb it, and that's mostly by way of it not being truly conscious of them.

If it wants to rule the roost, you can't simply hope it won't make it there.

The problem is that because it's hijacking the rationalization machinery, you can't see the coup as it's happening. Rationalizations are the main tool we have for self reflection. Worse still, literally all the other tools we have must be built in that forge. We don't have any ability to self-reflect without it.



Doubtful sounding? I agree. So I encourage a thought experiment: decide on anything, anything at all without relying on either sheer impulse OR rationalization. Okay, now why did you do it?

Remember that adherence to a moral code, a logical solution to a problem, sating bodily wants and needs, and following the orders of someone else are all rationalizations.

In fact, if you can think of an answer to why you did something that isn't "I don't know", you are rationalizing an action. Go ahead and try to come up with a counterexample if you still doubt. I'll be here.



Given that it hijacks the only toolkit we have for examining ourselves, you can't see it in action. You can only try to prevent it from happening in the first place. Hence caging your Ape being (imo) the best possible solution.

But all this midnight brain dump aside, I think you basically understand the core problem we all have now.

[Con-troll]

Sorry if I'm repeating myself, but my problem is that something capable of hijacking peoples rationalisations is called Ape, Animal, or whatever. Yea, animals rationalise shit, but usually NOT in a level that would satisfy a human brain. So it seems to me that the thing we are talking about here is better categorized as a human, and I for one don't for a moment want to be involved in caging innocent apes for the crimes made by humans.

It's like christianity all over again, lock your animal instinct inside, don't have sex, you don't need to eat that much, and if you get angry about the king doing all the animal shit you don't, that's an absolute no no. But christians didn't associate this all to some primal ape, no they tied up all the fun, and not so fun things that could disrupt he order in this person they called Satan^tm. They also gifted this virtual person much deceptiveness, cunning and other shit, so that people would live in eternal doubt, if the voice inside their head was the actual God^tm, or Satan^tm trying to trick them again.

Christians would say that the self-defense ape Joseph was talking about was part of Satan^tm, but also the group defense ape, which is much easier to trick into committing unnecessary acts of violence, usually encouraged from the outside of the individual. And as the christians had very much time to fuck up with human psyche, most of these human, or animalistic parts of the whole are confused as the same thing.

Anyways. The Ape is your Father and Mother. In a very real sense it is your ancestor, and altough we have come a long way since then, it still carries ancient wisdom from the time before all the brainwashing, when truth wasn't manipulated by every goddessdamn fucker with a keyboard. So if something needs locking up, lock up the Satan^tm God^tm or any other man made concept. As apes are real things with feelings and thoughts I refuse to categorize our misdoings as part of them, AS ANY FUCKING ANIMAL WOULD BE FUCKING CHILL WITH ACCESS TO AS MUCH RESOURCES AS ANY OF US DO.

[The Wizard Joseph]

Con-troll I kind of love you. 

Is also worth noting that animals do not bow down to Kings or priests. Well... Maybe you can train a dog to, but I can't really blame them for that. Their long-standing friendship with humanity is left them impressionable.

[hooplala]

We are animals.

[altered]

We are animals.

This.

Also note that the entire point is that the Ape /isn't rationalizing/ and /isn't bowing/. It's not doing that. It's making its human lackey do it. This is the metaphor. It shits everywhere and hoots and gibbers and the human has to clean everything up. The sapient part of the mind is making excuses to let the Ape do what it wants. This is like a family making excuses for their drunken garbage uncle.

Hijacking that machinery of rationalization isn't hard, all it takes is one moment of weakness. To employ a different metaphor: the rationalization engine is, from the exterior, less a complex machine and more a "Who's a good boy? You are!" Button. Any dumb animal can learn to press the button that allows them to feel good over and over.

In this case, "feeling good" is "eliminating cognitive dissonance": I'm not a bad person, that guy was a danger to everyone around him. Maybe I wrecked that bar but that bouncer didn't have to throw me out like that. We had to kill the village to save it.

When the animal presses the "Who's a good boy?" Button, the rationalization machinery spits out a treat and reassures whoever presses it that they're the good boy. All of the complexity is hidden.

[Con-troll]

So you are saying the Ape is the one that keeps me in home masturbating and I need to better myself, suppress, enslave, or kill the Ape? That we are all fundamentally flawed and have this orginal sin in us, and we better be careful that this thing inside us doesn't topple us over and turn us into four limbs of high velocity impacts on bypassers faces? If you wanted to hurt people, you'd know, and the reason usually isn't even inside the person, because there isn't terribly much space in there in contrast to the outside.

What the Ape sees is the Reality. You can zoom as far in the quantum foam as you want, or come up with accurate sociological theories but none of that feels as Real as survival situations, or seeing a naked human body up close. That is the level where humans exist, and it cannot be locked away and ignored as long as there still is humans. Suppressing that only gives space for something far more sinister to creep in.

When you lock up the ape, all that's left is layers upon layers of brainwashing, fake news and propaganda, that takes the control. The part we usually tend to call "the humanity". The Ape at least sort of has our self interest in its mind, it just wants to live a happy monkey life with lots of sex included if possible. But the Ape dies with its host. There is lots of stuff in our heads that don't. I'd be more worried about that.

Con-troll I kind of love you. 

Gimme dat shit, it gets me through the day!

[altered]

The above is in need of a response that, I must admit, I have no business writing. I don't have sufficient rage or intelligence.

Fortunately, it was already written for me.

"You're right: we should give up responsibility for making any difficult moral judgments, and surrender to the dictates of natural selection. Evolution cares so much about our happiness that no one who's obeyed an inherited urge has ever suffered a moment's regret for it. History is full of joyful case studies of people who followed their natural instincts at every opportunity--fucking whoever they could, stealing whatever they could, destroying anything that stood in their way--and the verdict is unanimous: any behavior that ever helped someone disseminate their genes is a recipe for unalloyed contentment, both for the practitioners, and for everyone around them."

—Greg Egan, Schild's Ladder

[Doktor Howl]

We are animals.

Well, yeah.  You're Canadian.