Part Two: Berlusconi and the significance of sigils

Silvio Berlusconi is something of a unique individual.  The 74-year-old prime minister of Italy behaves in a way completely removed from any normal expectation of how a senior politician should act; he ignores or buys off allegations of corruption, makes repeated comedy offensive remarks to very powerful people, has sex parties with teenagers and generally conducts himself like he simply does not give two hoots.

Here's a list of legal problems he has faced and batted aside like they didn't exist.

Some of the things he has been accused of but never convicted of include bribery, membership of an illegal masonic society that attempted to install a quasi-fascist regime in Italy, drug trafficking, mafia involvement, tax evasion, false accounting and embezzlement.  He is currently in the news over allegations that he paid a seventeen-year-old girl for sex during one of his alleged "bunga-bunga" sex parties.

As far as getting away with saying and doing socially inappropriate things goes, this list is either very shocking or utterly hilarious, depending on your viewpoint. Any time he makes an apology it's clear that he is completely and utterly taking the piss.

Some examples taken from that list are:
 

• Making a rude gesture behind the Spanish foreign minister at an official photo shoot implying the minister was a cuckold.  Berlusconi apologised by saying that he was just kidding, that he was trying to create a relaxed atmosphere and foster kind relationships, and most brilliantly of all that he was trying to amuse a nearby group of boy scouts.

• In 2003, during an interview with Nicholas Farrell , then editor of The Spectator magazine, Berlusconi claimed that Mussolini "had been a benign dictator who did not murder opponents but sent them 'on holiday'".

• Uncle Silvio apologised for saying that the Communists used to eat children by saying, "... read the Black Book of Communism and you will discover that in the communist China of Mao, they did not eat children, but had them boiled to fertilise the fields".  After rival politician Romani Prodi heavily criticised Berlusconi for this, he gave out one thousand copies of the Black Book of Communism at an election rally.   

• He was asked on television by a young woman what the younger generation should do about the lack of secure jobs.  His reply was that that she should try to marry the son of Berlusconi; "with a smile like yours, you could try".

• On several occasions he has complimented Barack Obama on his suntan.

•  On one occasion when due to meet German leader Angela Merkel, he hid behind a pillar and after she had walked past called out "coo coo".

• At another official photoshoot made up of world leaders, Berlusconi tried to get President Obama's attention by calling his name out.  This annoyed the Queen causing her to turn around and chastise Silvio, saying, “What is it? Why does he have to shout?”

That list is far from exhaustive, he's also regularly made jokes about rape, homosexuality Jews, Muslims, and makes remarks about sexy young women as if it's his favourite hobby. 

This man is 74-years-old and has run a major European country on and off since 1994.  So how the hell does he get away with it?

In my previous blog entry, I explained how each outcome in each discrete unit of time is created by the observer and is influenced by their attitudes and beliefs at that point in time.  It is my belief that there is some sort of cosmic database that holds each potential moment of reality, and that each of these points has a sort of reference number to identify it.  This can be imagined in a simplied form as physical location + position in time + identity and intention of the observer.

Obviously the universe is an indescribably complex place so this database reference is far more complicated than a simple grid reference, it is made up of an unimaginably vast number of parameters.

(Incidentally, there is an idea within hyper-reality that we live in a simulated world. Jean Baudrillard wrote of the example of a map so detailed that it covers the very land it is supposed to represent. The "grid reference" idea can be thought of as both being a map of reality, and reality itself because it is irreducibly complex and represents that which it is.)

Psychologically people use images and other forms of cross-referencing in their minds to remember facts, link ideas and generally make sense of the world around them.  There are also many ideas which exist in a kind of collective consciousness; for example language uses a huge amount of metaphors and idioms that mean something more than the sum of their parts, and one of the biggest problems with translating between languages is that subtle nuances of meaning can be lost when translating one word to another which otherwise means exactly the same thing.

The most plausible explanation for the fact that all native English speakers will understand the subtextual implications of a given word or phrase is that we have learnt it in the course of our lives.  There are other potential explanations but they are all too speculative to consider here.

Here are some synonyms for the word good: dear, good, right, in effect, unspoiled, skillful, sound, serious, effective, upright, salutary, in force, skilful, practiced, dependable, estimable, technical, expert, secure, beneficial, proficient, full, honest, respectable, undecomposed, unspoilt, nice, ripe, just, safe, adept, honorable, well, near, practised.

Each of these words has a slightly different connotation, and depending on context could massively alter the perceived meaning of a sentence*.  Assuming that we have learnt all of these different connotations and implications, I ask you this question:  Can you remember one specific instance of the actual learning of these subtle differences?

I'm expecting that you answered no.  We pick up on subtle, unconscious hidden meanings throughout our lives to the point that they are so deeply ingrained that we are mostly unaware of them, and we assume their inherent meaning to be set in stone and somehow to exist as a solid, real thing outside ourselves.

This doesn't just apply to words, I bet that if I ask you to picture an angel or a demon you will have a mental image that is more or less identical to everybody else's, even though in this age of science and reason there are relatively few people who believe that angels or demons literally exist.

You may or may not be aware of having seen this image before:

This image is from the Visconti family's coat of arms and dates back to at least the 5th century AD, in Milan.  Its exact meaning is unclear but it quite clearly shows a crowned serpent eating a man, and whichever way you look at it is a pretty unequivocal expression of power.

In fact you have seen this image before, but you may not be aware of it.  This is the logo of the Alfa Romeo car company:

It's a stylised and modernised version of the serpent symbol, but it's clearly the same basic image.  Older versions of the Alfa logo have it looking more like the stone carving above:

So whatever this image means, there are a lot of copies of it around, effectively hidden in plain sight.  There are a lot of people who like Alfa Romeo cars, so a lot of people have thoughts of goodwill when they think of this logo.  As I explained in the Double Slit entry, peoples' attitudes and views shape their realities moment by moment.  And as I explained a couple of paragraphs above, people know what certain things mean at an unconscious level without being aware of it.

Put these together and whenever people think positively about Alfa Romeo, they are also positively reinforcing whatever hidden meaning the image of the serpent eating the man has.

This is a picture of Silvio Berlusconi's lawn:

Seriously. That's not right.

I believe that this shows that Berlusconi has linked his intentions and his willpower to this image, so that whenever somebody sees the image they subconsciously process it and all it represents, and he is able to use their willpower to strengthen his own and swan about the place doing whatever the hell he wants. If a person has an emotional response, for example if they are admiring their shiny new Alfa Romeo, then the effect is increased.

This image is used by Berlusconi to represent the reality he wants to achieve.  It is a simplified version of the grid co-ordinates used to represent that reality, and as we all subconsciously know how to read and understand these grid coordinates, we are encouraging Berlusconi's reality every time we see the image.

An image used to represent an outcome, to represent a reality, is called a sigil.  Sigils are massively powerful and are used by some of the most powerful people in the world.

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 *Also, in Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, the government is trying to streamline language to remove all the nuances.  All words meaning something like "good" are to be removed and only the basic word is to be permitted.  Instead of bad, you would use the word ungood.  In order to say that something is extraordinarily bad, you would say it is doubleplus ungood.  This has the effect of removing the ability to describe why something is bad, and therefore stops the dissemination of critical opinions.

Coming up in later editions:

More examples of famous sigils

How you can make use of sigils

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