Moderates United

I really believe I have extraordinarily powerful ideas on a variety of topics.  But I don’t know how to get people to listen to me.  As Calvin Coolidge pointed out, “unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.”

His solution: persistence.  It is the correct prescription.

But persistence in what?  This is my question.  Should I dedicate my energies to writing a book?  Would anyone listen?

I have made some efforts to spread my ideas, but they have largely fallen on deaf ears.  Very few people, it seems, take anything seriously any more, and those who do generally find themselves occupying what I would argue are congenial illusions by the time they might even begin to think about reading anything I might write.

In the end, my responsibility, first and foremost, is my own spiritual development.  I must dedicate myself to becoming whole.  My relationship, first and foremost, is with God, with the Deeper Order.

Thus I have shelved, rightly or wrongly, any notion of writing beyond what is already on the internet, and readily available to anyone who finds their way there.

My life has largely lacked positive energy.  I grew up without much love, and I am not very good at feeling it.  I have a hard time loving myself, and a hard time loving others, the way I would like to.  Even though I have much to offer intellectually, what seems most needed, for me, right now, is to be able to bring the scent of a rose to every room I enter, and to remember that when I disappear I will not be gone at all.

There is a need for Mind, for intelligence, for the ability to see and describe deep orders.  But there is something much larger, and much more useful.  For want of a better word, call it the Way.

I watched the ship sail
  Away
     In the night.

Her plan to greet the
   Day
      With land far from sight.

Her plan to greet the
   Day
      With songs of hope and delight.

On the shore I slept under the
   Sway
      of tide and moonlight.

When I woke there was no sign in the
  Bay
    Of what had just gone last night.

We wish powerfully to be gone
  Far Away
   And yet to remain within sight.

I may have invented a new rhyme scheme there, although all that is new now has been new before, and known.

I might add that all becoming starts under your feet.  It cannot start anywhere else.  If you have sailed away in your mind, you are lost.  Come home, as soon as you can.

Beyond that,  I have no idea what my point was.  The images and words just came to me, smoking a cigar on my couch, dreaming.  As should be obvious, I dream a lot.  I spend hours and day sometimes, doing very little.  But I do a lot.

Here is a question: am I on a ship, bound for somewhere; waiting for a ship to come take me home; or looking at a ship already in port, which I can board any time I like, for any destination I like?

Being where you are, how you are, is a very hard thing.  It takes a lifetime, I think, to even remember to remember that that is the entry and disembarkation point of everything that matters.

Jesus wants you to invite him into your heart, so he can supplement your goodness, strengthen you in love, but all in your own way, in your own time, according to who you are.

The Devil wants to bring you into his heart, in his way, on his time, and so that you will disappear forever.  I think the metaphor in the most recent Stranger Things is good.  Initially you retain some semblance of outer form, even though you are gone.  Eventually, the husk falls off.

This is a strange and infinite universe.  Do not discount too easily what is possible.  Our science does not exist, at the moment, primarily to extend the range of what we know, but rather to draw curtains around the areas of what we do know, or think we know, so as to conceal the darkness beyond.

Beyond what they can speak of with confidence, they do not want to speak at all.  This is a psychological problem, brought on by a valid fear that our ignorance may yet prove to be infinite.  All of the smarter ones sense this intuitively.  Atheism is their answer, but it is not a very good answer.  They want to make everything knowable, because small.  I don’t think the universe works like that, and in any event the universe works the way it works.  It does not exist to humor our anxieties, and has no need to offer clear answers.

Certainly that it has already so many good answers, so many seeming natural laws would seem to point to some order, but as David Hume pointed out, we cannot infer with absolute certainty that if one billiard ball hits another, that the second one will move, even if it has 10,000 times before.  We assert the word “law” merely because we have not yet found the exception.

This sort of thinking scares people.  It is perhaps right to be scared . But I would assert that if anything is clear in this life, it is that one of our main tasks is conquering fear.

And speaking personally, I have long found a certain beauty in fuzziness.  Certainly, I like to draw clear lines.  But this is only possible in the abstract.  In the real world, I build these beautiful thought structures, then have to watch them swirl and fade into colored mist the moment they touch the light of practical reality.  Still, if you start with good lines, something remains.  You simply have to remember that most of the time the straightest lines are curved, as Chuang Tzu noted a long time ago.

Much of this is replacing psychology with political dogma.  It replaces individuals–with specific histories, who have moods, who have psychological conflicts, who want to be happy–with types.

With regards to, say, transgenderism, we are expected to assume that such people are necessarily benefiting from every last aspect of it.  Why?  Because we are EXPECTED TO.

It doesn’t matter if nuance is involved, as it always is in human affairs. It doesn’t matter if gender reassignment surgery, so called, actually causes lasting psychological damage.  The political points will have already been scored.

It is a core question, with regard to all this: what is the point of human life?  You are not building sound characters, and happy people.  You have no mechanism for personal betterment.  You are not teaching anyone how to live.

The whole thing is based on a violent obsessiveness which itself stems from mental illness. I’ve said this many times.  I will say it now this way.

I had a dream where I was shown a Democrats volunteer for something, and a Republican volunteer.  They looked identical.

We are our best selves when out in the world, doing concrete good things for actual people.  Helping with cross country meets, church picnics, community clean up, whatever.  Americans are helpers by nature.  We are volunteers.

It’s really hard to hate someone who is right in front of you.  It takes practice and determination for otherwise psychologically normal people.

It would not be right to say Republicans are innocent in all this hyperpartisanship.  It always takes two to tango.  But we are not the ones going into clinical hyperarousal every time someone disagrees with us.  We are not the ones who throw ridiculous and completely unwarranted names at people.  This is a fact.

Still, the two groups spending time together, mixed, focused on a shared objective: all good.

What use anyone can make of this observation, I don’t know.  But here it is.

I watched Sticks and Stones.  Given all his jokes about pedophilia–which came really, really close to condoning it–it’s amazing the fuss was about his car with a G driver, an L passenger, and a B and a T in the back.

I can’t really think too many gay men seriously disagreed with his comedy.  Transgenders are a bit of a problem for them, apparently, and apparently quite militant about it.  And they probably ARE driving the car because they DO know the road.

Shit, it’s literally conceivable this whole thing could drive gay men and some large number of lesbians into the Trump camp.  I think he’s smart enough to fete them and treat them right.  Even they have got to be getting sick of the crazy.

I think most Republicans are fine with “if it’s not affecting me personally, fuck it.”  This is certainly a development, but not a bad one, I don’t think.  I won’t say there have been no benefits at all, socially, to left wing agitation.  It is simply manic, obsessive, and denuded of any core goal other than shaking the shit out of every structure of society which works.

When nothing works because nobody wants to do their job, because they are fucking entitled morons, THEN people will get where all this was heading.

Gays and Lesbians will be hurt as much as anyone else.  General decline is general decline. I think more and more are seeing this.

I had forgotten this controversy.  That study I linked created a wave of hate.  The author followed up with this post, which also quotes the former Dean of Harvard Medical School, which did the study: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/culture-mind-and-brain/201811/teen-transgender-identity-response-critics

What I see is that the less fulfilling gender transition is, the more potent the following political rage.  Most of these people do not seem to want to live their lives quietly, and simply be left alone, which I absolutely support, and which is the American way, but rather to bully everyone who wonders out loud why 14 year old girls are deciding overnight to become their best approximation of men.

Nowhere in here is there wisdom.  Nowhere in here is anyone expressing any higher purpose to life than doing whatever the fuck you want, whenever you want, in any way you want, and fuck everyone who disagrees.

This sort of thing makes me fantasize about becoming a hermit up in the hills somewhere, and just letting the whole fucking building burn down.

I nearly didn’t post that.  I decided to.  Fuck it. 

Here is my thing: I won’t judge someone for wanting to change their sex (to the extent physically possible, which is not very much), but I WILL judge them, categorically, and all day long every day, for lying to me, or to themselves.  I fucking hate lies, and liars.  Even if it is self deception, I WILL call it out.

The truth on this issue, though, is that this buzzsaw is already cutting through our culture.  The damage will not be easily undone.

When I was in Sales, I used to compare sales proposals to trees.  Trees, once they start to fall, tend to keep falling in whatever direction they initially started.  It is very, very, very hard to sell to someone who is already sold on something else.  Trying to do so is what gives salespeople bad names.  Don’t do it.  If you start right, by placing the notches on the base of the tree yourself, it will fall your way.  My favorite sales book is titled “Let’s Get Real or Let’s Not Play.”  Great book.  Summary: qualify, qualify, qualify, then know what the fuck you are talking about, and how to get the good things you promise done correctly, on cost, and on time.

Be all that as it may, the tree is falling on universally shared notions of family, patriotism, church, etc.  It would not be hard to argue it has fallen.

But things will get much worse before they get better.  The falling is still going on.  People are still pushing that tree over.  Nothing I or anyone else like me says or does will change that process.

We all need to adapt.  We need to plan for when these people realize their ideas are a catastrophic failure.  When and how that may happen, I can’t say.  It may very well take national collapse.  I can’t say.  I don’t know.

But I do know that I can only preach to people already largely in agreement with me.  I can’t preach to anyone else.  No one is listening.  The rift widens daily, seemingly.

I was looking at my cashier tonight, and I’m pretty sure he used to be a she, probably not that long ago.  I’ve long had the feeling these women really get excited when their voice changes, and they start getting facial hair.  Who knows: maybe they throw parties.


But I couldn’t help but look at this and see next generation consumerism.  When you can have anything you want, what do you want?  To be someone else.


Now, some people really are born that way.  I have zero argument with this claim.  My kids knew a girl who, when she was 5, was saying “when I get breasts I am going to cut them off”.  Camille Paglia dressed up as a male character of some sort every chance she got when she was a child.  Even now, she identifies as transgender, even if she seems to oppose actual surgery for most people.


I got to thinking, though, that there are huge potential social gains from deciding to become transgender.  This article actually summarizes from a position of data the conclusions I formed independently.  This article is worth reading in its entirety.


https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/culture-mind-and-brain/201811/why-is-transgender-identity-the-rise-among-teens

Littman hypothesizes that ROGD [Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria] can be cast as a maladaptive coping mechanism for other underlying mental health issues such as trauma or social maladjustment, but also for other exceptional traits like high IQ and giftedness. The peer support, prestige, and identity leveraged by the youth who proudly come out as trans certainly appears to be protective in their circles. 

And:

The notion reported by parents that the ROGD appears to be “scripted” is also telling. Medical anthropologists describe the process of outsourcing negative feelings to cultural narratives and systems of beliefs as “idioms of distress.” These beliefs can be partially grounded in science and biology (as is the case with current brain-based mental health culture), or not at all (as is the case in cultures that explain mental illness through the idiom of spirit possession). When extreme forms of distress and coping arise through novel social pressures and spread through implicit imitation, strange epidemics of “mass psychogenic illnesses” have been documented. These have extended to dancing plagues, possession epidemics on factory floors,fugue states, or epidemics of face-twitching. These conditions are described as “psychogenic” (originating in the mind) when no underlying physical cause can be determined. But the term “sociogenic,” which highlights the social context in which these conditions occur,  is a better description. 

Now, they do note that there are negative factors as well:

As Littman’s study shows, this social signaling strategy also comes with strong disadvantages, particularly as it increases conflict between trans youth and the “cis” majority of the population, which, tellingly, includes a majority of the LGBT community. 

I had not really grasped the extent of this conflict, until I read about trans activists nailing rats on the doors of a rape clinic: https://www.theblaze.com/news/trans-power-womens-rape-shelter-faces-death-threat-and-vandalism-for-rejecting-transgender-women


My own reasoning was thus: when you “come out” and decide to “transition” you can expect to be praised as brave.  Anyone questioning you about ANYTHING can be termed transphobic.  You get a LOT of attention.  Everyone wants to know how you are doing.  It is virtually MADE for social media.  You get to post regular updates, get to vent about real or imagined incidents of bigotry.


And the whole thing might take several years.  During this period, you are a star.  And you get to focus all your attention on this one problem, and not the problems of life, not the problems of earning an income or educating yourself, not the problem of becoming a mature, socially responsible adult.  To all criticisms of anything you do or say, you can accuse them of transphobia.


So there is a huge secondary gain in this.  But the whole thing feels to me like getting a tattoo.  You might think, nobody is that stupid, that short sighted, that shallow, that naive.  Honestly, I disagree.  I see stupidity around me I can’t begin to fathom.  Every misanthropic impulse I have in me is strengthened, the more I deal with today’s youth.  As I’ve said many times, I can’t see how good comes from any of this.


And the whole thing wears off eventually.  You transition.  You get the hormones–which you have to take for life, as far as I know, and the health effects of which I don’t think are really known–and you do the surgery, and after all the hoopla, and attention, and novelty, there you are: the same person you always were, without the attention, without the gratification of being able always to defend against all criticism with a non sequitur.


You are in the world, different, but the same.  All the problems of life–paying the rent, finding true or at least stable love, deciding what life means for you, picking a vocation–are not diminished in any way.  Perhaps they ARE amplified by your decision.  Perhaps some residual prejudice remains.


And I just can’t help seeing, in my minds eye, people saying “what the fuck was that all for?”


As he says in the article, there is a very robust connection with social media involvement and this decision.  To put it mildly, social media is fickle.  Today’s star is tomorrows goat.


I can’t help but seeing many of these kids feeling suicidal depression 10-15-20 years down the road.  They didn’t do it for the right reason.  They made a foolish decision when they were young, that is very, very hard to undo.  Hell, even for people who made this decision when it WAS hard, or harder, say 30 years ago, their suicide rates skyrocket several decades after surgery.  I think the statistic I saw was a rate 400% higher than the population as a whole.  That’s not success, by any standard.


How is it that wisdom, and patience, and thinking things through has become passe?  How have we become so deluded that those with life experience think we need to automatically trust the judgment of brainwashed youth?  Do we not owe them more, if we love them?  Should we not want them to be happy, to thrive, by learning how to live as adults in a sometimes difficult and nearly always confusing world?  Do adults really not owe their children more than abject and astonishingly craven subservience? 

Commuting is a lot like a mass daily migration, isn’t it?