Random

~I've been scrolling through my various friend's lists this evening and of course seeing many expressing their 'hopes for a better year' in 2011. While I do understand the sentiment, I'm sorry, kids, but it ain't gonna happen. 2011 will suck harder than 2010, just as 2010 sucked harder than 2009, something I said back then as well. 2012 ain't gonna be no fucking price either, but let's save that shit for later.

It's not that I'm some sort of Nostradamus; I simply pay attention to the trends. Some of us individually may have some positive moderation of our own circumstances; I think this household might in the coming year. But the overall trend is Suckage and for the foreseeable future.

How deep said Suckage is going to be I cannot say. This time last year I said in In Which Her Prophet Expounds Upon Catastrophe Porn: “My own view is that Modern Civilization is not going to undergo a Total Collapse. Shit's gonna get Real Hairy, but I don't buy the End Times/Late Roman Empire paradigm. History does repeat itself, but never in the same way.

While the sheer size and complexity of Modern Civilization is part of the problem, it is also what will save our bacon, though maybe not bacon itself. There is massive informational redundancy built into the whole thing, so much so that wiping it all out is nigh impossible, short of an asteroid strike. *bites tongue*

Plus, this is not some Hollywood scenario. The so-called Collapse will happen over decades and will never be truly complete. Many parts of the whole will die off partially or totally, but other parts will survive nearly intact.”

That's the long term 'macro' view and the trends support it. Not much of a 'Happy New Year', but I'm not gonna go Happy Happy Joy Joy and blow smoke up your collective ass. And Goddess Knows I ain't gonna bite my tongue.

And that's the name of that fucking tune...

New Year's Resolution

"I have a voice activated writing program on my laptop which I've never used. Part of the reason was that my lappy was a little 'problematic'. But now that I'm using my old desktop tower again, the lappy is free of all other functions.

So, I'm gonna strip out just about everything and use it solely as a writing tool. Facing The Page can be a chore for me, but Goddess Knows it's nearly impossible to shut me up once I get going. After that, the rest would just be editing."

~I wrote the above on X-Mas Eve. And then Sunday I got busy with it.

I'd already started transferring the lappy's desktop files I want to keep over to The Tower which has a shitload more disk space. But once I made the above decision, I started the process.

The lappy has a 105GB C-Drive. When I started out on Sunday, there was 34.6GB available. I got that up to 56.6GB by scrubbing the things I would no longer use on the lappy, like Div-X and such. Yesterday, while watching cop shows on The Tower, I did a defrag. It took over four hours, but increased the C-Drive free space to 70.1GB.

I still have a dozen or so desktop files to transfer – a labor intensive process – but they don't take up much space, maybe a couple hundred MB.

Now comes the real challenge; dealing with my weird phobia that I'll 'break the program'.

That's essentially a combination of my Perfectionism and my fear that 'I can't have anything', that whatever Good Stuff comes my way will 'be taken away from me', probably the most destructive 'lesson' my Evil Step Father taught me and one that's still pretty fuckin' deeply embedded, though I have been chipping away at it for years now.

So I guess the most important part of this Resolution is to patiently and steadily push through that fear and keep going.

Random Lite

~I'm thinking of hiding out for the rest of the day. Got lots of Murder/Death/Kill, including four 90 minute episodes of Wallender, a sort of Swedish Columbo, that stars Kenneth Branagh. It satisfies my need for both Police Procedural and Existential Cinema in one package.

Random

~I feel like I have totally lost my way these past few months, so much so that my initial impulse to give this a “Her Prophet” title seemed false, as if I'd lament my woes and yet work my way around back to The Path by the end of the writing.

Too often these days I do not feel at all like I'm on that Path any more. Not that I've found a new one and am in resistance, but that I'm simply lost and just going through the motions. It is not even that I no longer believe in that Path – I do – it is that I no longer believe that I can actually do anything to unfold it for anyone else.

And I struggle, not with giving up, but with giving IN. It would so much easier to be a regular old guru, to latch onto the seemingly unstoppable bio-cultural juggernaut of bi-gendered Heterosexuality. I have noted that a number of intelligent, but emotionally lost young men see a 'firm but supportive father figure' in me. And Goddess knows there are legions of young women out there seeking a comfortable form of slavery to surrender to.

It would be so simple to 'have a New Revelation' - something semi-Jebus flavored most likely - and switch to that sort of paradigm, become a cross between Santa Claus and Charlies Manson. I know all those fucking tricks, trust me on that shit, kids. And most folks want to be Led and have a desperate need to be Told. There is great relief in not having to Choose and Decide anymore.

*very deep sigh*

There, now I have thoroughly depressed myself...and the rest of you too, I suspect.

Happy Holidays

Random

~Just doing my best to get through the holidays in one piece. This time of the year has been packed with Drama and Trauma for the greater part of my life – especially in my childhood - and much of that still bubbles in my subconscious.

And all of that is over and things under this roof are relatively calm and peaceful right now, though it has been a rough few months. Even things on the Note Holder front are quiet and I expect will remain so until I poke them again.

So I have a comfy place to live, plenty of food in the fridge, a kind and supportive companion, and Purpose in my life. A far cry from so many preceding holiday seasons. I am doing my best to be Grateful...and, as I said, the Ghosts of X-Mas Past still lurk and I worry about the Ghosts of X-Mas Future. Being a Writer and Prophet makes 'staying in the moment' a real bitch, ya know?

And so I am able to 'stay in the moment' only for a moment and then have to recenter myself. But I can't say I have nothing to do, eh?

The Individual and The Hive

”Liberal Humanism had once been a vital force and had changed human affairs for the better. But it inevitable fell victim to the Cult of The Individual and then fractured into ideological factionalism, individual narcissism and intellectual decadence. Its absolute rejection of Hierarchy doomed it to impotence.” from In Which Her Prophet Invokes The Future

The Cult of The Individual is clearly the predominant theme of the Modern Era. And it is a Lie.

Here is the ineffable Adam Curtis speaking upon it in a UK Guardian article: "The way power works in the world is: they tell you stories that make sense of the world. That's what America did after the Second World War. It told you wonderful dreamlike stories about the world ... And at that same time, you were encouraged to rise up and 'become an individual', which also made the whole idea of America attractive to the rest of the world. But then this very individualism began to corrode it. The uncertainties began in people's minds. Uncertainty about 'what is the point of being an individual?'

The politics of our time are deeply embedded in this idea of individualism, which is far wider than Westminster, consumerism or anything like that. It's how you feel. People think, 'Oh, if it's within me it must be true.' But it's not the be-all and end-all. It's not an absolute. It's a way of feeling and thinking which is a product of a particular time and power. The notion that you only achieve your true self if your desires, your dreams, are satisfied ... It's a political idea. That's the central dynamic of our life."

And this is a more somber comment by a Susan W. in Morris Berman's blog: “So much of our lives in America are compartmentalized it does result in loneliness. The way our communities are set up isolate us and make social interaction stilted. There's not much spontaneity and people don't know how to break this cycle and with 24 hour/day TV, the internet, long commutes and loss of real public space the soul continues to be drained out of Americans. It takes effort to see friends and build a social network that is comprised of real flesh-and-blood people rather than "profiles." Both Huxley and Orwell recognized this process of dehumanizing people even though they saw the causes differently.”

The Cult of The Individual is used be The Powers That Be to utterly dis-empower The Individual and it is my depressing opinion that most in The West, especially my fellow Americans, shall never escape that trap.

A chap who calls himself Laszlo Q. V. St-J. Xalieri - a nom-de-blog I expect - speaks of this in his essay The Parable of The Hive, to wit:

“The hive decides who gets to mate with whom and under what circumstances. The hive decides who gets the best food, the choicest real estate, and the cushiest jobs. The hive decides how you live and how you die. The hive decides what you eat for breakfast...

The hive is an invasive species composed entirely of information, of narrative, that exists only for its own benefit, that nurtures individuals — or the opposite — in proportion to how the individual benefits the hive. It is in the best interests of the hive to teach you sacrifice. To make you buy it completely.

The hive, by means of sacrifice and pooling resources, can survive when individuals would fare poorly. Individuals die, but society is preserved...

It has predators and parasites. It has fake members that are immune to the narrative, that masquerade as valuable, favored cogs, that pervert the rudimentary defenses to foil and destroy the drones that would root them out. They insinuate themselves into the supply chains to bleed off resources for personal hoards, for prime real estate, for breeding privileges.

They pervert the narrative itself to set themselves up as gods.

What are the choices here?

1. To ensure survival as much as possible by making yourself invaluable to the hive, but, in the end, putting your fate in the hands of the hive and its narrative.

2. To reject the narrative entirely and live outside of the hive to the greatest extent possible, live and let live, but outside of the hive’s protections and occasionally running afoul of the hive’s defenses.

3. To become a predator/parasite, competing with other parasites for your share of hoarded resources and privileges by your own attempts to co-opt a portion of the narrative.

4. Erect a counter-narrative and create a hive that competes with or even preys upon the old hive, or perhaps establishes a symbiotic relationship with it via an exchange of resources or favors.

Once you are aware of the hive, and its narrative, and the predators and parasites that prey on it, your choices are very limited. Keep your head down, try to escape, put up a fight, or autolysis.

What will you choose?”

What most in The West choose, especially my fellow Americans, is to operate in a gray zone between 1st and 2nd choices, thinking/believing that they are in a form of the second paradigm - but utterly in Denial that they are part of The Hive aka “Rugged Individualism” - while functionally operating fully in the first paradigm. That is the Tea Party mentality in a nutshell. Hipsters on the other hand are more aware of this, but blow it off with Irony. The shrinking and increasingly desperate Middle Classes tend to go for the first paradigm full bore, though still remaining largely in Denial about how thoroughly assimilated they actually are.

Wall Street, the New Rich, et al have taken the third paradigm - the 'predator/parasite gods' - to its insane extreme and will likely be the death of The Hive because of that. But such is inherent to the 'narrative' of The Individual, its unavoidable Poison Pill, "Screw you, Jack; I got mine."

So then, what is the point of being an 'individual'? What Purpose does your life have beyond 'satisfaction of desires', many of which are not even really your own? These questions invariably bring us to The Temple and where it stands in all of this.

Obviously we pick Door #4, “Erect a counter-narrative and create a hive that competes with or even preys upon the old hive, or perhaps establishes a symbiotic relationship with it via an exchange of resources or favors,” though we shall reverse the order by initially “establishing symbiotic relationship with it via an exchange of resources or favors,” and then subsuming the 'Old Hive' entirely.

“The central strategy here is The Viral Meme, the Idea that is so compelling and dynamic that that is spreads like wildfire. That Idea exists; a entirely new and modern form of Matriarchy. Our task is to create that Idea as a Practical Reality, a Practical Reality that becomes the microcosm of this new society, a Practical Reality that is vital, replicable, adaptable, and then plant it in the societies that presently exist.

In many places, it shall flourish and expand. In some places, it will struggle and even be extinguished. But if we do our work effectively and remain true to both the practical goals and the Spiritual vision of this New Matriarchy, we will grow into and absorb even the most hostile social orders.” from The Temple's Mission Statement.

In the meantime we must operate in the third paradigm until we are stronger, as “a predator/parasite, competing with other parasites for your share of hoarded resources and privileges by your own attempts to co-opt a portion of the narrative.”

I understand that all this is a bitter pill to swallow. Some of you can likely hear Number Six shouting, “I'm not a number, etc,” in your minds. But that is a delusion at this point. Just pull out your wallet or purse. You are several types of number and by yourself you are powerless. Yes, Worst Fear confirmed. And I am offering you a way to change this. It is a radical and even dangerous path and maybe be a fool's errand. But I truly believe that, for the many reasons elaborated upon in The Explanation, it is the only viable path out of the present death spiral, because it's fairly clear the 'Old Hive' is dying.

So, how many of you, my Sisters, are still in Denial about the nature of your place in the Social Order? How many of you are aware, but cannot yet bring yourself to take action? And how many of you are prepared to join our Hive and work to kill off the Old Hive that holds you in its thrall at this very moment?

This is an adventure and an experiment, my Sisters, and I can only make you one ironclad promise; it shall not be boring.