When Gods War
By
Cognitive Dissonance
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When I entered high school back in 1969 the small town I grew up in was just introducing a more flexible, dare I say liberal, curriculum to broaden my indoctrination experience. I vividly remember the excitement exhibited by the principal as he (there were no ‘she’ high school principals in Southern New England back then) addressed the incoming freshman class about the educational wonders “We the Guinea Pigs” were about to encounter.
I for one was as excited as the principal, having grown exceedingly bored with the standard canned textbook fare that passed for a Middle School (then called Junior High) education. In fact it was so new that even though we had already selected our High School freshman classes several months earlier just before leaving for summer vacation, there were now a few gaps in the schedule we could fill with ‘electives’. I thought I had died and gone to heaven. “Electives? You mean I can pick my own poison?”
Quickly I seized upon two courses that sounded interesting, “Greek Mythology” and “Totalitarianism and Appeasement”. The guidance counselor who was assisting the planning of my cognitive conditioning was aghast, quickly informing me that oil and water do not mix. Thankfully she (guidance counselors of that era were almost exclusively female, the maternal instinct considered oh so important to my guidance) could find no published rules disallowing my choices and I would not be swayed by her stern disapproval. I was in like Flynn.
Looking back from the vantage point of four plus decades of acquired wisdom I can better appreciate her concern for my welfare. Was I insane? Learning about the Gods of ancient Greece in conjunction with global politics during the run up to the World War Two madness was most assuredly a potent cocktail for my tender brain cells and not to be treated lightly. Our formal grade school ‘education’ is carefully planned out by ‘experts’, with one conditioning step after another explicitly designed to properly train Pavlov’s Dogs. Clearly I was messing with the secret sauce.
Similar to two classes of drugs that by themselves are ‘safe’, but when taken together are deadly, recognizing similarities between the ancient Greek War Gods and the Nuclear Gods of twentieth century Warring Earth was either going to be supremely enlightening or my cognitive subsystems would go critical and melt down. From the point of view of the masters of the universe it was the latter that befell me. As Mrs. Cog would say “I was ruint” and would never be a fit wage slave suitable for gainful exploitation….err….employment.
Two hundred years ago I would have been cast out of school on my arse and sent off to the salt mines to toil away my days till death did I part, broken by hard labor, slave wages and the foreman’s whip. Thankfully this was 1969 in New England so my sentence was commuted to two more years as a Roman Catholic altar boy and seventeen million recitals of the “Act of Contrition [10]”. Ah, those were the blessed days my friend. “Thank you Father, may I have another? [11]”
I suppose if I had taken both courses during the same semester my head would have exploded. Thankfully this was not the case, having elected to swim with the Gods during the first semester and then dive into the dictators during the second marking period. To this day I’m not sure exactly why I selected the Greek Gods first; though being pubescent I suspect the opportunity to gaze upon images of half naked statues of Goddesses for homework might have been a significant draw.
To be perfectly frank I didn’t quite understand what the term mythology meant since everything I had learned up to this point was taught as iron clad fact, no questions allowed. Early on in our indoctrination we are trained to question who, what, where, and when, but never ever why. One simply does not question the control system itself, only the cancerous symptoms of the control system.
One of the advantages of being ‘me’ was a last name that fell near the end of the alphabet, which nearly always assured me a seat in the back of the class. Strategically located as I was during the first day of Mythology class, as soon as the textbooks were passed out I quickly scanned the pages for images, then dog-eared each nubile no-no for rapid retrieval at any time.
I wasn’t too concerned about the disposition of my soul considering all the images were school board approved and I attended confession every Saturday and did God’s service on Sundays. Doing so assured me I was a lock, so why not dabble with the devil now and then as long as I confessed my transgressions to the proper authorities?
By the end of the first week I was thoroughly traumatized by how utterly violent, homicidal actually, and quite human-like these Greek Gods of War seemed to be. The Catholic Church assured me ‘my’ War God was all cuddles and kittens (as long as I ignored the Old Testament) so to find ‘these’ Gods sleeping around without wearing a condom, smiting the poor humans just because of a bad hair day and falling down drunk at all times of the day was, in my opinion at least, conduct unbecoming of a True God.
Even though I had not begun the “Totalitarianism and Appeasement” class, thus I had not gained that particularly unique perspective yet, the similarities between the angry spiteful Greek Gods and present day society’s duplicitous leaders were glaringly obvious and I was foolish enough to say so in my out loud voice. Since I was speaking truth to the blind I quickly became persona non grata, with even my fellow slave students turning on me.
“Just shut up and stop asking questions” I was told, then beaten about the head by the school bully-for-hire as the blunt instrument designed to drive home the message. Half way through the second week the teacher stopped answering my questions altogether and simply ignored my raised hand, regardless of if it was just a request for a visit to the comfort station. Thank the Gods of War that I had superior bladder control.
One must carefully consider the cultural time frame in order to appreciate the insanity I was pushing back against. A year or so removed from “The Tet Offensive [12]” which coincided with peak United States involvement in the insanity called “The Vietnam War [13]”, Walter Cronkite’s evening news was a grim blood and guts recital of bombs, booby traps and body counts, both ‘ours’ and ‘theirs’.
I was curious, fascinated even, about the ‘fact’ that the number of enemy soldiers killed was always two to three times ours. Kind of made you proud in a sick sort of way that our War Gods were that much more effective at squashing the puny humans then their clearly inferior junior grade war gods (please note the small ‘g’). Odd how it was that only much later did we ‘discover’ there were huge numbers of women and children mixed into that bloody body count.
While it appeared our Gods of War wanted to ‘win’ the conflict, or at least they said they did, they certainly weren’t trying very hard. Little did I know this was the new blueprint for future God like productions such as Afghanistan and Iraq. I was old enough to comprehend the facts, but much too young to fully understand the madness. Cultural insanity is learned the hard way; by brute force repetition and total immersion rather than the light touch of reason and logic.
My questions were reasonable enough by any standards…..at least for a nation that wasn’t already totally insane. “Why were the Gods Warring” I would ask mom, dad, teachers, anyone I perceived to be an authority. Terms such as collateral damage, fratricide, napalm, friendly fire, My Lai, mine fields, cluster bombs and fragging were bandied about on the TV, in the newspapers, even between family members and strangers in the same tone of voice one would use to discuss the weather, gardening or the locally beloved Red Sox. Same ole same old.
The insanity was so normalized, so integrated into everyday living, that it was rendered innocuous, harmless even, or so it was thought. Sure, ‘our’ boys were dying over there, but it was the returning walking (or wheeled) wounded you actually had to watch out for. While the dead mortals were quickly shipped home in flag draped boxes and honorably buried (“Teacher, why don’t we honor the living so they won’t be shot dead?”) those damn wounded just wouldn’t go away. They were so public, so obvious, so in your face. It was one thing to read about ‘them’ in the papers, another thing entirely to meet them face to face.
To this day I vividly remember overhearing a conversation between my father and the next door neighbor about another neighbor’s son. He had returned home after surviving his turn as cannon fodder for the Warring Gods missing ‘only’ his right arm and several fingers on his left hand. My father was irritated that this ‘wounded warrior’ was walking around the neighborhood scaring the kids half to death. Why didn’t he have the decency to remain inside during daylight hours? Out of sight, out of mind I guess.
My head still spins when I think about how people would talk about ‘The War’ without ever discussing anything significant or relevant. Always who, what, when, where and never WHY. We are only as sick as our deepest darkest secrets, those inner Uglies we’d rather not discuss collectively or individually. Best to leave the boogieman under the bed where he belongs rather than drag him out for confrontation. We were all just cannon fodder for the War Gods, so why get all worked up over it?
Patty Hearst and the SLA [14] had not yet appeared on the scene to mirror our own inner madness, Stockholm Syndrome writ large in our hearts and minds. Embrace the insanity with a full body love hug or be consumed by our own cognitive dissonance. Besides….the Warring Gods would eventually tire from their labors and collapse into bed to sleep it off, leaving us chattel to get back to the business of living before another royal row sets up the next cattle slaughter.
Like a hot potato passed rapidly from hand to hand to avoid a nasty scorching, my Mythology instructor bestowed upon me near perfect grades, regardless of my actual classroom submissions, in order to avoid any possibility of an after school one on one for conduct unbecoming of a student peon. Mama didn’t raise no fool and she wasn’t going to put herself alone in the same room with me and my questions.
Regardless of the quality of the homework handed in or the mark received when it was returned, the report card always showed I was at the top of the class. The teacher was not going to risk a parent teacher conference for a closer inspection of the offspring’s Genesis, let alone a return for a second semester.
Of course this was shear brilliance on her part because I wasn’t going to complain about grade inflation. Besides, I wanted to believe that the higher grade was based upon my classroom participation. It seems my conditioning was working after all. I got the message and kept my head, and hand, down for the rest of the semester.
The Greek Mythology class completed, my reputation preceded me when I walked into the “Totalitarianism and Appeasement” class to start the second semester (I loved referring to it as my “T&A class”, always with a dirty smirk on my face) and was greeted with a scowl from the teacher, quickly followed by “Oh, it’s you”. Even before the other students were seated I was escorted out to the hall and verbally dressed down, in essence read the riot act for crimes against the state of education.
“I’ve heard you’re a trouble maker, and I’ll have none of that in my class,” I was informed, finger wagging two inches from my face. “You mind your P’s and Q’s and we’ll get along just fine.” I suppose that was not the time to ask my first question, but it wasn’t my fault that I didn’t know the definition of P’s and Q’s. “Don’t you be smart with me young man” was the explanation I received. Not a good start by any stretch of the imagination, and it was all downhill from there.
While Greek Mythology could always be, and actually was, explained away as fantasy story telling by toga wearing Neanderthals if some rabble rousing child started asking difficult questions, T&A was an entirely different matter. This was modern history, the reciting of horrible events barely 20 years past, massaged and managed of course to agree with generally accepted lies. Worse, the present day (1970) Godly hostilities playing out in Southeast Asia were simply a continuation of “WW(restlemania) II, When Gods Play Rough” and no freshman teacher was going to stop the flood of questions that floated to the surface of the cesspool once the top was popped open.
With the benefit of hindsight it is now clear that what really irked me about that class was the tone of the instruction, which just reflected the arrogance expressed in the textbook and of the times. Look at what those silly War Gods did back in the 30’s and 40’s, how misguided they were while power wrestling among the mortals. Too bad several million were crushed under foot over such a silly misunderstanding. Our Gods of War, the new and improved Gods of 1970, would never be so foolish as to make the same mistake again. And the teacher said all this and more with a straight face.
I was equally dumbstruck by the fact that the teacher appeared to believe what she was saying and that my fellow student slaves were lapping it up unquestioningly. I was not gifted with immense insight or great intelligence, but even at my tender young age I could recognize that the mighty War Gods had not learned the error of their ways and were in fact just playing the same old tune in a different key.
Dear teacher assured me otherwise. “It’s different this time. We’re stopping the spread of God hating commies.” Well……that explained that, and I of all people should understand the importance of his Holiness’s crusade since I was an altar boy who wore the sacred black and white vestments and could regurgitate Latin adoration upon command. “Mea Culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. [15]” Translation: “My bad bro.”
We mere mortals are not properly wired to understand the wondrous ways of the War Gods, having been deeply conditioned into the slave mentality from birth. All we need to know, the one training we must embody in order to be properly assimilated and then exploited, is what’s good for the Gods of Mayhem is good for the slaves. Always remember, when the Gods feast on barbecued humanity and drink their blood wine we are blessed with God given Golden Showers.
Don’t bother yourself with trying to understand the divine madness of the God Wars, the fallout which consumes your mind and destroys your body. Just busy yourself with counting the nano angels dancing on the head of that nail driven through the palm of your hand while you follow the slave into the valley of death. One hot potato, two hot potato, three hot potatoes more. Blinders or blindfolds anyone? I’ve got plenty more where they came from.
There seems to be a general consensus among those whom you and I may consider at least somewhat ‘awake’ and those whom we might consider still deeply asleep. Sooner or later war is inevitable because the Divine Gods of War deem bloodletting to be good….or at least vitally necessary. Who needs leaches to cure our ills when we have Divine intervention?
I would hazard a guess that the vast majority of ‘We the Fragile Humans’, when encouraged to think for ourselves and to ponder the terrible destruction to our own life and limb, would agree that wars have no purpose or benefit to us personally. Then again, what good is a war machine if you ain’t gonna use it.
The next time the War Gods of finance, government, politics, industry, military, health care and especially the Divine Gods of the mainstream media implore ‘us’ to fight their wars of Peace and Godliness, just say NO. These are not ‘your’ wars, these are the Wars of Gods fought by the fragile humans of Earth for the benefit and amusement of the self appointed and self proclaimed Divine and Omnipotent. Cast off the mind meme and reject the wizard’s war ‘spell’, the claims of imminent attack and close proximity to danger. They are all lies.
The Money Meme is failing and the Ponzi is crumbling; the central banking War Gods are losing control of the ‘faith and belief’ support that is the glue that holds it all together. Public support for the Pontificating Politicians is at all time lows, and these mid level Mayhem Muckers are desperate to distract, divide and destroy in order to divert attention from themselves and their puppeteers.
The war drums are booming and those among us susceptible to the blood lust beat are beginning to rouse. In other words, the table is set for that inevitable war everyone expects and feels powerless to stop. You and I are not responsible, nor should we be responsible, for the decisions others make unless and until we are responsible for our own.
Do not defer to the herd, to assume it is hopeless simply because the herd is surging. Refuse to be passive, to go limp in the face of insanity and a perceived lost cause. Be personally sovereign and responsible to and for yourself. Do not under any circumstances surrender your power to the Gods of War. By not preserving and conserving our power exclusively for ourselves it is slowly bled from us as if we are mortally wounded, slowly bleeding out on the battle field. Worse, we don’t die, but rather remain in a severely weakened state, near comatose and tragically incoherent.
I have been speaking of late about personal sovereignty, of how first and foremost it is a State of Mind [16]. The buck stops here for I alone decide if I will release the power that springs from within me and transfer it to the War Gods. If I were to do so, the sole result of this transaction would be that my power is used against me. I am a sovereign entity, a State of One, head honcho and chief bottle washer of Cognitive Dissonance. The Gods of War will not have my consent. Will they have yours?
03-23-2014
Cognitive Dissonance
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Man's Best Friend - WAR