Charisma - Taboo, or not taboo.

WELCOME TO THE CHARISMA FILES

12
"TABOO, OR NOT TABOO"

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When you begin to alter your attitudes you start to change your environment. Perhaps nothing in your personal environment physically changes, but your view of it will. You will also become a change in the environments of those closest to you.

You may wonder why I spend so much time in backgrounding our past when it is the future that you are concerned in dealing with. Darwinian natural selection only produces adaption, i.e. change, as a response to changing local environment. We can go beyond that, by changing our inner environment. We need to see our lives in both evolutionary and mythical terms.

The evolutionary tree did not stop growing when humankind evolved. Our branch grew further branches, each family is a twig upon it. You are an outermost tip of that twig.

The Tree of Evolution develops another bud, and a child is born into a world of which it has no comprehension. Without the benefit of reason, its only means of communication is by the modulation of its emotional needs. This sound means I am hungry. This sound tells of my distress, of unfulfilled needs.

Its mind is a blank slate upon which any may write. It is surrounded by the great unknown. Its journey into life has begun. As it grows, its horizons expand, the darkness of ignorance is steadily pushed back by increasing knowledge of its surroundings. Until it meets the barriers of that which has been decreed taboo.

Fire burns. Do not touch! That is rude. Do not do it. That is selfish. That is naughty. That is not yours. That is not right. Beyond these points you shall not go.

In avoiding the taboos, the child's mind is being directed along the restricted path that its keepers have decreed for it. In mounting numbers, the taboos link their boundaries to form a wall. Beyond the walls lie dragons. Temptations and Terrors of the Unknown that will raise doubts in your mind. Will cause you to question your beliefs.

So the child learns life from within the parameters of the its restricted zone. No physical bonds restrain it. It is all in the mind.

With increasing age, it learns to push back the boundaries, within the allowances of its mind set. Engraved upon the foundation stone of its mental edifice, the taboos influence and direct all operations. Set there before reason developed, unknown to consciousness, they are the wallpaper of the mind.

Seen pictorially, it could appear like this. Each yellow node representing an event in its developmental progress. Its path circumscribed by the red warnings of the forbidden. Growth is only allowed in a linear direction.

If the child has been reared with loving care, with firmness, with tolerance and compassion, it will go forward with confidence. Experiencing the new, absorbing knowledge. Building that knowledge into its own database. Walking its own map.

This concept of walking the map is the main thesis of the Charisma texts. Internal maps for external journeys in the common reality. It will be developed as we go. The maps of the mind are often best travelled on the footpaths and byways, not on the highways decreed by our social institutions.

If the child grew in an intolerant environment, the lines are drawn much closer to home. The forbidden territory surrounds it. Not only does it experience intolerance, it learns to act with intolerance to any and all who do not share its prejudices. Not only is its own mind closed to innovative concepts, it assumes the right to forbid them to others.

Some taboos are ethical: "You must never harm a child."Many are the remnants of long outdated thinking that has no elevance, yet are carried along in the manner that a snail carries its shell. Many of them exist solely to provide a false morality to the suppression of the powerless.

"If you, a woman, show your face in public, you will be publicly beheaded or stoned to death."
Iraq. 2002

"If a woman becomes pregnant outside of marriage" Stoned to death.
Nigeria. 2002

"For showing her ankles when boarding a tram, 2 months imprisonment."
London. 1902.

"For murdering 2 people with an axe." 11 years imprisonment.
"For smoking a marijuana cigarette." 30 years imprisonment.
Texas 1977

"For reading forbidden books." Any penalty that we decree.
Stalinist Russia, Nazi Germany, Fundamentalist religious states, ... et al.

The taboos saturate all societies. So embedded are they that we seldom notice their existence or practice. Classic examples are contained in the manners in which we must conceal our bodies from each other. The dress codes.

The Banker. He sits there behind his desk. His is the power to grant or deny the means by which we buy our homes or build our livelihoods. So let us examine his dress code and all that it implies.

Sharp necktie. Conservative, but sharp.
Well cut jacket. Neat slits at the sides or back. Neat buttons at the cuffs.
Naturally, the left side folds over the right.

So what he is telling us?
The tie. First came into fashion at the time of the French Revolution. Eastern European peasants, drafted in to fight the good fight, were given cloth talismans by their priest, to go around their throats. The reason? The talismans deflected bullets!

The left-over-right fold of the jacket? Basic common-sense. Most men are right handed, so wear their sword on the left hip. The right hand can then slide into the jacket and lug out. Hence the buttons on the cuffs. A man does not want his cuffs to interfere with his sword play, so he buttons them back. The slits in the tail of the jacket? Surely it is obvious that a gentleman would not want his jacket to ride up when mounted on his horse.

So our banker sits there, knowing that he is not only bullet proofed, but that if you irritate him, he has only to lug out, run you through, then ride off into the sunset. Makes sense to me!

All role-playing carries it own set of rules that make sense only to those involved in the game. To the outsider, they appear as strange behaviour, that in turn, is an indication of strange thoughts going on behind the scenes.

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