Playing with Water: How to Manipulate a Scorpio.

Playing with Water: How to Manipulate a Scorpio.

The superstition that Scorpio cannot be manipulated is just as naïve as the tendency to be manipulated BY one.

I might boast an ability to get Scorpios to do what I want them to, though I would not have been inclined to admit to such a degree of self-interest. It is rather that I have succeeded in leading several projects of which Scorpios were a part.

The problem is: a Scorpio is a cynic who perpetuates his sinful agenda by rationalizing that it is the “way of the World”. (Hence the tendency to privately Blame the World and to demonstrate every conceivable degree of paranoia in respect to human nature: the sum of cynicism.)

So any business arrangement with a Scorpio is to his mind a situation of mutual manipulation: an ingenious business miracle that can preserve self-interest only to the degree that it does NOT limit the pursuit of that self-interest on the part of either party.

This is distinct from RECIPROCAL ALTRUISM, a much HIGHER rung on the moral hierarchy that preserves mutual interest to the degree that it DOES limit self-interest, which is defined as a violation of concern for the Other’s well-being as though it were one’s own.

From a Scorpio perspective, I succeeded in manipulation insofar as I could GET HIM TO DO WHAT I WANTED HIM TO DO. However, since he had chosen to enter this arrangement knowingly and willingly, I FAILED to manipulate him insofar as I might PREVENT HIM FROM DOING WHAT I WANTED HIM *NOT* TO DO. This he regards as a personal victory on his part.

It is in fact a tragic loss.

I will agree to the success, only to claim partial mastery on this plane. I beat him at his own game there. But what follows took me two years to learn in the wake of his treachery:

How to get a Scorpio to NOT do what he wants to do.

Pluto is in Latin Mythology the God of the Underworld.

What is the Underworld? This I have puzzled over extensively.

It is not the Unconscious, which is ruled by Pisces and Neptune. It follows logically (though this took me years to unriddle) that the Underworld must be a psychic phenomenon that is both Conscious AND Unconscious and that appeals to a LOWER STRATUM of Human Experience, and Animal Experience in general.

If exploration of the Unconscious Mind is called Mysticism, then exploration of altered states of Consciousness would be Visionary. Huxley’s distinction of Mystical Experience from Visionary Experience is my chief source here; so as not to bore more “self-reliant” readers I shall simply make a footnote* here.

* The Doors of Perception. Heaven and Hell. Various lectures on Visionary Experience.

Scorpio is remarkably uninterested in the Unconscious Mind, unless that Scorpio possesses significant Piscean tendencies. This might seem ironically totalizing of me to say, as though I were speaking from Conscious Judgment rather than Unconscious Perception, but it in fact draws on both. Memory and Intuition agree on this point.

Scorpio conceives of Consciousness as being the most powerful force in the Universe. This is because the ideal state of Consciousness for a Scorpio is that of Total Power and Control. This is all so the Scorpio conception of God Consciousness, and omnipotence is a frequent Scorpio experience under the influence of psychedelics. (Though total powerlessness is of course a corollary experience, as psychedelics dissolve the duality of Controller and Controlled, and all so for reasons I shall continue to elaborate upon.)

It follows that if the Unconscious is the Source that Mystics refer to, knowledge of which is idealized as “Nirvana”, “Samadhi”, “Satori” and “Salvation”, (to give it only a few names!) then Consciousness is Samsara: The Wheel of Birth and Death, which is what Scorpio is known for. Scorpio governs Birth and Death; it “rules” Sex. These primal experiences are understood on a psychic level by Scorpio, to its credit, and likewise the Scorpio has a lucid comprehension of OTHERS’ psychic understanding of these experiences, to their detriment.

Mysticism is a flooding of Consciousness in Unconscious Reality; all distinctions fade and even disappear once one Knows God. Yet Visionary experience is much more human and often tragically so. Kafka’s Visions are not those of Oneness with the Godhead and with one’s fellows but rather total alienation from both. And that is only one example. Living nightmares have been Universal throughout human history, at least in the Kali Yuga. Whether it’s one of Kafka’s existential crises or one of Kid Cudi’s Night Terrors, the Absurd truly CAN strike one, as Camus put it, at every street corner.

So what is the Underworld?

It is the Mammalian Mid-Brain.

Long ago I became fascinated by the same question that plagued Huxley: how to reconcile the Irrational with that Rational. In his time, Huxley conceived of this “built-in Jekyll and Hyde” as the dual opposition of an “Ancient Brain Stem” and a “Neo-Palium that is quite recent”.

In our time, we have a more nuanced theory of human development: the three-layer brain.

The most primitive aspect of this brain is the Reptilian Hind-Brain, which we have in common with Snakes and Lizards and which is responsible for basic Survival.

Next we have the mammalian mid-brain. Dogs have this. This is in charge of Status in the Pack. Our sense of loyalty to a group comes from this. Tribes, political parties, social groups, teams, and other organizations owe their existence to this Brain. And even to say that they “owe” any thing is the consequence of its thinking. Plenty of primitive God-conceptions all so arise here, as well as most of the notorious (and splendiferous!) Human Passions.

Last of the three is the Neo-Palium, otherwise known as the Neo-Cortex. This New Brain is what endows us with the faculties of Reason, Idealism, Knowledge, a great deal of our Wisdom, and, most importantly (one would suppose): the Ability to Transcend the Pack. An individual who makes ample and sufficient use of this Brain is Fully Human in the sense that he sees the sufferings of all Human beings as part of a Common Problem with a Common Solution, transcending the illusory distinctions of Nationality, Tribe, Appearance, and even (at times) Opinion and Lifestyle.

In FACT: One cannot be truly tolerant if one does not tolerate intolerant people. One is simply self-contradictory and hypocritical.

Why did I space on this detail? It is because one of you Scorpios INVALIDATED me! Yet I remind myself that it was unjust. Why would a Scorpio invalidate a theory? Is it because it is untrue? No. But rather it is UNUSEFUL. It is not only USELESS; it is in fact USEFUL to the SCORPIO’S ADVERSARIES. And its use must be unmade for the Scorpio to meet his goals.

Even if you knew, Scorpio, that the three-level brain was real, you used the highest of these three levels only to serve the foregone purposes of the lower of the two. You appealed to the intermediate brain by appealing to the “authority” of the tribal elders: the Scientific Community. Then you dazzled the Higher Mind with statistics and rationalizations aimed at your agenda, assured that it was simply aimed at OTHER agendas and that you were doing nothing wrong or novel.

You might have known that you were lying.

But Truth was beside the point, as always.

Truth is not something you owed to other people, but to yourself. And it was owed to you and you alone.

How did this invalidation happen?

In a Neo-Liberal Corporate State that champions the rights of tribal peoples, the notion of an “underdeveloped psyche” is offensive. Yet is it insulting?

“Rights of tribal peoples” is oxymoronic. There are no “rights” within a tribe. Other tribes do not have “rights” in the eye of the main tribe. INDIVIDUALS have no “rights” in the tribe. There is not EVEN the conception of what IS right in the tribe. All that exists is the tribal tradition: We Do This Because We’ve All Ways Done This.

This is of course sub-Rational because it violates Hume’s point that one cannot derive ETHICS from FACTS*. Simply that things ARE done a certain way is insufficient reason to say that they OUGHT to be done that way. People insist that “fallacies work”, and of course they do; that’s what the mammalian brain Is There Fore. Yet that people substitute traditions for ethics is not REASONABLE. As I’ve stated, there is insufficient REASON to say that. REASON rejects it, and you will find no contradiction in my analysis to refute this, even though you might find little in the way of an appeal to “authority”. (Hume, for instance, is sort of a stuffed shirt to my mind.)

THIS is where Fascism comes from.

And THIS is the Scorpio’s domain.

The mid-brain is the Underworld.

* The Fallacy of Naturalism.

Fascism is a political ideology aimed at treating all of Humanity NOT as a Higher End that transcends the needs of the tribe, but rather AS A TRIBE. Nationalism as a theory is idiotic; it all ways breeds conflict amidst the different nations. Yet Nationalism as a MOOD on the SUB-rational level is totally legitimate unto itself. To the Nationalist, there IS no Country other than one’s own. Other Countries are neither Equal nor Worthy. In an IDEAL world (from the Nationalist’s perspective) all the world would be his own Nation. Only a Rational Being who sees that Mother Russia, China, and the United States are all equally absurd can deconstruct Nationalism, and this deconstruction happens instantly.

So WHAT ABOUT SCORPIOS??

I could go on and on about how Goebbels led the Nazis’ propaganda brigade with a passion (incidentally, Vonnegut wrote a book about this sort of thing called Mother Night) and how Hilary Clinton all most won the Presidency despite a devious track record. But why bore you? After all: you came here for a purpose. Did you not?

I wouldn’t feel cheated if I were you. Often knowledge for its own sake is the purest strain. But if you WILL, oh fictional reader in my imagination, you fiendish rascal, comparable to Descartes’ Evil Genius, I shall oblige you…

But not before explaining what is wrong with what the Scorpio does. Only then can I satiate my appetite to feel that I have appealed to the Higher Part of your Nature and not the Lower.

There are two primary kinds of people: Introverts and Extraverts. By “primary” I mean not that these two groups take precedence over some other, but rather that this is the primary duality of human (and animal) personality. There is, in this case, no other.

MOST people are extraverted.

A MINORITY of people are introverted.

This minority is elite in one sense:

They tend to spend more time in the Neo-Palium than in the Mid-brain.

A politician like Donald Trump does not “win” the presidency by appealing to Universal Values, Moral Ambiguities, and Altruistic Passions. That is a Bernie strategy, and it tends as much to offend as to defend, because the seasoned self-effacing Virgo is entering a War Zone all most unwittingly.

Trump wins because he PROMISES to win.

He wins because he offers people WHAT THEY WANT, even if they could DEDUCE, were they to THINK ABOUT IT, (at great risk to their fellows in the Pack, esp. in the Bible Belt and the Midwest in general) that he cannot POSSIBLY DELIVER such promises, at least not without COLLOSAL SACRIFICE on the part of a probably UNWILLING VICTIM.

An introvert does not thrive off of his popularity.

He thrives off of his solitude. And in that space he finds Reason.

The introvert does not need to “get to the point” when he is idly thinking. Thinking must be valued as an End in and of Itself in order for it to be PURE.

While the extravert amuses himself with Social Convention and Legal Concerns, the introvert climbs Kohlberg’s Mountain of Moral Development (a psychological theory held in disrepute for reasons not unlike the ones that threaten the three-level brain theory.) and reaches the Universal Realm of Justice, Truth, Beauty, and Selfless Love.

To the extraverted world, he has gone crazy.

To HIS world, the extravert has gone crazy.

The introvert is outvoted.

The introvert has eventually to live with the extravert, to descend the Mountain and to interact in the Village. He tests his theory, and often it fails. Yet the extravert is wrong to presume that the simple FAILURE of a theory is indicative of its UNTRUTH. It is rather that the TRUTH is available to so few people that it cannot fulfill its teleological purpose. (This is not a Naturalist Fallacy, considering that one can know the FACT of what is Moral from the STUDY of Ethics and Morality, for instance. So in that sense the Fact, otherwise known as the Truth, serves that teleological purpose of achieving what is Right.)

The introvert does not win elections, except under dire circumstances. He simply meets God.

Whenever I would read about and meditate upon Universal Ethics I would think of Lofty Castle from Spyro the Dragon. It evoked the sense of Universality by appearing to be the Highest Level in the entire game.

I thought I was merely dreaming, living in a floating castle in the sky, which is the setting of Lofty Castle.

Yet then I found, upon a visit to the Clouds (specifically Soundcloud.com) that that level and its soundtrack are considered by many to be THE greatest level of that game, if not of ANY game.

The very popularity of this level is a testament to its Universality. It is not an Absolute in the sense that a dissenting opinion is of no value. But it is Universal in the sense that people arrived at some perception of its Grandeur INDEPENDENTLY OF ONE AN OTHER, as I did. Why else would they agree? Agreeing does not help one to “win”.

So this is PART of what the Scorpio messes up: obscuring the Universal Plane that holds us together and offers us transcendence from what Watts calls the “horrors” of life.

Yet obscuring the skies is incomparable in sin to the decision to disturb the depths.

Mammalian Thinking is indispensable. Without loyalty, there can be no trust. Without passion, there can be no love. Without faith, there can be no Reason. Without sex, there can be no romance. Without a neighbor, there can be no true Identity. Without desire, there can be no reasonable Ideal. Without dreams, there can be no schemes.

Yet Tribal Man left us as many booby traps as he left us goodies. The Noble Savage is not an offensive concept because he is Savage, but because he is pretended to be Noble.

Jealousy, covetousness, dogma, sin, impatience, brutality, and evil are all ancient Power Gods that run our lives and threaten to destroy them.

This is what the Scorpio appeals to.

A manipulator is not manipulative for being Rational.

He is manipulative because he uses the VENEER of Rationality to obscure an underlying appeal to the Mammalian Underworld.

Hence wars are justified by ideology. And the hypocrite who is unmasked flees the scene by saying that it was REASON and not PASSION that justified the war. Andrew Ryan in Bioshock is a satire of Ayn Rand’s “philosophy” that it is ALTRUISM that justifies war, poverty, and slavery.

Yes: Altruism is used (and abused) as an ideal to justify the forces that create these living hells. Yet Altruism is no more at fault than I am for the crimes of someone who happens to share my first name.

That the Romantic justifies the Rapist does not render the Romantic a Rapist. Ideals are Good; the MISUSE of Ideals is what enables evil, and I say that it “enables” it rather than “producing” it for a reason: that the Misuse is ALL READY PART of the Evil. It simply aids the TRUE agent of evil in the fulfillment of its agenda. And what is this fulfillment if not the consummation of the passions? Who is this agent if not the MID-BRAIN??

The situation gets murkier when we realize that IRONICALLY it is the EXTRAVERT that tends to “overthink” things moreso than the introvert.

The introvert’s main source of information is the Subconscious Mind, whose style of thought is NON-DIRECTED or spontaneous and largely uncontrolled.

The extravert’s main source of information is the Conscious Mind with its Directed (Deliberate) Thought. The Conscious Will controls these thoughts and via the Conscious Ego seeks to impose these thoughts upon Reality.

The introvert only uses Directed Thought in order to INTERPRET AND CONVEY Non-directed Thought.

The extravert lives EXCLUSIVELY in the domain of Directed Thought, which is the instrument by which Culture is conveyed. And via this conveyance the Tribal Traditions are imposed upon the Conscious Mind as the Primitive FORCE of Tradition bullies the Mid-brain on a largely Unconscious level.

So how do you stop Scorpios from manipulating you?

You simply Reason your way out of it. But careful that you do not Reason your way out of ACTION. Only by defying authority can it totally be defeated.

But then the Scorpio, knowing he can’t control you, will act out of the Vengeful Passion.

So how do you stop him then? What DEVIL of his own mind can you use against him?

FEAR.

Of all the signs, Scorpio is the most fearful.

He draws his “power” from a profound understanding of his own fearful depths. This is the foundation upon which he finds camaraderie with his fellows. It is by creating FEAR of an out-group that the tribal IN-group is “protected”, even if the out-group either does not exist or does not believe its self to BE an out-group, or even a group for that matter.

But what can so adept a manipulator possibly fear?

When the answer to this question dawned upon me as the Sun set, I laughed at how childlike and simple it was. One can even imagine a man pacing the floor furiously pondering out loud: “HOW can I defeat the Prince of Darkness? He is so DARK. WHAT COULD POSSIBLY BEAT DARKNESS?!?”

Light.

And if darkness is Untruth, then Light is the Light of TRUTH.

This is why Lucifer and Prometheus were condemned by the Gods of Power: they brought LIGHT to HUMAN BEINGS.

The Light of TRUTH disarms the Gods that govern our lives. Pluto, God of the Underworld, can take you down to Hell. But Apollo, God of the Sun, can help you find your way back OUT.

As an addendum:

1. The use of the Generic “He” is aimed purely at efficiency and maintaining the anecdotal character of this work.

2. The Scorpios I refer to here are specifically Problematic Scorpios, unlike the Ideal that is called the Phoenix-Eagle.

3. The technique I have taught you just now is higher than the technique that Scorpio uses, because it is defensive rather than offensive. Likewise, the skill of getting a Scorpio to do what you want is a talent that pales in comparison. You might just be participating in his act of Offense without even knowing it. (No blame to you for being a victim, but more power to you now that you have been warned.)

Dm.A.A.