Deeper Perceptions

We have peered darkly at ‘Perceptions’ previously. Now we need to look further into the mists that swirl over our conscious mind and into the sub-conscious.

It goes without saying that what we are trying to do is almost impossible without applying guesswork; in other words, the art of the ‘psycho-analyst’ who will tell you what you should be thinking, why you are not and how bad this is for you.

Let’s think about the National Rifle Association, the NRA. This is a State sponsored terrorist organisation thinly disguised in a cloak of urbane civility that entreats the World to accept that it is permissible for people to shoot other people. To death.

Their erstwhile leader, Charlton ‘Chuck’ Heston, was a fervent proponent of this idea and was, it must be understood, a messenger of Satan in spite of his portrayal of Moses. Under his, and his predecessor’s, guidance the NRA devolved from just supporting the right to carry rifles but the right to ‘bear arms’, all arms, as suggested by the National Constitution of the United States. This is then modified by an oppressive (to them) law that restricts the carrying of weapons to non-fully automatic - unless you are a criminal.

The last two paragraphs have been carefully worded to divide the reader up into two groups:

One group will espouse the idea of gun control and will agree with the sentiment expressed.

The second group will disagree vehemently; they will support the idea of the ‘right to bear arms’; and they will now send me hate mail.

I have no idea what the NRA is ‘for’ or ‘against’. Given that there has been a burst of gunfire in various locations in the USA then one might consider that views regarding the carrying of weapons concealed or otherwise might be particularly polarised.

Similarly, for all I know, ‘Chuck’ Heston was a really nice guy; a family man and supporter of several charities. The suggestion that he might be in league with the devil is entirely specious.

But it makes the point.

I can easily stir up a pot of hatred here. It takes little effort and few words.  All it takes is bigotry and selective arguments. I might even find a few quotes, taken out of context, that support my ‘views’. Perhaps, even, browsing through their text, there will be passages from the NRA literature that I can use to good effect to endorse my arguments.

People do this all the time. Just pick a subject and you will find someone who is vehemently against you.

We have mentioned, also previously, that there are a number of people who love to spread hatred. They will attack anything that does not agree with their own, usually narrow, views.

Perhaps they will attack other beliefs – Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, Atheism, Optimism. I have a Prism; it takes in a pure ‘Illuminati’ light and splits it up into various other colours ranging from Blue to Red. Except Pink. There is no pink. The Sectarianism originating from the original ‘Light Source’ now has an outsider, a heretical sect called ‘Pink’.

We shall come back to that.

If you observe some of the comments on the likes of ‘YouTube’ you will see that the vast majority of people who make comments do so in favour of the video clip. But there are always people who say ‘Hate it’.

Why?

Why is it that there are people who will waste time, effort and energy in making negative statements about, well, almost anything?

Do they think that they will change people’s minds? Do they imagine that they will be highly valued, admired, for making a stand against the run of other comments?

Many of these people are ill educated. Their grammar and spelling is, for the most part, execrable. Yet they persist. Something makes them do it. Something, in the inner recesses of what minds they have remaining to them, makes them avoid pages they will enjoy and go for those ‘links’ that they know they oppose.

Let’s go back to ‘pink’.

Pink does not exist. It may well be that ‘Pink’ is Steven Tyler’s (‘Aerosmith’) favourite colour but it doesn’t, in fact, exist.

There is no ‘pink’ in the spectrum. It is something that the brain makes up to fill a hole in the varieties of colours available.

So it is that ‘pink’ is an imaginary colour. Something that the brain uses for its own convenience.

What else does the brain use? From whence does the brain, your brain and mine, get this persuasion?

This has to go deeper than ‘perceptions’ because this is something that controls and adapts our perceptions.

There’s an old saying, “Give me the seven year old and I will give you the man.”

The meaning of this is that a child of seven has a mindset that is already moulded. The likelihood of change is small.

Yet a child under the age of seven has no great ability to reason and, furthermore, lacks the life experience and education to make rational judgements.

What we experience as a young child affects us more than we like to think. It affects us for the rest of our lives. Irrational? Yes. But there is very little you can do about it.

In simplistic terms it would be easy to say that the child who sees violence will become violent but this is not always true.

“Don't handicap your children by making their lives easy.”

― Robert A. Heinlein

is another view. But, once again, this is too simplistic.

In the United Kingdom a statistic says that domestic violence costs Plymouth City Council 49 million pounds per annum (USD 78million). They also say that a third of the children who witness this abuse MAY go on to repeat the cycle.

‘May’. They ‘may’ go on to repeat the cycle.

Yes, that is undeniably true but what of the other effects?

Witnessing and being part of abuse are two different things but there are similarities in the effect upon the individual.

Some of those children may grow up to shy and nervous to the point of being reclusive. Some may only be violent to their ‘loved ones’; others may be generally violent.

The likelihood is that there will be something that, buried beneath the surface, will manipulate the perceptions of the World as seen by that person.

There may be a trigger point – the smell (it is often smell) of alcohol or a Sunday joint cooking. It may be the sound of the pages of a newspaper turning or a pencil’s soft scratch on paper.

We have looked at violence as an obvious cause of sub-conscious mindset but it can be so many other things.

Heinlein meant that if you do not project some difficulty into the your children’s life path then they will perceive everything as simple and become frustrated, possibly violent, when things do not turn out their way.

You cannot know how your children will turn out. However you bring them up – however YOU were brought up, there will be something hidden in the darker recesses of the mind that will spring out unexpectedly.

Coming from a broken home is no excuse for being a criminal but it might be a reason

We are all responsible for how we behave. We are all aware of our shortcomings but we are not aware of our potential to do harm to others.

Even the quietest of people, perhaps especially the quietest of people, need to keep their own fingers on their life’s pulse.

Blaming your upbringing is an easy escape but we all do it. None of us like to think we are guilty, we all like to think of ourselves as victims.

Something, in our formative years, will squeeze the trigger on a mental bullet that lurks back there in the subconscious. It may colour over your idea continuously or there may only be odd occasions when something causes that blurring of logic and reason.

Embrace this idea in your writing.

When you are writing a story you do not have to give the ‘baddy’ a ‘bad name’. Not all bad people and those craving world domination are called ‘Igor’.

Similarly, good people, lovable people, can be called ‘Zbigniew Jarenicz’.

One of my most evil characters is called simply ‘Meevo’. Because, when Mummy and Daddy gave you your name at birth nobody knew what you will become.

Until you are seven years old or join the NRA.