Perhaps the class was like the classic fable of the monkey reaching his hand into the jar of nuts "and reaching for 'em all" but finds that he can't get his clenched fist out of the trap and has a hissy-fit.

On the first day, we went from a bunch of different stations "to play with our minds". In one, was a blue jar filled with a clear liquid. We were to sniff and determine what scent it was. Guesses went all over the map, from watered-down ammonia to essence of peppermint until it was revealed that it was none other than orange juice. Mentally, we had been "thrown off the trail" and psychologically "tricked" because of the blue jar being the opposite of "its orange slice" associations. No one had ever gotten it right, and I gritted my teeth-- resentful "of being made the fool of". Though everyone else had gotten it wrong it made no difference. . . . . .

Michael beat his fist against his chest, he was BETTER than other people.

The teacher laid out a seemingly ENDLESS series of ideas and concepts that didn't seem to have much relevance to real life, or the subject at hand-- only in a free-floating, connect-the-dots, GESTALT kind of way that didn't move mountains or cure cancer. as if one particularly wanted to work with a clipboard in an antiseptic lab.

There were some interesting tidbit's however, that made him secretly squirm in his seat. If one witnesses a misfortune, or an accident, or a world-crushing tragedy, one's sense of responsibility decreases in proportion to the size of the problem, the distance from the malady, and how many fellow idiots are wandering around "who could also be doing something". As a result, most of the time a crowd does not show courage. If one person says something negative, what a second person says will determine the credibility of the object in judgment-- which way the mob will go.

And no one wants to fly in the face of "the group norm", and will oftentimes overlook the fact that "the emperor has no clothes"-- scarcely believing their senses that he doesn't, or too mortified to speak out that their ruling precepts are bogus. And with the brain's pleasure/reward system more involuntarily-conditioned than we think, it helps determine what part of reality-- or our shared hallucination, you could say-- is important.

To the extent that most media "programming" exists to divert the public's attention away from what's truly important as we move closer and closer to what's called "The European Syndrome", or how "guaranteed happiness" takes the greatness out of life. It's like those chirpy Brits who celebrate Darwin's birthday and are perfectly satisfied to think of themselves as nothing more than "a species" that should be shepherded by "a zoo-keeper" of a government like good middle-schoolers, whose consolation after the passing of this vale is that they'll be recycled "into STAR STUFF" like cosmic egg-heads zooming George Lucas fighter-ship models through the air like secular-humanist ninnies. Up from the underground, it's the difference between a spoiled American athlete who's "gone soft" livin' "the high life" and a Filipino rolled out from the slums of Manilla with muscles like ropes and a face like a Tolmec war-mask, ready "to tear his ass up".

A corporation, government, or university has no conscience-- it only exists to perpetuate itself with the politics of power. It is quite literally like the iron fist in the velvet glove at our admissions offices when the select candidates not so much on caliber, but on theoretical "slots" that makes for appearances and a politic atmosphere that is most marketable to alumni and interest groups and the silk purse of corporate giving, all behind a wall-to-wall office of placid secretaries who act "like everyone has an equal chance". Those onboard "who don't tow the line" and internalize "the proper values" are quietly disposed of, because they find it "nearly impossible" to contort themselves in a way that jumps through the hoops of conformity. Sorry, kid. For all the people who did make it, they wouldn't even BE THERE unless they passed a long "scanning process" over a period of 20 years or more that deemed them to be "not a threat".

I was once pointed to an old article on "Salon" about "Woodstock '99" from about 10 years ago. I'd say the woman was on to something but didn't reach for anything "heroic". I'm sure Tom Wolfe or Richard Ben Cramer or Mike Sager could have been "far more ambitious", but what do you expect from a web zine reveling in the "blehh" of societal decay? Anything with offices run out of San Francisco is never going to have a particularly well-grounded "radar" anyway and is far more susceptible to picking up random ghosts and "BLEEBS" off the screen that ultimately "don't mean anything". Such is the state of the liberal, fanciful mind whose street never extends further than the blue-state dot of the local Starbucks where they get free WiFi internet access like short-lived, provisional "UTOPIA" on the slimmest of bandwidth. That is, before the prowling bear of the telecommunications company swats it down with a paw and starts charging premium prices. For we must be more than rodents chittering over the cheese of life like Napster-downloading grifters with Barack Obama signs. And remember. . . . . O.J. was innocent!

Back in the summer psychology class, I wondered if we'd get to play with the minds of rats "and mold and shape them" into our own image. Being rather disappointed, we spent long hours on the computer in the rat-fuck of a computer program that trained virtual mice to pull a lever for a food pellet, much like life in this classroom.

Watch how we're shaped and molded into nice, obedient drones.