This article is based on this Dutch article by Martijn Benders
The Carriage to the Land of Milk and Honey
Once again, this beautiful map:
Further research revealed that it was drawn by Enrico Mazzanti, the original illustrator of Pinocchio!
Pinocchio, drawn by Enrico Mazzanti.
I tried to figure out why two figures (one with a nightcap) are riding a basilisk, being tickled by a ballerina with a feather in France. Or why Turkey is represented by a crocodile with a nightcap?
The basilisk fits perfectly with the idea of France as a country where one “seeks danger”—eating raw meat in restaurants, writing poems about poisonous flowers like Baudelaire did, inventing existentialism, with its main product being wine, alcohol—all things that turn you to stone. But France also has that other, elegant side, the embellishments, the refined arts, which cannot resist tickling the basilisk with a feather.
But how surprising is it that already in 1871, the illustrator of Pinocchio was able to map out our enemy images so accurately? Images that we seemingly cannot escape? Because “Turkey as the sick man of Europe” is why we see a crocodile there with a sick hat. It’s dangerous; it’s sick. But the real danger truly lies in Russia.
But who is that enormous gnome with the bloody knife we see in Russia? That can only be a caricature of Tsar Alexander II of Russia, known for his enormous reforms. In 1871, he abolished slavery, and right after that, a war broke out in the U.S. over that same slavery. Isn’t that remarkable?
A war—we must at all costs prevent the Russians from appearing more progressive than us.
Why this eternal enmity towards something that’s just as Caucasian as you are? As this map already shows, the enemy image is enormous.
So, we are actually living in an endless episode of Pinocchio. And all the while, the real war in 1871, when this map was drawn, isn’t seen on the map at all. That was the Franco-Prussian War, 1870-1871, which was definitely in full swing when this map was drawn. And yet, you only see that eternal enemy image, so the cognitive dissonance (see the Eternal Freshman) was at least as monstrously large then as it is now.
The Wooden Golem
You don’t draw the real war on the map at all. So, as a draftsman, you don’t live in reality either, but rather in a kind of symbolic reality fueled by archetypes in your head. Precisely what Baudrillard would call hyperreality.
To experience that hyperreality, you only need to look at Twitter for one second. What you experience then is precisely what bureaucrat Sam Lowry sees in the film Brazil when he opens the door of his laughable little office. A massive convocation of buzzing bureaucrats passing by in a hallucinatory procession, grouping around a world-famous bureaucrat-politician screaming, “Yes, no, yes, no, good, not good,” making an endless series of decisions without any form of actual dialogue.
You can clearly observe that convocation on Twitter, and then there are those who think that if they shout something at that convocation, it will have any effect.
In reality, however, a marketing agency heads such a convocation. Even the cozy PVV group photo recently turned out to be a Photoshop creation. Barry’s legs were just missing.
Pinocchio, the wooden golem whose nose always grows when he lies. The original story is so incredibly complex that I almost immediately give up attempting an analysis. For those who don’t believe this, read the summary on Wikipedia.
Much more complex than, for example, Alice in Wonderland, which is a comparable story full of talking animals and symbols.
You could perhaps argue that the complexity of the above map actually serves a very simple enemy image.
And while what is actually needed is the opposite: an incredibly complex enemy image with a very simple basis. Are those people who put eavesdropping software on your phone truly your friends? A rhetorical question, but given that we behave as slaves to archetypal scripts without ever questioning the basis of such images—cognitive dissonance—isn’t that essentially what we constantly label in the media as “our way of life eternally in danger”?
The Carriage to the Land of Milk and Honey
One of the most threatening situations is when Pinocchio is lured to the Land of Milk and Honey (Paese dei Balocchi, Land of Toys), a place where children can do whatever they want without rules or supervision. However, this turns out to be a trap, as children there transform into donkeys and are sold as slaves.
That brings me back to serotonin. After all, it’s also a kind of Land of Milk and Honey in pill form, only they’ve filed off the truly uplifting aspects of serotonin, leaving behind something you can scientifically describe quite well as “second-hand happiness.”
Are you a donkey if you let the (semi)state sedate you with second-hand happiness? A slave perhaps? A slave who has been convinced that their brain is ill?
Oh, whoever believes such things—at least try serotonin in its pure form through MDMA, 5-MAPB, or 6APB—you’ll see it’s not the bird but the clipped wings. Serotonin is essentially a magical substance.
But if you clip the wings, well, then you’re indeed sitting in that Golden Carriage to the Land of Milk and Honey.
And knowing that receptor insensitivity is one of the main causes of modern, very painful nerve diseases like fibromyalgia: I say, stay away from those clipped remedies and see what the full substance can do for you.
Serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are a class of medications primarily used to treat depression and other mood disorders. They work by blocking the reabsorption of serotonin in brain neurons, keeping serotonin active longer in the synaptic cleft between neurons, thus enhancing serotonin signaling.
Regarding “bombarding” the receptors: by increasing the amount of serotonin in the synaptic cleft, SSRIs indeed boost serotonin receptor stimulation. This isn’t literally a bombardment, but a method to increase serotonin activity in the brain. This can help alleviate depression symptoms since serotonin is involved in mood, anxiety, and happiness regulation.
However, as serotonin also plays a role in other parts of the body, such as the digestive system, SSRIs can also cause side effects affecting these areas. Increased serotonin levels in the digestive system, which also contains serotonin receptors, can sometimes lead to side effects like nausea or diarrhea.
So, yes, essentially a serotonin reuptake blocker increases serotonin receptor stimulation by boosting the available serotonin amount, sometimes experienced as a “bombardment” of activity on these receptors. But constantly increasing serotonin will eventually make the receptors less sensitive, leading to conditions like fibromyalgia—a disease unheard of a century ago.
The desensitization of serotonin receptors is a disaster, honestly, because serotonin is precisely the substance that regulates sleep and mood in your body, as well as your nerves, your calmness, etc. If you then opt for a quack solution (symptom management) as a short-term solution – consider that this ‘short-term solution’ also caused a genocide among all aquatic life, because those substances eventually end up in everything and everyone through the water. What you end up with is a world full of people with an increasingly high rose-tinted glasses level, people who, for example, provoke a dangerous nuclear power simply because it feels good, a heroic role for themselves.
Martijn, July 24, 2024