Controlled and Compelled page one
	I have to wonder if Andrew Nichol intended The Truman Show to be more than it ended up being.  As it is, The Truman Show appears to be a yet to be discovered classic. The controlling aspect of our attachment experience years; the controlling effect our attachment experience years' caregivers have on our every experience, on every moment of every minute of every hour of every day of every month of every year of every decade of every life is the soul and spirit of this production; the prophetic essence that gives this movie a mystic right to exist. If this movie lasts through time, it will be because of this concept. The Truman Show and American Beauty are two recent movies that have incorporated this universal dynamic.  They have been met with great success, a wide audience of mystified seekers.  Viewers seem to have an instinctive attraction to their content, but for all I have been able to glean from the special features included with each dvd, they don’t seem to have a handle on the nature of the psychological mass which gives the movies their gravitational force.  They are as mystifying as a black hole phenomenon, except they are the exact opposite.  Instead of sucking everything in and annihilating it, they are spewing forth light in an attempt at waking the sleeping giant, mankind.  They are like World D mystics begging to be understood by a populace literally dying to understand. Let me give a brief synopsis of this attachment theory dynamic.  A child is born.  This child must immediately engage with its environment, but the child must be taught how to engage.  How this child will interact with its environment is established by the child’s genetic predisposition and the behaviors and attitudes of its caregivers.  These daily patterns of caregiver behavior and attitude build the child’s receptive and expressive machinery, determining how the child will perceive its world and its Self, thus creating the child’s world-view and Self-image. Essentially, genetics and attachment experience years’ caregivers determine the child’s lifelong rules of engagement.  In this manner, the caregivers of a child’s earliest years control the child’s behaviors and attitudes throughout the child’s life or until the individual is exposed to a knowledge which can release them.  Many are simply content or mildly discontent with the world their parents’ have given them.  But those who aren’t, like Truman, live a terrifying, oppressed existence.  The socially established rules of engagement given the child defy known realities and in varying degrees work to destroy the personhood of the individual. Being a slave to a pleasant and gentle master is very different from being a slave to an insidious and dysfunctional despot.  Either way, however, the individual is controlled by his or her attachment experience years’ caregivers’ behaviors and attitudes and is not free and independent. I don’t believe anyone can escape this controlling factor unless they somehow become aware of this dynamic.  Awareness of this dynamic is achieved through knowledge.  Historically, social science institutions have been created in an attempt at dealing with this dynamic, in an attempt at harnessing this dynamic and forcing it to produce some kind of logic and reason which give some believable rationale for the dysfunction inherent in the present social order.  The present social science milieu suggests society has been unsuccessful in this endeavor.  Control by or rebellion against this dynamic is living within the dominion of the beast.  Living in the shadow is living under the domination of this controlling dynamic.  Without the knowledge of this attachment experience years’ dynamic, one cannot be free of the dynamic.  Unless one takes purposeful definitive steps to address this control, he or she is living a controlled life.  Like it or not, one is controlled by the behaviors and attitudes of one’s attachment experience years’ caregivers. Much of what I have written about deals with the distorting, destructive Adult-compromising behaviors and attitudes inspired by our attachment experience years.  Not all behaviors are destructive.  Kindness, patience, generosity and love can be inspired by our attachment experience years.  Though these are attractive behaviors and attitudes, they are never-the-less distorting if they are simply a product of our attachment experience years.  So, whether benevolent or malevolent, whether pleasant or insidious, behaviors and attitudes which result from our attachment experience years are corrupting agents preventing individual freedom; as true a sense of freedom as is offered any living entity. The whole thing is an irony within an irony; a comical little dichotomy.  We escape the controlling force of our attachment experience years’ caregivers by addressing our Adult-compromising behaviors and attitudes.  All the while, whether living within the controlling domination of our early childhood caregivers, or escaping the controlling force of our attachment experience years’ caregivers’ behaviors and attitudes, our lives are controlled by the mathematic laws of physics given meaning within the universal cause and effect continuum; a larger, more encompassing controlling dynamic.  Whether or not we escape our attachment dynamic is determined by yet another controlling dynamic.  An irony within an irony; a fish’s tale; a Shakespearian dichotomy!
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