Another thought on re-watching Buffy

[robinturner]

Why is it that we still insist on using a goat's head to represent ultimate evil? OK, I know all the stuff about Christians demonising old pagan gods, but come on, a goat? Goats are silly creatures that go "meh" and eat clothes off washing lines. The worst thing goats have ever done is contribute to desertification by stripping leaves off shrubs. If you were being threatened by some Goat-Headed Evil Thing, a natural response would be "What are you going to do - nibble me?"

Comments

[cassielsander.livejournal.com]

I really don't know why, but a goat-head just works well for me, from the Marvel Comics version of Baphomet through Altered States and beyond.

Snake heads are so, I don't know. Classist.

Maybe we just figure all those goats we sacrificed to Azazel are going to take their vengeance one day.

Depends how well you know the actual animal!

[hfx-ben.livejournal.com]

What do most folk think of in association with "goose".

Me? I think of nasty, cussed, confrontational, aggressive, violent ... so far as I can tell the only way to fight off a goose is to kill it with a good swift kick to the chest.

So, with that as context ... on what basis do moderns know goats?

I'm going to generalize here: because moderns have such an insanely constrained knowledge of material reality almost nothing makes sense to them except the world of TV sit-coms.

If it weren't for sd$sm+$p `k~s sd^a0@d2 and *#n(d!l I'd have moved to live with the Bedoin years ago. (Because the natives of Kham, eastern Tibet, are out of reach.

When pondering things of daily life we per force need to remind ourselves that we're dealing with people who are massively alienated from the stuff of sanity.

So ... not likely someone will have any experiential basis for relating to "goat-like" ... except the distorted echoes of ancient culture, ramified and filtered through consummer brain-washing.

BTW: If you haven't already, read Robert Graves' "White Goddess". Not quite the Golden Bough, but a close 2nd.

[hyperina.livejournal.com]

Hah! Very amusing, and I agree.

Re: Depends how well you know the actual animal!

[solri.livejournal.com]

I read The White Goddess when I was a teenager, but don't remember much of it, and what I do remember, I get mixed up with The Lost Gods of England, which I read about the same time. I also recommend Peter Redgrove's The Black Goddess, which came put some time in the '80s—the title is a deliberate reference to Graves' work.

[solri.livejournal.com]

A friend of mine back in the 1970s had two goats. The female was the sweetest thing ever. The male hit adolescence and went all Satanic—he'd stare at you balefully with his yellow eyes, an effect accentuated by the fact that he'd taken to drinking his own urine. The look said, "You may stop me eating the washing, mortal, but I shall own your soul for an eternity of torment." But of course, when he actually did eat the washing, that kind of ruined the Satanic effect.

Re: Depends how well you know the actual animal!

[solri.livejournal.com]

I definitely share your opinion on geese. The first time I had to deal with the horrible creatures, I was still a vegetarian, and I remember thinking "You guys are really testing my ahimsa here."

[word-herder.livejournal.com]

Maybe it has something to do with Judaic law? Leviticus 16 (http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Leviticus%2016;&version=31;) talks about a ceremony involving two goats for the Day of Atonement. Lots are cast, and one goat is sacrificed while the other becomes the "scapegoat" and is sent out into the desert:

"Aaron shall bring the goat whose lot falls to the LORD and sacrifice it for a sin offering. But the goat chosen by lot as the scapegoat shall be presented alive before the LORD to be used for making atonement by sending it into the desert as a scapegoat...He is to lay both hands on the head of the live goat and confess over it all the wickedness and rebellion of the Israelites—all their sins—and put them on the goat's head. He shall send the goat away into the desert in the care of a man appointed for the task. The goat will carry on itself all their sins to a solitary place; and the man shall release it in the desert."

If the goat represents sins, it's not a stretch for it to become a symbol of all evil.

Re: Depends how well you know the actual animal!

[hfx-ben.livejournal.com]

heh, that's funny.

As a matter of fact at a friend's for Christmas dinner he served goose and I did have a sense of ?what? something like vindication.
;-)

Re: Depends how well you know the actual animal!

[hfx-ben.livejournal.com]

I went on a big kick after my military sting (Chile, projection of power, destabilizing other governments, that shiet) trying to figure out "where EU culture went wrong". I actually didn't find anything to even come up with a pet theory. Except maybe scape-goating, which seems endemic, but I suspect that's universal.

Anyhow, my point stands: modernism has detached us from the raw material of mysticism.

Oh, hey, have you read about Findhorne? The folk there came up with a wonderful co-planting system for gardening in weak soil ... so the story goes, one of the gardeners received advice directly from Pan. And he was as pictured except for head ... quite human. Hind-quarters were definitely goat-like (if memory serves). He explained the Satanic thing by pointing to how he'd always been a free-thinker.
:-)

Re: Depends how well you know the actual animal!

[solri.livejournal.com]

That was something else I read about back in the '70s. The guy might have been a bit eccentric, but he could certainly grow vegetables! Somewhat to my surprise, I just googled Findhorn and was pleased (and a little surprised) to find that the community still exists, even though Peter Caddy died in 1994.

"Raw material of mysticism" - now there's something to think about.

[solri.livejournal.com]

It's an interesting case of how words change that these days a scapegoat is imprisoned, whereas then it was set free ;-)

Since we're on the subject ...

[hfx-ben.livejournal.com]

... William Irwin Thompson's "Darkness and Scattered Light" is one of a very few books that have stayed with me since the 70s.

As for "raw material" ... alaya vijnana ... store-house of karmic seeds, yes? Or, more cognitively, we can only understand the moment by the lights of previous experiences. Not just at the level of active thought, but more deeply ... "cognitive schema" is a matter of wiring, Hebb assemblies and such like ... "Neurons that fire together, wire together!".

(Always nice to remind myself that I'm a clumsy and foolish old drunk who doesn't deserve even secure housing.)

Re: Since we're on the subject ...

[solri.livejournal.com]

Woo, the Lindisfarne people are still around too! I remember reading a chapter by one of them (probably Thompson himself) in a book on alternative technology, sandwiched in between the windmills and the carp farms. Plus ca change ...

Re: Since we're on the subject ...

[hfx-ben.livejournal.com]

IIRC it went broke a couple of times ... and I have vague memories of it having been in Colorado for a while ... not really sure.

You see, I don't actually follow phenoms like that because, well, when they transform into think-tanks they no longer represent models for "normal" people.
By way of contrast: in the late 70s models of group-living flourished. My best friend had moved to a collective in the states that financed itself doing indexing work ... yaa, literally, contracts from publishers to produce indexes. Now /that/ is a model that could apply today: a sub-set of the group doing web-work.
Our Zen Priory paid the bills by growing alfalfa sprouts ... "Bodhi Foods". Everyone pitched in on that and most of us had little enterprises of our own; top-dog had a part-time job at university installing the PLATO instructional system while working with his wife on stained-glass. I did cloisonee and drove my taxi. Another fellow made his living with pottery. And on and on.
Very livable situations.
And they're practically extinct.
Why?

You know, for pedagogical reasons I rail and rant and ask dumb questions and pronounce slightly crazed generalizations. But that's concious subterfuge. Old Zen saying, "The perfect answer becomes a donkey's hithing-post" ... providing pat answers diminishes the auditor ... Paulo Friere's pedagogy.
In truth I have a pretty good explanation of why people opt to live like an episode of "Friends": when the social contract consists of "You confirm my facade persona and I'll confirm yours", people need to live individually ... can't maintain facade persona 24/7 ... if the basic dynamic of monastic life: at some point you come to confront the "public secret" of who you really are.
And folk have come to feel an allergy to their true selves.
Actual self-loathing? Not sure ... certainly a feeling of insufficiency.
Soooo, in anticipation of failure and rejection (Withdrawal of attention and affection is the sword that dangles over moderns' heads.) they self-reject and live as isolated as they can, emerging from their lairs as required by their persona.

What I need to try is perfectly clear to me ... and I continue trying that ... but I really can't see any prospect for success. Especially since Buddhist communities have taken on the mutual-admiration society dynamic.
Is why I've increasingly withdrawn into my web-work ... the fact of my two broken feet is overcome easily enough. (Day after day, week after week, month after month I trekked downtown with my seat and two drums to make music on the street, with my feet worse than they are now.)

When those who are strongly motivated do naught, then those who've no more than aspirational values don't explore their potential.
It's all rather dire.

"set free"?

[hfx-ben.livejournal.com]

Ostracised into desert-land is cruel punishment, nae?

Re: Since we're on the subject ...

[solri.livejournal.com]

I think the main reason why most communal living experiments fail is that people basically don't like living with each other in practice, however much they may like the idea in theory. (This based on my experience of hanging out in hippie communes back in the '70s, and of Turkish extended families.) The success of the nuclear family is based on having a limited number of people to hate. Even the hunter-gatherer bands of the "peaceful" !Kung manage a murder-rate equivalent to Detroit.

Me, I'd like to live on my own, but close to a community—kind of like the monk who spends long periods walled up in his cell but comes out to stroll around the monastery and take tea or chang from time to time.

By the way, I haven't seen Friends, but what you say about it strikes a chord.

Re: "set free"?

[solri.livejournal.com]

Not for a goat.

Re: "set free"?

[hfx-ben.livejournal.com]

Debatable, I'd say. But I could be existentially wrong.

Goats do well in desert land on their own?

Re: Since we're on the subject ...

[hfx-ben.livejournal.com]

"people basically don't like living with each other in practice, however much they may like the idea in theory."
Moderns, yes. But that was my starting point.
As I wrote: "people need to live individually ... can't maintain facade persona 24/7" ... the only explanation of what I've seen.
All other things are managable ... sharing means folk end up with better food, better music, better everything and more economically. Stuff like "Other folk are too noisy/messy" is a consequence of having no real social relationships ... ill-mannered spoiled brats squabbling with other equally ill-mannered equally spoiled brats.
But, in my experience (and this applies to relationships) it's the reality that weighs heavy, inexorably: the pressure of eventually having to be authentic ... as though a hideous fate.

"The success of the nuclear family is based on having a limited number of people to hate."
huh huh ... agreed.

So: we don't deal with the fundamentals. Technology blossoms (read: spreads like a cancer) while morals and ethics take a back seat ... in an era where political amity is increasingly important. I wonder where those social insights are going to come from? (Show me a spirituality that isn't essentially practical and I'll show your rose-scented bullshit.)
We can't stand to live with others, but we're going to cope with 7B people.

"kind of like the monk who spends long periods walled up in his cell but comes out to stroll around the monastery and take tea or chang from time to time."
Congratulations ... the optimal that I've had but somewhere let slip.

What I'm advocating is just that sort of living ... for at least a period of time (3 months seems a bare minimum) ... a detox period.

Far from saying that folk aren't PITA ("pain in the ass", yaa?) I find that dealing with that is the tap-root of political insight.

"Friends" ... or "Seinfeld" ... they both leave me slack-jawed, bog-smacked ... callow, cavalier, arrogant, conceited, narcissitic ... celebrations of the culture of entitlement. For my money they're more corrosive than porn.

BTW

[hfx-ben.livejournal.com]

I spent a while spidering http://www.contemplativemind.org ... it's dramatic: truly substantial.

*lateral move*
I have always imagined setting up some sort of academic think-tank based on my "participatory deliberation" method. (Starting to cobble together a formal proposal I've been googling every clever phrase that comes to my mind and have been striking gold, such as "syllogistic analysis" or "declarative logic".) Bhutan, for my own reasons. (They're very friendly to Karma Kagyu there. And royalty has shown itself to be very forward thinking.)

Now, a broad-minded academic with an appreciation for the role the "east" is going to play in the new millenium might make something of that. I know UNESCO has been funding such things ... I bet they'd be grateful for a system that documents best knowledge and best practices concerning the thorny issues of the day.
heh ... I bet anything that would reduce the number of refugees can be funded.

We either confirm our civics (I'm soooooo glad Turkey saw their way to curtailing their military incursion!) or there'll be hell to pay.

Re: "set free"?

[solri.livejournal.com]

Well the Biblical desert is pretty inhospitable, but it's not like the Rub' al-Khali. I imagine a goat could get along there fairly well, given their ability to eat pretty much anything. Come to think of it, it was probably goats that made the place a desert.

Re: Since we're on the subject ...

[solri.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure if there's as big a difference with us moderns as you claim. It's true that we've lost some of our communal living skills, but I'm not sure the ancients were that much better at it. Like I said, most "peaceful" primitive societies are usually more violent on a day-to-day basis than we are—and I'm talking about the "nice" ones like the !Kung, not violent wackos like the Yanomami.

So any living arrangement has to take into account the fact that we are sufficiently fucked up that (a) we can't bear to live with other people for very long and (b) we can't bear to be alone for very long. (If I remember correctly, Pascal said something to the effect that all our problems come from the fact that we cannot sit quietly in our room by ourselves.)

As for Seinfeld, aren't you missing the point that it's a comedy based on people's flaws? The thing that makes it funny is that all the characters are selfish and shallow (except for Kramer, who is just nuts). Comedy is the gentle sister of tragedy: both show us the consequences of our failings.

Re: BTW

[solri.livejournal.com]

I like that contemplative mind site a lot (checked it out from one of your previous posts). The problem I have with a lot of eclectic new age spiritual development groups is that they think that improving the state of their consciousness is enough, rather than taking the view that it's just one part of making ourselves better humans, and that has to include acting justly. (Oh yes, and the fact that most of them are airheads.) As I just wrote in a post I'm working on: It all begins with ethics.

As for Bhutan, I've never been there, but from what I've seen and heard, it's fabulous, and an excellent situation for what you have in mind. Could end up as the Switzerland of Asia (minus the dubious bank accounts).

Re: BTW

[hfx-ben.livejournal.com]

"The problem I have with a lot of eclectic new age spiritual development groups is that they think that improving the state of their consciousness is enough"
Now let's pretend for a moment that it's actually as you say it is.
Would that attitude have a simple set of manifestations? I mean, would it show? Of course it would, in any number of ways. (One large and successful sangha I know considers demonstrations and protests to be "part of the problem".) It would show in a lot of ways because it isn't merely some superficial error in analysis ... it has deep roots.

Conventional organizations like, say, our national security organization (CSIS) likely see me as unreliable for my left-leaning ways. But "yuppie" organizations see me as untrustworthy because disloyal; my talk is not all that different from theirs, but when it comes to the walk ... people don't appreciate being shown up.
So in the end even without explicit / overt ostracism at the level of impact on material life it comes to the same thing.

But to be fair: that contemplative mind site does step into the realm of activism and social justice. Which, at the risk of sounding paranoid, is required by how they feel the need for a comprehensive facade persona.

A funny note: I spidered their site and, after watching a very nice video (one woman made a lot of good sense about how folk burnout on the front lines of the social justice battle) I tracked down one fellow, a Puerto Rican, and located his 2 blogs. Neither were open to comments. One even had registration closed. And no email to be found.
And that's what's haunted my life: when I look to see what people do I find the evidence of a complete hypocricy. Thing is, folk don't want to hear about that, especially with regards to individuals they want to venerate.

huh huh yes, the Switzerland of Asia, sounds fine ...
... the challenge for me: to break through the Catch-22; I can't get remuneration til I get a working system but can't get a yada-yada-bla-blah. (I may even lose my domain name if I don't get cash flow happening in the next 2 months.) So an international collaboration seems kinda delusive just now!

Re: Since we're on the subject ...

[hfx-ben.livejournal.com]

"Like I said, most "peaceful" primitive societies are usually more violent on a day-to-day basis than we are—and I'm talking about the "nice" ones like the !Kung,"
I've studied both, if only in 2nd year anthro course, and would say that neither have established the security that comes from agriculture.

Without calling for some mythical perfection, weren't there times of relative amity? I've read that Islamic communities lived in relative peace, c/w religious tolerance.

But I'll stand by my point: many moderns don't have the sense to check see if their PC is plugged in when it fails to boot. There's no time in their daily lives that they related to phenomenal world except for traffic and retail purchases and such as that.

As for Seinfeld, I don't think all comedy is edifying ... because it's funny and popular really doesn't indicate anything at all. I don't think you want to make that show paradigmatic of the genre. I don't find it insightful, or ironic ... just this squirmy superficiality, puerile ... it really turns me off. ("South Park", on the other hand ... or "The Daily Show" ... kettles of different sorta fish.)

Sure, the social equivalent of "grass is always greener" ... I'm not suggesting that the dawning of a Golden Age is at hand ... but from where the notion that we have to run in panic from the paradoxes? from where the notion that self-awareness is impossible and so we much knee-jerk react away compulsively from whatever causes us discomfort?
Is my point almost entirely, that.
Something I learned from having been caught in a long prairie blizzard (I mean 4 days long, not 4 hours long): misery is quite detached from death ... that I'm uncomfortably cold really and actually means almost nothing, so long as I pay appropriate attention to those "DANGER DANGER DANGER - hypothermia on the horizon"

"I am not absolutely comfortable with everyone in my surround 24/7" becomes justification for splendid isolation? Lousy logic ... sounds like self-serving sophistry to me.

Maybe moderns can't stand discomfort because they're gut-weak ... or, more likely, they've contrived a culture where they get to reward themselves for their weaknesses. "I'm so easily bored; I'll got out tonight for the 4th time this week and again spend nearly a hundred dollars on myself. Because I must ... because I'm bored at home, even with my splendid stereo, my super-hot PC, my full library, and my big-screen TV ... because I simply cannot suffer through 2 or 3 hours of boredom ... I just can't."
Junkie-talk.

"we cannot sit quietly in our room by ourselves"
Point isn't, I suggest, to sit quietly or not, but rather: if a person cannot bring themselves to do /that/, then what?
The hundreds of millions of suffering ... what would they give for the chance to sit quietly, still, warm, secure, well-fed?
But moderns have to drink more salt-water to slake their thirst ... and drink more, and again ... and again ... and again.

With that sort of psychic orientation /of course/ they will endure social indignity or injustice in the work-place ... /of course/ they will make Dem noises and then line up to support the oligarchs ... they're junkies, pure and simple.

Me? I'm a traitor and deserve to be pushed away, because I've had a life-vow not to support the myths, not to contribute to entropy, not to make the false appear true, not to encourage others into inauthenticity.

I'm not poor because I'm a perfectionist, because I demanded too much.
I'm poor because I would accept pay to join in the project of rationalizeing a situation that is unwholesome.