Month: December 2016

Given that Hillary’s poll numbers were manifestly cooked, why couldn’t Obama’s approval numbers be likewise cooked, for example by oversampling in large cities?  I read in his 8 years Democrats have lost over 1,000 seats, net, across the country, including those in Congress.  Remember that when he was first elected in 2008 Democrats held both houses of Congress.

He has been nothing short of a disaster, but the Democrats can’t let go of him, and the left wing utopian dreams of control and power and oppression that he represents to them.  Keith Ellison would be disastrous as the next DNC chair, but that seems to be the direction they are going.

Ideologues are inflexible in certain areas, and the thing is to awaken to reality, they would have to lose their left wing pipe dreams, and they just can’t do that.  They can’t admit they have been living for decades in a miasma of foggy thinking, factual misunderstandings, impudence, assumption, GroupThink, and continual failure (with respect, of course, to their claimed goals; in respect to getting power, their failures are quite recent, and record of success quite long).

So you have this spectacle of Obama being soundly rejected by voters in the election, and a Democrat Party that wants MORE, not less, of what was rejected.

We can only sit back and applaud.  Their options are waking up, or disappearing.  Both are good for the future of the United States and the world.

At root, if I might use a bad combination of metaphors, the egalitarian impulse–and it is an EMOTIONAL impulse–is a pruning, not a fertilizing, a reducing, not a growing, a destruction not a creation.

As s vehicle for the expression of latent anger in the name of good it is perhaps unsurpassed. Manifestly it has utility across virtually all human cultures.

But we can always ask: what are you trying to build? If they answer ” a more just society” we can ask: and how are you planning to enrich and fulfill the inner worlds of each individual in that society, such that life becomes a blessing beyond mere things and small comforts?

They have no answer to this question, if they are honest. It is not a human world they seek to build, but a mechanical one.

I would like to create a continuum with. Egalitarianism on one side, and on the opposite the notion of Individual Moral Progress.

Inherent in the former is the assertion that all people are equal. Within the latter is the OBSERVATION that people are NOT equal, that in fact diversity with regard to emotional well being, intellectual capacity, motivation, erudition, etc., is the RULE, and that all coherent thinking about people necessarily views them as individuals, and that no greater barrier to clear–which is say PRACTICAL–thinking could be imagined than the necessity of viewing group membership in lieu of personal characteristics.

What led to this pattern of thought was a series of severely politically incorrect thoughts. I was waiting to get beeped into a building and a young black woman comes by and says EXCUSE ME in the impatient way which we have all seen in black women with attitude. You’re not supposed to say this, but most people who have worked a lot with black folks know what I mean.

Then an older black woman comes along, who looked very sweet, but her path was in a collision course with mine, and only at the last minute did it occur to her it was not possible for me to get more out of her way. And I thought: that is the emotionally rigid pattern of someone who doesn’t want to be here, and who likely has some grief in her past.

Then I recalled that I have heard anecdotally from various black folks I’ve talked to over the years that rates  of child sexual abuse seem to be much higher in the black community. Rates of rape, in my understanding, certainly are.

Then I wondered–given how difficult life is in much of Africa, I wonder if the sexual instincts in blacks became a bit stronger as compensation evolutionarily. Then of course I self censored: the HORROR, you can’t think that. All people are equal, period.

Then I thought: what SCIENTIFIC basis do we have for assuming this? Is the NBA 80 or 90% black because white people just don’t want to make millions of dollars a year doing easy and fun work?

Egalitarianism has no way forward, truly, except to make all equal in misery. The doctrine of Individual Moral Progress can speak truth, because it offers a way out. EVEN IF disparities of talent and motivation exist today, they can be overcome. No matter who you are or what your experience you can choose s path of personal betterment, which helps not just society but your race.

Is it not much more interesting to make statements about what people are capable of than who they “are”? If you are assigned a slot, you become that slot. But if you are given a possibility, you GROW to fulfill it.

The Egalitarian philosophy is inherently one of confinement and violence, and diminishes inherently all it touches.

I will add as a perhaps needed end note that it amazing, truly amazing, that white kids, raised in white suburbs, and educated at largely white schools, think that they both can and should speak to what black peoples need, and that what they need MOST OF ALL is speech codes on white college campuses.

This is farcical and delusional. It not only does no concrete good, it stands in the way of the open and probing discussions which would make actual solutions to the problems of unemployment, crime, and hopelessness possible.

There can be little serious doubt that Obama–and handler Valerie Jarrett, who should not be left out of these narratives–broke the law continually and shamelessly for substantislly his entire time in office. The list is necessarily truncate because my memory and time are limited, but ponder Fast and Furious, the corruption of the IRS for nakedly political purposes, the illegal war in Libya, the illegal transfer of arms and provision of training to jihadists in Syria, the release of 5 senior Taliban commanders in exchange for deserter Bo Bergdahl (which violated a law HE signed), the corruption of the FBI by James Comey, and others I am forgetting. In a country ruled by LAW our current President should have been impeached and removed from office and criminally prosecuted and jailed long ago.

But we do not live in a country ruled by law, do we? Class and connections get some of us much better deals.

It does seem obvious though, that the egregiousness of Obamas crimes indicate the PLAN was a continuity of power from one criminal regime to another, and crooks cover for each other.

The problem with Obama pardoning the Clintons (Bill, Hillary, and likely Chelsea and her husband) is that he himself has done things that could and should get him arrested–not political crimes, to be clear, but crimes which undermined Ametican safety and security, got thousands of innocent people killed, and which were committed solely out if selfish personal interest.

Now, in an ordinary, sane world, Trump would have to weigh the risk of alienating a large segment of the electorate if he chose to prosecute their Messiah and his trplacement, but I would argue the profoundly violent and infantile response of the Headless Ones actually creates an OPPORTUNITY. Here is the thing: with that much hate, there is NOTHING, absolutely NOTHING, he can do to win them back,, they are gone and will stay gone. They are dead to him politically.

But the people who put him in office want to see some respectability restored to our government, some possibility of trust returned. They want the IRS and DHS, and FBI, and ICE (another scandal), and CIA, and EPA (another scandal), etc., PURGED of all the people who committed crimes for political purposes under Obama.

And they will be HAPPY to see at least Hillary prosecuted, and most of us would feel a whole lot better about the integrity of our government if Obsma and Jarrett were prosecuted too. I think that would be a no lose proposition for Trump. There is no point triangulating with lunatics who hate you. Double down with the people who love you.

I think some of this calculus shows in the desperate and ludicrous things Obama is doing, like expelling Russian diplomats based on charges even he knows are cooked up. He knows this is stupid and wrong. But I think the full gravity of the possible blowback resulting from his wholesale assault on our institutions and the values they represent is still sinking in. He has been in denial. This was not  the game plan. This is not how it was supposed to work.

And at the end of the day, his intelligence has always been vastly inferior to that claimed for him.

It is ironic that the sundry anti-Trump propagandas, which were intended to sway conservatives and moderates, seem to only have had effect on the precalculated political integers, whose loyalty was already absolute. But this effect exacerbated prodigiously the perceptual gap between the hard Left and most of America. There exist two radically different world views, which are equally radically incompatible.

What point is there in engaging in dialogue with someone who is a white supremacist, or, on the other hand, with anyone stupid enough to believe such lies?

Cultural divide? 100% the fault of the Left and its organs.

The first question any futurist should ask is: is individual moral progress possible? Implicitly, most of those I have read answer in the negative. They believe in technological progress and social progress–which is understood as the perfection of the social machine, as understood with an engineering spirit and mindset–but not a society of saints.

Star Trek implicitly asked us to choose between reason and emotion. Why? There is no conflict. The logics of the heart are as susceptible to progress as the best maths.

It occurred to me this morning that the way trauma is stored in the body, you could literally get knocked on the head, forget your own name, and still have these fucking memories.  This is one of the interesting things about the Wolverine character: he heals instantly from physical wounds, but he carries emotional baggage from things he can’t remember.

And what has been appearing for moments in past days is the feeling of being tortured.  It is an overwhelming feeling.  God has been merciful in creating the possibility of dissociation.  Dissociation is like becoming a seed with a hard shell, that can be blown from here to there, survive different climates, bouncing around, and stay intact for a very long time, with latent life within it, waiting for the moment to sprout.

And torture gets embedded on your nervous system not because of the physical pain, necessarily, but rather the realization that some other human being is CAPABLE of doing that to you.

In my own case, it is simply, I think, a feeling as a small child that I was both helpless and going to die.  Feel that ONCE, and the switch flips.  You might stop crying, you might seem calm, but it is because you went through a phase transition.  Your sense of self was radically altered in a moment, your capacities diminished.  You can deal after that.  It is like a permanent emotional anesthetic, but one which dulls the positive feelings as well, the sense of human contact and community, the sense of agency, of control, of a connection to the future of any sort.

I would stipulate as a general rule that anything you can feel, you can process.  In my own case, it will be letting that feeling through in small, small doses.  I already feel better.  I already seem to be working better. I can see what has always been there in the shadows, pushing me first this way, then that way, always in circles, always running and hiding, or fighting and raging.

And I look at who I used to be with some compassion.  I look at foolish things I’ve done, and they make more sense to me now. I see that I just didn’t know what to do, and there was no way I could.  I was never taught either what to do, or how to figure it out.  I have figured all this out on my own, with great difficulty, and over a long period of time.

And I do feel at times what would now be called an epigenetic component to all this, which I think the Buddhists, a bit more accurately, would call the karmic component.  I feel my mothers distress and unresolved emotions.  They were passed down to me, in her genes, but also in her spirit, and in her behavior towards me.  The children do inherit the sins of the parents, rather, the terrors and sufferings they felt.

But through all this I feel coeur-age.  Heart.  If I was going to break, it would have happened long ago. I have both the habit of surviving, and the ability.

There is a point where even in a healthy person–perhaps especially in a healthy person–pain ceases to smart, and it becomes simply one more texture of experience, of intrinsic interest, a proper subject for curiosity.  This is the moment when real growth can begin.

You reach a point with Kum Nye where you can feel various sensations, but they have no names and no boxes.  They are literally indescribable and often transitory.

And it occurs to me if my guess that both trauma and habit interact in unhelpful ways to tie the same–usually unseen, unfelt, and unacknowledged–sensations to the same flashes of an image that goes much too fast to be processed, to feelings which are often felt, to thoughts which occupy anxious minds, who then try to only think, to only be logical, to make them go away, then recognizing the various strands and shades of sensation ought to work to disentangle automatic patterns.

You say you feel sad.  Are there not many variants of sadness, and is not remaining stuck in the same sadness not ignoring them?  Most emotions come, if you watch carefully, with latent ancestors, friends, and nascent children.  They travel in families, in packs, and although it can simplify the thinking process pretending them come alone and undiluted, this is not the case, in my experience.

To remain stuck you have to blind yourself to all the motion all around you.

It does seem to me that the whole idea of Impermanence in Buddhism is not just an objective description of the world, but a call to use change as an impetus to positive feelings.  If you never resist change, you can adapt. If you adapt, you can stay positive, happy, and connected to most things and most people, despite bobbing up and down in the continual tide that is this world.  You are not disconnecting from everything and everyone.  No, you are disconnecting from the IDEA–the thought–that you are safe as one person, one feeling, one time, and one place.  That is a terribly dangerous idea, one guaranteed to cause misery not just in the long run, but every single day.

You don’t have to earn money you don’t spend.

It seems to me self hatred is really just a systemic sense of tension that cannot be easily resolved.

We are wired so that when we violate a social rule of some sort, we “punish” ourselves with a tension we call guilt or shame.  This flows naturally from the connection between our social brain, which allows meaningful connection to others, and very old instincts which protected us long ago.  Likewise, anyone who does not feel guilt can be assumed thereby to be separated from humanity in important and primitive ways.

Guilt might be the explanation and shame the reality.  Even animals feel shame.  We have all seen dogs express it.

Trauma in some respects is a primal expulsion.  It is being forced to detach from your social brain, and identify with feelings with exist in a much more primitive place.  There is a rough homology between this expulsion and the “guilt” or shame sense.  This manifests in many as self loathing.

This self loathing underlies, in my view, virtually all that is wrong with the human species.  I think tension leads to self loathing, which leads to rigidity, which leads to violence of all sorts.

Ponder the link between steps two and three.  If you hate yourself, you want to redeem yourself.  Since you cannot resolve the underlying and fundamentally irrational–as seen from its disconnection with any current observable reality–sense of shame, you invent something very difficult to accomplish, to help alleviate this feeling which would otherwise drive you mad.  I think this is the root of many manias, and all dogmatisms.

Being dogmatic is primarily an EMOTIONAL stance.  Being dogmatic is different from a strong sense of being right.  People who are dogmatic do not want to hear or consider alternative points of view.  People who feel like they are right, but willing to consider alternatives, are open to all feedback.

Logically, if unresolved tensions lead to dogmatism, then more agile, accurate, and useful thinking ought logically to proceed from relaxation.

It is literally my belief that we could achieve world peace in short order if all leaders of all nations were capable of regular deep relaxation, and of the pleasure that flows from it.

As things stand, I think the game, the ludetic system, favors strongly obsessive and rigid people, which is to say people incapable of seeing much of the world, and very capable of misunderstanding most of the rest.