What the guitar Discovery is in 2112
Cybermonk
In the Rush album 2112, "The Discovery" is legitimately interpreted as
the discovery of any and all of the following:
o The electric guitar
o Music
o Individual freedom
o Freedom of consciousness
o The ego
o Psychedelics as a trigger of the mystic cognitive state
o Ego death and the transcendent state of consciousness -- that is,
ego transcendence
The lyrics site (http://archive.uwp.edu/pub/music/lyrics/) is missing
the important text from the bottom of the back of the 2112 album.
This paragraph tells more about the protagonist's original
satisfaction and then his discovery of something that shocked and
awakened him and made him completely dissatisfied with the limited,
safe world permitted by the authorities.
The ego can be considered a modern invention or *discovery*, that
required the death of the kingly aristocracy, in which power and
control descended from above, with God the high master and everyone
else a slave. The lower on the hierarchy, the more completely were
people considered as slaves.
But extending past even the ego is the transcendent consciousness --
the next step in our collective evolution, a step that is explored by
only the advanced few in today's primarily ego-oriented level of
development.
Neil Peart, the lyricist for Rush, is a mystic and an intellectual --
or better, a lofty thinker. To understand some of the most important
dimensions of experiencing that his lyrics allude to, you must study
mysticism and have mystic experiences. To understand these meanings,
you must question our laws and prohibitions and refusals to explore
the open horizons that are offered to us.
The priests scoff. We've been, and we've seen. Yes, we know about
that -- it's published in the Encyclopedia Britannica and the
Scientific American. It's nothing new. It's just a waste of time --
another toy, that will only help to destroy our civilized,
well-ordered world. That road is only a childish whim leading to
chaos. We will not allow it. Never mind the whimsy of transcendent
exploration, of investigating our cognitive potentials -- better to
have order and safety than risk confronting the chaos of ego death and
insanity on the consciousness frontier.
The Discovery is only of an electric guitar. But since the mid-60s,
the electric guitar has been at the center of the mystic mystery
school of our times -- the warped and altered guitar Tone has been our
cosmic express train to Thailand and the east, shooting out on its
journey into the black hole at the center of the mind, where we sleep
dreaming in our home. The electric guitar has been our brightest
beacon and carrier wave toward the vortex of transcendent experiencing
and knowledge surpassing the ego.
===================
The priests in 2112 represent the regressive type of collective
consciousness that is destructive to the ego, to the sovereign
self-governing power of the individual. Socialists might claim to
uphold the individual better through collective action, and to
integrate the individual with the collective.
The priests are not exactly Randian collectivists, but rather, they
represent our system of fearful lawmakers, governors, and masses, who
consider safety for the status quo more important than the freedom of
the adventurous explorers and intellectual innovators. The album 2112
is not anti-collectivism, but rather, pro-freedom for the exceptional
individual. The priests represent whatever forces block mental
exploration and consciousness expansion, whether these forces are the
strong forms of collectivism the Rand refutes, or merely the averaging
and dumbing-down, limiting effects of our democracy and its coddling,
consciousness-stunting prohibitions in the name of safety for
citizens, society, country, and status quo.
On the issue of synthetic consciousness expansion, is Ayn Rand one of
the priests?
=====================
Perhaps some sort of collectivism is possible. But it seems we need
to first go through an ego stage in which the free, self-governing
individual is upheld as the ultimate authority, the most real social
and political unit. (Some might say that in democracy, the basic
social and political unit is the family. That's relatively similar to
emphasizing the individual, compared to the aristocratic hierarchy
system.)
Actual attempts at socialism have led to regression that destroys the
individual as a self-governing, self-existent entity, rather than
leading to an integration of self-existent individuals into an
integrated whole that preserves the integrity of the parts.
Democracy supports the individual more than do collectivism or the
aristocratic and theocratic hierarchy. None of these three systems
claim to support absolute individualism, but democracy enables the
existence of people as individuals *in addition to* their roles in the
group. Democracy, collectivism, and the aristocratic and theocratic
hierarchy all recognize group consciousness, but only democracy
recognized and supports individual consciousness *as well* as group
consciousness.
If the authorities tightly control every aspect of people's lives,
then the people are living as social units but not *also* as
individual units. The desirable goal is to integrate the individual
and the group in a way that preserves the individual as a entity that
is as self-contained, free-thinking, and independent as possible.
This amounts to freedom of consciousness, consciousness at the level
of the individual, not just a group consciousness that completely
dominates each mind.
Rush and Rand promote consciousness for the individual as a balanced
complement to a reasonable form of group consciousness. This is as
opposed to Kant's systematization of morality as extremist altruism,
"do nothing for yourself, do everything for the good of others".
Rand differs from Rush in that she was closed-minded toward mystic
experiencing and insight. She didn't like the idea of ego
transcendence. Mystic cults tend to destroy the ego, regressing,
rather than preserving the ego and correcting its errors. Most
mysticism as practiced *has* been half-baked and regressive. The
disease of mysticism is a stance that is authoritarian, anti-rational,
and promotes perpetual war with(in) the ego. But these perennial
historical flaws of mysticism are no refutation of the
ego-transcendent truths mysticism has occasionally glimpsed.
Modernity was the age of the individual. In the post-modern age, the
modernist conception of "the individual" is suspect because the
person, society, language, and consciousness are clearly known to be
structurally interdependent. Assumptions about the perfectly isolated
individual have been throroughly refuted. After building up our sense
of independence for a couple centuries, it has become clear that we
are all enmeshed in structures of dependency and mutual engagement.
But we have certainly become more individually independent, in some
important sense, than we were under the system of aristocratic and
theocratic hierarchy. We have become individuals, every one the King
of his house. But just as the unthinkable and the impossible
happened, just as the all-powerful Kings all fell and now kneel before
us masses of individuals, so must the ego be discovered to be less
than the ultimate level of consciousness, and less than ultimately
legitimate and true.
Though the kingly system was destroyed, government remained. The King
function was reshaped, and His power of governing was generally
distributed among every citizen. When the egoic structures of
consciousness are discovered to be logically flawed, corrupt, and
imperfect, the ego function must be preserved and reshaped, not simply
destroyed. If the pop mystic insists that there is no ego, that the
ego is only a lie and deceit, or if the moralist insists that the self
must be rejected absolutely and strenuously, then the mature ego who
is transforming to the ego-*transcendent* level of consciousness must
refute these simple stances.
The ego and its functions must be preserved and honored, and merely
re-shaped, rather than annihilated and absolutely rejected. To
transcend the ego is to preserve and newly re-integrate the ego into a
broader scope that includes all dimensions of the world, not to
annihilate the ego in order to clear space for some more sophisticated
consciousness that was merely obscured by the ego. A more
sophisticated society than ours would recognize and support not only
group consciousness, not only individual consciousness, and not only
spiritual, transcendent, ego-transcendent consciousness, but all these
forms in a balanced combination that preserves each as a distinct,
legitimate realm.
======================================================
The 3 imbalances from exclusive consciousness: an imbalance toward
group, individual, transcendent consciousness:
1. The attempt for sophisticated group-consciousness through rejecting
diminished individual or ego-transcendent consciousness, and through
rejecting ego-transcendent cosmic unity:
The collectivists would eliminate individual consciousness and
ego-transcendent consciousness in their effort to promote group
consciousness. They would claim to be "transcending" ego by
*eliminating* ego. They would fail to preserve and integrate ego.
The only real way to transcend ego is to uphold key aspects of
individualist thinking.
2. The attempt for individual consciousness through rejecting group
consciousness, and through rejecting ego-transcendent awareness:
The individualists tend to make the mistake of rejecting group
consciousness completely. They lose the ability and the daily
language to think in terms beyond their own personal,
narrowly-conceived profit-and-loss reckonings (Christopher Lasch -
_The Cult of Narcissism_). And they are alienated from awareness of
the cosmic unity that produces their being, their will, their every
thought and action. These are the isolated existential units, cut off
from the lower and higher levels of consciousness -- the
individualists are cut of from both the lower group consciousness and
from the higher cosmic or ego-transcendent consciousness.
3. The attempt for transcendent consciousness through rejecting group
consciousness, and through rejecting the individualist consciouness of
the ego
The escapist spiritualists are neither attuned to group consciousness
nor individual cognition. They seek to rise to awareness of cosmic
unity by leaving society and firmly rejecting the ego.
======================================================
You cannot have fully mature group consciousness, individual
consciousness, or ego-transcendent consciousness until you have all
three, integrated. For example, the most full and sophisticated group
consciousness can only happen when the members of society have fully
mature individual consciousness as well. And the ego can never really
develop fully until the logical distortions of the egoic way of
thinking have been worked through and integrated.
Rush transcends Rand, as ego-transcendence transcends the individual
of modernity. Rush includes Rand but corrects her exclusive respect
for the ego, in order to extend the ego beyond itself into higher
unity and into the level of consciousness exceeding ego-consciousness
or individual consciousness.
==========================
The song "Discovery" is about the discovery of an electric guitar.
This discovery is rejected by the priests, who are the authorities
governing and coddling the entire society, keeping it in a stunted
state of awareness.
What sort of Discovery is this, that takes place back in the cave that
looks out from behind a shimmering, glassy waterfall of perception?
In the mystic altered state of super-logical ego-transcendent insight,
you experience guidance systems breakdown, a struggle to resist, to
exist as a cybernetically self-governing, self-controlling individual
who originates his own choices. You feel a pulse of dying ego-power
in your clenching, plastic fist that is warping and unreal, viewed
through the fish-eye lens of your amplified awareness. You cry out
for supplication in the hope that a compassionate controller would
rescue you from the vortex of realization. Your gaze upon the
shocking truth is caught and held and you are lashed helpless to the
mast of the space-time matrix. "Oh save my ship of freedom", S.O.S.,
you signal, kneeling and bowing your head and praying to the father of
all moving parts, all cybernetic systems, as you cringe and dodge from
knowledge of the enemy within.
The Discovery is of the logical loop in the cybernetics of
self-control. This comprehension, when integrated, amounts to
ego-transcendent consciousness. The experiencing that brings this
knowledge of cybernetics is accessed using the most effective key, a
brew discovered in '43, which is forbidden and tabooed by the
authorities and by the society they control. A key that has always
been most highly respected by electric guitarists since the dawn of
distortion pedals.
"Le Snow Dog is victorious
over the limitation of consciousness by
ignorance, prejudice, and fear."
-- This signal is transmitted out into the cybersea, the
information-and-control space navigated by the cybernetically
self-steering helmsman journeying into the heart of the logical black
hole of ego, to discover the cybernetic source of self-control, to
Discover the Truth about his nature as a freely self-governing system
produced by and trapped in the spacetime lattice.
To put it in more common, vulgar, vague, and loaded terms, the
Discovery is of mystic enlightenment through LSD. But this cliched
expression slips and fails to convey the heart of mystic
enlightenment, which is insight into self-control cybernetics,
self-steering, free will, and fate.
Daddy-O
YAW-W-W-W-W-W-W-W-W-W-W-W-W-W-W-W-WN!
Daddy-O
Craig & Dawn Stenseth
In article <525715$q...@druid.borland.com>, cybe...@cybtrans.com says...
>
>In the Rush album 2112, "The Discovery" is legitimately interpreted as
>the discovery of any and all of the following:
>
No, you're thinking of Dan Hill's "Sometimes When We Touch".
Craig
Jeremy Michael Crosbie
<stupid treatise deleted>
I do not know how anyone could interpret this any other way. For you
non-Rush freaks (my name is Jeremy and I am a recovering Rush fan)
here are the lyrics:
"What can this strange device be?
When I touch it it gives forth a sound
its got wires that vibrate and give music
what can this thing be that I found?"
If you haven't heard the song, it begins with someone tuning a guitar
(Alex Lifeson). There are more lyrics but I don't remember them.
Jeremy "wait a minute, maybe its the Dali Lama's Head!" Crosbie
Troubleman
cybe...@cybtrans.com (Cybermonk) wrote:
>In the Rush album 2112, "The Discovery" is legitimately interpreted as
>the discovery of any and all of the following:
>o The electric guitar
>o Music
>o Individual freedom
>o Freedom of consciousness
>o The ego
>o Psychedelics as a trigger of the mystic cognitive state
>o Ego death and the transcendent state of consciousness -- that is,
>ego transcendence
<HUGE, HUGE snip>
Somehow, when I sat in the 4th row of the Baltimore Arena (the the
Civic Center) in 1977, and saw Alex Lifeson jumping around, flailing
his Les Paul, producing a wall of sound through a huge Marshall stack,
his flanger swirling deleriously - none of this came to mind; I doubt
it if came to Alex' mind either......
Rush as a thesis disertation, rock music never ceases to amaze me.
Troubleman
Troubleman
><stupid treatise deleted>
Are you recovering from Rush - the music group? Or recovering from
sniffing Rush - the organic solvent-based liquid incense that was so
popular in the late 70's? I think Cybermonk's answer is obvious......
Troubleman