Month: May 2012

It is less than obvious, but it has become my firm conviction that those who hurt the most feel the least.  Pain beyond a certain point causes a sort of emotional swelling, which performs the same role for the psyche that actual swelling does for injured limbs: it immobilizes and protects you.  Inflexibility is the outcome of unprocessed emotions, and inflexibility, in turn, is the cause of most misery in this world; it is the rejection of what is, in favor of what was or what one feels should be.

Those who are cruel hurt the most.  This is not obvious, because they will have thoroughly buried their pain, and even appear outwardly in some cases happy.  Yet, we all to some greater or lesser extent built artificial selves, artifacts of experiences we often cannot remember, and in response to social needs.  Any self built upon the need to see pain in others cannot be real, cannot face the world as it is, cannot, in the end, be at peace or ever be fulfilled.

As I watch myself, look inwardly, what I see is that self is almost always tied to the introjection of some authority or principle.  Who you are is who your fathermother was, or what you saw written in some book, or decided at some point.  You are this out of habit.  You repeat patterns.  But is that you?  Is that even a useful question?  We want to be happy, do we not?  Does repetition best serve this end?  I don’t think so.

Increasingly, I feel that the highest attainment is to process the world with full consciousness of all the filters within one, and finally to process it as it is, without filter.  This is of course an old idea, but what I would suggest is that most of what gets called spiritual growth is nothing but the advance of personal emotional well being, and nearly fully encompassed by good psychology.

Few thoughts.

An important point I think many people miss is that for those seeking dominion over the world–despite this being a stock goal of cartoon supervillains, these people do in my view actually exist–it never matters if this goal is being pursued overtly, or consciously.  Those working to support them in their aim may in fact believe they are working for the exact opposite.  Reagan called for smaller government, rhetorically, and no doubt believed in it, but the OUTCOME of his Presidency, what actually happened, was that government expanded tremendously.

Many of the “New World Order” conspiracists think George W. Bush intended to create a police state.  I don’t believe this.  It is sufficient, for Fabian purposes, to have people whispering the right things in his ear, WHICH MAKE SENSE.  Given the supposed extent of the intelligence failure presupposed by the success of the 9/11 attacks, it made sense to create a Dept. of Homeland Security, and a TSA.  Now, the NSA’s Total Informational Awareness was shot down, but has now been quietly resurrected.  Its time was not then, but rather now.

The simple fact is that if water is made steadily hotter by degrees–whether intentionally or not–then it will sooner or later boil.  This is a ridiculously obvious point, but one missed by most nonetheless.

Tried to post here: http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/297488/occupy-s-totalitarian-temptation-charles-c-w-cooke#comment-561348

Page won’t open for some reason.  Internet working fine.  For whatever reason, I am often blocked from posting on blogs, left and right.  This is intended just as a basic catechism of my ideas.  Bit disconnected, but the basics are there.

Ideas have consequences. Seeing this, and articulating where things lead, is the proper role of what are typically called intellectuals, and what I prefer to dress in overalls and call “thought workers”. This class has not done its job in 50 years, by and large, with the exception of William F. Buckley, Brent Bozell and the like.

What instead is presented is a pretend game, an artificial world in which everything is possible, and ideas never lead to concrete outcomes other than protest and other ritually useful forms of social interaction.

Now, it is in my view imposslble to lie to yourself–to ALL parts of yourself–which means that sustained lies necessarily lead, for self described “nice” or “loving”, or “compassionate” people to cognitive splitting. What happens is that if internalized violence is projected “out there”, that the sense of responsibility for it disappears, limits on its use disappear, and that massive and intractable rationalizations become necessary. Psychologically, this is how people like Noam Chomsky or Bill Ayers justify their support of programs of mass torture–physical and mental–rape, capricious imprisonment, suppression of basic human rights, generalized poverty, and of course the implementation of insurmountable systems of class.

When I look at the landscape particularly of our supposedly best universities, what I see is pervasive psychopathology, and cognitive dissonance suppressed only with the power of the routinization of nonsense.

Moral abandonment leads necessarily to cruelty. Any person incapable of a non-ironic, non-contingent moral code will necessarily join a group which tells him or her what to do. If conformity is the only virtue, then power is the arbiter of right and wrong. Those who seek power, seek it to use it. Hence the first sentence in this paragraph.

I explore these issues at some length in this piece, which is nominally about the Vietnam War, but which really just uses that as a jumping off place: http://www.goodnessmovement.com/Page19.html

It is not perfect, but it is in my view solid, and gets to the meat of the matter.

It would be easy to forget that, looking at the complicit media–whose “conservative” side still shills in most cases for something far short of actual conservatism–Ron Paul is still in the race.  I’m not big on videos, but I think this one tells its story better than words: http://www.infowars.com/ron-pauls-delegates-deluge-minnesota-washington-state-louisiana/

We borrow $120 billion a month.  There are no plans by anyone but Ron Paul to seriously address this, and the plain fact is that the demographic wave of Baby Boomers is just starting to hit.  The bleeding on the “entitlement” front has just started, and this will be overwhelming even if Obamacare–which adds a HUGE increase in spending just when we are already tipping over–is overturned.  Romney is simply not serious as an adult or responsible leader.

Our NSA is implementing what will soon be the perfect surveillance state.  If you carry a cell phone, if you drive a car, if you use a credit card, they know where you are, how much money is in your bank, who you associate with, what you say to them, and no doubt have developed computer programs to develop quick and largely accurate psychological profiles of EVERYONE in the country.  People capable of dissidence can be spotted years before they express anything publicly.  A totalitarian state built on modern technology would quite simply be insurmountable in timeframes less than thousands of years, at least without internal dissidence that could be easily eliminated.

Ron Paul’s ideas need to be made mainstream.  The extent of the existential threats we face need to be broadcast far and wide.

I am going to give him another $100.  It is not much, but it will be worth it if he can make the fake conservatives squirm at the Republican National Convention.  I want less flag waving, and more substance.  To be honest, seeing the American flag does not bring out the emotions it used to, not when I contemplate the generalized mediocrity necessary to elect a Barack Obama ONCE, much less twice, or the stupidity expressed in the failure of most Americans to grasp what is actually going on.  Who can be proud of such a people?  Of course, there are many who are awake.  In them lies whatever hope we have of keeping our freedom and dignity.

Can we get back to discussing the Federal Reserve, and the role it plays in taking away our wealth?  Can we agree that it is PECULIAR that a private, invitation-only corporation run by and for certain very large banks has complete control, by law, of our banking system?  Do you realize that when you cash a check, it goes through the Federal Reserve?  It is my understanding that when you use a credit card, it ALSO goes through the Federal Reserve.  They charge for these services, and this is one of the ways that the people who work for them make FAT money, even though the enterprise as a whole–once the salaries and bonuses have been paid–shows no net profit at the end of the year.

Is it the case–do you want to try and argue–that the foxes best understand chickens and are therefore most to be trusted to watch the henhouse?  This seems, to put it mildly, quite dubious to me.

Why do you work so hard?  Because of fractional reserve banking, and the Federal Reserve system which keeps it from collapsing, quite literally daily.  These facts need to be known, and the Left and the Right need to come together in demanding an end to this inequitable system.  Corporations are not and never have been the problem.  They are a source of prosperity.  BANKS are the problem, and the reason all the productivity gains over the last century have translated into MORE hours and less net worth.