September 19, 2009
 
Hello Mr. Bramley,
   Your book Gods of Eden has been a huge boon for me in understanding the
basic world religions, even aside from the alien question. I have had
little luck in my life finding any descriptions of religions that did not
have overt spin on them that left me more baffled than informed. I read an
account on the internet suggesting that you have an unstated intent to
promote L. Ron Hubbard's religious view, but that didn't seem to cloud your
diplomacy in presenting the Mormons and Jews and all the rest.
   I write to you twenty years after your effort, so I expect your life has
evolved enormously since then. Perhaps the subject of Custodial society has
been thrashed so thoroughly that any letter from a stranger that mentions
it goes right into the trash. No curse will descend on you for that. The
letter is open, at http://www.efn.org/~wolfe/bramley.htm, and perhaps is
written more for people who know me anyway.
   My own life has given me a different view than you about the
Machiavellian issue. I have directed a lot of group households and similiar
group intimacies, with frequent need to seed factional strife in order to
escape attack by dependent people over petty disappointments or technical
issues.
   In my youth I used humiliating rhetoric or direct beligerence instead;
but both resulted in poisoned feedback later, with whoever I thwarted. The
only way I've been able to stay a wholistically informed leader is through
appearing to be little and feeble and harmless; kept in service as a leader
through inspiring appreciation by those being ruled. A minority of my
constituents will nevertheless get riled up over some petty ridiculous
entitlement matter that will inspire them to seek a vulnerable target to
blame and bully. A feeble looking leader is an easy choice for that. If I am
alone with my antagonist I can explode into a moment of psychosis that
redirects their view, but usually the choreography is complex so I must use
an unconscious proxy, in the form of an equally ridiculous contrary person,
generally a loud social misfit welcomed into the group in a gesture of
compassion but also specifically for that role.
   I see the Custodial invention of our species as a legitimate basis for
ownership, as with a parent and child, wherein I hold the child's life to
be a gift of the parent, carrying no inalienable entitlements. I would give
any parent legitimacy in murdering or abandoning their child, rather than
encourage the widespread psychosis that happens instead.
   Having been a leader, I hold all leaders in awe. The psychic and
technical challenges they shoulder are huge to me and carry a different
basis for moral assessment. I cannot directly cooperate with Mr. Hitler,
but I can recognize what compells him to order the murder of some of those
whose lives he takes mastery of. The mother who poisons with candy and the
Councilman who supports suffocating building codes are running blind in a
morass of threats and thankless frustrations. All have to be willing to act
heartlessly, even if they aspire to a gentle choreography, because their
dependents won't comprehend the real limits on possiblities, and many will
get brutally insane with righteous heartless indignation that a leader must
reckon with.
   I think Mr. Hitler and his associates were unable to choreograph the
theatrical rudeness of the Jews or the passivism of homosexuals and
Gypsies. The present leadership in my world looks to me quite at a loss to
choreograph inclusion of my lifestyle. When they are forced by circumstance
to relate to me, I must coach them indirectly, for my own survival. What the
really big scale leaders take on looks insurmountable to me; I expect their
psychosis to be way out of control.
   Farming a clearly intelligent species, as the Confederate States did,
carries a serious moral awkwardness for me. But hiring the same people as
share-croppers looks maybe even more dubious. A visit to rural Ethiopia in
my youth made the matter even more unsettled. The people there were
strikingly content and easy-going, but had no economy to speak of. Being a
kid, I didn't either, so I was quite inspired to live like them, though not
all the way to being dirt poor. The Ethiopians were living entirely on
boiled wheat and sleeping in tiny windowsless mud shacks.
   What defines oppression? Did the Custodial culture violate something by
using bio-warfare mist to cull those with genetically or socially weakened
immune systems, so that those who remained could be more cosmopolitan. Did
they poison our lives by coaching the violent development of negotiative
government? Are their personal lives any more off the record than those in
my neighborhood, or an average possum? Are the apparent kings of the
concrete jungle less morally accountable than the traditional king of the
wild jungle? Is morality even relevant to address in the interplay of a
natural system?
   My reading of history and of current events suggests that all major
political leaders are seduced or drugged or drafted into service by
handlers who prefer to remain unknown to the public. I have next to no
interest in the majority of petty matters that get debated by Congress or
my local city council, so I presume likewise for the people who create
public leaders. They press their candidates on a few key matters that are
important in mock trade for all the rest, and the candidate takes all the
inevitable heat.
   The war choreography has always puzzled me also. I got on a Quaker
conscientious objector list during the Vietnam war, and agonized quite a
bit over what to say to a draft board (though I was never called). I have
gotten personal with quite a few military oriented fellows in my life since,
and I read in National Geographic about a chimpanzee war that coincided
with the genocide in Rwanda.
   I have gotten quite intimate with well over a hundred people in my life,
and virtually none of them have suggested that they would attempt any level
of political leadership without military choreography. Even I have stayed
small scale. I don't think the Custodial culture choreographs war with a
machiavellian motive.
   I think they are able to milk the world economy all they need to without
overt political participation (as am I). I would guess their motive for
creating overt war is as a continuous test and culling program. I think they
are attempting to force evolution of the dominate human culture into genuine
pro-active passivism. They are not fooled by nhilistic passivists, like the
Jews and Gypsies who got murdered. The Custodial culture wants ambitious
passivists who present no self-righteousness. They don't want Ghandi, they
want Hermann Hesse. They want passivist political majesty that sees and
dodges the steam roller of military choreography, and leads entirely by
example, not by negotiation, not involving petty organizational demands, not
throwing mud at anyone's idealism.
   The wars are a test. Anyone criminally insane enough to participate will
get flushed out of their petty little lives into a major choreography,
either as warrior or victom, and over the years the watchers will get more
and more cosmopolitan and more and more burned out on the military thing.
   The Asian financial crisis was a glimmer of hope to me, and I imagine to
the Custodial culture also, in the non-abandonment of the U.S. dollar, an
overt recognition of a unified world economy in which no player can be
realistically shut out. The current world military activity is what I call
police action and primitive criminal thuggery. I think genuine formal
battle is gone due to lack of participation, Saddam Hussein making the last
advocacy for it.
   I highly doubt that the Custodial culture has any compelling political
reasons to have overt relations with the public. I think they are doing
fine. But I also think that a genuinely friendly human race, carrying no
self-righteous baggage, will inspire overt contact, just to say hi and have
a warm-hearted sharing. I think the secret human manipulators who create
world leaders will likewise stand up in a world that can relate honorably to
them.
   In 1990 when you presented your book I could not have written this
letter, so I imagine you could have likewise become way more on the ball
about the topic of Custodial politics. My letter is to a guy who passed away
in 1990. I hope it is at least entertaining. Thanks for your noble timeless
book.
 
                               Adrian Wolfe



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