World Lobotomy

Clarence Dombey had a theory. It got him in trouble. But, like all double-edged swords, it also made him free. He called his theory, "World Lobotomy."

In a sense it's not the theory that caused the trouble: it was his wife, Claire. She was a shrew, a Xantippe, a psychological castrator of men. No one knew why she emasculated men. Maybe it had something to do with a grandfather and father who were such high achievers that she felt inferior, so since she couldn't outdo them she undid all men after them. Her most successful target was her husband: she snipped him through his pet theory.

Claire pulled the chain on her hubby by telling her lawyer and the judge, "Any adult male who actuallybelieves'World Lobotomy' has to be crazy. He must be committed. Locked up, and kept out of reach of society." Since a married person has the power to commit his/her spouse to a mental institution, Clarence found himself at the Sugar Loaf Health Center before he knew what hit him. And learned that he could stay there for the rest of his wife's life, too. That's when the other edge of the sword went into action. For after the first month of silent solitude which gave the man much needed rest, he came to realize that he had been on a treadmill run by Claire's motor and the only way to live in her world was to keep running. But he'd gotten just enough head-clearing rest that he didn't want to run anymore. Nor did he want to take the effort take on the courts. Instead,

he sat back and enjoyed his rest.

Fully rested, he put his theory on paper for posterity. Then disappeared. Disappeared is a good word because he was never seen again. He played his hand to perfection. He lived a new life with a new identity. Meanwhile, I'm convinced that there is just enough insight in the Clarence Theory that it may live on, at least in the minds of dreamers. I duplicate some of it here.

"Life is like a timeless, blank movie screen. In one age it shows that man's preoccupation was mere survival. His very paradigm has predominated by feast or famine, might is right, survival of the fittest. But at another time, a different movie covers the screen. One in which the outlook is master-slave. Here cheap labor rules. Disregard for human worth, get what you want by enslaving others. Another flick and on comes war: man destroys man, burns his food, smashes his houses, annihilates a race. Another feature is religion, where every actor is devoted, bows, carries on because religion is the filter through which the majority sees life. Another short is today's technology: invent, create, use the collective mentality to make everything we want with the least effort. Tools rule. And underlying many of these scenarios is the element of money."

"It has been said," continued Clarence's treatise, "that the two great evils that hinder mankind from reaching his true purpose on earth are women and gold. Women are a metaphor for all forms of self-indulgence, all sensuousness, whether it's over-eating, over-playing, or being pulled out of your Divine Self by the garment industry, cosmetics, or believing that sex really matters. Gold is a metaphor for all greed, need for power, hoarding, believing that profit rules, that the currency that reflects human worth is money and that we can't live without it because money is the form God takes on earth. A horrendous thought, but it's what underlies our

present paradigm. Women and gold: the way we see everything today."

I read Clarence's paper during Juice Break so I had to put it down occasionally and give my attention to the Residents. The next section intrigued me as much as the first did.

"There's an ancient text," Clarence wrote, "that states that all life is an illusion called Maya. Maya is all the movies on the blank screen: they are all false facades. True life is the blank movie screen. It's God and our inner selves. We're that blank screen, not all the distractions we overlay on. And I," stated Clarence, "have come to see that the paradigm of Money Rules has had its time and should be replaced by a moneyless outlook. Here's how it can be done."

Though I read skeptically, the Resident's philosophical bent was a breath of fresh air. One can get lulled by being around the retarded at a Health Center all the time. Clarence suggested that if the world paradigm switched from one of money and profit to one of Comfortable Existence, all would be well and good. Poverty would stop because when money isn't the standard, there would be no difference in wealth. Famine would cease because no one would see food as his or mine so sharing would be natural. Strife between nations would vanish because the paradigm would no longer be gaining more than your neighbor was valid. Mr. Domby had it all figured out to his idealistic satisfaction.

Later in his treatise the man discussed how the new paradigm might be implemented. He noticed that throughout history an invention or new discovery tipped the scales, pushing out a former outlook. He hypothesized that some creation such as the wheel, the cotton gin, telephone-electricity-automobile, or nuclear fission-fusion, or the computer might bring the change about.

"I must not rule out any possibility," he said. "The switch could also

come from a magnanimous, charismatic leader with some spiritual gift. Certainly that could grab the imagination of the world's billions."

He concluded his paper by saying that whatever the new paradigm might be and how it might come about, its effects would be the same: it would be like mankind getting a world lobotomy thereby losing its aggressiveness.

When Claire Domby heard that her husband had "escaped," she went wild. She sicked the police on him, got the FBI involved, and put on a media-blitz man-hunt. But they never found him. And without her husband/scapegoat, the man-hating woman had no personal target. So she aimed her frustration at Sugar Loaf. When that failed, she went plain batty: she simply couldn't accept that her husband had enough gumption to ooze from under her control. Already imbalanced, this sent her completely over the edge. Ironically, her own sons had her committed to Sugar Loaf just as she had committed her husband. But as the saying goes, that's another story.

As for Clarence Dombey, he truly disappeared. His theory, for what it's worth, remains in my Journal.