Cynical Protoplasm

The thinking that leads to Hesiod’s grim prerequisites for spurring mankind to activity, the thinking that leads to Donald Trump and market-based capitalism, addresses the ego through appeals to fear-based thinking, thinking that Nietzsche might describe as “only night and terror and an imagination accustomed to the horrible.” Fear-based thinking drives us to get weapons to defend ourselves from Nietzsche’s generic terror. It’s what forces us to choose either Donald J. Trump or Hillary Rodham Clinton as the less fearful evil.

Curiosity-based thinking presents a possible alternative to fear-based thinking. If we step back from the ego, if we don’t filter the experience of being alive through the artificial construct of fear, the world becomes a much-more interesting place, not a hell-scape filled with nothing but random terror, but a world that inspires and entertains. Fear-based thinking leads to what the Buddha called “misplaced desires,” desires that mostly fall under the categories of possession and control. When we engage in domineering or manipulative behavior, we’re succumbing to fear-based thinking.  When looked at from outside the cage of ego, fear-based thinking doesn’t seem terribly appealing, yet it’s the predominant form of thinking in our world. The earliest organized hierarchical control systems imposed on humanity took the form of religion, which is the ultimate expression of fear-based thinking. Organized religions provided the mythologies that motivate fear-based thinkers to this day. Fluid metaphor might make the curiosity-based thinker go a big rubbery one, but concretized mythology spins the propellers of fear-based thinkers and nothing is less fluid and more concretized than religious dogma.

Constructive science occupies the opposite end of the intellectual spectrum from religion. While the normalcy biases of fear-based thinkers often impede scientific advances—the Catholic Inquisition forcing Galileo to recant his theory of heliocentrism, for example—curiosity-based thinking has been the driving force behind most scientific advancement. Because our understanding of science constantly evolves, any scientific text must likewise evolve. A two-year-old text on computer technology is hopelessly out-of-date. Religious texts are a different kettle of fish. Hebrew priests began writing texts that eventually became the Bible like The First Book of Isaiah in the 8th century BCE. These ancient texts explain at great lengths the rules and procedures that preoccupied 8th century BCE Hebrews, like the proper method for burning stools upon which menstruating women have sat. The need for burning stools upon which menstruating women have sat is not a major concern for most 21st-century humans, nor are most of the other nuggets of wisdom presented in the Bible terribly useful today, yet this book is still considered the Official Word of God™, and God help anyone with the temerity to question His Official Word.

Christianity has remained one of the dominant mythological systems for over 2,000 years because of brilliant marketing to fear-based thinkers. The initial marketers of Christianity addressed the primary consequences of ego by focusing on that which the human animal most fears—death—and that which we most desire: sex. Expiring and begetting are addressed in equal measure in the Official Word of God™, although over centuries the liturgies of most mainstream Christian denominations have moved away from the more entertaining begetting part to focus on the more fearful death part.

Religion was the original product marketed through fear-based thinking, but others followed. By the time feudalism had given way to capitalism, science had advanced to the point where the Catholic Inquisition could no longer force the Galileos of the world to recant without looking like oddly-dressed buffoons and the ruling elite needed something more sophisticated than religion to terrify the peasantry into submission: the organized nation state. Like religion, the nation state marketed its product through fear-based thinking, though in a more sophisticated form than religion: a monopoly on the use of violence. Rather than the fear of burning in a lake of fire for sinning, the nation state offered torture, imprisonment, and/or death for disobeying laws laid down by the ruling elite. It also offered protection from the marauding forces of rival nation states, guaranteeing that any ruling elite with enough gumption to create a nation state would also create rival nation states to provide fear-generating enemies, justifying the existence of their own nation state.

[dropcap]A[/dropcap]s the industrial revolution gave birth to our current system of market-based capitalism, fear-based marketing likewise evolved. By this time the fear of the nation state’s monopoly on the use of violence was sufficiently ingrained to keep the peasantry more-or-less compliant with the dictates of the ruling elite, so fear-based marketing evolved from an outright control mechanism into an effective tool for turning peasants into reliable consumers, generating capitalism’s capital. Fear-based marketing now convinces us that we have to dress a certain way, drive a specific vehicle, and purge ourselves of the all the scents of humanity by using the correct toiletry products if we ever hope to engage in coitus again. Even then at least half of us had best consume the correct pharmaceutical products for maintaining erections if said coital act is to be considered even marginally successful.

As market-based capitalism took over, the propaganda broadcast by corporate media supplanted religious dogma as the primary source of concretized mythology. Corporate media presents an immutable reality that we can use to identify our team. If we get our propaganda from Fox, for example, we are on Team Red and think Trump is the second coming of Christ. If we get our propaganda from MSNBC, we are on Team Blue and Obama makes our putters flutter. (By now Hillary Clinton just sort of makes everyone uncomfortable.) Which team we identify with is irrelevant; the important thing is that we identify one team as “ours” and internalize all the fear-based propaganda associated with that team, thus making it easier for the ruling elite to tickle our hot buttons.

Substituting fear-based thinking with curiosity-based thinking could lead humanity down a different path, but we seem preternaturally disposed toward relying on fear-based thought as the defining factor in our lives. To get past this, we might need to repackage concretized mythology in a fashion that propagates curiosity-based thinking instead of fear-based thinking. Perhaps that means inventing a new curiosity-based religion.

Inventing a curiosity-based religion means inventing a curiosity-based God as its figurehead. The ancient Greek philosophy of Cynicism, which stresses living in accord with nature and opposing convention, could be an appropriate foundation for a curiosity-based religion that embodies the zeitgeist of the 21st century, and that most illustrious of Cynic philosophers Diogenes of Sinope would make an allegorically perfect God to invent. Otherwise known as Diogenes the Dog because of his insistence on publicly defecating and engaging in autoerotic activities in the marketplace, he lived in a clay pot called a pithos and earned his living as a beggar. Diogenes abhorred conformity. He advised people to abandon the artificial desires that chain the masses to a continual state of madness.

Diogenes might be a tough God to sell to the current masses who are nothing if not chained to a continual state of madness by artificial desire because, well, he was sort of a dick. When a listener demanded that Diogenes convince him to accept the philosophy of Cynicism, Diogenes responded, “If I could convince you of anything, I’d convince you to hang yourself.” Still, this masturbating philosophical dog gained such a reputation that he garnered the attention of Alexander the Great, who traveled to Athens to visit Diogenes. Alexander was so impressed with this brilliant philosopher that he offered to grant Diogenes whatever he desired.

“I will give you anything,” the great man said as he towered over Diogenes, who was sunning himself on his clay pithos. “What do you want?”

Diogenes, who seemed utterly incapable of fear-based thought, replied, “I want you to move and stop blocking the sun.”