Month: October 2014

I like to think people read my Goodness Movement website, but if anyone has read everything, there are not many.  This is a term I create/define in my glossary, I think I called it.

I posted a link on my Facebook to this song by Travis Tritt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5Mwig3VqXg

Any politically engaged “feminist” could object to his objectification of women if they so chose.

Here is the thing, though: sometimes women WANT to be objectified, they WANT to be appreciated for their beauty and feel sad when this no longer happens.

One can argue, on one hand, that demands for surface beauty are awful, superficial.  But one can argue on the other hand that that is how we are wired.

Life is not fair.  If the egalitarians win, the unfairness will consist precisely in what they call fairness.

There is something Luciferian in telling young adults they can be anyone they want to be, EXCEPT who they were and who they are.  There is a death in this, from which many–perhaps most–never recover.

One can both value gender roles and reject them.  One can see where they facilitate happiness and a clear sense of order; and ALSO understand how they can be unnaturally constricting, and irrconcileable with happiness.

This is henomoralism: I can change the moral God I worship, as circumstances change.

The prerequisite for the acquisition of new knowledge is the recognition of ignorance.  And the best way to recognize ignorance is to presume it.

This is why Edward de Bono called arrogance a “mistake in the future”.

Intelligence DICTATES, DEMANDS humility.  The more you know the more you know what you don’t know.

I’ve said this many times, of course, but perhaps not this way.  It is wearying trying to remember everything I’ve said.  Just on this blog I have I think nearly 2,000 posts (Edit: I misunderestimated it: 2,288).

And for the record, I think the Sufis taught this lesson the best.  As I understand it, in at least some schools everyone was classified according to what type of idiot they were.  I’ve always liked that.

And I’m honestly not sure what type of idiot I am.  Likely an emotionally constrained idiot, one unable to connect with people deeply due to a lack of development.

But there are of course grades of idiocy, and one can always strive to achieve the status of Top Idiot.  It’s something to shoot for, to be sure.

I have tapped into my trauma, and looked it in the face.  I have allowed my body to speak, through shaking, involuntary verbalizing, and regular sessions of just sitting and allowing myself to sense what it is doing.

What I am realizing now is that the only way to complete this process is to have FAITH that it can and will complete.  Only trust will do it.  Only a sincere love of myself will do it, and love always requires faith.

Related note: You know, I rarely write in my diary any more.  There are certainly many things I wrote there that I would not have written here, but in some odd way this feels to me like a communication, a communication to a perfect listener who never interrupts or offers advice.  This itself is therapeutic.

I am of course ridiculous in some ways, but perhaps evidence that God has a sense of humor.  He created me!!!

I had lunch today with my youngest at a wonderful cafe.  I had a brilliant Salade Nicoise with a nice cup of coffee. Everyone in there was laughing and smiling.  In a number of cases hugs were exchanged between people who had presumably not seen each other in a while, and were glad to see their friends.

I want this for everyone.  I told my youngest “I pity those who cannot afford this”.

Almost by definitions, those who value equality over wealth for all are NOT working to help everyone afford such meals.  Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton?  OF COURSE they will always be able to afford such meals (obviously, much better meals, since their “public service” has made them piles of money).  The question is do they want that for everyone else?

Will any amount of welfare every put poor people in such places, comfortably?  Will extensions in unemployment insurance, Social Security increases, or ANYTHING that is even remotely possible ever do it?  No.  Categorically, absolutely, finally: NO.  Not a chance.

Only a generalized increase in national wealth will do that.  Only better jobs will do that.

They claim to want this, but the only jobs they create are government jobs, which take money from more productive uses in the private sector, and thus COST jobs.

They claim increases in the minimum wage will do this, but the minimum wage would not come CLOSE to allowing people to comfortably afford such meals, and the higher they set it, the more unemployment they create, which creates a negative effect.  It hurts, on balance, far more people than it helps.

The core impediments to a generalized increase in wealth are

1) Government, obviously, and particularly punitive and unnecessary laws and high taxes, particularly corporate taxes.  I have argued often and will argue again that the corporate tax rate should be zero, and the difference made up by increases in income taxes.  This alone would lead to HUGE increases in economic growth, and would prevent fully companies from leaving. On the contrary, many foreign firms would likely relocate here.  This alone would likely ensure full employment.

2) Illegal competition with native born Americans, which depresses wages.  This is categorically the case, and the contrary cannot be argued, in my view.  Yes, Americans will probably not work hard for $8/hour, but if there were not people willing to work for $5/hour, they would be making $12 or more.  It is not that Mexicans–and they are Mexicans until they get citizenship–are doing jobs Americans won’t do. They are doing jobs for WAGES most Americans will not accept, and should not have to accept, given a sane immigration policy.

3) Finally, and most importantly, our banking system must be completely reworked.  Our nation is a nation in debt, which is to say characterized by massive claims on our collected wealth and labor which have been created ex nihilo due to a fatal flaw in our financial system.  I have linked my proposal often.

But returning to my meal: ask any Democrats you know if it would make them happy knowing that everyone in America could afford such luxuries, even if the rich got richer.  Their politics compels them to say no, and that is why I could never support such awful, callous, angry, and ultimately hateful people.

As I become aware of my body, it feels sometimes like it is filled with hungry mouths filled with sharp teeth.  This feeling I have had in me for a long time, and the way you get rid of it is to first see it, feel it, know it.  You cannot rid yourself of what you cannot see.

On a slightly higher level, you cannot rid yourself of an ego you do not have.

Christians are notorious for splitting the soul and body in unhelpful ways, but I think if one thinks of “the body” as the feelings I am sensing and releasing, that it is very much something that should be rejected.

But it has to be done from a position of wisdom.  All our instincts exist for reasons, it is the PERVERSION of instincts–turning the alarm system into a state of permanent fear, for example, which is sounding all the time and thus useless; or turning the joys of the sexual instinct into lusts for power and purely physical experience–which is to be rejected.

I do sometimes feel an energy like that called the Devil does exist.  I feel a spirit trapped in this world, not the ruler of it, trapped because it can neither grow nor diminish.  It is stuck like a monkey in a monkey trap of the sort where something desirable is placed at the bottom of a bottle tied with a string.  It can place an open hand in, but it cannot pull the thing out without opening its hand again, thus releasing the treat.

This something still speaks to us through the primordial muck from which we arose as spirits.  We can heed it, or we can let it go.