Palin’s farewell as poetry, as performed by the master of the pregnant pause, @WilliamShatner.

Shatner Reads Palin As Poetry

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I was just looking for a good play on “iambic pentameter,” but was reminded of a better, deeper meaning that explains much of Sarah Palin’s behavior, and that of her supporters, Rich Lowry and the Starbursters. All this is probably part of some grand, incoherent plan for 2012, as hinted back in October 2008.

Check it out (emphasis added in bold):

The Limbic System (Paleomammalian brain). In 1952 MacLean first coined the name “limbic system” for the middle part of the brain. It can also be termed the paleopallium or intermediate (old mammalian) brain. It corresponds to the brain of the most mammals, and especially the earlier ones. The old mammalian brain residing in the limbic system is concerned with emotions and instincts, feeding, fighting, fleeing, and sexual behaviour. As MacLean observes, everything in this emotional system is either “agreeable or disagreeable”. Survival depends on avoidance of pain and repetition of pleasure.

When this part of the brain is stimulated with a mild electrical current various emotions (fear, joy, rage, pleasure and pain etc) are produced. No emotion has been found to reside in one place for very long. But the Limbic system as a whole appears to be the primary seat of emotion, attention, and affective (emotion-charged) memories. Physiologically, it includes the the hypothalamus, hippocampus, and amygdala. It helps determine valence (e.g., whether you feel positive or negative toward something, in Buddhism referred to as vedena – “feeling”) and salience (e.g., what gets your attention); unpredictability, and creative behaviour. It has vast interconnections with the neocortex, so that brain functions are not either purely limbic or purely cortical but a mixture of both.

MacLean claims to have found in the Limbic system a physical basis for the dogmatic and paranoid tendency, the biological basis for the tendency of thinking to be subordinate feeling, to rationalize desires. He sees a great danger in all this limbic system power. As he understands it, this lowly mammalian brain of the limbic system tends to be the seat of our value judgements, instead of the more advanced neocortex. It decides whether our higher brain has a “good” idea or not, whether it feels true and right.

I remember reading about this hypothesis a while back, when researchers claimed there was a physiological basis for religious and political fundamentalism, dogmatic and judgemental parenting models, and so on. It may be complete hoo-ha but it’s very intriguing.

It doesn’t hurt that this idea means that progressive, tolerant people are more highly evolved than regressive, intolerant people.

The Reptilian Brain. The archipallium or primitive (reptilian) brain, or “Basal Brian”, called by MacLean the “R-complex”, includes the brain stem and the cerebellum, is the oldest brain. It consists of the structures of the brain stem – medulla, pons, cerebellum, mesencephalon, the oldest basal nuclei – the globus pallidus and the olfactory bulbs. In animals such as reptiles, the brain stem and cerebellum dominate. For this reason it is commonly referred to as the “reptilian brain”. It has the same type of archaic behavioural programs as snakes and lizards. It is rigid, obsessive, compulsive, ritualistic and paranoid, it is “filled with ancestral memories”. It keeps repeating the same behaviours over and over again, never learning from past mistakes (corresponding to what Sri Aurobindo calls the mechanical Mind). This brain controls muscles, balance and autonomic functions, such as breathing and heartbeat. This part of the brain is active, even in deep sleep.

And it even makes room for the Lizard People. Who are poised to take over the world in 2012 and rule as our Reptilian Overlords, apparently, also.

Over the last year Icke’s writings have become so paranoid and so extreme that many are probably inclined to dismiss him as posing any sort of threat, or requiring a response. Icke is now arguing in all seriousness that the Illuminati plot to take over the world is actually being carried out by a race of extraterrestrial reptiles in human form. They are described, literally, as being child-sacrificing, blood-drinking Satan-worshippers capable of changing their shape, whose ranks include George Bush, Bill and Hilary Clinton, Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mum, Bob Hope and Kris Kristofferson, among others.

I look forward to welcoming Bob Hope as a saurian overseer, dead or not. Good thing they’re remaking V, which is obviously an encoded primer on how to create a resistance movement when the Lizard People finally reveal themselves.

When they do, I expect their statements will be more easily understood, like Palin’s, if rendered as verse – perhaps in pterodactylic Rexometer. Maybe Shatner’s Gorn buddy could do the readings for their “People of Earth, you’re so screwed yet so tasty, nom nom nom” poetry slam.