Word Virus: The William S. Burroughs Reader

by William S. Burroughs

  The definite article THE. THE contains the implication of one and only: THE God, THE universe, THE way, THE right, THE wrong. If there is another, then THAT universe, THAT way is no longer THE universe, THE way. The definite article THE will be deleted and the indefinite article A will take its place.

  The whole concept of EITHER/OR. Right or wrong, physical or mental, true or false, the whole concept of OR will be deleted from the language and replaced by juxtaposition, by and. This is done to some extent in any pictorial language where the two concepts stand literally side by side. These falsifications inherent in English and other Western alphabetical languages give the reactive mind commands their overwhelming force in these languages. Consider the IS of identity. When I say to be me, to be you, to be myself, to be others—whatever I may be called upon to be or say that I am—I am not the verbal label “myself.” I cannot be and am not the verbal label “myself.” The word BE in English contains, as a virus contains, its precoded message of damage, the categorical imperative of permanent condition. To be a body, to be nothing else, to stay a body. To be an animal, to be nothing else, to stay an animal. If you see the relation of the I to the body, as the relation of a pilot to his ship, you see the full crippling force of the reactive mind command to be a body. Telling the pilot to be the plane, then who will pilot the plane?

  The IS of identity, assigning a rigid and permanent status, was greatly reinforced by the customs and passport control that came in after World War I. Whatever you may be, you are not the verbal labels in your passport any more than you are the word “self.” So you must be prepared to prove at all times that you are what you are not. Much of the force of the reactive mind also depends on the falsification inherent in the categorical definite article THE. THE now, THE past, THE time, THE space, THE energy, THE matter, THE universe. Definite article THE contains the implication of no other. THE universe locks you in THE, and denies the possibility of any other. If other universes are possible, then the universe is no longer THE, it becomes A. The definite article THE in the proposed language is deleted and replaced by A. Many of the RM commands are in point of fact contradictory commands and a contradictory command gains its force from the Aristotelian concept of either/or. To do everything, to do nothing, to have everything, to have nothing, to do it all, to do not any, to stay up, to stay down, to stay in, to stay out, to stay present, to stay absent. These are in point of fact either/or propositions. To do nothing or everything, to have it all or not any, to stay present or to stay absent. Either/or is more difficult to formulate in a written language where both alternatives are pictorially represented and can be deleted entirely from the spoken language. The whole reactive mind can be in fact reduced to three little words—to be “THE.” That is to be what you are not, verbal formulations.

  I have frequently spoken of word and image as viruses or as acting as viruses, and this is not an allegorical comparison. It will be seen that the falsifications in syllabic Western languages are in point of fact actual virus mechanisms. The IS of identity is in point of fact the virus mechanism. If we can infer purpose from behavior, then the purpose of a virus is TO SURVIVE. To survive at any expense to the host invaded. To be an animal, to be a body. To be an animal body that the virus can invade. To be animals, to be bodies. To be more animal bodies so that the virus can move from one body to another. To stay present as an animal body, to stay absent as antibody or resistance to the body invasion.

  The categorical THE is also a virus mechanism, locking you in THE virus universe. EITHER/OR is another virus formula. It is always you OR the virus. EITHER/OR. This is in point of fact the conflict formula which is seen to be an archetypical virus mechanism. The proposed language will delete these virus mechanisms and make them impossible of formulation in the language. The language will be a tonal language like Chinese, it will also have a hieroglyphic script as pictorial as possible without being too cumbersome or difficult to write. This language will give one the option of silence. When not talking, the user of this language can take in the silent images of the written, pictorial and symbol languages.

  I have described here a number of weapons and tactics in the war game. Weapons that change consciousness could call the war game in question. All games are hostile. Basically there is only one game and that game is war. It’s the old army game from here to eternity. Mr. Hubbard says that Scientology is a game where everybody wins. There are no games where everybody wins. That’s what games are all about, winning and losing . . . The Versailles Treaty . . . Hitler dances the Occupation Jig . . . War criminals hang at Nuremberg . . . It is a rule of this game that there can be no final victory since this would mean the end of the war game. Yet every player must believe in final victory and strive for it with all his power. Faced by the nightmare of final defeat he has no alternative. So all existing technologies with escalating efficiency produce more and more total weapons until we have the atom bomb which could end the game by destroying all players. Now mock up a miracle. The so stupid players decide to save the game. They sit down around a big table and draw up a plan for the immediate deactivation and eventual destruction of all atomic weapons. Why stop there? Conventional bombs are unnecessarily destructive if nobody else has them hein) Let’s turn the war clock back to 1917:

  Keep the home fires burning

  Though the hearts are yearning

  There’s a long, long trail a-winding. . .

  Back to the American Civil War . . .

  “He has loosed the fatal lightning of his terrible swift sword.” His fatal lightning didn’t cost as much in those days. Save a lot on the defense budget this way on back to flintlocks, matchlocks, swords, armor, lances, bows and arrows, spears, stone axes and clubs. Why stop there? Why not grow teeth and claws, poison fangs, stingers, spines, quills, beaks and suckers and stink glands and fight it out in the muck hein?

  That is what this revolution is about. End of game. New games? There are no new games from here to eternity. END OF THE WAR GAME.

  CONTROL

  The ancient Mayans possessed one of the most precise and hermetic control calendars ever used on this planet, a calendar that in effect controlled what the populace did thought and felt on any given day. A study of this model system throws light on modern methods of control. Knowledge of the calendar was the monopoly of a priestly caste who maintained their position with minimal police and military force. The priests had to start with a very accurate calendar for the tropical year consisting of 365 days divided into 18 months of 20 days and a final period of 5 days, the “Ouab days” which were considered especially unlucky and in consequence turned out to be so. An accurate calendar was essential to the foundation and maintenance of the priest’s power. The Mayans were almost entirely dependent on the maize crop and the method of agriculture employed was slash and burn. Brush was cut down, allowed to dry and then burned. The corn was planted with a planting stick. The Mayans had no plows and no domestic animals capable of pulling a plow. Since the top soil is shallow and a stratum of limestone lies six inches under the surface plows are not functional in this area and the slash and burn method is used to the present day. Slash and burn cultivation depends on exact timing. The brush must be cut and given time to dry before the rains start. Miscalculation of a few days can lose a year’s crop. In addition to the yearly calendar which regulated agricultural operations there was a sacred almanac of 260 days. This ceremonial calendar governed 13 festivals of 20 days each. The ceremonial calendar rolled through the year like a wheel and consequently the festivals occurred at different dates each year but always in the same sequence. The festivals consisted of religious ceremonies, music, feasts, sometimes human sacrifice. Accordingly the priests could calculate into the future or the past exactly what the populace would be doing hearing seeing on a given date. This alone would have enabled them to predict the future or reconstruct the past with considerable accuracy since they could determine what conditioning would be or had been applied on any given date to a population wh
ich for many years remained in hermetic seclusion protected by impassable mountains and jungles from the waves of invaders who swept down the central plateau of Mexico. There is every reason to infer the existence of a third secret calendar which referred to conditioning in precise sequence applied to the populace under cover of the festivals very much as a stage magician uses patter and spectacle to cover movements which would otherwise be apparent to the audience. There are many ways in which such conditioning can be effected the simplest being waking suggestion which is fully explained in a later context. Briefly, waking suggestion is a technique for implanting verbal or visual suggestions which take direct effect on the autonomie nervous system because the subject’s conscious attention is directed somewhere else, in this case on the overt content of the festivals. (Waking suggestion is not to be confused with subliminal suggestion which is suggestion below the level of conscious awareness.) So the priests could calculate what the populace saw and heard on a given day and also what suggestions were secretly implanted on that day. To obtain some idea of the secret calendar consider the Reactive Mind as postulated by L. Ron Hubbard the founder of Scientology. Mr Hubbard describes the R.M. as an ancient instrument of control designed to stultify and limit the potential for action in a constructive or destructive direction. The precise content of the RM. as set forth in his formulation is considered confidential material since it can cause illness and upsets so I will limit myself to general considerations without giving the exact phrases used: The RM. consists of consequential, sequential and contradictory propositions that have command value at the automatic level of behavior, quite as automatic and involuntary as the metabolic commands that regulate rate of heartbeats, digestion, balance of chemical constituents in the blood stream, brain waves. The regulatory center of the autonomie nervous system which controls bodily processes and metabolism is the hypothalamus in the back brain. Undoubtedly the hypothalamus is the neurological intersection point where the R.M. is implanted. The R.M. may be described as an artificially constructed and highly disadvantageous regulatory system grafted onto the natural regulatory center. The R.M. as expounded by Mr Hubbard is of considerable antiquity antedating all modern languages and yet manifesting itself through all modern languages. Consequently it must refer to a symbol system. And except for the intervention of Bishop Landa we could infer by analogy what this symbol system consisted of since all control systems are basically similar. Bishop Landa collected all the Mayan books he could lay hands on, a stack of them six feet high, and burned the lot. To date only three authenticated Mayan codices have turned up that survived this barbarous action.

  Mr Hubbard logically postulates that the R.M. commands take effect because they relate to actual goals, needs, conditions of those affected. A consequential command is a command that one must obey in consequence of having been born: “to be here in a human body.” A sequential command follows from this basic proposition: “to seek food, shelter, sexual satisfaction,” “to exist in relation to other human bodies.” Contradictory commands are two commands that contradict each other given at the same time. “TENSHUN!” The soldier automatically stiffens to the command. “AT EASE!” The soldier automatically relaxes. Now imagine a captain who strides into the barracks snapping “TENSHUN” from one side of his face and “AT EASE” from the other. (Quite possible to do this with dubbing techniques.) The attempt to obey two flatly contradictory commands at once both of which have a degree of command value at the automatic level disorients the subject. He may react with rage, apathy, anxiety, even collapse. Another example: I give the command “sit down” and when the command is obeyed promptly the subject receives a reward. If it is not obeyed promptly he receives a severe electric shock. When he has been conditioned to obey I add the command “stand up” and condition him to obey this command in precisely the same way. Now I give both commands simultaneously. The result may well be complete collapse as Pavlov’s dogs collapsed when given contradictory signals at such short intervals that their nervous systems could not adjust. The aim of these commands from the viewpoint of a control system is to limit and confine. All control units employ such commands. For contradictory commands to have force the subject must have been conditioned to obey both commands automatically and the commands must relate to his actual goals. “TENSHUN” “AT EASE” “SIT DOWN” “STAND UP” are arbitrary commands tenuously connected to any basic goal of the subject—(of course “TENSHUN” relates to the goal to be a good soldier or at least to stay out of the guardhouse which gives the command what strength it has)—Consider another pair of commands that contradict each other: “to make a good impression” “to make an awful impression.” This relates to much more basic goals. Everyone wants to make a good impression. His self-regard, livelihood, sexual satisfaction depend on making a good impression. Why then does the subject when he is trying most desperately to make a good impression make the worst impression possible? Because he also has the goal to make a bad impression which operates on an involuntary automatic level. This self-destructive goal is such a threat to his being that he reacts against it. He may be conscious or partially conscious of the negative goal but he cannot confront it directly. The negative goal forces him to react. The Reactive Mind consists of goals so repulsive or frightening to the subject that he compulsively reacts against them and it is precisely this reaction that keeps these negative goals in operation. Negative goals are implanted by fear. Consider a pair of contradictory commands that were undoubtedly used in some form by the Mayan priests: “to rebel stridently” “to submit meekly.” Every time a worker nerved himself to rebel the goal to submit was activated causing him to assert rebellion more and more stridently thus activating more and more compulsively the goal to submit. So he trembles stammers and collapses before an authority figure that he consciously despises. No exercise of so-called will power affects these automatic reactions. The goal to submit was implanted by a threat so horrible that he could not confront it, and the Mayan secret books obviously consisted of such horrific pictures. The few that have survived bear witness to this. Men are depicted turning into centipedes, crabs, plants. Bishop Landa was so appalled by what he saw that his own reactive mind dictated his vandalous act. Like his modern counterparts who scream for censorship and book burning he did not take account of the fact that any threat clearly seen and confronted loses force. The Mayan priests took care that the populace did not see the books. Mr Hubbard’s R.M. contains about 300 items. Some are commands arranged in pairs, some are visual representations. Using the R.M. as a model—and the Mayan system must have been quite similar—postulate that during a ceremonial month of 20 days 4 items were repeated or represented 20 times on the first day, 4 more items 20 times on the second day and so on 80 items for the 20-day month. The next 20-day month of the sacred almanac 80 more items until the items were exhausted after which they were repeated in precisely the same sequence thus constituting a secret calendar. The priests then could calculate precisely what reactive commands had been or would be restimulated on any date past or future and these calculations enabled them to reconstruct the past or predict the future with considerable accuracy. They were dealing from a stacked deck. Calculations of past and future calendar juxtapositions took up a good deal of their time and they were more concerned with the past than the future. There are calculations that go back 400,000,000 years. These probings into the remote past may be interpreted as an assertion that the calendars always existed and always will exist. (All control systems claim to reflect the immutable laws of the universe.) These calculations must have looked like this:

  year, month, day of the 365-day calendar which was calculated from 5 Ahua 8 Cumhu

  a mythical date when time began

  year month and day of the sacred almanac or ceremonial calendar

  year month and day of the secret calendar

  Mayan students have succeeded in deciphering dates in the 365-day calendar. Lacking cross references comparable to the Rosetta Stone much of the writing r
emains unsolved. If we interpret the writing as oriented toward control we can postulate that all the inscriptions refer to dates and the events, ceremonies, suggestions, pictures and planetary juxtapositions correlated with dates. Any control system depends on precise timing. A picture or suggestion may be quite innocuous at one time and devastating at another. For example “to make a splendid impression” “to make an awful impression” may have no effect on somebody when he is not in a competitive context. Same man bucking for lieutenant bars or apprentice priest can be reliably washed out by the same pair of contradictory commands, brought into restimulation.

  This seemingly hermetic control calendar broke down even before the Aztecs invaded Yucatán and long before the arrival of the Spaniards. All control systems work on punishment-reward. When punishment overbalances reward, when the masters have no rewards left to give, revolts occur. The continual demands for forced labor on the temples and stelae coupled with a period of famine may have been the precipitating factor. Or possibly some forgotten Bolivar revealed the content of the secret books. In any case the workers rebelled, killed the priests and defaced the stelae and temples as symbols of enslavement.

  Now translate the Mayan control calendar into modern terms. The mass media of newspapers, radio, television, magazines form a ceremonial calendar to which all citizens are subjected. The “priests” wisely conceal themselves behind masses of contradictory data and vociferously deny that they exist. Like the Mayan priests they can reconstruct the past and predict the future on a statistical basis through manipulation of media. It is the daily press preserved in newspaper morgues that makes detailed reconstruction of past dates possible. How can the modern priests predict seemingly random future events? Start with the many factors in mass media that can be controlled and predicted: