resource: The Rajneeshis and the Incels
[ by Charles Cameron — opposite extremists at opposite extremes — for JM, if he ever gets time to read / view / hear it ]
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As I write this, JM Berger is publishing what will no doubt be a powerfully argued and fascinating theoretical and, I suspect, anecdotal account of a wide range of extremists, Extremism (The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series):
extremism arises from a perception of “us versus them,” intensified by the conviction that the success of “us” is inseparable from hostile acts against “them.”
**
I presented JM’s tweet-stream detailing the stages of his developing theoretical researches culminating in this book on ZP not so very long ago, at JM Berger, Extremism — you have been alerted, informed
Both the groups I’ll discuss here finally fit JM’s definition, but my interest is in a comparison between two searches at an earlier time in their development when their motives can be seen prior to violence. And what interests me is that their situations are polar opposites. In brief, one laments zero sex, the other enjoys infinite sex.
In both cases, sex is central, central is too weak a word..
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Sex
Cobsider the ways of the world around you, Vogue, the tabloids, Playboy, porn..
Consider your own desires and fantasies, your urgencies and restraint, lust and romance, your personal Casablanca (and note Janis’s Casablance ref!! when we get there)..
And having considered sex, consider these two extremes on its spectrum:
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Sex to the almost infinite power:
Consider Christina Aguilera, live, body & voice:
And consider Janis singing:
“Move Over” is the only song on the 1971 album “Pearl” that Janis wrote on her own. If the lyric doesn’t strike you as particularly suggestive, just listen to the way she sings it and you’ll see what we mean.
Apply that to:
And now multiply by this, drawn from her letters:
She certainly didn’t subscribe to the radical-feminist orthodoxies of the superfluousness of men. She fell in love at a heartbeat; her sexual appetites are perhaps best described as ravenous (she had female as well as male lovers), her judgment frequently awry.
That’s — listen to her singing again, concert after concert —
— sexuality, pure & full-throated.
This — I can’t manage both — from a male (ie female) perspective..
& woah!:
[ & btw, philosophers, listen up, if you don’t already ]
janis song: “a woman left lonely”
“she would make love to 25,000 on stage, then go home alone..”
ight be able to do both sex & incel with Janis..
**
Given that, that strnegth, that compulsive pull, that driven drive —
Zero Sex, the absence, involuntary
Those who are involuntarily celibate — can’t get none — perceiving themselves shunned by those who attract them __
final lyrics, one version:James Brown, It’s a Man’s World..:
Oh how, how man needs a woman
I sympathize with the man that don’t have a woman
He’s lost in the wilderness
He’s lost in bitterness
He’s lost in loneliness
The last three lines occur frequently in different recordings, the line I sympathize with the man that don’t have a woman comes from a version I don’t have access to on video. And that last stanza, with that line in it, could be an incel anthem.
The raw reality of it: a child’s wail — see how much you can bear to see —
Hreere, should you care to watch it, is the boy’s full video, unvarnished:
This boy, this young man, a day or so after making this video, went out and killed six people in Isla Vista, Calif., in an attempt as “the prefect gentleman” to get his revenge on the hottest blondes in UC Santa Barbara. And became, for some, a hero to be emulated.. And emulated he was.
Readings follow suit:
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