Month: March 2017

It is not idealistic to dream of a better world, but part of the dreaming must involve clear ideas of better. In my own view, a better world would involve the progressive reduction of trauma, anxiety, compulsion, and related psychological disorders. On all scales this would translate to more harmony, peace, and sustainable prosperity.

The reason all past utopian projects failed is that they depended on abstractions and not qualities of being, qualities of INDIVIDUAL emotional health and balance. For the Nazi the Nation was everything. For the Commies the STATE was everything. In both cases power was centralized because there were–and are–no good ideas which work on the individual level, and which can thus be freely spread and developed organically in complex local and extended orders.

But another way, they had no way to enlist human nature in the service of genuine social improvement and skilled use of freedom.

If however we retain a coherent understanding of individual psychological and thus moral improvement, then without the State doing ANYTHING, growth is inevitable, if enough people do nothing more than internalize the idea that growth is good for them and everyone they know.

Be that as it may, when I say seemingly cynical things , like “those who are already down get kicked the most”, I am speaking from personal experience. I am speaking from my own life, and on the basis of not-inconsiderable erudition. Human society and human history are filled with horrors. Unspeakable acts are occurring at this very moment in hundreds of places in this world of billions.  To claim otherwise would be ludicrous and naive. And to be naive is, in the practical solution of real problems, to be on a continuum between useless and part of the problem.

But where a cynic would say THIS IS HOW LIFE IS, a realist would say “this is how life is NOW, in far too many places, but better is possible.

And who can deny this? Are we not better off in nearly all ways than we were 500 years ago?

Clearly, many bad ideas have been and continue to be presented as good ideas.  Socialism and the political tolerance of political intolerance come readily to the fore as obvious examples.

But what we have not tried yet is GOOD ideas combined with global technology. And who is to say this marriage is impossible? Not a realist, although he might view the odds as being as abysmal of those of the Patriots at the start of the 4th Quarter in the most recent Super Bowl, or that Donald Trump would beat Hillary.

What are good ideas, you ask? Read my website!!!!!!

And clearly some people have it easier than others. Those who have not been kicked in the head do not spend much of their life energy looking over their shoulder, leaving them more free for effective work and healthy relationships.

But pointing to relative privilege, OBVIOUSLY, doesn’t raise anyone. Acts of self hatred and self abnegation do not heal in others patterns of trauma, developmental deficits, or give them access to better opportunities.  If they have an educational deficit, for example, as is common in most cities and many rural areas, what helps is education tailored in an intelligent (which is to say SINCERE) way to their actual needs. Charter Schools are useful.

Checking your privilege is only useful for building an unwarranted and factually sanitized sense of self importance. Who needs the germs of facts–which promise only the diseases of confusion and self doubt–when a system has been perfected for perennial and effort free moral superiority?

Enough preaching. This started as a personal note. Preaching, clearly, is one of my best and most cherished defense mechanisms.

You can hate yourself for hating yourself. This was the observation I wanted to make.

From a neurophysiological perspective, trauma acts to create social isolation by taking the relevant social parts of the brain off-line. This gets processed as a sense of banishment and feeling hated. It FEELS like you were cast out for a reason.

But you can then get attacked by your residual social brain, which sides with what feels like the “masses” who cast you out for crimes unspecified. You are first convicted, THEN you put yourself into a perennial trial a la Kafka, who likely suffered from something like this process (Der Prozess).

It is all very interesting, and I do feel interest, curiosity, and relative kindness–of the sort you would afford a stranger–are the path back.

In many of the best paying professions, “dispassion”, so-called, is a positive asset. Such people have cool heads, analytical ability, “objectivity” (which tends to turn both observer and observed into objects, into things).

What if the main ACTUAL product of most of news media–one developed in response to observations about what sells–is EMOTION?  What if people tune into MSNBC, or Fox, or any of hundreds of other sites, for a dose of daily FEELING? Happy, sad, self-congratulatory or mad: all if it counts. Such media offer portals into forgotten dimensions of human experience.

Think about this systemically: would a system based on feeling not inherently work itself into radical antipodes who NEED each other?

Self evidently, I argue for conservative positions consistently. I view them as better because defensible in depth. Emotion is not needed. But have we been infected?

Abstraction as a pervasive problem was pointed out decades ago by others. I believe Jacqued Barzun talked about it. But would it not logically affect all cultural systems?

Interesting idea.

I feel this. And it is a good feeling. It is painful, but as I have said before, so is thawing a frost-bitten limb.

My true self, which was damaged badly before I could talk, is very very perceptive, and extremely persistent and agile. I can only be glad I am slowly and with great difficulty edging my way back in that direction.

NO ONE who studies the data can but conclude that Tower 7, at least, was the subject of a controlled demolition.  I see no wiggle room, no gray area.  Towers 1 and 2, possibly, although even there the preponderance of evidence supports controlled demolition.

But Tower 7 can only have come down in one way.  That this BLATANT FACT was intentionally ignored–and as he points out, these are highly competent people, so that too is the only real possibility–speaks volumes to the state of the American government, and what in recent days has been called the Deep State.

We don’t know who these people are.  We don’t know what they want.  But they clearly represent an existential threat to freedom, and in my view are our most important and dangerous enemy.

When people who have spent one quarter of their lives watching TV get to their death beds, what of that experience matters?

I am asking questions.  I am not at the moment willing to suggest answers.

This is obvious, I suppose, and perhaps has long been obvious to people who had their needs met better than I did.

But all the same, this fact is hitting me today for some reason.

You the reader need love, and most likely more than you are getting.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend.  This is the creed of the Left, and based on their actual behavior, they consider their main enemies the United States, its history, and the people who in the main built and maintain it.