How do you feel about the term "Domesticated Primates"?

[Khephra]

I've hated the term "sheeple", but I've always thought there's some truth in this term.

---

Humans who do not think for themselves. Human beings who belong to tribes, states, churches, rigid organizations, nations, industrial societies. The stages which precede individual cyber-life. This is another typical Sufi (Gurjieffian) barb at people who do not think for themselves. An "in joke" not appreciated by some. (Informative and funny references to DP's can be found in the following Falcon Press books presented in the order of snideness, Undoing Yourself, Prometheus Rising, Angel Tech,

Source:
Info-Psychology
by Dr. Timothy Leary, Ph.D.

.................

Wilson, Robert Anton. The New Inquisition

Do not adjust your mind-set: it is the book which is malfunctioning.

...mammals seem incapable of criticizing or examining their neural programs. To a dog or a cat or a monkey, some act or event or thing that seemed "bad" once will always seem "bad" and it, or anything that looks like it, will be attacked or fled. Such programs are created by processes known as imprinting and conditioning, which seem quite mechanical, in that observing them can yield predictions that will be verified, as precisely in many cases, as the predictions of Newtonian mechanics.

Domesticated primates (humans) seem also to function largely on imprinting and conditioning, and mostly they share the mammalian inability to criticize or examine these neurological programs. These mechanical reactions interact with a linguistic (emic) reality-tunnel to produce a characteristic vocabulary, from which behavior can often be predicted mechanically.

It appears that some domesticated primates, over the aeons, have not precisely evolved but have learned how to criticize and examine their own neurological programs. Members of this group cannot be mechanically predicted.

[GOPEC]

1. Sounds like Bloom County...

... or was that "House Apes?"

[Dogmudgeon]

2. As much as I like Neo-Genosticism

I think it suffers from smug elitism ... terribly.

I have always hated the term "sheeple". It does have a legitimate use, though -- it clearly marks its users as elitist prigs. So, too, will Domesticated Primates.

Fact is, humans really are Domesticated Primates. And there is a useful term that does not have much of a pejorative stink attached to it -- "benighted". It evokes more sympathy than scorn. (As it should be, if you ask me.)

Much of "our" (assuming "we" are neo-Gnostics) elitism probably stems from imitating Crowley's and Gurdjieff's bad social habits, but a lot is driven by the promise of superior knowledge that all Gnostic movements offer. This in itself makes "us" susceptible to hauteur and superiority. Even me. And I'm usually willing to admit that I'm a jackass, which is turning out to be just another neo-G hipster's pose.

Leary, though, was a populist about enlightenment, one of the few that the 20th cenutry produced. But Bob Wilson doesn't seem to know whether to cheerlead or sneer at people much of the time, and it's his good fortune that his strengths more than compensate for his weaknesses.

The fact is that the great "unwashed" mass of people are probably less robotic than they've ever been. What inhibits people's drive to consciousness expansion is the need to do lots and lots of work. As in (poorly) paid employment, not "The Work". Notice that the trend toward increased leisure time reversed itself at the very point the neo-Genostic movement became viable. It may have been a conspiracy ... or a robotic reaction in itself.

And it's not likely to change, since many neo-Gs are also into libertarianism and that idiot bastard child of neo-Gnosticism and Libertarianism, Extropianism®*. (Or "Extropianity" if you will.)

I'm currently reading Hyatt's first book (Undoing Yourself) and his own smug elitism really only undoes his message. Illumination for the elite is a 19th-century idea. I'd prefer to reach the Illuminated Promised Land with a whole lot of company. Sitting around a fireplace in a gentleman warlock/philosopher's parlo(u)r with snifters of brandy and Maduros and four of my best smugly Illuminated friends for eternity is a better description of Hell than of Heaven.

--bkl
And deliver me from "BOB" already!

* Extropianism® is a registered trademark of the Extropy Institute, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

[Khephra]

3. Leary, though, was a populist about enlightenment

I'd agree.