Acid and Jooky
Rackets of different kinds are at the basis of most wrong there is in the world. In order to keep a lie going, everything not of the lie, and everything that has the capacity to see through the lie, must be destroyed. This requires ever greater deception, sophistry, blinding, violence, ensnarement and abuse. These then become inextricable from the character of the arrangement and becomes the character of the society itself, coercing people through every means possible into believing and practicing the same. The character of the people becomes what is suitable for the lie's perpetuation - the character of blindness in some, slyness in others, and abusiveness, barbarism and deceptiveness required to keep the lie perpetuating from generation to generation.
In 1960s, a chemical called LSD became popular for its powers of consciousness transformation. It allowed people to see, among other fantastic beings, such heavenly creatures as Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. LSD went out of style after it was discovered that many of its takers ot only wanted to meet Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, but also to remain there with her. After that, the work of transformation of consciousness went into creating different kinds of another chemical known as Jooky - as in “we are all different, that’s why we all drink Jooky.” And Jooky took many forms.
Some forms of jooky got people to think that beating one’s wife and molesting one’s children is family values, and being good to them is not. Others, that putting America $10 trillion in debt and poisoning the planet is responsibility, character, patriotism and ethics. Other jookies have transformed people’s consciousness to believe that destroying half the world’s living beings is fine, but creating genetic cures and biotechnological cures is work of Satan; that abortion is murder but murdering millions of people is right; that scientists, writers, artists and journalists are evil and stupid, whereas people making such claims are true honest trustworthy good smart righteous Americans. Jooky has even led people to believe that intellectual perspective is worthless and the only thing that matters is bottom line, even as they forgot that the only reason the bottom line exists in the first place is the work of intellectuals such as Adam Smith, John Locke, Montesquieu, Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin - all of them highly educated European or European-influenced intellectuals who made possible for there to be capitalism and America, and without whom the normal American would be a normal serf in a normal monarchy working a normal two-acre plot of land and being run over by normal murderers and rapists.
Other jookies have led other people to think that democracy is about not offending anybody, and that for that reason one must do away with all meaningful free speech - speech that, being meaningful, will be controversial and as such would offend someone. There have been jookies that led women to believe that beautiful women are ugly inside, but that women having such beliefs and abusing beautiful women in their pursuance aren’t. There have been jookies that have led people to believe that art is irresponsible but driving SUVs and having full-screen TV’s and being 400 pounds is responsibility. Jooky has even led people to believe that there is no global warming, and that people who know to the contrary are Communists, idiots and sissies.
One must admire the amount of mental work that goes into creating such powerful consciousness transformation devices. But ultimately Jooky is deception. As such, it leads people to do worse things in the long run than if they had simply been acid-heads. It is time to see Jooky for what it is and to provide antidotes. This is the purpose of this essay.
Reaganized Lies
One racket - called Reagan Republicanism - has slipped under the radar and then took over the country, under the name of "family values," responsibility and morals. The actions of its participants show neither of the above.
True family values means attention to the needs of one's children and partner. It means treating them right, and it means leaving the world a better place for their sake. A person who truly cares about family will make sure that his children have a better future, and he will make sure that he is treating them and his partner well. And yet the self-proclaimed exponents of family values do neither of the above. Not only do they use family sanctity as cover for brutality, incest and wrongful control, but they have also done horrible harm to the future of their own children. And after having perpetrated these crimes they are demanding of their children and wives obedience to them under the rubric of family values.
The Reagan Republicans have put the government $10 trillion in the hole. Having replaced "tax-and-spend" with far more irresponsible borrow-and-spend, they are putting this giant obligation on their children and grandchildren while ridiculously claiming responsibility and family values. The Reagan Republicans have for three decades denied global warming and have poisoned the planet for their children - once again, while claiming , ridiculously, the same thing. And while claiming progress, they have suffocated progress in arriving at high-technology, high-intelligence, high-job-creation clean energy solutions. Solutions that have a chance of providing for the energy and water requirements of the world of civilization that man has created, while treading lightly upon the world of nature that man has not. Solutions that stand to make possible ongoing prosperity while reducing its costs to the planet and its inhabitants. Solutions that use man's intelligence to provide for man's needs while treading more lightly on nature.
Instead the Reagan Republicans have let Texas Oil run the energy policy, as part of the "family values" "responsible" "moral" coalition. What can be more ridiculous than to claim such entities to have qualities such as the above? We are dealing with pillaging, myopic, criminal, rapacious, irresponsible, scoundrels. These to define morality? These to define responsibility? These to define family values?
That’s some excellent Jooky, and one must admire the amount of mental work that went into creating it. But its effect on the world have been far worse than that of crack, acid, and all other substances that it replaced.
Another aspect of Reagan jooky has seen it attack the government for everything, while themselves having run the government for much of that time. So we have been seeing anti-government truckers using government-made, government-maintained Interstate system to deliver government-subsidized foodstuffs produced by anti-government farmers, to "big liberal" great American cities that they, as true "American patriots," want to wipe off the face of the earth - and which cities have been the true source of America's innovation and prosperity. We have been seeing anti-government conservatives using government Social Security and Medicare to keep them alive in their retirement. We have been seeing anti-government communities relying on government police to keep order, government military to protect them, and government FEMA to bail them out in times of natural disaster. We have been seeing anti-government businesses using government Interstate, government Internet, and government police, science, education, and military, at all stages of the production process. We have been seeing anti-government groups using government-made Internet to disseminate their hate propaganda. And these people are ones claiming that they are - sane, righteous, smart, responsible, Americans?
And people have been believing them for much of that time?
The same people have equated, and continue to equate, their liberal opponents with Communism and its abuses. And yet they have far more in common with hard-line Stalinist Communists who committed these abuses than do the liberals that they attack. In the exact same way the hard-line Communists, who equated liberal-minded people in the former Eastern Bloc with “Western imperialists,” had far more in common with the actual “imperialists” than did the liberal-minded people in the former Eastern Bloc whom they stuck with this label. The liberal-minded people in both blocs wanted human rights, far-reaching education, humane governments and social orders, institutional transparency, social diversity, respect for the individual, women’s rights, diplomacy before force, and respect for other cultures. Whereas the hardliners in both wanted unconditional “patriotism“ divorced from principle, suppression of all thought that is not of the party line, cookie-cutter similitude, persecutions against anyone not of the party line, and absolute control over the people of the country. The constituencies of American Conservatives - the social conservatives, the military, the country - were the same as the forces for hard-line Communism in the Eastern Bloc. And the constituencies for American liberalism - big cities, educated people, artists, social liberals - were likewise the same as the pro-Western forces in Eastern Bloc. The Soviet Union is gone, and it is time that the conservatives in the west stop getting away with equating Western liberals with Soviet Communism and its abuses. They - the Western Conservatives - have far more in common with the hard-line Soviet Communists who had committed these abuses than Western liberals ever did.
Politically Correct Blunder
The politically correct con has likewise had its disastrous run. The belief in the equality of all "truths" opened America to the people whose "truth" it was that America is Great Satan and must be wiped off the face of the earth. It opened it to the people whose "truth" is that they should brutalize, murder and throw vitriol into the faces of women and be made by so doing real men of God. It opened America to the people whose "truth" is that freedom of speech, democracy, and women's rights are evil and should be exterminated. And it opened it to entities on the inside whose "truth" is that science is rubbish, that scientists and journalists are liberal brainwashers, that there is no such thing as global warming or evolution, and that academia should be defunded until it is bent into practicing the ideology of people whose "truth" this is.
Mortimer Adler referred to "suicidal philosophizing" on the part of those philosophers who denied validity of reasoning which is of course the basis of philosophy itself. With political correctness, we've seen suicidal ideologizing on the part of academia itself. What made academia possible and gave it its raison d'etre - pursuit of knowledge of all aspects of the Universe through empirical exploration - was destroyed by an academic movement that claimed that any "truth" was as good as another. So it comes as no surprise that the "truth" that aimed thereafter to supplant science - the "truth" of evangelical Christianity and the "truth" of jihadist Islam - claimed that science itself was wrong; that it did not deserve government funding; that there was no such thing as global warming; that evolution was a fabrication of sinners, that "secular humanism" was destroying American values, and that used these ridiculous claims to not only defund the academia, but to convince a huge chunk of American population that science and journalism were liberal brainwashing - and that those claiming such things were telling the truth. This, not only resulted in defunding of academia and in failure to include academic knowledge of matters that should have been tended to 30 years ago. It brought about the era of Paul Wyerich, Rush Limbaugh, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and conmen claiming to speak the truth and demonizing actual knowledge.
That one allows other "truths" does not mean that the "truths" that aim to supplant it would allow one's own. That one is tolerant to them, does not mean that they will be tolerant to oneself. And so came the age of fundamentalism, as had been allowed by political correctness, to usurp from science the claims on truth. And it was not only academia that suffered from this foolish error, losing both its funding and its productivity. It also was the entities that political correctness had sought to protect: Women, other ethnicities, other cultures, and democracy itself.
At the time that science began its explorations into such things as consciousness, as well as the experience of people who meditate or practice Zen or have near-death experiences, the orthodox academics claimed these studies as being unscientific or cultish despite the fact that they were done using the best of science and ultimately extended greatly the knowledge of the mind. So that while it is understandable to be angry at an establishment that is acting in a bigoted and hypocritical manner about an aspect of knowledge, the same does not extend to other aspects of science that have nothing to do with it and that have been the source of 20th century prosperity - aspects such as biology, chemistry, paleontology, geology, history, mathematics, engineering, technology, anthropology and political science. And while much benefit has been realized by bringing to light the knowledge obtained by other cultures, at other times, through other methods, none has been realized from Christian and Islamic fundamentalism that claims that it has The Truth, that science is a liberal fraud or a fabrication of sinners, that everything coming from science or from other cultures is of the Satan, and that claims to speak for family values, America, truth and righteousness as it plunders the planet under the claim that there's no global warming, puts America $10 trillion in debt, defunds and discredits the academia, takes away women's rights, persecutes meaningful free speech, sabotages democracy, and aims for an Armageddon before their grandchildren have learned how to read.
In the end, political correctness did not lead to increase in tolerance or democracy; it led to undermining of both by the most intolerant entities on American and foreign soil. It was powerless against religious fundamentalism, which is one force with which it did not reckon having to contend. And that, was its own suicide; but far worse it was also a disaster for the country and for science and academia itself.
Yugoslavia and Political Correctness: Suppression and Its Results
Tito's Yugoslavia was widely regarded as the best country in the Communist bloc. With a standard of living sufficient for it to be included in Organization of Economically Developed Countries, an infrastructure adequate for it to host Olympic Games, universal high-quality healthcare and education, world-quality science and engineering, religious tolerance, and nowhere near the level of abuses committed in Soviet Union or its satellites, Yugoslavia had some of the best accomplishments and quality of life of all Communist countries. The events of 1990s came as a shock to many people, who thought that Yugoslavia,as the most civilized of all Communist countries, was in the best shape to enter the 21st century prosperous and intact. To people who tried to make sense of what happened, many conflicting explanations were offered.
One was offered, to me personally, by Bush Sr.'s Secretary of State Larry Eagleberger, who came as a guest speaker to a political science class at University of Virginia and responded to a question I asked him about Bosnian war. He stated among other things that he had held negotiations with Yugoslavian people; that they were (in his words) "the nastiest people [he]'d ever known;" and that he knew there was going to be a war in Yugoslavia. I am not sure with which people he had negotiated, or in what manner; but the Yugoslavian people whom I have known personally and in my work as a tutor were among the most genuine, most ethical, most intelligent, most responsible people I've known in my life. And it was from one of these people that I have finally gained a more insightful explanation of the events.
The Tito government preached national identity as a Communist country under an ideology of brotherly love. However what people actually thought and felt and talked about privately was entirely to the contrary of that ideology. And when the Communist party line was no more, the country exploded in ethnic hatred, which was what people had been thinking and feeling for decades - and to which they could not admit in public and therefore not be able to work through and find meaningful ways to resolve or move beyond.
I can see correlations between the situation in Yugoslavia in 1990s and the situation in America today.
The politically correct ideology has been telling people for over a decade what they could think, what they could say, what they could feel, what personality they could have, and how they could relate to each other, while maliciously exterminating all thoughts, feelings and choices that were inconsistent with their party line. The supposed tolerance preached by the politically correct was in no way matched by their behavior, and their extreme intolerance of everything that was not of their party line brought them to not only effectively destroy free speech in America but likewise free thought and any form of genuine feeling or genuine interaction. This resulted in a climate of extreme and suffocating hypocrisy - a climate destructive to development of either intelligence or sincerity, and particularly to sincere
intelligence. But there were even deadlier problems with this arrangement, and we have seen them play out in recent events.
Political correctness, like Tito's party line, created a climate in which people could say only the party line, which was of course inconsistent with their real feelings and thoughts. This created a schizophrenic separation between what people could say publicly and what they actually felt and thought. People's feelings in such climates are suffocated and made small, twisted and hideous; and when they come out, they do so with an explosive and murderous rage.
Eminem had a huge following, because he articulated sentiments that had been suppressed but that were felt by many people. Religious, cultural and national hatreds, that had likewise been brewing under the surface, exploded similarly in this decade with a murderous force. The people had not been allowed to articulate these things, but they were feeling and thinking them anyway. And when the Bush-style demagogues and Eminem-style misogynists came along to articulate or pander to these sentiments while taking them into a thoroughly destructive and ugly direction, they were seen as sincere and genuine people and a break from the coldness and insincerity of the previous decade.
Of course, in cases of Eminem and Bush, the rightful question to ask is "sincere and genuine - as what?" As Martin Luther King stated, nothing is more dangerous than genuine ignorance and sincere stupidity. That, has been the historic lesson of Bush. But there are other historical issues here, with even more significant implications for education, public debate and political policy.
The experience of both Tito's Yugoslavia and politically correct America have shown that is not wise, nor is it viable, to force down people's throats a line while suffocating what they actually hold inside them. The prudence comes in embracing what people are feeling and thinking and guiding it toward a place that is intelligent and constructive rather than one that is destructive and dumb. American Constitution postulates freedom of speech, for a very good reason. It's not just a personal right; it is an absolute necessity for a self-governing nation that hopes to be a democracy in any meaningful sense. Free speech - and that means meaningful free speech, whether or not it is part of a party line - makes it possible for people to express what they think, give perspectives that are not anticipated by others, tell crucial information that may be missed by any other group or any decision-makers, and reveal reality as it is faced by a person or by a group. And then it becomes possible for people to actually understand the conditions enough to create meaningful, informed, insightful and proactive solutions - both for their own situations and for the political entities that they represent.
So that when a party line takes away from people the right to free speech, not only do the people never develop their actual thoughts and feelings enough to find workable ways to affectuate them, but the policy makers are likewise clueless. Sincerity goes away from the public discourse and finds a way to exist in most destructive and most ugly possible ways. And then the logical result is events in Yugoslavia of 1990s, or in America today.
It is for this reason that the purpose of real education is development of both intellect and emotion, not suppression of the same. With these developed into genuine and mature fruition, people have better chance to become intelligent, sincere, genuine, healthy and wholesome individuals - with intelligence based in sincerity and the core of sincerity developed likewise into an intelligent and viable form. And what political correctness has done instead, is turn centers of education into centers of indoctrination, where minds and personhoods are not nurtured but broken, and neither intelligence nor sincerity are allowed to develop in any kind of a wholesome way. This has created a population of people fragmented, hypocritical, and intrinsically insincere, and has inflicted such population upon America as its supposed educated class. Meanwhile the people with less education have claimed to possess integrity - integrity to ignorance and stupidity, which by masquerading as ethics or guts or manliness or common touch or integrity has allowed ignorance and stupidity to take over the country and take it to a completely disastrous place.
In similarly wiping out sincerity from public discourse, political correctness has likewise helped along the same stance. With no sincerity allowed in intelligence, it has been found in ignorance and stupidity. Which ignorance went on to control American government and trying to turn it away from science, constitutional rights and freedoms, and even democracy itself.
That's not what makes great countries, nor is that what makes great citizens. Nor is this what liberalism, of which political correctness is a degenerate perversion, is about in any meaningful sense. The flaws associated with Democratic candidates - the wishy-washiness and irresoluteness of Kerry, the impersonality of Gore, the slipperiness of Clinton, the out-of-touch weakness of 1980s candidates - are all a function of disconnection made between intelligence and sincerity in American character. And the only way for people, societies and public policies to work in a meaningful manner, is to find ways to become sincere and intelligent at once.
This has been seen in the actions of Bill Maher, then Howard Dean, then more mainline Democrats, seeking to break through political correct doubletalk, pinpoint matters squarely and sincerely, and based on that create solutions reflecting sincere intelligence, sincere understanding, and sincere will to affectuate solutions reflecting the preceding. Which means to be able to understand cultural matters enough to address them honestly and without distortion. This, we have seen done by Barack Obama, in telling black fathers to take care of their children and other black people to stop using victimhood as an excuse for everything, took up the less educated white people on their scapegoating hate-everyone-who-is-not-like-us ways, and addressed the ruinous anti-intellectualism of youth in all races that keeps them away from educational knowledge and leads them to create aggressively ignorant cultures that claim integrity - to a lie.
The things that politically correct would not talk about, found the way to express themselves in reality. As always in such conditions, they did so in the ugliest possible ways. And now, it becomes possible to actually see those things clearly enough to address them rightfully and intelligently. Sincerity found a way to exist - as sincere destructive ignorance and sincere disastrous stupidity. Now it becomes possible, with the politically correct distortion that had kept sincerity and intelligence apart quite convincingly broken, to wed sincerity and intelligence and make sincere intelligence and sincere knowledge the basis of a better American character and a better American future.
Misdirections of Evolution
The evolutionary theory has been taken in two major directions. One is that of seeing humanity as a whole and seeing the human nature as one of benefiting the collective. The other is that of seeing man as the individual and seeing man's destiny as one of bettering his own condition. In reality, both are true, and the only order that has a chance of benefiting humanity at both collective and individual levels is one that recognizes the fact of both and gives people freedom to work to effect both outcomes.
This, I refer to as the philosophy of integrationism: One that recognizes both man's individuality and the identity of the species, and empowers people to make the most of both. And in the arrangement based on the fact of what is man, the two are unlimited and feed into each other to make the most of both man's life at individual level and of the benefit of the collective.
Now there are many false directions taken by evolutionary theory that first must be addressed. One is that of social Darwinism. This is wrong for one simple reason: It wants to claim that a single direction is superior, and all else are inferior, when in all cases there are some directions that are good in some ways, others that are good in others, and the correct solution is not that of one conquering all others but that of all contributing what they have. In this way, the entirety of human wisdom and achievement is recognized and goes to the benefit of all the people and civilizations involved. And the true way toward any kind of meaningful superiority is that of all soils integrating what is both theirs and what has been attained elsewhere and thus enriching themselves, their people, and the humanity itself.
Another false direction is that of seeing the world as a battle of all against all, or of competition as man's sole nature. In fact, studies of nature have shown that there is plenty of behaviors done by animals that benefit the species even at the cost to themselves, and also that cooperation as well as competition are part of natural world. If man has evolved as both the self and the species, then it is natural for man at times to do good to the species just as much as it is natural for man to benefit one's own self. Thus, both self-interest and species-interest are legitimate parts of human nature, and any complete concept of man makes genuine room for altruism and individualism both, as much as it does for both cooperation and competition.
Another false direction is the direction of claiming that there is some single purpose of nature or of man. The true nature of nature is multiplicity existing in multisynthesis. A tiger is not a hippopotamus; a hippopotamus is not a frog; a frog is not a rose; a rose is not a sequoia; a sequoia is not a bacillus. They are all different - validly, rightfully different - and it is this multiplicity that is the reason for all the richness of life and of nature.
Like in nature, also in humanity, it is this difference that makes human existence what it is: The difference of ability, the difference of temperament, the difference of appearance, the difference of life path and life choice. The world benefits far more from there being scientists, doctors, businessmen, engineers, writers, artists, farmers, and laborers, than it did by having everyone be a farmer. And given this multiplicity, it is to be reasoned - and found - that the bulk of manmade wrong in the world history has come from conceiving people as all the same, according to one or another necessarily false
definition, and bludgeoning them into being not only something other than what they are and less than what they could be, but also bludgeoning them out of what they have to offer others and themselves.
Thus arrangements such as keeping-up-with-the-Joneses makes the least of people and of humanity. Not only are people denied the right to meaningful freedom over their selves, their goals, their lives, and their individuality, but the false conception of individual freedom - the freedom that is in fact denied to people in every meaningful manner - is used to keep them from addressing common good. To this wrong, there are two partial solutions. One is pure collectivism that sees man's destiny as one of benefitting the species and engages all in that pursuit. The other is pure individualism that sees man's destiny as one of beneftting self.
The complete solution is one of recognizing both aspects of human existence and allowing both absolute freedom of self-definition and purpose as directed toward self - and the freedom of doing good as directed toward others. In this, the totality of the human beingness is served, and humanity benefits at both the individual and the collective levels, through actions of people directed toward both ends.
Freudian Mis-Analysis
Freud has made several of the worst errors that were formative to 20th century. In his analysis of the female patients, he interpreted their memories of sexual experiences with their fathers as erotic fantasy, when in all likelihood they were actual memories of sexual abuse. These memories, along with accompanying symptoms, which he called “hysteria,” come across as classic Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) – a traumatic event whose memory is repressed, which when it is recollected is accompanied by mental anguish and cognitive disarrangement. These memories, being a secret and one inconsistent with the pretense of “respectability,” “breeding” and “family pride,” created cognitive disturbances in the victims. Combine that with fake lives that they lived as part of “high society,” along with being completely dependent socially, emotionally and economically upon heartless misogynistic plutocrats, prevented from speaking their minds or even developing their minds, would drive any woman up the wall.
These women went to Freud for psychoanalysis, and some fell in love with him. This Freud likewise misrepresented as transference onto him of their supposed feeling for their dads, showing just how wrong he was. They fell in love with him, because he was an (apparently) brilliant man who (supposedly) tried to understand them at a deep level – something that they were not granted by other men, either their plutocrat husbands or their authoritarian dads, but that many women crave. He parsed these feelings as transference from these other men for whom the woman most likely has not had such feelings, when they were a natural reaction to a man’s (apparent) attempt to understand them emotionally – something that many women crave and, even if they claim they do not, still find attractive when offered.
The fact is, the therapeutic setting itself is conducive to creation of love feelings. In a scientific study, love was created in a laboratory by having male and female subjects share intimate details of their lives. Since therapy involves shares of extremely intimate details - though mostly by the client - it comes as no surprise that female patients would fall in love with male therapists, male patients with female therapists, and homosexual or bysexual patients with therapists of their own gender.
The therapists, priests and gurus who act on these feelings are seen as abusers of power. But not as much furor is raised in situations such as one with which I am personally acquainted, in which a female patient fell in love with a male therapist and shot his wife. The feelings that take place, in either case, are therefore not rightly characterized as "transference." They are a result of the dynamics of intimate shares in the therapy setting, as much as they are a result of an attempt at an emotional understanding, of a woman, by a man. And in misconstruing these feelings as "transference," Freud set psychology on a wrong path from which it is yet to recover.
What does this mean? Huge things. First of all, it refutes the source for a large portion of 20th century secular brand of misogyny, which was based in Freud’s erroneous depiction of women as “an incomplete sex” possessing “a penis envy.” These slanders against womanhood were used then to sabotage the women’s empowerment movement of early 20th century and force the women back into the kitchen in 1920s and in even more horrible ways during the three decades that followed. He led people to believe that women were hysterics and liars, when his patients were just this: Victims of sexual abuse and a corrupt and repressive society. They were telling the truth that was inconsistent with the pretensions of “respectability” and “decency” of the time, as well as with family loyalty; that as such were traumatic, maddening and contradictory to what was falsely known as “sanity”; and that as such wrought havoc with the mind of the victim as it began to stir out of its snares. As for their feelings of love for him, they were not transference at all, but a result of the dynamics of the therapy setting and of an attempt, by a man, to understand them and their feelings.
Another famous Freudian fiction – this one destructive to both genders – is founded upon this underlying error. In transferring his false analysis of both the memories and the feelings of his female patient, Freud claimed that men’s romantic feelings for women were transference of supposed feelings for their mothers - and women's, for their fathers. And yet the basis of this belief was a false analysis of the female, in which he interpreted PTSD from sexual abuse as hysteria and intimate share-based, emotional understanding-based, love, as transference. Based on two false analyses piled on top of each other, was created one of the worst, most poisonous, and most enduring slanders against romantic love. As corollary of two false analyses, this idea is fallacious through transitive logic.
Let me repeat what I have just said. Two false analyses, were used to create the most famous Freudian misanalysis. And by showing these underlying analyses both to be false, this misanalysis stands to be refuted.
The false analysis behind Freud’s conceptions of both men and women has been one of the worst poisons of 20th century. It led the world away from awakening to beauty, love, arts, poetry and freedom that took place in the Bohemian (Edwardian) period and into brutal repression against the same. Men and women did not go away; neither did feeling or sexuality. Instead, denied their healthy expression in beautiful relationships, they were expropriated from people and used to fuel fascism – a phenomenon described by Wilhelm Reich in The Mass Psychology of Fascism – as well as a number of poisonous and oppressive usurpations of feeling, sexuality, and every other motive in human being.
Freud’s false, ignorantly judgmental, and destructive and usurpatory, model, was only seriously challenged in 1990s, when it began to emerge through more honest analysis that sexual abuse by male relatives was not only real, but reality for one third of the females and one tenth of the males. And yet his wrong and destructive ideas continue being used to grave detriment of both men and women. Those bent on oppression, injustice and bullying will look for any argument to justify them, regardless of its dishonesty or its error. And the way toward freedom involves deconstruction of rackets used to enforce slavery, as I am doing here with one such racket.
"Self"? - Esteem and Inner Colonization
Self-esteem psychology has also proven to be a highly effective form of population control. First, the person is told what to be, how to think, how to feel, how to behave, and what values to have. Then the person is told to learn to esteem himself according to this externally imposed mindset. Then he is told that it is his responsibility to strive to meet this "self-esteem" - which of course is not "self" esteem at all, but that of the people who have created these definitions. And then the person is made to be responsible for a life and a mind chosen for him by the same.
This form of population control is quite impressive, as far as such go. There have been many attempts at duping the population, but this one is of a particularly excellent quality judging by the number of supposedly intelligent people who have bought into it without the need for labor camps or gas chambers. The people who have bought into it are not all obviously fools; but from the outside the extent of the con is quite easy to see.
As an obvious example of what I am talking about, I bring up a scene I saw at a Virginia bookstore. A man was singing to a group of children, "You can be anything - a doctor, a lawyer." First he tells them what to be - a doctor or a lawyer. Then he tells them that they can be those things. Translation: "Johnny, be what I want you to be. You can do it."
It merits little elaboration that the concept of self-esteem works the exact same way.
Does anyone ask if America benefits from there being so many lawyers? As for doctors, have I got news for Johnny. He will have a $500,000 debt before he makes his first dollar. He will be working 12 to 18 hour days. He will be tired, overworked, and as such liable to make all kinds of errors that he would not normally make. He will be seeing all kinds of cranky people who are sick because of bad lifestyles and who will sue him if they thought that he made an error. His overhead costs and malpractice costs will be through the roof, and by the end of it he will have made less money in net than a garbage collector. Yeah, Johnny, go for it, be a doctor, you can do it. Sucker.
And what if Johnny does not want to be a doctor or a lawyer? What if Johnny wants to be a scientist, an engineer, a teacher, a writer, a politician, an actor, a businessman, or (as would be in many cases an honest stance for people who are misinformed like this) does not know what he wants? Then the first step would be to convince Johnny that he is a loser and a freak. If that does not work, the next step will be to claim that he's arrogant, or that he "thinks he's better than everyone else," that he is dangerous or a sociopath or a narcissist, that he has "false self-esteem" - meaning of course that he esteems himself by a different code than the people who want him to be a lawyer or a doctor, which would be a fairly intellectually honest stance, and one that is in this (and in many analogous cases where any other false definition of health is being shoved down people's throats) quite rightful. Then the project will be to destroy Johnny's ability to have such thoughts, or Johnny's confidence in the viability of the mind that creates these thoughts, or other people's belief in the viability of Johnny's mind - or, if not that, then in his or other people's belief in Johnny's humanity. And then perhaps with his life completely destroyed Johnny will be ready to receive the brainwashing to make him think that being a lawyer or a doctor is the only possible way to a successful and healthy existence; but more importantly Johnny's contemporaries will be made to believe the same thing, allowing the con to go on for another generation and costing millions more people their freedom, their independence, their control over their lives, and their ability to give to the world what they are most suited to give.
If Janie does not like what's set out before her and tries to find other alternatives, then she also "thinks she's better than everyone else." The project then is to destroy her life as well. As psychologizers claim that she's "disturbed," that's she's "damaged" or that she has "low self-esteem," others that she is evil, with the latter driving any potential partner that Janie may have to abuse her in the most hideous possible ways. If Johnny gets together with Janie, then he is supposedly a predator and an abuser, when in situations of real abuse - with partners who believed that Janie was evil and used that belief to engage in extreme physical, emotional and social violence while seeking to destroy everything that she was about, everything she created, everything she worked for, all of her thoughts and feelings and character, and everything that she sought to impart - these same people not only did nothing to help Janie but blamed her for her partner's behavior and claimed that she was getting what she deserved and did everything they could to keep Janie stuck in the true abuse situation and to continue to keep her there.
The self-esteem psychology does exactly this. It forces down the people's throats the concept of what to esteem themselves by, then pushes them to strive for health as a function of living according to that imposed and manipulated definition and achieving esteem according to it. As such, it is a con that eats lives. And nothing that would require such cons can dare to think to call itself sanity, or health, or ethics, or values, or reality.
Learn to see through such cons. And then create a better way than one being forced into the heads of Johnnies and Janies of all ages around the world.
Why Winners Lost
Another major racket that has come from psychology has been the misuse of Eric Berne's concept of winners-and-losers away from its original purpose and toward a complete perversion thereof. The original meaning of the concept is that some people, whose parents liked them, were imprinted to win, while those whose parents did not like them were imprinted by them to lose. That, however, is not nearly how the concept has been utilized.
Winners became a club; a party line; a mentality that did not allow any level of dissent from itself. Anything different from the party line was made to become a loser (if he did not succeed), or, if he did, then a demon. This mentality then became a major source of control and abuse in America and ran millions of lives. Its extreme intolerance and aggressive bullying robbed America not only of intellectual and personal freedom but also of the contributions of anyone who had the sense to see through the party line or had ideas other than itself. It wanted not only to see everyone else lose, but to control everyone - for generations - while destroying, demonizing or denaturing anything not of itself.
The lie at the core of this misuse was punctured convincingly in 2008 as the supposed winners' club lost big. And to these, the correct thing to say is: Good riddance, and how good it is that you have failed. Maybe after going through a fraction of what they inflicted upon the liberal constituencies in 1980s and 1990s these scoundrels will have some compassion and awareness. I would not hold my breath for that, but rather continue the victory against them and further discredit for sake of the living and the yet-to-live everything that they are about and everything that they believe.
Another bad concept in psychology has been Alfred Adler's concept of adequacy. According to him, man's primary motivation is one of adequacy among "peers." In claiming this, Adler degraded humanity to the level of bonobos while doing away with everything that is human rather than bestial. No human being is an adequate physical match for a tiger. He uses better technology to outsmart the tiger and in so doing also advances the lot of mankind. To the Adlerian, that is pathological; which means that pathological to him is also all of man's innovation, science, technology, and everything creative, risk-taking, original and idealistic.
The Adlerian would have all these things - and all sources of these things - destroyed, and humanity to return to the cave. Which means that he is pathologizing not only the science, political beliefs, and people's effort, that gave him the right and the tools to express his ideas, but also all that gave the world and its people their comforts, their longevity, their liberty and their prosperity and peace. And without the people whom the Adlerian pathologies, the Adlerians would be living in caves and hitting each other with rocks.
Personality psychology, meanwhile, has been the modern equivalent of the Holocaust. Claiming to protect "normal people" from "sociopaths," was created an inquisition that paints evil everywhere and uses the claim to more and more tightly ensnare people in a noose. Sowing panic, dehumanizing ever greater chunks of the population, persecuting anyone not of the party line - all these are Nazi tactics. And the lie at the core of the concept - that ethics are inborn rather than chosen, and that some people are born without capacity for ethics - has lied to people who believe them in order to create a class of perpetual punching bags, while keeping others in self-perpetuating hysteria and control.
It is time to see through such rackets and then create and follow truer psychology - one that sees human nature for what it is and gives it a path to impart of what it has to give to the world.
Good Ole Bastards
A particularly pernicious perversion of psychology has been seen in the way it's been used by the goodoleboys. Claiming to represent society, they have went on to claim that anybody who has any disagreement with them is a sociopath and as such possesses the criminal personality. This is the same con as was practiced by Stalin, who claimed to speak for the people and branded anybody whom he did not like as the enemy of the people. And the result, at least the attempted result, has been a creation of de facto totalitarianism in places intended to be free, using the most corrupt and most deceptive of all possible methods.
The false link is of course the false concept of what is sociopath. The psychological diagnosis of sociopathic character is not the dissenter from false and wrongful "norms" and beliefs and codes of behavior, but somebody who is essentially not human, cannot feel anything except anger, and lives by exploiting and feeding upon other people. This character would not above the chance rate be found among dissenters to a brutal, incestuous, deceptive and hypocritical order. It would be found much more among its most well-adjusted participants, especially ones who are dishonest enough to make such a false and misleading link.
The people of intellectual honesty, insight and emotional sensitivity growing up in toxic, corrupt and deceitful societies such as American South face the hideous spectacle of being accused of the worst sins of their oppressors and being persecuted therefor. The society based on incest, brutality, spiritual and economic and political conmanship, denial of scientific truth, apocalyptic totalitarianism, coercion to false front of happiness disguising abysses of suffering and injustice, and fake decency manufactured to keep things from being revealed for their true character, must do away for its perpetuation with anyone who has the capacity to see it - whether the intellectual capacity to understand the dynamics with one's mind, or the capacity to feel them at the emotional level. Whether by demonizing such people, discrediting them, locking them up, or pumping them full of chemicals and spiritual poison, the lie can go on without credible witnesses. At which point it can then go on to assault the rest of the world by claiming ridiculously to speak for ethics, family, Christianity or true American values, and use the lie to bully the world into subservience to itself.
It does not bother the goodoleboy in the slightest that America's true liberty and prosperity comes from its scientific and technological innovation that does not exist in the goodoleboy areas but rather in California, New York and Massachusetts - which cultures and institutions the goodoleboy consistently discredits, debases and demonizes and seeks to defund. It does not bother the goodoleboy in the slightest that his own lifestyle, which started as being parasitical off the slave labor, became parasitical off the rest of America.
Parasitical through Texas Oil charlatans who have claimed for 30 years that there is no global warming, denied progress in abundant clean energy, and poisoned the future of their own children.
Parasitical through conmen tele-evangelist and right-wing radio talk show hosts and writers, who have claimed for decades that hundreds of thousands of hard-working, brilliant people dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge have been lying to the public, while they, who have contributed nothing to this pursuit, were not lying to the public by making such claims.
Parasitical through the government-funded beef industry, with taxpayer paying to make a high-energy high-waste high-health-hazard crop artificially cheap, making the nation sick, severely reducing the
productivity of American farming, and denying America huge revenues that could be realized by selling more efficient crops abroad - and huge international goodwill that could be realized by giving away more efficient crops in times of famine.
Parasitical through goodoleboy-led international policy designed to maximize war and thus to power and credit militarism.
The policies of the goodoleboy are legendary for their corruption. The worst of course has been the Bush administration. In 2000, Bush got his Republican nomination by spreading false rumors about John McCain. He then got put into power through corruption in Florida and lied to people consistently through his regime. And in 2008, the goodoleboys were seeking to hold on to power by calling voters and telling them more lies, such as that Barack Obama is a Marxist (which he is not) or that he is a terrorist (which he most certainly is not, but his attackers come quite close to being).
There is in fact a direct reason for the corruption, abusiveness and barbarism of the goodoleboy areas of America. It is a function of its intellectual and emotional oppressiveness. All innovation - hence all prosperity, all improvement, all progress - is dependent upon free and creative thinking. Places that brainwash all minds into a lie cannot allow such things to exist or to take place, so they destroy people's capacity for the preceding since early childhood. Not only does freedom go - as well as insight, passion and honesty - but so does ability to create knowledge, prosperity and innovation. And then the place can only feed off the rest of the Western world. And it does.
The goodoleboy is a true sociopath, who wheels-and-deals in corruption, deception and violence without conscience. Everything that anyone says, he finds ways to invert. So of course it was only a matter of time before the goodoleboys added this con to their already impressive sociopathic tradition. Tradition that includes such jewels as:
Silencing truth about global warming and then, as the crisis becomes more obvious, blaming it on "humanity" or on the end of the world;
Putting the government $10 trillion in debt, while running the government, and then blaming it
on "liberal government";
Claiming that they speak for "family values" as they aggressively persist in global warming and borrow-and-spend policies that ruin the world for their children and grandchildren;
Starting their rule by saying such things as "America, love it or leave it" and ending it by saying that Americans are sinners;
Starting with "money talks, bulls*it walks" and, as they get bested in money game by liberal states, Jews, Chinese, computer industry and some European countries, deciding that materialism is evil and turning toward skinhead or hateful pseudo-religious ideologies;
Persecuting Clinton, a legitimately elected president, for what is none of their business, while allowing a president into power through blatant corruption and supporting him through high-level criminal misdeeds.
The person who dissents from the goodoleboy is not the sociopath. The goodoleboy is the very epitome of sociopathic thinking, lifestyle and behavior. And the more the people dissent from the goodoleboy, the greater the chances for true democracy and integrity in the United States. But even more importantly, the greater are the chances that the world, including the goodoleboys' own children, will survive well beyond the deaths of the goodoleboys themselves, instead of affectuating through the sociopathic goodoleboy economic-political-environmental policies - through their sociopathic blame-placing for the results of their policies on "humanity" - and their supremely psychopathic vision of violent destruction of the world in our lifetime - a very real, manmade, artificial armageddon before their own grandchildren have finished school.
Anti-Government Trojan Horse
Another con has come in the name of liberty, but in fact has resulted in destruction of life and freedom to a far greater extent than it has in freeing anybody at all. Claiming oppression to come from the government, the anti-government movement went on to oppose and in many places to disempower government entities dedicated to protection of people's lives, rights and liberties, in the process allowing extreme corruption and extreme abuses to take place through the action of unofficial entities and societies.
As unofficial, unchecked, unbalances and unaccountable organs of brutality and oppression grew up uder the banner of anti-government rhetoric, so did abuses committed by the same. This went on until these usurpatory entities became downright criminal and did not shy from any crime to keep control over those unfortunate enough to be under their sphere of domination. And that did not increase liberty any more than it increased honesty or improved people's character or give people greater control over their destinies. It resulted in extreme degradation of all of the preceding.
The Western governments were entrusted with protection of life and liberty. The entities that came in to get government off people's backs, as had been their rhetoric, were not aiming to increase anyone's life and liberty. Their true purpose has been to remove government's oversight and protection of people's rights and liberties in order that they could dominate those over whose lives they had control, and not shy away from any crime in order to maintain their domination. As their power grew, outside the oversight by governments dedicated to protection of life and liberty, so did their abuses. In the name of community - in the name of family - in the name of tradition or God or freedom - was created an unofficial creeping totalitarianism in the countries whose founding intent had been liberty and human
rights. And as such entities became more emboldened in their abuses by communitarianism, libertarianism and "family values," so have come under immediate threat from them not only freedom, not only transparency, not only human rights, but democracy and rule of law itself.
There is no sense in doing away with official tyranny if the result is tyranny unofficial maintained by brutality, deception and corruption in politics and in law. The unchecked, unbalanced, unaccountable unofficial organs of oppression are not only a degradation upon civil government in the Western civilization; they are also the entities that commit far greater abuses and make these abuses the way of life. The sanctity of family and community results in this only: Horrendous brutality, disgusting crimes against wives and children, corruption and conmanship at all levels not only not being cared about or rightfully investigated, but being made the status quo. And as these corrupt practices are perpetuated from generation to generation, it is not only the wives and the children that suffer. What suffers the worst is the character of the people and the character of the nation. With those who know what is happening being silenced in name of community or family or sanity or not being seen as a loser or a victim, what suffers is honesty and integrity. With those who have the capacity to assist told not to pay attention or not to bother with negativity or to work on themselves or to focus on spiritual development or that caring about such things is bad karma or reflection of wrong in oneself or mental illness, what suffers is openness and knowledge and understanding of the reality of people's lives, as well as the lives of those who are denied such help. And as the corrupt entities and societies grow stronger in their abuses through act of such attention being denied, what suffers is democracy and rule of law.
As these usurpatory entities, claiming for themselves the voice of family or community - claiming to represent such things without people having given them such a right, and while viciously running roughshod or demonizing or destroying the people who have other ideas - continue to stomp over everyone in families and communities, and use these claims to maintain ever-greater stranglehold over people in Western countries, while not shying away even from murder to maintain their illegal dominion, what is destroyed and diminished is not only the life and liberty of people in these families and communities, but also the rule of law and democracy itself. And as such abuses spring up in the name of family and community and tradition and God, it becomes incumbent on people of principle who hold life and liberty dear to not only reveal the reality of the lives of those at the receiving end of such unofficial tyranny, but subject the same to the level of oversight that is applied to official organs of power. An unofficial entity, as we see again and again, can, and will, and does, violate people's lives, liberties and rights to an extent comparable to and frequently greater than the official, accountable, checked and balanced institutions of civil government. And that does not increase people's liberty any more than it improves their character. It results in severe degeneration of both of the preceding.
Communitarian Usurpation
The business entities, from single proprietorships to giant corporations, are made accountable to the public through the mechanism of competition from other companies, as well as through scrutiny by media and law. The government entities are made accountable to the public through the mechanism of electoral system sustained by active and involved media and electorate. A corrupt corporation like Enron or WorldCom, like the corrupt officials in the government, are exposed and either lose their market, their status as legal entities, their electoral base, or their official position. But communal organs of power have no checks upon them and therefore have the potential to get away with far greater abuses than either of the preceding.
Communitarianism - the belief that community is more important than individual and deserves to have power in itself - may sound appealing until one runs into reality of what communitarianism means. Community organizations such as tribal separatists, the KKK, militias, gangs, mafias, Muslim terrorists, old-boy networks, and religious cults, are the real-world manifestation of communitarianism - and none of them are benign. In all cases these are entities that arrogate for themselves life-and-death power over the lives of others and commit horrible violations of human rights, both within the community and without. These entities are not accountable to the consumer through the market, and they are not accountable to the voter through the elections. And that means, they become tyrannical, seeing it their right to control everyone in the community and to commit horrible violations to that effect.
When communitarianism began developing, I foresaw the creation of effective totalitarianism. I recognized that the unofficial local organs of power are capable of at least as great abuses as are the official ones, and lacking the constitutional principles and accountability to the public that keep the official government from becoming despotic, they could, and would, perform greater abuses than the official democratic governments can under Constitutional law. And I recognized that those communities and organizations, lacking either the human rights and civil rights principles that these governments or the mechanisms of check and balance upon them, could, and would, do graver damage to people's life, liberty and existence than the governments that they were seeking to supplant.
I foresaw this in America; and now I am finding it in Australia. A rural small town in the Australian state of Victoria, that prides itself on being a model community, shows exactly what the term means. My wife’s older friend, a lady who has achieved great professional success and raised a family of highly effective people, married a self-made millionaire from this community. When her husband had a stroke, his family, that wielded significant influence in the town, repeatedly claimed that she was not competent to take care of him even though she was a registered nurse. Unable to take custody over him, they poisoned the entire town against her, until she had to beg even cabs to come to her home in order that she could go shopping. They finally had their way when she had to go to a hospital for an operation, and her husband was placed in the town nursing home for a week. He entered the nursing home alive; he came out in a vase. During that week, he was not properly fed or given medicine, and nurses gave conflicting accounts of his death. When the daughter of my wife’s friend asked for an autopsy, his body was cremated before it could be performed.
On the Internet, communities become so arrogant that they decide it’s rightful to commit real crimes. Forgery, harassment, slander and defamation are common; as are such actions as mailing someone a piece of manure; pursuing someone to career networks in order to damage their job prospects and reputation; sending viruses to people’s workplaces, web pages and home computers; and making credible threats of death. The community mindset takes over and deems itself more powerful than the law. And anything that is seen as threat by the communal mindset, is deemed to be exterminated by any means possible. This means illegal action and violation of human rights. And while the potential for abuses of power in government and business are checked by media, consumer, voter and other branches and levels of government, the abuse of power in communities - unofficial organs of power - goes on unchecked.
In America, my friend C. had an aunt that went into a nursing home in New Hampshire. She was administered wrong medication that destroyed her health, after which she had a hole ripped in her back with a bedpan. When the nursing home found out that C., who has an M.D., was on the way, the nursing home murdered her aunt. Her body was still warm when C. showed up. Tests showed a six times the lethal dose of morphine in her body. C. has the photographs and the medical chart readings of the matter. But when she tried to go to court to get justice for what took place, her lawyer betrayed her. He was found out to be a part of the town‘s old-boy network. He since then continued to lobby other lawyers that C. tried to hire, who all betrayed her as a result. The employee who told C. what had happened was fired, and when C. had tried to call her last summer she was told that she'd had a nearly-fatal accident at her next workplace. That's the reality of old-boy networks; the reality of communitarianism.
The same reality can be seen, to even greater wrongs, in the parts of the world where communitarianism has had a longer run of power. In Indian rural communities, the goal is to beat a young bride into submission, and it is a common practice to murder brides who are not completely obedient to the will of the family to whom she's been given. In rural Ethiopian communities, the most common way to get a bride is by raping a teenage girl - and as the family rejects her since they can no longer give her in marriage, and the rest of community rejects her since she is no longer a virgin, the only place she can go to is to the rapist. In both cases, the national law and the human rights law does not reach these communities; and the horrendous wrong goes unchecked by media, politics and law.
It is likewise the communities in Afghanistan and Pakistan that hide the terrorists, using community codes and loyalties to protect people whose goal is to murder and fear-monger their way into unearned power. It is communities and families that are the root of the Mafia, and the community organization that is the Mafia wields power given to it by the families and the communities to terrorize and enslave the families and communities for which it claims to work. The community-based KKK and inner city gangs; the Southern old boy networks and fraternities; the survivalist militias; all commit horrible crimes under the name of community.
And for as long as this is the ideology, they continue to get away with it. The co-founder of pioneering software giant Cisco, Sandy Lerner, found out the reality of communitarianism when she moved to rural Virginia and attempted to open a diner. "The problem with small towns," she said, "is that the mind takes the size of the town." She is a self-made multimillionaire with power and experience. Imagine what someone who's not a multi-millionaire, who's less experienced, and who is in a less powerful condition, will discover if she were to move to such a place.
It is communities in America that create the phenomenon known in psychology as conspiracy of silence against the victims of sexual abuse. In order to keep up the lie that the community represents tradition, family and happiness, those on whose backs this pretence falls are silenced, slandered, demonized, broken and destroyed. The police does not do its job; it is co-opted by the community to perpetuate the deception. Mental health and social services do the same. And then the community built on brutality, incest, deception, and corruption goes on claiming that it is moral and the rest of the world is not moral and has its representatives usurp the values platform to bludgeon the civilized world into perpetuation of the community's barbaric, deceptive, corrupt, poisonous ways.
In business, false advertising - presenting a product as something other than what it is, or failing to inform the customer about problems with it - is a crime that is punishable by law. But communities continually advertise falsely, claiming to have a wholesome way of life while in fact being places of extreme corruption and abuse. And at issue here is not simply a product; at issue here is people’s lives. How many are lost to false advertising by corrupt and brutal communities? How many find their lives taken by smilie-faced lie disguising a snakepit of brutality and corruption? How many cannot find their way out because the community is more powerful than the law, claims itself as the law, and is made that way by communitarian attitudes and beliefs?
The women who fall for the siren song of country community find themselves stuck in a horrible situation from which they either get out with greatest difficulty or not at all. Far from idyllic existence, they become the town's and the family's acquisition, scapegoat, whipping girl, object of control. Like the brides in rural India, these women experience extreme physical and psychological violence from the families into which they have married, whose goal is to make her their own in every way possible and to never relent until she submits completely - after which, if she does, violence still goes on because violence in the country is way of life.
The police and the court system refuses to acknowledge abuse but instead seeks to silence its witnesses in order that the community's big lie and selling line do not get punctured by fact of what goes on in the community behind closed doors. And if the woman attempts to flee, the community seeks to break her down entirely and to use all its representatives to completely destroy her as well as her children.
This is what happens when unofficial entities hold greater power than official entities, and corruption, venality, deceit, and brutality perpetrated by communities is not subjected to openness, scrutiny, accountability, check and balance.
Without such check and balance, the communities arrogate for themselves life-and-death power over the lives of people. I have heard from many people in Midwest that they kill people like me. Which means not only that they have adopted murder as way of life and must have killed many along the way, but further that they believe they have right to kill people by virtue of how they think. Which means that they create an effective totalitarianism and do not shy away even from murder to keep it going. And communitarianism, by sanctioning such a thing, is in effect sanctioning corruption, murder, and indeed every other crime, by way of creating de facto totalitarianism.
This is not coincidental; this is inevitable. An official organ of power is subject to its official precepts; but a community is an unofficial organ of power and is therefore not subject to any laws. As such it becomes lawless - indeed it becomes a law unto itself. A law that is unwritten; that is not subject to checks and balances; and that therefore becomes despotic. A law that claims for itself all the psychological weaponry that comes with being associated in public mind with family and morality, and in so doing can silence any criticism on moral grounds and get away with extreme abuse against the ever-diminished individual and ever-more-discredited official power organs. And people, rather than seeing a freedom from oppression they have mistakenly identified to be based in “statism,” are bound much deeper, much harder, and much more completely by an entity that is far inferior to capitalism, and far inferior to liberal democracy, in ethics, legality, principle, vision, character or human rights.
Another problem, and one that Sally Lerner has discovered, is one known in psychology as groupthink. Even when not deliberately intending wrong, people in closed systems prevail on each other to think the same way and control their thinking until it accords with the rest of the group. This problem has been responsible for Challenger disaster, when everyone knew of the problem but none had the courage to talk about it; and when even the people as smart as those at NASA are subject to this, then so is clearly any other closed system in the world. Besides the result seen in Challenger - the result of leading people to overlook crucial information, silence real perspectives, deny legitimate understanding, and thus make horrible and uninformed decisions - groupthink leads to this: Absolute similitude of mind that does not tolerate anything that differs from whatever lie it becomes. Which leads to extinction of freedom of thought, subversion of democratic process and due process, failure to honestly address and resolve endemic problems, and conspiracy of silence on matters that violate the community's pretence before the world. But even worse that that it leads to this: The collective hubris of the community that would judge it acceptable to murder people and to destroy people's lives in the name of the community - to create corrupt, venal, oppressive and murderous cancers upon the face of the Western Civilization - and, as if that was not enough, go on and aggressively claim on political scene to speak for values, tradition, and family, while in fact representing murder, oppression, corruption and deceit.
As if that weren't enough, there is something here that is yet more sinister and far-reaching, and that bodes horribly for the future of democracy. And it is this: The moral and psychological power given to unofficial entities as vehicle for power-tripping as the supposed spokesperson therefor. As Stalin claimed to speak for the people and claimed that his enemies were the enemy of the people - and as the aggressive feminists claim that they speak for women and that their enemies are enemies of women - likewise those who claim to speak for communities portray their enemies as enemy of community and wield the power of the community to kill them or force them to submit. To speak for an unofficial authority is a power gambit that does not possess check and balance and therefore has the complete capacity for becoming tyrannical. There is no official code for a community, a society, a gender, a family, a tradition. Thus the people who claim to speak for these entities have nothing to check their words and actions against and can get away with any deception, any usurpation, any cruelty, any injury, any violence, any vileness, any violation, under the sun. All this of course has taken place at communitarian entities the world over and can only take place given the mechanism that underlies communitarianism.
That an entity is unofficial, does not make it not real. Instead the power that it wields is unaccountable, unbalanced and unchecked. As such it becomes insidious as well as tyrannical; and far from fostering good character as many communitarian types would claim, instead fosters the character of treachery, deception, venality, subterfuge and corruption. Which undermines and degrades the character of the people instead of improving it, and also undermines and degrades the character of the countries in which they live.
Communitarianism has been wrong from its inception. An unofficial organ of power, without constitution or checks and balances or accountability, can, and will, abuse power to a far greater extent than an official one that is by law forced to operate within official constraints or one that is accountable to the market or the law. If the communities are to be made organs of power, then it must be a power that is official, accountable, checked and balanced, and placed under the rule of law. Their rules and their ways must be codified and advertised precisely as they are, and then checked from both government entities from the outside and individuals from within in situations where either the rules or their enforcement violates human rights. Otherwise the result is absolute and unchecked criminality of whoever claims to speak for community; effective destruction of liberty and civil and human rights; effective destruction of honesty and transparency in the civilization; false advertising leading to lifelong ensnarement; degradation of character of the population toward venality and corruption; and mafia values, mafia tactics, mafia character, and creeping totalitarianism everywhere that such an ill-conceived ideology is given green light.
The Bullet Belt
The society of American Midwest and South has been widely described as venal and hypocritical. I am here to show the mechanism by which this outcome is an inevitable consequence of the beliefs held by these societies.
The belief that a person has to be happy in order to be a legitimate human being leads people to hide the pain and injustice in their lives. The people are of the conviction that if they are to let on that anything's wrong they would be considered invalid human beings; but far more fundamentally and far more sinisterly, they will be regarded as traitors. Traitors, that is, to the pretense from which the society at hand derives its claims of moral legitimacy - the pretense that people in it are happy; that all things are right and just; and that it is the Christian paradise on earth.
What is the outcome? The people pretend to be happy while in their lives harboring all kinds of darkness, pain and wrong. This leads to an extreme emotional insincerity: A cultivation of smilie-faced pretense over abyss of massive misery and injustice. Insincerity becomes a way of life; indeed it becomes a survival tactic. I pose this question: What is it that a society of emotional insincerity cannot possibly handle? The answer is this: EMOTIONAL SINCERITY. Which, by being what it is, provides a frame for the hypocrisy and injustice and dishonesty of the arrangement - and that therefore must be stomped out at all costs.
This leads of course to ongoing witch hunts and prosecutions. I have been told repeatedly by people from such societies that they kill people like me; and my question is as follows: How many have you murdered? Beyond that still: How many have you destroyed? How many are languishing in jails or mental hospitals for false and trumped-up accusations? How many were led to believe themselves evil and then picked for the role of scapegoating? How many emotionally sincere women are in horrible domestic situations - how many emotionally sincere men are in prisons - how many, at the long last, have you destroyed, in order to keep alive the lie of your society's honesty, righteousness, and happiness?
From this then comes these societies' hatred of the artistic and the intellectual - which in effect are nothing more than hatred of sincerity. The artist requires emotional honesty for his work to proceed; therefore he (or she) becomes prime target of hatred. When insincerity becomes the law, sincerity is criminalized. In women's case, this results typically in horrendous relationship situations, sustained by community pressure and its choice to blame everything on the woman in question and put her through unbelievable cruelty and injustice. In men's case, this results typically in trumped-up criminal charges, character destruction, community ostracism, or - as I was told repeatedly - murder.
These things are all of course connected; in fact they are causally linked. A pretense of happiness leads unavoidably to a society of insincerity; a society of insincerity unavoidably demands destruction of all that can possibly be sincere. The anti-artistic and anti-intellectual sentiment in such societies is a function therefore of such dynamics; and not only hypocrisy, but brutality, injustice, and tremendous emotional violence are an inevitable result.
False Advertising and the Culture of Insincerity
The racket in many situations either stems from or is perpetuated through this: False advertising in relationships and the culture of insincerity that results.
The racket initiator presents a genial front and acts nice to everyone. Then when he has found the woman, and she is his, he turns into a monster. The people cannot believe that he does the things that he does, because according to the impression he gives to them he is a nice person. And the person against whom the perpetrator commits his abominations is blamed for all things that result, and is attacked even further if she tries to leave the perpetrator.
In business, advertising as one thing while having a completely different product is known as false advertisement. It is a crime, and one that is severely punished. But in relationships there is no clause about false advertising. Instead, the person at the receiving end of the abominations is blamed for all things, and is blamed even further if she tries to go on her own.
This of course results in tremendous ongoing hypocrisy and insincerity. And it is a hypocrisy and insincerity that requires for its perpetuation a destruction of sincerity wherever it can be found. Thus, the sincere woman is entrapped; the sincere man is seen as being fundamentally criminal. And it is through this attack on sincerity that the culture of false advertising and insincerity goes on.
Insincerity, for its continuation, requires further destruction of sincerity wherever it can be found. Thus, any true feeling, any true idea, any true life, comes under vicious attack. And the result is a putrid swamp of falsehood and viciousness and hypocrisy that ensnares all the living. And then this swamp claims for itself the sanction of religion or of morality.
For this abomination to end, it becomes requisite to see all false advertising for what it is, and to instead demand truthful portrayal of self, of feeling, and of attitude. And then one more obstacle to sincerity, passion and excellence will be removed, and it will be more possible for more people to live honestly and to live truly.
Real Men Don't Need Male Chauvenism
One of the world's worst, longest-running and most entrenched rackets is known as misogyny or male chauvenism. What it is truly, is a particularly prevalent and pernicious example of what Eric Berne has described as "racket anger." A man goes into the marriage expecting the woman to do something bad; so he tears her down, controls her every move, and aggressively destroys everything in her that is not his, until she either does something desperate - in which case he claims that he was right from the beginning and that women are evil and should be abused and controlled - or she accepts the abuse lying down and, believing it to be the natural lot of women (and not tolerating any woman having what she does not have), inflicts the same on other women and supports policies dedicated to the same.
At the core of this racket is the Greco-Judaic claim that woman is the root of all evil - in Pandora and Helen myths of Greece and in the Eve myth of the Bible. And yet history shows repeatedly that by far the greatest abuses have been done, and continue to be done, by men - mostly in the name of Christianity, Islam, civilization, tradition, family - all the same things to which the men perpetuating this racket are pledging allegiance. So how can these evildoers be claiming that women are at the root of evil, when any examination of history (as well as of these people's policies, attitudes and behavior) show indubitably that they and what they claim sacrosanct is at the root of most evil in the world?
To believe someone a bad person and stay with her, is a racket. At least the women who leave their partners if they see them to be bad people are doing the honest thing. But if a man thinks a woman to be bad but remains in the relationship and keeps her from leaving, he is running a con. There is no excuse for such conduct. You with a bad person? Leave them. It is as simple as that.
But no. They do not want to leave. They want to enjoy everything that the woman does for them without reciprocating, without respecting and without loving in return. They want the woman to be chained to them by a dog chain and to treat her and beat her like a dog. They get a lot out of being with the woman. But they are not willing to value her and treat her accordingly. Which means that these men are guilty not only of brutality and degradation, but of effective theft and dishonesty at the deepest levels. As part of this racket, the women get blamed for the violence done against them. And that is the ridiculous place to which this racket has lead humanity. The bigger, stronger party, in most cases the dominant party in the relationship, is absolved of responsibility for his actions, while the smaller, in most cases the submissive, party, is made to be responsible for his deeds. At societal level, this creates irresponsible men and neurotic women. And that, is a terrible place to take mankind as well as a terrible character to inflict upon it.
These people then go on claiming that they speak for the family, for tradition, for fathers, for God even. They have no right to any of these claims. They are running a racket that has caused countless suffering and wasted potential and resulted in degradation of everyone's character, misappropriation of cause and effect, blame of the innocent, exoneration of the guilty, and a climate of suffocating dishonesty, brutality and hypocrisy that cannot tolerate any amount of insight, beauty and truth.
It is time to create better, more honest, more loving, more intelligent and more principled thing to call family and fatherhood. And with this to get away from these ugly rackets and give one’s children a better life than what they would be subjected to if they are at the mercy thereof.
Misdirections of Feminism
Both feminism and the reaction against feminism have begotten a large number of rackets as well. Of the more recent feminist stances, three were particularly destructive. These are: Gender feminism which wants to do away with everything feminine; anti-beauty movement that seeks to do away with physical beauty; and anti-sex and anti-love strains of feminism. As for the reaction against feminism, from the Sharia thugs to the so-called Fathers' Movement, the worst ones are ones that have taken the racket of mysogyny and subjugation of women into the new era.
There have throughout history been many forms of feminism, and some have been better than others. I speak of a form that has been most loud and most destructive, having faith that people can recognize that there are better directions that women's rights can and should take. Gender feminism - the ideology that claims that all differences between men and women are culturally determined, and that there is nothing inherently different between women and men - is fundamentally misogynistic and totalitarian at the same time. First it attacks the woman's right to all the qualities that are natural to women more than they are to men - to female physicality and all that comes with it, which gender feminists claim to be a
cultural construct but which biology, anatomy, anthropology, social history and experience of anyone who's been a parent knows to have a natural component, and which natural component has expressed in it many beautiful, positive, profound and life-nurturing qualities that are not found - or not as easily found - in males. Then, having taken away from the woman the right to her physical nature, it goes straight for her individuality, using its claim of having liberated women from patriarchy to dictate what women can feel, what they can think, how they can behave, how they can look, and what kind of lives and relationships they are allowed to have.
In the first step, such feminism disempowers women by denying them the right to their physical nature as women and to all the valuable, strengthening and positive qualities that come with this nature. In the second step, it disempowers them still further by denying them the right to their human nature - the nature as beings of volitional consciousness, capable of meaningful individuality, meaningful selfhood and meaningful choice over their lives. To such feminists, not only is expressed femininity loathsome but so is expressed individuality, both of which pose a threat - the first by threatening their central ideological claim; the second by threatening their claim that they represent the best interests of all women. And it is women at the receiving end of such ideologies who have been most injured by their self-proclaimed leaders - the self-proclaimed leaders who aim to take away from those they claim to be serving, but in fact are more interested in controlling, both the right to their physical nature as women and the right to their general human nature as beings of choice.
That many aspects of "traditional" women's roles are wrongful, oppressive, insulting and inapplicable for many women, is undeniable. But to claim that there is nothing inherently different between women and men, is absurd. And while there are naturally tomboyish females and naturally effeminate males, the ideal of unisex is one that makes people into robots rather than into free women or free men. To abuse in the name of women's empowerment both the women who seek to express the feminine nature and the women who seek to practice meaningful individuality - in the process destroying beauty, culture, romance, passion, and freedom, without creating anything better - is something that would be expected from Maoists during the Cultural Revolution. And while this type of feminism has been branded by those on the Right as "feminazism," a more truthful name would be femi-Maoism; which, like Maoism, is misconceived and results according to its own nature in great wrongs.
Not only do women deserve better representation, but so does America; and that means moving American feminism away from this direction and toward directions that are more democratic, more life-affirming, more based in human reality, and thus more capable of affectuating real improvement in women's lives. Feminism would do a far better service to women by working with instead of against the letter and spirit of American constitution and acknowledging, supporting and protecting, at every
meaningful level and to the same extent as for men, the women's constitutional rights to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. The first clause (life) means being able to be themselves - both in their physical nature as women and in their human nature as beings of volitional consciousness with ability to choose who to be and how to live. The second of this (liberty) means freedom to express both natures without violence or discrimination, and with meaningful protection against the same. And the third (pursuit of happiness) means being able to strive for happiness and fulfilment - as a woman, as a person, as her individual self - likewise without violence or discrimination, either from men or from other women. This should fulfil all the rightful demands of feminism - the right for women to have equal rights and freedoms with men; the right for women to be in control of their minds, their lives and their bodies; the right for women to shape their own destiny; the right for women to have protection against all who would mistreat them - while doing away with the wrongs that have come with feminism as it has been practiced in recent years. At which point feminism will move away from a negative misdirection and become again a movement consistent in every way with America's founding principles. And then it could rightfully claim a place that it has had in the past - the place as part of the true progressive agenda of constitutional democracy and human rights.
The claim by the anti-beauty ones among feminists is that beauty is relative. And yet their own behavior belies their claims. If beauty is truly relative, then they would be attacking all women, not only pretty ones. That they attack beautiful women instead of all women, shows that they have no integrity in their claims. And while it is valid to reject exploitative media standards, it is in no way valid to abuse beauty itself.
Another has been the anti-sex strand: the strand that claims that sex is degrading and that women are being seen as "sex objects." Taking the Catholic equation of sex with sin and secularizing it into equation of sex with degradation, the women responsible for this intellectual abomination have basically sold out a movement designed to free women into a movement designed to subjugate them in prudery and repression. And of course its biggest victims have been women who are beautiful, artistic and happy inside their bodies, as the feminist-influenced women abused them - and men, seeing the abuse and believing it, followed in the same vein with character assassination and brutality.
As for the "sex object" concept, that meme deserves to be taken out and shot. Sex is a shared act, in which each party is both the subject (the doer) and the object (the done to). If someone does not want the object role, then the person wants to be only the subject without also being the object; which means that the person is only happy with sex if she is raping the man. And while this may sound ridiculous, more ridiculous still is the belief behind the sex-object concept: That sex is something that benefits man at the expense of the woman, and that the woman cannot herself be allowed to be sexual.
If these feminists find that having a body is degrading, the question to ask is, “Would you be happier without one?” When asked of spiritually inclined people, many do in fact say just that: They would be happiest as spirits in heaven. But feminism does not conceive of a place such as heaven, and their anti-body doctrine is parasitical. The women do not benefit from such “feminism”; they benefit from those people, women especially, who have learned to affirm life in its physical as well as spiritual aspects and can teach women how to make the most of life as pertaining thereto.
As for sexual harassment, it has been nothing but an excuse by the most malicious of women (and apparently even men) to get co-workers fired without legitimate cause. The failure to properly investigate such claims led to a culture of career destruction without due process. With the more legitimate cause that is prosecution of rape, there has been and still is a very intractable problem: The courts tend to believe the kind of women who are not likely to be raped, but not the women who are likely to be real victims. The women at risk - women from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, women who take risks, women who are socially disenfranchised or seen as “disturbed“ - are not believed in the legal system. The women who are believed - ones who live protected lifestyles - are much less likely to be raped by strangers. Many of them are likely to be raped by relatives - and these are protected by family loyalty and reputation from having the rape revealed or prosecuted in court of law. Which makes prosecution of rape a very difficult and thorny enterprise, one that is fraught with potential both for not convicting the real wrongdoers and for wrongly convicting innocent men.
The feminism took a poisonous direction in 1990s: The direction of poisoning every woman with panic, while doing nothing to confront the far more real and ongoing wrongs to which women are subject. The worse problem confronting women is, and has always been, domestic violence. But this issue was ignored, and in many cases the women going through it have been blamed for it, while feminism hyperfocused on minor issues and wrong issues. And that destroyed its credibility, as much as it gave fuel to those men who want to see women as evil and impose upon them horrendous social orders.
Masculist Barbarism
From all this, men's groups may believe that I would support their agenda. Nothing is further from the truth.
Men's groups want this: A restoration of patriarchy, with women losing their rights and being treated as second-rate citizens. This is not an improvement upon feminism, it is a degradation. Their claims are that patriarchy is at the core of civilization, that it is the best mechanism for creating prosperity in the history of mankind, and that women are evil. All of these claims are demonstrably false.
The Western Civilization became the Western Civilization, largely through the efforts of several great women. One was Queen Medici, who was the political leader of the Italian Renaissance - a period that not only produced the Western world's greatest art, but also science and prosperity that was unheard of in the patriarchal Middle Ages, and that made Italy the beautiful place and the world cultural center that it has since then become. Another, even more important, figure was Queen Elizabeth I. Most of what is now known as Western Civilization started with Queen Elizabeth, who turned England from a feudal backwater into one of the greatest global civilizations the world has ever known - the civilization that not only became the commercial and political center of the world but also planted the seeds of America and Australia, and incorporated into itself the much more populous (and much more patriarchial) India, Africa, and later China and Middle East.
Another woman who had great influence was Queen Victoria, who presided over the era that is idolized by these same men. Victorianism was the age of giant hypocrisy, and Queen Victoria led by example. As a single woman, and a monarch, she lived the feminist dream; yet she herself was militantly against feminism. The lifestyle that she wanted other women to lead, she neither led herself nor knew anything about. And as the social conservatives of all kinds keep hearkening back to Victorianism, it is quite demonstrable of their character that they be idealizing an age of such hypocrisy; but what is even more significant is that they are hearkening to an age that was led by a hypocrite who was a woman.
As for patriarchy supposedly being the engine of prosperity, their claims are just as ridiculous. The most aggressively patriarchal societies in the world are in Africa and Middle East, and are also the world's most poor. And in the Western Civilization, the same is true as well in both historical and contemporary terms. The Western Europe's wealthiest countries - Luxembourg, Ireland, Norway, Switzerland, Sweden - all have healthy representation of women in power and a culture respecting women, with Ireland also having a woman president. Its poorest - Portugal and Greece - are its most aggressively patriarchal.
The same is of course true in America as well. Its two most mysogynistic populations - "white trash" and "ghetto blacks" - are also its poorest. As for the populations that have the most wealth - the so-called "elites," in particularly the Bay Area, Manhattan, DC, Boston, and the two most prosperous states (Connecticut and Delaware) - these are all solidly Democratic and are well advanced in women's standing. With their two bases of contention being demonstrably false, why would anyone believe what men's groups have to say?
Another claim by these groups is that women are immoral or evil. I ask this: Did women start the Second World War? Did women poison the planet, kill hundreds of millions of people during Islamic expansionism, Africa slave trade and colonization of Latin America, aggressively deny global warming, create traffic in child sex slaves, impose Taliban in Afghanistan, put the government $10 trillion in debt under patriarchial Republican administrations? So how can these men be referring to women as being immoral, when not only is it men who have caused these true atrocities, but it is the same kind of men who have caused these atrocities that are now claiming to be speaking for men and bullying other men into being part of their psychotic barbaric movement?
As for the “fathers' ” movement, of all entities I have ever examined it is the closest to Nazism that I've ever seen. Not only does it get its intellectual grounding - a fraudulent concept known as Parental Alienation Syndrome - from a pro-pedophilic conman named Richard Gardner with ties to the Nazi doctor Alfred Kinsey's institute in Indiana; but it has consistently used tactics and rhetoric very similar to those of the Nazis.
The Black Shirts, who have been harassing, hounding and assaulting women who've left wife-beaters, are a split image of Nazi hooligan group known as the Brown Shirts, who did much the same thing. Their ridiculous and contrived claims that 90% of mothers are abusive, that child sexual abuse is something that is invented by deranged mothers, and that there is a feminist "terror" or "genocide" being perpetrated against men, is split image of Nazi claims that a Jewish terror was being committed against Germany, that Jews wanted to destroy Germany, and that the Aryan race was being threatened by women's rights, unions, social democrats and non-Aryan influences.
And of course their claims of protecting "family" and tradition are precisely the claims made by Adolf Hitler in his campaign against the same kind of people that the fathers' lobby would like to see exterminated - feminists, homosexuals, Jews, social democrats, working women, single mothers, and everybody else who has different ideas than do they. And this time, I am not waiting for gas chambers. I am taking this fight on behalf of everybody who has a stake in a future free of tyranny official or unofficial - a future free of lies and corruption - a future in which their daughters have a chance.
I am a man, a husband, and a father, and I say outright to these people, You do not speak for me, I did not give you permission to speak for me, nor do I want your services. And yes, I am a devoted family man. As such, I care about my wife's rights and my daughter's future. And I refuse to let the scum of the earth such as ones who run these movements to define the world that my daughter will be facing when she grows up.
What kind of man would deprive his daughters of life and liberty in order that he have advantage over his wife? What kind of man would damn 50% of the human species to a subhuman existence? What kind of man would use rackets to hide the facts of their treatment of wives and children and inflict the corruption of these rackets upon his country? I'll tell you what kind of man: An abuser, a conman, a tyrant and a selfish short-sighted scoundrel. And it is time that all men of goodwill say to these creeps the same thing that women should say to the femi-Maoists: YOU DO NOT SPEAK FOR US.
Economics of Abuse
Economic thought is of enormous use in psychology. An economist knows when someone is being unfairly compensated, falsely advertised to, stolen from, or slandered and injured in order to keep them in a raw deal. And what we see in abusive relationships is one or all of these things.
There are people who come on being nice when wooing, then turn into monsters when the person that they've wooed is theirs. In business, that's known as false advertising, and the same concept can rightfully be applied to relationships, where what's at stake is not a mere product but people's lives. If someone does that to you, they've deceived you, and you have every right for returning the product or leaving the relationship. You have been given a false demo. You've been deceived. Trying to make things "work out" only empowers the deception and makes more people believe that deception is the way to go. The only way to ethical outcome is to see the deception, know everything based on deception to be based on false premises and hence made corrupt, and leave on the grounds of having been given false advertising.
There are people who want to make the partner believe themselves worthless, damaged, evil or insane. The correct response to such people is: "If I'm this way, then why do you want to be with me? What's wrong with you? Can't you find yourself someone whom you can respect, or did you want me so that you can treat me like rubbish? And what does that say about you?" Basically, if the person sees you that way, then for them to stay with you is an act of dishonesty. There is no reason why any sane person would be with someone he or she sees in that manner; and their act of remaining with that person shows the things they say for the lie that they are.
The people who do the latter commit, basically, a theft. They fail to value what they want, fail to reward it, and want to feed on it without adequately compensating it for the utility that they get. So then they want the partner (and frequently others) to think that her value is low or negative, when their choice of staying with the person shows that they get utility from being with her that they would not get from being with somebody else. Which means that they are committing a theft, and that their actions are corrupt in entirety. Which busts whatever pretensions toward sanity or morality that they may assert.
The greater the amount of bludgeoning the person into believing her as having negative value, the more apparent the injustice intended or committed against her. We see this on social level all the time. A valuable worker can only be made to work without adequate compensation if they or the market believe they are unworthy, or if they are threatened or menaced or undermined in one or another way. If the person were truly worthless, then the partner would not be with her. And if he is with her and wants her to think she is worthless, then his behavior of staying with her is a refutation of his claims.
Psychological violence is preparation for injustice and way by which it is maintained. Not only is it violation in its own right - sometimes extreme violation; but much more apparently, it is a way to reduce in the person's mind (and that of others) the value of themselves, in order that they could acquiesce to an arrangement where they are given a raw deal. This is true especially in these cases: When someone is with someone who is not willing to treat them according to their merits; when someone is being treated like rubbish, whatever their actual worth; when someone is being bludgeoned - physically, morally, or legally - into a situation where they are treated for less than their merits; or when someone is being brainwashed into staying in cultures or situations where they are unappreciated.
So if you find yourself being subject by your partner, or family, or community, or organization, to hounding, battery, character assassination and slander, you know that an injustice is being done to you. Not only are those things in themselves are injustice, but they are artificial ways to maintain injustice by twisting your view of self and others' view of you to be artificially negative. These things, when found in a relationship or in a culture, are certain evidence of a personal or a systemic injustice. The more these things are found, the greater the evidence of the injustice that they are used to maintain.
Misreadings of Beauty
Feminist writer named Naomi Wolf wrote a book titled The Beauty Myth, which claimed that fashion industry creates a beauty standard that is used to control women. I am going now to address all the lies about beauty created by haters of beauty and used to abuse beautiful women and men who love tem.
The first, and the biggest, is the line preached by 1990s feminists that beauty comes from the fashion and beauty industries and destroys women’s self-esteem. First of all, beauty does not come from the fashion industry. The fashion industry did not create all the amazingly beautiful life forms that pre-exist the fashion industry by millions of years. The fashion industry did not create the Luray Caverns, nor the ocean shore off Big Sur or Victoria, nor the stars above Nederland, nor any of the magnificent landscapes - from Fuji mountain to Iguazu Falls to the Serengeti - that exist in nature. Nor did the fashion industry create beauty manufactured by human beings, from Barcelona to San Francisco to Venice, Lhasa, Cuzco or Dubai. Fashion industry likewise did not create ballet, Tchaikovsky’s symphonies, Inca and Zen and Australian Aboriginal music, French, Russian or Chinese poetry. Nor is fashion industry in any way the last word on women’s physical beauty. Renaissance and Romantic art, as much as paintings from Orient and India, all reflect a far more profound ideal of beauty than what is found in fashion industry.
“Profound,” you say. “But beauty is shallow.” That reflects very shallow understanding of beauty; indeed it reflects lack of understanding of beauty at all. Nothing is shallow about the works of Shakespeare, Modigliani, Li Po, Murabai, Keats or Akhmatova. Nothing is shallow about Russian or English or French or German poetry of 19th century. Nothing is shallow about all the living masterpieces of beauty such as the butterflies and the seashells and the baobabs and the daffodils and the sequoias. Nothing is shallow about the Sistine Chapel or comparable works in worlds ranging from India and Burma to China, Persia, Russia, France, or Incan and Aztec lands. The people who claim that beauty is shallow are people who do not understand beauty at all. Not understanding it, they want to trivialize and destroy it. And that, is as ignorant and as destructive a course of action as was Spaniards thinking that Moores, Incans and Aztecs were infidels and using that thinking to destroy the magnificent accomplishments of these great civilizations. Not knowing what they are dealing with, they go on to destroy it. And that makes such people not only shallow, but destructive and ignorant to the core.
Another false claim is that beauty is patriarchal. And yet tigers are matriarchal and are amazingly beautiful creatures. Babylonian Queen had commissioned for her an extraordinarily beautiful palace; female poets from Sappho to Murabai to De Burgos to Tsvetayeva and Akhmatova produced magnificent works; female painters like Frida Kahlo and Georgia O’Keefe likewise produced beautiful art; and Epic of Gilgamesh was written n female hand. If some may make the case that these women were doing the bidding of patriarchal cultures, the same can emphatically not be said about art by modern neo-Pagan women, much of which is likewise extraordinarily beautiful. So how can beauty be patriarchal when - (A), it exists in non-patriarchal nature among matriarchal creatures; (B) it has been created by women, often better than by men; and ( C) it is being created by matriarchal women who believe in The Goddess? This claim therefore is manifestly ridiculous and holds no validity.
Further claims - this time not by feminists - is that beauty is impractical. Impractical? But why then does it exist in nature? Why does it continue being born in human society, even among people who have such shallow and destructive beliefs? And why do people pay money to visit beautiful places and none to visit the ugly ones, the first having been made beautiful by people working to make them beautiful - and the second having been made ugly by people who are against beauty or do not care? Why do people hearken back to periods that created beauty - periods like Renaissance in the West, Tang Dynasty in China, the Moghul Empire in India, the Greek Golden Age - and not to the periods, like Middle Ages or Mongol Invasion or Inquisition or Reformation or Cultural Revolution, that sought to make beauty extinct? And why do people all over the world come to visit Barcelona, Venice, San Francisco, New Orleans, Prague, Paris and Montreal, and not to visit Dnipropetrovsk or Cheyenne? The practical value of beauty is that it enriches life, but even more importantly that it creates a worthwhile legacy of existence; and by creating manmade environments that are an improvement on nature and not a degradation on nature, do honor to people who have created such environments, instead of dishonor that comes and will continuously come to those who create ugliness.
Then there are those who refer to people who favor beauty as being snobs or “pretentious” or “who-do-they-think-they-are.” And yet it was exactly “pretentious snobs” like Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin - both highly educated, European-influenced, and possessing great taste - who have given these people their freedom, their dignity, and a country in which they could live, prosper, and not be at the mercy of kings and popes and rampaging “nobles.” And yet these same people, who owe everything to such “snobs” as Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, who then go on and destroy similar leanings in their youth and their neighbours - and then attack other parts of America and the rest of the world where such leanings are valued - while claiming themselves true Americans. What can be more ungrateful? What can be more ignorant? What can be more lacking in integrity, or in patriotism - which, in its true sense, means being true to what made the country possible: The great, noble, heroic and principled action of highly educated highly cultivated European-influenced intellectuals named Franklin and Jefferson, of the very kind that those who most loudly call themselves American patriots want to fry in their backyards?
Then there are those who claim that beauty is something that women do to please men. Is that so wrong? And if you think that it’s wrong to want to please your partner, why should anyone in his right mind want to be with you? What, “men are pigs”? Fine then, don’t be with them, and stop brainwashing the good ones into your cult. Leave them instead to good women who do want to be good to their partner, but who, with men who are capable of the same having been guilt tripped and manipulated into serving the worst women on the planet, are instead doomed to abusive violent pigs.
The same needs to be said to the preceding: The people who think that women are evil and must be controlled. If women are evil, then it is morally and logically wrong to share with them one’s life, or one’s accommodations, or to have their evil blood in one’s children. “Women are evil”? Is your mother evil? Your grandmother? Your sister? Your daughter? And if you believe that 50% of the world’s population is evil, then whose sin is greater: That of the people who are not what you want them to be for not being what you want them to be, or yours for playing God in branding them that way?
As for the claims such as that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” they are refuted by the behavior of those who believe them. They attack pretty women, but not homely ones; which means that they know what beauty is and is not, and their claims lack integrity. In fact, science offers hard evidence both for absolute beauty and relative beauty; which should satisfy people of conscience on both sides. A face with particular proportions has been shown to be seen as beautiful by people across cultures, civilizations, age groups and generations. Meanwhile, a study of 20,000 people looking at 500 faces produced each face being picked as most beautiful by at least one participant. This reinforces the case for existence of absolute beauty and the philosophical case for the value of beauty, while giving everyone else a very viable proof that someone will find them beautiful, they just need to know where to look.
There is a reason why nobody reads academic poetry. It has forbidden beauty and thus lost its raison d’etre. There is a reason that most people despise modern NEA art. It is not beautiful. With art having been perverted from creation of beauty to creation of tripe, art lost its place in society. This hurt art; it hurt artists; and it hurt America. And it is time now to recreate beauty in art and to again make art - and beauty - an integral part of life in the First World.
Fine Arts and the Modern World
Fine arts and philosophy have been slandered as being luxuries of the elites. This slander is frankly ridiculous, and it exerts a degrading effect upon the civilization.
At this time in the world history, the world has by far the greatest amount of material prosperity that it has ever had. It also has by far the greatest population, the greatest amount of information, the greatest amount of knowledge, and the greatest amount of media and political freedom in the history of humankind. It has enough resources for - politically correct propaganda, right-wing radio talk shows, supermarket tabloids, TV evangelists, Jerry Springer, and all manner of hideousness and inanity that we see on TV and the radio and the news. So why not then have likewise an abundance of world-class intellectual thought and artistic accomplishment?
This question bears asking, for the sake primarily of the greatness of the civilization and the history of the world. That a Renaissance Italy, with three million people and an average household income of $1000 a year, would produce Michelangelo, DaVinci, Botticelli, Rafael and a number of other timeless masters, while the modern world has produced no known artist of similar caliber since Salvador Dali, does not say much for the modern world. Why, at a time when the world's GDP, population, information, knowledge and media reach far exceeds any ever created, are there not a thousand Michelangelos, Emersons, Tsvetayeva's, Platos, Franklins, Jeffersons, Li Pos, Rumis, Shakespeares and Elizabeth Barrett Browning's? Why, at the time of the greatest accumulation of knowledge and freedom of information and material resources and political liberty in the history of the world, is there not commensurate legacy and body of work - legacy and body of work of literary, artistic, philosophical and intellectual greatness?
The things that were once unthinkable luxuries even to the kings and the queens, are now the daily aspect of the existence of the people in the most run-of-the-mill Western household. There are full-screen TVs and two-car garages in most working households in America. These, by any historical standard, are luxuries - luxuries that never previously belonged even to Queen Elizabeth the First. So why, then, are fine arts and philosophy - the flowering, the consummation, the blossoming, the culmination, the legacy of man's intellectual and artistic striving - the flowering and the blossoming that, compared to these things, take far less material resources to create and leave per unit of resources expended a far greater legacy and embodied value - not at a nearly commensurate quality?
Are the moderns not smart enough? Are the moderns not talented enough? Are the moderns not free or educated or materially and politically empowered enough? Either of these explanations, given historical state of humanity, is absurd. There is something wrong with one thing and one thing only: THE PRIORITIES OF THE MODERN WORLD.
Who indeed would see it as idle luxury to create fine art and fine literature - all things that require minimum resource expenditure but produce embodied greatness that contain inspiration and excellence, enhance knowledge and emotional wisdom, enrich experience of life, and give the country something to look back upon proudly over centuries of future existence - while not seeing as idle luxury the McDonalds's and poison-spewing SUVs, taxpayer-paid subsidies to farm corporations and giveaway of government money to pharmaceutical companies, the supermarket tabloids and TV evangelists and right-wing uglies congesting the media channels and politically correct fascists using the taxpayer money to play power games against disenfranchised, attack all beautiful sensibilities in the academia, and rob life of its richness and splendor (and humanity of its genius) while using for that evil purpose far greater amount of resources than would be required to produce a thousand Sistine Chapels?
The problem is not with the West's economic or political system, which after all in both cases provide means for expression of people's values in the marketplace and in the government. The problem is with the values that are expressed through both systems. The problem is with the priorities and the ideas guiding these priorities. The problem is with the short-sightedness of the mindset that fails to look forward to history and to compute into the quantification of economic utility and political benefit the long-term greatness of the civilization, which lives through its literary and artistic accomplishments and bequeathes through them to future generation the brilliance and inspiration that once lived in it. The problem is with the failure to economically and politically quantify this: Historical interest; long-term benefit of humanity; the legitimate need for legacy; and the very true and significant need for splendor.
Splendor that:
Enriches experience of life;
Shows what is possible;
Inspires people toward excellence with sight of accomplishment;
Vitalizes the passionate and the inspired in human being, setting it free to impart of its riches and enrich the world, the lives of others, and the entirety of the human experience;
And imparts through both intuitive and rational channels the sublime and the magnificent to the living, directing and guiding them to passionate, beautiful, Inspired life.
Splendor that is the accomplishment of humankind's excellence - source of its passion and inspiration - that the world requires again to be made a value, in order that greatness can live again -
Produce magnificent and inspired legacy of its existence -
And enrich the lives of the existing, justify and give legacy to the existed, tap into man's talents for good of humanity, and inspire and give light to the yet-to-exist.
Immanuel Kant and Scott Peck
Scott Peck was to psychology what Immanuel Kant was to Western philosophy. In the same way as Kant had used philosophy, after a blossoming during Enlightenment and Romanticism, to affectuate a return to the Protestant dogmas that philosophy had sought to replace, so did Peck use psychology, after its psychoanalitic beginnings in early 20th century and its existential humanistic blossoming in 1960s and 1970s, to affectuate a return to religious dogmas that psychology had struggled to overcome.
The philosophy of Kant - and the psychology of Peck - employed a device referred to by Mortimer Adler as suicidal epistemologizing and suicidal psychologizing. Kant claimed that the imperfection of human perception meant that it was only capable of apprehending the phenomenal (apparent) instead of the noumenal (the true); he also claimed that beauty was relative, illusory and insignificant ("in the eye"). With these claims he trivialized and denigrated both science and art. In creating in public mind the suspicion of both empirical and intuitive modes of cognition, practiced respectively by Enlightenment and Romanticism, he destroyed both Enlightenment and Romanticism. In the same manner did Peck, through his contributions, place in the public mind contempt for and denigration of both reason and passion, equating the first with Cartesian logic that was inadequate to describe his experience of synchronicities, and claiming the second an invalid basis for either relationship or meaningful interaction. The result has been contempt and invalidation of both reason and passion and the destruction, first by philosophy then by psychology, of both aspects of humankind.
Both of course are wrong in all aspects. Reason is not limited to Cartesian dogmatism, and the intellectual and scientific pursuits, in higher physics, anthropology, and more advanced psychological studies, have uncovered knowledge that entirely exceeds Cartesian dogmatisms and its brainchildren - skepticism, behaviorism, logical positivism, and similar abominations. Beauty has been shown scientifically to exist both in absolute and in relative forms. As for romantic passion, it has been at the root of the best marriages I've ever seen - marriages that produced wholesome families, meaningful and lasting love between partners, beautiful and intelligent and accomplished children, and are still going strong 50 or 60 years down the road.
In taking the stances that they did, Kant and Peck thus became destructive of both the intellectual and the passionate aspects of man - and destructive of all the greatness and progress and richness of life that these two aspects have produced. And in pursuit of their dogmas, was created a character that is essentially necrophilic (death-seeking) and seeks to destroy, in its relations, policies, thoughts and activities, all that creates and affirms and adds to life.
In both cases, a pursuit that produced great improvement for many and at multiple levels was effectively destroyed by being used against its own foundations. With Kant, philosophy had destroyed itself -both Enlightenment philosophy that made possible Western science and Western democracy, and Romantic philosophy that made possible the world's greatest literature, cultural blossoming and richest interpersonal experience and relations - by claiming the mechanism for both to be imperfect or trivial. With Peck, so did psychology, in both its analytical and its humanistic aspect - by trivializing and denigrating the aspects of human being to which it spoke and which it worked to describe. And the pursuits that have given the Western world its greatest accomplishments - democracy, science, innovation, freedom, great literature and art, understanding of nature, civil and human rights, meaningful and beautiful relationships between men and women, and humanistic life-affirming values that went to a great length to make most of both accomplishment and experience - were subverted by the pursuit that had conceptualized them being used to destroy its own foundations. And in both cases, the result was an imposition, against a flourishing of life through affirmation of passion and intellect, of orders and character that were fundamentally anti-life.
The Victorianism that followed Kant, like the three decades that followed Peck, were contemptuous of both intellect and passion - contemptuous as such of the life-enhancing and life-affirming aspects of humanity. It is a mentality that by its own nature can only lend to systemic violence, oppression, and war against both feeling and intellect, which lead directly to abusive, controlling and systematically destructive mental, emotional and relational habits in people who are a part of that mentality. But furthermore still it leads to destruction of all that thought and feeling make possible: science, democracy, freedom, ingenuity, innovaton, human rights, beauty, compassion, art, love, vitality, and every meaningful form of improvement in people's lives. This, of course, has been the essential character of both the Victorian era and its more contemporary equivalent. And just as Kant and Peck came to believe that the source of evil was hubris - which their followers use to damn both reason and passion and people who affirmed, cultivated and benefited from both - so has the far greater hubris of their own mentality made apparent itself in its values and its effects.
In both cases, just as Kant used philosophy, and Peck used psychology, to destroy the ages of reason and passion, so have the concepts they brought in to replace them convicted the orders that they had ushered in. The Protestant morals that were used and then hideously misused to sustain the dark night of Victorianism were in the end employed themselves to convict as morally damnable an order that consigned the bulk of the people in it to colonization, child labor, brutality, squalor, suffocating formalism, hysterical prudery, internecine warfare, disconnection from life both within and without, and brutal, cruel, degrading, unforgiving existence. Likewise the concept of responsibility that was used and
then hideously misused for the last three decades is now making apparent the irresponsibility of suffocating innovation in energy sector to keep alive the stranglehold of oil cartels, giving taxpayer subsidies to beef industry that takes 10 times as much biomass to produce a burger than the vegetable industry to produce an equivalent amount of grain, consuming 4,000 calories a day and driving SUVs while millions are dying because of disastrous climatic events caused by ecosystemic destruction and accumulation of CO2 missions in the atmosphere, destroying with no thought for the future or for what made them possible the natural treasures that man cannot conceivably recreate, and ladening the future generations with trillions of dollars in debt, amid collapsing family incomes, in order to pay for an economic stimulus that never came. By applying at the collective level the characteristic that is demanded of the individual, is seen the corruption of the arrangement itself. Victorian moralism was rightfully used to show the moral wrongness of the Victorian order; and the more modern-day responsibility is likewise making apparent the irresponsibility of the present one.
And just as personality psychology has been used and hideously misused in the period following Peck to target people who thought or felt differently from the social or communal entities of place and time, whatever the character of these entities or their intent or the actual substance of their beliefs and behaviors, so has it been used by others, rightly or wrongly, to describe business, politics, religion, psychology, media, and even the Western civilization, as possessing a psychopathic and predatory character.
The same concept is now used by me to describe any communal or social entity that seeks unlimited power over the minds, beliefs, personalities and lives of the people within it - and then seeks to impose itself on others.
To believe that an unofficial organ of power, that unlike official organs of power in a constitutional democracy is not subject to check and balance and official accountability, is somehow less prone to corruption and wrong and abuses of power than official organs of power, is ridiculous. Such an entity becomes law, reality and sanity unto itself and therefore is capable of the worst forms of corruption and systemic crime. And in countries where the power of official organs is checked and balanced and made to accord with constitution and bill of rights, but for some or another reason the power of unofficial organs is not subjected to similar scrutiny and is thus used to commit most horrendous abuses and most illegal abominations against the people within them and without them, these entities not only can be seen as unconstitutional, but in fact should be seen themselves as possessing the worst of these disorders.
The sociopathic character that does not recognize law, is the character of the community or the social network that becomes law unto itself and thus not only perpetuates and then covers up systemic crime while totally controlling the people within it, but also commands of people inside of them unconditional loyalty regardless of scale of their crimes against people both inside and without. And it is these entities, not the people they demonize, that are the true danger not only to democracy, but to humankind as it exists at this time and as it stands to exist in the foreseeable future. The crimes and coverups of small towns, gangs, old-boy networks, cults, Islamists, Jehovah's Witnesses, paramilitary organizations, and corrupt networks and operations in medicine, law, police, courts, psychiatry, and politics, are a far graver threat to rule of law than are the works of any number of axe murderers - and they affect people's lives to a far greater extent.
The same can be likewise said of religions that think that they are superior to both nature and to humanity - indeed to entire Universe - and denigrate then destroy all accomplishments of science, democracy, business, art, literature, human rights, and nature in all its richness, in order to make room for their supremacy over a world that they have inherited both from nature and from the people who had created and contributed to these pursuits. The people who claim the universe to be God's, and all accomplishments of mankind and the vibrancy of nature and all things lovable to be belongings of God, appropriate for the Church or the Mosque that had created none of these things - that destroyed them where they existed and resisted most of them every step of the way when they arose in the areas of their dominion - the credit for nature and for humanity and all things lovable and life-affirming, both natural and manmade. All things of course that the Church and the Mosque condemn, deny, sabotage and then, when created by others and coerced from others, want to claim as their own to wield as tools of control against the existing and yet-to-exist. Such an entity can by itself be seen as not only psychopathic and narcissistic, but totalitarian and indeed necrophilic.
For such an entity to claim to define people, humanity, nature, and all that exists in the world, as any kind of evil or good, is preposterous. The evil belongs with these entities themselves and with the philosophers and psychologists - Immanuel Kant and Scott Peck - who brought them back into influence in these respective endeavors, after the mind and the genius of humanity in both these endeavors and their brainchildren had struggled to help humanity out of their grasp.
The religious supremacism has become so complete as to war in the past decade, with effective and thoroughly disastrous results, against both science and democracy as well as constitutional law. In the same way as it has warred in the previous two decades against individuality, relationships, culture, eros, beauty and romance, it is now warring, disastrously, against science and democracy. First it destroys Romanticism; then it aims straight for Enlightenment. And it is then that is seen its true character, in all its psychopathic totalitarian apocalyptic horror.
The extent of the necrophilic character of such a mind is seen in its future predictions. Its hubristic hatred of life at all levels is so complete as to foresee a violent destruction of the world itself. And the economics and politics practiced by those who most loudly claim to profess Islam and Christianity are all directed toward planetary destruction and global war. There is no future in this; the future in this is complete destruction of all that lives on the planet. And I see it as duty of man, as a being of life, to not only preserve nature but to preserve humanity, and to create a future in which both humanity and nature can live, coexist, blossom, and reach their ever-greatest fruition and accomplishment.
This comes through thinking - and pursuant that activity at all levels - that is affirming of life at all levels and dedicated to its enhancement, enrichment and perpetuation. The necrophilic mentalities - and pursuant that the necrophilic effect on the world of all the activities that they inform - must be replaced with ones that are biophilic and make most of life - both human and natural - in short, medium, and long-term. With this change in mind, all human pursuits - business, politics, technology, relationships, families, science, art, education, spirituality - can begin to work toward a viable future. The people who truly love and embrace life, will value life, and will create demand for - and supply of - economics, technologies, policies, ideas, art, and modes of interaction that are life-affirming and that add to life, extend life, and make possible life worth living for their descendants and for humanity, as much as they will take care to protect life that they have not created. The people who think that destroying the world will get them to heaven, will and do take their political, economic, spiritual and interpersonal activities to the direction of violence, destruction, plunder, theft, torture, abuse, and death.
Romantic attitudes are a logical consummation of rational ones and their further development. The mind is contemptuous of nature until it actually studies nature and finds in its workings the mechanisms far more intricate and intelligent than any that it itself has yet known how to contrive. By the time the science can actually create anything of similar quality or complexity as a living being, it has full respect for natural life; at which point it can learn to build on it, improve on it, create sustainable agriculture and development, recreate some of what was blindly driven into extinction, and even create new life. Similarly, the mind has contempt for - "instinct," feeling, passion, eros, sexuality, nurturing, reproduction - until it actually studies the mechanisms of these things long enough to find in them similar intricacy and intelligence - at which point it realizes the extent of its complexity as being superior to anything that it itself knows how to create. At which point it likewise develops respect for what it would by itself see as inferior function, and then actually becomes capable of creating and building and even improving upon humanity. True natural science, like true psychology, build understanding enough to achieve respect for what they study. And it is only then that they can replicate and even improve on these givens. At this point, the mind becomes an intelligent creator instead of a dumb destroyer. And then - only then - can man's rationality be said as itself having legitimately earned respect.
To tip the balance for life, man must become a creator more than he is a destroyer. At all levels of thinking - and all levels of action - man must do more to enhance life than he is to destroy it. It is then that there is a better future in view than that of the Apocalypse. And it is then that man can be said to be equal to nature and even possibly an improver.
The period after Victorianism saw electricity, telephones, airplanes, automobiles, skyscrapers, women's rights, middle class, Panama Canal, national parks, higher physics, film, psychology, Harlem Renaissance, Fitzgerald, Akhmatova, Modligliani, and an open, livable social climate that directly enhanced both the quality of people's lives and accomplishment of civilization. What this period of innovation and freedom was for 20th century, can be accomplished on even greater scale for 21st at this time. Solar and hydrogen energy, space travel and colonization, nanotechnology, biotechnology, economics designed to maximize intelligent creation and minimize destruction of what one has not created, prudent resource management, intelligent collaboration between private and public sectors, affirmation and rigorous defense of human rights, values favorable to innovative and creative thinking, positive regard for and affirmation of both the feminine and the masculine and a mutual understanding between one another allowing beautiful and happy relationships and marriages, respect for and cultivation of both feeling and intellect, affirmation and cultivation of both individuality and dedication to benefit of the species, and political and economic policies designed to maximize intelligent creation and minimize blind destruction, can be a seed of a renaissance with unlimited potential both for the currently living and for the yet-to-exist.
This can only come from this: An understanding of and respect for life at all levels, allowing man to see and feel life at all levels and, enriched with this understanding, to become an organ of life-creation, life-perpetuation, and life-enhancement, making possible livable long-term future for both the planet and humankind. Necessary is a concept of human being as an integral entity with relation to self, species and nature, that leads to an affirmation of individuality and an affirmation of humanity and an affirmation of nature, allowing people maximal self-definition, maximal contribution to good of the species, and appreciation of nature resulting in minimal damage to it. Necessary is a recognition and valuation of all aspects of life in both natural and human forms, creating a life-affirming mentality that finds expression in people's thoughts, feelings and actions, and thus their effect on the world as well as the covenants they create. The values, perceptions, cognitions, and consequently arts, science, economics, policies, and relationships, all stand to be improved by transition to modes of thinking that are affirming of life at the natural, individual and species-directed levels. And then all these pursuits will direct themselves to creation of life and enrichment of life instead of its destruction, while having respect enough for what man has not created to minimize damage to it.
The future can and should be better than present, and there is a way of making it so. It comes from embracing the modes of thought, feeling and relating that recognize and make most of life at all levels and moving beyond destructive, necrophilic mentalities and orders, to ones that are biophilic and creative, resulting in similar transformation in all activities of humankind. It is time to embrace nature, humanity and life itself, and to create for all these a viable future. The choice is about nothing less than artificial destruction of the planet and all its inhabitants, or a sustained improvement in life human and natural for as long as the informed genius of humanity embracing and building upon the givens makes it possible for nature and for humanity to flourish, grow, and reach ever greater achievement and ever richer experience and fruition of life.
Apocalyptic Totalitarianism
We come now to the biggest racket of all American rackets of recent decades, and that is: The Christian Right. The movement that ran American society on multiple levels since 1980 finally took it over officially in 2000 and led it to its most disastrous place since the Second World War. The results were only logical, given the beliefs of the movement. And they will be with America and the world for decades to come.
In order to convince the nation that Bible is One and Only Truth and that all else is a lie or an evil, the first step that needs to be taken is to destroy people's ability to think conceptually, their ability to think empirically, as well as their access to every other source of information. The last two results in the deafening of the population; the first two result in its dumbening. Both of the preceding create a population that is unsuited for democracy and instead pushes for authoritarianism, while destroying capacity for intelligence, thought, creativity, insight, and intellectual honesty in its youth. Maintaining this destruction requires extreme control, bludgeoning, abuse, brutality and degradation, with the worst directed at those most capable of thinking past this wrong - meaning of course those of the greatest intelligence and sincerity. And it also requires a gutted primary education system, in which America falls far behind other high-income countries in the quality of the primary education given.
The deafening and the dumbening having been done to the population groomed to be sheep, everyone else must be portrayed to be wolves - meaning, that they must be claimed to be evil. Thus the claim of evil liberal scientists, evil liberal media, evil pretentious Europeans, evil limousine liberals, evil NEA artists, evil single mothers, evil welfare blacks, evil socialists, evil granolas, evil Internet, and evil "sociopaths" who of course are not actual sociopaths but anyone who has any other ideas in their heads than the Christian Right. The sheep-wolf duality, further, cannot allow for there to be anyone other than sheep or wolves, which translates into: You are either with us all the way through and at all levels or you are evil. The project at that point becomes to destroy everyone who is not at any level a sheep, however minor the disagreement and however honest and rightful the reasons for having it.
The direct result: A population paranoid, invasive, toxic, brutal, and viciously and barbarically assimilative - and most malicious persecution against anybody, both within the community or without, who has the capacity to deviate from the party line - meaning anybody who has the capacity to contribute anything insightful or anything meaningful.
Further, the public must be convinced that only the way of Christian Right works, so considerable energy must be expended to destroying everything else that exists or to create an illusion that it is unworkable or evil. That includes, but is not limited to: Science, journalism, technological progress, human rights, labor rights, personal freedom, free speech, literature, art, beauty, left-leaning societies, California, New York, Jewish or atheistic or New Age communities, Europe, and ultimately democracy itself. Everything that gave America its achievements, becomes the enemy of Christian Right; which then claims everything good to come from God while destroying the very things that made these things possible in the first place.
An entity pulling this size of a con cannot tolerate anything that has the capacity to see it as a con. This requires destruction of critical, empirical and conceptual thinking, as well as closing channels to anything telling a different story - and sabotaging those that do find their way. The result is destroying in people the cognitive habits that are necessary for insight, for innovation, for individuality, for free and creative thinking that make possible not only these things but also scientific and technological prosperity. At which point the sheep, made incapable of doing this, have to live parasitically off the liberal parts of America that allow and cultivate such cognitive habits, while demonizing those parts of America and claiming them to be evil. Tis, requires even more conmanship and deception, which requires even more "faith" to sustain. The result is leaders becoming ever-more-skillful con artists - and the "sheep" becoming more and more removed from capacity for intelligence.
To believe that hundreds of thousands of brilliant, hard-working people dedicated to pursuit of knowledge are liars and sinners, and that those claiming such things aren't - to believe that AIDS is "God's way of controlling the homosexual population," that 9-11 was God removing his protection over America because of feminists and liberals, that dinosaurs were dragons and died out in the Flood, that fossils are tests of faith, that Internet is tool of Satan, or any one of a sundry ridiculous statements of Christsian Right, people must be brainwashed quite thoroughly indeed. The character that is demanded by such a thing is the character of skilled conmanship and deception on part of some and unthinking compliance on part of others; which is not character suited for democracy at all, but rather for totalitarianism.
So that when Christian Right types start attacking your character or claim that they are speaking for true American values, know that they are stating a Big Lie. Their character is that of liars who cannot allow anything else to exist - whether truth or any competing fallacy. And the amount of conmanship, violence, and abuse that they require to maintain a con of this size would put to shame anything that came out of Stalin's or Hitler's propagandists. And just as Stalin demanded absolute fear-driven similitude while portraying as "enemy of the people" and targeting for extermination anyone who had the capacity to be a threat to him, so has the Christian Right exerted similar degenerative effect upon the United States.
They claim to have family values; yet they poison the world for their children and hope for its violent end before their grandchildren have learned how to read. They claim to have ethics and honesty; yet they lie for 30 years claiming that there is no global warming and the planet is facing catastrophe - at which point they lie again and claim that what is happening is Armageddon. They claim to have responsibility, then they place America $10 trillion in debt before baby boomers have even started retiring. They claim to want government off their backs, then create the biggest, most invasive, most anti-constitutional government in US History and base their economy on entities - government-funded beef industry and Texas-Oklahoma oil, which has used deception of people and lobbying of government to deny America progress in clean and renewable energy. They claim that cloning, genetic cures, bio-engineering and resurrection of extinct species is evil, yet wiping out millions of existing species is not. They claim that homosexuality is a perversion, but incest isn't; that single motherhood is a sin, but brutality against wives and sexual abuse of children by male relatives is acceptable; that abortion is murder, but sending people to die and kill for false reasons is perfectly rightful, as is dooming the world to overpopulation by denying birth control to the third World, as is denying and trivializing the truth about global warming and the world's fastest-ever extinction - claiming that those who see such things are sissies and fools - and then blaming the whole thing on "humanity" rather than on themselves. They blame everything on - media, intellectuals, academia, single mothers, feminists, Europe - and then claim that they are responsible and strong and honest people.
The question is not why the policies of the Christian Right have led to the current disastrous state of affairs. The question is why this monstrosity was allowed to become as big as it did. And for that, responsibility does not belong solely to Bush, Wyerich, Pat Robertson and similar workers of evil. It also belong to those who took part in this directly and those who did indirectly by dissuading people from confronting it - those who told people that politics doesn't matter, that they should be positive and not pay attention to negativity, that they should respect others’ beliefs even if those beliefs are not tolerant of them, that they should "clean their own house" or "tend to their own garden" or "change self instead of the world" or "have the serenity to accept what they cannot change," that that they should not meddle in others' business, that they should only act locally, that what they see in another as a reflection of themselves, that they should "see no evil hear no evil," that "there is no such thing as society," that paying attention to such things is “whining“ or “blaming,” or that the world will “take care of itself.”
Integrative Conception of Man
The deeper problem with the traditional forms of such religions as Buddhism and Christianity is that the spirituality is seen as divorced from physicality, which leads to similar separation in social reality. The people with spiritual inclinations go into monasteries or into ministry; the women have to share their lives with people who men believe that women are evil and that their duty is to control their every action and every thought. The world, being seen as one of illusion or one of Satan, becomes that way more convincingly by being shorn of the attention of those who have it within themselves to want to improve things. And the concept behind these convictions becomes self-fulfilling and then becomes reality for the people living under such beliefs.
This is not accidental; this is an inevitable, logical result of the beliefs themselves. To conceive spirit as being forever divorced from flesh, or of human nature as sin, or of desire as root of all suffering, is to rob the real world of the spiritual riches and to damn it to ever-perpetuating, ever-consuming darkness. In all such cases, the injury done to mankind is monumental. And in both cases this does not have to be.
Christ and Buddha had to adopt the attitude that they did toward the world, because of where they were in the world, what the world wanted from them, and what the world at the time was like. Jesus had to decide that the world "of flesh" was evil, because his flesh and his world was owned by an alien militaristic empire that ruled with crosses and whips. He had to reject the world and damn it as being a world of sin, because the world belonged to his enemy. He had to reject - women, money, politics, power, even his physical body - because all this was in the hands of the Roman Empire, which could do anything with all this anything that it wanted. So he had to actually transcend the flesh and then resurrect, in order to prove that his true self was not owned, that the power of the Roman Empire was not absolute, and that there was a light at the end of the darkness - the light of heaven, over which the Emperor and his thugs had no power.
There were many people who could very well believe at the time that the world was the world of sin. The Roman Empire was a brutal militaristic organization where three quarters were slaves and endured constant brutality and humiliation. It was not an ethical enterprise, and many people made the mistake of conflating the slavery and the brutality in the Roman Empire with its religious diversity. The truth is, the two had nothing to do with one another at all, and while Christianity offered a promise of eternal life to people living in slavery or under the Roman yoke, it offered less than nothing for people's earthly experience.
With Buddha, the circumstance was not the same, but analogous at a mental level. He was the son of a king, and at his birth his parents were given a prophecy that he would be either a great king or a founder of a major religion. His parents wanted him to become an emperor and kept him from fulfilling the prophecy of his becoming a founder of a major religion by lying to him, keeping him from knowing anything, and removing all sights of suffering out of his eyes. So first he saw real world outside the royal compound - people sick, dying, in torment - and found out that his education was a lie; then as he left the city to meditate under the tree, the king kept luring him by his desires - dancing girls, tasty fruit, friends, wife, power - back to the kingdom hall that had deceived him. So what would it be logical for the meditating mind to decide but that the world is one of deception (maya) and that desire is the root of all that is wrong with the world? He had to reject both his education and his education- shaped mind along with any desire that he may have had, in order to find any kind of truth. That was because his education was a lie, and his desires were being tempted to go back to the powers that had lied to him.
Buddhism preaches non-attachment; there is a good reason for that. All attachment - emotional, physical, intellectual, personal - was being used to tempt Buddha away from his pursuit of the truth and into the maw of the people who wanted him to serve their will for him - the will that he had found out to be a deception. He had to break all desire for everything that the kingdom had to offer - from nice food to dancing girls to his sweetheart to adoring friends to political power - as well as his family bonds and his personal friendships and loyalties and romantic attractions, and destroy everything in the self that was vulnerable to these things or that wanted or required these things, because all were used to control him and lure him back into deception. Buddha is offering a path that he himself had to go in order to achieve freedom. That path meant moving away from all that desired - because the desires were used to tempt him to that which had deceived him. It also meant going away from ego - because all ego's wants and longings and attachments were used to entrap him in the kingdom that had deceived him and that had absolute power over everything - money, fame, power, status, admiration, respect, validation - that an ego might want. It meant spending many years silencing, deconstructing and transcending the mind - because the mind was falsely educated and falsely conditioned and made to think things that were not true. It meant what he had to go through to free himself from false things; but it does not mean that all suffering is based in desire, or that ego is a piece of dirt, or that mind is evil, or that life is an illusion, or that spirituality is forever divorced from these things.
To damn the world, or to claim world as necessarily one of suffering, or to remove from the world desire, is in no way a way for making a better world. Instead it is the way to remove light from the world and plunge it into self-feeding and self-perpetuating darkness. So while many people in monasteries have successfully and effectively followed Christ's or Buddha's paths to freedom and wisdom and spiritual power, their social advice has been absolute disaster for the societies that followed their guidance in matters of life. In both cases, relationships, science, education, business, politics, - everything - has been damned and have been therefore carried out in the most destructive possible manner. And that does not make anyone or anything holy. It makes life on earth an unnecessarily and self-fulfillingly toxic hell.
Christ's advice on the best way to have a relationship is not to have a relationship. That flesh is sinful and that therefore there cannot be at the same time a sexual and a spiritual love. That sex is a dirty thing and that anyone who elicits sexual desire or erotic passion deserves not love but physical, personal and spiritual violence. I'll pass on that one. I love my wife, I treat her lovingly, and if I have to go to hell for that I will do so willingly and make things better for others damned in that way.
With both Buddhism and Christianity, there is contempt for intelligence; for fact; for nature; for reality. So it is no surprise that application of both theosophies have eradicated learning, prosperity and accomplishment from the world in which they were applied. Roman Empire had great inventors, great philosophers, great scientists, great doctors, great engineers. They had a steam engine 1,700 years before the Industrial Revolution. And while religious people claim that Roman Empire was undone by its "decadence" (reality check: It was conquered 200 years after it Christianized) the true reason that it was undone is that it listened to Roman-day Republicans who thought with their pocketbooks instead of their brains and believed that the cheapness and abundance of slave labor made the steam engine uneconomical. If they thought ahead, they would have realized the promise of that invention and not only created real prosperity that they would have never dreamt of, but have also been able to invent war machines that would have vaporized any invading army - as well as being able to end the horrible institution of slavery that was the true moral outrage of Roman Empire and the real source of hatred and resentment against it.
In choosing whether to embrace high-technology, high-intelligence, job- creating clean energy, or to go on with the ruinous policies of Texas Oil, the present-day world faces a similar choice.
But that is a different matter, no matter how crucial in significance. The Romans had great science and engineering and could have had a world we have now, two millenia before it came about, if they had been smarter about their economic and political policies. Nothing of that sort existed in the Christian world until it was shaken to its core by European Enlightenment and American Revolution.
So it is no surprise that, in order to find intellectual, political, social, personal, sexual, physical freedom, many people have made the same choice that Christ and Buddha have made, in reverse. Like Christ and Buddha rejected the physical world, they have rejected the world of the spirit, because the world of the spirit was under control of mentalities that were hostile to intellect, nature, prosperity, science, human rights, sexuality, beauty, and all else that affirms life on earth. The European Enlightenment grew out of that, as well as a profusion of secular mindsets - rationalism, pragmatism, capitalism, realism, scientific materialism, economics, psychology, atheism, agnosticism, skepticism, and many others.
There is a problem with these mindsets as well. They stake their central claim on denying the world of spirit. So any spiritual longing, or any appreciation for or expression of splendor,or anything loving and warm and tender in people, is by them brutally and maliciously suppressed. Their supposed rationality becomes so overbearing, so controlling, so abrasive and horrible and destructive, that people flee from them even if it means disastrous consequences for themselves or living in poverty or losing their minds or their rights or their comfort or dying early or get brutally raped, tortured and killed. Denying spirituality to people with the same violence with which the religious deny physicality, these mindsets become just as cruel and just as horrendous as the ones that they seek to replace. And then what is left for people, is choice between one semi-life or another semi-life - the life of spirit without flesh, or the life of flesh without spirit. Both of which, in this situation, become lives of destruction and decay.
The process of evolution from rationalism - any rationalism - whether it be Enlightenment, or Victorianism, or the 50s, or the 90s - is quite similar. Genius struggles, laboriously, painstakingly, passionately, through the maze of rationalistic obstruction, to produce refutation and to bring into life some kind of splendor. Then more follows; struggle ensues. The world of the rationalist becomes less apparently certain, less apparently rational, less apparently noble, the more abrasive and terrible and hysterical it becomes in its attacks on what threatens its orthodoxy. And then - light at the end of the tunnel: A liberation. Which once again comes under attack from all sides, but shows a way for as long as it lasts and remains through history in its art to inspire those in the future generations who hunger for life to go as far as did they, and then further.
I know this from history, and I confidently give this prediction. A rationalism - any rationalism - will always be followed by a romanticism of one or another kind. Romantic period after European Enlightenment, Bohemian period after Victorianism, the 60s after the 50s - these are not accidental; these are inevitable. In all cases, we've seen the walls of false life-negating rationality refuted by people who have seen something more, or who have dug deeper, or who have used rationality itself to get to a more profound understanding than what is preached by the theories and that refute its conceptions and its implications for the world and for mankind, or who have experienced and studied learning from other cultures, or who have achieved powers of insight, or who have decided to feel instead of to only cognate and were able to see what the rationalist does not see himself or does not want people to see. An Einstein who as a scientist applies science to a place that transcends physical determinism that dominated the 19th century conception of the universe and its resulting structures and institutions - the 60s existentialist psychologists who refute the behaviorist dogmas and arrive at a concept of man as a human being rather than a machine - a Rousseau, Thoreau, Emerson, Byron, Wordsworth or Elizabeth Barrett Browning who open people's minds to the world of beauty and passion that in the Cartesian conception of universe could not exist - a Nash who in his work on game theory arrives at refutation of orthodox economics and gives place in the world for compassion and interest in the good of one's fellow man - will always pop up through history to refute any kind of rationalistic determinism. And this will go on, for as long as the rationalists of one or another kind try to construct a world out of their dogmas and to trap the minds, spirits and lives of their children and those after them in those entrapments.
With religious supremacism, we will see the same thing happen as well. A Luther who uses Biblical teachings to show the corruption of Roman Catholic Church, or the Enlightenment scientists who used intelligence to show the falsehood of the Biblican cosmology, will exist for as long as do both human intellect and the Bible. Intelligence will always continue to come along and refute dogma that denies intelligence. And if the theological dogmatists want to do away with or to subvert intelligence, as Bush administration did, as Puritans did, and as the Muslims appear intent to do, then it will come at them and their societies from without.
There has to be a better way than either of the preceding. A positive way is an integrative experience of life, in which both the physical and the spiritual exist and work to each other's benefit. It is a way in which both the physical world and the spirit world are affirmed and find ways to enhance one another and exist in synergy rather than disintegration. And it is a way in which life as a human being - a being who combines the spiritual and the material aspects - can be affirmed in its entirety, allowing for lifestyles and covenants in which the totality of humanity can exist - and achieve greatest human experience, greatest human accomplishment, and most complete and integrated manifestations of human beings themselves.
Manifestation of Cruelty
One fairly large movement in recent years has claimed that one’s beliefs manifest one’s reality. Question: What about the beliefs of other 6 billion people? What about the things that are true, regardless of whether or not one believes in them? What about all the people who have effect on the world through their actions in one or another way?
The practitioners of this line of belief want to get everyone “thinking positive” and advocate that as the solution for everything. Naturally, they want to claim “negative thinking” or anger or fear or hatred to be the root of all that is wrong with the world. But the world’s worst problems - pollution, debt, global warming, environmental destruction, overpopulation - are not result of negative thinking. They are result of wrong choices that people have made. And in claiming that anyone focusing on such things is thinking negative or adding to the problem, they are denying the problem the real solutions that actually stand a chance of making the world good enough in the long term to justify positive thinking not only on their part but on that of others.
The same people believe that injustice or wrongs or pain that people endure are things they have caused, or “a karmic lesson,” or something they’ve “manifested in their consciousness.” This leads to not only accepting wrongs of all kinds, but to systematizing and perpetuating them. Not only do beliefs such as these lead to crimes unredressed, but rather to further stigma against the victim. And what it leads to on social level, is cruelty and shallowness and coldness. Cruelty and shallowness and coldness that lead people to beat up on those who are down, while looking up to those (including these same people) when they are up.
If World War II happened now, these people would say that it was meant to happen or was a karmic lesson or a function of “negativity ” of the 50 million people who were murdered. If they lived through Islamic expansion or trade in African slaves or Spanish imperialism, they would say similar things about hundreds of millions of people who were slaughtered or enslaved by these wrongs. These beliefs by their own inner mechanisms beget extreme injustice, coldness and apathy. All these are breeding grounds for evil. And the best way to refute such convictions, is to turn them against themselves: Change the status quo, and then the same people will have to accept the new status quo as likewise spiritually caused and something that is there by will of universe, or of God, or as lesson to currently living, or as reality manifested - by them.
The idea that everyone is responsible for everything that happens to them leads people to support those who are up, but not the same people when they are down. This is known as being a fair-weather friend.
The idea that everyone is responsible for everything that happens to them leads people to believe that nobody can interfere in anyone's life from idealistic motives, while people do (and have always done, and will always most likely do) interfere in people's lives from non-idealistic motives. This is known as hypocrisy.
The idea that everyone is responsible for everything that happens to them leads people to do nothing to prevent wrong. This is known as moral supinity.
The idea that everyone is responsible for everything that happens to them leads people to deny support where it's needed and think that nobody can be of help to another person. This is known as cowardice.
The idea that everyone is responsible for everything that happens to them leads people to avoid things that are either shared responsibility or that involve emotional share. This is known as selfishness.
The idea that everyone is responsible for everything that happens to them leads people to blame those who are down for their misfortune, while doing nothing to those who are causing the problem. This is known as evil.
And while many beautiful and intelligent things have come out of New Age movement, it is these wrongful beliefs that ultimately led to its undermining, discrediting for many people also the positive things that have come out of the New Age movement and injuring those who did true good in its name.
Skepti-Bigotry
A more minor racket - ostensibly opposing this one, but lacking any of its creativity - has been that of "skepticism." Founded by James Randi, the "skeptic society" has made it its mission to exterminate use of - hypnosis, astrology, psychism, telepathy, consciousness science, and everything related to the same. It claims to be doing its "work" for sake of science, but there is nothing remotely scientific in its goals or methodology.
The scientific method is one of impartial inquiry into the universe through testable theory. The scientist knows that the inquiry is never complete, and that some explanation does not exclude the possibility of another explanation coming along that would complete, reframe or extend the current theory. He also knows that there have been throughout history and in all kinds of places smart people who, whether or not they used scientific method, came up with valuable and worthwhile knowledge. The "skeptic" however has no such knowledge. His claim is that some things absolutely cannot exist, and that anybody who thinks that they do is a conman, a kook or an idiot. This makes the "skeptic" not only unscientific, but the very thing against which science has had to struggle for centuries - a dogmatic bigot. And that does not make him an ally of science. That makes him the very essence of what has forever stood in the way of all true scientific inquiry.
Believing the people he attacks to be kooks, conmen or idiots, the "skeptic" then makes it his mission to harass and discredit them. This founds his entire approach on another completely unscientific and illogical device - the ad hominem. In logic, as well as in science, ad hominem is known as illogic, for a very simple reason that how someone is characterized has no bearing on the validity of his findings. They should know. The greatest minds of science - Galileo, Darwin, Einstein, Watson, Hawking among many others - were subject to most malicious character attacks by the societies they inhabited. And yet without their contributions those societies would have very little of what they have now, and many of those who attack these people would be serfs.
In his reliance on ad hominem, the “skeptic” develops the character of the abuser. And this results in great degradation not only in his character, but also in the character of anyone who adopts his beliefs.
Culture of Character Smear and Character of America
The predominant claim by political entities that campaign against the character of the opposition candidates is that they are protecting the character or integrity of the office. In fact, they degrade the character of the office as much as they degrade the character of the voter. Political culture of character assassination does not improve character of the office or of the country, but lowers it to the level of pettiness, nastiness, ugliness, maliciousness and vileness. And that does not improve the character of the office or of the nation; it degrades both.
To create a political culture of character assassination, is to create a political culture of vileness. Vileness then becomes the way of the political process, putting into office the people who are most skilled at abuse - and frequently at nothing else. That leads to wrong people being in the office and implementing wrong policies - in many cases, given the way they got into the office, policies that are completely destructive and injurious to the people. .
It is not only the ones in office that end up being encouraged toward wrongful action. The politicians' abusive behavior also trickles down to the voter. It influences people to behave in abusive ways to the people over whom they have influence. And that by itself is a source of needless suffering for millions.
The constituencies that are abusive, or that want to be abusive, thrive on such politics. The more abusive the constituency, the more drawn it is to the politics of character smear. The level to which an individual or a constituency supports character smear campaigns is a good measure of the individual's or constituency's embrace of abusive practices in their own lives. And the more political life is based on nastiness, the more people take the example, the more nastiness becomes the reality of people's lives. At which point not only is the character of the political discourse diminished, but people's own character gets worse and worse, as does the lot of people at the receiving end of their behavior.
That, is the true degradation in character that has taken place in politics of America. And the way to restore both statesmanship and American character, is to see through abusive smear tactics and demand dignity in the political process. The people who practice character smear campaigns, are themselves the worst character in the country and commit by their actions a far greater wrong than anything that the people whom they attack could be conceivably accused of having committed. Not only do they bring abusive behavior into politics, but far worse they influence people of the country to become abusers themselves. And that not only injures the credibility of America; it also injures countless millions of people who stand to be at the receiving end of vile behavior by people influenced in such a way.
So whenever one sees character smear campaign, it can be said with accuracy that the person doing such campaigning is an abuser, just as it can be said that someone who supports such campaign is likewise possessive of an abusive frame of mind. And bringing dignity and respect back to America requires growing beyond such despicable tactics and creating a culture of dignity in the political process. A person who truly is interested in character will concern himself with character which he encourages in the people. And if he campaigns abusively and influences people to be abusive, then it is him that exhibits the truly unworthy character and does true violence to the character of the political office and of the country itself.
Oil Character and Clean Energy Character
The basis of the economy percolates through all levels of human activity to become the basis of the character of the people in the economy, which then becomes the character of the societies and policies that the people create. In the same way as the Roman Empire built itself on slave labor - and made the basis of Roman character cruelty, brutality, conquest, predation, short-sightedness, laziness and oppression - so the oil economy fosters in people a character that mimics in its mentality the character of oil industry itself. This character is toxic, extractive, destructive, short-sighted, polluting, and ensnaring. And its poisonous influence can only be significantly reduced through a greater use of clean energy - and greater influence for life-affirming, intelligent, provident, and socially and environmentally responsible character that its development and widespread use stand to foster in humankind.
The oil character is the character of extraction and exploitation, but that's not remotely the end of it. From combustion of oil, are encouraged worldviews that see the world as being given, and of man as only there to burn it without consideration for the rest of the world or for its future. The planet is seen as there for people to burn; the people are seen as there only to burn it for present consumption. Which means that anything that cares for the given world that man has not created, like anything that cares for the future of the civilization that man creates, is a competing interest that must be wiped out by any possible means. Since the oil resources are finite, the oil character does not see nor plan for life beyond the time that oil runs out. Any mentality that sees this, looks for alternatives, or stands to create alternatives, is mortal enemy to the oil industry. Not only therefore is the oil character is short-sighted to the point of being apocalyptic and as such foresees - and effectively works to bring about in its spirituality, politics and economics - an artificial end of the world; but far more significantly it is aggressively, imposingly and overbearingly so, and seeks to stamp out by all measures all that is not itself.
As people are made dependent on oil industry for their lives and their livelihood, the economic foundations of life and liberty are likewise destroyed. All thought systems, spiritualities, psychologies, are manipulated by this interest toward forcing assimilation into the oil-industry way of living, but more profoundly into the oil character. These then are directed directly toward destruction of qualities that might influence people to not quite like this state of affairs or be motivated to look for or seek to create better alternatives: qualities such as knowledge and respect for the planet and nature in all its complexity and diversity; caring for humanity and its future; ability to create innovative solutions; and all in the human being - intellect, curiosity, natural wisdom, compassion, love of life, humanitarian orientation, and capacity for creative and innovative thinking - that might make these possible. Which means that destroyed is not only life and liberty, but also all in people that seeks and makes possible the above. First the order destroys life and liberty at economic level; then at spiritual, intellectual, and psychological levels; then finally at the political level. And then the oil order sets humanity careening toward planetary destruction while in the process destroying everything that is of life and liberty in its own ranks.
The extractive oil character is one of destruction of nature with no sight for the future and no creative role for man. It pits the interests of the industry against both what man has not created and everything that man has created and that he stands to create. Which means that both nature and mankind become enemies of the industry; and that creates the most destructive of all conceivable orientations. At social level, we speak of oil-based mentalities and their orders subduing, exploiting and driving into extinction all that is life-affirming at both natural and human level - controlling, expropriating and deceiving what can be controlled, deceived and expropriated; demonizing, abusing and destroying what cannot. At the political level, we speak of oil-funded Texas Fundamentalists claiming ridiculously to speak for America and then seeking to destroy and enslave everybody who are not oil-funded Texas-Oklahoma Fundamentalists, both outside of America and within.
All that is life in nature, and all that is life in man, are targeted for contamination, discrediting and destruction with eye toward eternal damnation. This is true for all that is physical and emotional; it is also true for all that is of the mind. Science, business, politics, art, relationships, are there to be conquered, subdued, eviscerated, and made through force and deception to serve the agenda of artificial Armageddon. Anything that is life-affirming, is sabotaged, corrupted, contaminated, slandered, defunded, discredited, undermined, in order that people can be led to believe the explanations that want to portray life as sin and all its manifestations as evil. Which people then want to bring about an end to life as such.
To that end no lie, no cruelty, no violation, no atrocity, is unacceptable. This is the case among oil-funded states claiming to profess both Christianity and Islam. The puppet of oil-funded Texas Fundamentalist acquiring Republican nomination by spreading false rumors about his opponent, getting in office through corrupt dealings, putting the government trillions dollars in debt amid collapsing family incomes, silencing truth about global warming, deceiving America into a war, and doing what he can to destroy the true greatness of America - its constitutional democracy, its ingenuity, its scientific knowledge, its affirmation and preservation of rights and liberties, its foresight, its humanitarian orientation, its willingness to lead through true diplomacy rather than barbarism, and the freedom of speech, thought, and way of life, that has made possible its accomplishments - even as he was claiming ridiculously to be making America stronger and greater - this, is only the political manifestation of the oil character. Its effect on the people within and on the world without, are even worse.
The oil character does not see man as a creator but only as a destroyer; thus it destroys man's capacity to create. Its hatred of nanotechnology, biotech, stem-cell research, genetics, is of the same mindset as its hatred of innovation, of ingenuity, of individuality and of art. By sabotaging and eviscerating man's capacity to create, it destroys man's capacity to create a long-term and livable future. It is as such the worst possible way to relate both man and nature, destroying nature while also destroying man. And from this mentality, outgrows a toxic, necrophilic, destructive, totalitarian and apocalyptic character - which then becomes the character of the oil arrangement, and shapes their economics, their politics, their spiritual life, and their inter-relations. A character that feeds on life, poisons life, inhibits life, and seeks to make life uninhabitable - and uses man's intellect, emotion, physicality, spirit, everything, toward not merely abusive and totalitarian but in fact apocalyptic ends.
Driven by oil mentality man destroys nature; then he destroys the foundations of his own existence. And in the process man's mindset as well as man's activities mimic the worst practices of the oil industry - short-sightedness, expropriation, aggressive ignorance, violence against life at all levels, criminalization and demonization of all thoughts and characters that may see to the contrary, destruction of liberty, and apocalyptic totalitarianism. The past life that is fossil fuel is burned; so through poisoning and global warming is life present as well as life future. The inheritance of the past is squandered, the present is poisoned, and the world is set to slide toward an artificial end. The character that burns dead dinosaurs also makes dinosaurs of the living while destroying anything that is not a dinosaur and anything in people that may lead to clarity as to the character of the dinosaur ways. And just as dinosaurs died out in a mass extinction, so has the order based on the burning of the dead dinosaurs created the fastest extinction in the history of the planet - the order that now threatens the existence also of humanity itself.
Clean energy, on the other hand, is not based on extraction or on combustion, nor does it work toward a planet-wide poisoning. Clean energy is based on transmutation, by high technology, of abundant energy into usable energy, while generating in the process no poisons or waste. This process fulfils the energy needs of the civilization, while being itself non-obtrusive to the planet and its inhabitants. The achievements, knowledge, prosperity, of civilization, are made possible through tapping into abundant energy of such sources as the sun and the oceans, without producing any toxic byproducts and without poisoning life present or sabotaging yet-to-come. The creative, constructive uses of human intelligence make it possible for both nature and civilization to exist - for nature to be accepted and left as
nature, and for man to make the best of man and his world.
This makes the best of the given and the created. The world given that is nature is known, respected, and left as much alone as possible; the world created that is the civilization exists in all of what it is capable and reaches, through maximization of intelligent creation and minimization of waste and destruction, to greater heights with no end in sight. The mind is not used to blindly destroy, but to intelligently build on the givens, to provide sustainable long-term existence for the civilization that man has created, while treading lightly upon the nature that man has not.
The sun and the ocean water are not at risk of running out for thousands of years; which means that, with clean energy, the world can be counted upon to be there for a long time. This allows the people to conceive and work toward a future that is indefinite rather than one that will end when the predatory oil-funded dinosaurs extinguish the life on the planet while telling people that it is punishment from God and using that to suffocate them still more. Life can go on, in both natural and human aspects, and people can plan and work towards a viable long-term future for themselves and for humanity. This builds in people the habits that are prudent, responsible, viable and conducive to life.
Clean energy recognizes, validates, and respects both nature and man, and makes most and not the least of life in both aspects. Nature is not just resources to be burned for consumption without regard for the future; it is something that is respected for its variety and richness and life-generative capacity - while man, rather than being merely a short-sighted destroyer, becomes an intelligent creator who builds on the knowledge of science and technology to create a livable future and livable world. Prosperity is not sacrificed; it is enhanced and extended. And so is livability of the planet, as well as of civilization itself.
The high levels of technology needed to put in place solar beams and similar devices encourage and validate the view of humanity as intelligent beings responsible for the destiny of both humanity and the planet, while also drawing on - making constructive use of - and fostering - in people inventive intelligence, long-term perspective, generative capacity, responsibility for the future, eye toward maximal benefit and minimal destruction, and greater understanding of, respect for, and caring for, the world - both in the given, natural aspect, and in the human, man-created, form. The mentality and character that is encouraged, both in people and in their social and economic and political activities, is therefore one that makes most of these virtues. It is the character that not only makes possible to indefinitely power the civilization while being minimally obtrusive to nature, but also fosters a nobler, more prudent, more responsible, more creative, more nonobtrusive, and more life-affirming and life-extending character in the people who would inhabit such a civilization - and, pursuant this, in the character of the orders that they stand to create.
Not only does clean energy therefore lead to a viable future, but it also fosters a more viable character in the people and consequently in the economic, political, and social orders that they create. From predatory destroyers eating alive the world and engorging themselves in the process, people become intelligent human beings who work toward a sustainable future in which the natural world can keep living, as civilization remains existing and achieves ever greater heights. The qualities of clean energy economy - responsibility toward the future, high levels knowledge, inventiveness and intelligence, use of mind to create, sustaining and growing the civilization while taking care to tread lightly upon the planet, life-affirming character that uses mind for constructive solutions that maximize creation and minimizes destruction, and respect found by intelligence for what man has not created as well as respect earned by intelligence for opting for and implementing this arrangement - will become more and more the substance of people's characters and percolate more and more to their social and political interactions to impart to them greater levels of these virtues. And that is a positive influence not only for the chance of the world to have a viable future, but also for the character of the people who stand to inherit the world.
Originality and Will
My friend, who works as a teacher and counselor at a school for troubled kids, says that the school policy is to defuse student romances by reminding the students of whatever relationship problems their parents had and leading them to believe that they will have the exact same problems.
My response: People have choice over what to do, and whatever the accident of training or background it becomes possible for people to do right deliberately out of their own values and choice. And it is in this ability to do things proactively and directly that is the saving grace of humanity, and its potential for liberation from tyranny of all kinds.
Without the volitional consciousness, the people become dragged down to the status of animals. Being an animal may seem appealing to some, until the animal tribe does what the animal tribes do best and starts plucking out the distinct. The animalistic drive for racial purity takes over, until the tribe turns into a Nazi horde. In psycho-fascism, the goal has been to destroy the people that they believe to be wrongly made. Beside the horrendous human rights violations, what happens is still more sinister:
The original mind (to whom the world owes all it has) and the original makeup (the reason that life has evolved past the stage of microbes) come under the worst of abuse and are assaulted, degraded and torn down.
And it is beyond hypocrisy for the living, human, beings, inhabiting a highly advanced civilization, to attack and destroy the mechanisms to which they owe everything from representative democracy to higher physics to the poetry of John Keats.
Would an original mind have difficulty in a tribe? Absolutely. His own mental processes, being unique and distinct from the party line of the tribe, will grate against the sociocultural context and cause internal and external difficulties of one or another kind. But it is the original, creative, inspired, passionate minds that are at the root of all improvement we've seen in human history. To look beyond personality adaptation and into the nature of things-as-are - makes possible manifest human value. And rather than plucking out the pearls, the man begins seeing their splendor and giving them a place in the necklace adorning the neck of the beloved -
And a way to be anything other than indiscriminate addition to sedentary mass.
Now faced with this dynamic, which incidentally explains according to its own mechanisms the supposed stereotype of tortured artist or innovator (which some in psychology want to equate with narcissism), the ideology of postmodernism has been preaching that there is no originality in the human being and no originality in realm of thought. This was an excuse for the postmodernist's own lack of inspired genius, and perhaps an excuse for the academia and the media to be taken over by ones who are least capable of making real improvements and robbed of those who are. The result has been a drastic reduction in Noble Prizes won by American scientists, and a stupendous degradation in the quality of American art and literature. Without originality in nature, we would all be bacteria; and without originality of heart and mind, the normal people would all be normal serfs in one or another normal hidebound monarchy working normal 16-hour-days on a normal two-acre plot of land and getting run over by normal murderers and rapists.
And it is to that state of affairs that the anti-originality movements have been seeking to return humankind.
And the first step has been plucking out the people who are capable of originality - as well as those capable of excellence, inspiration, wisdom, and passionate love.
No, it is not elitist to pursue excellence; it is making the most of the potentiality embodied in human being. No, it is not pathological to cultivate passionate love; it is sharing emotional riches of which one
is capable with another human being who would appreciate such a thing. No, it is not narcissistic to come up with new ideas; it is the centerpiece of all human improvement. No, it is not patriarchial for
women to be tender, feminine and artistic; it is empowering of what women can be as distinct in what men are capable of being, and as such dignifying, enriching and ennobling to any woman who would pursue that path.
And in attacking such things, what is attacked is anything that is ennobling - and that as such by its own quality refutes the atavistic postmodern worldview.
But what is attacked still more thoroughly in the process is liberty.
Liberty which means first of all freedom of thought, freedom of feeling and freedom of self-definition -
Which is the corollary of will and deliberate choice -
Which is the only climate in which any kind of improvement is possible -
And which the conman's totalitarianism that is a result of projection of animalistic interest through psycho-fascism cannot allow to exist lest it by its own beingness refute the interest's big lie.
When psychology first became big, preaching that people are driven rather than driving (instead of the far more healthy worldview that people, being human and animal at once, are both driven and driving,
different people to different extents and in different endeavors), many rightfully felt insulted by this argument. Among mistaken reactions were “love under will” and the far more ruinous "nevertheless I will." The correct response is: I WILL - period. And that means:
I craft. I create. I invent. I produce splendor and innovation.
Allowing complete manifestation of humanity and its path to accomplishment.
Which spirit, being driven into extinction by the aforementioned-fascism in realms of academia and the media, ended up reluctantly going into business, resulting in business growth against the backdrop of media and academia wilting away.
I am of the belief that active, engaged, smart, benevolent, principled media and academia are essential to liberty and civilization. And that if they are to regain influence, it is essential that they return to the spirit of innovation and excellence that allowed them in the first place to exist. And that means, recognizing the fact of all that makes possible excellence and innovation -
Which is the human; the will; the passionate; the ingenious; the inspired.
Which spirit is the embodied refutation of the postmodernist nastiness, and the salvation from unofficial tyranny embodied therein.
With recognition of will - and of its corollaries of freedom and choice - it becomes possible to again resurrect beauty, dignity, excellence, and all the other great virtues. And then it becomes possible for people to be human again.
I do not seek to deny the animal. I seek to also remember the human. I seek to remember intelligence, because intelligence is at the root of all that man has created as well as it is his protection from tyranny, conmanship and injustice. I seek to remember brilliance and ingenuity, because that is what made all the true innovation in all areas of life as well as capacity to see through rackets. And I seek to remember beauty, because beauty is brilliance and intelligence manifest in nature and in the works of humankind.
javascript:void(0)
And through the integrative synthesis of existence and essence - nature and man - heart and mind - the drives and the driving - to make viable the modes of cognition that recognize the totality of human existence and make it possible for humanity to be all it can be, and for the world to be all it can be as the result of its creation and unfoldment.
Freedom from Rackets: Path to Livable Future
With freedom from rackets, is made possible transparency at a profound level that makes it possible for people to see what they are dealing with and know how to work with it in a way that produces beneficial results. And the more the rackets, at any level, are seen through, the greater the chance not only of creating people and societies possessing integrity, but also of seeing conditions for what they are and impacting them, knowledgeably and responsibly, for the benefit of the existing and the yet to exist.
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Political thought on major issues of today and tomorrow.
Categories
- american constitution (2)
- Anonymous (1)
- Anti Education (1)
- aparthied (1)
- Australian Football (1)
- Barack Obama (1)
- Bloods (1)
- bush (1)
- business practices (1)
- character (1)
- charlie chaplin (1)
- Charmyne Pavlavi (1)
- church of scientology (1)
- Climate Change (2)
- clinton (1)
- Conservatives (1)
- corruption (1)
- Crips (1)
- Culture (1)
- Dam Levels (1)
- Democrats (1)
- Drought (1)
- Energy (2)
- Farmers (1)
- Fuel Efficiency (1)
- Fuel Prices (1)
- GANGSTERS (1)
- George Bush (1)
- ghetto (1)
- Global Warming (1)
- Global Warming Deniers (1)
- Green Energy (2)
- Hackers (1)
- Health (1)
- Health care (1)
- Health care reform (1)
- Hydrogen Transmission Network (1)
- Indonesia (1)
- inner city (1)
- intellectual (1)
- intelligence (1)
- Iraq (1)
- Japan (1)
- lies (1)
- Made in America Bloods and Crips (1)
- Movies (1)
- narcissistic (1)
- New World Order (1)
- Obama (1)
- Positive Discrimination (1)
- Propaganda (1)
- Racial (1)
- Racism (1)
- rainforest (1)
- Reforesting Deserts (1)
- Republicans (2)
- Respect (1)
- Russia (1)
- Russian business (1)
- Russian economy (1)
- Russian mafia (1)
- Scientology (1)
- Siberia (1)
- society (1)
- sociopathic (1)
- South Africa (1)
- Sri Lanka (1)
- Sustainable (2)
- taiga (1)
- Tamil Tigers (1)
- taxes (1)
- torture (1)
- UN Hackers (1)
- Violence Against Women (6)
- Water (1)
- Water Levels (1)
- Water Storage (1)
- White Supremists (1)
- young men (1)
0 comments:
Post a Comment