By CHARLES PLATT

THE EXEGESIS OF PHILIP K. DICK

Edited by Pamela Jackson, Jonathan Lethem and Erik Davis.

Illustrated. 944 pp. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. $40.

In 1979, I visited Philip K. Dick for a profile I was writing. In a modest apartment he shared with dusty stacks of books, deteriorating furniture, a vintage stereo system and a couple of cats, he took the opportunity to go public about a singular experience dominating his life. For the past five years, he told me earnestly, he had been receiving messages from a spiritual entity. “It invaded my mind and assumed control of my motor centers,” he said. “It set about healing me physically and my 4-year-old boy, who had an undiagnosed life-threatening birth defect that no one had been aware of. It had memories dating back over 2,000 years. . . . There wasn’t anything that it didn’t seem to know.”

Dick had already written more than a million words of personal notes on this topic, he said, notes he referred to as his “exegesis” — a word that traditionally means an explanation or interpretation of Scripture. In his case, he was trying to explain the voices inside his head.

The delusions of a penurious science fiction writer might seem of marginal interest, except that Philip K. Dick was not just any science fiction writer. Shortly after his death in 1982, his book “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” became the movie “Blade Runner.” Since then, no fewer than 10 other motion pictures have been based on his work, including “Total Recall” and “Minority Report.” He is widely regarded as one of the most conceptually innovative writers in the 20th century, whose influence has been acknowledged by novelists from William Gibson to Ursula K. Le Guin.

Even in his earliest stories, Dick wrestled with the nature of perception. As he described it to me, “I began to get an idea of a mysterious quality in the universe . . . a kind of metaphysical world, an invisible realm of things half-seen.” He could not accept the notion of a single, objective reality, and favored Jung’s concept that what we perceive as external may be an unconscious projection. When he tried to embed these ideas in serious contemporary novels, he found no market for them, and thus used science fiction as the unlikely vehicle for his philosophical questions.

An example is his disturbing novel “The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch,” in which colonists on Mars escape the deprivations of their environment by using a drug that opens a gateway to a shared, artificial reality. But Dick takes the concept a step further, suggesting this reality could be molded by the drug manufacturer; and then a step further still, as another entity competes to take over and manipulate the reality, along with the people in it. This reflects the other principal obsession throughout Dick’s work: his fear that a powerful person or group can change the perceptions and beliefs of others. He saw this process inflicted by politicians, religions and “authority figures in general.”

After his death, the overlap between his hallucinatory experiences and the concerns in his fiction made him a tempting subject for academic study. He had been a college dropout himself, with little regard for academia, but he was no longer around to debunk the professors who analyzed his oeuvre. So it is that his “exegesis” has now been exhumed and published (partly, at least) as “The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick,” edited by Pamela Jackson, Jonathan ­Lethem and Erik Davis, with assistance from several academics, including three theologians.

The struggle of a highly intelligent man to find a rational explanation for something inexplicable inside himself could make fascinating reading, if it was thoughtfully organized. Alas, the “Exegesis” pursues its target in the manner of a shotgun firing randomly in every possible direction. Dick ruminates, cogitates and associates freely from one topic to the next. He mulls the content of his dreams, descends into labyrinths of metaphysical hypotheses and (ironically) wonders how he can ever use this material to create a publishable book.

Nor does he succeed in explaining the source of his visions. Jackson and Lethem acknowledge it could have been merely a stroke, residual brain damage from drug use or temporal lobe epilepsy; but they seem unimpressed by such pedestrian possibilities. They insist that “to approach the ‘Exegesis’ from any angle at all a reader must first accept that the subject is revelation.”

The trouble is, any revelatory messages are embedded in more than 900 pages of impulsive theorizing, much of which is self-referential. Dick typically floats a concept, criticizes it 10 pages later, criticizes the critique, then rejects the whole thing as a totally different notion enters his head.

We receive no help from the editors in mapping this tangle. As Richard Doyle, a professor of English and information sciences and technology at Penn State, writes in his afterword, “When you begin reading the ‘Exegesis,’ you undertake a quest with no shortcuts or cheat codes.” Thus we’re on our own when we ponder sentences like “This ­forces me to reconsider the ‘discarding and annexing’ process by the brain in favor of a proliferation theory,” or “So irreality and perturbation are the two perplexities which confront us,” or “I dreamed: I am the fish whose flesh is eaten, and because I am fat, it is good. (Bob Silverberg ate me.)”

What’s missing here is context. From my interactions with Dick, I know that many of these musings were written while he stayed up all night, sometimes in an alcoholic haze, while perusing his favorite source, Macmillan’s Encyclopedia of Philosophy (edited by Paul Edwards). He also retained a healthy sense of humor about his supposed tutelary spirit. “On Thursdays and Saturdays I would think it was God,” he told me, while “on Tuesdays and Wednesdays I would think it was extraterrestrial. Sometimes I would think it was the Soviet Union Academy of Sciences trying out their psychotronic microwave telepathic transmitter.”

Fortunately, he retained this humor and self-skepticism when he grappled with his metaphysical ideas in his 1981 novel “Valis.” There he portrayed himself as an eminently sane observer, engaging in dialogues with a delusional alter ego whom he named Horselover Fat. A deity does enter the story, but the book’s theosophical concerns range from the sublime to the mundane, as characters ponder issues like why God allowed a much-loved cat to die. (The deity says the answer is simple. The cat should have known better than to run in front of a car. It died because it was stupid.)

The “Exegesis” takes itself much more seriously, and becomes tiresome as a result. The editors note that Dick’s children, who are the heirs to his estate, weren’t entirely happy about its being published, in case it “attracted unwelcome attention and threatened to undermine their father’s growing academic and literary reputation with its disreputable aura of high weirdness.”

Their worries were unfounded. The sheer mass of this folly will surely discourage most readers. Philip K. Dick’s novels — the works that he considered important and publishable — endure as the most fitting tribute to his intellect, his imagination and his willingness to acknowledge that when all is said and done, human existence may be nothing more than a cosmic comedy.

Charles Platt has written more than 40 books of fiction and nonfiction, including “The Silicon Man” and “Dream Makers.”

A woman with her child at a cholera treatment centre (14 Dec 2010) There have been calls for better public health information throughout the epidemic

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Rebuilding Haiti

* The rubble problem
* Progress: In graphics
* An aid worker’s view
* In pictures: Wolfgang Tillmans

Voodoo priests in Haiti are being lynched by mobs who blame them for spreading cholera, the country’s government has said.

At least 45 people have been lynched in recent weeks as Haiti continues to be ravaged by a cholera epidemic.

Haiti’s communications minister has made an appeal for the lynchings to end and called for a campaign to ensure people understand how cholera spreads.

More than 2,500 Haitians have died from the water-borne disease since October.

Another 121,000 people have been treated for symptoms of cholera, with at least 63,500 admitted to hospital, figures show.

The outbreak has also prompted angry protests aimed at the United Nations, whose Nepalese peacekeepers have been suspected of introducing cholera to Haiti.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has announced an investigation into the reports, although the UN initially denied the suggestion.
Blame game

Although many Haitians still practise voodoo or use aspects of voodoo in their religious worship, the latest violence erupted out of fears the traditional priests were using their powers to spread the infection.
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“Start Quote

People have been blaming us, saying that we cast spells and did evil things which brought the earthquake as a punishment”

End Quote Max Beauvoir Voodoo priest

Officials counted 40 people killed – mostly voodoo priests – killed in one region of Haiti, the AFP news agency reported, with five others killed elsewhere.

“The victims… were stoned or hacked with machetes before being burned in the streets,” communications ministry official Moise Fritz Evens said.

Haiti’s communications minister said she abhorred the killings and insisted that the answer was to improve general education about how cholera is transmitted.

“Voodoo practitioners have nothing to do with the cholera epidemic. We must press for an awareness campaign about the disease in the communities.”

A highly prominent voodoo leader, Max Beauvoir, told Reuters news agency police were not doing enough to stop the violence.

“Since the earthquake some people have been blaming us, saying that we cast spells and did evil things which brought the earthquake as a punishment,” he said.

Haiti’s cholera epidemic has provoked widespread fear across the country. Anger spread when suspicions emerged that the Nepalese UN peacekeepers could have brought the disease to Haiti – where it is extremely rare – from their country, where it is endemic.

Poor sanitary conditions in much of quake-hit Haiti have contributed to the rapid spread of cholera, which causes diarrhoea and vomiting. It can kill quickly but is treated easily through rehydration and antibiotics.

The country was hit by a 7.0-magnitude earthquake in January 2010 that devastated most of the capital, Port-au-Prince, and killed at least 250,000 people.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-12073029?print=true

The material girl’s professed faith has little to do with classical Jewish mysticismIn 1941, Gershom Scholem published “Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism,” a groundbreaking study of Kabbalah’s murky origins, complicated texts and arcane ideas. Scholem, who died in 1982, concluded the book with a vague prediction: “Under what aspects this invisible stream of Jewish mysticism will again come to surface we cannot tell.” Chances are he didn’t have Madonna in mind.

But the pop superstar has since the mid-’90s been Kabbalah’s most prominent enthusiast, incorporating Kabbalah-inspired themes into her music and even donating $18 million to the Kabbalah Centre, a controversial organization led by a New York-born former insurance salesman turned rabbi named Philip Berg. Now 81, Mr. Berg (known within the movement as “the Rav”) runs the enterprise—more than 60 centers and study groups around the world—with his wife Karen and two children Michael and Yehuda.

It may seem odd that Madonna, who is not Jewish, is the public face of Kabbalah. It was the Berg family that repackaged an esoteric body of Jewish thought—”the secret life of Judaism,” in Scholem’s words—into a universal self-help theosophy open to Jew and Gentile alike. In the process, the Centre stripped Kabbalah of much of its Jewishness. The website states it plainly: “Kabbalah is not a religion.” Yehuda Berg, though himself a rabbi, has said that he doesn’t consider himself Jewish, and in a cover blurb for his 2002 book, “The Power of Kabbalah,” Madonna underscores this point, writing that Kabbalah has “nothing to do with religious dogma.”

So what does the Kabbalah Centre have to do with classical Jewish mysticism? Not much, according to critics. The great Talmudic scholar Adin Steinsaltz has likened the connection to “the relationship between pornography and love.” Allan Nadler, a professor of Jewish Studies at Drew University, is even less charitable: “The Bergs hijacked an ancient, highly secretive Jewish tradition and popularized it as pseudo-mystical, New Age nonsense.”

 It may seem odd that Madonna, who is not Jewish, is the public face of Kabbalah.
.The Kabbalah Centre preaches a nebulous spiritualism that blends kabbalistic ideas with astrology, secular science and a large dose of pop psychology. The literature is laden with words like “energy,” “chaos,” and, most central, “Light”—”the Infinite source of Goodness, the Divine Force, the Creator.” Much of it seems vague and harmless. The Centre counsels adherents to let go of “anger, jealousy, and other reactive behaviors in favor of patience, empathy, and compassion.” Who can argue with that? At times, however, the Centre’s ideas veer from glib to offensive. Philip Berg has argued that violence against Jews, including the Holocaust, could have been averted if only more Jews had studied Kabbalah.

Classical Kabbalah emerged along with its canonical text, the Zohar, a 13th-century collection of commentaries on the Five Books of Moses, the Song of Songs, and the Book of Ruth. A complex mix of cosmology, symbology, theology and magic, Kabbalah has long existed on the periphery of Jewish life—a series of small, superstitious offshoots from the more rational, legalistic mainstream of Judaism. Indeed, the Zohar has at times been regarded as a dangerous book, its contents restricted to an elite of learned and married Jewish men over 40 who commit themselves to an ascetic lifestyle.

Not so the Berg family. Commodifying Kabbalah has apparently been good business. According to a report in Newsweek this week, the family lives lavishly—Beverly Hills mansions, luxury cars, first-class travel—all of it bankrolled by the Centre. The glamorous lifestyle accords with the Centre’s celebrity-based marketing strategy. Like Scientology, the Berg brand has benefited immensely from its ties to the rich and famous, including Demi Moore, Ashton Kutcher, Britney Spears and Lindsey Lohan.

Then there’s the Centre’s penchant for over-the-top salesmanship. Among the items available for purchase: red string to ward off the evil eye ($26), a 23-volume English translation of the Zohar ($415), and a bevy of books, DVDs and CDs by the Bergs (titles include “Becoming Like God” and “Divine Sex”). The Kabbalah Centre does encourage members to perform acts of charity, but the Centre itself often seems to be the beneficiary.

So what would Gershom Scholem make of the Bergs and the Kabbalah Centre? Would he be surprised by their success? Probably not. Jewish mysticism has had its share of unsavory gurus. Scholem even wrote a book about the most infamous one, the 17th-century false messiah Shabtai Tzvi. In short, notes David Biale, a professor of Jewish history at the University of California at Davis, Scholem “had a very sharp nose for charlatans.”

Mr. Goldstein is the editor of Arts & Letters Daily and an editor at the Chronicle of Higher Education.

or

http://books.google.com/books?id=MWF5s2yfFqwC&pg=PA113&lpg=PA113&dq=Breton+%2B+Random+Shooting&source=bl&ots=M7_t5cPTOm&sig=er9UU2s85rzd4V-gMEDszWuge_I&hl=en&ei=WfPkSsqQE4zW6gOhvNSVAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8&ved=0CB0Q6AEwBw#v=onepage&q=Breton%20%2B%20Random%20Shooting&f=false

Also known as the corporate psychopath, workplace psychopath, industrial psychopath and administrative psychopath.

Motivation: power, gratification, personal gain, survival
Mindset: manipulation, deception, evil
Malice: high to very high; when held accountable, off the scale

Jekyll & Hyde personality
always charming and beguilingly plausible, especially to those who are capable of protecting or enhancing the sociopath’s position
excels at deception (this must never be underestimated, but always is)
excels at evasion of accountability
is extremely and successfully manipulative of people’s perceptions and emotions (eg guilt and anger)
silver-tongued, has an extreme verbal facility and can outwit anybody (including a top barrister) in verbal conflict
will often engineer himself or herself into a position of authority as gatekeeper of the organisation and thus the person through whom all information must flow, and the person to whom all requests for services must be referred – which he or she then takes delight in denying
is adept at offering weak and inadequate people the positions of power, control, security, influence or respect that they crave but who lack the necessary competencies to achieve – such people are unaware that their consequent dependence on the sociopath makes them permanent manipulatees, pawns and expendable agents of harassment
identifies those essential to the sociopath’s survival and manipulates their perceptions them by making them feel special and thus obligated to reciprocate with support and protection
manipulates others into making fools of themselves in situations where they cannot back down or from which they cannot withdraw – these people become increasingly susceptible to further manipulation and are then trapped as pawns in the sociopath’s game
is likely to be surrounded by people who, having been subjected to control, manipulation and punishment by the sociopath, look wretched and who start to exhibit behaviour best described as disordered, dysfunctional, sullen, aggressive, defensive, hostile, retaliatory, counterproductive or cult-like and for whom disbelief, disavowal and denial are instinctive responses
creates an environment where levels of denial are so great that those involved are oblivious of the foolishness and self-evident absurdity of their denials when presented with the facts, with the result that non-involved observers are led to question whether such levels of denial merit psychiatric intervention
is contemptuous of disrepute to their organisation and of collateral damage and of the destructive consequences for all direct and indirect parties
is always surrounded by and leaves behind a trail of dysfunctional organisations, destroyed businesses, ruined careers, stress breakdowns and unexplained suicides
despite a trail of devastation to individuals, organisations, families and communities, the actions of a socialised psychopath may go undetected or unrecognised for years
a history of conducting frivolous, vexatious and malicious legal actions, especially (but not exclusively) against anyone who can recognise the sociopath for what he is
only after the sociopath is exposed and relieved of position, or they move on, can the full depth of their destructive behaviour be fathomed and the consequences calculated
is skilled at identifying, undermining, discrediting, neutralising and destroying anyone who can see through the sociopath’s mask of sanity
at all times restricts the actions and rights of others (especially those holding the sociopath accountable) whilst aggressively protecting his or her right to do anything without being hampered by social norms or legal requirements
pursues endless vindictive vendettas against anyone perceived as a threat or who attempts, knowingly or unknowingly, to identify or reveal or expose the sociopath, or who makes efforts to hold the sociopath accountable
is adept at appropriating rules, regulations, procedures and law to manipulate, control and punish accusers regardless of relevance, logic, facts or consequences
persists in and pursues vindictive vendettas using self-evidently false evidence or information, even after this is brought to the attention of the sociopath
will often manipulate minor bullies of the Wannabe type (who on their own might or would not merit the label ‘serial bully’) into acting as agents of harassment and as unwitting or unwilling conductors of vendettas
is adept at placing people in situations where the sociopath can tap into each person’s instinctive urge to retaliate in order to use them as his or her instruments or agents of harassment
gains gratification from provoking others into engaging in adversarial conflict
once conflict has been initiated, the sociopath gains increased gratification by exploiting human beings’ instinctive need to retaliate – this is achieved by encouraging and escalating peoples’ adversarial conflicts into mutually assured destruction
revels in the gratification gained from seeing or causing other people’s distress
when faced with accountability or unwelcome attention which might lead to others discerning the sociopath’s true nature, responds with repeated and escalating attempts to control, manipulate and punish
is adept at reflecting all accusations and attempts at accountability back onto their accusers
is adept at creating conflict between those who would otherwise pool negative information about the sociopath
has no limits on his or her vindictiveness
the need to control, manipulate and punish develops into an obsession with many of the hallmarks of an addiction
is skilled at mimicry and can plausibly and spontaneously regurgitate all the latest management jargon
exhibits minimal professional skill level and competency
exploits his or her intelligence to excel at talentless mediocrity
is always identifying the behaviours and strategies to which other people respond with the desired effect
is able to anticipate and credibly say what people want to hear
is easily able to win people over before betraying them or deceiving them or ripping them off
easily manipulates and bewitches an immature or naive or vulnerable or emotionally needy person to be their spokesperson or agent of aggression
exploits anyone who has a vulnerability
is pushy and extremely persuasive
is sexually inadequate and sexually abusive
is likely to protect anyone accused of or suspected of sexual abuse of pedophile activity, and will frustrate or obstruct investigations into that person
maybe associating with, or actively involved in, abuse or pedophile activity
has no emotions, no emotional processing capability and no ability to understand other’s emotions
is incapable of understanding, initiating or sustaining intimacy
the male sociopath has often convinced a string of women to feel they are in love with him and despite being treated abominably they blindly continue to be loyal to him and minister willingly to his every demand
may start projects with apparent enthusiasm and energy but quickly loses interest
frequently takes unnecessary and uncalculated risks but takes no account of consequences
is reckless and untrustworthy with money
is likely to be illegally diverting or siphoning off significant sums of money to his or her own budget, project, account or cause
is unreliable and untrustworthy in every facet of life
is likely to be leaking confidential information or secrets to third parties
is likely to have committed or be committing criminal or near-criminal offences, eg fraud, embezzlement, deception
is likely to have committed or be committing breaches of harassment and discrimination law, employment law, contract law, etc
disregards rules, regulations, Health and Safety requirements, professional standards, codes of conduct and legal requirements, etc
cannot comprehend the deeper semantic meaning of language and is thus unable to understand or appreciate metaphor, hyperbole, irony, satire etc (these elicit either zero response or a hostile response)
likes, seeks, enjoys and relies on procedure, ritual and ritualistic practices
through arrogant overconfidence takes increasingly risky chances and eventually overplays their hand or makes a mistake which leads to the sociopath revealing him or herself
exhibits parasitical behaviour, takes everything and gives nothing
grabs headline credit for minimal, flukey or other peoples’ success whilst surviving off the backs of manipulatees who are exclusively blamed for all failures
rarely blinks, may have stary scary eyes that cut right through you, or may avoid eye contact completely
is callous, cold and calculating
is devious, clever and cunning
is ruthless in the extreme
regards people as objects and playthings to be discarded when surplus to requirements
displays zero empathy
completely without conscience, remorse and guilt
malicious and evil
Power over people

The serial bully is able to exert a hold over people for a variety of reasons.

Targets are disempowered such that they become dependent on the bully to allow them to get through each day without their life being made hell.

The serial bully is often able to bewitch an emotionally needy colleague into supporting them; this person then becomes the bully’s spokesperson and advocate. How people can be so easily and repeatedly taken in by the bully’s glib charm, Jekyll and Hyde nature, and constant lying is a mystery. Psychopaths are especially adept at conning people in this manner.

Antisocial Personality Disorder (APD)

The serial bully exhibits behaviours similar to or congruent with the diagnostic criteria for Antisocial Personality Disorder.

Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD)

The serial bully exhibits behaviours similar to or congruent with the diagnostic criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

Paranoid Personality Disorder (PPD)

The serial bully exhibits behaviours similar to or congruent with the diagnostic criteria for Paranoid Personality Disorder.

Borderline Personality Disorder

Some visitors to Bully OnLine have suggested that the bullies in their lives exhibit characteristics of Borderline Personality Disorder.

Passive Aggressive Personality Disorder

See http://www.toad.net/~arcturus/dd/ddhome.htm

Personality Disorders

There’s more on Personality Disorders at http://www.toad.net/~arcturus/dd/ourdesk.htm

Avoiding acceptance of responsibility – denial, counterattack and feigning victimhood

The serial bully is an adult on the outside but a child on the inside; he or she is like a child who has never grown up. One suspects that the bully is emotionally retarded and has a level of emotional development equivalent to a five-year-old, or less. The bully wants to enjoy the benefits of living in the adult world, but is unable and unwilling to accept the responsibilities that go with enjoying the benefits of the adult world. In short, the bully has never learnt to accept responsibility for their behaviour.

When called to account for the way they have chosen to behave, the bully instinctively exhibits this recognisable behavioural response:

a) Denial: the bully denies everything. Variations include Trivialization (“This is so trivial it’s not worth talking about…”) and the Fresh Start tactic (“I don’t know why you’re so intent on dwelling on the past” and “Look, what’s past is past, I’ll overlook your behaviour and we’ll start afresh”) – this is an abdication of responsibility by the bully and an attempt to divert and distract attention by using false conciliation. Imagine if this line of defence were available to all criminals (“Look I know I’ve just murdered 12 people but that’s all in the past, we can’t change the past, let’s put it behind us, concentrate on the future so we can all get on with our lives” – this would do wonders for prison overcrowding).

b) Retaliation: the bully counterattacks. The bully quickly and seamlessly follows the denial with an aggressive counter-attack of counter-criticism or counter-allegation, often based on distortion or fabrication. Lying, deception, duplicity, hypocrisy and blame are the hallmarks of this stage. The purpose is to avoid answering the question and thus avoid accepting responsibility for their behaviour. Often the target is tempted – or coerced – into giving another long explanation to prove the bully’s allegation false; by the time the explanation is complete, everybody has forgotten the original question.

Both a) and b) are delivered with aggression in the guise of assertiveness; in fact there is no assertiveness (which is about recognising and respecting the rights of oneself and others) at all. Note that explanation – of the original question – is conspicuous by its absence.

c) Feigning victimhood: in the unlikely event of denial and counter-attack being insufficient, the bully feigns victimhood or feigns persecution by manipulating people through their emotions, especially guilt. This commonly takes the form of bursting into tears, which most people cannot handle. Variations include indulgent self-pity, feigning indignation, pretending to be “devastated”, claiming they’re the one being bullied or harassed, claiming to be “deeply offended”, melodrama, martyrdom (“If it wasn’t for me…”) and a poor-me drama (“You don’t know how hard it is for me … blah blah blah …” and “I’m the one who always has to…”, “You think you’re having a hard time …”, “I’m the one being bullied…”). Other tactics include manipulating people’s perceptions to portray themselves as the injured party and the target as the villain of the piece. Or presenting as a false victim. Sometimes the bully will suddenly claim to be suffering “stress” and go off on long-term sick leave, although no-one can quite establish why. Alleged ill-health can also be a useful vehicle for gaining attention and sympathy. For suggestions on how to counter this see the advice on the FAQ page.

http://www.bullyonline.org/workbully/serial.htm#Sociopath