The Gorean Voice - May 2000 - Vol II Issue 11

Civilization, throughout our history, has always brought out the best and worst of humankind. Every ancient civilization had one thing in common, a rise, a plateau, and a decline within the life cycle of that civilization.

Every aspect of civilization can be viewed in terms of positives and negatives of that civilization. Some of the greatest thinkers evolved from small, efficient civilizations, such as ancient Greece, Babylon, and Rome. Advances in astrology, mathematics, physics, and technology that advanced humankind in small steps leading to greater thoughts.

Some of the most shocking and inhumane events have also taken place during these times. The Spanish Inquisition, witch hunting, the crusades, the black plague, the decline of many of these great and wonderful civilizations, such as the fall of the Aztecs, Mayas. The colonization of old cultures, leading to the destruction of ancient methods, and ways of life. The Warrior, as was once known, is nearly all but lost by today's standards.

When considering Western civilization and the huge advances this civilization has made so many negatives walk hand in hand with the positives we have created. The television, what a wonderful invention, what a great tool for information to be spread from one corner of the globe to another. What potential there is for people to learn about each other's cultures? Yet we see people living their lives in front of the television, they have become "couch potatoes", laziness is rife, and I myself am guilty of wasting too much time in front of the box and not getting out as much as I should. Do the benefits outweigh the costs? Would we be able to survive without our play stations, computers and cars?

Weapons of mass destruction, something that has only been evident in the last 50 years of human’s history. What benefit can they possibly bring to this earth, perhaps these are part of human nature (humans are aggressive by nature), a part of our evolution, that will cause the rapid decline of civilization as we know it, one day. Perhaps these tools of destruction are the result of a frustrated world, unable to express itself in a natural fashion.

"I shrugged. "I do not know," I said. "Let us hope not." I did know the frustration tended to produce aggression and destructiveness. It did not seem unlikely that the frustration of my world, particularly those of men, might precipitate the madness and irrationality of thermonuclear war. Aggression, displaced, would presumably be ventilated against an external enemy. But the trigger would have been pulled. It would be unfortunate if the last recourse left to men to prove to themselves that they were men was the carnage of contemporary, technological conflict. Yet I knew men who hungered for this madness, that the walls of their prisons might be destroyed, even though they themselves might die screaming in the flames".

When considering positive and negative aspects of civilization, and in particular Western civilization, we can look to our homes, and our cities, and what we, as mankind, have produced in terms of wonderful architecture and environment that is fast furious, desired by some, scorned by others. We have excellent medical facilities in some cases and places, in other places people are dying on the waiting lists. Support networks for those in need, support networks for those not resourceful enough to do things for themselves, or too lazy. Western civilization can bring out the best and worst in people, big cities can be a person’s happy hunting ground, or a cold and alien place that is at best foreign, and at worst, disgusting, and a reminder of ones failures. What makes cities appealing to some, but not others?

"I gazed down upon the city. In such places came together the complexities and the poverties, the elementalities and the richnesses of the worlds. In such places were to be found the rare, precious habits of culture. The astonishing, moving delights of art and music. The truths of theater and literature. The glories and allegories of architecture, bespeaking the meanings of peoples, man-made symbols like mountain ranges; in them, too, were to be found iron and silver, and gold and steel, the chairs of finance and the thrones of power. I gazed at the shining city. How startling it seemed. Such places were like magnets to man; they call to him like gilded sirens; they lure him inward to their dazzling wonders, bewitching him with their often so meretricious whispered promises; they were symbols of races. In them were fortunes to be sought and fortunes to be won, and fortunes to be lost; in them there were crowds, and loneliness; in them success trod the same pavements as failure; in their plazas hope jostled with despair, and meaning ate at the same table with meaninglessness. In such places were perhaps the best and worst that man could do, his past and future, his pain and pleasure, his darkness and light, come together in a single focus".

Such a paradox we see in our society, aspects of love, grandeur, serenity, mixed with a busy, rat race inspired lifestyle, where the best can grow strong, and also, the evil can grow even stronger. Where greed, corruption and taking advantage of others is all too rife, where people gamble on treasures and lose, where individuals can make it or break it. Having never been raised in the countryside, the city must be a very daunting place to the outsider, a place where one will easily get lost, forlorn, forsaken. The poverty, pain, greed and corruption is not often witnessed from a distance, only when you move into the urban sprawl and squalor, do you see both sides of the coin. Walking the fine line of dirt and gold is appealing to the simplest of men, yet repulsive to others.

"From where we were, of course, we could not see dirt and crime, or poverty or hunger. We could not detect pain, misery and greed. We could not feel loneliness and woe. And yet, for all these things, which so afflict so many of its own, how impressive is the city. How precious it must be, that so many men are willing to pay its price. I wondered why this was, I a voyager and soldier, more fond of the tumultuous sea and the wind-swept field than the street and plaza. Perhaps because it is alive, like drums and trumpets.

To be near it or within it, to be stirred by its life, to call its cylinders their own, is for many reward enough. The last fellow, climbing up and closing the cart gate behind him, took his seat.

I did not take my eyes from the city, so splendid before us. Yes, I thought, it is all there, the habitats of culture, the intricate poetries of stone, the incredible places where, their heads among clouds. Common bricks have been taught to speak and sing, the meanings uttered scarcely understood by those who walk among them; yes, it is all there, in them, in the cities. I thought; in them were dirt and crime, iron and silver, gold and steel; in them were perfume and silk, and whips and chains; in them were love and lust; in them were mastery and submission, the owning and the helplessly being owned. In them were intrigue and greed, nobility and honor, deceit and treachery, the exalted and the base, the strong and the weak. In such places, filthy, and crowed and frail are found the fortresses of man. They are castles and prisons, arenas and troves; they are cities; they are citadels of civilization".

Those born and bred in the city often look at man made structures, and find beauty within what we have created, walking through the city of birth everything is there one needs, great restaurants, excellent opportunities to make a dollar, good people to spend time with. The architecture of many of the cities around the world demonstrates a wide variety of beauty and grace; humankind can produce wonderful and fantastic objects. The Pyramids, the Parthenon, ancient remnants that still remind us of our past achievements and histories, of times since gone but not totally forgotten. Reminders of not only what we have gained, but also, what we have lost.

"Those who know best how to live, sometimes it seems to me, are those least likely to be articulate in such skills. It is, not that they have not learned but, having learned, they find they cannot tell what they know, for only words can be told, and what is learned in living is more than words, other than words, beyond words. We can say, "This building is beautiful," but we do not learn the beauty of the building from the words; the building it is which teaches us its beauty; and how can one speak the beauty of the building, as it is? Does one say that it has so many pillars, that it has a roof of a certain type, and such? and simply say, "The building is beautiful?" Yes, one can say that but what one learns when one sees the beauty of the building cannot be spoken; it is not words; it is the building's beauty".

So many problems pervade our cities and our society, problems that can be a pitfall for the unsuspecting, the unwary. This is a paradox that is breathtaking, yet sometimes, sickening. A person simply aims to find their own way within a big city, establish the life they yearn for, to make it a highly worthwhile experience as one journey's through life. Yet life has its ups and downs, and we have to find our own way to deal these aspects as smoothly as possible, and ensure that the positives we make and fight for in our lives, and how we view them, outweigh the negatives. An opportunity exists to make the positive choices, and not the negative ones, and to fight the negativity in our society, and in our lives.

Perhaps, here and there, men will form themselves into small communities, where the names of such things as courage, discipline and responsibility may be occasionally recollected, communities which, in their small way, might be worthy of Home Stones. Such communities, emerging upon the ruins, might provide a nucleus for regeneration, a sounder, more biological regeneration of a social structure, one not antithetical to the nature of human beings".

Ah, violence, how our modern society claims to abhor it! It is blamed for a multitude of ills in the world, everything from teen mass murders to the quieter, more intense nature of the psychopathic serial killer on the loose. Road rage on our highways and gang killings across the world. And lets not forget about war... naked violence without pretense, the greatest of evils. Violence is deplored in the arts, in the movies, in the school yards, it is denigrated as a relic of a previous, less civilized time.

In the past, societies dealt more directly with violence. They more commonly understood that violence cannot be expunged from the human psyche, but rather must be channeled into acceptible forums, or unleashed productively in battle. Violence was nothing to be ashamed of unless it was uncontrolled, a person reduced past reason to animalistic response.

There are numerous examples of how violence was handled in past societies. The Roman arenas with thier gladatorial contests, the spectacle of blood sport between animals, man and animals, and finally, man against man, with the crowds screaming and cheering. The Spanish bull fights, man against a goaded, angry, and exceedingly dangerous animal more than ten times his size. In South America, ancient forms of the game of Jai-Alai featured broken bones and shattered teeth in the frenzy of the play. Human and animal sacrifice was once a common feature of civilizations around the world, entire societies experiencing religious ecstacy as a heart was wrenched still beating from a living body and held aloft in triumph. Public floggings that scourged the flesh off a man's back, hangings and beheadings that were both mandatory to attend and considered a source of entertainment by many, crucifixion which served notice to all passers-by that criminal activity would not be tolerated in the town they were about to enter. Massive personal violence turned towards what was thought to be constructive; a lesson in civic behavior, entertainment for the masses, spiritual transport. Whatever the excuse for it, one purpose it always served was to release the violent instincts in the population through a controlled, small portion of that same population.

Perhaps if these things occurred in only a few societies throughout human history, if they were localized to a particular region, or even one or two continents, it might be more easily explained away as aberrant behavior by people who simply 'did not know any better'. However, even a cursory examination will show that violence in one form or another has always been a part of human history, in every civilization, in every region and in every epoch, as far back as we have record.

These days children are taught that the evil of violence should be suppressed, that it is in inherently wrong. That it is, in effect, a dirty word for a dirtier act. They are taught not to fight, and that if they must release thier violence then it should be through accepted means such as sports, or gentle competition. Perhaps it is no surprise in this context that sometimes the most virulent violence breaks out from those who had held it in the longest, who had previously been most successful at pretending to pacifism.

"A 'pacifist male' is a contradiction in terms. Most self-described "pacifists" are not pacific; they simply assume false colors. When the wind changes, they hoist the Jolly Roger."

- Robert Heinlein, from The Notebooks of Lazarus Long

The legendary mild-mannered Postal worker who brings loaded weapons to work one sullen morning, boys in a school who can no longer sublimate their teen angst or tolerate bullies, the man or woman who comes home with life's frustrations driving them to abuse the spouse. Examples go on and on in a parade of tragedy. The causes are cited to be anything from insanity to bad childhoods, from social stresses to mental breakdown. Those who arrive at such conclusions are wrong. They speak of triggers and think them causes, and ignore fundimental human nature in the process. The cause is that we are an extremely aggressive race, we enjoy our violence, and that violence, like a dammed river at flood time, will find it's own outlet, one way or another, sooner or later.

Yet, our wondrous modern society does indeed have it’s hypocrisies where the evil of violence is concerned. It is sublimated into corporate take-overs and brutal sports such as boxing, karate, football, rugby, and hockey, but for many, sports are too distant from the real thing to truly sate the savage soul within. Most people claim to hate violence, yet the most consistantly high movie and television ratings go towards two fundimental themes; sex, and of course, violence. The films of John Woo and Quentin Tarrantino set new marks for 'action movies', the polite euphemism for violent action and, often, outright combat. People cry out at the horror of an accident on the highway, yet they slow down and create massive traffic jams so that they can indulge in 'rubber-necking', peering with anxious morbidity at the aftermath of high-speed violence, hoping that in the few seconds they are near to the scene a glimpse might be granted to them of twisted wreckage and shattered bodies. We demand that news coverage includes every possible aspect of war; the types and numbers of weapons, how they are used and what their effects will be, down to the interviews with the soldiers in the trenches, hanging on every shakey word. We are rivited to the screens as we watch the high altitude footage of bombs taking out whole city blocks, of missiles arcing unerringly into thier targets, and we know the slaughter is wholesale. Children play at 'army', while adults are glued breathlessly to thier seats viewing the auto races, with especial attention to the way a car tumbles out of control.

It is worth remembering, also, that not all violence need be physical, or with intent to harm, nor need it be upon another human for it to exist. The violent conflict of a debate or argument can be just as cutting as sharpened flint, the claw marks of a woman's passion upon a man's back even as his hands grip her unto bruising. The violence brought about by hunting and fishing as an animal’s life is taken for the sport of it. Not so long ago a movie was released which delved into the sexual release found in the violence of car accidents, while 'snuff' films have long been a part of the underground movie scene. Documentaries showing natural catastrophes, or the destruction of buildings, have thier own niche. And finally, violence can be done to a society, by numerous means. The bonds of community snapped while the destroyer smiles with the pleasure of watching that society fray and come apart. There are even more justifications for violence than there are types of violence itself, but in the final analysis on this perspective, violence is a fundimental and pervasive realization of innate human aggression, and as such, as long as there are humans, it will not be denied.

The Gorean philosophy handles things a bit differently. Based on age-old precepts of human behavior and needs, it works intimately with the relationship between genders and exhorts us to "be who we really are". It calls on us to not only understand ourselves more fully, but to embrace our primal instincts and find a way to integrate all of who and what we are in our real lives. Throughout the series one can find examples of people finding ways to release thier violence in ways that are consistantly constructive within thier melieu. Gor is a savage, untamed world which affords numerous opportunities for such release, unlike our own fairly tame Earth. Yet, humans are still humans, in spite of fundimental cellular differences between Goreans and Terrans. Much of the books delve into the nature of the Warrior, his Codes and his responses to circumstances, yet a Warrior is still a man, and I cannot help but think that much of what is said will pertain to all men.

"Tears are not unbecoming to the Warrior. The Warrior is a man of deep passions and emotions. Many men cannot even understand his depths. Do not fear your currents and your powers. In the Warrior are the flowers and the storms. Each is a part of him, and each is real. Accept both. Deny neither."

Deep passions... all the barbaric splendour of a people who refuse to bottle up thier emotions, who will not deny themselves or what is important to them. This is almost diametrically opposed to our modern societal viewpoint. At the same time, it is also clear that the nature of the Warrior is not the same as the nature of the Scribe, nor the same as that of a Merchant, that perhaps those are numbered amongst the "many men" who cannot fully understand the way the Warrior releases fully his inner violence in perfect harmony with who and what he is. The Warrior is unafraid of the furies which sometimes rage within him.

"Rings of gold and now insignia of rank, feathers and necklaces, were distributed. Once, Bila Huruma lifted his hand and said, "Good." The soldier then commended would then, I think, rather have died than betray Bila Huruma. Such small things, I think, may be scorned by those who do not understand the nature of war or men, and be seen as manipulative and laughable, and yet such a small commendation, when warranted and sincere, is worth more to some men than the material treasures that might move those who hold themselves their superiors. Let each man choose his own treasures. The cynical, mercantile mind will never understand the mind of the soldier. The soldier has stood with comrades in arms, and held. I do not think he would exchange that for the contemptuous pretense to wisdom of those whom he protects, who would scorn him. He has maintained his post. But perhaps some, even those who have never marched in the mud, with comrades, singing, on a clear and windy morning, a spear upon thier shoulder, can understand this. Why does the nibbling urt chatter and laugh at the larl? Is it because he himself is not a larl, or is it because he fears it's paw?"

A Warrior does not sugar-coat violence, he freely acknowledges it's purview and moves with power and precision within it's domain. Consider the Torvaldslander berserkers, an extreme case of the release of violence, yet even that wild, uncontrolled killing rage is permitted reign by deliberate choice.

The Gorean philosophy knows and understands the deep-seated aggression within the human psyche, and explores that with, on occassion, cynical yet piercing insight. Human nature is not going to go away, and it will not be smothered by the thin veneer of civilization. The human spirit is a flame that can fan into a raging bonfire on a moments notice, and when it does it will seek outlet, it will crave expression.

"It is not the killing, for executions would not suffice."
"No, it is the sport, and the risk, and the killing."
"One must fight for causes."
"Causes exist, that men may fight."

How many have come fresh from seeing a movie filled with phenomenal levels of violence, and smiled with contentment, a feeling akin to the afterglow of sex suffusing your psyche, sated for a few days or a week through vicarious violence? How many shout and scream as they watch the aggressive violence of sports? These things are with us even yet, though we are separated by over a thousand years from Rome and her arenas, from the Mayans and their sacrificial offerings. The difference is that now, in our society, we are not supposed to acknowledge our inner violence, and instead, are expected to somehow, mysteriously, expunge it.

Humans are arguably the most aggressive land species still extant, and violence is the expression of aggression. Violence is, it seems, universal to humans. In spite of a hundred years of political activism, in spite of millenia of the progress in technological and social advancement, humans remain fundimentally feral, requiring only the right trigger to release what lies in wait, within. Rather than wait until such a trigger comes upon one unseen, perhaps it is better to find natural forms of expression for our natural aggression. Instead of viewing it with horror, understand that it is as much a part of who and what we are as our eyes and our arms and our brains. We are not a gentle race, we humans. We are conquerors, fiercely competitive with ourselves, even when there is an opponent before us, an enemy to smite, a danger to end.

There was a time when I was new to online gor and all the people that read my words saw that they were just words written on this online medium by a newbie. And they looked at them as we all who come online will do. There may be some readers here that view my words as still new to your eyes and for others that are really new to the philosophy of gor my words are just words on a screen. I speak to all of you.

I had read all the books and then discovered a place called online gor. I clicked on and looked about to observe what this was about because I had thought that I was the only one to have bought the books as they were published and still read them. From 1975 and after is to be correct. From then I used certain elements of gor in my personal life. I had slaves read to me from the slave books of gor, I defined to girls how I wanted them to behave and as their natural slavery took hold in their bellies I found.the joy of knowing a slave in my arms long ago before I knew of online or that there was an online in fact

So my journey to gor began, two years ago this past April, and as I slowly observed I made a few decisions, the first being to improve my skills so that I could communicate with those that I found had like minds to my own way of living. And the second was to listen and learn for what I did not know.

And I found some kind people who helped me. They told me to add this / and to put this in your aliases ...little things that made a big difference to my ability to communicate. It really means something to a person that knows gor to see kindness from a stranger and that they are not your enemy.

For the new person that reads here for the first time perhaps heed this honest truth from one who knows. The people that live the gorean lifestyle online and offline are not your enemy.

Modern times we live in on earth and not within the fiction of the books. I am a channel operator in a lifestyle channel, a virtual gorean paga tavern for the pleasure of men to be exact. We have gorean slave girls serving men there that are themselves living the lifestyle or are in training and just learning of the lifestyle. And we do allow the free women to enter and remain if they behave. Men decide all matters on gor and in this lifestyle they define the station that a female is to occupy. Men allow women to be free or to be the natural slave that they hold in their hearts and bellies.

Online gor can be rough if you get out of place and show that you lack honor in the view of a gorean man and even with some of the females it can become quite testy. The words respect and honor are used often in conjunction with confrontations, and few really understand the relevant effective meaning of either of the words in the gorean male mindset.

Online is only part of life. There is the offline as well. For me at least I am offline much more than online. I just don't have the time or as much as I wish I could have to be online. For those that live this philosophy the offline is the real life part of gor that is more a part of their lives. Online is the communication, offline is the real interaction with gorean men, women and slaves. To break bread with a friend is a joy to behold. To look into the eyes of a slave offline that you know well from online is a pleasant experience.

When you have a sense of loyalty to the community at large that you wish give back to those and to others what you have learned then you have joined the community. And when you try to help someone that you can see who is trying, then you have joined the community. And when you think about how your actions will effect others before you hit the enter button then you are helping the community. Be true to your word and stand for every word that you write online or speak offline.

And read the source material, and the web sites that are correct and learn what an honest web site is that has citations to the source books and credits the authors of writings and artwork. What I am saying is now mostly directed to the new and who are learning, both free and slave is to watch, listen, learn and to the slave -obey.