Sedition & Stockholm Syndrome: Analysis of Burmese Days Chapter 13 || Neurotic Nihilism IV.1

The thirteenth chapter of George Orwell’s 1934 work Burmese Days is a whirlwind in cases of power dynamics; as well as subsequent masks and manipulation. 

Entering the chapter is once again a meeting between English Flory and the Burmese native, Doctor Veraswami. In their meeting the Dr. reveals he has figured out more regarding the looming conspiracy towards him on the part of the local magistrate U Po Kyin’s vying for election to the European Club, climbing up the ladder through sewing literal sedition to levy attacks at the Dr., supposedly on the behalf of the Dr. 

Once again the analogy of crocodiles striking at the weakest spot is rephrased. Reformed to the new light of Flory siding with Versawami in opposition to the magistrate as being an English Oriental would technically supersede the current amassed authority of U Po Kyin in general conventionality; however, since the initial dialogue regarding the crocodile Flory gained what would seem to be a new Achilles Heel with her arrival to India from Paris and his meeting of Elizabeth. 

That arrival being the catalyst for the rest of the chapter, and rationale behind choosing the doctor even if the convention is to let such petty Native business happen regardless as it served to only increase the idea of needing the control English Oriental’s had. 

“He knew why. It was because Elizabeth, by coming into his life, had so changed it and renewed it that all the dirty, miserable years might never have passed. Her presence has changed the whole orbit of his mind. She had brought him back to the air of England…”

While a break from English convention on behalf of a native, an act where at the moment Elizabeth’s character would seemingly frown towards; the purpose is as strange as it would seem exactly for that, though ultimately a seeming nostalgia in her as a mirroring muse. 

For so many years, as stated, while not void of companionship (as showcased fully later in the chapter), Flory’s day-to-day had been miserable; a listless existence of drinking and smoking and going about his duties, waiting to return to England… During the course of the story, he even almost makes it even for just a brief period, only to be called back to Burma. Finding himself, somehow, thankful to be back rather than his country of birth. 

The relation between Master & Servant has historically been one of an inherently dubious quality, given the blatant implication of one authority subjecting another to its own bends. A mundane extreme throughout time of slaves and other such synonyms for servitude— even Thomas Jefferson had at least one of them as a concubine, fathering a bastard child with a slave being the way we know in his case; it wasn’t uncommon. 

Ma Hla May worked as servant to Flory for a vast majority of his time in Burma leading up to the arrival of Elizabeth. Detailed in prior chapters of the book, the relationship between Flory and Ma Hla is innately speculative and Orwell makes no secret the dynamic of their sensual busines; the implication in it began as a form of rape and to an extent remained so even though over time she may have seemingly became attached. Or as it would seem their case could have been somewhat of a mutually inclusive hypnosis within her Stockholm Syndrome…

All cards of which shifted against her favor with Flory’s eyes darting to Elizabeth, as opposed to her conventional comfort. Or, as repeatedly stated as his ideation a few times within the chapter, the decent life that late he once lead. 

Attempting more restraint regarding his whiskey and tobacco driven habits, the listlessly living he believed, and did indeed on some level have albeit, at least only of late. Essentially, vice literally vulgar to the veins slowed down in relation to what Carl Jung pointed out regarding muses as a mirror-style conduit for what one wants to see in their reflection. 

Flory’s home is Burma, India. Though he desires some part of England, which he seems to perceive Elizabeth as portraying. The comforting capacity that could be there in companionship that seems familiar and similar and the nostalgia she brings to him, as well as a probable procreative impulse for continued lineage and conventional courtship. 

Similarly to cutting back on tobacco and alcohol in the presence of Elizabeth, Flory disregards Ma Hla May all the same. Or at least, initially attempts to. Having, “ruined her,” by her own as well as general cultural standards, and apparent gained attachment, during the week of her initial expulsion sent a mere message demanding a payment of 50 rupees, though it was disregarded. 

Going back to Flory’s after a week, Ma Hla May’s character appears to him at his arrival back to his abode proceeding his meeting with Doctor Versawami. 

Disheveled, plastered in a heavy white mask of makeup on her face she pleaded for a pity she seemed to know wouldn’t be given, even if felt. Wailing on the floor, Flory in his mind acknowledges her pain is his doing, however given the dynamic of power in the hypothetical late lead life it’s next to nothing, until eventually readjusting herself and in solemn-bitterness marched down the path away from the home. 

Dynamic encapsulated by Flory as she leaves, in his understanding that, “It was true, he had robbed her of her youth…” but with his power, concern turns back to his prior pondering. The solipsistic misery wallowing:

“Where is the life that late led I?”

“Late-lead,” as if dead before it ever left the head…

Might of the Moment || Neurotic Nihilism IV

1. Might?

“‘…like the crocodile, he strikes always at the weakest spot!’

‘Do crocodiles always strike at the weakest spot, doctor?’

 Both men laughed…” 

     — George Orwell, Burmese Days

Contextually the bit of dialogue spoken between Flory, an English colonial and his native friend the Doctor in George Orwell’s detailed Burmese Days is a more lighthearted instance than the actual implications of the offhanded inquiry. 

Might as the momentary application; failure or setback is nonetheless always possible. Challenger had its moment, then like Icarus flying too high, crashed down like a tower onto avenues around… which leads to the question, is there any Might in the moment of a sinking ship? If it were true a captain always went down with the wreck there’d be none of us left. Napoleon entered Moscow to no avail, but made it farther than the later Charlie Chaplin impersonated Austrian painter. 

This is the confusion of strength and Might. Not being innately inequitable, counterintuitive it would be to wholly view them as intrinsically inclusive. Might denotes strength whereas strength is not Might perpetual in and of itself. Continued strength perpetuates as a byproduct of Might’s flashes. 

2. Retentive Evolution

Paradise Lost, while largely a work of John Milton’s autofellatio, stands to embark the delusion as Satan is depicted in the promethean bastardization of Venus we see the character as today; Valor and power only to in the end wind up nothing but a shriveled serpent, not triumphant traitor. Funny how in spite of this, power philosophies and platitudes are drawn from that specific archetype…

“You say you want a Revolution

 Well, you know

 We all want to change the world

 You tell me that it’s evolution…

 […]

 You say you got a real solution

 Well, you know

 We’d all love to see the plan

 You ask me for a contribution

 Well, you know 

 We are doing what we can

 […]

 Don’t you know it’s gonna be alright”

     —The Beatles, Revolution 1 

“You said you wanted evolution 

 The ape was a great big hit

 You say you want a revolution, man

 And I say that you’re full of shit.”

  —Marilyn Manson, Disposable Teens

Between 1960 up until the 1970s the world glimpsed as what was probably the largest widespread adoption/ adaptations into movements that prior seemed somewhat underground. Namely and known are the Hippies, Black Panthers and Weather Underground; in part given their hub in US history as a undeniable phenomenon in world happenings, as well as how the latter mentioned managed to smuggle a bomb into the Pentagon…

Most of the common consensus in hindsight, was a false optimism of accomplishment, and most were to counterproductive in their pride to acknowledge or perceive it; leading to the inevitably and invariably harsher, more nihilistic next generation of counterculture: the Art That Kills- Aesthetic Terrorist movement. 

Art That Kills by George Petros is a book exploring
 this multi-decade group of creatives

Likewise with much of the focus being on American soil tends to negate that in the other Western nations, similar trends sprouted. At that it lacks much of a perspective that is more realistic than the superficialities of American pipe dreams. 

The Dutch Provo Movement was a short-existing blip in the broad genre of 60s cliques of activists, not terribly indistinguishable from most others except in the fact they did not adhere to a solid, grandiose vision of success. “Provo realizes that it will lose in the end.. Provo is an image,” an idea, as they wrote in their own literature, rather than a perpetual collected effort itself the movement is an archetypal ideal… 

3. Awkwardly Applying

Ideas are interesting as they are ideas. Application is awkward; assimilation and adaptation are both neurotic in their own right. 

“Are we demented or am I disturbed?

 The space that’s in between insane and insecure…

 Oh therapy can you please fill the void?

 Am I retarded or am I just overjoyed?”

— Green Day, Jesus Of Suburbia 

Prior to the production of an actualized Broadway spectacle, the album American Idiot was already described as a ‘punk rock opera’ due to the nature of it being a concept record; telling the story of disenchanted, disenfranchised naïvety which ultimately concludes in the subsequent suicide of the St. Jimmy and banal seclusion of Whatsername. 

All that to say the general idea can be summed up when Ghandi said his line about being the change you wish to see. Internal revolution in order for external. Personal is the only revolution which can be perceptual; that does not make it mighty by any innate means as it is so constant a tendency for humans to, “build it up just to burn it down,” and no one, if it were so, would leave the psychoanalysts chair, not even the analysts— then where would anyone be? 

4. Bullet 

Probably, albeit speculatively but intuitively, it’s likely we’d all bite the bullet.. in the Church of Euthanasia such would be an interpersonally personal revolution; their touted line being ‘Save The Planet, Kill Yourself!’ it’s equivalent to Christian sainthood almost even if atheistically. Tax exempt as an educational institution, Chris Korda’s aesthetic terrorist-posthuman church is a goldmine in the context of case studies in Terror Management Theory. 

Ultimately their view is the Earth grows increasingly in population when already substantially overrun by a cancer-like organism which has enough awareness to ruin it not only for themselves but every other ecosystem on the sphere for fellow and future inhabitants. Similar to Darth Treya’s secret mission in Knights Of The Old Republic II to completely sever every living entities connection to the Force, the solution given by and in spite of surprisingly acknowledged futility and biological impracticality of voluntary human depopulation. Intuitively, it’s an unrealistic hypothesis. Even if an inevitable inheritance of extinction exists, given that suicide is ultimately the form of symbolic ego fulfillment in the mind of a caged creature; biology tends to override ideology in the end with its imperative to blatant forms of instantaneous annihilation, comforting as it may seem. 

Collectively conscious mass simultaneous suicide isn’t completely crazy but it’s not a common denominator. The instances that can be poignantly used, while evident of many things, really seem to go to show groups of people whose psychology, like most anyone is prone to pathos and wind up exiting to Hale Bop like Heaven’s Gate as a byproduct. With that however even then permeates the Mortality Salience diagnosed by Terror Management theory; wherein, “conceptions of the supernatural world were probably in place around forty thousand years ago, with the advent of what anthropologists call the Upper Paleolithic Revolution, or the Creative Explosion. This era was marked by the simultaneous appearance of art, body adornments, burials and elaborate grave goods in many different societies… The concurrent emergence of material manifestations of supernatural beliefs and extraordinary technological advances is consistent with the notion that the sophisticated cognitive capacities associated with consciousness could serve our ancestors well but dressed in a supernatural universe in which death could be forestalled and ultimately transcended,”  according to the book Worm At The Core, further purporting the death desire is absurdly based on a denial of the event nonetheless. 

Jonestown in Guyana or a person jumping off a bridge, the ultimate differentiator is choice of beverages present or provided. 

Suicide is in a way a social contagion though, an escapist egress based on the shortness of human lives concluded from illusory assumptions of characteristics. Revolution against the inevitably innate, “when it comes to efforts to transcend death, not much has changed in the last forty thousand years… many ingenious approaches to immortality have arisen. All serve the same purpose: to diminish existential dread by denying death is either inevitable or the end of one’s existence.”

5. Self-Esteem: Synonym of Ego

“Everybody wants to change the world, but no one wants to die”

—My Chemical Romance, Na Na Na (Na Na Na Na Na)

Wisdom is limited to understanding of amalgamated perceived experience. Might is the futile attempts at making that matter, because if our ideas don’t have some intrinsic worth, surely neither do we. 

“Then I wonder how much more I can spend

 Well I guess I should just stick up for myself

 But I really think it’s better this way

 The more you suffer

 The more it shows you really care, right? Yeah

 […]

 I may be dumb but I’m not a dweeb

 I’m just a sucker with no self-esteem”

— The Offspring, Self-Esteem

Explanations regarding the concept of Mortality Salience often prefer to substitute the simple, yet vastly complex word of ‘ego’ for the less self-aggrandizing perception of the two-termed phrase of ‘self-esteem’

Self-esteem is a way of gauging neuroticism in regards to ego, rather than a completely equivalent synonym. 

***

6. Application in Awkwardness

Whether I’m more or less neurotic is unclear; what is, is it is a label and idea which is utilized as a way of broadly encompassing various queries about the human condition. It is a thought experiment for thought experiments and lasts as long as the questions in relation to the experiences of being Neurotically Nihilistic do, if they ever should truly subside. 

Observed, not answered. 

Intuition, not default definition. 

The thesis encompassing Neurotic Nihilism, “what’s a good Nietzschean without Neurotic Nihilism?”

Neurotic meaning, according to the New Webster Medical Dictionary, “one who has a neurosis or behavior suggests having one,” and with that; Neurosis implying, “a functional nervous or emotional disorder, less serious than a psychosis, marked by severe anxiety, depression and the like, without any apparent physical origin.”

Nihilism from the Latin Nihil meaning nothing, literally and metaphorically. Prescribed somewhat contradictingly as the “belief in nothing,” whereas it would be more of a neurotic agnosticism. 

Understanding myself as well as in the current present possible; I know that I embody the definition of a living neurosis walking nihilistically through existence. Synonym to this would be a better understood phrase of ‘mentally fucked’— The Body Keeps The Score but as Anakin Skywalker said in the opening scene of Revenge Of The Sith, and echoed by Rusty Cage for his Family-Friendly Noose Song, “this is where the fun begins!”

Manic, depressive, passively suicidal or just listening to music it’s an experience which can be dissected and will, as a way to understand and evolve from neurosis while simultaneously, unconsciously, growing it to and with each circumstance. 

I am skeptical to a redundantly reductive extent that ensures neuroticism. Not a curse or a blessing, nor is it atypical or too queer of a thing, even if in isolation it gets maniacally grandiose at times; in spite of that hell, to paraphrase Dostoevsky, it’s preferable to the many masks employed by those mysterious mirroring entities of external consciousness. 

7. A Short History of Decay & A Fucked Brain

“History confirms skepticism; yet it is and lives only by trampling over it; no event arises out of doubt, but all considerations of events lead to it and justify it.” anti-philosopher Emil Cioran explored in his potent pull of a book A Short History of Decay. 

Cioran’s book is akin to Nietzsche’s Human, All Too Human but with a more invocative (as in invocation, like a mystical rite) quality that likens it more to the poetic polemics found in the infamous Ragnar Redbeard’s tome Might Is Right. Less like the latter as it’s not a lyrical lambast, it’s a deconstructing diatribe in the same lineage. Not attempting sagedom in its prose moreso the banal comedic horror of the idea nothing truly matters at the end of it all. 

***

If I burned all my writings and destroyed all recordings I’ve made, disappearing to whatever end, it would be all to easy to simply sign my name in A Short History of Decay and have it serve as a posthumous note. Not so much an argument, “not a life sentence, but a death-dream” for none of it. Nothing. 

But, egotiscially, those aren’t my words or works and introspective inspiration they may have, they are mere tools made by other fools. 

***

Ironic

Idiotic

Septic symphony.

Not pity just a vibrating scream;

Something new to mean—

Misery is exclusive to me!

Sleuthing is suffering,

Traveling ends in cadaver skin flaking

“In the dirt, in the dust: it’s an Ordinary Loss”

All a mess, longing

Ethos imitation

Serotonin blows and superstition sews—

Why even watch a show?

Days go and worms only grow

19 out of 25 years and an imagined hundred to go. 

Solipsistic,

It’s near impossible to tell friend from foe

“Everything I think I know is just static on the radio.”

What About Hope? An interview with Some Kid You Don’t Know

At a small venue known as the Groundworks in Tucson, Arizona on December 16,2025 hosted a night of musical numbers of a variety of acts from folk punk to grungy protests. Playing the bill an artist known currently Some Kid You Don’t Know with a set of unique original sonic serenades and a few covers from the likes of the Pixies, among others not to be named (the room promised).

Hear the interview by clicking here.

Show flyer

Who are you, and what do you do exactly? 

Hi, my name is Emanuel Romero. I'm also known as Some Kid You Don't Know, or formerly in the band The Woah’s. 

You played a lot of songs: you played one that I found really interesting. I think it was called Song for the Sadists? 

Song for Guilty Sadists.

What exactly is that about?

Well, from my understanding, it's a song about exactly kind of what the song title is kind of describing, of being guilty for playing a sadist role in bed.

So, the guilt is being the sadist? 

Yes. At least I believe so. 

That's how I take the song. That's how I always perform it, I guess. To connect it more to myself, I'm quite afraid to hurt people both emotionally and physically, especially when it comes to a romantic relationship kind of setting.

So, especially in bed, it'd be a struggle for me to take on a sadist role, even if that's the kind of relationship that I have agreed to with my partner. 

What is fear exactly? 

Just, I guess, I will admit that I think part of this comes out of being, for lack of better words, a people pleaser.

When it comes to relationship, whether it be friendship, romantic, role models, stuff like that, I really want to prove myself and just kind of avoid any wrongdoing. When it comes to someone I like or have some kind of a relationship with, that's why I perform Song for Guilty Sadists. 

The opposite of fear would be hope. What do you think of hope? 

Hope? I think that definition has definitely changed for me. In my years of performing songs, I have definitely performed hopeful songs. 

I think that hope has definitely changed in recent years as I've grown older. As I started performing music in high school, I think the hope was that all my hopes and dreams, in this case, specifically regarding music, would have turned out. And within that time, I have been kicked out of the band, kind of spent a year out of music, not by necessarily a choice, but more inability to and trying to, and more in that time trying to figure out what I'm going to do with my life.
And right now, that is the hope. Being able to figure out what I'm going to do in my life, I guess, if that makes sense.

Do you think hope is necessary? Or is it a bit of a delusion that keeps someone going until they get where they want to be? 

I think that depends— it depends how people want to use their own hope. I truly believe that everyone has hope in them, even if they can't find it at the time. I think hope can be quite negative when it's an unhealthy kind of a thing, I guess. 

Maybe one that I would be able to relate to is an obsession with hope. I have this whole plan on one specific thing, and that's the only thing I focus on. And it just keeps getting out of reach, and I don't take the time to just stop and look around and just take in the information needed to assess the situation and assess, is this worth it? I think, at least with the people that I've met in my life, that is a big contrast that people struggle with, whether it be in a positive sense or in a negative sense.

So, what do you hope for? 

Well, I guess right now, I really just hope that things will work out for not anything specific. Whether it be my music, whether it be my relationship with my friends and family, whether it be my own career paths. 

That's what I'm hoping for, just for it to work out in some way. 

Thank you, is there any way that you can be found anywhere? 

Yes, currently my socials, it's only my private Instagram, but it is at somekidwhosnothacked— though that may change soon.

End of Interview.

Choosing…

It’s not so much omission when it’s deliberate decision;

Omnipresently,

although imperceptibly—

It’s only as real as much as it

     Rolls— halt—

—camera shot—

                   —Flash—

     —Dash—

Better it never lasts

But,

stop-wait

just omit non-commission

Make, take or break

One, two, three

Power to me

drei, zwei, eins

Flat affect

Delirious attachment exhume to consume

On a mission,

seeing the deliberate decision:

A hint is ONLY recognizable INTENT

Exemplary Jackass || Neurotic Nihilism II.3

This is a[nother] piece which is dual purposed. Part of a complete dissertation on Green Day’s album Warning and piece for Neurotic Nihilism which is still in the process of being scribed. While the entire dissertation is going to inevitably be included in the NN Lexicon, it’s written so as to stand alone at the same time. This small multifaceted writing has regards to the song ‘Jackass’ from the album, though it’s minimally touched on here given the point is the idea of the jackass rather than the song alone, wherein the full writing about the song contains information more pertinent elsewhere. This could have fit after NN III.3: A Track Trinity however given it’s primarily regarding a film’s depiction of a jackass, it fits in NN.II at II.3 as is currently being collected in said fashion.

Napoleon Dynamite is a slacker film in the complete (and touted) absence of point. A benign film, humorous in its representation of the monotonous life of one bored burnout in the midst of bumfuck nowhere suburban small-town banality. 

Napoleon’s Uncle Rico, a recurring main character in the movie, is an exemplary jackass, and in the way which comedy is horror in laughing guise: a failed athlete, his entire life revolves around being unable to move on from an injury which cost him big league possibility. Devastated, as it’s what his life hinged on, but not so ultimately unrecoverable. 

Despite displaying a genuine albeit malformed entrepreneurial career, his plot in the film is an attempt to build procure a working Time Machine in order to fix his unwanted life. Rico becomes the Jackass with the trauma never leaving and creeping into his whole livelihood. The Body Keeps The Score and we are solipsistic in misery…

His entire persona being not what is but what even decades after high school sports, in his mind should be. 

“Gosh!”

High school never ends…

Tune in, Drop Out: How? Neurotic Nihilism I.1.6

What is ‘tuning in and dropping out’, and is such completely possible? The old adage of ‘politics are for people who can’t run their own lives,’ is seemingly self-contradictory. Maybe lest one lives on Sentinal Island… but even with such an instance of seclusion it’s only based on external politics that prohibits colonialism in their regard. Notwithstanding the Sentinal people undoubtedly have their own internal politics within their fascinatingly insular culture. 

“Dropping out,” the touted Timothy Leary ideal seems a call more for decentralized utilitarian use of product. Chaos magic promotion. The last ropes sold as Karl Marx once fetishized, not to make a necessarily literal but in the least metaphorical string that may end in being a noose. Conceptually it’s controlled chaos for internal interruption. “Music for the mind,” as a provocative noise artist once explained it to Tom Metzger on his cable TV Race & Reason series. A mesh, collage of contradictions melded together. 

Very postmodern; all thanks to Savitri Devi, the Dadaists and Beatnicks with their addictions and overall jive of insanity superfluous. 

“Are we not part of this world?” as absurdly stupid it’s suffering can and/or may be?

Even a secluded hermit had a start in some social part. 

Nietzsche scribed in Human, All Too Human that, “the shortness of human life leads to many assertions concerning the qualities of man,” however, undeniable is the observation that it is largely a social ape; and with the current age of disconnected connection, dropping out is almost as it would seems form of slow suicide. Apathy encroaches nonetheless in the inevitable fugue. 

***

Destination reached too soon

Only to be gone as to lose

End in rear, unable to veer

Can’t even see if it’s possible here. 

Pray, pity, pleasure

love, laugh, love

Stagnate, serenade, shoot

Unison stomping boots

all to plead, means to loot

Utilitarian is a fetish; application a small dish

Moments of Might

Fawn, not right or flight

if it could only be a last night

Decay In The Plot

Coagulate

Stuck up, drop out

Cellar of data—

Decay on full-frontal display,

What’s in a name?

Rising up, tearing down;

right as whatever the goal,

trips in an inevitable plot-hole.

No one actually wants a clown

Crabbily holding one down

Rejecting projection

Internal imperfection 

Denominations of Satanism: Response to Joseph Rose

Long has the debate over the label of Satanist been argued amongst those who prescribe it to themselves as to the individual validity of the concept. From there Church of Satan holding out it’s place like an occult Ayn Rand Institute, a place to point to, to the online spaces on platforms like discord perpetuating varying opinions in line with what LaVey set up, and diverging or even denying. So with that the query posed by Joseph Rose of the Hail Satan Podcast who runs his own independent congregation of Satanists located out of Philadelphia, Satanic Delco; as well as his own project of articulating Satanism called Outsider Satanism. What he calls a denomination of the supposed religion. While there is another argument to be had whether Satanism can be constituted religious, that is irrelevant to if it is, can there be denominations? What creates a valid denomination for an “alien elite”?

On a Sunday Witching Hour YouTube livestream the all around apostate took in voicemails to answer inquiries, I sent one in regarding the concept of denominations of Satanism, how and why his idea would be valid as such. Prompted by this he finished an essay with his opinions on the topic, after which the inquiry was opened up a bit more within sphere’s he can be found within. 

From Joseph Rose:

We all know that many religions do have various denominations that all recognize a common central text or philosophy, despite whatever other differences they may have.

1. Is there something specific and unique to Satanism that somehow makes denominations completely impossible, unlike every other religion?

2. In your view, what conditions would need to be met for there to be a valid denomination of Satanism?

My response:

1. If we’re gonna go to the core sure I’d say denominations are impossible but only in the broad sense. The denominations would be in individual application and articulation, at least if it’s philosophically based in LaVey it would seem. I don’t think there’s room for a religion or denominations in the institutional or organizational sense with the concept of radical egoism with an alien elite, whatever that actually means as it would seem the ones who do end up doing that like yourself end up more often than not lambasted. Validly or invalidly it’s sort of just a dumb game of verbiage. 

If the base is LaVey, fine, but there’s always room for expansion on those ideas that’s sort of the whole point of it, being adaptable to the circumstances. In theory. Wherein you (Joseph) say it becomes religion is the application, “thought and action” fulfilled so to say. Maybe. Though I’m not sure if that’s just living or being religious, I guess it’s a differentiation in verbiage. 

What would be the base in Satanism? Satan? Which is a personification of what? The individual’s personally chosen archetype to align literally or anthropomorphically? Veneration of something can only go so far, the Process Church venerated Satan in their malformed cosmology where they Satanists? Some claimed the title with their own philosophical interpretations, some of which are not all too dissimilar from LaVey (though they also lived on the same street for a stretch of time lol, so who knows overlap). 

Individuation and articulation, that’s what would do it. While he left and shifted ideas, Diabolus Rex as far as I can tell isn’t discredited in spite of his more mystical and theistic concepts, he’s still allocated the title by the apparent arbiters. 

2.The valid conditions I think have at least a good idea for a base: the veneration of Satan and at least The Satanic Bible or maybe another form of understanding it in the archetype that would lend to psychological and conceptual credibility. So it would ultimately come back to individual application and articulation. Outsider Satanism is a cool personal glimpse into your microcosm of it, but it’s the same as CoS has done for decades with a different wording to it so it makes it seem a nuisance for them. It makes sense from a completely disconnected vantage point, cynically at least where all this argumentation comes from and where it’s counterproductive

The whole issue with verbiage is apparent all around I mean just say the word community around CoS people and it’s abhorrent of a concept, though it’s what would accurately label their niches whether connected on the basis of their identity as Satanists or not. The human animal as social is acknowledged but when it comes to the terminology it gets very, stupidly, puritanical.

End of Response

For more on the matter see my own thoughts more in depth on Denominations of Satanism. Also see the times I’ve interviewed Joseph or been mentioned on his podcast here and here. 

Mask Mentality: Scary Organ Grinder || Neurotic Nihilism III.3

A scary mask, organ grinder and the malicious mirror. 

The Lord of the Flies is a classic tale telling the story of a stranded class of adolescents survival on a remote island. Symbolism regarding and begging questions to features of human behavioral science purveys the book quite explicitly. Of the most notable and significant pieces of iconography delegated to the reader is that of the Mask donned by the boys rallying figure and antagonist to poor Piggy— Jack— and leeway for luridly Darwinistic stanzas creating the effective narrative, solidifying it as a classic story. 

Iconography of the mask marks the human and uncanny. A known entity to a mysterious external consciousness, mirror neurons perception is manipulated; Observational intuition [empathy] becoming obfuscated; known into uncharted territory—  something inexplicably unsettling instilling unease. Fear. 

1. Scary Mask

Long known for generally liminal aesthetics and uncanny renditions of Mundane Extremes in the online world, and genre-bending scores of pop-metal collages the artist Poppy enacts this in the character she explores and deploys for her art. Describing it in her 2018 collaborative work with the band FEVER 333 on the song Scary Mask: 

“I wear my Scary Mask when I’m afraid I don’t belong

 You can’t read my brain until it’s off,

 Not coming off, not coming off…”

As the verse goes, should it be removed, the illusion as well as delusion is killed. Like how sunglasses alter external perception, so does a mask. Literally or metaphorically. 

Due to added social effects of the mask and personal experience being altered to the wanted, or attempted purveying message, outward projection to protect and reject what would lift the mask becomes the actuality. 

“M-A-S-K-Am-I-OK?” she strictly asks. Masks are worn but kept even in spite of hating the mask. While one might, “never take it off,” as a defense mechanism, it is an active form of induced dissociation. 

2. Organ Grinder

Adorned because, supposedly, “you cannot handle” the internal uneasy conscious entity in the mirror. When donned, it is for personal security. Delusion may be an incorrect term of phrase as it isn’t a farce so often; rather, specific qualities already latent to a person. Allowing for alterations nonetheless, the mask is there so the farce is and isn’t. 

An act, though much interaction is already a performance, that may be forgotten is only a performance. ‘Fake-it-till-you-make-it’ self-nurturing. 

“I hate what I have become to escape what I hated being…”

The mask is a freedom, at least in theory. Insofar as application, realistically, just as it is a boundary for security against others, it can easily lock one into place as it is so black and white. 

You or me, as well as me or myself. 

Marilyn Manson’s song from Portrait of An American Family sonically symbolizing this idea with added regard. 

“Calliopenis envy from your daddy

 You’re not gonna hear what he don’t want to hear

 What I say, disgusts him

 He wants to be me and that scares him…”

Based on envy to be some ideal. Again, fake it till you make it. Genuine as it may be, it is still a narrow mold one is forced into by themself. Scaring others with the perceived concept of unrestricted existence all the while pigeonholing oneself into a specific module. Or attempting to, at least. 

Online investigator and Marilyn Manson anthropologist Forever Dirt made a noteworthy observation in the first of his Fundamentally Loathsome God of Fuck-deep-dive project, that, the mask is rather a making of fear; of insecurity and vulnerability…

3. A Mask Of My Own Face

With one aspect or portion of persona given full front stage autonomy, enters a Lemon Demon now. 

Tracks which are memetic in the complete sense of the first four letters of the term’s connotation on the World Wide Web typically; A Mask of My Own Face is an absurdist acknowledgment of the whole dissociative enactment. 

“I’d wear it on Thanksgiving and I’d laugh in the parade 

 At all the people hissing, knowing I’m the one they hate

 And at the big finale I would tear my face away

 And smile as they grip their own and try to do the same

 I look into my eyeholes and what do I see?

 Look into my eyeholes and what do you see?

 A handsome motherfucker, motherfucking looking back at me

 A mask of my own face

 I’d wear that…”

Mask so uncanny it is indistinguishable from the mysterious entity of consciousness that always is there in reality. Well, an intensified portion at least. Unstable and unreliable, yet wholly undeniable. 

***

Dissociation,

free association

Intention:

set symptom

Static,

stagnant modem

Monolithic Misunderstandings || Neurotic Nihilism II.2.2

 

Laying in the midst of rubble, encapsulated in the world’s largest Brutalist tomb built atop the old Chernobyl power plant is the infamous Elephant’s Foot. A mass of pure radioactivity. A human creation. Bob Ross would say of it, a, “happy accident,” as it was not an intentional invention. It’s never so cut and clear. 

The Elephant’s Foot is to the real world what the Monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey is: a creation by an intelligent consciousness that has no actual explanation for its spot in the universe when others stumble upon it. Radioactive decay ensures the Foot won’t be around forever, but high is the likelihood of that process outlasting the human gene altogether. Making a hunk for any possible future intelligences to scour the Earth before it gets engulfed by the sun to find; A Mass without meaning. 

Ominous is the choir in Also Sprach Zarathustra incorporated to accompany the existentialist film. Kubrick uses the most vocal moments in the number, in a way that could be seen as akin to hidden radiation when the neurosis of lack of understanding on the cosmic and personal level— though that is more of a stretching connection albeit, and would rather only make sense in hindsight to the film’s release and the moon missions being the former then the latter in historical sequence. The magnitude of what the Elephant’s Foot is to our species is rather trivial and meaningless to any other; which isn’t to imply nonhuman organisms do not feel effected from and are not affected by radiation, an awareness of something different exists but exactly what is unsure, like with the apes (and later homo-genus apes) Monolith in 2001 at the ‘Dawn of Man’.

It is possible the Monolith to be like the Voyager vehicles we launched, devices for exploration of just how far a species could send at least one thing rather than going only to attempt to find other life. Differential in that however as Voyager includes its Golden Record of the Earth (at least according to our species perspective) whereas the Monolith is merely there, obfuscating without any direct imposition or anything. It just is as it can be perceived: there. Meaning is by perception, what exactly can be perceived from an accidental hunk of radiation or traveling pillar?

One has meaning because we made it— literally— the other not so. Flip it around and it’s meaningless in that the meaning is subjective to the perception. Into new life or regular death, it’s there all by making and misunderstanding that maybe we can’t at a certain point…