The Question Is, To Be A Tiger, Or To Be A Goat
Or How To Deal With Asymmetrical Warfare Against The Individual
Only the most unconscious of the comatose are spared today from the alarming suspicion that we are under attack by a mephistophelian enemy with unlimited power and craftiness.
The cumulative sum of hostile activities to gradually delete our CO2 trace - not to mention our sense of entitlement - is mind-bogglingly complex, brilliant, and nefarious.
So nefarious that it's hard to digest as anything but a hair-brained conspiracy theory.
It takes oodles of research, courage, and clarity to accept that the effort is real - although a subtle, gently cumulative process, just like the act of boiling frogs.
Accepting that we're in the kettle here and now is essential.
It's our skin in the game, after all.
And this decade, the skin is finally coming off.
The simple goal is to disempower us from thinking for ourselves, for acting for ourselves. This way, our only option is to be "saved" - by the Engineers.
If we listen carefully to the subtonal message under the noise of the engineered chaos, it's this: "You're not a tiger. You're a goat."
Any psychological pillars supporting our identity - gender, sexuality, race, profession, nationality, family, education, community, you name it - are slowly being dismantled by feral algorithms that have gone rogue on your definition of yourself.
The algorithms prey on us with divide-and-conquer zeal like hyenas on a savannah. They're dismantling anything that we can hold unto for dear life.
Science - the art of seeking and verifying facts - has been replaced with scientism, a corporate-sponsored fairy tale engine that undermines our bodies and minds with toxic foods, drugs, and belief models.
Engineered crises are picking steam, increasingly limiting our freedoms under false pretexts.
Engineered pandemics require "protective" mandates that cause more harm than the crises initially fear-mongered about, necessitating more harmful measures for added protection.
Engineered climate crises require a more engineered climate as a response - evident from the increasingly opaque sheen in the sky.
Engineered wars ravish society with hyperinflation and material deprivation which, in the minds of the individual, justify real wars.
Engineered threats of end-of-the-world scenarios require the suspension of the bill of rights - for our protection.
Engineered fear makes us all dance to the same Pied Piper.
The art of the narrative is to justify a societal tailspin to protect itself from the same.
The more damage the response causes, the more response the damage requires.
"The shit piled up so fast in Vietnam you needed wings to stay above it," said Captain Willard in Apocalypse Now.
What would Willard have said about 2022?
Or Colonel Kurtz, for that matter.
If Kurtz had ten divisions of his indigenous warriors available today, could he have ended our troubles? Or would he have been drone-bombed as another extreme right-wing nut?
During a hike a few days ago, I caught myself thinking of the symbolism behind Apocalypse Now and how relevant it is today. I immediately decided to let go of that thread. Maybe I was going crazy.
I took a long breath and switched on an audiobook by Joseph Campbell.
The master of mythology had anticipated my anxiety and offered a passage that gave me a strange sense of calm.
Campbell asks us not to hide under blind ignorance or denial but to taste the harsh reality, fully conscious and alive, to the point of being joyful.
Why?
The world is always coming to an end in every generation - to help us grow.
Think of bacteria mutating into superbugs under assault from antibiotics. Or think of consciousness as a form of carbon that needs pressure to produce diamonds.
The forces we're dealing with are uniquely anti-life.
They can also be more fun than a bag of cats - if we so choose.
Here is the passage from Campbell. Try it for size.
"My wonderful friend, Heinrich Zimmer, my final guru, often said, "The best things cannot be told." That is to say, you can't talk about that which lies beyond the reach of words.
The second best are misunderstood, because they are your statements about that which cannot be told. They are misunderstood because the vocabulary of symbols that you have to use are thought to be references to historical events.
The third best is conversation, political life, economics, and all that. And that's what we are usually dealing with: the first three cakras.
Zimmer loved to recount an amusing animal-fable from India. It tells of a tigress, pregnant and starving, who comes upon a little flock of goats and pounces on them with such energy that she brings about the birth of her little one and her own death.
The goats scatter, and when they come back to their grazing place, they find this just-born tiger and its dead mother. Having strong parental instincts, they adopt the tiger, and it grows up thinking it's a goat. It learns to bleat. It learns to eat grass. And since grass doesn't nourish it very well, it grows up to become a pretty miserable specimen of its species.
When the young tiger reaches adolescence, a large male tiger pounces on the flock, and the goats scatter. But this little fellow is a tiger, so he stands there. The big one looks at him in amazement and says, "Are you living here with these goats?" "Maaaaaa," says the little tiger. Well, the old tiger is mortified, something like a father who comes home and finds his son with long hair. He swats him back and forth a couple of times, and the little thing just responds with these silly bleats and begins nibbling grass in embarrassment. So the big tiger brings him to a still pond.
Now, still water is a favorite Indian image to symbolize the idea of yoga. The first aphorism of yoga is: "Yoga is the intentional stopping of the spontaneous activity of the mind-stuff." Our minds, which are in continual flux, are likened to the surface of a pond that's blown by a wind. So the forms that we see, those of our own lives and the world around us, are simply flashing images that come and go in the field of time, but beneath all of them is the substantial form of forms. Bring the pond to a standstill, have the wind withdraw and the waters clear, and you'll see, in stasis, the perfect image beneath all of these changing forms.
So this little fellow looks into the pond and sees his own face for the first time. The big tiger puts his face over and says, "You see, you've got a face like mine. You're not a goat. You're a tiger like me. Be like me."
Now that's guru stuff: I'll give you my picture to wear, be like me. It's the opposite to the individual way.
So the little one is getting that message; he's picked up and taken to the tiger's den, where there are the remains of a recently slaughtered gazelle. Taking a chunk of this bloody stuff, the big tiger says, "Open your face." The little one backs away, "I'm a vegetarian." "None of that nonsense," says the big fellow, and he shoves a piece of meat down the little one's throat. He gags on it. The text says, "As all do on true doctrine."
But gagging on the true doctrine, he's nevertheless getting it into his blood, into his nerves; it's his proper food. It touches his proper nature. Spontaneously, he gives a tiger stretch, the first one. A little tiger roar comes out—Tiger Roar 101. The big one says, "There. Now you've got it. Now we go into the forest and eat tiger food."
Vegetarianism is the first turning away from life, because life lives on lives. Vegetarians are just eating something that can't run away.
Now, of course, the moral is that we are all tigers living here as goats. The right hand path, the sociological department, is interested in cultivating our goat-nature. Mythology, properly understood as metaphor, will guide you to the recognition of your tiger face. But then how are you going to live with these goats?
Well, Jesus had something to say about this problem. In Matthew 7 he said, "Do not cast your pearls before swine, or they will trample them under their feet and turn and tear you."
You wear the outer garment of the law, behave as everyone else and wear the inner garment of the mystic way. Jesus also said that when you pray, you should go into your own room and close the door. When you go out, brush your hair. Don't let them know. Otherwise, you'll be a kook, something phony.
So that has to do with not letting people know where you are. But then comes the second problem: how do you live with these people? Do you know the answer? You know that they are all tigers. And you live with that aspect of their nature, and perhaps in your art you can let them know that they are tigers. And that's the revelation then.
And so this brings us to the final formula of the Bodhisattava way, the way of the one who is grounded in eternity and moving in the field of time. The field of time is the field of sorrow. "All life is sorrowful." And it is. If you try to correct the sorrows, all you do is shift them somewhere else. Life is sorrowful. How do you live with that? You realize the eternal within yourself. You disengage, and yet, reengage. You—and here's the beautiful formula—"participate with joy in the sorrows of the world." You play the game. It hurts, but you know that you have found the place that is transcendent of injury and fulfillments. You are there, and that's it. "
~ Joseph Campbell
"Reflections On The Art Of Life"