Moderates United

I would like to suggest that the most important thing about a person, as far as predicting who they will be ten years from now, is curiosity.  Curiosity inherently breeds growth, or so I believe.  And incuriosity likewise breeds stagnation.

As I have noted on several occasions, the tiny nation of Israel, is at least one thousand times more inventive on a per capita basis than the Arab and Islamic world.

Islam means submission.  And that submission is to a final text, written roughly in the 7th century AD, which purports to include all knowledge necessary to transit this life successfully.  No added science is needed, no learning of any sort.  Nor is any soul-searching, or dark nights of the soul needed.  You just have to do exactly what you are told, across a life-time, then you reach an eternal heaven.

In my own view, no more pernicious doctrine for actual spiritual, social, cultural, economic, or political development could be imagined.  No doubt many people grow anyway, become good people anyway, but all that in spite of, not because of their foundational text.

In South Asia, many Muslims dance and play music.  So too did the Sufis.

In the 1970’s, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, and other nations were quite liberal with respect to women.  The Islamists–who in my view were largely funded and driven by the Soviets through their agents–ended all that.

What more dull life could be imagined that being forced to recite the exact same prayer 5x a day for the rest of your life?  Where nearly every possible spontaneous expression of praise and joy is forbidden?

Violence is the inevitable result.  One could as easily lay our impulse to conquer North America to our Puritanism, frustration, latent anger, and following self congratulatory moralisms.

Well, I think I have reached a root understanding of human violence in my own body, which continues to attack me at night in the form of unprocessed trauma.

I think the root of human violence is that in most forms, people do not see it as violence; or at least, they invariably frame their own violence as protective, proactive, necessary.

I’m watching a documentary on Dietrich Bonnhoeffer, and they have footage of Hitler.  It is a recurring theme in his actual speeches that he does not want violence, but by God he is not going to let it be visited on the German people, that he is sick of the crimes the Jews commit against Germans, how they sabotage them at every turn.  And how the international community cannot wait to shrink Germany into a small space and cut their balls off (in effect).

Hitler never said “we need to invade the Soviet Union and Western Europe”.  What he said was that Germany needed space to live and breathe, and that on all sides everyone was trying to prevent it, and to confine them.

All mass violence begins like this.  People have violence in them at all times, but they need an excuse to let it out.  An excuse, to return to the modern era, like the belief that “fascists must be attacked”.  This belief, of course, has less validity than Hitler’s claim that the world wanted to confine Germany, which was somewhat true (they did after all start World War 1, for somewhat similar reasons).

Be all that as it may, I am going to try for a longer term sobriety again, this time based on understandings I did not have even a week ago, which is that at root addiction is internally directed rage, and as such a remnant of a violence which happened outside of me, which I could not control, but which presumes my own life is worthless.  My own life is not worthless. I cannot control the storms which happen outside of me, and which regrettably play out within me still.  But I can focus on the good, and learn to calm myself.  I have already had some successes.

So, I feel this violence, deeply. I  do not get sex yet, but I get violence.  I think I can say that.

And what soothes violence is music and dance.  I was reading this piece yesterday, somewhat at random: https://www.absolutept.com/mental-physical-effects-drumming-review/

Does it not seem obvious that music has, as the saying puts it, the “power to soothe the savage soul”?  Does it not seem obvious that it brings people together, even disparate, different people?  Does it not seem obvious that dance does as well?  That it brings about spontaneous social orders which are robust, at least for a time, and quite real?

Ponder in this regard the prohibitions in Islam respecting music, dance, representational art, and intoxication in any form.

Could one not say that this religion is constructed so as to PREVENT the formation of any spontaneous order OUTSIDE of violence?  War is of course a well proven way of building comradery, and group cohesion.  And I suppose gang rape is a sort of war, isn’t it?

Islam is an order intrinsically and intentionally based on the use of force.  Force to prevent women’s “immodesty”.  Force to ensure conversion to Islam.  Force to ensure no one leaves Islam.  Force to make sure people pray 5x a day.  Force in the face of anyone who criticizes Islam.  Everywhere, a war, even within the “House of Peace”, to keep it homogeneous.

Genuine individuation and the development of personal moral consciousness is impossible in such a situation.  It is a totalitarianism which in the case of the Saudis literally extends to your bedroom and what you do with your dick.

I have always noticed on college campuses that the Muslim students are almost invariably clustered in groups of 2-3.  If they are not in a group, they are looking for one.  People who do not value independence and individualism need one another for continual reinforcement.  It has no room for a personal, conscience based relationship with God.  Rather, it is a social system organized by force to coerce everyone to interact with one another and the process of prayer in ways determined 1,500 or so years ago, in a desert far, far away.

This is the major point, though: how is peace possible with people who hate joy, who hate dance, who hate singing, who hate music, and who hate non-abstract art, which is to say, virtually all of the crowning achievements of the human spirit, the world over, and who are unique in all this?

Rand Paul is absolutely right that the longer we delay, the less likely a full repeal is.  I think the situation is simple: it is a Gordian Knot, so cut it in half once, and decisively.

Rand Paul’s free market ideas will work, and as far as all the people added to government rolls, give them 2–hell, 3, or 4, as long as it is a finite number–years to find something else, then end the subsidies.

Just simplify it that way.  Everything that started under Obamacare goes away in a fixed period of time.  Full Stop.  Put into place sane free market principles and policies and watch people’s rates go down, and their coverage go up, along with the overall amount of healthcare available in this country, which has been declining for obvious reasons.

When did Republicans turn the tide, and start winning back seats nationally?  Since TWO THOUSAND TEN, which was the first election after Obamacare passed on a completely partisan basis.

This number of 1,000 net seats gained gets passed around, but it is ENTIRELY dependent–the motion towards Republicans everywhere in all governments–on Republicans acting like conservatives, and SPECIFICALLY their repealing Obamacare.

Remember 2006?  Democrats retook Congress.  Why?  Because we had a Republican Congress and a Republican President, and we may as well have had Barack Obama in the White House then, Ted Kennedy running the Senate, and Tip O’Neill running the House.  It was ludicrous.  It is a major miracle Obama was able to perform even worse.

But if Republicans even START going back to those days, their support will vanish in a whiff of smoke.  They have every possible support they could ever want.  Now is the time.  Fuck it up and there will be consequences.  There was no Tea Party then.  There is now, and we are paying attention.  Do not fail if you want to keep your jobs, especially in the House.

I’ve been watching some of the many videos on YouTube about the evidence for a lost civilization that was wiped out in some massive cataclysm about 12,000 years ago.

With regard specifically to a wall built in Peru or Bolivia that they could not explain–the rocks in many cases are so hard they could only be cut with diamond tools, and are cut in many cases with such precision that in the modern era it could only be done with precision machines, and given their many ton size, even that would present considerable logistical challenges–I had a vision.  I allow my inner world fairly free rein, and thought I might share what came to me.

One of these walls was built by three brothers in the course of a week or two.  They possessed an ability to liberate or activate the space within the boulders, both to make them relatively weightless, and to allow them to be molded like marshmallows.  One brother made them weightless, one carried them, and one fit them into the wall.  It is not that the found conforming rocks and cut them, but that they used any available rocks and just squeezed them in.

They were quite funny.  They were very carefree, and joked continually.  And the wall was built not as a structure to live in, but as a way of altering the subtle energy flow in the area.  When they were done, they sat for a very long time, perhaps days, perhaps weeks, soaking in the energy, feeling its flow, and it nourished them the way food normally would.

This whole notion of activating space I have pondered.  All matter is mostly space.  This is simple scientific fact.  It is 99% plus space.  What appears solid is constituted with these little tiny bits that are just tiny, infinitesimal specks in the overall thing.  In a typical atom, if you have a golf ball sized nucleus at the fifty yard line in a football stadium, the electrons are somewhere in the upper bleachers, and perhaps marble sized.  This is my rough recollection.

Now, we also know space is never empty.  There is an oceanic, essentially infinite energy source all around us called the Zero Point Field, or Quantum Vacuum. Activating this would be activating space.

And when I ponder this, I wonder what gravity really works on, and why it is so strong.

We continue to not understand gravity, but obviously it is related to the creation of Mass.  This is an interesting thought: does the mass exist prior to the gravitational interaction?

Without being able to understand the math–I have only had very basic Calculus–I recall reading somebody derived Newton’s F=MA by integrating the Zero Point Field.  This equation has always simply been posited.  It was not supposed to be derivable.

Most of the interesting work in the 21st century will, in my view, take into account the Quantum Vacuum.

And I did want to follow up on a previous post: if Abstraction is the modern equivalent of ritual sacrifice, then the ultimate avatar of Abstraction–a violent, anti-life process, even if it allows us to build things–is Artificial Intelligence.  The underlying emotional drive motivating those who obsess over this technology is in my view self loathing.  There is no need for this technology, which is obviously very dangerous, and could lead to the end of at least human life on Earth.  There are many possible Apocalypses.  Why build any?

I had a tough time this morning.  I drank too much last night, but what that does–what I hope it will do–is expand me and break down walls, which it did in a major way.

It broke something I have been lapping up against for some time, which is the very high wall of my intellectualism.  Abstraction, I see, is a powerful narcotic, one which allows you to avoid most emotions, perhaps for a lifetime.

But it does so at the cost of being in the moment, of genuinely feeling happy and connected with the world, which is what I have been trying so hard to cultivate.

Here is a bon mot: Abstraction is the Sacrifice of the modern era.

What I mean by this is we bind parts of our collective lives in abstraction.  We sell a part of the experience of having a soul, of being a living, breathing being on Earth, for protection from the realization of our more primitive instincts.

What I also mean is that Sacrifice–human, animal and other–was a means of processing for a time all the demonic impulses within a society.  In our own society, we in general eschew violence–at least our chattering, academic class does, and particularly when it appears warranted in the pursuit of national security–;but it does not go away when it is ignored.  It appears as abstraction.  Individual and social “selves” are split into the sane and shadow.

And one sees this process of abstraction in place when you ponder the ease with which the Left has been able to peddle, and get repeated, the ridiculous comparisons of Trump with Hitler.  Agree or disagree with his policies–and by and large they have been pretty clearly expressed, and all seem on their way to being implemented–he is NOTHING like Hitler.  His supporters are nothing like fascists.  Only people lacking the capacity to connect emotional intelligence to the process of thinking could possibly be that stupid.

And I see too that “crusading” is almost always both the result of abstraction, and an effort at avoiding unpleasant feelings.  Many people need to be needed, so even if the people they want to “help” don’t want that help, even if they explicitly reject it, they will “help” anyway.  And in the case of black people, part of the dynamic has been convincing them they are functionally helpless, and that they do need help, which to my eye looks like grotesque racism.

And if the problem does not exist, they invent it.  By and large, the transgender folks have been managing the bathroom issue quite well for some time.  The only current addition to the debate is whether or not people who are OBVIOUSLY a different gender get to impose their will on others.  This does not make sense to me, or most people, which is why this is a great cause for people who need to be needed.  Since they are battling common sense and long custom, they are well positioned to use the resistance they encounter to bolster their internal sense of moral supremacy.

But to take that last shot of abstraction away from myself, I was in my body for a time, and it felt good.

One bite at a time.

This popped into my head. Metaphorically, it would refer to pendulation and titration.

But then I wondered if this might be a root of cannibalism, if the unwanted, inaccessible trauma is projected onto a hated Other, and then ritually fed to the digestive system, which is where trauma hides.  The trauma feeds itself, and in so doing is pacified for a time.

Is a Doppelganger you, but with access to your hidden trauma?  The You you don’t want to see, can’t see.  The real truth?  A monster “out there” psychologically?

And would eating babies not be a logical solution for people whose “monster” is Developmental Trauma, trauma they can’t begin to remember, but which dogs them all the days of their lives?  Would it not seem obvious that the root of Satanism is Developmental Trauma?  That baby IS the monster, made flesh, for such people.  It connects them to their own deepest mythic–which in this case is to say emotional–reality.

And how would rituals such as the sacrifice of children, as has happened in many cultures such as Carthage, perpetuate?  Would not fucked up parents create fucked up kids, to whom all this makes perfect sense?  Would not this fucked-up-ness be very easy to perpetuate?

I will repeat my core intuition that some of the most wealthy families on Earth screw up their children on purpose, and have for many generations.

I think there are some very important insights here.  You’re welcome.

Actually, I will add on the positive side of the ledger a story I read yesterday, where supposedly in some Indian tribe the babies birthday is dated to when the mother got the idea of having the child, and set aside quiet time to hear the “song’ of her future child, which is to say to feel the quality of its unique self, which she obviously cared for, and which then became a healthy, happy, well adapted and peaceful adult, who then fathered or mothered more such children.

We have choices in this life.  But all choices involve perception.  What is called “creativity” is simply picking from among the infinite unrealized possibilities in this life, and bringing them into concrete being.  Every creative act necessarily leaves an infinity behind.  This means we are all infinitely wealthy in the ways that matter.  That is a positive thought.  Look at me: I’m channeling Tigger rather than Eeyore, after writing what I just wrote.

LOL.  Seriously.  I’m a nut, but I find my madness congenial.

It occurs to me, now that my internal conflicts have become open to me, now that I have brought light into some unpleasant spaces, that addiction is nothing or less than undeveloped emotional intelligence, and that healing consists in nothing more than cultivating emotional intelligence, and specifically self regulation.

And I want to be clear on that point: the self regulation in question is not a question of knowing when to stop.   It is a question of learning to regulate the emotional flooding–much of it perhaps unconscious–which CAUSES the bingeing.  The bingeing is just a way to make it go away.  You look in one direction and see a monster.  So you run to the comfort of something else, in the other direction.  You turn away, because you cannot face it, that part of you which is woven into the fiber of your soul, that you cannot escape, but which you cannot control, cannot own, and cannot face without terrible cost.  It is a truly awful situation, and the background of otherwise incomprehensible behaviors which see outwardly decent and caring people kill themselves, directly or indirectly, rather than pay that cost.

Now, I do not want to say that alcoholism and other addictions cannot be influenced one way or the other with will power.  I do not want to say you cannot just say QUIT one day and make it work at the expense of a lifetime of taking it “one day at a time”, and being forced to admit regularly you “are” an “alcoholic”.  I have known many people over the years who did this.

What I want to say is that there is something in me which is psychologically “grundlich”, as the Germans put it: thorough, meticulous, and wanting to be as deep, wide, and absolutely comprehensive as I can be.  Mental health is a process, in some respects, of careful, long term craftsmanship, and such work should be done as well as humanly possible, and if angels can be enlisted, so much the better.

On the other side of tension waits a friend.

I try to do Pilates every day, at least part of the routine.  I have realized I make excuses to avoid it, and have realized it is because some of the exercises, oddly enough the Rolling one, elicit fear in me.  I contact that rich subterranean river of fear.  I get shivers all over.  It hides in my upper back, particularly.

Now six months ago I would not have allowed myself to feel this.  I would have exhorted myself to “get it done”, done it faithfully for 4 days, then given it up for three weeks by making excuses and then forgetting it completely.  This is the truth.

Now, I see what is happening.  And it occurs to me this fear has limits.  It does not go on forever.  I will pass through it.  And having passed through it, I will not only not fear the Pilates, but look forward to it.  It is after all intended to be rejuvenating and relaxing.

I feel good things coming my way.

First off, I will repeat that all Leftists memes directed at the right need to make a U-turn and point back at them.  If Noam Chomsky accuse the Right of it, he is guilty of it.  He may as well talk about the Manufacture of Reality, because that is his main preoccupation: creating atrocities where they do not exist, and vanishing those which do exist, but do not fit his narrative.

Secondly, anyone who cannot process emotion, who cannot or does not allow it to flow freely, is governed by little else.  The most rigid, ideologically driven people you know, the “analysts”, the “logical” people: they are deep wells of emotion.  This is what makes them rigid.  Free e-motion allows free motion.

And allowing feelings to flow does not mean that one is feeling all the time.  One is sensing and perceiving all the time.  One is awake, alert and alive.  I go up and I go down, and it is all interesting.  An ocean, on balance, is level, even if no part of it is level at any time.

Third, the point I wanted to make, is that our media exists to create an illusion of consensus and reality.  They historically have been able, themselves, to shout and scream about a politician or a policy, throw some trained and paid or brainwashed activists in the streets, and create the sense among the people consuming their media that everybody thinks a certain way, that they represent the mainstream.

But to state the obvious, whatever is happening, wherever it is happening, chances are quite good you are not there. You are getting your news, at best, second hand, and those hands have long felt it their right and duty not to report what happened, but to carefully sculpt a reality which supports their political ideology.

Thus to say newscasters exist to “report the news” is farcical.  In the main, they exist to CREATE the news.  They exist to ignore stories which do not support their narrative–choosing what to cover is the first part of their filtering process–and then to spin whatever stories they do cover in disingenuous and unethical ways.

Banning CNN or the New York Times is not to ban them from reporting the news.  It is to recognize that they abandoned any serious efforts at journalistic integrity long ago.  What is anti-democratic is a free press which supports the agenda of the continued erosion of ACTUAL civil liberties, which supports the on-going vitiation of our Constitution, which supports politicians who further this agenda, which LIES to further all these goals.

I was wondering yesterday if the Left has the stamina to keep up this hyperventilating for four years. I  was very upset when Obama won, but even I was not calling for impeachment the first day.  That would have been ludicrous: he won the election after all, and had done nothing to warrant impeachment (although of course he later did, e.g. the IRS scandal or Fast and Furious, or the Bo Bergdahl swap).

But many Leftists continue to seem to feel there is a quick and easy “solution” (Endloesung) to the Trump question.  There isn’t.  He is not impeachable.  There is no Russian connection. And even if Trump went down, somehow, Mike Pence is a very able and competent man who will continue implementing the same ideas.  The Democrats–and their media partners–LOST, bigly, and as Obama so snidely remarked, roughly, “elections have consequences”.

As should be obvious, if you are shouting at the top of your lungs 24/7 that people who disagree with you are “being divisive”, you are the one actually guilty of it.  It’s slightly elevated version of “who smelt it dealt it”, but it operates at about the same level of maturity.

If you hate people who hate and accuse everyone who disagrees with you of hate, you are the one who is guilty.

If you use fascist tactics to “oppose fascism”, YOU are the guilty party, not them.

In all of this, you will note there is no give and take.  There is no connection, or circulation.  There is not an exchange of opinions.  Trump could be a stuffed moose sitting in a museum and it is hard to see how the rhetoric would change.  It doesn’t matter what he says or does, because those who hate him–who hate the idea of ideational diversity, and hate even more the idea that their cause is unjust, and their crusades damaging to the very people for whom they claim to speak–are not listening.

It has apparently not occurred to them yet to accuse Trump of not listening, but it would be a logical extension of the fundamental process of projecting onto ideological Others all their fears, manias, aggressions, and other unprocessed emotions.

I was walking in the park the other day and saw a guy with a t-shirt that said in enormous letters “Black Lives Matter”, and underneath it “Unapologetic Radical”, and I thought: there is a guy who has built a wall around his core self, and instituted perennial rage as an alternative to feeling whatever is going on inside.  He isn’t helping black people.  And Radicalism is the result of the inability to embrace gradualism, which is the only creed historically which actually works.  It is the inability to touch nuance, to relate to other human beings in an honest and genuinely loving way.  It is the mark of an outcast, of someone whose social brain has not developed properly, who does not really understand human feelings, and who substitutes abstraction in their stead.

Very few of us, today, confront genuine injustice in our personal lives, other than perhaps bad bosses.  But the world, of course, is filled with both genuine and manufactured injustices.  And if you want access to Perma-Rage, then simply create impossible demands, and rail continually against the fact that they have not been met.  This is a loop out of personal development, out of inner work, and it readily supports infantilism, and absolute emotional stagnation, all while presenting to the person internally the excitement of being “useful” and part of a grand romantic crusade.