Month: November 2014

Human beings are born with the capacity for violence.  It is bred in us.  We are by evolutionary ancestry omnivores, which means that almost all of us for the entirety of our history have gotten some of our food through violence towards animals.

We seem also to share a tribal instinct.  We become closer to one group, in part, in solidarity against another.  The very existence of a Group B makes Group A huddle just a bit closer together, and we also share a instinctual need for that sort of community.

During the so-called Age of Enlightenment, the claim was made, arising out of Christian theological doctrine, that the mind and body–the soul as expressed through a rational, purified mind, and the body, source of all evil–were both severable and at odds with one another.

Emotionally detached men came up with the idea that something like pure Reason was possible, that it was possible to separate a sovereign mind from entangling emotions.

And they produced what might be called Post-Tribal ideas like “All men are created equal”, and “And are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights”, and “Among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness [Eudaimonia]”.  Obviously, it took some time to “live out the true meaning of [our] creed”.

Such ideas are in my understanding unique in world history.  I would contrast them, for example, with India’s ancient caste (varna and jati) system, in which you are more or less born into a trade union that exists at a certain social level.  You have duties (dharmas) and in somes cases privileges. Everyone has a tribe in an enormously complex system, and they never leave it.  They can’t.  That’s not how it works.  You live out your life, and hope to rise in the next life.

On the one hand we have nothing BUT tribes and on the other no tribes at all.  Everyone is equal in all ways, at least in principle, or at least equal in their RIGHTS as seen by the government and the people–the People–who constitute it, again in principle.

The whole thing has no content to it.  It does not positively tell you what to DO, what matters.  It presumes, though, as obvious, some sort of religious commitment centered in some way around Christianity, which could and did include Freemasonry, and many (almost entirely Protestant) sects of Christianity.

Add some time to this thing, and the belief in God starts to fade.  It has been attacked in the realm of “science” (I will use that word as shorthand to refer to the people who are employed doing science, without granting that all or even most of them adhere strictly to the METHODS of science;  they don’t, not in this domain), and attacked in the Humanities.

Moral confusion grows, but the biologically rooted need for tribes does not.

Which brings me to the present day, and very unabstract, very personal, somewhat ugly, but I think justified anger.  I got angry at someone on Facebook who posted a cartoon portraying conservatives cartoonishly, as, among other things, calling for dirty air and water so CEO’s could make more money, more jobs to go overseas, an end to taxpayer funded benefits, and a litany of other things.

And it just HIT ME that this cartoon was not different in any way, in intent or implied viciousness, from the cartoons the Nazis used to demonize the Jews.  You create a CARICATURE of your enemy, then repeat it over and over and over until people believe the lie, until they literally think that is how their ideological enemies think.

My oldest, just yesterday, was telling me that it was understood that Republicans are for Big Business and Democrats for racial minorities.  It is in the water, the food, air.  Our children imbibe this carefully concocted PROPAGANDA–and that is clearly, unmistakably what it is–from an early age.

And this should make us ANGRY.  We should always be angry when lies are told.  It seems to me many conservatives have been enduring this abuse for so long we simply tune it out.  Why?

The particular individual who posted was UTTERLY unable to understand why I was angry, why I would react passionately to Goebbelsian misrepresentations of people I identify with.  He stated repeatedly that he has been moderate in his responses to my anger, and more or less WTF was my problem.  I asked him repeatedly how he could possibly consider that cartoon anything but inflammatory, and of course he refused to answer.  There is no good answer, and he knew it.  That much he did know, even if he was unwilling to admit to the hate churning in his gut.

And it hit me: conservatives have literally been dehumanized to the point where we are literally having conversations like “I don’t know why you mind being called Nigger.  After all we let you walk our streets, and even shop in some of our stores.” or “I don’t know why you mind wearing the Star of David.  After all, your store is still open and we even let Echtdeutsche shop there.”

There is a difference-maker embedded in our brains, and if it is not fed intelligently, it will be fed dysfunctionally.  And it occurs to me that the more difference is erased in the egalitarian project–the more all races, all creeds, all gender differences, all social markers of any sort are eradicated in principle–the greater the need to amplify the one remaining difference: that between egalitarians and true Liberals.  It becomes a mania, a semi- or fully unconscious need to amplify all hate, all anger, and direct it at one group, and one group only: the out-group, that one which still believes in the possibility of and need for moral judgement.

Watch this clip: http://www.thepoliticalinsider.com/cnn-anchor-laughs-at-assault-on-bristol-palin-forced-to-apologize/

This attack sounds horrible, and Bristol was plainly very traumatized by it, and this anchor did not even see the need to APPEAR to care.  It was the daughter of a conservative woman–who was also viciously attacked AS a person, as an individual, even though Leftists supposedly stand for women–and that was all she needed to know.  She got beat down and dragged by her feet?  Fucking funny.  Best shit I’ve heard in years.

We conservatives need to wake up to the full extent of the awfulness that has been directed at us now for many years.  We need to fight back, never back down, not let any of the jackasses get away with their propaganda operations.  We need to underscore their innate viciousness and dehumanization of us at every turn.

It is a clear historical fact that dehumanization of PRECISELY the sort the Left has been directing at us now for at least 50 years has always preceded mass murders.  You portray your enemy as awful, as a parasite, as an insect, and this creates a CONDUIT for the channeling of all the rages anyone might have felt for anyone else, for all undirected anger, all undirected hurt, all unprocessed negative emotions, into one place.

We may have won Congress–to be clear, Republicans, which I do not conflate with conservatives, aka actual Liberals–but we have many miles to go to reclaim our humanity in the eyes of large segments of the nation.

Leftist economic and political ideas do not work for anything but entrenching small elites and enslaving the masses in poverty and what might be termed “rightlessness”.  Leftist propaganda, though, must be seen as very effective at creating enemies and directing hate toward them.  Tricking people, guiding people, is something they regrettably do all too well.

I have, from time to time, shared my thoughts/feelings about the after-life.  I believe there are differing levels, that all of us are born multiple times, and that there are both relative hells and heavens.  The Buddhists have something like 12 levels, with roughly the top 9 being substantially better than here.  Effectively, they are tiers of heaven.

The lower levels seem to be tied to this world. People stay here because they can’t let something go.  And there are worse places than here, which also seem to be tied to the planet, to this sort of convergence of solid energy which has been convulsed out of the pure energy of space.

Here is the thing: we are born and reborn until we learn needed lessons, and then we move on.  We  no longer have to come here.  But the existence of human life on this planet, of our species, is a prerequisite to coming back.  If we were to end life on Earth, human life, many spirits in the lower realms would be unable to reincarnate and complete their spiritual work.  They would be trapped in limbo.

Such an event would amount to a Judgement Day, one based not on one life, but on many, many lives, hundreds, perhaps thousands of chances. It would mean such spirits would be trapped until live reevolves on Earth, if it ever does.

This is of course a nightmare scenario, and one I hope is wrong.  Higher spirits, of course, would not be tied to this planet, and would suffer no difficulty.

This is an odd, weird, idea.  I have a lot of them.  But I thought I would put it out there.  It is possible to imagine something like a Christian Apocalypse, even taking into accounts much bigger visions of God and reality.

I spent perhaps 8 years arguing several hours a day on the internet.   I was attacked constantly as a child on all levels, and I guess I sought it out, and learned to dominate debates.  I have been often ugly, often aggressive.  I have, in my defense, also been consistently attacked as a PERSON, since personal demonization and character assassination have always been important tricks in the Leftist arsenal.  Alinsky discusses this process at length and very openly.

In recent days I have been releasing some negative energies–the equivalent, I suppose, of pus from emotionally insulated sores.  And of course I find myself arguing again on the internet.

But I’m trying to look beyond this, beyond this palliative activity, this thing which gives me something to DO.

(And to be clear, all this arguing made my mind much sharper, allowed me to develop and test my ideas, and forced me to learn a whole lot of things I would not have otherwise.  It has been immensely useful, but compulsive, and compulsive is never good in the long term.)

And I realize that trauma is all I have known.  I can’t imagine a life without it.  I don’t know the way forward.  I truly don’t.  It is fog.  It is a road turning around a bend, or going over a hill.

And I realize this is OK, that this is how it works, that uncertainty does not make me a bad person, and that confusion is often a requirement for clarity.

I don’t know.  I don’t know.  I don’t know.  This would likely be a good mantra for me, at least for the time being.

Edit: Grant, these are not pointless abstractions.  Good thinking MUST underlie all good policy.  Our nation is dominated by crappy, sloppy, unprincipled thinking, papered over with Orwellian slogans and bright colors for the children.  You give me a topic, and I can in most cases point you to a 5-10 page, carefully considered essay.  Obamacare, immigration, Iraq, Afghanistan, 9/11, Social Security, Minimum Wage, the nature of morality, Global Warming, the NSA: it’s a very long list, one which would not exist without me having had my particular manias.

Once I’m done with the initial phase of my inner work, I don’t expect ANY of my political ideas to change.  They are anchored in reason, and reason does not change as emotions change.  What I expect to change is my capacity to present them in a persuasive rather than bombastic way.  My outer veneer needs a LOT of work, but the ideas don’t, in my considered view.

It is astonishing how quickly fear turns into violence.  It certainly leads to physical violence, but it can be as subtle as waiting for the other person to finish without listening, because you have something to say.  It can be impatience.  It can be rigidity.

I am on a lesson in my Kum Nye practice which is seemingly pulling the worst out of me.  I have been unable to refrain from arguing on the internet.  To my credit, I am persisting in it, despite the ugliness it is pulling up, because I believe there will be an end to it, and this is the only way; at the same time, I am watching all the ways fear deranges me.

I was talking last night with a guy in a bar about educational costs. He made the, to my mind correct, point that when you go, say, to MIT, what you are really buying is a piece of paper, which validates both that you were smart enough to get in, and smart and diligent enough to get out.

It immediately occurred to me that with all the explosion of internet based learning tools, why not create a company which validates knowledge?  Let’s say you want to be an Electrical Engineer.  Why not create a test for people to demonstrate what they know?  As appropriate, it could even include real world work, like putting together circuit assemblies, or whatever EE’s do.

People could study at home, at their own pace, pay very little tuition, and once companies get used to the idea, are sold on the idea, college would become vastly less important, and cost might well start returning to the realm of the reasonable.

You could have differing level tests, and differing levels of Pass.  If you want to study Humanities, you could do four years in two.  You could accumulate certificates of various sorts.

And to be clear, I am not talking just about on-line learning.  I am talking about getting rid of the notion of courses and credits completely, and simply testing what a person can demonstrate knowing, in aggregate, on a specific date.

I am thinking someone could become like the Underwriter’s Labs, but for validating knowledge.  Obviously, you charge for it.  A lot of work would go into figuring out what companies actually need for, say, graduating Chemical Engineers, Physicists, etc.  You could have differing focuses.  Obviously, content could be offered for a fee.

If anyone has proposed this, I have not seen it.  Even places like the University of Phoenix are still giving you a degree and using the Credit system.

I would like to assert a principle, that qualitatively new ideas–intelligence, in all the manners in which it expresses itself–can only initially flow horizontally or upwards.  From there, it CAN but does not invariably flow down.

What I mean by this is that if someone–and I have in mind at the moment me–has a radically new idea, it can only be understood and appreciated by people of equal or superior intelligence.  Since most of the people who have such ideas are very high up in their levels of intelligence, and since even most intelligent people suffer from varying emotional rigidities and capacities for negative hallucinations, we can with this principle easily derive most of the history of science, in which the new is treated as stupid, then malignant, then obvious.

I spend much of my time being treated as stupid or malignant, to the extent anyone even notices or cares about what I have to say.

I was feeling a great tenderness the other day, something I’m not used to.  It was like two channels of energy hit me simultaneously: love and the feeling of loss.  To love is to lose: the object of your love inevitably will change; you will lose it.  If it is a person, they will leave you or die, or they will change and the connection will no longer be the same.  If it is an idea, or ideal, principle–or a place, a food, a habit, a mood–it will change.  It will not endure in the form you presently love it in.  The relation cannot remain the same in a world filled with, defined by, motion.

So this horror of loss coexists necessarily with love.  And I understood in a flash the image of Mahakala–Great Time: you have to internalize this.  To love, you must make your peace with loss.  You must be destroyed in every moment you love: there is no other way, which is not characterized by delusion.  To love is to die; to see is to be blinded.

I have been confused by the macabre nature of much Tibetan art, but if you view it as no more and no less than an accurate portrayal of life as it must be lived on the plane of existence, then it all makes sense.