Sadism – A political sport.

[info at furtherfield.org]

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Sadism – A political sport.

 

It is official; sadism is now a global international sport. Bush and Sharon are our equivalent contenders battling it out with Gladiatorial proportions. Of course they do not, in any way possess compassion, respect for life, helping the poor, or empathy like the characters Russell Crowe and Kirk Douglas did in the films Spartacus and The Gladiators. Plus Bush and Sharon seem to be going through a mid-life crisis, and bombing and killing helpless civilians is on par to a middle aged man deciding to get himself another woman or buying a brand new sports car or motorbike.

 

No, they are nothing like what we would expect from leaders of our countries. In fact they seem more like what Maximus and Spartacus thought against. What a shame it is for humanity that they are instead stuck in a repeated, psychotic groove, a pattern that they are not willing to move out of. We, humanity, us peasants, civilians (as usual) are tortured by their cynical, corporate owned armies. Their lack of imagination and lack of self-worth can be measured by the pain that they are causing in the world. 

 

No, they are not heroes; this is the shame of it all. They are over protected sadists, like a violent parent who cannot help but to inflict pain on their children. When the children cry louder they thump again, and we are all caught, trapped in the re-occurring nightmare. They are spreading their emptiness and poisonous contempt upon humanity each day, whilst the media shakes its head in an institutionalised confused haze, in the meantime they are getting away with it.   

 

Have a good look and think about all the leaders of the world and those controlling bosses who are constantly causing unrest in institutions and work environments internationally, and you will immediately notice the harsh similarities. What a mess these ape-men have created in the Middle East, the world. As they shoot via their socially constructed power over our submissive, blotchy faces. They have been given a free range to mutilate and create a bloody death orgy – in a massive (Lord of the Flies) playground. Where bullies with too much money, too much power, not enough love (self love) go through the process of whipping the world’s presumed slaves into shape. 

 

Of course sadism does not reside its psychological state in one single gender alone. Yet it is not a coincidence that it is the male of the human species that desires to dominate over others for their own personal gain. Bush and Sharon are both male, and along with such basic linear-type tradition, they feel driven to express their noncreative actions of violence on the people of the world. It’s ‘Dick Thing’, and a ‘Sadist Thing’. For the masochist, his/her world exists around the torturer’s whim, not knowing what they will do next. Each move is a matter of earth shattering consequence, as the victim suffers at the hand of the sadist. The sadist enjoys inflicting pain, it’s like a game and only the torturer knows the rules whilst the victim is a toy. 

 

One of the many Borgias’, Machiavellian tactics that we probably have all experienced in our everyday lives and with politics; is that they never let people know what their agendas actually are until it is too late. In contrast it seems fated that the masochist cannot help but to declare their own movements and intentions thus laying themselves open to corruption by the sadist.

 

(Sadism and masochism originate during the oral and anal phases of infantile development and are altered by later experience but their origin and growth is unconscious. While the cruelty of sadism and the suffering of masochism may appear to be separate, both are always present, one overt and the other covert so their combination is called sadomasochism.) Paul Lowinger.

 

INSERT: A little History on how America has been subjected to masochist conditioning…then the United Kingdom
 

America has been a perfect patient to look at in relation to its psychological state & its relationship as a culture to itself and the outer, other cultures. The impact that Anna Freud and Edward Bernays had on the capitalist dominated subconscious is depressing and unnerving. Bernays invented the profession of public relations in the 1920s and was the first person to take Freud's ideas to manipulate the masses. He showed American corporations how they could make people want things they didn't need by systematically linking mass-produced goods to their unconscious desires. Bernays was one of the main architects of the modern techniques of mass-consumer persuasion, using every trick in the book, from celebrity endorsement and outrageous PR stunts, to the eroticisation of the motorcar. 

 

His most notorious coup was to break the taboo on women smoking by persuading them that cigarettes were a symbol of independence and freedom. But Bernays was convinced that this was more than just a way of selling consumer goods. It was a new political idea of how to control the masses. By satisfying the inner irrational desires that his uncle had identified, people could be made happy and thus docile. It was the start of the all-consuming self that has come to dominate today’s world.

 

Freud’s ideas about the unconscious mind were used by those in power in post-war America to try and control the masses. Politicians and planners came to believe Freud’s underlying premise - that deep within all human beings were dangerous and irrational desires and fears. They were convinced that it was the unleashing of these instincts that had led to the barbarism of Nazi Germany. To stop it ever happening again they set out to find ways to control this hidden enemy within the human mind.

 

So we have now been caught up in the process of 'mediation of the self' by corporate means. This creates a sadomasochist environment where the people of a culture have no real information of what is happening in their own culture, or anyone else’s. So the Orwellian text 1984, which was meant to mean 1948, started in America years before.

 

Matthew Freud is now carrying the flame; often credited with being the creator of high impact, celebrity-led PR. His agency is one of the most high profile in show business with clients ranging from Madonna, Guy Ritchie, to Geri Halliwell and Chris Evans. He has the ear of the newspaper editors and will soon become an official member of the Murdoch family when he marries the media mogul's daughter Elisabeth. He is also marrying into the Murdoch family (empire). He has much to keep him busy outside the world of PR - he set up (and subsequently sold) Pharmacy restaurant in London with artist Damian Hirst and recently clinched the deal to take control of the UK media's favourite watering hole, the Groucho Club. Which is a place where many privileged artists in the UK hang out, you are not allowed in unless you are famous or have plenty of media clout.

 

(I got a lot of this information for - A little History on how America has been subjected to masochist conditioning, from a documentary on BBC2 called ‘The Century of the Self’).

 

So this gives us some idea of how processed and active masochism is, not just on the American people but also in the UK and Western culture via capitalist agendas. It is not much different than the function of religious brainwashing, subjecting the individual to feel in awe of the other, other than their original selves, superseding personal needs. So desire does not reside or settle with another person, a loved one alone, it shifts away from there to the point of recognizing self value either via a product or religious comforts. Both are external and potentially sublime, like nature, like the media, like god. 

 

Like what the excellent record says by ‘Mc 900ft Jesus’, Truth is out of style. And     

Propaganda is all about misinformation, placing all who conform to its almost omni potent power, to act out and be the masochist, the mediated, the submissive and prisoner and psychological victim of false information. It’s like having dodgy parents who do not tell you the real facts of life. 

 

Unlike the mad Caligula, who killed for insane pleasure, or Nero and his predecessors, who killed for political gain, the Borgias killed not only for pleasure and political gain, but for personal wealth. They were, indeed, the first crime family, a family unique to the annals of crime. They were not bound together by blood ritual, but by genes. Bush and Sharon may not be related but certainly do belong to the ‘Old Boys Club’, they both possess immense wealth and they are both keen to rule over others at whatever cost. And they are continuing the old fashioned Roman Empire scenario that controls wealth of the world by murdering, whilst misinforming the mob, the status quo, in the name of Neo-liberalism. 

 

Neo-liberalism that has of course replaced the old classical liberalism in its political as well as economic aspects, Replacing both feudal and communal structures with market capitalism and various kinds of pro-capitalist governments. Political life is organized through formal elections controlled by professional parties --usually organized around a more or less shared ideology. Behind a facade of pluralism, democracy is confined to those allowed to vote and to lobbying for those who can afford it.

 

A great weakness of our existing struggles against neo-liberalism is our isolation from each other. The business interests and policies which have crafted and imposed neo-liberalism are, unfortunately, much more united and coherent than we have been. Neo-liberalism has been designed, pushed and implemented by some of the biggest, most powerful institutions in the world. The masochist psyche is universal, just like the sadist persona. 

 

Sadism can only work successfully between consenting individuals if used for playful, intimate sexual role-play. But if it is taken out of its realm, brought into the world (outside) and used as a psychological weapon against a mass of individuals, a very different result occurs. It becomes a cold and calculated act used to impose thought control over the many for the gains of the few. The sadist’s enemy is the imagination, for it is our imaginations that explore new ideas and potential life adventures that are independent until mediated or officially suppressed. A good example is to look at the function of educative institutions. They survive by collecting the top thinkers in their culture so that they gain some kind of control over those individuals and their ideas, thus death of the author was not just an idea it was a necessity. The author is owned by the state unless that creative thinker dares to go against the grain and questions the fundamental function of that institution.

 

Sadism denies the victim to possess subjective reasoning, refusing a right to dispute what is being done to them. I’m sure that many of the people who are reading this are familiar with the saying ‘this is going to hurt me more than it is going to hurt you’. Yeah right, of course it will! The sadist, who can take on the disguise of the teacher, or a parent, priest and politician, enjoys inflicting pain on, or controlling people who have no power to question such actions. Sadism takes on many forms and is not always obvious until one realizes that one is doing something that one actually would not want to do because of the actions implemented by someone else.

 

It is time for people to take control and challenge all the sadists and all the institutions complicit in supporting them by working towards an alternative together, lets put status aside and start a cultural revolution. Lets push away this cynical Rome and move our selves headed for of a world that respects individuals on their own terms, their own imaginations, what they have to offer outside a work situation. Form collective groups that use business models to improve working environments world- wide on people’s terms, for their needs and not for marketing companies’ profitable needs or political needs. Let’s replace the old modernist style of from top down to, from bottom up, leveling the platform to a point that democracy can actually mean something worth while sharing.

 

POST: A few thoughts in relation to witnessing so many people being victimized by corporate controlled gorillas and small-minded (little men) despots, which do not care about the citizens of the world’s lives. I have not written a thesis or what can be termed as a cultural essay, but it is rather an emotional plea to all who can be bothered to read it. To those who are busy careering ‘the white man’s soul’, whilst not taking responsibility as a human to help others and themselves in an imaginative way. To those who work in the media and have not taken it upon themselves to stop the lies that are distributed as truth. To all those people who have been killed in history and are being killed, murdered today. To all those religious groups who value the sublime via male dominance over people’s lives. To all those people who reside behind institutional protocol leaving things to be changed by default and not actively trying to improve conditions and standards for the good of all. And of course to those who are actually bothering do something about this topsy-turvy world.

 

marc garrett

http://www.furtherfield.org   

 

Notes & References…
 

Where our imagination is, there our soul will be. I don't want to contribute to yet another method of self-improvement, no matter how soft and subtle. What I am recommending is nothing less than a cultural revolution: Getting out of the 20th century myth of success, progress, battle, and intelligent planning. We're in a new era now, I hope. And what I'm suggesting is not academic or abstract. It just requires a different way of approaching life. Until that shift is made, even the idea of care of the soul will be kept under the inappropriate rubric of finding a successful way of living. Thomas Moore.

 

Spartacus was the film that broke the Hollywood blacklist, giving open credit to screenwriter Dalton Trumbo who had been blacklisted during the McCarthy era. 

Here is the story of Spartacus, who led the great slave revolt against the Roman Republic in its last dying moments. I wrote this tale because I considered it an important story for the times in which we live. Not in the mechanical sense of historical parallels; but because there is hope and strength to be taken from such a story -- and because Spartacus lived not for one time of man but for all times of man. I wrote it to give hope and courage to those who would read it, and in the process of writing it, I gained hope and courage myself. http://www.trussel.com/hf/plots/t185.htm

 

Just as Bush once entertained himself by torturing animals, he now appears to enjoy executing his fellow Texans. But the misapplication of the death penalty is no laughing matter. For a recent case go to: Brooke A. Masters, " Innocent Man Nearly Executed" Washington Post, December 1, 2000.

 

Dark Eros – The imagination of Sadism. Thomas Moore.

The Most Radical Gesture – Sadi Plant.

Knowing how to know – Idries Shah.

 



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