Tuesday, September 22, 2020

Saving Up for Sufiah Yusof (back by popular demand)

[First published 13 April 2008. Re-read it today and decided to recycle it!]

What a fabulous fiasco it turned out to be, the hue and cry over the recent revelation by a scabious Murdoch-owned tabloid (News of the World) that a female math prodigy who entered Oxford University at 13 was now working in Manchester as a "£130-an-hour hooker" ten years later. Why the hue and cry? Simply because the girl, Sufiah Yusof, was supposedly Muslim, one of five children born to a Pakistani father and a Malaysian mother.

Like everybody else I found the story intriguing enough for me to poke my nose into it - and what I found online was a series of provocative poses uploaded as a slide show by the News of the World. Now I must admit I took an instant shine to Sufiah, especially after watching an interview with her. She came across as a highly articulate, self-confident, sexually liberated young woman who had consciously decided to embark on a lucrative career as a professional erotician. Luscious bod too.

"I've had some of the best sex I've ever had working in this job," she says candidly. Sufiah sounds totally British, so it's rather odd that some Malaysians still believe they have some sort of claim over her as a "princess of the soil." The truth is, what Sufiah does with her life is none of their fucking business, no pun intended. Okay, during the Mahathir era the Malaysian government did sponsor Sufiah's studies in the hope that she would someday do her motherland proud. But dammit the kid was only 12 at the time and it was her dad Farooq who came up with this insane and cruel method of "accelerated learning" designed to hydroponically produce academic geniuses. Not surprisingly, Farooq Yusof was recently jailed for molesting two 15-year-old students who were taking home tuition from him. You can imagine what sort of relationship Sufiah had with her dad.

But this blogpost isn't about Sufiah Yusof, even though she inspired it. What I want to talk about is the erotophobia of the Abrahamic religions which has turned repressed sexuality into a multi-billion dollar industry.

The crux of the problem is that morality has become inextricably linked to sexual behavior when morality and sex have very little to do with each other. Cutting edge thinker Robert Anton Wilson often wrote about the conflict between what he called the logogram and the biogram. Morality is part of the logogram - a set of assumptions and beliefs conjured by the verbal mind. Sexuality is part of the biogram - a reproductive strategy activated by biochemical, bioelectrical and sensory processes that do not take their cues from the analytical mind.

In other words, the language-processing conceptual mind creates artificial boundaries and limitations and then assumes they are real and universal; while the body operates on a complex series of autonomous programs triggered by the endocrinal and hormonal systems, evolved over billions of earth years.

The late great Austrian psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich (left) theorized that sexual repression is the source of many psychological and social problems. The split between mind (logogram) and body (biogram) causes us to destroy each other and our planet, Reich believed, and is the underlying cause of warfare. Reich saw the ability to lose ourselves in sexual ecstasy as the ultimate measure of well being. He held that neurosis is none other than the sum total of all chronically automatic inhibitions of natural sexual excitation, and everything else is the result of this original disturbance. Reich's psychotherapeutic goal was to restore the primacy of our sensual nature. To really let go during the sexual experience. Not just an orgasm but a complete, full release. For Reich, a key question was: Why did people support the Nazis? Reich found that several things went together in Nazi Germany:

* Strong paternal authority
* Sexual repressiveness
* authoritarian values
* reactionary political ideologies



Sexual desires naturally urge a person to enter into all kinds of relations with the world, and to enter into close contact with others in a variety of forms. If these urges are repressed, they can only express themselves within the narrow confines of the family. In patriarchy, there is much more emphasis on sexual control than in matriarchy. If all the wealth passes through the father, you want to be very sure who the father is. If it passes through the mother, there is less concern as to who the father is. Monogamy will cease to be presented as the only legitimate form of sexual bonding. [Brief summary of a paper by Victor Daniels of Sonoma State University]

E.F. Baker, in an essay on Reich published in the Journal of Orgonomy wrote:

"Reich could only conclude that sex, which was formerly believed to be solely for reproductive purposes, had the vitally important function of maintaining a stable energy level within the organism. It would follow, then, that without sexual repression, there would be no neuroses. This is indeed the case in those societies that are sex-affirmative, such as the Trobriand Islanders.' Such societies are matrilineal in structure. In western civilization (and most Asiatic and other countries), a patriarchal form of social structure exists which is sex-negative. We have, therefore, to be concerned with the social cause of sexual problems and hence neuroses. Our whole society is oriented against true sexual freedom and, from infancy on, every effort is made to inhibit and repress any sexual manifestations. Boys and girls alike are severely reprimanded for any curiosity about the other's body, and adolescents who engage in sexual relations can be severely punished. Thus, only a few are allowed to grow up with a natural sexual attitude, and yet, when they marry, they are supposed to be able to function. Few find or attain a satisfying sexual relationship even in our day when youths are boldly showing their sexual interest and demanding its fulfillment."

So why would anyone be willing to spend £130 (approximately RM870) just for a sexual romp with Sufiah Yusof? It's simply because she has figured out that the majority of men can't find sexual gratification at home and are happy to pay handsomely for a really fantastic fuck. Few women, once they're married and have children, bother to remain sexually appealing to their husbands. By specializing in the erotic arts, Sufiah capitalizes on fulfilling male fantasies of carefree, no-holds-barred sexual play. If an occasional evening out with somebody like Sufiah Yusof can help maintain a man's sanity, then that £130 can be considered money well spent.

Those who believe Sufiah Yusof needs to be saved from a life of sin and godlessness are themselves most likely to suffer from acute sexual repression. Growing up in a patriarchal culture and indoctrinated with erotophobic beliefs that equate pleasure with immorality, the existence of a sexually liberated female like Sufiah threatens the fundaments of their belief systems.


If I were living in the vicinity of Manchester, I might be sorely tempted to look Sufiah up. Not with the thought of saving her, of course, but it would be absolutely delicious to have a juicy discussion on algorithms and integral calculus with her while nonchalantly peeling off her algebra. Well, I'd better start saving up. This foxy lady who began life as a math genius doesn't come cheap!


[First posted 13 April 2008. Reposted 27 November 2013]

Sunday, September 20, 2020

A PAIR OF DOGS AND TWO SHINY DIMES (revisited)

How clever can you get? A pair o’ dogs is a paradox. Two shiny dimes is the Cockney way of saying “new paradigms.” So this is “paradox and new paradigms” time, folks!

Quantum physicists report that electrons are both particles and waves; even coined a word for this paradoxical condition – wavicles!

Electrons are fundamental to our everyday world. They swirl around the nuclei of our very atoms, generating currents as they flow as electricity, and pass through integrated circuitry to produce the bedazzling wonders of electronics.

Electrons are like people

How so? Look at any big modern city from the air. The higher you go the more it resembles a microchip, but as you zoom back in, it transforms into one big printed circuit board with all these capacitors, resistors, diodes, and semiconductors sticking up like tiny erections: highrises, office complexes, shopping malls, stadiums, sprawling suburbs, road networks. All these cables, tubes, and colorful wires transporting electrons hither and thither, generating the humdrum hum of rush-hour traffic.


The moment you make the connection between micro and macro, you begin to comprehend this modified and updated adage: “As within, so without.” The esoteric insights gained by magicians and quantum physicists DO apply to our everyday lives, and the sooner we get comfortable with paradox, the less rigid our mindsets become. I’ve never known anybody to suffer from an overly flexible mindset, but those who cling to rigid perspectives and beliefs certainly cause a great deal of suffering, especially to their own loved ones.

Take the classic EITHER/OR stance for example. When you hear some buffoon saying, “You’re EITHER with me, OR against me” – watch out! He or she is attempting to box you in, leave you with another Hobson’s choice – which is really no choice at all. In life, it’s never black OR white, there’s always an entire spectrum of grays in between – not to mention the possibility of spontaneous rainbows of vivid colors from which to choose!

The antidote to either/or is BOTH/AND. Most times it’s BOTH this AND that, not either/or. You can apply this to just about any situation. Take the hullabaloo surrounding the issue of “moral policing”: you hear arguments on both sides, some advocating strict control over what young people do for fun, and others defending the individual’s right to define his or her own concept of “morality.”

I personally LOATHE the very idea of allowing the State to dictate social behavior; but that doesn’t mean I like the idea of my own teenage children frying their neural circuitry and thwarting their own potential with stupid-making drugs. So the real issue isn’t whether moral policing is okay or not okay – but, rather, why do we keep resorting to FORCE when attempting to deal with any situation? Who was it who said: “When you think like a hammer, every problem looks like a nail”?

I find it unfathomable that there are so many who actually believe they can change people’s behavior from outside - through coercion, intimidation, and threats. Sure, point a knife at someone’s throat and they’ll give you their money or do whatever you say – but when the State legitimizes the use of brute force, it reinforces the Criminal Element and compels it to retaliate even more brutally.

Most times there is really no solution required beyond looking hard into the mirror and acknowledging that we’ve not been giving our kids enough attention, affection, and appreciation – which is why they don’t enjoy hanging around the homestead. I’ve seen so many parents justify their workaholism by saying it’s all for their children’s sake; they want to accumulate as much as possible, so they can give their kids the best education money can buy, and so on. But what they’re overlooking is that every kid essentially wants their parents to love and befriend them – everything else follows from that; and “education” itself can easily be shown to be merely another profitable racket run by know-nothings who actually don’t give a hoot whether your kids can think for themselves, as long as they pay their tuition fees on time.

“It’s a competitive world,” I hear parents parrot, “and we want to equip our children with everything they need to compete successfully.” First of all, when you have even the slightest understanding of quantum mechanics and the concept of the superconscious plenum, you would know that this is indeed an “observer-created” universe. Which, in plain words, means we see what we believe – not the other way around!

In effect, if you BELIEVE the world is “competitive” you project around yourself a hostile, unfriendly environment... and then you pass that holographic hell to your children as a legacy. Now, if you LOVE your kids, WHY on earth would you want to inflict such a bleak scenario on them? After all, the “future” is really just a bunch of different scenarios we’re collectively scripting with our present beliefs and perceptions.

Disaster, catastrophe, eco-apocalypse, Armageddon, and the New World Order are only scenarios generated by the old paradigms of Darwinian survivalism and Malthusian not-enough-to-shareism. They have absolutely no basis in reality... despite what the Experts say.

To become an Expert you have to embrace and extol and perpetuate the old paradigms. However, by consciously opting to create entirely new paradigms wherein all life can blossom into greater joy, freedom, and limitless abundance – without doing so at the expense of any other lifeform – you are effectively bypassing all possibility of doomsday, futility, and despair. Ask yourself now, isn’t that something worth putting your energy into, rather than gossiping about other people’s sex life?


[Originally published in the June 2005 issue of VIDA! First posted 8 January 2007, reposted 15 November 2017 & 30 July 2018]

EXECUTIVE SOOT & A DOLLAR FOR DOLLAH ~ by Antares


EXECUTIVE SOOT


the funny man speaks through harmless lips. He
operates in the presentperfect sense of his
pastparticiple mind & occasionally wonders why
the future seems so tense. Serious
man almost funny busynessman
working honest hours &
dishonest lifetimes
racing rockinghorses
in the dark. Honest
workingman eats his lunch
crammed between punchclock &
traffic jam. Big
bossman does his algebra
(ma & pa said son you'll go far)
with profit&loss plan. Funny
money man who saves his honey
like a busy bee on dear ol'
Maggie's Farm

[1969]



A DOLLAR FOR DOLLAH


A dollar for Dollah
And two for Maniam
Ah Kow has three
Now he's a Tan Slee


Datuk, datuk on the dole
Why do you do only what you're told?
Shake your sarong, tap your feet
Nod your head and grab a seat!


Errand boy blue
Look what you've grown into
From errand boy to erring man
In just a year or two


Mommy says I'll grow up strong
If I don't hang around the grownups for too long
Daddy says I'll grow up rich
If I don't mind being a sonofabitch

[written in 1970, revised 1994; from MOTH BALLS (Magick River, 1994)]


Drawings by Antares

[First posted 20 September 2011]