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Essay: "Mind Games"

by Kieth Reese
Essential Mind Games

The mind is a fabulous mystery. A phenomenal entity that thrives on all sorts of challenges. It is an innate poison misdirected by most of us. Many of us draw on the powers of the mind as a dark force(s) to usurp others. Others use it to proliferate progress. In the purgatorial wastelands of prisons, the mind is suppressed until it retrogresses to a primitive condition. Men's minds shut down to learning wholesome and gentle things. Therefore, they've reached the limit of their growth. Now, in this static state, nothing is used by the mind but the need for savage skills. Their language and character deteriorates, the mind rots. Anon, they become dangerous juggernauts to everyone. The mind is a jewel, metaphorically speaking. It is civilized and logical, and could lead us to constructive purposes, instead of destructive ones. The mind needs knowledge and games conducive to growth. I avoid the quagmire in my milieu because my mind recites a litany of facts to keep it strong. All around me, people are screaming and cursing like demons form hell, or crazy people. My mind is quiet because I have disciplined it. I won't allow the center of my life to fade away. In the process of preserving my mind, I've assimilated all sorts of litanies. I can recite: All the elements of the Periodic Table (even draw it from scratch), nations capitals, including Canada's Provinces and the U.S. States, the kings and queens of England chronologically by date, emperors and governments of Rome chronologically by date, catalogued stars and their constellations, all 43 presidents and their vice presidents and their inauguration dates, all the mottos, nicknames, flowers, birds, trees and songs of each of the 50 states, all the states that were admitted to the union, words of Andromache in Hower's Illiad in the books VI through XXIV, all the words of the Gettysburg Address, the dates of major wars, the Greek alphabet, and the Hebrew alphabet.

To avoid prolixity and redundancy I'll stop there. The gist is made. I have taped into the secret port of the mind. Now, I can learn anything. The only mind-game I play now is the one that inspires my genius. I am sure that George W.F. Hegel would have written a page to me in his, Phenomenology of the Mind if he had known of me. I am not being vainglorious or flouting the ignorant. I want to be your paradigm. Prison is a wasteland of souls. Doing what everyone else does while there will ruin you further. Invent sophisticated games for your mind. Do math and algebra, anything that will entertain your logical hemisphere of the brain. Prison has become my Ivory Tower. I play a mind-game of learning everyday. And for those who play mind-games of inhumanity, I avoid you at all cost. Join me in the rare galére of literati. Pick up a book and try a different mind-game.