Abrahamic? Yes and no, yes, the overall traits have been systemmatically ingendered in his religious descendents, but I can’t solidly put it at Abraham’s doorstep. He was patriarchial, and egalitarian to a higher degree than would be expected in his era- but someone blundering around blind through a wasteland, clearly not knowing where he is going and making and breaking alliances from lack of foresight doesn’t suggest to me perfectionalism.
The fear aspect in relationship to black and white thinking, that’s a supplementry motor area. Fear alone isn’t, but the limited range of judgement in a dualistic contrast is. You touch upon issues here, the economy of personality (people succeed with less effort) and the emotional cost of engadging in the action.
This isn’t suggestive of perfectionalism in and of itself, but a bilateral incomplete loop going through the supplementry motor areas, looping back through both the left and right frontal lobes, then getting lost in the unconscious (unconscious at best, this still doesn’t suggest any comprehensive grounds of a major personality quirk that’s always going to be present).
The dualistic control of the supplementry motor areas- one of the few parts of the brain that people can be active consciously in both the left and right hemisphere, given it’s highly intergrated networking capacity, comes with the caveat that it’s dualistic. Every activity one takes in one hemisphere against the regulation of the other hemisphere’s functions leaves it antagonistic to it’s shadow.
I have this situation- if I go out of the way to create a perfect system, I eventually numb down to the point that I simply won’t do it- I’ll procrasinate (right hemi reacting to the left SMA) or I’ll inject a social risk/ethical delimma into the mix. For example, I have been working since deciding to move back to my old town in West Virginia on designing a Vehicle Mounted Ultraviolet Spectrum Detector that can then project certain wavelengths into a passenger side monitor- allowing police to within a matter of days in a average size town here to rapidly discern how many active drug labs there is in town without getting into search warrant territory, as they wouldn’t be actively looking, it would be on and be used not as evidence to convict, but to assess who they need to provide surveillance to.
Now… my drive to doing this is meticulous, the deeper I get into it, and the more certain I become of aspects that once were clouded, merky at best, the more rapidly worries about consequences are. Such as… can the cops possibly keep up with the sudden onrush of information, will this cause a sudden, unaffordable surge in the prisons, increase stress and police overaction on the parts of the cops, will they use the technology correctly as i forsee it (my town’s police force, likely not, they like to break the laws themselves too much for comfort). So then I’ll fixate on ethical issues, and then will quander on defense issues- if people see the van, what’s to stop then from trying to do everything possible to burn or shoot or destroy, hijack the van in advance before it can increminate them?
These issues bounce around, and I worry about what politicians will think, the media, average person. All these labs means they are supply a chunk of the narcotically dependent population- the average person will like me, but some of those average people will also deeply hate me for ruining their business plan of starting a methlab across the street from the busstop. So I’ll bounce around in these issues and then fall back to the mechanics, incorporating it in.
This is a balanced, double feedback loop where the information is constantly being recycled back into it’s opposite, information forecasted in one hemisphere moves to perfect the blindside of it’s opposite. It’s very good to do, it saves alot of R&D expense, and makes comprehension of the laws and technology in relationship to ethics (which is the most nebulous, totalitiarian branch of philosophy today) and sustainability.
When it’s not complete, as in a double feedback loop (each SMA can coordinate on it’s own loop, but they still communicate) I do quirky stuff. For example, I can set out to clean the house, cleaning it better than you ever would dream of doing, but then petter down towards the end and become suddenly lethargic, and this little tiny pile is left, and it’s never swept up, and it enevitably gets left behind the door- or if I am living with someone at the time, gets hidden when I get perstered too much- but never completely disappears. Likewise, when I am chaotic and messy, there is a order to the otherwise indecipherable, disturbing mess. It’s a economy of labor in deference to my memory recall. One night one, I may change out of my clothes, and say to myself ‘you know what, I only wore these clothes for like, 4 hours… gonna wear them tomorrow when hiking’. Next day, I don’t… or do… but that pattern keeps itself. I remain non-committed to tossing away perfectly good clothes, into a ‘dirty basket’. However, I’ll also economize and notice I never really care to fold, or put stuff into a dresser, and got used to having a clean basket and just taking stuff out of it. However, when I am living with someone, the clean basket becomes the ‘dirty basket’ to them and they throw my dirty clothes into the clean basket- clothes not before dirty, but suddenly are given the other set was REALLY CLEAN and so I end up with this weird issue where i gotta go wash everything all over again, and wear my sad, deranged, ripped up clothes while I wash everything else… and because I suddenly got to wash everything, THEY DON’T GET WASHED. If this cycle repeats itself for a while, I’m left with two/three piles of nice clothes, and one very stinky, cat hair infested pair of cargo shorts and a old french-cuffed shirt to wear. People don’t get my system. I know this, and accept it. That’s right hemi Obsessive Compulsive triggered with Left Economizing, triggering Right Procrastination, triggering left Indignation to the task (which is a tech issues going back to the right, or a hierarchy/control issue, involving a even more complex loop of unbalanced dualisms that bounce for some time back and forth).
However, when you live alone, you have no bad habits. This neurotic characteristic only becomes inflammed in social situations. What further confounds people is when I turn back into a perfectionalist and redesign my system and clean up everything. Or likewise when I revert.
A large determinate has to do with: Intellectual Energy vs Physical Energy. If I focus on Intellectual, I’m a dirty bird in the long run, as it’s the most tiring and time absorbant. If it’s physical, it depends on the energy level in by body. It’s middle of the winter, so I am a dirty bird. Come spring, I’ll be cleaner than anyone you can imagine, minus that pile behind the door.
If you look at someone who’s diagnosed as ‘Obsessive Compulsive’ such as the TV character Monk, you can see he is indeed a perfectionalist- but only of one feedback loop. He is exacting to his lifestyle to the smallest detail, polishing his sump pump 5am in the morning. However, he’s not able to deal with conflicting patterns. This is where neurosis really comes into play, and it’s a increasd burder given most psychologists/philosophers tend not to have active control over the SMA region on average (I wasn’t the one to do the statistics on that), it’s left largely in the dark in terms of how to treat it because they are trained to be objective, science oriented… but the same hemisphere that runs Obessive Compulsive thinking also does the science, methodological approach… and such people can’t really be expected to come to a intutional insight when focusing in their own method on the same part of the brain that the issue arises in, it’s a problem of non-intergration with the left.
Adherence to absurd patterns, unjustified belief to the point of harming you (Monk had a nurse permanently escorting him, cause he kept getting into bad situations, such as dirt on a ladder when chasing after a criminal, resulting in him becomming stuck on the ladder) has a tendency to fall through our science filter in terms of behavioralism… as it’s pattern based. Most we do is catalog the absurditites, which brings us to the Left Hemisphere equivelent- the actors.
Usually, we don’t look at a waterfall and say ‘that’s fucking absurd, that pattern in the waterfall right there’. Maybe if your a artist painting the thing wrong for a month, failing each time at realism, but the average person doesn’t. We accept the off colored sky- the sky is ‘blue’ but never the same blue throughout the day, and become conditioned to this anomoly. Only times we can pick up on this being the otherwise is the first time a child becomes aware that the moon is out in the sky same time as the sun. It’s not supposed to be, Moon when night, Sun when day. I’ve seen several cases of kids suddenly reacting in awe that the moon is out. Another case it the harvest moon, when it appears a deep red, and much larger than normal… enough not to fit in with the expectations of what our moon looks like.
In these cases, for the briefest of times, the sun and moon operate much like a thinking, willing creature. They hold a big role in our lives, despite the fact we usually ignore them. It’s a absurdity, that behaves like a quirky personality trait. We’re thinking under a guise where that Obsessive Compulsive Instinct (which is natural, necessary and good for human survival) is largely submerged, and it’s left hemisphere’s opposite is emerging. Emotional attachment, shock, and awe. It effects a sense of self, until we tell ourselves ‘it’s only nature, and has a natural reason’, depersonalizing it.
Our actors and publically elected leaders are well aware of this. The flash catches, but doesn’t sustain. The mystery does. However, even the mystery doesn’t sustain people’s attraction to them for long, emotional engadgement does, requiring a upping of the ante on a near regular basis. People’s attention span gives way.
The outward perfectionalist showing of our top, elite actors isn’t usually a byproduct of their behavior, but a intution (or their agent demands them to) to following rule based dictates in fashion. Fashion flipflops all over the place, more for women than men… men have until only recently wore the same stuff, generation after generation. Suits that don’t have all that much variation- if you want a fancy one you gotta get a Italian or French hand stitched shirt or suit… which costs absurd amounts of money for a hand sewed quality many pakistani soccerball producers- old women living in a hut, hand, string, and needle, can produce with similar skill if given the chance. There is really only one direction for heterosexual men to go if they want to get fancy, and that’s mindlessly expensive. For women, alot more variation, but they are also expected to go mindlessly expensive as well. Alot of actresses don’t always have the option to wear that JC Penny bikini- if Kim Kardashian did it, fine, everyone’s looking pass the bikini to the shape of her and the skin. However, if a less famous actress is caught, it makes for a less than impressive tabloid picture. It’s why the cat walk relates to the red carpet… they gotta feed off people’s understanding of them… even though that’s not really them (though in kim’s sad case, it actually is her- unless she ever becomes poverty stricken, I don’t forsee her having a existentialist breakdown in Prada looking at the wears feeling alienated, asking who she really is.)
Clothing is one aspect. Housing is another. The location- Malibu isn’t too hard to blaim them for- it’s near Hollywood, and is the best piece of real estate locally, surrounded by peers, in a income bracket you can absorb- why not… but the need for aburdly large houses isn’t. How much of the house, large front yard, multigarage megasystems do they actually use on a daily basis? How often are they on the yacht or mini-jet? Alot of this stuff is expected of the absurdly rich and famous… and so they must go with it, both because they expect it of themselves (they too are the public, having once been a member of it) and think it comes with the package deal they work so hard for, as well as it solidifies them into that culture 'I have these status symbols, I’m one of you, remember that I’m hot shit, so you gotta give me that role in your next movie). It’s utilitarian, with a social-status emphasis that engenders our senf of self. A anthropocentric sense of self, that has unconscious rules. We go by it because that’s who were are expected to be.
Now, each of these aspects have unconscious roots that very closely relates to obsessive compulsion, because it’s almost exactly the left hemisphere’s equivelent in function. When we don’t have SMA Control, we end up like Kim Kardashian (if we’re worth it, most people fail extrovertly like she has, and we become introverts to a larger degree than she ever would). When we have a high degree of control, we end up like Karl Marx… one feedback loop, without much of the right’s awareness to check the excess. When we’re able to consciously evaluate the right, prefering the left, we end up like Chomsky- laid back, looking through the multiplicity of systems in the right hemisphere from the left, while comfortably plying, engendering, and preserving a sense of self compatible with their image in the left. He has a fanaticle fan following, and his emotionally driven reasoning on current day, cutting endge issues is less than impressive, fanatical at times- almost like Monk and patterns/phobias… but they both can be objective and restrained, in a Stoic Indifference to formal compare and contrast of systems. Chomsky can sit around in a Cardigan when everyone is much more formal, explaining, often quite rightly your faults in your factional reasoning. You hit upon a political problem that eludes or evades his system, he’ll fall back on the left dominance, and will dig into you tooth and nail, however irrational the details are when it’s stacked together. It’s a imcomplete system, and he sucks with incomplete systems. Hence why he mostly focuses on emotional issues of the past, as it’s safer to say ‘would’ instead of ‘ought’ liability wise, as it’s easier to defend statistically over the real time world of now.
The contruction and deconstruction of systems, in terms of emotional value, is difficult at best. Everyone knows of Diogenes defacing the currency, becoming a mad Cynic breaking the rules of ettiquette and behavior expected of a wiseman or philosopher. Alot of it appears to be intentional, not mere madness, if he ever was mad- he tapped into the obsessive compulsion of both hemispheres, and navigated a approach that made his a wise discerner of patterned systems of social rules in the right (a Cynic tradition, judging social norms, unlike Anarchist that seek to break them, we judge them in terms of viability, sustainability, economy, and blantant paradoxial contradictions) while running high as a kite on the social enthusiasm for his rude behavior. He was objective in hsi breaking, but fed of other’s energy for a place in athenian society, being socially manipulative as he was, a true philosophical mountain climber. His logic failed at points, but the consistency in highlighting the overall double loop is what made him centerstone to both the sober and eclectic straditions of Cynicism, which most philosophical traditions mimic in LIVING, though not as often ideology.
It’s important to note the SMA, though both of them (remember, two Supplementry motor areas) unite most of the brain, the ability to control this isn’t natural. In it’s natural form, one is just restraint and reserved, like a good roman puppet, doing what’s right for the right reasons. In order to get more aspects of it under conscious control (as it’s one of the last parts of the brain to fully light up, if it ever does consciously) you either gotta have trauma or a time consuming spiritual/yogic experience. There are cults, some quite ancient, centered around drug use to try to network it all together, but I’ve onl found evidence of old guys largely incoherent from years of LSD overuse still tripping without using, and the newtorks they establish are off balanced, producing deeply irrational systems of intutitive logic. My case was trauma, a lifetime of it. Nothing gets the intergration of the mind working like the continual pressure of starvation and isolation.
For spirituality, the basic aim over the last few thousand years has been a ‘bottom up’ approach. This has advantages, in that the SMAs DON’T CONTROL ALL THE BRAIN, as I pointed out before, as most Philosophers/Psychologists are not activated fully there, barely aware of aspects, the opposite holds as well, we don’t have as much control over their thinking. It’s why CEOs, the control, inventive element of the company, meets with a board- not just of shareholders, but also of upper management, but also has to descend into the murky depths of the system and rely greatly on psychological outlooks largely alien to his own, such as accounting, maintenance, Human Resources, Shipping, etc.
This is the ‘abramahic tradition’ minus abraham. It uses a wide variety of cognitive tools, descended from Christian Neoplatonism. It influenced and was influenced by Pagans and Gnostics, and Mystical Jews. A long tradition in the west, who’s geneology is online, usually starting with St. Augustine on, and paralells buddhism to a high degree, as bith Buddhism and Christianity has Platonic-Hellinistic roots (it was the Greek Colonies in Taxila that made Mahayama Buddhism, the excessive paralellism by atheists in the west during the 20th Century put the unfounded assumption that we got everything from Buddhism because it claims ancient roots, when the opposite exists, Jews have been documented as migrating to the Buddha’s kingdom 60 years before he was born- most modern examinations of the flow of materials east-west have taxen this into account- Alexander’s invasion counted for more than we like to give it credit for).
A more native tradition in India, the Tantric system, which the Hindus and Buddhists have varying accepted or rejected, isn’t too different from Diogenes outwardly in most respects. It’s shares alot of assumptions with Monistic thinking, you can become completely enlightened overnight, rejecting the Karma Cults and the Caste System in becoming supermen, outside and superior to the system. That is not the abrahamic tradition of being lost in the desert (which Moses followed, getting hopelessly lost and not asking for directions is part of the system apparently), nor the slow moving system of western mysticism. In the west, we developed techniques very similar to that used in Zen in many cases, in others to the forest dwellers in india… but rarely the tantric approach until protestantism, with the evangelical hooping and hollering from getting saved. That’s NOT the SMAs at work.
As far as the tantric systems exploiting the SMAs network, I seriously doubt it, but am sure a few systems out there do- I haven’t taken a serious study of the system, as a perfectionalist. It’s on the long list of stuff to do, but figure statistically, and given the emphasis on the Bottom Up approach floating around since Plato’s Dialectic was unleashed on the world following Alexander’s Invasion, I wouldn’t be surprised. So this is my messy area I’m gonna sweep up into the corner and not finish here.
Perfectionist- It’s a duality. The ‘man’ and the ‘man assumptive’. A sense of self codified, accepting or rebelling with (of a mix) of two different outlooks. Or, you were told of the need to look as such- like in the old Stores in San Francisco I used to guard, people absolutely inlove with the ‘culture of the brands’ practically living in the store.
There is one aspect that ‘might’ relate to elements of tantric systems on a superficial level… which focuses more on a network in the Basal Ganglia, that focuses on the interrelation of images as a mode for social status- a mixing of the elements of broken fashion (as opposed to the art of pure fashion of intergrated historical modes custom producing wear within a overall, preconceived storyline/lifestyle). I noted from alot of my talks with the gay guy staff in these stores that they looked down on magazines like GQ, which unless it has hot chick on it’s cover, is ONLY going to be read by gay guys… they didn’t like it, as they thought it was the kind of stuff straight guys like I would read to learn how to do the basic, like creams and hair products, that most men already knew how to do. I don’t fucking know how to do that stuff… my appearance is largely natural in terms of grooming beyond the short hair and shaving. I don’t know squat when I look a the wall of vidal sassoon, despite knowing and working with two workers from the SF one. The alchemy is beyond by give a shit threshold. But the magazines they read looks at times like tantic drawlings, not the mandalas (thought the need to stylize them might) but with the odd penis and freeky aspects intermingled with a sanguine outlook. It’s all mostly for show I guess in both cases… not in the sense of ‘Truth is Pornographic’ but in it’s inverse of that loop, the desire to attract brings a system into being in and of itself. These men don’t naturally have something twinkling above their head saying ‘gay guy here’ so they gotta fit in, reading the stuff explains to them how to do it, and doing it requires more specialized feedback. I honestly don’t know how a recently turned straight to gay guy reacts to the totality of the new spectrum. Doubt they in full do… hence why some guys are gayer than others, despite knowing they were fairies all along since middle school. There is a element of truth in it, but they can bring it to a cultural manifestation that’s fake as shit of a high octane drug culture of the spectacular and grotesque intermingled into the erotic. I see elements of this in the Tantric system, but can’t begin to claim it’s the system as a whole.
The Tropic of Thunder movie does play on the perfectionalist-existentialist parady (Ben Stiller appears to be deeply attracted to the phenomena of silly men asking ‘who am I’ as if they have more depth to them). I encourage people to watch that movie if you already haven’t.
