Moderates United

One of the ways of dealing with the animal anxieties of life is to simply pretend that one is a recipient, that one plays no active role in what happens, and that certain things are just destiny.  It liberates one from worrying, at least potentially, because worry is an active effort to plan and sculpt the future.  If the future is “written” (Maktub), as many Muslims believe, then there is no point in worry, because there is no point in planning, because things are beyond ones control.

This is in some respects an attractive option.  When I was posting on the squirrel and the beetle, this is roughly what was in my mind.  What will be, will be.  I actually saw a bird yesterday in a job site, which had flown in, and was frantically trying to find an open window.  But the only open windows were on the ground floor, and it kept flying up.  It is likely dead now, unless it was able to detect moving air current from the outside.

And I watched Dunkirk tonight, and thought the same thing.  If you read about the stages of what I will call combat fatigue, in nearly everyone there is a growing apathy and lassitude over time.  The prospect of death loses much of its terror, and most wind up repeating what is likely a very old theme: “when it’s your time, it’s your time.”

Where am I going with this?  Well, somewhere political.  It’s what I do, much too much.

If the creed of true Liberalism is “character is destiny”, then the creed of its retarded substitute is “birth is destiny”.  If you are born white, you cannot redeem yourself, ever, fully.

And think even of Marxist ideas about historical necessity, about the machine-like and automatic, unavoidable “progressions” (which constitute progress because they tell us they constitute progress, even if misery and enslavement is all anyone else can see) of “History”.

What do they do?  They eliminate the need for individual judgement, for individual moral initiative, for worry related to getting things right, rather than very, very wrong.

Such fatalisms serve the role of traditional religions.  They render the individual irrelevant, moot, and ultimately helpless.  This is why people cling so fervently to these horrific ideologies, because losing them would mean losing their primary means of self calming, and unleash absolutely unbearable–for them–anxiety and sadness.

True moral and psychological growth consists, I am persuaded at the moment, both in a decrease in self importance, such that the vagaries of the universe do not come to seem personal, and such that one does not expect to get through life without worry, toil, sadness, grief, loneliness and genuine trouble, but also an increase both in perception and in response-ability, such that one can see better what can be controlled, and what cannot, and make active preparations for the former, and to let go the latter.

How does one wed authentic passion with daily focussed discipline?

To my mind, striking North Korea has to be authorized by Congress. Such a war could unleash a Pandora’s box of disasters, and so requires the assent by both law and common sense of a sizeable chunk of our elected leaders.

At the same time, the more warning we give Kim, the worse it gets. This is obvious.

I have proposed before and will propose again that Trump get the verbal assent of enough leaders to pass muster, plus perhaps a few more in case. A highly secure app can be assigned to each of these people, and if and when he decides it’s time he can broadcast a go/no go to substitute for the substance of an actual vote. Self evidently, not every member of Congress need be consulted. Many of them would betray us and the interests of civilization instantly and with considerable self satisfaction.

The problem with sanctions, which are really the only means of diplomacy, short of China kicking Kim in the balls and telling to straighten up and fly right, is that they only cause suffering and pain for ordinary people. They don’t affect Kim. They don’t affect most of the military or Party leaders. They never worked on Cuba. Given sufficient ruthlessness and amorality, no amount of pain and suffering can have the least effect.

Conversely, the only military way to limit damages to South Korea, Japan, and here, is to dictate the rules of the engagement as fully as possible by choosing the times and places.

I don’t want war with North Korea. It will be horrible. But I also don’t want to have nuclear weapon we could have prevented detonating anywhere in this country.

I keep reading that firing Mueller will provoke a “crisis”.

I would ask a simple question: what the guck are we in now?? Half of Trumps staff is actively sabotaging him, including, apparently, McMaster.  News agencies are calling for his impeachment for anything (charges? We dont need no stinking charges). His ability to govern is severely compromised.

And if folks want to call it a “Constitutional” crisis if he fires Mueller, I would ask how? Why? Where does the illegally appointed, seemingly partisan Independent Prosecutor (Special, whatever it is) show up in the Constitution? Where does the right of bureaucrats to shit on the expressed will of the people show up?

Put practically, how much worse can it get than daily calls for Trumps assassination and impeachment?

Some Gordian Knots are best dealt with quickly and decisively and unapologetically.

I am slowly releasing my anger, and it hit me this morning that what I will miss is the feeling of power that it gave me.  It is a constant energy surge, even if it is one which is also exhausting.  It feels like it creates a barrier between me and those who would hurt me.

But I also feel that it is not a foundation for a life.  It is living in the clouds, in an undifferentiated and constantly moving space where you can never feel at home.  There is no texture, no interesting color, merely a relentless monotony.

And I felt that a stable personality must be built brick by brick, patiently, as a workman.  You can build a home, a place to feel safe, a place to live and feel comfort, but not through what destroys it.

I think the image of Jesus as a carpenter is apposite here, since what he preached was building a structure, a skeleton, upon which could be placed a roof, and beneath and within which one could live.

I was doing Neurofeedback this morning and it hit me that hate is how we protect ourselves from love.  You hate people you are tempted to love, but who, for whatever reason, you have to push away.  It is a tool for self protection.

We cannot choose our passions.  We can merely redirect them.

Many years ago I had a dream where I was attacked by a madman, who escaped into this endless series of stairs, going in all directions, including up and down.  I got lost quickly.

I was thinking about this tonight. Often life is confusing, and it can feel like it is closing in on us, while simultaneously bewildering us.  Me.  I statement.

There were several elements in my meditation.  I am working downtown in the Big City, and had to park on the top floor of a parking garage.  When I arrived, a squirrel was there, somehow.  He looked hungry.  I wondered about his prospects, but figured garbage at least would keep him alive for a while.

When I left, there was a fat beetle next to my car.  It looked near dead.  I figured it perhaps got caught in an updraft, then lost the ability to fly through hunger.  It is likely dead by now.

I will offer one other element.  My tendency towards Buddhist beliefs notwithstanding, I continue to choose to eat meat.  And it hit me one day that this is an ideal time and method for meditating on death.  I can ponder the life and last moments of the turkey, or the cow, or the chicken.  They did not want to die.  They felt fear.

And I do not want to die.  I feel fear.  But I think we have to practice dying to really focus on living.

And then I thought about this obsessive quality people get when they meditate too much on death, and on the need to “live”.  They have to climb every mountain, consume every experience.  This confuses me.  You can’t do everything, and it all ends in death anyway.  The most clever fellow, the most adventurous, lucky, intrepid man or woman who ever lived, is dead or one day will be.

All of us to some extent are like the beetle, or the squirrel.  We make decisions, and sometimes they are the wrong ones.  It may be that I make a mistake some day that kills me.  This is not what I want, but much of life is beyond our control.  We do our best, but sometimes we are still wrong.  Perhaps we are momentarily or temperamentally stupid.  Perhaps we are unlucky.

Do we go left, or do we go right?

So, returning to my dream, it hit me tonight that EXPANSION is always the correct direction.  The madness and the constriction and the confusion are all of a piece.

This is a fundamental Kum Nye tenet, that when our energy is flowing properly, an innate wisdom and an innate pleasure in life emerge spontaneously.  They are our natural gifts, but we have forgotten them.

So I think I don’t want to climb every mountain. I  don’t want to consume life.  I want to learn how to watch trees swaying in the wind with greater and greater pleasure.  I want to be more and more fascinated by the quality of light in the day, and the moon at night.

I am that squirrel.  I am that beetle.  I am the meat I ate today.  They lived for a time, and then they died.

This is really the balancing act of life: remembering impermanence, but relishing every moment.

And I’m going to make another point I had intended for another post. I  just worked a really long day, but a flood of ideas just hit me that I’m going to post while I wait for the wine and melatonin to take effect.

Every time you hit an emotion you can’t process, you separate.  I feel this.  I am slowly reversing the process, by reinhabiting the emotional places I was driven from so many years ago.  It literally just hit me today some of the ways I am EXACTLY like my father.  It is so obvious, now.  I feel it.

And to take that specific case, I find I have a penchant for cruelty.  I really feel this.  This is what I am feeding when I go out and find people to argue with.  It’s a step up from barfighting, or finding a masochistic woman to abuse, but this is the reason I can understand Sade (up to a point, I think).

Yesterday, I was feeling tired and frustrated for several reasons, so I went to an old go-to: I got in a Global Warming “debate” with someone I knew had no ability, much less interest, in listening to what I had to say.

Now, my ideas in my view are solid, but this need to argue is directly related to a primary means by which I deflect negative emotions which would otherwise bedevil me.

Specifically, I BECOME SOMEONE ELSE when I go into arguing mode, one not connected spontaneously and on an on-going basis with my emotional energy.  I separate into two.

And I feel this happens to all of us on many levels.  The process of self deception is so well developed in all of us that we fail to see it.

I was watching this woman walk along a long, busy road this morning, who was nowhere near anything.  She wasn’t going to a bus station, so she must have been walking to work, or somewhere.   She had a bag.

Now, I have been, roughly, this person.  And what do you do?  You rationalize the situation.  You say “It isn’t so bad”.  You say you like walking.  It’s a nice morning.  Etc.

What you do is you become someone other than the psychologically normal person who would object to this situation.  This is what women (and let’s be honest, no small number of men) who are in bad relationships do.  This is what all people who are confused do.

So, returning to Buddhism as I tend to do, when the Buddha says “No Self”, what he likely meant was “Who you really are, you have never met.”  and “who you think you are, is the result of a long series of lies you had to tell yourself at one time.”

How many of us can honestly say we can stay deeply connected to our inner world on an on-going basis?  We react habitually and call it honest.  We find an emotion of some sort, and call it profound.  But what is behind all this?  What is left when nothing we know is left?  Who is in the Void with you, and who are you in the Void?

I don’t know why, but this last question made me laugh.  I don’t understand myself, but I am sure as hell trying.  If living well is expanding, and the key to expanding is self knowledge, then I am doing my best to live well.

It occurs to me that the creed of Egalitarianism is literally and figuratively that of “getting even”.

It is a creed of revenge, based on putative wrongs.  It exists as a system to manufacture those wrongs out of the fertile nature of human life, in which no two people are ever born alike.

Self evidently, all one needs to manufacture anger, rage, and following self righteousness, is to stipulate that the world should be other than it is, and to demand that it meet your expectations immediately and fully.  It is a sure fire and short route to the FEELING of empowerment, and moral superiority, and an a priori rationalization of any crimes one is anticipating committing.

To commit evil directly, all one need do is fault God for his creation, and then abolish Him through atheism, as Sade did. Alternatively, one can simply assert that God is the Devil, and the Devil represents the work of this world.

All of this is related.

And in my own life, I feel this energy.  I have been objectively wronged this week by several people.  But it is a measure of my progress that I am getting better and better at just letting things drop. Yes, sometimes we all need to fight.  Yes, sometimes we all need to express rage and anger.

But none of this is healthy long term.  It is a coffin, a prison, a darkening.

What would it take, for any of us, to make of disciplined work an expression of joy?

I am trying very hard now to understand time, and how I am supposed to relate to it.  I may have more to say (the bet that I will have more to say is always a good bet), but who knows.  I will leave that question there.

If Trump has to be treated to reading the contents of private telephone calls made from the Oval Office in a local newspaper, how on Earth can he deal with things like North Korea, where secrecy might literally make the difference between success and failure, between the death of millions, and peace?

I literally, from the bottom of my feet to the top of my head, do not get the arrogance and moral detachment necessary to be someone like Jeff Bezos.  I don’t know what he endured in childhood, I don’t know if he was an only, a lonely, or an adopted child, but he is sick in the head, and he has a lot of company.

I dream of better human beings.  He dreams of better machines.  That is the difference.  Any improvement that comes from the outside, is no improvement at all.  It is an intrusion.

And as I ponder this, there really is a functional analogy between using machines to “improve” human consciousness, and using government to “improve” human society.  Both are extrinsic to basic consciousness, and both must be understood in terms of force.  Life does not own the death of a machine. The death of the machine owns life.  I see no other possibility.

Put another way, spiritualists point out the obvious fact that our bodies are in some respects machines, but they are machines within which consciousness manifests.  Improving the machine does nothing to improve the quality of the perceptions that matter.  It does not matter how fast you can solve a differential equation, spiritually.  What matters is your capacity to love and to expand.  There is nothing any of these tech midgets are producing which will enable us to do that directly.

As I have said, I am not a technophobe, but to the extent I embrace things like Neurofeedback, it is because we are collectively batshit insane, and this is a needed tool in helping to reconstitute basic humanity, which is increasingly rare.