Prometheus Rising Chapter 8 The Moral Socio-Sexual Circuit

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Prometheus Rising Chapter 8. The Moral Socio-Sexual Circuit

Author: Robert Anton Wilson Publisher: Grand Junction, Colorado: Hilaritas Press. Publish Date: 1983 Review Date: Status:📚

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Highlight(pink) - Location 1387 The socio-sexual circuit is activated and imprinted at adolescence, when the DNA signal awakens the sexual apparatus. The teenager becomes the bewildered possessor of a new body and a new neural circuit oriented to orgasm and sperm-egg fusion. The pubescent human, like any other rutting animal, lurches about in a state of mating frenzy, every call gasping for the sexual object. Imprint vulnerability is acute, and the first sexual signals to turn on the adolescent nervous system usually remain fixed for life and forever define the individual’s sexual reality. We should not be surprised, therefore, at the various fetishes that are so easily acquired at these sensitive moments. In fact, we can tell precisely at what period in time a person was sexually imprinted by noting which fetishes continue to turn him or her on.
Highlight(pink) - Location 1395 As Masters and Johnson have pointed out, most sexual dysfunctions are hooked into the nervous system at these adolescent moments of acute imprint vulnerability; their archetypal case is that of a male who, about to mate for the first time, in the back seat of a car, was traumatized by a policeman flashing a light on him and his paramour. The imprint of that ghastly moment was hooked for decades: the male remained impotent until reimprinted by Masters and Johnson in their clinic. The choices of heterosexuality or homosexuality, brash promiscuity or timid celibacy, etc. are usually imprinted by exactly similar accidents at points of imprint vulnerability.
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Primitives (so-called) know these facts and surround all the points of imprint vulnerability with rituals, “ordeals,” “rites of passage,” etc. well designed to imprint the desired traits of a well-integrated member of that tribe at that time. Relics of these imprint ceremonies survive in Baptism, Confirmation, Bar Mitzvahs. Marriage Ceremonies, the Masonic “raising,” etc.
Highlight(pink) - Location 1404 It is important to realize that chance, genetics and malice (anger) are among the “accidents” that create imprints at the points of vulnerability. Most humans do not, due to accidents of this sort, imprint exactly the socio-sexual role demanded by their society. The fourth circuit can almost be called the guilt circuit: almost everybody, almost everywhere, is quite busy hiding their real sexual profile and miming the “accepted” sex role for their gender in their tribe. In ordinary language, the imprint on the socio-sexual circuit is generally called “the mature personality” or the “sexual role.” It is “the Parent” in the jargon of Transactional Analysis.
Highlight(pink) - Location 1515 The fourth circuit is located in the left neo-cortex—the newest part of the left hemisphere of the brain. It is linked neurologically with the genitalia and the breasts (fucking-hugging-embracing-protecting circuitry).

Highlight(pink) - Location 1409 It is amusing to note that Freud recognized the first circuit as the oral stage, the second as the anal stage and the fourth as the genital stage. He did not notice the third, semantic circuit—perhaps because as an obsessive Rationalist he was so absorbed in verbal and conceptual programs that they were invisible to him, as water may be to fishes. Similarly, Jung described the first circuit as the sensational faculty, the second as the feeling faculty, the third as the rational faculty—and skipped the socio-sexual circuit entirely. (There may be a clue here as to why Jung could not abide Freud’s fourth-circuit emphasis and built a separate, less sexual psychology of his own.) Jung then went on to lump all the higher circuits under the rubric of the faculty of intuition.

Highlight(pink) - Location 1417 The infant is genetically prepared to learn any language, master any skill, play any sex role; in a very short time, however, he or she becomes mechanically, robotically, fixated to accept, follow and mimic the limited offerings of his social and cultural environment. In this process, each of us pays a heavy price. Survival and status mean forfeiting the infinite possibilities of unconditioned consciousness. The domesticated primate, inside the social reality-tunnel, is a trivial fragment of the potentials for experience and intelligence innate in the 110,000,000,000-cell human biocomputer. As Robert A. Heinlein wrote: A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, design a building, conn a ship, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve an equation, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
Highlight(pink) - Location 1427 But as long as we remain on the antique circuits we are not very different from the insects. That is, just as the insects repeat their four-stage program (egg, larvae, chrysalis, adult) from generation to generation, we repeat our four-stage cycle also. The antique circuits are genetically conservative. They ensure the survival and continuation of the species, but do no more. For future evolution we must look to the futuristic circuits.

Highlight(pink) - Location 1430 SUMMARY
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Highlight(pink) - Location 1432 The Gurdjieff titles in the above summary are deliberately negative, since he was trying to get people off these primitive circuits and into the futuristic circuits.

Highlight(pink) - Location 1435 It is sometime mistakenly stated that there are no universal sexual taboos. This is not true. There is one omni-purpose taboo which exists in every tribe. That taboo stipulates that sexuality shall not be unregulated by the tribe. That is, even though no other taboos are universal, the taboo against living without taboos remains constant. Every tribe has its own set of verbots and thou-shalt-nots, but no tribe allows the individual to choose his or her own set. An American President may not marry his own sister (if he wants to get re-elected); an Egyptian Pharaoh had to marry his own sister. Confronted by this moral relativism, many social scientists have failed to notice the invariable: both the President and the Pharaoh are expected to obey local rules.

Highlight(pink) - Location 1442 Why is there this taboo against sexual self-definition and self-actualization? Why is it that, while no two societies can agree on what is sexually “good” and sexually “bad,” every society thinks that it must make some definition? The answer is that our first humanoid (symbolizing and conceptualizing) ancestors were very ignorant, but not at all stupid. They were ignorant of the laws of genetics, but they were smart enough to suspect that such laws exist. Sperm-egg fusion is surrounded by violent taboos and fierce tribal conformity because the survival and future evolution of the gene pool depends upon which particular spermatozoa reaches which particular ovum.
Highlight(pink) - Location 1447 Etymologists confirm the Freudian theory that there are ancient linkages between the words for the sacred, the erotic, the obscene, the awe inspiring, the awe-ful, the divine, the “thrilling.” All of these are primitive, powerful physiological responses to the mysteries of sexual attraction, mating, reproduction, inheritance, genetic drift, future evolution. The earliest god-forms found by archeologists are pregnant goddesses and ithyphallic gods. The most intolerant, bigoted and recalcitrant of all prejudices—the very last to fade away after cosmopolitanizing contact with other tribes having different values—are the taboos concerning the right way to reproduce. If one nation insists that the head of state must marry his sister, and another insists that he must not, both are acting on the assumption that the right way must be found and rigorously enforced.
Highlight(pink) - Location 1457 GODS AND GODDESSES ARE SEXUAL & GENETIC PROGRAMS EXPRESSED IN PRIMITIVE SYMBOLS
Highlight(pink) - Location 1458 There are unknowns in the area of reproduction—why twins? Why three boys in one family and three girls in another? Why miscarriages and stillbirths? There are unknowns in the area of inheritance—“Why doesn’t my son look like me?” many a domesticated primate has wondered uneasily, leading to a great deal of paranoia and male chauvinism. There are unknowns in the area of genetic drift—modern researchers recognize twelve or more variables, but still have more questions than answers. There are unknowns in the area of future evolution—“Where do we come from, what are we, where are we going?”, the title of Gauguin’s greatest painting, is the basic ontological question; the totem-pole, like the treatise on sociobiology, is an attempt to answer. Amid all these unknowns—of sexual attraction, mating reproduction, inheritance, genetic drift, future evolution—the shamans of every tribe try to establish guide-posts to tribal (gene-pool) survival. Thus “morality” is invented.
Highlight(pink) - Location 1467 Sexual attraction, mating, reproduction, inheritance, genetic drift and future evolution are all stochastic processes. (That is, processes in which, out of a random series, some “intelligence” or something that can be metaphorically conceived as an intelligence, is selecting a final outcome.) That these stochastic processes overlap, as shown in our diagram, is intuitively obvious; and it is also obvious that the future is being “selected” every step of the way.* Taboo and morality are tribal attempts to govern the random element—to select the desired future.
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That the whole chain is “intelligent” or manifests “intelligence,” is the Lamarckian heresy which Darwinians have never quite been able to kill; every time it is buried, it rises again in new form. Two most able recent arguments of the neo-Lamarckian or meta-Lamarckian position, which the reader is cordially urged to read, are Timothy Leary’s The Game of Life and Gregory Bateson’s Mind and Nature.

Highlight(pink) - Location 1478 “Morality” attempts to control the stochastic evolutionary process at two points—interfering between sexual attraction and sexual consummation (Mating) by taboos and commandments, or else interfering between mating and reproduction. The latter case is represented by infanticide, a widespread birth-control measure always justified by the local shamans on magical grounds, e.g., the infants selected for sacrifice are breach births, or birth-marked, or twins, or in some way stigmatized by the “gods.” The actual function of such practices, of course, is population control; such customs are most common on isolated islands where runaway population would be a disaster. Similarly, the Judaic taboos functioned to channel all sexuality into increased population, since the ancient Jews were surrounded by large and pugnacious Empires eager to conquer them; they needed more boys for soldiers and more girls to breed soldiers.
Highlight(pink) - Location 1485 The most “idiotic” and “superstitious” taboos, from the Rationalist viewpoint, always had some function when invented. For instance, the most “pointlessly” elaborate (non-genetic) “incest” taboos, in which virtually everybody in the tribe becomes unavailable sexually to everybody else, force exogamy (marriage outside the tribe). This creates affectional alliances (family ties) between tribes and decreases warfare. Something like this primitive exogamy survived into very recent times, in the custom of marrying one royal family to another.

Highlight(pink) - Location 1489 Every form of “morality” is, of course, irksome on some level to everybody, because no individual ever has exactly the sexual imprint desired by the tribe. The more sophisticated totem-cults (the “higher” religions, so dubbed by themselves) take account of this by the doctrine of atonement. In one form or another, this allows the individual to be ritually “forgiven” periodically for not being the perfect sexual robot decreed by tribal morality. This becomes hilarious only when one realizes that most of what domesticated primates are asking their priests to forgive them for consists of what Kinsey so accurately called “normal mammalian behavior.”

Highlight(pink) - Location 1499 Time-binding (the transmission of symbols and tools across generations) begins on the third circuit. Acute consciousness time is, however, intensified on the fourth circuit. The principle function of the socio-sexual circuit, in the higher primates, is to form an adult personality—a parent.* By definition, the parent is one who cares for the young of the species; by genetic necessity, the parent also cares about the young. In symbolizing humans, this means planning, hoping and having aspirations. In the language of the mystics, this means being “attached” and “trapped on the wheel of karma”; the first effort in most mystical traditions is to break this fourth-circuit attachment by taking a vow of celibacy.

Highlight(pink) - Location 1507 Homosexuality (like left-handedness) is probably included in the genetic script to serve auxiliary functions. In most primitive societies, the homosexuals (and the left-handed) are shunted into shamanic roles. In more complex societies they are (like spinsters and heterosexual bachelors) usually shunted into intellectual or artistic roles, which have quasi-shamanic functions of making, breaking or transforming cultural signals. Those who claim any perennial sexual variation is “against nature” are underestimating nature’s variety, diversity and economy. The “mutation” of Leonardo de Vinci, a left-handed homosexual, was needed to break up the signal of the dying medieval reality-tunnel and remake our perceptions into the reality-tunnel of post-Renaissance scientific humanism. His success is registered by the fact that a Leonardo painting is still the “norm” of what we mean by realism, i.e., most people (including right-handed heterosexuals) are living in the scientific-humanist “space” this man invented.

Highlight(pink) - Location 1517 Persons who take their heaviest imprint on this circuit are beautiful. That is, their entire body has received so many sexual neurotransmitters from the brain that they are constantly radiating the “attractive” mating signals that make up our perception of what is “beautiful” in a human being. According to accidents of imprinting, they can be coldly calculating exploiters, totally repressed Puritans or carry some other negative traits but they always look like (send the signals of) the ideal fucker-lover-protector.

Highlight(pink) - Location 1521 Once formulated, “morality” serves as not only a check on genetic drift but a brake against Circuit III innovation. The shamans, priests etc. define which ideas are “moral” and which are “immoral.” Anything new—anything that will break the tribal cycle, i.e., take us out of cyclical mythic “time” into linear, progressive, revolutionary “time”—is usually defined, very quickly, as “immoral.” To say that religion and priestcraft have played a conservative role in history is an understatement. One might as well say that bubonic plague has killed a few people, or that Hitler was a little bit strange. The chief role of religion has always been reactionary. This is its evolutionary function, in the dialectic of the circuitry of the brain.
Highlight(pink) - Location 1527 Circuit III, unchecked, is like a cocaine monologue. You can’t remember anything, because everything is changing too fast. This is profoundly disorienting to the average domesticated primate, so the tribal moralists keep stability and tranquility by acting as decelerators. The average person, similarly, is philosophically most “open” and “curious” before the adult sex role of parenthood is elected. After reproduction, there is little time for Circuit III speculations, and (because of the sanctions every tribe places upon “heresy,” i.e., new ideas) there is also little inclination. Thus, Circuit III tends to take us out of tribal cyclical time into linear progressive time; but Circuit IV loops us back into the cycle again.
Highlight(pink) - Location 1533 Homosexuals may or may not be the chief creators of cultural innovation, as some Gay Pride advocates claim; but it is certainly true that they have done more than their share. The reason? They are not trapped into parent roles.

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Highlight(pink) - Location 1536 A and B represent socially “good” and socially “bad” sex, according to the tribe, A1, A2 and A3 represent individual imprints—personally “good” sex (what the individual is imprinted to like)—and B1, B2 and B3 personally “bad” (what the individual doesn’t like). If Axis A1-B1 is only slightly tilted, the individual is fairly “normal” (in that society). If A2-B2 is tilted more; the individual is “neurotic” (in that society). If A3-B3 is tilted much further; the individual is a “pervert” (in that society).

Highlight(pink) - Location 1540 These four circuits are coded, with four permutations of each, into the “court cards” of the Tarot deck. Thus the Knight of Discs, representing earth/earth according to the occultists, is the pure First-Circuit type—all sensation, all oral demand, all viscerotonic. Behind their alchemical, Cabalistic, theosophical jargon, most books on Tarot are describing this type when they discuss this card. The pure undiluted “Momma’s boy.” The Queen of Discs, or earth/water, is a mixture of first and second circuit traits—sensational-viscerotonic-oral and emotional-egotistic-political. You better be damned careful to call her Ms. The Prince of Discs, or earth/air, is a blend of first and third circuits—oral demand and rational calculation. Probably, a very sharp and sharkish lawyer. The Princess of Discs, or earth/fire is first-circuit orality mixed with fourth-circuit sexuality. This fusion of exhibitionism with enflamed eros means she’s probably starring in porn movies., In all Disc cards, the first circuit predominates over the others.
Highlight(pink) - Location 1548 The Queen of Cups, or water/water, is emotion and territorial demand. Nelson Algren had her in mind when he said, “Never bed down with a woman who has more problems than you.” The Knight of Cups, water/earth, is emotion plus sensation. The pure predator, marauder, thief, rapist or sociopath. The Prince of Cups or water/air is emotion plus reason. The humanist, humanitarian, liberal; an ideal Unitarian minister.The Princess of Cups is water/fire: an explosive mixture of egotism and sexuality. Scarlett O’Hara. The femme fatale.
Highlight(pink) - Location 1553 The Prince of Swords is air/air; all pure undiluted intellect. His feet never touch the earth; he lives amid floating abstractions. The monk-scholar. The Knight of Swords is air/earth: reason and oral exhibitionism. The actor, orator, demagogue—sometimes the artist. The Queen of Swords is air/water; reason plus emotion. The greats in science and art are generally of this imprint group. The Princess of Swords is air/fire: reason and sexuality. The good parent; usually the Puritan, but sometimes the crusader for “sexual freedom.” In any case, the motivating drive is an attempt to impose abstract reason upon the genetic imperatives of the mating urge. The Princess of Wands is fire/fire: sexuality at its most powerful. These types are usually, but not necessarily, quite promiscuous; sometimes they pour all their erotic energy into one mate and raise huge families, parenting being a strong part of the fourth circuit; e.g., J.S. Bach, who may have written the sexiest music in history, had twenty children.
Highlight(pink) - Location 1561 The Knight of Wands is fire/earth: sexuality and sensationalism. The Playboy. Reich’s “Phallic Narcissist.” The Prince of Wands is fire/air: sexuality plus reason. These types are likely to get involved in the kind of empirical mysticism that is not tolerated by the local Authorities—e.g., the Tantrists in India, the Knights Templar and witches in medieval Europe, Aleister Crowley and Wilhelm Reich most recently. (Crowley said this card was a portrait of his “True Self.”) The Queen of Wands is fire/water: sexuality and emotional politics. The law courts have a steady parade of this type passing through every day.
Highlight(pink) - Location 1566 The clever Cabalists who designed this pictorial key to the four primitive circuits included a clue to higher consciousness. For they teach that each element in traditional alchemy (earth, air, fire, water) corresponds to one of these Tarot suits (discs, swords, wands, cups) and to one of the letters in the Holy Unspeakable Name of God—YHVH. The correspondences are as follows:
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Highlight(pink) - Location 1569 The logic of this imagery is quite clear to the unconscious mind, and these associations appear frequently in dreams, as Jung documented in Psychology and Alchemy.
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Highlight(pink) - Location 1571 The aim of the Cabala is to make “the microcosm mirror the macrocosm”; that is, to make the human being a perfect image of “God.” This means putting together the four “alchemical” elements symbolized by the letters Y, H, V, H. In other words, bringing the four circuits into balance. This is the same lesson as taught in the Buddhist mandalas with four demons at the corners and the circle representing awakening in the middle.

Highlight(pink) - Location 1577 Behaviorists tell us wonderful stories about the intricate patterns that can be conditioned into experimental animals. They say we have, by selective reinforcement, trained this rat so that at the sound of a bell, he runs up a ladder, presses button A, races across a plank and down another ladder, presses button B, dashes across the cage and waits at the food-slot for his meal to arrive. Lest anybody think this book is written from a perch of superiority, consider the similar, but more complex, behavior which the author followed for twenty years. He would set an alarm clock before sleep every night. When the alarm woke him, he would breakfast hurriedly, rush off to catch a bus, ride to a subway, change to the train, ride to an office building, rush through the lobby, board an elevator, ride to a certain floor, enter an office, and toil at repetitious (and generally pointless) tasks for eight hours. This behavior sequence had been shaped, as B.F. Skinner would say, by reinforcement delivered every second week in the form of bio-survival tickets (money). These tickets were necessary to the bio-survival of four dependent children.

Highlight(pink) - Location 1585 The reader of this book can probably remember, somewhat dimly, the imprinting and conditioning of each of these circuits. We all began as infants in a one-dimensional world, orally hooked to Mommy. The further away from Mommy we crawled, the greater was our bio-survival anxiety, and we generally returned to Mommy as quickly as possible. The key imprint incidents of this period, together with associated conditioning, determine, concretely, how much we currently exhibit of:
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Highlight(pink) - Location 1590 Then, when the DNA sent the appropriate RNA messenger molecules to the glands, endocrine system, etc. a mutation occurred. Our gross morphology—our whole body—changed, and our “minds” changed in the process. That is, our reality-tunnel dilated into two-dimensions, when we rose up and began to walk about the house, and started learning who we could dominate, who could dominate us, who could be dominated (emotionally bullied) at some times and not at others, etc. We developed out of amorphous bio-survival consciousness into stubborn individual ego. We were imprinted and conditioned with a particular style of emotional-territorial “politics.” At this stage we were imprinted and conditioned for:
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Highlight(pink) - Location 1596 We were subsequently conditioned to switch between these reflexes depending on whether the person we were dealing with was Higher in the pecking order or Lower in the pecking order. (Middle-class people, e.g., Reagan conservatives, John Birchers, etc. will always revere those Higher in the pecking order; and, equally, will always have some reason to persecute—peck at—the poor, who are Lower in the pecking order. Hence, they will say and even believe, that they are being robbed by the poor on Welfare—who get about 4% of the tax dollar—and never “notice” that the military-industrial complex is getting 72% of their tax dollar. This is normal mammalian sociobiology.)
Highlight(pink) - Location 1601 After this second-circuit reality-tunnel is wired in, the organism molts and mutates again into the verbal stage, and a third circuit style of mentation imprinted. That is, on top of protoplasmic consciousness and mammalian ego, we acquire human mind, which is created by and creator of human artifacts and speech.
Highlight(pink) - Location 1604 In the semantic stage of imprint vulnerability we acquire either:
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Highlight(pink) - Location 1608 Why do we say “dumb” (mute) for stupid? Because “a good mind means a good mouth,” and the human mind is a verbalizing circuit.
Highlight(pink) - Location 1610 At puberty, another DNA trigger fires and RNA messengers initiate another morphological mutation of body-mind. The “adult personality” is imprinted and conditioned. We become:
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Highlight(pink) - Location 1612 Lack of understanding of these morphological changes, and their persistence in imprint circuits in the brain, is responsible for most failures in communication, and for the general sense of exasperation with which we too often confront each other. Since everybody’s imprints are a little bit different—the average is that which nobody totally is*—we all feel at times like the legendary Quaker who told his wife, “All the world is mad but me and thee, and sometimes I wonder about thee.”

Highlight(pink) - Location 1618 James Joyce justified anarchism on the grounds that “the state is concentric and the individual is eccentric.”
Highlight(pink) - Location 1621 Reichians, disciples of Dr. Spock and the Summerhill School, etc. have called attention, with some impatience, to the brutality and stupidity of many of our traditional child-rearing methods. These methods are “brutal” and “stupid” only if, like the above-mentioned heretics, one regards the goal of child-rearing as the production of a sane, balanced, creative [NOT CRATED] human being. THIS HAS NEVER BEEN THE GOAL OF ANY SOCIETY IN THE REAL WORLD. The traditional childrearing methods are quite logical, pragmatic and sound in fulfilling the real purpose of society, which is not to create an ideal person, but to create [CRATE] a semi-robot who mimics the society as closely as possible—both in its rational and its irrational aspects, both as the repository of the wisdom of the past and as the sum total of all the cruelties and stupidities of the past. Very simply, a totally aware, alert, awakened (unbrainwashed) person would not fit very well into any of the standard roles society offers; the damaged, robotized products of traditional child-rearing do fit into those slots.
Highlight(pink) - Location 1628 That is, there is a neuro-sociological “logic” to the illogical. Are traditional schools very much like mini-prisons? Do they stifle imagination, cramp the child physically and mentally, and run on various forms of overt or covert terrorism? Of course, the answer is an unambiguous yes; but such schools are necessary to train people for roles in the ordinary office or factory or profession, which are also very much like mini-prisons, stifle imagination, cramp the person physically and mentally and run on terror (threat of loss of bio-survival tickets, in the form of pay-checks or tenure).
Highlight(pink) - Location 1633 The permissive movement in child-rearing appeared only when it did, and has succeeded only to a limited extent, because society has always needed and still thinks it needs human robots. Utopian child-rearing will advance further, necessarily, only as society itself evolves out of authoritarianism. That is, as the accelerated changes now occurring propel us into the most rapid period of social evolution in all human history, we will then need citizens who are not robots, who are creative; who are not docile, who are innovative; who are not narrow-minded bigots, who are explorers in every sense of the word. Traditional child-rearing began to falter only when society began to enter into the present period of accelerated change and technological omni-transformation of all traditional values.

Highlight(pink) - Location 1639 Failures in communication generally derive from sending a message to the wrong address. That is, your husband has an ego problem and you send a message to his mind. Adapting a diagram from Transactional Analysis what has happened is this:
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Highlight(pink) - Location 1642 The message is addressed from Circuit I to Circuit IV. It means “I feel weak; help bolster me up.” If the answer comes back from Circuit III to Circuit III, “Well, let’s analyze the problem …“ there has been a Wrong Address. Of course, this example is deliberately untypical, although not impossible. It is untypical because women traditionally are trained not to make this kind of mistake—to be “emotionally sensitive,” to be “supportive,” etc. It is much more likely, statistically, that this kind of Wrong Address will go the other way—husband to wife. That is, the wife signals “Help!” and the husband on Circuit III says, “Let’s analyze the problem …”
Highlight(pink) - Location 1647 We have said that the imprinting of the circuits contains a large element of accident (within genetic parameters). Society, everywhere, without understanding this theory, understands enough pragmatically about imprinting processes to attempt to program each individual for his or her assigned role. Hence, traditional girl-rearing is different from traditional boy-rearing, so that women will have more Circuit II “sensitivity.” Again, Women’s Liberation, like modern child-rearing, arrived only when we were evolutionarily ready or nearly-ready for it. The traditional system worked in traditional societies. Similarly, class structure, like the caste structure in an insect hive, works to produce the “right” imprints in each class. The third circuit of the servile class or proletariat is imprinted chiefly for manual dexterity, while the same circuit in middle-class or ruling-class children is imprinted for verbal, mathematical or other symbol-using skills.

Highlight(pink) - Location 1654 Democracy has been less than a total success—and the intellectual’s half-shamed cynicism about democracy is justified—to the extent that traditional society did not need, could not use, and in many ways discouraged the development of high verbal (“rational”) skills in the majority of the population. That is, concretely, most people are not encouraged to be very smart, and are rather heavily programmed to be comparatively stupid. Such programming is what is needed to fit them into most traditional jobs. Their bio-survival circuitry works as well as that of most animals, their emotional-territorial circuitry is typically primate, and they have little third-circuit “mind” to verbalize (rationalize) with. Naturally, they usually vote for the charlatan who can activate primitive bio-survival fears and territorial (“patriotic”) pugnacity. The intellectual looks at the dismal results and continues to believe in “democracy” only by an act of Blind Faith similar to the way beliefs in Catholicism or Communism or snake-worship are maintained.
Highlight(pink) - Location 1661 Again, the traditional system works, for traditional society. A mass made of people who have intense curiosity about why Beethoven went in for string quartets after the Ninth Symphony, or whether Kant really refuted Hume satisfactorily, or what the latest quantum theories mean in relation to Determinism and Free Will, is not a mass that will easily be led into dull, dehumanizing labor at traditional jobs.
Highlight(pink) - Location 1664 Why did Adlai Stevenson lose to Ike Eisenhower, George McGovern to Tricky Dicky Nixon, etc.? It was the Wrong Address problem again. Stevenson, McGovern and other darlings of the intelligentsia were speaking to the third circuit, which is not very highly developed in most domesticated primates yet. Eisenhower in his Fatherly way, and Nixon in his bullying Big Brother way, knew just how to push the right Second-Circuit emotional-territorial buttons to get a mob of primates to follow them. They were genetically programmed alpha males, in ethological terms.

Highlight(pink) - Location 1668 Similarly, the Moralist (i.e., the Adult Personality who has imprinted heavy Ethical imperatives on Circuit IV) is often totally unable to communicate with the scientist or technologist. The Moralist may even decide—many already have—that the scientist per se is “inhuman.” In fact, morals are fairly irrelevant to the Third Circuit analytical mind, which is the brain function the average scientist has imprinted most powerfully. To the third circuit, the only morality is accuracy, the only immorality is sloppy thinking.

Highlight(pink) - Location 1672 Again, the rise in “social conscience” among scientists is happening only when it was evolutionarily necessary that it happen, i.e., after Hiroshima. If it doesn’t seem to be happening widely enough and quickly enough, well, the same can be said—also in error, I think—about modernizing education and childrearing, about Women’s Liberation, about racism, etc. The rebellion against all the follies of the past is succeeding, and will continue to succeed, only as we evolve into a society which needs each human to function well on all circuits. We are moving with ever-increasing speed, into such a society.
Highlight(pink) - Location 1676 What the impatient radical forgets is that many of the “injustices” of the traditional primate society were not even perceived as such by the best minds of 1000 years ago or 100 years ago, or in the case of institutionalized sexism, even 30 years ago. If we can see injustice and absurdity in many age-old institutions, it is only because we are evolving out of robothood, at precisely the point in evolution when it is necessary for us to become smarter and more sensitive on all circuits.

Highlight(pink) - Location 1680 Each of us has a “favorite” circuit—that is, a circuit that has been more heavily imprinted than the others. Miscommunication, misunderstanding and general misjudgment of one another is vastly increased by the fact that few of us know about these levels of circuitry, and we all tend to assume that the person we are interacting with is on the same circuit we are. Thus, there are narcissistic (oral) first-circuit types in every social group. Present them with a problem and they will immediately look for somebody else to handle it, since the oral stage is robotically imprinted for dependency. (Or, if they have imprinted hostile weakness instead of dependent weakness, they will explode into anger—infantile tantrum—raging that a problem exists and that it has been imposed on them.) A second-circuit type, in the same situation, will attempt to frighten the problem away by barking and blustering at it, mammalian-fashion. A third-circuit type will try to reason out the problem. This is the best approach only with problems that are themselves rational, i.e., “How do you make this machine work?” It can be blind, and futile, when the “problem” is another human being acting out one of the more destructive second-circuit rage programs. (“The liberal is the one who leaves the room when the fight starts,” somebody once said. Third-circuit types are most confused and feel impotent when second-circuit mammalian politics takes over the scene.) A fourth-circuit type will try to be rational (third circuit) and to sense the emotional dimensions of the problem (second circuit) but will basically try to impose a moral solution: “Now this is the decent, fair thing to do …” This may or may not make sense to the third-circuit Rationalist, looking for objective justice; and it will usually make no sense at all to the totally second-circuit type dominated by emotionalism and territoriality.

Highlight(pink) - Location 1694 What is true of the group is true of the individual. While we all have our favorite circuit, and tend to see that circuit as “superior” to all the others, we can be pushed out of it by shocks or stresses, in which case we jump to another circuit. The most robotic Rationalist will descend to the first circuit, eventually, if threat to bio-security is forcibly enough presented on the screen of consciousness. And, if prevented from “leaving the room when the fight starts,” the Rationalist will even descend to second-circuit mammalian howling and barking, under sufficient pressure. (Oliver Wendell Holmes referred to this as “the hydrostatic principle in controversy,” whereby the fools drag everybody down to their own level.) The most robotic Emotionalist may also move up to the third circuit, temporarily, if a problem remains intractable to every form of emotional bullying or con-artistry. All of us will move into fourth-circuit Parent role or Super Ego—even little children will do it, imitatively—if it seems that the only way to get what one wants is to appeal to tribal morality: “Why, it would be positively, indecent not to do it the way Grandfather would …“ “Give us the child until he is five, and we will have him for life,” bragged some 18th Century Jesuit.

Highlight(pink) - Location 1705 Nonetheless, most people in most societies do grow up as fairly accurate replicas of the previous generation. Most children educated by the Jesuits have remained Catholics. Most children of Democrats do not become Republicans. Etc.
Highlight(pink) - Location 1707 Considering the wide variety of philosophies available to any of us, the fact that most people remain in the same reality-tunnel as their parents, does indicate that acculturalization is a mind control process. We are all giants, raised by pygmies, who have learned to walk with a perpetual mental crouch. Unleashing our full stature—our total brain power—is what this book is all about.

Highlight(pink) - Location 1711 There is a Zen story (very funny—ha-ha) about a monk who, having failed to achieve “enlightenment” (brain-change) through the normal Zen methods, was told by his teacher to think of nothing but an ox. Day after day after day, the monk thought of the ox, visualized the ox, meditated on the ox. Finally, one day, the teacher came to the monk’s cell and said, “Come out here—I want to talk to you.” “I can’t get out,” the monk said. “My horns won’t fit through the door.” I can’t get out … At these words, the monk was “enlightened.” Never mind what “enlightenment” means, right now. The monk went through some species of brain change, obviously. He had developed the delusion that he was an ox, and awakening from that hypnoidal state he saw through the mechanism of all other delusions and how they robotize us.

Highlight(pink) - Location 1718

EXERCIZES

Recreate vividly in imagination your first orgasm. To what extent do you still use the same accessories (stimuli) to turn you on?
Try to change your sexual imprint. See if you can reach orgasm by some method that has been taboo or unthinkable to you before.
Imagine that you are Rev. Jerry Falwell. Explain to an imaginary homosexual why his sexual imprint is “sinful” and should be changed at once. Include instructions on how to change it.
Imagine that you are a Gay man or Lesbian. Explain to Rev. Falwell why you will not or can not change your sexual imprint to please him.
Read Margaret Mead’s Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies. Then write a five-page proof that the taboos in our tribe make more sense objectively than the taboos of the tribes she studied. Be serious about it!
Choose the viewpoint of the Samoans in Dr. Mead’s book above. Write a five-page proof that their taboos make more sense than those of our society. Be serious about it.
Re-read the paragraphs about the giraffe and the gosling. What does this tell you about your sexual imprint? What is your jeep or your ping-pong

Notes

Amount: 10

🔮 The Cosmos

Prometheus Rising Chapter 8. The Moral Socio-Sexual Circuit

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