TEN YEARS OF CHAOS MARXISM

Whoopee.

Take a look at how it was great when it all began (I was a regular Lenin fan), and what remains of those grand hopes that we were going to work out how to save all the movements for human liberation? Possibly only this: Nietzsche's old saw about "battle not with monsters lest ye become a monster". Replicated in Marx's "the ruling ideas of society are the ideas of the ruling class", and L. Ron Hubbard's (!!!) "if you fight an enemy and do not defeat it, you will assume its valence" - i.e. "turn into it".

I think we can boil down all we've usefully learned here to groupthink and tribe-against-tribe logic is the enemy, even if you're the good guys. This is all the more important in the social media era when it's the work of mere seconds to assemble a lynch mob to harass the bad guys into silence or suicide. It is our nature, having grown up in class society, to behave like this. The plus side of this is that reflexivity, humility, and opening to non-ego motivations of action are the only defence, and we must learn them and teach them to each other. And by "ego" we mean the collective ego of being the Good Guys, as well. Tony Cliff was wrong - the only way to actually overcome our enemy is to be asymmetrical to them.

Here are some very recent materials on the subject:

Embrace Your Inner Scientologist
Something I Said

A materialist enlightenment...

... is nothing more than reflexivity, the vision beholding itself, the "one I clapping". In other words: the psyche divides itself into ego, id and super-ego. The ego's job is to live in the World-That-Is, the Matrix, the "Real" World of Horrible Jobs. The ego gives you good reasons to do the things that the id wants to do but the super-ego finds shameful - and the id takes the blame. We could say that, in the older Judaic conceptions such as those found in the Book of Job, Satan is YHWH's id - as an angel he doesn't have free will, he's just a reflection/refraction of YHWH's attributes, but he's propped up for the rubes to blame as the guy who does the "dirty work" of the heavenly host.

"There is nothing more disillusioning as enlightenment", as Orton Nenslo put it. Brad Warner's description of an enlightenment experience in Hardcore Zen - a brief, beatific vision of identification with the Universe, as simply one of a countless number of moving viewpoints via which the totality explores itself through 4 dimensions - is materialistically identical with Jill Bolte Taylor's description of her cerebral infarct in My Stroke of Insight or Hazrat-e-Pir Javad Nurbakhsh's poetic formulation: "Say it plain, that God by God I see." It is the reflection on the individual level of Lukács' description of the proletariat recognising itself as the subject-object of history.

Adopting an ego means excluding the non-self, which means creating a "blind spot" or "censor barrier" through which the positionality of the ego can simply not be seen. The ego assumes a God's eye view and thus is God, in every meaningful way - as the hadith qudsi puts it, "He who knows himself knows his Lord". This is why Marxist praxis (theory mutually reinforcing practice) is necessary but not sufficient. The ego which evolved under capitalism will sabotage everything in order to keep up the barriers between "I" and "it" - it loves its own alienation because that gives it an excuse. It's so much easier to not be responsible. Watch how revolutionary groups and movements are destroyed by the reassertion of the leader-led dialectic of class society when things get tough - some people want an excuse to be Boss and order people around, and others want a Boss to take their responsibility away. Marty Rathbun is recently pointing out that too many of the "true believers" who have quit the increasingly insane $cientology cult have ended up starting their own cult, complete with all the "thought police" nonsense they were victimised by. It's all right for us to have a security-goon apparatus to protect ourselves, we're the good guys! Right? (For those not in the know, part of Hubbard technology is supposed to be making you able to confront everything - so exactly why do Scienos have to break off ties with friends who criticise the cult and aren't allowed to read teh intarwebz without a ent-nanny?) Marxists might recognize this as the "some of the biggest Stalinists are Trotskyists" syndrome, or noting that every split from Gerry Healey's cultish ICFI has kept all the cultist apparatus.

Jill Bolte Taylor saw her ego collapse - then put it back together, amazingly leaving out the bits she wasn't happy with - when a fuse blew in her left-brain hardware. This meant months in hospital and years of physical rehabilitation, of course, so I wouldn't recommend it for everyone. The more traditional way to go about it is a course of meditative practice, in which the mind is left "turning over in neutral" until the observing consciousness finds itself capable of confronting everything that it throws up, accepting but not reacting. That is the point of the (temporary) elimination of divisions between ego, id and super-ego; when restored, they can be edited, and recognized from personal experience as arbitrary. Caution: what you find out will disgust and disturb you, necessarily. It's coming to terms with everything that you hate, everything against which you found your very existence, and realising that THOU ART THAT. EGO ID SUM.

Double caution: Aleister Crowley calls this "crossing the abyss", and points out that getting all the way up to the dissolution of the ego and not going through with it turns you into a Black Brother, i.e. some monstrous thing. Brad Warner speculates that that's what happened to, for example, Aum Shinrikyo's leader (and I'd add Ron Hubbard to that) - you get to a certain level of insight, you get the realisation that YOU ARE IT, and the ego twists that into a self-preservation that becomes madness: "I [ego] am God and identical with the universe, which means I can do what I like! MWAHAHAHA!" Dr Nurbakhsh similarly likened the spiritual path to a game of snakes and ladders, where there's a great big snake going from square 99 all the way back to square 1.

(For those who've developed an unhealthy fan-boy attachment to the owner of this blog, a bit of personal information to solve that: my brief "enlightenment" experiences have pointed out to me that I deliberately make my life painful and difficult because I get a high from panic; that I toy with fantasies of cruelty to others; and that, despite everything I've written here, what I really want to do is switch off and go play video games all day long. I'm obsessed with making myself look good to others: the main real reason I write this blog is to make people think I'm cool, and the reason I write pseudonymously is just in case anyone doesn't like it. So, anything good you read here is despite me, not because of me.)

But anyway, YOU do not exist. You are in potential everyone and everything. You constructed yourself through a "blind watchmaker" process of blind selection. You will never transcend the circumstances of your arising until you "undo" youself altogether then put yourself together again; which presupposes the gradual building of a "will" capable of acting contrary to the super-ego's commands, the ego's plans and the id's drives.

New directions for the New Year

Language is a virus. The ego is a meme*. "The world flows through us." Most of what we do starts long before the left-brain language centres decided to make up a good excuse for it. The "unconscious" is that left-brain inventing someone else to blame for actions which don't fit within its own self-image, which have their sources in the Real World of Horrible Jobs. When the left-brain shuts down or is bypassed (stroke, dreams, drugs, spiritual/psychic practices, brainwashing, art), then you begin to see how "thermoplastic" your personal reality is. But corporate psychotherapy / self-help is all about you paying to adjust your reality so it's closer to theirs.

David Smail got there first. Hello, comrade.

* I picked this up from a book on post-Kantian philosophy, and it was so obvious and confounding that I was amazed to find out that only those wacky Grant Morrison fanboys at Barbelith had got there first. But it is here that social-materialist psychology agrees 100% with non-dualist spirituality. "YOU ARE NOT REAL". You cannot fix your world from a position of "I". In Truth and Love, there is no I and thou.

In defence of cult leaders

So does anyone start a mind-control cult on purpose? It is rumoured that a certain rummed-out science fiction writer started his "applied religious philosophy" solely and purely as a money-making scheme. It is certainly tempting - and much much easier - to assume that all the televangelists, half-baked jihadi imams, crooked Buddhist monks and leaders of tiny socialist sects out there do so in conscious and pure selfishness, seeking nothing more than to make a living without having to produce anything of value, and giggling at their success in pilfering funds from the sheeplike Pinks.

One thing I'm slowly but surely learning is that anything that's easy is probably dead wrong. James Cannon, the American Trotskyist leader, said that anyone does anything for two reasons: "a good reason, and the real reason". Let us start from a principle that Marxism, Islam and Scientology all hold clear - people are basically good, although forgetful and easily confused. Indeed, LRH himself - in a moment of interesting personal insight - suggested that if people get trapped in a spiral of evil behaviour, they end up "doing themselves in" to save the world from themselves.

The Alexander Technicians and the followers of Gurdjieff all agree that "it is difficult to overestimate the power of habit" - that people start doing counterproductive things and they keep doing them because they come to accept that as the "new normal". A Marxist description of ideology is that it's an "imaginary solution to a real problem" - we could connect all these with Bourdieu's concept of habitus, that your habitual patterns of behaviour becomes your identity and that to give them up just because they're counterproductive is the equivalent of death. And the Sufis take seriously the Prophet's injunction to "die before you die" (equivalent of Jesus's "be born again", I suppose).

So the argument I'm making is that perhaps all these cult leaders begin by actually believing that their methods are what's best for them, their disciples and the world. Nothing survives which is purely evil - the important thing to remember is that all lies with staying power are based on an element of truth, or that all ideologies are false extrapolations from real data. So any cult leader's practice will be a combination of real "juice" and ego-gratifying bullshit. A good reason - and a real reason - for ordering people around.

But the time comes when the cult's practice comes up against obstacles in the real world. At that point, the guru has two choices - the hard one, which would be to give up his/her ego-gratification, or the easy one, to give up the confrontation with reality (and remember that Reality is the Sufi name for God), and to turn the cult inward and to play God over their own little world. Jim Jones, in other words. God can destroy the world if he wants to. Take it away, Wikipedia:

One goal in the study of Thelema within the magical Order of the A∴A∴ is for the magician to obtain the knowledge and conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel: conscious communication with their own personal daimon, thus gaining knowledge of their True Will.^[66] The chief task for one who has achieved this goes by the name of "crossing the abyss";^[67] completely relinquishing the ego. If the aspirant is unprepared, he will cling to the ego instead, becoming a Black Brother. Rather than becoming one with God, the Black Brother considers his ego to be god.^[68] According to Crowley, the Black Brother slowly disintegrates, while preying on others for his own self-aggrandisement.^[69]

And that's where cult leaders come from. But the important thing to realise is they wouldn't have gotten there if they hadn't been trying to do something useful (as well as gratify their egos). It's just that they failed the final test, or decided it was too hard.

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By the way, we're coming up to the 6th anniversary of Chaos Marxism, and I should explain that the reason I don't contribute that often is that I'm starting to become aware of how much nonsense my own ego spouts in an effort to make itself important. Thanks for your continued interest.

Left hand, right hand, Aleister, Ron

This from the comments thread to this post by Village Voice editor Tony Ortega. For those not aware, Marty Rathbun was previously the 2nd-in-charge of the Church of Scientology, and he has since split from that organisation, denounced its leader David Miscavige betraying the legacy of its Founder and running slave-labour camps, and is attempting to start his own Scientologist International, with blackjack, and hookers, and e-meters. (So, these guys are to the Tom Cruise church what Protestants are to Catholics, or Trots are to orthodox Communists.)

I post this as a counterbalance to my recent positive-sounding ruminations on Rathbun's independent Scientology. I think perhaps my ego continues to have a sneaking regard for the subject because it would love to, as Scientology promises, be able to solve all its own problems using rationalism and without surrender. However, I am still intrigued by what seem surface similarities between Scientology and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy - in that both claim to be able to "deprogramme" the subconscious mind by extracting, looking at and then "as-is"ing rules of behaviour and assumptions about reality. This "tech" doesn't require an empathic or transference relationship with a therapist, only someone to guide the patient/preclear's self-analysis, a job which can be equally well done by a computer.

Other points: given the points raised about Ron's insane bullshit auto-hagiography, others have pointed out that this is yet another link showing his debt to Crowley. Thelemites have often argued with me that Uncle Al did that deliberately - throwing insane grandiose lies into his writings just to see who'd be enlightened enough to realise they were bullshit. I don't credit Ron with that much self-insight. I also note the points made by other commenters on this thread that Rathbun seems much more interested salvaging those people damaged by the Miscavage/Cruise regime than repackinging "LRH tech" for the broad masses.

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ETA: 

One thing that the Scientology Cult fears the most is that the common-sense parts of what is called "auditing" - which exclude trickery and coercion, and exclude subtle psychological manipulation and overwhelm, such as found in the Auditor-Code-violating "Implantology levels" - be recognized and used in a free fashion by independent counselors.
 

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Skydog 7 hours ago

I have to think Rathbun must be a little frustrated at his current predicament. He is trying to defend a subject which is indefensible. I do agree with his premise that Miscavige is doing all in his power to portray Hubbard as a fraud. Fortunately, I did not watch the entire three hour video extravaganza that is the 2012 birthday celebration. Three hours is a long time for decent movie and the thought of watching and listening to the dropout dwarf and mullet head for that time would no doubt lead me to at least suicide ideations, if not attempts.  

The words of LRH [L. Ron Hubbard] go beyond "tall tales" and amount to fraud. Recently, someone asked me why or how anyone would ever get involved in this cult? My response was simply ego. It is a religion marketed on the promise that their "tech" can solve each and every problem-emotional and physical-that plagues the initiate.  The promise of immortality and super powers are powerful motivators for the vainglorious with large amounts of disposable income. These dupes are secure in their belief that the large donations made by them will ultimately contribute to their further success and give the the "super power" that they know LRH possessed. Absent in this fraudulent conduct is any "science" to back up their ridiculous claims. When challenged on this point, they point to faith.

 

Damian DeWitt 7 hours ago in reply to Skydog

Well said. This is precisely why Scientology is not an authentic religion. Authentic spiritual practice is about getting free of your attachment to thousands of ego-desires, not the amassing of power to control everyone and everything to your liking.
This is authentic spiritual freedom and enlightenment that lies at the heart of the great spiritual traditions of the human race. It costs nothing.
True spiritual freedom cannot be bought and yet demands that you surrender everything as you burn up your ego-desires in prayer and meditation in the zendo, church, synagogue, mosque, or temple.

 

Llama 5 hours ago in reply to Damian DeWitt

Some of the very good research in this subject describe the effect of the great spiritual traditions as moving from a dualistic (egoistic) mindset to a nondualistic midset (no "I versus you" dichotomy). 
Part of this also involves moving to direct unqualified life experience as opposed judgmental qualified experience.  This has been described as presymbolic, or beyond vocabulary.
So Hubbard, by invented an entire new vocabulary and forcing his members to constantly look up words, he is pushing them back to a dualistic "pigeonholing" experience of life.  This is the opposite of what you're supposed to do.  I see no way around LRH's tech putting people at risk for insanity.
But that's what you get when you trust a charlatan with your soul.

 

grundoon 1 hour ago in reply to Llama

You are describing the "right-hand path." L. Ron Hubbard was a master of the "left-hand path." See http://carolineletkeman.org/sp/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1364&Itemid=92 and http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2012/02/scientology_and_4.php.
Most Scientologists don't see themselves as following a left-hand path, however. Letkeman explains: "For its members, Scientology does not qualify as a valid left-hand path.
Their members are lied to about the true sources of Scientology doctrine
and about the qualifications and true background of its founder.
...  A left-hand path designation can only be assigned to those members in Scientology who are fully cognizant of Hubbard’s sources and true intent. Scientology’s upper management is cognizant of the exact left-hand path that Hubbard left for them—it cannot be other than this. It is only these small few that can legitimately claim to be following a left-hand path."

Llama 35 minutes ago in reply to grundoon

I'm aware that Hubbard practiced black magic, although it is interesting that he wasn't trying to pass that "expertise" on to his followers; rather, he implemented mind control mechanisms. 
But what I was referring to is the research done on people who have had enlightenment experiences (and there are quite a few).  These were all on the "right hand" path of experience.  The descriptions of peaceful well being are fairly uniform.
I'm not aware of any research done on the success of "left hand" practitioners, other than the examples of people who seem to have gone insane from the practice, like Hubbard. But I'd be interested in any references:)  That Letkeman article was interesting.

Words like violence break the silence

... yeah, so I'm coming very close to understanding that, as far as understanding goes, Cramulus is probably right and I wrote everything I needed to write on these subjects a couple of years ago, when I first found the books which provide the "missing link" to my ideas. But the issue was that I have spent the last almost-five years on this blog attempting to give a rational justification for the embrace of the irrational. A worthwhile project, but one which I realised with a jolt yesterday I have not actually been practicing in my own life.

I've talked about, if you are serious about introducing "light from the Better World" into the closed system of entropy which is the Real World of Horrible Jobs, the need to "give up your identity" to the Higher Power that you've devoted yourself to. I suppose I underestimated how difficult that is because giving up your identity means giving up your mind, and giving up your little world. (Or at least be prepared to give those things up... if you do it right you will get them back later, all cleaned and tuned up. As Crowley put it, you put yourself together again on the other side of the Abyss.)

The last one is a concept which has just congealed for me. Just as one of those insects that lives on the bottom of ponds glues rocks and shells and sticks to itself to defend itself, your nafs / mind / ego / identity creates a little world around itself. This world is made out of possessions, habits and social relations - but only the most very important ones, the ones which shield you from the vertiginous abyss. You know - your drinking buddies, your favourite intarwebz sites, your favourite albums and books, your family, your loved ones, your local sports team. All the things that "tell you who you are" (at least in terms of the Matrix, which as we know, cannot really do such a thing).

But it also makes you blind to the real world. It's a hermetic seal, if you'll pardon the pun. You can't know Reality, and therefore what you are really supposed to be doing in order to bring Light into the world, unless you are prepared to step out of your little world and leave it behind, like a hermit crab does when it grows too big.

And the only thing that can induce you to do that - as the 12-Step programmers know perfectly well - is an act of faith, the mind / ego / nafs / identity just giving up and letting a Higher Power (call it God, an Angel, a praeternatural intelligence, the Spirit of the Age, your own right brain / Higher Self / atman) do it. To get back to politics, one of the reason the Leninist sects (possibly the anarchists as well) have put themselves into a dead end is that they built a party to change the world, but the party has become the extended ego of the participants - they have all the fuel they need but they refuse to burn it, and if anyone else burns their own fuel they're mocked for "liquidationism".

The Sufis say that this is generally not possible without a Master - as a focus for the great power of Love that you need to be able to make this happen. I have one of those now, so we'll see what happens.

I realise now that my pride is my shame - I really did think my mind could do everything itself. "What a sucker I had been. What a fool. The answer was there all the time," to quote Dr Frank'n'Furter. Everything I've really achieved, I haven't achieved myself - Higher Self did so acting through me. (You can tell that because I didn't think about it, it just "came to me", and I could barely remember it afterwards.)

So, that's my job next - building the faith to leave the mind behind. In politics, building the intellectual and activist strength to leave organisational forms behind. And hopefully in music I can leave a few holes in my solos so maybe some Music will fall through.

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A very important warning: because books work on the level of the mind, they can't really teach you jack-shit about anything important in the real world. They can help your mind make sense of your experiences in the real world, but you need those real world experiences first. I've certainly had experiences reading books which seemed impenetrable garbage the first time, and the second time (after a few years doing it hard), they answer all my questions in retrospect. Probably the same goes for blogs, hint hint.

Oh, this is excellent.

I just found this blog, and serependitiously its author comments on one of our major themes:

The ego tries to remake the world according to its own self-perceptions. The ego will expect others to be friends with the same people we perceive as good and stay away from folks we see as bad. The ego will try to convince others of religious, political or other viewpoints. The arrogant ego will try to force others to be complimentary. The negative ego will see every bump in life's road as proof of their unworthiness.

Perhaps killing the ego is more along the lines of killing the desire to create 'proof' of personal perceptions. Perhaps it is closer to killing the need to force the world to fit within our parameters.

I know, for example, that my own ego - or nafs - is intent on being the greatest genius in the room, and spends its existence in bitter, ranting anger that the Real World of Horrible Jobs doesn't conform to its desires, bowing down to acknowledge its mistress.