Consciousness and Culture

I pointed out in my last post that I have had hallucinations, one when I was five and one when I was 21. They didn't happen in a vacuum; they were based on the culture I was raised in (a monster from a movie, a bee, a woman wearing high heels). While our consciousness is based on our culture...there is apparently a feedback system. A cybernetic system, you can say. Consciousness affects culture...and culture affects consciousness.

(I also once had a vivid nightmare about, of all things, the Buckners - the Zombie Redneck Torture Family in the movie, The Cabin in the Woods. )

Our culture certainly limits our consciousness (perhaps I should say "belief-systems") and then we turn around and use those belief systems to determine our culture. That's what I mean by a cybernetic feedback system.

Ideally, those beliefs should give us importance, meaning and community in our lives. When our lives are in ferment - or perhaps I should say chaos - it can be awfully hard to find those things. And it can be especially bad when you have clashing belief systems ("multiculturalism" aka Cultural Marxism) attempting by law to force their consciousness on everyone else.

When all is "equal", all equally meaning nothing.

The "goodness" of any belief is how satisfying it is to people, and the kind of culture it creates. In other words, the kind of people - their consciousness - and how it is created by the culture.

Since art imitates life, it's not all that hard too see what is happening by looking at art. For example, Superman, who used to stand for Truth, Justice and the American Way, gave up his U.S. citizenship in early 2011 to become a "citizen of the Universe." What's next - the Hulk coming out as gay? (There have been attempts to turn Catwoman into a Jewish dyke. Fredric Wertham who in the early 50's raged against comic books with his Seduction of the Innocent, would have throw fits over what exists today.)

You may say, "Well, those are only comic books," but that's what kids read when they're growing up, and it certainly can affect them. Personally, I consider them art, just as I consider "Dibert" to be art (it certainly does reflect stupid bosses and life in a cubicle).

Art is supposed to be constructive and worthwhile. It's not supposed to degrade. Aristotle defined it "as the realization in external form of a true idea." In other word, the Good, the True, and the Beautiful.

These infections (perhaps cancer is a better word) are everywhere these days, and they are of course leftist. I understand why people are pulling their kids out of the public schools. I've known people who have moved into rural trailers to get their kids away from these demented influences. What are concerned parents supposed to do? Watch everything that can influence their kids in a bad way? To prevent the culture from influencing their consciousness in a bad way?

These leftists for years have been doing a Gramscian march through our institutions. Now they're trying to get to our kids through comic books. What's next? Fairy tales (oops, feminists have already rewritten fairy tales to suit their beliefs.)

To quote from the Amazon blurb for Barbara G. Walker's Feminist Fairy Tales: "Prominent feminist author Barbara Walker has revamped, retold, and infused with life some of your favorite classic fairy tales. No longer are women submissive, helpless creatures in need of redemption through the princely male! Instead they are vibrantly alive, strong women who take fate into their own hands."

"Vibrantly alive, strong women." Now where have I heard that before?

Leftists, all of whom are anywhere from four to 12 years old emotionally, think human nature is infinitely plastic. All they have to do is get children young enough - from fairy tales to comic books - and then mold them into what they want. They're wrong about it, just as they are wrong about just everything else.

I sometimes wonder what it would be like to live in a culture where you could not read or watch what you wanted. It'd be one in which you guard your thoughts and could say what it only accepted - because if you slipped terrible things might happen to you. It'd be a hell. Czesław Miłosz well understood that dynamic in his The Captive Mind.

Sooner or later, as has always happened in the past, people with common sense will knock leftist's heads together.

There will always be a reaction when people realize that certain people are trying to poison their children's minds - mutilate and sometimes destroy them.