A favorite quote of mine is by Teilhard de Chardin, “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”
I've decided to live my life with the assumption it's true. It may not be and if it is not so, then the world does seem like a hollow sad place.
jamenta: Great quote. My Dad always told me, "Life is a mystery to be lived. Not a problem to be solved." He learned that from his father, who learned that from his father. The saying goes all the way back to Ireland.
Yes, A great quote. But now people have become more used to “being” as a mass noun, so if he were alive today, he could put it like this: We are not human forms experiencing being. We are being experiencing human forms.
"It’s easier to understand what’s going on in the world when you mentally “mute” people’s narratives about what’s going on and just look at the material movements of wealth, resources, weapons, and people."
I do that. Read Fortune's list of the biggest and most profitable companies. The biggest first world companies will get what they want. Biggest second world companies will be vigorously opposed. For example, in about 2013 Russia's Gaszprom was the most profitable in the world. Nowadays US foreign policy revolves around screwing over Gaszprom, while in 2022 Russia gave equally mighty Exxon Mobil a five billion dollar shafting.
In short, government is all about winning with whatever means are feasible.
It's impossible to hide the movement of trillions of dollars. Following such is a lot more effective than messing around with QAnon clues.
Contrary to liberal mythology, states are not participants in worlds; they are the guarantors of worlds and the keepers of value. Karl Rove was more right than anyone really cares to admit.
This is a great article by CJ. I was just thinking the same thing on the back patio (it's 101F in the shade at 6 PM here in Sonoma County, CA).
Dump the narratives and assumptions and look around to see what is really real. If you drop an apple it falls to the ground. The sun comes up and the sun goes down. Stars come out at night.
Get the BS out of our heads from people who want to manipulate us. "Make up your own mind."
I do disagree with #5. Everything is NOT beautiful. I spent 6 months working in the Amazon basin. Dysentery, daily dysentery, is not beautiful. The diseases, poisonous snakes, spiders, millipedes, piranhas... were not beautiful.
I admire any attempt to state fundamentals, and Caitlin’s effort is exceptionally good and useful, but I had a similar reaction to #5 (and a couple others in the list). I was reminded of Steve Martin’s old comedy routine about his belief in six of the Ten Commandments. Anyone who’s ever spent time in close proximity to nature, or on a factory farm, or in war, or at work in a soulless corporation knows everything is not beautiful. Good and evil are intertwined in this world, beauty is often just a seductive disguise, and evil seems to hold the better hand. Where you live, for example, before the colonizers arrived--when the coastline, forests, and mountains were still pristinely “beautiful”--some historians believe most of the natives died from bear attacks. To some engineers, scientists, generals, and politicians, a nuclear weapon is a thing of beauty. This is a deeply flawed world. In moments of brutal honesty, I wonder about the mind of the creator of such a place, whether that creator was Nature, or the ancient Canaanite storm god that most of us still worship, or our collective unconscious.
JackSirius: I often ponder the same questions of the Creator that you pose. So have theological scholars all through history. I've never found a satisfactory answer to the question.
Was it George Carlin who boiled down the Ten Commandments to only one or two? I've forgotten how it goes.
Thanks Caitlin. you make some good points. What is even more primary than movement of wealth is who creates wealth, and those are the people who provide the primary needs which are food, shelter, sanitation and physiological, medicine. Our quality of life has gone backward for the past 50 years in America, and the more significant reason is the growth of the non productive which now is in the scores of millions in America. The non productive are the the employed parasites who make their living manipulating people as a way of life, which in America is about half of the citizens. To support this class which we call the psychocrats, necessitates much of the evil that follows, such as Imperialism, It is only in the interest of the productive people to resolve this problem.
Number 7 - We have been pushed down by a negative force sooo long , that we haven't been able to succeed to our next level of Intelligence, understanding and Peace. We have the capability, but these World Elitist and possibly non human interferences need to be destroyed first. There is no living along side of these Demons.
#5. "Everything is beautiful." There is indeed a cornucopia of exquisite beauty in all sorts of arenas on this planet & in our lives. However, since most life forms suffer being eaten alive that concept of beauty might not actually be true for all beings. There is also much truth in the saying that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
#8. "Reality is nondual". We're all one, yes, *but* one cannot be the observer *and* the observed at the same absolutely precise instant. You might say, what of a mirror?, to which I'd say, what of the speed of light?, etc. Strange things go on at the quantum level. I've spent a long time pondering such things and have concocted my own 'Theory of Everything' which will be published on the net soon in language that the noted physicist, Ernest Rutherford, would approve of. He suggested that his students should be able to explain clearly what they are involved in to the barmaid/barman. This may help us free ourselves from the present headlong rush into extinction. I really do hope so. However, it is supremely important to understand [overstand?] that everything must pass & that the universe creation cycles are infinite in number so 'we' all will probably get a turn at everything, good & bad! Balance. Equilibrium. Karma. Call it what you will. It's reality.
#9. "The self is an illusion". Bang on target. Susan Blackmore's book, "The Meme Machine", ISBN-13: 978-0-19-268212-9, explains this illusion with great clarity & has been very helpful in the preparation of my own version of the 'Theory of Everything'.
#12, concerning antisocial personality disorders, is true enough. In my view, some form of Direct Democracy will help us remove the concentrated power away from dangerous psychopaths & allow us to thrive, fulfil our potentials and leave a glorious world for our children to enjoy. It's certainly worth noting that vile but somehow tolerated child/baby abuse in the form of ritual circumcision leaves in its wake galaxies of Cluster 'B' personality disorders that help to mess things up even further in society.
Psychopaths exist first because of class distinction, which is one when group provides the necessities of survival and the other group makes their living manipulating people by words and images, and capital. The psychopath has contradictions in their mind, and lashes out as we see in all the Mass Murder in America. The government and politicians in a democracy serve the interest of the class they belong to, and it not us, the productive people. As a working RN, I see how the dangers are inflicted upon us, and it is even worse for those in the food and construction industries. Much of this ugliness is not even conscience but is rooted in the need of the non productive to get more out of for less so the other non producers keep their ways of life. To many, we have become invisible. This is one reason why so many shows regarding productive labor are on T.V. because of the mass of non producers, we ae almost exotic. The solution if to organize as class for its own power, to dminish the personality disorders.
Private property can't exist without coercion. It's an unnatural separation that has to be enforced. Possession, aka 9/10s of the law, is an entirely different, more material thing.
No, the labor theory of value only applies to slave societies such as Christianity. To project the present love of private property, slavery, and other evils onto the past is a well-known error.
"Private property can't exist without coercion." I agree. I agree that force is what enforces private property. I don't need a government to help me determine what is not mine. I know what's mine. The key to your sentence, which is correct, is the absence of the word government.
Actually, property doesn't exist without a state and a value system to enforce it. Outside of that, your rights and your feelings and your claims are meaningless and your ideological forebears have purged peoples for less, so you can also spare your middle class whining about the fact that you too are mortal.
Have you considered actually growing up as a human being instead of dissipating yourself in some LARP?
Any predator can say exactly the same; and it might be true that only predators would say such magical, incurious, ahistorical, obviously programmed thinking. Please, don't repeat myths or fantastic nonsense or posture as if you are important, and instead read a historical survey of this stuff:
I don't want to continue the conversation, or at least not in this vein. To the extent of my preemptive lack of manners, I apologize. I am curious, though, about your belief system. I am anarcho-capitalist. May I politely ask how you categorize yourself? (Not that I guarantee I will reply.)
"… you do not become a “dissident” just because you decide one day to take up this most unusual career. You are thrown into it by your personal sense of responsibility, combined with a complex set of external circumstances. You are cast out of the existing structures and placed in a position of conflict with them. It begins as an attempt to do your work well, and ends with being branded an enemy of society. […]
By breaking the rules of the game, he has disrupted the game as such. He has exposed it as a mere game. He has shattered the world of appearances, the fundamental pillar of the system. He has upset the power structure by tearing apart what holds it together. He has demonstrated that living a lie is living a lie. He has broken through the exalted facade of the system and exposed the real, base foundations of power. He has said that the emperor is naked. And because the emperor is in fact naked, something extremely dangerous has happened: by his action, the greengrocer has addressed the world. He has enabled everyone to peer behind the curtain. He has shown everyone that it is possible to live within the truth. Living within the lie can constitute the system only if it is universal. The principle must embrace and permeate everything. There are no terms whatsoever on which it can co-exist with living within the truth, and therefore everyone who steps out of line denies it in principle and threatens it in its entirety."
bill wolfe: H. Mencken said it better and in fewer words:
"The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable." H. L. Mencken
"The point where living within the truth ceases to be a mere negation of living with a lie and becomes articulate in a particular way is the point at which something is born that might be called the “independent spiritual, social, and political life of society.” This independent life is not separated from the rest of life (“dependent life”) by some sharply defined line. Both types frequently co-exist in the same people. Nevertheless, its most important focus is marked by a relatively high degree of inner emancipation. It sails upon the vast ocean of the manipulated life like little boats, tossed by the waves but always bobbing back as visible messengers of living within the truth, articulating the suppressed aims of life.
What is this independent life of society? The spectrum of its expressions and activities is naturally very wide. It includes everything from self-education and thinking about the world, through free creative activity and its communication to others, to the most varied free, civic attitudes, including instances of independent social self-organization. In short, it is an area in which living within the truth becomes articulate and materializes in a visible way."
All of this is highly commendable. We all make mistakes and are meant to learn from them. There is no place for overweening guilt, a tool of religion to keep you in a state of subservience, forever asking for forgiveness from those not authorized to give it in the first place, and in need of it themselves. The planet is beautiful, and its creations are beautiful. There is everything here to promote a good, enjoyable life. The signs all point to it. We cannot even imagine a more beautiful planet, and all our ideas of beauty are derived from it. Those who insist on making it ugly and punitive might someday find themselves in a universe of their own making. Or that's what I am inclined to think when in a rare philosophical or mystical mood.
Doris W E: Where do you live? "The planet is beautiful"? Take a trip to the Amazonian rainforest and live in the jungle for a week or two. You may change your opinion.
On point 13: I disagree completely. There is always healthy criticism to be delivered and received. The way this point is phrased seems to advocate for zero self reflection.
Eg. I am not a narcissist for spending years trying to get people to believe negative things about themselves if they mask kids, victim blame the jab injured or celebrate medical apartheid.
I suggest instead that the best way to avoid sociopaths and narcissists is to have healthy models of self analysis, and to actively and kindly speak out against injustice. Sociopaths and narcissists hate that. Otherwise you can fall victim to guilt (point 11 is spot on), and start thinking it is your fault for openly criticising things none of us should tolerate.
Shane: No. I agree with CJ on this point. Someone who wants you to think negatively about yourself is to be avoided immediately. Someone who puts you on the defensive with a question.
For example: "Why weren't you at the funeral? Why weren't you at the nursing home? Why can't you take care of the folks? You are retired. You have nothing better to do."
Or perhaps: "Why is your house always a mess? Your kids are so messy. Don't you buy them any good clothes? Do you ever discipline them?"
Passive-aggressive questions can be used by anyone, not just narcissists, and I agree they are unpleasant for many people. Questions which put you on the defensive might also be asked by anyone, not just sociopaths. Since your opinion is valid and well expressed, I guess I should not have generalised. How about this reframe:
I enjoy questions, or even constructive criticisms being made of me, and I enjoy offering the same to other people with their permission. I like to hope that my honesty in this regard has (mostly) repelled the attentions of sociopaths and narcissists.
Shane Pisani: In the Old West of the uSA, it was considered rude to even ask someone their name. Perhaps, it is more a matter of bad manners to have conversations consisting of questions than it is the action of a sociopath or narcissist.
You are a good person to accept constructive criticism. I guess I've become an old grump as I no longer do. The old Jesus saying about, "Do not complain about the splinter in a man's eyes when you have a timber in your own." is what I always think when people criticize me.
"Everyone's a critic." My Dad would always say.
In Ireland a question is answered with a question:
"How many pints didja have last night at the pub?"
I agree too but narcissism is something you see almost everywhere you go bc that's what the U.S. empire is built on, so you're talking like eliminating a looooot of people and if you're a third party, those are heavily demonized.
When someone has built their entire ego around that and then some category 5 hurricane suddenly and unexpectedly destructs their ego, yeah I can expect to be demonized. The U.S. isn't used to having just the 2 mainstream political factions but the FBI and the CIA are far worse today than they have ever been. It's that concentration of power that really gets to me and yeah, this is human nature but those 2 institutions aren't.
Brooke K: I thought the US Empire was built on greed and power. Is that a good description of narcissism? I don't understand me being a third party. I don't want to eliminate a looooot of people, just avoid them. And what does "heavily demonized" mean? Can someone be lightly demonized?
Anything goes? You'd think Latin America would be one of the first places to make sure that didn't happen bc Che Guevara is like this huge icon there and all over the world combating American lawlessness. Like for example, I was a victim of "revenge porn" with an ex but Idk if a bj even qualifies as porn bc it's not a big deal and I didn't even know I was being watched so that's video voyuear and slander which carries a hefty fine if found guilty and they made such a huge deal about me wearing yellow boy shorts and a black t-shirt which is like the equivalent of wearing a 2 piece bathing suit but I was covered up much more than that so I was being called a sex worker which I wasn't and never have been obviously but sex work is apparently something to be shamed for and the only legalized sex work is from the ruling class, biggest sluts on planet earth but nobody bats an eye about that. So, It's always been the working and middle classes fighting against "anything goes"
Brooke Kesterson: My only Latin American experience was in 1990 working on a film in the Amazon for six months. The film crew and actors were based in Belem, Brazil.
Sex was just another part of life there, perhaps the biggest part. Religion was big, too. But there wasn't religious persecution of sex or sex workers. It wasn't anything like the USA.
Everyone was poor. I suppose there was a middle class. I met a hotel manager and her family. They had a nice apartment in a high rise. But nothing fancy.
The hospital was practically medieval.
No one was fat. No one was old.
Women outnumbered men 9-1 I was told and it seemed like that was true. (Disease and climate kill the boy children more than girls.)
Yeah I know, the U.S. is or was so medieval and backwards from the rest of the world, we're still stuck in the dinosaur age. Che Guevara was eventually captured by the CIA in the Amazon and that was his original warning to the western world about this covert institution. They are the extreme Christian right bible thumping about the old testament to kick every naked person out of the garden of Eden and become sexless and clothed.
A third party is actually quite common everywhere else around the world, but the U.S. acts like it's unheard of. They can't seem to accept it that nobody has to do what they tell them to do. I mean to them it's just so bordering on the "goddamn commie" bc I happen to be born in Florida just 90 miles from Cuba and they don't take too kindly menacing forces bordering so close to the U.S. lol
Brooke K: Ahh, you are talking about political parties. I wish America had a parliamentary system with many political parties. I think it would be harder to have wars that way.
People love telling others what do do here in the SF Bay Area in California. Drives me nuts.
"80% of human intelligence is minding your own business and the other 20% doesn't amount to much." Robert Heinlein
Fucking American exceptionalism. You have more freedom in communist Stalinist China than you do here. This is the dumbest shit hole country in the entire history of the world.
bill wolfe: "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" is one of my favorite stories. It is easy to be bullied when you think you are doing the right thing. And then one day, you realize that the bully is full of shit.
A favorite quote of mine is by Teilhard de Chardin, “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”
I've decided to live my life with the assumption it's true. It may not be and if it is not so, then the world does seem like a hollow sad place.
I love that quote. So true. We are more than just mere physical forms. We are spirit and light.
jamenta: Great quote. My Dad always told me, "Life is a mystery to be lived. Not a problem to be solved." He learned that from his father, who learned that from his father. The saying goes all the way back to Ireland.
Yes, A great quote. But now people have become more used to “being” as a mass noun, so if he were alive today, he could put it like this: We are not human forms experiencing being. We are being experiencing human forms.
Believe me, it's true. I know.
"It’s easier to understand what’s going on in the world when you mentally “mute” people’s narratives about what’s going on and just look at the material movements of wealth, resources, weapons, and people."
I do that. Read Fortune's list of the biggest and most profitable companies. The biggest first world companies will get what they want. Biggest second world companies will be vigorously opposed. For example, in about 2013 Russia's Gaszprom was the most profitable in the world. Nowadays US foreign policy revolves around screwing over Gaszprom, while in 2022 Russia gave equally mighty Exxon Mobil a five billion dollar shafting.
In short, government is all about winning with whatever means are feasible.
It's impossible to hide the movement of trillions of dollars. Following such is a lot more effective than messing around with QAnon clues.
Contrary to liberal mythology, states are not participants in worlds; they are the guarantors of worlds and the keepers of value. Karl Rove was more right than anyone really cares to admit.
PP: As the saying goes, "Show me the money!"
Horsea T. Nowadays it would be called "Soylent White".
This is a great article by CJ. I was just thinking the same thing on the back patio (it's 101F in the shade at 6 PM here in Sonoma County, CA).
Dump the narratives and assumptions and look around to see what is really real. If you drop an apple it falls to the ground. The sun comes up and the sun goes down. Stars come out at night.
Get the BS out of our heads from people who want to manipulate us. "Make up your own mind."
I do disagree with #5. Everything is NOT beautiful. I spent 6 months working in the Amazon basin. Dysentery, daily dysentery, is not beautiful. The diseases, poisonous snakes, spiders, millipedes, piranhas... were not beautiful.
The people were beautiful.
I admire any attempt to state fundamentals, and Caitlin’s effort is exceptionally good and useful, but I had a similar reaction to #5 (and a couple others in the list). I was reminded of Steve Martin’s old comedy routine about his belief in six of the Ten Commandments. Anyone who’s ever spent time in close proximity to nature, or on a factory farm, or in war, or at work in a soulless corporation knows everything is not beautiful. Good and evil are intertwined in this world, beauty is often just a seductive disguise, and evil seems to hold the better hand. Where you live, for example, before the colonizers arrived--when the coastline, forests, and mountains were still pristinely “beautiful”--some historians believe most of the natives died from bear attacks. To some engineers, scientists, generals, and politicians, a nuclear weapon is a thing of beauty. This is a deeply flawed world. In moments of brutal honesty, I wonder about the mind of the creator of such a place, whether that creator was Nature, or the ancient Canaanite storm god that most of us still worship, or our collective unconscious.
Blake said it best.
“Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?”
JackSirius: I often ponder the same questions of the Creator that you pose. So have theological scholars all through history. I've never found a satisfactory answer to the question.
Was it George Carlin who boiled down the Ten Commandments to only one or two? I've forgotten how it goes.
The Black quote is very good.
PS: "Blake quote". Damn spellchecker.
barbaric practice of a barbaric people
I would add to number 3: you also have to dig deep into history and be lucky enough (for lack of a better term) to stumble on the right books.
Wow. Fascinating. Insightful. Useful! Thank you.
Thanks Caitlin. you make some good points. What is even more primary than movement of wealth is who creates wealth, and those are the people who provide the primary needs which are food, shelter, sanitation and physiological, medicine. Our quality of life has gone backward for the past 50 years in America, and the more significant reason is the growth of the non productive which now is in the scores of millions in America. The non productive are the the employed parasites who make their living manipulating people as a way of life, which in America is about half of the citizens. To support this class which we call the psychocrats, necessitates much of the evil that follows, such as Imperialism, It is only in the interest of the productive people to resolve this problem.
This was all intentional. Khazarian Mafia.
Number 7 - We have been pushed down by a negative force sooo long , that we haven't been able to succeed to our next level of Intelligence, understanding and Peace. We have the capability, but these World Elitist and possibly non human interferences need to be destroyed first. There is no living along side of these Demons.
#5. "Everything is beautiful." There is indeed a cornucopia of exquisite beauty in all sorts of arenas on this planet & in our lives. However, since most life forms suffer being eaten alive that concept of beauty might not actually be true for all beings. There is also much truth in the saying that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
#8. "Reality is nondual". We're all one, yes, *but* one cannot be the observer *and* the observed at the same absolutely precise instant. You might say, what of a mirror?, to which I'd say, what of the speed of light?, etc. Strange things go on at the quantum level. I've spent a long time pondering such things and have concocted my own 'Theory of Everything' which will be published on the net soon in language that the noted physicist, Ernest Rutherford, would approve of. He suggested that his students should be able to explain clearly what they are involved in to the barmaid/barman. This may help us free ourselves from the present headlong rush into extinction. I really do hope so. However, it is supremely important to understand [overstand?] that everything must pass & that the universe creation cycles are infinite in number so 'we' all will probably get a turn at everything, good & bad! Balance. Equilibrium. Karma. Call it what you will. It's reality.
#9. "The self is an illusion". Bang on target. Susan Blackmore's book, "The Meme Machine", ISBN-13: 978-0-19-268212-9, explains this illusion with great clarity & has been very helpful in the preparation of my own version of the 'Theory of Everything'.
#12, concerning antisocial personality disorders, is true enough. In my view, some form of Direct Democracy will help us remove the concentrated power away from dangerous psychopaths & allow us to thrive, fulfil our potentials and leave a glorious world for our children to enjoy. It's certainly worth noting that vile but somehow tolerated child/baby abuse in the form of ritual circumcision leaves in its wake galaxies of Cluster 'B' personality disorders that help to mess things up even further in society.
Psychopaths exist first because of class distinction, which is one when group provides the necessities of survival and the other group makes their living manipulating people by words and images, and capital. The psychopath has contradictions in their mind, and lashes out as we see in all the Mass Murder in America. The government and politicians in a democracy serve the interest of the class they belong to, and it not us, the productive people. As a working RN, I see how the dangers are inflicted upon us, and it is even worse for those in the food and construction industries. Much of this ugliness is not even conscience but is rooted in the need of the non productive to get more out of for less so the other non producers keep their ways of life. To many, we have become invisible. This is one reason why so many shows regarding productive labor are on T.V. because of the mass of non producers, we ae almost exotic. The solution if to organize as class for its own power, to dminish the personality disorders.
#16! Coercive government is always evil, no matter what you think or how you feel. All. ways.
Private property can't exist without coercion. It's an unnatural separation that has to be enforced. Possession, aka 9/10s of the law, is an entirely different, more material thing.
In Fiji, I believe it is called "Kari Kari" which boils down to, "You have it, I need it, I'll take it".
The problem is then that no one works to improve anything because no one wants to get ripped off.
No, the labor theory of value only applies to slave societies such as Christianity. To project the present love of private property, slavery, and other evils onto the past is a well-known error.
Even wikipedia contradicts this idea.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value
"Private property can't exist without coercion." I agree. I agree that force is what enforces private property. I don't need a government to help me determine what is not mine. I know what's mine. The key to your sentence, which is correct, is the absence of the word government.
Actually, property doesn't exist without a state and a value system to enforce it. Outside of that, your rights and your feelings and your claims are meaningless and your ideological forebears have purged peoples for less, so you can also spare your middle class whining about the fact that you too are mortal.
Have you considered actually growing up as a human being instead of dissipating yourself in some LARP?
Wrong. Property exists with or without a state whether or not your programming allows you to process it or not.
Any predator can say exactly the same; and it might be true that only predators would say such magical, incurious, ahistorical, obviously programmed thinking. Please, don't repeat myths or fantastic nonsense or posture as if you are important, and instead read a historical survey of this stuff:
https://davidgraeber.org/wp-content/uploads/2007-Manners-Defference-and-Private-Property-Or-elements-for-a-general-theory-of-hierarchy.pdf
I don't want to continue the conversation, or at least not in this vein. To the extent of my preemptive lack of manners, I apologize. I am curious, though, about your belief system. I am anarcho-capitalist. May I politely ask how you categorize yourself? (Not that I guarantee I will reply.)
As Vaclev Havel wrote, to live in truth:
"… you do not become a “dissident” just because you decide one day to take up this most unusual career. You are thrown into it by your personal sense of responsibility, combined with a complex set of external circumstances. You are cast out of the existing structures and placed in a position of conflict with them. It begins as an attempt to do your work well, and ends with being branded an enemy of society. […]
By breaking the rules of the game, he has disrupted the game as such. He has exposed it as a mere game. He has shattered the world of appearances, the fundamental pillar of the system. He has upset the power structure by tearing apart what holds it together. He has demonstrated that living a lie is living a lie. He has broken through the exalted facade of the system and exposed the real, base foundations of power. He has said that the emperor is naked. And because the emperor is in fact naked, something extremely dangerous has happened: by his action, the greengrocer has addressed the world. He has enabled everyone to peer behind the curtain. He has shown everyone that it is possible to live within the truth. Living within the lie can constitute the system only if it is universal. The principle must embrace and permeate everything. There are no terms whatsoever on which it can co-exist with living within the truth, and therefore everyone who steps out of line denies it in principle and threatens it in its entirety."
http://www.wolfenotes.com/2015/06/after-a-decade-at-the-barricades-the-lights-go-out-at-nj-peer/
bill wolfe: H. Mencken said it better and in fewer words:
"The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable." H. L. Mencken
We close by returning to Havel:
"The point where living within the truth ceases to be a mere negation of living with a lie and becomes articulate in a particular way is the point at which something is born that might be called the “independent spiritual, social, and political life of society.” This independent life is not separated from the rest of life (“dependent life”) by some sharply defined line. Both types frequently co-exist in the same people. Nevertheless, its most important focus is marked by a relatively high degree of inner emancipation. It sails upon the vast ocean of the manipulated life like little boats, tossed by the waves but always bobbing back as visible messengers of living within the truth, articulating the suppressed aims of life.
What is this independent life of society? The spectrum of its expressions and activities is naturally very wide. It includes everything from self-education and thinking about the world, through free creative activity and its communication to others, to the most varied free, civic attitudes, including instances of independent social self-organization. In short, it is an area in which living within the truth becomes articulate and materializes in a visible way."
Brilliant work Caitlin!
You're on a roll, and going vertical.
Keep it up!
All of this is highly commendable. We all make mistakes and are meant to learn from them. There is no place for overweening guilt, a tool of religion to keep you in a state of subservience, forever asking for forgiveness from those not authorized to give it in the first place, and in need of it themselves. The planet is beautiful, and its creations are beautiful. There is everything here to promote a good, enjoyable life. The signs all point to it. We cannot even imagine a more beautiful planet, and all our ideas of beauty are derived from it. Those who insist on making it ugly and punitive might someday find themselves in a universe of their own making. Or that's what I am inclined to think when in a rare philosophical or mystical mood.
Doris W E: Where do you live? "The planet is beautiful"? Take a trip to the Amazonian rainforest and live in the jungle for a week or two. You may change your opinion.
Number 13 explains my ex-spouse to a tee!
Number 10 explains my relationship with my current spouse.
Thanks for the useful facts. We would do well to print them out and put them in our wallets or download them to our phones for quick reference.
On point 13: I disagree completely. There is always healthy criticism to be delivered and received. The way this point is phrased seems to advocate for zero self reflection.
Eg. I am not a narcissist for spending years trying to get people to believe negative things about themselves if they mask kids, victim blame the jab injured or celebrate medical apartheid.
I suggest instead that the best way to avoid sociopaths and narcissists is to have healthy models of self analysis, and to actively and kindly speak out against injustice. Sociopaths and narcissists hate that. Otherwise you can fall victim to guilt (point 11 is spot on), and start thinking it is your fault for openly criticising things none of us should tolerate.
Shane: No. I agree with CJ on this point. Someone who wants you to think negatively about yourself is to be avoided immediately. Someone who puts you on the defensive with a question.
For example: "Why weren't you at the funeral? Why weren't you at the nursing home? Why can't you take care of the folks? You are retired. You have nothing better to do."
Or perhaps: "Why is your house always a mess? Your kids are so messy. Don't you buy them any good clothes? Do you ever discipline them?"
Anyone who says things like that is a narcissist.
Run away!
Passive-aggressive questions can be used by anyone, not just narcissists, and I agree they are unpleasant for many people. Questions which put you on the defensive might also be asked by anyone, not just sociopaths. Since your opinion is valid and well expressed, I guess I should not have generalised. How about this reframe:
I enjoy questions, or even constructive criticisms being made of me, and I enjoy offering the same to other people with their permission. I like to hope that my honesty in this regard has (mostly) repelled the attentions of sociopaths and narcissists.
Shane Pisani: In the Old West of the uSA, it was considered rude to even ask someone their name. Perhaps, it is more a matter of bad manners to have conversations consisting of questions than it is the action of a sociopath or narcissist.
You are a good person to accept constructive criticism. I guess I've become an old grump as I no longer do. The old Jesus saying about, "Do not complain about the splinter in a man's eyes when you have a timber in your own." is what I always think when people criticize me.
"Everyone's a critic." My Dad would always say.
In Ireland a question is answered with a question:
"How many pints didja have last night at the pub?"
"You still can't add can ya Paddie?"
I agree too but narcissism is something you see almost everywhere you go bc that's what the U.S. empire is built on, so you're talking like eliminating a looooot of people and if you're a third party, those are heavily demonized.
When someone has built their entire ego around that and then some category 5 hurricane suddenly and unexpectedly destructs their ego, yeah I can expect to be demonized. The U.S. isn't used to having just the 2 mainstream political factions but the FBI and the CIA are far worse today than they have ever been. It's that concentration of power that really gets to me and yeah, this is human nature but those 2 institutions aren't.
Brooke K: I thought the US Empire was built on greed and power. Is that a good description of narcissism? I don't understand me being a third party. I don't want to eliminate a looooot of people, just avoid them. And what does "heavily demonized" mean? Can someone be lightly demonized?
Anything goes? You'd think Latin America would be one of the first places to make sure that didn't happen bc Che Guevara is like this huge icon there and all over the world combating American lawlessness. Like for example, I was a victim of "revenge porn" with an ex but Idk if a bj even qualifies as porn bc it's not a big deal and I didn't even know I was being watched so that's video voyuear and slander which carries a hefty fine if found guilty and they made such a huge deal about me wearing yellow boy shorts and a black t-shirt which is like the equivalent of wearing a 2 piece bathing suit but I was covered up much more than that so I was being called a sex worker which I wasn't and never have been obviously but sex work is apparently something to be shamed for and the only legalized sex work is from the ruling class, biggest sluts on planet earth but nobody bats an eye about that. So, It's always been the working and middle classes fighting against "anything goes"
Brooke Kesterson: My only Latin American experience was in 1990 working on a film in the Amazon for six months. The film crew and actors were based in Belem, Brazil.
Sex was just another part of life there, perhaps the biggest part. Religion was big, too. But there wasn't religious persecution of sex or sex workers. It wasn't anything like the USA.
Everyone was poor. I suppose there was a middle class. I met a hotel manager and her family. They had a nice apartment in a high rise. But nothing fancy.
The hospital was practically medieval.
No one was fat. No one was old.
Women outnumbered men 9-1 I was told and it seemed like that was true. (Disease and climate kill the boy children more than girls.)
In Belem "revenge porn" would be laughed at.
Yeah I know, the U.S. is or was so medieval and backwards from the rest of the world, we're still stuck in the dinosaur age. Che Guevara was eventually captured by the CIA in the Amazon and that was his original warning to the western world about this covert institution. They are the extreme Christian right bible thumping about the old testament to kick every naked person out of the garden of Eden and become sexless and clothed.
A third party is actually quite common everywhere else around the world, but the U.S. acts like it's unheard of. They can't seem to accept it that nobody has to do what they tell them to do. I mean to them it's just so bordering on the "goddamn commie" bc I happen to be born in Florida just 90 miles from Cuba and they don't take too kindly menacing forces bordering so close to the U.S. lol
Brooke K: Ahh, you are talking about political parties. I wish America had a parliamentary system with many political parties. I think it would be harder to have wars that way.
People love telling others what do do here in the SF Bay Area in California. Drives me nuts.
"80% of human intelligence is minding your own business and the other 20% doesn't amount to much." Robert Heinlein
Fucking American exceptionalism. You have more freedom in communist Stalinist China than you do here. This is the dumbest shit hole country in the entire history of the world.
Continually striving toward the light of truth will bring us all home.
Mona M: I don't know if we ever get to go home, but striving toward the light is the best way to go IMO.
My dog is laying down in the shade. My dog is sprinting after some critter.
He's living in truth only in the latter case.
Frantz Fanon made action central to agency very clear:
http://www.openanthropology.org/fanonviolence.htm
and so did James Baldwin, Malcolm X, Emerson, Mario Savio, and Ernest Hemingway - regarding the latter, see:
~ The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber – Ernest Hemingway, 1936)
http://www.tarleton.edu/Faculty/sword/Short%20Story/The%20Short%20Happy%20Life%20of%20Francis%20Macomber.pdf:
bill wolfe: "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" is one of my favorite stories. It is easy to be bullied when you think you are doing the right thing. And then one day, you realize that the bully is full of shit.