There was a time when my mind was focused on one direction: up. If you consider the “time line” as an unfolding left to right axis, and add a perpendicular axis for the individual, isolated moment in time that one can possibly experience, per se, then you can understand why I was looking up all the time.

At this point in life, on the perpendicular axis of time I prefer to look in front of me. I experience to a lesser extent the emotional and sensational vibrations of the moment being. I select only the cognitive impressions of this moment in time and store it according to my expectations with regard to any future (subst., m) I perceive in front of me, with a more or less accurate and objective 6th sense.

(Intuition used to be a powerful tool for a strong lady to make use of. Nowadays, intuition becomes less effective, to the extent that genuine social interaction developed in time, under the sign of friendship, seems to be slowly, slowly dying.)

Philip Zimbardo talks about the Lucifer effect in one of his lectures on TED, giving some explanations for why normal people, people that are dear to us, people that wouldn’t harm anyone, become the everyday demons that kill, rape, torture, do evil things, under 7 conditions. The number as such as nothing mystical to it, but there are some conditions necessary for any individual to become a modern Lucifer in  this god-presided society (syn. nation under god; syn. god-created earth, so on and so forth).

This and some other thoughts of mine, which I call autumnal phrenies, made me realise that this effect has a  more subversive side which can be detected in the everyday human behavior. It is more diluted, less obvious and therefore more harmful over time because it’s ignored and tolerated. One of the conditions of the Lucifer effect is anonymity and this anonymity, as Zimbardo explains, is a state of mind in which the subject is submersed, as a consequence of him changing is appearance and, if possible, hiding his real identity. This identity-blurring process could work as a switch for any evil tendency that each of us has deep within. It can also work very well as a volume controller which puts any conscious coercitive thought on mute, although we are still aware of their existence. The thoughts with regard to the morality of our actions is still there, but we  pretend not to hear them… for a moment.

The diluted Lucifer effect is present when people become more alienated, more distant and less warm and sincere towards one another. The diluted Lucifer effect makes this world a  glossy glacial world with lots of slippery surfaces into pathologic behaviors, abnormal tendencies and exaggerated self-centeredness.

It was God indeed who, according to the biblical story, sent Lucifer, the naughty angel, down on Earth and in his mental isolation and anonymity, he became a demon… and it is each of us who send people in the corner, who mock them, turn them down, disappoint them, lie to them, play with them, don’t give a **** about them, and in their alienation, they become the paria that we call deviant minority…

Sadly enough, there will be no battle between evil and good  that any modern prophet talks about which will wash out the stains of human self(mass)destruction.

I believe the I don’t care that hear no evil, speak no evil see no evil has become in our society  is one attitude under anybody’s “god” and morals that encourages harmful actions to be done, evil thoughts to cross our minds and corrupt feelings to be experienced. Confucius talked about do no evil too and that was depicted by a fourth monkey crossing his arms.  We forgot about the fourth monkey. Actually we just throw the evil doing monkeys in jails where we may very well humiliate them, put a stigma on their face and just expect them to obey us.

Sometimes, as Zimbardo puts it, there are just bad apples (inherently evil people), but most of the time ther are bad gardens and, if I am right, we cultivate various vegetables, fruits and trees in the garden and so that we can feed from them.

So, to conclude this post, I’m not sure there was a Lucifer and a resentful God many years ago, but I’m sure we repeat the story every second, day by day. Can YOU  something about it?

Sincerely,

katchja