Gort’s hairstyle
I’ve turned up the volume on heavy metal and I’ve got my earphones on. You may proceed, weirdboob alien. “I come in peace. I am your friend. I mean you no harm. Bakbakbak.” This guy is no “friend” and he’s only here to do us harm. Just another outer space alien. Harm like getting us out of the way so his kind can steal our planet’s valuables. And vaporize its inhabitants with ray gun blasters they bought at Target. Should I be scared?
Outer space boobs are “outer space” because they’re missing something. Yeah. Gort and his death ray. Inner space. Huh? I’m doing fine with outer space. If your inner space is gathering dust and cobwebs in the basement you wouldn’t know. Really? Inner space is where we monitor our performance so we don’t get on stage with a bad act. Where we introspect. Reflect and check in with our conscience. The boundaries between what’s OK and what’s not OK. That equip us with judgment and discipline.
Why would anyone need to do that if they’re already perfect? A serious question if it’s not a joke. Because some of us do think we’re perfect. Silly! No one’s perfect. Imagine saying “Gort, old boy, let’s let our hair down and get better acquainted with ourselves. So we can be nicer and feel just a little bad about evaporating everything with our death ray.” Gort’s visor would start to open. You would see his beady eyes and become incontinent. Yes. He’d have to remove his helmet with the visor to let his hair down. Outer space boobs don’t have hair. He’d be embarrassed. I was wondering why the aliens in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” didn’t have combs. You can’t get a hair brush anywhere on Mars. That’s what disqualified me from going there.
Gort and Fifi’s webinar on accountability
The difference between human and animal is the difference between having and not having an inner space. Wild animals do fine without introspecting or reflecting, reasoning or choosing, judging between right and wrong. Instinct takes care of that. Domesticating them doesn’t give them an inner space. Doesn’t humanize them. It just adds more things for them to want or fear. When Fifi seemed out of sorts I took her to a veterinarian. I’ll bet you didn’t know vets aren’t trained in Freudian psychoanalysis. Poor Fifi! She just needs someone to listen to her whimpering.
Gort and Fifi can’t join us for a webinar on accountability without an inner space. Not if all they know is worlds inaccessible to humans. Without an inner space there’s nowhere they can even think about it. Then how can humans without an inner space keep from leveling Manhattan with their death rays? They do what animals do: whatever their herd does. Without an inner space for guidance they rely on herd mentality. A substitute for the inner moral compass, the judgment, they’re missing. What “everyone else does.” They become “good” by becoming agreeable, sociable. Being “likeable” especially since then their herd will think they’re “good.”
And then the trouble starts
How can a human be “human” and not have an inner space? Gort and Fifi don’t need an inner space because of what they are, what their use is. A human’s usefulness requires an inner space because it requires choice. All our faculties of mind are there to enable us to do what we are, to choose. To learn to choose freely once we’ve aware of who we are and what we’re doing here. Because that’s the only way choice can be “free,” and we’re still trying to figure that out. So with or without an inner space we adapt.
Like evolution? Yes. To whatever we need that’s inaccessible. Like an inner space that’s there but inaccessible when a human’s mind can’t find it. What would make it inaccessible? Different things. For example, finding anything requires judgment able to recognize boundaries. Able to navigate because it has coordinates, and not all minds, not all personalities, have judgment. So they adapt. They get in step with their herd’s “judgment.” Seeking the precision of schools of fish moving in unison. And then the trouble starts. Why?
The solution to self-evaluation: perfection
If we can’t imagine having a soul-searching conversation with Gort or Fifi, try imagining it with one of the fish. I could with a skillet and the right seasoning. The fish has forfeited any pretense of independent judgment to its school. And when you engage with it, you’ll be engaging with the school. And if you persist in relating to an individual fish you might find your delicate ballet-dancer anchovy is a shark. It’s made itself inaccessible to one-on-one relationship. The only “relationship” possible is if you give up your individuality and join its school. I’m already sick of school, so forget it.
“Herd mentality” is another term for animal instinct or will. Will that doesn’t need reasoning or choosing to act. Your wild Siberian tiger is a compelling ideal: a herd of wild beasts transformed into a single, all-powerful King of Beasts. Exquisitely beautiful and answerable to no one. That’s me! The opposite of “sociable.” Freed from all limits. Infinitely free. Infinitely powerful. Don’t stop! A human missing judgment and boundaries of her own can’t live this ideal and submit to self-evaluation too. So she deflects it by adopting her ideal’s perfection. By being “perfect.” “I’m perfect” says “I can’t be questioned.” “I can’t be criticized. And if I am there’s something wrong with you. It’s your fault.”
Permanently on probation
Another example of how human inner spaces are blocked is when inner space is too full of judgment instead of empty. Too much judging and too many boundaries. The wrong kind of “judgment” that’s judgmental. That mischaracterizes acts as justification for blame instead of guidance for navigation. For blaming the human herself. So that all “inner space” is to her is the “judgment” of self-blame. Not a good feeling.
Not at all. Anyone might feel compelled to project the feeling and guilt along with it onto others. By taking refuge in “perfection” beyond criticism. By shifting accountability for any “imperfection” onto someone else if they dare to question it. The internal pressure of negative judgment makes her “sociability” less protective than the other kind’s. Needing to control the pressure is her first priority, so sociability gives way to unsociability pretty fast. Especially true if you’re an authority figure like a parent, or a child who resists conformity, because they can jack up the pressure. Putting them permanently on probation.
Stuck in outer space
And this is all because of inner space? Whether inner space is blocked by lack of judgment and boundaries or by too much judgment and too many boundaries, the solution to the fixes the individuals wind up in is accessing their inner space. They can’t be “sociable” if what’s driving them is anti-social. They can’t be “friends” if the way they’ve adapted to their conditions is to become not-friends. There is no work-around for inaccessibility if there’s no inner space for your inner space to connect with. If all you or I or the other person have to offer is some version of outer space, we will be giving up any possibility of friendship that’s intimate, trusting, and loving.
So the choice is between inner and outer space. It’s between being a person with both spaces or a one-dimensional cartoon character. Unrelatable and to be avoided because, much as we may love them, they can’t be there with us emotionally or for us either. They’re somewhere else, stuck in outer space.
Nice kitty!
There are other perspectives, other explanations that might work better for you. This one helps me sympathize with others obstructed by conditions they’re not responsible for. Who want to be good just as much as I do. So if they misjudge me maybe they can’t help it. Misjudging them just makes things worse. You love them anyway.
We can love others for who they are even if what they do hurts us. But understanding why a wild Siberian tiger is dangerous doesn’t make it safe to be around. Let it roam free in its imaginary wilderness where it can’t hurt anyone. It doesn’t belong in relationships where it can hurt. I can’t bring my nice kitty into my friendships? You can if having a nice kitty means more to you than having a friend. Your friend will eventually be bitten and that will be the end of that.
Into an unshared world of not-sharing
Our eyes are good at seeing appearances – what’s on the surface. Another kind of vision helps us see what’s beneath the surface, where the real “action” is. The desires and fears, the satisfactions and frustrations that motivate us. That make us human and determine how things work out. A good reason to access our inner space because that’s where this vision is. The ability to detect with intuition the truth behind assurances that an outer space invader is our “friend.” Or a wild beast is “safe.” The ability to connect with another perspective that is our friend and can see what we can’t.
Outer space has invaded inner space. Inner space is Psyche, guiding us with truth, innocence, and trust. Outer space is the wrong guide: mischaracterization, guilt, and deceit. Luring us with unlimited power and freedom, promises too good to be true. We can’t get rid of it while we’re in this situation but we can manage it. So we can distinguish between what’s OK and not OK, what’s loving kindness and what’s not, without its interference. With the right kind of judgment and boundaries that make sense of things.
The instinct of a wild Siberian tiger is to resist all boundaries. It fears inner space where its wildness will be limited by conscience, empathy, judgment, and discipline. The qualities that make us human, relatable. Wildness is not-human, the opposite of relatable. What needs to be resisted isn’t inner space. It’s bad advice from the invader, outer space. Luring us out of our shared world of sharing into an unshared world of not-sharing. Ruled by herd mentality. Self-centered and selfish.
Can we still be friends?
Inner space is the gyroscope that keeps us oriented when circumstances toss us about. Like stormy seas making us seasick. It’s our navigator that keeps us away from dangerous reefs. Relying on a school of fish for navigation turns thinking and feeling over to what “everyone else does.” To the school or herd that cares about itself but not much about us. Guided by animal instinct to prey on others in competition for survival and dominance. The only way to behave it “knows.” Destined eventually for defeat. For colliding with a reef.
For its members it’s the opposite of wildness. The only “freedom” they have is to change their minds and get the heck out of there. Go back to inner space and being themselves. To connecting with Guidance that does care about them and respects their individuality. That can help them get it right.
If I get it wrong can we still be friends? I’ll always love you. But friendship won’t be possible. Not if I need a person to relate to with both spaces, inner and outer. Not an insensitive, unthinking, self-centered, outer-space animal. Herds are for animals, not persons. If the human with too much “judgment” needs a better way of managing pain than dumping it onto others, the human who seeks “good” in “perfect” needs to be satisfied with good. Then maybe we can all be friends.
Thank you. My kitty and I will take it under advisement. Say goodbye to the nice man, dear.