Month: September 2013

I have been making a lot of internal progress lately.  Changing qualitatively is a very odd thing.  Old things, things you know, patterns you know, come to seem new and interesting.  I feel like I am turning 90 degrees, like I have been walking parallel to the proper, best direction for me my whole life, and while I am accustomed to walking in this direction, useful movement requires me to stop moving in one direction, turn, and begin anew.

Imagine a realm of light to your right or left–or let us say both sides: a realm which becomes brighter and brighter as your view travels into the distance, and the road easier and easier until the movement does itself.  Most of us spend our entire lives blind to this light, blind to the possibilities that are RIGHT THERE.  They are not distant, they are RIGHT THERE.  And yet we walk perpendicular to them across a lifetime.

Turning is difficult.  What these Saw movies have done for me is bring evil directly into my awareness, to begin integrating it.  I was driving somewhere the other day, and the hate that was directed at me as a child swept over me.  It felt like a slow motion panic attack.  I realized, though, that I can now take that heat.  I can now stand that pain.  I can now sit without flinching while waves of terribly unpleasant emotions sweep over me, until they are diminished.

It is a terribly difficult thing, facing suffering you had erased from your memory, but which continues to create massive character flaws in you.  Most “sin” is an accommodation with painful emotions that person cannot process.  You lie, cheat, and steal not because it is easiest–it usually isn’t–but because something is driving you in that direction, something you can’t see, something in the darkness. 

We identify this something as the demonic.  Now, I believe beings exist which are properly termed demonic, but even they are hiding from themselves.  They have simply run farther than most of us from truth, and the light which facing the truth enables you to manifest.

I can feel this sense of utter helplessness I felt as a child.  I remember a dream in which I was being muddled into a bloody and completely crushed mess at the bottom of a cauldron by my mothers dual personalities (she is not a clinical psychopath, but in shifting modes comes close at times).  I feel the helpless rage and the tears that fell with no comfort.  All of this before I was 4 years old.

And I look at how I raised my own children.  I consciously mimicked them.  When they would say or do something, I would respond, so they could see that they were a part of the world, and that the world responded, and responded in a loving, happy, playful world.  What I realize now is that I was unconsciously helping elicit their best them.  I was training them not to be me, not to do what I say, not to acculturate to what would appear to a small child arbitrary and incomprehensible standards–in short, not to be raised the way I was–but to feel a sense of empowerment within limitations to be who they were born to be.

The opposite of this is to expect from a child that they imitate you, that they do what you do, act how you act.  In my own case, I was spanked and hit often for crimes I didn’t understand.  Apparently I was even spanked for being too quiet, again from about age 1 to age 3.

And in my case the effect has been, when combined with two narcissistic parents throughout the rest of my childhood, a sense that I do not have the right to exist, to achieve, to dream, to be happy.

I pursue personal growth because nothing satisfies me.  If I were to find out that I personally stopped a war with Syria, it would elicit something close to nothing; not at the moment anyway.  This is what I am trying to change, this is what a 90 degree turn looks like.

As far as the post title, we think of “letting go” as holding on to something, then letting it drop.  We have a deathgrip on something, and release our hands.  One analogy I’ve used is that of the monkey traps in South and Southeast Asia, in which a bottle is tied to something, then something is put in it which a monkey would want.  The opening is big enough to allow an open hand, but not one closed, holding something.  Many monkeys will literally never let go of their prize, and thus trap themselves.  This is a good metaphor.

But what occurred to me today is that it can also be heard as letting things go, as letting things progress on their own, without interference.  So often we feel this need to interfere with others, to interact with others didactically, even when our own affairs are not in order.  We direct others as a means of obtaining a power which we cannot exercise over ourselves.

Is it not funny that many of the most messed up people are the ones who seek out positions of influence?  Is it not a stereotype that psychologists study psychology because they are less stable than others?  Were Frazier and Niles Crane not made funnier because of the ironic juxtapositions of their neurotic behavior and their positions as mental health “professionals”?

On the Left the hippies say “live and let live”.  They more or less mean this, but then they support people who make us less free, who want to limit what we can do and say.

Letting Go is a conservative–or I should say, classically Liberal–position.  This is more or less the direct meaning of “Laissez-Faire”.

Lot of stuff here.  Again, I am not congenitally a psychological exhibitionist, and I am certainly not fishing for sympathy, but I think there is material here which is common to many people, and this may thus prove helpful for some.

In particular, I would like to posit as a likely fact that the dominant mode in most traditional cultures–which survive throughout Asia, Africa and elsewhere–is the child copying the parent.  You break the child in order to fit them for your social order.  You guide them away from who they are naturally, and fit them into a place they are assigned to.  This has all sorts of deleterious psychological effects.

In my own case, the principle problem with how I was raised is not that I was hit, or broken, but that I was not given a coherent cultural model to inherit.  If these same tactics had been used on me to become a good Hindu, or Muslim, or Chinese businessman, they would have succeeded.  I would have been an unhappy, psychologically repressed, somewhat angry, but largely acculturated man.  I would have lived a lifetime without questioning my role.  Many, many people live like this.  Most human beings for most of history have lived to some greater or lesser extent like this. 

In most of history, the need for individuation, for self expression, for following an individual but sincere spiritual path so as to reconnect with the Light, has been suppressed.  For most of history people have been broken, then placed in slots.  If as adults they rejected those slots, they were literally beaten, imprisoned, tortured, and killed.

In America. of course, we go too far in the other direction: we pander to our children, we pamper them, we enthrone them.  I am DEFINITELY not advocating this.  I am more or less in agreement with Russell Peters on this one.  This video is worth the watch. It’s quite funny, at least to my sensibility.

Moderation in everything, including at times moderation.  There is no substitute for being awake.

If I may say so, I believe there is some deep wisdom here, worth pondering carefully.

Finally got through the series.  The last two seemed weaker than the previous five, although all had quite sufficient grotesque images for all but the most morbid.

Few thoughts:

1) We create these grisly images often in war. 

I was a war hawk on Afghanistan and Iraq because in the first case I thought the training that enabled 9/11 happened there; and in the second case because I thought that the attack happened in the first place because America had lost credibility not just since it chose to lose the Vietnam War, but also because Saddam Hussein had been more or less mocking us publicly for the better part of a decade.  We knew he wanted nukes, and that he planned to make them.  He admitted when we caught him that had we not invaded, he would have started the program up again–and as far as that goes, he did have a secret program which was transferred to Syria according to high level and credible sources which have been completely ignored by our complicit media.  This is why the Syrians had a nuclear weapons program which the Israelis attacked.  This is where Assad–if he has chemical weapons–likely got them.

Still, people have their heads cut off.  They are cremated alive.  They are blown to bits.  Every condition of death is present in an average war that was seen in all the Saw movies.  The only thing lacking is the specific intentionality, even though the broad outlines of what will happen are clear enough.

Watch these videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atM2srk9qm8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvEvzr_T8RQ

Does this not frighten you just a bit?  The ease and emotional distance from which men’s lives can be ended?  They may all have been evil human beings, but I suspect they were operating from a sense of loyalty to their families and clans and religion.  Why are we flying those gunships on the other side of the planet?  Why are we killing them?

This point assume particular importance when we consider that there were clearly coconspirators in the 9/11 attacks.  I will post again my treatment of Tower 7: https://moderatesunitedblog.com//2010/10/plausible-911-conspiracy-theory.html

To this I will add that if Islamic terrorists were able to place bombs in Tower 7, then why didn’t they blow it first, when it was full of people?  If they placed bombs in Towers 1 and 2–and the official investigators on their own admission never tested for bomb/thermite residue–then, again, why not blow them?  Why bother with the planes?

My answer is that the people who engineered these attacks wanted strong, valuable propaganda.  They wanted a casus belli that virtually everyone would support because of the images presented on our TV screens.  It was not mistake that there was a delay in the plane strikes.  In my view, United 93 was supposed to hit just after the first plane.  That is why top New York officials reported explosions. They were timed to go off just after the plane hit Tower 7.

To this DAY, this very day, this very war with Syria, the memory of 9/11 enables the call to war to assume stronger resonance than it otherwise would have.  It makes for extraordinarily strong propaganda.  It seduces people like John McCain and Lindsey Graham, who also are supporting the NSA’s development of an Orwellian surveillance state. 

And of course the Puppeteers long ago put their strings into the Left, who oppose any war that could conceivably be in our national interest, and here astonishly support the Syrian War perhaps precisely because it is unnecessary and stupid.  Mostly, they do what they are told.  Surrendering the capacity for moral reasoning is the initiatory rite to join that gang.

To be clear, I have many friends in the military.  I used to work out with an Air Force officer 3-4 times a week. I value this nation, and understand that evil exists in the world.

All the same, we spend more on national defense than most of the rest of the world put together.  Why?  Is China an existential threat?  Are “Allahu Akbar”-chanting fiends going to be stopped with aircraft carriers?  And how many of them are there, really?  Given that the NSA can see everything, virtually, it is quite possible to limit the organizational possibilities of terrorists, and finish up what is left with HumInt.

We need to wage wars which actually concern clear and present threats to America.  There are none at the present, although the nuclear weapons capability of the North Koreans will qualify if and when they figure out how to get nukes across the Pacific.

How STRANGE is it that Obama talks incessantly about Syria, and yet said NOTHING when a power which for all we knew might have been capable of it was threatening a nuclear strike on three of our biggest cities?

I feel like the scales have dropped from my eyes with this Syria issue.  Never have I seen more clearly how patently CONTROLLABLE our complicit media is, and how miraculous it is that ANY alternative accounts make it anywhere into the public sphere.

With regard to Iran, here is an idea: fly high level aircraft, drones, or even balloons–this is a technical problem, but the very fact that the logistics can be worked out adds to its power–over major metropolitan areas and drop leaflets which read: “if your nation ever launches a nuclear attack on any other nation, you will die.  This leaflet is within the blast radius of the weapons we will respond with.”  I think that message is clear enough.

2) Saw VII more or less completes the recurring theme of encounters with death being therapeutic.  John Cramer, to be clear, killed many innocent people in the pursuit of his “lessons”, but I think this theme itself is relevant and important.

In many traditional societies, rites of passage are quite dangerous and harrowing.  To this day many people die in Africa from infections from circumcisions that are a part of these rites.  Here is one link.

Over and above their higher testosterone levels and lower social IQ’s, I think one of the reasons men crave war is they value the transcendence that becomes possible with facing the worst situations possible and overcoming them.  They crave that dying and being born again experience.  That is what the Marine Corps, as one example, delivers.  Most, perhaps all, Marines can tell you the day they were “born again” as Marines.

For women, giving birth serves this purpose.  I would even argue that the monthly process of menstruation has a bit of this element as well. 

Virtually all traditional cultures have some conception of, and place value on, the process of dying and being reborn.  We need that.  This is why CrossFit is so big.  It is why the Tough Mudders, and Spartan Race and other such extreme events exist.

OK.  I feel better.  I may pull my actual list of notes out tomorrow and do some serious writing.  We’ll see.  Please ponder all this carefully.  These are in my view important and deep thoughts, even if some of them are repetitions in new words of ideas I have spoken of often.

Actually, think about this, too: every heartbeat is a little bit different.  Every breath is a little bit different.  When you look at an EKG, what you do not see is mechanical precision.  You see patterns that repeat themselves endlessly, but always in very slightly different ways.  This is the nature of life, and part of the skill in living it is to see the new in the old–as well as the old in the new. 

Stay awake, as well as you can.

It seriously pissed me off to read that Petraeus came out in support of this monkey’s ass of a mission in Syria, which will do nothing constructive, except salve a few large egos.

Here is what occurred to me immediately: this asshole ran the CIA when Benghazi happened.  As far as we can tell Doherty and Woods worked for him, and Sean Smith likely reported in some fashion to him.  So too did virtually all the several dozen other people who were there, who were attacked, some of whom were wounded, and NONE of whom has spoken to Congress as far as I know.

Here is a simple thesis: Petraeus backed the Syrian false flag operation personally, as well as as a result of orders.  His mission was to get second rate Libyan chemical weapons in the hands of Syrian jihadists, and train them in their use, so that Obama could pursue a strategic objective of destabilizing Syria, and eventually toppling Assad.  He now continues to support that policy, likely due to ego involvement.

He let those people die, because spooks exist in a realm of plausible deniability, and sometimes you let agents die for some murky greater good.  We have all seen spy movies. Spies and soldiers are treated with a different morality.

On a related note,I have never in my lifetime seen the pervasiveness of the propaganda apparatus which exists in this country shown in such stark relief.  Even though some of the columns on his site are in my view nuts, much of what Alex Jones has been saying for years now appears plausible to me.

As far as the cult members, the headless ones, the indoctrinated ones, take the example of Ed Asner: even though he theoretically opposes war in the abstract, Obama’s ethnicity is quite literally the only criteria that matters.

I have argued often that the Left MUST be understood not just a different understanding of the facts, but a fundamentally different mode of being, one characterized not by principle-based engagement with reality with a goal to improving the world; but one characterized by the submergence of the duty of perceiving things as a sovereign entity, a sovereign intellect and self, to the duty of conformity.  Whatever you are told to do, you do.  Your captivity is your freedom.

Thus we see left wingers using virtually the same rhetoric right wingers used in the lead-up to the war with Iraq, with the important difference that the war with Iraq was at least plausibly in our national interest, and the war with Syria is categorically CONTRARY to our national interests.  We are intervening on behalf of our enemies, risking a more general war, all for NOTHING.  The killing will not stop, and to the extent the weapons appear to have been used by the “rebels”, WE ARE ATTACKING THE WRONG SIDE.

Everything is upside down.  Rational discussion is out the window, and this fact is on prominent display.

Oi.  Rant over for now.  I will likely return.

This looks quite interesting.  Somewhere in here is a link to a course on the evidence for the survival of consciousness upon physical death.   That course is discussed here.  It was put together by a “Scottish-Italian” doctor.

As I do from time to time, I would like to reiterate that “the human condition” can be improved through the actual application of intelligence.  All the problems we face–of war, of poverty, of sadness and isolation, of a sense of futility–can be solved through the application of intelligence.

To be clear, greed is the outcome of failing to know how to live.  It is a failure to understand how to generate deep, authentic connections with important parts of our selves, which in turn enable fruitful, fulfilling connections with others.  It is a failure to learn the lesson that objects cannot gain you what you crave most of all if you are honest.

Likewise, religious dogmatism is a failure to open up belief to experience.  Everything that is REAL about religion is as available today as it was 2,000 or 4,000 years ago.  We can investigate prayer.  We can investigate life after death.  We can learn to understand moralities–and I personally would argue there should be as many of them as there are people, within certain bounds–as systems for self fulfillment, and social harmony.  They are not commands.  God does not punish us.  We fail to seek God.  That is our punishment.

I will add to that as well that I have come to realize that the concept of “sin” is meaningless as used in religious contexts.  Why would an infinite being CARE about what we do?  We exist within that being.  We are that being, or more properly He is us.

This being consists in infinite love, in my view, and no loving being would condemn or hurt us for our ignorance; and sin is always ignorance–not in the sense that you were never told the rule, but in the sense that if you commit a “sin” you only do so because you do not understand why that rule exists.  Rules, like “be kind to others”, exist for our own benefit.  If we are kind, we are happier, and if everyone follows that rule, our world is a more happy place.

In my view, the conceptions both of sin, and eternal damnation for minor misreadings of texts written in another language thousands of years ago, exist for SECULAR purposes, for command and control purposes, for political purposes.  Take excommunication: this power of the Pope was considered quite considerable for a very long time, and kept many would-be rebels in check.

A great many of the griefs currently darkening human lives around the world could be ameliorated if we replaced religion with scientific knowledge about how the after-life actually worked.

Bringing–not these ideas, but this mountain of EVIDENCE–into the mainstream of science would revolutionize human life in many powerful and positive ways.

Leftism, as a death cult, exists mainly as a strong psychic reaction to the notion of death as eternal dissolution, and the social order as the only possible mechanism of immortality.  Given that leftism is currently the most pernicious force in the world, the force which creates the most suffering, bringing this evidence into the light would be greatly beneficial for many suffering souls.

Few thoughts.

Obama is the Commander in Chief, correct?  In that capacity, he is a member of the military.  As such, he is required only to give lawful orders.  If Congress specifically repudiates his war with Syria–as a proxy, apparently, for Saudi Arabia–then giving the order to fire cruise missiles is illegal.  Given this, is not the penalty for breaking the law being arrested and put on trial?  Could the military arrest him, after disregarding his illegal orders, for the same reason that Lt. Calley was arrested?

It would take some stones to do that, but if we are going to get our nation back on track, these sorts of ideas should not be disregarded out of hand.  Obama is getting people killed for political reasons, and he is doing it in patent violations of the law.  Who stops him?  At what point do we start valuing the laws of our land, after considering that all of them were put in place for reasons which are just as valid today, if not more, than they were 200 years ago?

I wrote that near the end of a 12 hour day, thinking erroneously I was about to have a big problem.  It did not materialize, and now that I have had a couple good nights sleep, it seems to me that I was partially right, but largely wrong.  Certainly, I think the combination of intelligence and sociopathy would be helpful in most corporate environments–and the political realm–but it is less common than I made it sound.  I think better terms might be that climbing the ladder can make people mean, cold, and calculating–or in any event to select for these traits.  I have heard over the years any number of stories from the inner circles of the elite, and most CEO’s are not very likeable people, once you really know them well.

The book “What Would Machiavelli Do?” discusses these things at length.  It is intended mainly as satire, but when I first read it I worked at a very large telecommunications company, and it was simply too true to laugh at.  I lived it daily.

I will add that I have a great many things to post, but it doesn’t feel right at the moment.  I have been doing a lot of Kum Nye, and it has really opened up some energies and emotions that were quite locked up.

So I’m a chick lately.  I’m feeling.  The other, intellectual, me will resurface sooner or later.

I have watched several people I knew reasonably well turn from decent human beings to self aggrandising, scheming, backstabbing assholes within corporations characterized by relentless stress, and constant power struggles. The one I know best more or less throws new recruits to the wolves, then rewards survivors with respect.

What I would contend–and this would be an interedting study to do–is that vast bulk of them are becoming functional sociopaths–context dependent sociopsths to be sure–but people within which an ACTUAL moral sense has largely been eroded in constant fights for survival.

They mask this by launching recycling campaigns and posting pictures of happy people everywhere, along with motivational slogans. In my observation, the more smiling faces you see on the wall, the more nasty the place is likely to be.

Such corporations wield a huge amount of power. I will not agree with Leftists that the solution is centrslizing power with government sociopaths, but I will repeat my view that corporations should be both tax exempt–which should lessen the struggle for survival and corresponding nastiness–and prohibited from making political contributions.

Is it worth risking a regional war in order to launch an ineffective strike against an enemy who is likely innocent, in pursuit of non-existent US security interests?

This fact has been scrubbed by our domestic propaganda apparatus, but it is my understanding Russia has threatened a strike against Saudi Arabia if we hit Syria. And why not? The Saudis have apparently threatened to deploy Chechen terrorists they claim to control, and seem to have provided the nerve gas in what we can all agree WAS a nerve gas attack. Thing is, they gave them to the “rebels”.