now you know you see on the left there
at the top on the sorry on the right at
the top you see a picture of an old man
kissing Joseph Stalin which is quite a
weird thing to do given that Joseph
Stalin was probably responsible for the
deaths of you know some number of people
in excess of ten million perhaps in
excess of 30 million people argue about
this all the time
he certainly starved 6 million
Ukrainians to death in the 1930s which
is something that you know for some
reason you don't hear much about your
education but you know 6 million
Ukrainians probably worth noticing a
little bit but it doesn't matter because
this old man this was taken after the
fall of the Berlin Wall
he's nostalgic for the times when
everything was certain you know and the
the gold statue of Stalin is a
representation in some sense of a
deified leader and the old man is there
is in a position of worship and then
Captain Hook there at the bottom on the
right hand side he's quite an
interesting character because he's
basically a tyrant and the Peter Pan
story is very interesting because peter
pan pan sort of means everything and
Peter Pan is the sort of person who
wants to retain the dynamic potential of
childhood because when you're a child
you're not anything but you could be
anything so you're pretty much only
potential and then you might say well
why should you sacrifice that potential
to become something actual because in
some sense it's actually a limiting
process so for example and I mean this
in the most concrete possible way you
have more neural connections when you're
born than you do at any other time in
your life and most of those died by the
time year 2 so you go through this
tremendous pruning process from when
you're born from when till 2 so it's
like you're dying into your childhood
personality and then again the same
thing happens at the end of adolescence
between say 16 and 20 when which is also
the peak time for risk for the emergence
of schizophrenia and some people think
that's the pruning process going wrong
but you know as an adolescent you also
shed childhood potential to become
though limited but specialized and
potentially useful thing that you will
become and so you might say well is it
worth it
worth shedding that potential and peter
pan's answer to that is well no he wants
to remain in Neverland as a magical boy
forever and he's king of the Lost Boys
which I would say it's not a very that's
not much of a dominance hierarchy right
it's like you're you're the king king of
the king of the losers so to speak
people who can't get their act together
and mature now a notice in Peter Pan
that Peter Pan doesn't grow up he
doesn't establish a relationship with
Wendy who's actually real he has to
settle for Tinkerbell who you know is a
fairy and they don't exist and so she's
really in some sense a figure of his
imagination because he won't mature he
can't have an actual relationship with
with a genuine person so he has to
satisfy himself with well it's something
like a pornographic fantasy actually so
seriously it is it is like that I mean
it's it's it's toned down a lot in the
movie version obviously but still that's
what's underlying it now you might say
well why doesn't Peter Pan want to grow
up and the answer is the only figure of
authority that's around for him is Pete
his Captain Hook and he doesn't like
Captain Hook and that's because Captain
Hook is a tyrant he's brutal you know
and he's also a coward because he's lost
a hand already to a crocodile with a
clock in its stomach that's chaos and
time you know that's the dragon that
lives underneath everything it's like
the basilisk in Harry Potter and that
damn crocodile has already got a piece
of him which is exactly the case like
that crocodiles got a piece of me you
know I'm older than 50 and so time is
already god its grip on me and you know
part of the problem of being adult is
that you also have to take the fact that
you're finite and limited into account
and if you're terrified by that which
people tend to be then it can easily
turn you into a tyrant because you're
afraid of everything or disgusted by
everything and you have to ramp up the
amount you control it and so Peter Pan
looks at Captain Hook and he thinks
there's no damn way that's what I want
to end up as so he's got a bad role
model you know so Captain Hook and
Stalin and this sort of devouring
monster are good representations of the
negative or tyrannical element of the
great father or so that's the tyrannical
element of the dominance hierarchy