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Kevin's avatar

A more of us "in the moment" and a less of the desired inanimate garbage that ends up in the landfill.

I am in Panama. Stores here sells Christmas trees imported from Quebec Canada. And tons of tinsel, Garland and multicolored christmas balls. We are 6 hours away from Panama City the main container port. There are butterball turkeys. Yuch. A force fed animal that has never seen the light of day, butchered for special occasions, stuffed with some concoction that is not butter, wrapped in thick plastic, frozen and shipped by truck, boat, truck, boat, truck, truck, so some spoiled asshole can gorge themself into a diabetic shock with piles of food. The next day add a mass of garbage to the landfill. WTF are we doing?

What an absolute waste of human energy and time. It is the tragedy of humanity.

The reason most are here is to get away from the rat race and enjoy the weather. We get here and bring there, here.

We poison the planet. We poison ourselves. We have lost our minds. This is not what "the Christ" is about. This is not peace and goodwill towards men.

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William Paul's avatar

Caitlin, you make a lot of thought-provoking points, for which I am grateful. But perhaps you know:

* You are landing on Plato's side of the literature argument between Plato and Aristotle. Plato wanted only lofty literature that elevated people. Aristotle wanted it all: realism, fantasy, etc. I am in Aristotle's camp because Plato ultimately wanted to ban 99% of the authors, like Homer, because they weren't down for his program of reprogramming the human race to be ruled by philosopher-kings.

Damn artists want to pursue their own independent visions!

If humans want to achieve peace and integration, they probably should study Carl Jung, specifically his concept of the shadow. The person who claims to be all light probably doesn't realize that he or she has equal parts shadow. If you are unaware of your shadow, it becomes dense and black, and the evil pops out in the worst way. Example: George W. Bush and Obama always talked about peace and love and freedom, and they bombed the hell out of everyone. With Obama, we were at war with someone for literally eight years straight, making him worse than Bush.

The ultimate goal, for Jung, was consciousness, which happens when we integrate our entire personality. This is difficult because our shadows contain everything we hate about others, and ourselves.

You don't have to act out the shadow, but you have to be aware that you can't get rid of it. You have to learn to express it in non-lethal ways.

Literature, movies, etc., can help us do that. We aren't getting ideas about murder and conquest from art. Those ideas are already present within us. By blaming those people over there, and saying how evil they are, we are just creating a dense, black shadow that will explode. Hence: Bush, Obama, Antifa, Biden's Injustice Department, etc.

Carl Jung is a great place to start. He's deep and endless, so be prepared to go on a journey of decades.

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