timothy Leary’s dead
Sun 1.12.20
My interest lately is in how we got to be the human species we are today. How did fear come to dominate humans? If you look at everything you do, every act, every service, every thought is to a great extent motivated by fear. It is so ingrained in the human character that folks don’t see how it defines them, I can hear you out there; that’s not me, she’s not writing about me. Yes, I am.
If you had no fears you wouldn’t be striving for recognition, acceptance, awards. If you had no fears you would not need another’s recognition, their certificate. I remember reading a statement by the clinical psychologist, Timothy Leary addressed to his audience in academe that if a person wanted to practice psychotherapy, they should just do it. Well, I thought, it’s ok for Tim to say that from his perch teaching at Harvard. But his words have stayed with me. He at the time was ingesting a lot of LSD and he’d come to an awareness far different then most.
The first logical response to his statement would be: you need a license to be a therapist. There might even be laws against it. You don’t need a license to speak to people. Yeah but, you can’t collect payments from insurance companies for your work without the license. So what you’re saying is that the state decides who the therapists are. Years in colleges are demanded. You could learn a few things to be sure, but most of it is of little value. You are paying your dues, as they say. You are performing, like the baby in the mirror who discovers this whole new dimension of himself. He waves a hand, he tips his head sideways.
The reason our would-be therapist does not go out and set up his therapy shop is because he’s afraid. Operating outside the system that confers validity, remuneration, accolades is risky. Most societies have evolved in such a manner that they have absolute control over its populace, from food on the table to protection from outside forces. The proper response to Timothy Leary’s statement is that one is too afraid to step away from society’s protection to strike out on one’s own. It is our fear screaming at us everyday from the performing dolls on TV to the politicians with their pockets full of ill-gotten gains, we create this fantasy every day. I tell you this because . . . EVERYBODY KNOWS, what’s coming. The system as it is set up no longer works. It’s a Ponzi scheme. Fear as a motivating factor brings about it’s own destruction. The financial management world is collapsing because of fear’s mate which is greed.
The people are not told these things because . . . yes, fear. Fear of what people would do should they know how precarious the whole set up is. It’s a pack of lies and as they say, if you tell it long enough, not only will the people believe it, but so will its reporter. One of the outcomes of 2008 Great Recession was the birth of entrepreneurship, the guy with his own carpentry gig, the lady who set up shop designing websites. People stepped out of the system and made their own way, got on the internet, got a website, produced a product or offered services that were wanted and needed.
We have religions to thank for our serfdom. The very first police state formed was the inquisition. Christianity developed a vast network of followers, priests, bishops that spied on people to make sure they were interpreting the correct teachings of the Church. They saw women’s wisdom as practiced by men and women as not in line with orthodoxy. Millions died in the most horrific ways. They feared the lack of church control over an individual’s relationship with God; they feared the troubadours, the Cathars who had a more joyful, immediate and intimate bond with the deity. And of course, they feared a loss of power.
The favorite essay this month has been, André Gide
