Sickness Rules

'A maladjusted person with a crippled set of reflexes tends to overdevelop a narrow range of one or two interpersonal responses expressed intensely and often, whether appropriate to the situatioin or not. When two individuals interact, the 'sicker' person determines the relationship. The more extreme and rigid the person, the greater hir interpersonal 'pull' - the stronger hir ability to shape the relationship with others.

We meet here a lowest common-denominator process, a Gresham's law of interpersonal collisions. Sick people control the interpersonal interaction. The 'sicker' or the more maladaptively rigid, the more power to determine the nature of the relationship . . . The sick person has a very narrow range of interpersonal tactics, but these are generally quite powerful in their effect. In politics, however, the situation is more ominous. A country is a closed system, and you can't avoid the troublemakers - particularly because they usually have the weapons! (sometimes in the form of excuses coded into law!) Throughout most of human history, countries have been controlled by violent, suspicious, unpleasant men whose behavior would be considered criminal, or even psychotic if expressed in situations that they could not control by force.'

Notes from Tim Leary's (pre-LSD) 'Politics of Self Determination'

P.S. dontshootthecat gets the Asshole Award for putting my name on a mailing list from which I receive condoms and 'personal lubricants' in the mail from freestuff.com. I don't use my current address for bills and no one else knows it except H, my parents and, well. . . you! Way to go, Asshole!