Month: July 2015

He’s a kind, well-meaning boy, and awfully sensitive…But let me tell you, the whole trouble stems from immaturity and sentimentality! It’s not the practical aspects of socialism that fascinate him, but its emotional appeal – its idealism –what we may call its mystical, religious aspect – its romanticism…and on top of that, he just parrots other people.

And I would add that in the same sense that small children can sometimes be reflexively cruel, so, too, do frustrated idealists become violent cynics, for the simple reason that the world, which does not cooperate with their simplistic and unrealistic visions, becomes hated.

This child never grows up, but he does lose his romanticism.

This quote is from this excellent article: http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2012/12/16/dostoevskys-6-nightmare-prophecies-that-came-true-in-the-20th-century-part-one/1/

I picked Dosteovsky to riff on for a reason.

Edit: I have not read that in a while.  It still fills me with deep emotion.  It was hell writing, but ultimately very therapeutic.  To climb, you need rungs, and that piece served that purpose for me.  We build our own ladders out of Hell.

I am extremely sensitive; very, very sensitive.  I feel the world around me directly in a way I cannot communicate with words.  I have a well developed capacity for dissociation, which is why the psychologist who diagnosed me with PTSD said I would do well in a concentration camp, but at heart, when I am myself, I see and feel everything.

I feel the evil in the world well–I of course also have a well developed instinct for danger–but am only slowly growing to feel the Good.  Just yesterday I had a split second of clarity, and felt how it would be to love everyone I met.  It is not a burden: it is health.  And I am growing healthy.  And I wish you the same.

One day, perhaps, this mass nightmare will end here on Earth, and our potential as spiritual beings be fulfilled.  It is impossible to know, and I am not and never will be in the business of making predictions I cannot defend.  But one can always speak to the truth of ideals, and visions of what could be.

Is universal peace possible?  Yes.  Yes it is.  I work daily in my small way to move in that direction, starting first and foremost with working on myself.

It is impossible to think clearly when one is surrounded by untruths.  Some time in the late 1960’s, our media complex lost its connection to the principle of telling truths, first and foremost.  When Walter Kronkite came out against the possibility of victory in 1968, it was understandable that he did not realize the extent of the defeat which was inflicted on the NVA during the first Tet Offensive.

47 years later, it is impossible for anyone who cares NOT to know about what a devastating blow it was to them.  Senior NVA leaders have written about it.  They have talked about how they thought about quitting, and suing for peace under nearly any conditions.  They have talked about how much moral support traitors–and I use the word clinically and precisely–people like Jane Fonda gave them.  They have talked about how they watched our news nightly, and took great courage from the growth of the “anti-war” (losing a war with Communists does not end war, it merely moves it into the next phase of a war by the State against the people; and in this particular case, it facilitated mass slaughter in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam) movements.

This is the world we live in, in which all the congenial lies told over a half century are accepted at face value, with enthusiasm.  Leftists are always the Good Guys, and the task of news is not just to report it, but to INFLUENCE it.  This is all Goebbels did.  The task was always both to report the news, and to report it as accurately as possible. They would even report defeats.  They simply spun everything in a positive way.  You can report failures with absolute fidelity, if you nest that report within an overall narrative or context of progress. Likewise, the successes of your enemies can be made failures.

I look around me, and I remember.  Do you remember Ross Perot, who made our national debt a major priority, who galvanized everyone to care?  Watching our news, one would think illegal aliens and gay marriage opponents are the greatest existential threats facing us.  Clearly, Obama and his cronies have provided shelter and open support to murderers, rapists and thieves, and that is very simply indefensible on any level, and it is impossible for any sane person to look into the eyes of their victims and claim any good has been done for humanity.

At the same time, the interest payments on our national debt will very soon be higher than our Department of Defense allocations.  The interest on the debt is becoming a cancer on our economy.

And Obama is doing all the things Socialists do, that he can get away with.  This always causes economic decay and rot.  Not sometimes: ALWAYS.  There are no exceptions.  Obamacare will cause de facto monopolies in health insurance to form, will cause rationing of actual healthcare, will continue to put stress on small businesses–we have had dozens of restaurants close around here in the past year–and will put stress on the budgets of the middle classes who have to pay for everyone, themselves, and the new welfare recipients Obama is trying to buy with middle class money.

All the Fed needs to do to cause a crash is stop buying our debt, or stop pumping $50 billion or something a month into massive Wall Street banks, or raise interest rates.  I am seeing they want higher Reserve requirements, which is inherently deflationary, at least in good economic times.  Deflation right now would cause a crash.

All the signs are on the table of a massive disruption of our system, even absent something like a major terrorist attack.

And the people who make their livings, and hang their professional hats on, telling us truths we need to hear, are completely absent from their posts.  Quite the contrary: they have sided with the lies.

I got distracted: watched Casablanca with one kid, and Singin in the Rain with the other.

Not much to add.  The film is filled with large, tightly packed crowds.  The message is clear, that there is the crowd, and there is Hitler (with a few followers).  As Rudoph Hess said, National Socialism is Germany, Hitler is National Socialism, Hitler is Germany, and Germany is Hitler.

He did not mention Jews once.  He spoke of the future.  One can see the appeal of control and authority in a nation which had known a great deal of chaos (much of which Hitler’s S.A. helped sow).  Instead of blowing with the wind, he was going to plant “a pole” (Audience: Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil).

I think the Nazi anti-Semitism has to be seen, within their awful logic, not so much as hatred of Jews, but love of Germans.  The Jews had to be “dealt with”, there had to be a Final Solution, because the protection of the German race and people necessitated it.  Auschwitz was a proactive defense against the ruin of Germany.

And Hitler was obviously quite proud that his party represented an ideology.  We have come, rightly, to detest and fear ideologues, but I think at the time it amounted to the creation of a socially needed secular religion.

Goebbels was definitely the most creepy guy in the film.

Hess struck me as goofy.  I had not realized just how powerful he was.  It was Hitler, then Goering, then Hess.  It caused me to reread his story, the details of which I had forgotten: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Hess

They kept Spandau Prison open for 20 years with him as the only prisoner.  His was a very odd life, even by the standards of the time, and the group he belonged to.

I have often seen Leni Riefenstahl referred to as a genius, or master propagandist.  I did not see this film as particularly brilliant, although I suppose I have to measure it by the standards of the time.  They did end with a massive audience singing the Horst Wessel Lied.  The whole thing felt like some combination of Oktoberfest and Church.

https://youtu.be/gHO1PprfmkY

We’ve just about reached the point where this isn’t satire any more.  Do you not feel the brainwashing going on all around you?

Gibbon also made the interesting point that Jews reject all other cultures and peoples in a way that was somewhat unique in the ancient world.  I tend to think of them being rejected, as in anti-Semitism, but they equally reject everyone else as Goyim.  I have never really understood anti-Semitism, but it is a fact of human psychology that people do not like people who look down on them, which can be inferred from the fact that no Gentile could be good enough to marry a Jewish girl.

He also noted as one of the reasons for the triumph of Christianity, which first occupied the entirety of the old Roman world, and has since of course spread over the world, was its intolerance.  Competing creeds were banned and quite often punished violently, which had not been the case with Roman religions, which were very pluralistic and syncretic.  We think of Christianity as a creed of love, but its actual history is one of more or less direct imperialism, both politically and culturally.

I continue my 127 hour foray into Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”.  We have gotten to Christianity.  His treatment of Judaism was a bit of a treat for its very political incorrectness, and, largely, aptness.

But he made what to me was an interesting point. I’m not sure he intended this idea directly, but I inferred it from what he said.

Jesus died, by the standard chronology, in A.D. (Anno Domini, if memory serves, or CE if one wants to wash history free of Christianity) 33.  The Second Temple of the Jews was destroyed in A.D. 70, some 37 years later.

Here is the thing: much of the Law that binds the Jews centered on that Temple.  They were required, per Gibbons, to “present themselves before Jehovah” 3 times a year, and of course the Temple is where the sacrifices were made.  T’Shuvah, which I understand is a critical Jewish term meaning something like “repentance”, originally involved making sacrifices to atone for sins.  The rabbis–or whatever they were called then–would slit the throats of animals on altars intended for the purpose, and presumably stained with blood.

When the Temple was gone, the Law could no longer be followed exactly.  Here is the interesting point: Jesus was made the FINAL sacrifice, such that the Temple was no longer needed.  Virtue was made of necessity.  Christianity, as it came to be called, was in effect an alternative to the traditional faith which not long after his death was rendered impossible.  As Gibbon has it, it seems many early Christians wanted to keep the details of the traditional Jewish law, but append it to include an end to sacrifice.

We seem to know that none of the Gospels were written within fifty years of Christ’s death, and some much later, seemingly.

We also know–and we can reference documents found from that era–there were many contending stories and doctrines which were not included within the dominant narratives that were created by the Romans, impatient with competition and alternative.

People, and the history they make, are endlessly interesting.  I’m drinking again, and should go to bed, but my dreams don’t stop.  I can just sit, and watch endless and endlessly interesting visions flow through me.  There will be an end to all this, but not tonight.

I think I’ve said this before, but the teenage years begin when your children are still in diapers.

See.  See what is in front of you.  See all the way.

I have two teenagers, and they are both delights.

http://www.infowars.com/seattles-nanny-state-is-deputizing-trashmen-as-secret-police-to-snoop-through-wastebins/

A week or two I mentioned as a lunatic scenario the deputizing of the politically correct to act as direct and legal militants in favor of the State.  Well, here it is.  You throw away an apple core?  You will be found out and punished.

And I want to be clear that we always have to separate out whether or not some action is right or wrong, and instead address directly the increase in power and surveillance required to enforce it.

The city literally wants to empower people to go through people’s garbage in pursuit of some ludicrous political objective.  The world will not be saved or lost by apple cores and week old spaghetti.  It WILL be lost by people who insist such trifles are the direct business of an omnipotent State.

And in the second half of the story, they talk about police using analyzers to detect drug traces in the urine people flush down their toilets.

If that does not make you say What the Fuck, please take a long needle and stick it in the inside corner of your eye.  That will complete the lobotomy, which at this stage is just a formality.

This insanity can only end in total tyranny, unless it is stopped.

As I mention from time to time, I really like this form of meditation.  It is intelligent.  It evokes feelings and teaches you to process them.  It is in that sense eminently practical.  I have not done Vipassana, but in my understanding it consists in the awareness, but does nothing to evoke something to be aware OF. I did mantra meditation for a long time back in my youth, and have tried Zazen and the “just sitting there” forms of meditation, and none did anything but wind me up.  Counter-productive, as I suspect is the case for all people not already relatively well adjusted.  That, in any event, is what I read is often the case.

We are complex, rich beings.  We are like cabinets with countless drawers and shelves, and filing spaces.  Personal growth consists in the first phase in simply coming to know ourselves as we are, to open everything up, to see it, to become acquainted with it.  The spaces within us have unique and distinctive textures and feelings.

You have to have motion to open things up, and you have to have stillness to allow it to speak. Kum Nye has both.  Uniquely, in my not inconsiderable experience.

Today, between my last post and this one, I did my practice, and in the fifth part of this set of exercises, I was bringing my negatives into my “cloud”, and a Mr. Hyde sort of figure came up, and told the part of me that is loving “I always hated you and wanted to hurt you.”  “I”–I hate to identify with that other part of me, although I recognize in principle I must–asked why.  And it showed me that it needed love for a very long time, but had no way to get it.  And anything we need but can’t get we grow to hate.  It is natural for unloved people to grow to hate love.  Something tantalizing but 6″ out of your reach is maddening.

The nature of trauma is that the more you need people the more you push them away. Some part of you knows that your very desperation makes you intrinsically vulnerable, intrinsically gullible, intrinsically prone to error and the manipulations of others.  The harder you reach, the harder you pull back.  It is one more of the contradictions of loss and emotional privation.

But my two selves went for a pleasant walk in a pleasant park, and I think they worked something out.

There can be no greater gift, no skill more worth developing, than the ability to truly love oneself.  Once you can do that, you don’t NEED people, and so the desperation and clinging disappear, and so the ability to approach other people appropriately, in a spirit of welcoming and openness becomes available.

My life’s tasks are developing this ability in myself–I am nearly there–and then figuring out how to teach it consistently and efficiently.  That is one of my life’s tasks anyway.  Any regular readers I may have know I have set some other modest tasks in addition to that.

I have not been able to bring myself to watch “Unbroken”.  I KNOW, from personal experience, that there is a huge difference between surviving and thriving.  When you push your will to the utmost, with the fury and passion that terror and fear of death–and sheer stubbornness–compel, there is a cost.  There is a price to pay.  A debt is incurred, that is paid with sleepless nights, tossing and turning, nightmares, panic attacks, hypervigilance, inability to trust people, and the depression and sadness that these symptoms bring in their wake.  That was the aftermath of Zamperini’s war time experience. In my limited understanding, it was only when he embraced Christianity that he found peace.

Nietszche’s famous dictum notwithstanding, he wound up very much alive in an insane asylum.

I can’t embrace Christianity, and I don’t think most “moderns”, as I could call people like me, can either.  I wish I could, but I can’t.  It remains my personal belief that whatever Christ’s actual message was, it has been perverted through some combination of carelessness, avarice, and stupidity.

My dream is of methods which CONSISTENTLY, reliably, resolve trauma.  Our processes and procedures, our understandings, are those of infants.  Ancient civilizations, I think, were vastly superior to us in that respect.

One interesting thing I will note is that I have reached a point in my Kum Nye where after half an hour or so of doing the exercises, I very much feel I am in a cloud–that I sort of AM a cloud, or a field, of energy.  And in my current set of exercises we are reaching a culmination of sorts, where I invoke this cloud, and then bring past traumas and negative experiences into it, and they are transformed.  The ideal–and this is a realistic ideal, I think, based on my early experience of it–is to take all experiences of all sorts and instantly transform them into positive, even ecstatic energy.

There is a method to this.  I have been doing this practice 2-6 times a week now for about a year and a half.  It has taken this long to get to this point.  And of course I have been doing a lot of other inner work as well.

But I will reiterate my vision that things like this belong in temples at the very CENTER of our culture, which are not peripheral, but part of the sustaining core of what brings and keeps us together.

What a fallen, ugly lot we are.  Even in Christian churches, which speak–often but not invariably–honestly of love, they still retain a human sacrifice at the very center of it, and a vengeful, violent God.

And Christianity, and all other religions in America and the West generally, is in decline. Those outside of it have NOTHING but their politics, their work, maybe their families, and hedonism to replace it, all of them too ugly to be the focus of a good life.

We need more.  We deserve more, I think.  Certainly we need to demand more of ourselves.  We need to take the next step.  I am speaking to the wind again, but at the moment I need to.