tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-48199810458045085082024-03-18T22:05:44.203-07:00How to Be Free - the blogJoe Blowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05875304789593618533noreply@blogger.comBlogger140125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819981045804508508.post-70424645523983050352023-03-25T18:21:00.014-07:002023-03-25T19:04:29.765-07:00Techniques 1 : Gratitude Diary<div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixfZdBm5kjz9EEoJQjWzm-xYH_RT7RLqClUe_ckEemHTPAqT1hXCSRiAB26rpfveOTAAxGIogeKgykZZzRtShG-SKjjwFJrEAN4b2tdB3N4azriByVV6p5UktLPUcpYmsBANFGns7yoyFJVsgxEJNsc8CZfXDzoBpwyCZEY76wGE0QdOxdXYKYNOi9LA/s2508/168302312_m_normal_none.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1672" data-original-width="2508" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixfZdBm5kjz9EEoJQjWzm-xYH_RT7RLqClUe_ckEemHTPAqT1hXCSRiAB26rpfveOTAAxGIogeKgykZZzRtShG-SKjjwFJrEAN4b2tdB3N4azriByVV6p5UktLPUcpYmsBANFGns7yoyFJVsgxEJNsc8CZfXDzoBpwyCZEY76wGE0QdOxdXYKYNOi9LA/w640-h426/168302312_m_normal_none.jpg" width="640" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times;">Photo by <a href="https://www.123rf.com/profile_antonioguillem" target="_blank">Antonio Guillem</a></span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;">Just because someone is good at articulating a philosophy doesn't mean they are always good at living it. In recent times I have struggled with anxiety and depression and needed to look to others to teach me how to quell it (while also having the help of medication.) </span></div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;"><br />One idea I picked up from television. I assume the guy I saw being interviewed was Hugh Van Cuylenburg of <a href="https://theresilienceproject.com.au" target="_blank">The Resilience Project</a>. I'm very familiar with the cover of his book from the library where I work, but have not, as yet, read it.</span><div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1mK8WuS9e31I7KlyYGLU-FpvLzNS6DQJ5mJXIVdIjQy5-nuQi9GjL8xm6EC_aALs_nLmtGYXcOk-o4G1ioZmFytqAimVU4eLVISmHqnUAVlUbY5hIVe34DrXqZi7TCVHEYR3a4EWx6sQVDzmEsphO0rH4nkYwtMLFBDQmVOLx--E_SfJd-eKbVCSkjw/s3543/9781760893286-4097421281.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3543" data-original-width="3543" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1mK8WuS9e31I7KlyYGLU-FpvLzNS6DQJ5mJXIVdIjQy5-nuQi9GjL8xm6EC_aALs_nLmtGYXcOk-o4G1ioZmFytqAimVU4eLVISmHqnUAVlUbY5hIVe34DrXqZi7TCVHEYR3a4EWx6sQVDzmEsphO0rH4nkYwtMLFBDQmVOLx--E_SfJd-eKbVCSkjw/w640-h640/9781760893286-4097421281.jpg" width="640" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: times;"><br /><span><br /><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span>In talking about gratitude he suggested something very simple. Just write down three good things which happened each day. <br /><br />I latched on to this and found myself ending each day by writing a list of around fifteen things which were positives. The key was that nothing was too small. A stranger returning my smile. A tasty meal. An enjoyable conversation. <br /><br />A psychologist I've been seeing said that this is just the way to do such a technique. Those who are not helped often say each day : "I'm grateful for my family. I'm grateful for my health." The key is to draw attention to the little things which might go unappreciated. <br /><br />We all tend to have a negativity bias. This makes sense as we need to be aware of dangers and to focus on problems in order to solve them. Our ancestors were more likely to die from being inattentive to negatives than unappreciative of positives. And if we feel a pain in some part of our body, it is a call to attend to a problem. <br /><br />But sometimes the problem alert signal - in the form of anxiety or depression - becomes a hindrance to addressing the problem itself. <br /><br />Keeping a gratefulness diary counters the negativity bias. We will still be able to focus on solving problems as needed, but by appreciating the things which go well we will draw more sustenance into our psyche with which to power those problem solving activities. <br /><br />What I have found is that I am more likely to wake in the morning feeling optimistic and excited about the day to come because I have reason to believe that it will be filled with similar small but precious gifts to the one before. <br /><br />My suggestions are : <br /><br />1. Make the list just before going to bed. <br /><br />2. Write down as many things as you feel like. If you can only think of one, write one. If you think of fifty write fifty. <br /><br />3. Survey the day from start to finish in your memory, but don't feel you have to write things in chronological order. If you remember something afterwards, just add it to the end of the list. If you remember something the next day which you'd forgotten, you can always add it then. <br /><br />4. Remember all your senses and how they can give you pleasure. (I always think of the Iranian movie <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120265/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1" target="_blank">A Taste of Cherry</a> (1997) (dir. Abbas Kiarostami) in which one character tries to persuade another not to commit suicide by reminding him that to be dead is to forgo the pleasure of tasting a cherry.)</span><br /></span></span><br /></span><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tbody>
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</table><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5caxJDl8QPPeU3jmItHNE9QpYaflk_u1wOIF4-Vv-RjXY219-S16PBd5TPXwlwhlpbBwelNJkDg-TmEt6LcJi_L4HqFJO2lc3G9bYL2w7pGomMtkeGmo52ieuR0mrVcNHK_8eY629OTtRDk5DeVekiZcLwisnQXsGWbO2lqvtnk_tnayAT7OF-jf4xg/s3309/785b6b20c2d84e14f637b4c6baabaaa4-1141220317.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3309" data-original-width="2339" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5caxJDl8QPPeU3jmItHNE9QpYaflk_u1wOIF4-Vv-RjXY219-S16PBd5TPXwlwhlpbBwelNJkDg-TmEt6LcJi_L4HqFJO2lc3G9bYL2w7pGomMtkeGmo52ieuR0mrVcNHK_8eY629OTtRDk5DeVekiZcLwisnQXsGWbO2lqvtnk_tnayAT7OF-jf4xg/w452-h640/785b6b20c2d84e14f637b4c6baabaaa4-1141220317.jpg" width="452" /></span></a></div></td></tr></tbody></table></div><br />Aussiescribblerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04835275666734452167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819981045804508508.post-84361942585515954542022-10-10T03:14:00.010-07:002022-10-10T03:32:52.334-07:00The Psychology of Totalitarianism by Mattias Desmet<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggONbCLfNVcdx417RSraYVirzIQ-Tc0NFQb1dnrQuHd7Y8laWlC7RnhQcwlQo1w7zWKgEbKV3t2EnFL8z9hbdu56Rfx4xlNssNmoytb_MkJD04rGY8oOKiHirXFWijVvQbvEQoE55m6TkYvUyym6jj6LwkDbQoEQjLc3Zg4umykPaO1MVSUWwNJtCzXg/s1350/510RguGnNZL.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1350" data-original-width="900" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggONbCLfNVcdx417RSraYVirzIQ-Tc0NFQb1dnrQuHd7Y8laWlC7RnhQcwlQo1w7zWKgEbKV3t2EnFL8z9hbdu56Rfx4xlNssNmoytb_MkJD04rGY8oOKiHirXFWijVvQbvEQoE55m6TkYvUyym6jj6LwkDbQoEQjLc3Zg4umykPaO1MVSUWwNJtCzXg/w426-h640/510RguGnNZL.jpg" width="426" /></a></div><br /> <span style="font-family: times;"><i style="color: #131313;">"Totalitarianism is the belief that human intellect can be the guiding principle in life and society.”</i>
</span><p style="color: #131313; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="color: #131313; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">One of the most important questions which face us as a species is why we have a propensity to go collectively insane in horrendously bloodthirsty ways. Why the Holocaust? Why the killing fields of Cambodia? Why Mao’s Cultural Revolution? Why Stalin’s purges?</span></p>
<p 0px="" 17px="" font-stretch:="" line-height:="" margin:="" min-height:="" normal=""><span style="font-family: times;">Wars of conquest, horrible as they are, make sense to us. We can understand wanting something possessed by another and using force to get it. But these periods of madness lead societies to implode. They begin by vilifying particular subsets of their population, but the elimination of the victim classes leads to a widening net of destruction which may end up with the annihilation of those who initiated the purge. Hitler assured the German people that he was saving enough gas for them so that they wouldn’t have to face the reality of defeat. And many of those who enacted Stalin’s purges ended up finding themselves on the list. Whatever is going on in these times of madness is not something which can lead to a stable outcome.</span></p>
<p style="color: #131313; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"><span style="font-family: times;">Mattias Desmet has written a truly remarkable book on this topic. Building on the classic work of Hannah Arendt, he provides a framework for understanding the psychological landscape of totalitarianism which is concise and easy to understand. You’ll find yourself saying, “Ah, ha! Of course,” often.</span></p>
<p style="color: #131313; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="color: #131313; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">He places this phenomena in the deepest of contexts, both that of the developmental psychology of the individual and the historical evolution of ideas.</span></p>
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<p style="color: #131313; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">As a child we learn language. We want to know the precise meanings of words, but words are described using other words. Meaning is always deferred. This sense of uncertainty can either be accepted as an opportunity for creativity or lead to an anxious hunger for some kind of certainty. The deepest question for the developing child is “What does the Other want?” What is the secret to being loved by the Other? The need for a sense of certainty about this question can lead to narcissism. Healthy development requires the ability to live with uncertainty.</span></p>
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<p style="color: #131313; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">The history of ideas also saw us faced with a choice between accepting that the essence of reality will always be unknowable or a mechanistic way of conceiving of the universe as something which can be fully explained and successfully manipulated to create an earthly paradise. The mechanistic worldview continues to dominate even though discoveries in physics which were made in the twentieth century reveal it to be unfounded. The mechanistic schema is that the realm of physics determines that of chemistry which determines that of biology which determines those of psychology, sociology and economics. But we now know that psychology has the ability to determine physical phenomena such as the movement of atomic particles.</span></p>
<p style="color: #131313; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="color: #131313; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">Desmet explains that totalitarianism is the full expression of the mechanistic worldview.</span></p>
<p style="color: #131313; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="color: #131313; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">What inspired him to assemble the notes on this topic he had been making over recent years and put them forward to the public in the form of this book was the social and political response to the Corona Virus. In the acceptance of authoritarian control imposed on society and the othering of the unvaccinated, he saw the basic patterns of what at other times has turned into full-blown totalitarianism.</span></p>
<p style="color: #131313; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="color: #131313; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">I’m sure that many would resist this interpretation. Sure scientific studies have now shown that the lockdowns led to more collateral damage deaths than they could possibly have prevented Covid deaths. Sure we know that the Covid shots didn’t end up preventing anyone from contracting or passing on the disease (and thus don’t fit the traditional meaning of the word “vaccine” regardless of how much benefit they might hypothetically have in limiting symptoms for the individual.) But we believed these things in good faith. Is it fair to say that we were hypnotised as a result of our social isolation and free-floating anxiety? You or I might not have been a part of the mass formation perhaps, but extremes of behaviour were exhibited by large numbers of people which it does make sense to interpret in that way. Hostility toward “anti-vaxxers” certainly persisted beyond the point at which we knew that they posed no more risk to others than anyone else. And how do we explain people’s willingness to have their male children (who had an infinitesimal chance of a bad outcome from Covid) given a shot which carries a very significant chance of damaging their heart?</span></p>
<p style="color: #131313; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="color: #131313; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">Desmet doesn’t go into detail about these issues. You can go to <a href="https://alexberenson.substack.com/"><span style="color: #0a514b;">Alex Berenson</span></a> or <a href="https://www.rwmalonemd.com/"><span style="color: #0a514b;">Dr. Robert W. Malone</span></a> amongst others for that. His point is that we have a propensity to manifest totalitarianism. It isn’t just something that happened in foreign countries in decades past.</span></p>
<p style="color: #131313; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 17px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="color: #131313; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">There is a spiritual vision at the heart of the book which points the way to a cure for our madness. If transhumanism is the latest form of totalitarian dystopia in waiting, the way forward is for us to embrace our humanity, and its grounding in the mysterious creativity of the universe, all the more deeply.</span></p><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(24, 24, 24); color: #181818;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPxBi4SCTn0TqpezqE_iI_KoZrVxCdu6VqQMw05wkCQ83kvILg2wrOFrmErQYOgw89JbYEWIXWR2FtjwwYDGPXKDJ5-_-ymNj7IPI-QX7EXH3CLEAVeaY9O9dtvb55ZZ1lxI6v5u2JGsrDMBrDUE2MeqPl_GiiGJoGP_qv1QMaak79wv1uCd3wt_K6sA/s800/foto_mattias_desmet.jpg.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="693" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPxBi4SCTn0TqpezqE_iI_KoZrVxCdu6VqQMw05wkCQ83kvILg2wrOFrmErQYOgw89JbYEWIXWR2FtjwwYDGPXKDJ5-_-ymNj7IPI-QX7EXH3CLEAVeaY9O9dtvb55ZZ1lxI6v5u2JGsrDMBrDUE2MeqPl_GiiGJoGP_qv1QMaak79wv1uCd3wt_K6sA/w554-h640/foto_mattias_desmet.jpg.png" width="554" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mattias Desmet</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span 24="" caret-color:="" color:="" rgb=""><br /></span></span></div>Aussiescribblerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04835275666734452167noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819981045804508508.post-80134642880913439772022-06-26T21:43:00.003-07:002022-06-26T21:43:21.790-07:00BOOK REVIEW : The Soul of Man Under Socialism by Oscar Wilde<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEyXMk275xr2hLZEbd9BGW9oqSBMM6_NXqwGKu9bRAqF-LxIlxw4hip1Deu8aa_agUCajK7298G2vQydsw0bvYkqZuIY3gFGhe-7hSF3OPA8jjApTVLhc1opkrL5lMP_MxXZxjr17a39rS5yef7tSQKLzjUr21XhXVZKfGXWkh61J-i2mk_NThnu_A5g/s2239/the-soul-of-man-under-socialism-9781633551961_hr-246440594.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2239" data-original-width="1400" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEyXMk275xr2hLZEbd9BGW9oqSBMM6_NXqwGKu9bRAqF-LxIlxw4hip1Deu8aa_agUCajK7298G2vQydsw0bvYkqZuIY3gFGhe-7hSF3OPA8jjApTVLhc1opkrL5lMP_MxXZxjr17a39rS5yef7tSQKLzjUr21XhXVZKfGXWkh61J-i2mk_NThnu_A5g/w400-h640/the-soul-of-man-under-socialism-9781633551961_hr-246440594.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p>When he wrote this essay, first published in 1891, Oscar Wilde was very optimistic about the ability of socialism to rid society of poverty, and advanced machinery to rid society of burdensome toil. Or was he? I don't know much about the context, but Wilde was a playful provocateur. Perhaps by taking the promises made by socialists and running with them, he was trying to expose the fallacies of their thinking and explore what really might be necessary for an improvement in society.</p><p>He claims that the chief advantage of Socialism would be rescuing us from having to be concerned about alleviating the hardships of others. Poverty might be ended without the need for charity, which is degrading to the recipient.</p><p>What he means by socialism is the abolition of private property. He is not simply talking about some extension of a state funded welfare system. Of course he is writing well before the horrors which attended so many experiments with communism in the twentieth century. So it is possible his optimism is genuine.</p><p>We think of socialism as the surrender of the individual to the collective. Irony is at the heart of Wilde's wit, and here the irony is that he takes the promised Utopia of Socialism and explains how it can only succeed if it leads to the full flowering of Individualism.</p><p>The reason to abolish private property is that its protection and maintenance distracts us from cultivating our Individuality. The more we are our property the less we are ourselves.</p><p>His vision of socialism is more like anarchism. All forms of authority will cease and along with them all forms of punishment.</p><p>He turns to the teachings of Jesus, which he presents also as a call to Individualism.</p><p>It is common for people to wrongly associate Jesus' teachings with Socialism. There is a huge difference between appealing to one's followers to voluntarily help the poor and advocating that the state should force them to do so. Wilde isn't saying that Jesus was a Socialist. He's merely saying that Jesus advocated Individualism and asserting the opinion that Socialism, if properly pursued, would lead to greater Individualism.</p><p>He adds that Individualism would end family life, but that this would make the love of a man and a woman more than it has been, the implication being that that which is enforced is less genuine. Again he appeals to Jesus' refusal to recognise the members of his own family.</p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE22wQfHTjmnz7MtpNkgOwKNRl1bnPDvx3K8pPvUUNAv4Vnl5O6lR6Y5qikZiqSS2gPK6DpsyPvzC7c5trd0d2Sjegn-EWrSI_FGH44Eh5GIDpdgYpoChmdwGC3EwfdVB_REltUFTuJKwyB-8Rc8fpA4h5pNEJIbnFTBu3dl3QXVPWdifHENmiLLCCGA/s1080/tumblr_p7tra6HH6t1uq64kmo1_1280-1916466504.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1080" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE22wQfHTjmnz7MtpNkgOwKNRl1bnPDvx3K8pPvUUNAv4Vnl5O6lR6Y5qikZiqSS2gPK6DpsyPvzC7c5trd0d2Sjegn-EWrSI_FGH44Eh5GIDpdgYpoChmdwGC3EwfdVB_REltUFTuJKwyB-8Rc8fpA4h5pNEJIbnFTBu3dl3QXVPWdifHENmiLLCCGA/w640-h640/tumblr_p7tra6HH6t1uq64kmo1_1280-1916466504.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p>In the latter part of the essay, Wilde turns to literary criticism to show how hard it is for Individualism to find acceptance in various written forms.</p><p>Wilde's take on things may tend to be unrealistic. He argues ending private property will end crime. But in the broad strokes of his thesis is much food for thought.</p><p>It makes sense that a peaceful, cooperative and loving society, if such a thing is possible, would have to be made up of those in whom Individuality has found an unhindered expression. We can see an apt analogy in nature. A thriving healthy group of plants or animals are those least impeded in following their instincts.</p><p>Is a society possible where everyone is free from impositions on their Individuality and yet cooperation allows for the practical solution of the problems facing the group?</p><p>I think so, but the process to get there will not be easy as the healthy loving impulses are often buried beneath much resentment.</p><p>The abolition of private property is impractical because it requires either the consent or the control of the masses. On the other hand, Wilde is right that Individualism is the answer. The way to achieve it is through a mixture of assertion and healing. Strength and soundness are needed to stand firm in the face of all that opposes it. This is where Wilde's pointing to Jesus is so relevant. We don't need screwed up people uninhibitedly living out their reckless disregard for the well-being of themselves or others. Of course, we might see that they are not Individuals, because they are more of a programmed expression of those who have damaged them than of their authentic self. </p><p>But we need a path of healing and it may be that the words of Jesus, rather than those of Socialists, have the ability to provide it.</p><p>Anyway, there is much to recommend Wilde's vision :</p><p><b>"For what man has sought for is indeed, neither pain nor pleasure, but simply Life. Man has sought to live intensely, fully, perfectly. When he can do so without exercising restraint on others, or suffering it ever, and his activities are all pleasurable to him, he will be saner, healthier, more civilised, more himself. Pleasure is Nature's test, her sign of approval. When man is happy, he is in harmony with himself and his environment."</b></p><p><b><br /></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-7kt66nIbJ1CVgkK12RKz0F1SBBRpe_UIils6LeI-_bJ0VsyUFL0JavHMbznfZdqWZRxb6HS63piAjUDtdg3ruoMbveN-yK363NMiYVhoeyzharfKPnllcf5hXimizDRYcMGHo3nRaIUX5zi2VM4d-kcXoDcwm2H-2e42HwvvyOc8WRWhs3T7G-S28g/s1080/627b96fd100e2df72d7929762815626b-1064983439.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1080" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-7kt66nIbJ1CVgkK12RKz0F1SBBRpe_UIils6LeI-_bJ0VsyUFL0JavHMbznfZdqWZRxb6HS63piAjUDtdg3ruoMbveN-yK363NMiYVhoeyzharfKPnllcf5hXimizDRYcMGHo3nRaIUX5zi2VM4d-kcXoDcwm2H-2e42HwvvyOc8WRWhs3T7G-S28g/w640-h640/627b96fd100e2df72d7929762815626b-1064983439.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><p><br /></p>Aussiescribblerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04835275666734452167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819981045804508508.post-33689918616834578752022-05-14T20:29:00.002-07:002022-05-14T20:29:22.289-07:00Will We Fall Back On Love and Truth?<p>One need not be a religious believer to feel that we live in Apocalyptic times. We are reaching the limits of our society to maintain basic cohesion and of our ecosystem to support us. And we see the spread of toxic forms of ideology which emphasise identity and difference in a way which works against the spirit of universal love which might gather us in and set us on a true path. And the pandemic has tended to make us fear each other and to put our trust in a centralised authority which has often proved unworthy of that trust.</p><p>Some say that we need to return to Christian values. This seems valid if one takes those values from a non-literal interpretation of the Gospels. There are too many of us who call ourselves Christians while departing from those values - of love and honesty and non-judgement and charity - to expect that holding up Christianity as an answer will win the approval of unbelievers.</p><p>I say this and yet the one thing I fall back on to give me some modicum of hope is that Jesus prophesied that the darkest moment would herald his return. I may not believe in a supernatural sense, but a pattern which is central to our greatest story is not to be lightly dismissed, especially when the alternative is a slow painful extinction for the human race and all the beauty in the world.</p><p>Some believe that the heart of human psychology is competition. Nature is a competition for food and mating opportunities. But it seems to me that love is the primary grounding of our psychology. The love bond between mother and child is the foundation of our development. Later there are factors which alienate us from that. If our survival as an individual is in peril, if we are feeling the impulse to serve the breeding impulse, and, particularly, if we are in a psychologically insecure state, then this acts as interference temporarily blocking out our more profound nature. But if we meet a stranger in a situation in which we feel no danger to our survival or our psychological integrity, then there is no reason we won't feel a fellowship with them which is a return to the essence of our first way of relating to another human being, but without the element of complete dependence.</p><p>Psychological insecurity is the root of our problems. I know it all too well. If my belief system were made up of secure building blocks, then I would not want to see those who think differently proven humiliatingly wrong. Don't we see this in ourselves and others, particularly on the topic of politics. We build our ego castles and hurl projectiles of mockery at those of our fellows. The "other" becomes perhaps a stand-in for everyone who has ever hurt us. We get an outlet for our frustration, but no healing for that hurt.</p><p>So is, perhaps, an Apocalypse the last stand of a failing strategy? There is no doubt that business as usual is proving to be a massive failure. If that failure breaks us, will we, in newfound humility, acknowledge the long-denied truth and fall back into our capacity for love?</p><p><br /></p>Aussiescribblerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04835275666734452167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819981045804508508.post-41977904571794904702022-01-23T06:21:00.007-08:002022-01-23T06:43:48.606-08:00BOOK REVIEW : A Hunter-Gatherer's Guide to the 21st Century : Evolution and the Challenges of Modern Life by Heather Heying and Bret Weinstein<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg2kXaNrYF-8bLfHIbS5vOLbwSDGLdN4_4enVkOgXLkpCypph-ZRavQnGbVEO49pvf2IRP4BMF29_571G0IsVNj2BHsrM6V42JQBrfgNqzAQKP7fpGu4x8UDtTwR-hUKg7nkp9cJPpxsVKeytwxmBzUWPzfEsQ9XWpvBRpzIZ_WumF041x2gggfXAaK2g=s2560" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2560" data-original-width="1696" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg2kXaNrYF-8bLfHIbS5vOLbwSDGLdN4_4enVkOgXLkpCypph-ZRavQnGbVEO49pvf2IRP4BMF29_571G0IsVNj2BHsrM6V42JQBrfgNqzAQKP7fpGu4x8UDtTwR-hUKg7nkp9cJPpxsVKeytwxmBzUWPzfEsQ9XWpvBRpzIZ_WumF041x2gggfXAaK2g=w424-h640" width="424" /></a></div><br /> <div><span style="font-family: times;">The challenges which face us as a species are legion. What should we do?<br /> <br />First we have to know who we are and where we are. We need to understand our programming and the ways in which it interfaces with the world around us, both its natural elements and those we have constructed. <br /><br />The central challenge is one of hyper-novelty. Our instincts change extremely slowly and so are still adjusted to the way we were living many thousands of years ago. Culture changes more quickly, but still requires much time to test its innovations. A technological advance can spread throughout the world almost instantaneously, but a culture of social habits which allow it to be used for our net benefit rather than net deficit might take decades. Social media gives a case in point. It has brung us great benefits, but we are struggling to know how to manage downsides such as addiction and toxic forms of social interaction. <br /><br />Heather Heying and Bret Weinstein set out in this book to provide us with tools which we can use to orientate ourselves and begin to improvise strategies for a liveable future. <br /><br />I sometimes become annoyed with people who interpret human psychology with an evolutionary lens. Clearly our psychology exists within the process of evolution, but it sometimes seems as if people will use evolution as an excuse to reduce everything to the question of what does or does not lead to the prospering of the genes. So we are told that people wear ostentatious clothes for the same reason that some species of bird have bright feathers, i.e. it helps to attract a mate. That is all very well as far as it goes, but it doesn’t acknowledge that a post-menopausal woman may wear fancy clothes because it feeds her ego to get attention. The authors talk about rape as a product of evolution - a reprehensible form of reproductive strategy. This makes sense, but the rape of non-impregnable individuals is very common. Men rape other men and they rape prepubescent children. Rape can be an expression of a distortion of the ego which does not confer any benefit on the individual's genes. <br /><br />So it seems to me that, just as culture is nested within and interacts with the system which is the genetic evolution of the species, so the psychology of the individual is nested within genetic evolution and culture, and it would be foolish, in trying to understand it, to reduce it to a role of servant to that larger system. Very often we are not even servants, but rather saboteurs, to ourselves. <br /><br />This is just to give some idea of my own biases. I was not disappointed in the way this book approached the topic of evolutionary psychology. It emphasises the importance of viewing cultural evolution as being in service of genetic evolution. Just as mutations in genes lead to variations which either persist or don’t depending on fitness for life in the environment, culture is a series of experiments (conscious in this case) which lead to changes in society which either prove adaptive or not. <br /><br />If an aspect of culture is costly in effort or resources and persists for a long time, then we can assume that it is adaptive in some way. The authors call this “The Omega Principle”. This doesn’t mean that the content of this cultural form is necessary true. It may be a myth which encourages socially beneficial behaviour. If a tribe believe that anyone who steals will go to Hell, it will probably lead to them being more cohesive and prosperous even if it isn’t true. <br /><br />One of the key influences on this book is G. K. Chesterton. You may get a little sick of just how many times the author’s refer to “Chesterton’s fence,” but it is understandable given what a useful analogy it is. Chesterton pointed out that, if you are walking across a field and you see a fence and you don’t know what the fence is for, it is a really good idea to find out before you tear it down. This is Conservatism 101. Tradition is the wisdom we have inherited. Be careful that any change is going to be in your own best interest. <br /><br />There is an interesting balance between this caution and the authors’ acknowledgement that, at this crisis point of hyper-novelty, we need to prioritise consciousness over culture. Culture is the repository of old solutions and consciousness is what we use to find a new path. I suppose the idea is that we need to learn the lessons from culture in the process of finding a new way. <br /><br />There is plenty of practical advice in the book, grouped in bullet points at the end of each chapter. A lot of it centres around limiting hyper-novelty - processed foods, pharmaceuticals, unnatural light, etc. There is much parenting advice. And a lot about getting out into nature and being more sociable in person. Their argument against watching pornography seems like very sound advice for others, though I won’t be following it myself. I’ll also give spending time in potentially dangerous wild environments a miss for the time being. <br /><br />One part of the book I found very interesting was their comment on the growth in diagnoses of autism and the way they link it to young children being “babysat” by screens. This fits well with what I have read from some other writers and it makes complete sense. I’m curious how it will be received though. In the past, explanations posited for psychological disorders which centred around the behaviour of parents have been very strongly resisted. <br /><br />It’s a book which is very easy to read and full of fascinating information. I never knew that we humans can be usefully thought of as a kind of fish. <br /><br />The final chapter deals with the question of where do we go from here - how do we secure ourselves a future. The key insight is that we need to find a psychologically satisfying alternative to material growth. We need to be exploring and utilising a new frontier - “The Fourth Frontier” - because it won’t satisfy us to stagnate without adventure. It has to be something other than maximising our exploitation of the Earth’s resources in the service of an increasing population and its indulgence. It’s a fuzzy picture, but I suppose it has to be. It can’t be someone’s planned utopia. It has to be something emergent from the interactions of us all. Thus it can’t be knowable in advance. <br /><br />I also highly recommend the authors' <a href="https://odysee.com/@BretWeinstein:f">Dark Horse podcast</a>.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjttgGPlMKrYApgCEZBYsSnxWJgMX2EhOtQS5i9qQo9SLpSoJmawQrH552bcmKrm0GIxe8bGVjdHP7sMOR1KtAUbU1Z8Gqo_DkJxq1zBfOSxQ5kLkIsy0T5bVk9TZ5D8oq-9VEoqwJsBnBATDHK6yGK9EPoqUaj53PiK4M-jYxyNK8WH5tMBS1yTRN1LA=s2290" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1322" data-original-width="2290" height="370" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjttgGPlMKrYApgCEZBYsSnxWJgMX2EhOtQS5i9qQo9SLpSoJmawQrH552bcmKrm0GIxe8bGVjdHP7sMOR1KtAUbU1Z8Gqo_DkJxq1zBfOSxQ5kLkIsy0T5bVk9TZ5D8oq-9VEoqwJsBnBATDHK6yGK9EPoqUaj53PiK4M-jYxyNK8WH5tMBS1yTRN1LA=w640-h370" width="640" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><br />Aussiescribblerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04835275666734452167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819981045804508508.post-26689125092171381122021-12-22T18:47:00.008-08:002021-12-22T18:58:33.700-08:00My Response to Jeremy Griffith's Explanation for the Human Condition<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">From the time of my adolescence I was always prone to feelings of guilt, even though I did little to feel guilty about. I felt shame, early on, about masturbation. I sometimes gave sizeable donations to Third World charities because I felt guilty about having more money than I needed. I’m sure these were fluctuating phases. I was also prone to deep depressions.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">When I read Jeremy Griffith’s first book <i><a href="https://www.humancondition.com/free-the-end-of-the-human-condition/" target="_blank">Free : The End of the Human Condition</a></i>, I resonated with it because of my guilt. It said that “sex is an attack on innocence". It related our extravagant lifestyles to the starvation of people in Africa.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">It also promised redemption from this state. It promised to explain why we had had to be the way we were and shouldn’t feel guilty about it. I was glad that such a thing was promised, but I didn’t feel it as strongly as I felt the guilt.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">I’m not sure how much I came to feel his work as a defence. I certainly championed it, and I did some work transcribing for him. While I was doing that I was throwing the responsibility for whether he was right or wrong to him. I knew that it was good for ideas to get out into the public sphere where they had a chance to prove themselves. If Griffith was wrong on some things, it would come out in the public debate which would eventuate.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">My immediate break from supporting Griffith’s work came when I had a mental breakdown. The worst point in that experience was a confrontation with the worst feelings of guilt I ever experienced. I felt that the whole of human history was going to come to nothing only because of my lack of courage.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">Later I tried buying copies of Griffith’s new book and donating it to libraries. By now I felt he was wrong on at least a few things, but again I thought the best way for that to be sorted out was to submit it to the attention of the world. There was need for debate.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">It’s hard to be in a situation where you recognise that there is some key problem at the heart of human psychology which is not being addressed, but you’ve ceased to trust the one attempt you have come across to articulate it.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">If an explanation for the human condition is going to solve that problem it has to bring positive feelings to the bulk of humanity.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">What if it works the opposite way? What if we all have our ways of keeping the guilt at bay, and this book promises a better way, so we grab it, but then it dissolves in our hands and drops us into undiluted guilt?</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">I suspect this is why it has been a slow process for Griffith getting many people supporting his work. Most people can probably sense where guilt lies. I was early to open to his work because I was already wallowing in the pit.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">Griffith’s advice is that, once someone has been convinced that what he says is the truth, they should support it without grappling with it intellectually too much, lest they become destabilised. That they should live off of what it can do for the world.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">But that is only possible if you believe it will have a liberating effect on most people. If you believe the “confronting” aspect of it will connect harder than any defence, it would be hard to be so enthusiastic, especially if being confronted by idealism is what drives the progressive worsening of that condition in the forms of hostility, alienation and egotism.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;">My response, such as it was, was to express the ideas I did in <i>How to Be Free</i>. How might we heal from the human condition without running the risk of increasing any feelings of guilt? </span></p>Aussiescribblerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04835275666734452167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819981045804508508.post-57414809569503022692021-12-22T00:21:00.007-08:002021-12-22T00:32:10.107-08:00The Case for Jeremy Griffith<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgNigNiUSdTa21WPdvuk9Ag3tFG08yy2W40XUl11VGXcb71DUsXPjhdYjcAwQ8Twup7Y0vceIwlOirufm8_SjKvxoIRdXap9NrZvvSuPsfb87I-dKsCrXOXM1pjJtAqYdLv5FL7uKBapA9IDR_jn4OmGxJrIRSYqrPLqH2LyctdMHzAn77wzXz5oDKb8Q=s799" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="799" data-original-width="615" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgNigNiUSdTa21WPdvuk9Ag3tFG08yy2W40XUl11VGXcb71DUsXPjhdYjcAwQ8Twup7Y0vceIwlOirufm8_SjKvxoIRdXap9NrZvvSuPsfb87I-dKsCrXOXM1pjJtAqYdLv5FL7uKBapA9IDR_jn4OmGxJrIRSYqrPLqH2LyctdMHzAn77wzXz5oDKb8Q=w492-h640" width="492" /></a></div><br /><p><span style="font-family: times;">I’ve written a lot about the case against Jeremy Griffith’s explanation for the human condition. Here I will try to walk with him as far as I can go.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;">His explanation grew out of his need to reconcile his idealism with what he encountered in the social world around him.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">His idealistic behaviour was an expression of his instinctive orientation toward love, which was sheltered by similarly loving nurturing.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">From observing himself he deduces that our instincts are toward idealistic behaviour.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">In time he will discover that most other people do not behave in this way. People are often selfish, egotistical or cynical. And the world is not run on idealistic principles or it would not be in the mess it is in.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">He comes to the conclusion that people become angry, egocentric and alienated when they encounter the message that they should behave idealistically. They are angry at the criticism. They try to defend themselves from the attack on their ego by fortifying it. And they shut their ears to what is being said. If this means blocking their mind from acknowledging certain aspects of reality, then that means they become alienate, i.e. cut off from reality.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">It’s worth pointing out that the anger isn’t necessarily one way. Griffith talks about expressing a great deal of anger, in his youth, at what he saw as the wrongness of other people’s behaviour.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">Griffith supposes that all children will go through the process of trying to make sense of why the people around them don’t act according to what they perceive in themselves as the correct form of behaviour.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">Eventually, he says, they will “adopt resignation”, i.e. find a strategy of adaptation to the non-ideal world they find within them now as well as without.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">The state before resignation is innocence.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">Sex could be an innocent expression of the loving instincts, but by the time we reach sexual maturity, egotism characterises our behaviour. So Griffith sees sex as “an attack on innocence” - he sees the egotistical element of it.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">Perhaps it would be fairer to talk about something like sex (to the extent that one can generalise) being used as an attack on the oppressiveness which originally originated in innocence. There may be sadists who want an innocent one to suffer, but most of us just want guilt to fuck the hell off. And that doesn’t just come from directly from innocence, but censorious prudes who may be anything but innocent.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">Anyway, there’s a battle against the oppressive ideals, a battle which is necessary if those ideals are not going to oppress the freedom necessary to find liberating self-understanding.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">Griffith came up with a hypothesis to explain what he had experienced in his own life. Our instincts were like him, in his youth, pointing a finger and accusing people of being selfish and superficial. Our conscious mind had to set off to find a defence for itself. Humanity, as a whole, was responsible for the knowledge gathered by science, though it is Griffith who assembles it and finds the liberating truth, thus being a representation of the start of the problem and its finish.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">Griffith’s takeaway is that we are the heroes of existence because we were willing to fight a great battle against ignorance.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">I don’t remember how much this meant to me when I was supporting Griffith. I know I saw value in it as a “selling point” when writing about Griffith’s book for others.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">When I knew him, Griffith had a way of saying “I love your courage” when he hoped that someone would stop doing something. The theory is that, if egotistical behaviour is part of this grand battle against criticism, then the proper response is to show appreciation for the behaviour instead of criticising it.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">When he tried it on me it didn’t have any effect. I could see through it as a strategy, but also receiving praise from others is rarely if ever the motive behind something I do.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">So, even if Griffith’s explanation for the human condition is correct, will the perception that we are an heroic species have a healing impact on individuals? Isn’t “you’re a hero!” a bit like a cocaine shot to the ego, which burns out as quickly as it hits? And even if it didn’t, isn’t “I’m a hero” just a cage to live in?</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">What interests me the most is therapy. How do we become free of the embattlement of the ego?</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">The most beautiful thing in the world is redemption. A redemption story in film or literature is the most likely to move me to tears.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">For as long as I can remember I’ve identified with we human beings at our worst. Griffith in his youth may have looked on at egotistical and superficial behaviour with anger at its wrongness. And most of us will tend to view those who commit atrocities as alien monsters.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">My imagination has always taken me inside the destructive individual to see someone who is already imprisoned by a character structure which makes them the centre of their own little hell, which they then inflict on others.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">I can imagine that something in the human spirit which corresponds with the condemning innocent that Griffith represented in his youth might be the jailer which locked us in our prisons.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">Does his explanation of the human condition set us free?</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">I can only imagine this being the case if it brings on a cathartic release of the frustration pent up within that condition. Maybe some kind of almighty primal scream aimed at the condemning innocence which was the unwitting source of all the horrendous evil and suffering ever committed or experienced by we humans on the planet earth. </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"> </span></p>Aussiescribblerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04835275666734452167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819981045804508508.post-89330749931797647212021-12-12T23:12:00.014-08:002021-12-13T03:02:43.666-08:00BOOK REVIEW : Death By Dogma : The Biological Reason Why the Left is Leading Us to Extinction, and the Solution by Jeremy Griffith<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEglXg0hlMfAuEPQnZ6AsW4mqxDeH7Z21eIx0icygmJv1JcZF_rAdQOZfSxXrgfvuuK5NuAX_beyqWORASue7DaIA_o8T0e-JIydIk1lOMUMzjC3krv-SQV0L_iAg05y0aOMHeqE1Yz8Rx5Zrk5I1NmAL8tLG8EB0PQg7vVh1H6LJAfBonxvgfqFgDoLrg=s755" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="500" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEglXg0hlMfAuEPQnZ6AsW4mqxDeH7Z21eIx0icygmJv1JcZF_rAdQOZfSxXrgfvuuK5NuAX_beyqWORASue7DaIA_o8T0e-JIydIk1lOMUMzjC3krv-SQV0L_iAg05y0aOMHeqE1Yz8Rx5Zrk5I1NmAL8tLG8EB0PQg7vVh1H6LJAfBonxvgfqFgDoLrg=w424-h640" width="424" /></a></div><br /><p><span style="font-family: times;">I’ve been wrestling with the ideas of Australian biologist Jeremy Griffith for over thirty years</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">What’s the problem? Why not simply accept them or reject them?</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">I agree with him that the human race suffers from a psychological condition which threatens our future. We are prone to forms of selfishness, aggression and irrationality which have brought us great suffering and squandered opportunities throughout history. And, now, there are so many more of us, we are beset by new forms of irrationality, we seem more miserable than ever, even though our lives are longer and more comfortable, our ecosystems are threatened and we have weapons that could make the world uninhabitable in minutes.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">I see it as a psychological problem through observation of myself and others. My behaviour is dependent on the insecurity of my ego in different situations, and I can observe the same to be true of others. If my ego were secure at all times, I would always be cooperative and loving and clear-thinking. When my ego is wounded by shame at a mistake, by criticism or mistreatment of some kind, I am liable to be angry or depressed, ungenerous, rebellious or withdrawn.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">How secure could the ego be? How resilient to the vagaries of human existence? Could we all be so secure that love and reason would rule our lives?</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">That’s what I want - A human race made up of rational loving individuals living peacefully and creatively together in a healthy ecological system.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">We clearly can’t get there by force, or by discipline. Whatever is wrong with our psyches, which makes us so prone to feelings of insecurity, needs to heal through self-understanding.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">So here is Jeremy Griffith claiming to have the solution. He has a grand narrative to explain what he calls “the human condition”. This is the thing. No-one else that I know of has a grand narrative so all-encompassing.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">When I first encountered this narrative, in his first book <i><a href="https://www.humancondition.com/free-the-end-of-the-human-condition/?scroll_to=free%20%3A%20the%20end%20of%20the%20human%20condition&scroll_num=1" target="_blank">Free : The End of the Human Condition</a></i>, I felt divided. On the one hand, it was reassuring that someone recognised that there was a problem of this kind and claimed to have the explanation which would solve it. On the other hand, his book was so drenched in an extreme idealist’s vision of the world that it felt more like torture than liberation to read it. He would deny that it was idealistic, because it is a defence for why our behaviour is not ideal. But when someone says that “sex is an attack on innocence” or talks about how an ornate spoon represents several starving Ethiopians, these things are dagger wounds to the insecure ego regardless of the context. And I had never even had sex. But here was I conjuring up the image that I was somehow molesting a small child within me by masturbating to lustful fantasies.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">Griffith warned that his book was “confronting” and that we usually coped with these things by being “evasive”. So the question always remains as I critique these ideas - am I following reason or am I evasively fooling myself in order to escape from a reality I find oppressive?</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">The way it is supposed to work is that the “defence for humanity” is supposed to give me so much relief that the rest doesn’t matter.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">I don’t buy that defence. I did at first, but I don’t think it survives close examination.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">The problem with presenting a defence within the context of confronting material is that it can lead to the “cripple them and then give them a wheelchair” problem. You don’t want to be too ruthless in your assessment of a defence if its collapse is liable to dump you undefended into the briar patch where “sex is an attack on innocence” and your cutlery drawer is full of dead Ethiopians,</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">Griffith claims that we have an instinctive orientation toward selflessness. He identifies this with our conscience. He believes we acquired it through something he calls “love indoctrination”. Our ape-like ancestors had an extended nurturing period made possible by a food-rich and predator-scarce environment. The mothers' nurturing of their offspring was a genetically selfish process in the sense that the offspring were repositories of their own genes. But to the infants this looked like selfless behaviour. So the infants learned that selflessness was meaningful. Somehow what was learned by their minds became encoded in their genes. I’m not sure how this works.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">Griffith views this instinctive orientation as something dictatorial and unforgiving of deviation. I’m not sure how love can be dictatorial or unforgiving.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">When we began to develop our intellects we needed to experiment with different kinds of behaviour. Griffith says we began to feel criticised by our instincts when we deviated from selfless behaviour. Clearly he doesn’t mean literally criticised, as only the conscious mind can criticise. Presumably he means that we felt like we were doing something wrong and thus became insecure, leading to anger, egocentricity and alienation.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">In one of his early books, Griffith had a cartoon he had drawn which showed the inner child responding to the individual at each stage of life. Eventually the child is pointing an accusatory finger and saying : “Now you are really bad!” This gets to the heart of what feels wrong to me about Griffith’s worldview. I don’t feel like I have one of those creatures at my core. My guilts seem superficial. They are pain in the flesh of my ego. But when I experience love it comes from a deeper level where there is no judgement. This seems to fit with what we find in religious writings.</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjO3x7Qr6vbnMzWDvJ43ng0i-EvUuvBM2AcoVg6Gw2UqEOo8VTGxfkkh_rW-jdMRq38UCdNR-m7wUZiR2waxsVcMZ9Usdy3zDreGWvqynAxkuzo6C_Z12VrMAS2hwtvb4-kx-ZdW_7HkynzArxoJKM2dFwY4wagDXqjj53CEVJABdKeBGMhNFnhAiA6jw=s960" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="454" data-original-width="960" height="302" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjO3x7Qr6vbnMzWDvJ43ng0i-EvUuvBM2AcoVg6Gw2UqEOo8VTGxfkkh_rW-jdMRq38UCdNR-m7wUZiR2waxsVcMZ9Usdy3zDreGWvqynAxkuzo6C_Z12VrMAS2hwtvb4-kx-ZdW_7HkynzArxoJKM2dFwY4wagDXqjj53CEVJABdKeBGMhNFnhAiA6jw=w640-h302" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: times;">If we have a horrified little child judging us from our core, then healing for the individual and the world will be hard, especially if that child is actually an instinct not amenable to explanation.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">Griffith says that we are born with instincts which expect a perfect world and we are deeply wounded when we discover that it is so imperfect.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">If we have a loving all-forgiving core then we won’t mind that the world isn’t perfect. We’ll just want to do our bit to make it better.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">Griffith first wrote an essay called <i>Death by Dogma</i> for the Foundation for Humanity’s Adulthood newsletter back, I think, in the early 1990s. He’s had a couple of major books out since then which included the same ideas. Now he has this new version which updates the discussion to include the topical subject of Critical Theory.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">Is what Griffith himself is presenting a dogma? The scientific method is supposed to involve presenting a hypothesis which attempts to explain the available data and then looking for ways to falsify it, i.e. prove it wrong. Griffith’s approach has been to look specifically for evidence (and quotes from famous people) which back up his hypothesis. This is called confirmation bias. It comes across as an attempt to defend through fortification. And much of his rhetoric is an attempt to persuade by something other than reason. To be fair, if people find it hard to understand the significance of his hypothesis (simple as it is), I suppose he has to sell them on the idea of making the effort. What we should look for in any explanatory framework for human behaviour is a simple formula which explains the complexities and paradoxes of history and culture no matter where we look and how finely we examine the details. If the advocate of such a framework has to oversimplify and cherrypick in order to provide evidence for its veracity we are right to suspect that it is a pseudo-scientific dogma.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 12px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">The problem with this new booklet begins with the back cover blurb :</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><span style="font-family: times;">“The Left’s dogmatic insistence that everyone behave in a cooperative and loving way makes its advocates feel good but…”</span></b></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">We have all experienced dogmatic insistence from individuals on the left, but is what they are insisting on “cooperative and loving behaviour.” Cooperative and loving behaviour is something which can only arise spontaneously. Submission to another’s will is not cooperation. To the degree that those on the left demand something, what they demand is submission to their will. It has nothing to do with love, which by it’s nature must be open, spontaneous, honest and generous. What we see is the resentment-driven aggressiveness of the wounded ego masquerading as love and compassion.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">With this booklet Griffith is playing catch-up. The justified backlash against Critical Theory had not really got started when his major work <b><i><a href="https://www.humancondition.com/freedom-the-end-of-the-human-condition/?scroll_to=freedom%20the%20end%20of%20the%20human%20condition&scroll_num=1" target="_blank">Freedom : The End of the Human Condition</a></i></b> was released in 2016. It is no secret to those of us who've read <b><i><a href="https://howtobefree-theblog.blogspot.com/2020/10/of-all-secular-parables-our-culture-has.html" target="_blank">Cynical Theories : How Universities Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity - and Why This Harms Everybody</a></i></b> by Helen Pluckrose & James Lindsay that Critical Theory is a threat to our society and our ability to practice science, and thus advance our understanding of ourselves. Pluckrose and Lindsay have an advantage over Griffith in their ability to investigate the topic and make it understandable to the rest of us. They don’t have to make the facts fit a pre-existing explanatory structure. They can approach the topic in a scientific rather than propagandistic manner.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">Griffith precedes his critique of Critical Justice with a rundown of his ideas about our instincts and a history of earlier dogmas.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">He presents his refutation of conventional theories about our competitive and aggressive nature. He rejects ideas about competitive genetic instincts and the role of testosterone in influencing competitive behaviour, etc., because we have words like “egocentric”, “depressed”, “sadistic”, etc. It isn’t necessarily either/or. We might have an instinct to sow our genetic seeds and yet, also, be prone, when emotionally wounded, to become depressed or sadistic. Personally, I think that emotional wounds play a bigger role in competitive human behaviour than genetic competitiveness, but that doesn’t prove there is in us no retention of the impulses of our pre-human ancestors.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">Griffith is wrong when he presents the conscience as something instinctive. We may have an instinct for loving behaviour, but that is not what we call our conscience. Our conscience is a part of our ego in which we store our expectations about ourselves. Love is open and free of content. Conscience is rigid and specific in its dictates. Much of the conscience is learned. How else do we explain the fact that different people, in different cultures, feel guilty about different things.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">Central to this essay is Griffith’s concept of “pseudo-idealism”. By this he means progressively superficial demands for some improvement in the social world which are essentially dishonest because they mask the person’s “upset”, i.e. their deep well of emotionally-wounded anger, despair or depravity, and don’t recognise the need for moral compromise inherent in the search for meaning. For Griffith, there is a simple progression of dogmas each of which calls for a retreat from the battle and insistence on cooperative social behaviour enforced by some form of discipline. Each is more alienated than the last, less acknowledging of the failings of the individual, that is more delusional and self-congratulatory.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">There is no such thing as “pseudo-idealism”. There are just different kinds of idealism, all of them divisive and destructive. Idealism, the tendency to demand that oneself, others or the world as a whole, conform to a concept of perfection, is the root of all evil. Perfection is impossible. To demand it is to breed anger and egocentricity.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">The most evil form of idealism would be that which is so total as to condemn humans for not being selfless. The fact that something is less extreme than that doesn’t mean that it is “pseudo”, i.e. pretend idealism.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">Now perhaps Griffith thinks of it as “pseudo-idealism” because he thinks that adherents are pretending to be ideal. If so, they are not fooling anyone but themselves in most cases.</span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">Griffith says that Moses was an exceptionally sound individual who gave us the Ten Commandments. Most Biblical scholars agree that Moses was not a real person, that he is a mythical composite for a number of other figures. When it comes to the Ten Commandments, would it really take an exceptionally sound individual to compile a list of dos and don’ts based on the complaints that people in their tribe had about each other? Who wouldn’t be able to identify not killing each other, not stealing from each other and not sleeping with each other’s wives as important principals for maintaining peace in the tribe based on the experience of things which had caused fights in the past? To read the words of Jesus in the Gospels is to be awestruck at the clarity of vision and purity of nature of their source. The Ten Commandments, not so much. Griffith claims that they are still the basis of our law today. Are they? Sure we have laws against killing and theft, but would a person not be punished for those offences in Ancient Greece or Egypt? In most countries it is not against the law to covet one's neighbour’s wife or property. It isn’t illegal to have graven images. Even adultery goes unpunished in many societies. Christopher Hitchens pointed out that it might have been better to forget the coveting laws and put in something against rape and the molestation (or mistreatment in other ways) of children. I think a truly sound individual would have put in laws against those things. Their absence is no mystery if the commandments arose as a reflection of what had caused conflict amongst the men in the tribe. It was a patriarchal society where crimes against women and children could easily be ignored.</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjq7M55tVYVffun7nvEbUNoXe9hefH8h8KsLP3-S4s59qOJhIDp6O78GFOA3EOV1UXIe40VvT1av3olftlaGEdNsWPFABVjXiaf0F-iFELDOfyByU6VX-D4eQ-6_wIKXXK6yh9Xca9kMyU1rDQFsU8WMckrCBsED9l7oNKb75DcGC8yzWOAc6V0Yx2RdA=s784" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="784" data-original-width="611" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjq7M55tVYVffun7nvEbUNoXe9hefH8h8KsLP3-S4s59qOJhIDp6O78GFOA3EOV1UXIe40VvT1av3olftlaGEdNsWPFABVjXiaf0F-iFELDOfyByU6VX-D4eQ-6_wIKXXK6yh9Xca9kMyU1rDQFsU8WMckrCBsED9l7oNKb75DcGC8yzWOAc6V0Yx2RdA=w498-h640" width="498" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Moses and the Commandments by Gustave Doré</i></td></tr></tbody></table><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">Griffith uses the example of Christianity as his primary example of a religion centred around a uniquely sound prophet. He doesn’t mention Islam, although one of his illustrations includes the crescent moon symbol amongst the symbols of other religions. Leaving it out is a good way of avoiding controversy. Where does this religion fit into his progression? Anyone who knows much about the life of the Prophet Mohammad knows that he was very different from Jesus. He hardly conforms to my concept of a sound individual.</span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">Griffith sees Communism as a form of “pseudo-idealism” for people who found the concept of a potentially judgemental God too disturbing. He presents it as being aimed at imposing a cooperative and selfless society. This he sees as a betrayal of our obligation to pursue understanding (through science) of our selfish psyche and thus achieve liberation from it. I think it works better to conceive of Communism as an idealistic thought virus. It provides an excuse for people to unleash their resentment against those more successful than themselves. This is one of the sources of its bloodshed. It also encourages dishonesty to cover for the misalignment between behaviour and espoused ideals, on the part of the rulers or the ruled. Of course violent oppression is also brought on by the imposed nature of the experiment, which Griffith is acknowledging. The reason I see a thought virus as a better way of describing these forms of dogma is that a virus can affect different parts of an organism in different ways and can lead to a progression of different symptoms.</span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">Griffith has a very simple formula at the heart of all this. Our instincts are toward selflessness. Our emerging intellect needed to experiment with departure from selfless behaviour in order to find understanding of itself. The instincts criticised this. Our intellect thus became insecure and responded with anger towards our selflessness-demanding instincts. We became egocentric. Our duty now was to plow on through increasing levels of self-corruption in order to eventually find the understanding which would liberate us and allow us to become selfless again.</span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">Each of the forms of “pseudo-idealism” Griffith examines is, in this formula, an attempt to retreat back towards our instinct’s demand for ideal behaviour and thus deny the need to find and confront the truth about ourselves. Of course, it’s never an insistence on complete selflessness. It’s an insistence that the capitalists stop exploiting the workers or that we stop chopping down so many trees, or something like that. But if those insisting cast themselves as “the good guys” and interfere with the freedom of the human enterprise, then it could derail the whole project. Griffith sees the human condition as a battle against the ignorant condemnation coming from our instincts. It is responsible for the battle weary to leave the battle, adopt some form of behaviour which will allow them to feel better about themselves, but the battle must be pursued by those capable until it is won.</span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">For Griffith, there is a simple progression of dogmas each of which calls for a retreat from the battle and insistence on cooperative social behaviour enforced by some form of discipline. Each is more alienated than the last, less acknowledging of the failings of the individual, that is more delusional and self-congratulatory.</span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">I don’t think we have a dictatorial instinct for selfless behaviour which criticises our experiments in self-management. I think we are born with an instinct for loving behaviour and an intellect which has the weakness that it can become more insecure as it develops if it picks up contradictory programs. Idealism - in the sense of an unforgiving insistence on certain useful forms of behaviour - arose experimentally as we learned to think. This acted as a thought virus to spread insecurity, and thus anger and egocentricity, throughout society. Forgiveness and love (open, honest, spontaneous and generous behaviour) could act as a healing force to the insecure ego, but it could also be seen as implicit criticism and attacked, e.g. Jesus.</span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">To get back to Griffith’s progression of “pseudo-idealisms” - the next is the New Age Movement. What Griffith fails to acknowledge is that The New Age Movement isn’t a dogma. Particular gurus may have their own dogmas that they push, but the movement is really just a loose collection of practices and gurus. It hardly represents the kind of threat that Communism does. It’s voluntary and appeals mostly to those who need something they aren’t likely to get anywhere else. Griffith sees it as more alienated than Communism because it doesn’t acknowledge cooperative ideals. That may or may not be true depending on which guru they are following. Some gurus set up communes.</span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">Next comes The Feminist Movement, which he claims “maintains that there is no difference between people, especially not between men and women.” He believes the feminists are more removed from reality than the New Agers because they don’t acknowledge that there are psychological differences between men and women, and specifically that the fact that men are egocentric is a sign of their heroism not that they are villains. Again he is oversimplifying. Not all feminists believe there are no psychological differences between men and women. The concept of feminism as a route to solving all of society’s problems has the characteristic of an idealistic dogma, but for women to insist on their right to vote and be paid more are simply pragmatic pursuits of self interest. To work together to build rape crisis shelters or defend their access to abortion, likewise, are hardly acts which impede the freedom of society to search for understanding. Where feminism can be a destructive thought virus is when it takes the form of social constructivism. Here there is the belief that the only psychological differences between men and women are those which we are socialised into. As for men, where there is aggression there is insecurity driving it, so Griffith is probably right that the dark side of men will not be healed by more criticism, even if that criticism has to be expected.</span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">With the next development - The Environment or Green Movement - we again see that it is something which grows out of pragmatic approaches to real world problems but which can take a dogmatic form based in tokenistic behaviour or a lack of realistic thinking. There is a lot of “virtue signalling” about environmental issues. On the other hand, they are real. The seas really are full of plastic. The ice caps are melting. The problem is that it is our lifestyle which causes the problems, and it is easier to wave a placard than it is to restrain our consumption. We need psychological healing if we are to heal the planet. Griffith thinks the answer is to absorb his explanation for the human condition and then promote it to all your friends. I don’t think that will work, because I think he’s got his explanation wrong. If his explanation were correct there would be no need for the Transformed Lifeforce Way of Living - i.e. to transcend your hurting psyche and live off the excitement of bringing liberation to the world. He says you could use his explanation to go back and reexplain all the traumas of your life to yourself in a “truthful” way using this “information”. I think the only reason that would be so time consuming is that what he is presenting is not the truth but a dogma and you would be attempting to go through and brainwash yourself. If it were the truth, it would effortlessly seep through your thinking bringing its illumination.</span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">I don’t know a lot about post-modernism but my understanding is that it amounts to scepticism of received “truths” taken to the extreme. On the plus side this may mean deconstructing dogma. On the negative side it may mean rejected the means - reason - by which one approaches the truth. If it is a form of idealism, it is one which makes doubt an ideal. It doesn’t seem to, in and of itself, be a demand for ideality in one’s self or others. I believe Foucault was all about analysing systems of power and saw categorisation as one way in which power is exerted over groups. This is a philosophy amenable to “social justice” idealists, but I’m not sure whether Foucault felt that he was making the world a better place. No doubt there are better places to go to get an understanding of what post-modernism is than Griffith. Pluckrose and Lindsay’s book above might be a good start.</span></p>
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<p style="color: #1a1a1a; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">Griffith gives an account of conflict between the left and right in evolutionary theory. He also talks about how easy it has been to defend left wing ideas politically and how hard it has been to defend right wing political ideas. He ends with “<b>the ideology of the Left was wrong while the ideology of the Right was correct”</b>. But surely the social system which was working its way toward self-understanding needed a balance of cooperative behaviour and competitive behaviour, some arguing for more assistance for those falling behind and some arguing for progress at all costs. The whole enterprise could be sabotaged by too much insistence on group interests but also by too much individualism without responsibility. If the right were always correct, then slavery would have been O.K. Surely the ideology of the Right was correct when it didn’t go too far, and the ideology of the Left was O.K. when it didn’t go too far.</span></p>
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<p style="color: #1a1a1a; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">This mapping of a righteous battle for self-understanding onto specific human behaviours is an uneasy match. Most human enterprises require a good deal of cooperation and generosity. This cooperation and generosity may arise from transcendence of more selfish impulses, but, if there is a battle to achieve self-understanding it is an aid to it. So isn’t this person still participating in that battle? By contrast, someone may live out their aggressive tendencies in defiance of the demands of the instincts, but in such a destructive way that it disrupts the search for knowledge.</span></p>
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<p style="color: #1a1a1a; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">Griffith feels that now we can all become left-wing (in the sense of desirous of and practicing loving and cooperative behaviour) and we can all give up being selfish or aggressive. It may be a little hard to imagine : “I’m selling my yacht and giving the money to the poor because some dude in Australia wrote a book saying I’m really a hero.”</span></p><p style="color: #1a1a1a; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p><p style="color: #1a1a1a; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhhqt7JecDf8TbGPTCMvTCMpC8iisYtawWkBZM-nFWywTbBn8goNB87OhPwYWpAKuEfelkTT1RUn_ZDTSD3aKHxwuVMwiN8f_1I3aL6g-axj_6JJpuIKet09krEeeS_WWUXjUlm6oIe5TYCQkad60LaAGdEDq12y1sbrjx2PLN7M3uUnpYdEPA_eJ3k4w=s800" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="727" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhhqt7JecDf8TbGPTCMvTCMpC8iisYtawWkBZM-nFWywTbBn8goNB87OhPwYWpAKuEfelkTT1RUn_ZDTSD3aKHxwuVMwiN8f_1I3aL6g-axj_6JJpuIKet09krEeeS_WWUXjUlm6oIe5TYCQkad60LaAGdEDq12y1sbrjx2PLN7M3uUnpYdEPA_eJ3k4w=w582-h640" width="582" /></a></div><br /><p style="color: #1a1a1a; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;">Griffith mentions that Critical Theory drew on Sigmund Freud as well as Marx. The member of The Frankfurt School (birthplace of Critical Theory) in whom these two influences came together was Wilhelm Reich. Reich had been a student of Freud’s, who, like Jung, had split from him. Reich was a member of the German Communist Party at the time when they were fighting the growing power of the Nazis. He would later disavow his support for Communism, or any other mass movement, seeing them all as forms of “the emotional plague”. I find Reich’s account of the human situation, in many ways, more accountable than Griffith’s. Reich saw us as having loving instincts which can be experienced as erotic impulses. If we are taught to fear such impulses they become selfish or even sadistic drives. This gives a clear way of explaining how sex exists on a continuum between a tender act between two people who have got to know each other intimately and a sadistic act like rape. His concept of “character armour” (as presented in his book </span><a href="https://howtobefree-theblog.blogspot.com/2017/01/book-review-character-analysis-by.html" style="font-family: times;" target="_blank"><b><i>Character Analysis</i></b></a><span style="font-family: times;">) gives a practical way of studying ego embattlement. He saw this form of embattlement as the common state of humans. Thus he acknowledged that alienation is now the norm, our thinking and feeling and, even our bodily functioning, being structured by the neurotic (i.e. fearful) ego. He also took inspiration, late in his life, from the teachings of Christ, in his book </span><a href="https://howtobefree-theblog.blogspot.com/2019/05/book-review-murder-of-christ-by-wilhelm.html" style="font-family: times;" target="_blank"><b><i>The Murder of Christ</i></b></a><span style="font-family: times;">. No doubt the Critical Theorists took some inspiration from Reich, but they don’t seem to have paid much attention to his key insights. Now maybe the emphasis on the sexual in Reich’s ideas needs to be seen in its context. He grew up in a time when it was the norm for parents to punish their children for masturbating. The church and teachers spread the message that natural erotic responses were sinful. One of the ways in which the innocence of children was attacked was teaching them to fear these feelings in their body. Reich would say that the reason someone’s sexual behaviour in adulthood is perverse or even sadistic is because they were taught that their first innocent sexual impulses were something dirty. And repression of erotic sensations brings with it repression of love in all its forms.</span></p>
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<p style="color: #1a1a1a; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">Regarding Critical Race Theory Griffith says : <b>“To impose a new world of love and kindness between ethnic groups or races, it was simply asserted that it was philosophically sound to claim that there is no difference between races; and further that any contention that there were differences was just a dishonest, manipulative, racist, artificially invented device used to oppress and ill-treat certain races.”</b> Griffith believes that different races differ in their level of alienation dependant on how long they have been involved in the battle to find knowledge. Hence, Asians are more alienated than blacks. While it is true that one can make statistical comparisons, e.g. seeing that Asians tend to perform better academically, it isn’t clear to me that that is not a matter of culture rather than genes. Would an Asian child who was adopted by a family which didn’t place such a strong emphasis on academic achievement still have an advantage? It’s wrong to make the assumption which Critical Race Theory makes that all variation in success is evidence of racial prejudice. But Martin Luther King’s principle that we should not assess people based on the colour of their skin is the answer to it. If everyone is allowed to proceed on the basis of their merits, then, if some groups have an inherent advantage, that will manifest as it will. But if we were to operate on the belief that such an advantage exists, we might make unfair decisions on its basis.</span></p>
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<p style="color: #1a1a1a; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">Griffith leaves out all mention of one of the key offshoots of Critical Theory or “wokeness” - Queer Theory. Queer Theory is based around subverting the concept of normal especially with regard to sexuality. So, for instance, it sees our society as “hetero-normative”, i.e. oppressively imposing the judgement that one is not normal if not heterosexual. One of the dangers of Queer Theory is that some of its adherents want to “normalise” sex with children.</span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">The concept of an idealistic thought virus, appealing to the intellect while sowing seeds of greater insecurity in the psyche or providing tools for gaining power or wealth or providing an excuse or justification for the cathartic unleashing of aggressive behaviour, seems to me to better fit the complexity of the different ideological dogmas which face us in the world today.</span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">It is the divided self which makes us prone to thought viruses. We have a dark side where our resentment dwells. Then we have our “good persona” which needs to have a positive self-perception and which may be sensitive to criticism. The thought virus may take hold with the idea “if you don’t adopt me you’ll be bad”, e.g. “if you don’t support BLM you are racist.” Or such a hook may sometimes not be necessary. The “good persona” is necessarily sensitive to criticism, because it is a precarious barrier against encounter with the dark side. This generalised sensitivity explains the call for “trigger warnings” and “safe spaces”. The sense or righteousness of the “good persona” is at the opposite end of the spectrum from knowledge. Knowledge is precisely that which can stand in the face of all criticism.</span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">The divided person who has been infected by the thought virus for some form of idealism, projects their own dark side onto the enemy of that ideal. If anti-racism is the ideal, then white supremacists are all around. The hostile resentment and entitlement he sees in them is that which lurks in his own subconscious.</span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">What often causes the worst behaviour is when the conscience aligns with full expression of aggressive resentment. That conscience is our ideas of what is right or wrong. If we believe that it is right to torture or murder people because this is just punishment for something they have done, the dark side pours out through the “good persona”. In a somewhat milder form this is what we see when “social justice warriors” send death or rape threats to those who challenge their dogma.</span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">The cure for thought viruses is individuation - the owning and reintegration of the dark side. Individuality is the state and practice of not being internally divided. This can also be described as having integrity, i.e. the parts of one’s psyche are integrated. Such an individual is authentic and substantial, not an empty vessel to be filled by whatever intellectual contagion may come along.</span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">Honesty is inseparable from individuality. It means being guided by our own individual perception of reality. Then the question arises as to how accurate that perception is. But it will not be accurate unless it is our own. We must be guided by our own senses and our own reason. Others can provide ideas and data, but it must be sifted and integrated by our own reason if are not to be false.</span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">Griffith believes we are doomed if his message doesn’t reach a broad audience quickly. I don’t think his explanation is correct, but I do find engaging with it is a stimulus to potentially productive insights. Most of what hope I have for the human race comes from my own experience that a breakdown can also be a breakthrough. If there is an answer which will arise from the debates going on in the world, it could spread like wildfire if it works to unlock the mind-prisons of dogma. When we run out of lies, there is nowhere to go but into the truth. Whatever that proves to be.</span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">I take some comfort from the prophecy : <b>“For as lightning that comes from the east is visible even in the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.”</b> Matthew 24:27</span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">This suggests that when an answer arrives we will know it because it will effortlessly race throughout the whole of humanity as if instantaneously. We see this with new technology, so why not with knowledge which unlocks what William Blake called <b>“the mind-forg’d manacles.”</b></span></p>Aussiescribblerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04835275666734452167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819981045804508508.post-49612250017338744032021-04-01T00:49:00.010-07:002021-04-01T01:05:59.284-07:00The Lord's Prayer for Unbelievers Like Myself<p><br /></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIbJuk-lTDwdxQTgN4JPhW-ZVlvCKC3oYCd1lmBSosmrmEsDxLZp_GMopCK16aWQRAXlTHniukpl4waLa2a3qckkNN2fcx_uNBTSkz7plK5YXia7gO2rL6_4uoC1DqkuaOfic5kV9QC68i/s2048/86569151_m.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1365" data-original-width="2048" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIbJuk-lTDwdxQTgN4JPhW-ZVlvCKC3oYCd1lmBSosmrmEsDxLZp_GMopCK16aWQRAXlTHniukpl4waLa2a3qckkNN2fcx_uNBTSkz7plK5YXia7gO2rL6_4uoC1DqkuaOfic5kV9QC68i/w640-h426/86569151_m.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo by <a href="https://www.123rf.com/profile_okrip">Serhii Datsinko - Ukraine</a></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p><span style="font-family: times;">For a while I’ve been intending to do some more writing about what Christian ideas mean to me as a person who doesn’t believe in the supernatural. Why not have a look at a central text - The Lord’s Prayer? This is found in Matthew 6:9-13 and Luke 11:2-4.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><b>“Our Father…”</b></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">I think it helps to draw meaning from this concept of “God the Father” if we acknowledge that it is an expression which originated in a patriarchal culture. The source and guiding principle of the universe might have been depicted as “The Mother”, but in this case it wasn’t, so what we have to ask is “What does the father figure mean to a culture in which a man was considered the head of the family?”</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">Our parents are the source of our existence. They came together and we were the result. So the father is a representation of the process by which we came into existence.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">The father, in such a culture, is also the teacher of morals and the one who punishes us if we depart from them.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">I don’t believe in the supernatural, but the term “God” is meaningful to me as a symbol.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">First there is “God the Creator”. For me, this is a personification of the creative process of the universe whereby more complex and capable wholes come into existence. Somehow atoms came to be arranged in the meaningful form which allows me to exist as a complex intelligent entity sitting at my computer and typing this sentence. We know a lot more about this process now than we did when the Lord’s Prayer was first spoken, but it is still something worthy of the kind of awe we associate with the term “God”.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">Then there is “God” as a motivating force in human behaviour - “God” as love. Here again we have something which brings into being more complex and capable wholes. While love is all too easily subsumed by conflicts of one kind or another - to the extent that there is such a thing as a friendship or a family or a tribe or a community, these are wholes which are greater than the sum of their parts made possible by love. Love being a form of communication characterised by openness, honesty, spontaneity and generosity.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">“God” is seen as a teacher of morality and a judge. Love is the source of our morality. I believe we have an instinct for it which is born in us, and, if we are lucky, that is reinforced and encouraged by the example of those who love us. While we often suffer from experiences which are simply bad luck, we can also be taught lessons by life. We may make a selfish decision in which we neglect to recognise that our wellbeing rests within the wellbeing of those around us, and as a result life may teach us a lesson via negative consequences. I think “God the Judge” is a symbol for that process. Life could be imagined a bit like a video game. We have a certain capacity for love which can be recharged in positive encounters with others, like picking up power packs, and there are encounters with mischance and with the malevolence of others which may deplete us. There is a chance we may lose our way entirely. Maybe we will lose patience and “go over to the dark side” because it seems easier, less of a struggle. The idea of “God the Judge” is of someone who is keeping the score. Maybe there is no such entity, but our life situation and its consequences are real.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><b>“…who art in heaven…”</b></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">To me, the word “heaven” represents a realm of potential which we can apprehend using our imagination. We can imagine what the human world would be like if it reached its creative potential, if love and reason ruled over all. In our world we see “God” as if “through a glass darkly”. Love shines out here and there amidst the darkness, but war and crime and depression and all the rest can easily seem to be the larger part of reality. And foolishness is more common than wisdom or reason. So we have to look to our imaginary vision of how things could be to see “God” clearly.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><b>“…hallowed be thy name…”</b></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">“Hallowed” means “made holy”. As I’ve said, the creative principle of the universe is one which allows for the formation of more complex and capable wholes. “Holy” comes from the same source as the word “whole”. So that which is “holy” is that which is “whole” or “of the whole”. To heal is to “be made whole”. “God” is our symbol for all that “makes whole”.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><b>“…Thy Kingdom come, they will be done, on earth as it is in heaven…”</b></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">The essence of the prayer is that the potential for wholeness - through love and reason - be realised in the world as it exists in our imagination.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><b>“…Give us this day our daily bread…”</b></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">A plea that we are able to obtain the means to meet our daily physical needs, but this also could be a way of symbolising our emotional needs for hope, inspiration and love.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><b>“…And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us…”</b></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">One of the major threats to wholeness, of the individual or the group, is lack of forgiveness. </span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">Conscience acts as a guide to our behaviour, but a healthy relationship with the conscience requires self-acceptance and the flexibility it makes possible. If our self-acceptance is undermined to the extent that the conscience becomes an intolerable source of oppression, then we can go to war against it. Instead of doing what we know to be the best thing, we may deliberately do the opposite of what our conscience would tell us. This seems to me to be the best way to understand the extremes of human malevolence. There are acts of evil which have a pragmatic purpose. One might torture someone to get information to help one’s own side in a war. But some people commit such acts without such an external motive. How do we explain such sadism? The impulse is the exact opposite of the love impulse. Is it unreasonable to interpret malevolence, of which this is the purest form, as resentment at a conscience which demands loving behaviour when, because of undermined self-acceptance, there is no more love to give? If hatred of the conscience were not a motivating force there would be no point in wasting time, or risking one’s freedom, by inflicting suffering when one could spend that time and effort indulging in sensual pleasure.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">So a healthy relationship with the conscience is one in which forgiveness for past transgressions frees us up to do better next time. Self-forgiveness is a major part of self-acceptance. By self-acceptance I don’t mean complacency, because our potential to improve is a key part of what is being accepted. To be self-accepting is to recognise that one has nothing to prove about one’s self and thus be able to open up to intrinsic motivations for doing things rather than ones rooted in maintaining a fragile sense of pride.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">And clearly the functioning of human groups require forgiveness amongst their members. It won’t work if there is an imbalance here, with some forgiving all the time and others always being the ones whose misbehaviour is being forgiven. So it is linked : “…forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us…” (the unforgiving don’t get forgiven) and followed by the next two lines which address the origins of the transgressions which might need to be forgiven.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><b>“And lead us not into temptation…”</b></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">It’s all too easy to be tempted by opportunities to seek immediate gratification of some desire even when we know that the longer term consequences will be harmful to both ourselves and others. So there is a plea to limit such tests. Since I’m not looking at this as something involving a supernatural being, I would see this as an intention to develop the spirit of stoicism as an defence against impulsiveness.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><b>“…but deliver us from evil.”</b></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">Once again a positive focusing on the power of love, reason and wisdom, personified here as “God”, to heal our malevolent motivations, An opening up to all that might lead us back to wholeness.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">This is needed to compliment forgiveness. Forgiveness can’t be expected in the absence of a move toward better behaviour.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><b>“For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever.”</b></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">The creative principle of life, expressed in inter-human affairs as love, is that through which everything becomes possible. In a limited sense it is possible to defy this principle, but such defiance is ultimately in vain as nothing worthwhile comes to us as a result. Selfishness is ultimately self-defeating, because we have far more to gain by working together for our mutual benefit. In this sense, that which we symbolise under the word “God” is the source of everything wonderful and the ruler of the system of which we are an expression.</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><b><br /></b></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><b>"Amen"</b></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">“Amen” means “certainty”, “truth” and “verily”.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p>Aussiescribblerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04835275666734452167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819981045804508508.post-7488626256969443912021-03-12T20:56:00.004-08:002021-03-12T21:03:35.032-08:00Selfishness : The Human Dysfunction<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh70anod5wh64L-ocWseZ0u9n_i8i5PgI_Ktsq4KnQ3mo75xO4w5u_7erHUD9cDrjXw2yf99gYZS7YkwzzYpsAbXphUaR6R6uIZxYHzvdeVeLzA-O_DV60kdljKK9Ce9ZqwB-K5cC376ENn/s2048/121239777_m.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1367" data-original-width="2048" height="428" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh70anod5wh64L-ocWseZ0u9n_i8i5PgI_Ktsq4KnQ3mo75xO4w5u_7erHUD9cDrjXw2yf99gYZS7YkwzzYpsAbXphUaR6R6uIZxYHzvdeVeLzA-O_DV60kdljKK9Ce9ZqwB-K5cC376ENn/w640-h428/121239777_m.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo by <a href="https://www.123rf.com/profile_andov" target="_blank">Andriy Dovzhykov</a></td></tr></tbody></table><p><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">The central form of human dysfunction is selfishness. This has to be distinguished from self-interest. It is natural and functional that we should desire a pleasant and meaningful life for ourselves and our loved ones. Selfishness is when we have a need - other than the physical requirements of continued existence - which is so strong that we satisfy it at the expense of our own well-being or the well-being of others, either in the short or long term.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;">Selfishness is addiction. We can see how addiction to drugs, alcohol, unhealthy foods, gambling, sex, etc., is defined by the detrimental effects, either on ourselves or others, that temporary satisfaction of the need brings with it. And greed (addiction to the accumulation of wealth) can lead to decisions where the well-being of other individuals or collective well-being (think of damage to ecological life-support systems) are undermined.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">If selfishness disappeared from the human species we would all have a chance to live lives much richer in pleasure and meaning. In theory, even the least well-off individual would be better off than the most fortunate individual now, because to live on a imperilled planet full of misery is a burden that no amount of wealth can lift.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">Of course, as long as there are generous people and selfish people, the generous have to be judicious in how they mete out that generosity. It would do nobody any good if they were simply taken advantage of by the selfish.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">But if selfishness is our problem, what is its cause?</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">An addiction is a strategy for temporarily escaping the pain of existence. In some cases this may be physical pain, but more often it is psychological pain.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">So if we are to improve our ability to thrive as a species, the key frontier is understanding our psychological pain and how to relieve it naturally, thus freeing us from our addictions.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">The problem with utopian ideas, such as communism, is that they try to treat the symptoms instead of the disease. At least access to the means of satisfying one’s addiction has a pacifying effect. Leave the need and take away the means of satisfying it and you breed even more hostility.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">The suggestions I make in my book <i>How to Be Free</i> for doing something to heal the pain of existence are quite modest. I’m sure there is more to know and more and better techniques.</span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">Let’s attack the problem. Let’s share what we know. Let’s seek to know more.</span></p>Aussiescribblerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04835275666734452167noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819981045804508508.post-23879826099041145062021-03-10T22:56:00.004-08:002021-03-12T20:57:22.691-08:00BOOK REVIEW : The Parasitic Mind : How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense by Gad Saad<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdAd1aS3k8CSIvykg6gtA1YspQuYpF40IRVVKSNyhDIcNYSBBbAU39HQ5aVZh_8aVLxbtp8_N-j358QFEkWMOy6PxW9zfWnxkvP7rrJ7UT59HweN7H8dDsNc702fmW8S-weNjj8UKlNwLI/s2048/71oSh-sum2L.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1344" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdAd1aS3k8CSIvykg6gtA1YspQuYpF40IRVVKSNyhDIcNYSBBbAU39HQ5aVZh_8aVLxbtp8_N-j358QFEkWMOy6PxW9zfWnxkvP7rrJ7UT59HweN7H8dDsNc702fmW8S-weNjj8UKlNwLI/w420-h640/71oSh-sum2L.jpg" width="420" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; text-align: left;"><div style="caret-color: rgb(24, 24, 24); color: #181818; font-size: large; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(24, 24, 24); color: #181818; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Very often the truth hurts. But the truth also sets us free. A safe space may feel comfortable, but only when you leave it do you realise that it was a prison.</span></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(24, 24, 24); color: #181818; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(24, 24, 24); color: #181818; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">This book is important because it is a rallying cry against those who want to make the world a prison on the pretext of kindness - to replace free thought, free expression and the scientific method with various forms of utopian dogma.</span></div></span><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(24, 24, 24); color: #181818;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(24, 24, 24); color: #181818; text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Gad Saad is a brave man. (He’ll tell you so himself.) It’s a dangerous business to tell the truth about the Islamic religion particularly. And the subject of biological and psychological differences between the sexes has become a minefield. As Saad points out, it can become risky to talk about things as obvious as the sun in the sky if others are committed to an ideology dependent on denying them.</span></div></span><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(24, 24, 24); color: #181818;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(24, 24, 24); color: #181818; text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">I have my differences with Saad on a key topic. I won’t say that he is wrong and I am right. I just feel that the issue is far from settled. As an evolutionary psychologist he has a tendency to see superficially similar behaviour in humans and other animals as having the same explanation. For instance conspicuous consumption - buying a Ferrari - has the same underlying cause as the evolution of a peacock’s tail. Fair enough, I see his point. A Ferrari may serve to increase a man’s mating opportunities. But is human selfishness always comparable with the genetic selfishness of other animals? What about the issue of the hunger to assuage the wounded ego? Is the only reason a man tries to have sex with lots of women that his genes want to reproduce themselves. Or can it be that he is trying to compensate for the voice inside that tells him he’s a piece of shit. The two may not be mutually exclusive. A homosexual man who has sex with many partners is not going to pass on his genes by doing so, but it may feed his wounded ego. There are aspects of human behaviour which can be more easily explained once we acknowledge this element. (I’m indebted to the Australian biologist <a href="https://www.humancondition.com" target="_blank">Jeremy Griffith</a>, also a strong critic of “political correctness”, for his critique of the false equivalency issue in evolutionary biology.)</span></div></span><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(24, 24, 24); color: #181818;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(24, 24, 24); color: #181818; text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Saad says : <b>“The pursuit of these two ideals</b> [freedom and truth] <b>was not imposed on me by my parents; rather it is a manifestation of my personhood as inscribed in my genes.”</b>This seems to me to be a conclusion arrived at by a false dichotomy - i.e. aspects of our ego are a product either of our nature or our nurture. Now maybe we are all born with a genetic orientation toward the ideals of freedom and truth, and most are then socialised out of that commitment. But it doesn’t make much sense that such a commitment is something - like red hair - which one person gets from their genes and others don’t. The thing with socialisation is that it is not a simple substance we passively consume. We can react against it due to our personal experience. Being hurt by another’s lie at an early age could lead someone to pride themselves on being truthful. At that time when our inborn self-acceptance is beginning to erode, we need to find some self-concept within which to maintain our pride, our character armour as psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich described it. When someone calls us something ending in -ist or -phobe, our defence is “but I’m the champion of truth.” And during the long dark night of the soul when we look inside ourselves and see the swamp of lusts and resentments and bitterness, likewise we say “but for all that, I’m the champion of truth.” Or it might be : “But I’m the guy who banged a thousand chicks and drives a sport’s car.” Our behaviour is not necessarily directly comparable with that of other animals, because they have (as far as we are aware) no conscience and thus no long dark night of the soul.</span></div></span><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(24, 24, 24); color: #181818;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(24, 24, 24); color: #181818; text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">This is important, because the issue of the human condition of the wounded ego and guilty conscience may be crucial to an understanding of the ideological parasites that Saad is discussing.</span></div></span><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(24, 24, 24); color: #181818;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(24, 24, 24); color: #181818; text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">When feminists talk about “toxic masculinity” they are not making it up out of the air. In individuals, masculinity can take a toxic form. Rape, wife bashing, gay bashing… There are many instances where a man’s ego becomes insecure in a way which makes him feel compelled to inflict violence, humiliation or power dominance over someone more vulnerable than himself. The problem is the way the concept is misused. Masculinity is not inherently toxic. Stoicism is not toxic. Willingness to use violence to protect others is not toxic. What makes masculinity turn toxic is the addition of malevolence arising from the wounded ego. And this also turns femininity toxic. So we should be able to come together on the recognition that malevolence is our joint enemy, and that the healing of the wounded ego is the long term solution. </span></div></span><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(24, 24, 24); color: #181818;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(24, 24, 24); color: #181818; text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Parasites feed off of the weak and vulnerable. Perhaps the ideologies Saad documents are the vultures Jesus referred to when he said of the end times :</span></div></span><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(24, 24, 24); color: #181818;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="color: #181818;"><b>"Wherever the corpse is, there the vultures will gather." </b>Matthew 24:28</span></span></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(24, 24, 24); color: #181818; font-weight: bold; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;"><b><br /></b></span></div></span><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(24, 24, 24); color: #181818; text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;">These ideologies are spread from academia and through popular culture, but why do they find such a receptive audience? We don’t live in a good time for the retention of a healthy flexible ego. Broken marriages, access to all the most disturbing aspects of life at an early age over the internet, the breakdown of community and shared values, lack of opportunities to spend time in nature… All these things can contribute to children growing up into ego-wounded adults.</span></div></span></span><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(24, 24, 24); color: #181818;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(24, 24, 24); color: #181818; text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">The Social Justice Warrior role can be particularly seductive to desperately wounded egos. What do they need? A way to “prove” they are a good person. Something which protects them from any aspect of reality which might feel painful to them in their wounded state. And something which allows them a guilt-free outlet for any malevolence. This is similar to the mentality which targeted “the witches” or was behind the Holocaust. A simple belief system which enables individuals to believe that evil exists only outside themselves. </span></div></span><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(24, 24, 24); color: #181818;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(24, 24, 24); color: #181818; text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">So we need to challenge the idea pathogens themselves, but addressing the issue of how we heal wounded egos is also crucial. A person with a healthy secure ego is one who has the flexibility to change in the light of newly discovered truth and one who enthusiastically embraces any form of cooperation which serves the common good. We need such people.</span></div></span><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(24, 24, 24); color: #181818;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(24, 24, 24); color: #181818; text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Saad suggests adopting the spirit of the honey badger when fighting for the truth. There may be times when that is appropriate. He gives the example of a bakery which sued for defamation when accused of racism. That’s an appropriate response in that case, because if someone defames one business and gets away with it, that will encourage people to do the same to other businesses. But when Saad describes his “honey badger” behaviour on Twitter, I’m less sure. He talks about an exchange where he referred to someone as “a retarded schmuck” and “degenerate”. Now if I didn’t know the person who used those terms - if this tweet was my introduction to him - my first thought would be that I was encountering an insecure individual who was unable to make his arguments through cool reason and was expelling his frustration at his own impotence by using cheap putdowns. Crude ad hominem insults are usually resorted to by the person in the weaker position. This is why so many people call Saad a “racist”, “sexist”, “Islamophobe”, etc. By calling someone a “retarded schmuck” isn’t he just sinking to a similar kind of behaviour? The big dangers when fighting someone are that we may sink to their level, become more like them, and maybe even let slip some of our own malevolence.</span></div></span><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(24, 24, 24); color: #181818;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(24, 24, 24); color: #181818; text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Be the rock of truth against which the deluded smash their bloodied fists and thereby advertise their impotence. That would be my suggestion, where it is possible to do so. A tremendous sense of authority comes with being able to remain calm in the face of abuse. I think this is what Jesus was pointing out when he recommended turning the other cheek. A hot-tempered response is a signal of weakness. Speak the truth far and wide and fearlessly, but let the abuse hurlers expose their weakness by their own behaviour. Engaging with them is a waste of your precious time.</span></div></span><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(24, 24, 24); color: #181818;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(24, 24, 24); color: #181818; text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">So I may look at things a little differently from Gad Saad on some questions, but the door needs to be pushed back open which guarantees us all an open forum within which to use reason to explore reality and look for solutions. He has taken on a Herculean part of that task and he deserves our support. The more of us who join the fight, the less courage is needed by each. It is always hardest at the start. If he can do it, we can do it, and, in time, everyone can leave their safe space and find freedom.</span></div></span></div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjelJMSA4DA8iFEFKS7dWYzuFNIviSlQB332R6cHMiarCiCMPJhKZrkNH8i_p_zl2JDE-FZfcQ1EGFsqQBG2yOwDcrF_Yh8xjLsWJLCGSvCLKZGzc7n9FWVcmEqVywHMlifzhVDXuIoJ_tP/s900/unnamed.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="900" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjelJMSA4DA8iFEFKS7dWYzuFNIviSlQB332R6cHMiarCiCMPJhKZrkNH8i_p_zl2JDE-FZfcQ1EGFsqQBG2yOwDcrF_Yh8xjLsWJLCGSvCLKZGzc7n9FWVcmEqVywHMlifzhVDXuIoJ_tP/w640-h640/unnamed.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>Aussiescribblerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04835275666734452167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819981045804508508.post-28026982335880828622020-11-15T21:59:00.008-08:002020-11-15T22:11:57.345-08:00Mythical Communities?<p> </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjE_A1Iz4uVxk84H8exCFHs14MX5AHOeW_WRUokR5M_eDyY3kpP3_hBupqG_47C5qN8voJ1an3sfFzqOUbZHj5RjywBrH5n7qv0Lnm0QQa7xhD29fZER9aSaeEIXNJ1TJ05iEmTDvU1FED6/s2048/33524889_m.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1365" data-original-width="2048" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjE_A1Iz4uVxk84H8exCFHs14MX5AHOeW_WRUokR5M_eDyY3kpP3_hBupqG_47C5qN8voJ1an3sfFzqOUbZHj5RjywBrH5n7qv0Lnm0QQa7xhD29fZER9aSaeEIXNJ1TJ05iEmTDvU1FED6/w640-h426/33524889_m.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo by <a href="https://www.123rf.com/profile_stockbroker">Cathy Yeulet</a><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p><br /></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">What is the nature of community? Today we often hear talk of "the black community", "the gay community", the "trans community" etc. To what degree can a single physical characteristic like race, gender or sexuality be the formative determinant of something which can genuinely be characterised as a community?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">Merriam-Webster defines "community" as <b>"a unified body of individuals"</b> and then goes on to give a variety of examples.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">Wikipedia says : <b>"A community is a social unit with commonality such as norms, religion, values, customs, or identity. Communities may share a sense of place situated in a given geographical area or in virtual space through communication platforms."</b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">I begin with myself. I'm white, male and heterosexual. I don't feel that I'm a part of a white community or a male community or a heterosexual community. When I experience a sense of community it is irrespective of race, gender or sexuality and based on other factors.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">There may be many factors which can be the basis of community, but here are some I can identify :</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;"><b>1. Proximity</b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">A family or a workplace can be a community regardless of any differences between the individuals who make it up.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;"><b>2. Culture</b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">People can be united by a shared cultural heritage, including shared history, myths and first language.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;"><b>3. Belief system</b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">People can be brought together by a shared belief system, such as a religion or political allegiance.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;"><b>4. Interest</b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">People can be brought together by a shared hobby, or shared interest in music, movies, literature or sport, etc.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;"><b>5. A common threat</b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">People can be united by a threat which is posed to all of them, for instance, when one country launches a military attack against another it is usually enough to cause the citizens of that country to unite in the spirit of self-preservation.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">I think the reason we might talk about a "black community" or a "gay community" etc. is that we may perceive the group to be united by a common threat. Whether this is true now, is open to argument, but a stronger argument of this kind can be made when looking into the past. When racial segregation was legal and homosexuality was illegal, oppression might provide a unifying factor producing a sense of community amongst members of these identity groups.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">To the extent that someone feels they are a part of a "black community" or a "gay community", is it because they are part of a community which is united by a particular cultural attitude to that shared characteristic? Will a black atheist necessarily feel more communal unity with a black Christian or Muslim, than with a white atheist? Will a gay conservative feel more communal unity with a gay radical or a straight conservative?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">There is no doubt that there are communities within the black and gay demographics, based around the factors of proximity, culture, belief system or interest. But can each demographic as a whole be classed as a community? Where is the proof that race alone is a unifying factor which can compete with something like political affiliation? People who argue that there is a black community tend to then have to resort to claiming that some people are "not really black" because their political beliefs set them at odds with other members of the demographic.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">Some find it politically useful to argue that demographics are communities, but evidence needs to be provided that this argument is meaningful.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">One of the most extraordinary claims is that there is such a thing as "the LGBTQ+ community". Here it is not even a common identity characteristic which is considered to be the basis for a sense of unity, rather this is a group said to be unified by what they are not. The argument is that everyone who is not heterosexual has enough in common with everyone else who is not heterosexual to be unified by that fact.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">Conflict is rife within all demographic groups, be they based on race, sex, sexuality or gender identity.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">If we want to come together in meaningful and creative ways, I think we need to do this through :</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;"><b>1. Proximity</b> - getting to know our neighbours.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;"><b>2. Culture</b> - learning about each others histories and traditions.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;"><b>3. Belief systems</b> - finding and embracing those beliefs which heal conflict and build community and using reason and science to eliminate beliefs which, because they are lies, can only feed division.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;"><b>4. Shared interest</b> - especially those, like music, which have always had to power to be the expression of a communal soul</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;"><b>5. Recognition of common threats</b> - ecological, medical and social - and the need to cooperate as a community to address them.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">Whatever our race, sex, sexuality or gender identity, that's fine. But we can't look to these qualities to unite us, and mustn't let these qualities divide us.</span></p>Aussiescribblerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04835275666734452167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819981045804508508.post-59751945697166509492020-10-25T02:55:00.003-07:002020-10-25T02:55:47.180-07:00Critical Idealism and the Inner Darkness<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZ0qoksJnDA_z4Dc2rvfAAmjaiqMkMt1nRb_DcUUrNhoRBfdcChcZ5sKq2o6g68fEpiLhoxbdCaSxzVd8qSwNIvODcHrdvR-PefpRPX2j1vuv-zJ4xooOchUWMZyLSHtyQS_GL7RK-rlh7/s2048/126671237_m.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1365" data-original-width="2048" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZ0qoksJnDA_z4Dc2rvfAAmjaiqMkMt1nRb_DcUUrNhoRBfdcChcZ5sKq2o6g68fEpiLhoxbdCaSxzVd8qSwNIvODcHrdvR-PefpRPX2j1vuv-zJ4xooOchUWMZyLSHtyQS_GL7RK-rlh7/w640-h426/126671237_m.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">Photo by <a href="https://www.123rf.com/profile_aberdeen82">Aberdeen82</a></div><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span><p></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">I want to present a simple model of an aspect of human psychology in order to test to what degree it maps onto our own experience and our observation of the behaviour of others.</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">When we feel accepted, our tendency is to open up to greater flexibility, tolerance and generosity.</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">When we are, or feel, criticised, we may respond in a variety of ways - from withdrawal and depression to anger, defiance and hostility. The potential to respond creatively and adaptively lies on a narrow band between the negative passive and negative aggressive responses.</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">If we adopt a critical form of ideology, we carry the destabilising tendency of criticism within us. It may be an ideology which criticises us directly or it may be one which criticises someone else. But very often even the latter will be implicitly critical of us, for instance criticism of the wealthy may seem to be not about us, until we realise that according to a different frame of reference we are the wealthy.</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">Is it not perhaps to be expected that, just as the grain of sand irritates the oyster into producing a pearl, the presence of this aggravating critical voice will cause the formation within the psyche of an ever-growing well of either despair or angry defiance and resentment? And is it not resentful defiance of “the good” (as represented by the voice of the conscience) the essence of malevolence - the evil intent apparently unique to humans?</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">We are not whole unless we own our dark side.</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">In the absence of an acknowledgement of the dark side, doesn’t the face we show the world become an increasingly brittle and desperate fraud? And don’t we have a tendency to project that dark side we dare not acknowledge onto others?</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">There are examples every day of people who are labelled “Nazis” simply because they critique “wokeness”. They are seen by those who embrace this form of critical idealism as embodiments of both authoritarianism and malevolence, in the absence of any evidence of behaviour betraying either tendency. This seems a clear-cut case of projection. And those making the accusation may betray malevolence and authoritarianism (a bullying attitude) themselves.</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">We can see these tendencies also in some people who have a particularly critical form of religious belief which seems to drive them to behave in a malevolent or otherwise authoritarian manner towards those whose behaviour they see as a threat to it.</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">Unconditional self-acceptance is a healing force which can address the underlying problem. It we accept our thoughts and feelings, not as accurate messengers about reality, but as the ever-changing flesh of who are at this very moment - as the road to freedom for our deeper loving self - then, to the extent that they are negative, they will evaporate. It’s O.K. to hate goodness. It’s O.K. to hate everybody and everything. Because as soon as you’ve felt that unashamedly, the natural thing is to let go of it as something not useful to you.</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">Critical forms of idealism are poisonous seeds which grow despair and malevolence and social conflicts which strangle love.</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">As we are developing our competence in the various areas of life we want appropriate criticism so that we can learn to improve. But we don’t want to be subjected to idealistic, i.e. perfectionistic, criticism to the extent that it wears us down and makes us bitter. How much criticism we can respond to creatively is determined by how accepted we feel in general.</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">How much “good behaviour” is part of a desperate battle to deny and keep contained a growing inner malevolence - or despair? We need to address and find ways to heal that inner darkness, because whatever comes from our depths will be the basis for our society. That can be love, but only if we learn to remove the ideological weeds which poison it.</span></p>Aussiescribblerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04835275666734452167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819981045804508508.post-38547004771892611002020-10-13T02:11:00.003-07:002020-10-13T02:15:43.787-07:00BOOK REVIEW : Cynical Theories : How Universities Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity - and Why This Harms Everybody by Helen Pluckrose & James Lindsay<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZOpqs901H7fXut4vaquxSp_1HpZcFlRXe49YrnePqajCKVQiy8NX2rWMQSDukRwbs4pi7tVlGpqOx_vE8LeaNmHj3iWI1hzoOVeST4FF5GDMLpKJQqUsgE9fGSUqoPxPfSIZRgJS1hj3C/s1500/71gzbJ1HmIL._SL1500_.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="1000" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZOpqs901H7fXut4vaquxSp_1HpZcFlRXe49YrnePqajCKVQiy8NX2rWMQSDukRwbs4pi7tVlGpqOx_vE8LeaNmHj3iWI1hzoOVeST4FF5GDMLpKJQqUsgE9fGSUqoPxPfSIZRgJS1hj3C/w426-h640/71gzbJ1HmIL._SL1500_.jpg" width="426" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The earlier edition with differently worded subtitle</i></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p><span style="caret-color: rgb(24, 24, 24); color: #181818; font-family: times;">Of all the secular parables our culture has produced, the one most relevant to our current cultural situation is </span><i style="caret-color: rgb(24, 24, 24); color: #181818; font-family: times;">The Emperor's New Clothes</i><span style="caret-color: rgb(24, 24, 24); color: #181818; font-family: times;">, made famous in the version told by Hans Christian Anderson. It shows how, in a society of individuals who lack confidence and live in fear of censure, even something blatantly contradicted by evidence can gain social traction and cultural dominance. In the story it is fear of being thought stupid or incompetent. In our situation it may more often be fear of being thought to be bigoted in some way. But it is also a hopeful story. Even the smallest, least powerful individual can save the day by speaking the dreadful truth, because a lie needs to be maintained with effort while an obvious truth, once the culture of fear about acknowledging it has been dispelled, argues for itself.</span></p><p><span id="freeTextreview3583367417" style="caret-color: rgb(24, 24, 24); color: #181818;"><span style="font-family: times;">Are you “woke”? Have you been “red pilled” into recognising that we live in a Matrix called “the white supremacist patriarchy”?<br /><br />The problem with such grand explanatory frameworks of interpretation for the world is that they lend themselves to our natural tendency toward confirmation bias. It is easy to find evidence for such an interpretation. It is all around us, just as it tends to be pretty easy to find evidence for a conspiracy theory. The way to assess the accuracy of any theory is to sincerely attempt to falsify it - to prove it wrong. The more we try to do that and fail, the stronger the credibility of the theory.<br /><br />Critical Social Justice Theory, the field of scholarship which underlies the cultural expressions we label “woke”, is founded on the assumption that any inequality of outcome for groups who have historically been discriminated against can be accounted for by systemic oppression, a continuing form of universal prejudice pervading our society, particularly as expressed through language, i.e. “discourse”. This is just as unfalsifiable as the existence of that other omnipresent and invisible entity - God. If someone acts in a bigoted way, that’s evidence of systemic racism. If they don’t, that’s because they benefit more by hiding their racist feelings.<br /><br />This worldview reduces the complexity of human social interaction to simple formulas. A person’s situation is to be understood by their membership of identity groups. Each group is then seen to be in a more or less advantaged position. The fact that we are all individuals with a unique mix of talents and challenges can be lost. The answer to improving society is to change the discourses (eliminate “problematic” terms and invent new ones), to educate or re-educate (i.e. indoctrinate) and get the “enlightened” into positions of power.<br /><br />They are not wrong that discourse can oppress. Just ask anyone who has had a malicious lie spread about them. And there are examples from both past and present where religious or political systems of discourse have oppressed populations. But this is really an argument <i>against</i> rather than for their approach. If the idea were to open up greater opportunities for the expression of diverging discourses, or to test belief systems against objective data taken from science, that would make sense. But to try to install one’s own discourse while discouraging that of others, is to more or less guarantee that it will become a source of oppression.<br /><br />As Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay argue, we already have a strategy for improving society, and it is the one which brought us the end of slavery, the establishment of universal suffrage, the dismantling of colonialism, the end to racial segregation, the legalisation of homosexuality and the banning of discrimination on the basis of race, sex, sexuality, disability, etc. That strategy is liberalism - the belief in democracy, reason, free speech and science. This allows us to target problems specifically, come to understand them through reason and research, and rally the support to make the necessary changes. It doesn’t require us to adopt a shared dogmatic way of interpreting the world. And if we have a divergent viewpoint, it doesn’t punish us as heretics.<br /><br />While the Critical Social Justice Theory worldview may be unfalsifiable, we can see evidence against it from observing whether it has a positive or negative effect on the behaviour of those who adopt it. It doesn’t seem unfair to say that a tree which produces rotten fruit is not a healthy tree.<br /><br /><i>Cynical Theories</i> is an indispensable book for anyone navigating the troubled waters we find ourselves in as a society. We’re a little like Odysseus sailing between the Scylla and the Charybdis. We need to steer away from the whirlpool of “woke” madness which could tear our society apart, but we mustn’t pull so far over to the other side that we lose the ship of liberalism to the snapping mouths of rightwing authoritarianism. This is the beauty of what Pluckrose and Lindsay have achieved with this book. It empowers us with a deep understanding of the “woke” mindset and how it evolved, while exuding a calm, sane and generous spirit. There is always a danger that we might take a reactionary approach which mirrors those we have set ourselves to resist. On the contrary, the authors take an approach which is in stark contrast to the cynical, ungenerous and aggressive zealots of “wokeness”. This book is an act of love towards the “enemy”. The authors have listened and understood and provided that which is most necessary for the wellbeing of those whose ideology they oppose.</span></span></p><div><span style="font-family: times;">Helen Pluckrose is editor of <a href="https://areomagazine.com">Areo magazine</a>.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;">James Lindsay runs the <a href="https://newdiscourses.com">New Discourses website</a>.</span></div>Aussiescribblerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04835275666734452167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819981045804508508.post-14789549644516741652020-09-28T00:26:00.008-07:002020-09-28T00:46:18.525-07:00Why might Australian biologist Jeremy Griffith believe that U.S. biologist E. O. Wilson is "the antichrist"?<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirqf3E66eGOqtTxWKQk0Apvp1Xt26HArv3V48suWnJb1iABL90O2QrBEZx-4rOColu2n28yDuF4mFgJ0b3dQ-_hlu-laeNQjqqNiw43T3xI99TF3YVOkt6Iv4NpYp0XJbxqWYn3F4EQrsO/s750/FREEDOM-Launch-RGS-Jeremy-Griffith-Close-Up_Crp_WEB_750x500.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="750" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirqf3E66eGOqtTxWKQk0Apvp1Xt26HArv3V48suWnJb1iABL90O2QrBEZx-4rOColu2n28yDuF4mFgJ0b3dQ-_hlu-laeNQjqqNiw43T3xI99TF3YVOkt6Iv4NpYp0XJbxqWYn3F4EQrsO/w640-h426/FREEDOM-Launch-RGS-Jeremy-Griffith-Close-Up_Crp_WEB_750x500.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Jeremy Griffith at the launch of his book Freedom : The End of the Human Condition at the London Royal Geographical Society on 2 June 2016</i></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div>The person who has had the biggest influence on the ideas I express in my writing has been Australian biologist Jeremy Griffith. In some cases that has been the kind of influence where you adopt an idea which someone puts forward which proves accountable, but more often it has taken the form of a challenge to find a better way of explaining something after having found Griffith’s interpretation unaccountable in some way.</div><br />It seems to me that if we want to understand someone, it can be useful to examine those areas in which their behaviour seems out of proportion in some way. An over-reaction can be a sign of insecurity, of a sore spot.<br /><br />Griffith claims to identify fellow biologist E.O. Wilson with the figure of “the anticrist” predicted in the Gospel of John and “the beast” spoken of in Revelations. This is very peculiar behaviour for a scientist.<br /><br />Here is the relevant passage from his book <i><a href="https://www.humancondition.com/freedom-cover/">Freedom : The End of the Human Condition</a></i> :<br /><br />“And this ‘unity of life and all its manifestations of experience—aesthetic, religious and moral as well as intellectual and rational’ is not the fake offering that E.O. Wilson—that lord of lying, the master of keeping humanity away from any truth; indeed, the quintessential <b>‘liar…the antichrist’</b> (Bible, 1 John 2:22), the <b>‘deceiver and the antichrist’</b> (2 John 1:7), <b>‘The beast… given… to utter proud words and blasphemies’</b> (Rev. 13:5)—put forward in his 1998 book, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, when he proposed that Evolutionary Psychology’s alleged ability to explain the moral aspects of humans meant biology and philosophy, the sciences and the humanities, indeed science and religion, could at last be reconciled.” from paragraph 1155<br /><br />Now I don’t know any more about E.O. Wilson’s Eusociality theory than Griffith’s account of it. It seems to have to do with the possibility that we could have developed instincts for cooperation because cooperation has a survival advantage for groups. Evolution eliminates the least fit, but being a member of a cooperative group increases fitness because cooperative groups are more likely to survive than groups where the individuals compete at the expense of the group.<div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4Lv1NKcciGO79z4EkPGzyoh9puzv3xSGLc_RHpPFjXbwV7E7l84NOybjnmdiEq67rkhOiKDOIVBWvN5eO6vrhajRNEQ966Tq1kEXvlVZkMfWGUhq5H2jEI69xazGUQS9f1lRrt65zvD5z/s1240/Plos_wilson.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1054" data-original-width="1240" height="544" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4Lv1NKcciGO79z4EkPGzyoh9puzv3xSGLc_RHpPFjXbwV7E7l84NOybjnmdiEq67rkhOiKDOIVBWvN5eO6vrhajRNEQ966Tq1kEXvlVZkMfWGUhq5H2jEI69xazGUQS9f1lRrt65zvD5z/w640-h544/Plos_wilson.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>E. O. Wilson</i><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div>Griffith claims this couldn’t happen because it requires the development to cooperativeness in individuals before the benefits can manifest in groups, and cooperativeness could not arise in individuals without the cooperative individuals being exploited by the non-cooperative individuals which would mean they would be less fit and would be eliminated.<br /><br />I’m no biologist, but I can imagine a way in which cooperative groups could arise. The assumption seems to be that our instincts drive competition, but I don’t see why we would necessarily have to see it that way. Take food. If there is not enough food to go around, we may compete for what food is available, but is it our selfish genes which are making us behave this way or is it the shortage of food. If there were enough food, it would make more sense for us to share it and enjoy the sensual benefits of loving behaviour with other members of the group. So if there were an environment with enough food so that competition would not be necessary, would not the pleasure principle - the impulse to do what feels good and avoid what entails suffering - lead to group cooperation?<br /><br />I suppose there is also competition for breeding opportunities, but the idea is that those qualities which allow someone to have the most offspring who survive to mate themselves prosper in the evolutionary process. In some species and some contexts, aggressive competitions may determine who breeds the most. But in the context of a group whose members are not fighting over food, is it not possible that females would chose to mate more often with affectionate rather than aggressive mates?<br /><br /><div>As I say, I’m no biologist. The fact that I can imagine something doesn’t mean there may not be many reasons why it couldn’t have happened that way. And I don’t know what E.O. Wilson is suggesting beyond Griffith’s very brief, and possibly biased, account.<br /><br />But why is Griffith so angry about Wilson’s theory? He says that it is because Wilson’s theory grounds both our competitive and our cooperative behaviour in our genes, while Griffith sees our problem as a “psychosis” which can be cured. If it is in our genes, it can’t be cured.<br /><br />I think this actually does highlight a problem in Griffith’s theory. What he is complaining about in Wilson’s theory applies also to his own.<br /><br />Griffith believes that our instincts are a dictatorial demand for selfless behaviour. If this is true, then the problem he calls “the human condition” is just as insoluble as it would be if Wilson were right about us having competitive instincts, in fact, our situation would arguably be even more intractable.<br /><br />You can’t change an instinctive orientation and you can’t make it see reason. If our instincts make us feel bad for not being selfless then we can’t get them off our back.<br /><br />What Griffith is saying is that we now recognise that the “criticism” coming from our instincts was unjust and so we can go back to following them, reassured that we were not bad to deviate from them originally.<br /><br />The problem with this is that - no matter how sensible it might be to behave cooperatively - if we have to do it because our instincts will make us feel bad if we don’t - that is a kind of internal totalitarianism.<br /><br />Freedom means choosing our behaviour to best suit what we feel to be our interests. If we are enlightened, we will realise that our best interests and the best interests of those around us tend to align. But we have to feel that it is our choice.<br /><br />I don’t believe that our instincts are dictatorial. Just because they gave us a way to orientate our behaviour before we developed intelligence, doesn’t mean there need have been any resistance put up by them to more helpful ways of managing our life.<br /><br />I think the conflict between good and evil in us is a product of different ideas about how we should self manage which have arisen in the intellect and of the emotional turmoil which can result when those ideas are unhelpful ones. This means we are not doomed by our genetic orientation, either one to competition or to freedom-denying idealism.<br /><br />I think that, sometimes, in these moments in which another’s behaviour confronts us with a key weakness in our own worldview, we may project onto them some disowned aspect of ourselves.<br /><br />Griffith accuses Wilson of being “the antichrist” and of arrogance and “blasphemies”. It is Griffith who has claimed that his work represents the fulfilment of that which was promised by Jesus Christ. If his theory is wrong, that means he is the arrogant one committing blasphemy and putting himself in the position of the false Christ.<br /><br />I once experienced an example of this kind of projection in Griffith’s response to me. I had politely and tentatively questioned him about his assessment of my character type. The appropriate response, it seems to me, would have been to say something like : “Perhaps you don’t understand. I’ll try to give you a fuller explanation.” Instead he convened and meeting and told people that I was : “M-a-a-ssively deluded.” Why this over-reaction to someone politely questioning his interpretation? Was he seeing something in me which really applied to himself?</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://howtobefree-theblog.blogspot.com/search/label/Jeremy%20Griffith">More</a> critiques of Griffith's work.</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://www.quora.com/What-has-your-experience-been-like-with-the-World-Transformation-Movement-WTM/answer/David-Munn-18">My personal story</a> of involvement in Griffith's Foundation for Humanity's Adulthood (now the World Transformation Movement).</div></div>Aussiescribblerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04835275666734452167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819981045804508508.post-56447936634289828122020-09-20T03:59:00.002-07:002020-09-24T00:15:45.565-07:00BOOK REVIEW : THE Interview That Solves The Human Condition and Saves The World! by Jeremy Griffith<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-9xQA8CK3LjgX5aYVHoAHlIy402uNhz6dqykOCJDY8mvrGxYc8SFV4yijprucl1Y88_XL4lor-wEwXIF9Fw0Dgv2NSSSnyHN1cOequUO3qUVvn1V550MbyVWq73srelUCRwIoTPT_Cn3I/s1401/529966248.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1401" data-original-width="934" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-9xQA8CK3LjgX5aYVHoAHlIy402uNhz6dqykOCJDY8mvrGxYc8SFV4yijprucl1Y88_XL4lor-wEwXIF9Fw0Dgv2NSSSnyHN1cOequUO3qUVvn1V550MbyVWq73srelUCRwIoTPT_Cn3I/w426-h640/529966248.jpeg" width="426" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i>This is a review of a booklet which is the transcript of an interview. You can watch the interview or download a free copy of the booklet <a href="https://www.humancondition.com/the-interview/#full">here</a>.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><br /></i></div><p></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">The cover of this booklet tells us that <b>“This world-saving interview was broadcast across the UK in 2020 and is being replayed on radio & TV stations around the world.”</b> I’d love to see more information on which radio and television stations in which countries have played the interview. I’ve done a Google search for “Jeremy Griffith” with “Craig Conway” hoping to get some idea of how people in various parts of the world responded to these broadcasts, but I haven’t come up with much other than the World Transformation Movement’s own promotions and Craig Conway’s social media.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">There is such a thing as under-selling and over-selling something. If one presents one’s product without any major promise of its value, it may be that hardly anyone tries it out. As Jesus pointed out, you don’t want to hide your light under a bushel. But if you lay the promises on too thick, you are liable to illicit suspicion in the prospective consumer that you are a snake-oil salesman or that you are blowing your own trumpet so loudly and repetitively in order to drown out your own inner critic. The title of this booklet <b><i>“The Interview That Solves The Human Condition and Saves The World!”</i></b> should suffice to bring that light out from beneath any bushel. Make the claim and then deliver on it. What a person says in praise of themselves or their own work should count for very little. What matters is whether it delivers for the reader. Does it enlighten them? Do things make sense in the world that didn’t make sense before? Politicians and priests will make glorious promises expressed in soaring rhetoric. But their aim is not to appeal to the reason, but to stir up an emotional response, often one which overrides the reason. An appeal to reason should be cool and calm and challenge the reader to find fault with it.</span></p>
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<p style="color: #262626; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">The blurb about Griffith in the front of the booklet says that <b>“his work has attracted the support of such eminent scientists as… Stephen Hawking…”</b> This seems a bit misleading to me. Griffith put together a documentary proposal in 2004, which he distributed widely to scientists. He received a reply from someone representing Hawking saying that Hawking <b>“is most interested in your impressive proposal”</b> and <b>“please let us know further details in due course.”</b> I would not interpret this as meaning that Hawking was a supporter of his work. It sounds more like polite curiosity. Before using someone’s reputation to lend credibility to one’s controversial theory, it seems to me that it is only right to make sure that they understand what that theory is and have publicly expressed some kind of praise for it.</span></p>
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<p style="color: #262626; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">Griffith says that <b>“the human condition is such a difficult subject for us humans to confront and deal with that I couldn’t be talking about it so openly and freely if it <i>hadn’t </i>been solved.”</b> I think this is false reasoning. Assuming that we can only talk freely about the human condition, as Griffith defines it, if we have a framework of belief (or understanding) which tells us we are not bad, then all that is needed is for Griffith to have a belief which tells him that he is not bad in order to move around smoothly in that framework. The proof of the framework has to be in its explanatory power.</span></p>
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<p style="color: #262626; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">I agree with Griffith that genetic selfishness can’t explain our competitive, selfish and aggressive tendencies. It is very easy to see that differences in these qualities between individuals are often the result of psychological insecurity. And, in a social species, being competitive, selfish or aggressive would only be a genetic advantage in limited circumstance and for limited times. Success in business, or winning a mate and raising a family, etc., is more dependent on the ability to be a cooperative team member than it is on trying to exercise some form of forceful control over others.</span></p>
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<p style="color: #262626; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">But it does seem we have always been an insecure species, always feeling we need to prove something about ourselves as individuals or tribal groups. We develop feelings of resentment which lead us to take out our frustrations by causing the suffering of others.</span></p>
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<p style="color: #262626; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">A capacity for love and cooperation is always there, though, when we are in a situation where we feel safe from criticism. Mutual acceptance and self-acceptance has the power to heal our insecurity and resentment.</span></p>
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<p style="color: #262626; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">Just because our behaviour has a psychological component, however, doesn’t mean that an impulse to propagate our genes may not also be a part of the motivation for our behaviour. It isn’t an either/or.</span></p>
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<p style="color: #262626; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">I see no reason to see our conscience as something instinctive, as Griffith does. Different individuals in different societies have different ideas on morality. They feel guilty about different things. It makes more sense to me to see the conscience as a part of the ego, an internalisation of a learned moral system. A system of expectations we have about ourselves. For me, guilt is always tied up with thinking. I think critically about my behaviour and I feel emotional discomfort. This leads me to concluded that the conscience resides in the conscious mind, i.e. the ego.</span></p>
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<p style="color: #262626; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">How insecure are we actually about being selfish or competitive? I think it depends on the degree to which we have been told we shouldn’t be selfish or competitive. It’s a negative feedback loop. Being criticised makes us more insecure which makes us more selfish. But this is a social phenomenon. I see no evidence that the criticism comes from somewhere below the conscious mind.</span></p>
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<p style="color: #262626; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">Is psychosis the correct term to use to describe the psychological condition which produces our dark side? A psychosis is a mental illness which causes its sufferer to be seriously cut off from reality. But what do we mean by “reality”? I’ve experienced the state which psychiatrist’s call psychosis. I was cut off from reality in the sense that I thought things were going on around me which were not going on around me. Griffith is saying that psychosis is the norm, that we are all cut off from reality as we go about our daily lives. But we have a good enough grasp on reality to do the things we have to do on a daily basis. Of course we are cut off from reality to some degree, because we process the information about the world around us through our conceptual framework which is a product of our view of ourself which may not be an honest one. I prefer to think in terms of neurosis, emphasising the experience of feeling insecure, because that doesn’t require wrestling with the question of whether we can ever experience unfiltered reality and whether it would be advantageous for us to do so. It must be hard to shop for breakfast cereal while your doors of perception are so open that all things appear infinite.</span></p>
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<p style="color: #262626; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">Griffith’s central thesis is that our psychological insecurity and resultant selfish, egotistical and aggressive behaviour is the result of a conflict which broke out early in our development as a species when our newly formed conscious mind came into conflict with a pre-existing instinctive orientation. “A battle would <i>have</i> to break out between the emerging conscious mind that operates from a basis of understanding cause and effect and the non-understanding instincts that have always controlled and dictated how that animal behaves.”</span></p>
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<p style="color: #262626; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">At first, because we know we have some kind of conflict within us, we may find this argument convincing. But is it?</span></p>
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<p style="color: #262626; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">Are instincts dictatorial? Griffith uses the example of a bird’s flight path. If we were to place a major obstacle in that flight path, would the birds be driven by the dictatorial nature of their instinct to fly headlong into it? Or would they fly around it, following their instinct in a way which was responsive to a changing environment? Surely a lion’s instincts can tell her how to hunt, but not where the game is to be found on any particular day. For that she has to allow her behaviour to be guided by the data taken in from her senses.</span></p>
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<p style="color: #262626; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">If this is the case, then why would a conflict necessarily arise between our instincts and our developing conscious intelligence. Intelligence is a tool, like the senses, with which we can pursue the orientation given to us by our instincts. Why should we expect the instincts to fight back against any experiment in new behaviour?</span></p>
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<p style="color: #262626; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">And Griffith claims that our instinct is for loving, cooperative, selfless behaviour. So wouldn’t an instinct of this kind have to lovingly, cooperatively and selflessly surrender to something which took it in a new direction? An aggressive, selfish instinct might fight back, but not one of this kind.</span></p>
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<p style="color: #262626; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">Griffith describes our instincts as “dogmatic”. The definition of “dogmatic” is “inclined to lay down principles as undeniably true”. But this is something only the conscious mind can do. Instincts are stored information which has proven beneficial to the survival of the members of a species. The fact that it has been beneficial in this way is evidence for its accuracy, but to dogmatically insist upon its truth is something only the conscious mind is capable of. Griffith says that our instincts <b>“are going to condemn him</b> [our mythical ancestor Adam Stork] <b>as being bad.”</b> Again, only the conscious mind can condemn someone on moral grounds. Griffith seems to be projecting the nature of the idealistic judgemental human onto our pre-conscious orientating system.</span></p>
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<p style="color: #262626; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">My contention is that we do have a conflict between good and evil going on within us and that we do become insecure in the face of idealism which criticises us, and that this leads to us becoming ego-embattled - egotistical, selfish, aggressive and alienated. But I see idealism as being a product of the experimentation of the conscious mind. The war within is not between our ego and our instincts, but between conflicting influences within our ego. Our ego is the battleground. If we turn off our ego for a while and reconnect with our instinctive orientation, I believe we will find it to be an all-accepting, all-forgiving, non-judgemental openness to loving interaction with others. Of course we need our conscious mind to understand the world and make decisions. Our loving instincts are not sufficient on their own, but we should not project onto them any aspect of the battle going on in our ego.</span></p>
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<p style="color: #262626; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">This problem of treating the instincts as if they are capable of conscious thought runs through Griffith’s Adam Stork story. He says that Adam ideally would have sat down and explained to his instincts why he wasn’t bad. But this makes no sense, because the instincts are incapable of understanding. You can’t explain anything to them. It is Adam who has to explain to himself that he is not bad. If it were a matter of our instincts understanding us, the problem would be insoluble because it would depend on something which is impossible, i.e. instincts understanding anything at all.</span></p>
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<p style="color: #262626; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">Griffith has said that he was extremely idealistic in his youth. Presumably this led to him being very critical of other’s non-ideal behaviour. Is it possible that when he thinks of the instincts he is thinking of his youthful self. He needed people to explain to him why their behaviour was not as ideal as he felt it should be, but they were unable to do this. Is he seeing in the story of humanity the story of his life? This has to be a strong tendency for anyone who sets out to articulate an all-encompassing account of human behaviour.</span></p>
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<p style="color: #262626; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">Griffith relates his theory about this conflict between the instincts and the conscious mind to the Biblical story of Adam and Eve, but he doesn’t deal very thoroughly with that myth. He says that Adam and Eve ate “from the tree of knowledge”. He leaves out the bit about it being the “tree of knowledge of good and evil”. This is misleading. If it is simply the “tree of knowledge” then this suits his theory that the key event was development of the ability to reason. But “tree of knowledge of good and evil” suggests that it is specifically talking about moral knowledge - i.e. idealism, which distinguishes between some forms of behaviour which are categorised as “good” and other forms of behaviour which are categorised as “evil”. General knowledge about how the world around us works need not undermine our self-acceptance and thus make us selfish and ego-centric, but idealistic standards against which we can find our behaviour and that of others wanting does undermine self-acceptance and lead to a negative feedback loop which actually promotes “sinful” behaviour. Hence our fall from grace.</span></p>
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<p style="color: #262626; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">Griffith claims that his work has not been accepted by mainstream science because it conflicts with the prevailing paradigm, but I see no evidence that he presents a credible testable hypothesis.</span></p>
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<p style="color: #262626; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">There is a problem with Griffith’s concept of “love indoctrination”. The idea is that our ape-ancestor’s mothers nurtured them for genetically selfish reasons, but to the infants it looked like selfless behaviour, so they were “love indoctrinated”, i.e. they learned lovingly selfless behaviour. This is supposed to have happened before the liberation of full consciousness, but learning requires a conscious mind. Conscious learning is overlaying and supplanting the underlying genetically selfish instincts. How does this learning from experience end up encoded genetically so that we are born with the orientation? And how can something which is by its nature patient and forgiving become the source of a dictatorial instinct which is intolerant of experimentation?</span></p>
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<p style="color: #262626; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">Is it not possible that what love needs to manifest is simply a niche were it will not be eliminated? Where an animal who doesn’t compete for food dies and the genes of an animal that doesn’t compete to breed are eliminated, evolution selects against love. But in a social animal living in a food rich environment for millennia, there is no evolutionary disadvantage to opening up to the intrinsic pleasure and group advantage of love. The essence of nature is to create through the formation of wholes, so the formation of a loving whole amongst humans goes deeper than instinct to the very heart of the creative principle itself.</span></p>
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<p style="color: #262626; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">This could explain why bonobos developed as such a loving species. In them we may see what our ancestor’s were like before we began to undermine our self-acceptance by applying idealistic moral judgements to ourselves and each other. As Griffith quotes primatologist Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, <b>“If you are a bonobo infant, you can do no wrong…”</b> Idealism is the opposite of nurturing. Forgiveness returns us to our own capacity for love, while judgement against a standard of perfection makes us angry and resentful and drives us on to the kinds of actions which will attract only more judgement.</span></p>
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<p style="color: #262626; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">Because he sees the human condition as arising from resentment of the instinct’s judgement of our non-ideal behaviour, Griffith feels that each of us is a deep well of upset. <b>“And no wonder we have led such an evasive, denial-practising, lying, avoid-any-criticism, escapist, alienated, superficial and artificial, greedy, egocentric, power, fame, fortune and glory-seeking existence.”</b> While we are prone to these things, this seems the view of an idealist who only sees the negatives. I find <a href="https://howtobefree-theblog.blogspot.com/2017/01/book-review-character-analysis-by.html">Wilhelm Reich’s concept of the character armour</a> more helpful for understanding the dark side of our nature, i.e. that our personality rigidifies around the battle to justify ourselves. All that is needed is for us to feel truly safe from criticism for this often very destructive defensive structure to begin to soften. But Griffith builds his description of the human condition out of idealistic criticisms, what he sees as “confronting truths”. This might be acceptable if his theory actually worked, but because it doesn’t, I see his writing as a kind of Trojan Horse which promises to defend us against condemnation and thus encourages us to open up to statements like this one which, taken on their own, sound like condemnation. This may make us all the more desperate to embrace his theory uncritically. After all, now that he has presented us in such a harsh light, we need something to feel good about ourselves again.</span></p>
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<p style="color: #262626; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">But if the problem lies not in our instinctive orientation but in idealism as a cultural phenomena, I think all that negative behaviour Griffith describes can still be explained - idealism does make us egotistical, selfish and aggressive - but the way in which this phenomena plays out in the world can be understood with less of a temptation to resort to simplistic over-generalisations, as Griffith does when tackling such subjects as politics and sexuality. One need only see idealism as a kind of thought virus, taking different forms - religion, communism, Critical Social Justice Theory, etc. - spreading from individual to individual and producing different forms of negative symptom in different contexts. The key factor is that we have a form of idea which leaves those it contacts feeling criticised in a way which, rather than being the source of healthy correction, sows the seeds of resentment and ego-embattlement. By contrast there must be a healthier form of idea which heals and brings us back toward the capacity for reason, the courage needed to face our problems and the love to bring us together as a community. We will know when we have found this idea, because it will spread like wildfire, everywhere transforming the darkness into light. It won’t require effort for people to embrace it. By their fruits shall ye know them.</span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="color: #262626;">Griffith talks about socialism, the new age movement, the politically correct movement etc. as “pseudo-idealist”. The definition of “idealism” is “the unrealistic belief in or pursuit of perfection.” Idealism is always a bad thing, because perfectionism poisons any attempt to improve things in the world. The term “pseudo-idealist” would mean someone who is only pretending to have an unrealistic belief in or pursuit of perfection.” Is it worse to be a pseudo-idealist than to be a genuine idealist? They are both negative social phenomena. But is everyone who calls themselves a socialist or a member of the new age movement in pursuit of perfection? There are right wing people who have a perfectionistic view of society which makes them intolerant of others as well. Hitler was an idealist. His ideal was racial purity. The battle between different forms of idealism can not be understood as a simple dualism. Griffith is prone to see it all as an expression of his battle between the selflessness-demanding instincts and the understanding-seeking ego. So he sees the left who call for a fairer society as oppressive of the search for understanding and the right who call for more self-reliance and less regulation as championing the search for understanding, even though someone on the left may be a champion of free enquiry and someone on the right may want to reduce spending on pure research. You can’t simply lay some grand worldview over the struggles of individuals in the world and think you have understood them. You have to acknowledge that there is usually more variety between individuals in particular groups than there is difference between the groups. Griffith wrote an article for a conservative on-line publication “explaining” the irrationality of the left. The readers responded enthusiastically to the claim that the left were crazy, but I doubt if many of them looked more deeply into his work. I’ll be impressed if he gets the same audience to accept his claim that “there’s no longer any reason for the right-wing in politics” and that they should become “effectively…left-wing.” Left or right, you get a lot of people who just want to be told what they want to hear. I put my hope in deep thinkers, some of whom come from the left and some from the right. Left wing examples include </span><span style="color: #0000ee;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 238);"><u><a href="https://newdiscourses.com">James Lindsay</a></u></span></span><span style="color: #262626;"> and <a href="https://bretweinstein.net">Bret Weinstein</a>, who are at the forefront of the battle to expose Critical Social Justice Theory. There are wise people on the right too, but there are also people who are irrational enough to believe that Donald Trump is the best politician in the world at the moment or who are caught up in bizarre conspiracy theories.</span></span></p>
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<p style="color: #262626; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">So I agree with Griffith that our species suffers from a psychological insecurity, that some of our distant ancestors were free of this condition, that the human race is not essentially bad but rather heroic and that we can heal the problems of the world with knowledge about the origin and nature of this condition. What I don’t believe is that it originated in a conflict between our instincts and our intellect. I don’t believe our instincts are dictatorial or unforgiving, but quite the opposite and I believe the origins of the problem originated with the development in the conscious mind of our ancestors of idealistic, i.e. perfectionistic, standards for the judgement of moral behaviour. The stricter the standards the more they drive us to the opposite by undermining self-acceptance and generating resentment. Like Griffith I feel we are right on the brink of the abyss. That’s why diagnosing our condition accurately is so important. I don’t feel that he has done so. If he presented his theory as just that and encouraged readers and listeners to find fault with it, I would give this booklet a higher rating, but any work has to be assessed against what it promises. This one literally promises the world, and delivers something far less than that.</span></p></div><p><br /></p>Aussiescribblerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04835275666734452167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819981045804508508.post-11815123110940270402020-07-17T22:20:00.000-07:002020-07-17T22:20:46.512-07:00The Empire of the Most Easily Triggered<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDOykirVxWPC27Dqyy3ORA26F7tIKuG78STJW-zR3ff9Xo6bMJOC2olqFpU-GctV_dBVeQz3Bi59fGZxIuE43NZCGtJk1RCJk-dZAEXY8hClv4JZbx_38tgn301bQzQSvOhgTpDNIByHnY/s1600/131032329_m.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1065" data-original-width="1600" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDOykirVxWPC27Dqyy3ORA26F7tIKuG78STJW-zR3ff9Xo6bMJOC2olqFpU-GctV_dBVeQz3Bi59fGZxIuE43NZCGtJk1RCJk-dZAEXY8hClv4JZbx_38tgn301bQzQSvOhgTpDNIByHnY/s640/131032329_m.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo by <a href="https://www.123rf.com/profile_ruslanshug">ruslanshug</a></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">In </span><i style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">How to Be Free</i><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> I argue that neurosis is the norm for humans. By this I mean that we have an insecurity about our own worth which makes us especially prone to negative emotions. As a result our ego - our conscious thinking self - is preoccupied with self-defence - we are ego-embattled. Our rigidly defensive personality can be conceived of as our character armour (to take a concept from the psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich). It is a protection against threats from without - the criticism of others - and within - any potentially disorienting emotion, such as fear, anger or grief, or impulse, such as sexual lust, which we keep repressed.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The more embattled the individual, the more important it is to maintain strict control over their own psychology, and this may be paralleled with an impulse to control the social world around them. So I expressed the view in my book that this need might explain oppressive rule, with those who are most insecure about their own worth feeling the need to rise to the top of the hierarchy and impose discipline on the masses. That may be a bit over-simplistic, as competent leadership can also bring people to the top of a hierarchy. Not all leaders are tyrants. It may, however, go some way to explaining the motivation behind tyranny. After all, the life of a tyrant can be a harsh and unpleasant one, and so a fear-based need may explain the surrendering of opportunities for care-free enjoyment.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">At the moment we are faced with a different kind of authoritarianism - the decentralised authoritarianism which arises from <a href="https://newdiscourses.com/">Critical Social Justice Theory</a> and its mob-enforced political correctness. It is no coincidence that the tertiary institutions where this new dogma was born also popularised the “safe space” and the “trigger warning”. Insecurity is the driving force behind this form of authoritarianism as well.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">In some ways this could be seen as a reverse of the phenomena which Critical Social Justice Theory is ostensibly aimed at addressing.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">While racism may have originated in tribal conflicts and sexism in friction resulting from the division of labour between nurturers and group protectors, it becomes ever more severe through a process of negative feedback as individuals become more and more insecure. These responses rigidified into armouring. The insecure individual dehumanises, silences and attacks those he has already exploited or mistreated in some way, because they are to him the outer mirror of that quiet voice inside which tells him he is doing wrong. Of course there can be other aspects of the phenomena arising from something like repressed sexuality which causes him to see members of another race as sexually dangerous or to see women’s sexuality as a threat.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The insecurity which arises from Critical Social Justice Theory is different, but it can lead to a similar kind of fear-based oppression.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">What we need to be aware of is the inability to tolerate difference, in this case difference of opinion. The secure individual may view another individual’s difference of opinion on some key question as a challenge, but they will not interpret it as a personal attack.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I think what has happened with Critical Social Justice Theory is that it provides a false explanatory structure for the world. A sound explanatory structure will have a healing effect on the traumatic wounds an individual may be carrying. It will make the individual more courageous and less resentful. It will give them a way of understanding any bad treatment they have experience in life as something which doesn’t reflect badly on them as an individual and direct them toward a positive strategy to addressing the injustices they find in the world around them now. It will make them more tolerant of differing opinions and better able to engage in productive discourse with those who hold them.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">But Critical Social Justice Theory is a poor explanatory structure which feeds on the wounds of the traumatised individual, encouraging feelings of resentment and directing them against anything, such as reason and evidence, which might undermine that explanatory structure. It encourages confirmation bias.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Just as racists and sexists are easily triggered, and thus have tried to maintain control over society in order to keep their fears or guilts at bay, so those who have a very poor explanatory structure as their only strategy to live with whatever wounds they are carrying - and the anxiety which arises from them - will end up trying to exercise control over any social manifestation of the realities this explanatory structure is in denial of.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I keep coming back to Biblical concepts, even though I’m not a believer in the supernatural.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">To me the Kingdom of Heaven is the society which would arise if our insecurity about our own worth were healed. It is the absence of the control impulse. Love is open, honest, spontaneous and generous communication. It is a process which brings us together naturally when we give up trying to control each other. Reason and evidence provide the grounding for this as they are the way in which we discover our collective reality.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Critical Social Justice Theory is an attack on love and reason. Thus I identify it with the Anti-Christ, that which falsely claims to be solving the world’s problems but actually is anti-The Kingdom of God.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">We are told, in the Bible, that there will be a final conflict before the arrival of the Kingdom of God, that there will be a Judgement Day and many will be thrown into The Lake of Fire.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">If you are caught up in a false explanatory structure which is your strategy for holding all your psychological pain at bay and you are telling yourself that you are the good guy fighting for a better world, it is going to be very painful to be confronted with the truth that you are on the side of destruction and have been deceived. All the pain rushes back in and with no defence. Perhaps that is what is meant by being thrown into The Lake of Fire.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">But if that is true, the good news is that it isn’t eternal. The Kingdom of Heaven still lies on the other side of that agony, because love is the sea that refuses no river. All that is needed is to stop fighting against it.</span></div>
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Aussiescribblerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04835275666734452167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819981045804508508.post-28805636187584249022020-06-22T02:23:00.000-07:002020-06-22T02:43:34.490-07:00The Anti-Christ May Come As a Social Justice Warrior<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYAT0Wa-_dcpTIx4aZer3DvE2I-TXsuj6WTWMzjRo2I4cK4i9S0jw_2yTCiUihVpkLkl1ZXEGeaBL8Mp6wv_bbwzrSiF1-QYlzL4169wm4aSrb03P98oCosjQJ62T2e_KCCUW109A00wNi/s1600/109467576_m.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1600" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYAT0Wa-_dcpTIx4aZer3DvE2I-TXsuj6WTWMzjRo2I4cK4i9S0jw_2yTCiUihVpkLkl1ZXEGeaBL8Mp6wv_bbwzrSiF1-QYlzL4169wm4aSrb03P98oCosjQJ62T2e_KCCUW109A00wNi/s640/109467576_m.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Drawing by <a href="https://www.123rf.com/profile_vladischern">vladischern</a></td></tr>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I’ve reached a crossroads where I realise that I need to take a stand and make my position clear.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I was telling a Christian friend yesterday that I’ve come to the conclusion that predictions of the rise of an “Anti-Christ” in the Bible refer to the domination of the world by a particular dogmatic cluster which has been described by various people as “critical theory”, “identity politics”, “postmodern Marxism” or “cultural Marxism”. The latter two terms may not be completely accurate, but what matters is what is being pointed to by them, not how accurate the name is.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">There are other people who are much better than me at dissecting and critiquing these ideas. I recommend <a href="https://www.jordanbpeterson.com/">Jordan Peterson</a> or <a href="https://bretweinstein.net/">Bret Weinstein</a>.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The reason I have come to identify these belief systems with the figure of the Anti-Christ is that they promise what Jesus promised - an end to the injustices of the world - but it is not what they deliver.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">For me, as an unbeliever, Jesus represents a principle of truth, love, non-judgement, forgiveness and generosity. Love - open, honest, spontaneous and generous communication - is the answer. But I believe that the dogma of identity politics, which has spread through our culture, brings lies, hatred, judgement, vindictiveness and selfishness, all the time claiming to fight those things.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand:)</b></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Then let them which be in Judaea flee into the mountains:</b></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Let him which is on the housetop not come down to take any thing out of his house:</b></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>Neither let him which is in the field return back to take his clothes.</b></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>And woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days!</b></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>But pray ye that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the sabbath day:</b></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.</b></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened.</b></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Matthew 15-22</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The “abomination of desolation” refers to offerings give to a false God. To me the significance of this expression is that we are coming to a time when “social justice” replaces love as our highest good. Justice is important, but, by its very nature, it can only be achieved by force and control. Love, the attitude which allows us to treat all our fellows as equal embodiments of the divine, leads us toward healing and a better world for all naturally.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The rise of the “Black Lives Matter” movement has made it all so clear. The cat is out of the bag. We have a movement which claims to be about saving black lives, but it calls for the defunding of the police. Since far more black lives are lost to violent crime than to police brutality, this means it is promising one thing and delivering the opposite. If you point this out you may be labelled a racist. This thought virus is powerful and deadly. The sensible approach to reducing police brutality would be to spend far more money on the police so that they can spend more time training and so that enough police can be employed that it is very easy to fire any police officer the first time they show signs of racism or a propensity to use excessive force. No matter how dissatisfied anyone is with the police, they should be able to realise that any power vacuum created by a reduction in the effectiveness of the police will be filled by violent criminals.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: black;">When I went onto Twitter today I found someone who appreciates my writing saying : “</span><span style="color: #2b343c;"><b>If you've ever heard me say that heteronormativity is a product of patriarchy, this is where I got the information from. The book is called "How to Be Free" by Joe Blow.</b>” The following pages of my book were attached to illustrate this.</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjG1a4p3O7Gom3BNSDptmS6JWI5zPLWiVWWVguBz1lZhTq5iyPmqskfecuoJCtJKc_rkc1QbWmXRUXwernRikl0FPoyDsUwQDSLMWCz2fEF7tyTaqaL2SA_k7TQplvrJHBGSean_1nDR8k7/s1600/Ea6oiXwWsAEtlQ2.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="1600" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjG1a4p3O7Gom3BNSDptmS6JWI5zPLWiVWWVguBz1lZhTq5iyPmqskfecuoJCtJKc_rkc1QbWmXRUXwernRikl0FPoyDsUwQDSLMWCz2fEF7tyTaqaL2SA_k7TQplvrJHBGSean_1nDR8k7/s640/Ea6oiXwWsAEtlQ2.jpeg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #2b343c; font-family: times, "times new roman", serif;">So here is my crisis. What do I do when I find my writing being associated with that which I identify as the Anti-Christ?</span></div>
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<span style="color: #2b343c; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I don’t blame anyone for making this connection. I talk about some of the same things that are talked about in critical theory. I talk about the psychological basis for patriarchy and fear of homosexual desire. But I don’t support calls to “smash the patriarchy” as those in the grip of identity politics sometimes do. I talk of patriarchy mainly in the past tense, because our society no longer excludes women from positions of power.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #2b343c;">What about “heteronormativity”? It is defined as <b>“</b></span><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><b>the belief that heterosexuality, predicated on the gender binary, is the norm or default sexual orientation. It assumes that sexual and marital relations are most fitting between people of opposite sex.”</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I don’t really disagree with that. Gender <i>is</i> binary. Biologically there is male and female. There are psychological characteristics which we identify as masculine or feminine. There isn’t some third gender with which we identify characteristics. Of course there are men who exhibit more feminine characteristics and women who exhibit more masculine characteristics, and there some people who have about an even mix. It is like colour. There are only three primary colours. All the other colours are mixtures of those. All gender identities are mixtures of the masculine and the feminine. And heterosexuality is the statistical norm, and heterosexual families are the organisation best suited to producing healthy children - all other things being equal.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">None of that is to say that we should idealistically insist on that which may be the statistical norm. There are many ways of doing things effectively in the world.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">In my book I posit that bisexuality is the underlying form of sexuality. I arrived at this conclusion as a result of what I learned about our close primate relatives - the bonobos - who engage in erotic exchanges irrespective of gender. Also because we have the biological capacity to share erotic physical pleasure with others irrespective of gender. And because many heterosexuals are uncomfortable with homosexuality, which implies, to me, that there is a contrary desire for it buried beneath the public face. All of this is just speculation on my part.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Another incident which has focused this problem in my mind has been the treatment of J. K. Rowling over her discussion of transsexuality. I read her <a href="https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/j-k-rowling-writes-about-her-reasons-for-speaking-out-on-sex-and-gender-issues/">blog post on the topic</a>, which I found to be remarkably sensible, well-informed, open-minded and compassionate. Yet, she has been roundly attacked. This tells me that we are at a very dark time. To speak the truth in a way which challenges this pervasive dogma is dangerous, but necessary.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Some may think me paranoid to use concepts like thought virus or even demonic possession to depict what is happening, but I think it helps to visualise how it works - the way that it has a life of its own, which operates through people without them being aware of what is happening to them.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I’ve said that idealism is the root of all evil and is a thought virus. Identity politics (lets stick with that term) is the most dangerous form of idealism which has ever existed, because it has spread most broadly to the global community. Religious groups have often done terrible things because of an idealistic insistence on imposing their dogma on others. And communists and fascists have slaughtered millions as a result of <i>their</i> idealistic dogma. If the current lie can be exposed in time, it may not come to that. But I have no doubt that, if not exposed as the lie that it is, this current dogma will lead to even worse horrors and, in fact, the end the human race.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">So, there, I’ve explained where I stand. If anyone wants to quote my writings as a way of supporting this dogma, they are welcome to. That is their business, not mine. From the very beginning I’ve renounced what I call “the control strategy”. I take no ownership of my ideas. They are offered to be used as the person receiving them sees fit. To my mind this is how I differentiate myself from what I call “the Anti-Christ”. You will see those who are in “his” thrall trying to control others expression through intimidation or censorship.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I am, and have always been, on the side of freedom and love.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>"Ye shall know them by their fruits."</b> Matthew 7:16</span></div>
Aussiescribblerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04835275666734452167noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819981045804508508.post-54031209296506258672020-06-13T22:34:00.000-07:002020-06-13T22:35:26.261-07:00Has the World Gone Mad? : A Comparison With My Own Experience of Insanity<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgehZY7F-zXxt8JNbkjmr1A5YvA88Lfyoxhzm4TXhOV_xd-k0KOviwScaXykbGXT4dmwE3dyDTfgpG67BtioPeoq7pldku9sjdLLkagTdjoFAzl60ccs6x-QeeZPoW48IDbEGqfADFTfQTn/s1600/55483938_m.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="1600" height="383" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgehZY7F-zXxt8JNbkjmr1A5YvA88Lfyoxhzm4TXhOV_xd-k0KOviwScaXykbGXT4dmwE3dyDTfgpG67BtioPeoq7pldku9sjdLLkagTdjoFAzl60ccs6x-QeeZPoW48IDbEGqfADFTfQTn/s640/55483938_m.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo by <a href="https://www.123rf.com/profile_grechka">grechka</a></td></tr>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">How often do we ask ourselves : “Has the world gone mad?”</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I wonder if there is something to be learned about some forms of social behaviour that we see in the world around us from my personal experience of mental breakdown.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">First an irreconcilable conflict became apparent within the conceptual framework through which I was living my life. Order broke down.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Much that had been repressed by that, now shattered, conceptual framework, came to the surface.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Desperate for escape, my mind built utopian dreams out of the wreckage. They had to be true, because the alternative was unthinkable. But they never could persist, because they were mad fantasies that had no basis in the ground of real life.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">As the fantasies evaporated I was left in the barren desert of despair. No wonder I had clung so desperately to the illusions. Here I was confronted with personal responsibility in its most extreme form. What if all the problems of the world were somehow my fault? This was a contrary form of madness, but perhaps a doorway to sanity.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Perhaps this terrible doorway is there within all of us. The most terrible place we never want to go.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Human society is a system playing itself out - action and reaction, in an intricately woven web. Information, knowledge, wisdom.. can bring some order to the system by bringing commonalities to the thought processes of individuals or communities and integrating them with practical realities they face, allowing their problem-solving actions to bear fruit. Lies, on the other hand, whether we tell them to ourselves or to each other, sow disorder in the system, leading to conflict and, very often, violence.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Chaos theory tells us that the most infinitesimal changes in a system will, over a long enough time period, change the entire system. So change in any of us, could be the change which determines the difference between triumph and disaster for the human race as a whole. That terrible doorway is that realisation.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">That doesn’t mean we know what to do. And self-consciousness about our own actions tends to impede our effectiveness at even helping ourselves. Ultimately, we have to somehow open up and surrender to some kind of intuitive process. That is what lies on the other side of the terrible doorway - the awareness that we can’t force improvement in the social system, but that we can be a conduit for something helpful to flow into that system and help to manifest the orderliness which will benefit all.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">When we see our fellows caught up in mad frantic utopian dreams or mob behaviour or judgement of others, perhaps we can see behind their behaviour a fear of that desert of despair and that terrible doorway that lies there. But that realm is only terrible if we go there alone, unguided and without hope.</span></div>
Aussiescribblerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04835275666734452167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819981045804508508.post-88468125772529453582020-06-07T23:33:00.000-07:002020-06-07T23:40:18.985-07:00Ask And Ye Shall Receive?<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVieDYPYoqQB-_frQD1Pysfiiv_skgcvvi90uaND4wNYFMeLTHnwiMXnrJBbtPGlRt81X_evtZ0XRaUMbmHHbMkLjhnwkVdkjWXwgQHE4hXcsWfh0GsoB_0AH-fNL-OdsQCFticWmYWZFP/s1600/97229054_m.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1182" data-original-width="1600" height="472" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVieDYPYoqQB-_frQD1Pysfiiv_skgcvvi90uaND4wNYFMeLTHnwiMXnrJBbtPGlRt81X_evtZ0XRaUMbmHHbMkLjhnwkVdkjWXwgQHE4hXcsWfh0GsoB_0AH-fNL-OdsQCFticWmYWZFP/s640/97229054_m.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo by <a href="https://www.123rf.com/profile_ipopba">Pop Nukoonrat</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">"<i>Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.</i>” Matthew 7:7</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I often find passages from the gospels a great stimulus to exploratory thinking. I’m not a believer. It seems to me that, to be a believer, is to think that we know what something means. The fact that I may look for meaning in a passage of text, first of all requires a degree of mystery. It is also an experiment. I don’t intend to try, as one might by researching context and language, to make a case for some kind of objective interpretation. I’m treating the passage as if it were a seed that I’m planting in my imagination to see what will grow there. I can’t make any claim for the healthiness of any plant that this experiment produces. I may be gardening in contaminated soil.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The above passage is a mysterious one. No doubt many who thought their faith was strong have asked for things they didn’t receive.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The passage guarantees that the asker will receive and the seeker will find. This sounds a bit like the theme of a Disney cartoon feature - “Don’t let go of your dreams and eventually they will come true.” It may be true that those who give up their dream are unlikely to achieve it, but there are plenty of people who hung onto a dream and came to a sticky end or found themselves mired in debt.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">For the time being anyway lets ignore the guarantee. Maybe the guarantee comes back in if we understand the meaning of the passage. Maybe if we do it right, it’s bound to work, but I feel more comfortable being skeptical about that at this stage.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">There are three things that it is suggested that we do : ask, seek and knock.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Ask</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">When we ask for something we describe what it is that we want or at least give it a name.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Unless we are asking for something trivial, we are most likely also admitting an insufficiency in our own ability to supply it.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">What do we want? We might make like a beauty pageant contestant and say “World Peace.” But what exactly do we mean by “world peace”? What would it look like? How would a peaceful world need to function in order to maintain that state. What are the barriers which stand between us and it which we need to ask to be removed? The more specifically we can describe what we want, the better chance we have of that description acting as a blueprint that could draw us and others toward it as a reality.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">So whether we get what we want can depend on the quality of our asking. If we ask for something which others want as well and in a way which inspires them to action then our wish may be granted.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The creative principle which we see in operation around us - both in nature and in culture - works through the formation of new wholes. Ecosystems are wholes in which the individual organisms interrelate in a way which not only keeps each species alive, but has allowed for increasing complexity both in the system and its most advanced members. In society, individuals come together in families to produce and raise offspring and individuals come together also to form organisations which engage in creative endeavours, such as producing increasingly powerful forms of technology. Individuals create by bringing parts together to form new wholes, for example I’m creating this blog post by bringing together a new arrangement of words.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">One need not have a supernatural concept of God to see that bringing some new thing or new arrangement of things into being means opening up to this creative principle - looking outside ourselves, as well as beneath the surface of our inner self, perhaps - seeking the connections which are the very essence of creation.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Our pride may stand as a barrier to receiving the blessing we seek from the creative principle. Maybe we think we already know. Maybe we think we can already do. But if we get down on our knees and admit that we don’t know and we can’t do, then maybe we will be prepared to see a realisable potential we had been missing.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Seek</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Seeking is all about looking. It is about paying attention.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Seeking means first admitting that something might exist. We can’t afford to be too cynical.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Only if we pay attention to the people around us and to the systems - natural, social and technological - of which we are a part, will we see the opportunities - the potential new connections - through which what we seek can come to pass.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">If we get too caught up in our own personal schemes we lose sight of the power that we can have through our appreciation of the talents of others. Many a talent lies dormant because nobody has called upon it.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Knock</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">A knock is a determined action intended to call forth a response.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">If we want something we need to take some kind of action. We need to initiate it, while at the same time remembering that there is much that we don’t know and much that we can’t do.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">We might take action to share our vision. We might ask people what they need. It might involve literally knocking on doors.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">***</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">If I can ask for anything, why not ask for the “Kingdom of Heaven”.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">What does this phrase mean to me?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">This is a potential which exists within us and within the world to manifest a community characterised by loving fellowship.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Thus, “…your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven…”, to me, means the realisation in the material world (“on earth”) of the matrix (“kingdom”) of love (“God”) which otherwise only exists in the world of positive potential (“heaven”).</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Don’t we want to experience the ultimate pleasure and save ourselves from suffering?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The ultimate pleasure is that of loving connection with others or with the world around us in which we lose ourselves in the experience of being part of something larger. Maximising our ability to savour this pleasure requires a harmonious social environment and a harmonious relationship to the natural environment. Within the context of such a loving community, it would be much easier for us to work together to solve the practical problems which face us.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">What stands between us and this potential loving community?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Egotism, greed, prejudice, aggression, despair, resentment… There are so many psychological barriers. There is so much in us which can make us enemies and thus lock us all out of “Heaven”.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Let’s imagine a tyrant who inflicts terrible suffering on his people. He is a fortress made of beliefs and behaviours which hold fear and guilt at bay. Can he acknowledge the common humanity of those he oppresses? No. Because to do so would be to confront his own guilt at having treated other humans so appallingly. Can he take his sword away from their throat? No. Because he fears they will rise up and exact their revenge. He really has no freedom of mind or freedom of behaviour. He is a reflexive pattern of oppression within which the loving being he was when he was born is imprisoned.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">This is the extreme, but there is something of that tyrant in all of us. We have our rigid defensive beliefs and our fears which push people away.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The Kingdom is the state of freedom. Imprisonment is what keeps us from that kingdom. We are troubled by other’s selfishness, egotism, prejudice, violence. But these are their prisons. Each of us has our prison which is the source of our suffering and may contribute to the suffering of others. Our enemy is the jailer and not his victim.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">So what do I ask for?</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I ask not for justice, for justice is something which must be imposed. Instead I ask for the key which unlocks the prisons of the mind of which the injustices of the world are the outward expression.</span></span></div>
Aussiescribblerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04835275666734452167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819981045804508508.post-80026102159118507102020-06-06T22:36:00.000-07:002020-06-06T22:38:02.810-07:00How to Be Free - The Audiobook<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHelo4BGh1bbyb5ARoyDbXDXaEuOI7EPr_lXLZBi5M8UIEAO_K1gP1ZVfeeDF2-ql9ZvF4dSnPtKeD1XkLD-NEbMfZb8ZKdxQtYLgNL0YdJlX53Vwyxd1wownkasHIwK1Ia_tJ7ylLs-Z3/s1600/How+to+Be+Free+audio+book+cover.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1600" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHelo4BGh1bbyb5ARoyDbXDXaEuOI7EPr_lXLZBi5M8UIEAO_K1gP1ZVfeeDF2-ql9ZvF4dSnPtKeD1XkLD-NEbMfZb8ZKdxQtYLgNL0YdJlX53Vwyxd1wownkasHIwK1Ia_tJ7ylLs-Z3/s640/How+to+Be+Free+audio+book+cover.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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<i>How to Be Free</i> has been available as an audiobook for several months now. It is available on the following platforms :<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKpAEzx-oRrYKXRDxKtHrhXNjK_w39sm8x4-wgBOYZB0ua39Fzr-sIM3i0zrzPl9QJBgzBroi3aNrFbCYaS4Gk91bQhjg8hAFXXF8Ax0j-cYPod96E1JCp4_atzHb5nLGz2MiO-iC98LzD/s1600/Distributors.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1017" data-original-width="1008" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKpAEzx-oRrYKXRDxKtHrhXNjK_w39sm8x4-wgBOYZB0ua39Fzr-sIM3i0zrzPl9QJBgzBroi3aNrFbCYaS4Gk91bQhjg8hAFXXF8Ax0j-cYPod96E1JCp4_atzHb5nLGz2MiO-iC98LzD/s640/Distributors.jpeg" width="634" /></a></div>
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It is proving particularly popular on Apple iTunes and <a href="https://play.google.com/store/audiobooks/details/Joe_Blow_How_to_Be_Free?id=AQAAAEBs0V2RIM">Google Play</a>.<br />
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My original idea was to narrate an audiobook version myself. This proved difficult, partly because I'm very self-conscious as a reader and partly because I haven't the skill or equipment to produce a high class recording.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/GBDaPaFSgk8/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/GBDaPaFSgk8?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
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<i>My self-consciousness on full display.</i></div>
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One day I was Googling myself - as one does - and found that an <a href="https://www.acx.com/narrator?p=A39JGIL89I1SE4">audiobook narrator</a> used a quote from my book as one of his samples.<br />
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This got me thinking seriously about hiring professionals to create an audiobook for me.<br />
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First I had to find a company which would do the job for someone like myself who doesn't have a U.S. Tax File number. After a bit of a search, I settled on <a href="https://findawayvoices.com/">Findaway Voices</a>. They provide a brilliant service and made it very easy for me. I was provided with some samples by different narrators and chose <a href="http://www.derekbotten.com/">Derek Botten</a>. He was easy to work with and I'm very happy with the way he read my book.<br />
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My initial assumption was that an audiobook version, like the print version, would be something I would have to charge for. Whether I would ever recoup the money I invested in having it created was another question. It surprised me to find that many platforms would allow me to set the price of the audiobook at $0.00. This allows me to continue the approach I've had with the ebook, even though the cost to myself has been much greater. What interests me is not making money but reaching a large audience.<br />
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Some services do insist on a charge, most notably <a href="https://www.audible.com.au/pd/How-to-Be-Free-Audiobook/B0874F6ZHN?qid=1591507542&sr=1-1&ref=a_search_c3_lProduct_1_1&pf_rd_p=771c6463-05d7-4981-9b47-920dc34a70f1&pf_rd_r=XZCFPWPPN3NZWQCGBEPH">Audible</a>. (<i>That's the link to the book on the Australian Audible site.</i>) So if you want to help me to recoup some of my investment and you are an Audible user, you could buy the book from there.) As of today 7/06/2020, my total income from the audiobook has been $7 U.S. But, for me, the 5 star reviews which indicate that the book has been a help to people are the true treasure.<br />
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<br />Aussiescribblerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04835275666734452167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819981045804508508.post-71514177955462625932019-11-24T22:39:00.000-08:002019-11-24T22:44:55.072-08:00The Intoxicating Power of Anger<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhx6VAMI8P-F-Z6qacZm_zyfTHl8c3fw2YBNdChy2EZVRR0279sezfn-DhRReS4m-SWMerifNizlhv_P7OAwC50JBd00ieNwKHq1uwZC5C0Yd6xCKd3sbF0PmdhIn1e6PcNN4pXOj8JvWi1/s1600/33887330_m.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1600" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhx6VAMI8P-F-Z6qacZm_zyfTHl8c3fw2YBNdChy2EZVRR0279sezfn-DhRReS4m-SWMerifNizlhv_P7OAwC50JBd00ieNwKHq1uwZC5C0Yd6xCKd3sbF0PmdhIn1e6PcNN4pXOj8JvWi1/s640/33887330_m.jpg" width="640" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Illustration by <a href="https://www.123rf.com/profile_tigatelu">Teguh Mujiono</a></span></td></tr>
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<span style="color: #1c1e21; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Greta Thunberg has attracted a massive amount of attention. Some have pointed out that individuals who are actually coming up with practical solutions or are taking personal action to address problems get far less attention than someone who expresses anger at those who are intransigent on a problem.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1c1e21; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Why is our attention attracted more powerfully to a locus of anger than to a locus of solution or inspiration?</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1c1e21; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">It is sometimes necessary to do or say things which will make others angry. And anger is an appropriate response to many things - something that alerts us to the fact that there is a problem to be solved - whether that be a problem in the world or a problem within our own psyche.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1c1e21; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">It's a healthy thing to accept our anger, unconditionally, as it is to accept all of our emotions. To act on anger directly is not healthy. If we don't use our reason to come up with a workable solution to the problem it represents we will find ourselves in strife and we might cause great destruction.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1c1e21; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">But if we want a better life for ourselves and others, solutions are what we need to focus on. If loci of anger interfere too much with our ability to do this then we are not going to do well.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1c1e21; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The Thunberg phenomena gives a good example of how the locus of anger works. To analyse it as such is not to say that it is not, in some sense, a necessary or unavoidable thing. Historically, protest has had its place in the necessary recalibration of society as circumstances change. But what I'm concerned with here is the psychology of interest attraction.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1c1e21; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Thunberg gives people an opportunity to feel angry. Those who identify with her can feel angry at the fossil fuel industry and intransigent governments. Others can feel angry at Thunberg herself (viewing her as a whiny privileged virtue signaller), or at her activist parents, or at those who lioniser her. There is no doubt that she is an angry locus for the anger of many.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4qm5YUcM55ZrtYoV0QXaTCJ1gI2oUYwkLLJN0Pw-1kcUFrcK2gZimHQLuuMm9XoIV1JXHvC1qg3x7ipTFJRGep3VfWXF61YnN7GFlm04l4KPRzQnr5yCbSBL_If88YU7TlTgH0tnZYn_0/s1600/126455389_m.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4qm5YUcM55ZrtYoV0QXaTCJ1gI2oUYwkLLJN0Pw-1kcUFrcK2gZimHQLuuMm9XoIV1JXHvC1qg3x7ipTFJRGep3VfWXF61YnN7GFlm04l4KPRzQnr5yCbSBL_If88YU7TlTgH0tnZYn_0/s640/126455389_m.jpg" width="640" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 12px;">STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN - MARCH 22, 2019: Greta Thunberg climate activist demonstrating on Fridays<br />Photo by <a href="https://www.123rf.com/profile_livoeian">Liv Oeian</a>.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="color: #1c1e21;">Anger can be very appealing as a form of escapism. We all make mistakes and most of us are prone to feelings of insecurity about our own worth - to feelings of guilt. The beauty of anger is that it focuses our attention away from ourselves. It's someone else's fault. For the moment, anyway, we are not the ones who need to make a change to ameliorate a problem.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1c1e21; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">In this way, anger is a like a drug, an intoxicant. And we can see how the professional media and social media are awash with this drug.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1c1e21; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">What have we come to when some people seriously say that they support a political leader because the people they hate hate that leader so much?</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1c1e21; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">As William Blake put it, in <i><a href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Everlasting_Gospel_(complete)">The Everlasting Gospel</a></i> : <b>"What is the accusation of sin, But moral virtues' deadly gin?"</b> Are we not drunk on angry accusations of other's sins? Anything to forget our own.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1c1e21; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">What this leads to is polarisation. Solutions to our problems require that we find some way to come together. How do we come together after calling each other "fascists" or "baby killers" or whatever?</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1c1e21; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">If an addiction to anger arises from our propensity to feel guilt, i.e. compromised self-acceptance, then cultivating unconditional self-acceptance is how we break our addiction to anger. We will still recognise and respond effectively to unacceptable behaviour from others, but we won't be drawn away from focusing on practical solutions or forming bonds with others, even where we may have different beliefs on key issues.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Illustration by <a href="https://www.123rf.com/profile_lightwise">lightwise</a>.</span></td></tr>
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Aussiescribblerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04835275666734452167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819981045804508508.post-79248173932361420902019-11-19T23:52:00.000-08:002019-11-22T02:30:05.986-08:00BOOK REVIEW : Atheism : The Dumbest Religion on Earth by Monk E. Mind<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #181818;">The first thing you should know about this book is that it was not written by a religious believer. We have probably all heard someone who identifies as a Christian claiming that atheism is really just another religion. And those whose worldview is founded on the concept that their religious belief is wisdom might well judge atheists to be foolish. So when you see a book with this title, the natural expectation is that it will be the work of a religious person who has become sick of atheists labelling them as the dupe of an irrational belief system and is indulging in an “I know you are but what am I?” comeback.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #181818;">What we have here is an ex-atheist - he says he is countering arguments he himself used to make. For him, God is not a matter for belief or disbelief. Because belief and disbelief are for matters which can’t be definitively settled.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #181818;">It’s all about semantics for Monk E. Mind.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #181818;">All words he says refer to either objects or concepts. Objects have shape. Concepts describe the relationship between objects. To exist is to be an object with a location. Only objects exist. The universe and space are concepts, therefore they don’t exist. God would only refer to something existing if that something had a shape and a location.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #181818;">The name Monk E. Mind seems appropriate for the author of this book as his authorial voice suggests nothing so much as a noisy little primate scampering around pulling mocking faces and hurling his faeces at anyone who comes close. His faeces in this case being his pseudo-reasoning and pedantry.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #181818;">Monk E. Mind was also the author of a book called </span><span style="color: #181818;"><i>Rope Hypothesis and Thread Theory</i></span><span style="color: #181818;">. The Rope Hypothesis is a physics model proposed by an engineer named Bill Gaede, who first came to public attention as an industrial spy for the Cubans. When I did a bit of reading and watched him on YouTube, I found that his philosophy is the same as that presented by Monk E. Mind in this book. Is Monk E. Mind a pseudonym for Gaede, or for a disciple of his? I don’t know. Gaede used his own name for his magnum opus </span><span style="color: #181818;"><i>Why God Doesn't Exist</i></span><span style="color: #181818;">.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #181818; font-family: times, "times new roman", serif;">One of the key qualities needed by anyone who wishes to pursue a deeper understanding of any subject is humility. Boldness can be very useful for breaking free of unhelpful patterns of thought, but only the individual who has humility will be on the look out for their own errors and learn from them. Monk E. Mind is so full of the idea that his vision is superior - dancing and crowing about how remarkably stupid scientists are for believing in things like black holes - that he can’t see the obvious fallacies on which his arguments are based.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #181818;">“</span><span style="color: #181818;"><b>People that do not define are using word magic,”</b></span><span style="color: #181818;"> </span><span style="color: #181818;">he says. But what about those who make up their own definitions? Monk E. Mind has built a house of cards out of his own personal definitions for words.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #181818;">Clear effective written communication requires that the writer and the reader agree on the definitions of the words being used. Dictionaries are there to help us to get on the same page. There is a kind of democracy about dictionaries in that it is in the best interest of the lexicographer to match what is meant by the majority of individuals when articulating a definition. People kicking up a fuss because they feel a word has not been defined in the way in which they intend it would hurt the reputation and sales of the dictionary.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #181818;">If someone comes up with their own personal definition which doesn’t appear in any dictionary then the onus is on that definition to have, for us, an obvious advantage over the definitions used by as many as 1.5 billion other individuals (if we are communicating in English).</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #181818;">The argument Monk E. Mind presents rests entirely on his own definitions for words.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #181818;">“</span><span style="color: #181818;"><b>Object : that which has shape.”</b></span><br /><br /><span style="color: #181818;">An ideal triangle doesn’t exist, but, by definition, it has shape. It’s a triangle. Shape is all it has.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #181818;">Google’s definition is “a material thing that can be seen and touched.”</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #181818;">Of course you could object that objects can’t be seen by a blind man or that an object on the surface of the moon can’t be touched because it is too far away. But that would be silly, and lets not be silly.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #181818;">“</span><span style="color: #181818;"><b>Concept : the relation between objects”</b></span><br /><br /><span style="color: #181818;">A concept isn’t necessarily a relation between objects. It can an relation between other concepts. A mathematical formula is a concept which is a relation between numbers. Numbers are concepts.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #181818;">Google’s definition is “an abstract idea”.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #181818;">So how do they define “abstract”? “(E)xisting in thought or as an idea but not having physical or concrete existence.”</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #181818;">So theories about gravity are abstract, but gravity itself is physical (it effects the movement of physical objects.) According to Monk E. Mind’s definition, gravity itself would be a concept presumably.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #181818;">“</span><span style="color: #181818;"><b>Exist : object with location; something somewhere; physically present.”</b></span><br /><br /><span style="color: #181818;">So relationships between objects don’t exist? The planets exist, but the solar system doesn’t?</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #181818;">Google say that to exist is to “have objective reality or being”.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #181818;">They define “objective” as “not dependent on the mind for existence; actual.”</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #181818;">Now remember Monk E. Mind is saying that only objects can exist and that objects are what have shape. Google allows the solar system to exist, because it isn’t dependent on the mind, even though it is not an object but a relationship between objects.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #181818;">Gravity is not an object, but does it depend on the mind for its existence? If you jump off of a tall building you will splatter on the pavement whether you believe you will or not.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #181818;">Most of us use the term “exist” to refer to relationships as well as objects. For us laws exist, even though they may have originated in the human mind. They exist because they can have consequences on our actions and the actions of others.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #181818;">And most concepts of a monotheistic God can be understood as a universal system of law. For a pantheist like myself these are natural laws potentially accessible to science. To religious individuals God’s law may be moral in nature. But unless someone worships something like a golden calf, one’s God is a relationship rather than an object.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #181818;">Bringing it closer to home - are you an object or a relationship? The human body has a border, but we are not simply our body. We are the whole process which animates that body. In the same way to speak of God is to speak of the whole process which animates the universe.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #181818;">One may have the view that the universe has no such coherent process, and even if we do have the view that it does, we may disagree greatly on the nature of that process, especially the degree to which it resembles a human personality. I don’t see an insistence that such a process doesn’t exist because it isn’t an object doing anything to silence debate on this topic.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #181818;">“</span><span style="color: #181818;"><b>Because matter and motion are eternal, there was no first cause to motion or creation of matter, therefore no Creators are possible!”</b></span><br /><br /><span style="color: #181818;">Would Monk E. Mind tell a painter… a sculptor… an engineer… an architect… a movie maker… that creation is impossible? They know that they don’t create their own raw materials, but creation is the arrangement of raw materials into a new and meaningful whole.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #181818;">Mr. Mind claims that matter can’t be created. I’m not particularly well-informed on science, but I do remember being taught at school that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. We were also taught that matter is made out of energy and can break down to release that energy. So it makes sense to say that energy can’t be created, but if it changes and can have the form of elements which react with each other to form different kinds of matter and might lead to forms of matter which are alive and eventually living forms which are intelligent, then it seems to me that creation is something that can take place. Something more complex and meaningful can arise from something pre-existing. We see it in our own culture when individuals come together to form an organisation which is, in some way, more than the sum of themselves as parts. For creation to be the theme of life does not necessarily require that it ever had a beginning. One might believe in God as the eternal creative theme of a universe which has always existed.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #181818;">The author claims that matter can’t be created. Can he prove it? And, if he can’t prove it, why should we not simply ignore his argument?</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #181818;">Ah, but science is not about proof, he insists. It is about explanation only.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #181818;">“</span><span style="color: #181818;"><b>science: rational explanations for reality”</b></span><br /><br /><span style="color: #181818;">But how do we arrive at these rational explanations?</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #181818;">Google defines science as “the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.”</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #181818;">So that definition tells us how we can arrive at our rational explanation - “through observation and experiment”.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #181818;">Monk E. Mind says :</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #181818;">“…</span><span style="color: #181818;"><b>you need to get over…the idea of facts, truth, proof and evidence. Reality is having none of it. These things are founded on the limited sensory system and the beliefs of man. They are opinions. Facts are the opinions from authority. What is true for you may not be true for your neighbor. Proof, which is based on evidence (observation), at best confirms what the person already believes.”</b></span><br /><br /><span style="color: #181818;">Only objects exist, according to the author. So love, energy, waves, circles, squares, magnetic fields, motion, the universe, numbers and the mind don’t exist, but rocks do. But on what basis does he make the claim that rocks exist if he doesn’t recognise facts, truth, proof or evidence (observation)? He can see them and feel them, but that is nothing but unreliable observation. And if truth is a useless concept, what, in his view, differentiates his ideas from those of others he rejects?</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #181818;">So he wants us to arrive at our goal - “rational explanations” - but rejects the method by which we are trying to get there. Maybe his rational explanations are going to come to him by divine revelation.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #181818;">One fallacious form of argument is the argument from authority. That an idea is expressed by a person who has some form of social acknowledgement of expertise in an area doesn’t, in itself, make the idea more worthy of credence. It has to work in and of itself, regardless of the source.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #181818;">The author says that there are no authorities, and challenges the reader to reject his explanations because he is </span><span style="color: #181818;">“</span><span style="color: #181818;"><b>a Wal-Mart greeter”</b></span><span style="color: #181818;"> </span><span style="color: #181818;">who </span><span style="color: #181818;">“</span><span style="color: #181818;"><b>learned this from a shoe shine boy.”</b></span><span style="color: #181818;">That would be all well and good if his explanations were sound and illuminating, but we need to be just as rigorous with the thinking of a Wal-Mart greeter as we would with someone like Richard Dawkins. If his new definitions of words are not useful, his lack of academic credentials won’t make them so.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #181818;">“</span><span style="color: #181818;"><b>Any one person with the willingness to do so has the ability to learn anything that another human can learn.”</b></span><span style="color: #181818;">The problem is that learning requires time and access to information. The ideas about physics expressed by someone with a PhD. in the subject may not be completely reliable, because humans are fallible and science is a process of elimination of unsatisfactory explanations, but the advantage they have over the average Wal-Mart greeter is that the time they have been able to devote to their study is not severely limited by the time requirements of supporting themselves with a low paying job, and they have been able to engage in discourse with others knowledgeable in the field. They may also have had the chance to do experiments. Having said that, if the Wal-Mart greeter can express something that makes the physicist slap his head and cry “How could I have missed something so obvious?!?” of course we will pay attention.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #181818;">Let’s get to the title of the book. On what basis does Monk E. Mind come to the conclusion that atheism is a religion? Unsurprisingly, he starts by making up his own definition for the word “religion”.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #181818;">“</span><span style="color: #181818;"><b>religion: irrational explanations for reality”</b></span><br /><br /><span style="color: #181818;">What do we mean by “explanations”? According to Google, an explanation is “a statement or account that makes something clear.”</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #181818;">Given how mystical many religions are and the degree to which their dogma, rather than making things clear, tends to need its own explanation, this hardly seems a satisfactory definition.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #181818;">Google gives us : “the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods”.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #181818;">Sounds more like the religions I’ve come in contact with.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #181818;">Ah, but how to troll the atheists without finding some dishonest way to equate them with that which they reject?</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #181818;">To demonstrate his contention that atheism is a religion he points to a Supreme Court judgement and a dictionary definition. This indicates that some people consider it a religion, but unless they can produce a reason why they consider it a religion which is based on a definition on which we can all agree, this is an empty argument from authority. The soundest argument he has here perhaps is that official forms often have a question about the person’s religion which give one option “Atheism” and another option “No Religion.” The existence of such forms proves nothing, but if someone who identifies as an atheist ticks the “Atheism” box rather than the “No Religion” box, one could reasonably ask why they are accomodating the false listing of atheism as a religion when they have the option of having nothing to do with this error by simply ticking “No Religion.” This is a small point.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #181818;">Now I’ll indulge in a little armchair psychoanalysis. Monk E. Mind is contemptuous of atheists, who he presents as hypocrites for criticising others for having a faith-based belief system when that is what they have themselves. He lumps atheists together and he lumps scientists together, claiming that they believe in magic. The individual in a state of severe denial often projects the disowned aspect of their own psyche onto the world around them, showing a diminished acknowledgement of differences between individuals within the groups onto which they are projecting. Monk E. Mind is arguing that we should seek easily visualisable explanations for what happens in the world around us and that we not bother to test these explanations experimentally. That is what religious people did in a pre-scientific era. Perhaps his exasperation with others is a projection of his subconscious fear that his game of semantics may be “the dumbest religion on Earth.”</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #181818;">I don’t think we need to trouble ourselves much with this book. It is full of ideas. Ideas are not objects. Ideas are concepts. Only objects exist. Concepts don’t exist. There’s nothing to see here.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #181818;"><i>[This review has been heavily revised as a result of feedback from the author.]</i></span></span></div>
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Aussiescribblerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04835275666734452167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819981045804508508.post-87087956070974073592019-10-23T19:20:00.000-07:002019-10-23T19:30:33.423-07:00Judgement and Parental Guilt<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">There is a Christian principle “Judge not that thou be not judged.” Some people no doubt believe that the usefulness of this advice hinges on a belief in God. After all, is it not God who would judge us?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I interpret it differently. If we have a framework of judgement, then we will subject ourselves to that framework of judgement whether we like it or not.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I was thinking about this today as a result of a controversy which has erupted about a cartoon by the controversial Australian cartoonist Michael Leunig.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The cartoon depicts a baby falling out of its pram unnoticed by his young mother because she is too busy looking at Instagram on her phone.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">This is a pretty extreme situation. There is no need for anyone to identify with this mother simply because they are a mother with a mobile phone themselves. It is not as if the cartoon is about a baby in a crib looking up accusingly at his mother on her phone. It depicts extreme social media addiction and neglect. If you don’t have a serious social media addiction and you are not a neglectful parent, then it isn’t about you.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">But the cartoon has made a lot of people very defensive.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Controversial feminist Clementine Ford responded :</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b><a href="https://www.perthnow.com.au/lifestyle/parenting/clementine-ford-slams-michael-leunig-for-comic-criticising-young-mums-ng-b881361746z">“Hey Leunig, you f**king gronk. I bet you never spent hours walking babies around in a pram, feeling isolated and alone and terrified. After my bub was born, I walked him around and around for hours in the pram or the carrier trying to get him to sleep. I spent much of that time on my phone. You know why? Because I was f**king WORKING. Sometimes I was tweeting sh*t or scrolling Instagram... and sometimes I was just looking for anything to distract me from the internal screaming about this incredibly traumatic physical and emotional thing I had been through. If a woman is on her phone and pushing a pram, it's nothing to do with you. Keep your f**king bullshit cartoon nonsense to yourself, you f**king judgmental prick.”</a></b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Clearly the cartoon touched a raw nerve. That’s what it was meant to do. If Ford didn’t feel guilty, she wouldn’t respond in that way. But it isn’t a judgemental cartoon. If judgement comes, it comes only from the conscience of the viewer. The cartoon is using imagination to suggest what an infant’s eye view of the world might be. An infant doesn’t know if you are on your mobile phone for work or sharing pictures of him, he only knows that your attention is elsewhere. Leunig is depicting something which already exists in our subconscious, so it is no good shooting the messenger.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Parental guilt is a major problem which exists with or without Leunig’s cartoons. What makes it so insidious is that it is a negative feedback phenomena. The more guilty a parent feels the more they turn inward or need distraction and ego-reinforcement to deal with the pain, and thus the less available they are for their children, which leads to more guilt.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">There is also a feedback link between our judgement of others and being prone to judging ourselves. Ford is someone who is known for being judgemental - for calling people “cunt” or “creepy fuckface”. Standing in judgement of men, in particular, is her stock in trade. So, of course, she has a guilty conscience about her parenting. Not only do we judge ourselves if we are locked into judgement mode with others, but the judgement of others may be our way of getting some relief from the torture of our own conscience. Thus it can be another negative feedback loop.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">So, once again, we see the need for cultivating unconditional self-acceptance. Only this will unleash our full capacity to be there for those who depend on us, and enable us to respond to the destructive behaviour of others without judgement of the wounded individual who lies behind that behaviour. And it will make us into people who can’t be hurt by a cartoon.</span></div>
Aussiescribblerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04835275666734452167noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4819981045804508508.post-4550772949898790592019-08-25T02:11:00.000-07:002019-08-25T02:12:48.430-07:00It's O.K. If You Hate Me<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikQDBk7tGbxDCYTkAKu-oDg2JDiPiQqtGUSQGQ5ZA7OC0USZv5EiBA7LCtwnXJVc8ub2wDWCNC3ishCyOBOT3uG79Ji7MgVhcYNpnLI-saDXzlbb8HzjA4v-iyEZiOSvb7z9p3eKy8ILQT/s1600/22879470_m.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1528" data-original-width="1600" height="610" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikQDBk7tGbxDCYTkAKu-oDg2JDiPiQqtGUSQGQ5ZA7OC0USZv5EiBA7LCtwnXJVc8ub2wDWCNC3ishCyOBOT3uG79Ji7MgVhcYNpnLI-saDXzlbb8HzjA4v-iyEZiOSvb7z9p3eKy8ILQT/s640/22879470_m.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo by <a href="https://www.123rf.com/profile_Cybernesco">Denis Pepin</a>.</td></tr>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">It seems that the battle between the conscience and the insecure ego is playing itself out around us all the time. It is the theme of our times and it has been the story of our history from the very beginning. And, surely, it is not just around us but within us that the battle rages.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I feel myself torn. Those who play the conscience of our times articulate the realities of our situation ecologically and socially. While they may not always get it right, they are pointing to things which cannot be dismissed without burying one’s head dangerously in the sand.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">On the other hand, when such individuals inspire even violent hatred, that is not something alien to me. I identify with those who feel this way. I feel it in me too. Preach at me. Tell me what is wrong with me. Remind me of the things I deep down know are true but desperately wish were not true. And I’ll wish you were dead.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">This dilemma is the story of our species. What we need in order to behave lovingly towards each other is self-acceptance. From this comes our ability to be generous, open, spontaneous and honest. But an unforgiving insistence on such behaviour means that our self-acceptance is progressively undermined by feelings of guilt. Beyond a certain point, the more the conscience insists, the more the ego resists.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Selfishness is the natural self-directedness of the suffering or insecure organism. Thus guilt, far from correcting the totality of our behaviour, makes us selfish.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">And the dictatorial demands of the conscience on the selfish individual generate malevolence - the desire to revenge ourselves on the critical voice by doing something ever worse.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Of course we couldn’t do without the conscience. We needed to have some concept of what loving behaviour would look like which could continue to exist in our minds long after the love needed to realise it had died from our hearts. If we had been able to forgive our failures to meet that standard, then that love would never have died, but we have never been able to forgive ourselves enough.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The history of the human race has been one of great courage, determination and initiative. When we think back at the dangers and challenges our ancestors met head on and the terrible suffering they experienced, and inflicted upon each other, it is remarkable that beings of mere flesh and blood could persist through all that.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">As Hamlet said, “…conscience does make cowards of us all.” Historically we persisted against the odds partly because we repressed our conscience. Our conscience would tell us that it was wrong to conquer, to steal and to oppress. But we did it anyway. If we had followed our conscience exclusively we would probably be living in huts in the jungle eating nuts and berries - without science and without the benefits of technology.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">This doesn’t mean we could or should continue to live a life of conscience-suppressing domination. We just don’t want to lose the spirit and courage which we will need to meet our current crises. If we are to find a new relationship with the conscience it mustn’t be one in which our spirit is broken, crushed beneath it’s unforgiving jackboot.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">If we are to have a sustainable new way of living it will have to be an expression of exuberance arising from an unalloyed love for ourselves. It can’t be some humiliating act of penance for past misdeeds.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The courage that brought us through the nightmare of history was the courage of divided beings. We were carrying the burden of a condemning conscience. If we can heal this conflict and all of the social divisions it gave rise to, then we will find a courage and determination we have never known.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">How do we do this?</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">We need an understanding of this underlying human dilemma.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">We need to unconditionally accept thoughts and feelings, recognising that they are the inevitable product of our current situation and that, the more we acknowledge them consciously, the more easily we can chose appropriate behaviour in the light of them. To accept a thought does not mean to believe that it is a truth. And to accept a feeling does not mean to act upon it.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">We need to be able to honestly articulate our psychological position.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Acceptance is what shrinks the dark side of us. It was inflamed by unforgiving criticism, and criticism open or implied continues to exacerbate it.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">So what if someone hates me? I say : “It’s O.K. if you hate me. If I were you I know I would hate me too.”</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Hatred is a cover emotion for underlying feelings of guilt or shame. If we can feel that our feelings of hatred, as an emotion, are accepted, perhaps the feelings of guilt or shame can come into consciousness. The idea that an emotion is accepted acts against the impulse towards repression, while criticism of that emotion encourages repression of whatever lies beneath it.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Sometimes sadism masquerades as righteousness. Sometimes the sense of humiliation which we experience when we look at our own sins makes us need to point out the sins of others and glory in their humiliation.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Instead we could realise that we are all in the same boat. If we can feel love and behave benevolently in the world, then we are one of the lucky ones whose situation in that world has not been one that killed our love and drove us to malevolence. If our love is real and our benevolence not a show, then we will have no interest in the egotism which would take credit for it.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The path towards healing for society is the path of honesty. That means acknowledging our own darker emotions and accepting them in others.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo by <a href="https://www.123rf.com/profile_argus456">Bram Janssens</a>.</td></tr>
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