•TPC•

Cyrano’s Journal Online and its semi-autonomous subsections (Thomas Paine’s Corner, The Greanville Journal, CJO Avenger, and VoxPop) would be delighted to periodically email you links to the most recent material and timeless classics available on our diverse and comprehensive site. If you would like to subscribe, type “CJO subscription” in the subject line and send your email to JMiller@bestcyrano.org

By Jason Miller

10/8/07

Cluster B Personality Disorders

1776.0 Americanistic Personality Disorder

The essential features of Americanistic Personality Disorder include pervasive patterns of extreme self-absorption, profound and long-term lapses in empathy, a deep disregard for the well-being of others, a powerful aversion to intellectual honesty and reality, and a grossly exaggerated sense of the importance of one’s self and one’s nation. These patterns emerge in infancy, manifest themselves in nearly all contexts, and often become pathological.

These patterns have also been characterized as sociopathic, or colloquially as the “Ugly American Syndrome.” Note that the latter terminology carries too benign a connotation to accurately describe an individual afflicted with such a dangerous perversion of character.

For this diagnosis to be given, the individual must be deeply immersed in the flag-waving, nationalistic, and militaristic fervor derived primarily from the nearly perpetual barrage of reality warping emanations of the “mainstream media,” most commonly through the medium of television. Typically indoctrinated from birth to believe that they are morally superior, exceptional human beings, these individuals suffer from severe egocentrism, a condition further engendered by the prevalence of the acutely toxic dominant paradigm known as capitalism.

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Cyrano’s Journal Online and its semi-autonomous subsections (Thomas Paine’s Corner, The Greanville Journal, CJO Avenger, and VoxPop) would be delighted to periodically email you links to the most recent material and timeless classics available on our diverse and comprehensive site. If you would like to subscribe, type “CJO subscription” in the subject line and send your email to JMiller@bestcyrano.org

By Adam Engel

9/23/07

Bright lights.
Screechy scratchy
space gossip:
alien tongues
like insects in debate.
Cold instruments, hard tables.
Paralyzed, mute, helpless.
Steely gadgets telescoped up my –
but back in bed by six.
Clock radio Muzak
alarm, alarm. Alarm. Alarm.

That dream again?
No, look, proof:
tiny scoop-marks on my thigh
and oh my burning bum!
Regardless:
to the shower
the espresso pot
the car my pod my womb
two hours traffic
may I not collapse
on the packed pavement
of my destination or
drop dead
in the cubicle unremarked
till pay day or
stink of personal decay or
impromptu staff meeting.

May I survive this day’s
abduction,
return
home again, home again
to night’s
white light blindness
catatonic lifetimes past
probes unspeakable
alien chit-chat
unidentified fleeting objects
of deliverance.

Adam Engel is a senior contributing editor for Cyrano’s Journal Online and can be reached at: bartleby.samsa@verizon.net

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Cyrano’s Journal Online and its semi-autonomous subsections (Thomas Paine’s Corner, The Greanville Journal, CJO Avenger, and VoxPop) would be delighted to periodically email you links to the most recent material and timeless classics available on our diverse and comprehensive site. If you would like to subscribe, type “CJO subscription” in the subject line and send your email to JMiller@bestcyrano.org

By Jason Miller

8/27/07

“It is impossible for capitalism to survive, primarily because the system of capitalism needs some blood to suck. Capitalism used to be like an eagle, but now it’s more like a vulture. It used to be strong enough to go and suck anybody’s blood whether they were strong or not. But now it has become more cowardly, like the vulture, and it can only suck the blood of the helpless. As the nations of the world free themselves, the capitalism has less victims, less to suck, and it becomes weaker and weaker. It’s only a matter of time in my opinion before it will collapse completely.”

–Malcolm X

Striving with the unwavering dedication of true believers and slaves to the grind, those of us who exist within the geographic, social, cultural, economic, and political boundaries of the United States are collectively destroying the Earth.

With dutiful efforts, heavily sedated consciences, and sweet obliviousness to the depth of our depravity, we toil away at our chosen or assigned tasks. After all, predatory plutocrats like “Mitt” Romney would be impotent without his minions—the hundreds of millions of wage slaves exercising their “right to work” (for as small a wage as they desire) while obediently manning the bulwarks of a system so putrid that were it possible to feed it to a pig, our porcine friend would wretch his guts out.

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Cyrano’s Journal Online and its semi-autonomous subsections (Thomas Paine’s Corner, The Greanville Journal, CJO Avenger, and VoxPop) would be delighted to periodically email you links to the most recent material and timeless classics available on our diverse and comprehensive site. If you would like to subscribe, type “CJO subscription” in the subject line and send your email to JMiller@bestcyrano.org

By Vi Ransel

8/23/07

While the game is rigged
in favor of the Rich,
they still depend
on us
to spend enough
to support them in the style
to which we’ve allowed them
to become accustomed.

When we turn around
and make a gift to them
of the wages
we slave so hard to make
by exchanging them
for mindless consumer fluff
we’re saying that it’s OK

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Cyrano’s Journal Online, Thomas Paine’s Corner, The Greanville Journal, CJO Avenger, and VoxPop are initiating a weekly email which will include links to both the most recent offerings and to timeless classics available on our very diverse and comprehensive site. If you would like to subscribe, type “CJO subscription” in the subject line and send your email to JMiller@bestcyrano.org

By Sylvain Lamoureux

7/7/07

In many comments and previous posts on Thomas Paine’s Corner, I may have referred to the masses as being easily hypnotized by the status power of shiny gadgets. After viewing the following link, I had to re-think that statement:

http://www.technorati.com/videos/youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DEjQ4Nza34ak

I have determined that it is not the mere “wow factor” that influences consumers, but a variety of factors, all of which are equally ridiculous. Let’s take the two examples of Microsoft and Apple.

Microsoft. A trusted name? Not likely. If not a trusted name, then what? Ask “why Microsoft?” and most people will reply “because everyone else uses it.” When presented with superior (and free) options like Linux or OpenOffice, they are suspicious, fearful and dismissive. This leads me to conclude that because “everyone else” uses MS Windoze, consumers will not even consider another product. Is this the way that they go through life? Stampeding with the herd?

Apple - a trusted name? More so than Microsoft. Yet it is not as much about “trust” as it is about “cool.” Apple products are cool: iPods, iPhones, i-yi-yi. They are the latest craze and they are expensive, more so than their counterparts. People line up for days to get these things. How did marketing gain such control? Quite simply. Bernays’ disciples, Madison Avenue, and the corporate media assault us constantly with an array of psychological manipulations. And they work!

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”Spirituality used to be ontology (philosophy of reality) thousands of years ago, but those days are long gone. Now spirituality is mostly entertainment, self-deception, and self-mystification, which is to say a dedication to unrealities.”

By Sankara Saranam

Meta Arts Magazine

It’s hard to dispassionately and philosophically discuss liberty with a straight face these days without becoming a journalist and describing the many ways in which our liberties have deteriorated in our declining society. I’ll try, but I don’t know how long I’ll last or the point of lasting, anyway. Am I to write something for a ’spiritual’ column that practically serves as distracting entertainment while our liberties are being suffocated? I could stop now and advise you to go to buzzflash.com to read the news; but whether you stick around or not, one thing to say about liberty is that the quickest and most pain-free way to lose it is by failing to keep abreast of current events, failing to know history, and failing to engage is a continuous social dialogue that raises self-challenging questions.

The perspective I commonly give to principles like liberty, and everything else, in my writings is the ontological one. That perspective is certainly important, as it provides a foundation for how to think about things, how to define things, and how things stand in relation to what is real. But it is half the battle. The other half is embodying that perspective in ways like the ones listed above - ways that are real, i.e. spiritual, duties.

Spirituality used to be ontology (philosophy of reality) thousands of years ago, but those days are long gone. Now spirituality is mostly entertainment, self-deception, and self-mystification, which is to say a dedication to unrealities. Of course, no one really wants to believe that, but it wouldn’t be self-deception if they did.

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