Cuissage Is Not A Myth!

If you just follow the American media's propaganda about public morality and religiosity and ethics, you will certainly resist the phrase I am about to use: 'sophisticated moral intelligence.'

According to the Christian Right and the pharisee tradition of the modern American-style media, morality has to be plain dumb, and anything different to that is likely to be the 'work of the devil.' Thus to add the word 'sophisticated' to 'morality' is almost to qualify it with something evil.

Cuissage...

Yet I have often wondered why it is that everything that is said to be to do with this very popular fellow (i.e. 'the devil') has this touch of the inherently exciting, even whilst it is also most assuredly bad and dark and horrid. And everything, by comparison, that is numinous, is rather dull and boring.

We watch movies like The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and become glued by the sections of utter vicious violence; well, at least I did when I watched it!

Admittedly this particular movie is not completely gratuitous in its inclusion of extreme violence as a theme.

However I must warn that I am intending to proceed from the immediate prior post about 'values,' and move the subject along to the idea of the application of values in the hands of wealthy adults. Now I say 'wealthy' adults very deliberately because I wanted to suggest that unless one is not careful, it is all too easy to become dissolute when a lot of time and money falls into one's hands. And this is largely because of a habit that tends to be formed when one is not necessarily so very very facilely um, loaded. The discipline that enforces itself onto spending habits and lifestyle habits due to modest means, is in many ways, a good thing; but it is a 'false' discipline...

One finds so many instances in which commentary regarding some fashionable place, or tourist destination, or upscale (we say 'up-market' among the British over here...) restaurant – splashes criticism around lavishly. The food was overpriced/the service was pushy/you were tried to be 'sold' on stuff/you were not respected/something or other was 'over-rated...'

The very beautiful -
Plaza Athenee entrance

And so let me say something now about going out to a Michelin Three Star table in the context of having anything at all to do with the receipt of service. Servants, are not things you have; they are participants in your lifestyle and they are part of a set of relationships. And your part, as the receiver of service, is that you are performing a role. Literally.

I see people who speak of these things saying that the droit de cuissage (the right over the thigh), is but a myth that some French aristocrats propagated. But it is not. Nevertheless, it entails, as I say, a high and a sophisticated moral intelligence. On the surface of it, a lord of some estate or other, is supposed at some point in the distant past, to have possessed the right to have sex with any of his serf's virgin daughters. Or some such thing along those lines. I know my father often spoke of our family's tendency to have infused itself with 'good peasant stock' from time to time.

But you must understand the impoverished humour of the aristocrats of my ken.

You see these things are not true in the way the words are employed to talk about them. But they are true in very much more sophisticated ways than the common popular media will be able to understand or explain to you.

Here's what I mean: perhaps you go to the Plaza Athenee in Paris, and have read a review in which they go on at length about how over-priced, and how over-serviced, and how unmemorable, the food was...

Ah but you see, for me to go there at all is a performance – by me. At least as much as I expect it to be a performance by the staff there.

And, they will comprehend, if not others, the allusion to cuissage that I make, if I subject my companion to having to wear the thing you see in the picture here. It's a Dior outfit, on the actress Jennifer Lawrence, and I understand all, or most, of the media and entertainment critics carried on at length about her wardroom malfunction, sufficient to make Dior put out a statement.

Jennifer Lawrence,
Also 'Cuissage' but by Dior

But it is not a malfunction.

If you go to, let's say, some Michelin Three Star establishment that you have heard be less than celestial in its service and substance, and offer this Dior'd get-up on your arm, as you alight from your taxi or Rolls Royce, to the doorman, and thence on to the Maitre d' and so on, I am reasonably sure that the placement of her dinner cloth onto her lap, either by the staff or without stares from them when she does it, will break all the rules about dining.

And I am reasonably sure, that you will have a very pleasant evening, and completely forget all about criticisms of the service that you were not 'getting' for your money, because as I have said before, money is not the be all and end all of it. As Karl Lagerfeld says, 'yes it is true; if you are cheap, nothing helps.' But if you are sophisticated, you do not need to be violent, or obviously armed with money, to get your way.

And getting your way, may I remind you, leads us right to the money afterall. The art of getting your way, qualifies the meaning of moral intelligence in ways that only the sophisticated may know about. And I don't think, the devil, is as sophisticated, as an English gentleman – not that I have come across an English gentleman, for many a good long year, and the only real person that I can think of in living existence right now who can fit into the mold, is Hugo Jacomet, and he is French. As far as I know.

For The Younger People

THE POWER OF THINKING FOR ONESELF.

I had never intended this column/blog to be exclusively for people around my age – in fact, this is the kind of place I would have actively sought out, to glean some ideas myself from, when I was a lot younger.

I think I might have said before that I grew up around uncles who were both extremely wealthy, and in some respects, historically significant people. 'Kelvin' McClory was my father's first cousin, and, although he was the noisiest representative of the Thunderball movie 'steam train,' he was not the most important one in our family who was involved with that particular escapade. One of my father's stepbrothers (therefore an uncle to me) was MD of Shell Far East at the time and Shell played a huge role in the financing of the movie.

A 'shut up and take my money'
brief case

But overall, the point I really want to get at here is that there is a major advantage in being able to be around these kinds of people when you are young – I mean, not only are they exciting to be around, but they possess all sorts of amazing knowledge and practical experience that is difficult or next-to-impossible for the normal kid to learn about from the usual sources available to the average kid growing up in modern-day suburbia.

Aboveall the most important thing you can learn from these people is 'values.' And for those entering the world of entrepreneurship, or having anything at all to do with big money, 'values' is by far the most important thing to know about, rather than 'value...'

Oh yes, I mean it.

Sure its nice to have nice things but its far better to have real values. In fact it's better to have values than to have either money or a lot of things. There are a lot of people with more 'things' than either you or I or a hundred 'you's and I's' will collectively ever have in our lives – and those things are yet meaningless, useless, and worthless in their hands; even though they will have cost several fortunes to have acquired.

'Values,' are the most complicated, subtle, and sophisticated of things that it is possible for any human to attain to and possess. By 'values' I don't just mean any old religious or ideological or cultural ethic, nor do I mean morality. I mean something you will never hear in the mouths of preachers today, and certainly not in the mouths of selfish people either.

Values are what defines you the person, you the personal identity; they are you – now, tomorrow, and forever more beyond what you regard as your own personal 'lifetime.'

I put it to you that you have no idea what 'your lifetime' is or will be. Tomorrow, you may wake up to find someone can really put your consciousness inside a supercomputer and you will live eternities as a humanoid machine. You don't know that it can't or won't happen.

Values are why you are exciting to live around...

Values are absolutely not, doing 'right' and knowing right from wrong – values are what make you human, and what makes the human the form of the prime intelligent being in the universe.

And here's my proof.

In ancient times, according to ancient legend, the Great God Zeus, cleverly sidestepped the tricky task of deciding which of three goddesses was the most beautiful. Another heavenly being, 'Dischord,' had rolled a single golden apple into a wedding feast at which the gods were in attendance (according to the legend). Upon this golden apple were inscribed the words 'to the fairest.'

Each one of three goddesses sought to pick the apple up and disputed over which should be entitled to have it – Hera, Zeus's own wife, Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love, and Athene, Zeus's daughter.

Zeus then demured from the task, and bestowed it upon the Trojan Prince Paris.

What Hera, Queen of Heaven
looks like

Zeus instructed the progenitor of the Ithican Island part of my own family – Hermes – (see, I have some entitlement to speak about these things authoritatively!) to take Paris to some secluded grove far away, in which the Goddesses would each present themselves to Paris completely naked, and following which he would make the decision as to which was the most beautiful.

Now the rest of this unlikely story is that each of the Goddesses attempted to bribe Paris – and that could not be true – and moreover even Athene, according to this untrue tale, disrobed fully in front of him.

Paris gave the apple to Aphrodite, and in her fury, Athene caused another of my ancestors, Odysseus, to encourage the Greeks to go to a great and mythically heroic war, which they did do, and which today is known as the Trojan War.

What Aphrodite, Goddess of
Love, looks like

Now personally, I have to tell you, from my knowledge of what the Ithicans say of the Greek Gods, that none of this story can have been true even in the smallest element of it. The Gods do not bribe, they do not dispute among themselves, and Athene DOES NOT, on any account whatsoever, go naked in front of a human.

But the story is a story and there is a point to its existence and this point clears up why it is important to realise that there are eternal beings who govern all of our lives even those of the amoral and the atheistic because... ...THE POINT OF THE STORY IS THAT IT APPLIES TO YOU, NOW, TODAY, AND WILL IT SO ALSO APPLY, TO EVERY PERSON WHO LIVES IN THE FUTURE.

Let us assume, for instance, that you are an atheist. Well, here is your challenge, as my ancestor once did, I now also bring before you, the three Great Goddesses, Hera, Aphrodite, and Athene, and request of you, that you decide, which one is to get the golden apple, upon which is inscribed, 'to the fairest.'

You see, the story is not for 'Paris' to have resolved. It is for you, the living human being.

That is to say, as a human being, you are daily confronted with choices and decisions that are within the realm of what the mortal is concerned with – complicated decisions often absent of adequate information, and yet, one may be forced to choose something from which choice may proceed consequences both or either good or not good.

The human will live and it will die, but the decision and its components never will go away; and hence they are immortal choices even though dynamic, and immortal components. 'Values' are the result of both how you go about making your own choice/s over these types of challenges, and how 'human' your perspective is.

What Athene, Goddess of Victory in War, looks like

This 'story' is known in the classics as 'The Judgement Of Paris.' Would that I could be, personally, an atheist. But alas I cannot, as I am an Ithican, and the Gods themselves live quite nearby, and regularly bring to me conundrums and puzzles of some definite ornateness though for what exact purpose other than their own sport, I am not quite sure.

The Tools To Handle The Wealth

Now see here's the problem with having a lot of wealth and living the life that is expected to go along with it:

When you go to Wimbledon – where I wouldn't personally, because I detest modern tennis – but at least when you go, and it happens to be a cold day, they will give you a little hot rock to hold in your hands...

Qantas First Class Beluga

And when you travel First Class on Qantas – which I would do - they will give you this designer pair of silk-lined pyjamas, when you want to sleep off the Bollinger they serve.

And pretty soon you'll get this feeling that most of the rest of the world is badly disadvantaged and must have a terrible time of life. Which they basically do do (have a terrible time mostly, that is).

But why are you so important; so especially deserving?

Now that's an important question. Clearly, it is the wealth which 'makes' it appear that the carrier of wealth is important and better and more deserving. Without being able to carry the wealth (that is, to have any!) one is deprived of all these trinkets and trappings.

The trouble is though, that if at some stage it becomes the case that you do acquire some wealth, then you could easily find yourself lumped with the problem of feeling for all the rest of humanity who haven't got any, and also sometimes, you may be quite disappointed too with your erstwhile wealthy 'brothers and sisters' who do and yet whose attitudes and abilities stand in stark contrast with any kind of ideal human person! You will find yourself stuck between a hot rock... ...and a soft pair of pyjamas.

As the Chinese Classics say the look on the face of the wealthy is never happiness. It's often more like a kind of distress.

If you reject the pampering people will say you are mean-spirited and miserly and if you embrace it they will say you are uncaring and selfish.

Symbols of male selfishness, surely!

And that is the reason why it is absolutely vital that on no account should you disclose to anyone exactly how much you have or how much you can get or how much you can engineer or how much you have power over or how much you can generate. It is an absolute crime and a sin (not really sure what that word means...!) against all the rest of your fellow human beings to not fully absorb yourself in the enjoyment of what wealth can bring, and to not be fully in the moments of utter wealth and grandeur that you afford yourself – on account of allowing the unconsecrated to the art and science of wealth, in at those times.

Only those who ever have been, or are and can objectively realize their position, or who have the capacity to be, wealthy, can understand what this is all about. The concentration of conscious intelligence has the role in the universe of a relationship with everything that is the best. And it is only in this role that one is truly able to see the best in people and things, and to set about its preservation within a world of decay and ignorance and foolishness.

Makrolon Ornament

The illuminated Spirit of Ecstasy hood ornament for those owners of a Rolls Royce who can extend their budgets a further, almost $10,000, is not made from glass but from a Bayer Chemicals patented polycarbonate called Makrolon. Those engineer-types who stop by here will be familiar with this product.

My father-in-law has just recently gone a little beserk and done something Jovian for his daughter and grandson.

I must say he has taken a lot of pressure from my own shoulders because it will now be easier for me to go to an additional ten grand for the Makrolon hood ornament.

I jest of course and I feel though, that I must explain my arrogance.

As of right this very minute, I personally, would be thieving from my own rare coin collection to as much as mount a battle to attain a Swiss-cheeseburger (at least, though, we have said 'Swiss-cheeseburger' and ought to add that it will be the Angus beef one, too).

However I have a sense of strong confidence about the future. Well, at least for my future, anyway, and I hope, for yours as well.

At heart I am a believer in the possibilities flowing from the invention of things like Makrolon, much more than I am in the possibilities offered by the political life. For I do not believe in the establishing and the building of cities for modern people – but I do believe in the exploitation of the artefacts of automaton mentality. I believe in architecture. Architecture is a rational system that bypasses or at least sidesteps the pseudo-intelligent agency of modern evolved people; today's people fit in to the architecture of cities and modern structures and dwellings, whereas they mostly all believe it is the other way around.

And money is a rational system too. And it also has architecture and this is not something our friend Ben Bernanke has sufficient an understanding of, or a deep appreciation for.

Take this very distant example of what I mean: let's say here is a great and successful Beijing identity who goes and marries some millionaire in a presumed more-liberated society. Just one step away from Communist Beijing, she marries an oligarch from, let's say, Singapore; the Beijing government is not too worried because the two societies are not that far apart politically. The order remains.

But then one day she decides she cannot any longer tolerate the egregious arrogance and disdain for the ordinary human being shown by this oligarch she has become entangled with, and she contemplates upon how that his mindset exhibits in every particular way, all the odious features of the usual wickedly privileged, and spoilt, tyrant.

So one day she throws on a tight satin Dolce & Gabbana, high heels and a pashmina wrap, and grabs her Baschmakoff purse, and walks out. And as her Rolls Royce leans in acquiescently to approach her, she angrily pulls off the million-dollar ring she is wearing and casts it down to the gutter or to the pavement somewhere, and is too exorcised to even notice the blue illuminated, glowing frosty Makrolon Spirit of Ecstasy light up its warm 'welcome in' to her very brand new and gleaming Rolls Royce Wraith, all plush inside with its doublecream-thick carpets, and soft luxury black-piped leather seats, and its excessive starlit ceiling.

Ah, you see! The elevated in station often have their own problems that serve to deny to them the ability to see and to appreciate the splendours of their lofty surroundings.

One can become highly disillusioned by staying too long there, and perceiving the banal reality behind much of the public face of power and money.

But one can also be uplifted by its intensely private side. That is to say, if you ever discover the true face of private power, and money.

Mysterious Money - where does it come from?

“Be calm... Be still.” as Nicol Williamson's Merlin says in Excalibur. “All is well.

Behold! The Dragon's Breath!”

In the mysterious smoke of the Dragon's Breath, conjured by the even-more-mysterious Merlin, a Spirit of Ecstasy glimmers, for the wise.

Money cannot afford too much banality. If it becomes banal – as Bernanke has made it – then it dies. Powerful money, on the other hand, is interesting, even fascinating, and utterly mysterious.

Learning From The Jungle

I grew up quite literally inside a tropical jungle. For whatever reasons we need not inquire into right now, I have in fact lived inside two major Malaysian jungle tracts - the first place was called Taman Endau-Rompin, and the other, Belum-Temengor.

Taman Endau-Rumpin

In those days a lot of life was much slower-paced there, as well as in many other parts of the world. There were no tv programs to rush back inside to, the sun was fairly lazy... People went on walks. I certainly did from as soon as I could walk. There were two clever house dogs that accompanied me wherever I went and they barked whenever my mother called out and afterawhile she took to trusting the dogs implicitly and that meant I could go on long walks. Which I did do. Without other people around...

Look, it was nothing for me to go wander into the jungle and stay out from mid-morning to early evening. I mean it was literally true that if the dogs barked you could hear them from a mile away echoing through the crevasses and valleys. There were no machines, no cars, no buildings, no construction sounds. On a good day you could hear the water pumps and generators of the two chinese tin miners washing out the ore-bearing sands from out of the side of a mountain-stream incline – although they were deep into the thick jungle.

I learnt many things in the jungle but one was that there are places humans can go where nothing else can. A human can see, and ajudge, and consider the changing face of risk, and make decisions based on reflected expectations and a kind of creative positive imagining of outcomes. Animals always default to their fear factor, whenever the challenge meets their threshold capability and threatens to exceed it.

A human can go into that particular notch in the rockface, look behind that particular fan of ferns, go under and behind the noisy crashing waterfall – the crocodile will not, and tiger does not. And if you climb up the rocky sides, not even the sunbasking iguana is going to be able to chase you there if it wants to. The black panther might, but it sleeps in the day, the cobra or the python or the viper might but these can be avoided or beaten off with a stick – you can see them if you keep a good eye out for them especially where you are stepping. Spiders are not too great a problem if you know to look for them and besides they don't stay in the flinty rocky wet dark anyway. A strong loping vine will take you out across a hundred foot drop and back to the exposed bright sunny side. Monkeys hang out in moving troupes and they hate fire and I have a Zippo.

The jungle is a safe place.

Modern Shanghai

Great monsoons sweep a lot of things away... I have never personally seen wild animals attack each other when they are on the run from a huge disaster. Animals are fear-based priority responders.

The human civilized world is also a very safe place. Same reasons. In the wild there are occasionally crazed animals of course, behaving crazily; same as there are crazed people in the world.

 

Here's a symbol from the modern, advanced and civilized human world. The Spirit of Ecstasy, by Charles Sykes, carries the fairytale of a secret affair behind it. All round such symbols, a crazed world swirls of course. But such symbols, and the ideas behind them, are all-important to the intelligent mind!