Story telling is pleasurable entertainment.
Here is some pleasurable entertainment.
There was once in a land far, far away,
a small person who was born with a defect.
Yes it's a sad story.
This small person was born without a personality.
In this land far, far away it is a widespread disease.
In fact every small person was born with it.
Every different parish in this land far, far away, knew how to Cure it.
It was amazing that there were hundreds of different languages and hundreds of different cultures and they each did a different version of the Cure and almost every one was cured.
Those poor souls who couldn't be cured were looked after very well.
There were institutions dedicated to caring for them.
...anyway, back to the Cure
It was learned very early in the history of this land far, far away that the best way to carry out the Cure was to give the job to parents.
Parents were trained by their parents who were trained by their parents and so on.
Nobody knows who trained the first parents.
There are stories, of course.
Some say it all started in a garden while others say it was a swamp.
Anyway it doesn't really matter where it all started.
It just matters that if every parent does their job properly then every small person will be cured.
Just as in training wild animals, a system of reward and punishment was found to be effective, although
it is thought that the reason that the state has to build more and more institutions to take care of the incurable is because parents don't have proper training.
Most blame the rule makers for this, but they in turn say that harsher punishment will correct the situation.
...anyway, back to the Cure
Whether it was discovered by some smart parent in the distant past or whether it was a slow evolution is a point the academics still argue today in the Learning Centres, but somehow parents came to know that if they described to the small people repeatedly the details of a personality that they wanted them to have that they would be Cured and develop a personality.
The usual outcome was that the small people rarely developed a personality like the parents had described but instead developed a mutated version of it.
Parents were still pleased regardless, as any personality meant that the small person wouldn't be taken away to one of the institutions for the incurable. (They tell me that conditions there are horrible.)
They usually start with a mantra of "Oh, your so cute" in a kind of syrupy sing-song voice of approval.
Of course when the small person starts to do something that is not approved of the response is a bark of frightening intensity designed to shock the small person in such a way that they won't repeat whatever it is that they did.
As growing occurs the mantra changes to something like "your a naughty boy" predominately as 'good' behaviour often elicits silence.
This is a particular potent mantra as it programmes the brain at several levels.
Firstly the 'your' word tells the small person that they have a separate identity. They soon learn that 'your' is the same as I/Me/MyName.
'a' reinforces the separateness. 'a' thing.
'naughty' while originally described behaviour gets taken as a characteristic of the small person. So it's not a small person behaving naughtily but a small person Who IS Naughty.
'boy' defines a gender identification. 'boy' has inherent in it all attitudes and behaviours that are masculine.
This mantra repeated several times a day is very powerful.
There are many variation of this mantra and even those that are not used directly.
A small person called Johnny over hears his mother saying "Johnny is not very good at reading" will very quickly adopt that as a characteristic of his developing personality.
Some parents adopt the attitude of the Rule Makers and believe that if they apply discipline that Johnny will get good at reading.
The end result is that most young adults have a fully formed personality and could easily fill a page with likes and dislikes and typical behaviour that define their Selves.'
Although the personality is developing and evolving from before birth to the very end, each person tends to see their Selves as something permanent and unchanging. At any point in their lives they will say that it is the same I that has always been there.
This is the absolute recognition that the Cure has been completely successful.
In a land far, far away there is in every cult(ure) a small group of outcasts.
They are not the incurable, though often they become that way, they are those who are so affected by the side effects of the Cure that they are obsessed with finding a different cure or with finding a way to lessen the side affects of the Cure.
They are usually referred to a 'the Seekers'. Always seeking a way to do it better.
They can have some strange ideas about life and how it could be.
They often refer to the few individuals in books that down through history had found a way to negate the side affects.
The Seekers had their own Rule Makers, usually somebody long dead who had followers who had followers and it was their followers who made a book telling it like they thought the original Rule Maker had said it.
He was usually a man from an entirely different cult(ure) and rumor had it that he might have had magical powers.
In spite of their differences most of these fringe dwellers had in the mythology of their particular cult(ure) a version of the Cure that had only beneficial side affects.
There were stories of perpetual bliss and the ablility to manifest whatever was wanted.
...anyway regardless of the promises, the cure to the side effects of the Cure was said to be attainable through following any one of a multitude of different paths.
Most paths, of course, maintained that they own the copy-write for the Only path that actually gets you there.
As somebody who was cured of the side affects once might have said;
"All of these paths, or most of them, occasionally touch the truth.
They were often based of a truth, but like the chinese whisper game (where a message is transferred verbally down a line of people) a few steps away from the original message, things start to mutate seriously.
Now they offer the same ego masturbation that belonging to a club for support of a football team does.
They are mostly bullshit !
But you know, bullshit is useful.
What are you when all of the layers of bullshit are peeled away ? "
...anyway back to the cure for the side affects of the Cure.
There are those among us that other people think have something special.
They seem not caught up in the trivial dramas that are usual for most people. They don't usually offer opinions or pronounce judgements about the good or the bad of something or somebody.
Some of them have said that the cure to the side affects of the Cure is actually very simple. That it's not learning something but rather Unlearning something.
They showed that there's nothing wrong with the Cure itself, but rather that the side affects are actually from a false belief that we are dependant on the Cure for continued survival. Indeed, that the Cure was actually a part of who we are.
The importance placed on maintenance of the Cure meant that our whole life was hinged on the upkeep of our Personality.
We not only constantly groomed it but would go as far as to commit murder if somebody insulted it.
Almost every thought sentence is started with I or My.
The Belief that you are your personality, the main character in the story of you is the total cause of the side affects of the Cure.
to be continued...
