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It is More than Just a Game!

The computer, perhaps the modern archetype of impersonal, cold, calculating science and technology, has itself become the prime projective dumping ground of humanity’s inner psyche. This conclusion becomes all the more striking and powerful when one realized that one has very little reason to think that the designers of these games had any conscious appreciation of the fact they were projecting their internal archetypes onto their computerized creations. It would be a serious mistake to think that such raw images and projections are absent from the thoughts of adults. Wizardry is a game apart from others of its genre. Its success probably rests on its unique abilities: no other game allows as much flexibility in building your own characters, designating strengths and weaknesses that have clear effects; and more important, no other game allows you to take a group of characters, up to six at a time, into [a] a dungeon, where they interact and work together to overcome monsters and obstacles. Characters can trade gold and equipment freely, cast beneficial spells on each other, and change position in the expedition to benefit all. Or they can run from all monsters; if one runs, all run.

Wizardry is a projective game; people tend to put their personalities in the characters they invent. The World of Wizardry can be populated with characters of different races—dwarf, elf, gnome, hobbit, human—and different classes starting as [sorcerers], priests, fighters, or thieves; character can earn the right to become a samurai, bishops, and lords. The dungeon has ten levels to conquer and there are numerous personal levels through which your characters per [computer program], any six of which you can gather in the tavern to send on an expedition to the maze. Together your band fights monster, searches for treasures, or has a good old time at the inn. It is undoubtedly true that the historical context of the vast majority of archetypes that members of the human population have experiences throughout the ages is by now so far removed from our direct experience and daily lives that ancient traditional forms have little contemporary meaning for us. At best, they appear bizarre, as if from another planet. At worst, they seem to degenerate hopelessly into mysticism. And yet, this is precisely the attitude we must avoid.

As those who have played Wizardry testify in their own words, it is more than “just a game.” The characters one creates are part of oneself. Hence, when one of the character dies, it is like having part of oneself die as well. I used to be against adults playing video games, I had stopped playing when I was twelve because I became frustrated. However, after analyzing how people spend their time, making good use of artificial technology can be a good use of time and a great outlet. I know video games may help a person after a hard day at work. Video games and virtual technology do not look like my boss; therefore, sometimes I submerge myself in my character, I lose almost all sense of my own identity. I once played for three days straight without coming up out of the game. When my party was finally devastated, because the game was out giving everyone energy (points), I almost broke down into tears because I kept missing the energy. I would liken virtual reality to a fantasized system of personnel management. As a member of a small group of individuals…you must manipulate the members’ performance against the “competition” so that they achieve a certain goal. With AI technology, as in real life, the goal can be readvancement, or the quest for power, or over the long haul, the pot of gold.

Perhaps the most interesting and potentially use of such games is in the field of child psychotherapy. This application also shows that we are not talking about the complete abandonment or nondevelopment of such techniques at all, but rather, only more reflective consideration given to their potentially socially productive use. An accepted psychotherapeutic technique of working with children, who cannot verbalize their inner emotional states as well as adults, is that of play therapy. What people play with and how they do offers window into their inner World. Thus, for instance, with AI technology, you get to generate your own imagine for your character, and the goal is to score points, when the boss comes, you try to get energy from them to get into the winners’ circle and earn a prize. This application reinforces the idea that people can work productively alone, among others, and compete with others to gain the bosses favor for a chance to become part of an elite circle, and whoever has the best project or output, in this case the most energy, wins a prize, and the application even allows you to shop and get discounts.

We hear some much about being part of a team, but we must not lose the idea of individuality and doing the best you can do without paying attention to your competition. Virtual technology allows one to project onto oneself characteristics in which one may be deficient. It teaches you to feel comfortable being your best and to tune others out. How ironic that a machine which has come to symbolize the epitome of humanity’s impersonal, calculating abilities carried to the highest levels of scientific and technological development should serve as a prime vehicle for teaching people how to be an independent productive member of society and rewards them for good behavior. Video games are very popular. There are 155 million Americans who regularly play video games. 42 percent of Americans play for at least three hours per week. Four out of five American households contain a device used to play video games. The average game player is 35 years old. 26 percent of players are under 18 years old, 27 percent are over 50. Interest the mature adults and kids are almost equal in playing games. 56 percent of players are male; 44 percent are female. The most frequent female game play is on average 43 years old, and the average male game player is 35 years old. Of the most frequent game purchasers, 41 percent are female, and 59 percent are male.

Instead, Just Sandwiches and Lemonade Were Served—Reflections on War and Death

At the most elemental level, archetypes help people develop an emotionally satisfying picture of the World. The World is so terrifying both to the primitive and to the child that they require some way of coping with it and organizing it. Two dangerous patients escape Washington psychiatric hospital. Anthony Garver (age 28) and Mark Alexander Adams (age 59) were last seen around 6pm, 6 April 2016. Police said both men were at the hospital on a 180-day court commit out of Snohomish County to treat mental illness and both arrived at the hospital in February 2015. Authorities believe the men escaped through a loose window in their room. Hospital staff say they are considered dangerous to others. They blur the shapes between men and animals and represent a primitive stage in the evolution of the human mind—the stage where people are not yet able to differentiate the animal instincts that emanate from within them.

The truth cannot always be told openly, but somehow it does come out. Since childhood and the primitive project their inner fears out onto the external World, little wonder that some of the most Universal an potent archetypal images are the strangers looking demons—half-human/half-machine creatures. Anthony Garver, age 28, is 5-foot-8 inches, 250 pounds, with brown curly hair and a beard. He was arrested for first degree murder in 2013, but was found not competent to stand trial. In the police report, Anthony Garver was accused of gagging a woman with a ball of cloth and stabbing her 24 times in the chest before slashing her throat. Mark Alexander Adams, age 59, is 6-feet tall and weighs 210 pounds, with long blonde hair. Marl Alexander Adams was sent to the hospital to receive treatment on a domestic violence arrest from 2014, where he was also found not competent to stand trial. Authorities report that he might try to flee to California.

The stereotyping of people, for instance, “extreme bad boy with a dark side” or the “the kindly old man” are but a tiny example of a more general phenomenon that explains at a much deeper level our requirement for unreality. You always hear women talking about how they want a bad boy, but do they every stop to think of what that mean? Anthony Garver is a stereotypical extreme bad boy with a dark side and really negative traits, such as lawbreaking, physical and verbal abuse, drug use, abandoning responsibility, and even killing people. Still, women obsess and fantasize about being with him or a man just like him because being a bad boy is considered powerful and attractive. He cuts through all the malarkey and titillates a woman with his powerful seduction techniques that she is literally at a loss for word. The Christian Grey type may not actually be good for you. Good and evil are present in this man, and he may be a satanic figure.

Then you hear young women talking about how they want a “kind older” man to take care of them, someone who will spoil them and pay their bills. Well, sometimes these silver daddies have a dark side also. They possess traits so powerful that they turn women on to the point where they literally lose almost all control of their emotions and behavior. Traits so powerful that women will feel a deep and strong attraction for the silver fox, even if they hear friends and family do not like him and tell her that “you can do better.” Before you know it, you are a victim of his strong sexual urges and experiencing physical responses you never felt before all because you wanted a sugar daddy. After the first few black eyes, being held captive in your house, and helping to run his shady business, you are not only a victim of abuse, but also a criminal. It is this duality which poses the moral problem and requires the struggle to solve it. In psychosis, symptoms show there is a constant struggle between fancy and reality.

This year was filled with a whole lot of sexiness, but some starlets just shine brighter than the rest. Now you can see how hot they can be in person. The glamour girl, Brenda Delgado, age 33, standing 5-feet and five-inches tall, weighing approximately 145 pounds, with black hair and brown eyes is considered armed and dangerous. She revealed her most captivating credits ever, after being charged with capital murder and unlawful flight to avoid prosecution in connection with the 2 September 2015 death of Dr. Kendra Hatcher. Authorities report that Brenda Delgado ordered Dr. Kendra Hatcher’s murder because she was jealous of the dentist’s relationship with Brenda’s former intimate partner. Clearly Brenda Delgado lacked the differentiating between animal instincts and those of the images she has seen on the screen. She became indifferent to everything around her. #RyanPhillippe 5 of 13

Lights, camera, action! The sexiest shooting star, Brenda Delgado, is only the 9th woman to make the list of the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted on Wednesday, 6 April 2016. Federal investigators are offering a $100,000 reward leading to the capture of the jilted woman, Brenda Delgado. “Brenda Delgado’s addition to the list underscores the violent and calculated nature of the crime she is accused of committing,” reports FBI Special Agent in Charge Thomas Class Dr. Brenda Delgado forgot her humanity and inexorably reality, she obtained pleasure at the expense of her victim’s hardships. Authorities has already arrested three other people in connection with the killing, including the suspected triggerman. Kristopher Love, arrested last October, has also been charged with capital murder after he allegedly shot Dr. Kendra Hatcher in the parking garage of her apartment complex. Inflicting pain was apparently Brenda Delgado’s way of forgetting.

You have seen the glamour girls sear the screen in red-hot roles, but what is Old Mother Hubbard hiding in her cupboard? Regina Gail Agee, age 58, is charged with two counts of first-degree financial exploitation of an antiquated person and four counts of fraudulent use of a credit card. Regina Gail Agee has been arrested on a grand jury indictment for exploiting money from an antiquated couple she was taking care of, as she was accused of taking money from the couple’s account for personal gain. Regina Gail Agee has authority to sign the woman’s name, and she is accused of writing checks on the couple’s joint checking account. Plus, she used their credit card to make purchases of items only she would be using. Contrary to what takes place in modern children’s stories, in fairy tales, evil is as omnipresent as virtue.

Old Mother Hubbard went to the cupboard to get more than just her poor dog a bone. Reports indicate that Regina Gail Agee is also accused of taking the couple’s money to pay for vacations to the beach and the mountains as well as personal purchases. The mishandling and fraud had been going on for 18 months when a member of the couple’s family notified the Sheriff’s Department, after the couple started getting notices of purchases they had never made. Regina Gail Agee was hired to care for the couple eight hours a day so she knew exactly how to exploit them. Jerry Groce, district supervisor of the north division of the Alabama Department of Human Resources reported that exploitation crimes against the elderly and disabled are becoming more common. They are seen as easy targets because they have regular benefits and are often isolated. The figures in fairy tales are not ambivalent—not good and bad at the same time, as well as in real life. Regina Gail Agee developed the diagnostic characteristic of schizophrenia, namely, a marked apathy.


The evil wizard Gargamel, for instance, may have been able to plague the happy, blue Smurfs for a very long time. Gragamel is a hateful individual, who lived in a castle, on a hill and was willing to commit many sinister and cruel acts to achieve his goals and he could be downright ruthless on occasion, such as enjoying tormenting the Smurfs, threatening to burn Puppy alive, and even attempting to harm the defenseless Baby Smurf. However, despite his dark and evil heart, no matter how rich and powerful you are you cannot go on mistreating people and running lives and expect to get away with it. Ambiguities must wait until a relatively firm personality has been established on the basis of positive identification. What was actually happening was that the ego was gradually constructing for itself a new World. Former Massey Energy CEO, Donald Blankenship evidently refused to be affected by impressions for the outer World as seen in when he became the first chief executive officer (CEO) in U.S. history was found guilty of a workplace-safety crime.

After earning millions, a year, the former Massey Energy CEO, Donald Blankenship, age 66, who presided over his coalfields from a mountaintop castle, was sentenced 6 April 2016, to a year in prison and a $250,000 fine, the maximum punishment six years after the death of 29 miners who were killed in a West Virginia coal dust explosions. This conviction is due to Donald Blankenship’s conspiring to flout mine-safety rules. “How come you never come to apologize to me personally? You don’t have a heart! For six years he never apologized. He’s got a family to hug him. I’ve got tombstones.” Tommy Davis, a former Massey miner whose brother Charles Davis was killed in the explosion shouted at Donald Blankenship. Donald Blankenship has recently been cleared of securities fraud and making false statements, but looks like this backbreaking conviction is final. The real life Garamel was finally punished. It is quite clear that the distortions manifested in the psychoses are shown by the whole behavior of the person rather than through verbal expression.

This more general phenomenon is that of archetypes. Archetypes constitute the deepest and most symbolic aspects of the mind that humans used to give order to their World. Most often observed in dreams in the form of mythological character, they are even more readily seen through an analysis of comparative World mythology, legends, fairy tales, religion, and so on. Their agreement is too strong to be produced by chance alone. It is therefore attributed to a similarity of the human psyche at the deepest layers of the unconscious. These similar appearing symbolic images are termed archetypes. A person must either be good or bad, nothing in between. These archetypes help the child develop a basis for understanding that there are great differences between people, and that therefore, one has to make a choice about who one wants to be. The distortion in this whole picture consisted of a fusion of feeling and ideas which played a part in the conflict in the mind of reality where criminals allowed abandoned all logic.

This basic decision, on which all later personality developments will build, is facilitated by the polarization of the fairy tale. The mechanisms of condensation, displacement, substitution, illogical thinking, absurdity, indirect expression, elisions, and representation are all present in everyday life, but such conventional inaccuracies cannot be allowed to glide by without any evident impediments. In wit, these mental disguises are especially evident because they seem to produce pleasure. They are products of the unconscious, and show that no matter how much restriction civilization imposes on the individual, he or she nevertheless finds some way to circumvent it. The most pronounced psychopathological expression which point to a deep-seated disturbance by hallucinations and delusions, which occur in adult psychotics and show a somewhat different kind of disguise. The things they say do not concur with objective facts. There is one fine thing about Teddy; he always gives you a square meal.

What Have You Done for Me Lately?

We are extremely sensitive to recent information; emotional upsets like bad feelings last for a while, then are forgiven. Terrible disasters, like the school bus crash that happened today, 6 April 2016, at 2.36pm in Baltimore, Maryland in which 41 middle and high school were being transported when the school bus crashed, injuring eight of the students forces our attention on the safety of school buses for a while; all sorts of reforms like seat belts will be initiated, and then the spotlight will go away. #RyanPhillippe 1 of 7

Ryan Phillippe
Do not call me unless anything new and exciting happens. We are interested only in the news, then sudden appearance of something unknown. Unexpected or extraordinary events seem to has fast access to consciousness, while an unchanging background noise, a constant weight, or a chronic problem soon gets shunted into the background. It is easy to raise money for emergencies, like the victims of the Keystone pipeline oil spill. On 2 April 6, 2016, landowner’s worst fears came true when the Keystone pipeline in South Dakota sprung a leak. TransCanada, which operates the pipeline, reported a spill of about 187 gallons of crude oil to the Coast Guard’s National Response Center on Saturday afternoon. #RyanPhillippe 2 of 7

In contrast, however, it is more difficult to raise money for the many victims of continuous malnutrition, which kills 3.1 million children globally, accounts for 45 percent of deaths among children under age five, and robs millions of the surviving children of their physical and intellectual potential. We respond quickly to scarcity and danger, unless of course it is the ongoing crises of child(ren) starving. Gradual changes in the World go unnoted while sharp changes are immediately seized on by the mind. #RyanPhillippe 3 of 7

Get to the point! The mental system determines the meaning of any event, its relevance to the person. In the process, it throws out almost all the information that reaches us. Of the billions of leaves you saw last Summer, how many do you remember? A flash of red crossing your view may mean that your son has driven to the house in a red car, but you hardly notice the visual stimulus, just its meaning. A siren is frightening because it means the police want you to stop. #RyanPhillippe 4 of 7

Our minds are set up to simplify, to bring to order to a World that often is as chaotic as it appears. To do this we not only throw out a great deal of information that is presented to us but we lock in, long after they have seemed to retain their usefulness or validity, older patters and pieces of information. These features alone help to explain some of the other great discoveries of the entertainment/celebrity industry. The industry capitalized on our great requirement for simplifying patterns by exploiting it fully. #RyanPhillippe 5 of 7

The industry realized that few people can make it as celebrities can have complex or multiple story lines and still survive in the public’s consciousness. Complexity leads to a loss of clear-cut identity. That is why a clear-cut, single and simple, unambiguous story lines, especially one that ideally can be maintained indefinitely, is so important: #RyanPhillippe 6 of 7

We probably are the official in simplemindedness about others. We select only a few items about each person to go into the fast path judgments, as we do for everything else. We try to make them more stable than they are. We may quickly judge someone, for instance, as a prototypical kindly old man and then try to fit his actions into the correct category. Or, more than likely, we select a few key features that go along with being, for instance, kindly and restrict our observation to them, largely in the same situation, over time. Because behavior is consistent in the same situation over time, we can maintain our coherent perception (“He is honest”; “She is conscientious”) and simply ignore many other situations and behavior of that person. #RyanPhillippe 7 of 7

Secrets and Lies—Dark Side of the Celebrity Industry

The businessperson who uses celebrity, the entertainer who seeks it, and the individual who is confronted by it—show just how far celebrity has spread into every sector of the American life. So great is the value of visibility that the manufacturing and marketing of celebrities now reaches into business, sports, entertainment, religion, the arts, politics, academics, medicine, and the law. Visibility is what every aspiring host wants, what every professional seeks. It is the crucial ingredient that can make Ryan Phillippe the most sought after in town, and talk show host Paula Ferris of the View on ABC the most popular in her market, and Dr. Randy Harris in West Hollywood, California USA the most sought after and highly paid Obstetrics and Gynecologist in his city. However, sometimes when you read celebrity gossip, it should be read, if at all with an attitude of fascination, much as one view the scene of a heinous crime with feelings that alternate between horror, curiosity, and disgust. People sometimes fail to appreciate what the celebrity industry is trying to accomplish. People should stop their complaining because of their presumed jealousy at their having failed to achieve the same degree of fame as those whom they are critical of. While our social critics attack the highly visible and denounce them as underserving of their tremendous salaries, power, privilege, and control over society’s opinions, what the critics really seem to be angry about is that they themselves do not control the process.

Critics of celebrity culture will never be able to control image formation. The root cause of why people want—indeed, require—celebrities are so basic as to render the critics’ complaints superfluous. That the public chooses to worship Ryan Phillippe and not the editor of the Sacramento News and Review is not necessarily destructive or damaging. It is, to the contrary, often valuable and certainly worth understanding. One of Ryan Phillippe’s most vivid memories was at the age of about five years, he was standing one afternoon in the room in the first floor in his parents’ house watching a Swedish servant who was in the shower. He became very disturbed and made a great effort to look away and gave a very strong rebuke. He was very much humiliated. The servant took Ryan downstairs to the dining room in the basement and told his father and brother that he watched her undress through a keyhole, and she somehow caught him and punished him very severely for it. In his great excitement, Ryan ran away, and no one could find him. They spent hours looking for him—the police, neighbors, even the neighborhood drug dealers stop selling dope to help find the little boy. He said for year he regretted that he hid in the closet. He kept on reproducing more scenes, all of which dealt with frustration. This young man was a good Christian. On the whole, the memory represents a religious scene in order to hide an immoral scene of marked affective content. He believed that afterward, he had repeatedly come to consciousness.

Ryan stood in the doorway demanding something and screaming; “My mother, pretty and slender, then suddenly entered the room, as if returning from the street. I formulated the scene so vividly, seen, which, however, furnished no other clue. Whether my brother wished to open or lock the door, why I cried, and what bearing the arrival of my mother had, all these questions were dim to me; I was tempted to explain to myself that it dealt with the memory of a hoax by my brother, which was interrupted by my mother. Such misunderstandings of childhood scenes retained in memory. I missed my mother and I became convinced that she was not in the closet, I began to cry, and therefore demanded my brother unlock it.” One of the techniques and strategies for celebrity development have shifted dramatically as the industry itself has matured over the course of this century; Ryan blamed his naughty brother for the absence of his mother, and he believed that him being locked in the closet is what restored her and that when she greeted him she was appeased by his worry and anxiety. Clearly, the discovery and development of people who has raw talent to begin with was important for becoming a celebrity. However, the industrialized production of celebrities reveals that there is a definite, dark, Barinas Collins side to unreality. Here, the aspirant is essentially taken as “given.” Friends or families respond initially to the immediate performances of a potential “star” and encourage him to develop his talents further. It is mainly up to the aspirant, Ryan Phillippe, with his trademark curly blonde hair, was instantly recognizable. He sought out teachers, arrange for photographs and write-ups and to distribute them to venue managers—those who control theaters or other places where the talents of potential aspirant are likely to be showcased. The potential celebrity aspirants are developed and/or promoted largely by personal cadre of teachers, friends, or parents. These “helpers” in turn seek out dancing teachers, dramatic coaches, lawyers, etc. And the celebrity aspirant’s personal helpers seek and arrange by themselves the appropriate lessons for the aspirant. Under this plan of proceeding, the aspirant depends largely on developing whatever talents he has and hopes, through hard work and luck, to be “discovered.” However, the success rate of this method are too low to justify the expenditures of time, energy, and money it requires.

Ironically, after physically being locked in a closet, one of Ryan Phillippe’s first roles on TV was on One Life to Live, as Billy Douglas, a young man who was convinced that he was homosexual and trying to come out of the closet, but was rejected by his father, and called a pervert. Under this model, we begin to see the utilization of more specialists to help refine the aspirant’s talents and to being him to the attention to the outside World. This represents the industrializing stage. Specialists hired here are agents, publicists, and lawyers who in turn will refer the aspirant to further professional help from coaches, teachers, accountants, and so on. The specialists may even work with the communications media to spread the potential celebrity’s image, and this how Ryan Phillippe got the role of Shane 54, in the cult classic 54. Billy Douglas represented a real breakthrough for Ryan. Sometimes when creating a celebrity, every brand of expertise necessary to spot, develop, market and sell new celebrities is brought under one centralized roof. New names and story lines for potential aspirants will be designed in-house. Clinical psychologist might be employed to transform the individual’s personality to be completely consistent and consonant with the story line. An entire strategy for the transformation of the aspirant and his careful development in controlled settings are painstakingly developed. If need be, every facet of the aspirant’s life from his finances to where he lives, how he dresses, what he eats, with whom he is seen is carefully developed and coordinated. Under the guidance of his manager, Ryan Phillippe undertook physical regimen involving diet, four and one-half hours of daily exercise, dictation and drama lessons improvements for his posture, appearance, and behavior. The guy can run five miles without even stopping for air.

With this process of celebrity manufacturing, market researchers are employed to find out what the public wants from celebrities. These in turn are translated into specs to see if there is a potential celebrity in-house who already meets the criteria or whether a potential aspirant is malleable enough to be manufactured to fit the specifications as to what the public wants. Story lines are also carefully crafted to establish an identity for the potential aspirant. Celebrities are not only given new names to fit their new identities, but new identities are fashioned for them. Depending on how deep the internalization process is, in effect a whole new packaged identity is created. There is the pure selling approach, product improvement approach, and market fulfillment approach. Ryan Phillippe wanted to be the best! People do not realize how lucky they are; celebrities are a relatively new phenomenon. Back in the Victorian era, most people had little, if virtually no, direct contact with those who occupied high places. Vast numbers of people would not even be so fortunate as to secure a once-in-a-lifetime, fleeting glimpse of someone famous. It was really only in the 21st century that social media, and TV, and photography, and rapid means of travel, and communication have made celebrities so accessible to the public. Ordinary people are now able to see people that they have only dreamt of previously. Nowadays, people take celebrities for granted and forget that a close up shot is not a natural way to view a star. It is an artifact, an invention, that was made possible by the medium of motion pictures.

The camera is focused in on the eyes, the lips, the hair, the legs, and the chest of our heroes in ways that we never saw one another before. Seeing such things on a week-in week-out basis one cannot help developing an intense curiosity about what these people are like in other settings, how they live, what and whom they like, what they wear, eat, dream. One cannot help, but form an intense bond with such people without indulging in deep fantasies about them. It is precisely the human ability to fantasize that is in the heart of nearly all the forces which move the human psyche. Hollywood has quickly learned to apply its onscreen story writing talents off-screen to the lives of its starts. A new genre was mastered—pseudo stories, which in turn gave rise to pseudo-events, staged events that has as their only purpose the creation of artificial newsworthy happenings so that the star could be vastly observed by the adoring public. The stars were deliberately created so that the masses could live out their fantasies. The process of intense identification was made infinitely easier if the stars were different, but not too different from their adorning fans, who could fantasize that each star was a more glamorous version of themselves. Besides, fame itself is hard enough to handle on its own. More than once, envy has been motiving enough to site the less some to assassination or murder. Celebrities are now so complicated that it requires the intense cooperation of other industries for it to operate.

A deep sense of mystery has always been an important ingredient of real art. A true piece of art is never fully explainable. This is one of the reasons why we are continually drawn to it again and again. Public relations accounts for the more than 70 percent of all the information that is disseminated under the label as news in our society. That the decentralization of the celebrity/Public Relations industry has contributed to the deliberate production and distribution of partial or slanted truths at best and outright untruths at worst is disturbing, if not dangerous to the celebrities. Often times ignorance or deliberate falsification creates a negative side to fame, which most are incapable of seeing. Hundreds of personal stories could be used to illustrate the “dark side” of celebrityhood. More often than not, it represents the final act of a genuine tragedy. There was a celebrity male who was not qualified for network-level journalism; however, he was hired by a TV station to boost the rating because he had a following and was very attractive. He was making over $1.2 million a year, but had hit rock bottom and was relegated to one-minute news updates, all the while withdrawing into the pathology of stardom. His ever-shrinking professional World was dominated by a core of doting personal attendants—groomers, wardrobe helpers and secretaries—who formed a “warm, unthreatening, loyal wall between him and the increasingly hostile World outside.”

He got so weirded out on cocaine, his addiction was in full [swing] and he was snorting from morning till night. He was so paranoid by the time it was time to go to work, he would not go. However, he was labeled as someone who had more than a drug problem. People said that he was depressed, and his hands would shake. He would get paid $394,964.01 for a TV episode, $59,244.06 for a cameo, up to $5,000.00 for a picture and handwritten letter (even if it was image engineered), $236.98 for a five-minute phone call, and his underwear would sale for $59.05 a pair (the cleaning lady was really cleaning up)! Only the future can tell which young actors will be ready to bleed for their art and which will continue to work with ice cold Perrier in their veins. It would be wrong to conclude that, as a result of the industrialization of celebrities that is so rampant in our society, all mystery has vanished from the scene. Some sense of mystery is always necessary to the successful creation of celebrities and their appeal to the masses. All arts and artists constantly flirt on the borderline between heightening mystery and reducing it. Everything which humans create is a testimony to their nature. We should expect, therefore, that the kinds of reality, celebrities, like Ryan Phillippe experiences is a reflection of the general culture of the particular society in which his is situated. The dark side of the celebrity industry is our dark side as well.

The Deliberate Manufacturing of Falsehood—Cookin’ Some Fish and Twerkin’ at Faces

The dialectic between free will and determinism in its original form is no longer as relevant for us in the century although it can never be fully dismissed or dealt with completely. As the power of computers and sophistication of graphic displays have both increased enormously, artificial realities have become more lifelike in the features that they contain. Hence, not only do they allow people to experiment with ordinary reality, but they have even begun to surpass ordinary reality itself by creating new (artificial) realities. Thus, our contention is that artificial reality sits midway between reality and unreality for it can be used both to explore and to develop either one. If society our society appears increasingly headed in the direction of unreality, then artificial reality is the midwife to bring it to life. #RyanPhillippe 1 of 10

What happens if CBS has one of these machines that can generate real-time animation of photographic quality? You can look at two TVs—one has got a picture of Ryan Phillippe talking to Randolph Harris, and the other set has a picture of Randolph Harris standing behind Ryan Phillippe and you cannot tell them apart. One is on videotape and one was synthesized on a computer. We already do not believe in film anymore. What is going to happen to electronic news gathering when the validating function of videotape no longer exists [emphasis ours]? Television will no longer be a verification medium. Who is going to control that? The rules by which TV operates cannot be seen directly. The rules behind all of the seductive images, the glitter—in short, the gloss that tempts us into throwing aside older versions of reality in the relentless pursuit of new or better improved ones—cannot be see. #RyanPhillippe 2 of 10

How do we put governors [i.e., in our language, “guarantors”] on these fantasy systems so that people do not fantasize the wrong things? The fundamental dialectic for our time is between reality and unreality, especially now that we have the power to influence and create both. As a creature in God’s likeness, did man possess a soul and a will that were autonomous, or, as a member of the physical Universe was man’s behavior completely describable in physical terms? Was man really free to plan his actions or was freedom an illusion? The paradox is that for a medium that is primarily visual, TV can show everything except the rules by which it operates. Thus, weird physical objects that do not obey the usual laws of physics can be created as well as the weirdest imaginable creatures. #RyanPhillippe 3 of 10

Real people can be stored within a computer. Programs can make the imagines interact with real, live, or other previous simulations of the initial person or things. The fundamental rationale for all of this is not to allow engineering nerds to play with highly sophisticated electronic toys. The real reason is that the networks, the electronic and computer manufactures, he advertisement agencies, and even the big toy companies, all have poured considerable monies into the development of Image Engineering. This is because it allows all of the interested parties to achieve and to maintain a degrees of control over electronic images that they cannot achieve and maintain over live human subjects. Have we not in fact become like the gods? Some reporters, politicians, and community members has gotten so used to lying, spreading rumors, calling people by the wrong names and using smuggler language that they cannot even distinguish what is reality or unreality because they lie so much. #RyanPhillippe 4 of 10

Do we not possess great powers along very limited technological dimensions and hence like the gods lack the accompanying moral and political dimensions to put our new powers in proper perspective? One of my patients informed me once, that his earliest memory started when he was five years old. His mother took him upstairs to meet the neighbors, but he remembers experiencing this in a panoramic sense, as if he was there watching himself meet the neighbors. He distinctly remembered the house and the stairway leading up to the second floor. He entertained this memory for many years, but when he imparted it to his mother, a few years ago, she laughed, declaring that there was no truth in it, that is the first place he was not born in this particular house, but has merely lived there from age four to six, that she could not recall this particular neighbor on the second floor. #RyanPhillippe 5 of 10

Notwithstanding his mother’s absolute denial, the patient continued to entertain this memory; he strongly felt that it was true despite all facts to the contrary. By now, most people are vaguely aware of the revolution that is occurring in genetic engineering even if they do not fully comprehend it. They know it has to do with something bigger, smarter, and richer. What they do not appreciate is that the medical revolution hits much closer to home. Some people are under the impression that a particular being was created, and that this creation was discovered by a corrupt politician, who will stop at nothing so he can destroy it and study it, and that the being is unaware that he is not natural. There is also a myth that his father, a famous actor wants his son back, but is too shy to speak to him. The young man has suffered several injuries that would have killed a normal person. #RyanPhillippe 6 of 10
Researchers at the University of Texas invented a new kind of synthetic bone material. The revolutionary new material is not only lighter and stronger than the old kinds that were used to make repairs, but in addition possess a property that older materials never did. The new synthetic material is not only more compatible with living tissue, but indeed so much so that it is the only known material this far into which blood vessels can grow. In effect, blood vessels are capable of converting what was previously inert martials into new living material. The type of synthetic bone the Scientist developed is virtually identical to natural bone, and much stronger than previous bone substitutes and better able to withstand stress. Once the new material is implanted, it is slowly broken down by bodily process and replaced by living bone. The own natural bone covers and grows into the pores over a two-to-four-week period and blood vessels grow into the bone. #RyanPhillippe 7 of 10

The stimulation of the new bone growth suggests that grafts should last indefinitely. Over longer periods of time, the synthetic bone is broken down by specialized cells and replaced with natural bone—just as the body’s own bone is continually replaced. One wonders whether human beings are on the verge of becoming like modern cars. In effect, the only thing that is still American about any cars if their nameplate. The actual car itself may be composed of more foreign than American parts. Is the same thing happening now to humans? What after all is the dividing line between inert and living material? What is dead? What is alive? What is real? These are no longer academic questions. They are certainly no longer questions for which there are available obvious or easy answers. All I know is the continuous attack and harassment of a living being should not be tolerated nor should a politician and the community actively try to label a sane person “crazy” so they can contain and study him, dead or alive. #RyanPhillippe 8 of 10

There should be a way to provide physical and psychological relief from the stresses generated by a bureaucratic, technological society that often demeans and dehumanizes its members who are locked it its grips. The phenomenon of Boundary Warping becomes especially disturbing when the degree of identification with a character becomes so intense that it substitutes in part or in total for the personalities of the viewers. Societies everywhere have always produced people whose personalities and identities were either weakly or incompletely formed. Heroes, celebrities, royalty, historical figures have always served as living substitutes for the deficient parts of the personalities of people whose own personalities were weak or insufficiently formed. What is alarming is that modern societies provide an ever abundant, ever increasing supply of fictive personalities with whom weak or incomplete people can identify or compensate for their own deficient personalities. #RyanPhillippe 9 of 10

The worst, most extreme, for of identification occurs when, for instance, a Kevin Johnson identifies so closely with a Randolph Harris that he projects unwanted or undesirable aspects of himself on to Harris. When the unwanted projections are so powerful and so bad that the person cannot accept them as characteristics of himself/herself, then often the only way to get rid of the projections is to kills the person, in his case Randolph Harris, who has been chosen as the unconscious embodiment of them. To put it mildly, this is Boundary Warping of the most extreme and most dangerous form. One is not able to keep straight—literally—the boundaries between himself/herself and some other well-known person. This type of Boundary Warping was also seen in Jennifer’s Body, when a cult of celebrities become obsessed with Jennifer, and need her in order to live. America has always had deep yearnings and striving for therapeutic redemption. #RyanPhillippe 10 of 10

How Far Back into Your Childhood do Your Memories Reach?

Childhood is to youth what manhood is to age. Children must first by fear be induced to know that which after when they do know, they are most glad of. Some examinations show wide individual variations, inasmuch as some trace their first reminiscences to the sixth month of life, while others can recall nothing of their lives before the end of the sixth or even the eight years. I believe we accept too indifferently the fact of infantile amnesia—that is, the failure of memory for the first years of our lives—and fail to find it strange in a riddle. We forget of what great intellectual accomplishments and of what complicated emotions a child of four years is capable. We really ought to wonder why the memory of later years has, as a rule, retained so little of these psychic processes, especially as we have every reason for assuming that these same forgotten childhood activities have not glided off without leaving a trace in the development of the person, but that they have left a definite influence for all future time. Yet, in spite of this unparalleled effectiveness they were forgotten! This would suggest that there are particularly formed conditions of memory (in the sense of conscious reproduction) which have this far eluded our knowledge. It is quite possible that the forgetting of childhood many give us the key to the understanding of those amnesias which, according to our newer studies, rest at the basis of the formation of all neurotic symptoms.

Of these retained childhood reminiscences, some appear to us readily comprehensible, while others seem strange or unintelligible, much like the gibberish in Rihanna’s song “Work.” It is not difficult to correct certain errors in regard to both kinds. If the retained reminiscences of a person are subjected to an analytic test, it can be readily ascertained that a guarantee for their correctness does not exists. Some of the memory pictures are surely falsified and incomplete or displaced in point of time and place. The assertions of persons examined, that their first memories reach back perhaps to their second year, are evidently unreliable. Motives can soon be discovered which explain the disfigurement and the displacement of these experiences, but they also demonstrate that these memory lapses are not the result of a mere unreliable memory. Powerful forces from a later period have moulded the memory capacity to our infantile experiences, and it is probably due to these same forces that the understanding of our childhood is generally so very strange to us. The recollection of adults, as is known, proceeds through different psychic material. Some recall by means of visual pictures—their memories are of visual character; other individuals can scarcely reproduce in memory the most partly sketch of an experience; we call such persons “aduitifs” and “moteurs” in contrast to the “visuels.” These differences vanish in dreams; all our dreams are preponderatingly visual. However, the development is also found in the childhood memories; the latter are plastic and visual, even in those people whose later memories lacks the visual element.

The visual memory, therefore, preserves the type of infantile recollections. Only my earliest childhood memories are of a visual character; they represent plastically depicted scenes, comparable only to stage settings. In these scenes of childhood, whether they prove to be true or false, one usually sees his own childish person both in countour and dress. This circumstance must excite our wonder, for adults do not see their own person in their recollections of later experiences. It is, moreover, against our experiences to assume that the child’s attention during his experiences is centered on himself rather than exclusively on outside impressions. Various sources force us to assume that the so-called earliest childhood recollections are not true memory traces but later elaborations of the same, elaborations which might have been subjected to the influences of many later psychic forces. Thus, the “childhood reminiscences” of individuals altogether advance to the significations of “concealing memories,” and thereby from a noteworthy analogy to the childhood reminiscences as laid down in the legend and myths of nations. Whoever has examined mentally a number of persons by the method of psychoanalysis must have gathered in this work numerous examples of concealing memories of every description. However, owing to the previously discussed nature of the relations of the childhood reminiscences to later life, it becomes extraordinarily difficult to report such examples. For, in order to attach the value of the concealing memory to an infantile reminiscence, it would be often necessary to present the entire life-history of the person concerned. Only seldom is it possible, as in the following good example, to take out from its context and report a single childhood memory.

A twenty-four-year-old man preserved the following picture from the fifth year of his life: In the garden of a summerhouse, he sat on a stool next to his aunt, who was engaged in teaching him the alphabet. He found difficulty in distinguishing the letter m from n, and he begged his aunt to tell him how to tell one from the other. His aunt called his attention to the fact that the letter m had one whole portion (a stoke) more than the letter n. There was no reason to dispute the reliability of this childhood recollection; its meaning, however, was discovered only later, when it showed itself to be the symbolic representation of another boyish inquisitiveness. For just as he wanted to know the difference between m and n at that time, so he concerned himself later about the difference between boy and girl, and he would have been willing that just this aunt should be his teacher. He also discovered that the difference was a similar one; that the boy again had one whole portion more than the girl, and at the time of this recognition, his memory awoke to the corresponding childish inquisitiveness.

Married to a Criminal–Laundry Day

When you think of the average suburban family, you think of the normal apple pie life—two parents, who have honest jobs, and children, a nice house and a couple of cars. However, you never think that the husband is involved in threats, intimidation, harassment, assault, drug dealing and/or financial crimes like tax evasion. Many people think that being married to a man who is involved in a crime means that you will not have to testify against him, but that is not true, and even if you are not actively participating in his crimes, you can also be arrested and/or charged. #RyanPhillippe 1 of 5

A nice caring women with kids would never engage in crimes, but she might and may not even be aware of it. Even more, people think that most women would never marry a criminal, but they often do and do not find out until they are a few years in their marriage. Some say, “if I found out my husband was a criminal, I would divorce him right away,” but that is not always the case. Some women stay married to criminals because they think that the community would turn their backs on them for not standing by their man. #RyanPhillippe 2 of 5

Other women tell themselves that their husband’s heart is in the right place and the only reason he is going what he does it so protect the family. Many women marry psychopaths and sociopaths and stick by them, even when they find out their husband is under investigation. Even the community will stick by these people, who are criminals, because the victims of crime are considered to be unimportant, or no formal complaint has been filed so unlawful behavior is acceptable. #RyanPhillippe 3 of 5

“Cookin’ fish and twearkin’ ha ha ha ha!”
However, even if you are not actively participating in the crimes of your husband, if you both are charged with a crime, you can be made to testify against each other. Furthermore, if your husband is involved in financial crimes, and you sign your name on the tax forms or other business documents, you can also be charged with a crime. So do not think you will get away. Wrong is wrong. Nonetheless, people think certain types of crimes are okay because they are less investigated or prosecuted. #RyanPhillippe 4 of 5

One woman says she saw nothing wrong with what her husband was doing, until she ended up in jail for a few days and was forced to answer questions. Teresa Giudice was recently released from prison after serving 15 months for conspiracy and bankruptcy fraud; because they have kids, Teresa was allowed to do her time first and now her husband Joe Giudice is starting his 41-month prison sentence for conspiracy and bankruptcy fraud. Both Teresa and Joe were both celebrities, so this just goes to show, anyone can get it, the law does not discriminate based on status. #RyanPhillippe 5 of 5

A Conspiracy to Eavesdrop and Warp the Minds of Americans

Having assented to the initial titillation of eavesdropping, the celebrity could not even plead entrapment. Today, 4 April 2016, California Governor Jerry Brown sets the highest minimum wage in the country of $15 dollars an hour by 2022. However, not that I am pushing for this, but many economists report that by now minimum wage should be $24 dollars an hour if he kept up with inflation. Critics are saying that a $15 an hour minimum wage will cause layoffs, raise rents and prices of food, and make it harder for people who are retired or on public assistance. Yet, the whole programs seem to be staged so that no one really loses. There are cost of living increases for retirement benefits and cities and counties even require that private developers set aside housing units for low-income workers. We are constantly reassured by the government that overrides the critics that everything is real and will be okay because there is justice in America and if your fall short of your dreams, goals, or budgets, there is a safety net you paid for with your tax dollars that will provide a certain percentage of life the life you used to live, and in the meantime, you can find other options to regain your former lifestyle. While people say they understand what is going on, there is a difference between understanding and actually experiencing a situation on a particular level for so long. There is no one to trust, there are constant intrusions and threats. When all boundaries are erased and up for sale, what is there to prevent the selling of people as products in contemporary America? Like most important social phenomena, it begins in innocent ways.

The popularity of the tabloid picture over the serious story demonstrated again and again that the public preferred the frivolous against the serious. People seemed to want escapist fantasy, a feeling of person identification with fictitious characters and celebrities, even more than they wanted the truth. This strong overlap does not mean that distinction between reality and unreality is useless or meaningless, but rather, like all important social phenomena, it is complex. If we have a better idea of how and why unreality is produced, then we may have a better chance of assessing both its influence and the possibility of its containment, if not reversal. With boundary warping there is a deliberate distortion and confusion between traditional realms of reality, for example, between entertainment and news; the general rule is that everything that appears on TV, and every segment of our society, is a branch of entertainment. Reality consists of all those sets of carefully negotiated and evolved distinctions between things that many find convenient for giving order to our World. Reality marks off the boundaries between critical things, events and processes. However, different cultures do not draw the same boundaries around things, especially those that are critical to everyday life. Unreality is the result of the massive infusion of entertainment into every realm of human affairs to the point that everything threatens to become nothing but a spinoff of its truth.

Unreality occurs when everything not only becomes a sub-branch of entertainment, but does do in ways that many are not even aware that it has occurred. Under the rubric of entertainment there is an invasion into your life and reality is denied, distorted, and generally kept invisible from the public. People start to think that you are a source of entertainment and the things that happen to you are part of a game because they are hooked on massive dosages of entertainment in order to function. Image engineering has become so popular that human beings are capable of producing any kind of appearance (photo, video, hologram) that you can imagine, constructed electronically and is capable of interacting with any other image. Person engineering is also become popular, and it is like genetically engineering, but with beings that are already living. The general principle is that a specific person can be manufactured or made over to embody any set of personality characteristics determined by market research to be appealing to a significant segment of the population. The human experience has become so deeply organized around recurrent symbols that they continually have more power over many than actions. Symbols are now so powerful that they are archetypes. For example, the young prince no longer is a person, but he is an ancient fairy tale passed on from generation to generation and is a deep part of the culture that he is embedded into the point he is detached from being a living being, but only seen as a representative.

The young prince is now simply used in the context of selling products, and it is a process that possess a number of disturbing features which thus qualify for inclusion under Boundary Warping. His World may no longer be as tangible as your, but more symbolic and metaphorical. Instead of being human, he is viewed as a hybrid creature, who possess greater power, ability and intelligence. In effect, he is endowed with the ability to solve human problems. However, even more significantly, all boundaries are inherently unstable. In contrast, the humans are generally portrayed as a product of their environment, helpless, and usually crumble in the face of overwhelming problems. Thus, humans are generally portrayed as both passive and paralyzed by their fears and limitation. Boundary Warping thus plays a prominent role in the Universe in which such beings exist because it is a World you can never completely trust. The World is always on the verge of transforming instantly into something else. Because humans are not responsible enough to be accountable for their actions, there is no stability in existence. The main goal of unreality is to remove history or ordinary time as we normally experience it so that the public can have the illusion that no matter what happens to you, you will live forever. And figures of authority serve to trigger powerful acts of destruction devoid of any moral or social context whatsoever. Indeed, an apocalypse is often a current theme. One of the most disturbing aspects of unreality, however, is that the psychopath may be more accepted and understood than those who supposedly have a grip on reality, and that is why outlandish things are able to happen to some people and the perpetrators go unpunished. The infrastructure penetration and contamination of the manufacturing of unreality has reached such proportions that it has literally infiltrated itself into virtually every aspect of American life; the phenomenon is thus so deeply and widely entrenched into very lifeblood of American society that its eradication is highly problematic at this point. American culture stands to become a vast wasteland of programmatic ignorance or unreality creation on the face of the planet. This is why experts tell you to limit the time your kids can watch TV and use social media. Make them read books and play outside. This also goes for adults. TV has rendered traditional causality, traditional sequence of events, irrelevant. Boundary warping can be trivial and frivolous to socially significant and potentially Earthshattering.

Flight from Reality–What Will Not Slaves do for Fear?

We have lost perhaps once and for all, whatever slack and buffering we had built into our system. When we had huge, unsaturated domestic markets that were hungry for anything we could throw at them and hence did not give much of a damn for goods and products that were different from what the Joneses next door wanted, we could get away with equally huge, bureaucratic organizations and production lines that were sloppy or inefficient. We could tolerate friction and hostility between labor, management, government, and stockholders. The problem today is that we cannot get by any longer with this kind of behavior. #RyanPhillippe 1 of 11

We are competing with countries that make quality goods because they have forged close alliances among their employees, managers, governments, shareholders. They may not be perfect alliances, but they stand in sharp contrast to our adversarial relationships. We were shielded from the rest of the World by temporary advantages which have now passed on to others. The World has changed. It has to do with the fact Worldwide travel industry really took suffered the last couple of years. The obvious reasons have to do with the threat of terrorism and the fear that this has raised in travelers that they are not so desirous of visiting abroad. #RyanPhillippe 2 of 11

The travel industry can really understand why people are fearful to venture overseas with what happened in December of 2015, when Syed Rizwan Farook and Tshfeen Malik opened fire at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, California USA, killing 14 people and injuring 17 others and the 22 March 2016 terror attacks at the Brussels Airport and Metro station were brothers Khalid and Ibrahim El Barkraoul acted as suicide boomers and killed 35 people and injured more than 300. That part of the reason for the trouble of the travel industry one can readily understand. And fears of the Zika virus could costs $63.9 billion in lost tourism revenues. That really drove home once again how and why our World has changed so dramatically. #RyanPhillippe 3 of 11

The World is now governed by a condition of weird connections! Any two of the most improbable events anyone can think of can now criss cross and connect up in weird and unpredictable ways that almost defy any person’s imagination. There is no separation anymore between any parts of the globe. Everything everywhere is now in effect local news. The disaster that happened in Brussels and San Bernardino, California USA shows how totally interconnected we have become. For example, these things used to only happen in the Middle East, now they are taking place in Europe and America, and frequently. Events like these are capable of not only physically affecting the whole planet, but also electronically and financially as well. #RyanPhillippe 4 of 11

This is a whole new level of affecting human events that we have never experienced before. We are not more coupled to distant forces beyond our complete control than we have ever been. The ante not only keeps going up, i.e., the disasters we are witnessing are not only bigger in scope, but the time between them is shrinking precipitously. Worse yet, each type of disaster keeps breaking the records for its class. The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in 2011 is the biggest incident of its kind to date, the Gulf of Mexico oil spill 20 April 2010, the Zika virus, and the Boston Bombing on 15 April 2013, are the biggest of their kind. #RyanPhillippe 5 of 11

The whole structure of our World has changed fundamentally. We doubt that something like the Zika virus or Boston Bombing would have happened some 60 years ago. The kind of accidents we had then were no less devastating to a particular community, but they were mainly confined to a particular region. A disaster like a mine explosion for instance could wipe out and be catastrophic to a particular community, but it would not have affected a whole nation or a whole region. The reason why a product tampering, for instance, can happen today is that we have the mixed blessing of modern communications and travel technology. Nothing confounds like to sudden terror, it thrusts every sense out of the office. #RyanPhillippe 6 of 11

With mass communication and mass transportation, a single psychopath can get on a plane and, unfortunately, visit five cities in a day. Hence, when somebody calls in to a company with a product tampering threat, we really have no choice, but to take the idea of a nationwide product recall very seriously, unless we can determine that the so-called tampering threat, if indeed it is real to begin with, was confined to a particular locale or a particular batch or products, a task that is increasingly difficult, in a complex system. How does one locate the particular bottle of poisoned products out of hundreds of thousands of containers (or grapes) scattered across the continent? #RyanPhillippe 7 of 11

No wonder paradox operates in today’s World. No one can foresee all the complex interconnectedness of everything, that everything is both weakly and strongly interconnected at the same time. The weakness is that there are many potential connection between things that few are permanently or directly connected all the time. At the same time, the strength is that if any two things do connect up, then the effect is often instantaneous and dramatic. Thus, even though one starts out assuming that what one is doing is good, it can have adverse effects. Things are now so complex that actions that seem good can lead to complete opposite of what one had intended. #RyanPhillippe 8 of 11

For example, on my son’s birthday a few years ago, his friends invited him out to lunch, and I had an elaborate dinner planned. He thought it would be rude to decline the invite and that he would be back in time for dinner. However, his friend deliberately took him out of town to a casino, they did not even eat, and they delayed leaving the casino until 5pm, they got stuck in traffic on the way back and did not make it home until 9pm. Needless to say they ruined my dinner plans. My son intended to be nice, but it really hurt my feelings because he did not make me a priority on his big day. #RyanPhillippe 9 of 11

New technologies create new freedoms and new dependencies. The freedoms are more evident at first. The dependencies may never become evident, which makes them all the worse, because then it takes a crisis to discover them. If the system has not had time to mature a lot of checks and balances, crises of large complex systems can be nasty. Appreciation for complexity has always been regarded as a sign of weakness by the masses who have no taste whatsoever for it. Which is now to say that reality itself must be regarded as the official sign of weakness by the masses, for reality has become virtually synonymous with complexity. Fear brings one into more dangers than the caution that goes along with it delivers one from. #RyanPhillippe 10 of 11

Little wonder then why as a result many should have become preoccupied with a Flight From Reality through the creation of multiple forms of unreality. It is to a more detailed look at the mechanisms that underlie the production and creation of unreality to which many now turn. Some people are born stupid; some achieve stupidity; and some have stupidity thrust upon them. Ignorance and folly breed the phantoms by which ignorance and folly are perplexed and terrified. A base and dastard fear is the sole principle of human nature to which the slaveholder appeals. There is nothing more depressing than wanting to live, but feeling alone and constantly fearing for your life, safety, and future. It is not from death I request thee to deliver me, but from this terror of torment’s eternity. #RyanPhillippe 11 of 11

It is Dangerous to Trust an Illusion—All Ways End at the Same Point, Disillusion

America had precisely been a huge unparalleled success. However, many Americans confused and took for granted short time, temporary, conditions as permanent, God-granted advantages that existed for all time. They failed to understand and take necessary corrective actions to prevent nearly every single one of their crushing advantages from turning into paralyzing disadvantages. While prices gouging, underpaying workers, and treating people inhumanely, the American economic and infrastructures are destroyed, crumbling, overloaded, or undeveloped. #RyanPhillippe 1 of 12

At one time, the United States of America possessed such a wealth of assets and money it could literally afford to squander them, but now America is $19.2 trillion in debt, running out of water, land, and losing jobs and just now figuring out that conservation of energy and materials is a good idea. Every dimension and every level of society, less can be more. For example, smaller manufacturing plants are easier to design, maintain, and manage than big ones, and they permit much more flexible manufacturing processes that are capable of shifting quickly from one production mode to another. #RyanPhillippe 2 of 12

The United States of America, having always relied on its huge internal domestic markets as being impenetrable, is now at a considerable disadvantage. It knew only how to sell efficiently to one market. Its manufacturing and plant facilities were not only rapidly becoming out of date, much like news on TV is increasingly becoming undesirable, hence inefficient, but increasingly inflexible as well. Organizations themselves should not be viewed as businesses, but as machines. If one part fails to work well, the defective part merely has to be pulled out and replaced with a new one. #RyanPhillippe 3 of 12

One of the most appealing properties about the American dream is it was once like a machine. The greater the inputs into it, the greater the resulting outputs. And generally speaking this is true if the machine is able to maintain the same level of output efficiency no matter what the size of the material that is input into it. However, machines have a useful life and if you abuse it and do not reinvest money into maintaining them, they fall apart and break. Not sure why so many people think they can use and abuse things and they will stay loyal or function as brand new. #RyanPhillippe 4 of 12

Ryan Harris
We also find increasingly on every front of human existence that greater inputs into human organizations do not result in greater outputs of benefits. First of all, in order to handle greater inputs, human organizations generally have to become bigger, and bigger organizations and are generally more inefficient than smaller one. Thus, the mergers of more and more organizations into fewer bigger ones that in turn begot even larger organizations, private as well as public, led to their generally increased inefficiency. #RyanPhillippe 5 of 12

It is well known that all processes have an upper limit to their efficiency. At some point, when too much pressure is put on one resource, it boomerangs and turns back on itself. Instead of leading to greater end benefits, it produces negative end effects and possibly unforeseeable negative benefits that go completely counter to the hypothesized benefits of bigness. Thus, instead of bigger being better, or more inputs into the machine leading to bigger desired outputs, more of bigger inputs into an inefficient machine generally lead to less. #RyanPhillippe 6 of 12

Once one reaches the ability to affect the whole globe, weird things begin to happen. Actions that in the small or isolation are good can have reverse, completely counterintuitive effect when they are magnified up to the level of affecting the whole globe. If trust and cooperation are missing initially, where and how do they magically appear subsequently, especially, God forbid, in the heat of war, an extreme state that does not exactly contribute to the building of additional trust. No one has been able to answer this key question. #RyanPhillippe 7 of 12

The point is that managing complexity calls for conventional, new thinking of the highest order. It requires that ability to appreciate paradox and the fact that complex systems have multiple, divers aspects so that they do not always follow traditional patterns such as bigger is better. Those who only see one dimension of complex problems are now so out of touch with reality that they are truly dangerous. The failure to appreciate a panoramic perspective literally threatens our existence. #RyanPhillippe 8 of 12

Unless the complexities of the whole system are taken into account, something which in isolation appears good can have the complete reverse, opposite, of the intended effect. The ability to understand and to appreciate complexity and paradox is the quintessential essence of the new thinking we have been discussing. It calls for the ability to see broad patterns that influence our World and to avoid getting caught up in irrelevant details. #RyanPhillippe 9 of 12

The tragedy is that just when such broad understanding is of vital importance, particularly to understand why the old patterns that have governed the World for so long (i.e., bigger is better) no longer work, instead what we have gotten is more, narrow-trained, incapacity. Just when we require leadership even more on every front, we have gotten managership. As we have required people who can dream big dreams and set even bigger goals for us, what we have gotten instead are bureaucrats who lack the basic ability to dream any dreams whatsoever and to see any broad patters whatsoever. #RyanPhillippe 10 of 12

It is almost as if when we required a different kind of understanding to cope with complexity, even if it could no longer be fully tamed because such taming like understanding was completely impossible for any one single person, we have produced bureaucrats, the end results of a system that was designed to flee from reality. Hence, the circle became complete. The characteristic features of the new reality are in near complete opposition to the characteristic features of the new unreality. #RyanPhillippe 11 of 12

It is too much to really posit then that as reality became more complex, so complex that no one single individual could understand all the forces and patters unleashed, we retreated more and more into the invention and proliferation of self-contained Worlds of unreality over which we could maintain the illusion of control? Perhaps it is better to wake up, even to suffer, rather than to remain a dupe to illusions all one’s life. Words are gas until you condense them into pictures. #RyanPhillippe 12 of 12
