When I set out on this ‘path of the fool’ most readers would probably not recognize I was referring to the Tarot cards. Each post number in this series has corresponded to the number of the Major Arcana from which that post was inspired. The last one was 13, that’s Death, before that, 12, the Hanged Man, number 11 was Justice, and so on.
14 is Temperance, one of most favorites. I have a map, you see. It may not be a good map, it is terribly old after all, and I may not be such a good map-reader, but I find it’s better than nothing. That means with this map we go to 21. I hope a few of y’all can bear with me that long.
If nothing else, even a bad map can help at least to name something. What is the very first thing we are driven intellectually to do? We name it. This goes as much for the name of the birds to the notes they sing. Material things, concepts, countries, emotions, principles, processes, everything, we are name-making creatures before we are meaning-making creatures.
It’s just like with my “gravity-free icicles” photo that had me in such a head-spin. Until I had the name for it–ice stalagmites–I had hardly a clue how to move forward, how to begin to understand the phenomena behind their formation. Just learning the name felt like a little triumph. (Thank you, Yamakawa!) I may never fully understand it or see its likes again in my lifetime, but at least I can refer to it by name.
There is an immense amount of power in naming something. It’s why tyrannical types rename the streets and cities of the regions they conquer. Scientists and explorers immediately lay claim to their discoveries by naming them. The weathermen and weather manipulators name storms and systems and in doing so give them an air of normalcy. Everything seems more normal, more credible, more acceptable once you can name it.
Positive psychology is such a name, invented to explain and explore constructs of our modern age. Simple-sounding and reassuring, it is in fact the rails guiding this speeding train right over the cliff’s edge.
Did it start with the hippies of the 60s? I can’t say, but there’s plenty of folks who noticed it a long time ago, like Barbara Ehrenreich. In her book Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America she names the culprits quite clearly.
“Those who set themselves up as instructors in the discipline of positive thinking—coaches, preachers, and gurus of various sorts—have described this effort with terms like ‘self-hypnosis,’ ‘mind control,’ and ‘thought control.’ In other words, it requires deliberate self-deception, including a constant effort to repress or block out unpleasant possibilities and ‘negative’ thoughts.”
The tolerance pushers and cult of positivity types would rather bury their heads in the sand than ever admit anything is wrong in the world or with themselves.
They act like this is something new, with their new age credos of ‘love conquers all’ and ‘fake it till you make it.’ Those who point out evil are as evil as evil itself in their twisted candy land. They have adapted what Ehrenreich calls a “reflexive capacity for dismissing disturbing news” They don’t recognize their convenient beliefs are cowardly, because in them they are supremely self-righteous.
“You’ll never change anything without a positive attitude!” they chant. Really? So I guess Hitler, Stalin, Lenin and lots of others must have been remarkably positive people, because they changed loads of things.
In their lily-livered lust for “peace” they’d happily turn everyone into slaves. I know far too many of these folks, considering how annoying I find them. They whine that those in the ‘alt-right’ are Nazi hate mongers in the same breathe that they praise the usurpers of Western civilization. They mistake their pity for compassion, their immaturity for innocence and their gullibility for adaptability. I do not particularly like the alt-right, but I’d side with them in a heartbeat over these so-called progressive nitwits constantly harping on the importance of being ‘heart-centered’ and ‘vulnerable.’ These are certainly lovely sentiments, the world could certainly use more of them, but before we can start spreading the juicy love bombs of permanent global abundance in blissful Utopia, we must first have a reality check.
Reality check: How can you best mask your own lack of ability and capacity to fight for anything? Preach that fighting is beneath you.
We are not Bonobos. No amount of social engineering or genetic tampering will change that, though the string-pullers are still trying their damndest. Those who are begging for a one-season world are attempting to live life in complete contradiction with nature. They can “think positively” and like magic the cancer becomes a beautiful life lesson, the child abuse too. Every human misery is reduced to a “growth opportunity,” and “character builder.” “It’s the only way to get any traction,” they claim, therefore minimizing true victimhood and excusing by default every perpetrator and predator.
What these folks really want is an excuse to bypass reality and someone to take care of them, cradle to grave. And they need to believe that care-taker is benevolent beyond all reason. They want to feel free to fully express their vulnerabilities, even to an enemy. They don’t want to have to face their own dark side, let alone the dark side of the most evil among us. Because they cannot fight their own battles they preach that no battle is worthy of a fight. Should one dare to point out to these folks that their perpetual clinging to ‘Christ consciousness’ is a pre-programmed master/slave directive dished out by the greatest tyrants in history, as I have done, be prepared for a deer in the headlights stare followed by more coos of moronic, placating nonsense.
Reality check: How might you ensure your own extinction? Keep turning the other cheek. Surrender to the collective. Keep empowering the tyrants. Extol the virtues of selflessness and compassion at all costs. Forget authenticity, forget mental and physical fortitude, go for the pharmaceuticals instead.
From the stoners, whose favorite expression is “It’s all good!” to the charlatans who earn their money telling the gullible, the confused, the traumatized and the down-trodden exactly what they want to hear and call this mercy and compassion, to those constantly virtue signaling and endlessly boasting and victim-claiming on social media, y’all need a swift reality check.
Ehrenreich again, “The truly self-confident, or those who have in some way made their peace with the world and their destiny within it do not need to expend effort censoring or otherwise controlling their thoughts.”
This week’s breadcrumbs:
Amish farmer faces Federal trial for mislabeling his homemade product.
http://www.healthnutnews.com/ron-pau/
An “alt-right” approach, which I find far more palatable than the endless utopian illusions of ‘progressive’ ideology.
Biodynamics—A topic I’ll be diving into deeply while remaining staunchly realistic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5G40qCDv6A
Biodynamic Agriculture. http://www.biodynamic.org.uk Steffen Schneider and Emily Kozakiewicz are at Hawthorn Valley Farm, NY, USA hawthornevalleyfarm.org; Heidi Hermann is at The Natural Beekeeping Trust, Sussex, England http://www.naturalbeekeepingtrust.org; Jakes Jayakaran is President of the Biodynamic Association of India http://www.biodynamics.in. This material was filmed in the making of Jonathan Stedall’s film ‘The Challenge of Rudolf Steiner’.
DVD and download of the film available at http://www.rudolfsteinerfilm.com
Kensho Homestead 