Fear And Loathing In Madrid

I was backpacking around the world at the tender age of 18, back in 1980.  As was the custom among backpackers at the time (dumbphones have completely replaced such antiquated pastimes), folks would trade books at campsites while trading war stories of the road and hard-learned tips for survival.

It was during this adventure that I was introduced to such great works of literature as The Women's Room, The Other Side of Midnight and The Way to Dusty Death.  Though I occasionally lucked into the rare bit of Poe or Kant, for the most part my reading list was uninspired and uninspiring.

At one point, I was en route to Spain, mostly to experience the brand-new French TGV, but also because I spoke fluent Spanish and wanted to go somewhere other than an Anglophone country where I could communicate effectively.

At that time, the French trains stopped at the northern side of the Pyrenees mountains, and one had to board a coal-burning relic of a previous century for the arduous crossing.  This turned out to be one of the most memorable legs on my European trip.

Imagine the Hogwart's train after 20 years of ill-repair.  The wood used to finish out the interior had petrified in place.  Each car had a line of 4-person cabins lining one side and a narrow walkway down the other.  You could not pass another person in the walkway without one of you ducking into one of the cabins to allow the other to pass.

Along the outer edge of the walkway was a gutter, of sorts.  In this gutter, urine from the overflowing toilets would run first one way going uphill, then the other going down.

There was six of us backpackers crammed into my cabin (did I mention they were designed for 4?).  One of them, Tim, turned out to be the first fellow Texan I had met in nearly a year.  He was a student at Baylor University studying literature and on summer walk-about in Europe.  He also had the first peanut butter I had seen since leaving the US nine months before.

We became instant friends, partly because I had La Vache Qui Rit cheese and a baguette with olives and a few precious slices of luncheon (mystery) meat.  He happily traded a generous portion of his peanut butter for a quarter of my rations.

We both learned valuable lessons on that journey, such as don't open windows for a breath of unurinated air when riding on a train with a coal-burning locomotive.  We spent several minutes clearing out the thick, acrid smoke, then shared a crushed, filterless Gauloise cigarette from my dwindling supply.

The subject in the room eventually turned to books, as it always did.  A Swede, a German, two Spaniards and two Texans began the complicated ritual of swapping our libraries.  I don't recall what I had to offer, but it attracted the German's attention, and the book he offered attrated Tim's, who in turn gave me one of the most influential books I have ever read.

Up to this point, I had lived a fairly sheltered life.  I was blissfully unaware of Gonzo journalism and this guy - Hunter S. Thompson - peering at me with aviator glasses and a foot-long cigarette holder looked vaguely dangerous.  Despite my naivete, I had read Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (another profound moment in my life), and Time said that if I liked Breakfast of Champions, I would love this book.

This was a mighty big claim, but I took it on faith from my fellow Texan and dutifully stashed the book in my pack.  Attractive German girls were far more appealing at the moment.

As is the custom in Spanish culture, the entire nation shuts down mid-afternoon for siesta.  As luck would have it, there was a tavern a short walk from the hostel that stayed open, primarily preying on journeyers who were unused to a relaxed lifestyle.  Tim and I quickly became regulars, bringing our books and ordering copious amounts of lukewarm cervesa to while away the lugubrious afternoons.

No more than three pages into the well-worn paperback, I was hooked.

Here was a journalist, a profession I associated with Walter Croncite, being sent to the Kentucky Derby, the Superbowl, political conventions, and never actually making it to the assigned events.  Instead, he and his Polynesian lawyer sidekick were transporting suitcases full of booze, pills and weed, and trashing hotel rooms during paranoid hallucinations of bats and narcs, while occasionally watching moments of the events on television - at least until the TV was destroyed.

I gobbled down the yellowing pulp like Mother's Milk, while single-handedly expanding the marketshare of Estrella Galicia one liter at a time.  I vaguely recall one such day sitting down at around 2 in the afternoon and being asked to go home at closing time some 12 hours later.

During that week that Tim and I wandered around Madrid, discussing the finer points of Thomspson's symbolism, we stumbled into a medieval castle with the massive wooden doors slightly ajar.  There was just enough room for us to sidle into the empty courtyard.  Tim, being still partially tourist, took out his camera and began snapping away.  I, being a journeyer, began committing various still images to my long-term memory.

I don't know how long we stood there, but it couldn't have been more than a couple of minutes.  At some point, Tim and I both heard the unmistakable (to any real Texan) sound of a hammer being pulled back.  Michelangelo would have been inspired by our poses as we froze solid in mid-action.

As we stood there, a man in the uniform of a guardia civil strolled slowly around in front of us.  He was about six feet tall, wearing aviator glasses and sporting a foot-long cigarette holder clenched in his brown teeth.

At that precise moment, Tim and I both simultaneously burst into hysterical laughter.  Within seconds, tears were streaming down our faces, as a bizarre mixture of terror and irony tightened its grip on our funny bones.  Though one of the most terrifying sights in all of post-Fascist Spain was yelling at us and waving a .45-caliber pistol, locked and loaded, in our faces, we couldn't stop laughing.  Trying only made it worse, and as anyone who knows Thompson will tell you, having a man in uniform who looks like Hunter Thompson waving a gun in your face and yelling incomprehensibly only served to push us further to our certain doom, laughing uncontrollably every step of the way.

As I write this, I am stroking the scar on my left temple where the generalissimo struck me with the gun sight on the business end of his cocked and loaded .45-caliber pistol.  The warm, sticky feeling running down the side of my face sobered me up, but only slightly.  I still had a powerful sensation of someone poking my long thoracic nerve, causing my abdomen to convulse involuntarily.

I held my hand up...slowly.  "Wait, wait," I pleaded.  "May I show you something?"

He appeared to gaze intently at me, though it was hard to tell behind the limousine-tinted aviator glasses.  "What is it?" he demanded.

"A book, here in my pack.  I think you will understand when you see it," I said in a voice verging on fresh paroxysms of laughter.

The generalissimo yanked the day pack from my hand and gave it to a subordinate who had mysteriously appeared at his side, while the pistol never strayed far from the centers of Tim's and my chests.

The subordinate opened the bad, looked inside, then reached in and pulled out the slowly disintegrating copy of The Great Shark Hunt.  He showed it to the boss man, who glanced quickly at it then back at us.  "So what?" he growled like a pit bull on crack.

"Turn it around, please," I said.

The subordinate looked down at the back of the book, then started laughing.  The generalissimo snatched the book, thankfully dropping the ugly end of his pistol down to the ground.  He flipped the book over and stared silently for what seemd like minutes

"Who is this?" he demanded.  At that point, he flipped the back of the book towards Tim and me, and held it out to us.  From our perspective, there on the left was a mean, nasty, armed holdover from Spain's Fascist past, and on the right was Hunter S. Thompson's visage staring at us from the liner notes on the book.  The two of them were posed almost identically.

Tim tried so hard to stifle a guffaw that he blew a week's worth of snot down the front of his face and shirt.  I was on the verge of fainting, working so hard to stifle a fresh wave of hysteria while standing in Madrid's legendary summer heat.

"His name is Hunter Thompson," I managed.  "He is a famous American writer."  A week before, I wouldn't have known who Thompson was, but I figured the "famous" part couldn't hurt and might stroke the generalissimo's ego a bit.

The generalissimo turned the book around again and stared at the image.  After a moment, he tossed the book at the subordinate, who grappled with it then shoved it back in the bag.  He rummaged around a bit and took out my passport.  He opened it and held it up for the Big Guy to see.

The generalissimo grunted and said, "Americano."

After a moment's pause, he looked at us again.  "What are you doing here?"

"We were walking around and saw this castle.  The gate was open, so we came in to look around," Tim said through strands of drying snot - he hadn't moved his hands in several minutes now.

The generalissimo barked something at the subordinate having to do with puerta and abierta.  The subordinate stuffed my passport bach in the bag and tossed it on the ground, then ran off towards the entrance where Tim and I had come in.

The gneralissimo appeared to glance over our shoulders at the subordinate, though it was hard to tell behind the inscrutable eyewear.  After a moment, he holstered his pistol and took the camera from Tim's hands.  He opened the camera and pulled the film out, exposing its entire length, which he threw on the ground.  He motioned me to pick up my bag and waved towards the massive wooden doors.

"Go," he barked.

We didn't stop running till we were back at our tavern.  We drank heavily the rest of that day, and tossed uneasily that night while visions of bats and narcs haunted our dreams.

Fear And Loathing

The big weather news of the week?  No, not the dozen or so who died in a typhoon in the Phillipines, but Brad and Muffy had to flee the Hamptons for some piss-ant rain storm.  Reportedly, Muffy's hair got mussed by a mild breeze caused by the rush to evacuate.

Hunter S. Thompson would be proud.  Richard C. Hoagland calls it "fear porn," and a more apt name we are hard-pressed to develop.  It's an old trick, but it is very effective.  What is surprising is how many people fall for it, even though there are repeated examples of the manipulation.

The use of fear as a weapon is a simple, yet effective tactic.  It is the basis of the concept of 'terrorism,' which is to frighten people to the point of submission.  The reason terrorism can ONLY be government sponsored is that people's fear response doesn't serve any other interest.

People, despite all our sophistication, have basic and primitive responses to certain stimulae.  One of the strongest and most basic is the fear response.  When faced with a threat, people will automatically 'circle the wagons.'  There's an instinctual rally behind leaders and a desire to protect vulnerable individuals and institutions.  Not that the instinct is bad, but the manipulation of it for socio/political ends is quite evil.

As a technique for manipulating large groups of people, the concept is very old.  Even the telling of ghost stories around the camp fire is a means of keeping more impressionable souls close to camp.  After a good ghost story, kids won't wander off in the night, to fall prey to accident or attack.

On a larger scale, such thinkers as Sun Tsu and Machiavelli wrote at length on the use of fear for political and strategic goals.  Using imaginary, manufactured or even actual enemies is a tool that causes the masses to cling to 'thought leaders' and gate-keepers' (politicians and media) to receive 'information' on how to react, and 'protection' from the threat.

A prime example of this technique in practice is the recent events surrounding hurricane Irene.  Anyone who has sufficient experience with big storms knows that you lock down for hurricanes and run from tornadoes.  One assumes that 'experts' would know this.  So why the week and a half of fear mongering and orders to flee?  It can only serve one purpose, that of generating fear in the masses and causing them to turn to PTB and media as the purveyors of 'information' and 'protection.'

The same technique was used quite effectively on a global basis after 9/11.  The fear of an unforeseen attack by mysterious enemies capable of destroying large and unthinkable targets has caused a global fear instinct to kick in that is still reverberating 10 years later.  The use of that fear has caused great numbers of people to willingly hand over their personal power and responsibility to a group of self-serving power mongers.

Even things as small as 'Amber Alerts' serve the PTB.  Amber Alerts are a program of media warnings in the US that are triggered when a child is reported missing.  Children, of course, are the most effective tool of those who would make the masses submit.  The idea of a child in danger causes and very strong and primitive reaction in people to drop what they are doing and circle the wagons, waiting for word from the 'authorities.'  It is very subtly fed to people by inducing the fear of 'it could happen to your child.'

Children are used by the PTB to create some of the most egregious violations of personal freedom known to Man.  Organizations such as 'Child Protective Services,' which are nothing they claim to be in that name, get other people to feel justified and proper in stealing people's children and farming them out to the highest bidders.

So-called 'public education' functions on the fear that your child won't have a chance in the 'real' world if they don't receive the full 12 years of indoctrination at the hands of evil manipulators.  This is despite the fact that some of the greatest thinkers in history had little or no 'formal' education.  Sitting in a classroom no more guarantees an education than having an open book on your desk, yet the fear that your child will be deprived causes you to submit your child to the brain butchers.

Mass vaccinations operate on fear.  If you don't take the jab, you will die a horrible and painful death from some vicious disease, even though more people statistically drown in buckets of water every year, than die of the supposed plague du jour being used to 'fear' you into submission.

The Cold War, global warming, nuclear holocaust, viral epidemics, killer storms, cometary impacts and the like are all tools of fear-mongering that are in play in our culture.  Who benefits from the fear that is generated?  Why, the very people who are telling us to be afraid, of course.

Fear of poverty keeps the middle classes in line.  Fear of Second Comings and Eternal Damnation keep the faithful in line.  Fear of depriving our children of some vague opportunity keeps parents in line.  Fear of death keeps nearly everyone in line.

There is a reason that the great adepts have all, without exception, taught that conquering fear is the first and most important step in freeing ourselves from bondage.  When we no longer act out of fear and subdue our innate panic response, then we are finally free to open our minds to greater Truths and Spiritual Development.

The Truth shall set us free, and the Truth is, there is nothing to fear.

We must train ourselves to stop acting without reasoning first.  It's not easy.  There are very primitive parts of our brains that startle at the unknown.  We create phantoms in our minds that cause us waste our lives reacting to possibilities, rather than focusing on reality.

It is fear that causes us to surrender our personal responsibility to anyone who presents themselves as a 'leader,' when in fact those 'leaders' are using their knowledge of the truth to present themselves as fearless.  It's a vicious circle that keeps us submissive and subservient to those who generate and manipulate fear as a weapon.

Observation of animals will quickly inform us about the basic human condition.  That lemmings will panic en masse and follow each other over a cliff is a trite but effective metaphor.  Both sheep and cows are excellent examples of blind submission to 'leaders.'  The Judas goat is a classic example.  The goat is trained to walk through the corral, and the sheep blindly follow it to their certain doom, or at least a good sheering.  A herd of thousands of cows can be managed by a handful of cowboys by simply guiding the lead cow.

In human 'society,' the lead cow is called a 'news anchor.'  It is their job to boldly march into butcher's hands, and they willingly do so because they know they will be spared to lead the next group.  Those who follow, though, are not so lucky.

There is hope.  Stories about people ignoring evacuation orders and going to the beaches despite threats of punishment and certain doom tells us that the power of the 'opinion leaders' is waning.  After all, the right of the individual to do anything they want to themselves is supreme above all other powers.  If Joe Sixpack wants to ride the storm surge on his boogy board, so be it.  If a man wants to ride out a storm on his property to protect it from looters and public 'authorities,' more power to him.  These people are taking personal risks that they feel are warranted, for whatever reason and reward they perceive.

Anyone who invests in the markets knows that the greater the financial risk, the greater the reward.  It is the fear of loss or ruin that keeps most people out of such things.  Those who take the risks are personally responsible for informing themselves of the benefits and dangers of such actions.  It is not for us to decide whether or not they should take those risks, and it is not for us to mediate their losses, should they fail to properly calculate the risks.

In the same way, it is not for us to decide if a storm is dangerous or not for any given individual.  That is their choice.  They have information on storm tracks, wind speeds and expected rainfall.  They, as reasoning beings, are personally responsible for deciding to stay put or flee, and they must accept both rewards and losses for their decisions.

If we find this a reasonable argument, then what can possibly be the benefit to some group to inculcate fear in large groups of people?

Training mass numbers of people to respond in certain ways makes them predicable, and thus controllable.  It also keeps them from depending on themselves and their friends and families.  Rather, it indoctrinates them into the concept of clinging to 'thought leaders' and 'gate-keepers' as sole arbiters of right action.  When people are afraid, they follow anyone who appears to have an idea what to do.  It causes us to doubt our own capacity to decide the odds and what we should do to mitigate risk.

We are implanted with 'behavioral templates' in the media that cause us to use pre-programmed responses to various stimulae.    The PTB use this for their entertainment.  It's amusing to them to herb masses around and watch the terror in their eyes as they run from a summer rain hardly more than a Texas gully-washer.

Anyone who has faced their fear and survived knows the feeling of empowerment it brings.  If the Self can conquer the animal flight instinct and face down the things that makes Self afraid, then Self is rewarded with the knowledge that Self is powerful and capable and independent.

That is the greatest fear of those who would control us.  That we should become empowered and conquer our fear and learn self-reliance makes us impossible to control, impossible to herd.  The empowered individual does not need a leader, he IS the leader.  He doesn't need to pay taxes, or depend on government agencies and hand-outs.  He is his own authority.  He doesn't need to share his reward and doesn't ask others to re-mediate his losses.

Does that sound like the kind of individual that governments and 'authorities' try to create?  Or does the quivering, indecisive lump of fearful animal flesh seem more to their liking?

Despite all his faults, FDR did come out with a great line that is worth remembering: "There is nothing to fear, but Fear Itself."  Knowledge that we are eternal beings incapable of real death, and fearless in the face of danger, real or imagined, is the remedy to our current predicament.

Those who stand and fight, whether natural or man-made dangers, are self-empowered and self-reliant, and truly free individuals. 

The PTB are deathly afraid of one thing, the self-actualized human being.  Their power, wealth and control are completely and inextricably dependent on our fear.  Whether it's religions, political institutions or just plain bullies, they eat fear and thrive on it.  The complete lack of fear is kryptonite to their super-powers.

Ask yourself this: Why do the 'authorities' tell everyone to run, but allow supercilious air-heads to remain in the face of danger to report it to us?  Very simple.  It creates in our minds the impression that the media have the favor of the 'authorities,' and we instinctively admire their bravery and fearlessness in the face of certain doom.  We, therefore, naturally transfer our allegiance to the media because they have no fear, whether of Nature or 'authorities'.  Thus, we become willing pawns of the PTB mouthpieces.

Every time someone tells you to fear and run, the first question in your mind should be, "Why?  What do you have to gain from my fear?"  That simple thought deflates their power and brings them down to our level.  Don't be fooled by follow-on stories about the folks who didn't listen and died.  People always die.  It is the nature of life.  It is no less tragic, but it should not cause us fear.

Freedom comes through two tasks.  Uninstall the fear, and conquer it's cousin, guilt.  If we deprogram those two things, then we are powerful and free.  The hardest part is accepting the consequences of our actions, no matter what our choices.

The true heroes are the ones who stand and face their fears, not the uniformed baboons who show up later to clean up the mess.