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wolven7I've talked about this, before, but it's coming around time for the Presidential stump speeches, and I want you to be paying attention, and I want as many people as you think you can get to listen to you, when you tell it.
I'm sure you've heard about the recent "Barrack Hussein Obama"/ "ZPBLATOMG! Hussein Osama! " debacle, that's been going around the news cycle. If not, go ahead and, *ahem*, "Google" it. We'll wait. Found it? Good. Take a gander at this quote, from the Dallas Morning News, for a most clear example of what you're looking for:
' Just days after Barack Obama mused about running for president, Republican strategist Ed Rogers winged the senator on Hardball. "Count me down as somebody who underestimates Barack Hussein Obama," sneered Mr. Rogers, carefully enunciating Mr. Obama's middle name – a family moniker passed down from his Kenyan father and grandfather.'
Oh god. His middle name is Hussein. Oh holy shit of Christ. His last name sounds like "Osama." What the fuck ever shall we do?
People will take this seriously. Don't sneer, don't laugh derrisively, just pay attention. People will listen to this drivel, because it's Sympathetic. It's Contagious. "A Thing Like A Thing Is The Thing." "A Thing Like A Thing Can Affect The Thing." These are the rules of symmpathetic and contagious magic, and they are the rules for a reason. This is how people think, and this type of thinking can accomplish things, in the world. If I show you a similarity between two things, over and over, a part of your brain is going to be heavily inclined to think that those things have a lot to do with each other, and you're right, in a sense. But in another, important sense, they don't.
See, the truth is, things come one after another, and theyare made to seem related in a variety of ways, not the least of which is Time. "Before" and "after" are constructs we created so wee didn't get lost. Many tribes do well without them. But anyway, all relational constructs are exactly that. We must take care to not the levels and layers of similarity, how many intervening sections of likeness there are, between one thing and another.
Here: In my left hand I have a globe. In my right hand, I hold the world. There are many points of similarity between the two things, but what I do to the one does not necessitate a change in the other. No. There are other steps involved. First I have to say "I think Kualalumpoor's borders would look better shaped like... this." Then I have to show that to some military and political advisors, and get them to believe the same thing, in a similar fashion. Then We have to tell a bunch of propagandists, soldiers, people in the world, and Other that it is good for Kualalumpoor's borders to look like This. We are passing the idea along, in a contagious manner. The more contagious the idea, the greater the similarity becomes, in the minds of others, and the greater the similarity becomes in the practical world.
The world doesn't have dotted lines and borders. But we see them, anyway, and we make walls and fences to refelct them.
Ask yourself: What does a name mean to you? What do words mean to you? Are names such that we are driven by them to a level of similarity that we can only watch, an not affect? Or are names what we make of them? Are words indellible, immovable? Or are words a framework for growth and life? A trelis for really wonderful roses, perhaps. This is the lesson in magic: We frame our world around our words, as well as our words around our world; we seek to make things that reflect our thoughts, and we seek to make the thoughts of others reflect the things we have made.
Barrack Hussein Obama is a name with similarities to two people who are, in the minds of many, horrendous (and who are, in the minds and memories of too few, former allies of this Nation State). So what? A name is what you make of it. You take the expectations and weights of all those who have gone before, in your name. The thoughts and intentions of your forebears, as well as the deeds of people. My name is Damien, people. I've thought about this.
What people say about your name doesn't matter. What people say about the names of others only matters if you find other similarities to verify. Are the people from the same family? Same culture? Same belief structure? No? Then shut the fuck up, and move on.
This has been a public service announcement, from t he council on magic, language, philosophy, and politics.
I'm sure you've heard about the recent "Barrack Hussein Obama"/ "ZPBLATOMG! Hussein Osama! " debacle, that's been going around the news cycle. If not, go ahead and, *ahem*, "Google" it. We'll wait. Found it? Good. Take a gander at this quote, from the Dallas Morning News, for a most clear example of what you're looking for:
' Just days after Barack Obama mused about running for president, Republican strategist Ed Rogers winged the senator on Hardball. "Count me down as somebody who underestimates Barack Hussein Obama," sneered Mr. Rogers, carefully enunciating Mr. Obama's middle name – a family moniker passed down from his Kenyan father and grandfather.'
Oh god. His middle name is Hussein. Oh holy shit of Christ. His last name sounds like "Osama." What the fuck ever shall we do?
People will take this seriously. Don't sneer, don't laugh derrisively, just pay attention. People will listen to this drivel, because it's Sympathetic. It's Contagious. "A Thing Like A Thing Is The Thing." "A Thing Like A Thing Can Affect The Thing." These are the rules of symmpathetic and contagious magic, and they are the rules for a reason. This is how people think, and this type of thinking can accomplish things, in the world. If I show you a similarity between two things, over and over, a part of your brain is going to be heavily inclined to think that those things have a lot to do with each other, and you're right, in a sense. But in another, important sense, they don't.
See, the truth is, things come one after another, and theyare made to seem related in a variety of ways, not the least of which is Time. "Before" and "after" are constructs we created so wee didn't get lost. Many tribes do well without them. But anyway, all relational constructs are exactly that. We must take care to not the levels and layers of similarity, how many intervening sections of likeness there are, between one thing and another.
Here: In my left hand I have a globe. In my right hand, I hold the world. There are many points of similarity between the two things, but what I do to the one does not necessitate a change in the other. No. There are other steps involved. First I have to say "I think Kualalumpoor's borders would look better shaped like... this." Then I have to show that to some military and political advisors, and get them to believe the same thing, in a similar fashion. Then We have to tell a bunch of propagandists, soldiers, people in the world, and Other that it is good for Kualalumpoor's borders to look like This. We are passing the idea along, in a contagious manner. The more contagious the idea, the greater the similarity becomes, in the minds of others, and the greater the similarity becomes in the practical world.
The world doesn't have dotted lines and borders. But we see them, anyway, and we make walls and fences to refelct them.
Ask yourself: What does a name mean to you? What do words mean to you? Are names such that we are driven by them to a level of similarity that we can only watch, an not affect? Or are names what we make of them? Are words indellible, immovable? Or are words a framework for growth and life? A trelis for really wonderful roses, perhaps. This is the lesson in magic: We frame our world around our words, as well as our words around our world; we seek to make things that reflect our thoughts, and we seek to make the thoughts of others reflect the things we have made.
Barrack Hussein Obama is a name with similarities to two people who are, in the minds of many, horrendous (and who are, in the minds and memories of too few, former allies of this Nation State). So what? A name is what you make of it. You take the expectations and weights of all those who have gone before, in your name. The thoughts and intentions of your forebears, as well as the deeds of people. My name is Damien, people. I've thought about this.
What people say about your name doesn't matter. What people say about the names of others only matters if you find other similarities to verify. Are the people from the same family? Same culture? Same belief structure? No? Then shut the fuck up, and move on.
This has been a public service announcement, from t he council on magic, language, philosophy, and politics.
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I feel sorry for the all the Adolf/Macarena's
Date: 2007-01-11 05:42 am (UTC)If we define reality by perception then he is a grand-dragon master... wizard.. of Oz.
Re: I feel sorry for the all the Adolf/Macarena's
Date: 2007-01-12 04:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-11 11:16 am (UTC)a little like have a boss named dickerson that you think is a dick and then one day just out and calling him "dick face" or some other suchness....
personally, and i hate to really say this, but i think hollywood would be a good model to follow here. what do actors and actresses do before trying to make it big? they change their names to ones conducive to being remembered, and being remembered positively...
*twitch* and i'm then at least reminded of Prez. and the Smiler...
no subject
Date: 2007-01-11 11:34 am (UTC)however, he could do exactly what he appears to be doing, which is make himself sound controversial so people will pay attention to him, get his name stuck in their heads, and then suddenly, in the voters booth, where you're lucky if the voter himself recognizes half the people up for election, despite the associations with his name, his name will be the one they recognize, and so they will vote for him...
no subject
Date: 2007-01-11 02:18 pm (UTC)I'd be afraid that if he tried to change his name they'd just scream it to the heavens and point to it as proof that he was ashamed of it, thus confirming their worst suspicions in some weird roundabout way.
All that shit comes out in elections, name changes, speeding tickets, youthful "transgressions."
Like the "I didn't inhale" thing. As an Oxford don we know put it "If indeed that is the case, then he's the only Oxford grad in the last couple of CENTURIES who didn't."
no subject
Date: 2007-01-11 03:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-11 03:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-11 12:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-11 03:03 pm (UTC)Two words...
Date: 2007-01-11 07:55 pm (UTC)It has a better rhythm and rhyme, it's easier to remember than the other one, and... basically has a longer lifespan as a meme.
Not to mention if you put it into the same tank, it'll eat the other two.
The only downside being the inevitability of his appearance in a bad out-of-reference Superman spinoff movie.
Re: Two words...
Date: 2007-01-12 04:11 am (UTC)