Moderates United

You know, in traditional Sufi story-telling, I think all metaphors were understand to have 7 layers (I forget the number, but let’s use 7), each more subtle, such that only the most wise could decipher them all.

I, for my part, will submit a second meaning to the metaphor just referenced, which is that we are distanced from the ground of reality by artificial appliances, and that reality, in turn, is obscured by shifting clouds of ignorance and the pushing away of knowledge.

This is more abstract.  I prefer the original meaning, the feeling-tone of which came to me in a dream.  The car was driven, by the way, by someone I know who I consider an exemplar of personal discipline and applied common sense.  A man. 

Now, it’s been so long since I’ve been laid, I look for signs of incipient homosexuality in my dreams, but it continues to be the case that in my rare sex dreams it is always women.  I will admit to being thankful for this.  There is something sad, to me, as I observe it, in homosexuality, at least male homosexuality.  It’s not a question of morality to me–what men do with their dicks is, I am quite sure, a matter of indifference to God, as long as no one is hurt–but what I see and feel. I have known quite a few gay men, and there seems to be this feeling of an unknowable loss of some sort.  That is my perception, in any event.  Perhaps I am making things up.

But with regard to reality, this is much more abstract concept.  I don’t like that level of abstraction.  This is why I have parted ways with much of the Indian tradition, with what might be termed Raga Yoga.

I like the Tibetan tradition, as taught by Tarthang Tulku, in which one approaches reality bit by bit, as tangible feelings and sensations, as wholistic affective gestalts which are irreducible, but categorically present and felt.  Nudging your way in.  Step by step by step, every one leading to emotional healing and spiritual cleansing.

I will admit to some things going on in my life I am not talking about.  I will eventually. I am superstitious in some ways, about some things.  It’s perhaps irrational, but, perhaps, not.

G.I. Gurdjieff’s book “Meeting with Remarkable Men” is the only book of his I’ve read.  I have an album of some of his music too (everything is so easy, now, isn’t it?  It reduces somewhat the joy of finding and getting).

He speaks of “wiseacring” in the beginning, and is as good as his word.  The book is filled with metaphors.  In one place he paints fake birds, a simple enough symbol.  In another he takes a heavy rock and dives deep into the ocean to find treasures, another simple enough metaphor.

But in one case he crosses some desert in Asia–perhaps the Gobi, I forget as I read this more than a decade ago–and they use stilts to stay above the shifting sands.  I have long wondered just what he meant by this.  It was obviously a metaphor, but I wasn’t sure for what.

Last night I dreamed I was in a car with extended wheels that went down 40′.  A storm hit and the water came around the car, but it was still able to move, still able to drive.  I have had one other similar dream, where I was with my children.  I kept the seat we were in stable, in a sea of change.

The stilts, in my view, and the extended car, are ways of connecting with reality in a sea of emotion and change.  Quiet, and stillness are ideal, but not always obtainable.  The stilts are a way of saying to yourself, when must pass through a difficult place, that “reality is what I say it is”, because you cannot at that moment see, cannot feel clearly, cannot sort things out, cannot find peace and quiet.

The stilts are a will with which you orient and move yourself in times of random movement, of shifting sands.  It is how you keep your sanity, and ability to come back to earth eventually.

The alternative, which I also saw on display, was many cars floating on the tide.  A car, in America, is a symbol of power, of control, of motion.  To float on the tide, is to lose agency, to lose personal power.

And so many people, now, are floating on the tide.  The storms of our modern world have overwhelmed them. They have lost their footing, and cannot now find their way back.

This is a very hard time.  Very hard indeed.

My work continues.

I don’t have the meticulous patience to be an actual inventor, but I have a lot of ideas, a number of which I have not shared anywhere.

But here are two, one of which I think I may have already mentioned.

1) Baby FitBit.  A wearable something for babies to monitor their levels of arousal.  You could get a baseline for a month, and when you are using childcare with very young children, you could make sure at the end of the day that they didn’t cry for hours on end, or get hysterical over something.  One bout of severe hysteria is enough, I suspect, to inflict lasting harm.

Good mothers attune to their infants naturally–this is more or less the definition of a good mother–but all mothers might benefit from seeing patterns in sleep and arousal, and there might even be an “alarm” that could be created when crying infants go beyond a certain level of upsetness, although the volume of their crying is likely a good enough alarm. 

It would help make sensitive mothers more sensitive, and God forbid whenever men might be caring for the infants, it might help them be much smarter than they are now.

You’re welcome.  Remember me in your will. 

2) Vibrating earrings.  As I heal, I am starting to think about sex more and more.  I’ve always been able to talk with women, and although I am to smooth roughly what sandpaper is, I used to get laid a lot just because I wasn’t afraid to ask the question.  Rather, being afraid of everything, that was not much of a jump for me.

But I really really think that the combination of vibrating earrings–and/or possibly something which makes it feel like they are being sucked on–on the earlobes (which I know I have discussed can, alone, make some woman come), with good cunnilingus would be enough for just about any woman.  I would bet money on it.

If it’s true that if momma ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy, then this would be one way of making momma happy.  And it’s quiet too, if she is.

Whenever I start having sex again, I think I might make it a hobby.  It’s a horrible thing to say, but like anything else, it is amenable to logic.  Logically, I need to be emotionally available and open.  This is the necessary starting point.  But after that it is varied forms of pressure and friction, tension and relaxation.  I have all my minor points, like the ribs, and inner thigh, and earlobes and neck, and I have my areas which can induce orgasm like the earlobes, nipples, clit, G-Spot, cervix, and to a lesser extent and perhaps in a different way, the anus.

I know I am ridiculous in some ways, but if you think about it, why wouldn’t most men make an actual study of how to make women come, and come again (You know, in the balls that are “bouncing to the left, and bouncing to the right”  Edit: I will note the original seems to have been, uh, pulled)?  The beautiful thing about women is they have no real limit.  They don’t run out of orgasms, just energy.

Sex is a very natural thing.  Sex without connection, at least for a time, is not.  Sometimes a shared rut is just the thing–sometimes both want it, both need, and both really enjoy it–but somehow we seem to make it all very dirty, even when as a matter of high level social policy everything is perfectly, perfectly acceptable in every way.

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/12/andrew-sullivan-americas-new-religions.html

Much of this I could have written.  I found it particularly interesting seeing that John Stuart Mill reached the same conclusion long ago that I reached myself, which is that most “liberals” NEED people to need them, and that if the need disappeared, they would be rudderless and empty.  Their lives would be pointless. 

This creates what we nowadays call  codependent behavior, in which, for example, the “champions” of black people routinely pursue policies which hurt them.  Why?  One, they need the votes, but two, even I am not cynical enough (and I am very cynical) to believe that all bleeding hearts are only about votes.  What happens is that there is an unconscious conflict, in which one part of them wants to help, but another wants to withhold help, so that blacks can retain their value as victims, and as the needy objects of their attention and effort.  The right hand giveth, and the left hand taketh away.

This is one major reason they resist debate: it is not just that they can’t defend their policies, but that open discussion risks rupturing their self delusions, which in turn are foundational to their sense of place in the world, their sense of meaning, and their sense of purpose.  Without their delusions, they are lost.  Small wonder so much anger appears when they are challenged: it is an existential question, not a mere policy question, as it could, should, and would be, if the well being of blacks (or women, or gays, etc.) was truly at the root of their work.

I of course disagree with his treatment of Trump.  Trump is the one who speaks the truth.  Nothing less, nothing more.  He was forced on us by the long term abdication of courage by substantially every politician in Washington.

In the same way Churchill refused to concede victory to the Nazis, despite it being the most obvious, and certainly the easiest short term route (by the way, my favorite scene, the one that got me and made me tear up, was when the King visited Churchill, alone in some spare room, up all night, worrying and worrying, and told him: I have your back.  Odds be damned: we can’t let the bastards win.) Trump has refused to concede victory to the forces trying to control speech, to force lies on all of us, to make political cant the only acceptable language, to enshrine in our halls of power the right of de facto Commissars to inflict social violence on all people straying outside narrow lines.

Trump, in other words, is roughly to Political Correctness what Churchill was to Nazism.  This is the reason he is so hated.  His policies are ordinary.  Defending the border was not a controversial issue as late as the 1990’s.  Tax cuts, particularly for corporations, have always reliably generated tax growth eventually, and economic growth immediately.

No, it is his refusal to accept what we might term the “New Politeness”, which could easily be a Fabian term, which makes him such a danger.  He isn’t cowed by howling.  On the contrary, he seems to enjoy it.  He is every bit the public gladiator that Churchill was, even if we grant that Churchill–a Nobel Prize winner for Literature–was vastly the greater wordsmith.

Still, Churchill did love the one liner, and it’s interesting to speculate what use he might have made of Twitter.

“An empty car pulled up and Clement Attlee got out”.

“I may be drunk, but you are ugly, and in the morning I shall be sober.”

Etc.  He was no saint.  Not by a long shot.  If the task is a fight, don’t look for saints.  Look for people who like to win, and who have a track record of doing it.

And for that matter, Churchill’s record of winning was scant to non-existent when he became Prime Minister, and his record of disasters was quite long.

In the long run, pugnacious but principled assholes are vastly more useful than polite, cheerful gentlemen, who lose with dignity, and ultimately make no difference, what-so-ever.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xWVRE9FskQ

It seems to me, based on my limited experience with it, that heaven and pleasure are a process of gathering, of creating a core self which learns to choose affects which are pleasurable, which learns to give and receive/accept love freely, and which is able to grow and expand these feelings.  This is the core process of Kum Nye.  You discharge all the “bad” stuff into the atmosphere (bad, of course, is a value judgement which can, in turn, create further affects which then also need to be dealt with.  If you don’t judge it the first time, you don’t need to deal with it a second and third and fourth time, making non-judgement vastly more efficient), then gather what they call the “cream” of Kum Nye, which is the positive, relaxed, pleasant, connected experience.

The obverse of this is being fragmented into many pieces.  As I grow, paradoxically, I keep dropping back into hell.  What happened to me was extraordinarily unpleasant, and all the affects are still there.  It’s an ocean of feeling, a universe of feeling.  Nothing would have been easier for me to have become an academic or professional of some sort who lived in his head, who dealt–well, since I am intelligent–in the abstract.  My body likely would have protested with illnesses of various sorts (as things stand, I am very healthy.  I never get sick, and have not, yet, suffered any effects at all from all my drinking), but I could have achieved and maintained a relative homeostasis.

But in hell the pain forces you into many places.  If I might use traditional imagery, one part of you is dangling over a pit of fire, another is being drowned, another confined to a small cage, and another eaten over and over by wild beasts.  This does not quite happen simultaneously, or sequentially, but all are true at the same time.  The pain has to be distributed, somehow.  A unitary self cannot face it alone.  This is the principle of dissociation.

Practically, in my understanding–and although I am quite certain my understanding is incomplete, I am not certain the science itself is complete either–dissociation manifests as delta waves.  Parts of you go to sleep, in effect.  We have all seen, I suspect, dreamy people who have been through severe trauma, people who are not quite there/here.

The delta is a sort of fog which covers up the light of clear memory.  But those memories, when theyh hit, hit in many places.  The unitary self cannot endure.  Severe abstraction is one symptom.  Substance use (sic) is another.  Such trauma is always an encircling, with the victim at the center.  If I might be so bold, I think primitive sacrificial rituals come out of a literal reenactment of this primal wound, when carried by many.  They make social and psychological sense.  They pacify, for a time, some discomfort, some terror, in the soul of those present.

As I say, perhaps as a lunatic, perhaps as a genius, perhaps as a misguided fool, I want to write a Gesamptphilosophie.  I want to start what I might call a new religion, based on a very, very deep understanding of the nature of human kind, as combined with the best in neuroscience.  I have suffered a great deal for what understanding (I think) I have won, and will no doubt suffer more.

The thing about suffering, though, and this is the third of three ideas I mentioned some months back, is that when it is done, it is only a distant memory.  When you hold your breath, every second can feel like an eternity at the end, but when you get that breath, all is forgotten.  When you are very hungry, all is forgotten when you sit down to dinner. 

All the anxieties I felt on December 12th, 2017, and 2016, are forgotten.  I can’t begin to say what they were without going back to my blog and diary of that period.

I read, when I was 18 or 19, that Meister Eckhart commented that “nothing is as sweet as having suffered.”  Now, this is not a motto for a masochist.  What he is saying is that it is a fantastic feeling when any misery ends, and a better feeling than a baseline which lacked that suffering. 

People who come to this nation from poor places value it (at least, the immigrants we WANT value it) because they have been in places of mass poverty, and no opportunity with almost any amount of work to get ahead without becoming criminals.

People who have suffered value ordinary days.  People like me who have been tortured every night for many years value a good night’s sleep.  Or at least I think I will.  I think I am close.

But all this is magnificent.  None of this is wasted.  Nothing that happens to you, or that you choose to do, is ever wasted.  The universe conserves information.  Everything can be used to learn.  Nothing is forgotten.  What takes time, though, is learning to remember mainly the good. It’s always there.  It isn’t going anywhere, and no one is hiding it.  We just place it in the shadow in our waking consciousness, or at least some of us less enlightened souls do.

Putting first things first is a hard thing to do.  But as I’ve said before, if I had to pick a one word motto it would be “REMEMBER”.  If I had to pick a second it would be “ENDURE”.

You could build a good life on those two.  

If you think about it, Communism was a Western idea which was sold to the developing world as an antidote to other Western ideas.  It was supposed to be the magic elixir to undo the effects of colonialism and imperialism.  It was the magic bullet.  It was the antidote to the poison.

But it was vastly worse than all of them.  Far from being an antidote, it made the effects of the original poison more deadly.  Communism, by far, is the most horrific export from the minds of Europeans ever.  It is the disease we gifted people who were already suffering.  It was the serpent for people seeking the dove.  It was the betrayal which fell upon all who trusted it.

Americans and Europeans are far from innocent.  So too are the overwhelming bulk of the people we colonized.  Study any culture which some Western nation conquered: they had weapons.  They had warriors.  They had kings.  They fought and killed one another, attacked and enslaved one another, long before the first visit from us.

There may have been innocents here and there, but by and large, no nation and no people is innocent, and it is pointless and even counterproductive pretending otherwise.  Mexico is named after people who would flay their victims and run through the streets in their skins; who would cut the hearts out of people, whole, in front of vast mobs, and throw them into a pit (as I understand it).

If you are seeking simple solutions, then you don’t know very much.

The more I study Attachment and Developmental Theory, the more obvious the centrality of a well adjusted, emotionally self regulated mother becomes.  Everything depends on it.  The beginning becomes the life.  The infant is the father of the child.  Rather, Wordsworth might be corrected and adapted to say:  the infant is the mother of the child, and the mother is the mother of the infant.

There are Rosebud moments in infant lives, moments of before and after, moments which cause that  child, that neurologically sensitive organism, to alter in ways which forever after become the template, and which are forgotten.  They remain until, perhaps, the moment of death, and in the case of preverbal assaults on self, likely never reappear ever in this life.

Psychopaths and narcissists are such people.  They cannot remember a before, even neurologically, even somatically.

In my own case, I was broken around age 5.  Between age 5 and 7 certainly, which is to say within the domain of memory.  I can remember struggles before that.  They are in my body.  I feel them every night.  I fought with every ounce of my infant and toddler being against the dying of the light.  And I lost.  But something survived.  This is my fortune, my luxury.  Not all are granted that.

One last comment: totalitarianism–which is the outcome of an aggregate of work by highly disturbed people–might be seen as a motherless world.  And such motherless worlds are created ONLY by motherless people.  They are created by people who were broken while still in the crib, and the language they use to justify their crimes is irrelevant.

In some more enlightened future we might privilege the role of mother above all others, understanding that the child of the woman is the future of the world.  As mothers go, so go we all.

And ponder, if you will, the status of the role of mother in our present society.  Her primary political claim is her right to destroy her child, to treat it as personal property, to be disposed of as she chooses, for any reason, and at any time.

Feminists, those who claim to speak for women, denigrate the role of mother.  Only the religious still agitate for it, and those who still speak thus are, obviously, under attack.

Motherless children are gaining ground.  We need to stop them.

I think most survivors of child sexual abuse suffer from Developmental Trauma Disorder as well, even if the abuse happened within the realm of their memory, which is to say after age 5 or so.

Child sexual abuse, in my view, likely only happens in already dysfunctional systems.  The protective barriers and safeguards are malfunctioning.  First, the parents may be the abusers themselves.  They may do it together, or more commonly, a father does it, and the mother suspects or knows, but does little or nothing.  Neither parent, in such a situation, can have been nurturing to that infant, to the extent needed to meet the “good enough” standard.

And of course pedophiles nearly always prey on the vulnerable, those who have no one they can trust, those whose bond, particularly, with the mother is absent or weak, because she is absent or weak, emotional, physically, or both.  They become both the trusted person–this is especially true, I think, of man on boy abuse–and the abuser.  This is a mind fuck on several levels, because love and abuse cannot be separated easily; one’s usefulness as a sex object and as a human being are intertwined.  All the feelings are comingled.

I was talking once with a male survivor who was abused by a church elder of some sort, and he commented that it was not all bad.  It felt good to him, but in the abstract he had to call it abuse.  This guy was seriously fucked up, and has since done a number of nasty things to people who trusted him.  He will likely never heal, since he has rationalized his anger at the world.  As I think about it, he is likely at not inconsiderable risk of becoming a pedophile himself, although as far as I know he has nothing to do with children.  I have not seen him in a year or more.

It is, I read, a reasonably well established fact that the rates of rape among sexual trauma survivors is a multiple that of those who grow up in happy homes.  It is not hard to see why.  They lack boundaries of the acceptable.  They feel shame in their very existence.  People willing to treat them as victims find them ready prey.  One trauma leads to another, in one of these sick cycles that cause some of us to feel the need to get drunk when we contemplate them too much.

So I would suggest that when you see someone assert that sexual abuse is their primary problem, I would hazard a guess that the MAIN emotional wound, the one that set the foundation for those following, happened before age 3.  Everything else compounded on an existing superstructure.

You can, as one example, be in a car accident and be lacerated in multiple places.  All those cuts can be sutured and treated, and you can still die from internal bleeding.

When you throw a rock in water, it sinks to the bottom.  The bottom is where the work needs to be done.  Everything else rests on it.  It is dark and difficult there, but it is not impossible.

Guru, I will note in this context, literally means “heavy”.

Social hierarchies are the tribalization of otherwise relatively homogeneous groups, who share a language and broad culture.

Humility is rest.  It is a cessation from pointless battles.

Pride was bred into me.  It was necessary to survive my home, where I was attacked relentlessly by both parents, in different ways.  I have never felt the feeling of safety in my life.  This is the truth.

Much, if not most, if not all, of my output on the internet stems from pride.  I see this, as I calm down.

I fight, where no battle had been needed.  I fight, where no final victory can be obtained.  I fight, witnessed only by the crickets, passing birds, and a pig or two. I fight, in the night, under the stars, immune to my own absurdity.

I fight, therefore I am, is a bad motto for a life.

That last was intended as absurdist humor anchored in ridiculous fact.

Some day we may all see clearly.  It will be a remarkable day, in many ways.