Oedipus: Klep Model

Oedipus

Hubris Meets Integrity: An Honest Model for Kleptocrats

Theme: we have the same political structure as did Rome, as did the Jews, as did Jerusalem. Jesus could get kangarooed by us just as easily as he got kangarooed by Herod, Pilat, Augustus ... you and me. I don't care if the Republicans or the Democrats of the Communists are in so long as we are ruled by hierarchies of supposed experts using proxies: human exercising judgments without demonstrating (to any but ourselves) that our judgments are worth a damn.

Cave men couldn't have crucified Jesus, or put a contract out on Luther: because cave men didn't have big complex bureaucracies the lies of which complexify at every level. Cave men could have murdered Jesus, shot arrows at him the instant he first appeared; but they wouldn't have had trials, and jails, and specialists in flogging ... We do.

I rewrite, hoping to condense, points made more than a decade ago at Knatz.com: about the myth of Oedipus.

Oedipus was born to a king and queen (in the days where every town, certainly every county, had its own king. The king and queen, superstitious like everyone else, took their babe to the temple where a prophecy was made: the little prince Oedipus would grow up to kill his father and marry his mother. It's a you-can't-avoid-your-own-destiny kind of story. The royal couple try to avert the prophecy by killing their son. But of course they're squeamish, have specialists to do their work for them, priests, soldiers ... murderers. But the murderer is a softie too. He takes the kid to a border and leaves him in the "wilderness." Naturally the kid survives, is adopted by the king and queen of the next county over, raised as a prince: their prince.

Princes are trained in war, trained to be regal, haughty: ready to draw the sword at every perceived slight. So Prince Oedipus is out on the public road with his princely train, along comes some other doofus in his princely train. Get out of the way, No, you get out of the way. They fight. The younger man kills the older man. Oedipus goes about his business, thinks nothing of it.

Oedipus' foster parents hear that their neighboring kingdom has lost its king. Local royalty is being solicited to find a replacement king. Oedipus' parents volunteer Oedipus. Let's say that Oedipus real parents were the royal family of Sebring. Let's say that Oedipus' foster parents were the king and queen of Avon Park, a few miles up the road. Oedipus leaves Avon Park, his princedom, and travels south to Sebring. There's the unmanned kingdom, there's the widowed queen: unknown to him, unknown to her, his biological mother (who believes that her ill-starred son has been done away with). Oedipus does what is common to lots of cultures: as the new king he has an income, a palace. In that palace is the widow who's been there since time immemorial. He marries her. (It was their Social Security. The Arabs do the same thing, Mohammed did the same thing.)

Time passes. Plenty of kings wouldn't have bothered to sleep with their aged new queen; Oedipus and his mom had children, seem to have gotten along, must have perhaps even liked each other. So he did sleep with her, and loved her.

Oedipus is aware one year that things aren't going swimmingly with his kingdom. The priests say that it's a representation of the gods' displeasure that the murder of the late king hasn't been avenged. It's state of the nation type stuff. Oedipus responds. He commissions a committee to look into it. He'll chair the committee. Evidence trickles in, then pours. Oedipus finally realizes: he's been looking for the mother fucker: he's found him: it's he himself!

Oedipus rushes to see his queen. She's heard the news. She's seen that she and her former king's efforts to defy fate have only rebounded to kick them in the teeth. She hangs herself. Oedipus finds his dead mother, queen, consort, he takes her hair pin from her hair, he stabs his own eyes out. He can't bear to see what's happened to him, what he's done, what he's been party to.

Now: I've asked for decades, loving this story (and hating our own vanity, our own hubris): if one asked Oedipus, Did you kill your father? he'd reply, No, of course not. Maybe he'd add, How dare you? Maybe he'd play marimbas on your ribs after they'd bleached in the sun for a few years. But how could he be sure?

What if you asked him, Have you ever killed anyone? He'd say, Of course, what do you take me for? a faggot?

OK, enough of that for the moment: here's pk real point, pk's pk point:

If you ask an American, Have you killed God? They'll say, nearly all or any of them, No, of course not!
If you ask an American, Have any of your representatives killed God? They'll say, No, of course not!
If you ask an American, Have you or any of your representatives tortured any innocent party? Misappropriated their property? Not paid your bills? The first answers will be emphatic and indignant. As the questions progress, they'd become a bit more uncertain: except you wouldn't get to ask so many questions before you'd find yourself in jail, stripped of your rights, your property, your identity.

We don't know what we have and haven't done. That's why God will do the judging; not us.

Kafka has K immediately blurt on being charged, I'm innocent. But K doesn't even know what the charges are! How can he plead innocence?

Better questions are: Are your political institutions corruptible?
Have you ever looked at a Van Gogh painting in the museum? in an ad? in a movie? How is any such person not guilty?

How dare we quote Jesus? Did we pay him for the original utterance? Have we paid his disciples?

Have we paid the Father?

Are you sure? Are you sure we didn't give the money to a bunch of priests? How do we know the priests passed the money to God?

The US pays its debts to banks and to major corporations: does the US pay its debts to its enemies? To the natives whose land, ideas, institutions, culture we're stolen? To Sutter whose rout west we took, then took his gold? To Illich whose social networking we've perverted? To me whose offer of inter-networked digital libraries got stolen, and perverted?

Cave men may have murdered each other left and right (not really, or we wouldn't be here), but they didn't do atrocious things as a "nation": or as a "religion."

Hypocrisy Laughs

Living in a kleptocracy is a bundle of laughs. One of my chuckles this morning comes from headlines about some sports medicine person testifying about possibly testifying about conversations with Lance Armstrong, years ago, when he had cancer. The rumor is that he'd confided to her that he'd taken performance enhancing drugs. McGuire, Bonds ... Clements, Armstrong ... Oh, no: people wouldn't cheat in a money mad society, would they?

Hypocrisy laughs all the way to the bank.

And just the other week there was a story about some poor kid who confessed his way out of a golf tournament win. He'd unwittingly carried an illegal fifteenth club in his bag. No one accused him; but himself. That's what myths about the purity of golf will do to the impressionable young.

I'm reminded of the story from the Decameron where the dying old sinner confesses to a priest that he'd once had disrespectful thoughts about his mother. The priest runs around getting the old bastard declared a saint!

Spectator sports are how a society of managed consumers pretends to be active and engaged in fair competition. Did you ever look at Clements on the mound? He was cheating with every breath he took. One look: and a fair society would have DSQ'd him for life: or at least have given him the Oscar for intimidation. (Except he wasn't acting: he really would knock you down!

The Liars Paradox

In creating itself the US penned a Constitution, then added some Amendments. The first and most famous promises that Congress will make no law limiting freedom of speech.

Notice the difference between parents naming their infant daughter Chastity and journalists hailing a First Lady as chaste and anthropologists attributing chastity to a dead society.

By the time of Teddy Roosevelt our Rough Rider said the following:When compared with the suppression of anarchy every other question sinks into insignificance. The anarchist is the enemy of humanity, the enemy of all mankind, and his is a deeper degree of criminality than any other. No immigrant is allowed to come to our shores if he is an anarchist; and no paper published here or abroad should be permitted circulation in this country if it propagates anarchist opinions.The popular mind misquotes The exception proves the rule, misunderstanding the word proof. The phrase means put to the test, means disprove. In reason exceptions mean that a rule must be restated, improved: upgraded until there are no exceptions. But in government common sense applies: generalizations about the society need have no examples that are true!

In the 1970s Ivan Illich, my mentor's, best-sellers weren't reissued, were taken out of circulation, disappeared from libraries. My books weren't published. When I published things myself I was arrested, my domain censored, by a federal court stone deaf to all argument but its own. But never mind what the government did — we should be well used to mendacious hypocritical repressive government — what did the people do? Nothing! (What right do we have to be called people?)

Anyway, as often and long as I've thought about all of the above, I just thought of a meta-angle on it for the first time: a polity making generalizations about itself is logical nonsense! The parents can name the girl but not at her birth report on her nature as an adult. The journalist can claim anything about any luminary, but what claim to truth does journalism have? No. Anthropologists make be wrong, may be ignorant, may be prejudiced, but it's only the anthropologist who has much chance of veracity: because it's a report on something finished, not a prediction made while something is beginning or ongoing.

It's nonsense for a country to say that it has freedom of speech at its beginning. It's nonsense for a government to promise it. Freedom and government are opposites. Governments promises about freedom make as much sense as Satan's bargain with Eve: what made Eve think that Satan had Knowledge to sell? Wasn't that God's purlieu? Wasn't she buying the Brooklyn Bridge? from a non-owner?

The liar's paradox analyzes the pattern formally:

This sentence is a lie.

Russell, Bateson ... explain: the sentence references itself. It's a meta-statement phrased as a statement. If it's true that the statement is true, then the statement must be false: if it's false that the statement is false, the the statement must be true. The grammar misleads us to think that sense has been stated. It hasn't. All such pronouncements are formally meaningless.

When I was released from jail and sent to a halfway house run by the Salvation Army, the institution had a statement printed on the wall. It told of how the future would judge the Salvation Army's performance! (PS: None of the Salvation Army's promises were manifest in its behavior!) That's like the church telling us who's in heaven! Uh, Isn't that up to God? Shouldn't we wait till the race is over before we try cashing wagers?

So. Look at the Constitution. Sounds liberal. Look at the US's behavior. Anything but.

Read the papers. All glowing.

And now the magician while shuffling a perfectly ordinary deck of cards will make the Ace of Spades flutter down from the chandelier.

Stealing Expertise

I love the scene in the movie Schindler's List where the Nazis are herding some Jews somewhere as other Nazis work on a structure, a bridge or something. The military oafs are doing things in their militarily oafish way, the blind scurrying to follow the blind, betting your life as well as their own that testosterone can substitute for intelligence without penalty. A woman among the Jews tells them they're doing it wrong and corrects them. The Nazi in charge has her shot.

I just looked the movie up at IMdb.com hoping the dialogue would be quoted. I find what must be the scene:Reiter: I'm a graduate of Civil Engineering from the University of Milan.
Amon Goeth: Ah, an educated Jew... like Karl Marx himself. Unterscharfuehrer!
Hujar: Jawohl?
Amon Goeth: Shoot her.
Reiter: Herr Kommandant! I'm only trying to do my job!
Amon Goeth: Ja, I'm doing mine.But this "quote" leaves out my favorite part! The woman is shot. Some other flunky says to the Nazi who gave the order to shoot her, But what should we do about the bridge? And the leader, this Goeth I presume, says, Do exactly as she suggested!

Ah, kleptocracy. As though it's OK to crucify Jesus so long as after we've done so Caesar Augustus tells us to do what Jesus said.

Wrong. We're still damned. Because though we steal what the dead Jesus said at thirty-three, we don't get to hear what the living Jesus might have said at thirty-four! or forty-four, or eighty-four ... But we'll always kill the golden goose, believing we've now maximized our profit.

I'm glad I've always been interrupted before anyone understood a word I was trying to say: otherwise I might have succeeded in saving you! You not knowing what I offered is my revenge!

Belief (in Kleptocracy)

Were we cavemen it might not make much difference whether we believed in common sense gravity or in Newtonian gravity or in Einsteinian gravity.

(Common sense gravity: what goes up must come down;

Newtonian gravity: all matter is attracted to all other matter;

Einsteinian gravity: space is warped and

matter rolls to the low places.)

Ask a priest (of any of kleptocracy's many religions) and the priest may not much care either. Indeed, few priests, whether for Jahweh, Jehovah, Buddha or Baal, will see much significance in the differences among those three (or perhaps other) theories of gravity.

No. No one cares whether you believe that the God kidnapped from the Jews by the Christians "made" the world in six days six thousand years ago. Such sacred beliefs are merely practice for the patently absurd beliefs of the secular social system. You swallowed "Father knows best"? (Maybe after long ago swallowing Mother knows best?) Then you swallowed God knows best? Then we swallowed King John knows best?

Now we're supposed to believe that the teacher knows best (though her intellect is clearly very ordinary)? Now we're supposed to believe that the draft board knows best? or that Congress knows best? or, God help us, the New York Times?

Encore Kleptocracy

Why, after it's caught lying to us, is the Church still the Church?

After they're caught buggering their altar boys (our children) why are the priests still living off the skim?

Why after traffic all stalls is the bureaucracy at the MVB still drawing salaries?

The White House still the White House? Wall Street still Wall Street? The Constitution still the Constitution?

Be patient.

(There's nothing else to be.)

The Past, the Present, won't be the Future for much longer.

Divine Messages

I used to believe that God was using me to convey certain ideas to my fellow man. Now I believe that God was using me to prove that those ideas could not be communicated to contemporary kleptocrats.

What I don't get is what's the point? Who is God demonstrating it to?

Any human paying attention would already know that. Could Satan not already know it? Or could Satan be demonstrating it to God?!

And my finally figuring it out is mere byplay.