Manson (1973)

The beauty of the ignorant.

I had seen Charles Manson's interviews in jail and got away with the impression that Manson simply didn't give a fuck, considering life a win some, lose some affair, and on a very basic level and in a very general sense that might be the truth, but having seen Hendrickson's documentary now, I feel that I should reconsider his case in more detail.

I've repeatedly written about the four types of evil that have the potential for social growth, namely the moulding of the three parts of the soul by alienating (Lust), suppressing criticism (heed) and confusing (care), and the abuse of choice through arbitrariness; for the first time in a systematic way on the 21st of July 2012: Moralische Defizite aus Schwäche oder Bosheit.

It's patently obvious which of these four evils was the evil of Manson's Family, namely arbitrariness, the arbitrary setting of right and wrong, valuable and worthless, following of course a deeper current of opportunism.

Manson's followers all lacked judgment and it's written in their faces. After being treated to sex and drugs they started to live in fragments of Manson's mind, fading out all parts of reality that weren't bathed in the brightness of his cynical assertions.

And that they were. Manson had picked up Hippie phrases and gave them a spin suited to the situations of his life, not unlike many a cantankerous old man of his time. The difference being of course that Manson had decided at some point that he would be doing a respectable work in the eyes of the Lord, if he took the flotsam of society, with which the Hippie movement supplied him so amply, and shaped it into a family of lawless predators, feeding on the American society.

It is not more than the pursuit of a personal vendetta, mocking both the experiences of his own life and the institutions and currents of the United States. He turned to arbitrariness, because he found it easy with many, probably finding many of the opinions of his time to be extremely arbitrary, thinking he could do at least as well.

He probably did believe that crime thrives in the American system, and he had certainly been in jail long enough to figure himself an expert on the matter, only that he refused to let himself be depressed by it and instead chose to take it as an invitation to a game that he would play with a team of supporting players, who would share his belief in self-righteousness in a system of injustice: If you can't establish moral rules, I'll just make my own.

A heartless man. Scary is the flotsam, whose ignorance allowed it to feel itself fulfilled.