RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,136
(at best a clumsy thing)
Lots of times I used to think
of primitive Humankind. It was
no stretch - school and culture,
back then, was promoting that
late 1960's version of the world
as a long, slow, progression of
time and event leading to the
pinnacle up of Man. Everything
was relegated to the drive for
supremacy. There was a symbolism
everywhere - culturally anyway
- that the cocktail-swilling,
cigarette-smoking, fancy-ass,
three-cars-in-the-driveway,
California huge split-level
mansion with a kidney-shaped
pool was the height of achievement.
Lung cancer and syphilis notwithstanding,
the ongoing delights of pan-orgyism
and a constant half-drunk state of
domestic bliss was perfect. Occasional
wife-smacking and the drugged-out
berating of kids and kin made for
a perfect existence, and the man
of the house would daily drive his
chariot to some aviation-techno-
sales-schooled-bullshit-endless
job. Women, mostly, were
relegated to either the brassiere
closet or to the shopping mall.
That world was, perhaps, slow
to learn its limitations, but was
intent - just as much - on that
supposed upward sweep.
-
It made for a curious, evolutionary
pinnacle, but no one ever discussed
that. I can myself well-remember the
New York version of all this, centered
mostly Long Island and Connecticut
way, but trying as well - in pathetic
Jersey places like Westfield and West
Orange. The Jersey version of any of
this was pale by comparison to the
California version; yes, and it even
paled by comparison to the 'wiser'
Connecticut and Long Island versions,
which both then became the east coast
ideals of about the same vision. I guess
that was a Manhattan version of it too,
but that involved an entirely different
economic class - one in which all of
that was centered on the second 'country'
home, where all the large cars and expensive
collections were kept, while the Park Ave.
or Fifth Ave. apartment unit was used
as the city-constant version of society's
high-life. It was far and away a different
and more elevated class of existence,
unknown to me until I learned it later.
Peripherally, and with all its enticements
of gender, lubrication, recreational drugs
and recreational outlooks too.
-
What I used to dwell upon was the idea
of 'Primitive' man. I realized that the
one difference, perhaps, and the most
glaring difference, which no one had
mentioned or figured out, was how
that primitive humankind was an
undifferentiated mass. Any ideas of'
individuality, personal identification,
or personality, had yet to be developed.
The moving 'tribe' was held together
in its globular oneness by needs and
by the imperatives of grouped existence
and cooperative efforts - for the basic
needs, of course, of food, shelter,
clothing, protection, safety, and - I'd
suppose, family and child-rearing. Not
health, since there really was none and
those sick and those dying were either left
behind or separated out for death, in
which ways it happened then; whether
30 years old or 10. Old age was a very
fictional future then. Their own version
of science-fiction.
-
I guess it all had to do with making a
differentiation, but how did that ever
arise? A differentiation of what? Some
form of leadership quality? A peculiar
cave-man bravado and vitality that some
type-A chest beater used to rise to a form
of prominence? Territorial leadership?
I could never figure any of this out,
and it was never discussed - all those
wise and schooled elders masquerading
as suburban-barbecue-ethos 'teachers'
had no clue. Their versions of reality,
as I think back now, mostly involved
having a good seat at temple (for which
the sublimes of Jewry paid. Yearly
subscription-seating for the high holy
days was based on donations; unlike the
poor crib-sheets at Avenel's St. Andrew's
Parish, which weekly listed in the Sunday
bulletin how much money each family
had put into the collection baskets the
week previous. That was sure some
differentiation too!). Thinking back now,
I am amazed at how much early-years
elementary-school initial learning was
given by Jewish teachers. A curious
development, if thought about. Just
more 'tribalism' to the fore. It must
have made a difference in outlook.
-
I wondered, did the cave-man
wise-guy get, maybe, all the women
first; or get to initiate, by an aggravated
and early proto-religious fiction, the
young girls? All that 'sacrifice' and
the streams of blood from virginal
and ritual slayings? First went the
animals, and then the selected
young folk? For what purposes
that? What possible motivation
would empower someone to wish
to lead the next trek across the
savannah or the desert and then
go and proclaim an emboldened
'superiority' over the next bunch of
pathetic savages they'd
see? I figured it had to be quite
difficult for this 'early' personality
guy to keep coming up with 'new'
stories to validify his superiority.
His differentiation. His brand of
the new and the unique. Frankly,
for myself, I decided it had to
be motivated by sex, followed by
'religion' and them mixed with weird
urges for domination. Thus, 'Society,'
as we know it now, got its very first,
creepy-crawly, beginnings amidst the
perversions of Men. (That leaves
out Amazonian empires of hatchet
wielding women warriors grabbing
men by the air and saying 'stick it
in; we too must propagate.' But, how
it goes (or went) is how it goes.
-
So, life becomes a trolling for the
notification and modifications of
everything. I realized quickly that
one must learn to see - to observe
everything, because by that are the
definitions of futures made. All our
futures; even death.
-
'What goes on within a a man's head
is far beyond his comprehension, of
course. In the same way that a lizard
or a rat or a bird, cannot comprehend
being organisms. But a human being,
owing to dawning comprehension,
may well feel that he is a rat who
lives in a temple. In his external
development, as a thing, a creature,
in cerebral electronics he enjoys an
adaptation, a fitness which makes
him feel the unfitness of his personal
human efforts. Therefore, at the
lowest, a rat in a temple. At best, a
clumsy thing, with dawning awareness
of the finesse of internal organization
employed in crudities.'
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