Author: White Whale

I have this notion I have articulated from time to time of perceptual breathing, of a global perceptual In-Breath, and a global perceptual Out-Breath. Large to small to large to small.

Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words. Sometimes you need the thousand words, and more.
Sometimes pith is the essence of wit, sometimes wisdom speaks long and carefully.

Be all that as it may:

Addiction is not the problem: it is the RESPONSE to the problem.

Love is when you feel completely safe with someone without using denial.

No sane person will deny that life is often hard.  Whether it SHOULD be hard or not is a philosophical question, but that it is for many people is clear.

We are all born where we are born, to parents who may or may not want us, who may or may not teach us useful lessons, who may in fact inflict pain on us, and denigrate us.

Where you are is where you are.  Nothing can change this.  Given this, if you stipulate, through excuses, that you are helpless, then you have taken your own destiny out of your hands.  You have given in to helplessness, and this in turn makes whatever pain may be present worse.

I think most people make excuses.  Certainly I do.  My feeling is that my excuses are often reasons–which may or may not be true, although if I’m honest it likely isn’t true–but they are reason on a path to personal accountability.  I take frequent breaks climbing the mountain, but I look at the summit often, and when I am done resting, I continue climbing.

It is perfectly acceptable to ask for help, but it is never consistent with a healthy sense of self, of healthy self empowerment, to demand of others that they do for you things you can do for yourself.

This is an axiom of genuinely Liberal culture.  This is an axiom of good people. 

The alternative is people USING other people for their own selfish and unhealthy ends.  Some people need to infantilize other people, so they can remain perennial parents.  Not because they are good parents, or care-givers, but because it gives them a sense of power when others depend on them, which is easily rationalizable as morality.

This is the root dynamic of race relations in this country.  The political Left tells blacks that it will care for them, and far too many blacks are content to take them at their word.

Again: this is spoken from a place impatient with the low self esteem implied by the complicity of ordinary blacks in this system.  Black people are capable of vastly more than they are showing as a cultural group at the moment.  They are capable of genius.  They just need to believe it.

We all make excuses, and in my view, there is no warrant for judging people for it.  At the same time, it is perfectly reasonable to hope for other people what they fear to hope for themselves.

As I have noted often, many people–most, perhaps all–have many “parts”, which can and do send contradictory signals.  I would like to assert that in the presence of combined passive aggression and apparent courtesy, the most damaging signal should be treated as the primary one, even if it is subtle and intermittent.

Particularly when you try hard to consciously focus on the most obvious, most socially acceptable one, the second one becomes vastly more damaging, because it becomes  a virtual hypnotic suggestion that you deserve such treatment.  To combat it effectively, you have to ignore the socially acceptable parts of the communication, and focus on the damaging signal, because in reality it IS the primary one.  It comes from the root of that person’s consciousness.

To the extent all these notions of unconscious racism have validity, this is the source.  At the same time, you do not change how people REALLY think by forcing them to avoid certain words, or to avoid expressing certain thoughts.  The feelings remain, and will always find an out.  As with feminism as well, the best offense is generalized success.  If blacks want to eliminate racism, they need to start graduating from high school at the same rate as the kids in the suburbs, working as hard as those kids, and taking responsibility for their families.  They need to stop blaming the world, and need to stop looking to leaders who encourage them to do so. 

These are not things you are supposed to say, but it is the truth.  It may be that vigorously policing peoples expressed ideas eliminates or reduces psychological discomfort among blacks–I’m sure it does–but it does not raise the standard of living, make the streets safer, make the schools better, or increase the number of good quality jobs.  It doesn’t.

Returning to my main theme, I would in fact suggest that there is a covert hostility–or at least actual racism–inherent in the ideas that whites need to “look out for” blacks, that they depend in inherent ways on the political system, and that they need to be guided through life like little children.  These ideas–particularly since they are not expressed in clear language–weaken them.  If the Irish, Jews or Italians had had friends like the modern Democrats, they too would still be impoverished in disproportionate numbers.

And in dealing with narcissists, the double communication is the main source of damage.  In order to delay the realization that they are radically alone and incapable of honest human contact, the narcissist–particularly in “romantic” relationships–will often offer to the other the same esteem in which they hold themselves.  This appears to be generosity, but it is simply a cloaking device, a concealment, a trick they don’t even mean to play.  With most, I don’t even think it is conscious.  It is simply who they are.  They have a behavioral soundtrack that they play through, then reset at the beginning with the next one.

Grandiosity, though, betrays an inner lack.  Conversely, GENUINE humility–which is rare–indicates an inner fullness and richness of experience.  You don’t need to always be right, because the world is a fascinating, large place, and there is much you don’t know.

All of this, of course, is personally relevant to me.  My work continues, as does success.

All human action begins in the body, is processed by the brain–some brain–and expressed symbolically if communication is desired, most commonly through language. Language, in turn, both expresses ideas AND creates them. Images we form are often in response to words. This primitive feelings can go through many forms, themselves constantly changing and evolving.

The deliberate abuse of language is a deliberate abuse of ones fellow humans.  Conversely, consciously accurate use of language is a form of compassion and even love.

Hence: gun control is the effort to reduce illegal gun use by reducing legal gun use.

Corollary: gun control is the effort to reduce the number of illegal guns by reducing the number of legal guns.

I would stipulate John Lotts phrase should have a word added: more LEGAL guns, less crime. This is a highly defensible statement. It may be that low crime areas exist without guns–this is certainly true-/but I very much doubt there are any high crime areas outside war zones where legal gun ownership is common. Witness much of South and Central America.

This song is from 1979: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xfxfmi

There are others.

What is interesting about this whole Hollywood thing is that the open secret has become simply open, or is in the process of doing so.

In every other business, sexual harassment has been punished quickly and severely for decades now.  The question is why it has been allowed to continue in Hollywood, with both men and women coming out now in large numbers.

I was reading an op/ed citing a rabbi who claimed that the Times piece on Weinstein was the result of his plan to make a philo-Semitic movie about the Warsaw Ghetto, and they found that politically unacceptable.  I suspect, though, that they had no idea how many rats would come fleeing out as well.

It seems likely left-wing culture itself made the sexual harassment possible.  It both stipulates that all sex is meaningless, that one should pursue pleasure at all times and all costs, and that the cause is always more important than any individual sacrifices.  Weinstein was a staunch leftist, so hurting him was hurting Democrats was hurting whoever it is that person thought they actually helped.  The little people, lets say, or oppressed minorities who would otherwise be completely helpless.

Weinstein knew everybody, and they seem to have known him.  We might call this the “Bill Clinton” principle, that all sins are forgiven if you are on the right side, because, again, the cause exceeds any sacrifice.  Paula Jones and the rest of them were just the price of progress, so called.

It will be interesting to see if the naked and undeniable double standard being displayed everywhere at the moment will open any eyes.

For his part, Trump seems to have been quite astute at picking willing women.  Weinstein was pretty much a “I’ll fuck anything that moves, bring me meat”, but Trump has always seemed to me to truly enjoy feminine beauty for its own sake, and the company of intelligent, individuated women.  He may have grabbed pussies, but if so, those woman likely consented at some point, and slept with him because they wanted to. 

Trump has been sued over 4,000 times, but not ONCE for sexual harassment.  Ponder the odds of that: a multi-billionaire playboy not sued once.  And I have never seen one allegation of hush money, which have trailed Bill Clinton and Weinstein (and others) all their careers.

Here is the thing: I think Weinstein and Clinton HATE women.  Sex becomes a means of punishing them, of asserting power and dominance over them.  This is the real turn-on, which makes it so the target doesn’t matter at all.  They are all–perhaps, if I might indulge myself in some psycho-dynamic oversimplification–their mothers.

I think of Fellini’s City of Women, which presumably echoed Freudian themes, but I do not think Freud was fully wrong about everything.  He always got to the right intersection, then made the wrong turn.

Despite being only 12 pages, and free, I found myself skimming this after a close reading of the first 5 or so. He goes on and on about the importance of time–which is a useful topic–but fails to tell us what it is we should be doing.  He merely conveys the regrets of many, and the failures of the few who lived as he counsels.

This is a paradox of our own time.  We have, relative to at least our recent past, much leisure.  It is possible, for example, for someone to make a best seller of a book titled “The Four Hour Work Week”.  But we don’t know what to do with it.  That same author seems to find himself now working 60 hour weeks, not just because of money, but because he doesn’t seem to know what to do with himself.  He “meditates” daily for 20 minutes or so, because it “sharpens his mind”.  It is a best practice of high achievers.

I read many billionaires are now micro-dosing with LSD to make them more “creative”.  Creative to what purpose?  Amassing another billion?  A fifth billion?  Becoming the wealthiest man in the world?  Why?  What does this get, if not leisure?  I get that making money is a game to them, that it is autotelic, but on a deep level is such play an important part of life?  They could get the same satisfaction surfing, without needing to be cuthroat, as so many are.  There is not just a play element, but a power element, and the thirst for power is inherently sick.

Such people cannot be role models.  They have no idea what to do with life.  Whatever they are focused on, it is not learning how to love and be loved, how to relax deeply, and how to get at the deep and rich spirit of each and every day, which to my mind and heart are the points of life, and which I, in my own way, pursue each day.  I still ache everywhere, and I still have much work to do, but I am on the path much more than any billionaire, or even most millionaires you might read about.

What to do with time?  That it can be wasted is clear, but what constitutes the best and highest use is made no more clear by the current passion among many for the Stoics.

Socrates, for his part, considered “philosophy”–the love of Truth–the highest use of time.  And he ended his life only able to say he knew nothing.  Is this really the Summum Bonum upon which to base the edifice of our civilization?  That, or the deconstruction of the notion of truth, and a following obsession with material well being, or lunatic schemes of social engineering, in which men become at best herd animals?

The answer is in your body.  It is not in your mind, unless by mind we intend the integrated heart and mind conjured by such words as the Hindi “Mun”.

I continue to see stupid people.  It is my curse.  Perhaps I am stupid, too.  I am willing to consider that.  But my body tells me I am on the right, if difficult, path.

You can only see the future through the lens of the present.  Anything else is a lie.

Corollary: if you cannot see the present, you have no business speaking of the future.

Obviously, both of these are large problems at the moment, and have been for a long time.

I was looking out of the windows of an office building yesterday, pondering the mass murder in Las Vegas. It was raining, and there was mist everywhere, and what I saw was birds eating worms and bugs. Large birds eating smaller birds and rodents. Fish eating bugs, and large fish eating smaller fish. I saw animals dying of hunger and cold. I saw them fucking obsessively in the spring.

What I might assert as the Luciferian Principle argued that if God doesn’t care, why should we? CLEARLY, He does not prevent evil, does not prevent pain, does not obviously shelter and guide us.

What is remarkable is not that violence happens, but that we have evolved ways to make it less common.

Paddock clearly suffered from PTSD. He would lay in bed and moan and scream. I can relate.

Here is the point I want to make here, and I could say much more, but I lack time: at this moment in human history, given all the shelters and frameworks we have created, violence is almost intrinsically the result of trauma. If we, as human beings, want to evolve to the next phase of our cultural evolution, we MUST put trauma front row and center, and deploy ample resources so that where it is present, it can reliably be diminished.

My vision is a new cultural form I have been calling a “church”. I have spoken of this before, but I am approaching a point where I think I can take effective action. I have always been a bigger talker than doer, but what I have in mind is quite small. That is my source of relative confidence.

I think across a lifetime who we become is directly dependent on what we think is possible. For this reason I tend to think the best way of “defining” someone is by the sum total of what they think is possible, even if they are never able to manifest everything they see (I am of course speaking somewhat autobiographically there).

Most or all of us expand to the point beyond which we think “more” is impossible, at which point our lives become recursive.

Me, I see a massive fog, and I make no claim to know how far back it goes, but it speaks to me regularly. That is what this blog is.

I felt disgust with this blog the other day, and thought about discontinuing it. I am putting myself out there, to little seeming purpose. I have no followers, and few readers. But then it hit me that I ENJOY having ideas pass through me, and if the fog cannot plausibly see me as a conduit, then the ideas will stop, and I too will become a circle, or in any event more circular. Posting to no one is the price I pay to be me, and as fucking awful as it sometimes is to be me, I like being me. I would not change lives with anyone on this planet. This is my path, my choice, my destiny. This is beautiful.

Hete is a purpose of life: the spontaneous expression of complex order generated through regular moments of contact with the Transcendant.

I have spoken of Henomoralism, but what Henoreligiosity? What if one were to determine to take up a different religion, diligently, every decade of ones life?

Henotelearchy–differing organizing values and purposes at different times. Perhaps sometimes we should treat time as the ultimate object of value, as counseled by Seneca in “On the Shortness of Life”. https://tripinsurancestore.com/4/on-the-shortness-of-life.pdf (I’m only a third of the way through, so I may be missing his ultimate point).

But perhaps sometimes we need big fat gaps of time. Ponder the fact that “work”, and a productive life generally, consists mainly in meditation in the Buddhist tradition. Many monks scarcely leave their monasteries in long lifetimes, and never marry.

Life is a large ocean, and we are floating in it. Land emerged from time to time, for reasons we don’t understand. The sun, moon and stars are our constant companions, and the whole interface between here and there, between a small present and an infinite one, is fascinating.

I have no idea what I am saying, by the way. Maybe you can tell me how this makes any sense.