911 and 77 (21)

I am old enough to have been able to watch the TV series "The Prisoner" at the time it was first broadcast, oh way back in the late '60s and believe me I was a big fan too and, I suspect, like many fans of today rather, as in my case, than yesterday, I watched and thought about it all on my own. I don't remember ever sharing thoughts about it with anyone. I was able to watch it in peace, undisturbed, I turned the sound right down, real low, my parents went off to bed about 10.30 pm and my younger brother likewise and my sister too, they were all packed off safely upstairs in bed and out of the way by the time it aired which must have been at 11pm - and that on it's own was unusual because a TV program of that kind, however you want to slot it, would more normally have been shown in the 8pm slot - I would say, from memory. I had watched and been a big fan of Danger Man years before, also with Patrick McGoohan - the man who a search engine might have been half-named after, if they were wise - (Google, in case you're having difficulty with my crytic sense of humour) and programs like that, thriller series I suppose they might be called, would always be slotted in the earlier part of the evening because in those days TV transmissions ended at about midnight and the viewing schedule was a much simpler formula than today. I imagine it's late showing was and is a signal that it was too strange to show as a series like Danger Man or The Saint and their formulaic like and a big risk as such. It is ever the case that the strange will be treated as dubious.

Anyway this isn't a history or sociological article article but an insightful and more meaningful one like most of my writings so let's move on to the point.

When I found out that Patrick Mc Goohan was (and of course still is) Irish but more importantly was (maybe still is, I have no idea) a catholic then the Rover, that giant white balloon object, meaning became clear to me - it is a metaphorical representation of the body of christ - but let me do a whoa there because those who have never tried catholic ritual, the 'mass', may not understand what this is all about. Catholics, as I was many years ago, would and still do, make their way up to the alter, the front, stage area part of the church where all the action is and there is a kind of fence, a low level wooden wall and in front of that there is a step, all the way along and during a part of 'the mass' as they call it, this weekly performance some of the people queue up for a piece of god.

They form a queue to kneel on this step in front of and up against the wooden fence and the priest on the other side of the fence goes along the row and makes a few magic passes and says a few latin words and takes a thin round white piece of what is something like rice-paper, that stuff they use underneath cakes which you can eat although on it's own its pretty bland. Well the point is that you have this whole mystical paraphenalia and ritual going on and it is bound to cause imaginations to run riot. That's the whole idea behind it of course, it's not about making things, the truth for example, clear but about making things mysterious exactly the same in any magic show except that the magic show contains more truth and is motivated by purer thought than these catholic rituals.

That round slice of magic rice paper is supposed to be the body of christ, really, no, I am not kidding, go along, pretend your a catholic for a day, join in, copy the others, and try it out. If you explode it's because you havn't been sanctified, blessed and purified and forgiven for all your sins. The priest pops the biscuit on to your tongue, and you don't touch it except with your tongue which you actually push out of your mouth so the priest can put it there, no I am not kidding, and you mustn't bite it because then it will bleed because it's god's, jesus's, christ's body you're eating.

You have to understand that catholicism is like a double strength version of christianity and in Ireland it is doubled or amplified hugely yet again. In any society that has a regular ritual mumbo jumbo performance then it is bound to generate as a side effect, if you like, an inner confused state of mind because that is what they do and is largely how they work - it is all about affecting our minds - and a large part of it is about creating controlled fear which is what mortal sin, hell and damnation, god's wrath etc is all about. That state of mind will have at least that much as a certain, calculable, kind of uniformity to it. Now whether this is a good thing or a bad thing is a separate issue although in the case of catholicism I see nothing but evil in it and I am writing as a man who is well aware of the Great Spiritual Reality not as an atheist and I write not as an embittered victim of it but as someone who just believes in describing things as they actually are and not with some ulterior motive except that of revealing, exposing evil, and that is what it plainly is to me, evil. Anyway that metaphor is pretty damn obvious to me but you either go with metaphor phenomenon like this because you already know about such things, which is rare, or you don't.

Years ago I noticed a couple of pattern things about catholics, one is the women's hair! Another is that the priests end up looking like psychiatrists often to. I think this is because in both cases an extreme form of mentality is present which is consistent and powerful and, frankly, very similar and it takes up most of one's thinking or pseudo-thinking life. Of course I am just providing a quick half-explanation on the spur of the moment for why this pattern is there and what it means, it means there is something in common basically. As far as the hair goes I haven't got a clue except that it's part of something bigger, because it's big hair, wonderful and awesome or at least we are meant to think so, and taken a little further they also have this common 'aura' too, a certain kind of presentational template if you like, it even comes across when you hear them speak on the radio, there is a certain tonality which is derived from a kind of forced confidence in their catholic ideas but I have never really paid any attention to it, just noticed it that's all. Now, just recently, I was thinking about the Prisoner again, I don't recall the context but I realized what another part of The Village is all about, what it is a metaphor of, it is the catholic congregation after mass. This is how they are, slick, clean, simple, smart, with a forced and ultra simple but forced confidence, an artificial confidence and certainty about everything and well sort of zombified. You can't really pin it down but you just know something, just something isn't quite right, isn't quite as it should be. The people in the village are exactly that, they are blissfully unaware of the obvious, and if you are slightly questioning they look at you quizzically. That is catholicism to a T.

While I am on a roll here it occurs to me to point out the garb of those in charge of the village, if I remember rightly didn't they sometimes resemble priests?

Now, I don't want to explain all about metaphor here, it's just too big and deep subject to explain in a cursory look at the two examples here, the body of christ and the catholic congregation but I have to also say another thing which is about a human ability to pattern-recognize. I think we all have it but like psychic ability it may or may not be evident to a greater or lesser degree. Then too there is strangeness factor and I note that people shut off if the strangeness factor gets too big for them.

This is why, or partly way anyway, The Prisoner is such a specialist following, a calling if you like, that only appeals to a certain 'attributed' minority.

We all know, those of us with that kind of eagerness to look and want to know, that there is something to it, that it means something, but we are puzzled about it. Various analytical commentaries, explaining The Prisoner may or may not be right - I have only scantily paid attention to one and I don't usually have any interest in other's interpretations simply because they fall into a standard that is almost always very blinkered despite it's insightfullness and the insight usually shapes the meaning into a socio-politico-societal context and not even looking at anything much beyond that so it easily misses the point, so I don't pay much interest there.

My interpretation is more meaningful by far at least it is to me and is much more specific. It raises the question of just exactly what is this phenomenon that I call metaphorical representation, for example is it deliberate, is it sub conscious. It is rarely deliberate, rarely done with full conscious awareness otherwise the motivation would be lost because it is the conscious awareness of A Puzzle that is the motivation. Knowing the answer takes away the motivation express it, the Puzzle, I mean, why go to all that trouble unless it is a really niggling enigma that needs to be expressed.

In essence, what you are seeing when you watch The Prisoner is an attempt to represent a metaphor of something that occupies the mind but occupies the mind in a way which is less obvious that anything we would consciously pay attention to and thus the mind redirects the way we deal with it so that the result is the expression of it in a metaphor.

Breaking away from conditioning, programming and indoctrination, dogma and all kinds of controlled thinking where the control is exerted by anything other than self discipline is and should always be openable, openable to scrutiny and close examination. The Prisoner is just such an opening. It provides us with an "Of course!" factor, an of course with added "why didn't I see that before?" quality to it because when you look at something you are part of like, in this case, catholicism, it is just about impossible to see it objectively and for what it really is, instead you are bound to be swept up by it. But curiosity, wanting to know answers to questions you know you are not supposed to ask opens up an almost magical process and connects you to a means of getting the answers and the very answers themselves: metaphor.

In large part then, The Prisoner is a metaphor for catholicism. It very likely is much more too but even if it were just that it's value would be, and is, priceless.

If you are a fan of The Prisoner then it may well be that you are aligning with the messages that it gives without knowing what the message is. If that is annoying then bear in mind that it would be equally the case for Patrick Mc Goohan too - he probably doesn't realize the source of his inspiration. That does not and is not meant to devalue this great work of his, it was largely his work and money too that brought us The Prisoner and thank you Patrick for that truly marvellous gift, one which will puzzle thinking people for generations to come, generations as yet unborn.

By Paul E. Coughlin
SaneThinking.com
25 May 2007

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