04.07
The Art of Manliness, in my never-humble opinion, is a grand repository of male lore and discussion – I recommend it highly. This article in particular – “Creating and Consuming” is very instructive. The author discusses the fundemental difference between men and boys – the boy is defined by what one owns, the man defined by what one does. While this is a bit simplistic in my opinion, there is certainly a grain of truth to it.
Witness the Church of Satan and it’s membership, or at least, the public side of the Church found online. My entirely unscientific and self-serving survey indicates that there is a high number of artists in residence – and an artist is a Creator, a god in his or her own right. Most art is ideal for display on the Internet – you can reproduce an image of the creation for display on the web, and any knucklehead who browses your page can see the creation. The skewed sense of the Internet aside, there are multitude ways to be a Creator. Don’t fool yourself – We are all around you, and not all of us carry a paintbrush or write interesting and wonderful music. One with talent who owns that creativity can make a deep mark in this world.
A Consumer defines him or herself by what he owns – essentially, he allows others to define his being almost in toto. He or she is psychic silly putty, naturally lifting the newspaper print of Fear and Desire. Both Consumer and Creator are necessary – we need wool from the sheep to keep us warm, as well as meat for our bellies.
For a more directly Satanic treatment of this topic, I strongly suggest picking up Magister Matt G. Paradise’s book, Bearing the Devil’s Mark – you’ll find his essay “Producer or Consumer? Which one are you?” to be quite instructive.
So…which one are you? Producer or Consumer? Are you certain? Have you asked yourself this question lately?
This post is really low on the content scale – it’s point is simply to lead you to think about a topic of my design that, on first view, appears unrelated. The topic is this: if humans are no more than animals, and there are objective, scientific means to train animals, are humans really any different from other life forms?
More to the point – one of the very few differentiators between man and other beasts is the evolution of man’s forebrain, the organic source for language and what is known in a scientific context as Verbal Behavior. We can communicate through language, making understanding possible. If one can know how to train an animal, and one can verbally describe and understand the objective mechanisms that make this possible, is the human animal exempt from it’s operation?
Bonus question for the Crimson Card carriers here – both Anton LaVey and Peter H. Gilmore have some background in animal training – Dr. LaVey with the circus and his legendary pet lion, and High Priest Gilmore was raised in part by a father who worked as a dog breeder and groomer. Given the place of both men in the Church, do you think this shared background in and around animal training to be simply a coincidence?
