Assorted ThoughtsMuch of my writing is not well organized at this point, |
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Of course, religion makes the whole notion of voices and visions appear foolish and dogmatic, rather than a vital survival skill to restore balance to a social/economic/political system far out of line with nature.
Being reduced to an object is psychological death. It means one is no longer an actor but a link in an infinite chain of cause and effect. The knowledge of that fact has to be carefully sealed off from awareness. There is usually a sacrificial caste, some group that is forced to deal with objectification so that other groups don't have to. That's why drugs are popular, they give back subjectivity when one feels like an object.
Do societies have a balancing mechanism that enables them, if they are sufficiently aware and intuitive, to prepare for runaway feedback spirals and other forms of chaos in the cultural matrix? If there is a serious threat to the stability of the whole organism from dogmatic authoritarian governments or fascist social strains, does the organism have the ability to heal itself and repair the split, squeezing out the poison? Does it depend on the level of interconnection among various groups which contain and protect the intuitives whose visions make up an early warning system? And what if fiction, art, and entertainment are a sort of search net, a radio tuner looking for the station whose signal can unify and guide us through the future? Howard Bloom calls science fiction the "antenna of the sciences". I think that's a great analogy. I think of imagination as a sort of cultural immune system, or scenario planning matrix. Individual stories, dreams and inventions are like trial balloons, and when the time is right, the balloons that are appropriate for the era become switched on like genes, amplified, duplicated and sent through the cultural bloodstream. If crime gets above a certain level (or if people just become more aware of it through media amplification) strategies for dealing with crime are picked from the carpet of fiction and nonfiction produced in response to the pathogen. Crime shows on TV are becoming increasingly well-produced and accurate, perhaps in response to the perception that the justice and prison system are locked into an unhealthy paradigm. Distributing stories from members of subsystems to the larger system would increase the pool of ideas needed to change systems locked into faulty axiomatic as opposed to ecological procedures. Of course, a system in which the right memes cannot get enough attention to produce that switching and amplification effect will be like an immune-deficient body, which is why our media system is being challenged by the decentralized home-studio and internet wave. If one social network puts its status and ego needs above the health of the whole, other groups begin to flow around it like water flooding cracks in a wall, leading to the wall crumbling and allowing the immune response to function again. Our need to elevate celebrities to great heights and delight in their fall may be a symptom of a system which caters to unhealthy narcissism or exclusionary eitism. It "teaches us a lesson" about influence and ego. Interesting to think about the role of money in light of this model. What if there were a pervasive fatal flaw in American culture, or even
global culture, something ignored for centuries because the problem could
always be reframed as an issue of how to expel a group or person as a
"contaminant"? Each group would take turns punishing some other
group for having that flaw, but without dealing with it in themselves.
Let's say the problem is something like, "Everyone is escalating
arguments to the point where reasonable discussion is impossible and any
sense of shared public space is eroded". If that were the basic problem,
simply proving a group to be wrong and expelling it from the process would
only perpetuate the flaw. What then? Rational thinking would be hijacked
as a tool for groups to justify excluding and demonizing other groups,
leading to an erosion of shared space and a fragmentation of culture.
Even academia, which ought to be above that nonsense, can be somewhat
tribalistic and exclusive. One of the reasons Evangelical Christians became
so influential in politics is because they felt excluded in academia.
The charge of "political correctness" enabled the Right to marginalize
the Left entirely (which, ironically, led to the Right becoming more "politically
correct" than the Left). There is no shared space for discussion
where each person can be assured he will be heard and respected, even
if his views aren't persuasive to the rest. I would ask that anyone who finds a spark of empathy for their enemy,
or who finds some deeper awareness One lesson people will eventually have to learn is that you don't have to see yourself or your culture as evil in order to be involved in evil. Evil is a slow process, where everyone takes one step toward what they think will be security, popularity, a promotion, or some other reward. Surprisingly, a lot of evil is done in order to feel innocent. That's why it's so hard to resolve conflicts when people are convinced their enemy is evil... if they drop that perception, then they have to see their own part in the conflict and feel guilty. To some extent, we all do that in our culture, making compromises with our hearts in order to gain security or feel less guilty. When enough people do that in small, daily decisions, it can amplify into an avalanche, and that really can cause fascism and violence and other nasty collective diseases. Of course, when we're watching TV and hear about some horrible crime, it's easy enough to say "They're so EVIL!" But that's moral gum-chewing, it has no nutritional value and is really no more moral than ignoring evil altogether. In evolutionary terms, it makes more sense to err on the side of security than to take risks, and that's why the social fabric can get so precariously thin... people start avoiding danger to the degree that they lose the ability to reach out. They withdraw into groups where they feel safe and avoid contact with other groups, sometimes blowing up the tiniest differences in belief into huge gaps that can't be overcome. Eventually the culture is destroyed by its own lack of cohesion, or invaded. It's a fractal pattern, so each individual can feel his or her part in the fragmentation process is not their fault, yet everyone inherits guilt from it and some go insane because they can't distinguish their individual guilt from the collective "sin" they're part of. Cynicism is stereotyping a wide range of situations as potentially harmful.
Often it involves taking a wide view of time, so that even helping people
who are clearly harmless is seen as a potentially draining commitment
in the long term ("If I help them now, they'll just keep wanting
help and take advantage of me") There are a lot of cognitive errors
and automatic reactions involved, and "cynicism" is just a general
label slapped over something more complex and involved. There is no cure
for cynicism, because there is no sensory information in the word "cynicism".
But changing how you react to specific situations is possible. Sometimes
cynics are just very sensitive and feel they have to help in EVERY situation,
and then go to the other extreme when that backfires. It helps to talk
about specifics, what happened when and how that became generalized into
"avoid everything that reminds me of this". There's a tendency
for a series of bad experiences to coalesce into a massive generalization
about life, so you have to dig beneath a generalization and go into what
actually happened and how you felt about it. At this point in history,
where television and current events have put us all in a state of hypervigilance,
we really need to confront fear of loss and death, and probably some guilt
as well. We need to ask ourselves, what is life for? Is it for security,
self-interest, altruism, teamwork, entertainment or spirituality? Events
like the flood force us to confront the hard questions we've been taught
to avoid, and often it is church people who handle it well because they
already have a spiritual framework that includes charity and a story that
gives them meaning. Those of us who are not religious may have to develop
something similar if we want to stay sane. The ego is a passenger that thinks it's the driver. Consciousness is
bigger than ego, the way a landscape is bigger than a painting of a landscape.
The painting is part of the landscape, but it's a confusion of levels
to believe that what is in the frame is the whole. My favorite theory about the Fall is that it was an allegory for the tendency of human beings to judge one another. To have knowledge of good and evil is to be a judge, and to carry out that judgment against another person is to play God. The message is: don't play God. In that context, awareness of nudity is a symbol for awareness of one's own hubris and arrogance in the presence of a greater judge. A bit like how many politicians would feel if their acts were exposed to the public, with no protection by secrecy or status. To be naked before one's enemies was to be judged without the protection of status symbols (uniform, title, etc). Physical death exists, but psychological death may just be a knot in consciousness, an illusion based in fear. The separation of the individual from the group is a major problem for consciousness. In reality, nothing is truly separate from anything else, we're all enmeshed in a system in which we're very small. So in believing one's individual life is important, that one is separate, one risks having the opposite come into awareness. It wasn't long after they took Jesus down from the cross that they nailed him to the Bible. I wonder what the dogmatist Christians and Muslims will do when they discover the Spirit works everywhere, and has no law but love and logic. No more will we sacrifice others for our own sins in the name of God's justice, while displacing his mercy onto those who benefit us financially or socially. The concept of an operator is a product of the social hierarchy, the need to seal the ego from knowledge that it is part of a chain of cause and effect. The ego hates that idea, it destroys subjectivity and introduces an excruciating sense of being an object. So we prefer to believe that we are operators, or that some higher Operator is in charge. In reality, we're all part of a concert in which the instruments themselves synchronize together without a conductor (unless you think of gravity, electromagnetism and so on as the conductor). I would say expressing hate through violence is more of a *release*, a way of unloading guilt, fears of punishment, feelings of helplessness, etc., as well as displacing unresolved emotions from the parent-child relationship onto a new, concrete situation. The transference could involve both revenge against the parent (for making one's child-self feel helpless) and fusion with the parent (and a corresponding feeling of omnipotence), which would produce a dramatic sense of closure and completion. In addition, if one is involved in a situation where two sides really are trying to hurt each other, there would be an urge to trigger violence in order to feel more in control of the outcome. Pre-emptive attacks and attacks against helpless members of the enemy tribe would increase in proportion to the sense of dread and uncertainty one has to live with. "Pleasantness" would be the wrong word... "resolution" would be more accurate. Violence resolves something. It settles what is unsettled. That might all be described as "pleasant" after the fact, especially by someone not aware of his own motivations. But to say that hate is fun is to gloss over all the reasons it might seem so. The less helpless one felt in childhood, and the less terrifying one's childhood image of parents, the less likely one would be to find hate fun. Empathy would engage sooner, rather than after the fact when the damage was already done. In any two groups, there will be a few people who are capable of relating on a human level to members of the other group who show tolerance and a willingness to learn. Find those people, put them in a room together, encourage them to express their feelings and perceptions without blame. Showing anger is OK, as long as it's in the form, "I am angry about losing something important to me", rather than "you people are liars and thieves!" After the emotions are taken care of, solutions are relatively easy to find. Ironically, those people who can make peace may be the same ones who are drawn to crusades and suicide bombings. They are magnetically pulled toward their opposite. Many of the suicide bombers tried on Western lifestyles and got hurt, felt betrayed and went back to what they thought was a more "traditional" Islam, to get revenge on the culture that poisoned them. Idealistic, intelligent young men who got into drinking or womanizing, then felt guilty and were seduced by radical teachers who preyed on their feelings of shame and alienation, and converted those feelings into a belief that they could attain paradise by blowing themselves up. The young women may be the key. They understand the males very well,
and they have the incentive to create peace in the world rather than losing
everything to polarization and war. Repair the psychological wounds of
young Muslim men and women, and you'll solve the problem. Give them a
way to feel innocent and idealistic again, to forgive themselves and the
alienated Western kids whose party culture tempted and betrayed them.
Many suicide bombers did well in school, but lacked a passion for what they learned. They had access to middle class cultural outlets, but found them empty. They had no self-love to sustain themelves and fell prey to older men who gave them love and attention in return for swallowing a doctrine of hate. The disease could be caught early, if people pay more attention and speak to kids who are struggling with Jihad and with the meaning of their lives. In a nutshell, the biological model is derived from the view of a culture as a cell, with catalytic enzymes and nonlinear feedback chains and a code driving the expression of each subsystem. The details are not yet worked out, but the model has an intuitive ring, and I believe it can be developed into a coherent strategy for dealing with the global situation on all levels. This paradigm may in fact be instinctual, existing in tribal cultures whose members find it difficult to adapt to an individualistic, linear analytical culture. Racist groups and religious cults seem to rediscover the model, using biological language to describe their enemies as parasites, insects or vermin. This suggests a multicultural society (at least one driven by marketing and corporate culture) is perceived as a pathogen or contaminant on a primal, unconscious level. We know our culture is not ecological... what can we learn from tribes which function as organisms with each part entrained to the whole through binding myth and ritual? How can we decentralize power systems which are dangerously top-heavy and subject to manipulation by niche marketing and appeals to fear? The concept of "dragon lines" is one metaphor that is perhaps more than metaphor. I believe there are certain viral patterns in culture which are activated at times of differential tribal ascent/descent, and the long-term trend of women's empowerment is driving fundamentalist "reptilian" subcultures to enforce their codes of repression in ways that are toxic to the global body and must be flushed out. To do this, we need to develop intuitive models for teamwork which can adapt to different contexts, as in Ender's Game (I imagine you've read the book, if not, it's a good science fiction novel with some interesting ideas). This means breaking out of the pattern of fixed rules and rigid hierarchy, creating something more like an octopus whose tentacles are able to coordinate at every stage. Osama is clearly using the biological model as Hitler did (on an unconscious level, if not consciously) and in order to combat the cancer of terrorism it will be necessary to transcend standard warfare and rely on more advanced covert and psychological operations, and it must include the aikido-derived methods of redirecting energy and using environmental hypnosis and subtle influence. On the civilian side, there must be an effort to include Muslims in popular culture and a movement to defend the right of Muslim women to speak openly without fear. If this can be done in a systemic way rather than according to the compartmentalized, linear paradigms, a solution will come much sooner, with much less pain. The image they are following is the image of their teacher's face, the voices they are hearing are the voices of their tribe, filtered heavily through the cult indoctrination they've been through... they don't hear the voices of moderate Muslims. The images and voices of the victims do not reach consciousness, and are batted down as temptations to infidelity. Think of the Borg, if you like Star Trek metaphors. The individual is the appendage of the tribe, with the voice of conscience drowned out by the noise. I suspect some suicide bombers will waver when more moderate Muslims and Muslim women speak out and have their voices amplified by mass media. They will find it more difficult to bat down the temptation to see potential victims as human beings, they will become more paranoid toward their own teachers and more likely to see the evil they project onto Western society in their own group. A good psy-ops approach to terrorism would involve a two pronged approach: one, a campaign to humanize non-Muslims, Americans and Jews (cheerleading for secular culture that offers Muslims a place at the table) and two, a "bait and switch" program to lure Muslims to believe they're carrying out suicide bombings, with fake bombs. This would destablize the dynamic which derails compassion and keeps absolute faith in the teacher and the cult intact. I suspect duplicity cuts off passion, since it requires compartmentalization which disables both intuition and genuine feeling. Groups engaged in "reptilian" politics are only able to co-opt intuition, they can't actually use it in a fluid and flexible way. And the guilt eventually catches up with them and turns them against each other or gets them caught in scandal. Perhaps one reason for the religious notion of "sin". Anything that distorts the natural flow of culture toward solutions appropriate for the time, which would be anything that forces people to compartmentalize and live double lives. So honest polyamory or homosexuality wouldn't be real sins, but gossip, backstabbing, adultery and manipulation would be. It makes sense that politicians engaged in conflicts of interest and covert deviousness would scapegoat free love and other aspects of the "hippie ethic", because it would prevent their own females from linking up with intuitive groups that use sexual energy to drive higher cultural processes. H.G. Wells (I think) said, "Moral indignation is jealously with a halo." I think that puts it pretty well. Psychologically, I believe sexual repression plays a part as well. Difficult to prove, but cultures which depend on masculine dominance and disempowerment of women seem to have trouble adapting to changing circumstances, since their primary genetic strategy is to produce many children and protect them with tough shells made up of male warriors. That's a great strategy if you live in a competitive desert environment where no law can police all the spread-out groups. Take that kind of culture and put it in an environment of multicultural capitalism, and it flounders. The sensitive males who try to make it in capitalist culture often fail, and then resolve to destroy themselves as an act of revenge both against the male domination of their own culture that forces them to repress honest sexual feeling and creativity, and against the capitalist culture that let them down. Those on the periphery of a group are often the ones who are most zealous about stirring up hostility between groups, when they discover it's difficult to unite them. That's the only way they can reconcile their sense of identity with their cultural roots. And in genetic terms, it benefits their gene pool (unless it results in a backlash that gets their family or tribe killed). This is why the silence of Muslims about suicide bombings was such a problem, now that more Muslims are speaking out, suicide bombers may start having second thoughts as the instinctual component drops off and they begin questioning whether their cultural programming really benefits Islam as a whole. Probably one of the best ways for Muslims to frame the conflict is to engage young Muslim males in the defense of Muslim women in countries where women have no voice. I believe that would turn some of the instinctual energy toward a positive goal. People are not isolated from the social web, and the social web is governed
by an operating system, a code. Anyone who understands the code can influence
other people's behavior. We do it all the time, within families and other
groups whose motives and values we know well. It's true that you can't
make someone believe something just by contradicting them. That brings
up a predictable polar response, and there's no point to it. Real influence
is weilded through charisma and entrainment. Those are abilities that
aren't generally taught in the mainstream. But we do live in a marketing-based
culture, and everyone wearing an article of clothing with a corporate
logo has been manipulated into doing so. And if it's done well, the "subject"
believes he is gaining more in the way of individuality and personal expression
by playing along. It's just that nobody ever wants to feel he's been manipulated.
A suicide bomber recruit would be mortified if he realized that his own
traumatized heart has been hijacked by a toxic movement, and that his
religious ideology has driven him to endorse murder, a hell-worthy crime.
He is more or less forced to play along with the script he's been given.
Theoretically, he has "free will". Yet the only way to exercise
logic and genuine feeling would be to throw himself into his own bottomless
wound, and to forgive the enemy he is so convinced represents bottomless
evil. It's as likely as Americans or Israelis are to forgive and offer
a hand of reconciliation while they're under attack. Sure, we have free
will in theory. But in practice, we do exactly what human beings are programmed
to do, and so do they. The only way out is to acknowledge, understand
and forgive our enemy. We do that when circumstances force us to do it,
when the consequences of demonization and hatred become too great for
the mainstream to bear. We don't do it a minute sooner. All in all, human
beings are as predictable as any animal, and our freedom consists only
in the expanded capacity to represent time spatially and put concepts
into words. Ironically, that freedom is one we engage in compulsively,
we have a hard time living in the moment and not relying on mental concepts.
So our layer of freedom is one we can't avoid falling back on. What are the odds that labeling any process "inferior" is part
of what makes it so hard to develop new perspectives on it? Isn't the
whole point of acknowledging the shadow to recognize that it has some
positive (or at least important) energy to offer? My understanding of
the Jungian approach is that the poison is the cure, that giving creative
life to complexes is what heals them. Dreams turn complexes into characters.
I don't think any character is inferior once fully developed and expressed...
it's when there are several in embryo and they're competing and not allowing
each other to be alive that "inferiority" happens. So it's the
judgment and disallowing of complexes into consciousness that paralyzes
the conscious will, not the contents of the shadow. At least that's my
understanding of it. Being in conflict psychologically is "inferior"
from the standpoint of conscious intention (maybe "handicapped"
is a more colorful word for it), but it's the repression of unconscious
perspectives that causes the poisoning/paralyzing/binding effect. Inauthenticity
happens when what is at the core is felt as poison, and cannot be processed
smoothly without fearing a loss of security, integrity, honor, or in the
case of religious fanatics, purity. If we could all reframe life as a
movie and experience the same comfort watching our own complexes unfold
as we do watching characters develop on film, we'd probably have very
little shadow problem, because there'd be no resistance on the part of
the ego to surprisingly meaningful communication from other parts of the
brain. It would all be part of the story, and the attitude would be one
of curiosity or excitement rather than anxiety or self-judgment. It's
when shadow is associated with the herd impulse to demonize and ostracize
that it becomes really poisonous. Everyone spends too much time holding
back their inner life in order to function outwardly, creating an energy
drain. The entire system eventually withers and a compensating movement
arises in order to counteract the feeling of weakness, shame or inferiority
in the group. Kids grow up feeling like something is wrong with them,
some vague original sin, and are drawn to movements which allow them to
shed their unwanted selves and the unwanted present (Eric Hoffer gets
it right when he attributes mass movements to the need to lose the "inferior"
autonomous self and merge with a decisive and powerful mass). People can use religious awe and dread as a way to feel in control, by inflicting fear on others, the way some people enjoy driving fast when terrified passengers are stuck in the back seat. One of the most fundamental human needs is to make a difference. Those who can't make a positive difference discover at some point that it's a lot easier to mess things up for everyone else. Unfortunately, much of what society does to punish disruptive behavior only inflames the underlying need that drives it (prison makes people feel small, and then pushes them to learn the most negative ways to feel big). Consider how difficult it is for nonviolence activists to get publicity, and how easily a suicide bomber can dominate the nightly news. We're training people to believe that good deeds are pointless, while acts of newsworthy destructiveness captivate everyone's attention. A system that pays more attention to negative acts is a system that creates negativity, by giving the impression that only bad deeds are powerful enough to get people talking. The solution is simple, but hard to convince people to try consistently: reward good deeds, and get everyone to talk about them more than the bad. Ignore people who try to use negative attention-getting devices, and then reward them when they make any attempt to use positive means instead. People generally do what they think will get others talking, so pay attention to what people talk about, which kinds of actions make it into the gossip pool and the news. It's a simple solution, but you'd be amazed how addicted people can get to rewarding bad behavior with extra attention.
Groups that remain isolated and paranoid will implode as they experience the "hellfire" of psychological schism. The Religious Right should embarrass itself fairly soon, and radical Muslims will lash out more and more at moderate and feminist Muslims, leading to a multifaith denunciation of anyone who attempts to weild the sword of God's judgment without God's mercy. This will infuriate fundamentalists, who experience gender equality and global identification as a trigger for repressed "demons" relating to their own childhood experiences of gender alienation and toxic power. I'd be surprised if we don't find a link between child abuse/neglect and terrorism as well. People without identities will attempt to gain a body by manipulating groups as Hitler did. Most will embarrass themselves and slink off, ashamed. Others will do a huge amount of damage to other human beings before their own groups cut them off. The dragon energy doesn't respect those who use it to manipulate. It sacrifices leaders who fail to lead but hide behind the energy of their audience, saying what gets applause with no comprehension of the consequences, playing the role of leader while following a script.
If someone you don't trust punishes you, it's usually not ecological,
and the tendency is to use the same We ought to distinguish between the scientific It's entirely possible that some people are genetically driven to violence.
But that would However, identifying people at risk for violence, Perhaps the fear of society is not that people It would be a combination of speech patterns, gesture, movement, eye contact, voice tones and so on which would activate the entrainment pattern to trigger violence. It would happen on the boundary between self and other, so that commands like "control yourself" (a bit of a paradox, if you're saying it to someone else) would fail, and the only recourse would be for others to give signals contrary to expectations. The particular set of influences, their voice tones and demeanor would be there as well, like a magnetic undertow, giving the words extra emphasis. Nobody becomes violent hearing violent rap music. But if someone has been indoctrinated into gang culture, music might be a kind of insignia, an indicator of power, triggering cascades in the brain leading to aggressive behavior. In family arguments, something as simple as an eye-roll or whining tone of voice can set someone off. The issue of "who controls whom" becomes very complex, since all perceptions are in the same brain and self and other are not as distinct as one would imagine. The words also resonated with a particular subculture of German youth, raised with very authoritarian and demanding parenting. His words echoed through the audience like a father's voice, drilling through the psyche of a child too small to resist and lacking a coherent self with which to reject the message. Those who resisted, who hid Jews in their attics, were likely raised according to a different paradigm. They had a core self. Hitler's followers did not, and his words were like a virus in an operating system with no firewall. Hitler's "code" doesn't speak to you and me the way it would to a prewar German street thug. It would take a different code, different voice tones and patterns of movement, to trigger such a deep response. We're entrained to people like Einstein, Feynman, or whoever our favorite scientists/musicians/writers may be, rather than to shrill, demanding parental memes.
What Gandhi did that was really impressive was to face his enemy as a human being, rather than refusing to negotiate while sending others to fight his battles. Martin Luther King also spoke directly to the power systems, walking in the streets rather than hiding behind office walls. It will happen again, if the men behind the world's systems of power refuse to stand with those who walk alone. It may happen on an amplified scale, with thousands of Gandhis, too many to kill. A child in every family will confront his or her parents if they are caught up in the power systems and unable to see the web they've spun. The earth itself will build a voice stronger than any army on the planet. There is no stopping an idea whose time has come. I've met peacemakers who received only blank stares and silence, and who learned to speak in code, to fish for kindred spirits. Soon all the locked hearts will open, and their voices will combine into something beautiful and powerful that will transform the way people view power, even the way they view their own identities. Like an avalanche of love and genius, all geared to saving the earth from the power-intoxicated and the blind. No longer will we be led by those in love with their own voices filtered through the ears of their audiences who give up responsibility in exchange for a childlike dependency on power. People are not demons. If all you see in Self defense is up to the individual. It is Human judgment tends to perpetuate whatever it fights.Judgment in the
spirit may seem paradoxical,
Most of the kids I've known who had serious problems with motivation and self-discipline came from homes where discipline was confused with punishment and where dysfunctional adults judged the actions of the kids inaccurately and hypocritically. Lacking a stable role model for self-discipline (an alcoholic parent who hits his kids with a belt for Jesus while failing to control his own behavior would hardly qualify), they never had anything to internalize in order to gain self-discipline. Not surprising they find learning difficult in school, since emotional turbulence and the fight-or-flight response cuts off higher learning and memory in the brain. Before anyone can focus on complex reasoning, they must be able to feel safe, to know they will be appreciated whether or not they succeed, and rewarded for any step toward improvement. If security and appreciation are taken away, reasoning takes on a highly analytical, robotic quality, which only works in certain fields. Anywhere else, and failure is almost a given.
Muslims feel persecuted, and many innocent ones will be persecuted for associating knowingly or unknowingly with terrorists, having the intention of teaching them, not promoting their tactics. Muslims have an instinctive sense of what God wants, and God wants them to overrule the extremists. Those who understand what God is will do their best, under extremely stressful and frightening circumstances, to influence the groups that recruit young men and women to kill innocent people. They can't help doing so. It's a direct consequence of their connection to faith, which is as sacred as your identification with Zionism, or with science. Respect it, and help them to stay safe. Empower them with information. Ideally, we'd be giving them some CIA support, and warn them of threats before they're carried out. Perhaps a civilian group could do that, though. Any thoughts? Musharraf's dictatorship may be better for Pakistan at the moment than democracy. Democracy hasn't worked well for Palestinians, and Bush attributes that to a learning curve (I agree, but with reservations as to timing). I would distinguish between dogmatic authoritarianism and pragmatic authoritarianism. Pragmatic authoritarian governments cooperate with the US against terrorist groups. If the cultural operating system is not ready to elect sane people, that may be the safer way to go, until the culture goes into a more open phase. Urban Pakistanis are likely much saner and more open than the rural tribal subcultures, but it is not only urbanites who vote! I believe some of what is labeled "supernatural" is actually real, just not in the way it's described. Not talking about ESP, but a kind of triangulation done by the intuitive brain, putting large amounts of distributed information into a search net. So you may not be able to predict with accuracy where or when something will happen, but it may be possible to predict that a certain even will happen, because the overall situation requires such an event in order to bring balance. One thing I'd emphasize: getting outraged over a cartoon while mosques
are being blown up, along with innocent people, smacks of hypocrisy and
the extreme sensitivity of a bully who fears judgment while delivering
it freely. Which is more sacred, Mohammad's image, or the meaning of his
religion? If nothing else, Mohammad envisioned a united Muslim family,
not one dismembered by sectarian violence. Protecting his image while
destroying the possibility of a healthy Islamic culture is the most extreme
form of idolatry, and they have no idea what they've done to their own
faith in the name of protecting it. For that matter, neither do we in
the Christian West. We are And it misinterprets the prophetic visions, personalizing them or
Not to be the kid who can't believe in Santa, but I'd like to offer a different perspective on channeling: it is not the occupation of a body by a foreign entity, but the development of a latent personality denied by one's culture or by one's own self-limiting beliefs. Women often have male entities to channel (Jungians would call it her animus) because women aren't encouraged to develop their masculine, ordering self. Christians may hallucinate demons because they haven't adequately dealt with their own shadow or admitted their own anger. But in terms of consciousness as a system, one can only channel what one is, or what one picks up from the culture and can't express through their normal personality. As long as there are "authoritative guides" in religion, there will be people channeling the ones who are dead, or imitating the ones who are alive, because symbols of authority ultimately relate to one's core self and the feeling of knowing exactly what to be. The more insecure people are about their status in the world, the more they will have temporary breaks in normalcy and channel entities that have great authority and power. This can lead to serious culture shock when the individual identifies his or her ego with that authority and then confronts the fact that society doesn't always take that kind of channeled wisdom seriously. In other words, we don't channel Christ, Archangel Michael, Siva, Ram or any other figure. We channel our true selves (or at least one denied aspect of our true selves), using those names as landmarks to solidify the sense of authority being conveyed through the channel. People may listen more closely to an Archangel being channeled through a housewife or grandmother than they would to the same person making authoritative statements in her own name. And, because those symbols and names relate to processes in cultural evolution that are larger than all of us, perhaps it's appropriate that authority is channeled rather than claimed as one's own. Christians channel Jesus when they act on their higher knowledge and confidence. Buddhists channel Buddha. But at some level, the names may be interchangeable and at times irrelevant. It is more damaging when (many, not all) Muslims deny that suicide bombings are murder, portraying it as "desparation under tyranny" (which requires ignoring Tibetans, who show so much restraint under occupation). That makes it harder for other Muslims to blame the perpetrators before blaming the US or Israel, and perpetuates one of the most virulent and toxic strains of religious nationalism on the planet. As long as the US is "the greatest terrorist" and Israel is a "genocidal state" there can be no real accountability for terrorists, and the disease spreads unchecked. What's most disturbing is that worldwide, there seem to be an unusually high number of movements which have the elimination of parasitic elements and "macho pride" as major themes. Not only was Hitler's movement based on exactly that theme, but the same theme affected all sides, including the internment of Japanese civilians in the US. If progressives allow that mentality to become dominant in their own thinking and behavior, the wave will be all the stronger and all the more toxic. Those who search for answers are constantly told there Men who are in touch with their authentic masculinity will be driven equally to develop their own authority and to endorse that of strong women. Men whose authentic male energy has died will either find some path to healing, or they will cling to powerful male groups with increasing loss of integrity and ethics, until those groups become a shadow of their fathers, cut off and ashamed. The reptilian brain is losing its armor, and empathy with wisdom is the next wave. Yes, the reptilian machinery will grind on, and no, it won't "win" (even if it wins politically, it shames itself through bad management and toxic entrainment patterns). The trance of compulsive masculinity leads to greater insecurity in the long run. It's not authentic, and doesn't stand. At heart, it is men leaning on male establishment symbolism, incestuously attaching themselves to something that awed them as children rather than gaining their own authority and integrity as male mammals. It's a farce, and men know it. As Norah Vincent (the woman who lived as a man and infiltrated "male culture") wrote, men wear armor ten sizes too large, and their insecurity leads them to impoverish their own spirits. In politics, or anywhere else.
Prophesy always contains symbolism, and those who overly literalize and promote fear rather than positive action and connection between human beings will always miss the point when the winds start shifting. Those who believe in conspiracies tend to conspire against them, and if they live by the sword, they can die by it as well. America is not immune, nor are the Islamic nations. We must love our enemy, or we will become him in spirit, even as we judge his sin with what we believe to be the sword of God's wrath. Fear of failure and perfectionism keep people in a very left brain, analytical mode that can be toxic over time to the feeling function, the organic drive that connects people together and creates synergy and enthusiasm. There is no way the linear self-talking brain can manufacture enthusiasm. Trying to do so only results in greater pain as others gradually discover they're not getting the real deal. Positive feedback drops off, connectivity dies, and people start cutting each other down rather than building each other up. The solution is to be more grounded in the physical body, breathe deeply, trust the flow and avoid getting entangled in criticism, malicious gossip and other forms of 'curse magick'. And getting out of internal dialogue, especially the kind that comes with eye fixation and shallow breathing, never hurts. Religion is a mirror of cultural evolution. It always begins as a If it's not positive and heartfelt, it's mechanical and won't lead to anything good. Homeless people don't need you to toss them a quarter out of pity. They need eye contact, someone to listen to their story and help them get their heads clear. A society that fails the poor or treats them as karmic sponges will collapse, eventually. That's the meaning of the Biblical Sodom story, it had nothing to do with the Queer Eye guys riding around on chariots giving makeovers. It had to do with an atmosphere of tribalistic cruelty, a prison-like environment where male rape would have been a realistic fear. America won't fall because for legalizing gay marriage or abortion. If it falls, it will be because of its insular attitude and predatory behavior toward other cultures. The Whore of Babylon is described as fabulously wealthy, the empire the entire world goes to for trade and exploitation. That's obviously not Iraq, poor as dirt. That's us, if we don't shape up. The Christian militia movement, which went back underground after the Timothy McVeigh incident, used to describe America as Babylon, until they got one of their own in the White House. What they'll do if Hillary wins office, is anybody's guess.
Oprah and Diana both represent the feeling function (i.e. the human connective principle that's closer to the limbic than anything dogmatic or cerebral) in a world dominated by insecure masculine conflict and competition. They both represent the soul trying to break free of the cement coccoon of industrial society as it transitions into an information society. They were/are both also very aware of their power, use/used it wisely, and represent the global informational power of media when wise and sensitive people are at the top of the pyramid. They are also associated with the idea that a person can be business-savvy without compromising their core beliefs and ideals. Not hard to see why that would appeal to so many people. Their power also undermines the fundamentalist mindset of female disempowerment and proves that intelligence is stronger and more nimble than ritual, to people who may be sick of ritual without feeling and connection. I can see why it would appeal to someone in Saudi as much as to any disillusioned housewife in the US. On the purely instinctual level, Oprah and Diana have/had "good vibes", and I think the animal level communication there (the magnetic "nuturing mother" archetype) would cut through any form of tyranny, exposing it as sterile and weak. Osama and some other fundamentalists use many maternal signals to appeal to young males, even while teaching them male superiority (in other words, they use "feminine" communication habits while claiming women are inferior to men). They speak with soft, seductive voices, as if to say, "You're all safe in my nest, children, and the bad people can't harm you here." Hitler had some of that quality too, although he was more melodramatic than nurturing. I'm wondering to what degree the fundamentalist homophobic subcultures are dependent on males using "feminine" social strategies while displacing the fear of being unmasculine onto a "sacred conflict" with an enemy (sacred because it goes to the core of identity, the need to defend one's masculine identity and ward off shame and temptation to corrupting influences that might damage that masculinity). From what I've read of the psychology of violence, that conflict between nuturing and independence (especially in cultures that discourage independence) would result in explosive violence rationalized in ways that would strike an observer as bizarre and irrational. It goes with what others have written about shame/honor cultures. The American South is often compared to Arab cultures, and it's easy to see the same logic, the limbic appeal to parent/child patterns, in the rhetoric of Southern fundamentalists as well as in Iranian clerics or the Jihadists. They're all hijacking the buttons in the brain, the instinctual ones that would give a strong, communal experience to people overwhelmed by confusion and discord. If (at least for some people) there is no sense of group bonding and unity provided by competition in a global market, it's reasonable to expect that experience to be found in some other type of competitive-yet-nuturing group, especially one that promises redemption and honor to those most humiliated and disempowered by globalism. Globalism and multiculturalism are the great demons of fundamentalist subcultures. Of course, the fundamentalists want globalism on their terms, with everyone submitting to their Allah/Jesus, and they want a multicultural society bonded by the same religious belief. There may be an instinct for many subcultures to pull together and fuse into a superorganism whenever it provides allies against an external threat. The religious impulse would make more sense in the modern world if it were seen as something inherent in the soul rather than channeled through old books. I wonder what brain scans of fundamentatlists would say about the balance of left and right brain activity, or show some loss of activity in the parts of the brain that process complex social cues. To see ordinary people as demons based on a minor difference in dogma would require more than a need for certainty, it would probably involve some "ghosts" being superimposed on people's faces, literally making them appear as demons. That would also make it possible to put a woman to death for adultery or whip someone for being openly affectionate with the opposite sex. The "justice mob" would all be hallucinating, participating in a ritual stoning of their own discarded sub-selves. The victim simply wouldn't be seen or felt by them as real, but more as a shell infested by something dark and terrible that tempts them to hell. Female sexuality, to a repressed and militant male, would trigger all sorts of psychotic states, and the tribal bonding mechanisms would ward off the "demons" by cracking down on the culture around them or seeking external enemies. So it amounts to a big machine, made of people, that hijacks the repression and insecurity of people (mainly males) who feel emasculated by modernity. It would be no surprise that the rise of feminism in the West and in the Islamic would, would push fundamentalist groups on both sides into overdrive. Nothing releases the ghosts of the lizard brain like rejection or humiliation, both of which become standard pitfalls of a sexually open and commercially competitive society, whenever failure is equated with a loss of face.
What women really like is a man who is congruent, whose conscious and unconscious minds are aligned, whose right brains are fully engaged and whose sexuality is easygoing and not overly repressed. Many men confuse sexual repression (i.e. being "too nice" rather than openly showing interest) with kindness, and assume women just hate men who are kind. In reality, women just like confidence and are turned off by repression. One can be nice without lacking confidence. It only requires that the woman's opinion not DOMINATE the man's self-esteem. He has to be focused on her, not on himself, and self-consciousness or stage fright don't create connection. It is impossible without painstaking effort to learn how to fake right brain signals, something autistic people have to do in order to communicate without awkwardness. Perhaps if autism is a form of "exaggerated maleness", then many men who are not quite autistic but have trouble reading and responding to signals from women, would need the same kind of training to recognize and respond congruently to the right-brain language of emotion and connection women find easier to master while young. While girls are learning about social ecology and how to connect to their peers, boys are learning how to compete and stand out. If sex is viewed as a competition (where the goal is more to be selected than to be touched), there would inevitably be a mismatch between the woman's communication style and the man's. *Especially* if deception or manipulation is involved. If you aren't sure what's manipulative or not, the answer is: whenever full disclosure would "bust the frame" (i.e. break the connection), or whenever you wouldn't want to be in the other person's shoes, it's probably manipulation. One reason women would respond to men not caring about their feelings is because it's always easier to be yourself when you aren't worried about what the audience thinks. However, there is no reason one can't care what the audience thinks *without* being paralyzed by the fear of failure. That's the real need that needs addressing: how to care about a woman without being a slave to the need to be accepted. Which turns out to be the same thing women need in order to stop responding to men who act like jerks in order to fake confidence. An archaic concept worth examining is demonic possession. It's a real thing, it happens when the energy of a group falls on one person who is rejected by the group, views the group as a whole as a kind of evil machine, and lashes back when a window of opportunity opens. The more people a society throws out or humiliates (even those who are guilty of crimes can absorb bad energy) the more the danger grows. It is imperative that we find ways to create systems that are inclusive and not based on rejection of those who don't fit in or don't have stable boundaries. We need another approach to violence, and I believe it will involve showing kindness even to those who are guilty of extreme, horrific crimes, making sure they are projected from unstable cultural energy and unable to create more victims. Containment of the energy, as opposed to pushing it all on one person and watching them take the fall for everyone's cruelty or indifference. We've chained ourselves unnecessarily to belief systems which cause us to do far more harm to ourselves and others than would be done if we simply coasted on our animal instincts. Animals tend to be pretty sane. To create a horrifying machine-like hurricane of death, you need a large number of people with a dysfunctional belief system controlling their behavior and preventing anyone inside the machine from seeing the consequences to outsiders. We've taken our relatively gentle, territorial primate urges, and turned ourselves into genocidal ants. Religion plays a large part, although the USSR and China gave religion a run for its money without a deity. When under attack, it is important to remain open rather than defiant, and anyone with sensitivity on issues of race, religion or nationalism has to be careful not to escalate an unhealthy paradigm in defense of his own affiliations. Ignore your critics, love them even, and you'll go far. Intellectual humility regarding the one-state vs. two-state solutions is essential, and while it would be far better for Palestinians to live under a secular or even officially Jewish Israeli government than under a Jihadist one, there are reasons both sides would reject that solution, and neither can be demonized for being too proud to give up its perception of itself in order to make peace with its enemy. Tricky terrain, indeed. One must start with the heart connection, and work gently toward the points of negotiation, without hitting any land mines along the way. Mohammad was a warrior, with all the ethical lapses common in warrior tribes at the time (identical to Moses in many ways). But he was violent in service of a goal, to unify what was shattered. The sectatrian violence and attacks on mosques in Iraq represent the dismemberment of all he stood for, imitating the worst of his tactics while undermining his purpose. I believe Muslims can be convinced of this, are convinced already, and only need help articulating it without demonization of the West and Israel putting flies in their eyes. Immediate impact means very little, really. It's planting the seeds We are fighting against "powers and principalities". Bush the man is a nice, charming, folksy guy who would do very well in any environment where the people affected by his decisions are able to communicate with him face to face. If he spoke in person with Muslim leaders rather than sending delegates, I believe he would do much better. A cabal that insulates its leader from feedback from the ground will never have a consistently positive effect, and can do a great deal of damage. Someone like Bush, who "leads with his gut" will be a disaster in any group that is stuck in groupthink or conflicts of interest, because they will become his body and he will become their mouthpiece, without understanding what is really going on. His fall, which may result in impeachment or assassination, will break his heart, and I have as much compassion for him as I do for a suicide bomber seduced into destroying his own spirit in the name of solidarity and justice. They are like children trapped in giant robot suits that have a life of their own, which I think is a good metaphor for the damage we do to ourselves in general, when we rely on axiomatic thinking and peer pressure rather than standing with our own spirits for what is right. It's an ancient spirit in new clothing. And those who put on the uniform of the Beast have no comprehension of what they've done, to themselves or to others. We will see people (yes, even Republicans, and especially them!) emerge from behind the veil of loyalty and start speaking truth, even making confessions to clear their conscience. The moment of truth is near, and I say that with no desire for vengeance or lack of compassion for Bush or anyone in his circle. We reap what we sow, and in Christianity there is an escape clause, but only when one has repented and realigned himself to true North. I wish Bush a change of heart, not a bullet. eace is sustained by a web of ties between human beings. recognizing that all your perceptions, including your perception of self and other, are part of a single information system, works really well for me. It enables me to actually love my enemy (or at least see myself in him and vice versa), without being subject to manipulation, and I find that helpful from time to time. It's counterintuitive for a lot of people who are taught that the "enemy" (or co-worker, neighbor, or angry wife) is Other, separate and apart from one's own consciousness, a foreign body. But from the standpoint of cybernetics, that self/other schism is the root of a lot of headaches, and repairing it with a more unifying view of consciousness makes sense to me. To put nationality, ethnicity or even religion above the need for human safety and compassion is idolatry. It is a form of pornography, using the plight of a group of human beings as pawns in a prophetic game, rather than being a peacemaker. Those who engage in it are sinning, and will not have inner peace. Christianity is the persuit of a spiritual Israel, that is, a place where people can walk in righteousness rather than darkness. All politics encourages darkness, while face-to-face human contact with both sides in a conflict produces light and peace. Watch the fruits of people's actions, and ignore dogma on people's tongues, or even in holy books. Holy books point the way, they are signposts, but not the destination. Mistaking words for what they stand for is another form of idolatry, an extremely common one.
There is a path to peace, and most of the people who are currently persuing
it are influenced by Buddhism or "New Age" philosophy. Their
hearts are in the right place, although from the monotheist perspective
their dogma is wrong. But far better than Christians who get the dogma
right but lose their hearts. To love one's enemy, or even to feel equal
grief for the suffering of the enemy's children as for one's own, is not
easy. But to dismiss the possibility of love between enemies altogether
is a denial of Christian love and redemption, and of the character of
Christ himself. There are many points of disagreement along the way, and
one must even turn the other cheek from time to time in order to show
that one is not just another political animal trying to trick or manipulate
his prey. But when ordinary people allow those points of disagreement
(even ones that seem fundamental, like the Trinity, or the ethics of rewarding
suicide bombers with community fame and media attention) to cut off communication
across lines, the sin of violent people on both sides becomes the sin
of the community at large. There can be no justice and no peace as long
as one judges the same act differently depending on the nationality or
religion of the perpetrator and victim. To feel immense grief at children
who die on one side and nothing at all for children who die on the other
is to become that political animal, the ravening wolf who acts in the
name of piety but who leaves a wake of dismembered sheep in his path. It's very difficult for people raised with constant and severe abuse, or poorly bonded with traumatized mothers in infancy, to know where their boundaries are and what their own responsibility is, especially in conflicts where others are at fault as well. On the biological level, we are a social species, and we may require help in taking responsibility from time to time. The problem is, there's no objective way of knowing when the individual can do it for himself and when external help is required. It can be assumed one way or another, but assumptions aren't solutions. Ironically, when we say, "Take responsibility!" we're often shedding ourselves of responsibility in the process. It can be a way of saying, "You're not MY problem", which encourages the same attitude on the part of the person you're demanding responsibility from. So we see these conflicts in which each side demands the other take more responsibility, and where that same attitude is reflected back. Perhaps when someone actually DOES it instead of talking about it, it becomes contagious and encourages parallel action on the other side. Freedom has to start within. Adopting the mindset of "evil them oppressing innocent us" is adopting the frame of the oppressor and giving up whatever degree of freedom one really has (Gandhi and Martin Luther King were great at recognizing their own degree of freedom within a bad situation). It also has a nasty tendency to create an attitude of entitlement and resentment that can spill over and harm bystanders, creating waves of backlash that do more and more harm as they escalate back and forth. A lot of groups in the world right now are falling into the basic Nazi pattern of nursing historical or personal resentments against some other group, demonizing everyone but insiders, adopting a conspiracy mindset, and then lashing out in ways that do damage to everyone in range, regardless of whether they have participated in oppression or simply share an oppressor's nationality or religion. And of course, each group justifies the damage it does by the evil of the others, who are perceived as "the real Nazis". Harmful acts by people on one's own side are seen as irrelevant distractions, excused or even praised, while similar acts by perpetrators on the other side are emphasized. Perspectives diverge to the point where each side is living in a separate world, unable to see the big picture because they are absorbed in their own emotional cycles of suffering, blame and attack. The cycle leads to hidden guilt, which is expressed in more strident blaming and defensiveness, and so on. Those most deeply enmeshed in the cycle may not be able to change it from within, so more participation by bystanders is required. It's a scary cycle, one which could potentially lead to an act of nuclear terrorism or the persecution of minority groups in many areas. We assume a particular group are the "evil ones", but it's really a pattern that breaks out on many fronts, with little regard for national or religious boundaries. The only way to undermine it is for us little ants to converge, overcome religious and national divisions, and create a ball of light bright enough to overcome the darkness. The media is a major part of this. There is a natural surface tension between cultures which prevents individuals from reaching out and making friends across lines, and any political tension adds to the problem. It has to be an active process, and it has to involve people who can see multiple perspectives, empathize with the emotions of many groups without excusing bad behavior or contrasting "lesser evils" with greater ones. When each side condemns abusive acts by its own members rather than merely lashing out at the enemy for not policing its own extremists, there can be some progress. This has a lot to do with shadow projection and other deep psychological notions that have only recently made their way into public consciousness. When two or more cultures are isolated from one another and have few
community ties, the media becomes an arena for playing out each side's
fantasies about the other. It may be possible to do the opposite, and
use the media to overcome stereotypes and humanize each side to the other
(some reality shows specialize in that approach). The objectification
of human beings in each other's eyes is the basic problem, regardless
of any political, cultural or religious factors. To see anyone, even a
perpetrator of evil, as an object rather than a subject, is to perpetuate
evil. And it always feels SO righteous! In order to extricate ourselves
from a potential global catastrophe, we will have to be both humble and
determined, compassionate and clever. It can be done, and I believe will
be done, when those who have clear hearts and eyes rise to the top of
the media pyramid and begin to influence the public to pressure politicians
to do what is right rather than what is expedient.
Often, when people condemn nations or individuals, they are It's easy enough to see Bush as an "evildoer", much harder to see that our culture distanced itself from Muslims and Arabs, creating a wall of silence that could only breed demonization, stereotypes and ultimately violence. And more difficult for American liberals, rightfully denouncing religious intolerance when it comes from the Christian Right, to condemn equally the same toxic religious indoctrination in the Middle East. Our physical distance from the region explains some of it, but it's undeniable that most of Bush's critics have done little to address the problem the Iraq war was supposed to solve. Without a coherent strategy for helping Islamic reformers take back their culture and political systems, Bush's war was the default option, and it was both inevitable and preventable. Let's not get too moralistic and self-righteous about the evils of the Bush Administration. Instead, let's prove his way is not only wrong but unnecessary, by promoting alternatives that work. Positive reinforcement is something people have trouble with if It's possible that one way or the other, some non-governmental system will have to be set up to help the poor, especially if the public rejects tax increases. The conservative axiom is, "Government has no right to force me to pay to support people who can't or won't support themselves. That's the job of churches and charities." The liberal axiom is, "Charities have their hands full and it's not enough. We need taxpayer funding for a safety net." My own position is that both are right, and both have a little hypocrisy here and there. I've met many liberals who advocated government aid for the homeless but never spent any time actually interacting with the homeless. That's the easy way out, in my opinion. And the hypocrisy of conservatives needs no mention here, we've both seen it and its political manifestations. It's not ideal that government forces people through threat of imprisonment to support programs they don't believe in (whether it's nuclear warheads, pre-emptive wars or social programs), but there are times when the alternatives are worse, and experimentation should be done in cities and rural districts to see which types of governmental and non-governmental aid work best, before advocating massive changes to national policy. But conservatives may be right on one of their key points: if a culture unravels, government cannot reproduce the social safety net, and material aid may only increase the feeling of dependency and frustration that causes social unrest, if it fails to give people a meaningful way to contribute to society. If America is Sodom, then government aid may only buy time. If we continue to increase the anger, demonization and stereotyping across lines of division, it will matter little whether our side "wins". We need a cultural renewal, transcending religious and political dogma. A kind of meta-religion, a new moral code. Christianity and Islam aren't going to solve the problem. They may point the way to cultural evolution, but they aren't the destination, and neither can afford to gloat about its moral consistency or courage. But then, neither can secular liberals, who often scream for change without changing their hearts. The Christian idea of renewal through repentance and rebirth is right on target. It just falls short when it falls back on scriptural prohibitions of homosexuality and women's empowerment. Islam isn't such a bad platform for community aid, one of the reasons Hamas is so popular. But it's collectivist and conformist, and that's too oppressive to be worth it. So what is the secular, independent equivalent, a network that supports the homeless and poor and provides personal contacts for re-entry into the community? By default, the religious fanatics win, if they use charity and empathy as tools for recruitment and we merely call for government safety nets. Not that government funding isn't necessary or good. We need that, but we also need something like a "faith-based program" without a religious dogma to keep out people who lack faith or interest in organized religion. In Europe, many Islamic radicals are on welfare, but it does not make them appreciate the European system more. On the contrary, since they are socially isolated from the mainstream, government aid only increases their sense of humiliation at the hands of Western culture. America too has its class of alienated young men, converting frustration into political rage, but unwilling to connect and contribute to the community. Racism is part of it, but not the whole story. If we don't find ways to integrate alienated groups into the larger community, there will be a general breakdown of social cohesion, with each groups withdrawing into its own world, listening only to news designed to appeal to its prejudices, and the religious fanatics (both Christian and Muslim) will keep pushing their way into power. Bush has given us a gift, he has created a viable and self-sustaining
progressive movement, a patchwork of perspectives that's far healthier
and more robust than the neoconservative and evangelical cabals. But when
Democrats call for more funding for social programs, the public hears
something missing. They want their leaders to usher in an era of cultural
rewnewal, not just a way to patch the holes, but to reweave the fabric.
It's the "vision thing". When Bush is out of the picture, there
will be opportunities, but we still need the vision, and it's got to be
one that draws from Christian ideals of compassion, renewal and mercy
while avoiding religious dogmatism. It has to have Islam's social cohesiveness,
without the intolerance and arrogant feeling of superiority toward infidels
and Jews. Bush may have given us a good push in that direction, but we
still have a lot of work to do on the cultural level, not the least of
which is to promote genuine love for our enemies, something a Christian
nation ought to know instinctively, but which forgets from time to time.
I get the sense that a lot of people are simply convinced that when someone else gets defensive or acts from a place of insecurity, that it signals one has been deceived, that the defense is the essence, and that trust cannot be re-established after it's been broken. The guilty party (assuming only one is guilty) avoids reconciliation out of shame or fear, and the violated party sees only a demon, a defense personified rather than a vulnerable and insecure yet well-defended human being That would account for a lot of the emotion flying around in the martyrdom-defiance spectrum, and a lot of the damage being done by stereotypes, at a time when reconciliation and openness are vital to species survival. Stereotypes lay the groundwork, politicians cultivate crowd anger to elevate their own status, and then the public is taken for a ride as politicians escalate conflicts they cannot resolve, because they have not resolved the inner wound and defense that drives their side of the conflict. If that pattern were better understood by more people, perhaps it would be clear enough to avoid falling into... but we've seen how powerful anger is as a tool, and how stereotypes and demonization can be used to marginalize voices that need to be heard, or to prevent resolution to problems locked in place by mutual suspicion and lack of teamwork. It is truly sad that the most energetic interaction between groups in conflict is between each side's most blind, hard-hearted and cruel elements. If Palestinians lived side by side with liberal Jewish peaceniks, the perception of Jews on the Palestinian side would be very different (and is different, in towns where Jewish-Arab social ties are sincere and strong enough to overcome political polarities). But each side's fanatics are pushed together by their mutual desire to conquer the land in the belief that God wills it, or by mutual suspicion, mistrust, and fear. What can the mainstream do to override that magnetism between the most dogmatic and irrational members of each culture, now that internet has created the possibility of a web of community transcending geographical, political and religious boundary lines? What kind of peacemaking are Christians, Muslims and Jews called to do, and what are the consequences of withdrawing from contact with the other side, or failing to make contact between those on both sides who have positive intentions and a working conscience?
Each side has been driven, to some extent, by the vengeance of the dead. The dead have no vengeance, and those who act out that vengeance are committing an act of idolatry, not honor. They give up responsibility for their actions, believing the dead, and God by extension, endorse the release of every humiliation, every atom of accumulated rage and resentment against the enemy and his children. The perpetual conflict in every human heart between shame and pride, autonomy and collectivism, dominance and submission, willfulness and repentance, is sunk into conflict with an enemy, and the marriage of what is impure in each side is sealed. Those with purer hearts and clear conscience tend to dislike and avoid confilct. It is, after all, difficult to fight when you love your enemy. But they must become engaged, and develop confidence in their empathy for both sides, and in their desire to see mutual recrimination and demonization stop. They must stand up to accusations of treason and soft-heartedness. Grandmothers can have great authority, because unlike young males, they have no honor code that requires them to fight. They cannot be accused of improperly standing up to men, because they have seniority. It's when grandmothers come out in force, that people start seeing beyond the shallow need to appear strong and willful in the face of attacks. If no one else will stand for what is right, it will be the old, the young, and women who will be counted first. Men are stubborn once they've formed an enemy-bond. It's like a marriage between what is cruel and poisoned in the heart of each, and men will die rather than recognize what they share with their enemy, and to mourn what they've lost due to their own blindness and need to feel powerful and determined. When they figure that out, the violence will stop, and those who have committed violence, even in word, will have to make amends. Not by continuing the cycle of punishment, but by containing it and transcending it. Christianity, in theory, allows for that transcendence of power and fear. It is difficult for those who have killed in God's name, or in the name of any higher ideal, to discover and accept that they have committed murder in their zeal. To a Muslim, murder means hell, while suicide bombings mean fame and honor. Reversing that toxic equation is difficult, since those who join the Jihad are often motivated by shame, and whatever people do to get rid of shame, they will defend to the last, fearing a return of everything they have condemned in themselves, or that the enemy will take advantage of shame to deliver a punishing blow. Perhaps those who have killed, or considered killing, can repent and reconcile. But only if they disentangle themselves from the sickness in their culture that teaches each side to see the demon in the other's heart and deny it in themselves.
It's the punished child, lecturing his brother in order to identify with
Dad and deny the abuse he's experienced by passing it on. If you looked
at the family patterns of extreme Christian fundamentalists and Jihadists,
I'm betting you'd find some systemic child abuse, incest or other "demons"
lurking in their closets. Repression exists to protect the mind from breaking
under the stress of abuse, but then it leads to the passing on of the
pain because nothing can be done about what isn't acknowledged. Those
who quote scripture to judge or punish are The paranoia generated through mass media is quite tribalistic in a weird way, and we need some inversion of it, perhaps something like a "good news network" putting all the bad news in context and connecting people together to form solutions. Compartmentalization and linear, driven mindsets have shredded the web of interconnections, and I believe it affects children, the elderly and others who depend on the goodwill of others for their survival, in ways that might be compared to electric shock experiments done with animals, driving them insane, causing them to turn against one another. School shootings would be one example. Mothers killing their infants to save them from the polluted world would be another. Perhaps even serial killings reflect some cultural poisoning, with many minds behind that of the killer. I believe the seeds of our renewal and sustainable future are already to be found in tribal cultures, including some of the neo-tribal and psychedelic subcultures, and of course in all the online "think tanky" high-level theory from fields like neurolinguistic programming, cognitive psychology and aikido. I would add to the golden rule a cybernetic notion of good and evil, in which current decisions made by all (including those who have fallen to the lowest levels of the snake pit) are judged by their positive/negative gradient rather than judging and punishing the person, which I think of as branding and a kind of curse. Then you would only have to deal with the "what if they do it again" problem by making sure people who commit serious crimes are prevented physically or electronically from having access to potential victims. We need to deal with the poison in our culture as a whole, rather than simply punishing those who explode outwardly rather than inwardly. It will be children and the elderly, who are both in a I try to focus on what I have in common with each person, and determine which of their goals I can help with while keeping my own integrity and independence. Works pretty well, and it avoids the "wall of silence" when people feel disagreements are fundamental. My intuition tells me Howard has gotten some backlash from others due to his style and some of the statements he's made about Islam and so on, and I've told him that moderating his approach to the "clash of civilizations" and being more disciplined about making distinctions between different social networks within the Islamic world will pay off. He likes his Muslim friends, as do many neocons. He just uses sloppy language sometimes and seems to overly identify with Zionism (although I believe his Zionism is close to Einstein's and not based on racism against Arabs). And I think he's gathered more good influences around him lately, he is not socially insular like many of the neocon think tankers, and I believe the root of the conservative problem is social insularity and groupthink, not a personality problem as such. I even see Bush as a basically decent and well-meaning man, as shocking as that sounds to most people these days. It's the "company he keeps" that does him in. If he reached out from the heart to Islamic and Arab leaders, I bet he could do a great deal of good. But he'd have to endure some harsh criticism with Christlike patience and humility, and come out from behind the flak wall of his advisors, who lead him more than |