Paper Tigers

I want to bring Dr. E back to my writing group. Dr. E was a huge hit when I first joined the group but I have since gone on to bigger and better things.

Dr. E, of course, is a real person. He was my therapist for 20 sessions - paid for by the great State of New Jersey. They sent me to him to support me in my quest for gainful employment. Who says that capitalism and the mental health field are not intertwined??? Didn't Foucault say that since the Industrial Revolution the "mad" have come to be defined as those who can't or won't work?

Dr. E was, of course, filled to the brim with every bourgeois piety in the book, but I've always felt bad making such delightful fun of him because he is a genuinely good man. He's just desperately, desperately lost - further from enlightenment than Your's Truly.

He was not quite up to my speed. I still have trouble getting my head around this. I knew more at the age of 28 than he did at the age of 60.

What ASTOUNDS me is this: THESE ARE THE GUARDIANS OF OUR SOCIETY!!! He is a Harvard graduate and a Rhodes scholar!!! He's a grown-up! He's a man! He's made his money! I'm sure he has a nice bank account!

MEN LIKE HIM (maybe not him) but MEN LIKE HIM control - to an extent - the destinies of others. The psychiatrists who admit people into mental hospitals are MEN LIKE HIM. The judges who make decisions that affect the lives of others are MEN LIKE HIM!

They may be better men or worse men, but they are MEN LIKE HIM!

In other words, MEN WHO KNOW NOTHING!

I remember one particular appointment. He already knew that I was somewhat smart.

"Hi, Will. So, how are you this week?" asked Dr. E.

"Good. How about you?"

"Good, thank you. I visited my brother in South Carolina last week," he said.

"Oh, good. How was that?"

"Good. I drove all the way down to Charleston."

"Oh, how was that?" I asked, sounding more like the psychologist than him.

"Great. I drove for hours because I had a really good audiobook."

"What was the book?" I had to hear his answer on this one. He did not disappoint.

"Dan Brown's Angels and Demons. Have you heard of that one?"

"Yeah." Oh, this was getting good!

"I'm telling you, man! It was so good I could not stop driving! I mean, it was just riveting! Captivating! You would really like it! I mean there's some heavy stuff in there! Some really deep, heavy stuff that just bends your mind around."

You can't make this stuff up! Classic! In the eyes of our clueless society this guy is a winner and I am a loser! This man has power over others and - for the longest time - I did not have power even over myself! I was in a depressed hole so profound I read Schopenhauer just to cheer myself up (actually I didn't read too much Schopenhauer because my OCDs would not let me.) But this guy knew nothing about Schopenhauer. Or Nietzsche even. Or anything.

A now classic episode (which I've now recounted several times) is the time I mentioned something about Aleister Crowley.

"Who's Aleister Crowley?" he asked.

How could you not know who Aleister Crowley was? I told him to look up Aleister Crowley online.

"Will do." He jotted down Aleister Crowley's name.

When I saw him the next week he said, "Hey, I researched that Aleister Crowley guy."

"Oh yeah? What did you think?"

"Wow! Weird stuff, man! Scary stuff, man! I mean, the stuff those Golden Dawn people were doing was really crazy, man! I even checked out a few websites. Just really, really weird stuff. There was one where they had all kinds of weird hieroglyphics and stuff. I couldn't even look at it. I was afraid that if I investigated I'd get sucked into some kind of whirlpool I wouldn't be able to get out of."

The wicked grin I have on my face as I write this! They sent me to him so that he could straighten me out and instead I had him eating out of my hand. I was more a threat to his sanity than he was to mine! I spent the sessions just completely undermining his entire belief structure. He probably still - in his quiet moments - goes over some of our conversations.

Anyone who knows me well (and, yes, this is pointed at the beautiful Indian girl who reads my blogs everyday) knows how dangerous I can be in a philosophical argument. Anyone who knows me knows that I am an expert at inverting normal values - what's up is down and what is down is up. I can back up every unconventional opinion with valid, rational arguments - like the nasty child who is intelligent enough to defend his bad behavior (I got that line from some customer's Amazon review of the Marquis de Sade's "120 Days of Sodom.") Think of what this poor guy had to deal with. He was an eating disorder specialist so he was used to treating High School cheerleaders and suddenly he has a junior Faust in his office.

But again, a part of me almost feels bad writing this. Dr. E was a good man and he is still eager to work with me. Like most people, he found me intensely interesting and charismatic.

I just can't help but to notice that most of this world must be an illusion. All these people who always seemed so much bigger than me, stronger than me, smarter than me and more powerful than me are really just paper tigers! This whole world sometimes seems to be nothing but a big paper tiger.

These people may not rule the world, but they are certainly the bureaucrats who are in charge of its administration.

I was watching YouTube clips of Robert Anton Wilson yesterday and he said that he prefers to think of him and his friends as the Power Elite. That, he said, was a "Winner Script" and he chose to think of himself as a winner.

I too think of myself as a winner.

I can't wait to flesh this out for my writers group! The Dan Brown line is great! I can't take any credit though! It was Dr. E's line - not mine!