Monster From The Id
In the legendary science fiction movie "Forbidden Planet," the plot is very simple. A highly evolved race of beings (the Krell) on a far away planet mysteriously disappeared without explanation. This species had evolved to such a state of knowledge and technical skill that they were able to harness immense power to materialize their every want and need using only telepathic control of that immense power - "without instrumentality' as the movie explains. The mystery of why they disappeared is unraveled when a group of human astronauts arrive on the planet to rescue another group of humans who found the planet years before. The rescuers are at once attacked by some impossibly powerful "creature." It seems that the last surviving human from the first landing, Morbius, had tapped into the system that the Krell had created. He had the telepathic command of that great creative power. The rescuers puzzle out that, as the dialogue reads:
Rescuer to Morbius: Like you, the Krell forgot one deadly
danger... their own subconscious hate and lust for destruction.
Morbius: The beast. The mindless primitive. Even the Krell
must have evolved from that beginning. And so those mindless beasts of the
subconscious... had access to a machine that could never be shut down. The secret devil of every soul on the
planet... all set free at once to loot and maim... and take revenge and kill!
My poor Krell! After a million years of shining sanity... they could hardly have understood what power was destroying them.
- - -
I submit this for your consideration as you and I try to
puzzle out the phenomenon of Bush, Cheney, the torture policy and the rapid
collapse of the foundational precepts of our culture. Of course we can continue to diligently
examine the thoughts of those who wrote our Constitution and review the history
of our past treatment of enemies and even look to religion, philosophy and
ancient history to find clues; but perhaps we need to step back and see that
Bush and Cheney may be hard to fathom because they reside inside each of
us. They are the "mindless primitive"
that most of us conquered in our formative years and placed under the firm
control of our higher selves. Control it
we did, but we could never destroy it.
It is always there, in the shadows, and now in our forgetfulness we have
allowed it access to the power of our civilization.
It may not then be a problem of us vs. them. Rather it may be a matter of one part of us saying "No" to another part of ourselves. Growing up the first time was not easy. This will not be easy either.
You don't get it, Dad.
Everyone's doin' it.
May 31, 2009 3:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
Two pronged approach: Confront the monster within. But investigate and prosecute the monster without.
Excellent insights, as usual, Larry!
What bush&cheneyco (and the straussians/neocons) failed to do was to realize that what they were viewing as the enemy "without" had taken them over "within" - so, yes, very wise to pursue justice, while keeping a tight rein on ourselves.
So much wisdom in one broom! :-)
May 31, 2009 3:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
(peers down deep into her id)
Ack! It's a broom closet!
May 31, 2009 3:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for such a thoughtful post; rec'd. I hope that there is no Bush/Cheney in me, but I do know that they got where they got us by stoking a very primitive emotion: fear. Cheney is still doing it today. His delivery of his speeches, (more in the last 3 months than he ever gave in office) using terms like "hit again," and the ever-present "911" are for the sole purpose of keeping his audience paralyzed with fear. He and his ilk are even telling us that if we close Gitmo and bring prisoners here it will endanger our neighborhoods! [Fear for the lives of your innocent children on their bicycles!]
Everything they did they did through fear and intimidation, all the while telling the quivering bunch of pussies listening to them that the USA is better than anywhere else and its people are better than all other people.
The Krell destroyed themselves with their great power; Bush/Cheney are still trying to destroy us by ceding our power to fear. At Mesada, the entire population destroyed itself out of fear of being overtaken by Romans. Jim Jones in Guyana did the same thing. Fear. Always fear.
I do think that bravery still exists, but to be brave one must have some hope. I see a glimmer of it.
May 31, 2009 3:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Brilliant observations, Larry and C'Ville.
May 31, 2009 4:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
See Larry I cannot seem to 'put it together' today. I still have time...
But when you are hot, it sure takes a load off. hahaha
Instead of Oh Hell. Why not Oh Krell.
A truly offal film--times two--but you have taken it and provided a new take on the Wizard of Id. ha!!
May 31, 2009 5:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
Granted it wasn't Olivier's Hamlet but it had too memorable features. This was before CGI but Disney did the special effects using his animation skills and it was the "Star Wars" of its time in that sense. Another similarity is that a truly great actor, Walter Pidgeon carried this film not unlike the way Alec Guinness made the first Star Wars three dimensional. The other memorable feature was Ann Francis swimming al fresco, every young man's dream. Think about that as you wile away the afternoon in your monogrammed silk bed suit.
May 31, 2009 5:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Two" not "too." Sorry but I couldn't take my eye off that saw. Its a wood thing.
May 31, 2009 6:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
DD - have you not heard that old truism, or saw (don't worry, Broom, the saw mark is not addressed to you) that: "... on the seventh DAY -- Dick Day -- he rested..."
Please use those pajamas for the original purpose they had. Rest. Because "tomorrow is another day," Mr. Day.
May 31, 2009 5:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oh, well done, wendy!!! :)
May 31, 2009 5:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oh Belle, I think I will take your advice. I have three threads going on Word right now. But nothing has come together yet.
Larry did all right, he always does!!!
May 31, 2009 6:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
The id is survival, so sure, we need it. I don’t want to destroy it. Like DD says: “All of me, why not take all of me.” But fear certainly lives there.
The ego is where reality is differentiated. I believe that is where ASSHATS like Bush and Cheney really live.
Now that sounds like our dear X-leaders. More loyal to the id.
But like the Wizard says: You took a part/that once was my heart/so why not take all of me?
So let’s take All of Them to jail!
Without instrumentality, the Krell disappeared do to lack of brooms.
May 31, 2009 6:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
thoughtful post. We all have primitive instincts. Panic is a human trait. There's also ignorance and arrogance. When all three go into a decision, humans are at or near their worst.
9/11 was a major attack on the U.S. But the response to 9/11 was the real major attack on our way of life.
Was it simply a matter of the primitive id emerging victorious over the ego and superego?
I don't think so. In the case of Cheney, the id did not act alone. It fed his ego and superego. A completely misguided effort, informed by the distorted sum of his experiences, but a collaborative operation nonetheless.
May 31, 2009 6:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Quite right, larry! Sometime we really ought to revise that Homo Sapiens label. I don't know what qualification applies better. We are much more phobic man or mad man than wise men. Clever, but all too rarely wise. We are better rationalizers than reasoners. And once you've slipped down the slope from fear to anger to hate and revenge, it's difficult to climb back up. Because it requires a recognition of what you have become. This is a bit long, but as long as we're doing movies, I'm taken with this exchange from the Talented Mr. Ripley:
PETER
Can you imagine, if Dickie did kill
Freddie, what must that be like? To wake
up every morning, how can you? Just wake
up and be a person, drink a coffee...?
RIPLEY
Whatever you do, however terrible, however hurtful - it all makes sense, doesn't it? inside your head. You never meet anybody who thinks they're a bad person or that they're cruel.
PETER
But you're still tormented, you must be, you've killed somebody...
RIPLEY
Don't you put the past in a room, in the cellar, and lock the door and just never go in there? Because that's what I do.
PETER
Probably. In my case it's probably a whole building.
RIPLEY
Then you meet someone special and all you want to do is toss them the key, say open up, step inside, but you can't because it's dark and there are demons and if anybody saw how ugly it was...
(If you know Ripley, you know what happens next...)
May 31, 2009 6:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hum.
That's from the first one? I'm reading it right now. I think your dialog must be from near the end?
What I have noticed, is that I have started hoping Ripley will get away with it. What is up with that?
May 31, 2009 7:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
Its the one with Damon. He strangles Peter. See, I have a vague memory of a second one, but I'm bad at keeping up. Heard they did a new set of Star Wars as well...
Yeah, Ripley's a wierd one. Read a couple of the books, and There I root for him. (Damon, not so much.) So, yes, what is up with that? IT'S RUINING MY WHOLE POINT...!!
;0P
May 31, 2009 7:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oopsie.
Sorry pugaleeto! (shuffles feet)
I'll just... waddle off now.
May 31, 2009 7:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
You can't waddle off NOW!! I'm confused again. You gotta fix it, chicken! Or the Broom, or SOMEONE!
May 31, 2009 7:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think, er, therefore...my id likes Ripley?
Ack!
(pats pug)
Don't worry, someone somewhere should be able to explain it...Oh TheraP!!!!!!!!, you haz some 'splaining to do...!
May 31, 2009 7:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hhaha...
Oh well, I'm being told it's my bedtime. gotta go. Hope someone sorts me out by tomorrow... nitenite.
May 31, 2009 8:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
Pleasant Dreams
=D
May 31, 2009 8:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for contributing your considerations. As your exchange here suggests, we don’t like to think of ourselves as having a “mindless primitive” inside our heads. Yet here we are in the ninth year of the most outrageous collapse of civility in eighty years and it isn’t stopping. As I wrote this piece this morning, I had in my head that iconic image of the cheetah running down an Impala on some African savanna, the one that plays over and over on the Nature channel. How many uncounted billions of predations between uncounted species over hundreds of millions of years had to have happened to keep the chain of life going long enough for a single species to find itself in a position to choose against some atavistic impulse? As you suggest we are a sorely misnamed species. At best we are what Nietzsche suggested, a rope between the animal and the beyond-man.
May 31, 2009 8:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
The Cheetah is a very interesting metaphor. Through evolution, it has become so streamlined and fast that it can run down any of its prey, given the right circumstances. It is amazing to behold in the wild, and I feel very lucky that I had the opportunity to observe a Cheetah kill once. http://www.uwyo.edu/dbmcd/molmark/lect11/Cheetah.jpg
On the other hand, if the prey manages to get away -- too far away to start, able to climb higher than the Cheetah, or any other number of factors, the Cheetah will be so spent that it is likely to die. The numbers of Cheetah are declining markedly, and in fact there are very few gene pools left. Their very power and their inability to judge when to rein it in may have done them in.
Look at a Cheeta;'s face. They have a dark tear-stain running down from the inside of their eyes.www.isgtw.org/ cms/?pid=1000580
May 31, 2009 9:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sorry; couldn't get the second image with the face to work. Google cheetah and see for yourself.
May 31, 2009 9:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for the correction. I also liked this movie, the robot notwithstanding.
And you have found the connection I found. If we cannot rid ourselves of Bush and Cheney and their acts then perhaps it is because they are us in some fashion. It isn't flattering but, like it was for Morbius, the truth may be hard to see. This was the consideration I wanted to present.
May 31, 2009 11:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
(misplaced. Please ignore.)
May 31, 2009 11:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
BTW, I wrote to the management about these purse and health drink spams. I hope they get on top of this. It is very annoying. I was reading about the worst viruses on a different site, and I would discourage anyone from responding in any way to these spams. Who knows if it is yet another way to get into your computer?
May 31, 2009 7:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for doing that, CVille. I can't believe they stay up there so long. No moderators here?
May 31, 2009 10:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Actually you don't quite have dialog correct.
Cmdr. Addams:Like you, the Krell forgot one deadly danger... their own subconscious hate and lust for destruction.
Morbius:The beast. The mindless primitive. Even the Krell must have evolved from that beginning.
Cmdr. Addams:And so those mindless beasts of the subconscious... had access to a machine that could never be shut down. The secret devil of every soul on the planet... all set free at once to loot and maim... and take revenge and kill!
Morbius:My poor Krell! After a million years of shining sanity... they could hardly have understood what power was destroying them.
......
Cmdr. Addams:You still refuse to face the truth.
Morbius:What truth?
Cmdr. Addams:Morbius, that thing out there. It's you.
Morbius:You're insane! You have led it here where
Alta must see you torn to pieces!
Cmdr. Addams:You think she's immune?
She's joined herself to me!
Alteria:Yes, and whatever comes, forever.
Morbius:Say it's a lie. Let it hear you!
Tell it you don't love this man!
Alteria:Not even if I could.
Morbius:Stop it, Robby! Don't let it in! Kill it!
Cmdr. Addams:It's no use. He knows it's your other self.
You see the point was that Morbius refused to accept that even he was capable of murder and revenge. And that his experience with Krell machine gave him the power to do so. With his own subconscious.
I love this movie and have it on DVD.
C
May 31, 2009 10:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
whatever -- read my cheetah story above; it is the same idea without dialogue and has the same ending.
May 31, 2009 10:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for the correction. I also liked this movie, the robot notwithstanding.
And you have found the connection I found. If we cannot rid ourselves of Bush and Cheney and their acts then perhaps it is because they are us in some fashion. It isn't flattering but, like it was for Morbius, the truth may be hard to see. This was the consideration I wanted to present.
(This comment was misplaced above.)
May 31, 2009 11:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Fear vs. trust. Amorphous fear seeks form, which can manifest as "the other." And we have many definitions of the other from Cheney, whoever influenced Dr. Till's murderer, Limbaugh - the haters.
Trust often embodies more unknowns than fear does, is more ambiguous, causes us more anxiety. Hating cuts right down on anxiety, structures our lives, is blissfully predictable and comforting.
In 12-step programs, wise ones say recovery is the process of increasing your tolerance for ambiguity.
Each of us has fear inside. Some of us don't know or accept it. If I can say, of course I'm racist - how could anyone in the US not be, regardless of race - and then try to deal with my racism responsibly, I'm less likely to make a person of another race "the other."
When we project our fears outward, rather than turning around and facing them inside ourselves, we kill John and Martin and Dr. Till.
Scott
P.S. This is almost my first post here, and I have fears :) that you won't get what I'm trying to say. Please let me know.
June 1, 2009 2:30 AM | Reply | Permalink
(Thanks for your response. I found it clear and very interesting. I share your fears about being misunderstood but I like the challenge of putting my thoughts into words that others will understand. Welcome to the club.)
You have an interesting angle on the very thing I was suggesting was worth consideration. I especially like “recovery is the process of increasing your tolerance for ambiguity.” It is not so much that alcoholism is a metaphor for our current descent into madness. Rather I am suggesting that like alcoholism, Bush/Cheney/torture/citizen abuse is the disease as it presents itself but the cause, the dynamic, lies much deeper and is internal to the personality of all of us. I am not so much impressed by the fear dynamic as I am the will to power. A man drinks to create some alternate reality, a reality in which he is more powerful, successful and happy. Everything else becomes negotiable to that end. Sound like the rational for torture? Or for limiting Habeas rights? I think so.
Please write more from this perspective. I think it is more than analogy. It is insight
June 1, 2009 11:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
Make that Dr. Tiller. Recently watched a civil rights documentary that covered Emmett Till's murder.
June 1, 2009 2:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
The id represents repressed and invisible contents.
The fact that the id is being made visible through our quasi-elected leaders is therefore positive and therapeutic. This would also mean that we are going to have a massive unconscious episode in the aftermath.
Dare I say that 9/11 was the trigger of our psychic upheaval? The even brought our clandestine activities into the open, thereby making our repressed contents visible for either acceptance or continued denial. The superego national narrative is compared to the id of our wages of sin, and the ego (ie, the living citizens) are forced to individually and collectively manage both, when before the revelation we could safely deny the repressed contents and conveniently project them at the enemy of the month.
This may be why the masquerade of the neocons appears so tragicomic to those of us who are in the process of incorporating these repressed contents into our awareness. Their denial is savage, hilarious, pathetic, and dangerous... but a valid transference. The transference is into the medium of radio and television, which emits soothing noises that feed the denial.
You can see the positive transference into the image of Obama... the hopey-changey imago whereby our national sins can be forgiven by a redeeming figure. This of course leads to disappointment or denial in those who are in the grips of the transference because the imago is arcehtypal and can not meet infantile expectations.
Blah blah blah. I will step away from the keyboard. My BS detector is going off at me.
June 1, 2009 12:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
You are a very smart guy. Even your B.S. is worth a read.
I don't know about the 9/11 thing. When those guys on SCOTUS signed off on the theft of the Presidency, they weren't doing it to collect some payoff like a free deck on their country home or having a freeway off-ramp named after them. They had something much bigger in mind. The Roman Catholics among them are "pre-psychology" thinkers. If the governance that they installed looks a lot like the Spain of Torquemada that may not be merely a coincidence.
June 1, 2009 12:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
I wouldn't say that 9/11 "changed" everything insomuch as the pre-psychology mindset is concerned. What I am saying is that the US has an esoteric history that is repressed by a constant fusillade of waving flags... leading to a somnambulist state where a certain percentage of the population literally believes everything they hear and read and thus choose mediums that reinforce their prejudices. Since this is a tailor-made audience for nielsen ratings and advertising revenue, corporate control of the media is leading to a two-tiered popular media:
1. Those who actively watch and believe bottom-feeder infortainment because it pleases their limbic system.
and
2. Those who rubberneck and comment on number one.
So, if we were to look at this nation as a patient, we would perhaps diagnose the patient with sociopathic disorder stemming from unbounded narcissism. That is because we engage in heinous acts against other nations, especially if they are substantially weaker than us, inflate violent authority figures at home and abroad, and exploit anyone and everything if it benefits our needs... ALL THE WHILE maintaining an objective distance in the form of denial and patriotism.
This exists regardless of our ability to perceive it. But... 9/11 changed it. The shock of the attack released these formerly unconscious contents into our domestic lives in such a manner that they had to be confronted, like a sociopath confronted with the victim of their crimes in a manner that is irrefutable to the sociopath. This triggers a conflict, an unconscious upheaval whereby formerly repressed contents are dealt with. Depression is usually a result... especially after a particularly manic episode.
So the pre-psychology SCOTUS represents our skewed authority model of presumed cold objectivity dispensed by a higher authority, embodied by the Roman Catholic church... thus any empathy-negating decisions are quickly repressed as simple "rule of law" decisions reflecting "strict interpretation" of the constitution.
Constitution as dogma. Law as ritual. Capital as church. War as entertainment.
June 1, 2009 12:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Bravo.
June 1, 2009 1:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
Just to add a smidge to this good post, I wonder if this explains more.
I read last week (and can't find where) that psychological research indicates that when presented with a fear-inducing stimulus, one becomes less rational. Survival mode kicks in.
Could this explain the political "dialog" of the Republicans and Cheney, and the journalistic approach of FOX? That hard core set of believers are seeing the world through the veil of their fears. Ever notice how FOX really beats the stories that appeal to our fears? Maybe it's not the political advisors who have influence in the board rooms, but the psychologists.
June 10, 2009 8:16 AM | Reply | Permalink