Elaboration 14.2

A somewhat different approach towards 'applause' and 'control' should be made here. For convenience sake, the term 'applause' is used preferably because the term 'control' does not seem to reflect the stupidologic essence so well. The reality is that applause denotes the measure of control, and is an indication for on what side one stands. One is applauded by those being controlled, and one applauds the one who is in control. Truly, it is typical that what one controls, one has contempt for, i.e. one does not applaud. What we possess, we control, and the controller is more-, better-, higher-, than what he controls. When a rich man is heard to say that money is nothing important to him, ask him to make it over to you there and then. He will not do so of course, but you have seen through his contempt for what he controls, his possession. On the other hand, why is a man in say, a train, so angry with the man who is reading 'his' newspaper alongside with him? It is not the sheer possession of the newspaper that he steals. Anyway, he knows very well that the pages do not lose all their letters by being read unauthorized. He knows too that this particular paper is valued today as 100 cents but tomorrow it will be worth 2 cents per ton. No, he is angry because he loses some control, because another person shares his reading, i.e. his control. Why would a dog owner become angry with you when you are friendly to his dog and it shows affection to you? Certainly not because he expects his dog to go over to the other camp, but because it shows you as having some control over what he ought to control. The reader may safely substitute 'newspaper' or 'dog' for 'wife, husband, mistress, friend, etc. '. and he will find it applies too. I have seen a good (?) friendship wrecked, solely because one party had other friends as well, simple jealousy. Jealousy is not only with regard to the loss of property, the missing of property, but also with regard to the loss or miss of (part of) control. The normal 'attention' of others to you, is control-indicative is applause. When lovers hold hands, they practically get nothing out of it except that it is a signal to others and themselves that they possess, they control, and they have given up control, possession. In the pure dog-world, that fellow who puts up his tail, straight as a poker, indicates that he is in control. This being not recognized as legitimate by other dogs, there is nothing that makes them so angry and aggressive. In nature, in the pack, only one dog has acquired the status of leader, of controller, and this allows him to wear his tail upright. All ideation is a fight for the control of the environment, of reality. It IS control and trying to control, therefore, the human fight for applause (control) is natural. Natural that is, when the other fight for control (hunger, the belly) has become superfluous. Stupidity then, is not unnatural, it is only the outcome of the fight for control, applause. But the rational mind can have this very same natural hankering for control, applause, but then on a rational basis. With this, he thus also wants the applause to come from likewise rational beings, not from stupids (see M Aurelius A, Epictetus, Cicero, Seneca, etc.).