I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
“I go and lie down…” | Music: Wild Imagination | Kurt Vile
Third Archetypal Animation & Stanza
I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.
“I come into the peace of wild things…” | Music: The Peace Of Wild Things | Keith Kauspedas [1] Deep Echoing (Fox In The Snow)
Fourth Archetypal Animation & Stanza
I come into the presence of still water.
“I come into the presence of still water…” | Music: Watermark Enya | [9] River
Fifth Archetypal Animation & Stanza
And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light.
“I feel above me the day-blind stars…” | Music: Stars Night Mantra
Sixth Archetypal Animation & Stanza
For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
“For a time I rest in the grace of the world,…” | Music: Peaceful Piano Musicals Cover Kid | La la Lu (From “Lady and the Tramp”)
ReflectionsOn Wendell Berry’s Poem to This Moment in Time
When the forces of man’s collective psyche gather into a maelstrom sending destructive vortexes this way and that into the world, it is hard not to feel as Wendell Berry begins his timeless poem:
...despair for the world grows in me, and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children's live may be...
Putin blows his devil’s breath from high within his isolated, depressing Moscow tower. A devil’s wind that makes his warrior vortexes go this way and that. Everywhere they go, the leave behind trails of blood, of dead bodies and blown up buildings, trees, and earth. Up there in his tower of desolation, he bloats in his madness as he congratulates himself over and over again about how he is getting away with unleashing his Hell-scape fantasies, deathly desires, and foolish folly into the world.
If you are a person with normal capacity for human empathy and compassion, then it is impossible to turn away and ignore what is going on in Ukraine. And you must not turn away.
We all must witness this wicked madness straight on, just as the Ukrainians are meeting Putin’s little devils straight on. If we don’t want to become like Putin, we must feel this destruction deeply and furiously. And we must feel down deep into our bones all the other tragedies unfolding in Afghanistan, the Middle East, Africa, Central America, South America, in the heart of all major cities and super rick countries in this world.
If you do, this means you are still human.
Wendell Berry describes the monsters inside us all. And he also tells us how to quell them and to sink into the peace that passes all understanding.
I wonder when was the last time Putin went down to where the wood drakes gather? When did he last lay down on his back, belly exposed to the light, the air, the sun, the stars and breathe in the beauty of this world? When did he last see a heron eat a snake or ponder the peace of still water? When did he last look up into the night sky and wonder about how implausible any of us are here at all?
When did Putin cut himself off from his curiosity, his wonder, his inner grace and awareness that he is alive in a magnificent world with enough bounty for all, if only we would tap into our inner wild nature where the wild wisdom of life runs free with the knowledge there is bounty all, if only we take our fair share? When did Putin become a narcissist blob cut off from his body, his heart, and his humanity? When did he become a monster?
Seventh Archetypal Animation | When Grace Is Lost
“And then the sun went out bright…” | Music: Dark Bloom | Darkness | The Sun Went Out Bright
Putin lost his inner grace long ago, and now, alone and cold in a forbidding world, he opens a gate for devils to tumble and fumble their way out into this beautiful world. They rape women, shoot children, bomb maternity hospitals, children’s hospitals, and recreation centers where 1,000 women and children huddle in the dark and cold hoping they might just stop their bombing. Instead, they are crushed under the rubble of another bomb.
I hate Putin. I hate Putin’s army of dead and dying souls. I wish the Free World would grow a stronger backbone and kill this man who has become a Dracula overseeing an army of Zombies. But, we are playing on the “civilized” game board, while Putin plays on the barbarian game board.
However, he won’t win. He might kill a Hell of a lot of people. He might even launch a nuclear bomb, but like so many Ruthless Rulers before him, he will crumble into the dust bin of life. Ruthless Rulers always do.
Oh yes, they might win for a time. And, they might press their smelly likeness onto other human beings, adding to the blob, but he will never win. His zombies will never rule over the multitude as he has promised.
Evil never wins! At least not for long…not as long as there is life to live. Not as long as wood drakes sail on lakes or great herons hunt and devour snakes. Not as long as a single human being wanders down to the waters edges and wonders why this whole thing exists at all. Ponders why we are here amongst the divine majesty of the trillion billion stars above.
Being Human by Being Connected to Each Other & the World
My friend Karen shared this poem with me. We both feel deep pain for suffering the of the people of Ukraine. We both feel helpless in the face of such evil, and yet, we live…and…in the face of such horror, in retaliation to the demonic evil unleashing death, destruction and horror on Earth, Ukrainians fight! They live!
And yes, they are dying by the hundreds of thousands because Putin is a coward and his army is ill-equipped and ill-prepared, indeed, they are unwilling to wage this war, expect for the beasts he’s imported in and the degenerate ones who glory in the gross and disgusting side of life…the ones who are too afraid to love or to know who and what they really are.
Ukrainians know the price of this evil, and they stand against it, and they are winning! They are winning because they remained connected to their humanity and grounded to this Earth–our home, our mother, our true nature. They show us, the Free World, each and every day how to fight for what is right and how to be better human beings!
The Storytelling Species: Makers & Players of Reality Bubbles
Storytelling Species Series
In the previous pieces of the Storytelling Species Series, we have explored how individual attitudes, beliefs, and thinking styles can influences our individual perceptions of reality. We also looked at how stories can influence our understanding of reality (inner and outer). We even explored how stories can become shared narratives that serve as foundational building blocks of our great civilizations and complicated societies. We also looked at how other kind of stories (e.g., conspiracy myths) can pull us together and shred our shared reality. These types of stories are carefully crafted narratives created by people craving attention and power and such people make up stories designed to tear us apart and make us distrust each other. They do this because in a civilization that is in a state of chaos and distrust, it is much easier to carve out a group of people who they can manipulate and control.
Each and every person alive today contributes to the quality of our shared reality–at local levels, at national levels, and at global levels. It all begins with our individual understanding of reality (our inner world), which is contributed to our shared reality (our outer world) through our thoughts, words, and deeds (conscious and unconscious), through our feelings (conscious and unconscious), and through our sensations, specifically, what we pay attentiontoand what we ignore. We also contribute to our individual and shared reality through our instinctual and intuitive responses to what happens to us as we journey through space and time.
Many of us know thinking, feeling, sensation, and intuition as components of psychological tests like the Myers-Briggs Personality Type. Finding out what our default psychological operating system is can help us navigate the world better such as figuring out what kind of job or career we might be good at doing or happiest doing. Most of us consider this knowledge not much more important than knowing what our astrological sign is. But I suggest this knowledge is critical to understand not only how to navigate the outer world, but also how to navigate our inner world (the hidden world inside of us).
One of the most tragic aspects of being a modern human today is an all out denial of the reality of one’s inner world. Denying the reality of our inner world denies us the ability to navigate it. We must know our inner world in the same way we know the physical world (the outer world). We must know where the dangerous areas are inside of ourselves and why they are dangerous. We must know where the safe and nurturing areas are inside ourselves and how to navigate between these hidden places. Without this inner knowledge, we can feel lost, anxious, and fearful in the world.
Conversation with the Bubble Maker on How to Make An Awesome Batch of Bubbles
This is what crystalized for me the day I met the bubble maker. The quality of our individual batch of consciousness is how we know and understand our outer (physical) world as well as our inner world (hidden world). The quality of our stream of consciousness can be greatly influenced by how we employ our thinking style, or how much we allow our feeling style to help us understand the world around us. The quality of our consciousness can be increased or decreased by the degree of sensation information we pay attention to (e.g., who is around us, how are we feeling around them) as well as the degree to which we are aware of how we are responding to people and things around us (i.e., are we acting unconsciously, in an instinctual way to people and things around us). When we react unconsciously, this impacts how much intuition we can access in the moment.
Our individual batch of consciousness is constantly changing for it needs to be dynamically balanced moment by moment with what remains unconscious inside of us. Many of us who have grown up in modern Western society are taught from very young ages to deny the reality of our inner world. We were taught to do this to survive the ways in which power is wielded in our super-huge, mega system of consciousness. We have evolved these systems of being because they have been super successful strategies to survive in an unpredictable and complicated world. These systems have allowed human beings to dominate the outer world.
When we deny the reality of our inner worlds, we do not to stick out, we do not individuate (i.e., we do not become a singular and unique human being as we were meant to be). We do not grow up to become the person only we can be. By not being unique and different we fit nicely inside our system of consciousness that values sameness (i.e., people and things that are readily replaceable within the system). By being the same as everyone else, we do not draw undo attention to ourselves by individuals who are more powerful than us and who could do us harm. Especially if our uniqueness and difference threatens their view of reality or if our uniqueness threaten’s their power (watch out then!).
When we become a target of a more powerful person, it is bad. We all know this. So most of us go along with the system because it is easier, and we can have comfortable enough life doing so. If we play it right, we can even possibly grow to have more power in the system too. However, do not delude yourself that if you become a person with power that you are immune to the corrupting force of power. Power corrupts and corrupts completely. It takes a great deal of consciousness to withstand the corrupting force of power. This can only be done by balancing power with honesty and humility. Since most of us lack awareness of our inner worlds, it is rare to find powerful people who can balance power with honesty and humility. It is also rare because our current system of consciousness does not reward individuals for doing this.
In addition to being very vulnerable to the corrupting forces of power, when we do not know our inner world, our physical, psychological, and spiritual well-being is greatly diminished. We become victims to our own unconsciousness, which condemns us to a life of ignorance that can incur terrible damage to our psyche. This damage is readily visible to other people because unconscious people are much more likely to participate in spontaneous acts of violence that they inflict on “other” people because they have projected that part of themself on the “other”, refusing to see it lives inside them and it is themself they are destroying.
If you think our current system of consciousness stinks and needs to change, the only lasting way to change the system is to change yourself. You change yourself by knowing more about yourself inside and out, which means understanding your inner/hidden world is real and has a reality that impacts you in powerful and significant ways. Doing this can be painful for it means going into the darkness of your soul and finding your inner divide.
If you are human, you have an inner divide. It is what allows us to be conscious. It becomes dangerous for us and other when we remain ignorant of this inner divide because this is how our unconsciousness flows into the world (our shared reality). When it does, all sorts of mischief and mayhem happens. So, if you are serious about creating a more beautiful world, get busy getting to know what is living inside of you–the good, the bad, and the ugly. It is only by knowing all of one’s self that a person can balance the oppositional powers always moving and flowing inside of us. It takes an equal and opposite force inside of us to balance a powerful force. When we remain unconscious of the psychological forces inside of us, we weld power in lopsided and destructive ways that hurt us and hurt others.
Recipe for Making a Better Batch of Reality Bubble Mix
Step1: Finding the Right Balance Between the Stories Rising Inside of You and the Ones Swirling All Around You, Especially the Ones You Choose to Eat
The Bubble Maker
On this day, I biked to the Big Wheel at National Harbor in Maryland, going across the Woodrow Wilson bridge. On some days when I cross this bridge when the wind is blowing it feels like flying. It was on my way back after this wonderful ride that I meet this extraordinary woman making gorgeous giant bubbles.
The Bubble Maker — Photo by Bebe
Earlier that day, I wished I had asked a group of men who were practicing a dance with scarfs that they waved above their heads if I could film them. The dance was so beautiful, even though I thought it was quite feminine for men to be dancing with scarfs. But I was too scared to ask them. Then, on my way home, I saw two construction workers horse playing after work. One held his hands up like a boxer looking for a good punch on his friend. His friend waved his t-shirt at him to distract his friend from landing a good punch. They were laughing…that’s how I knew they were playing around. And then, I knew what the men dancing with scarfs were doing–it was a highly ritualized war dance!
So, when I saw the Bubble Maker, I said to myself… ‘I’m not going to let this one by!’ I asked her and she said yes. We had such an amazing conversation as I filmed her making beautiful bubbles. She told me this batch bubble making solution was not her best batch. She explained each bubble mixture is a little different. Some batches make bubbles better than others, so she was struggling with this one. Despite this, she was a master bubble maker, and I got many beautiful shots of giant bubbles. It was magical in every sense of the word.
Step 2: Synthesize, ferment, and transmute your flow of consciousness.
Bubbles of Consciousness
As I watched her, I thought about a conversation I was having with my good friends in Germany about how the human mind is capable of crafting and believing such fantastic versions of reality. I began to think of these bizarre versions of reality were like bubbles created by the mind. Thus, the idea of Reality Bubbles popped into my mind. Some mind bubbles are very stable and last for a long time. Other Reality Bubbles are inherently unstable and pop almost as soon as they leave our minds. Most Alternative Reality Bubbles will pop soon after leaving the mind because the Rock of Reality is very hard.
Venus-DiVinci-Kundalini — Drawn by Bebe
I imagined the human mind is like the wand the woman making bubbles was holding in the park. With our minds, we make bubbles of reality that we put out into the world, which are visible through our thoughts, words, and actions. Consciousness is like the bubble making mixture in the bucket. As human beings, we channel and distill consciousness continually as it flows through us as experienced by our circumstances, station in life, visions, and dreams (sometimes nightmares). The consciousness contained inside of us is used to generate ideas that inform our individual actions. Thus, the quality of our individual consciousness determines the strength of the mixture used to manufacture the ideas we put out into the world through our Wand of Mind. It is the same wand every human being uses to put out bubbles of reality into the world, but the mixture of consciousness used can be vastly between humans.
The Big Wheel — Photo by Bebe
Step 3: Explore, discover, repair, and revive your inner landscapes.
Reviving Our Lost Inner Landscapes
This mixture also forms our inner landscapes, mind-scapes. These inner landscapes are illuminated by the light of our conscious understanding. This is how we come to know who we are. This inner light of consciousness is what we inherited when we stepped across the threshold of consciousness many thousands of years ago. Despite all this time, this part of our consciousness is the smallest part of us. Vast amounts of every human mind remains cloaked under the darkness of inner unconsciousness.
But this is what we are here to do–to explore, discover, and claim inner landscapes by illuminating them with the light of our awaken consciousness. The more unconsciousness contained inside your mind, the less stable your inner landscapes will be as well as the bubbles of reality you manufacture with your mind and put into the world through your actions.
This is why it is important to see more of who were are as a human being, which always includes good and bad parts of ourselves. To make stable bubbles that are able to last through time, we need to maintain dynamic balances between good and bad elements existing inside of us and flowing all around us all of the time. We get glimpses of these cloaked areas through thoughts, dreams, and visions. But more often we become aware of our unconsciousness because we get triggered by the unconscious content living inside of us. They pop up just like instincts pop into action due to environmental stimuli that spurs an animal into action. When an animal acts based upon their instincts, nature has already worked out the dynamic balances over billions and billions of years evolution.
However, as newly awaken conscious beings, we have a lot to understand and work out dynamic sustainable balances. This is hard work and it is far easier to revert back to simpler ways of seeing the world such as black and white, right and wrong, good and evil, and then choose one side or the other side to rally along side. But, ultimately all opposites are inseparable because inside goes with outside, up goes with down, light goes with night. Every opposite is inseparable from its other side just like the other side of a coin. You can cut off the other side, but it is still there…the coin is simply thinner… and that is exactly what we do when we split reality and exist in only one side–we make it smaller. Another serious problem of existing only on onside or the other side of the Coin of Realityis a fatal lopsidedness will result. Living in our huge human collectives with lots of technology can delay the consequences of this fatal lopsidedness, but not forever… that is the Gift of Reality… it will always flow towards balance in the end, and as you are carried in this flow, you will hit the Rocks of Reality along the way.
So, think about your thoughts and how they are turn into actions in the world, which shape and create our shared reality.
Promo for It Came From Inside — Drawn and created by Bebe
I know this is all pretty abstract, but perhaps you will read the story I am writing about this when I finally finish it (Sapience: The Moment is Now). For now, I continue to make these mini movies to help me feel grounded to the Earth and connected to all the beautiful life around me and inside of me. By appreciating the beauty of Earth, I am able to continue gathering inner strength to pull back the projections I have put out into the world. As I pull them back, I find my inner reservoir of consciousness is replenished, which helps me endure.
Projecting our consciousness out into the world is perfectly natural because we cannot see ourselves when we are first born into the world unless we look in a mirror. That is what projections do. They allow us to see ourselves through others.
The trick is seeing: “Oh – that is me!” And, reclaiming that part of ourself that has been temporally lost into the world as a project. This is your power. This is all in my book… but I still must find deeper calm to write again since the latest calamity befell me and my family.
Step 4: Be here, now, that is all we ever have… everything we know, do, feel, become is wrapped in the now.
It is up to each of us to find critical inner balances between the self of the present and the self of the future. It is simply the price of being a conscious creature, and so, it must be navigated. At times, it can be very hard navigating between the needs, desires, fears, and fantasies of present self with the concerns and needs of future self, but that is what we are called to do a conscious human beings who have the gift of knowing.
Following are some of the activities I do that have helped me navigate my inner divide, which exists inside every human being. Often, it comes down to calming down my self-talk (the thing we call thinking and prize so much as modern human beings). Alan Watts often says that thinking is a good servant but a bad master. This is a fundamental teaching of Buddhism that the Western trained mind has a very hard time understanding.
Nature Heals
Nature helps us see ourselves in balance with everything else. Being outside, we can step outside of our minds and open us to other ways of knowing and understanding ourself in relationship to everyone and everything else. But to do this, one must be willing to slow down and look! I’ve made a series of nature videos throughout the months of lockdown and social distancing due to the global pandemic, which required individuals to put the well-being and health of others ahead of themselves–that is why we were asked to wear masks and keep distances, not because we were being controlled by evil politicians and scientists. My goodness the stories circulating on the Internet are so creative and more entertaining in conspiracy myths than a Marvel movie. I would ask those flocking to such narratives, what is it inside of you that these stories are activating? If a story you read makes your blood pressure rise, your heart beat faster, your anger increase, who is trying to manipulate you to their point of view? Instead, go outside. Let your own inner truth rise. If you are holding your inner split in balance, you will feel peace, you will feel confidence, you will feel in control and trust yourself to know who is telling you porky (aka bullshit) and who is telling you something real (be it good or bad). Life is complicated. Nature is complicated. We are constantly surrounded by complications and need each other to understand and navigate a complicated world as we travel inside very complicated collectives (i.e., our super-huge civilizations). To see the full nature series, click here: Have You Been Outside Today?
Description: Think about the resolutions you made this year: to quit smoking, eat better, or get more exercise. If you’re like most people, you probably abandoned those resolutions within a few weeks. That’s because change is hard. Behavioral scientist Katy Milkman explains how we can use our minds to do what’s good for us.
Towards the end, Katy says, “So often we don’t understand the forces of opposition inside of us, such as the desires of present me (I want to eat that ice cream now) and the consequences of future me (I’ll have to deal with the extra load of calories and fat that might be bad for my weight, cholesterol, mood).” Through out the episode, she gives plenty of examples where her present me created problems for her future me. She said she found it far more productive to approach these situations as an engineering problem rather than falling back to judgemental self-talk (also known as thinking). To do this, a person needs to recognize the forces of opposition operating inside themself, such as Seinfeld’s conflict between Night Guy and Morning Guy and Day Guy. between present self and future self honestly and fully without judging them as lazy, no good, stupid, or anything else one has been told by family members, friends, and culture about the behavior.
Seinfeld – Night Guy, Morning Guy, Day Guy
Basically, my take away from Katy’s presentation is that anything that trips us up and subverts us from achieving our long-term goals is human. It is normal. And, it can be handled by understanding the inner conflict and engineering simple work arounds. To do this, we need to see the forces at work honestly and fully without judging them (e.g., I’m a lazy, no good, stupid *#$). Often we internalize negative self talk because we have been told this by family, friends, and our culture. It is easy to label and judge. It is much harder to see our internal conflict, which in an inner spilt due to being a consciousness creature, honestly and to accept it as part of one’s self that must be loved and nurtured just as much as the parts of ourself that are heralded as good traits (e.g., over-achieving guy or gal, bringing home the bacon guy or gal, or anything else we or others label as desirable behaviors).
Alan Watts
Ra’s Playlist of Alan Watts — Ra is an AI helping one of the characters in Sapience understand how to transform human consciousness on a scale never before achieved. Stay tuned, you will meet Ra soon in Book 1.
Watts often liked to ask in his lectures: “Why don’t you know what you want?”
“First, you don’t know what want because you haven’t thought about it or you’ve only thought superficially about it. Then when you somebody forces him to think about it and go through and say yeah I think I’d like this, I think I like that, I think I’d like the other as the middle stage. Then you get beyond that say: “Is that what I really want? The end news day, now I don’t think that’s it. I might be satisfied with it for a while and I wouldn’t turn my nose up at it, but it’s not really what I want.”
“Why don’t you really know what you want two reasons that you don’t really know what you’re not number one you have it.”
“Number two, you don’t know yourself because you never can. The Godhead is never an object of its own knowledge, just as a knife doesn’t cut itself, fire doesn’t burn itself, light doesn’t illumine itself. It’s always an endless mystery to itself.”
“I don’t know.”
“And this I don’t know, other than the infinite interior of the Spirit, this I don’t know is the same thing as I love, I let go and I don’t try to force or control. It’s the same thing as humility, and so the Upanishads say, “If you think that you understand brahmin, you do not understand it and have yet to be instructed further.”
“If you know that you do not understand it (dharma), then you truly understand for the brahmin is unknown to those who know it and known to those who know it. And the principle is that anytime you as it were voluntarily let up control, in other words cease to cling to yourself, you have an access of power because you’re wasting energy all the time and self-efense trying to manage things trying to force things to perform (the way you think things ought to be–like Rush H. Limbaugh–lol!). The moment you stop doing that that wasted energy is available. Therefore, you are in that sense having that energy available. You are one with the Divine Principle. You have the energy.”
“When you’re trying however to act as if you were God–that is to say you don’t trust anybody and you’re the dictatorand you have to keep everybody in line–you lose the divine because what you’re doing is simply defending yourself. So then the principle is the more you give it away, the more it comes back. Now, you say I don’t have the courage to give it away I’m afraid. And you can only overcome this by realizing you better give it away because there’s no way of holdings onto it.”
Alan Watts Chillstep – We’re All One | This is the lecture set to music which the above quotes come…
Haunted and the Edge
Lloyd’s Haunted & the Edge Playlist
The haunted and the edge offer much in understanding our inner realities better, but they are often taboo and little understood. This is a playlist created by the Last DJ of Earth who is trying to save survivors of Earth after a global catastrophe. He hacks Multinational satellites to broadcast his musical sermons, working day and night to bring down Earth’s new overlords–the ones who worship money. Consciousness is the key. The Sapience Series tells the tale. Follow Sapience: The Moment is Now for when Book 1 is available.
You are beautiful. You are vital to this now. So, take care of yourself. Stay safe, stay well, and find some time to cultivate your beautiful patch of consciousness for it connects you to me and to all of life and the natural world! This is how we create a more beautiful world by seeing the beauty in each other, even when we disagree about things.
Conflict–what a terrible and yet beautiful word. Conflict is something all human beings must learn how to do from the moment they realize they are a different entity from their parents, primarily of course the mother. In psychology, this moment is known as thePrimal Split. In Judeo-Christian doctrines, it is known as Original Sin as epitomized in the opening chapters of the Book of Genesis telling how God created the world and all life in it and then created Adam and Eve to live in it and enjoy it.
But like any children, Adam and Eve inevitably disobey God’s command not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge; the one capable of inspiring inside of them the knowledge of good and evil. The conventional story tells that it is Eve who picked the tempting fruit after being deceived by a sneaky snake. But did you know Eve was Adam’s second wife?
Eve was Adam’s second wife. Adam had a secret first wife whom God created at the same time and in the same way as Adam. She was his equal and opposite in every way. Her name was Lilith. History mostly remembers her only as a demonic figure. One must look to medieval Jewish tradition to find where Lilith is remembered as Adam’s first wife, before Eve. However, when Adam insisted, she play a subservient role, Lilith grew wings and flew away.
I suspect what really happened in the Garden of Eden was entirely all too human. Upon getting his new beautiful, obedient but docile wife–certainly not his equal–Adam carried on an affair with Lilith. Eve never caught on, but God did. The only snake in this story is Adam’s manhood, and God was mad for his transgression for he created Eve for Adam on one condition to be faithful to her and Adam disobeyed. So, he had no choice but to throw Adam and Eve out of Eden. Lilith having transformed into a different sort of being, simply flew away.
The First Mortal Conflict
Conflict Styles: What Sciences Says — And how Liberating Structures can help create an environment where the most effective styles are possible. *** Medium blog by Christiaan Verwijs *** Most conflicts happen under the waterline. Illustration by Thea Schukken. *** You can also listen to this blogpost in this episode of our podcast.
So here we are: humans of the world left to find our way forward after the dramatic fall from Eden due to the first conflict of the world! A parent-child conflict, of course, just as the Primal Split is a primal parent-child conflict awakening the psyche to consciousness, but that is another story.
For this piece, I am sticking with the supernatural conflict between God the Father and his children, us. So super charged was this first mighty conflict, discord and strife remain the default mode of knowing in the world.
When conflict is done in an open, fluid, inquiring way, it can illuminate the world between us and inside of us, at least for a moment like a flicker from a spark caused by conflict. These sparks help us see more of what we don’t know about the world, about each other, or about ourselves. When we see the unknown, we can begin to know it. When we know it, we can integrate it into our Field of Consciousness (the part of ourselves illuminated by consciousness–i.e., what we know). This is how we grow our consciousness by seeing and learning more about the world around us and inside of us–most often through conflict.
But conflict can also cause us to get stuck within static, standing patterns of disagreement, disaccord, disharmony, and dissension. These patterns grow instead of consciousness. Over time, these patterns become rigid, unyielding, taut, stressed, tight, solid, and harden objects tend to collapse under pressure, trapping the individual’s desperately trying to sustain and defend them from attack. This becomes a crushing process, a dying process because locked into a standing pattern of permanent defensive conflict, the psyche does not grow and what does not grow in this realm, dies.
I will illuminate two talks I heard recently that were inspiring. I believe they offer opportunities of learning better ways to engage in conflict. This is important to learn because conflict is not going away anytime soon in the human world. So we might as well get better at doing it. I have imagined two common standing conflict patterns that all of us get caught in at one time or another. The first, I call getting Lost in the Garden of Eden. The second, I call getting Trapped in a Fairytale.
When we come together in relationships, we recreate a little bit of the Garden of Eden inside ourselves and inside of others. This little bit of Eden is a safe place to grow and learn about the world and ourselves. Of course learning means conflict because we are human now, but in relationship, we are in a place where we can be safely seen and heard for who we are–the good and the bad. This is love. Love is capable of holding the opposites of who we are in dynamic balance as we learn and grow through conflict and mistakes.
There is nothing bad about making mistakes or having conflict, except we can get stuck in bad patterns of conflict that hold us down in inferior patterns of behavior, second class beliefs, mediocre ideas, average/commonplace/uninspired ways of being in the world. This is how we get lost in Eden. We let our inferior self lead.
This leads me to the first talk I want to highlight. It is given by Esther Perel about how we can develop resilience in our relationships. I heard it on the Ted Radio Hour.
Esther Perel begins her talk saying, “People want to feel alive in their relationships. And they want it in their friendships, they want it at work, they want it in their romantic relationships. It’s essential.” Esther says this feeling of aliveness is what inspires us as human beings to build trust with each other, to collaborate or compete with each other, to build intimacy and maintain it through time.
One of the most powerful things about relationships is that they can help us weather uncertainty and survive against the odds. Esther says any “prolonged uncertainty …is accompanied with a sense of grief and loss, not because we lose people only but because we have lost the world that we knew.” She explains that she focused her work on working with couples because the couple inside the family really transformed. When marriage was a no-exit enterprise, then it didn’t really matter if the couple did that well or not. I mean, it mattered a great deal, but it didn’t matter for the survival of the family. People stayed together miserable if they had to. Once people could leave, the expectations and the demands from their intimate relationships completely changed. And I found that transition really fascinating.
Here are fascinating moments from Esther’s talk:
There’s Energy In the Room
“I realized that there was an energy in the room with a couple. You could actually see the change happening in front of you if you helped people to connect or to open up or to be vulnerable with each other or to speak truth to each other or to apologize to each other.”
We Think We Can Be Happier: But Really, We’re Just Walking Deeper & Getting More Lost in the Garden of Eden Inside Our Soul
“Today, we don’t leave because we are unhappy necessarily, but we also leave because we think we could be happier. And that is how consumerism has entered modern marriage.”
The Crisis of Desire is A Crisis of Imagination: We Need Each Other to Get Unlost in Eden
“I stumbled upon sexuality. It was absolutely not planned. And I stumbled about it, actually, around the Clinton scandal because what interested me was how sexuality in every society, in every culture becomes the place where the most archaic, traditional, rooted aspects of that culture are lodged or, on the other end, where the most progressive, radical, transformative changes take place.”
“So, we come to one person, and we basically are asking them to give us what once an entire village used to provide. Give me belonging. Give me identity. Give me continuity. But give me transcendence and mystery and awe all in one. Give me comfort. Give me edge. Give me novelty. Give me familiarity. Give me predictability. Give me surprise. And we think it’s a given, and toys and lingerie are going to save us with that.”
“…the crisis of desire is often a crisis of the imagination.”
“When I say that we cannot have one person give us what once an entire village used to provide, what I’m saying is that there is a kind of individualization in romantic love that I think is problematic. Look. At this moment, I’m not just even meeting a partner. We are meeting a soul mate. A soul mate used to be God; you know. But at this moment, people are talking about ecstasy, transcendence, meaning, wholeness, you know, things that we used to look for in the realm of the divine that have now been transcended into romantic love. It was meant to be. It’s almost a divine intervention. It fell from the heavens in front of me.”
“What I will say is that people need community, and they need other friends. They need other people to talk to. They need other people to share activities that their partner isn’t interested in. To ask one person to do all of that – to give me belonging, to give me meaning, to give me community, to give me transcendence, to give me – and then all the other stuff of everyday life – succession, children, family life, money, etc. – that is…”
Massive Transformation
“Relationships are undergoing massive transformation on all levels. But especially couples have gone through an extreme makeover. There is no other relationship that has gone through so much change.”
The following comment comes at the end of a segment where Esther and Manoush listen to part of a piece that aired on “Where Should We Begin?” dealing with infidelity… the most difficult type of conflict a couple can attempt to grapple with, especially because of the shame and failure our culture tends to attach to it. What Ester zeros in on is something I think all conflicts hold in common and that is coming to a better understanding of each person’s humanity and their individual journey that has brought them into the current conflict.
“And interestingly, when you reach the end of the session and you hear his – you know, his challenges around his feelings about masculinity, about the fact that he could not have a genetic connection to his children, about the way that, you know, he became the way he is not out of nothing. He becomes humanized. You may not like him, but you begin to understand him.”
For anyone playing at being an armchair therapist or just genuinely trying to be a friend and advise someone in a difficult conflict, what Ester says next is very important to remember.
“And that is the role of the therapist. The wife has to decide what she wants to do. And nobody lives with the consequences of her decisions but her. So, it’s very easy to tell people do this, do that. We are not in their seat. We help people gain clarity. We help people there to do the things that they are afraid to do if that’s what they say they want to do. But we also understand that this is a couple that has two decades together almost, that they have a rich life, that they actually often get along quite well and that…”
The Wonderful World Work & How the Bottom Line Accelerated Our Disorientation that Dumped Us on the Sea of Unconsciousness (Now We’re Really Lost in Eden)
Another fraught and difficult realm to navigate conflict is the workplace. Ester says, “When people go to work, you interview them about their official resume – what schools did they go to, what experience of work have they had? And nobody’s asking you about your unofficial resume, and your unofficial resume is your relationship history, and that relationship history does not stop at the door when you go into the office; it travels with you, and it is going to influence how you work with your colleagues or with your father or with your co-founder, etc.”
In a character from the Netflix miniseries OA, the young woman playing OA talks about the invisible self. It is the part of ourselves that we hide from others…sometimes hide even ourselves. But this invisible self is a reservoir holding all our potential selves. It holds our values, virtues, principles, ideals, and ethos–what the I Ching calls an individual’s superior qualities/Superior Self. It also holds our deceitful, empty, fruitless, idle, inconstant, ineffectual, nugatory, null, profitless, shadowy qualities/Inferior Self/Selves. It is hard to underscore just how important it is to illuminate more and become acquainted with all of who we are. It is the only way to truthfully, justly, compassionately navigate our fate, which is all those parts of ourselves still hidden in the darkness of the invisible self. We create Eden in relationship to each other. We get lost in Eden when we break our relationship to each other by letting the Inferior Self take control of our thoughts, decisions, and actions in the world we share together–this is how we create Hell.
The OA | We’re Angels | 1,061,667 views•Oct 25, 2017
Esther discusses how for years; it was very hard to get invited to companies to talk about relationships because it was considered a soft skill. It wasn’t part of the bottom line. And soft skills were often considered feminine skills, and feminine skills were often idealized in principle and disregarded in reality. She goes on to say this changed as transformations in workplaces changed and then suddenly, relationships become the new bottom line because no amount of free food or money…Compensation, benefits is going to compensate for a poisonous relationship. And then I began to think, you know, I would love to go and show how these relational dynamics that I have been exploring, they don’t just take place with your partner, your romantic partner; they actually are part of your relational life.”
A Bad Business Breakup
“I ask everybody, how many of you and your businesses have bad breakups? And to what extent do those breakups and in what way do these breakups influence the way you start to work with the next person and even who you hire? Often, we tend to hire the person whose strengths match the weaknesses of the one before you. I think work is a very rich ecology to explore the overt and the covert, the seen and the unseen relationship dynamics that people bring. We expected more in our personal relationships, but it happens no less at work.”
On a Time of Working from Home Using Too Much Zoom
“So, I would say I don’t think we are working from home, Manoush. I think we are working with home. I am with my family, my children for some of us, my partner for some of us, my parents, my siblings, my roommates. I am inhabiting all the roles at the same time. I am the parent, the teacher, the lover, the friend, the child of the colleague, the boss, the CEO, you name it. And it’s all happening often on the same chair in the kitchen.”
“So, we have all these disembodied experiences. And people talk about exhaustion for a reason – because even the phone is much better, you know, where we actually are in synchronized time and not in a delay constantly. And we’re not trying to look at people with whom we actually never make eye contact. So, I think it’s a very different reality.”
On Losing A Job
“And when I lose my job, I lose a fundamental part of my identity. I thought I mattered because a younger generation has been raised with a deep sense that they are important and that they matter. And I can – I am totally dispensable and nobody actually really feels responsible for making sure that I will have something to eat. I think what a pandemic does for work and for personal is it rearranges your priorities. It makes – you know, a pandemic is an accelerator. Every disaster is an accelerator of relationships. It’s an accelerator because it brings mortality to the forefront or loss – loss of job as well. And at that moment, you basically say, what am I waiting for? I’m going to go do what’s really important.”
Relationships rest at the center of who we are, who we want to be, how we become what we want to be, unless we get trapped in a standing pattern of conflict that can get us lost inside ourselves and in relationship with each other. Ask yourself what relationships are you in and what is their quality, vitality, fluidity, and spirit? Are they growing? Are you growing? If not, why not?
Trapped in a Fairytale
ABC’s Regina the Evil Queen of Once Upon a Time
Conflicts can rear up into ugly, unexpected things that tear relationships apart or trap them in stagnant, unchanging patterns that don’t allow for true growth. The trap may be beautiful where every wish is granted—a fairytale. Or the trap can be frightening and disorientating—another sort of fairytale. Both are dangerous because both end up separating you more and more from the hard work any real relationship requires to stay strong, supple, and grow through time.
If the separation grows too wide, too deep, a rupture of reality occurs. We do this all the time when we fail to heal the cracks caused by conflict, but rather focus on the cracks in another person’s story, ideas, beliefs. When we dissect and vivisect each other through constant unresolved conflict. When we fail to take responsibility for our part of the conflict. When we fail to hold the other in compassion and love and trust both people want to know the truth of who they are, who they are in relationship to each other, who they are in relationship to the world and universe. This is how we break reality into a million, billion, trillion pieces that just keep shattering more and more. This is how we create alternative realities, fairytales, where we may have control, but we don’t have knowledge… we don’t know anymore who we are, what we have become, or that we are trapped in a fairytale where we are the author, the characters, the victims, and the victor.
Once Upon A Time 1×21 “An Apple Red As Blood” – Regina Forces Snow White Ate The Poisoned Apple | 722 views•Nov 2, 2018
Whole groups of people can become locked inside fairytales, the boundaries of which are defined by one-sided arguments and lopsided beliefs. This is how human conflict becomes polarized. This is how radicalization forms and grows into a monstrous thing like a horrible fairytale.
Our modern lives are very complicated. Because of this, there are lots of conflicts… many, many of which go unresolved and fester. This is what I am calling getting trapped in a fairytale. The trap is inside our own mind and it causes us to lose sight of who we really are turning us into characters like the big bad wolf or Mary with her little lamb and making us ignorant of if we are eat the nourishing apple of the Tree of Knowledge or the poisonous apple brewed by the Evil Queen. The I Ching would say when this happens, one’s inferior selves have gained control are are trying to get rid of one’s superior self… the war is inside.
I really found Adam Grant’s talk with Shankar Vedantam on The Hidden Brain illuminating. I particularly found how Adam talked about two common types of human conflict:
Relational conflicts are inherently much more difficult to see clearly and navigate smoothly. I think every adult human being on Earth can cite a relational conflict that never was resolved and remains an open wound between both individuals involved. This is a tragedy always when a conflict cannot be resolved for it leaves an open wounded inside each individual’s mind that becomes inscribed within the growing consciousness—potentially causing it to grow lopsidedly, which will recreate the unresolved conflict over and over again with new individuals in desperate attempts to heal and continue conscious growth.
Task conflicts are very different actually essential for groups of people who have come together to solve a problem or to implement a collective effort. Task conflicts are how collectives grow the collective consciousness. However, if we are individuals who have not mastered relational conflicts, task conflicts are easily co-opted by an individual’s psyche and turned into a relational conflict, which serves to inhibit and sink the efforts of a group to grow and solve challenging problems.
Hidden Brain with Adam Grant – The Nice Guy –author of The Fool’s Journey
Shankar Vedantam introduces Adam Grant by saying, “Grant is an organizational psychologist at the Wharton School. He’s the author of Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know. He’s interested in the question of obstinacy. Why do so many of us find it difficult to question our own beliefs and challenge our own views?”
Adam begins his talk by recounting a conflict where he refused to admit he was wrong
“I think I was 12. My friend Khan was on the phone with me. It was a commercial during Seinfeld and we got into an argument. I don’t remember what it was about. And I just refused to give in, even though he had really good proof and eventually he hung up on me and I called him back and I said, did the power go out?”
On Competing Powers of Self
“And as long as I can remember, I’ve been agreeable. And it’s weird because on the one hand, I hated admitting I was wrong, and I was extremely stubborn. (…) But on the other hand, I really liked Harmony and I wanted to get along with other people.”
The Downside of Always Being Agreeable and Wanting Harmony
“Yeah, I think like everything else in life, it has tradeoffs. So, on the one hand, agreeable people create a lot of harmony. They tend to get along with other people. They’re constantly encouraging. But if you look at the data on leadership effectiveness, one of the things you see is highly agreeable people tend to be worse at leading organizations and teams than people who are somewhere in the middle of that spectrum. (…) They say yes to everything and they don’t challenge people enough.”
Agreement Bias
“…agreeable people are really prone to what’s called agreement bias.” Adam tells how this can be bad: “Cleverly. Where you come to the table, somebody offers you a terrible deal, but you hate the idea of saying no. And so, you say yes to something that’s not in your best interests.”
The Problem of Always Going with Your Gut
“I remember my mom telling me if you’re unsure of an answer on a test, go with your gut. Go with your first instinct. And yet, if you look at the research, if you do go with your gut versus your second guess your first instinct, which is better, and on average, the vast majority of students who reject their gut, they actually improve their scores on average.”
“And so, there’s a fallacy that your first thoughts are your best thoughts. A lot of times, intuition is just a subconscious pattern recognition. And the patterns that you’re recognizing from the past may not be relevant to the problem you’re solving right now in the present.”
I want to jump in here because we have lost so much knowledge of our inner realities our language and shared understanding about it has become muddled too. The confusion between instincts and intuition is one of these things. Instincts are short cuts to reality that help the individual survive dangerous and challenging circumstances. They are indeed triggered by pattern recognition that are recognized as dangerous, life threatening, or life promoting circumstances. Intuition is the ability gained by becoming a conscious being. It allows a conscious person to glimpse into the darkness of their unconsciousness and know something that would otherwise not be apparent or knowable. Repeated glimpses into the unconsciousness might recognizes patterns, but it takes conscious effort to unpack it and truly understand it. So, I would reword Adam’s second paragraph as instinct trying to navigate a world in which it never was evolved to live within… no wonder it gets multiple choice questions wrong!
Test Your Gut
“And so, you don’t want to trust your gut. You want to test your gut. And even when you tell people about this evidence, they are still reluctant to rethink their first answer…” like what happened with Blackberry “I think we can both remember a time when basically everyone you knew had a BlackBerry and they just dominated the market. And then BlackBerry fell apart because – Mike and his colleagues were unwilling to rethink the very things that had made BlackBerry great.” “And they just got locked into this set of assumptions that what people wanted out of a BlackBerry was a device for basically work e-mail, as opposed to essentially a computer in your pocket for home entertainment.”
Big Stakes Can Led to Big Mistake: The Importance of Rethinking What We Know
“Our reluctance to think again can have even bigger stakes in the 1980s, NASA downplayed a brewing problem in the spacecraft Challenger. Since the spacecraft had completed many missions, officials assumed it was safe. But in January 1986, the spacecraft exploded moments after liftoff, killing seven astronauts on board. […] Or take the U.S. war in Iraq, where President George W. Bush and his colleagues failed to rethink their views after their initial rosy expectations of the war.“
The Soup Nazi & the Drivers of Obstinacy
Shankar says, “Adam, I want to talk about some of the drivers of obstinacy in our lives. I know that you’re a fan of the TV show Seinfeld. And there’s a famous scene which features a restaurant owner who is called the Soup Nazi.”
Adam laughs as he explains what drives the Soup Nazi on Seinfeld, “He makes great soup, but he cannot tolerate the slightest criticism or deviation from the script. I want to play you a short clip where the character Elaine visits the Soup Nazi.”
The Soup Nazi | 1,914,009 views•Jul 22, 2017 | “NO soup for you!”
Task vs Relationship Conflicts
Shankar recaps, “So the Soup Nazi illustrates something that you talk about at home, the difference between relationship, conflict and Task conflict.”
Adam replies, “Most of us, especially those of us who are agreeable, when we think about conflict, we are thinking about Relationship conflict. That’s the personal, emotional, of us, especially those of us who are agreeable, when we think about conflict, we are thinking about Relationship conflict. That’s the personal, emotional, I think you’re a terrible person. And my life would be better if I never had to interact with you.”
[…]
“There’s another kind of conflict, though, that an organizational psychologist named Eddie Jan and her colleagues have studied. Task conflict, and it’s the idea of debating about different opinions and perspectives. It’s potentially constructive because it’s actually about trying to get to the truth. It’s not personal. It’s not emotional. We’re not trying to beat up the other person. We’re not feeling like we’re being attacked.”
How the Soup Nazi Inside Us All Turns Task Conflicts into Relationship Conflicts
“We’re trying to hash out or sought out different views through what might be a feisty conversation. But it’s intellectual. And I think one of the biggest problems that the Soup Nazi had is he could not have a task conflict without it becoming a relationship conflict.”
How the Soup Nazi Inside Us All Turns Task Conflicts into Relationship Conflicts
“We’re trying to hash out or sought out different views through what might be a feisty conversation. But it’s intellectual. And I think one of the biggest problems that the Soup Nazi had is he could not have a task conflict without it becoming a relationship conflict.”
“The moment that you object to his line, that you don’t follow his rules, he takes it very personally and bans you from his soup oasis.”
Less Conflict is Better: A Critical Mistake
“I think the mistake that a lot of people make is they assume that less conflict is better. That if you want to build a successful collaboration or a great team, then you want to minimize the amount of tension you have. But as some researchers have argued, based on a lot of evidence, the absence of conflict is not harmony, it’s apathy.”
How We Create Collectives of Apathy: Fairytales That Don’t End Happily Ever After
“If you’re in a group where people never disagree. The only way that could really happen is if people don’t care enough to speak their minds.[…] in order to get to wise decisions, creative solutions, we need to hear a variety of perspectives. We need diversity of thought. And task conflict is one of the ways that we get there by saying, you know what, I think we actually don’t agree on what the vision for our company should be or what our strategy should be or how to design this product.”
Adam’s Study on Groups
“I tracked team performance over a number of months, and I surveyed people in teams on how often they were having relationship conflict as well as task conflicts. In one group, even if they agreed on nothing else, they agreed on what kind of conflict they were having and how much of it.”
“It turned out in the failed groups, they tended to have a lot more relationship conflicts than task conflicts, especially early on, they were so busy disliking each other that they didn’t really have substantive debates until about halfway through the life cycle of their project.”
“And by then it was almost too late to change course, whereas in the high performing groups, they started out with very little relationship conflict and plenty of task conflict, saying, look, before we design a product, we really want to get all the ideas on the table about how we might do it or what it might be for. […] …once they sorted those out, they were able to really focus and align around what their common mission was.”
Where and How Things Go Wrong in Groups: Enter the Poison Apple or the Dragon
Adam says most often in a group, “Someone raises an issue with something that the group is doing, and people behave like the soup Nazi. They react and take things personally.” When this shift happens in a group, then “Everything that gets raised by the other person is interpreted in the most negative light possible. And then I think the other problem is people sometimes just they don’t even hear the substance of the idea because they’re so invested in defending their ego or in proving the other person wrong.”
But Wait… There’s More: Sometimes Conflict Arising Due to Confusion Over Beliefs & Values
Shankar says, “There’s a related idea to this distinction between task conflict and relationship conflict that you explore in your book. Adam, you say that one reason it’s hard to admit we are wrong is that we sometimes confuse our beliefs with our values.”
Belief or Value & the Dragon Scale
Adam says, “When I think about a belief, I would say that’s something that you take as true. A value is something you think is important. And yeah, I think a lot of us make a mistake of taking our beliefs and opinions and making them our identity. And since I spent a lot of time studying the workplace, I really enjoy thinking about how dangerous the world would be if people in the professions that we rely on every day did that.”
Conflicts That Clarify Rather Than Confuse
“There are examples of leaders who basically model what it’s like to have task conflict without relationship conflict. I was thinking of something that President Obama said some years ago when he invited someone, he disagreed with to play a prominent role in his administration.“
“We’re not going to agree on every single issue, but what we have to do is to be able to create an atmosphere where we can disagree without being disagreeable and then focus on those things that we hold in common as Americans.“
“To disagree without being disagreeable.”
On Correcting Others
Shankar recaps, “I think many of us forget this lesson at and we think that if someone else is wrong, our job is just to correct them. How we correct them is unimportant.”
Adam replies, “Yeah I think that’s such a common mistake in communication. We think it’s the message that matters. But so often whether somebody is willing to hear a message depends on who’s saying it, why it’s being said and how it’s being delivered.”
On Trust, Dignity & Respect
“I cannot tell you, Shankar, the number of times that I have rejected useful criticism because I didn’t trust the person who was giving it to me. Or they delivered it in a way that I found disrespectful or offensive.”
On Threats to the Ego: The Big Bad Wolf or Poison Apple Problem
“Not all of us listento useful feedback even when it’s presented clearly and without rancor. That’s because we confuse challenges to our views with threats to our ego.”
Or Maybe It’s Just a Case of the Totalitarian Ego
“There’s a term that I love for this which comes out of psychology originally Tony Greenwald’s term. It’s the totalitarian ego. The idea is that all of us have an inner dictator policing our thoughts. The dictator’s job is to keep out threatening information, much like Kim Jong Un would control the press in North Korea.”
Inner Dictator to the Rescue!
“When your core beliefs are attacked, the inner dictator comes in and rescues you with mental armor and, you know, activates confirmation bias where you only see what you expected to see all along, triggers desirability bias, where you only see what you wanted to see all along.”
Corner Stones of the Totalitarian Ego Are Obstinacy and Stubbornness
“You can see the totalitarian ego at work in a study conducted some years ago by researchers in Australia. They asked volunteers to think of a time when they did something wrong and apologized for it, and to also think about a time when they did something wrong and did not apologize for it. Researcher Tyler Okimoto explains what they found.”
Adam:When you refuse to apologize it actually makes you feel more empowered. That power and control seems to translate into greater feelings of self-worth. [00:24:41]
Shanker:And in some ways, the sounds like the inner dictator when we when we apologize, in some ways we are disarming ourselves. And when we refuse to apologize, in some ways we are mounting a form of emotional self-defense. [00:24:50]
Adam:Yeah sadly, staying attached to wrong convictions makes us feel strong. And psychologists have also found for decades that the act of resisting influence only further fortifies our convictions. Because we can we basically get inoculated against future attacks. We have all of our defenses ready and we end up sealing our beliefs in an ever more impenetrable fortress. [00:25:04]
Edges of Convictions, Beliefs, and Conflict: Maybe This Really Isn’t Your Fight… Your Just A Scale in the Armor of Your Group Who’s in Conflict with Another Group
“So, I have a brilliant colleague, Phil Tetlock, who wrote a paper about how almost every decision you’ve ever made, almost every opinion you’ve ever formed, is influenced by your relationship to the people around you and by the groups that your part of and the identities that you hold about who you are in the social world.”
Preacher, Prosecutor or Politician – Do You Know What Your Conflict Mode Is?
“What Phil observed is we often spend time thinking like preachers, prosecutors and politicians.”
The Preacher
“Preaching is basically defending a set of sacred beliefs and saying, look, I found the truth. My job is to proselytize.”
The Prosecutor
“Prosecuting is the reverse. This stance in a conflict is to prove you wrong and win my case with the best argument.”
Getting Stuck
“Any time an individual or group has strong beliefs. It’s pretty unlikely they are going to rethink any opinions or decisions if they slip into preacher or prosecutor mode, because we already know.”
The Politian
“We’re a little more flexible when we shift into politician mode. […] when you’re thinking like a politician, what you’re trying to do is get the approval of an audience that you care about.”
“And so, you might be campaigning and lobbying. And sometimes that means adjusting and flexing at least what you say you believe in order to fit in and win them over. The problem is that we’re doing it because we want to prove our allegiance to a tribe, not because we’re trying to get closer to the truth.”
Strategies that Help People Reconsider Cherished Opinions
Shanker asks Adam to tell the story of Orville and Wilbur Wright, the brothers who invented the first successful airplane. Adam describes:
“Of all the moments in history that I would love to witness, I think watching the Wright brothers argue would be pretty high on my list. So, if you look at the history of what the Wright brothers created together, it seemed like they were constantly in sync. They created their own printing press together. They ran their own bicycle shop. They made their own bikes together. They launched a newspaper together. And of course, we all know they invented the first at least successful airplane together. And I always assumed that they were just lucky to have such harmony.”
“And if you read any of the biographies that have been written about them, if you read their own letters and personal communications, if you read the stories and the anecdotes from people who knew them well, it was very clear that arguing was their default mode and it was almost the family business. What I think is fascinating about the Wright brothers is they mastered the ability to have productive task conflicts without it spilling into relationship conflict.”
It was typical for them when they were trying to invent their airplane to argue for weeks about questions like how do you design a propeller?
They would sometimes even shoot for hours back and forth.
At one point, their sister threatened to leave the house because she just couldn’t take it anymore.”
The Power of Scrapping
“But they seem to get a kick out of it. They called it scrapping and they said, look, the whole point of an argument is it helps both people see more clearly if you do it well.“
“They never saw an argument as personal that their mechanic used a phrase that I think about almost every day. He said, I don’t think they really got mad, but they sure got awfully hot. […] “That to me, captures the passion, the energy, the feistiness that goes into, you know, duking out a set of ideas that’s really important to you, but not leaving that interaction angry.”
Even Brilliant Visionaries Need a Team to Scrap With
“You tell the story of Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple, obviously a brilliant visionary, but he was also famously stubborn.“
The Problem with Highly Agreeable People
“When you think about your network, we all have a support network that’s usually the highly agreeable people who we know are going to have our back and, you know, really lift us up or pick us up when we’re down. I think what we overlook is that we also need a challenge network, which is a group of people that we trust to question us to point out the holes in our thinking, the flaws in our logic, the ways that our decisions might be leading us astray from our goals.“
Creating a Great Challenge Network
“It’s not clear to me that Steve Jobs did this intentionally, but he was very lucky to be surrounded with a group of people who played that role of a challenge at work for him. […] He was dead set against making a phone. He complained for years about how smartphones were for the pocket protector crowd. And Apple makes cool products. We don’t want to touch that. He could rant for hours at a time about how, you know, everybody was beholden to the cell phone carriers and they didn’t know how to make an elegant product. And sometimes he would even throw his own phone against the wall and shatter it because he was so frustrated with how bad the technology was.”
Cultivating a Fertile Idea Field & Planting Idea Seeds that Grow
“Luckily, Jobs surrounded himself with brilliant engineers and designers who knew how to get him to think again. You have to be run by ideas, not hierarchy. A lot of the things they did as part of his Challenge Network are things that we’ve seen people do every day. They would plant seeds.
They would say, ‘Hey, I hear Microsoft is talking about making a phone. How ugly do you think that’s going to be? And if we ever made one of those, what would that look like?’”
They would ask questions like, you know, hey, we did the iPod. We’ve already put 20000 songs in your pocket.
What if we put everything in your pocket? And what they were doing was they were activating his curiosity.”
Taming the Inner Prosecutor: The Sneaky Little Gremlin in Any Good Fairytale
“If you told him he was wrong, he would immediately go into prosecutor mode and tear your argument apart.”
“But if you could ask a question that intrigued and led him to realize that he didn’t know some things, he might then go out and try to discover them or give you the green light to go and discover them. And those kinds of conversations finally got him to reverse course and make a phone.”
Madhvi Parekh: A Curious Seeker
Beware the Logic Bullies: Mirror, Mirror on the Wall — Enter Evil Spock
Adam tells how he got the nickname logic bully: “I had a former student named Jamie [who came to me] for some career advice. It was clear in the first minute or so of our conversation that she was already locked into the plan she had made. I was worried she might be making a decision that she would regret. So, I told her all the reasons why I think [she was] making a potentially big mistake. She listened patiently for two or three minutes, then said, ‘You’re a logical.’ She [told me] that I overwhelmed her with rational arguments and data, and she didn’t agree [with], but she didn’t feel like she could fight back.”
“The curiosity we show in trying to understand more about [our] own views and motivation to change [this type of] thinking. That’s where real thought happens.“
Habits of Highly Effective Thinkers
“There’s a classic study by Neil R. and colleagues [that examines] experts versus average negotiators where they compare what their habits are.
One is [average negotiators] spend a lot more time both in their planning and in their actual negotiations, thinking about common ground and talking about common ground, saying we want to build areas of consensus before we find out where we’re opposed.
They asked a lot more questions (e.g., OK here are two or three possible proposals. What are your reactions to this? What do you like? What do you dislike and what are your thoughts? And that allow them to both learn more and again, signal more flexibility as well.)“
Getting to the Great Ideas – Is It A War or A Dance?
Shanker summarizes: “We often think of trying to change someone’s opinion with the metaphor of, you know, a tug of war, that the harder I pull, the more I can get you off balance, the more likely I am to win. And the model that you’re suggesting here is a very different model, you know, model where you’re asking a lot of questions, where you’re seeking common ground, where you’re willing to make concessions, where you’re open to figuring out how you yourself might be wrong.”
Adam adds: “There are some psychologists who have said we should think about disagreements, less wars and more as a dance. And I can’t dance at all. […] But what I like about the dance metaphor is, you know, that in a dance your job is to get in sync with your partner.”
You Can’t Lead All the Time to Save the Planet!
“That means if you’ve both shown up to the dance with an idea about what steps you’re going to take; you can’t lead all the time and expect your partner to do all of the adjusting.“
“You actually have to be willing to step back and let your partner lead from time to time. And that’s what expert negotiators seem to do, its what great debaters seem to do, and I think it’s what all of us could do more when we have polarized conversations.”
I’ve taken you 40 minutes into this very beautiful and important talk, but there is more. You can read or listen for yourself if you have found any of this helpful. Adam and Shanker discuss how to frame multiple versions of an idea, setting up effective challenge networks, creating psychological safety to get to more and better creative ideas (idea places where people aren’t punished or penalized for offering opposite ideas), and creating group cultures based on trust and respect (critical part of psychological safety). Psychological safety does not mean sloppy:
[00:44:38] — Amy Edmondson is quick to point out that psychological safety is not about being nice or having low standards. We actually need psychological safety with accountability. We can have high expectations for people, but also give them the freedom and permission to rethink some of even what we might have called best practices.
They discuss creating environment where people are rewarded for being nuanced rather than punished. They talk about how to avoid becoming a group that is solution averse like what is happening with Climate Change.
[00:45:55] — “So, let’s say with climate change, for example, if you say, well, we need a whole bunch of companies to reduce their emissions and you’re talking to somebody who’s a staunch free market conservative, they’re not necessarily going to like that idea. And so, their motivation then is to deny the existence of the climate problem in the first place. And I think we should be really cautious about jumping to solutions. We would be better off saying, hey, I’m aware that there are some problems when it comes to climate change.”
[00:46:30] — “We shouldn’t spend all this time talking about why my solution is right or why your view that climate change isn’t an issue is wrong. Instead, I should say, well, given your views about what we should do on climate policy, how would your proposed solutions work and how would you implement them? And when you ask those questions, something really intriguing happens.
They talk about the invisible balance between idea flexibility and inflexibility (e.g., [00:48:15]
Winston Churchill facing down, you know, Adolf Hitler, even think of, you know, people like Mahatma Gandhi, you know, very singular, focused in terms of what they were doing, very unwilling to reconsider sort of the rightness of their views.)
They talk about explanatory depth, which is the idea that we think we understand complex systems much better than we actually do. They talk about the importance and benefits of being a little bit more intellectually humble, curious, nuanced, more doubting, and less dogmatic. These are the behaviors and habits that help people moderate their own views, become more patient with others, and become less extreme. In a time of extreme polarization on almost every conflict of existential crisis to human existence, isn’t learning how to become less extreme inside yourself a beautiful idea?!!!
Are you ready to rethink your cherished ideals and ideas today?
This tells about two women you stood in conflict against oppressive, lopsided, racists beliefs, behaviors, and practices. Because of their sacrifice and courage, our shared reality has been changed.
Description: When Billie Holiday was harassed by U.S. government agents and told to stop singing ‘Strange Fruit,’ she refused. When Shirley Chisholm ran for president and was ridiculed and told she shouldn’t aim that high politically, she refused. On this episode of Throughline, two pioneering Black women, Billie Holiday and Shirley Chisholm, who set their own sights and never backed down from a fight.
Sometimes conflict is essential to change the world and bend it back into balance.
“So much of the news from Syria consists of sad stories of chaos, of brutality, of war. But a new book — while a story about Syria and about war — brings us a refreshing story of hope, of female courage, and of heroes.“
Quantum Mechanics, Free Will and the Game of Life
Image from Scientific American | Credit: Getty Images
Excerpt: “Before I get to the serious stuff, a quick story about John Conway, a.k.a. the “mathematical magician.” I met him in 1993 in Princeton while working on “The Death of Proof.” When I poked my head into his office, Conway was sitting with his back to me staring at a computer. Hair tumbled down his back, his sagging pants exposed his ass-cleft. His office overflowed with books, journals, food wrappers and paper polyhedrons, many dangling from the ceiling. When I tentatively announced myself, he yelled without turning, What’s your birthday! Uh, June 23, I said. Year! Conway shouted. Year! 1953, I replied. After a split second he blurted out, Tuesday! He tapped his keyboard, stared at the screen and exulted, Yes! Finally facing me, Conway explained that he belongs to a group of people who calculate the day of the week of any date, past or present, as quickly as possible. He, Conway informed me with a manic grin, is one of the world’s fastest day-of-the-week calculators.”
There is so much we don’t know. An open, fluid, flexible mind able to navigate complexity and conflict with curiosity, passion, and compassion is beautiful. They world needs more beauty now. Are you ready?
The Death of a Father is a devastating event regardless of if it occurs to a family or a civilization. Fathers represent half the sacred act of creation. In Buddhist philosophy, “Yang represents Heaven, the Father, and the Creative…while yin represents Earth, the Mother, and the Receptive. Yin and yang are dependent upon one another…” To read more about the symbolism of Yin & Yang, see this beautiful blog: Yin & Yang Symbol: Between Heaven and Earth.
TheCollective Death of the Father
Why am I comparing the Death of a Father as experienced by an individual or a civilization as a similar event? Because civilizations are nothing more than of millions of individuals who have agreed to come together as a collective to achieve a greater good. Part of what they do to accomplish this greater good is contribute some of their individual consciousness to the collective pool of consciousness needed to do this. Note when I refer to consciousness, I mean illuminated consciousness, the part we are awareness of that tells us who we are, where we are, what we can do, and allows us to do and accomplish things in the world.
Collectives of any size draw upon this greater pool of consciousness to do things a single individual could not do alone. In ancient times, this larger pool of knowing and ability helped people synchronize and organize themselves to bring about the greater goal. Back then, the great goal was surviving, but our ancestors recognized how a well synchronized group of people could afford to divide up critical survival tasks such as hunting (protein), gathering (critical vitamins, minerals, and other trace nutrients), building (shelter), and safety (fighting off beasts or other humans who want to steal your resources or creating/sustaining fire) to overcome the challenges that probably would kill an individual acting alone.
Imagine for a minute that you are an ancient human trying to live alone in a world due to circumstances beyond your control. To do this, you must hunt, gather, build your own shelter, and protect yourself from all sorts of danger and challenges. You must also know how to heal yourself if you get hurt or become ill. Necessity will allow you to use your great mind to overcome some of the obstacles to survival. But, pretty much all your time and energy will be dedicated to surviving, leaving little time to imagine, much less build, a new and better way of living in the world.
But thankfully you are a modern human who is living in a modern world, so surviving is much easier. But it is also vastly more complicated. That is because our modern luxuries comes with a price, which necessitates that you put more of your individual consciousness into the ever-evolving more complicated collectives. There are many ways individual’s contribute their individual consciousness to the collective. One obvious way is by internalizing and abiding by the rules of the systems sustaining the collective (e.g., go to work, make money, spend money to employ other people who must go to work). Collective concentrations of consciousness are supposed to sustain the good of all people living inside of them. However, just as an individual can choose to use their consciousness for evil, so too can a collective.
It does not take many individuals who have bended and been broken by the lure of the Corruption to pollute a collective’s pool of consciousness. All human beings need to navigate the lure and pull of corrupting impulses, desires, yearnings, longings, and fancies that live inside our psyche. In Western civilization, these Corrupting forces are immortalized as the 7 Deadly Sins: pride (modern day manifestations is narcissism), greed, lust, envy, gluttony (hoarding more than you need, thus taking away things other people need to survive), wrath (a corruption of anger that turns it into an obsession to get even and punish anyone who wrongs you, even if the wrong you perceive is fantasy).
The United States of America right now is watching such forces play out in the second Impeachment of Trump. Here a prideful, wrath-filled, vengeful man along with his complicit and powerful, imaginative cronies (e.g., Steve Bannon, the Mercers, Rupert Murdoch, Stephen Miller, etc.) corrupted an entire political party. They managed to warp reality and get millions to believe it is real. It is a process of radicalization that has been going on for a long time. Donald Trump’s win of the 2016 election was a huge payoff for this steady and persistent warping of reality. Once he took power, an intense period of stepped-up deep radicalization transpired. It is a period that has played upon deep-seated fears mainly residing white people who fear losing their long-standing position of privilege.
Image from PBS Newshour — Description: With a focus on intent, Democrats wrap up their case in Trump’s impeachment trial — Feb 11, 2021 6:55 PM EST — Thursday was the second and final day for the House of Representatives to make their case against former President Trump for inciting an assault on the U.S. Capitol. Senators serving as the jury at his impeachment trial heard that the mob on Jan. 6 had no doubt about why they were there. Yamiche Alcindor and Lisa Desjardins join Judy Woodruff to discuss the day’s events.
Trump uses fear like a subtle knife (a reference to His Dark Materials) to cut an opening into the hearts and minds of ordinary men and women. He cuts deep with it going back to the rage and division of the 1850s, even further to the primitive foreboding fear of ‘the other’ who could be a raiding party coming to kill you. The House Impeachment Managers have laid out a damning case for how the former President seeded, cultivated, and grew an alternative reality resulting in a raging mob that descended on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. It was a moment of pure madness that caused the deaths of 7 people, injured 140 police officers (e.g., losing 3 fingers, the tip of his index finger, crushed discs, brain injuries, eye gouged out, one officer run through with a metal fence post, another suffering a heart attack after being stunned with his own stun gun), and damaged the Capitol building itself.
His Dark Materials-Will Learns How To use The Subtle Knife | 2,103 views•Dec 1, 2020
I suggest we are struggling through as a collective the Death of the Father. In this case, it is the Death of the Founding Fathers. All civilizations must grow their collective pool of consciousness through time just as individuals must grow their sphere of consciousness. Eventually, every civilization will grow beyond the boundaries of what their founding fathers envisioned. It is utterly natural to grow beyond the boundaries defined by the founding fathers. What set of humans being can see beyond their time, much less 200, 500, or 1,000 years into the future. A father wants his child to grow, just as the founding fathers want their nation to grow physically and psychologically.
As a civilization grows, it must redefine itself and reorganize according to what new knowledge has been learned. To do this well requires new men and women of great imagination and vision. People who can help the collective see far upon the horizon of time and help it adapt and change to new challenges coming at it that could crush it if it doesn’t evolve. When a civilization fails to grow and adapt, it begins to split and fracture because the Corrupting forces live inside all men and all women and it will seize control of the rudder of a civilization that is drifting due to the death of its founding fathers—a natural death because the collective (the civilization) has flourished under their vision and grown beyond it.
What Cain and Able Teaches Us about the Death of the Father in a Collective
The Cain and Abel is a story about the Death of the Father (in this case, it is an immortal father what has retired to the immortal realms of heaven). When a father leaves, a void is left behind that must be filled by a new leader (a new father).
“After God sent Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden, they joined together and Eve gave birth to Cain, who became a worker of the soil. And then to Abel, who grew up to be a shepherd of the flocks.
In time, Cain made an offering to the Lord of fruit from the ground. And Abel brought the firstborn of his flock with its fullness and fat. The Lord respected Abel’s gift, but had no regard for Cain’s. And Cain was angry, and his face fell. And the Lord said, “Why are you so upset? If you do well you will be accepted, but if you don’t do right, sin is waiting for you by your door. And sin will want you. But you can conquer it.”
One day, when the brothers were in the field, Cain rose up against Abel and killed him.”
We are indeed hearing about the first murder committed by the first mortals of the world after God banished his children from Eden for disobeying him. But we also are witnessing the rise of the new father of Western Civilization. Charles Johnson explains further:
“When he kills Abel, to me it’s not really about Abel. It’s about striking back at God. And think, for just a moment, because I think this is very interesting for a novelist, about the phenomenological, if you will, experience of envy. You know, what is that- who do you envy, really? It’s someone who must be enough like you with just a little bit of difference, right? You don’t envy somebody who’s totally different. You- you’re related. You have a relationship. Maybe you’re in the same profession? Right? I’m not going to envy a doctor. I’m gonna envy Oscar Hijuelos (LAUGHTER), as a novelist or John Barth. And the question is, why? Why is their offering, which is their self, received so fully and mine not? So, the envy’s gonna be really tremendous. Because there’s this relationship, I really think, between self and other. It’s almost like a doubling. Almost like a twin.”
And yet, your- equality is not in the world. It’s something that we have to accept, you know, whether we like it or not. So that the only thing he can do is eliminate him. But by eliminating him, he gets rid of his better possibilities.”
It occurred to me after publishing this post there is a modern retelling of the succession aspect of the Cain and Able tale. It is an HBO mini series titled Succession, which is a brilliant retelling of the somewhat good son and the somewhat foolish and ruined son lining up to succeed their aging dad who has amassed an international corporate empire. This modern tale adds an important upgrade by throwing in the beautiful, accomplished, and somewhat dangerous daughter who is also standing in line to take over this modern empire that has the power to amass an army to sow ignorance, division, and confusion around the world–which of course benefits the empire. It is a brilliant telling of how these ancient archetypes have evolved in the human mind and an insightful telling of how power is wielded in the modern world.
Succession: Season 1 | Official Trailer | HBO | 2,677,882 views•Apr 26, 2018
Splitting the Father in Half & the Fight for Control
Circling back to what Charles Johnson said above about Cain and Able, this sounds strikingly similar to what is going on in the United States of America presently, doesn’t it? In this case, Trump was getting rid of his better possibility by demonizing it, denying it, and creating an alternative reality that he served to this followers to drink to the dregs. The drink was spiked with the Big Lie he had carefully concocted and designed to pick at and incite his followers deepest fears, darkest biases (among them a deep belief that white people deserve all the power), and worst impulses as human beings.
I believe worldwide we are fighting over our founding fathers. We have been splitting them in half. This splitting was done by the people the fathers once ruled with wisdom, truth, compassion, and justice. Once the fathers have been split, the people war between themselves for which father will rule—the Benevolent Father or the Malevolent Father? Both father images have powerful appeal to the people. However, the choice is an illusion because the one Father consist of both benevolent and malevolent potentials. A wise father knows this and knows how to balance these forces inside himself. A foolish, stupid father has no such awareness and lets his basal instincts (i.e., primeval, animalistic, self-serving, or ignoble motivations) rule him (like Trump has done and has managed to skillfully impart these same unconscious impulses to his base of followers).
The Human World Struggles to Grow Consciously As Collectives
The US is not alone in this struggle between the good and gentle brother (who stands in line to replace the father) and the dirty and angry brother (who also stands in line to replace the retiring father). Note the dirty, angry brother is only so because he works in the field, he grows the food from the soil. Perhaps God himself played on this brother’s feeling of inadequacy by having no regard for his gifts from the land that he, Cain, had brought as an offering. Perhaps that was a test. If it was, it was a cruel test showing God’s potential to be both good and bad at the same time.
In this moment of time, Britain also struggles through the messy muddle of outgrowing its founding fathers vision. This same story is playing out in different ways through Brexit. The Middle East is also struggling through this messy muddle as it outgrows its founding fathers vision for their people. The Arab Spring (Arabic: الربيع العربي) unfolding as a series of anti-government protests, uprisings, and armed rebellions that spread across much of the Arab world was part of this struggle playing out and is still playing out. Also see, The Struggle for Middle East Democracy and Ten years after the Arab Spring, democracy remains elusive in Egyptby Nick Schifrin, Ali Rogin.
There are many examples around world of cultures, nations struggling through this succession according to their own cultural and historical origins. Where a splitting of the father has occurred within the collective body of the people, an eruption of chaos is unfolding with deadly consequences. I heard Adam Curtis interviewed on the BBC yesterday. He has been tracing these struggles and how they have been playing out around world in a provocative new series entitled: I Can’t Get You Out of My Head: An Emotional History of the Modern World.
Adam Curtis interviewed by Simon Mayo and Mark Kermode | 46,032 views•Jan 29, 2021
Adam is right to embark on this journey and to bring this knowledge back to us through this novel series embedded with deep insights needed now for we are in an existential crisis for for which father will rule. Lincoln said as much 150+ years ago in his House Divided speech: “A house divided against itself, cannot stand.” (…) “It will become all one thing or all the other.” In other words, either Cain will prevail or Able will prevail, but one will kill the other. CNN is about to air a new series Divided We Stand about Lincoln and this time of crisis.
The unexpected story of Abraham Lincoln explored in ‘Lincoln: Divided We Stand’ | 2 views•Feb 12, 2021
Individual Death of a Father
My own experience of losing my father was devasting. It flung me into an existential crisis that set me on a journey I scarcely understood. As I tried to survive this crisis, it felt like I was floating on an endless sea. Most of the time, I was utterly alone.
Art by Bebe
I was still on this endless sea when 2020 arrived, but I knew how to float and I actually felt more understood and less alone. But floating in uncertainty and limbo is exhausting and my last routines of relief had taken away with the arrival of COVID-19. So, I had to find new ways to hold onto hope. I began making documentaries of moments of beauty encountered during bike rides in 2020.
Blue So Deep — Pulling Back My Power | 35 views•Premiered Oct 18, 2020
Moments of Insight & Healing in the Wake of Death
In Blue So Deep— Pulling Back My Power, I document a day when I understood how I have been losing essential inner energy by projecting parts of myself onto others. The previous year, I recognized the bad parts of myself I was projecting onto others and because of this, I was losing energy. I pulled them back. I began to heal. By making these videos I started recognizing how I was projecting good parts of myself onto other (e.g., the deep thinker, the doer, the seer, the dreamer, the successful one, the popular one). I realized I needed these parts back in order to survive on the sea that I still am adrift on more than 2 years later after losing my father.
I also saw this picture and a contest to caption it.
I wrote: “I am your shield, a force forged by love, protecting you from the sharp barbs of fate until you grow strong, my dear one.”
To my great surprise I won the contest!
Through this picture, I realized how my father had protected me from the brutal barbs of reality. I realized how he was my shield against the steady bards of what have become cruel systems and ways of being in the world. In the wake of his death, I was left completely exposed to the brutality of all the barbs being sent my way. I had not realized how dad protected me simply by being there to listen to my woes and understand me without judgement and offering only love and compassion. There are many reasons why we are cruel to each other, we envy what another has, we lust to have more than we deserve, but the most common reason is fear.
Why Fear Can Incite Us to be Cruel to Each Other
We fear each other because we have lost part of ourselves to “the other”. We do this by projecting some part of ourselves that is remains in the darkness of our unconsciousness. People do this all the time. It is a natural psychological process that helps us see, know, understand more of who we are in the moment of recognition: “Oh – that is me!”
In that moment of recognition, we grow as a conscious being because we are empowered to pull back the projection temporarily lost to the other. This natural psychology process becomes pathological when we fail to recognize our projections and pull them back, thereby failing to grow. We can only become whole by knowing more about who we are and what we are capable of doing—both good and bad.
A psyche trapped within chunky, inflexible, lopsided belief systems can become quite grumpy. It is also very vulnerable to demigods and other master manipulators who want to co-opt their consciousness and their bodies to do bad things in the world. Trapped psyches can quite easily blow up into a terrifying one-eyed psychic monster capable of getting the people co-opted into the beast to do savage, ferocious, barbaric acts of destruction. It is bad enough when this happens inside an individual. When a bunch of people have been synchronized to such a beast, it is a catastrophe.
I will tell more in upcoming blogs how I managed to recognize and pull back my projections as I floated on my Sea of Sorrow. I tell my story in case it offers hope to anyone else finding themselves on such a sea of misery and misfortune.
Bell: Who are we unifying with? We are not unifying with Black and Brown people who cannot get away with anything in this system. Black and Brown people get beaten and killed for doing Nothing. They get executed by the state for Nothing. Today we have 2 Senators who participated and helped to incite the insurrection, and all we are talking about is Unity. Democracy is not about Unity; it is about who has more votes! The White Privilege is mad about its slipping power and privilege. Bell tells about a real estate woman who went to the Insurrection like it was a Super Bowel Game and while attacking the Capitol promoted her real estate business, then back in Texas, asked Trump for a pardon. If it had been Black and Brown people descending on the Capitol, it would have been a massacre.
Kondabolu: Voting should be about values not team. I have a baby and I have to have hope because I have a baby who hasn’t even had ice cream yet… I’m not ready to go down with the ship.
My friend Fabian Navin shared this post the other day that is very appropriate to how an individual participates in the collective consciousness of his or her society and the toll it can take on the individual psyche… there is an invisible price of belonging to collectives:
“The spontaneous painting I began to do helped me not only to discover my personal story, but also to free myself from the intellectual constraints and concepts of my upbringing and my professional training, which I now recognized to be false, deceptive, and disastrous in its impact. The more I learned to follow my impulses in a playful way with colors and forms, the weaker became my allegiance to conventions of an aesthetic or any other nature. I did not want to paint beautiful pictures; it was not even my goal to paint good pictures. All I wanted was to help the truth to break through. In this way, when I finally confronted my own truth and was strengthened by it, I found the courage to see with ever-growing clarity how the conventional methods of psychoanalysis block the creativity of patients as well as analysts.” ~Alice Miller (in the Preface to the 1990 edition of “The Drama of the Gifted Child”)
Alice Miller, Paintings 1975 – 2005
See this previous post on moving through moments of adversity with wisdom.
“Breath Is Too Precious for Hate” — Rev. William Barber
In a time of Great Grief, one must find a thread of Great Belief to hang onto. Not just any thread, but one grown and spun from the center of your heart… the core of who you are as a living being traveling through space and time with other living beings all struggling to survive the setbacks and challenges inherent in being a space-time being. It must be a thread spun with compassion, understanding, truth (at least a willingness to sink into and see truth as it is revealed through time), kindness, patience, and love. This is an elusive thread to find because so many of our systems of being are based and reward the opposites of all these precious qualities of being human. But to survive Great Grief, this is the only way that will lead you and everyone you love to a better place in space and time.
But how do you do this? How does one find this rare and precious thread inside oneself to hang onto as the waves of lost, injustice, disease, death, isolation, exploitation, cruelty, ill treatment, and so many other things that happen to us as we try to survive through time…things that wash away at our very soul?
Just breathe… breath is powerful.
In a Scientific American article that I link to below (Vision and Breathing May Be the Secrets to Surviving 2020), the Stanford neurobiologist Andrew Huberman discusses two things all of us can do to control our response to distress, trauma, pain, and suffering, even during a high-stress time such as this past year has been with an extremely divisive election, racial disparities spotlighted in brutal, traumatic ways in the killing of George Floyd (and so many more individuals unjustly) and unequal access to wealth and healthcare causing black and brown people to suffer the highest death tolls from the COVID-19 pandemic sweeping the world.
Breathe has never been more forefront and center than it has been this past year with the tragic events leading to chants across the country, indeed the world, of “I can’t breathe” combined with COVID-19 patients struggling to breathe as the novel coronavirus robs them of their ability to do so.
In the article mentioned, Andrew Huberman says, “Breathing represents a bridge between the conscious and unconscious control of the body.” Since I’ve been writing about consciousness and unconsciousness in my story Sapience, drawing much from Carl Jung’s work, I wondered what is the equivalent to breath for the psyche. Then, I remembered this song Breathe by Télépopmusik.
Breathe – Télépopmusik – Album: Genetic world
I brought you something close to me Left for something you see though you’re here You haunt my dreams There’s nothing to do but believe Just believe Just breathe
Another day, just believe Another day, just breathe Another day, just believe Another day, just breathe
Breath has long been a symbol for spirit–that invisible force powering all living beings. As human beings, we are aware of this spirit that is powering us and flowing throughout our life on Earth. Jung talks of the importance of this thing that is aware, he calls it Self or psyche. He explains that this small part of self that is aware must swim between that which is conscious inside oneself and that which is unconscious inside oneself to generate the energy necessary to maintain consciousness. This is what gives us the ability as human beings to choose actions different than what our instincts would otherwise dictate. It requires us to ascend up and down within the parts of ourselves that we know about because they exist within our sphere of consciousness and the parts of ourself that we do not know about because they exist within the sphere of our unconsciousness (the bigger sphere). Belief might be like a psychic vessel (a ship, a submarine, or maybe a fish) that we create inside ourselves (in our mind space) in order to make our epic journey through space and time.
However, belief is not omniscient (all-knowing, all-wise, all-seeing) in and of itself. Belief is a part of the immortal body that exists somewhere in the realm of mind, but it is also very mortal and because of that imperfect. For belief to exist through time, just as the body exists through time, beliefs must be refreshed and refined with new knowledge (hopefully even wisdom) all the time, just like the lungs must be refreshed all the time with new air, fresh air so the corporeal body may live.
So how does one hold on during a time of Great Grief, Great Sadness, Great Stress, and Great Lost--like now? It is breath. It is belief. But one must take care to keep the immortal and mortal air breathed clean and refreshing for beliefs can lead individuals into very dark places as well as into illuminated places. It is up to you to choose which place you journey through space and time.
Following is a collection of stories percolating through me since I heard them that have inspired these thoughts. Or perhaps, I should say immortal breaths…and so, another day, just believe, another day, just breathe…
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: And finally today, it’s been less than two weeks since the Biden administration took office, and it has already been a whirlwind. The president has signed more than two dozen executive orders addressing everything from immigration to climate change, as well as one of the issues he says propelled him to run for the presidency for this third time, racial justice.
So we thought this would be a good time to check in with civil rights activist, the Reverend William Barber II. He was invited to offer the homily at the inaugural prayer service. The text came from the prophet Isaiah.
SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING of the Rev. WILLIAM BARBER II:
“And so the prophet gives the nation God’s clear guidance out of the jam it is in. Choose first to repent of the policy sin, and then repair the breach. The breach, according to the imagery of Isaiah, is when there is a gap in the nation between what is and how God wants things to be.”
MARTIN: It was both an affirming message but also a call to action, so we wanted to hear Reverend Barber’s take on what that should look like. To remind, he is the president of an organization called Repairers of the Breach, which is based in Goldsboro, N.C. He’s a recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship, the so-called genius grant, and the co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign. And he is with us once again.
Reverend Barber, welcome back to the program. Thanks for joining us.
BARBER: Thank you so much for having me on today.
MARTIN: What gave you the inspiration for the sermon?
BARBER: Well, I was asked to deliver it, and that was quite a humbling request. And then they asked me, did I know much about Isaiah 58? And, of course, that is one of the major passages of scripture recognized by Jews, Muslims and Christians especially. It is a scripture specifically speaking to the nation about how to repair itself after it has been through lying leadership, extreme leadership, mean-spirited leadership, oppressive leadership. And it really gives a step-by-step what has to be done.
MARTIN: Well, to — you know, to that point, I mean, the president in – President Biden in running for office and certainly at his inaugural message has been stressing a message of unity. And during your homily, you spoke of unity. I mean, you said the breach would be knowing the only way to ensure domestic tranquility is to establish justice, but pretending we can address the nation’s wounds with simplistic calls for unity. Can you expand on what you’re saying here?
BARBER: Well, surely. You know, one of the things I think more than just being a civil rights activist, I’m trying my best with others to be, you know, a moral leader, one who looks at things through the lens of moral analysis, moral articulation and moral activism. And you can’t have a simplistic view that all we need is “Kumbaya.” All we need to do is slap back — is pat each other on the back. No, no, no, no. There are real forces — and we have seen them — forces that we saw that would rather put a person on the Supreme Court than protect people from dying in caskets from COVID, forces that would rather give trillions of dollars — trillions — to corporations during COVID while billionaires make almost a trillion dollars and then fight to just give a few trillion to poor and low-wealth people and those who are hurting. These are real battles. And some people are not going to unite with justice. But if enough of us can unite with justice and love, we can move this country forward.
MARTIN: But I am interested in how you feel that happens when some have made it abundantly clear that they do not agree with this agenda. I mean, for example, I mean, your first, as I – you announced on Twitter that beginning tomorrow, the Poor People’s Campaign will be holding special Moral Mondays events. Your first event will center on increasing the minimum wage. Your group is calling for some very ambitious things like universal health care, limiting defense spending. I mean, the fact is that a significant number of people in this country don’t agree with that. So how does he reconcile both the desire that some people clearly have for a more sort of temperate, more moderate, more constructive tone and yet people like yourself who say, no, there are ambitious things that need to happen? How does he resolve that?
BARBER: Now, yes, 70 million people voted for Trump, but over 80 million people voted for Biden and Harris. They knew they were going to pass – they were going to fight for living wages, addressing systemic racism and to address health care. Biden won 55% of all poor and low-wealth people voting under – that made under $50,000 a year. In Georgia and other places, poor and low-wealth people voted for Biden and Harris at a rate 14% higher.
We’re talking about, how do we heal the soul of the South Side? And it’s only by healing the sickness in the body. And so what we’re talking about is a must – is a must. These things must happen, and when you have the power, even if you only have one vote – Republicans showed us something. They did it for the wrong reason, but they didn’t care if they had just one vote. They did what was wrong. So people who have one vote now must do what is right.
MARTIN: I can’t tell from listening to you whether you feel encouraged or you still feel frustrated.
BARBER: So I’m encouraged because the movement is encouraged. I’m encouraged because more people turned out to vote in the midst of COVID than ever turned out in the history of this country. I’m encouraged because 6 million more poor and low-wealth people turned out in this election than they did in 2016. I’m encouraged because this country has shown us that if you run on a progressive agenda, if you talk about health care, living wages and dealing with racism, you can win in California. You can win in Georgia. You can win in Pennsylvania. You can win all over this country if you give people a vision of progress for which they can vote.
I am discouraged on one thing, and it’s — but it’s going to come — that we still don’t hear enough about poverty. We hear Democrats talking about the middle class and workers. But if 43% of this country was poor and low-wealth before COVID, and 8 million more have been thrust into poverty since May of last year, and if only 39% of this country can afford a thousand-dollar emergency, we must use the word poverty. We must talk about poor and low-wage people. We must say their name and say their condition. And we must say we’re not going to lift from the middle up. We’re not going to trickle down. We’re going to lift from the bottom up.
MARTIN: So before we let you go, I want to acknowledge that, as you have acknowledged, that many people are still struggling because of the pandemic, because of the downturn. Obviously, some people – many people were struggling before that, but a lot of people are suffering right now. And this is something that you brought up in your homily. And I just wondered if you had some words of encouragement for people who are struggling.
BARBER: You know, as a pastor, I will tell you, in this season, sometimes I have not had words. I’ll just be honest. All we’ve had is presence, even if it was distant presence. All we’ve had is love. All we’ve had is sometimes just getting on a video and crying together when people couldn’t go visit their loved one. Sometimes that’s all we’ve had.
You know, one of the things some of us have done is ask the question real seriously, why are we still alive? I mean, in this moment when any of us could be gone in seven days, seven minutes – you know, we could contract COVID. We could be breathing fine one minute, and it could all shut down – why is it that we’re still alive? Or more importantly, what is it that we’re going to do with the breath we have?
And some of us have decided in the midst of the tears, in the midst of the hurt, in the midst of the pain, we decided that breath is too important to waste. We don’t have any breath to waste on being mean and hateful and unjust and hurting people. The only real use of our breath is to try to breathe some more love and truth and grace and justice into this world and in this society.
And so whether we live seven minutes, seven days, seven months, seven years or 70 years, that’s what we’re committing ourselves to do with every breath we take from now on because this moment has been a moment where we all have to face the potential of our own mortality in a very real way. We can end any moment, be alone on a breathing machine with nobody able to come and see us. And many people have died like that. And in their name and in their memory, even with our pain, we must use every breath we have to turn things around, to push our political system to do right from the bottom up, with every breath we have left until we have no more breath in us.
MARTIN: That was the Reverend William Barber II. He’s president of Repairers of the Breach. He’s co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign. Reverend Barber, thank you so much for joining us once again.
BARBER: Thank you so much. And blessings to you and your staff.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
* * *
After hearing the Rev. William Barber speaking with Anderson Cooper earlier in the year of 2020 at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and then again in the aftermath of the brutal murder of George Floyd, I was so inspired by his deep wisdom, knowledge, and words that I created a playlist: Repairers of the Breach. We are all responsible for the existence of this breach, which grows deeper and wider with every act of ignorance, malice, and hate that we conduct into the world through our thoughts, words, and actions.
But we are all also healers of this breach, and we can repair this breach when we act with knowledge that we have distilled from our experiences in the world and that we have gained by taking the time to educate ourselves about things, about great mysteries and unknowns in this complex and beautiful world, and when we pay attention to great masters/teachers who have lived throughout time who can help us remove the veils of illusions and delusions–sadly created by others who have chosen to trick and deceive people for their own self-betterment.
We can repair this great divide, the breach we have all forged inside ourself and between each other when we conduct ourself with love and compassion, when we take time to pay attention to other people, especially to people who are suffering, who are in need, who have been ignored and left behind, who have not received the blessings meant for all living being on Earth because these blessings have been diverted and hoarded by a few, especially in these modern times.
Each of us is a healer and repairer of this terrible breach that has broken so many families and friendships recently, but we must constantly refresh our beliefs.
* * *
This American Life
Beware the Jabberwock — Stories from the upside-down world where conspiracy theorists dwell
I had heard Act 1 of This American Life before (Down the Rabbit Hole, which is the story of Lenny Pozner, whose son, Noah, was killed at Sandy Hook. In the years after Noah’s death, Lenny and his family were harassed by people who believed the shooting at Sandy Hook never happened – that it was all a conspiracy. Until one day, Lenny decided to fight back).
This is a powerful, heart-breaking, and terribly important story to hear. So, if you have not heard it, you should start with Act 1.
Act 2 is new to me, and it blew me away. Reporter Jon Ronson travels to Texas to uncover the origin story of Alex Jones, infamous founder of InfoWars. Having just finished watching HBO’s Watchmen, I was into origin stories. This is one that needs to be heard because it encapsulates an Archetype of our time. One that is dominating the minds of millions and millions of people these days. One defined by Conspiracy Obsession—Satan Fixation—Bully Compulsion tendencies. It is so prevalent in America society today, percolating even more fiercely by the isolation imposed on every human being in the world due to COVID-19. Alex Jones is a man who had great sway and influence on our former President, Trump, who has a very similar mental world bound by the same Conspiracy Obsession—Satan Fixation—Bullying Compulsions as Jones—something we all saw fall off the page of Facebook and come to life in the storming of the Capitol of the United States of American on Jan. 6, 2021.
I can just feel how one’s breath must tighten and grow shallower and shallower as one depends deeper and deeper into such rabbit-holes of deception and obsession that leads to hate, grief, and pain all for the good of someone like Alex Jones or Donald Trump, not for the good of the ones going into the holes.
Which direction in life will you choose to go? The journey running away from grief and pain by going to fancy parties and coronations in fancy golden high heels? Or will you choose to climb the highest mountain to see the llama or the Lama? 😉
* * *
The TedRadio Hour
Breathe— “Breathing is essential to life. And lately, the safety of the air we inhale, or the need to pause and take a deep breath, is on our minds a lot. This hour, TED speakers explore the power of breath.”
This episode is all about breath. I did not think too much about it after I heard it, but then I heard the words of Rev. William Barber and I saw the importance of these stories in a new light. Because of this, I am highlighting them here and providing links to them so you can listen to them as you have time and interest to do so if you decide to explore the links between breathing, believing, and life. [Note that the images accompanying each story do not necessarily match the TedRadio Hour images but rather link to similar ideas/stories but different sources.]
Image from TedRadio Hour — Benjavisa Ruangvaree Art/Shutterstoc
Image from Everything You Need to Start Free Diving — BY MEG LAPPE, MAY 18, 2019
Description:In 2002, free diver Tanya Streeter completed a record-breaking dive of 525 feet—in one breath. She reflects on the obstacles she faced, and the experience of pushing her body and lungs to the limit.This is a riveting story!
About:Tanya Streeter is a world champion freediver who was inducted into the Women Diver’s Hall of Fame in March 2000. For more than two months, she held the world record — for both men and women — diving to 525 feet in the “no limits” category, which is still the women’s world record for No Limits Apnea.
She has been featured in the documentaries, Freediver, and A Plastic Ocean. She also hosted a show on BBC Two called Shark Therapy, in which she attempted to overcome her fear of sharks.
Streeter received degrees in Public Administration and French from the University of Brighton.
Image from Manhattan Mental Health Counseling: TOP 5 SCIENTIFIC FINDINGS ON MEDITATION/MINDFULNESS
Description: Mindfulness expert and Headspace co-founder Andy Puddicombe guides listeners through a meditative reflection on appreciating breath.
About:Andy Puddicombe is a former Buddhist monk and the co-founder of Headspace, a project to make meditation more accessible to more people in their everyday lives.
Puddicombe also writes for The Huffington Post and The Guardian on the benefits of mindful thinking for healthy living.
He attended Wellsway Comprehensive School in Keynsham, and studied Sports Science at De Montfort University. He also has a Foundation Degree in Circus Arts.
Description: Journalist Beth Gardiner and activist Yvette Arellano explain the long-term health effects of air pollution. Yvette lives in a Houston neighborhood near the largest petrochemical complex in the U.S.
About: Beth Gardiner is an American journalist based in London. For ten years, she reported for the Associated Press in New York and London.
Now, her reporting primarily focuses on the environment. She has discussed her work on NPR’s All Things Considered, WNYC’s Brian Lehrer Show, and the BBC’s World at One.
Gardiner is the author of Choked: Life and Breath in the Age of Air Pollution, an exploration into the long-term health effects of air pollution. Gardiner received grants to support her work on Choked from both the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and the Society of Environmental Journalists.
Description: Dinosaurs ruled Earth for 180 million years, but to dominate they had to outcompete a slew of other animals. Paleontologist Emma Schachner thinks their lungs could have been the competitive advantage.
About:Emma Schachner is an anatomy professor at LSU Health Sciences Center in New Orleans. She also specializes in the 3D digital modeling of anatomy from CT and MR images, as well as scientific illustration, which merges anatomy, art, and scientific communication.
Schachner’s research uses an interdisciplinary approach to study the soft tissue and skeletal anatomy of a broad range of animals including alligators, chameleons, parrots and ostriches. She uses these data to reconstruct the biology of extinct reptiles, particularly dinosaurs and the fossil ancestors of crocodilians.
She received her master’s degree in paleontology at the University of Bristol and her PhD in philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania.
Fifth Story: Andy Puddicombe: How Can Breathing Help Us In An Ever-Changing World?
Description: Mindfulness expert and Headspace co-founder Andy Puddicombe guides listeners through a meditative reflection on breath and impermanence.
About:Andy Puddicombe is a former Buddhist monk and the co-founder of Headspace, a project to make meditation more accessible to more people in their everyday lives.
Puddicombe also writes for The Huffington Post and The Guardian on the benefits of mindful thinking for healthy living.
He attended Wellsway Comprehensive School in Keynsham, and studied Sports Science at De Montfort University. He also has a Foundation Degree in Circus Arts.
Image from article: Life Without a Sense of Smell | Losing your sense of smell takes away more than scents and flavors — it can fundamentally change the way you relate to other people. By Emma Young | August 4, 2015 1:00 AM | Discovery Magazine [I chose this image/article because COVID-19 is robbing the sense of smell from many people, sometimes for months… and we don’t know how long yet this could last]
Each day, we breathe about 22,000 times–and all that time we smell. Scent historian Caro Verbeek recreates scents of the past. She says, just like music and art, smell is a part of our heritage.
About:Caro Verbeek is an embedded researcher of olfactory heritage at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Rijksmuseum and International Flavours & Fragrances. She creates olfactory tours and interventions for museums.
Verbeek teaches the course ‘The Other Senses’ at the Royal Academy of Arts The Hague and is the curator in chief of the olfactory culture program ‘Odorama’ at Mediamatic Amsterdam. She is also an advisor for immaterial heritage projects at Mondriaan Fonds.
She received her M.A. in curatorial studies at VU Amsterdam University and her M.A. in art history at the University of Amsterdam.
Mindfulness expert and Headspace co-founder Andy Puddicombe guides listeners through a meditative reflection on how breath can bring us closer together.
About:Andy Puddicombe is a former Buddhist monk and the co-founder of Headspace, a project to make meditation more accessible to more people in their everyday lives.
Puddicombe also writes for The Huffington Post and The Guardian on the benefits of mindful thinking for healthy living.
He attended Wellsway Comprehensive School in Keynsham, and studied Sports Science at De Montfort University. He also has a Foundation Degree in Circus Arts.
* * *
NPR’s Lulu Garcia-Navarro Interview with Sophie Fustec
NPR’s Lulu Garcia-Navarro speaks with Sophie Fustec, known artistically as La Chica, about her new album La Loba, in which she comes to terms with her brother’s recent death who died after jumping into a hot spring to save his dog. I was deeply touched by this interview and Sophie’s beautiful voice.
LA CHICA – LA LOBA | Dec 2, 2020
LA CHICA – OASIS | Dec 5, 2015
LA CHICA – Agua | Dec 3, 2020
LA CHICA – Sol | Dec. 3, 2020
ALTERLATINE | La Chica | Jun 27, 2019
* * *
Sophie Xeon
Then there is the tragic death of another beautiful Sophie–Sophie Xeon who was popularly known as just Sophie. She died at 34 after a terrible accident where she fell from a roof that she climbed to get a picture of a full moon. Ludovica Ludinatrice, Sophie’s representative, said: “True to her spirituality she had climbed up to watch the full moon and accidentally slipped and fell. She will always be here with us. The family thank everyone for their love and support and request privacy at this devastating time.”
SOPHIE — It’s Okay To Cry (Official Video) | Oct 19, 2017
Concluding Thoughts
Each breath we take is precious for every breath links us to every individual we ever come into contact with each and every day. Breathing\believing is how we weave the web of life (our shared reality). It is a timeless process done in our corporal bodies through breath and in our immortal bodies through belief. We all need to breath…to believe to survive and thrive.
What will you do with your breath today?
It is so precious…you are so precious…and life is so fragile and short.
Synchronistic stories are like bread crumbs I like to gather for a rainy day when I can ponder them more deeply and seek out the connections (to me, to others, to the moment). They are stories or conversations that have gotten me thinking about things beyond what I would normally ponder in the business of surviving another day. During these extraordinarily abnormal times, synchronistic stories are especially good to contemplate. Who knows, perhaps they hold the key to a new idea, an insight, or understanding how to move forward in a difficult moment. Here are a few more stories that got me thinking about how having a boring life isn’t so bad…if fact, highly desirable.
“Writing Forces You to Think Through Things” — Now is a Good Time to Think Things Through
“Young people often have this desire to try to make their life interesting,” says actor, author, and director Ethan Hawke. “Life is so interesting all by itself. You do not have to try to goose life.” He’s pictured above in Paris on Nov. 25, 2019.
Words of Advice
While on book tour in Berlin, Hawke met a German editor who gave him some advice: “He said, ‘The problem is you’re having the same dilemma that famous writers have at the end of their career … You are not a famous writer — you are a famous person who’s writing.’ “
The editor suggested he just embrace it. “He advised me on my next novel not to run away from it, but to run into it … and then, of course, it took me 20 years to do it.”
On why he framed the story around Shakespeare’s Henry IV, a play he performed in 2003
I started trying to do King Lear, but I’ve never performed King Lear, and I realized that I just wasn’t intimate enough with the play and that the play’s themes didn’t speak to my themes that I wanted to write about. You know, Henry IV probably explores fathers and sons and masculinity and the attempt to arrive at some kind of, quote unquote, manhood or adulthood about as well as literature can do. And that was what my story was.
So I kept kind of coming back to Hotspur. One of my favorite things about acting is seeing yourself as your character’s lawyer and defending his position. And in the novel, I have this sense that William is trying to prove to himself — that he’s the good guy and he’s trying to do the same thing for his character and there’s something kind of wonderful about that realization.
On revisiting a difficult time in his life – he was performing in Henry IV around the time his marriage to Uma Thurman ended
I had a lot of growing up to do, and one of the things that I really love about writing is it forces you to think through things, and think through situations, and create a fictional universe where you can see things that maybe you can’t see inside your own life. That’s what the title is about, you know, “a bright ray of darkness” is the unity of opposites, so to speak, that we learn by suffering.
On the complex relationship between celebrities and their fans
I’ve spent so much time thinking about this because I experienced celebrity young. I’ve had a desire to break that glass wall. … When I look at Michael Jackson, or Elvis, or any of these people who have reached extreme celebrity, it’s like they’re in some isolation tank and they’re just going mad. And we’re watching them, kind of loving watching them die.
When everyone else is staring at you, it’s hard not to start staring at yourself like them. You start to see yourself in third person. You start to be writing the narrative of your life and it’s just a toxic way of thinking.
And yet, it’s fun to sell out a theater. It’s fun to get a standing ovation. It’s fun to move people and have them tell you they were moved. So the positives are this huge high and the negatives are just people chopping at your ankles. It’s been very confusing throughout my life.
Danny Hensel and D. Parvaz produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Beth Novey adapted it for the Web.
Threads from Facebook – Weaving Stories Together to Understand Things
I shared this post on January 27, 2021 in one of the last remaining groups I belong on Facebook, adding the following comment:
Truth… wisdom… bearing witness to the world as it is… does this what the image conveys… perhaps… I am getting attacked right now for making an artistic, celebratory video on the inauguration of Biden and Harris… someone asking where are the fact checkers… (perhaps they meant to say where are the fantasy checkers?).
I suspect he was referring to the stories that inspired the raid and sacking of the Capitol on Jan 6, 2021. It was an insurrection inspired by lies, misinformation, and fantasy. An alternative world created by alternative facts that compelled people to believe that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, and then it didn’t take much to poke at this fantasy and pop the mind bubbles making them burst into a deadly reality. How much of our human world is shaped by fantasy and by beliefs that we’ve ceased to examine critically by using all our human faculties of thinking, feelings, sensation, and intuition?
These things (beliefs, story, fantasy) become shortcuts we hold inside our mind to explain reality. So cherished they can become, we can be inspired to act on our short cuts for reality. If they are lopsided and out of whack with reality, bad things tend to befall all humans involved. This is the danger of creating alternative worlds inside our minds that become more precious to us than the world we share with each other.
The only antidote is to grow your mind, your light of consciousness by using all your conscious abilities: critical thought, feeling, sensation, intuition.
Image probably from a Tarot card deck
The original post came from: Chaim Mendel * January 25 at 7:00 PM * If there were one philosophical truth that you could teach everyone in the world, what would it be? What is the most interesting philosophical question?
An Online Conversation
The following conversation ensued. It is a story. But it takes an open mind to explore and unlock the possibilities explored.
That’s what we are here to help each other do—unlock our inner possibilities.
All of us have infinite inner possibilities, but we must squeeze them out one at a time as we travel through space and time.
Being an ancient species and new species at the same time, we confront many paradoxes, obstacles, and challenges as we try to remember who we are and what we are here to do.
Many tools of insight and understanding have been developed by every people and all civilizations to help people find, cultivate, and grow their inner power. Most are cloaked in mystery and numinosity. Most have been lost to modern man.
This conversation explores the wisdom of the Tarot and traces its deep, enigmatic roots.
Auntyflo says about the Nine of Swords: “When the Nine of Swords becomes present in your reading there is an experience in your life that you are going to need to analyze very carefully.
Focus on your priorities and keep moving. This card is representative of ill tidings coming your way. Sometimes life throws us curveballs that exist for the purpose of giving us the experience of working through the problems that they create and this is the case for you at this time. Often this card is depicting some kind of loss that has thrown you completely off of your normal routine.
The image that is depicted in the Rider-Waite deck shows a woman waking up in the dead of night in despair. Her head is in her hands and there are nine heavy swords hanging over her head. This is symbolic of loss, suffering and sometimes misery or oppression. This card could be symbolic of a loss of a loved one either in an end in a relationship or a death. When you have gotten this card in your reading you will need to take a step back emotionally and take a look at your situations as they currently are.
If you are experiencing this level of loss and you are right in the middle of grieving this could be hard to do. But this card tells you that it is important for you to keep focused on your end goal primarily because for one thing it will help with your grief and for another you will find that even though this is a difficult time, much growth will come as a result of you having the strength to keep on moving. You will definitely need to prioritize because you will not be able to take on very much right now, so what you do take on needs to be gentle and easy for you to handle. When you prioritize then you are giving the pain something positive to transform into, and often times pain and suffering can be excellent motivations. You need a distraction that will help you get through your grief. Immerse yourself totally and trust that you know what you need to do to succeed. At this point, the higher mind can take the wheel, and you should allow it to. Healing is found when one connects to their higher source energy.
Right now the combination that can be found in Knowledge and in Wisdom should be treated as interrelated. You cannot carry out a responsibility without the knowledge necessary to do so and you can’t be truly informed or knowledgeable on anything without the assistance of responsibility. There is a copasetic relationship here that cannot be denied. At this point in the Suit of Swords, you must take the responsibility inherent in the Knowledge that is at your fingertips so that you might get through this devastating time unscathed.
The time to fine-tune your personal philosophy and set goals for this lifetime is now. Even though it may be difficult to do so, there is nothing healthier for you at this time then to focus on improving yourself in life. Take the time now to consider how you are putting yourself down and being counterproductive, what is causing you suffering at this time? What is causing you to be depressed?
During this time of COVID-19, we are all experiencing deep loss and most probably depression at some level. Go to Auntyflo to read more of this ancient wisdom contained within the cards of the tarot. She explores The Nine of Swords in Love,The Nine Of Swords As Feelings, The Nine of Swords in Health, The Nine of Swords in Work and Wealth, Nine of Swords Advice,Nine of Swords Outcome, and Reversed Meaning – Nine Of Swords (this is like Runes of Ancient Nordic cultures. I was writing about runes and reversed meaning at the time my father died two years ago.)
Note : I am an atheist, but the card is interesting indeed: “If there were one philosophical truth that you could teach everyone in the world, what would it be? “
Summarize Philosophy to One Truth
The Desiderata seems to find a balance with metaphysical Naturalism … Humanism … Desiderata (things that are desired)
GO PLACIDLY amid the noise and the haste and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexatious to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism.
Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment, it is as perennial as the grass.
Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be. And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.
This is such deep, beautiful wisdom. Sage advice for how to live a boring but deeply meaningful, productive, shining life. I told Colin this was gold. I never heard of it before. Thanks to Colin digging deeper, my post (which I had not thought very deeply about) suddenly went much deeper into a vein of wisdom I would have missed had Colin not paid attention and contributed this work above.
Tarot Cards, Major Arcana & the Kabbalah
Then, Barry Kort continued the dive, going further back in time and space.
The Tarot Deck (especially the Major Arcana) come from the Kabbalah. Originally the 22 cards of the Major Arcana were illustrations of 22 passages in a generic life story. I’m not sure of this, but I think Colin’s version of a life story is what he calls a Journey Map.
A 20th Century secular version of a generic life story would be found in “Passages” by Gail Sheehy.
By Journey Map or Quest Map is for a specific journey of one endeavor. I will be explaining the various “maps” in the next while. Defiantly cognitive sense-making tool. Not a solution to life, that is 42. (22 for Dave M)
Thanks for your interest.
Shared by Barry Kort — not sure origins
There are many variations on illustrations for passages in a Life’s Journey. Here, for example, is a kit of cutout illustrations for “Life’s a Journey.”
Life’s a Journey — Collection Reveal
Here is an artisan in Italy who makes custom Tarot Cards for any passage in a Life Journey.
The Handmade Art of Tarot Cards
By the way, ‘Tarot’ is ‘Torat‘ spelled backwards.
In Hebrew, ‘Torah‘ and ‘Torat‘ are the same word, meaning ‘Theory‘ or ‘Science‘.
If you want to say, “Epistemology” in Hebrew, you say, “Torat Emet” (literally the Science or Theory of Truth).
The reason for adding the consonant is so one can understand two successive words where the first word ends in a vowel and the second word begins in a vowel. So you don’t say “Torah Emet” because it would sound like “Toramet.” Adding the extra ‘t’ helps separate the two words when they are spoken aloud.
So don’t be tormented by “Torah Emet” but say “Torat Emet” to mean Epistemology — the Science or Theory of Truth.
The totality of a generic life journey is known in the lore of the Kabbalah as “The Fool’s Journey” and it’s illustrated by the 22 cards of the Major Arcana.
The totality of a generic life journey is known in the lore of the Kabbalah as “The Fool’s Journey” and it’s illustrated by the 22 cards of the Major Arcana.
«The Fool’s Journey is a metaphor for the journey through life. Each major arcana card stands for a stage on that journey — an experience that a person must incorporate to realize his wholeness. These 22 descriptions are based on the keywords for each major arcana card.»
“We begin with the Fool (0), a card of beginnings. The Fool stands for each of us as we begin our journey of life. He is a fool because only a simple soul has the innocent faith to undertake such a journey with all its hazards and pain.
At the start of his trip, the Fool is a newborn – fresh, open and spontaneous. The figure on Card 0 has his arms flung wide, and his head held high. He is ready to embrace whatever comes his way, but he is also oblivious to the cliff edge he is about to cross. The Fool is unaware of the hardships he will face as he ventures out to learn the lessons of the world.
The Fool stands somewhat outside the rest of the major arcana. Zero is an unusual number. It rests in the exact middle of the number system – poised between the positive and negative. At birth, the Fool is set in the middle of his own individual universe. He is strangely empty (as is zero), but imbued with a desire to go forth and learn. This undertaking would seem to be folly, but is it?“
Barry Kort relays: «When the Nine of Swords becomes present in your reading there is an experience in your life that you are going to need to analyze very carefully.
Focus on your priorities and keep moving.
Sometimes life throws us curveballs that exist for the purpose of giving us the experience of working through the problems that they create. Often this passage is depicting some kind of loss that has thrown you completely off of your normal routine.
The image that is depicted in the Rider-Waite version of the Tarot Deck shows a woman waking up in the dead of night in despair. Her head is in her hands and there are nine heavy swords hanging over her head. This is symbolic of loss, suffering and sometimes misery or oppression. This card could be symbolic of a loss of a loved one either in an end in a relationship or a death.
This passage tells you that it is important for you to keep focused on your end goal because for one thing it will help with your grief and for another you will find that even though this is a difficult time, much growth will come as a result of you having the strength to keep on moving.»
How to Grow Your Mind Space: N.E.M.E. — Notice | Engage | Mull | Exchange
It is altogether fitting and significant that this thread is an instance of “N.E.M.E.” ~ Notice / Engage / Mull / Exchange.
John Steinbeck: The Grapes of Wrath | In his iconic novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939), John Steinbeck portrays the hardships of life during the Great Depression in the United States.
Just as in “The Grapes of Wrath,” we’re all fermenting the same w(h)ine, but affixing different labels to the bottle.
Whiniest Heroes
Have to take a side note here: The Whiniest Heroes In Movie History (whiners might just play a critical role for humanity)
Whiniest Quote: “It just isn’t fair! I’m never gonna get out of here!”
Though Luke grows into one of the greatest heroes in the galaxy, he begins his days as a rather angsty, reluctant teen. His journey is a rough one and he is rarely afraid to let those around him know it. His list of complaints is so long that whole compilations have been made that show off his whiniest moments.
The 22 Cards of the Major Arcana are similarly numbered by the 22 letters of the Hebrew Alphabet.
Each card of the Major Arcana corresponds to a major passage in the life of a typical person on a typical Life Journey.
The remaining numbered cards within each of the four suits of the Minor Arcana — Swords, Pentacles, Wands, and Cups — correspond to specific Cognitive-Emotive States that a person may find themselves in somewhere in the midst of any given Life Passage in their Life Journey.
I really liked Heidi we had some fun talking and we had a little bit of a dispute going with our takes on Jordan Peterson although I agree with a lot of what Jordan Peterson’s academic work. At least I think I do.
One thing to note about Heidi is that she always had a hard time understanding Doug because he would use such flowery language and go on and on and she would try to get him to get to the point or explain it in a way somebody could understand/I don’t have a hard time understanding Doug for the most part although I do think he stays at a high level where more concreteness could help with verifying understanding.
We did several shows on the alphabet code hopefully I’ll have my query database running soon.
I’m starting to become more of a video producer than programmer and plus I got several other things on the go like this guy who’s giving me a lot of grief in a difficult conversation coexistence group I’m in.
Around the world, people are grappling with the risks posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. How do our minds process that risk, and why do some of us process it so differently? This week, we talk with psychologist Paul Slovic about the disconnect between our own assessments of risk and the dangers we face in our everyday lives.
Jaws | Final Face-Off With the Shark in 4K Ultra HD | 27,527,510 views•Jun 10, 2020 | Look how many views in less than one year of posting… we love scary things as human beings… we really do…
Shankar Vedantam says, “Our feelings are shaped by stories, images, and the people we are with. (…) Our sense of control determines our sense of risk. Take for example calculating our sense of contracting and getting COVID-19. We perceive that we have greater control going to a restaurant and thus might believe we have less of a risk getting COVID there while we perceive less control of making the vaccine and thus perceive this as more dangerous to us.”
Psychologist Paul Slovic says, “The modern world has a whole range of dangers much different than the world in which our brains evolved, which were inside hominoids who were living in caves. (…) There is no gatekeeper in our brains that vet feelings. This was very adaptive a long time ago helping humans survive by accessing their instincts at a moment’s notice (e.g., hearing growl in the grass). There was no time then to analyze every possibility. But our feelings do hijack the mind and this can be dangerous in our complicated modern lives that have Collective Consequences that are very different than Stone Age Consequences. (…) Take example wearing a mask to reduce the risk of transmitting COVID. We don’t see the consequences of taking such a collective action right before our eyes, and thus may underestimate the harm of not wearing a mask to ourself and others. If we then choose to not wear a mask, the virus wins and spreads and mutates. But, if we wear a mask and pay attention over time to the results of lots of people also wearing masks, we see the collective benefit and reduction of the spread of COVID-19. But many people don’t connect long-term results with short-term sacrifices, and thus continue taking wrong action. This is the same phenomena playing out in taking right action to reduce the harmful effects of the coming massive, global climate change.”
This podcast is profound because to explores how our feelings shape our actions in the world. Often they do so in ways we are very unconscious of, but they do so in ways that have huge impacts on our shared reality.
What Does 2021 Have in Store for Children? | Save the Children | 1,634 views•Dec 18, 2020
Psychologist Paul Slovic says, “We tend to help others because we feel good when we can do something that makes a difference. But when we realize there are others who we cannot help, then bad feelings enter our minds and this dampens our empathy capacity and lessens our action to do something. This is crazy because we should do what we can where we are at with what we have.” For more, see Arithmetic of Compassion.
And BEWARE how Save the Children has been coopted by QAnon to hook people into crazy beliefs. More about this soon in The Story of Q.
QAnon, coronavirus and the conspiracy cult – BBC News | 188,994 views•Premiered Jul 27, 2020 | A bizarre conspiracy theory has surged in popularity in the US since the pandemic, according to exclusive research seen by the BBC. | Since this video was posted, QAnon has been linked to the storming of the Capitol on Jan 6, 2021 — it is a violent conspiracy cult that baths its followers with ancient, awful myths of imagines that trigger their most primitive feelings, which trigger ancient animal instincts in vile ways.
Frightening Stories That Fascinate Us
The Sixth Sense (1999) – Official Trailer
The Shining – Official Trailer [1980] HD | 916,305 views•Apr 6, 2012 | “Here’s Johnny…”
“It is precisely this collision of immoral power with powerless morality which constitutes the major crisis of our times.” ― Martin Luther King, Jr.
The Storytelling Species: Makers & Players of Reality Bubbles
Part 2 in The Storytelling SpeciesSeries
The Sea of Misery: What Have We Done As Country…As A People?
In Part 1 of this blog series, I wrote: “As the global pandemic made its watery march around the world, I began to see stories shared by people I thought I knew that shocked me. Most barely clung to reality. Rather they floated in the air like blithe, colorful bubbles reflecting what was happening, but with a strange, surreal spin to it. Given the freakish, unearthly nature of these stories, most would pop upon encountering the first Blades ofReality growing out into the Sea of Being that we all live within and must comply to basic cause and effect realities. When this happens, then fate will run its course drawing momentum and energy from the psychic contents spilling out.”
While I wrote these words, a pro-Trump mob was descending on the Capitol of the United States. Thousands of people participated in the insurrection. It was a savage siege. One fatten up on lies and misinformation designed to trigger and incite the submerged psychic energies of the deep currents of White Supremacy that runs through our country. The President and his power-hungry cronies breathed new life into this diabolical narrative. They proved adept in using symbols and images to inspire and consolidate lots of fringe groups who are nursing their hate in chat rooms and shooting ranges. What Trump did is no small feat. He provided a center of gravity for all these fragmented groups to orbit around and synchronize their hate.
Image from The New York Times | Decoding the Far-Right Symbols at the Capitol Riot | By Matthew Rosenberg and Ainara Tiefenthäler | Jan. 13, 2021 — There were militia flags and banners of extremist groups, as well as absurd images of dinosaurs and comic book logos that belied the violence that was to unfold.
Once uniting all these discombobulated groups, Trump pulled them tighter into his circles of lies crafted to create even more mistrust, fear, and hate. His revolting bitterness fermented and grew even more toxic in groups such as QAnon (a disproven and discredited far-right conspiracy theory alleging that a cabal of Satan-worshipping cannibalistic pedophiles is running a global child sex-trafficking ring and plotting against U.S. president Donald Trump, who is fighting the cabal), Proud Boys (a group who refers to themselves as God’s warriors), the boogaloo movement (a loosely organized far-right, anti-government, and extremist political movement in the United States), the Three Percenters (re an American and Canadian militia movement & paramilitary group described as having right-libertarian and far-right ideology), and many more descended on the Capitol.
Warner Leger of the Anti-defamation League warns throughout 2021 there will continue to be flash points like we saw on the 6th.
Image from Here & Now: Damage is seen inside the Capitol building early on Jan. 7, 2021, in Washington, D.C., after supporters of President Trump breeched security and entered the building during a session of Congress. (Olivier Douliery/AFP/Getty Images)
Image from Here & Now: Security forces clash with President Trump’s extremist supporters after they breached the U.S. Capitol security in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6. (Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
FBI Warns Of Extremist Violence Ahead Of Inauguration— January 14, 2021 — Former FBI special agent and domestic terrorism expert Michael German joins Here & Now’s Peter O’Dowd to discuss security concerns following last week’s deadly breach of the U.S Capitol. “Law enforcement has so long turned its gaze away from these far-right groups, they don’t really know what’s going on.” “What shocks me that this has been a patterned for a number of years—Portland, OR and Michigan.” “In this group, people were trained by the US military.”
So irresistible was Trump’s Monkeyshine for the Mind, violent chatter continues although they are scrambling for platforms that will tolerate their hate. In short, Trump and his minions have turned Washington, DC into a war zone just before the inauguration of Biden and Harris.
With participants such as Jacob Chansley (who is known as the QAnon’s Shaman), I was very tempted to write the whole thing off as a dreadful and misguided fantasy.
But then, someone called my lived experience a fantasy.
Mind Matters
Narratives, fantasy, and imagination have always served as powerful tools for humans to mold and shape reality in accordance to their deepest desires and benefit. When thousands of people storm the US Capitol with some willing to commit murder or die, there is something deadly real going on, even inside a fantasy story chock full of lies.
Narratives, Fantasy, Lies & The Rise of Western Civilization
Narratives, fantasy, and imagination are used by storytellers to create mind nets that are cast into the depths of the individual and collective human consciousness. They are especially effective in the unconscious realms of the human mind. Without myth, fantasy, or sacred symbols, human beings would probably sink back into the Sea of Unconsciousness from which we emerged long ago, becoming ignorant beings again who are guided by nothing more than animal instincts. The magical Alchemy of Mind that man can do is because he is conscious. It allows human beings to make their inner reality an outer reality. It is a power that has defined the Rise and Fall of great civilizations for time immemorial.
Lloyd’s Rise & Fall Playlist
Western Civilization evolved much like any other civilization, though it developed a distinct appetite for gobbling up other groups of people by conquering them. Throughout time, the winners of such conflicts are able to consolidate even more power and gain more resources (often more than they need) along with obtaining the right to write the history of how they came to be the superior human beings. Such historical narratives are not really about the past, but rather they are meant to set the Stage of Mind for the living members inside the group (aka Western Civilization) to inspire them to move forward together in a specific pattern. In the case of being a conquering people, the narrative is intended to inspire the belief that they are the glorious, chosen people bestowed with the manifest power to conquer and control other people. The sole purpose of this collective belief is to grow even stronger and to become even more powerful.
Myth, fantasy, and fibshave always served as cornerstones for just about every group of people who have ever aspired to be something greater than they were. Indeed, myth, fantasy, and fibs have proved to be essential tools of the mind needed to consolidate the psychic energy of individuals who are needed to conduct the desired action. Civilizations are nothing more than a bunch of human actors performing in such a way necessary to build the desired empire (in other words, they are following the scriptand playing their roles). Such narratives are imbued with the numinous power of myth and legend. The greatest empires that have ever existed in Western Civilization have attained their greatness by drawing from this dark, mysterious, deep well that lives inside every human being. It is a well that extends all the way down to an inner sea, a collective sea, that is constantly flowing and constantly influencing human reality.
Lucy Worsley’s Royal Myths & Secrets | Queen Elizabeth I’s Speech at Tilbury | PBS — A myth that gave birth to a Western Super Power
Great storytellers know how to use narratives like nets cast into this inner sea, the Sea of Unconsciousness. They fish for forgotten fantasies, desires, and lost energies that are lying below the Threshold of Consciousness. This threshold is the demarcation line between animal instinct and human knowledge. The knowledge is that using the light of consciousness, man can see his primal instincts rising and can manipulate them before acting in the world. If unconscious content gets caught in the narrative net, then an individual is vulnerable to the numinosity of the narrative. The most dangerous narrative nets use myth, fantasies, and lies to manipulate and control the minds of the individuals who get caught inside the mind net. Individuals with unconscious content caught inside these nets can become part of the narrative–parroting out the lies, myths, and stories of the ones who are casting the net to control others. In effect, they grow the net, adding their individual psychic energy to the numinosity of the narrative. The bigger the narrative net grows and the more numinous it becomes, the more people are drawn and caught inside the net. Highly numinous narrative net grow a psychic gravitational field that attracts even more people to it.
When this happens an alternative reality bubble is born.
Alternative Reality Bubbles
As long as an alternative reality bubble keeps growing, it tends to remain stable. But sometimes they veer too far from the stable, solid ground of reality. When this happens, such a bubble can pop suddenly and dramatically dropping all the mental constructs and numinous content back into the Sea of Unconsciousness. This can be a terrifying experience because suddenly all the ideas and beliefs that have been constructed around the ego to make oneself feel safe, important, and powerful are shattered. The first pieces of the ego’s outer protective shell to fall are from the false narrative that have been incorporated into the individual’s psyche–this is how an individual merges into a collective. It is a powerful feeling because they feel bigger and greater than they did as an individaul. Stripped from their shell, it can be an experience akin to being casted upon a great and endless sea without a boat to float upon. The boat in this case are the ideas and beliefs that make the individual feel they have a sense of purpose, feel secure, feel part of something bigger than himself, feel powerful.
Alone and without a Boat of Self to float upon, the Sea of Unconsciousness can invoke a primal fear (the kind our ancient ancestors probably felt just before being devoured by a more powerful beast). Such fear is dangerous, especially when felt by a living being that has attained consciousness for now they can manipulate this fear, warping it into an energy that is capable of dreadful, desperate, menacing action in the world. The most dangerous aspect of this state of being is that an individual often does not recognize the threat is rising from inside themself. Not recognizing this, they turn their murderous rage at anyone standing near. The ‘other‘ becomes the scapegoat—the cause of all the misfortune being suffered by the individual or the group. In the end, everyone suffers from this type of circular thinking and circular action architected by the creators of manipulative myths, fantasy, and lies. These stories are carefully crafted to siphon off some of an individual’s Field of Consciousness and submerge the rest. This is how an individual’s personal psychic energy is contributed to a collective fantasy or belief, thereby growing it. Narrative nets such as these often lead to conflict, bloodshed, and war. The only antidote to this mind disease is to grow one’s individual Field of Consciousness.
Apocalyptic Cults
You think I am exaggerating again, don’t you?
I understand your mistrust. I have come to understand through my own personal adversity how we have been taught to mistrust the deepest parts of who we are as human beings–the hidden parts, the invisible parts, the inner parts of ourselves. This is where our mythical, fantastical, divine and demonic parts of being human reside and live. This is why we need stories…why we are driven to tell and share stories. They help us understand who we are, where we are, what we are as a conscious living being existing in space and time. It is an awesome ability that comes with an implicit responsibility to self and other. We are responsible for each other’s realities and wellbeing.
Before you past judgement or read further, take a break and listen to this episode that aired on Snap Judgement on January 21, 2021. It is a deep dive into an apocalyptic cult that claimed the lives of 39 individuals in the late 90s.
Apocalyptic cults are not new. In fact, Snap Judgement’s host Glynn Washington grew up in an apocalyptic cult. He recounts in this episode the day the 39 individuals were found dead with purple shrouds put over everyone expect the last 2 people to die…meaning they took their lives in waves over a long period of time. Washington remembers everyone in the bar where he was when the news broke stopping and watching in disbelief for a minute until shaking their heads and writing the whole thing off as fanatical individuals duped into death by a fantasy. Once writing out off the tragedy as a bunch of crazies, everyone went back to what they were doing. But not Washington. He knew how close he himself came to the same fate in apocalyptic cult he grew up in and he understood how close to this edge every human being exists.
This is a podcast well worth listening to. Washington says so poignantly, “Story is the closest way of touching someone else’s divine.” Without story, we are locked out of our own divinity…our own soul. We need stories. We need to tell our story. And, we need to hear other people’s stories. This is how we know what we know. This is how we create reality.
In 1997, thirty-nine people took their own lives in an apparent mass suicide. The events captivated the media and had people across the planet asking the same question… ‘Why?’ 20 years later, those who lost loved ones and those who still believe – tell their story.
Snap Judgment presents a special spotlight on Heaven’s Gate. Find out the story behind the cult that changed the world.
Heaven’s Gate is produced by Stitcher in collaboration with Pineapple StreetMedia and is hosted by Snap’s very own Glynn Washington. You can listen to Heaven’s Gate wherever you get your pods. Go on… subscribe right now and listen to all the episodes!
The Sea of Unconsciousness
I cannot talk for someone else’s experience on the Sea of Unconsciousness. I can only talk about my own experience of finding myself on this endless, hopeless inner sea. I did not intend to write about the collective experience of being cast upon the Sea of Unconsciousness when I began this series, but the events of Jan 6, 2021 compelled me to mention how our collective narratives can infiltrate our minds, seep into our thoughts, and dictate our actions. Once inside the mind, they go to work creating alternative reality bubbles.
At first these narrative feel and seem like a Godsend, the answer to the hardships and difficulties being experienced. These manipulative narratives offer explanations and answers. These stories make an individual feel that they know something everyone else remains ignorant about and this makes a person feel powerful.
When you find yourself floating on the Sea of Unconsciousness because of bad luck and misfortune such a story is very appealing. But the story is made of the sugary content of lies and misinformation, it can be a very dangerous story to cling to. The question for the United States of America now is will we rise together as a united people determined to mend the rips, lacerations, and gashes that have been made in our collective fabric of life in a democracy? Or will we let our differences, fears, and mistrust (aka mislead instincts) let us tear us apart?
I do not know.
I can only tell you how I learned to pull my inner energy back inside myself so I could float and survive another day on this hopeless, miserable sea of misfortune. All of us end up here at one time or another because no one is spared from fate.
To me, fate is a coming together of one’s own unconsciousness with the unconsciousness of others in such a way that things previously believed to be safe and normal are no longer effective at keeping you and others safe. Normality gets flipped upside down. The arrival of COVID-19 is an example of such a time, but just about any reversal or set of misfortunes can pop one’s Reality Bubble. When this happens, you get dropped on the Sea of Unconsciousness, which can often feels like the Sea of Misery because nothing feels or works normally anymore. Depending on how much of one’s self is submerged below the Threshold of Consciousness determines how well you can navigate in the new reality and how fast you can build a new boat or better Reality Bubble.
Sea of Unconsciousness — Art by Bebe
I’ve been floating on this sea for some time. For me and my family, the growing currents of misfortune began in 2015 when my husband was targeted by cruel co-workers who were eyeing his small department’s budget for their own purposes. The fateful currents of misfortune continued in 2016 when I was targeted in a massive layoff made necessary due to an ill-conceived decision by the CEO to compete with a collaborating company. I was told I would lose my job 12 days before Christmas.
One Day — Yellowstone — “This video is about our time in Yellowstone on this vacation, and the day fighting bison hit dad’s car.” This is when our fortunes changed, sweeping us away in a tide of misfortune that has not stopped yet, 5 years later.
The Fates of Misfortune double down on us in 2017.
Perhaps the cruelest moment of misfortune was when the CEO of the low-paying job I had to take after being thrown overboard the corporate ship fired me for being with my dad as he struggled for his life in the ICU at the Mayo Clinic. He had experienced a massive heart attack. Against all odds, heroic first responders revived him. And then valiant efforts of doctors, nurses, and aids at the Mayo Clinic almost brought him all the way back. I’ve written about this and what happened before, so will not elaborate now.
Who We Are & He Walks With Me — Goodbye Dad | Posted: Aug 4, 2020
This is when I let go and fell into the Sea of Misfortune &Despair. I did not let go because my father died. I let go due to the cruelty of others…due to calculated callousness I had been experiencing before dad died, and then even more, after dad died.
Looking back, I can see how my father’s death acted like a lightning rod or the gunpowder of transformation that woke me (violently) to my role and responsibility to Bear Accurate Witness to my reality. It is something I have been doing my entire life, but did not realize it.
In the System of Consciousness we are born into as citizens of modern Western culture, those born into privileged classes or strata of people are taught not to notice or see the inequalities, imbalances, polarities, and unfairness that are baked into the system. Things that determine what a person can do, where they can live, how far they can advance in their career–things that determine how well a person can survive inside the collective system of being in the world. This is not true of individuals who are forced to survive at the bottom of the system. They see the inequalities because not seeing them can mean the difference between life or death.
Our modern System of Consciousness has been constructed to steal the blessings and resources meant for everyone living inside the system and redirect it unto a few. Most of the civilizations that modern man exists inside is like the lottery–everyone buys into the belief that anyone can make to the very top if they just work hard enough and long enough. The truth is, which is the reality of the system, is that making it to the very top of the system is very rare. Most modern Western systems purposefully deprive people of what they need to live so that a few at the top who have made it can have a lot. It is really fun living at the very top because it means an individual can enjoy more than they need or deserve. This very system that has diverted the blessings meant for everyone, also blames the people from whom these blessings and resources have been stolen for their own misfortune. It is a cruel, inhuman system that refuses to see another person’s reality, especially if that person is perceived to exist below others existing in social strata above them.
Being white, I was born into a privileged class and taught not to notice the inequities existing all around me. However, being my father’s daughter, I was taught better than this. He showed me how to see them and how to hold all people as equal, beloved, and valuable. From an early age, my father taught me how to Bear Accurate Witness to my reality. It is something I would be punished for over and over again. And, I would learn there are many nuances existing inside the ‘superior’ class of people and that those who do not obey the silent rules and expectations of conformity would be throw into the Sea of Misery without a boat or any hope of rescue.
Scapegoats, Whipping Boys & Aunt Sally
Let me be perfectly clear: No one deserves misfortune. And, no one deserves fake sentimentality in place of true empathy, compassion, and help in the wake of the Maelstrom of Misfortune. No one asks for it, at least not consciously. And most people who are just trying to survive in our modern world have done nothing to deserve it. Rather, they are victims (scapegoats) of a system of consciousness we have evolved as humans to live inside. The one we live inside today is sick, lopsided, failing. It is a system that has engineered misfortune, injustice, tragedy, trauma, and grief to effect and impact some people more than others. Our modern system of consciousness channels blessings meant for everyone living inside the system onto a few.
Our systems are engineered to protect the few who are receiving blessing they don’t deserve. They are protected by automatic reactions that get triggered and expressed by the masses who reject any person who gets labeled as an oddball, an outsider, a freak or bad boy/girl…the wackadoodle weirdo who no one cares about.
These are deep subterranean psychological channels engineered by our system of consciousness that activate and trigger certain behaviors by the common man and woman living in the system. Most don’t even know they have been triggered by the system of consciousness they are living inside. It happens below the threshold of most people consciousness. Unaware of their unconscious reaction, they act in accordance with the expectations of the system that have been designed to maintain the imbalance of power.
When a person gets labeled as an outsider or eccentric oddity, the system gives the masses the permission to dismiss them, disengage from them (ignore them), and disenfranchise them from the benefits everyone else receives for following all the rules of the system without questioning them.
No one deserves to bea scapegoat,a whipping boy,an Aunt Sally(a game played in some parts of Britain in which players throw sticks or balls at a wooden dummy called Aunt Sally), the fall guy or girl for a wicked system. It is something that is done to them, so resources and blessings that should have naturally flow to everyone in the system is redirected only to a few who are living at the top of the system and holding the power and authority over everyone else under them. To heal this injustice, which is a disease of the collective soul, requires the entire system to stop blaming innocent people for the immoral, corrupt, black-hearted actions of those who hold power over others.
When the blessings meant for everyone living inside a system are redirected unto a few, terrible consequences are inflicted on those from whom resources, benefits, and blessings have been diverted. The result is that perfectly innocent individuals suffer, more than they should, all for the good of a few greedy people. This is nothing less than the Theft of the Blessings meant for all living beings on planet Earth. It is an embezzlement conduct by a corrupted system of human being existing in a system of consciousness that has been engineered to steal the blessings meant from the masses and redirect them unto a few.
It is an imbalance engineered long, long ago.
It is dead wrong.
During the final days of the Trump Administration, we are seeing it play out in magnificent awfulness. While huge tax breaks were approved for the very rich and corporations by Republican Representatives and Senators two years earlier, the same individuals now reject raising the insufficient COVID relieve payment to individuals earning less than $70,000 from $600 to $2,000. The result of thefts like this is that the most vulnerable people suffer, especially the children as reported by PBS Newshour in this segment.
PBS NewsHour: The overwhelming impact of childhood trauma on Chicago’s West Side — Dec. 16, 2020
The Scapegoat & the Mainstream
So why does our system of consciousness, which defines all the manmade systems that we live and work within disenfranchise and scapegoat people? What exactly is a scapegoat anyhow?
A scapegoat is a goat sent into the wilderness after the Jewish chief priest had symbolically laid the sins of the people upon it (Lev. 16) [Definition from Oxford Languages]
Judeo Christian beliefs contribute much material to the ancient channels of consciousness that grew to keep earlier groups of men and women safe from harm. However, what causes harm has been interpreted in vastly different ways according to the needs and environments in which the small groups of tribes of men grew. These ancient channels that hold the beliefs that sustained these ancient cultures–beliefs such as a goat can symbolically hold the sins of the people and be sent into the dessert to die for their sins–continue to flow through the channels of consciousness that live in the minds of modern men and women existing within Western Civilization.
We even have a word for this: Mainstream.
The banks of the mainstream hold and maintain the most commonly held beliefs and conventional ways of being in the world. It is broad and shallow. The banks of the mainstream are mostly made out of foregone and often very primitive social and cultural taboos.
Tribute to Cider | Jan 1, 2020 | This is definitely about taboos…thank you Cider for showing me!
The Banks of the Mainstream & the Role of Taboos
Many Western Civilization’s taboos originate from ancient Greek and Roman cultures, which themselves absorbed and assimilated the cultural substrate of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. The Western Civilization that we recognize today was chiseled out in medieval Europe. Some of the most powerful sculpting tools was Medieval Christian religion and feudal society with its dispersed power-structures that concentrated power in kings and courts and evolved economic dynamism — see Western Civilization TimeMaps.
However, since Western Civilization is old and very big, it has absorbed many beliefs, ideas, and cultural/religious taboos from many other smaller civilizations and cultures it gobbled up in its domination of the world of men. All of it and everyone gets incorporated into the ever-growing Banks of Being, which is the template for how to fit into Western Civilization. When you flow between these banks, you are flowing in the Mainstream.
Resistance is Futile! | Jun 5, 2012
Every child born into Western Civilization or every individual assimilated into it by choice or by force is indoctrinated into its particular ways of being. Some conditioning is plain to see. It happens in schools, places of worship, the workplace. It is maintained by rules of a community, a state, a country. It is also transmitted seamlessly and invisibly from parent to child and through peer networks, flowing like water constantly moving from person to person. It contains all the hidden cultural biases, prejudices, partisanship, favoritism, and bigotry built in the system of civilization in which the person lives.
These invisible codes transmitted are the taboos that have been defined long, long ago. They include all the illicit, illegal, unutterable parts of a being human deemed prohibited by the group, the tribe, the civilization. Most people mistakenly believe if they do not utter or see these dreadful, awful, unmentionable things banned by the group, they do not exist, or at least can be caged and contained. This is dangerous myth.
Dana Williams – Fragile Ego (Official Music Video) – Dec 1, 2017 | See Lloyd’s Egos….Masks Playlist for more music videos on egos and masks | This is a playlist created by the Last DJ of Earth who is trying to save survivors of Earth after multiple global climate catastrophes that brings the world order of the 21st Century to its knees. He hacks Multinational satellites (the new overlords of Earth who rose from the ashes of the last century). Once inside, he broadcasts musical sermons from his massive playlists–the only surviving library of Earth’s musical memory. He works day and night to bring down Earth’s corporate overlords–the ones who only worship money and their own greed. Consciousness is the key. The Sapience Series tells this tale. Follow this blog for when Sapience: The Moment is Now, the first Book in this series, is available.
Taboos & Autonomous Unconscious Content
Cultural taboos are very fragile and easily broken because they are very old and worn out. People feel this, which makes individuals conceal and hide the darkest parts of self in the deepest recesses of the human mind. It makes people weak because it keeps them in the dark. They don’t grow their consciousness. The illuminated part of their mind. The part modern men call the ego. The result is that the vast majority of consciousness, remains hidden in the darkness of unconsciousness where it is ready to pounce on our puny illuminated minds directed only by the ego. Once captured, these dark parts of self can hijack the little ego.
When autonomous unconscious content hijacks the mind, a person may engage in actions extremely counter-productive to their personal wellbeing or the wellbeing of others. This is what the taboos were originally were trying to do: hold back dangerous autonomous unconscious content. But they are not working so good any more. They are breaking, fragmenting, collapsing. When they completely fall away, a huge wall of unconsciousness is going to fill the collective sphere of human existence found inside the human mind.
As mentioned, long ago taboos were constructed to protect us from our inner darkness and potential to do harm to self or others. Every culture constructed taboos. And indeed, they worked and protected their members from possession of autonomous unconscious content existing inside every human being. Not all this unconscious content is bad. Indeed, a great deal of it is superior, magnificent elements of being human.
Most ancient tribes and civilizations understood this. But they also understood it took training to master the darker realms of mind. Each culture created taboos aligned with the collective needs of the group to help them survive most optimally within the environment they existed. Taboos took into account availability of resources needed to survive as a collective as well as forces of competition limiting these resources.
When a person steps outside his or her cultural boundaries, they often were punished, sometimes harshly. And some become a scapegoat for their tribe who pile on to this individual all the unconscious content the other members of the tribe does not want to accept or see about themselves. It is a shortcut that is extremely short-sighted in the long run for the wellbeing of the tribe or civilization.
All systems of human consciousness have evolved taboos to maintain order in the group. Taboos are simply shared customs prohibiting or forbidding discussion of or behavior deemed dangerous to the wellbeing of the group. Sometimes what is deemed dangerous drifts because it becomes taboos to maintain power by those holding power in a group.SeeThe Boy Who Ate the Wrong Part of the Crocodileas an example of forbidden action. A taboo can also be associated with a particular person, a place, or thing.
Why Taboos Aren’t Working So Well for Modern Man
The problem for modern man is these banned behaviors and thoughts are really, really old. They have been maintained inside man’s mind for so long, their origins are mostly forgotten. During this time, they have become very rigid. Repairs have been attempted through religions and rules civilizations erected on the graves of the old ones and the old ways. But under the demands of modern Western civilization and rapid globalization, these repairs are cracking and fragmenting. Modern life is very complicated and human cooperation, understanding, and empathy are crumbling as they system grows even harsher and crueler in a futile effort to maintain control. All around the world, mankind stands at the brink of disaster–one coming from inside.
The Divine Dodo — In Maidjan | Image/gif by Bebe drawn for The Divine Dodo story
Collectively, mankind stands at the edge of a Primal Split existing inside the mind of every human being. It is a split that gives man consciousness, but the human race has been using its ability of consciousness to rejigger the flow of blessings and misfortune that are supposed to be distributed equally unto all living creatures of Earth, unto a few. This causes more misfortune to flow onto the masses. This lopsidedness has grown so powerful we are shattering all guardrails of the mind… it’s everyone for themselves… when this happens, we are very near the end.
The rearranging of blessings unto a few and misfortune unto the many has been going on for a long time. It has created an uncrossable abyss cutting the ordinary man and woman off from some the most powerful aspects of who they are as human beings. Cut off from their most powerful inner resources, the ordinary man and woman are deemed much easier to control. The people holding power use fear or rage or threat of further misfortune if they don’t behave. Basically, stay on your boat and follow the rules of your captain.
Most human beings living today have no choice but to shut themselves off from their power emanating from the darkest regions in their mind. Yes, there are fearful, even deadly, beasts there… but there are many, many aspects of being a sentient being that include spiritual, atman, ka, anima/animus–the inner being possessing transcendent knowledge. Every human being has both aspects hidden in the unlit parts of their mind. It is the birth right of every human being to claim more of their inner worlds–to grow their individual Field of Consciousness.
But rather, today, we are forced to shut down our natural impulse to grow our inner light. A soul that is not growing is shutting itself down, thereby shutting off life. To be an inner voyager is to walk a very narrow high wire between intensely uptight external systems one must fit into to live and the inner self longing to grow and know. I keep falling off the high wire. I always seem to break taboos. Here are some I’ve broken.
Family Taboos
At my father’s funeral, one of his cousins told me other members of his extended family clan had always looked down their noses at him, his brother, sister, and father. They had failed to be strong and sturdy enough probably. The tragedy began shortly after my father was born–probably exacerbated by unrecognized and untreated postpartum depression–but it led to a mental health breakdown that would result in the institutionalization of my grandmother. She had been born into a dominated cultural belief that no matter what: yougot to tough it out mentality. Trauma was viewed as discipline and mental health issues were considered a sign of weakness. My grandmother retreated to her parents’ home where she did receive loving care and where my father and his siblings were being cared by his mother’s family. However, my grandfather felt humiliated that she had left him, leaving him an angry and broken man. And so it was that he and his twin brother (who probably suffered from an undiagnosed mental health disorder) schemed to get the children back into my grandfather’s custody. They began by stealing my father right out of his highchair while his grandmother hung the laundry…at least that is what my father remembers happening. He would sue for custody of my father’s older siblings, but this would take a year or so. He was deeply traumatized from this and his father was known to be overly harsh with his children. However, no one in his family confronted him or did much to help the children besides smalls acts of kindness here and there. His older brother would go on to suffer from schizophrenia. These formative years would leave an indelible mark on my father for his entire life. It haunted him in nightmares that made his scream and kick and fall out of bed two to three times a week. It was one of the reasons I moved him to comfort care in his final days because he got trapped in an endless delirium with these phantoms of long ago visiting him. I knew them well. I’ve grown up with them. I was marked with the taboo of bearing accurate witness to mental illness running in our family rather than pretending it was not there.
As my series of misfortunes piled up in the past 5 years, the last group of people I saw on a regular basis began to distance themselves from me. I had become a radioactive Contagion of Misfortune, and I was being blamed for my own misfortune. I doubt they even knew that they were doing this, but getting invited in group activities, conversations, and outings grew more and more infrequent.
One of the most glaring exclusions occurred at the opening of the Star Wars: The Last Jedi movie. I had been invited to join my little gym group for the last several Star Wars movies–though reluctantly for I knew there was invisible resistance inside this circle of friends to even include me as one of the groups. But due to circumstances, we saw each other every single day and so probably the taboo of pretending to be a nice person all the time was more powerful than the one to exclude me because I did not quite fit in with their dominate interests and form. However, as my misfortunes piled up, the balance tipped and when this movie came out, no invitation was forthcoming.
I had just lost my job with a government contractor 12 days before Christmas and my husband had been pushed out of his just one year before. It was a very stressful time. So, my friends were steering clear of me. But I loved Star Wars and needed a distraction to my misfortune, so I selected one of the opening showings, got a seat by myself, and went by myself. I enjoyed it immensely. I didn’t feel alone because the characters feel so vital and alive in my psyche. I sat watching the credits until the lights came up. I was sitting in a row close to the screen. When I got up and made my way to the closest isle, coming down the steps almost colliding with me, were ‘my friends‘ who this time did not include me. It was awkward, very awkward. I find it hilarious now. But then it was quite painful because I understood I had been marked with the taboo of bearing accurate witness to my circumstances, which mademy friends uncomfortable. I made them uncomfortable because I was experiencing misfortune and talked about it.
One of my first corporate jobs was working for a hospital that was conducting cutting edge research in treating AIDS and cancer. It was located on the West Coast but treated people all across the country and world. I was hired by a high-spirited, dynamic woman who was opening a new regional office in Washington, DC. I rose quickly through the ranks to Director of Development with my boss based on the West Coast. I loved the job and my co-workers (who except for the woman who hired me), I helped hire. We got a lot done, raised a lot of money, and had lots of fun being together. Not long after rising to Director, word was racing through the workplace grapevine that there was a tremendous power struggle going on at headquarters.
When I was first hired, there was a CEO and 4 or 5 Vice Presidents who oversaw various activities such as workplace giving programs, unions, special events, and so on. I worked under events planning and my boss was friendly and helpful. One by one, the VPs fell but we thought in DC my boss would remain because he was best friends with the VP making the power plays. We were wrong. He did him in too. At the next all staff meeting that doubled as the biggest gathering of volunteers from across the country, which always took place at the Beverly Hills Hilton, our new VP let us know the new rules. This was probably my 3rd all staff meeting and previously we were treated like adults who could conduct themselves appropriately and we did.
But this time was different. The new VP of everything was letting everyone know that he was the new boss in town. He lectured everyone the very first night that there would be no use of the pool, the exercise room, all employees were assigned set up and clean up shifts for the big thank you fundraiser of long-time volunteers. He made it known these were mandatory regardless of if there was anything to do or not. Having come from the East Coast to the West Coast, I was not hungry at the proper time and went for a run instead. I arrived at my assignment on time just to sit for 5 hours because everything was done. During this time, I grew famished and light-headed because I had not eaten breakfast or lunch.
My co-worker from Philadelphia told me to go get a sandwich and bring it back, she’d cover for me if anyone asked but she was sure no one would notice. So, I slipped out, went downstairs to the little cafe, and ordered a sandwich to go. While I waited, I chatted with a man eating a late lunch. I thought nothing of it until I felt a forceful tap on my shoulder. I turned around and was shocked. It was the VP of Everything. He had noticed I was gone. He forced my co-worker to tell him where I went. He had come to fetch me back. I had to go immediately. I could not even wait for my sandwich even though I said I was light-headed and needed protein. His response was tough luck. You had your lunch time. You didn’t eat. There are candy almonds on the tables. Eat those. It is pretty funny now. I was kind of scared then.
Fortunately, the man I had been talking to downstairs knew where the VP took me. He brought me my sandwich telling me that the whole thing was pretty unbelievable. I broke the taboo of being human and putting my own physical needs above the edicts of VP. Super controllers often try to imprint this taboo on everyone through loyalty pledges. They do this because they are making a power grab, so anyone willing to break their edicts becomes dangerous.
Social media platforms are weird and very sugary environments. The idea that individuals all over the world who do not have any previous real life, face-to-face relationship of meaningful exchange can establish and maintain any kind of genuine human system is farcical. Facebook is a space that allows people to migrate to the most superficial extremities of who they have defined themselves as human being. Here, they marinate in the outermost cosmetic personas of themselves. But they do this at the expense of true knowledge of who they are as a complex being with good and bad qualities that must always be calculated and balanced in every moment, especially the liminal space where thought is manifested into words or deeds.
Because of the vast superficiality of this virtual space (i.e., a space lacking in thoroughness, depth of character, or serious thought) the worse parts of being human tend to rise inside of individuals where it quickly gains dominance and power over thought and actions, which attracts others of liked mind and superficial attitudes. It is a space that cultivates addictive personalities. People who crave the time and attention of others to such an extreme other people stop being human beings with whom they can have a real and genuine relationship but become food for their vainglorious superficial self.
Such environments tend to create vacuums of consciousness where one-sided, narcissistic thinking grows and thrives, lacking the normal brakes of reality that exists in the real, normal, drab, everyday life of being a human being who must cooperate and offer basic respect and decency to the people around them. I broke the taboo of being individual, being real, and sharing this with others pretending to be something else and ultimately, the taboo of being more complicatedthan the stick figure I had been made out to be by Fake Friends on Facebook.
Taboo Breakers, Consciousness Warriors & the Inner War
While the folly recounted above was unfolding, my friend Reinhold from Germany (who recently deleted his account from Facebook) sent me the following e-mail. Since I am not very good at responding to messages and e-mail, he had no idea what was going on with me. And his messages are always a bit code-like, but this one really resonated with my moment. And it synched what was happening to me externally to my ancient wisdom inside me that helped me shape the structure of this blog. He said:
We are in a Historic Phase Transition… …like 1914 1932 1945 2001 2008 2020 and there is MORE to come!
…even… …if there were any working solutions WHO??? is able even WILLING to attack it– WHO…?????
EXODUS
No place in Taboo Land for any sacred person...
We are all sacred people, if only we could remember we were so.
Another case occurring in the nebulous realms of our collective virtual world is recounted here (Moulton/Comedy of Terrors) by Barry Kort. There are times when names and details need to be remembered and recounted so that how we get to a moment is understood. Below in Supplement Resources, I include Take No Prisoners about the AfterMath of WWII.
There is a poem Margaret Thatcher recites to the Queen in the fourth season of The Crown in the episode called ‘The Balmoral Test’? The poem is “No Enemies” by Scottish poet Charles Mackay, who lived from 1814 to 1889.
“YOU have no enemies, you say?
Alas! my friend, the boast is poor;
He who has mingled in the fray
Of duty, that the brave endure,
Must have made foes! If you have none,
Small is the work that you have done.
You’ve hit no traitor on the hip,
You’ve dashed no cup from perjured lip,
You’ve never turned the wrong to right,
You’ve been a coward in the fight.”
Thatcher THE CROWN Enemies quote, Charles Mackay | The Crown Season 4, Gillian Anderson’s Thatcher
I call taboo breakers Consciousness Warriors.
Consciousness Warriors tend to break lots of taboos, but the war is an inner war. We need more Consciousness Warriors now than ever because modern life has grown more complicated than ever, and more unconscious than ever. Western Civilization has been herding humanity into the shallowest waters of consciousness for a long time, but now social media with its algorithms are doing this work at an unprecedented rate and level herding our collective psyche into long-standing rigid patterns designed to benefit a few.
See After Math: The Magical Calculus of Consciousness and Parrots of the Algorithms for more on how the modern our human psyche is held in ridge, well-defined patterns of behavior and conformity by algorithms.
AfterMath — The Magical Calculus of Consciousness
Coming Up Next
In subsequent blogs, I will cover:
Part 1: Individual Storytelling — How Being Outside Helped Me Observe Better Mind Stories that Helped Me Repair My Lost and Little Boat Cast Adrift on an Endless Sea of Unconsciousness
Part 2: Collective Storytelling — The Good, The Bad & The Ugly, especially Conspiracy Mythsthat Always Rise during Times of Great Change and Crisis
Part 3: Collective Reality — How to Mix Our Individual Stories with Collective Stories to Make a Better Shared Reality
We are a beautiful species with an extraordinary power: the power to tell stories. And the stories we tell create reality. What does your story tell?
Thank you for your time and attention.
Supplemental Resources
The culmination of Trumpism: MAGA riots at the Capitol
Image from 1A aired 1/18/21: A man wearing a QAnon sweatshirt protests against US Capitol police officers as they try to stop supporters of US President Donald Trump from entering the Capitol in Washington, DC. SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images
Description: Conspiracy theorists have enjoyed the Trump presidency. Wild false notions about the deaths of high-profile American figures and what was really going on behind closed doors in Washington and Hollywood took over certain sections of the internet.
But the link between online conspiracy theories and real-life behavior has clarified as conspiracy theorists like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) began running for elected office. And as President Trump, along with his associates and supporters, began questioned the legitimacy of the 2020 election despite no evidence of fraud.
It all came to a head when insurrectionists, who believed the president’s lie that the election had been stolen, stormed the Capitol building while Congress was certifying the electoral votes for the 2020 election.
Why are conspiracy theories so enticing? And how can we combat conspiratorial thinking?
How The Capitol Mob Compares To Black Lives Matter; Actor Wendell Pierce
Here & Now | January 18, 2021: Some on the right have compared the violence of the insurrection to last year’s Black Lives Matter protests. Historian Ashley Howard explains why the comparison doesn’t hold up to reality. And, “The Wire” star Wendell Pierce talks about the role of art in advancing social progress. That and more, in hour one of Here & Now’s Jan. 18, 2021, full broadcast. You can find more at hereandnow.org — and follow us on Twitter, Instagram or join the conversation on Facebook.
This interview is so inspiring. This is one way to hold onto more of our consciousness as human beings.
Description: “Host Michel Martin talks with Rev. William H. Lamar IV, pastor of Metropolitan AME Church in Washington, D.C., about the message of his New Year’s Eve Watch Night service this year.” Three things he said that really resonated in me are:
“2020 didn’t do anything to us. Systemic racism and America’s refusal to treat human beings as human beings did it to us.”
“We too much rest and must remember if we become human doings without rest, we will not accomplish much. Rest is revolutionary.”
“The importance of the message of perseverance must be remembered because they have always come… they won’t stop coming… in the words of Sterling Brown, we too must keep coming with love… bending the world towards justice includes efforts, work, muscle… we can build better multicultural, multi religious communities where every one has a seat at the table…”
NPR’s Scott Simon talks with MSNBC host Joe Scarborough about his book, Saving Freedom: Truman, the Cold War, and the Fight for Western Civilization. When Scott asks Joe if he will miss the ratings after Trump leaves the White House, Joe said absolutely not. It’s been exhausting and politics has been turned into a tribal sport. Thirty years ago, a liberal could sit down with a conservative and strike a deal and get things done. Today, it’s all about winning and it is killing our democracy.
Image from 1A: Stickers for voters after they have voted, sit on a table at a Cobb County voting location in Atlanta, Georgia.Megan Varner/Getty Images
Description:“The stakes are sky-high in this week’s Georgia dual Senate runoff election. Rev. Raphael Warnock defeated Sen. Kelly Loeffler to become Georgia’s first-ever Black senator. The race between Jon Ossoff and Sen. David Perdue is still too close to call. Democrats are halfway to reaching their goal.
If Ossoff can pull off a win, control of the Senate and Congress will shift to the Democrats. If Perdue emerges victorious, control remains with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and the GOP.
Those outcomes, whichever comes to pass, will decide what goals the Biden administration can expect to accomplish. Reports indicate the president-elect’s team is optimistic for a victory given record voter turnout and Republican missteps on the campaign trail, but bracing for the consequences of defeat.
However, it might not be apparent who won for some time. Just like in November, there’s a chance that Americans won’t know which party is in control of the Senate for several days.
Plus, Congress still has important business ahead. Senators are due to meet on Wednesday as a part of a joint session of Congress to certify President-elect Biden’s victory. But some Republicans, including Josh Hawley of Missouri and Ted Cruz of Texas, say they will object. Although any allegation of voter fraud is completely unsubstantiated, these senators have called for a commission to investigate the 2020 election.
What will the results of the election mean for the Senate? And for the federal government as a whole?”
Jad Abumrad is the creator of RadioLab. In this TedTalk he tells how Dolly Parton helped him understand the deeper currents operating inside people that activate during conflicts and how she found a way to unite people in a safe space even though her fans run the gamut of ideologies, beliefs, and ways of being in the world that recently have ended up in deadlock rigid conflict.
Image from Reveal’s Take No Prisoners episode I heard on Jan 2, 2021
In December 1944, Frank Hartzell was a young soldier pressed into fierce fighting during the Battle of the Bulge. He was there battling Nazi soldiers for control of the Belgian town of Chenogne, and he was there afterward when dozens of unarmed German prisoners of war were gunned down in a field.
Reporter Chris Harland-Dunaway travels to Belgium to tour Chenogne with Belgian historian Roger Marquet. Then he sits down with Bill Johnsen, a military historian and former dean of the Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, to ask why the Patton Papers don’t accurately reflect Gen. George S. Patton’s diary entries about Chenogne.
The massacre at Chenogne happened soon after the Malmedy massacre, during which Nazi troops killed unarmed American POWs. The German soldiers responsible were tried at Dachau, but the American soldiers who committed the massacre at Chenogne were never held accountable. Harland-Dunaway interviews Ben Ferencz, the last surviving lawyer from the Nuremberg Trials, about why the Americans escaped justice.
And finally, Harland-Dunaway returns to Hartzell to explain what he’s learned and to press Hartzell for a full accounting of his role that day in Chenogne.
This episode was originally broadcast July 28, 2018.
Listening to this episode, after hearing Jad Abumrad‘s and his realization about the scared space between us is complicated and perhaps only a person with a high degree of empathy can truly begin to hold and honor all these complications was striking in comparison to this story and the heat of war. Here the scared space of possibility is collapsed into instinct, repetitive training, and orders. What a man or woman might have done differently in a moment if they had more time to consider their options is not an option during war or high stress conflict. During these times, people act and the winners control the narrative, which always only tells half the truth. This is a compelling listen.
UK Judge Blocks Extradition For Julian Assange. What’s Next For The Wikileaks Founder?
I found this 3 minutes very interesting. Assange’s mental state remind me of how bad mine became due to unrelenting circumstances beyond my control. Yes, Assange brought the fury of the US upon himself when he stole and dumped classified content onto the Internet. But then, I thought back to what I heard yesterday in Chris Harland-Dunaway‘s story about Chenogne, Belgian and the notes he found in General Patton’s personal diary expressing the hope this could be covered up and never revealed. The truth is, as one of the last living army man from this day tells Chris, both sides of a war are capable of committing terrible atrocities and crime. And, it is the winner to determines and controls the narrative (or those in power).
I also listened to this yesterday, which influenced the connections I made between all the content I was listening to as I wrote this blog. This is an excellent piece about how we develop healthy habits and unhealthy habits. A lot of what determines a healthy habit vs an unhealthy habit is how much consciousness you bring to forming it (another way to view this is how much time and attention do you apply to developing a health habit). I would further argue that putting more time and attention into developing and maintaining healthy habits has an added benefit of growing one’s individual Field of Consciousness.
And this is another awesome listen for developing the inner flexibility and health you need to survive the Sea of Misery when you find yourself afloat upon it… as most people have found themselves upon as 2020 unfolded… and most of us continue to float upon as 2021 begins.
A few excerpts from this wonderful interview:
On why he recommends seven to nine hours of sleep at night for optimal brain health
The brain is not at rest the way people might imagine it to be when we’re sleeping. … There are several important things that are happening. … One is, that is the time when we really do consolidate memories. So, you’ve had all these interesting experiences throughout your day — people that you’ve met, conversations you’ve had, experiences you’ve had, whatever it may be. You have these things in part because you want to remember them and add them to your life narrative.
That process of actually putting them in the memory book, if you will … really happens at the time that you sleep. That’s the “consolidation of memory” sort of phase. Some of it is actually placing the memory. Some of it is moving memories from short-term to longer-term memory and those sorts of things. So you have to be able to sleep well in order to remember well. And you also have to be able to sleep well to in order to forget well, because you want to, in order to make that life narrative as cohesive as possible, you’re doing a lot of editing along the way. … A lot of that is happening while you sleep.
Another more recent finding about sleep is that there is a sort of rinse cycle that’s happening when you sleep — a rinse cycle that allows certain neurotrophic factors to bathe the brain, but also to remove certain waste as well from the basic metabolic processes that are happening. … So during sleep, it’s really this consolidation of memories, this removal of waste and this nourishing of the brain that takes place more efficiently than at any other time during the day.
On why multitasking doesn’t really work
The idea that you move from one task to another sounds great and very efficient. The issue was that they found you actually divert a fair amount of attention each time you do that. You may not notice it yourself, but when you start to objectively measure this with different types of brain scans, scans that are measuring the function of the brain or particular parts of the brain, at any given millisecond, you find that you actually expend quite a bit of energy just to switch from one task to another. So you think you’re doing both simultaneously, but you’re probably doing neither as well as you could be, and you’re probably going to take more time than if you just did them linearly in some way.
“Science cannot rescue us from ourselves if we don’t have the leadership.”
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
On how the unrelenting stress of the pandemic impacts the brain
It’s been really challenging. I think that there is a thing about stress and the brain that has long been documented. And the headline is that stress is not necessarily the enemy. In fact, we need a certain amount of stress. It’s what gets us out of bed in the morning, makes us perform well on tests, hopefully, all that sort of stuff. But it is that second adjective you used — unrelenting — that is really problematic here. We need these breaks from stress. You need that constant sort of ebb and flow, and that’s what’s missing. Again, you don’t want it to all be good all the time, but you need to have that sort of up and down to some extent. … The idea of eliminating stress … it is not attainable nor is it necessarily a good idea for the brain.
In this short segment, Here & Now‘s Peter O’Dowd speaks with Derek Thompson, about what these shifts mean for our lives and communities. Thompson is a staff writer at the Atlantic and he talks exactly about what I am writing about here — the fragmentation of reality. He says, “Community is where you show up again and again… however during this past year, we have not been able to show up in the places we normally did.” This is worth a listen.
Here & Now‘s Tonya Mosley speaks with SirDavid Attenborough and executive producer Alastair Fothergill about their new five-part documentary series, “A Perfect Planet.”
Kilauea Volcano Eruption | A Perfect Planet | BBC Earth | Jan 2, 2021
The part I most love about this clip of A Perfect Planet occurs at about minute 1:24 when Attenborough says:
“Volcanoes are certainly destructive but without these powerful underground forces there would be no breathable atmosphere, no oceans, no lands, no life. We can’t control volcanoes but they’re vital for all living things on planet earth…for you.“
I will advance this as metaphor to the power of story, to possessing the power of consciousness, to know that we know as human beings. Just like volcanoes result from powerful subterranean forces that break through Earth’s crust and transform our planet, so too is consciousness which erupted through the shell of instinct and routine and birthed us–a species who can think, can know things, can tell stories about who we are and where we are going. So as it is with Earth and underground forces constantly at work shaping our planet making it the perfect place for life, so too it is with our minds with unconscious forces constantly at work shaping our shared reality.
I end all my Have You Been Outside Today videos with the following questions:
What will you do with your plot of consciousness today?
More importantly, what will your unconsciousness do with you today?
It’s Going To Rain Tomorrow | Oct 28, 2020
Previous Post:Part 1 of The Storytelling Species Series
“Old Heraclitus, who was indeed a very great sage, discovered the most marvellous of all psychological laws: the regulative function of opposites. He called it enantiodromia, a running contrariwise, by which he meant that sooner or later everything runs into its opposite.” – Carl Jung
What follows is an accounting of the very common channels psychological energies flow when a conflict gets triggered and grows. These are the very same channels psychological energies flow when a collective conflict is triggered or incited. If you are interested only in my response to Jan 6, 2021, then go to the end of this blog. If you are interested in the psychological maneuvers and levelers of conflict, then keep reading for individual and collective are the same.
In short, when individuals or collectives end up in separate corners during a conflict, refusing to see the other’s reality, the process of enantiodromia is triggered and fate will run its course. Our psychological is very ancient. As such, when speakers at Trump’s 2nd Impeachment Hearing spoke today (1/13/21) that history will be the judge, they are referring to the ancient knowledge only opposites maintained in dynamic balance will stand the tides of time. Lies are sweet and eagerly consumed by the mind, but they are quickly washed away in the onslaught of reality, leaving nothing behind. Truth stands because truth holds opposites in dynamic balance.Truth and reality are one and the same.
I admit, I wondered if Π had read Facebook Folly and if he understood a little bit more why I was angered by his actions. No sooner had I thought this thought than Π showed up on my Facebook page in all his brazen glory.
The answer is no. He didn’t absorb a dam thing. He didn’t express a shred of regret for speaking ignorantly and in a way meant to demean me. In fact, much like Trump has done for 4 long years, he shamelessly repeated and amplified his degrading ideas of Barry and myself by calling my lived reality and Barry’s efforts to understand why I had been removed and blocked from his Facebook group a fantasy. Because of this, I shall respond. He is the one who fired first by making demeaning and degrading comments about me and my ‘dead parent’ behind my back. Then Π pressed go by disparaging Barry in the same scornful way, thus provoking him to share this ‘private conversation‘ with me.
I will take Π‘s latest comments line by line, just as I did in Facebook Folly.
It’sA Little Late to Start Paying Attention
Π: I’m getting a little worried by posts like this, I’m afraid.
In Response: Very funny Π because in the 4 years we’ve been friends on Facebook, this is the first time ever you have ever commented on a blog I wrote and posted on Facebook, including your group, EoST. I wonder what this fear is? Perhaps it stems from your duplicitous nature? Specially, Π, you have pretended to be a kind, caring, and supportive friend to me. Meanwhile, you have privately held very different views as revealed in Facebook Folly. In case you missed it the first time, you are the Fake Π.
Black & White
Π: There’s a gradual polarised demonisation at work – the world is only good and bad, and if not wholly good then it must be bad – which fails to take into account human frailty, brought on by lack of time, human mistakes and observers making faulty assumptions.
In Response: There is no mistake in what you said about me behind my back. That is in black and white.
Dumpster Fires, Demonizing & Fragile Egos
Π: People aren’t evil, on the whole, but they generally do carry a great deal of human frailty, and demonising that serves only to pour petrol on the dumpster fire.
In Response: When an individual talks about another individual in a sneering, disparaging, dismissive, and disdainful way behind their back, who is demonizing who? Who held the gasoline can of scorn, then poured the petrol of disdain,derision, and contempt onto a fire that started out as a simple misunderstanding?
Good & Evil
Π: I make only one exception to that, in my lifetime, and the US wisely has just fired him. Things will get better from here.
In Response: Really, there is only 1 evil man in the entire world in your lived experience? How about Putin who ordered the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko (the first known victim of lethal polonium 210-induced acute radiation syndrome). Or what about Sergei and Yulia Skripal who were poisoned by Novichok and lay near death in a British hospital near Salisbury for weeks, not to mention the death of an innocent citizen of Salisbury who accidentally came into contact with this poison that only Putin could have ordered to be used.
And most recently, Alexei Anatolievich Navalny was also poison by Novichok. The man who poisoned him said he sprinkled it in his underwear, along the flaps. “You know,” he said matter-of-factly, “the kind men’s underwear have“–imagine that. Perhaps if evil is done methodically and matter-of-factly it’s not so bad, as far as evil goes. Perhaps even, if you spin well, it’s not evil at all… it’s just the business of getting one’s way over the wellbeing and good of others.
“Navalny fell sick during the Aug. 20 flight in Russia and was flown to Berlin while still in a coma for treatment two days later. Labs in Germany, France and Sweden, and tests by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, established that he was exposed to a Soviet-era Novichok nerve agent.”
“The man in the recording indicated that he was involved in cleaning up Navalny’s clothes “so that there wouldn’t be any traces” after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s top critic fell into a coma while on a domestic flight over Siberia. During the recorded call, the man said that if the plane hadn’t made an emergency landing, “the situation would have turned out differently.”
I suppose Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, the man who is believed to have behead Daniel Pearl, is simply carrying a great deal of human frailty too. His pending release is being widely reported now by BBC, NYP, and many other news outlets. This killing spurred the highly choreographed beheadings of Western journalists in the years to come. But apparently, no evil here, just human frailty at work.
Here & NowDescription: “The lawyer for a Pakistani man convicted and later acquitted in the 2002 killing of American journalist Daniel Pearl is asking Pakistan’s Supreme Court to free his client.”
“Pearl, a 38-year-old Wall Street Journal reporter, was abducted on Jan. 23, 2002. His body was later found in a shallow grave in Pakistan.”
And as for America will get better from here: Are you kidding man? Did you see what happened on Jan 6, 2021?
The far-right Trump insurgency just scored a huge propaganda coup (Jan. 8, 2021 at 11:28 a.m. EST) — Opinion by Greg Sargent
Image from WP: Trump supporters who gathered to protest the certification of Joe Biden as the next U.S. President describe how they view the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6. (The Washington Post)
Image NBC News: Riot police push back a crowd of supporters of President Donald Trump after they stormed the Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021.Roberto Schmidt / AFP – Getty Images
These are some of the extremist groups responsible for the violence on Capitol Hill (Jan 8, 2021) by Christy Somos CTVNews.ca Writer
Image from CTVNews.ca
“The mob of U.S. President Donald Trump’s supporters who overran police and stormed Washington’s Capitol Hill included members of several well-known extremist and white-supremacist groups.”
“The violence did not come as a surprise to Barbara Perry, Director of the Centre for Hate, Bias and Extremism at Ontario Tech University.”
“I think I was [only] surprised that it took that long for something like this to happen. A lot of us had anticipated that we would see violence immediately following the election, especially if he [Donald Trump] lost,” Perry said in a phone interview with CTV News.ca Friday.”
“Perry said she agrees that there has been a “mainstreaming of hate,” in recent years, and that the attack on the Capitol was a perfect example of it.”
To be clear, what happened on Jan 6, 2021 is not going away any time soon. The attack on the Capitol is just the beginning of evil and good mixing it up, this time in the USA, just as it has been doing for as a long human beings could perceive of the concepts of good and evil.
Image from Here and Now: At a bus stop on Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest in Washington, D.C., a notice from the FBI seeks information about people pictured during the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday. (Al Drago/Getty Images)
“The violence at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday was unprecedented in modern U.S. history — but some pro-Trump extremists are promising it was just a taste of things to come.”
“What happened on Jan. 6, this past Wednesday, might not be the end of the insurrection, but the beginning,” Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois told NPR’s Weekend Edition. [As Inauguration Nears, Concern Of More Violence Grows, Jan 9, 2021
If you listen to only one thing listed in this post, this is the one that must be heard. Reveal takes aim on the myth that Jan 6, 2021 is not who and what America is. In fact, what happened on Jan 6, 2021 is exactly who and what America is. In fact, it is the latest wave of the Civil War, which has never really ended ever since it was fought (1861 to 1865)—156 years ago. The war has simply taken different shapes and used different tactics throughout this time. What happened Jan 6, 2021 is the latest surge of a very long, brutal battle for who holds the power in this fragile democracy.
Description:A mob of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol, aiming to block the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory. How did we get here?
We start by examining President Donald Trump’s rhetoric over the last four years, as he stoked conspiracy theories, coddled White supremacists and laid the groundwork for inciting violence.
Host Al Letson talks with Democratic Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton, who took shelter in his office during the insurrection. They discuss what it was like inside the Capitol and the legacy these actions will leave on American democracy.
We hear from two reporters who were also at the Capitol. Independent reporter Brendan Gutenschwager and Washington Post reporter Marissa J. Lang say there was a big difference between the meager police response to the Trump supporters compared with the massive show of force with which they met Black Lives Matter protesters over the summer.
Then we look back at another coup in American historythat has eerie echoes of this week’s events. In the late 19th century, Wilmington, North Carolina, was a city where African Americans thrived economically and held elected office. This, however, did not sit well withWhite supremacists, who plotted to retake control of the city from democratically elected Black leaders.Their coup in 1898 set in place the structural racism that still exists today.
Governor Schwarzenegger’s Message Following this Week’s Attack on the Capitol
Governor Schwarzenegger’s Message Following this Week’s Attack on the Capitol | Jan 10, 2021
Schwarzenegger talks about how lies lead to the Night of Broken Glass (Kristallnacht), which was one of the first events to take place in the lead up to the holocaust and WWII. To repair all the broken relationships that have been shattered more by decades of lies (FoxNews/Rupert Murdoch) and then supercharged and radicalized by 4 years of Trump, it is not going to be easy.
Judge & Jury of Someone Else’s Reality
Π: What I’m seeing in the story above is a fantasy unrolling, fed by folk who struggle to see beyond good and bad, and who assume that “their side is always in the right”.
In Response: That is a pretty dismissive, judgmental, and downright cruel comment to make about another person’s lived experience. I understand what Π is trying to do. He is trying to deflect blame from himself, again. It is obvious he didn’t even read the post he is commenting on. I will respond to his self-conceited comment with a story.
My father was a Lutheran minister. There’s not much money in being a Lutheran minister, but that’s not why dad was one. However, he did have a family and needed to provide for them. So despite loving the network of congregations he as serving in Northern California, he decided to accept the call from a fairly big congregation located in a very small town in South Dakota. It was a town you could probably throw a baseball right through downtown if you had a good throwing arm, but it served all the famers surrounding the town growing corn and soybeans feeding Americans and the world, so the congregation was quite big. This allowed them to not only provide a parsonage for the family to live in but also a salary—something none of the congregations in California could provide, only one could provide a parsonage and so my mother has to work to feed us.
It was heart-wrenching and terrible to move from the Redwoods of Northern California to the prairies of South Dakota. My brothers and I loved the trees of Redway. We roamed the mountainside behind our parsonage setting traps for Bigfoot and rabbits. I just remember feeling completely devastated seeing the flat, barren landscape of the prairie made barren by monolith fields of corn and soybeans—one after another after another. But dad had grown up on farm in Iowa and mom had grown up in parsonages scattered from MN to WI to IA, and so both my parents were happy to return to the heartland.
This was a typical drive as children in the Redwoods
This was one of the churches my father was pastor. Right next to it stands our home, the parsonage we lived. It was so beautiful.
This is Grace Lutheran Church – Sister church to Redway — and the other church my father served
We drove through trees all the time in the Redwoods
This looks like the main road below our parsonage and there were hitchhikers there all the time because we lived there during the height of the Hippies.
As we caravanned from Redway to Sinai, South Dakota, dad driving the U-Haul and mom driving the family station wagon, mom gave me Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I didn’t like it at first, but really had nothing else to do, so I kept reading. It would be a book that would save my broken heart and help me find new dreams to build my drastically transformed life around. We lost our beloved cat Puff on the way to Sinai. She got out of our car and wandered off somewhere in Oregon or Idaho at a campground we stopped at to sleep along the way. She was the first pet we ever had as children. Dad brought her home to us in paper bag, surprising us with a gleeful smile on his face. She was so glorious, a spicey calico cat who had lots of babies (these were the days before sterilizing pets was the norm). I am glad of this though because with us were some of Puff’s kittens—the ones we could not find homes for before leaving Northern California, so they were traveling with us to South Dakota. We had a mini, calico kitten who was missing one paw on her front leg. But that didn’t stop her. She would prove to be just as spicy as her mother and as fertile.
Downtown Sinai, South Dakota
Arriving to our new home was disappointing to be sure. However, the churches were beautiful and I would grow to love the big parsonage we moved into. I believe we arrived in Sinai the day before the 4th of July. We would find out soon the 4th of July is big stuff in small town, middle of the heartland of America. There was a town parade where all the children decorated their bikes with tissue paper and glittery things (that first year we kids did not have time to enter but subsequent years we sure did! It was a big deal!). There were bands and a huge firework display by the church where my dad would preach. And there was a day of festivities and games happening throughout the day—like a mini state fair. One of the activities that first full day in Sinai was the greased pig contest.
Sinai Lutheran Church & Grace Lutheran Church — the churches my father would serve with kindness, compassion, and love
Yes—it is exactly what it says. A local farmer donates a young pig. It is greased from head to toe and put inside a pen. Then all the children who sign up for the contest line up behind the fence. When the whistle is blown, the idea is to climb over as fast as you can and race for the pig. The kid who holds is around the belly the longest gets to keep the pig!
Boy—now moving to Sinai, South Dakota was suddenly looking a lot more interesting. I was going to get that pig! I scrambled through the milieu of girls and boys I did not know. I got to the pig and I grabbed it around it’s center. I did not let go. I held on. There was a boy you held the pig around its neck on one side of me and another you had the pig around its back legs, but I had the center. By their rules: I won! I get to keep the pig!
I heard a whistle blow and one by one all the other children piled on top of the three of us were picked off of us and told to leave the ring until only the three of us were left. I was sure I would be declared the winner. But then I felt a tap on my head. The farmer officiating the greased pig contest told me I had to leave, and the two boys would get to compete for the pig in the end.
I couldn’t believe I was being told to leave. I was the one holding the pig around its belly. I was covered in grease from head to toe. I was incensed by the double standard being displayed by the judge. But I had no power. I had to leave. I did not stay to watch which boy won. This would not be the last time I or my family would experience such hypocrisy.
It would play out again but next time in a much more deadly way. The coming conflict would unravel slowly over a period of about 3 years. During this time, I found a way to love the prairie, I made many friends, dad even got me a pony who had a foal. Now that was sure the heck better than a pig. We had a huge garden dad tilled and grew all sorts of things—corn, squash, zucchini, potatoes, tomatoes. He gave each of us small plots in the garden and taught us how to grow delicious, healthy vegetables. We also had an orchard, about 8 or 10 trees—each one a different kind of apple. Each of us kids got to pick a tree and build a tree fork. I think I took the crab apple or maybe that tree was Pete’s tree. We played scary chase games around the church. We built massive snow forts in the mega drifts of snow that were left behind after blizzards. One year, the blizzard was so bad, it blew snow drifts that reached the roof of the church. School was cancelled for weeks that year and we kid’s tunneled snow forts into the drifts surrounding the church, which was also cancelled for weeks. Those forts lasted for weeks!
Fields of Corn — The 70s
We roamed the town and railways, making forts and hideouts everywhere. Some of our favorite hauntings were the old schoolhouse long ago left abandoned with old molding books and cups and plates and silverware still inside. We weren’t supposed to go inside the old school, but that just made it all the more fun to go. We also frequented the old, abandoned jail house, down a steep hill from the one block downtown. It was really nothing more than a one room building made completely out of concrete with bars for windows. We loved it! We also had a place just outside of town, perhaps a mile or so walking down the railroad tracks to a bridge where a train long ago had derailed and dropped a bunch of polished marble—big slabs.
Dad faithfully served the two churches partnering together to offer him the call. He got to know every family of both congregations by first name, every member and visited anyone in need at any time. He was beloved by many members of both congregations. Mom sang in the choir and helped with Sunday School and Summer Bible Camps. We were soon knitted into the fabric of the small-town community of Sinai, South Dakota. But there were rips in the fabric.
While dad was a Lutheran pastor, he loved science and read about all sort of scientific discoveries. He took us to see fossils in the Black Hills. We talked about how fantastic the Earth was and how much time it has existed in the universe. To dad, it was completely possible to believe in science and in God the Father, creator of the universe. To him, God used the mechanisms of physics and evolution to get to us. To him, this did not diminish who we are as human beings, sons and daughters of our Lord the Savior, but this made us so much more precious and important.
Dad sometimes wove some of his thoughts and enthusiasm into his sermons. To some who heard these ideas coming out of the mouth of their pastor, it was blasphemy—a foolish fantasy that had to be dispelled. A coalition went to work against my father. One of the leaders of this coalition was the mayor of our small town who also happened to be the butcher.
I believed they tried to get dad never to utter such fantastical nonsense every again in church or anywhere where his congregation members might hear him. But that was not my dad. The division and the divisiveness grew wider and more aggressive. It would cumulate and boil over one fateful day when our dog Reckless (a black lab) disappeared. My dad would soon discover, the mayor had captured Reckless, taken him to his butcher’s shop in the center of town, and shot him dead, then disposed of his body with the rest of the used pieces of the cows and pigs he butchered that day.
We probably stayed one more year after that, but the writing was on the wall. Dad didn’t fit in there, and he was no longer welcomed there. I’m pretty sure shortly after Reckless death, he started looking for another call. It would take him a year to find an opening. It was the last year he would serve as a minister in a Lutheran church. He decided the politics were just too toxic. He entered a program to become a hospital chaplain. Soon we moved again. This time to a city, Minneapolis. It was another hard move for me to make. I had grown to love the prairie and the life I had learned to live there! It would take years to learn how to grow into and live in the city, but I would do that too, eventually and grow to love Minneapolis deeply as well.
It is so easy to be the judge and jury of another person’s experiences and their reality. Unfortunately, the human brain seems wired this way. Maybe we do it to simplify reality so we aren’t paralyzed by it. Reality is always so much more complicated than a single human being can perceive. This is why we need each other to understand more of it. But, when we judge each other in overly simplified ways, we fracture it instead. When we judge each other, we also stop seeing each other as human. Maybe we do this because we fear the ‘other’ might pop our own overly simplified bubble of belief about what the world is.
So dear reader, you tell me who is struggling to see beyond good and bad. Who is making the assumption that “their side is always in the right”.
Ah — The Promised Land
Π: I suggest reading Barack Obama’s book A Promised Land.
In Response: I suggest you read it again. Perhaps you missed a few things the first time you read it.
“there are people in the world who think only about themselves. They don’t care what happens to other people so long as they get what they want. They put other people down to make themselves feel important. “Then there are people who do the opposite, who are able to imagine how others must feel, and make sure that they don’t do things that hurt people. “So,” she said, looking me squarely in the eye. “Which kind of person do you want to be?” ― Barack Obama,A Promised Land
“Either grab a drink and sit down with us or get the fuck out of here.” ― Barack Obama,A Promised Land
“there was the unsettling fact that, despite whatever my mother might claim, the bullies, cheats, and self-promoters seemed to be doing quite well, while those she considered good and decent people seemed to get screwed an awful lot.” ― Barack Obama,A Promised Land
“The truth is, I’ve never been a big believer in destiny. I worry that it encourages resignation in the down-and-out and complacency among the powerful.” ― Barack Obama, A Promised Land
“I’d met my share of highly credentialed, high-IQ morons” ― Barack Obama,A Promised Land
“I suspect that God’s plan, whatever it is, works on a scale too large to admit our mortal tribulations; that in a single lifetime, accidents and happenstance determine more than we care to admit; and that the best we can do is to try to align ourselves with what we feel is right and construct some meaning out of our confusion, and with grace and nerve play at each moment the hand that we’re dealt.” ― Barack Obama, A Promised Land
“I experienced failure and learned to buck up so I could rally those who’d put their trust in me. I suffered rejections and insults often enough to stop fearing them. In other words, I grew up—and got my sense of humor back.” ― Barack Obama,A Promised Land
“Perhaps most troubling of all, our democracy seems to be teetering on the brink of crisis—a crisis rooted in a fundamental contest between two opposing visions of what America is and what it should be; a crisis that has left the body politic divided, angry, and mistrustful, and has allowed for an ongoing breach of institutional norms, procedural safeguards, and the adherence to basic facts that both Republicans and Democrats once took for granted.” ― Barack Obama, A Promised Land
Paying Attention Takes More Then News Headlines & Quick Quips
Π: This shows the dangers of this polarised approach, which includes the US inability to sign the Kyoto Treaty, why the US is sometimes slower to act than the world would like, and why the US makes policy mistakes.
In Response: So glad Barack’s book has given you, a person who sits across the pond, such a broad and insightful understanding of America. I have been sharing countless blogs in your beloved group in this past year (2020) about what is going on here. I live less than 15 miles from the White House. I’ve gone to protests (Black Lives Matter and MAGA).
Black Lives Matter | Jun 8, 2020
Cacophony — The Beautiful Humans of Earth | Nov 14, 2020
Oh, and I’ve also been to these minor events that have occurred in Washington, DC (and these are just a few of the interviews I’ve done):
First Women’s March held in Washington, DC on Jan 21, 2017 — Full version ofSustain the Flame includes interviews with over 39 individuals attending the 1st women’s march
Sapience Talks — March for Science — Climate Change is Critical
Sapience Talks (#3) — Science Builds Communities
March for Science — Climate Change is Single Most Critical Issue
Sapience Talks – Comey Fired – Interviews 4 &5
Sapience Talks – Day after Comey is Fired — interview 1
Sapience Talks – Day after Comey is Fired — interview 2
Sapience Talks #2 — The Intersection of Science & Spirit
March for Truth — State of World — Jun 3, 2017
March for Truth — Watergate Redux — Jun 17, 2017
Science March – Rising Seas – April 23, 2017
Web of Lies — March for Truth — Jun 3, 2017
Women’s March 2018 — Can’t Delete Reality — Jan 22, 2018
Women’s March 2018 — Handmaid’s Tale — Jan 22, 2018
Women’s March 18 — Immigrants — Women’s March 2018
March for Our Lives — Mar 25, 2018
No More — Mar 25, 2018
National Student Walkout — Mar 14, 2018
Deep Forgiveness (Darryl Green) & March for Our Lives — Mar 26, 2018
“I Want to Be a Scientist” — Science March 2017 —
Orange is the New Black — Science March 2017
I Skipped Senior Prom – Science March 2017
Chain Reaction – Science March 2017
Science March 2017 — Bio-medical Research and Cuts to NIH
Science March 2017 — Bio-medical Robots
Curiosity & Human Civilization – Science March 2017
Teens – People’s Climate March
College Students Climate March
I follow the news closely and digest it in my blogs. But, you couldn’t be bothered. And, I had to call your attention to the potty-mouth members of your group who were using immature words for vagina. Apparently, just the sight of a naked woman is enough to send their minds down to the bottom of their trunks.
I shared the post below in EoST at the end of July. This piece speaks specifically to the growing alarm at this time (last summer) about what Trump was doing to the psyche and minds of his loyal followers. It was clear back then he was twisting words and staging events to get images of out-of-control Black Lives Matter protestors so he could use them to enflame his base during his campaign.
Sadly, now we see where all this energy is flowing after Trump lost the 2020 election. This is energy man. It is produced inside the mind. It does not just disappear, especially after being super-charged by lies and misinformation used to construct a psychological monster. Many of Trump’s super-charged supporters were hunting for Pence to hang him simply for his ceremonial role of certifying the election results for 2020. But, no one in your group wanted to talk about this possibility back in July 2020. They just wanted to name all the other words for vagina. And you really never took any meaningful action about this behavior even after I called your attention to it occurring in EoST.
To Stop Dismissing & Belittling Takes a Lot of Work Too
Π: Bi partisan work takes a lot of horse trading, and the simplistic adoption of I’m right you’re wrong attitudes really, really doesn’t help …
In Response: Just like the UK demonstrated its superior bi partisan work in leaving the European Union? And what precisely does bi partisan work have to do with a personal conflict? One you started by dismissing and belittling me to Barry as he tried to get to the bottom of why I was removed and blocked from EoST.
You Are Not My Friend
Π: Rather than fantasise about motives and evil in the world, if there are real problems, then seek real solutions, with the people concerned. Critique and run will never solve any problems.
In Response: You belittled me behind my back. You didn’t think I had the guts to fight back. You were wrong. Your actions are wrong. I am nothing like how you have painted me to Barry and others. I am not trading horses with you. You are not my friend. You are my (click here to find out what you are).
This is Not a Fantasy
I have digested all the disparaging ill-will you’ve privately held against me and then shared with Barry. You are the fake—fake compassion, fake sympathy, fake concern for another human being. None of it is real, and then you have the gall to call what Barry and I have recounted as fantasy.
The one good thing about you calling my lived experience a fantasy is that I was going down the same rabbit hole as I began to write second blog in my series: The Storytelling Species: Makers & Players of Reality Bubbles. That’s when I saw your comment.
That’s when I understood (as I digested how my own lived reality was being dismissed as fantasy) how deadly such a dismissal of another human being’s lived experience and beliefs can be.
Police Officer Crushed During Capitol Siege | Cop Screams, Bleeds from Mouth | Jan 9, 2021
In response to you Π, all I can say is that I once held you in high esteem and admiration. Now, I only feel disgust. As Barry pointed out, there is a psychological process of Enantiodromia (the tendency of things to morph into their opposites) that goes on in all human minds, mostly unconsciously. Mine has been completed of you. You emerged out of the mists of obscurity and back to obscurity I return you. You do not get to define who I am. I define who I am.
Enantiodromia by Bebe
In response to Jan 6, 2021, we are living through a moment of cultural, moral, and spiritual reckoning. The episode I’ve noted above from Reveal (Democracy Under Siege) is critical to listen to in order to understand what I am going to say next. Lacking this perspective (and/or lacking the willingness to absorb the facts of reality as it is and as it has been lived by black and brown people for far too long) about the long history of racism in American, you the reader will be trapped in your narrative bubble of reality.
In short, what we are witnessing is the enantiodromia of The Republican Party. Yes, enantiodromia can occur in groups as well as individuals. It is a psychological process, but long ago, mankind learned how to collectivize his individual psyche with his collective. It was necessary long, long ago to survive. Modern man is playing a dangerous game with his ability to synch his mind with a group he or she chooses to follow. I will not bore you with the details of the psychological underpinnings of what I am saying, but I do not say this in ignorance. Carl Jung and many others since him have opened a channel back into our collective unconsciousness. It is a channel purposefully blocked off and closed to everyone living in Western Civilization. Lacking access to our individual reservoir of knowledge, wisdom, as well as monstrous potential to do harm, we will destroy ourselves as a species.
Abraham Lincoln was the first Republican president of the United States of America. The Republican Party is also referred to as the GOP (Grand Old Party). Under Lincoln’s leadership, the United States took a stand against slavery, entered into a bitter Civil War, and successfully banned it in 1865. This was a party that stood for courage, compassion, truthfulness, and the noble goodness of all men and women.
In the wake of the Civil War, all the psychological energy of the losing side did not disappear. It submerged under the threshold of our nation’s collective consciousness re-consolidating itself in hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan. The first Klan was founded in the tremendous wake of the Civil War in 1865. It is an American white supremacist hate group whose primary targets are African Americans whose roots have spread across the country. But there was much more hate circulating under the threshold of consciousness of the American people. Reveal shows how the coup of 1898 that occurred in Wilmington, North Carolina (under the guise of Democratic Party of that time) provided a template for other vicious waves of hate that would manifest as Jim Crow laws, the 1921 massacre of Black Wall street in Tulsa, OK, hangings of so many innocent black men and women, cross burnings design to instill terror, and the seedings of white supremacist hate group around the world, the United States having by far the most (Germany a close second…remember Hitler).
What we witnessed on Jan 6, 2021 was the full and complete enantiodromia of the Republican party. It has become the thing it stood against more than 156 years ago. Indeed the Civil War has not ended. What we witness was more than coup on the capitol. It is a coup of the hearts and minds of the Republican Party that is infecting this group of people with the fuel of hate, lies, and misinformation that Trump ignited into a roaring fire on Jan 6, 2021.
Christopher Kerbs who was the Senior National Cyber Security Official fired by Trump because he came out against Trump and said the 2020 election was one of the most secure and accurate elections ever said recently, “We are on the verge of a breakdown of democracy and civil society. It is the equivalent of ignoring pain in your chest for a couple weeks, and then suffering a catastrophic heart attack. If you tell a lie big enough and often enough, people are going to believe it.” Kerbs says the most dangerous thing Trump has done is to synchronize all the hate groups in America that have long fought between each other with differing ideological views. Trump became a center of gravity that has organized them into a wave of action that is truly terrifying and is not done.
As I continue the blog series: The Storytelling Species — Makers & Players of Reality Bubbles, I will trace the roots of how simple conflicts such as described about between me and Π can erupt into great divides. If consciousness is not brought to bear on the powerful forces that rise from the Sea of Unconsciousness created from the cracks of conflict, powerful and destructive forces rise and flow into the conscious mind. These are fluid forces fully capable of hijacking the small and fragile light we call the ego. If this happens, hell flows forth. All humanity floats on this massive psychological sea living inside of all of us. It is our job as a conscious species to transform our own individual pool of unconsciousness into consciousness. When we fail to do this but rather retreat into smaller and smaller bubbles of reality that are spiked by lies, misinformation, and fear, tragic and terrible destruction can result. We are the creators of Hell on Earth. We do it using nothing more than our minds.
3 questions to ask yourself about everything you do | Stacey Abrams | Jan 8, 2019
The Double Standard— Hidden Brain (the second most important piece to listen to)
Description: It’s easy to spot bias in other people, especially those with whom we disagree. But it’s not so easy to recognize our own biases. Psychologist Emily Pronin says it’s partly because of our brain architecture. This week on Hidden Brain, we explore what Pronin calls the introspection illusion.
Description:Right now, many kids aren’t in their classrooms — but there is so much to learn outside of school as well. This hour, TED speakers explore life lessons that teach us far more than any textbook.
“We no longer agree on a common set of facts, on a common reality, and that is a big problem for democracy.”— David Becker, Center for Election Innovation and Research, Jan 6, 2021 on 1A
Part 1 in The Storytelling SpeciesSeries
A DANGEROUS GAME
2020 – what more need be said. It was a year of enormous reversals, lost, and tragedy. Colossal waves of misery circumnavigated the global hitting every continent of consciousness like tsunamis of misfortune. These billowing waves of ruin quickly laid waste to norms, routines, and traditions keeping humanity flowing in elaborately engineered channels of business-as-usual.
The cause of this terrific ruinous wave was not a stupendous subterranean seismic shift. Rather it was a submicroscopic infectious bundle of nucleic acid molecules. A minute bundle of pre-life substances that decided long ago it was far more effective to replicate itself inside of the cells of living organisms emerging at the same time long ago. Rather than grow all those high energy organelles themselves, this teensy-weensy replicon simply evolved the capacity to bind to cells of living beings and invade them. Upon gaining entry, the little replicons go to work doing what they are best at doing: replicating. It’s not that hard to understand how a thing that replicates so much mutates and jumps from one species to another.
Before 2020 was half over, it was clear no part of the globe would be spared from the tiny replicon that made the jump to us, and then it got worse. Nevertheless, small pockets of human triumph emerged (places in the world where quick collective action kept the little replicon at bay). I found this website tracking which countries are winning in the fight against COVID-19, which are nearly there, and which need action. I was surprised because thought I knew which ones were winning. It turns out many countries I thought were doing fine have faltered, while others who are winning or nearly there, I’ve never heard of—places like Djibouti, Holy See, and Vanuatu.
To be sure, many of these are smaller countries or island nations, which naturally confers an advantage in winning the war against this tiny replicon. However, the most powerful tool in the arsenal of every continent of consciousness has been messaging a rather new type of communiqué to emerge in the human world. It is a word used frequently in workplace settings. But it is also used wherever there is a need to get a lot of people on the same page to accomplish a collective action.
Study.com defines messaging into 3 types: 1) informational messages communicate routine, repetitive daily tasks or convey instructions, codes, steps, or workplace procedures; 2) persuasive messages are designed to convince an individual or group to take certain specific actions; and 3) goodwill messages are used to show or instill a sense of kindness or friendliness in a workplace or community.
To combat COVID-19, blending these 3 types of messaging together has proved to be the most effective strategy in repelling the tiny virion. It turns out this blend of messaging is a modern distillation of a much older form of human communication, storytelling.
Every people, culture, and civilization that has ever existed has stories that are passed down from one generation to the next. Stories tell what has happened to the people through time. Stories weave wonderous narratives of where the people have come from and where they may be going. Stories entertain, frighten, warn, and make fun of aspects of being human and of living together in groups. Some of our most beloved stories are of individuals who overcome overwhelming obstacles to accomplish something extraordinary that benefits the people. These are the stories of heroes, winners, celebrities, and luminaries—a civilization’s shining stars of how to be a superb human being in the adoring eyes of all its citizen members.
Almost as beloved but for different reasons are stories of individual who commit dreadful, appalling, horrifying atrocities on other living beings. These stories tend to serve as warnings But sometimes they get twisted and become a template for emptying the space inside the minds of individual citizens and filling this space with warped and twisted content designed to serve the narrator of these stories. When this happens, it is always a dangerous time for everyone in a group.
Stories have long been used to galvanize collective action for as long as mankind can remember. They are powerful tools because they work inside the invisible spaces of the human mind. They settle into the darkest recesses of the human psyche. They take root and grow within the human soul.
Throughout human history stories have galvanized individuals living within a group or civilization to strive for something greater or for something mingy. Stories reveal the best and worst of the people who tell them because they reveal pieces of their soul.
Coronavirus-19 — Art by Bebe
As the global pandemic made its watery march around the world, I began to see stories emerge from people that shocked and surprised me. Many stories barely clung to reality. Rather these stories seemed to float in the air like colorful bubbles that would most surely pop as soon as encountering the first blade of grass growing out of the Rock of Reality… the one we all live on… our beloved Planet Earth.
In this blog series, I will explore how stories alter human reality. It is something we’ve been doing for a very long time. The difference now is there are so many more humans living on Earth all creating slightly different versions of reality inside their mind. These realities take form and burst into the world whenever an individual acts upon their inner stories. All of us have them. These are the stories we tell ourselves about what has happened to us through space and time. It is self-talk, but inner talk that creates bubble-like realities inside our minds.
We need these mind bubbles. They generate energy that power our minds. It is very much like how living cells grew organelles, little bubbles, inside the cell to power the cell, creating life! Mind bubbles create awaken consciousness. There are other organelles inside the mind creating human consciousness, but I will focus on the ones creating mind bubbles through stories, which we consume to feed our mind.
Most modern human beings have forgotten this. Forgetting this, we have descended into consumption patterns that are quite destructive. It’s a lot like eating fatty, sugary, highly processed morsels of food that has become more artificial than natural to sustain the body. It doesn’t end well. The same is true of feeding the human mind, it requires nourishment and this nourishment sustains the soul.
I believe humanity is playing a dangerous game. Most of it is occurs inside our minds until it erupts into action. When action is informed by reality, humans have done and accomplished amazing feats. However, when human action is informed by human fantasy and misinformation, terrible things can occur.
Today, one of these bubbles popped in a most distributing way.
Most of us have stumbled into this game. Many have been pushed by super manipulators of dangerous and false narratives. What these stories do is stir up sleeping forces living deep inside us. Most modern men and women have forgotten they are there. Without the light of consciousness, they can be deadly. It is a game humanity has been playing for awhile and it has been steadily dragging the entire world to the brink of catastrophe. If humanity survives this game, future humans will remember 2020 and the beginning of 2021 as the beginning of the coming catastrophe that will resonate throughout the entire century created by a meltdown of the human mind.
A deep taproot feeding our deadly descent is a collective unwillingness to Bear Accurate Witnessto reality. It is a concept my friend Barry Kort brought to my attention recently. I will talk more about it later and recount our conversation in October/November in AfterMath: The Magical Calculus of Consciousness.
In upcoming blogs, I’ll explain more of what I mean that we are a storytelling species playing a dangerous game of bubble realities. These games transpire inside our minds and can turn off our hearts. This ability gives humans tremendous power. Stories can ignite the human soul and inspire it to act in terrible ways. Stories can also extinguish the flame of destruction and heal hearts and souls. Both of these potentials come from inside us. As perhaps the only storytelling species of planet Earth, we hold the magical power to create or destroy our shared reality through stories.
Postscript:
Yesterday, I was working on this piece while listening to NPR as I usually do. When it got towards 1:00 p.m., FreshAir was airing something I was not as interested in when it occurred to be that the Congressional counts were beginning. So I turned on CNN and listened to it as I wrote. I did not intend to put the videos and pictures above in this piece. At that moment in time, the reality bubble had not yet popped and spilled into reality in disturbing, violent ways.
Just before it did, I began taking pictures and videos to make a short video about dogs watching history (like I did one year earlier during the Impeachment Hearings). I thought it funny and a nice way to document and remember this historic moment. I finished this video just before the Capitol was invaded on Jan 6, 2021–incited by the President’s speech one hour earlier and his steady drip of misinformation that he won the 2020 election by a landslide and the election was stolen from him.
Here is the first video I made yesterday. Moments after making this, CNN began to cut to marchers surging upon the Capitol.
Dogs Watching History | Jan 6, 2021
After the Capitol was breached and distributing reports streamed across the airways, I kept filming and made a second more serious video.
Today Began as Expected…Division But It Was Peaceful…Then | Jan 6, 2021
These are the Impeachment with dog videos I made a year ago.
Impeachment Hearings Today…But I’d Really Like to Get Into This Bag | Premiered Jan 21, 2020
Day 3: Impeachment Hearings — Day 1: Puppy! | Premiered Jan 25, 2020
This was on the ground footage of one of the first Pro-Trump rally in DC.
Cacophony — The Beautiful Humans of Earth | Premiered Nov 14, 2020
And, this was one of first Black Lives Matter protests in DC after Trump violently cleared Lafayette Square for a photo opt.
Black Lives Matter | Jun 8, 2020
Some of Jan 6, 2021 AfterMath
Who were the groups at the rally? By Shayan Sardarizadeh of BBC Monitoring — I will be talking about QAnon a little be later in this series. I heard about this guy. Pretty stunning.
Image from BBC | “Supporters of the QAnon conspiracy theory, alongside far-right pro-Trump groups, were planning the rally outside Congress for weeks.”
Image fro BBC | “If this is the “at long last, have you left no sense of decency” moment for Donald Trump, it arrives as they’re cleaning up blood and broken glass in the US Capitol.”
Image from The Atlantic: JOSEPH PREZIOSO / AFP / KENT NISHIMURA / LOS ANGELES TIMES / GETTY / THE ATLANTIC
I have been following Anne over the past year as she is an expert in these matters and really, really smart! She opens her piece in The Atlantic saying:
“We have promoted democracy in our movies and books. We speak of democracy in our speeches and lectures. We even sing about democracy, from sea to shining sea, in our national songs. We have entire government bureaus devoted to thinking about how we can help other countries become and remain democratic. We fund institutions that do the same.
And yet by far the most important weapon that the United States of America has ever wielded—in defense of democracy, in defense of political liberty, in defense of universal rights, in defense of the rule of law—was the power of example. In the end, it wasn’t our words, our songs, our diplomacy, or even our money or our military power that mattered. It was rather the things we had achieved: the two and a half centuries of peaceful transitions of power, the slow but massive expansion of the franchise, and the long, seemingly solid traditions of civilized debate.“
… She talks about the years after WWII and how America stood as an example, but more than that… a symbol of democracy. Symbols act very powerfully inside the human psyche. Stories use symbols to conduct their magic. Anne goes on saying:
“During this period, many American politicians and diplomats mistakenly imagined that it was their clever words or deeds that persuaded others to join what eventually became a very broad, international democratic alliance. But they were wrong. It was not them; it was us—our example.
Over the past four years, that example has been badly damaged. We elected a president who refused to recognize the democratic process. We stood by while some members of Donald Trump’s party cynically colluded with him, helping him break laws and rules designed to restrain him. We indulged his cheerleading “media”—professional liars who pretended to believe the president’s stories, including his invented claims of massive voter fraud. Then came the denouement: an awkward, cack-handed invasion of the Capitol by the president’s supporters, some dressed in strange costumes, others sporting Nazi symbols or waving Confederate flags. They achieved the president’s goal: They brought the official certification of the Electoral College vote to a halt. House and Senate members and Vice President Mike Pence were escorted out of the legislative chambers. Their staff members were told to shelter in place. A woman was shot to death.“
… Anne talks about how anti-democratic countries are and will continue to use what happened yesterday to push down democratic efforts among their people. They are already twisting what happened at the Capitol yesterday equating the rioters who rampaged the Capitol as the same as the demonstrators in places such as Russia and China that have violently dealt with individuals seeking free and fair elections, equating the MAGA rioters ignited by a false narrative promoted by Trump as the same.
“America’s enemies said less but surely enjoyed the images more. Yesterday morning, after all, the Chinese government arrested the leaders of the democracy movement in Hong Kong. In 2020, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, who did so much to put Donald Trump in the White House, was accused of poisoning his most important political opponent, Alexei Navalny. In recent memory, the Saudi crown prince ordered the gruesome murder of a journalist who was one of his most prominent critics; Iranian, Belarusian, and Venezuelan leaders regularly beat and imprison dissidents in their countries.
After the riot at the Capitol, all of them will feel more confident, more secure in their positions. They use violence to prevent peaceful debate and peaceful transfers of power; now they have observed that the American president does too. Trump has not ordered the murder of his enemies. But now nobody can be sure of what he might do in order to maintain power. Schadenfreude will be the dominant emotion in Moscow, Beijing, Tehran, Caracas, Riyadh, and Minsk. The leaders of those cities—men sitting in well-appointed palaces, surrounded by security guards—will enjoy the scenes from Washington, relishing the sight of the U.S. brought so low.“
Yes indeed, America was significantly damaged yesterday–all in the service of one man’s bruised ego.
Image from 1A — Jan 7, 2021: A man holding signs and flags in support of President Donald Trump is seen in front of the Capitol Building in Washington, DC.Jon Cherry/Getty Images
Slate’s Aymann Ismail was with some of the insurrectionists as they breached the Capitol:
The people I managed to speak to didn’t seem to understand the gravity of what they had done. Inside a building they had broken into, they described themselves as “peaceful” to me. I talked to a kid from Florida, who must have been no more than 17 or 18. He told me, “This is nothing compared to what Antifa does.” I said, “Look, they’re breaking the glass.” He answered, “Yeah, but at least they’re not destroying the things.” I showed him pictures of things destroyed. It didn’t register. On the way up, there was a woman holding a sign saying, “If we were leftists, we would be rioting.”
After multiple calls to do so by Republicans and Democrats, in the afternoon, President Trump asked the mob to stay peaceful. In the same video posted to Twitter, President Trump also insisted the election was stolen from him, which is a lie. After these videos were posted, the president was banned from his Twitter account for 12 hours.
The insurrection was the third MAGA-related event in the last few months as Trump-affiliated demonstrators previously clashed with counter-protesters and police in November and December.”
One of the guest speakers is talking about the narrative going back decades such as Newt Gingrich saying he wanted to make politics a blood sport (and he has). This speakers says a conscious choice was made to court the worse instincts in their supporters. The problem is once these instincts ignite, the manipulators loss control.
Image from 1A | Jan 7, 2021 | Pro-Trump insurrectionists stormed the U.S. Capitol following a rally with President Donald Trump.Samuel Corum/Getty Images
Jen White says: “We knew because he told us over and over.”
Rep Tim Ryan (D-OH) says (approximately): “I’m not impressed with all the Republicans jumping on the right side of history in the last 13 days of the Trump Administration. And the Republicans still riding the Trump bandwagon know better. Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, and a handful of others. They know better. They received the best education possible in America and still they propped up Trump’s false narrative.”
Andrew Marantz (Staff Writer, The New Yorker; author of “Anti-Social: Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of the American Conversation.”) says (approximately): “We have a much bigger problem going on. Our entire social media empire is a system constructed to hijack the human mind and tap into the lizard brain. It preys on humanity’s worse instincts and keeps them addicted to it.” This is what I’m writing in my book: Sapience!
Description of episode: “In a September presidential debate, President Donald Trump told the Proud Boys “to stand back and stand by.” The Proud Boys are a right-wing extremist group with ties to white supremacy. But those comments weren’t the first time he appeared to encourage violence from his base. And on Wednesday, thousands of pro-Trump insurrectionists stormed the U.S. Capitol building.
Despite previously encouraging them to go to the Capitol, President Trump urged the mob to “go home,” though in the same statement he continued to falsely claim he won the election. And after this, some are wondering whether it’s still safe for the president, and the lawmakers who challenged the vote certification process, to stay in office for the rest of his term.”
Image from Kojo Nnamdi Show | Jan 7, 2021 | U.S. Capitol Police hold protesters at gun-point near the House Chamber inside the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington. ANDREW HARNIK / AP (This was rare…most of the people who walked into the Capitol walked out some escorted or helped down stairs.)
Greg Carr, Chair, Dept. of Afro-American Studies, Howard University, said (roughly): “They… who are they (the people who poured into the Capitol yesterday)… they are the people who see ‘their’ country slipping away… the power they use to have as a majority, as former slave owners and landowners, as people who have become use to having advantages over black and brown citizens of the United States of America. They were promised to bring all these things back… and they saw this promise slipping away… and so they went into ‘their’ house to hold state in ‘their’ country. That is who they are...” (…) “This country was founded on the enslavement of a people. What we saw today is a continuation of this struggle. … There is a moment when the black police officer is retreating up the stairs from the mob chasing him. When he finally gets up to the 4th floor and encounters several white police officers, you can see the moment when he stops and looks at them and you know he is thinking — are they with them or are they with me? He does not advance to defend himself and the capitol until he sees the white officers advancing on the insurrectionists. That moment tells you everything about what was going on yesterday.”
Dana Fisher, Professor of Sociology, University of Maryland; Author, “American Resistance: From the Women’s March to the Blue Wave”, said (roughly when asked what is the difference between a protestor and insurrectionist): “Protesters expertise their right to voice their disagreement to something going on in the country, but protesters do not carry arms, invade a building of government, and call for shooting and hanging the traitors they believe have failed them. These are insurrectionists… these are domestic terrorists…“
Stay safe… remember love always finds the most inclusive, gentle way to live together in peace and harmony. It is our choice to act through love or to act through hate.
Next in The Storytelling Species Series | Part 2: The Sea of Misery:
“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.” Carl Jung, The Philosophical Tree
This is a simple and very common story. It is a story about a mistake that lead to a misunderstanding that descended into fatuity. Stuff like this happens all the time between people. Most of the time, it leaves both parties feeling moronic, doltish, and foolish.
The exception is when one person holds more power or authority than another person. Then such common occurrences get channeled down a most menacing passage way. One socially designed to keep the power holder’s dignity and respectability in place while decimating the other’s social standing or means of making a living.
You think I am exaggerating?
Injustices use the energy created inside the mind to effect action in the world. Systems of consciousness evolved to divert the psychological energies generated by simple mistakes and common misunderstanding unto a few. The few are the handful of people who have amassed resources and become rich and powerful in the world of human beings. These rich and powerful folks then engineer the social systems to reroute the blessings meant for all people living within a system (e.g., a family, a tribe, a city, a state, a nation, a civilization) unto themselves. This has been happening for centuries, entrenching power unto a few people existing on the top of the social hierarchy.
Still doubt me? Watch Poldark to see how the system worked in the late 18th century and early 19th century in England–a country that emerged as a supersized powerhouse in molding how modern day Western Civilization works today. Sure Poldark is a work of fiction, but all good fiction draws upon archetypal characters acting in the real world.
Poldark: The Best of Ross Poldark | Nov 20, 2019 | Throughout the series Ross Poldark must navigate the disruption and disasters created by his childhood nemesis George Warleggan–a man born into wealth and good fortune but who wants constantly wants more than he deserves.
George sets himself against Ross because deep down George feels inferior to Ross. There are many scenes where George uses his wealth, social connections, and the law to bring Ross to his knees. He almost does. But, Ross is made of something different than George…very different.
In this clip, George and Ross point guns at each other and George asks Ross: “On what side will you fight Ross for the civilized world or the revolution?” Ross answers: “On the side that stands with humanity.”
But even a foolish, stupid thing can be turned into a source of knowledge, even wisdom, if one seeks deeper understanding and is not committed to upholding the existing system of being, most often referred to as civilization. It is for this reason I choose to tell and share this story.
To me it is a navigation map. Something an individual in a conflict can refer to as a reference point for guidance in navigating the depths of misunderstanding, especially when all the Cards of Knowledge are not being lain down on the Table of Resolution. Knowing how to navigate the strong currents created by deception, power plays, and one upmanship maneuvers can help both parties avoid dropping down into the even darker realms of being human. Down there in these darkest realms of the human psyche, mistakes can quickly transform into ugly beasts of folly that are quite capable of inflicting terrible suffering on other people, and even of swallowing a fragile ego whole, just like a snake swallows an egg.
Snake Swallowing Egg | Set to Creepy Music
You think I am exaggerating again, don’t you?
Girl With Dragon — A Mini Series Chronicling the Premonition of the Confluence of Unconscious Content that Was Going to Come Together in a Terrible Way… Some of It Was Mine… Much of It Was Mixed With the Content of Others Surrounding Me in My Life at the Point in Time
If you are like me and taught the edges of your thought are the edges of yourself and believing this, you have probably constructed a pretty nice ego (or perhaps it should be called an egg-o!..lol..) to comport yourself through life, just like I did. Most of the time, your ego construct probably serves you just fine, just like mine did. But if you are like me and believed this to be all that you are–like that pretty egg just sitting there doing nothing to invite the devastation and destruction fate so often serves–then you encountered autonomous unconscious content inside yourself but outside of your egg-o, it was probably pretty traumatic, just like it was for me.
But wait, there is more: you realize such autonomous unconscious content exists inside everyone who you love, respect, answer to at work, depend on as friends, etc., ect. When you realize this, such an encounter with autonomous unconscious content can turn into something very devastating, just like it did for me.
I chronicle it in my girl with dragon story that tells about what happened to me as my autonomous unconscious content mixed with everyone’s else around me to create the perfect dragon storm of autonomous unconscious content acting in the world.
Girl With Dragon – Part 1 | Apr 2, 2019
If you’re not into reading blogs (even super short ones), I turned this story into a video series. But, there are only 3 because during this time of my inner journey, I needed encouragement and attention. This first video got a lot of likes and comments when I shared it, but the next two seemed to reach no one. So, I stopped making them. I didn’t have any more energy inside to do it even though they made me happy. I was relying on the time and attention others were giving me then. It is not a good way to live; however, the Facebook universe is built this way. It incites us to live on the outer most edges of ourselves, which are the most public, the social roles we play in our groups and society. Facebook promises fame and fortune for those who learn how to play this game well. But, there is a dark side to this game we are all playing on this platform.
The brutality is built right into the platform (as well as other social media platforms) and it can spill over into reality in terrible, evil ways. Consider the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar. This genocide used Facebook to incite terrible, brutal violence in the real world. The New York Times conducted an in-depth investigation of this genocide and reported what they found in this article: A Genocide Incited on Facebook, With Posts From Myanmar’s Military
“Members of the Myanmar military were the prime operatives behind a systematic campaign on Facebook that stretched back half a decade and that targeted the country’s mostly Muslim Rohingya minority group, the people said. The military exploited Facebook’s wide reach in Myanmar, where it is so broadly used that many of the country’s 18 million internet users confuse the Silicon Valley social media platform with the internet. Human rights groups blame the anti-Rohingya propaganda for inciting murders, rapes and the largest forced human migration in recent history.”
“They posed as fans of pop stars and national heroes as they flooded Facebook with their hatred. One said Islam was a global threat to Buddhism. Another shared a false story about the rape of a Buddhist woman by a Muslim man.”
There is also a brutality conducted daily on ordinary users of this platform. It is quite invisible but follows the currents of time and attention generated by everyone using the platform that day or point in time. We, the users, create the currents of time and attention swirling around on all the social media platforms. But since they are a collective creation, no one individual controls them. That’s what makes it fun–learning how to galvanize, shock, and stir up attention, and then send it this way or that. These are little streams of course, but if you’re good… they can grow… and if you’re really good, the currents of time and attention can transform you into a top dog or a shark inside a fish tank. Then, all the other little fishes in the tank will follow you anywhere you go.
But, if you fall outside the collectively generated currents, you will feel the coldness of being ignored, the silent treatment (even by your friends and family in your network) inflicted upon you for crossing some unseen social boundary, usually a taboo. In short, Facebook is slowly but surely turning its users into Attention Addicts. Any addiction of any nature usurps an individual’s inner psychological energy that is needed to think, to feel good about self and others, and to act with intergirty in the world. I believe this is a new type of addiction we are growing in ourselves, all around the world. It is to our own detriment for it is another channel being carved into our collective consciousness diverting the blessings meant for everyone unto a few. Not much is written about this evolving new addiction, much more needs to be written. However, I found this article, which is very interesting: Why I Was Addicted to Attention, Lies, and Drama byVironika Tugaleva.
This is a tangent, and I will not take any more time to talk about now other than to say these places I speak about that are concealed deep inside the human psyche have been mostly forgotten by our civilized, modern world. They have been suppressed, denied, and rejected for centuries. The most common refrain used to justify this refusal to be a whole human being is ‘that’s not civilized.’
But these uncivilized parts of self exist inside every person’s psyche. They are the empty-headed, slow-witted, dopey, short-sighted, ill-considered, inept, cocked-eyed parts of self. They are the parts of ourselves that have been stashed and locked, and double locked away. No one wants to admit these parts exist: the asinine, loopy, unthinking parts of ourselves that can make us feel or look repulsive to others–perhaps even dangerous.
To admit such detestable vulnerabilities publicly can result in being ostracized. This is most of all true of modern day Western Civilization. And social shunning can have severe and damaging effects on the social roles that we are forced to assume and inhabit in order to live a modern, Westernize life that allows us to feed, cloth, and shelter ourselves and our loved ones.
The silent treatment is very effective, and it is a very old practice. It can be traced far back into the dawning of Western Civilization. My friend Barry Kort pointed this out recently, and I have researched shunning several years ago for the story I am writing.
Ignoring someone for some socially perceived fault was encoded into law by Hammurabi who was the sixth king of the First Babylonian dynasty of the Amorite tribe, reigning from c. 1792 BC to c. 1750 BC. The Hammurabi code of laws, a collection of 282 rules, established standards for commercial interactions and set fines and punishments to meet the requirements of justice. The laws varied according to social class and gender, and it took a brutal approach to justice. And these codes did not die out with the conquering of Babylon. There is a fascinating discussion of this code in this interesting book: Shared Reality: What Makes Us Strong and Tears Us Apart. Public shunning was one of the punishments devised by Hammurabi and disguised as coming from God. Today, we know the silent treatment is a form of psychological abuse.
An article in Psychology Today states: “The silent treatment is a strategy frequently used by people who appear to possess great self-control and claim to be more rational than emotional. At the same time, it is related not only to an expression of passive violence but also to a concealed strategy of psychological abuse. That is to say, it can profoundly damage the person on the receiving end.”
“The worst sin to our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that is the essence of inhumanity”
I postulate there is another way to navigate mistakes and misunderstandings. A way that evolves us as a species and helps us individually grow more whole. It is not an easy way, but it is a way that sheds light on these unseemly parts of ourselves that allows us to see them and bring them to the fire of one’s flame of consciousness. I propose that it is exactly these parts of ourselves that desperately need rescuing now. To not do so will condemn us to repeat the mistakes of our ancestors who have given us this current brutal system of consciousness. I put forward it is percisely the primitive, most primordial parts that live inside every human being’s psyche who needs the gentle hand of understanding and tenderness of love for no other reason that for being.
What Happened…
I write about all this in my story titled Sapience: The Moment is Now. It is a story that required me to descend to great depths inside myself. It was so dark down there, I got lost. But the descent allowed me to resurrect some of the deepest, most forgotten parts of myself. And strangely, it is these parts that have helped me survive a terrible year–a year of sudden reversals and suffering around the world. Nothing more needs to be said except 2020.
All things, good and bad, hold power to awaken and illuminate more of who we are as tiny flecks of illuminated consciousness. Four years earlier, I was searching for venues to share a documentary I made about the first Women’s March. It was a super historical event. One that emerged organically like a super sentient being dressed in pink. This being, feminine of course, was a counter force rising in the wake of Donald Trump’s 2016 election win. The election that landed him in the White House.
I interviewed 39 people that day, then used my new skills in iMovie to assemble a homemade documentary. It’s not that good. It’s too long and amateur. Some would say it’s exceedingly boring—except for the interviewees. Their voices are powerful.
After making this long video, I wanted to share it. And so, I ventured into the Netherworld of social media. It is a place until this moment in time that I instinctively avoided as a vile, loveless Pit of Perdition. And, I was not wrong about this.
I’ll get back to this later.
In the wake of Trump’s election, lots of new Facebook groups were forming around the world. There were Women’s March groups, Indivisible groups, and groups dedicated to the idiocracy of Donald Trump’s America. I joined many of these groups across America and around the world. I also joined Climate Change and Environmental groups because these issues run through the storyline of the narrative I’ve been chasing since before 2009 and writing daily since 2012. A story that was bursting into reality with the election of Donald Trump. That’s why I went down and interviewed people. It was so uncanny–what I had written and what was happening–I had to talk to other people. Indeed, I can sum up my story in three words; it is one about Climate Change and Consciousness.
Promo Video for Sustain the Flame published Mar 26, 2017 | To see the full documentary, click here.
At this time of rapid uptake of joining Facebook groups, I came across a group called the Ecology of System Thinkers (EoST). It was a bit outside my wheelhouse. However, I reasoned I had a degree in Human Ecology with a concentration in the sciences. Plus the group promoted itself as an intersection of diehard Systems Thinkers and everyone else. So, it seemed to me that I fit the parameters they had defined.
At this time, I noticed the time and attention one admin gave to members, especially to members experiencing conflict and arguing (boy—were there arguments back then!). I was impressed by this and came to understand he was one of the founders of the group. I found him inspiring. We became Facebook friends.
About a year later, I recall he took time off from his deep involvement in the group citing it took too much of his time, and he needed to put more of it into his family and other things going on in his life. I thought this was an admirable action too. The new admin replacing him was highly at first involved too. And we were already Facebook friends from another group. We had several in-depth, probing conversations. Then, the other guy came back and a few more admins were added. I noticed the first admin however was no longer as highly involved as before, except for a rare post here and there. In fact, he rarely commented any more on posts.
I remember being named as one of the members in this group who got high engagement from other members, but who was not participating or liking other members posts. He was trying to get more engagement from all the members. He was right. There is nothing more boring than a group where no one likes or comments on anyone’s posts. I liked and commented on other members posts for a time. But no one noticed. So, my engagement naturally declined, falling back to my pervious occasional posts. When I shared something I had done, I tried to make sure I connected its content with the interests of group with a comment of how it was relevant.
After my father died, this admin and others added as admins in this group or would be soon added to the admin team of this group, appeared super supportive of my sad situation. But it was short-lived support. All of them soon moved on in their own veins of being and interests in Facebook endeavors. In fact, none of the admins (5 of whom were my Facebook friends) ever liked a post I shared in EoST or commented on a post I shared in this group.
One day this year, I noticed the group no longer appeared as one I belonged to. I thought this odd but paid no mind to it until one day I searched for the group and could not find it, I became more curious about what had happened.
By now, it had been several weeks after I noticed the group had disappeared. I decided to ask my Facebook friend who was one of the head admin of this group what had happened. After a day of inquiring with the other admins, he simply told me one of his admins (he didn’t know who) was cleaning up spam and removed me on that basis. Apparently, this admin did this without consulting with any of the other admins assuming that I was a fake account that was spamming the group. My friend, the admin, expressed no shock, no sadness, no remorse about what had happened. Rather, his message to me was more like a lecture: It was overly zealous admin who failed to be as zealous in checking who or what was spam. He also told me matter-of-factly none of the other admins were at all regretful of this zealous admin’s actions. To me, this demonstrated an unconscious complacency by the whole admin team in support of questionable, overly harsh actions.
I had a bad feeling. I could not say exactly what or why I was feeling this, but I felt I had to act immediately. So I did. I blocked all 10 admins from my personal account. Then, I answered 3 unanswered messages in messenger. I told them I was deactivating my Facebook account and very briefly why. Then, I deactivated it and was gone. I didn’t think anyone would even notice my absence.
TheAfterMathof What Happened
But it turns out I left a wake.
It turns out I had an ally after all, Barry Kort.
I had recently featured him in my last blog titled AfterMath — The Magical Calculus of Consciousness. In this blog, I tell the story of how a casual conversation in another Facebook group sparked insight in me that aligned with content I was wrestling with in my story.
Unbeknownst to me, Barry was championing my case. He had taken it up with the admins of EoST. From what I’ve gleam from bits and pieces I learned about later, Barry was assessing and analyzing what had happened and why. He was spelling it out eloquently and illuminating deeper currents of thinking that were informing the actions occurring inside the group.
He did not have all the information because much of it remained hidden; however, his analysis is excellent and offers opportunities for insight and growth. But of course, this kind of growth is hard. Because of this, it is often rejected, especially by collectives, because it is not pretty, it is not nice. It is the stuff about ourselves we have all had to reject and hide away because we would be viewed as monsters by others for revealing these parts of ourselves.
This is a trap. It is a trap built into our modern systems. It was built to divert the blessings meant for everyone within a system or a group unto a few. It happened long ago. Most of us now no longer remember how it use to be. We are taught to believe this is normal.
It is not.
It is inherently cruel.
Left unchecked and unchanged, our modern systems of consciousness are growing more and more lopsided. They are turning in on themselves and will soon devour themselves. Just like Beth Harmon, the star in the Netflix Original story about a young orphan girl who is a chess prodigy, we (the humans of Earth) are inflicting the consequences of our individual and collective unconsciousness on ourselves and on each other through thoughtless, careless, cruel actions.
Barry has given me permission to share some of his analysis here:
Bébé, in her E-Mail to me, expressly decried the absence of an empathic human response. That created a dilemma for me, because Π was unable to provide the original context, so I had no useful information on what happened to cause Bébé to feel betrayed and wounded. Π could similarly see no reason for Bébé to be angry at him. But after I shared with him a bit more information, Π did see why her anger was directed at him. In other words, the failure to share relevant information blocks the possibility of empathy. If having and expressing empathy is the ultimate goal, then concealing information is anathema to that goal. — Barry Kort — December 17 at 6:13 PM
Barry has hit on something extremely important here in that: concealing information is anathema to the goal of expressing empathy…this something that is actually very important to the world of Systems Thinkers. In the past 4 years that I’ve belonged in this group, no one has ever talked about the importance of empathy and understanding. I learned more about Systems Thinking in this one paragraph written by Barry than I gleaned over 4 years of being a member of this this group. The power of empathy in constructing Bridges of Understanding allows for repairs to the deep divisions engineered into modern living–systems designed to keep us separated and isolated in our individual thinking and group silos.
As near as I can tell, this one admin departed from the model that Π and the other admins would have employed. As I understand it, this lone rogue admin unilaterally determined that it was correct to summarily boot Bebe out of the EoST and does not repent of that belief. It’s unclear to me how this lack of consensus among the Admins can be resolved. It may be too late for Bébé, but it means that this phenomenon is likely to recur, perhaps with another would-be contributor in the future. What has occurred is what Gregory Bateson would have called “Schismogenesis” meaning a fracturing and a fragmenting of Systems Thinking into two or more conflicting factions, each of which would employ disparate practices. As near as I can tell, this is why Bebe has lost faith in the integrity of the Systems Thinking culture. At least one faction would retain the practices of the anachronistic and deprecated model of the Police Culture. This disparity has roots that goes all the way back to the disparity between Theology and the secular Rule of Law. I had long hoped that the contributions of the more enlightened systems science would have at long last resolved that hoary and lamentable rift. — Barry Kort — December 17 at 11:37 PM
What more can I say, Barry sees a phenomenon at work and operating below the threshold of conscious awareness of this group. He has chronicled it in a most palatable way. Refusal to look at his analysis or to consider it in the light of understanding can only mean the undercurrents of concealment and denial are running deep and strong.
That’s what Π said, too. But it also reveals a phenomenon that troubles me far beyond this kind of commonplace mistake. Intention is one element in a Theory of Mind. Clearly the rogue admin misjudged Bébé, with respect to her intention. It’s clear from copious evidence that her posted content originated from a thread in GCC that included Sam, Doug, and myself (I am leaving Sam and Doug as they have been allies in this situation too). But another element of a Theory of Mind is emotional state. I was astonished at how erratic Π was in characterizing my emotional state. And Π’s inexplicable misconceptions in that regard helped me appreciate why Bebe reacted so strongly about the lack of empathy she encountered in EoST. I’m quite used to it, as almost no one ever gets it right when they try to assess my emotional state. Long ago, I learned that I have to expressly say that I’m chagrinned or disappointed or vexed and perplexed by some observable phenomenon on the social networks. But even having done so, Π still asserted an inexplicably incorrect character model, as if I were some chimera of his imagination. How the devil could he have gotten it so wrong? I reckon Columbo, Poirot, or Miss Marple would have a field day with this one. — Barry Kort — December 18 at 3:24 AM
Barry is absolutely correct, this is a case for the all the Columbo(s), the Poirot(s), and the Marple(s) of the underworld of man’s psyche. I’ve been writing about this (and by the way sharing it in EoST to the sound of silence) for quite some time. I dubbed this work the work of Consciousness Warriors. I suspect my work is too artistry and suspicious for the Systems Thinkers of EoST. Indeed, Barry’s thinking seems to be received this way as well, which is a lost for the group.
«Clearly the mistaken action by the admin touched a deeper nerve, no?» Precisely so, Doug. As I understand it, Bébé posted something in EoST, whereupon some undisclosed Admin summarily deleted it and unceremoniously blocked Bébé, erroneously believing it was spam. Π said that’s all he knew; he didn’t even know which of 11 Admins it was. But according to Π, whoever it was did not believe it was an error to have deleted Bebe’s post and to have summarily blocked her. As to what Bébé posted, my surmise is that it was something related to this contemporaneous blog post, which contains content Bébé had just gleaned from a discussion thread in GCC.
cc: several people ~I wonder if Einstein would have been unceremoniously ejected from the same Systems Thinking communities that Doug and I got booted out of. If so, would he have soothed himself by playing the violin? — Barry Kort — December 18 at 7:06 PM
Doug and Barry are indeed right, a deeper nerve was hit and exposed. It is right for Barry to point out this type of thinking/reaction sequence and how an individual who did not fit in such as Einstein would have been treated if the systems operating now and are ubiquitous in modern society had operated then. Would we know about black holes, the theory of general relativity, and the photoelectric effect?
«I try to remember the devil of second order cybernetics. Observe the observer. When I do, I am of course observing myself observing someone observing.» That’s the opening lines of one of the paragraphs in Nora Bateson’s article in the O.P. And it occurs to me that the long comment thread initiated in response to BPT’s question, “What happened?” is an instance of “the devil of 2nd order cybernetics: reckoning the observer. What did the observer know and when did he know it? What did the observer report, and when did he report it? Did the observer know and report the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? Was anything left out or distorted? Was any of it paraphrased, glossed over, or taken out of context? To my mind, this cuts to the issue of Bearing Accurate Witness (and the consequences of redacting information that one would rather not have brought to light). I don’t know that we’ll resolve this issue here, but I submit that the political decision not to bear accurate witness is inconsistent with the fundamental tenets of cybernetic systems theory. As I understand it at this juncture, Bébé lost faith in the culture of systems thinking because it morphed from science to politics, and that departure introduced what she calls a “darkness” (and I call a corruption) of the fundamental tenets of systems science and systems thinking. — Barry Kort — December 19 at 6:15 PM
Barry is shining a brilliant light into a dark place. I have lost faith in the culture of Systems Thinking. The darkness of the human mind is indeed the source from which all corruption infiltrating the systems man has made creeps in. It takes conscious work to keep the darkness at bay. Most people don’t want to do this work because it is icky, painful at times, and humiliating at other times. So, we hide it in the dark places inside ourselves. But it does not go away. It remains quite actively there and very capable of acting autonomously and antithetically to our own self-interests. This is how the corruption works. I write extensively about it in my book.
As I see it, the community of systems thinkers have splintered into two discernible factions. The smaller faction, to which you and I subscribe, is that we employ the axiomatic principles and tools for thought of systems thinking to solve both systemic problems “out there” in the world at large, as well as systemic problems that arise within the corridors of our own discipline and practices. Moreover we do our work in public, so as to demonstrate that we are role models for our methodology even when we are addressing internal issues within our own community.
The larger faction (as apparently exemplified and revealed by at least three of the more prominent leaders in EoST) is that internal misadventures and departures from the governing axioms, principles and practices of systems thinking are not addressed in public (and perhaps not even addressed at all).
In yesterday’s Barn Raising, it occurred to me that you and T. were especially articulate in characterizing this dichotomy that divides Systems Thinking into these two mutually incompatible factions — a dichotomy that only surfaces when the practice of systems thinking itself has veered off the rails with respect to keeping its own house in order.
If that analysis has any merit, then it’s our minority faction which is obliged to devise a way to proceed in a constrained manner that is true to the core principles without alienating ourselves from the larger faction. Per G.‘s methodology, the title of this drama would be, “Physician, heal thyself.”
Bébé uncovered a “darkness” in EoST that might be characterized as a shame-based cover-up that is then seen as a “corruption” of the professed principles and practices of systems thinking. At least that model explains her loss of faith in systems thinking as she experienced it first-hand in EoST. At least that model explains why she characterized them as a bunch of “fakes” (because they didn’t practice what they preached). In classical stories such as those found in the New Testament, the corresponding term of art would be “hypocrisy.”
There must be a “third way” to proceed that is both effective as a diagnostic process and acceptable to the likes of Π, Beta, and the otherwise unidentified “zealous admin” whose rogue actions precipitated the ensuing liminal social drama (and its 2nd-order offshoot on my timeline).
Sam, in the process of recusing himself, Beta (not real name) referred to a non-private chat in which he declared his intention to de-attend the conversation over the issue of doing it in public.
May I add your name to that non-private chat so you can provide your insight on why this process is going awry?
The Folly& the Fake
Barry has provided a powerful and in-depth analysis for those who have the strength to digest it. A lass, I doubt many do. In addition to these tidbits I gleaned from my deactivated account; Barry shared something further with me that floored me. It is the reason I felt I had to deactivate my account though at the time I could not tell you why I felt this.
Below is a small excerpt of a longer exchange. It is the most hurtful and it so full of misperceptions and misrepresentations; I do not even know where to start. I feel compelled to dissect it sentence by sentence from my point of view. The truth lies in-between and so too is our shared reality. Where you fall as a 3rd Party Reader depends on where you stand upon your own inner terrain of being. It has been this way with truth ever since man crossed the threshold into consciousness so long, long ago.
Image of Folly by Colwords
Π: “I already get a lot of email I would rather not have.“
My interpretation: “Dam it, Barry! Don’t you understand how busy and important I am! Why are you bothering me with this?”
Π: “Her anger, then, is pointless and achieves nothing, in terms of anything I can do, it’s too late for that. Rather it’s a phase she needs to go through personally to get to a period of acceptance.“
My perspective: Π is pretending he knows me so well that he can instantly infer why and what I am angry about. His foolish attempt to assign value to someone else’s anger is folly. It reveals a reckless irrationality that is swimming about inside his mind. Not realizing the monster he fears lives inside him, he attempts to deflect blame of the injustices I have complained about as self-inflicted. This is a gross oversimplified of reality. One that is bound to create blow back.
Π: “However …Over many years, I have suggested to her, indirectly, that writing her book was not in the end going to be the catharsis she seeks for the death of at least one parent.“
My perspective:Π demonstrates his vast knowledge and understanding of me by showing he doesn’t even know which parent died. In fact, he doesn’t even remember when or how the death occurred. He is knocking his brain to recall if I even have already lost both parents. So, to not look completely stupid, he’s covering his bases with the stony-hearted phrase: the catharsis she seeks for the death of at least one parent. Besides being muddled in his mind about how long my parent has been dead, he demonstrates his utter lack of listening skills. I’ve told him many times I’ve been writing this story long before I ever met him or joined the EoST. I have written down enough material for 12 books with 12 more in my head. This is not a catharsis process grieving for a dead parent—what an inconsiderate, thoughtless, self-centered jerk!
Π: “I suggested she was better engaged in writing for other people, but she did not want to pursue that. She has chosen her own path, in terms of adjusting to loss, especially ignoring counsel from others, and there are consequences for that in terms of teaching m recovery rates. Feeling sad about loss is one thing, taking out anger on others is actually counterproductive.“
My perspective: Here again Πdemonstrates utter ignorance of who I am, what I’ve done, even how old I am. He says, “I suggested she was better engaged in writing for other people…” …as if I were 22 or 23 years old. You know… I bet he does think that’s how old I am poor bloke. He’s about 30+ years off. I’ve written for lots of other people. I have raised more than $10 million dollars for individuals, non-profits, and corporations around the world from the things I have written for other people. I’ve been part of huge proposal teams that have written winning proposals for huge government contracts totaling another $10 million dollars. I’ve written media and new releases and planned/implemented special events, planned-giving, and other types of fundraising things raising another $1 to 2 million for other people.
Writing for other people provides as much safety and security as being the Press Secretary on board the Titanic who is ordered to whip out a flashy News Briefabout how fabulous, sea-worthy, and unsinkable the ship is while it is sinking into the watery, cold depths of the North Atlantic. I made a video about this recently. Not that Π would have seen it as clearly I am not a person worth his time or attention.
White Flag — Miracle Day | Aug 2, 2020
So forgive me if I’m done writing stories for other people! These comments drip with his shallow, flaccid, artificiality. He reveals himself here as a self-obsessed, self-conceited bloke of magnificent proportions. Boy was my admiration misplaced in him.
Π: “Namely, I feel she has not properly got over the death of her parent, and also seems to blame others without reason for their ignorance – stupidity even – when she thinks they should know better. But I’m afraid we are all human beings. We all make mistakes. There’s nothing personal involved. No one knows everything, as pointed out at considerable cost by Socrates, a deep Systems Thinker himself.“
My perspective:HereΠ demonstrates once again how well he knows me. Again, he can’t even name which parent died–mother…father? He leaves the door open that both parents may very well be dead…because he really doesn’t know. Not only that, he asserts himself as an expert on grief. Then callously and cruelly blames me for my own suffering and pain.
Side Note: I wrote about this too…being blamed by those who really don’t know me at all for my misfortune on 10/31/18. At this point in time, my personnel tragedy was about 3 months old having occurred on 8/4/18. On Facebook, it was old news now. Looking back, this is when most of my Facebook friends vanished! Vamoose–all the individuals who were paying me so much attention before my father died…disappeared. And all the individuals who were not paying me much attention before dad died, joined the bandwagon of condolence wishing because–WOW–I was getting a lot of attention on Facebook then, and it would be a missed opportunity not to be seen by others on Facebook (you know… the murky, mutual friends that Facebook has engineered for us). Who hasn’t got Facebook suggestions: Hey, ‘so and so‘ is a friend of ‘so and so‘… someone you just became friends with on the platform and so you become friends with everyone else’s friends and pretty soon, you don’t really know who your friends are any more because everyone’s friend have become so inbred and artificial. Now, I understand why and what has been going on at a deeper, seedy level.
Dodo and reality barbs in vortex — Original art created by Bébé | The Divine Dodo series
But, back to the conflict… that’s what you really want to read, right? (wink):
Indeed, there are plenty of times I have brought misfortunate on myself, but this is not one of them. I along with millions of other people just like me get far more misfortune than we deserve. It is inflicted on us by the Systems of Thinking that have been designed this way. They are cruel systems dreamed up by unconscious Systems Thinkers. Our modern Western systems have been engineered to divert the blessings meant for everyone existing inside the system unto a few.
[See Postscript at the end of this blog about Charles Dickens Scrooge and how fair “the system” has been for so long of time to the masses–-the ordinary men and women just trying to survive another day in it.] And you dare to call yourself an enlighten Systems Thinker… shame on you Π.
Even though this statement drips with cruelty and contempt, now, we are finally getting somewhere!!! This is what all the bells and whistles Π’s been throwing up into the air are all about. They are simply distractions because he’s afraid he will look stupid and cold-hearted (reptilian). He begs for his humanity meanwhile denying me mine. Then, in the next sentence, he has the gall to elevate himself to the level of Socrates—the father of Systems Thinker – ‘Oh my – we must be impressed with him now, mustn’t we?!’
Π:“I have deliberately not sought to take control of EOST, although I could have done so, BECAUSE I’m a system thinking guy, who sees those control patterns repeated again and again over history, with largely unsuccessful results, and much pain along the way. I will cite Hitler and the Jews here.”
My perspective: This part of Π’s soliloquy is between him and Barry. But really man, come on… citing Hitler and the Jews just because Barry is asking you for accountability of the group you founded. Pretty high and mighty… and very sad.
Π:“I have tried to work collaboratively with other Admins because I believe 💯% in working that way, and I’m unwilling to change that, underpinned by ST reasons.“
My perspective: This part of Π’s speech continues to be between him and Barry. He’s a System Thinking guy… just so you don’t forget that aspect of who he is.
Π: “Bébé can return but chooses not to. Again, it’s not my choice, but a self-inflicted wound on her part. If she wants to return I will 💯% support that, because I know that it was a mistake on the part of Admins that we have discussed and can rectify.“
My perspective: Thank you Π but no thank you!! For 4 years, I’ve contributed thoughtful content related to the “Systems Thinking ” from a non-systems thinker’s perspective (something you told Barry that was part of your aspirations for starting the group in the first place). During this entire time, neither you nor your admin team have given so much as a blue thumbs up… much less commented on a single post I’ve made in this group.Rather, I’ve been ignored, and now possibly, I see this is no accident,
Rather, in the past 6 months, I have engaged with your members more so than you or most of your admins who rarely post or comment on anything (except one who posts but rarely comments on members posts). During this time, I have encountered some of the most misogynistic, potty-mouth men than in any other group I have belonged (and that is a long list).
Self-inflicted wound?! I don’t think so. It is more like you’ve been a poison swirling around in my pools of friendships on Facebook. Silently, but decisively, your hidden attitudes and beliefs about me have been undermining me and belittling me to others. You think your disparaging attitudes and false beliefs of me go unseen just because you don’t say them like you’ve said to Barry… but you are wrong… these things permeate and infect the mutual Pools of Consciousness we have shared…like the group of 11.8K members amassed and growing into a gelatinous pool of goo because big groups tend to pull the collective consciousness down to the lowest levels of being unless hard work (like Barry is doing here) is attempted.
Π: “That’s the real point that she and you should be focusing on.“
My perspective:More distraction – “Oh look… look over there… that’s where the fire is…” Aren’t we all sick if these types of shenanigans after 4 years of Trump?”
Π: “For Bébé to blame humanity for being human and making mistakes is to expect folk to be superman. I’m sorry but that’s not a reasonable or Systems Thinking approach to take.“
My perspective: No, I am blaming you. I simply expected that you wouldn’t be so shallow, fake, and artificial. Once again, Π reveals himself to be self-conceit and superior to others. [See It Feeds on Fear and Sadness… scroll to the bottom where you will find information about Superiority and Inferiority Complexes]
The Thing That Feeds on Fear and Sadness
Π: “Consider her anger shared, BTW!“
My perspective: Good, you are finally beginning the process of waking up.But given what I’ve seen, you’ll find a way to throw cold water on it.
Π: “But please note, again from a Systems Thinking perspective, I think anger that blames others is a pointless and net negative activity, a view clearly endorsed by the Dalai Lama, another Systems Thinker, and this anger is currently a self-inflicted and perpetuating wound.“
My perspective: Ah…the Dalai Lama! Yes, it would be nice to insert a little wisdom into such abundant false conjectures and accusations of a person that you clearly do not know. If he used even a little bit of wisdom, Π might even be able to locate the compassion inside of him, locked away in a place forgotten. He is so fixated on self-inflicted wounds… it makes me wonder if it is not himself that he is referring to. I am simply a convenient target to project it onto for a time. He’ll need another one soon.
Π: “If you choose to share this with her, please give her the whole context, not a juicy extract of your choosing, where I think sometimes your own past suggests that you miss some of the fine points involved.“
My perspective: Yep, got it all—loud and clear! Now I see you for what you really are: a self-absorbed, conceited man who needs to put others down in order to feel big and powerful and like a Superman or like Socrates or the Dalai Lama. Rather you are petty and cruel. It is really rather sad realization.
Why Calculating Consciousness is a Useful Activity
This is the accounting, the AfterMath, of a simple, reckless mistake, something that occurs frequently on a platform such as Facebook. Actually, something that is accelerating and growing within all social media platforms that are acting like incubators for unconscious autonomous content that exists inside every human being.
What Barry revealed in his calculus of what went wrong rises beyond a simple, reckless mistake, but a refusal to grow consciously. He uncovered an aggressive unconscious projection that had been conducted upon me, and even onto him for his efforts to understand. Had Barry not undertaken this work, I would not have known the underlying inner narrative that was acting like a toxin between me and Π and that was having a corroding effect on everyone with whom we were mutual Facebook friends. Inner narratives are powerful. Even if never shared or spoken to someone else, they influence an individual’s choices and action in the world and this is how reality is made.
Without Barry’s intervention, analysis, and willingness to share what he learned with me, I would have remained in the dark with my feelings of worthlessness and that something nefarious was afoot, but unseeable. I sensed there were foul undercurrents working against me. Now, I know. Barry has shown me my feelings are valid and can be trusted.
When someone is not treating you as as a friend should treat a friend, consider there may be a hidden inner narrative at work that is acting more like a devilish poison designed to wear you down and dissolve you for the benefit or entertainment of another.
These things happen in real life as well as in the fake lives we live in social media. I call them fake lives because on social media platforms we are really performing–constantly curating our content and pretending to be our most ideal selves (never mentioning or acknowledging our other half because that would be less than ideal to mention). Even more nefarious, some people pretend to be someone or something they are not in order to sell or swindle things from other human beings who are simply seen as resources to be used then thrown away.
So trust your feelings. If someone who has befriended you is not treating you as a real friend, a true friend, trust yourself and take action to protect yourself.
Thank you Barry!
Postscript:
The Numinous Power of Stories in the Human Psyche
Stories and narratives, especially those running inside our heads, have long played an oversize role in shaping our shared reality. All stories emerge from our inner spaces of mind. I call them mindscapes. We all have these sacred internal spaces that we build over time and reshape as we tell ourselves what has happened to us on our journey through time and space. These inner stories are powerful.
In this episode from This American Life, the power of how stories can shape reality is beautifully told in this Christmas mishap of storytelling that was a little bit too real.
Ever since humans gained consciousness, they have told stories about their experiences in space and time. We tell stories because we can, and they imbue life and energy into everything we do and believe and influence how we act in the world. This American Life tells wonderful stories about being human. I am selecting this one here as a prologue to the story of the Misadventure and Folly of Facebook to illustrate how power the narratives we hold in our head are in shaping our reality.
Lights, Camera, Christmas! — This holiday season, we bring you a show filled with stories of people going to great lengths to throw a special Christmas for their families. In particular, I want to highlight the story of the Mutchler’s who embellished the Christmas story of Santa and his reindeer and his elves in ways that grew to gigantic proportions within the minds of their 3 children.
Humans: The Storytelling Species
We are a storytelling species. And, human beings can conceal these internal stories that shape our motivations and actions in the world. In the real world, where people encounter each other in the flesh and blood, bodies and faces reveal hints of underlying motivations, conscious or unconscious, that are propelling action in the world.
Over millions and millions of years, living beings evolved complex ways of perceiving and decoding essential clues contained in bodies and faces. Clues that if deciphered fast enough could hint to possible life-threatening or predatory intentions.
In the human world, our basic animal instinct to survive has been raised us above the ground of basic survival by becoming conscious. Consciousness also gives us our ability to think, and this has allowed humans to outcompete every other living being on Earth. It has also allowed us to change reality to suit our needs.
But there is a price for this power. The price of consciousness is to grow it or to incur a debt that must be paid by costly misadventures that arise from unconscious behavior and actions in the world. Some will be good, but other misadventures will result in trial, torment, and tribulation. They will be ordeals of misfortune, suffering, distress, trouble, worry, and woe.
No human is perfect, of this there is no doubt, but some humans conduct themselves with greater compassion, gentleness, and humanity that conduct peace, warmth, and brotherly love into the world. Meanwhile, other human beings conduct themselves with heartless indifference in the world, a consequence of unconsciousness that burdens the bearer over time by warping our marvelous abilities of thought bending them into monstrous variants of the survival instinct rapacious greed and vulturine avaricious.
What Does Scrooge Have to Do with Anything?
Want and Ignorance from A Christmas Carol (1984)
The classic story of Scrooge and the manifestation of Ignorance and Want as the children hiding inside the robes of Christmas Present. The Ghost tells Scrooge the children are the responsibility of all mankind.
On Quora, Gwendolyn Smith, a former teacher who has taught adolescents for 27 Years, answers this question: What is ignorance and want in ‘A Christmas Carol’?
Charles Dickens was a strong believer in social justice. He also understood that ignorance and want had the potential to doom our society if left unchecked. His use of the term want is different from our use today. To us, want means desire; to Dickens, it meant abject poverty, a complete lack of the barest necessities of life. Remember what the men who were collecting for the poor said — that want was felt even more keenly during this time of year — and Scrooge’s response: “Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?” His solution was to throw the poor and starving into prison and the jobless into workhouses. In other words, “It’s not my problem.”
The Spirit emphasizes that, as bad as want is, ignorance is worse. Why? Because as long as people remain ignorant — lacking in knowledge, information, and understanding — they will continue to lack the resources to gain jobs and work their way out of want. Instead, the problems will just compound, until society is destroyed by them. Want is self-perpetuating. Those of us who have the resources to do so must help those who languish in want and ignorance if we are ever to do away with them.
Dickens believed so strongly in the dangers of ignorance and want that he allegorized them as children, possibly to show that we as a society must take a hand in caring for the poor and the ignorant and help them learn the tools and skills to help themselves — the way we help our children. If we refuse, we, like Scrooge, are doomed.
Ignorance and Want from Pinterest (no source cited)
Just as ignorance and want are the terrible consequences of people who have been subjected to injustice in the real world because of the unjust systems we have created and imposed on ourselves, but mostly we have forgotten this small detail. They also have devastating consequences inside the minds of men and women. They are born and sustained by beliefs and inner narratives that operate much like algorithms or sheep dogs that shape one’s mind into an ignorant, stupid, one-eyed ogre. The story of Scrooge is very much about this kind of ignorance and want… indeed, it is the external expression of ignorance and want in the world suffered by the poor and disenfranchised people of the world that individual’s like Scrooge could help alleviate in the world exactly because of his wealth and the opportunities this afforded him.
It is because of the unlikely appearance of the apparition of Jacob Marley, Ebenezer Scrooge’s very miserly business partner that affords Scrooge to conduct an inner accounting of his beliefs and internal systems of consciousness that have governed his equally penny-pinching actions in the world. When we remain ignorant of the many different aspects of ourselves that exist inside our psyche, we tend to become very lopsided human beings that despite our best intentions to do good in the world usually end up doing a lot of bad things in the world, indeed, wicked things. This is because everything existing within the spectrum of consciousness is an energy and just because an individual refuses to admit certain aspects of who they are does not make them disappear. In fact, these lost, forgotten, unseen parts of self tend to gain energy and grow within the psyche, thereby gaining an outsized influence on an individual’s choices and actions. Even more dangerous, these splintered, unacknowledged aspects of one’s own psyche in a desperate effort to be seen by the Self so that it can be integrated into the wholeness of who one is as a conscious being, it will be projected onto “the other person” who becomes the villain or the cause of an undesired situation. This happens suddenly and naturally when an individual encounters a circumstance that triggers unconscious content into action. It is when we fail to recognize these aspects of ourselves and integrated them into the wholeness of who we are when we are most capable of conducting the greatest evil in the world.
The Real Story of Scrooge is Individuation
Scrooge is the story of individuation.
SCROOGE ON THE COUCH: HOW THE NUMINOUS TRANSFORMS | EPISODE 90 | Dec 19, 2019 | This is a fantastic podcast series Jungian in tone and flavor!
My friend Fabian Navin finds and shares absolutely wonderful concepts distilled and illuminated by Carl Jung and other individuals who took the process of individuation seriously. Ultimately, every man and every woman choose: to remain in the darkness of our own unconsciousness into which we all are born, or to release the light inside of us (trapped in matter) and reveal the divine, limitless being who walks between heaven and hell and survives.
Photo: Jolande Jacobi with C.G. Jung — From Fabian Navin’s post
Fabian Navin:December 26 at 8:30 PM
“To many people it seems inconceivable that there could be in their psyche autonomous contents and an activity which is not “done” or “willed” by them. It is one of the most important achievements of the individuation process to experience this non-ego, to make it conscious to a large extent and to accept it as a helpful, constant companion. To live only within the limited confines of the ego is senseless and painful. But to participate knowingly in the boundless creative life of the psyche and in the archetypal images of the non-ego is full of meaning because whatever we do or omit to do is then resolved in something greater than the ego.
Here a bridge may be thrown across to the metaphysical realm, and here Jung’s belief in God reveals itself. He asks: “The decisive question for man is: Are you related to something infinite or not? That is the criterion of his life . . . Only consciousness of our narrow confinement in the self-forms the link to the limitlessness of the unconscious. In this consciousness we experience ourselves concurrently as limited and eternal, as both the one and the other. In knowing ourselves to be unique in our personal combination—that is, ultimately limited—we also possess the capacity for becoming conscious of the infinite.”
Knowing participation in the “infinite” follows, in the psychological realm, from the awareness of the inner God-image, of the Self. Intimations of heaven and hell have been man’s since the earliest times, for these are the two poles—the light and the dark—between which his soul swings. A swing towards one side is always followed by an equal swing towards the other. Peace is found only at the centre, where man can be wholly man, neither angel nor devil, but simply man, partaker of both worlds. The search for this centre, for this balance of the soul, is a lifelong undertaking. It is the basic task and the ultimate goal of psychotherapy.
For this centre is also the place where the Divine filters through into the soul and reveals itself in the God-images, in the Self. It represents the moment of quiescence when the image of God can be perceived in the polished mirror of the soul. The “balance” meant here has nothing to do with what we call “happiness” in the ordinary sense of the word, nor with that state of freedom from care, suffering, and effort which hovers before most people’s eyes as the goal of their heart’s desire. Rather, it means a state in which both worlds, the light and the dark, the good and the bad, the joyful and the sorrowful, are united in self-evident acceptance and reflect the true nature of man, his inborn duality.
In this sense the individuation process leads to the highest possible development and completeness of the psychic personality and is a preparation for the end of life. Whether one goes the “natural”, more, or less unconscious way of individuation or takes the consciously worked through way depends, presumably, on fate. But one thing is certain: unconsciousness or wanting to remain unconscious, to escape the call to development and avoid the venture of life, is sin. For though growing old is the inescapable lot of all creatures, growing old meaningfully is a task ordained for man alone. What meaning has our life? None but what we give it.
The consciously undertaken way of individuation can, as we have seen, be considered from several points of view. In conclusion, we will list some of the most important.
As a process of psychological development, it represents the step-by-step maturation of the human psyche to the point where all its potentialities are unfolded, and the conscious and unconscious realms are united by integrating its historical roots with present-day consciousness.
From the point of view of characterology, it throws the typological profile of the individual into ever clearer relief. It facilitates increasing control of the auxiliary functions and of the undeveloped, inferior function and attitude, resulting in a growing capacity for judgment and decision and an extension of the freedom of the will.
From the sociological point of view, it integrates the individual with the collective and adapts the ego to the demands of life.
In psychotherapy it brings about a redistribution of psychic energy, assists the dissolution of complexes, identifications, and fixations, as well as the withdrawal of projections. It furnishes a means of recognizing and enduring one’s own shadow qualities, of finding one’s own values, and thus of overcoming neurosis.
Finally, from the religious point of view, it creates a living relation between man and the suprapersonal and gives him his proper place in the order of the universe. Through the encounter with the contents of the unconscious realm of the psyche and their integration with consciousness it lays the foundations of an independent, personal philosophy of life which, depending on the individual, may also ally itself with a particular creed.
The individuation process, however, cannot be grasped in its deepest essence, for it is a part of the mystery of transformation that pervades all creation. It includes within it the secret of life, which is ceaselessly reborn in passing through an ever renewed “death”.
“If man is to live,” says Jung, “he must fight and sacrifice his longing for the past in order to rise to his own heights. And having reached the noonday heights, he must sacrifice his love for his own achievement, for he may not loiter. The sun, too, sacrifices its greatest strength in order to hasten onward to the fruits of autumn, which are the seeds of rebirth.” If this sacrifice is made willingly—a deed possible for man alone and demanded again and again on the way of individuation — transformation and rebirth ensue.
Most people, however, prefer to be born only once. They are afraid of the pains without which there can be no birth. They have no trust in the natural striving of the psyche towards its goal. And so there are all too many who halt on life’s way. They venture nothing, they would rather forgo the prize.
Often even those who go the conscious way of individuation have not understood that the greatest problems in life can never be finally solved. “The meaning and purpose of a problem seem to lie not in its solution but in our working at it incessantly.” These words of Jung’s should console us for never having met a “fully individuated” person. For it is not the goal but the striving towards this goal that gives our life content and meaning.“
~Jolande Jacobi, The Way of Individuation, pp. 129-134
And here is another gem shared by Fabian Navin about individuation as experienced by the alchemists whom Jung studied and learned from greatly.
Fabian Navin:December 26 at 6:53 PM
“One of the most fascinating aspects of the esoteric tradition is that they view the human being as a sleeping God, there’s none of the sin stuff, we are not sinful creatures, we are divine creatures, but we have forgotten who we were, because the light has been trapped in matter, and so long as my spark of light is trapped in matter I’ll just keep reincarnating over and over again.
But if I can liberate that spark and then unite with it then, that would be the definition of enlightenment that the Anthropos symbolizes. So the Alchemists also believed that they were Redeemers ,they believed that they were Redeemers in many different ways, according to the Alchemists if the act of Christ’s redemption of the world was insufficient, it wasn’t complete, we have to complete it.
And again it views the alchemists as a very powerful spiritual being on par with the divinity in some ways. One of the ways they express this: they would use the book of Genesis, as in alchemical texts, and so they would work with light, try to create light in the way that God did, in order to create in their little world this new divine being. But the ones that were a little less philosophic and ambitious also believed that alchemists were Redeemers because they were transmuting lead into gold.
Now from their perspective, and I think this goes back to Aristotle, there was the idea that metals grew in the earth, that lead, if left in the earth for a million years would naturally become gold, it was their evolution. so lead is the sick gold, it’s a deformed gold, it’s an undeveloped gold. So the alchemist says: well I don’t want to wait a million years, I can do this in my laboratory in maybe five. They’re not just making gold so they have money, they’re trying to redeem lead, they’re trying to transmute it into its healthy form, and they had this idea with all of matter, that this earth could be a paradise if the impurities could be transmuted out and the lead of our own world could become a golden world.
They applied that to the human being, as Jung does, we start out lead, we’re unconscious, we’re chaotic, we’re impulsive and destructive and what-have-you, but we can transmute our psyches into gold, and if we do that, then we experience the Anthropos and then we experience ourselves as more than human, as more than lead. You know, as was said earlier: if you take the world that we live in at its concrete terms it’s a pretty hopeless situation, but if you take the world that we live in as something that could be transmuted and redeemed especially through the imagination, and through the finding of meaning, then it’s not so hopeless.” — Jeffrey Raff – Jung and the Alchemical Imagination
Jeffrey Raff – Jung and the Alchemical Imagination — Jun 13, 2020
We Are Numinous Creatures Who Have Forgotten So Much of Who We ARE
Interlocuteur: “If we became aware of the ancestral lives in us, we might disintegrate. An ancestor might take possession of us and ride us to death.” ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 139
“[W]ithout relatedness individuation is hardly possible. Relatedness begins with conversation mostly. Therefore communication is indubitably important.” –Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 609-610
We think we shape ourselves and try to act authentically. But our identity is malleable, and the unconscious plays a big role in that. To adapt with integrity, to be true to yourself, would require a clear sense of who you are, really and it is still context dependent. We are not the authors of our own narrative. Psychological well-being is tied to a coherent sense of self identity but is not its only source.
Here is a Real Systems Thinking Man
And this man is not known for his Systems Thinking, but he has done more to improve the systems we live inside than any Systems Thinker I have yet encountered:
“I should like now to pull together into one statement the conditions of this general hypothesis, and the effects which are specified. If I can create a relationship characterized on my part: by a genuineness and transparency, in which I am my real feelings; by a warm acceptance of and prizing of the other person as a separate individual; by a sensitive ability to see his world and himself as he sees them; Then the other individual in the relationship: will experience and understand aspects of himself which previously he has repressed; will find himself becoming better integrated, more able to function effectively; will become more similar to the person he would like to be; will be more self-directing and self-confident; will become more of a person, more unique and more self-expressive; will be more understanding, more acceptant of others; will be able to cope with the problems of life more adequately and more comfortably. I believe that this statement holds whether I am speaking of my relationship with a client, with a group of students or staff members, with my family or children. It seems to me that we have here a general hypothesis which offers exciting possibilities for the development of creative, adaptive, autonomous persons.”
~Carl Rogers, On Becoming a Person: A Therapist’s View of Psychotherapy
One, Two, Three — Go Forth, Be Conscious!
The Glorious Beingness of the Middle of December | Series: Have You Been Outside Today?
This is one of the videos I have been making during 2020 to survive it. I always end my video notes with the following questions:
What will you do with your Field of Consciousness today?
More importantly, what will your Unconsciousness doe with you today?
