Mel Gibson, the rooted thoughts and Doppelgangers

August 03

You gotta feel sorry for the position Mel Gibson found he'd let his underself put him in. Because of the nature of how our thoughts and concepts build - 2 integrations are made, then 2 more intra-integrate with each node of both of those, and soon bazillions of integrations are made - and if at the root or center of all of those, there is one which is false - well... you've got the mother of all Gordian Knots to unravel in order to repair your thoughts. Most of us when they find out that something is rotten at the center of some idea or another will just try to make a mental note, and move on - perhaps to be startled by associations or slips of the lip that spill out later in life.

I'm not exactly sure why, but it made me think about my Dad. An excellent person if there ever was one. As I grew up and began playing in a band, I began to circulate with a good chunk of the multi-culti mix of human flavors available, and of them I became good friends with a select few, but was often surrounded by an unselect many. Their associating with me, brought them into close contact with my parents, and on embarrassingly numerous occasions, I brought about what I now realize were some rather huge impositions upon them. My Dad never behaved towards any of us in any way that smacked of any influence from such non-essentials as race, color, creed, etc. And we definitely put them into plenty of non-stress-free situations where such slips would have been thoroughly understood.

It was only years later, the result of some innocuous comments, that I realized that my Dad in fact did have some ingrained prejudices. When I questioned him about them, he kind of shrugged a perplexed "ah, yes - silly, isn't it". They were there, but he didn't allow them any significance in influencing his actions. That they were there I suppose isn't really surprising, from someone born in 1928, then and now, as a kid you tend to internalize, to accept views from those around you, especially your parents, without a great deal of critical thought, and it isn't until you get older that you may, if ever, come to question those thoughts. Even if you should ever come to reject their premises - they have probably already been deeply woven into your life. They've been "Saved to Disk" so to speak, and only by practicing a fair degree of active error checking, do you weed them out of your conscious thoughts and actions.

Something I find impressive about my Dad, is that he never passed on those prejudices to me, and he never acted from them in any of the many opportunities I presented him with which were all Most suitable for a tense slip of the lip to let them fly. And I don't mean that he effused in the typical liberal-guilty-overcompensating-aren't-they-all-wonderful sort of way, which I find to be just as offensive as the blatantly prejudicial acts. He was always just honest, generous and helpful to us, and was also appropriately upbraiding to us as needed. But at some point in his life, he realized that those thoughts were flawed, and from that point out, he didn't let them influence his conscious choices.

In case there is an afterlife, and the blogosphere is accessible to it, you were a good Dad, Dad.

On the other hand however, Mel Gibson recently found his rooted thoughts putting him into a pickle. Now obviously I haven't a clue how he behaves towards people in real life, or what he actually thinks. But I do know that in our consciously lived moments, we often find ourselves choosing to say and do things that our under doubts and fears murmur at us not do, but we do them because we consciously believe them to be right and proper.

It doesn't take a genius to realize that when you're rip roaring hammered drunk, those dark murmurs are easily released from conscious control, their volume gets cranked up and they can get full control of our joysticks making a mess of the lives we have so consciously chosen to live.

Of course it doesn't excuse Mel, he consciously put himself into a situation that would hand over the controls to his sub self (personally I found his 1st apology "despicable thoughts" much better than the 2nd seemingly PR enhanced blathercuse), but I certainly see how a person can be good and proper and reject that type of thinking, and yet still have such thoughts lurking underneath.

My point is that what Mel should be roundly condemned for, is making the fully conscious choice to begin chugging the brews in the first place - while he may not consciously believe his dark murmurers, he must certainly be aware that they lurk under his radar, and he had to know that getting hammered would be letting the Doppelganger, his private Mr. Hyde, run loose with the controls to his life, putting himself and others in real mental and mortal danger.

Seems like it's always the little choices that end up making the biggest difference.