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The Platonic End Run

The goal of this series of posts has been to describe the theory of transacational analysis, and to demonstrate how it makes sense of human sin and human suffering. Basically, transactional analysis shows us that most of our actions and our mental states are not chosen. Rather, our actions are chosen for us, by patterns rooted in social custom and in the experiences of our childhood, often (though not always) traumatic. I have presented the Platonic model of the soul and a set of practices for its purification. The reason for this is to do a kind of end-run around modern psychology and psychotherapy. By returning to older models and alternative conceptions of the soul, we can circumvent the Parent-Adult-Child system and the three toxic categories of the rescue game. 

Let's take a moment to return to transactional analysis as such, and see what Eric Berne thought about the means of overcoming games.

In Games People Play, Berne writes that the goal of transactional analysis is the attainment of autonomy by the individual. He then defines autonomy as the capacity for awareness, spontaneity, and intimacy.

By awareness, he means the capacity to experience reality on its own terms, unconditioned by cultural expectations. Above all, he means the capacity to be present. 

By spontaneity, Berne means the capacity to choose one's own actions.

And by intimacy, the capacity to have relationships with other individuals uncorrupted by games. 

The first two terms refer to the individual's relationship with himself, the second to the larger social world in which he participates. In our terms, all three relate to the development of virtue, to justice within the soul and the purification of the nous. 

Notice that none of these concepts are foreign either to the Platonic tradition or other, related, traditions of spiritual development. The capacity for an unconditioned experience of reality is precisely the goal of Taoist internal alchemy. The unconditioned child, capable of present awarness and active relationships, is identical to the yuan shen (元神) or "original spirit." For Plotinus, the present is the closest one can come to eternity while incarnate; the past is one step, the future two steps removed. True awareness of the present is thus the closest one can come to awareness of eternity. 

Of course, for Berne, as a trained psychotherapist, freedom from games is attained on the psychotherapist's couch and in the group therapy session. Now, this is where Berne's system seems inferior to the work of the ancients. We are used to these sorts of things. The therapist's couch appears banal, the therapy group, somewhat ridiculous. But is it really so? Can't we rather see in the therapist's couch an analogue to the dialogues of Socrates? And aren't the collective dialogues of the Republic and the Symposium-- and even the Laws-- akin to group therapy? And we might an earlier and more effective echo of the Socratic practices in the private Confessional and the group Confiteor of the Christian Church. 

The one practice derived from Plato that I haven't discussed explicitly, then-- but which is just as important as the others-- is the dialogue. This is too large and important a concept to go into here, and so we'll save it for a future post, or series. 

The Path to the Child is Through the Adult

Although mainstream psychotherapy seems to have minimized Eric Berne in favor of medication and odd techniques like EMDR, many of his ideas have gotten loose into the popular culture. Among the most harmful of these is that of the Inner Child, and I want to talk about this for a moment. 

Like many things, the idea of the Inner Child isn't harmful in its natural habitat, that is, the process of transactional analysis. Here the capacity to reveal the Natural or Unconditioned Child is the goal of a therapeutic process which includes coming into awareness of the games that one plays, healing the Conditioned Child, and learning to reason as an Adult. On its own, the Inner Child seems to have escaped especially into New Age circles, where he does a great deal of harm.  

So let us be clear: The Inner Child isn't Peter Pan. Peter Pan lacks the capacity to grow up, and so he lacks the capacity to either reason as an Adult or to make rapid judgments as a Parent. Don't get me wrong, he's great fun to be around-- as long as everything's going well. But what happens when disaster strikes-- as it always does, in human life? In a crisis, we need to be able to make snap judgments rooted in trained opinion, and then we need to reason as to the best course of action. To take an extreme example, imagine an EMT coming upon a mass casualty event. (Don't imagine it too strongly, as we don't need to bring it into manifestation.) But suppose it's a plane crash, or a train derailment. Our EMT must immediately take stock of the injured and sort them into three categories. Light injuries need to be ignored for now-- but so do mortal injuries. The first will keep, and the second can't be kept. Priority must be given to those whose injuries are life-threatening but amenable to treatment. Hard choices must be made, and discipline maintained in the face of danger. The Child ego state cannot do this. An adult reasons, a parent opines, but a child emotes. In a crisis, the Child's response is the temper tantrum. 

And as our society has careened from crisis to crisis for two decades, we've also seen our capacity for resopnse to crisis reduced to screaming and wailing. At best we manage to shift into a Parental state, judging and condemning, but directing our judgments only at others, the other side, our perceived enemies. This lasts for a time, and then we're back to bawling again. At times the Parent and Child ego states are indistinguishable-- which makes perfect sense, given that many of us have been raised by people who are themselves permanent children. 

Here again we can turn to the Platonic tradition for guidance.

Four, Three, Two, One

Inscribed above the entrance to Plato's Academy were the words "Let no one enter who is ignorant of Geometry." This seems reasonable enough if we think of the Academy as a modern school, but rather odd if we consider it to have been more akin to an ashram or monastery. The latter are centers of spiritual development-- what has geometry to do with God? 

For us, nothing. For the ancients, everything. 

In keeping with the usual custom of the ancient world, Plato's inner teachings were kept secret, not revealed to the public or in the dialogues. We have only hints of what these teachings may have been, but these are very suggestive. Among the best sources for Plato's inner teachings is his wayward student Aristotle, whose work is peppered with sideswipes and direct attacks at his longtime teacher. From the Republic, we know that Plato divided the powers of the soul into four: sensation, opinion, reason, and intellection, in ascending order from the purely physical to the purely intellectual. From Aristotle, we know that each of these was assigned to the numbers of the tetrad: 


In the teachings of Plato, we must ascend from the sensory to the spiritual, the outward to the inward, the complex to the simple, step by step. And there is no skipping steps. We must move from the Four, the sensory knowledge of the world of the Four Elements that we share with the animals, to the Three, the capacity to govern our perceptions by traind opinions. We move from the Three, the world of opinions that we share with the other members of our society or our group, to the Two, the capacity to think original thoughts and acquire knowledge directly for ourselves. We move from the Two, which is knowledge in process and knowledge of objects, to the One, which is the nondual state of union, where there is no distinction between knower and known, subject and object. Now this unitive state is the state of our original existence, as we have declined from the One, the state of union with the Divine, to the Two, the realm of Ideas, to the Three, the phantoms of the collective soul, to finally settle in the Four, the world of matter. To ascend to the unitive state is to return to our original condition, in which we have the capacity to choose, to create, and to relate. This, then, is the true Inner Child, the true Yuan Shen. But it is not reached through the world of sense or opinion, but only by cultivating the trained opinions of the Parent, and the reasoning capacity of the Adult. 

To put it in archetypal terms, the Conditioned Child is Peter Pan. He is incapable of maturity, incapable of relationships; he can only play or pout when his fun is spoiled. The Natural Child is Mabon, the Child God. Now Mabon is imprisoned below the Earth, and is only freed after a series of arduous adventures. His prison is Neverland; to be stuck there is to be stuck in the world of Sense and Opinion. (This is also the imprisonment of Ulysses on the island of Circe.) His freedom is the attainment of sovereignty over the reason and union with the noetic realm. 

Becoming Non-Contingent



And another way of saying this is that our goal is to become non-contingent beings. In traditional theology, the argument from contingency states that for everything that exists, there is a cause; therefore everything is contingent upon the existence of something else. But it is impossible for there to be an infinite number of contingent things, because if everything requires something else to exist, nothing could ever come into existence. Therefore there must be a non-contingent being. Moreover, there can only be one such being, as, if there were more than one-- even if there were only two-- then both would have to share some third thing in common in order to both be said to "exist." They would, therefore, depend upon that third thing for their existence, and that would be the actual one non-contingent being. 

The goal of the spiritual life is union with God, and, as Plato wrote in the Theaetetus, to become like God. And this is another way of saying, to gain the capacity to choose our actions, rather than having them chosen for us by our cultures, backgrounds, and childhood circumstances. Our work, then is-- insofar as it is possible-- to become non-contingent beings, dependent for our actions and our choices upon nothing-- save God alone. 

The End

(I'm not sure why this is an image of Typhon, but there you have it.)

The Many Headed Monster

The difficulty with the Epithymia is simply that it wants, and wants, and wants-- without limit. Left to its own devices, it will spend its time eating, drinking, and having sex and sleeping. A human under the rule of Epithymia is an animal.

As a brief aside, there is a notion found in the writings of Dionysius the Areopagite that is worth exploring further in a future post. For Dionysius, the creation of the universe proceeds upward from the simplest to the most complex-- and this is also a moral evolution. What this means is that, for beings at a certain, lower, level, certain qualities are simply not present. But for beings at a higher level, the presence of these qualities is their good, the absence, their evil.

For example: Life is not present in a stone, and its absence does not harm the stone. But if life is not present in a plant, the plant is dead. To say it another way, it has fallen to the level of a stone. Similarly, movement is not present in a plant. But if movement ceases in an animal, it soon finds itself either eaten by something else or starving to death. This is why the long-term comatose were referred to as "vegetables." Finally, in an animal, morality is simply not present. A cat kills a mouse, a chicken pecks another chicken to death, a male dog forces itself on a female. No harm is done. But a human who torments a animal as a cat torments a mouse, or bullies and murders a weaker human, or violates another sexually, has fallen to the level of a beast. To be ruled by Epithymia is to be bestial.

Don't suppose for a moment that the writings of Dionysius are foreign to the traditions we are discussing here. While his identity was unknown, it seems likely that he was a member of Proclus's school, and there are some who have suggested that he was actually the late Classical pagan philosopher Damascius in disguise! His Christianized Platonism, or Platonized Christianity, was the light of the Christian world for 1500 years, and his partial loss (or total loss, if one is Protestant) in the West has been part of our disaster. Moreover, I am fairly certain that I see Dionysius, along with Origen and John Scotus Eriugena, lurking in the background of Iolo Morganwg's Christian Druidry. More on this at a later date.

For now let us return to the topic, and suggest another way to master the Epithymia. This is the way of Fasting.

Fasting

The word "fast" traditionally refers only to food. Historically, Christians kept either one, two, or even three fasting days per week, every week, and several major periods of fasting throughout the year. What these latter were varied by region. Lent-- the forty days prior to Easter-- and Advent-- the four weeks prior to Christmas-- were always major fasts. Other fast periods included:

Ember Days. This was a series of 3 days around the Solstices and Equinoxes kept as fasts in the Roman Catholic Church. In the older literature, the purpose of these fasts is explicitly to harmonize the soul with the energy of the season-- that is, the Airy energy of the Spring, the Fire of Summer, the Earth of Autumn and the Water of Winter. (You may be used to another arrangement; this is the older one, from what I can tell.)

St Michael's Lent. This is the period from the Feast of the Assumption of Mary on August 15th to the Feast of Saint Michael on September 29th. (Happy Michaelmas, everybody!)

Rogation Days. This was a day, or several days, of prayer and fasting in early Spring, associated with agricultural fertility.

The Dormition Fast. This refers to the 14 days prior to the Assumption of Mary-- or, as the Feast is known in the Orthodox Church, the Dormition (Falling Asleep) of Mary.

Periods of fasting are traditionally followed by periods of feasting. I've written on this topic at length, and so I won't try to recapitulate the whole discussion here. But I do want to make a few additional points.

Traditional fasts in the Orthodox Church are basically time spent as a sober vegan. Fasting rules in the Catholic Church-- which the modern Church in its wisdom, has abrogated-- allow for fish to be eaten, but greatly restrict the quantity of food one intakes; traditionally, the rule was "one meal of no more than 8 ounces plus two snacks; you can also have plain bread and coffee in the morning." For most of us today, however, I believe that the primary focus of fasting need not be food. What I recommend above all is fasting from technology.

The trouble with technology is that it acts upon the epithymia, but it has effects which cascade up through the entirety of the soul. We hear a great deal, these days, about pornography addiction, and a bit about videogame addiction, but in my view the problem is less the content of the screen than the screen itself. To my own mind, it doesn't matter whether a person is addicted to social media, online politics, shopping on Amazon, World of Warcraft, or pornography. The effect on the soul is the same.

And so I strongly recommend regular periods of abstinence. These need not be periods of total withdrawal from all screen or internet use-- though they may be. Instead, they should target whatever form of technology wasts the most of your time. As I wrote,


Those who are Christian or willing to work with Christian symbolism can simply use the traditional fasting periods. In addition to providing a regular structure, these also have the advantage that you won't be working alone-- Christians around the world will be fasting in one way or another at the same time. Remember that the thymos is basically social; participating in a fast with others will allow you to tap into the lion's strength. Non-Christians will need to come up with fasting periods on their own. A fasting calendar based on the pagan Wheel of the Year would probably be very helpful, as it would-- like the Christian liturgical calendar-- allow for group participation. At minimum Saturday would work quite well as a day for fasting from technology. Saturn governs discipline, and he is also associated with agriculture. Saturn is equally the planet of Ceres, the Grain Mother; her day is a fine day on which to disconnect from the virtual and reconnect with Nature.

Nor do food and technology exhaust the possibilities for fasting. A 40, 90, or 365-day period of abstenence from alcohol can be very helpful, especially for people who want to learn to drink socially, rather than having to commit to teetotaling. I'm sure that a similar period of withdrawal from caffeine would be of great benefit as well, and if anyone is capable of it, I'd be glad to hear it. (In a fine synchronicity, the hot water pot just finished boiling as I was typing that sentence; time to go pour a cup of coffee). There is a large and growing literature on the benefits of temporary abstinence from sexual activity, and there are entire traditions of internal alchemy based on re-purposing sexual energy for magical and spiritual attainment.

The Capacity for Delay

Like meditation, fasting is as a form of training. Just as a weightlifter develops strength which can be used, and is meant to be used, outside of the gym, so the faster develops the capacity for refusal.

But notice: Traditionally, every fast ends with a feast. Fasting isn't the culinary equivalent of celibacy. During the long stretches of Lent and Advent, the most rigorous and committed faster knows that a long period of feasting is coming. When it comes to taming the Epithymia and mastering addictions, delay is one of the most powerful tools. The way this works is simple: When the Appetite asks for something, rather than telling it "No," tell it, "Okay, but only if you still want it in 30 minutes." Or ten minutes, or an hour, depending on what it is.

This is how I drink alcohol most of the time. I enjoy beer, but when I was younger I tended to overdo it badly. These days, after I drink a glass of beer, I tell myself, "You can have another one if you want it in an hour." Most of the time, it turns out I don't want it anymore. Sometimes I do, and in that case I have it. I do my online shopping the same way. Left to my own devices, I'd have the Amazon truck pulling up to the house every single day, and almost always to bring me still more books. So if I want to buy something online-- or to make any major purchase-- I force myself to wait 24-48 hours. If I still want it, then, okay. But it turns out that I usually don't.

That's all I've got for today.

Join me next week, and we'll wrap up this discussion, and move on to something else which I've wanted to write about here for some time. See you then!

The Monster

We come at last to the purification of the Epithymia, the appetite.

In the Republic, Plato compares this part of the soul to a monster with many heads. In his certainly had the image of Typhon, the hundred-headed offspring of the Earth and Tartarus, the pit of Hell.

The task of overcoming the Monster is not an easy one, and in a real sense is the work of a lifetime. And it's also something that everyone must do for themselves; no one came into this world with your particular stack of appetites, desires, passions and vices, and no one else accumulated the habits that locked those things in place in the same way that you did. And so all of the advice I give must necessarily be general, and some of it may not work for you. That said, I want to give a couple of suggestions here. But first, I want to start with a discussion of what-- in my experience-- does not work.

What You Resist, You Strengthen

In the Republic, as we've seen, the three parts of the soul are compared to a man, his trusty lion, and a monster; but they are also compared to a king, his warriors, and the peasantry. And so the work of overcoming the appetites and establishing Justice in the soul may be compard at once to a battle, and to ruling a population.

We will do well, then, to look for advice both from military and political science. To that end, I want to share a few selections from a pair of Chinese sages.

First, Laotze, from the Daode Jing:


Next, Sun Tzu, from the Art of War:


Very often, when people take on the work of overcoming their appetites-- their passions, in the older way of speaking-- they do the exact opposite of what Sun Tzu tells us here. We all know what our worst habit is, and we know that it consists in the regular indulgence of our strongest desire. If you want to change your life, the way to begin is usually not to make a direct assault on this behavior, whatever it is.

Unfortunately, this is an area where the Christian tradition can be unhelpful and even counter-productive. I don't happen to know if this concept, or a related one, exists in Eastern Christianity, but in Roman Catholicism the concept of mortal sin stands directly in the way of any productive approach to the passions.

Mortal sin is the belief that there are certain sins that simply can't be repented without the help of a preist; die after committing one of these but before getting to the Confessional, and it's straight to Hell with you. The net effect of this belief is to turn the process of overcoming the passions into a dire emergency, which is exactly the opposite of the frame of mind that you actually need to maintain in order to do it. And this in turn produces varying levels of neurosis, starting with what's called "scrupulosity." 

The Twelve Step tradition is another one for which I ordinarily have a great deal of praise. Here again, though, a very uhelpful habit prevails, similar to the idea of mortal sin. This is the concept of "going out." If you aren't familiar, in groups like AA or NA, a recovered alcoholic or addict who takes a single drink or drug is said to have "gone out." This is usually expanded to include even things like "near beer," which is 0.5% alcohol, or taking a second painkiller if one is prescribed one a day. Once a recoveree has "gone out," all of the "Time sober" which they had accumulatd immediately evaporates. Upon returning to their regular meeting, they have to identify as a "newcomer" in their "first 30 days of recovery." The negative effect of this attitude should be obviously, and I've seen it work its destructive magic more than once. A person accumulates a fair amount of time sober, and then in a fit of pique or an absent moment takes a single drink or, perhaps a second oxycodin. Well, now they've "gone out"-- and so they now give themselves permission to go on a bender. They turn up a month later, having drunk or drugged themselves nearly to death. 

Needless to say, these are not the approaches I recommend. 

But what do I recommend?

Ask And it Shall Be Given You

...I'm afraid that's a discussion that's going to have to wait for tomorrow. Last night I received a call that my grandmother had suffered a bad fall and was in the E.R. She's home today but could use somebody to come and help around the house. If you read yesterday's post, the significance will be obvious. I'm out of time for today and should in fact have left the house a half hour ago, so I'm going to have to end the discussion here. We'll pick this up tomorrow. In the meantime, if the readers here wouldn't mind offering a prayer for the health and recovery of Mrs. Sylvia Mandes, I'd be very grateful. 

Over the course of this series, we've examined the transactional analysis model of social psychology created by Eric Berne. We've looked at the Drama Triangle of Stephen Karpman. We've discovered that much of our lives, and above all our relationships-- or what we consider to be relationships-- can be understood as destructive social games. These games play out unconsciously, without our control, all the time, and are responsible for a great deal of the misery that we experience. 

Now it's time to talk about what we can do about it. 

...And here, it feels necessary to hedge a little bit. The work of un-learning the sorts of behaviors that we're talking about is the work of a lifetime. In a real sense, it is the goal of all real spiritual practice, as it is identical with what Eliphas Levi called the Great Work: "The creation of a man by himself, especially the total conquest of his faculties and his future." 

This is a tall order, and precisely how to do it is not going to fit into a short blog post. What I propose to do in this post is to provide a rough 

Psychic Anatomy

I'm going to use Plato's tripartite model of the soul in this post. I've discussed this so many times that readers here are probably sick of hearing about it by now. In case anyone is tuning in for the first time, the soul can be divided into three parts:

Epithymia. This consists of all of our instincts and appetites; everything that we share with the lower animals. When you're hungry or tired or "in the mood," that's the Epithymia at work. 

Thymos. This consists of the social emotions, including the desire for success and the instinct toward honorable conduct. C

Nous. This is the reasoning part of the soul. The nous itself is further divided into mere sense-knowledge ("I see a three-sided object"); opinion ("All three-sided shapes are triangles"), reason (Given the height of the triangle and the length of its base, its area is x); and intellection (knowledge of higher realities, inexpressible in language.)

Each of these has its proper role, both individually and in relation to one another. The state in which each part of the soul performs its correct function in relation to the other two is the definition of Justice give by Plato in the Republic; a Just man or woman is precisely that person whose soul is properly ordered.  In the discussion to follow, I'm going to suggest specific practices aimed at the purification of each of the parts of the soul. Let's take these in order. 
The Purification of the Nous

Let us begin with the nous, as it is is the highest part of the soul. 

Prayer and Ritual

We will find that we get nowhere without divine aid. This aid must be encountered in two ways: Prayer and Ritual.

By prayer I mean the direct invocation and communication with divine beings. Most of us know what prayer is, and so I don't know that I need to say a great deal about it. One thing that may be helpful to note: Many people from Protestant backgrounds have been raised to believe that prayer must be spontaneous, "from the heart." They make Jesus's condemnation of "vain repetitions" into a condemnation of all repetition, and therefore refuse to engage in formal or liturgical prayer. Often, cradle Protestants carry this attitude with them when they convert to other religions, or to liturgical forms of Christianity. 

And then they sit down to pray find that they have no idea what to say. 

If that's you-- whether your religious orientation is Christian or otherwise-- let me suggest another approach. Liturgical prayer is a technology; its intention is to invoke the presence of the Divine, in whatever form. Once invoked, the right thing to say is--

Nothing at all. 

Remember that the highest part of the soul extends beyond the reasoning mind; it extends, therefore, beyond the sorts of thoughts that can be formed into words. 

A simple but very effective form of prayer is to simply light a candle, say or sing a liturgical prayer out loud, and then be silent. Feel the presence of the god or power you have invoked. Don't feel the need to ask them anything; simply be aware of their presence. If you feel nothing, that's okay. Just be silent. Pay attention to whatever thoughts come into your mind. Remain in stillness for a few minutes, and then blow out your candle. 

This is where prayer bleeds into the second of the two practices, ritual. Rituals are best when performed with two or more persons, but very often this isn't possible. If you happen to be a part of a large religious organization, then you're in luck, and all you need to do is to attend services regularly, but for many of us, ritual is something that we have to do by ourselves. In either case, though, the purpose of ritual was neatly expressed by Carl Jung as "the externalization of the archetypes of the Collective Unconscious." The archetypes, in Jung's theory, are those universal forces that lurk deep in the background of the human mind, and typically act through us without our knowledge or our consent. (If that sounds familiar, given our recent discussions, stay tuned; I hope to discuss Jung at length sometime in the near future.)

It is important not to treat prayer or ritual as a way of getting God or the gods to do something for you. God is not a genie, or a vending machine. The purpose of prayer is not to change God, to get Him to do what you want-- it's to change you, to make you more like him.  

Study and Self-Examination

These work on the next two faculties of the nous, the dianoetic and doxastic powers-- that is, the reason and the opinion. 

By Study, in this context, I especially mean studying those sorts of texts which help us to understand and unlock the hidden parts of the soul. Books like Berne's Games People Play, or books discussing Stephen Karpman's work (there are very many available these days) are one option. There are others, depending on the approach you prefer. 

Develop the habit of reading slowly, and then setting aside time to carefully reflect upon what you have read. This can be blended into prayer through the practice of lectio divina (divine reading). Lectio divine is a traditional mode of meditation taught in the Roman Catholic Church, but it can be profitably employed by anyone; you can find simple instructions here. Some books, like modern fiction novels, can be read in the way that you watch a movie-- quickly, passively, and for entertainment. These sorts of books will not do the work of purifying your nous or changing your behavior, at least not in a way that you can choose consciously. The sorts of books I recommend here must be studied and considered carefully, and in so doing, they become initiations into higher modes of thinking. In this context I especially recommend Plato's Republic. Please, no abridgements or just extractions of the Allegory of the Cave-- read the entire thing cover to cover. 

We must study the works of others in order to gain knowledge of how to work with the soul and a model for how to approach it. Whether you're reading Eric Berne or Plato or smething else, however, what you are reading is a map. One cannot become an explorer, much less a conqueror, by simply studying maps. We must venture into the territory. And the territory, of course, is your own soul, your psyche. Once we have a model of how the psyche works, we need to spend time in self-examination. Read Berne, and carefully go through his "Thesaurus of Games." Do any jump out at you? These are the ones that you're probably playing. Reflect on your own life, and see how the game is playing out, how it's doing its work. Then, learn to watch yourself play. This is the first step to quitting the game. Do the same with Stephen Karpman, Carl Jung, or Plato. If you are a Christian, there are countless books describing the process of "examination of conscience." If you aren't Christian, read them anyway; you still have a concience. 

Next Time, On Life Without Games

Tolkien famously wrote that the Lord of the Rings was a tale that grew in the telling. If you've ever read any of his early drafts, you know that this is true. The story was initially conceived as another light-hearted adventure for older children, but over the course of his writing it grew into a multi-volume epic far more suited for adults.

In the same way, this series of posts has grown far beyond what I had intended. Today's post was intended as the point of the series. In fact, it was the only thing that I had originally intended to say. But as I've read and thought more on the topic, I believe I've uncovered something larger and deeper, so that today's post will be more of a digression, or perhaps a side-quest. Think of it as the Scouring of the shire sequence at the end of The Return of the King. Can the story go on without it? Yes, as Peter Jackson demonstrated. But something is definitely lost without it-- again, as Peter Jackson demonstrated.

You Cannot Love A Victim

I wrote yesterday that one of the major issues with Karpman's "Dramatic Triangle" is that it makes real relationships impossible. When someone is acting the part of the Victim, or the Rescuer or the Persecutor, the real person is not present, and it is impossible to relate to them. We can only relate to their role. And, crucially, we can't really relate to that either, because it's being performed subliminally. The Victim is posing as someone in need of help, and so we respond to that posture. But the posture is false. The Victim does not want help. They either want to remain in a Victim role permanently, feeding off of the energy of their would-be Rescuer, or else they want to rope in a sucker and "flip the scripts" at the right moment, so that the Rescuer themselves becomes a Victim, and the Victim a Persecutor. In neither case do we have a true relationship. A true relationship requires honesty about intentions; self-awareness on the part of the participants; and respect both for oneself and the other person.

Now, to a certain extent, we are all always roleplaying. This is just a part of human life. Right now I'm playing the role of "blogger." A moment ago I was at the grocery store, playing the role of "shopper." Prior to that I was dropping my daughter off at her school, playing the role of "parent." Before the children woke up I was seated in meditation, playing the role of "occultist." The trouble is not even the roleplaying as such, it is, again, the dishonesty. It is worth recalling Berne's words here:

Moreover, we need others to play roles. When you're sick, you need someone playing the role of "Doctor." The trouble is that, these days, a great number of people who seem to be playing "Doctor" are actually playing "Con Artist" or "Loan Shark."

Small Talk and Dancing

This may be a digression from a post which is already a digression, but I think it's worth discussing. I've had two readers comment already that they don't like "small talk." I suspect there are more out there who simply haven't said anything. Small talk feels flat and inauthenic, and for a lot of people, we simply don't know what we're supposed to say. How do you respond to an obviously-fake question like, "How are you doing today?" or, worse, "Hot enough for ya?"

Now, I don't have that problem. At one time I did-- I was socially awkward enough as a teen that I probably could have been diagnosed with some form of autistic spectrum disorder, had anyone been interested in performing such a diagnosis (thakfully no one was.) But I spent a number of years forcing myself to learn how to talk to people in different sorts of situations, how to read social cues, and, above all, how to read body language. Now I get along with most people, and I have no problem with the sort of idle chitchat that makes social cohesion possible.
You see, the key to "small talk" is understanding that it's a ritual. I mean this in the usual sense, and also in the technical sense that Berne uses in Games People Play. Rituals, again, are defined as "a series of simple complementary transactions programed by external social forces." Most forms of small talk are highly ritualized. American small talk, in truth, is as structured a ritual as a Japanese tea ceremony. The trouble is that, here in the United States, we don't admit this fact, either to ourselves or to anyone else. Children may be taught politeness, but they are rarely taught, "Because this is the Northeast, our people greet one another with a ceremonial nod of the head, to indicate respect and awareness. After ten to twenty such exchanges, it is customary to add an additionl, 'How are you?' By no means are you to respond to 'How are you?' with any personal details, as this is the height of disrespect. Instead, you must say, 'Doing all right, how about you?' It is acceptable to leave the second question unanswered; if the other person is walking you must not stop them."

I suspect that if "small talk" were framed to us this way, as a ritual of social cohesion, it would make a great deal more sense. We are the sorts of people, after all, who gravitate toward highly ritualized spiritual practices, from the pentagram ceremony of the Golden Dawn to the Divine Liturgy of the Orthodox Church. I'd bet I'm also not the only one here who has practiced East Asian martial arts extensively, and found their formality greatly preferable to the more informal atmosphere found in boxing gyms and the like.

As I was saying, I personally have no problem with small talk, or with talking to people of any kind.

I do, however, have an absolute terror of dancing.

Now, don't get me wrong. I love music. The constraints placed upon my time by work, fatherhood, and the 80 other things I like to cram into my day don't allow me much time to practice these days, but I can play any instrument in the guitar family reasonably well, and I enjoy doing so. And I also like to move, and I'm good at it. The issue isn't one of "not getting" music, or of being uncoordinated. One of the absolute worst experiences for me is when someone tries to force me onto a dance floor. Women often do this to men that they think are "shy," and a number of former girlfriends of mine used to try to do it to me. I hated it. I'm not shy, and I don't mind making a fool out of myself. Many people list "public speaking" as their greatest fear-- but public speaking doesnt' scare me. Dancing scares me. And the reason is simple: When people start dancing to contemporary music, I have literally no idea what to do.

And, what's worse, they all seem to know exactly what to do. They switch seemlessly between pantomiming an epileptic fit, having sex in public, and pretending to be lawn equipment, as though they had some invisible companion telling them exactly what to do. "All right everybody, act like you just washed down 25 sleeping pills with a bottle of vodka. Okay, now we're doin' it doggy style. Now it's time to be a malfunctioning sprinkler system. Back to doggy! Grandpa's lawnmower! Ride 'em cowgirl! Kid staring at a videogame for too long in the 1990s!" All the while whatever appalling music bangs on, Boonta-boonta-boonta-boonta-boonta-boonta...

On the other hand, on those rare occasions when I've participated in more formal dancing, I've enjoyed it greatly. It's structured, it's as graceful as a taijiquan form, the music is pleasant and, best of all, you're told exactly what to do, and exactly when to do it.



I'd like to suggest that contemporary dancing is similar to American small talk. Both are highly structured rituals with their own grammar and their own intended result. But both are, for whatever reason, informal, covert, and even subliminal. I managed to figure out the grammar of small talk a long time ago, though it took far more conscious observation than I suspect it's supposed to. I expect the grammar of modern dancing to remain forever beyond me. Oh well.

You Cannot Love A Victim, Part II

But back to the topic at hand.

As I was saying, it's impossible to truly relate to someone when they're playing a covert role, especially a destructive role like those found in the Victim-Rescuer-Persecutor triangle.

And you also can't relate to someone when you are projecting the role onto them. I want to emphasize this. It's very easy to talk about other people acting like Victims, or like Persecutors or Rescuers. It's important to look inward and realize that we ourselves are often very comfortable playing these roles. And, like everyone playing a role in a drama, we go looking for others to play the other parts. Every Othello needs an Iago, a Cassio, and a Desdemona, and if no one is volunteering he'll assign the roles himself.

Now, most of the time, the people we choose to play the other parts in our drama are other human beings. This is natural enough, of course. But the trouble with people-- living, conscious, ordinary people, people who can talk back to us-- is that they're capable of figuring out the game, and of refusing to play. And so it frequently happens that we go in search of nonhumans to play the parts we need. This is very helpful, because nonhumans either cannot talk, or else talk in a way that it's easy for us to ignore, or in a way that we can easily substitute our own delusions for their actual communications. And this becomes a very big problem indeed, because the combination of the dramatic triangle with personal delusion also goes by the name of religion.

Now, don't get me wrong. I am obviously not saying that all religion is false, or destructive. I am saying two things. First, many people substtitte a combination of drama and delusion for actual religion and actual spiritual practice. Second, for the sake of this post I am taking a very expansive view of the word "religion," to include any form of relationship to or belief in the Unseen. I am not a member of any church-- not really-- but for the sake of this post I must be considered as highly religious, since I spend a considerable amount of time in prayer, meditation, and ritual every single day. People who call themselves "spiritual but not religious" are highly religious, and often the most prone to delusion.

And so for the remainder of this post I'd like to give some examples of beings that are not Victims, and ought not to be treated as such. In each section I will describe the game, and give a rough assessment of the Roles. Then I will give an antithesis. In Berne's work, every game has an antithesis, which is a means by which the game may be stopped. In this case, I intend the antithesis to be a way of thinking about things which should short-circuit the Dramatic Triangle.

The Gods Are Not Victims

The Game: Although it's somewhat less common today, it has for many years been fashionable in pagan circles to see the "Old Gods" as victims of the wicked persecutor, Christianity. Sometimes, as in the case of American Feminist Wicca, this is also wrapped up in another Rescue Game which sees women as the victims of men. Ground zero for this point of view is the 2001 TNT mini-series version of Marion Zimmer Bradley's Mists of Avalon.

In this version of the Game, the Ancestors were peacefully worshiping the Old Gods, and everything was fine. But then along came those dastardly Christians, and they pulled down the statues of our gods, and put churches in their places. And now the Old Ways are lost, and our people suffer under the oppression of the Pale Galilean and his priests and ministers.

This unfortunate point of view has been helped along by many Christians who quite enjoyed playing Persecutor in the Rescue Game, delighting in tales of-- for example-- Saint Boniface cutting down the sacred oak tree of Donar, or mocking "hippies" who "worship trees." (More recently, Christians have shifted into the Victim mode in the Rescue Game, on which more later.)

Antithesis: The pagan philosophers of ancient times all agree that the world is governed by the Gods and overseen by their benevolent providence. If this is the case, is it really possible that the gods could be "defeated" in this way? The truth is that early Christianity in many parts of Europe made a conscious effort not to destroy the pagan cultures it encountered, but to "baptize" them. And so seasonal festivals remained, but they were given a Christian significance. Pagan philosophers like Plato and Aristotle were preserved. Often the gods themselves continued to be worshiped explicitly-- but now they were seen to be under the final dominion of the Holy Trinity. Later, of course, their worship was transferred to saints with suspiciously similar names. Even the Sacred Oak of Donar was not cut down to make toilet paper by greedy lumber barons; its wood was used to make a church.

Moreover, there may be a very good reason why things turned out the way they did. In much of the Old World, pagan worship meant human sacrifice. It isn't pleasant to think about these days, but it's a fact and it's unavoidable. One of my favorite illustrations of this point is recounted in Michael Enright's Lady With A Mead Cup, and concerns the Christianization of Norway. The Norwegian people, it seemed, were reluctant to abandon the worship of the Aesir in favor of Christ. And so the Christian King Olaf made them an offer-- They could remain pagan, he said, but the number of human sacrifices would certainly need to be increased, and the gods would no longer be satisfied with slaves or prisoners of war. Once their own heads were on the chopping block, the nobles were much quicker to accept the new way of doing things. What would you have done?

Now, the immediate temptation is to continue to play the Rescue Game, but to switch roles around, so that now the Christians are Victims. Way back when, the Christians were persecuted by the wicked pagan worshipers of the demonic Old Gods, and now those old devils have made a resurgence and begun persecuting the Christians again! This is a view that has become very popular in certain Right Wing circles in the last few years, thanks to the efforts of a few irresponsible Christian and Jewish authors who I won't name here. What I'm suggesting here, though, is not a conflict between either Innocent Victim Old Gods and Persecuting Christians, or between Victimized Christians and Persecuting Old Gods. What I'm suggesting is that if the world as a whole is governed by divine providence, and if the focus of human religious life changes with the ages (as it seems to), then those changes are themselves overseen and even dictated to us by the Divine. By God, the Gods, or (as I see it) God and the Gods. The Old Ways give way to the New, and then with time they become the Old Ways, and another New Way emerges. Today it seems that the cycle of ages has come round again. The New Ways have become Old again, as they always do. And now another New Way is being born.

This is all as it should be.

The Earth is Not A Victim

Related to and often directly caught up in the idea that the pagan gods are Victims is the idea that the Earth Herself is a Victim. Again, this is often wrapped up in both paganism and feminism. Many ago, I attended an activist gathering in the Pacific Northwest specifically organized around the ideas of radical feminism, radical environmentalism, and Wicca. For these people-- including for myself, at the time-- the Earth, both feminine and divine, was the ultimate Victim. Of course, our thinking was greatly helped along by the fact that the Earth does not speak English and so was unable to say "Shut up, kids, I'm a lot older than you and I'll be here long after you're gone."

Of course, these days, the great Persecutor of the Earth is "Climate Change," which has the added advantage of being highly abstract and difficult to prove. This makes it a perfect vector for the most theatrical sorts of games. As I wrote a little ways back, "invasive species" are another favorite of the defenders of the Earth. Oddly enough, one rarely hears about serious issues like industrial pollutants, the prevalence of artificial carcinogens in the environment, or the decline of world fisheries from the Earth's defenders these days.

Around the time I was attending the radical get-together described above, I was also working for a conservation organization, leading crews on behalf of the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management in various backcountry locations in the Pacific Northwest. One of the projects to which I assigned was billed to the public as "habitat restoration." It seems that the snowy plover, a little bird who lives on the Pacific Coast, was in danger, and we were there to rescue it. How? By combing the beach for miles, pulling out every last stalk of European beach grass that we could find. Oh, and also Scotch broom, and Himalayan blackberry.

You see, it seems that, unlike the native dune grasses of the Pacific Northwest, the European beach grass tends to grow upward and then die, creating dense piles of organic matter. This matter then forms pockets of soil, which become home, in succession, to shrubs and to trees, finally culminating in forests of Sitka spruce and shore pine, where once there had been only empty sand dunes.

Are you thinking, "Okay, what's the problem? Aren't forests good?" Of course you are, but that's because you're not an environmentalist. You see, the trees and the thick shrubbery beneath them then become habitats for owls, racoons, foxes, skunks, and feral cats. And those no good predators go down to the beach and they eat the poor snowy plovers! Now there are no more empty beaches fully of scattered dune grass and little white birds, but dense forests full of birds and animals, and even more undesirable plants like (fat, juicy, delicious) Himalayan blackberry. it's just awful! Surely we need to spend millions of dollars in federal grants to remove all this grass. At once!

As we used to loudly proclaim at Earth First rallies, "The Earth isn't dying, the Earth is being killed."

Antithesis: The antithesis to this game is simply to become aware of hte fact that the Earth, and the living world of Nature, is much bigger and much older than you, and will be here long, long after you're gone. One of the best ways to do this is to find a piece of woodland or another natural place near your house and really get to know it. Learn the animals, the trees, the plants, the natural history, the water cycle, the geology. Learn to love this place, on its own terms. As you grow in knowledge you'll find out that much of what you considered "nature" is considered "invasive species" by environmentalists. Go into the woods and snack on some Himalayan blackberries, or gather some garlic mustard, dandelion, and plantain greens for sandwiches or spring salads. Or just watch some honeybees at work. Then decide whether or not you care.

The Ancestors Are Not Victims

This goes along with the discussion of the gods above. In this version of the Game, it's not the gods, but our own ancestors, who were irreparably harmed by those dastardly Christians. Or perhaps those dastardly Englishmen, or white people, or whoever.

For the sake of this discussion, I want to focus on the religious dimension of this particular Game. Another day we can talk about the racial/ethnic side. Here again, the story is that the Christians (or perhaps the Muslims, or the Jews, or even the Buddhists, depending on where your particular ancestors are from) came along, and they destroyed all of our beautiful ancient traditions, and now our people live in subdivisions and worship Jesus. It's such a shame.

Now of course, there was in fact a concerted effort to forget much of our traditional culture in the Twentieth Century. This is true for almost every version of "our traditional culture." There is nothing wrong with etiher recognizing this or attempting to reverse it. It becomes a problem, as always, when it becomes a Game. That is, when we ourselves become Victims of the great destruction, or Rescuers looking to save our ancestors, or Persecutors looking for some no good Christians (or whatever) to give a piece of our minds. In one version of this Game, our people are traditional ethnic Roman Catholics, who lived in tightly-knit ethnic neighborhoods in the Northeast and the Upper Midwest. But then along came World War II, and the dastardly Jews got into the government and decided that they would need to break up the ethnic neighborhoods, especially identifying the Irish, Germans, Italians, and Poles for this round of ethnic cleansing. And so-- in an alliance with the lousy Protestants and a few sneaky Catholic Fifth Columnists-- they conspired to import hordes of Southern Blacks to Northern cities, while simultaneously building up faceless, soulless suburban neighborhoods. The suburbs were the carrots, the blacks were the sticks. And here we all are, living in subdivisions while our churches lie in disrepair in the old cities.

Of course, the pagan version has the Christians marching off to Ireland and Germany and Scandinavia and destroying Our People's ancient traditions and converting them, entirely against their will, to a new religion and a new way of life.

Antithesis. The antithesis to this game is to recognize that, as hard as it may seem to you, your ancestors chose their way of life on purpose, for reasons that seemed good to them.

An anecdote may help illustrate the reason they would have done so.

A friend of mine is a member of an American Indian tribe whose reservation is in Texas or Oklahoma. This tribe is now Roman Catholic. The reason? In the 19th century, a terrible drought struck the people's land, and they began to suffer from want of water and food. They did rain dances and prayed to their Sun God, but to no avail. Finally, they went to a Christian missionary for help. He agreed to pray for them, but only on the condition that they take down the statue of their god in the center of their village and allow him to put up a crucifix instead. This was done, and the droubt promptly ended.

Accounts like this are very common in the literature. Valerie Flint's excellent study The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe makes this case in great detail. The fact is, many of the ancient pagans converted to Christianity because the Christian bishops were better at magic than the pagan priests!

Now, it remains to be seen whether this will persist. I personally see very little power in the rituals of the Novus Ordo Catholic Church, for example. Not "no power at all," mind, but little. Here again, though, we mustn't fall into the trap of seeing the modern Catholic Church as the victim of the Novus Ordo or of Vatican II. There's a reason that the overwhelming majority of the world's gigantic Catholic population went along with the reforms, as awful as they might seem to us and, again, if we believe in Divine Providence, we have to see its hand here. My own view is that the burning of the Notre Dame cathedral was an omen of the final denouement of European Christendom. Something new will rise in its place-- perhaps something which looks Christian, perhaps something very different.

That's all for today. Tomorrow I hope to wrap up this series-- but we'll see. Again, it's a tale that is growing in the telling.

The Victim

Everybody's had this experience.

Someone comes into your life. Perhaps they're a friend or a family member; often they're somebody new, met at work or school.

The first thing you learn about them is that they've suffered. She was fired from her last job for following the rules too closely. His last girlfriend cheated on him and stole all his money. Her father drank and ran off with another woman. His professor failed him even though she knew it wasn't his fault he didn't turn in his essay. It wasn't her fault her last roommate kicked her out of the house. It wasn't his fault that he couldn't make it into work that day. It wasn't her fault. It wasn't his fault.

The second thing you learn about them is that it wasn't their fault. They've suffered: And someone always did it too them. In fact, someone is doing it to them right now. Her last boyfriend went psycho and she had to move into a new place. But now the landlord is going to kick her out if she doesn't come up with six hundred dollars by Friday, and there's no way she can do that because she just had to spend all her money having the apartment repainted (no evidence that the apartment has been painted). He needs a place to stay, just for a few nights, so that he doesn't end up on the street (he shows no evidence of having looked for a place to live.) She needs to take the class for free because all her money has to go to take care of her daughter (then why is she always going out to bars?).

And so the third thing you learn is that they need something from you. (And you ignore the parenthesis. For now.)

The third thing you learn is also the fourth thing you learn. And the fifth thing you learn. And the sixth thing you learn. You give her the six hundred dollars so she won't lose her place. Next week she needs your help rearranging her bedroom. The week after that she needs a ride to a doctor's appointment on the other side of town. She'll pay you back once she can find a job, but it's just so hard. She never finds the job. The week after that she doesn't need your help, and someone mentions seeing her out with another guy. The next day you get a series of deranged text messages about how this guy is going to kill her. You stop what you're doing, jump in your car and drive over there. Of course there's another man there (no evidence he means her any harm or even knows about you). You become jealous; you lose your temper; you say things you'll regret later. She accuses you of stalking her and demands you leave.

Congratulations: In the next version of the story, you're the psycho ex-boyfriend. In fact, right now she's telling her new target all about how horrible you were to her. He can't even believe the way you just showed up like that, uninvited! And now he learns that thanks to you spending all her rent money, the landlord is evicting her, and she'll need to move into a new place next week. That is, unless there's some way she can come up with six hundred dollars by Friday...

Games People Play

Interactions like this are as common as they are destructive. In the 1960s, a psychologist named Eric Berne noticed that many of his patients acted out repeated patterns like this one, taking one or another role as the occasion demanded. Originally a Freudian, his close study of actual human behavior lead him to found a new school of psychology called Transactional Analysis. His book Games People Play is the foundational popular text of this school, and I strongly recommend it; I rank it as one of the two or three most helpful books I've ever read that were written by people who lived during the Twentieth Century. According to transactional analysis, if you've participated in any of the interactions I've described above, you've been a player in a very specific sort of social phenomenon called a game.

In the following series of posts, I'm going to discuss Berne's theory of games and similar, simpler social transactions out of which they emerge. I'm going to suggest that a particularly destructive game dominates our political life in America. And I'm also going to suggest that the way that we do religion and spirituality, and above all the sorts of alternative religion and spirituality that are familiar to the readers of this blog, are also highly dominated by games of this sort. Finally, I'm going to suggest a way forward, to a spirituality without games.

The Structure of Transactions

The basic theory of Transactional Analysis is that human beings require social recognition from one another, which Berne called "strokes." In a small child, "strokes" are basically literal. An infant needs to be physically handled, or it can literally die from emotional deprivation. In an adult, a "stroke" may amount to nothing more than a nod of recognition from a neighbor-- but it serves the same purpose. As Berne points out, the use of solitary confinement as a method of torture is proof that adults too may be killed or badly harmed by emotional deprivation.

Most of our interactions, meanwhile-- and especially those which seem to be spontaneous-- are in fact highly structured methods of exchanging strokes. These exchanges are called transactions. In every society transactions are highly structured and repeated, but people often remain entirely unconscious of them.

A simple transaction can be described as follows:


In this scenario A and B are neighbors but have little else in common. In Berne's terms, each receives 1 stroke from the interaction. It isn't that either has calculated what they need from the other person, or what they're going to give that person. It's that each simply "knows," on a level prior to consciousness, that the level of their relationship demands that each provide the other with a single stroke and receive his stroke in turn. The number of required strokes, the method of providing them, and the obligation to provide strokes at all vary from one culture to another, and are one of the ways of analyzing and understanding that word, "culture." Within the United States, there are some areas in which the obligation to a neighbor consists entirely of a nodded head. To respond with a smile and a "good morning!" is to elicit a sense of confusion and "What does he want?" In other areas, a "Good morning" may easily lead to a (scripted) conversation about weather, grass, and the like. Other factors may influence the sort of transaction to which one is permitted/obligated. Where I live in rural Maryland, for example, men and women very rarely speak to one another. Even husbands and wives don't seem to like each other very much-- at least, I rarely see them demonstrate the slightest interest in being in one another presence-- and to speak with an unaccompanied person of the opposite sex is something of a faux pas.

In any case, the scenario described above is a very simple form of transaction, called a ritual. Rituals, in Berne's words, are stereotyped, simple transactions programmed by external forces. Greeting, leavetaking, and exchanging pleasantries at a checkout line are simple, informal rituals. ("Hi, how are you?"). Formal rituals are more complex and far less subject to individual or regional variability; the apex of these are highly structured rituals like the Catholic mass or the coronation of a king. From Berne's perspective, informal rituals are actually more interesting. Among other things, the informal ritual's lack of an overt script means that you can analyze how well socialized a person is by how effectively they perform them. Consider the man who responds to a stranger's "Hi, how are you?" with, "Oh, I'm terrible. I just got off the phone with my mother-in-law, and it looks like her brother has cancer. Cancer, can you believe it? The doctors are saying they're going to have to remove his lymph nodes. Just imagine. I had a cousin who had lymph nodes removed and his arm swelled up with lymphedema and got all fat and purple, you shoulda seen it. I was worried they were going to have to amputate-- Hey, where are you going!?" Well, such a person has just revealed a great deal about himself, utterly unrelated to his mother in law, her brother, or his cousin.

Now, it's quite possible to have interactions with other people that are not scripted. Such interactions, governed by reason and directed toward specific ends, Berne calls procedures and operations. These are simpler than rituals, in that there are no scripts or lines to remember; one can honestly say something like "I'm heading to Richmond today, do you happen to know if it's better to take 15 than 495?" receive an answer, and move on. Of course they can also be more complex, as in a large group project or a serious planning session. In the case of procedures, the primary form of interaction is transparent and rational-- and as such, there is little to say about them, and so we'll move on.

Pastimes

More complex than informal rituals are pasttimes. Pastimes are defined by Berne as a series of complementary semi-ritual exchanges, organized around a single field of material, whose ultimate purpose is to structure time. In the book, it is in the section on pastimes that Berne's sense of humor begins to emerge; I have a feeling he was a fun guy to spend time around, games or no games.

Each of these follows a very strict pattern, and you probably know many of them well. PTA: "The kids these days can't function in the workplace." "It's the overprotective parents; when we were kids they let us play outside until the streetlights came on." Sports Talk: "Did you see the Steelers game last night?" "Sure did, Pickett's finally coming into his own as a quarterback." General Motors: "How do you like the 2018?" "It's great, I really like the automatic doors and the backing camera." And so on.

The purpose of a pastime is to structure time, but it serves several other purposes as well. First, it stabilizes each individual in his or her social role. This role, which is what Jung called the persona, consists essentially of the part the individual plays in the games of his or her choice. I like playing PTA and my favorite role is "grumpy old man"; you like playing General Motors and telling me about your Ford F-150; she likes playing "Ever Been?" and going on about how Europeans have the metric system. According to Berne, an individual's role, and the larger position of which it is a manifestation, stabilizes very early on in life, and we spend most of the rest of our lives justifying that role and that position.

Pastimes also form the basis for ongoing acquaintance and friendship. Two women who meet at a party and play a rousing game of "Ain't it Awful!" are likely to meet up later that week for more of the same. Moreover, the pastimes that one participates in are reflections of social class, and finding a new set of pastimes is a major part of upward mobility. Working class people don't play "Ever Been?" Many upper middle class ("PMC") subcultures frown on "General Motors," and consider "Sports Talk" a major faux pas.

Games

Finally we come to games. Games are akin to Pastimes, but they are distinguished by three key traits. First, they are more complex than pastimes, often involve a series of tightly scripted moves. Beyond that and far more important, games are distinguished by their dishonesty. Two men engaging in "Sports Talk" know that they are talking about the football game and enjoying doing so, even if their specific words and phrases are more or less scripted. But two men playing a game of "I've Got You Now, You Son of a Bitch!" are likely to be totally unaware of their motives, even as each chooses his next move exactly in order to ensure the desired outcome. That outcome, finally, is the third distinguishing feature of games. Every game ends in a carefully pre-determined outcome, even as its players claim totally ignorance, and innocence.




I want to now look at a few specific games detailed by Berne, and then at another model of gamesmanship produced by one of Berne's more recent followers. This will illustrate the scenarios discussed at the beginning of this post. And it will also, we will find, have profound implications for spiritual practice in a world of covert games.

If It Weren't For You

Berne opens his discussion of games by illustrating a marital game he calls "If It Weren't For You." It should be familiar from its very name alone. Berne claims it is the most common of games played by married people, and you can probably guess the moves before I even write them.

Mrs. White complained that her husband severely restrictd her social activities, so that she had never learned to dance. Due to changes in her attitude brought about by psychiatrict treatment, her husband became less sure of himself and more indulgent. Mrs. White was then free to enlarge the scope of her activities. She signed up for dancing classes, and then discovered to her despair that she had a morbid fear of dance floors and had to abandon this project.

Now, we can imagine the same scenario taking place in any number of different forms. Mr. Black had always wanted to live in California, but his whole family was in Massachussetts, where it's always cold and gloomy and everyone is so up tight. If it weren't for them, he'd be living his dream in the warm California Sun. Finally, decided to throw caution to the wind and by a one way ticket to L.A. Within six months he found himself totally out of his comfort zone and moved back to the snow and the cold and the miserable people of the Northeast. Miss Gray had always wanted to find a man and get married, but someone had to take care of her ailing mother and none of her other siblings were willing to help. At last her mother died. Miss Gray had several suitors and went on a number of dates, but soon discovered that she was terrified of sex and so broke off contact with the men once things started moving in too intimate a direction. For a time she lived alone, but then-- never doubt the working of Providence!-- her elder sister came down with M.S. and needed a live in caretaker.

In each of these cases, we see that the person who is "It" in the game, while appearing to suffer, in fact gets exactrly what tehy want. In Berne's example, Mrs. White has carefully chosen a domineering man for a husband, which keeps her from having to face her fears and also allows her to confirm her own belief that all men are tyrants. Mr. White, meanwhile, lives in terror of being alone and has chosen someone who will never leave it. As Berne puts it, their surface-level interaction looks something like, "You can't go out dancing tonight, I need someone to make my dinner!" "You never let me do anything!" But their covert interaction is something more like, "You must never leave, I'm terrified of being alone." "I will stay, as long as you keep me from facing my fears."

Other Games

The Games that Berne describes are as familiar as his pastimes. In "I've Got You Now, You Son of a Bitch!" Mr. A arranges for a plumber, Mr. B, to install a new set of fixtures at a set price. When Mr. B submits his bill, it turns out he's gone several dollars over the agreed upon price, due to unexpected expenses arising. Mr. A calls up Mr. B, they have a good shouting match, and Mr. B agrees to reduce the bill. Mr. A is satisfied that he doesn't have to spend as much money-- but the truth is, he doesn't realy care about the money. He loves shouting at people, and he loves confirming hsi belief that everyone is always trying to screw him over. And the truth is, Mr. B had fun too, because he was playing his own game. When he sits down at the dinner table that night, he'll regale his wife with the story of the awful Mr. A, and she'll get to join him for yet another round of Why Does This Always Happen To Me?

Some games are much more serious, and can have far more serious consequences. Berne points out that the prototypical childhood game for most criminals is not "Cops and Robbers" but "Hide and Seek." When a child plays Hide and Seek, the emotional climax comes when he is discovered-- especially if this comes after a good long chase. Many criminals carry this same behavior into adulthood, seeing how much they can get away with and then secretly delighting in finally getting caught. "Alcoholic" is a four-player game, with roles for the Alcoholic, the Persecutor (often his or her badgering spouse), the Rescuer (sometimes a therapist, sometimes his AA sponsor), and the Enabler (who may also play the Persecutor or the Rescuer, dependingon the number of available players).

If you think about it, I'm sure you can come up with similar games in your own life. I have several family members with whom I hate going out to dinner. Somehow it always happens that no matter what sort of restaurant we pick, no matter the day, no matter the time or the city or the style of food, we always get terrible service. The food is late, it's cold, the order is wrong, the waitress ignores us, she spills our drinks, they charge us for an extra hamburger and refuse to take it off the bill. It happens without fail. For many years I simply put up with this, but then I noticed that these ladies-- they're all ladies-- absolutely love sharing the stories of their awful service, after the fact. In fact, even before I read Berne's work, it became quite clear that the story was the point. These gals love going out to dinner, but by and large they aren't interested in food. They're interested in playing a round of "Aint It Awful!"

But I'm afraid I play my own games, and, if you think about it, I'm sure that-- unless you've done some serious work on yourself-- and I hope you have-- but in most cases, I'm sure you do too.

Tomorrow we're going to continue the discussion, drawing on another thinker in the same tradition, and applying these concepts to the spiritual traditions that inform this blog. In the meantime, I leave you with the thought--

What's your favorite game?

Arawn, Lord of Annwn

The above is a stylized image intended as a depiction of Arawn, Lord of Annwn. The source is a Google image search; the image is also used by a Druid order hitherto unknown to me, apparently based in Washington. Annwn is, as we have seen, the realm of the Dead, and according to the Mabinogion, Arawn is its ruler. 

The First Branch of the Mabinogion concerns the adventures of Pwyll, Prince of Dyfed. At the beginning of the story, Pwyll finds that he has offended Arawn, and agrees to do whatever the latter asks in order to make amends. Arawn asks Pwyll to change places with him. For a year and a day, Pwyll will wear his semblance, rule his castle, and sleep in his bed. At the end of this time, he will meet with Arawn's enemy, who contends with him for rulership of Annwn. Pwyll must give him a single blow, but not more than this. 

Now, the Mabinogion is a literary and very much a medieval work, not ancient mythology, but traditional Celtic lore is woven into it, sometimes in a garbled fashion, and there is much we can learn from this story.

Pwyll's name means mind, perception or wisdom. During his time in Annwn, he lives in Arawn's home and sleeps in Arawn's bed, wearing Arawn's form. And Arawn's wife is the most beautiful in the world. Despite having every opportunity to have access to the lady, Pwyll declines, and does not lay a hand on her at night. At the end of his time, he delivers a single blow to Hafgan, Arawn's opponent, but refrains from striking again. Hafgan is defeated, the kingdom of Annwn is united under Arawn, and when Pwyll returns to his own realm of Dyfed he finds that it has prospered in his absence.

The Prince of Dyfedd and the Descent of the Soul

Let's look at this story in terms of the ideas we've been exploring. 

Pwyll's name means intelligence or mind; he thus symbolizes the incorporeal part of man. His name is significant in another way too, which we'll come to. By descending into Annwn, he descends into the World of the Dead. This world, as we have seen, is the world of Matter. Thus Pwyll's descent into Annwn is the soul's descent into the body. 

But it doesn't end there. 

By agreeing to Arawn's terms, Pwyll has accepted Justice. During his sojourn in Annwn, Pwyll demonstrates self-mastery or Temperance, especially in his refusal of intimacy with Arawn's wife. Facing Hafgan, he demonstrates Courage; administering but a single blow, he demonstrates Wisdom. Having done these things, he is able to return to his own realm, and to discover that it has been well-governed in his absence. He faces the temptations of both sex and violence, and responds with virtue. His soul is now rightly ordered, with strength acting in service to reason, and the desires no longer given free reign. 

Now it is clear that Pwyll and Arawn are mirrors of one another, and their respective kingdoms are also themselves. Pwyll's government of Annwn is also his government of Dyfed, and his transcendence of the limitations of the material world is his government over himself. His descent into Annwn is his incarnation in a physical body. His refusal of the temptations of the flesh allows him to unite his body under himself as ruler, and to begin the process of ascent from incarnation. He has, we may suppose, have faced Arawn in the forest hundreds of times before this in prior incarnations. Was his name "Pwyll," intelligence, before?

The Lord of Annwn and the Father of Lies

The Sophist is a dialogue of Plato whose subject seems straightforward, but may not be so.

One of Plato's concerns in his dialogues is the distinction of the real from its imitations. In the Gorgias, for example, he suggests that there is an art of health and strength, but also an art which imitates this. The first is the art of the doctor and the physical trainer, but the second is the art of the fashion artist the aesthetician. The first produces healthy bodies, but the second only creates a semblance of it. Or to give another example, the baker produces sweet foods which we love to eat; the doctor produces medicines, which are often foul but produce health. (At that time a doctor's job was to produce health, as odd as it may seem to us). Most of us prefer the semblance to the real thing, and this is our problem, but it doesn't say anything about the reality of the situation. If you were to set a doctor and an ice cream man before a jury of children, they'll obviously prefer the latter. Our souls, in their unpurified state, are those children. 

According to Plato, the Sophist imitates the Philosopher in just this same way. 


And so the sophist is explicitly declared to a magician or wonder-worker. The guest then divides the art of image-making into two forms, which will be very familiar to those who know anythign about the iconographic tradition in the Orthodox Church. There are images which are intended to resemble forms; these are called "icons." And then there are illusionary images, which are called "phantasms." 

The dialogue then makes a metaphysical point about the existence of non-being. 


And so the sophist imitates the philosopher in the same way that the baker imitates the doctor or the aesthetician the physical trainer. Where the philosopher leads the mind to truth, the sophist produces lies. In this way he is a kind of magician or wonder-worker, seducing the minds of wealthy young men. But-- critically-- the images themselves have a kind of reality, a being of non-being. 

The Sophist and the Sublunar Demiurge

The Sophist appears to discuss a particular class of people in Plato's day, viz. phony philosophers who sold their teachings to the parents of rich kids for money. According to Iamblichus, this is only a surface meaning. The Sophist is not a mere pedant for hire. Rather, he is an image of a particular feature of Iamblichus's cosmology, the Sublunar Demiurge. 

Now the word "demiurge," you probably know, refers to the creator of the material world. The work of the Demiurge is discussed at length in Plato's Timaeus. But to the later Platonists, there were three demiurgi. The first is the Father of the Demirurgi. The Second is the Heavenly Demiurge. And the third is the Sublunar Demiurge. 

Remember that, on the cosmology of both the ancient and the medieval worlds, our physical world begins at the Moon. Above the Moon there is order and stability. The super-lunar cosmos-- that is, the spheres of the planets, the Sun, and the visible stars-- is thus an image of eternity. Beyond this is the eternal Heaven of God. Below the changeable Moon, we have the realm of change, process, division, and decay. We thus have three realms, which we can call the Sublunar, the Astral, and the Celestial. Or in our terms, Abred, the depth of which is Annwn, which is the realm of change and death; Gwynfydd, the starry realm of luminous life; and the invisible Ceugant.

Now each of these three realms has its ruling Power, who is an image of the ruler of the next realm up. This is its creator or Demiurge. 

Were Iamblichus and the later Platonists correct in their beliefs regarding the Sophist? Well, we don't "really" know, but it would make sense. We know that Plato's inner teachings were not written down, but were kept secret. We know that in one of his letters, he tells us the following:


And we know that the Sophist was the first in a trilogy of dialogues, of which the first concerns the Sophist, the second, the Statesman, and the third was to have concerned the Philosopher. This would seem like an image of the three kings, the three demiurgi. (The Philosopher was either never written, was lost, or was kept secret.) 

In any case, we have the image of a creator-god of this material world. We have a material world which is a world of illusions, and also a world of death. And consider the following, from the Chaldaean Oracles: 



To be continued...

Proposition

In the United States at the present time, there are approximately 2,000 chimpanzees, 400 elephants, 200 bonobos, 600 giraffes, 13,000 emus, and 4,700 ostriches. 

Many of these animals live in zoos, of course. Some others live on farms, or in managed wildlife refuges. Six years ago, an experimental population of 90 kangaroos was released into the wild in Wyoming. Of course, this is only continuing a process which began 500 years ago. In 1492 there were no horses in North America; today there are 70 million, including 300,000 wild horses. And there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of zebras in zoos, and at least one wild heard of at least 150 in California. For a time there was a wild population of camels in the American Southwest, abandoned by the United States army during the Civil War; though that population did not survive, we still have at least 3,000 in captivity.

At some point-- maybe over the next century, as JMG thinks, maybe over a thousand or two thousand years, or more-- our civilization is going to collapse, and at some point after that, no memory of us will remain. The creatures that we have imported here from all over the world will remain here, and one day no one will remember that they came from somewhere else.

At some point in the future, North America is going to be a place where hunting peoples are as likely to follow elephants or kangaroos as bison and farming villages are as likely to be patrolled by emus as chickens. I like to think that a future civilization will produce detailed studies of the wild American sasquatch, and that its biologists will scoff at both our disbelief in this well-known animal and at our credulous belief in a creature called the "gorilla" in Africa. 

Digression



Some years ago I wrote a novella set in a future North America in which a remnant population of humans abandons their attempts to rebuild civilization and instead become elephant hunters. It was called "The Elephants Out of Babel". The people in the story had a few fragments of the Bible, and believed themselves to be the survivors of the fall of Babel, which they thought referred to a nearby mega-city whose ruins were now overrun by autonomous robots of various sorts. On a journey to the city, the pair are attacked by an enormous machine built originally as a construction vehicle, complete with a cutting laser, which they believe to be a dragon.

Much later, I discovered that an author named Michael Swanwick had written a novel entitled The Dragons of Babel which also featured a mechanical dragon. This was published in 2008, 3 years after my story was written. But there is no possible way for Mr. Swanwick to have known about me. Another plot point was that one of the characters remembered a variation on the Hail Mary that his mother had sung to him as a child, except that the words were addressed to "Holy Spirit, Mother of God." This would then-- it was implied at the end-- become the basis of a nature-oriented and more female-centric religion, once the survivors abandoned their attempt to rebuild civilization. Yes, I was very much a conventional Leftist at the time, and committed to ideas like radical ecology and eco-feminism. 

Years later I picked up a random book in the science fiction section of a Borders somewhere and found the characters saying a version of the Hail Mary addressed to "Holy Spirit, Mother of God." And again, there was no way at all for the author to have known about me, and I can't even remember what her name was, or what her book was about. But that was when I gave up on the idea that our thoughts are internal to ourselves, or that minds are part of individuals. No, Mind is clearly something in which we participate, and thoughts can be found wherever they like; I never completed my story to the point of publication, and so the thoughts found other vectors for expression in the physical world. 

In my mind still I see a future America in which hunters pursue elephants past the ruins of gargantuan cities. Where do these thoughts come from? 

Here are some of the teachings of Plato.

• Idealism. The material world is determined by the noetic or ideal world. Mind is therefore more real than matter.

• The tripartite psyche. The human soul consists of three parts. These are the appetitive part, which controls the primal longings for food, sex, and so on; the spirited part, which governs the social emotions; and the nous or higher part, which includes the reason and the capacity for contact with the divine.

• Moral realism. Goodness actually exists, and in fact has a more real existence than material things, and is more real than evil. The particular virtues, especially Justice, Courage, Temperance and Wisdom, are also real. One becomes just by participating in real Justice.

• Beauty is real, and the beauty of virtuous actions is the same as the beauty we admire in a face or a landscape. All beautiful things participate in the form of Beauty, and become beautiful thereby. Beauty Itself emanates directly from God, and to be united to Beauty is to ascend to the divine. 

• True love consists of the love of soul for soul, and to truly love someone is to help them become better. Sexual attraction is merely a step on the road to real love, and we ought to practice sexual restraint.

• We can imagine an ideal form of government, in which all things are shared in common (Republic) and the working masses are governed by wise philosopher-kings. This, however, is only possible for gods and demigods (Laws), and so an actual constitution must be formulated with the needs of human beings in mind, including property and hierarchy. 

• Real governments may be produced by constitutions worked out by philosophers, and have as their highest priority the production of virtuous citizens and giving due honor to the gods.

• In political life, one cannot be both a partisan and a citizen.

• The goods of the soul are primary, those of the body secondary. Material goods, the possessions of the body, are tertiary. The goods of the body consist in health and strength. A fashionable appearance is a mere imitation of the actual good of the body. 

• The aim of government is to produce virtuous citizens. 

• After death, the soul goes to a place of judgment, and is rewarded or punished as it has been virtuous or vicious. Punishment for vice may include reincarnation in the body of an animal corresponding to the vice in question. 

By contrast, here are some of the teachings of modern philosophers, and the modern world generally. 

• Materialism. Nothing exists except for matter. To the extent that mental phenomena exist at all, they are entirely determined by the material substrate from which they emerge. 

• The tripartite psyche. The human psyche consists of three parts, the Id, the Ego, and the Superego. The Id, which controls the appetites, especially for sex, is always in control.  Contained in the superego are all the teachings of religion, but these are just coverups or sublimations of the desires of the Id. 

• Moral relativism. Ethics, insofar as it means anything at all, consists in a series of rules to help people get along better in society. In place of wisdom we have intelligence, which consists in being able to repeat large numbers of other peoples' ideas, provided those other people are unviersity professors. Justice is a word much used, and its definition currently is something like "Governments take revenge against a large population of their own citizens for imaginary crimes." Courage, which consists both in not acting through or being controled by fear, and not acting through or being controled by pleasure, is actively discouraged. Temperance, which consists in self-control and especially control of the appetites, is actively discouraged. Scientists teach that temperance consisting as it does in, acts of will, is impossible. 

• "Beauty" is a subjective state of preference of one object to another. This preference only exists because it enabled primitive organisms to outcompete other primitive organisms, for some reason. 

• Love is an epiphenomenon of human bonding hormones such as oxytocin and dopamine. To love someone is to experience sexual and emotional pleasure in their company, and to prefer it to others for the sake of that pleasure.

• We can imagine an ideal form of government, in which the working masses share all things in common and rule other classes in a dictatorship of the proletariat, and we should bring this government into existence in the real world through as much violence as necessary.

• In political life, one must be a partisan. 

• Material goods are primary, and a person's worth may be judged on his possession of them. Physical beauty, demonstrated by a fashionable appearance, is secondary. Goods of the soul, consisting in possession of the virtues, go unmentioned. 

• The aim of government is to produce wealthy citizens. 

• At death, the mind dissolves. A human person could never fall through vice into the form of an animal, but the form of an animal may evolve, through vice, into the form of a human being. 

It's interesting to note that the four great apostles of Modernity, viz. Darwin, Freud, Marx, and Nietzche, all taught exact inversions of Platonic philosophy. Freud taught the tirpartite soul of Plato's Republic, but made Epithymia the master and Nous a mere social convention. Marx taught the ideal society of the Republic but gave the dictatorship to the proletariat and demanded it be brought into being in the material world through force. Darwin taught that, rather than a human falling into animal form through evil, an animal may rise to human form through "reproductive fitness," which consists largely in succcessful acts of evil. The despicable maniac Nietzche, claiming "Plato is a coward," taught that virtues are nonexistent and that real morality consists in deliberately cultivating personal evil. 

A very large part of our political divide has, for a long time, consisted in whether one embraces Darwin and Nietzche on the one hand, or Freud and Marx on the other. The first gives us right-wing economics and the "libertarianism" of the late 20th century conservatives; the second left-wing economics and socialism. This has shifted a bit of late as Freud himself has fallen out of fashion. 

What are we to make of all of this? Rather than just shake my fist and curse the world-- as enjoyable as that can be at times-- I want to think about why we've been given this inverted reality and what we're meant to do with it. But that's a blog post for another day. 

Over on John Michael Greer's blog the topic of the Changer has come up again, in the context of both climate change and invasive species.

I say "has come up" in the passive voice, though somewhat incorrectly. I brought it up, as did another at the same time and synchronistically, which suggests that the thought was a shared one and its source external.

If you aren't familiar, the Changer is a figure from the folklore of the Pacific Northwest. He appears in many of the legends gathered by the folklorist Ella Clark in her volume Indian Legends of the Pacific Northwest. His job is exactly what it sounds like-- There comes a time for the old world to give away to a new one, and so the Changer comes, and transforms the world. A typical example runs as follows:

Not all of the Changer's adventures go well, and not all of his changes have results we might like. At one point he goes to the house of a man of Fire. The Man releases the Fire, and it chases the Changer all through the land. The Changer asks for help from various beings, including Boulder, Tree, and River, but no one can help him. Finally, Trail tells tells the Changer, "Lay down on me, and the Fire will pass over you."

***

On Mr. Greer's blog, I posted the following comment:
What's interesting to me to note is that several commentators responded to me by pointing out that the eucalyptus trees increase the risk of fires. This is true, of course; like the many other highly resinous trees that line the Pacific coast, they're prone to going up in flames. But that's totally irrelevant to the point that I was making, which was, "Here is a different world," not "Here is a better world."

It's been clear to me for some time that we are indeed in a new age, and I accept the theory that the Age of Aquarius began in the late 19th century. But I realy think that most of us are still so locked in the model presented by John of Patmos-- and for that matter, the Poetic Edda, Hesiod's Works and Days, and Plato's Politicus-- in which the next age must necessarily be an improvement upon the present one. Unfortunately, the evidence both of history and of occult theory agree that there is no such necessity.

Indeed, to my mind, the following is the very best image of the Age of Aquarius--

The time ofthe Water-Bearer, rising out of the sea at the end of the age of Oceanic Pisces--

Ruled either by Saturn, Lord of the Grave, or Uranus, Lord of Chaos--

Or Both--