Conspiracy Theorist Blasts Mainstream Media for Cultural Dumb Down

Breaking the Rules

Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
Never use a long word where a short one will do.
If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
Never use the passive where you can use the active.
Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

~George Orwell

From Ethan Indigo Smith’s Santa Clause Syndrome.

    The above is the best advice on writing I have ever I have found.  A Holiday Hazing Santa Clause Syndrome focuses on breaking the rules, societal and literary.  I took rule #6 to another level in the following.  I break the rules in order to say the opposite of anything outright barbarous.  Breaking the rules in the war world allows exploration of consciousness and is the opposite of barbarism simply by default. 

    Before settling on Orwell’s rules for writers I variously sought advice on bettering my prose so readers might interpret my writing as funny, so I might sell a few books, or to at least approach sounding halfway witty and sell a book.  In the process I’ve been offered a lot of good advice, found some worth considering, some that was half malarkey and been offered some advice that was utter nonsense, useless for writing anything of substance, more applicable to selling squeegees than matters of prose. 

    I admittedly sunk so low as to attend some writing conferences to rub elbows with intellectuals.  I managed to lose most all respect for, and faith in the publishers and editors who long ago cemented their position in the literary business, and nearly lost all hope for humanity in all its shallow breadth when I verified that literature was judged from the top down on its bottom line, its ability to move units, not its ability to move minds.  Practically everyone in the book biz capitulates to the capitalist system, just like every other industry, just like the squeegee business. 

    Deciding what literature to produce based on sales potential is equivalent to letting mob rule run society, most people will be satisfied about and accept the process, but largely they’ll go nowhere and do themselves no good via the results.  Most published literature therefore might be exactly what people will enjoy to buy and read, but they will be no better for it.  I had the horrible realization they invest in promotion of hollow words because it’s all just another business.  And in the case of the literature business in the postmodern world, book sales are predominantly influenced by teenybopper tastes and soccermom money.  Most editors and publishers fall in line to the wants of the consuming masses, most do not seek to find writing they might be bettered by, they simply release holiday editions.  If the people want vampires chasing pheromones and fairy tales bathed in virginal sexual tension, then by golly they’ll have it.   

    The large percentage of popular contemporary fiction is made up of suggestive insinuations and all out whips and chains plots.  Contemporary nonfiction is largely about the individual climbing of a mountain of sorts, various narcissistic conquests.  Practically all art today is somewhat narcissistic, literary and otherwise.  Nonfiction is predominantly about the story of mastery of some obscure activity or capability, instead of exploration of a subject, instead of exploration of our inner selves.  Most publishers and editors have deduced there is little money in nonfiction of the thoughtful sort and contribute to the horrible cycle of postmodern narcissism by allowing predictions of what the masses will buy to influence what artistic expression to invest it.  Capitalistic editors and publishers, serve to degrade instead of uplift, they seek the most common denominator instead of the highest.  Those in the book biz seek to make money. 

    A Holiday Hazing, Santa Clause Syndrome goes against the grain and breaks all the rules in every way.  It is about our thinking and being and will enhance your own thinking and being.  It is about us.  It is not narcissistic and it concerns something you and yours might love, exposing how you might be negatively steered by it and many just don’t want to hear that.  Society at large, and the microcosm of the literary world, does not normally cover such topics, perhaps because of the topic at hand; making money.  We have been schooled to avoid developing ourselves, to avoid internal work. 

    Many will hate the following because it’s not narcissistic for one, and because it describes our own intimate and celebrated mental conditioning, forcing us to look within, to peer inside our psyche, but mostly because people are trained to bring vitriol to anyone who appears to be against the Santa phantom or at war with Christmas.  A Holiday Hazing, Santa Clause Syndrome is not against Santa, but for us and it is not about me, but about us.  The following is not narcissistic and it’s not what you’re used to even though it’s about an idea you know well.  It’s philosophical, it’s psychological, it’s historical, it’s inspirational it’s comical and it’s not part of a war on Christmas. 

    I tried my best to make the following gracious and to inspire with provocative and humorous insight not just attack tradition.  I reiterate that I really tried to be funny, reasoning it the best way to prevent people from snapping on me for presenting Santa Clause Syndrome, because it can be upsetting to contemplate, because of training, because of the Grinch factor.  Presenting the idea can be upsetting to some because some have bigger Grinch issues, perhaps more deeply engrained and buried which can be upsetting to stir up, and Santa Clause Syndrome is stirring. 

    The more narcissistic someone is, the less they look within.  They are busy practicing vanity and searches outwardly.  Celebrating the Santa Clause story is a practice in narcissism, focused on outward wants, whereas the winter solstice specifically, and winter as a natural cycle are especially oriented toward going inward, going within through meditation in darkness, and calmly sharing the gifts of harvest with company. 

    The Santa Clause storyline is narcissistic and materialistic and the very opposite of what the season primordially symbolizes.  The longer one has been involved in outward thinking and narcissism, instead of inward thinking and meditation, the more upsetting looking within can ultimately be, so maybe it’s best after all that you don’t read this.

    Most writers are no more victims to the narcissistic impulses so thickly spread about than anyone else, only writers have the audacity to express it, in what might one day be referred to as long notes, judging by how much people read nowadays.  The following is not about narcissistic conquest and it is not depictive of sex or violence, it looks at processes concerning our development, how we are possibly shaped in a way that maintains the drumbeat of the status quo, which if you hadn’t noticed is a wee bit destructive currently, endangering the very existence of future generations. 

    According to the literary business formula utilized by sophisticated Wisconsinite, suburbanite transplants who’ve been representing Strokin and Johnson Agency on Madison Avenue for the last umpteen years, you will not be interested in nor buy this book.  According to the cultural understandings of the dominant forces in the literary world, readers do not want to learn anything suggesting they were wrong in any way shape or form, especially something that forces or enables -depending on one’s outlook- the reader to face the underside of a highly cherished celebration, especially something that inspires critical thinking of our own psychology for crying out loud.  No one wants to learn they have been hindered by something they cherished, just as no one wants to know they have been lied to by someone they trust.  Just like most everyone, those in the literary field mostly have no idea and do not want to consider why people avoid such contemplation, concentrating instead on making money.

    A Holiday Hazing, Santa Clause Syndrome discusses the shadow aspects of the most cherished holiday ever, addressing how it steers our thinking and being.  Santa Clause Syndrome goes against the grain and breaks so many societal and literary rules in so many ways that breaking the rules is indeed the book’s only quantitative selling point.  It all goes hand in hand of course, being able to break ridiculous rules or taboos and thinking for oneself instead of unconsciously continuing to think in the manner one has been steered to. 

Editors and publishers from the old blasé blah blah happy days of carefree dunt de dunts (being the interim between Nagasaki and Fukushima or thereabouts) have a few rules used to sell more books, that might have been applicable at one time, and perhaps highly effective at selling books to a larger audience than just one’s parental units, at one point.  One schematic I heard repeated again and again like a cult rule, was to ‘write to develop characters not to develop message, if you’re writing with a message you might as well write propaganda.’  While this makes sense, to show rather than tell, for me, nowadays, if you’re still writing fiction for the characters or if you’re writing narcissistic nonfiction, without a message that might better the thinking and being of those around you, if you’re writing to entertain in the nuclear age, well then, chances are high you’re part of the problem.  There is chemical, industrial, nuclear, biological catastrophe taking place right now on Mother Earth and you’re eating it, so if you’re writing for characters, if you’re writing without a message, you’re late at best, and not using your art for its highest purpose; elevating mind. 

    A Holiday Hazing, Santa Clause Syndrome goes against the established literary ruling class, perhaps merely guilty of falling in line to society’s ruling order, that seems to quell exploration of our individual and collective thinking and being.  Herein is a blatant message to inspire critical contemplation of ourselves and the postmodern war world.  People don’t want to know about S.C.S. or most anything relevant to thinking and being, possibly because of S.C.S., which is why I had to explore it and write about it.  Criticizing the Santa Clause story is taboo across the board.

    The publishers and editors from the blasé blah blah happy days told me all sorts of helpful rules, and they’ll tell you if you ever decide to attend a writer’s conference, if such things as writer’s conferences continue in a war world so environmentally devastated, at least in part due to writers lacking message and being full of character.  One thing I heard repeatedly was, “You can’t write for everyone, choose your audience and write for them, if you attempt to write for everyone, you’ll end up writing for no one.”  Well, I’m breaking that rule too, of course. 

    Everyone has experienced the invariably little discussed taboo that is Santa Clause Syndrome and practically everyone was at one time forced fed the Santa Clause story that everyone else has tasted.  This book is written for everyone who was force fed the story, filled with emotional attachment and initiated into adulthood with the Santa Clause story and everyone else who has ever had to deal with people afflicted with Santa Clause Syndrome, i.e. everyone literate everywhere and just about everyone else on the planet too.  Writing for everyone is not the same as trying to please everyone and in this case if anything, the subject matter may be accused of angering practically everyone or at least the established inner circles here and there that appreciate the Santa Clause story.

    I’m not trying to please anyone in writing for everyone, but instead wake up some people, utilizing a topic we all understand intimately and nearly all have been immersed into to one extent or another.  Why no one has explored S.C.S. before, why no professional psychiatrists looked into the subject for instance, can only be explained by our ardent refusal to break the rules and question the influences of tradition, the steering of the status quo, especially the cherished Santa Clause story.  For me, with the combination of my alternative education and dropping out of high school, breaking the taboo rules is the preferable or natural option.  Dropouts can break the rules easier than most and mere mention of S.C.S. requires basically, breaking all the rules.    

    Despite the rules of the book business, such as concentration on character development as opposed to theme and demand for sycophantic query often through an agency, and all the other qualifications akin to any business model only accompanied with the pomposity of pseudo intellectualism that comes from dealing with the intellectual property of others, all writers, all artists, all readers, everyone who is creative, and even some publishers and editors too, understand the creative value inherent in breaking the rules.  Breaking the rules is usefulness in expression, and as publishers would note, as part of a character that might do well at selling squeegees.  If you don’t break the rules, you cannot and will not come up with any new thought.  If you break the rules you can look at the status quo of old engrained thinking and being anew. 

    Sometimes just telling it like it is requires breaking the rules and moreover removal of fears of the stigmatism that accompanies being the one to step out of line so as to make better observations and then say something.  If you unquestioningly follow the rules, if you quell your instinct to say something and question, even if it breaks the rules, you probably have Santa Clause Syndrome.  Doing as you’re told and obeying is not the primal indicator, as much as obeying unquestioningly is, acting without asking the situation, like who is telling you what to do, or why you are being told to do so.             

Ethan Indigo Smith, The Enstitue, Sean Independent Publishing House

About the author:

Activist, author and Tai Chi teacher Ethan Indigo Smith was born on a farm in Maine and lived in Manhattan for a number of years before migrating west to Mendocino, California. Guided by a keen sense of integrity and humanity, Ethan’s work is both deeply connected and extremely insightful, blending philosophy, politics, activism, spirituality, meditation and a unique sense of humour.

Ethan’s publications include:

• 108 Steps to Be in The Zone, a set of 108 meditative practices for self discovery and individual betterment, including techniques to develop balance, transmute sexual energy.
• The Geometry of Energy: How to Meditate: Simple and profound, this book offers an empowering four-step meditation, focused through the sacred dimensions of geometry.
• The Complete Patriot’s Guide to Oligarchical Collectivism, an insightful exploration of history, philosophy and contemporary politics.
• The controversial book, Terra-ist Letters, a work that humorously contrasts two very serious issues: the prohibition of marijuana and the promotion of nuclear experimentation.

For more, visit Ethan on Facebook and check out Ethan’s author page on Amazon