Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "Just Do It Over."
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| [a] Topsy RF |
Look again at the "bonding" commercial (and get your hankies back out, sentimentalists). Go ahead. Click on it. This time be a philosopher-sociologist; look for the growth of stratification and inequality in the household. Jean Jacques Rousseau would have understood this in a moment, as we have seen. Plato, too (I'm that guy in the lecture...and I am many).
If you watched carefully, with the imaginative eye of C. Wright Mills, you will have seen that big-time human complicity is at work. While human automatons seem to think that they are creating marital bonds that forge a domestic (human) life together, the reality of feline overlordship has already begun to take root. Don't get me wrong here. I love cats (and dogs, too, but the latter rarely serve as rulers of men). The key to understanding cat-power is to grasp how humans freely and lovingly give their own power away.
Go ahead, kitty. Be our god.
Some of us know that "god" is "cat" spelled backwards.
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| [b] Opiate RF |
We will march to the beat of your drumming forelegs (on the bedroom door that has blown shut overnight), demanding food, love, bodily warmth, and, well, attention. They do this until they tire of all the fuss and find a good place (a morning ray of sun is optimal) for a nice nap. Get out of the way then, human-boy, but do not think that you are free. Your hours of freedom are an illusion—indeed, an opiate. Catnip for people. Never forget that cats want it this way, and they want to teach you to want it, too. The fact that you lovingly accept the chains of command does nothing to change the stark reality that you no longer call the shots. You are no longer in charge. Those shots are called for you, often with a squeaky little meow and a purring sub-roar.
Do you still think that you, the ostensible bacon-bringer (wearing the family's pants) are being asked for something? You must be kidding (Also Sprach Zarathuscat). If you still think that you are some kind of lord of the realm, master of your domain, or Übermensch of the Apartment, you need to read some more Foucault and perhaps do fieldwork on the island of cats (a.k.a. "home") for a bit longer. We humans are just worker bees—cogs in the machinery of Cat Control. We give over our power freely, and thank our little loves for taking it from us. And what is their reply?
Let them eat Science Diet.
All of us who live under the command of furry four-paws know this to be true (you will notice that there are few books echoing The Dog Whisperer, and those that try don't work). People in the know will concede the point, but before we conclude, let's fill in a big blank. How did we get from "nine lives" to the furry tentacles of power over humankind? That's a big jump. What do those things have in common? What road did we travel from twisting and landing neatly on all fours to controlling the domestic order?
Well, let's see. Let me think. Yes, that's it: Everything.
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| [c] Fundamentals of rule RF |
It is not just that furry little Lucy taunts and escapes death on a weekly basis, thereby extending her dominion and averting the possibility of crafting a generational do-over with a new little kitty "who" must build power from scratch. Sure, longevity (壽) is part of it. It figures into the equation, but not in any profound way. No, nine lives must be read in the context of the longest-running continuous governmental philosophy on earth—Chinese cosmology and political theory. You see, just evading trouble in far more sophisticated fashion than Rover or various neighborhood raccoons is no great feat. Power may be won on the battlefield of domestic struggle, but it does not take root until raw control is harnessed to overwhelming vision.
If you read La Pensée Chinoise, you know that three squared is (yin)-yang power squared. It is lies at the very heart of traditional Chinese politico-cosmological underpinnings of imperial authority. If you are anywhere near the number nine, you are in the gravitational pull of imperial power.
Cats know this.
That is what really is at work with "nine lives," and just about everyone in human history has missed it (except for Chinese political theorists...who live with cats). Power comes from battlefield (early morning meowing) and political (pet me here...and now) victories, to be sure, but raw power is nothing but sweat-drenched (and often pyrrhic) victory. Real power can only be solidified for the generations by allying with the world of ideas. It is how one victory becomes nine (three squared) lives.
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| [d] Two down (seven to go) RF |
You see, unlike former president George H.W. Bush, cats truly "get" the whole "vision thing." They smell pretty well, too. Nine lives is "the vision thing." It is the mythology behind the power—the Amaterasu Omikami behind the divine status of the Japanese emperor (until 1945)—and the reason that your cat runs your house.
Nine lives provides the sacred backstory behind your cat's power over you.
Like all power-explaining myths, it bubbles below the surface until needed. Then it squashes your revolt. In the end, you welcome your naughty little feline master home after inexplicably letting her squeeze out the door, and after you have worried yourself sick all day long. Into the kitchen trots little Molly, having secured—in your very insecurity—even greater power over you.
Only the Roman Catholic church and Dong Zongshu's articulation of Han cosmology (well, and two dozen other politico-religious bodies in human history) have ever come close to the mythology of Nine Lives Feline Rulership.
If you think that this is just a little cat-fancying and pet-loving nothingness....well, they have you right where they want you.
As much as I would like to continue, I have a few things to do. I need to feed the cats, and freshen their water bowls. Then I will push the bed up against the window so they can enjoy the afternoon sunshine. I am a little behind schedule, so I have to get moving...
Gotta run.
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| [e] Le chat, c'est moi RF |
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