How to convert a population
(to the practice of a religion or
anything else.)
translated
from French
Contents
General principles
Disco music
To leave the common paths
Timidity
Remark on the natural progress of civilization
Warning : to correctly grasp the
meaning of the following text, you should read it until the end.
General principles
Take a population which you want to convert to your religion (or to
anything). For that, quietly issue the following thing while diverting
the attention of the
population to some more urgent topic.
The obligatory educational establishments (secondary and academics)
will be divided into 3 categories:
- Those reserved for converted (with men and women)
- Those for the non-converted men
- Those for the non-converted women.
Moreover, for each city, the first will be established downtown, and
the two
last will be established in diametrically opposed suburbs of the
city, and with periodes of holidays which prevent non-converted men and
women from meeting each other.
The effect is understood easily: people needing to find
partners but considering this as a purely private problem, thus
following
naturally the methods of individual do-it-yourselfing, will be
tempted to convert to be accepted in the mixed establishment. If they
do
not do it but try during the holidays periods to go dredge downtown,
they will find converted people, who not having problems to meet other
converted people, will not have any reason to make the effort
to adapt
their way of life to that of a not-converted partner. They will thus
pose naturally as an obvious and natural condition to the relation,
the fact of adopting the practice of the converted, which thus destroys
any will of resistance of these people unhappy to conversion.
If there
remain refractories, their desires in love dissatisfied will condemn
them to often go and look after people who do not want them. This will
attract them a dirty reputation of frustrated and perverse people.
Thus the virtue of this religion as a source of joy and goodness will
be well-known and certified by statistical studies.
As for the few who still do not convert, being therefore condemned to
celibacy,
they will not be able to reproduce and thus will mainly disappear from
the next generation.
With the following generation thus, whereas the initial method
above would risk to be exposed to the protests of
some people, the minority situation of not-converted people allows you
this time to
pass to the following even more machiavelic method, that continues to
produce the same effect in a way now out of any suspicion.
You mix again the population into an homogeneous mass which you
redivise in small local groups (classes, schools) in a random but
constraining and uncheatable way, according to a publicly objective
method of drawing
of lots (randomizing) that will hardly let anyone deviate from it by
any voluntary choice.
Then, the not-converted being minority find themselves in each group
in a situation of isolated individuals having most of the time as
possible
partners to meet only converted people who, here again as before, being
surrounded with other converted people do not have any reason to
question
their religious habits for a possible not-converted partner. This is
what reproduces the preceding situation, and even more if for any
reason the relations between converted and non-converted people are
harder to establish than those between people of the same kind.
If that is not enough, you can always force integration by founding
democracy in each group allowing its members to vote to decide in
the majority which common habits they will respect. But do not even
need this in fact, it is enough for you to let be exerted the law of
market in a local way, by maintaining the constraint of indivisibility
of each group, on the question of the organization of the activities of
group in relation with these habits. Group activities will always
necessarily
be those of your religion as the non-converted people are only isolated
people and not groups.
Thus your religion will impose itself de facto to all.
What do you thus say of this method ? Never thought of that ? delirious
imagination ? Inapplicable? Admittedly the method number 1
described above was never seen, at least apparently not in this form,
but... wait a little.
As for the method number 2, you will note that
its means are "laic", needing not to mention any religion, and in its
contents does not anyway differ from the
current system of public high schools and colleges. And thus the
question is not to know how to introduce it, but rather how to leave
it, if ever anybody dared to try to stop this against all the
egalitarian principles of the Republic.
Good, joked enough will you say to me, since even if the
method number 2 described above is indeed in force, there is no
dominant religion currently imposed or potentially enforceable by such
methods.
All right; let us come to realities ot the present world.
How can we know if the situation is comparable, finally ?
A small indicator at random: the rate of celibacy. Uh, one notes that
nowadays it is important, and increasing.
Hum... but let us not be afraid for such a little things little, try to
examine the causes
concretely.
Good, I do not know concretely what can be exactly the causes for the
others,
but I will speak about problems as I feel them. In fact there are
several problems.
Disco music
Randomly, let us see: when I speak about my problem of celibacy
around me, among the reactions of incomprehension there is for example
this one often heard : "Hey man, to meet girls is
easy, you should just go to disco !"
To this I would like to answer: hum, you did not well understand the
question. I am rather seeking for a
girl of the style who does not like disco music! Where can I meet
some, then?
At this point people start to look at me through (scorn). I am not
normal. Everyone likes disco music. Disco music it is super,
one is burst (?), it is there that meetings are made. What a strange
idea to try to meet people outside that, frankly? It is my fault, I
just have to like disco music like everyone. People teach me this
lesson of morality: "You should at least open yourself a little, to
styles of
things which you do not always prefer".
But, do I force any people to adopt to my tastes, and to
open themselves to the choral society, the ballet dancing (which I do
not practise
but I may have been interested if it was well spread),
mathematics, physics or the liberal economic thinking for example? Not
of course, and even if I wanted it I could not.
Why should I adapt to the common spread tastes of others, then?
People ask me: Why you do not like this music?
(as if the tastes could be discussed. They proclaim: it is good
music...)
Do you not see people who have fun (or: who burst themselves)?
Don't you find that good (or that you think about it)?
Well, if you really want to know everything... I find them stunned,
under the
influence of this dreadful, violent and foolish din. In
any case
I cannot see the relationship with love that so much of people seem
to make.
I think that it is one of the worst conceivable contexts to get to know
someone as :
- One does not see oneself (darkness, chaotic coloured lighting)
- One cannot hear each other, one cannot thus tell one's life
- One is not concentrated to be interested in the other
- What happens is subjected to the arbitrary rhythm of the
pieces casted
- When one tries to mix with the others one gets people in the face
every minute in an unforeseeable way.
As a
result, when I am there despite everything, I happen to wonder what the
hell I came for in the middle of this horde of zoulous.
Enough philosophized on the tastes, let us come back to the problem.
It
is too easy indeed for the mass to be excused by the fact that anyway
it is the majority which likes that, they did not make this
purposely to be the most numerous and thus no matter what we can say
there is
nothing to do but to bear them. What a strange idea
to want to be opposed to the current tastes of everyone.
One can wonder indeed, how I could resist it. To tell the truth, it
was not a small matter.
Thus let us come back to the beginning, the story of my tastes during
my childhood.
I
must acknowledge that my family with a traditional style is probably
there for something, even if it there must also be some innate
factor. However, this had only a relatively
limited weight relatively to the influence of the ambient society.
Indeed, however I tried in
vain to follow my tastes and to refuse as long as possible what I
hated, the social context forced me to very often
undergo the aggression of this din.
Violent by nature, this "music" exerts its violence by employing
its followers to impose it on the others by all means. By the means
of the decibels for example, or by leading its followers to attack
their own ears sometimes until they become half deaf and need to still
want to increase the decibels to compensate, it imposes itself to the
ears of whoever is near. By
the behavior also, where the excessive enthusiasm of the followers
obliges them to violently try somehow to share their
enthusiasm with the others with the terrible balance of those
completely persuaded to bring the good to them. By this violence
of their incomprehension towards those would not share the same tastes
as them. Violence also not to want to stop and respect a few moments of
silence.
I underwent this violence a little everywhere during my childhood and
teenage. At home by
opening television or the radio. While leaving, with each time I took a
step: in the trip buses, in some stores or restaurants, with the car
radios in others'cars. I would even say that it made me quite upset.
And with that people reproache me to have locked up myself, to have not
tried to listen to these horrors to know if I liked that or
not. They explain me : it is normal not to like the first time. To
really know if you like a music or not you must first listen to it
hundreds of times. Only this way I can have a chance to "open myself".
But... would this be thus really obligatory to... "open oneself "? And
if I do not want to try, how can I do?
There
is thus only this in life which can give me the right to qualify me
as "open "? Is the world really so narrow and monotonous that it does
not offer anything else but that to be able to "open oneself
"? There would thus not be the right to try to open oneself to anything
else instead ? I do not know, for example baroque music, nature,
the mountain, the folklore, physics, philosophy or the economic
thinking?
I acknowledge, that my resistance had some moments of exception.
For example the period when I let myself to the music of
Jean-Michel Jarre. If sometimes that seems facinating, it is also
a
risk to skid on other side, I realized that when, after recording
pieces
which I liked, some of him and some more traditional ones, I listened
to them ones after the others, I could see
the contrast and note the gap of way of being that that
supposes. Also, there was once, at secondary school (end of the
year) where all the class came for a party and everyone could bring
pieces
of music which we they liked, I brought my cassette of
classical music. Of course I did not have the right to pass it at
the beginning, I had to stand horrors for perhaps an hour or two, at
the
beginning I hated, after it seemed all right, and then at the end I
started to like it, at this point I finally got the right to
pass my cassette. What's that ? It is completely
null! There must be a mistake... I did not recognize my
music which I liked so much. I just had the brain washed, I
had lost all my musical sense.
Leaving the beaten paths
Enough spoken about music, let us see other aspects. There are
many other possible originalities that one can have, leading to
insulation. Any thorough field of knowledge or culture, in
fact, from its specialized character, involves an insulation of the
centers of interest from other people. As some caricature
presented, the only universal feature in man is his stupidity,
wildness, or any other gregarious practices. To be able
to cultivate the human originality and creativity, I think
necessary to develop a flexibility and a mobility of the society away
from the common "republican" pot arbitrarily grouped (which the school
system claims to impose), allowing the meetings of individuals from
various geographical horizons sharing common interests.
Timidity
But among the characters there is one more to which
I would like particularly to draw the attention: timidity.
One often says that timidity is a defect, so that those who
are timid find themselves this way somehow made feel guilty of
what they are, which is a vicious circle. It is a defect whose
only victim is the one who has it. It can be a handicap for meeting
others. Occasionally, shy persons are encouraged to leave
their timidity and to force themselves to open to the others and their
activities, because it seems to be only this way, that they
will be able to meet the soul mate.
However, there is more
precisely a phenomenon of which I understood only relatively
recently: it is that timidity is not
really a handicap for a girl to meet people, as if she is beautiful she
will always be approached by boys. On the other hand, when a boy
is
timid, he is much more likely to remain alone because it is a much less
usual practice for a girl to go to approach a boy (according to what I
head).
But let us return to the argumentation.
There are behind this encouragement two ideas:
On the one hand, the opinion of
the extroverts who make a success of their life, who estimate
good to be extrovert and who encourage shy persons or
introverts to open themselves, according to an approach like that this
is "to have the form" (to be well). Idea not bad in itself, but
suffering of a lack of attention towards the deep of the problem.
On the other hand, a vulgar strategic discussion on the
most effective material means to manage in this cruel world to take
down a goal which has no other relation with its means than this
relation of causality, the crude goal to defend one's meat in lack of
any other consideration. The extroverts thus, whether they are
like this in an innate or acquired way, tend to say, that since they
are extroverts, that everyone can be it, and that those who are not, it
is because they decided to. They say: things are well done,
because the problem of the love meetings is the occasion to prove to
the shy persons that is well to make the effort leave their
timidity. Thus, this problem is a good trial which leads them to
be cured of their timidity, and those who do not get through, it is
that they do not want to. Then they say to the shy persons:
leave your timidity, open yourself ! Because in any case it is a
good thing. You must do
it. It is the morals of destiny, the virtue of the things such as
they are. The world is perfect, and it is up to each one to
understand it and to conform to it.
But here is the problem: those who say that have the word easy
and ensured, believing in their superficial knowledge of what they say,
while those to which they are addressed, being timid precisely, have
great difficulty to express the reality of their difficulty. It
is quite difficult for them to contradict those who speak to them with
insurance. Even less because of the fact that they have a problem
and that those who speak to them do not have this problem but present a
solution. Well, certainly there can be cases where this works,
but we have no guarantee. It is easy then to tell those for which
that did not work, that they did not want it. The problem,
indiscible, is repressed.
But one can also present the problem in the opposite
direction: if somebody is timid, it is because the external world
is or seems to be hostile to him; a love relation can then be a
good
means of not remaining locked up on oneself, an occasion to understand
someone else, to open oneself, to learn how to develop considerations
for others in one's life. Consequently, the fact of giving to the
shy persons means of love relations before
they do open to social
relations, may be in fact, contrary to some assumptions, the only
effective
incentive to open oneself away from any doom of loneliness and
closeness (= jail in oneself ?). And, would not a love of shy people be
something beautiful ?
(corrections end here)
Morals
To analyze more precisely the source of timidity, one can see it as
being founded on morals, the fear to do a wrong move. This
fear is first related to what one believes to be a wrong move, still
being influenced by what the others look as being wrong moves.
But, what does the world condemn?
When one hears the news and other things, one can retain that the
principal fault which the society denounces as regards love are
all these stories of rapes and sexual harcellements. However
these crimes find their source in the natural desires, and the risk
to confuse these crimes with these desires is not far. Moreover,
this somewhat distant misinformation is found again in other less
extreme but nevertheless much more concrete forms, in everyday life
: the natural desires can hardly be expressed
without some risk of scandal or some kind of mockery. The
romantic
literature and other cinema films which flatter the natural desires,
are way too carefully reserved to the world of fiction and lonely
privacy to
counterbalance this fact in practice. The desires are seen as
goods in the dreams but bad in reality. The practical
understanding of what is moral and what is not is far from being an
obviousness, especially for timid children.
Admittedly, beyond
the wishful thinking and other good words, it is quite difficult to
give
a practical reality to the right to love. In order to provide a
practical solution
it would first be necessary to stop making all this
parasitic fiction and, on the one hand to seek to really expose the
problems by anonymous Web forums for example, on the
other hand to found openly, by not-for-profit associations open to any
individual initiative, networks of clubs and Web
sites of dating. To find and implement a way to replace fiction
by practice, here
is the problem. First because it is very difficult to invent
a method which is really practical and not just a new fiction
which while claiming to promote love would in fact for some people just
subject them
to an additional Tantalum torment.
But, even if it was possible, another obstacle is that some
people would be upset of it in that it would put them in front of their
responsibilities, like when marvelous poetry for the glory of God or
any other very nice advice is revealed to be no more than a pure
hypocrisy when compared to reality. And this true work of taking care
of reality may be precisely seem very unnatural decisions at first
sight. Hey, fiction is much sexier than practical solutions, that makes
it possible to justify oneself very cheaply by innocently making pretty
dream promises to
everyone...
To paraphrase the maxim "If private life is outlawed, then only outlaws
will have a private life" (Phil Zimmermann),
I would say: when love is seen as immoral, only immoral people
feel free to enjoy it. In fact, it often happens that
where this problem does not arise, it is that it is taken with fun,
selfishness and derision, in the do-it-yourself way, in a way not
motivated by any consideration of serious
research of the good, justice and morals. From there, together
with the pitiless dictature of chance promoted as a funny game or as
the will of God, comes a
reinforcement of the idea that love is not a serious trick for pure
and idealistic people but rather a trick of people without scruples,
or even perverse. If you add to this the idealist hope for the
perfect occasion, and awaits the passages of the years piously until
the plan of God is achieved instead of being involved in these
idiotic games, one finds oneself a day awaking to the necessities of
life, finally isolated in one's loneliness, an age bracket where the
best
potential mates are already taken.
Note on the natural progress of
civilization
Consider the distinction between "natural" situations for
which nobody is responsible, and
artificially and politically caused situations.
I remember a certain course of philosophy in high school, where the
question was discussed of the
definition of the "natural" man considered separately from any social
and cultural influences and
determinations. The answer was that this question has no sense,
because the nature of the man is
precisely to have and transmit a culture; that a characteristic
of man is to live not in an environment but in a world, in a civilized
society.
I would remark moreover that, precisely, there is nothing more
anti-natural for man than
to live subjected to the risks of starvation depending on climatic
risks, and to
plunderings (as man almost always lived in fact), that it is
anti-natural to be in the need and to have only the practice of
plundering within reach under hand to get through, and than it is even
more anti-natural to plunder. It is not because that
was
so often practised during millenia at the point to be resigned to think
that it will be always like that, that it is as well a natural
thing, even less an inevitable or good thing. Humanity evolved,
even
more quickly since centuries in particular, gradually arranging new
aspects of its environment or its own social organization which had
always been regarded as natural and unchangeable up to that
point. If an
additional effort of social organization and adjustment of other fields
of life is necessary in order to stop another destroying
cruelty, then resignation not to make this effort, under pretext that
one does not know how to do, amounts blocking the evolution of
humanity at the stage where it is now. It would be one of the
most absurd, arbitrary and machiavelic decision, hidden under a
mask of hypocrisy.
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