See the discussion thread at:
artistsway.tribe.net/thread/...f769b3dd
(if you can't see the entire link and it's not working for you, it's in "artistsway.tribe.net" and is entitled "Another form of thought control, re: The Artist's Way?"

First to the post above [Diane's]:
Yes, I read the book, yes I still have that copy. You are misunderstanding. JC uses "crazymaker" in the same general terms I use that term; you are obfuscating things...She's talking about "crazymakers" who are fellow artists, not just anyone in particular. But good try.

To Diane:
JC's book DID gain a national audience much faster, than say, anything Richard Bach or perhaps even don Miguel Ruiz ever wrote, or for that matter Noam Chomsky (but of course, Chomsky write political analysis). Her rise to popularity was about as fast as the "West Nile Virus" scare that killed, what, four people (?) compared to the AIDS crisis of the 1980s which continues to kill thousands, if not millions around the world. The politics that went in to blocking AIDS awareness in the early 80s appears similar in its pipeline pattern to how truly liberating information --i.e. info working to help us maintain our autonomy and meaningful community-- is suppressed. JC's book, on the other hand, was hyped widely in a similar meta way to the West Nile Virus.

That is probably too rough and unrelated a comparison, but it's what came off the top of my head. Anyone have a better one?

As for the idea that people having challenges with their creativity should *avoid* others similarly challenged (i say), sounds like the typical manipulation i'm seeking to expose. The typical manipulation here is that the challenged artist should not worry themselves with aiding others and therefore actually aiding themselves (via empathetic strategies of mutual aid), but should *let the professionals* do that, and just give away your power to them, and don't worry about that even if your intuition brings alarm bells.

That's what I get out of that.

And no, I didn't read this other book you mention. Is this a new book? I suspect she uses these new terms to throw on people like me who seek to challenge her thinking and advocacy in the typical manipulative ways that "successful" professionals are known world-wide for doing: avoiding and ignoring the meat of a challenge while seeking to assasinate the character of the personality of the challenger. "Wet blanket" sounds like it's meant to throw onto people like me, for example!

And "piggybacker" sounds like a mechanism to silence those who agree with a challenger, using similar tactics!

Oh, the short-term laughs (or head-shaking) so many artists must be "enjoying" at the expense of their fellow even-more-sensitive artists! Hooo boiii! And the long-term profits so many con artists are enjoying at the expense of you fools for so easily being manipulated like this. (Ah, but we are such products of our domestication, aren't we?)

You said:
The time to help a personality type that makes you crazy is NOT when you're trying to get your own balance back. In fact, you really cannot be any help to that person then anyway. I personally think everyone is a creative. But that doesn't mean I have to associate with every creative that tries to take over my life with their agenda.
----
I dissent. That's like if you told a nation, say Cuba, that since they have not got their shit together yet, they shouldn't go helping other nations. Think this through, is all I'm saying. If you know anything of imperialism and colonization in the world, look at what leading institutional analysts are saying and compare. That's all I'm promoting.

Now, the idea of even *reducing fellow human beings* to emotionally potent oversimplifications like she is promoting in her books is one of the classic games pros play when seeking "to pull wool over the eyes" of the unwary (i.e. artists who are being reduced/streamlined into market value type war games). That is, to exploit us while pushing "necessary" values (values which don't allow for true challenge to even rear up) Read something about how thought control works, and you may wake up as well. These certainly aren't the values of someone trying to create truly meaningful community!

For example, try this on for size, from:
web.archive.org/web/200412...reface.html
(Pay attention to the latter part of this quote, especially. Note it's from the web archive; I don't know why zmag.org decided to change things so much after so many years of hosting this book, but you can read all of it via the archive project, still at least!)
--
"...The issues that arise are rooted in the nature of Western industrial societies and have been debated since their origins. In capitalist democracies there is a certain tension with regard to the locus of power. In a democracy the people rule, in principle. But decision-making power over central areas of life resides in private hands, with large-scale effects throughout the social order. One way to resolve the tension would be to extend the democratic system to investment, the organization of work, and so on. That would constitute a major social revolution, which, in my view at least, would consummate the political revolutions of an earlier era and realize some of the libertarian principles on which they were partly based. Or the tension could be resolved, and sometimes is, by forcefully eliminating public interference with state and private power. In the advanced industrial societies the problem is typically approached by a variety of measures to deprive democratic political structures of substantive content, while leaving them formally intact. [b]A large part of this task is assumed by ideological institutions that channel thought and attitudes within acceptable bounds, deflecting any potential challenge to established privilege and authority before it can take form and gather strength. The enterprise has many facets and agents. ..."[/b]--from the preface of Chomsky's 1989 book _Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies_

The bottom line is that we artists are simply to take orders from the oligarchy of alleged experts. If we question things articulately (or in the case of the "crazymaker" less-than-articulately) we run the risk of being castigated with all of these reductionist character assasination terms. We're not to see that the solidarity of meaningful community is being broken apart; we're not to see that "community" these days has become very very Orwellian. And we're not to remember that meaningful community once consisted of varying forms of mutual solidarity, empathy, and strategies of mutual enrichment, instead of restriction! By today's "values" and standards, all of that is much too threatening, and I'm sure some of you will march dutifully to your friendly neighborhood expert and tell her or him how bad I've "made you" feel now!

All that are left over from such shenanigans as these are the most stupidized and mediocre creative people who don't see how they're being fooled and tooled.

Now, if we were to change the name "artist" and insert the word "indigenous person" (and "crazymaker" with shaman or chief or similar potential power-spot-holding person), we might see things more clearly for what they are.

We artists must wake up to how we are not only already controlled (as already colonized subjects) but how we are increasingly controlled via the introduction of new levels of colonial-style control masked as beneficient. The basic tactic--divide and conquer remains at work to keep us alienated from all whom *might* seriously challenge the imposed value system. Of course, if they are shunned by dutiful fellow artists, they may not even obtain the necessary balance to do so! After all, labeled in such dehumanizing ways, the "help" they're likely to get will be only the most pretentious crap that their intuitions will no doubt vehemently challenge.

But, atomized from other artists, they will be (and already are) much easier to isolate and manipulate towards the values of Brave New World (I.e. didya hear about the latest DSM label "oppositional defiant disorder" now being seeded into young, pre-articulate rebel kids?). This is a pattern that's been going on for awhile now, and it will continue with the usual heavy financing and access to the national media in a most curious way.

Surely i've lost most of you on this, by now. All I can do is direct you to the writings of Frantz Fanon, Taiaiake Alfred, and the Papua New Gunean tribesman who wrote "Just Leave Us Alone!" And Noam Chomsky in the introduction to his fully-online book "Necessary Illusions" (see above link). Then perhaps you'll see how comparable the situation is to us.

More sources on thought control:
search.freefind.com/find.html

abuse and "improper"; this is a value assumption based on Rollback-style values. Who gets to decide what is "improper" and what is "proper" and why? Is this a true democratic decision? With hype like these labels she's perpetuating, I question her and all others who use this mechanism.

And, I disagree with you that "nobody's trying to" silence those labeled "abusers". Those hype terms alone are ways to silence people. And so is the idea that tells us we in our off-balance state *cannot possibly* aid our fellow off-balanced.

JC is likely "strategically challenged" because she's probably not conscious of the value system she's promoting. At least I'm giving her the benefit of the doubt on that one. That's what I mean by that term. It's nothing about "strategies", here. She's probably a "very well educated" (aka highly-propagandized) person who has internalized the "proper" value system and thus her quick rise into widespread popularity.

To conclude, yes, JC's books have kernals of truth, and yes, I see value in those. Yet the underlying value system is what I'm challenging, specifically in the quick resort to restriction from thinking things through. The value system that says it's okay to exclude or shun those labled in these anti-community ways (these ways, which, incidentally, are totally normalized in today's Rollback value system), while giving our powers of community away to these Nice professionals. These are classic techniques of *engineering consent* and artists who believe uncritically in this form of superficial "community" are in for a big surprise someday sooner or later.

Now, perhaps I should get some direct quotes, now that I've got the attention of some more thoughtful posters?