This is a 5 minute excerpt from Science Channel series Dark Matters: Twisted but True.
Not quite the story as I know it, but damn funny.
Author Archive | James Curcio
The Myth of the Lazy Youth
As we have seen time and time again, one of the challenges of modern myths is their relative invisibility. It is the outsiders of any age, those who are alien to their own times, that make the best artist shamans, and the same goes for mythic explorers. If you are too close to a culture, you will very frequently mistake the truisms of culture, the myths, as a fact. This is true with “human nature” (as we have seen), and it is also true with our myths of labor and work.
Let’s consider the example presented when one generation judges another,
“Twenge and Kasser analyzed data from the Monitoring the Future survey, which has tracked the views of a representative sample of 17- and 18-year-old Americans since 1976. They compared the answers to key questions given by high school seniors in 2005-2007 to those provided by previous generations.
To measure materialism, the youngsters were asked to rate on a one-to-four (“not important” to “extremely important”) scale how vital they felt it was to own certain expensive items: “a new car every two to three years,” “a house of my own (instead of an apartment or condominium),” “a vacation house,” and “a motor-powered recreational vehicle.” They were also asked straightforwardly how important they felt it was to “have a lot of money.”
To measure their attitudes toward work, the seniors rated on a one-to-five scale the extent to which they agreed with a series of statements, including “I expect my work to be a very central part of my life,” and “I want to do my best in my job, even if this sometimes means working overtime.”
The researchers found a couple of disturbing trends.
Cultural Illness and the Curse of Shifting Sands, DSM V
Cultural Relativity
In evaluating dysfunction or illness, we have long followed the seemingly straightforward model of diagnose, treat, evaluate, iterate.
However, diagnosis has long been the secret — or not so secret — Achilles heel of the psychiatric establishment. Many philosophic issues arise, issues of cultural relativism, ethical issues of financial interests in pharmaceuticals, to name a few. These are issues that ‘by the book’ psychiatrists frequently dismiss as ‘merely philosophical.’ Indeed, it’s been a relatively long time since Freud or Jung were taken entirely seriously by the establishment doling out the meds. ”By the book.” What is “the book”?
Since DSM-III (American Psychiatric Association 1980), disorders have been defined in terms of syndromes—that is, clusters of symptoms that covary together (see the section following, titled “Need to Explore the Possibility of Fundamental Changes . . .”). …
The major focus of field trials for DSM-III was establishing the reliability with which multiple clinicians could come to the same diagnostic conclusions when presented with a patient’s expressed signs and symptoms.
Sinister Yoga
From Modern Mythology:
“Breathe in, hold in, breathe out, old, focus on purifying the mind and body with white light” — how many of you have heard this before? (Quite possibly while internalizing thoughts of lighting the teacher on fire as they use words like “sensation” as code for “agonizing, excruciating pain” as they twist you into a pretzel.)
Here at Modern Mythology we are often looking at the origin myths behind what has become rote practice. This may involve delving into etymological history or just conjecture about the possibilities that have since been forgotten. However, in this case, it seems that our work has been done for us. If you’d like to check out an alternative perspective on yoga and the myth of the yogi, check out David Gordon White’s “Sinister Yoga.” (This is not to say that alternative myths are not myths themselves.)
This approach challenges many of the preconceived Western notions of yoga.
The Hard Water Fluoride Conspiracy
From Gonzomentary:
In a world where the government controlled the minds of their citizens by injecting fluoride in the water supply, Elijah Wormwood discovers that it might not be the fluoride, but the water itself. (video)
The Universe Does Not Exist: Conspiratorial Cosmology – the Case Against the Universe
From Modern Mythology:
German physicists Jörg P. Rachen and Ute G. Gahlings have recently discovered evidence of a Universal Conspiracy and have just published their results in a brilliant exposé published in the highly esteemed Journal of Comparative Irrelevance:
Abstract: “Based on the cosmological results of the Planck Mission, we show that all parameters describing our Universe within the ΛCDM model can be constructed from a small set of numbers known from conspiracy theory. Our finding is confirmed by recent data from high energy particle physics. This clearly demonstrates that our Universe is a plot initiated an unknown interest group or lodge. We analyse possible scenarios for this conspiracy, and conclude that the belief in the existence of our Universe is an illusion, as previously assumed by ancient philosophers, 20th century science fiction authors and contemporary film makers.
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| It’s like this, only BIGGER |
Krampus and Kicking the Hornets’ Nest!
From The Washington Post:
It sounds crazy, but there is good reason to suspect that this story, in the prominent South Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo, could be true. According to the story, North Korea ordered its diplomats in some number of foreign embassies, including at least one in Eastern Europe, to sell illegal drugs on the streets. The diplomats, according to a defector who spoke to South Korean intelligence, were each sent abroad with 20 kilograms (about 44 pounds) of drugs and were told to raise $300,000 from the sales.
In case that is not weird enough for you, the diplomats were told that they were being asked to forgo their ambassadorial responsibilities in favor of pushing illicit drugs in order “to prove their loyalty and mark the birthday of nation founder Kim Il Sung on April 15.”
From the BBC News Three men charged over Norwich ‘Oompa Loompas’ attack:
Police investigating an assault involving people dressed as Oompa Loompas have charged three men.
A Question of Art, Aesthetic, and a Body of Work
From an interview with The Dharma of Don, talking with fellow indie author and artist Curcio about the ins and outs of writing, publishing, collaborative artwork and art collectives, and everything in-between!
Don: The Words of Traitors is published under Mythos Media which is your imprint, if I am not mistaken. What other houses have you published under, and have you succeeded with Mythos Media where you felt you struggled with branding under your own name?
James: My first book was released through New Falcon Press, who published Timothy Leary, Robert Anton Wilson, Aleister Crowley, Israel Regardi — it was because of them I think that I got branded an “occult author” although that isn’t really entirely accurate. I’ve worked on several books since then that have been released by Weaponized, which is a UK based imprint.
You will see most of those books also on the Mythos Media website.… Read the rest
Human Demonology: Occupy Daath, or The Missing Protagonist
From P. Emerson at Modern Mythology:
…the Cop Show has only three characters–victim, criminal, and police person–but the first two fail to be fully human–only the pig is real. Oddly enough, human society in the eighties (as seen in the other media) sometimes appeared to consist of the same three cliche/archetypes. First the victims, the whining minorities bitching about “rights”–and who pray tell did not belong to a “minority” in the eighties? Shit, even cops complained about their “rights” being abused. Then the criminals: largely non-white (despite the obligatory & hallucinatory “integration” of the media), largely poor (or else obscenely rich, hence even more alien), largely perverse (i.e. the forbidden mirrors of “our” desires). - Hakim Bey – Boycott Cop Culture
Welcome to the apocalypse
Could we draw similar implications from the view of the US/Corporate empire being seen as the world’s police force? We all know the villain of this piece.… Read the rest
Sante Muerte: Encountering Death
An article about personal expeerience with Sante Muerte from Modern Mythology by M.G,
“Popular in Mexico, and sometimes linked to the illicit drug trade, the skeleton saint known as La Santa Muerte in recent years has found a robust and diverse following north of the border: immigrant small business owners, artists, gay activists and the poor, among others – many of them non-Latinos and not all involved with organized religion… The saint is especially popular among Mexican-American Catholics, rivaling that of St. Jude and La Virgen de Guadalupe as a favorite for miracle requests, even as the Catholic Church in Mexico denounces Santa Muerte as satanic, experts say.” - ‘La Santa Muerte gaining in popularity in the U.S.’,Associated Press
A friend of mine, (of dubious character but capable of remarkable scholarship), once told me that the more marginalized a people, the more powerful their magicks will be. If true, few figures must be more powerful than Santisma Muerte, the death saint of Mexico.… Read the rest
