philosophy – Page 4 – Kensho Homestead

The Folly of Forgiveness

The single most destructive virtue of Christianity is forgiveness.

In fact, it’s not a virtue at all, it’s a vice. It’s a ready-made excuse for laziness, cowardice, avoidance and self-aggrandizement.

Which is more challenging? Which is more beneficial to society?
A. Forgive those who trespass upon you.
B. Hold them accountable for their actions, or their lack of them.

The New Age movement, the modern outgrowth of our Christian heritage melded with aspects of Eastern religion/philosophy, shares this fundamental folly. You quite literally cannot read a spiritual or New Age text that does not claim something like this:

“Ultimately, make it your goal to move on to forgiveness of yourself and those involved in causing you pain in the past. Forgiveness doesn’t mean that what happened to you was acceptable. It simply means that you are no longer willing to allow a past injury to keep you from living fully and healthfully in the present.” Dr. Christiane Northrup, The Wisdom of Menopause: Creating Physical & Emotional Health During the Change

Nonsense. Forgiveness most certainly DOES mean that you’ve found the offense acceptable—you’ve given them “a pardoning” — look it up!

Forgiveness: “To pardon; to remit, as an offense or debt, to overlook an offense, and treat the offender as not guilty.” Webster’s Dictionary 1905

When a school of philosophy/religion/spirituality (Or individuals!) must change the meaning of words in order to fulfill their mission of manipulation it becomes propaganda and begs the question, “Who benefits?”

It’s not simply forgiving past injury that’s keeping anyone from living healthfully in the present, true peace of mind comes when justice is served. We witness the lack of justice and accountability all around us today, and we have centuries of brainwashing in this particular vice-cum-virtue to thank for that.

Burying the hatchet is rarely a guarantee it stays buried. Life is not a sitcom and taking the easy way out is testament to a lack of virtue, not a grounding in it. “Kiss and make up” solves little. “Turn the other cheek” is a blanket invitation to abusers.

To forgive someone who has not asked for it, nor shows remorse, nor penance, nor changed his ways is not healthy—not for the individual, not for the culture—in the long run.

It might keep you from getting cancer next year, or so the New Age self-helpers keep insisting, but you’ve only kicked the can down the road and made it worse for the perpetrators’ next victims. Good for the guru’s pocketbook and status, not so good for future generations.

The Christian myth that claims those who live in proverbial glass houses should not throw stones is a recipe for granting pardon to serial criminals while demonizing petty theft and other personal, minor infractions.

Everyone might very well be a sinner, but not all sins are created equal.

Holding others’ accountable for their actions is far more difficult than giving them a pardon. It’s exhausting to have standards of behavior and stick to them. It’s miserable to feel the loneliness that comes with not accepting abuse in one’s relationships and surroundings. It sucks to stand up for yourself against the group and especially against loved ones. But battered partners who don’t leave, Stockholm syndrome, normalized corruption, addiction, insanity and suicide are the direct result of a culture obsessed with forgiveness.

Unearned forgiveness is:

*A green light to bad behavior
*Victim-blaming for those who don’t want to, or choose not to, forgive
*Spiritual bypassing
*Ensuring history repeats
*Lowering the morality bar
*Killing the messenger
*Requiring scapegoats (represented by our most celebrated scapegoat, Jesus)
*Requiring lies, whitewashing, spinning of narratives to maintain illusions
*Forcing individuals to fit the will of the power structure rather than forcing the power structure to fit the will of the people

The personal and political spheres overlap—what we tolerate in our own house, we tolerate in the White House. What results is repeat offenders who are eternally tolerated.

The New Age movement has managed to create the worst of two worlds: The magical child thinking and materialism of the West combined with the spiritual hierarchies, self-hypnosis and toxic mysticism of the East.

Next post: What I think the New Agers have gotten right.
Whaaa . . . .?!

Forced Helplessness: Welcome to the Machine

Convince the young mother the White Coats know best. At first sign of conception, Condition her with fears of the unknown. Insist she consult the experts at every stage of childhood development. Mock her legitimate concerns of the benefits of: Formula, Vaccines, Medications, Ultrasounds, Nursery School, etc., while simultaneously shaming her for irrational mothering ‘instincts’.

Convince the young bachelor the women are out to trap and ‘sperm-jack’ him. He’s a prisoner of the ball and chain. His own needs and desires are toxic and dystopic. He must dominate or be dominated. He NEEDS a Brotherhood for this fantastic feat Against all that haunts him.

Convince the young couple they will most likely get divorced. Portray their family life as boring and dismal. Co-opt their bonding time with workaholism, alcoholism, materialism and addictions and distractions of every variety imaginable.

Convince the family their entire existence is ‘Interdependent’ with the Machine. They cannot exist without it. The Machine provides everything they need: Food, Water, Energy, Entertainment, Health, Purpose.

The Collective, the Individual, are nothing without IT.

Convince the Philosophers civilization itself is the Machine and Mankind could never exist without it.

Convince the Politicians and their progeny they are destined to rule, as the Workers are destined to be ruled over. Emotional manipulation will ensure they stay in their stationed positions in order to care for the weakest among their group rather than make a move toward the upper echelons of the Pyramid hierarchy. “Selfish” will become the big sham/shame buzzword.

Convince the weakest of the group they are the strongest thanks to ‘Democracy’.

“It is not an easy task to unite the efforts of the human race toward the accomplishment of any common good. Mankind in the majority is selfish, provincial in attitude, and concerned primarily with personal success and acquiring creature comforts. It will not be possible to build an enduring peace until the average man has been convinced that personal selfishness is detrimental to personal happiness and personal success. It must be shown that self-seeking has gone out of fashion, and that the world is moving on to a larger conception of living.” The Secret Destiny of America by Manly P. Hall 1944

Socialism: Where Principles Don’t Matter

I like Caitlin, for the most part, and rarely divest energy into pushing back against those who seem to me to be on the same page as far as ending the global Military Industrial Complex (along with the Pharmaceutical Industrial Complex, Food Industrial Complex and, so on) and in general seems to stand for the liberty and good of the common man.

But I really welcome those moments where I can Individuate from the cracks of the Progressive collectivist push, and here is such a one. So, thank you in advance, Caitlin.

“Defending the most powerful is always the wrong position. Defending cops from the people. The rich from the poor. The US empire from weaker powers. White people from the causes of people of color. Men from feminism. Israel from Palestinians. You’re just helping to create a more unjust and imbalanced world.” Caitlin Johnstone

WOW! The delusions here just smack me right in the face! So, who is right doesn’t matter. Justice doesn’t matter. Poor, disenfranchised, weak, that’s all that matters. What matters, whether wrong or right, Is ONLY that the strong don’t win.

Since when did ‘unjust’ come to mean ‘not sanctioned by the masses’?
Since when did ‘imbalanced’ come to mean ‘cops, white people, men, and Israel are ALWAYS wrong’ just because they are stronger?

What happened to discernment? Why is everyone a member of a group before they are treated as individual cases?

If defending the most powerful is ALWAYS the wrong position, are we to assume the weakest ALWAYS know best?

What happens then when you are among the strongest yourself, Caitlin? I guess we must assume you will then always be wrong, unless you are standing for those weakest links, who will always be right.

I welcome you to a very fun Adulthood, in that case, and look forward to hearing how awesome it is for you to forever bow to the weakest links, no matter whether right or wrong, just because they are so pitiful in their weakness. No strong man is ever right or good, unless they are taking a knee to the consensus trance.

And the weakest in their collective consensus trance is always right and Hitler was also American, because everything evil originated from here, and remains the sole global scourge, obviously. As long as we are promoting weakness, it’s all good.

Easy-Peasy 2020

Relatively speaking, we had an excellent year. I’m not the type to gloat, really. It comes as no surprise to me at all that my experience is pretty much the polar opposite of most folks most of the time. I accepted that ages ago and prefer to think I’m perfecting this ‘gift’ bit by bit, year by year.

Following are some highlights, some whys and hows and so forth, not meaning to boast or give advice, but rather to contrast previous years with my rosy 2020 perspectacles.

I perfected sourdough bread. I’ve been getting failures regularly for years without understanding why and thanks to one farm friend and her new guru, Elaine Boddy, I got the bitch slap needed to learn I was doing it ALL wrong. Not only was I making it infinitely more difficult than it had to be, I had a flabby starter and was creating needless waste. We’ve entered into higher consciousness sourdough on the wee homestead, praise be.

She doesn’t just make it look easy, she actually makes it easy.

I have also become a Kombucha master. Really, a master. It’s easy to say that for a number of reasons, but especially because so few folks drink it around here, or like it once they try it, that it’s in the realm of ‘acquired tastes’ and only needs to appeal to Hubby, and two nearby friend-aficionados. I’ve been working on signature blends for months, using seasonal herbs and fruits, have Kombucha vinegar in a few flavors and am now aging Kombucha champagne. It’s the funnest thing ever. Or, I’m just a real geek like that.

Of course, no one becomes master without help, and in Kombuchaland, this is Scripture:

Even funner than making cheese and much easier too.

Three great gardening successes overshadow the multiple failures—like a second year of sweet potato perils and a fourth year of melon miseries. I leave those to ponder in an upcoming post. For now, it’s Cranberry hibiscus, Blue coco beans and Trombetta squash. I really can’t praise them enough and they were prolific and worry-free and I can’t wait to plant them again in profusion.

But I once said that about the sweet potatoes and the melons, so I’ll shut up now.

Trombetta squash, delicious as summer or winter squash, we have one still standing in the kitchen waiting to be enjoyed.

It’s the sepals that are most popular for tea-making with the Thai red Roselle, aka cranberry hibicus or rosella.

Still eating these six months later and a second crop of volunteers came back at the end of summer.

All the wild grapes and pears we’d harvested and processed and froze in preparation for wine and cider-making were spoiled, because Hubby accidentally turned the deep freezer off. His one big dumb move of the year, pretty mild, relatively speaking again.

Extra-special mention goes of course to the best news of the year, Hubby’s layoff-rebranded early retirement, a somewhat unexpected miracle that has improved my reality already in very unexpected ways. Sometimes the true weight of a burden isn’t fully realized until it’s lifted.

I think he prefers his current working conditions.

Pretty certain it will take him a while to get sick of us, but just in case, there’s always the sourdough.

I knew he’d take over most of my animal chores leaving me more time in the garden and the kitchen, where I most prefer to be. And that he’d build more and relax more and check off items on the to-do list at a more satisfying pace. We’ve added two large asparagus beds, coop 3.0 has raised the bar once more in poultry housing, the orchard looks positively professionally and my promised potting shed is in the planning phase finally.

What I had not expected was how good all of that would feel and that it would come so early and that he’d be so glad about it and that we’d be prepared enough for it to not miss the income much in the foreseeable future.

There’s incredible empowerment and peace of mind in preparing, and not just financially. It has gone in a single year from “Prepping” being something we heard mocked for a decade in the mainstream to now feeling like we were choosing wisely all along—not the easy road for sure, but the right road for us and the many others doing likewise.

And with that a wee bit of a boast.

And another. Still, mask-free, with no need or intention to alter that reality or any of the layers horse shit coming down the pipeline with it in future. Have I earned the right yet to say what I really think about these fucking vaccines? Decker, at Dispatches from the Asylum, says it best so far: vials of battery acid.

Just mark me down in your permanent ‘anti-vaxx’ file and if they send the goons to our house, warn them they’ll be given a good ole-fashioned goose chase. (hmm, bravado before breakfast, I must be feeling good!)

Food for thought for the New Year:

“Ignorantly worshiping our own being on the theater of the external world leads to pathological behavior and neurosis. We are ensnared and enslaved to the will of despots in all sorts of guises. We are wide open to irrationality, manipulation, mania and insanity. As parents often work to deliberately undermine our will and identity, the world’s leaders and misleaders use our psychic dissociation to their advantage. In fact, our estrangement from ourselves is the main reason for the rise of all tyranny. However, the deadly predicament ends the moment we heed the inscription at the Oracle of Delphi – “Gnothi Seuton” or Know Thyself. No other instruction is needed on the journey toward enlightenment.”

Jesus Meets Jung: Religion vs. Psychology – michaeltsarion

Muddying Victim Waters

The first two things you’ll hear in New Age Brainwashing school, in which we are all currently being systematically submerged are:
“There are no accidents.”
“Victimization is a choice.”

The so-called New Age, birthed from the Human Potential movement and begetting such popular offspring as Scientology and Christian Science, has been pushed for well over a century already and include schools and foundations like the Esalen Institute, Frankfurt School, Tavistock Institute and myriad others. These two fundamental beliefs work hand-in-glove to perpetuate the status quo, while pretending to help individuals and society at large.

“There are no accidents.”
“Victimization is a choice.”

In other words, everything that happens to you was meant to happen. This is a clever ruse to get the individual to perpetually deconstruct their own actions in order to align better with the world around them, no matter if that world is healthy or insane. Don’t question society. Don’t question tyranny. Question yourself. Look in the mirror and change yourself. In this way you will ‘alchemize’ the abuse or tragedy that occurred to you, against your will, and therefore not only be healed from it, but be stronger from it as well.

The proponents of this warped ideology will swear until the ends of the earth that this is the only way for victims to ‘gain traction’ and it’s the only place where ‘the rubber meets the road’.

It is an outgrowth of Biblical teachings where one is considered more spiritual, more enlightened, more ‘good’ if—as he makes meaning of the events in his life, which is a perfectly natural human thing to do—he never points a finger to the perpetrators of such accidents or abuse, only at his own role in them, no matter how minuscule that role might have been.

In this way your ‘personal growth’ can then be owed to those who victimized you in the first place. As the joke goes among the plebes in a brotherhood after they’ve been swatted with the fraternity paddle, “Thank you sir, may I have another!”

Because “God” only dishes out what you can handle, right? So if you’ve been granted disease at birth, sold into sex slavery by your parents, gang raped at your office Christmas party, lost limbs in war, ‘chosen’ by your priest as ‘special’ —well congratulations—you’ve been gifted at the highest level of spiritual development. What heroic life potential!

Revenge? That’s so petty. Trial by your peers? Good luck with that. Choose more wisely and by the way, you have one choice—get over it—for your own good.

In this way the tyrants and their collaborators can further muddy the waters by throwing into the mix everyone who thinks of himself as a victim, whether or not he truly is one.

Upset because your neighbor hasn’t been properly social distancing? Did your poor choices lead to 5 children from 5 different fathers? Has your cocaine addiction ruined your life? Did your business fail, your girlfriend cheat on you, your dog eat your homework?

Just hop in the victim bandwagon, where everyone is welcomed and no one knows how to use discernment, because all they really need is someone to cry with and listen to and share their pain with, in order to feel heard for five minutes over the cacophony of bullshit flying at them. It’s no wonder to me at all the victim groups just keep growing and growing. I suspect there’s no end in sight.

I know more folks who actually are victims, yet insist they are not. They’ve bought into this establishment farce completely. They march ‘empowered’ for other victims and repeat the nonsense they’ve heard to keep them out of the pathetic victim group.

You can be healed by your attitude! You must alchemize that cancer into “the best cancer ever! Really, you can do it!

And there’s about 2 million YouTube gurus to tell you exactly how.

No need to wonder what gave you cancer in the first place. No need to face down your abusers. No need to learn discernment. No need for justice. No need to understand the psychosis of our civilization or the lies of our history. No need to accuse or confront the tyrants by name at all. Just follow these simple steps and violà, you’ve turned the lead of your psyche into gold and all will rejoice with you. Yippie!

The ‘victim mentality’ is on overdrive now because it’s a very useful tool of the establishment. If everyone is #metoo, then no one is really #metoo—it’s just the culture, sit back, gaze into your eternal naval-mirror and repeat after me: “There are no accidents. Victim is a mindset. Find the silver lining. Turn the other cheek. Let bygones be bygones. Buck up, Buttercup.”

Nature=Master Deceiver

“There’s no lie in nature.”

I’ve heard this repeated so many times now, from so many different and I believe well-meaning voices, that I decided it’s high time to add my own voice to this nonsense.

Nature doesn’t deceive. Nature doesn’t try to fool you.

Today this is repeated by quite a few philosophers, conspiracy theorists and ‘truthers’ as a way to elevate nature above man’s conning and cunning ways and to condemn our current fantasy-based reality. I agree our so-called civilization deserves plenty of condemning. But, I do not intend to trade one set of illusions for another.

Apparently this attitude goes way back, to the likes of Walter Russell and an entire camp of German Idealists. I love nature as much, maybe even more, than these guys, that’s for sure. Yet my experience is there are no greater deceptions to be found anywhere else, the worst of man’s worm tongue included, than there are to be found in nature.

There are mushrooms so similar that not only a spore print, but a microscope is needed to tell them apart. Poisonous Amanita spissa or delicious Amanita rubescens? Chlorophyllum molybdites, lepiota Americana or macrolepiota procera? Do you want a nice dinner or an evening hugging the toilet? Don’t be fooled, choose wisely!

“Destroying Angel”
the deadly Amanita virosa

Man got his idea for camouflage directly from nature, obviously. In some cases the camouflage is so stealth you could be staring directly at a living creature and not even know until it moves.

Take a walk in the woods and you’ll see sticks that look like snakes and insects that look like sticks. There are spiders that look a lot like bats and bugs that look more like birds.

There are plants like poison ivy, my greatest garden nemesis, that look completely benign, leave no feeling or trace at all in the moment, but 12-24 hours later, long after you’ve forgotten all about it, can elicit a rash so severe you’ll be begging for relief even if it takes the form of a cocktail of toxic pharmaceutical drugs.

That horror story is my arm, on too many occasions to count.

The possum plays dead so effectively he’ll fool nearly any predator.
The most beautiful flowers can kill you.

The most disgusting and unappetizing swamp insect can be delectable.

In fact, to say nature is THE Master Deceiver is even an understatement if you ask me. Nature is a raving, lying bitch at least half the time.

Living so close to nature, growing food, co-creating with the land has offered me the greatest single lesson of my life: Cute and nice are the camouflage of prey and pets.

Nature does not play nice. Nice is for ninnies.

It’s considerably more deceptive when man’s hands meddle in nature’s mix as well, quite impossible sometimes to tell where one ends and the other begins.

Compassion Minus Consent

I’m something of a stickler for words, but what can I say, when you teach foreign languages for two decades a fetish for ‘le mot juste’ just comes with the territory.

Furthermore, when you love being a student as much as I do, it’s expensive to disagree with your teachers. On the other hand, it’s far more expensive to not disagree when I think a disagreement is in order.

Which brings me back to a recent post where I disagree with my current favorite teacher, James True. I don’t think I was persuasive enough in my argument, because he tried to shame me with group-think in front of the whole class (by class I mean his YouTube audience). It didn’t work though, because my love of words is far stronger than my capacity for shame, or group-think.

I lie awake at night thinking about such things. In the wee hours, that is usually between 2 and 3 am, I often get inspiration in the form of annoying insomnia. It’s a fairly small price to pay for what occasionally turns out to be a spectacular insight.

So, I’m trying again, Professor True, to convince you to shift your expression ‘Compassion is not consent’ because I think it’s not accurate. Embedded in the word compassion is consent. Its etymology is ancient, unlike more modern words like empathy. But, I already mentioned that in my first failed attempt to persuade.

And, I don’t want to just negate the expression, because I think I understand what is meant and the sentiment behind it. Instead, I’d like to offer what I think is a more precise phrase in order to refine it.

Consider instead, if you please: “Compassion minus consent.”

Here’s why.

Understanding is based in intellect. Empathy/sympathy is emotionally-centered. But compassion comes from the core. I think so far the good professor would agree, because he talks often about the importance of being seated in one’s pelvis, though he uses more colorful expressions for that fact.

I believe these subtle differences in expression have considerable impact and can be used by nefarious powers against the greatest intentions and wills of man. A couple of examples:

“We are all One” or “We are all in this together” is a kind of bastardization of an absolute truth: Everything is connected. We live in a holistic system. I believe this means that in the mind of man is buried the ancestral wisdom of all ages. I believe this is true because I’ve experienced it personally. Someday I’ll have the skill to express it. But I don’t yet.

I believe this is also what NDE (near death experience) is about. There is an ‘extended consciousness’ realm and I do believe some folks are able to move between these realms (sometimes against their will or comprehension). We used to call it shamanism and try to cultivate it, now we call it schizophrenia and try to control it. Professor True has several excellent posts on this topic.

Another example: “All we need is love” or the myriad variations that have bombarded us for several generations through art, film, books, music. I’ve already said my piece on this a couple of times, so I won’t rehash it again.

I’m all for love and compassion. I just think to saturate the culture with it or suggest it’s the magic bullet to end our social woes is actually undermining it. True love and compassion should be earned and dished out sparingly. Empathy, sympathy, understanding should be extended as far and wide as humanly possible. Kindness, care and concern should be liberally applied, perhaps even where it’s not deserved.

And compassion, minus consent, is something awesome I could aspire to—I know it won’t be easy—but it seems to me a worthy goal of an enlightened social order.

In any case, these men are totally crushing in this best Apocalypse ever, and are so much more entertaining than this post. Do something both fun and healthy for yourself on Father’s Day and check them out!

The Wandering Jew & the Lucky Bamboo

The Wandering Jew & The Lucky Bamboo: A Fictional Conspiracy Theory

Do you understand the plants are made just like that? Compare them to the ones that were like, painstakingly crafted?

If you knew there was a difference, would you wonder who crafted it, and how, or even why?

Did you know the sandwhich, the olive, the vodka, were all crafted? Of course you did.

But did you know also was the potato, the tulip, the rose, even the honeybee?

That I hate going to the dentist is no mystery. But in some States, particularly in the South, it seems, sedation is an option. Now I hate going to the dentist slightly less than before, as in all my way too long functional memory. On the gas, there is some enlightenment, as you’ll see.

Twice now I’ve been to the dentist since the Plandemic, because I have dental issues since childhood, not to mention dental trauma, from the choking fluoride treatment molds that tormented me every six months for a decade. That I found these treatments horrific is considered a mental weakness on my part. That my mom paid for them from her hard-earned wages, and trusted them, breaks my heart to this day.

Now they’ve required me to sign a checklist that I have no symptoms of the Covid during these last two visits where only the gas, and lovely company of kind women, guard my fragile acquiescence .

At these days they’ve also insisted on taking my temperature via a digital thermometer directed precisely at my 3rd eye.

That is, the pineal gland. Little do they know, I’m sure, the conspiracy theories that surround that teeny-tiny gland. Right behind the directed laser pointed right there, to which they are given a number, as if that is the only signal that instrument is designed to relate. And as if they would know any other reason why this instrument is now being more normalized than the obscene body scanners at the airport.

I hate dentists, so much so that my latest dentist is my heroine. She gets what honest dentist-hate is like. She commends my stoicism in the chair, bless her heart. I honor her sacrificial hours and delicate sensitivity which I recognize as akin to artistry. She really is someone worthy of far more than her title. I like her, and I’m not being even remotely sarcastic. I can hardly imagine what it’s like to be a woman like that.

“Feelings are considered to be internal human structure and architecture. But what you imagine and create are far more important—and the creative process radically and naturally changes feelings in a positive way, as a side effect.” Jon Rappaport

On the gas, I reflect, and tears flow, beyond my knowing, how. They are so kind, they see, they don’t define. Are you ok? Yes, I am, right here, right now, I am ok. And I see how flimsy that is this sedated happy feeling in the here and now.

Are you? Are y’all? Is that enough? Is that ok? Do you load yourself with duty and then pray you’ll sleep and have enough still to spend another day?

Would you have enough pity, prana, love, care, energy, to say . . .

Would you really like to know what it was like for me, in the pit, today?

I did not get the impression s/he did. Bypassing is our only call of fame. From the pedestal the pit cannot be understood. There is no degree of compassion that might pacify the pit.

Because you see, in the pit, your compassion is where I most love to shit.

That you preach how I should feel makes it that much more worse
But you praise and anoint yourselves with kudos and more books

It is an annoying block to enlightenment for those who perpetually misunderstand. And are misunderstood.

“If I do not describe the details of our work it is because we were busied with things which lie beyond speech and which therefore elude the spell that words exert. But everyone will remember how his mind has labored in regions which he cannot portray, whether it were in dreams or in deep thought. It seemed as if he were groping for the right road in labyrinths or sought to unravel the figures among the patterns of an optical illusion. And often he awoke wonderfully strengthened. This is where our best work takes place, and so it seemed to us, too, that in our struggle speech was still inadequate, and that we must penetrate into the depths of the dream if we were to withstand the threat against us.”

The cynicism that regards all hero worship as comical is always shadowed by a sense of physical inferiority.” Occulture: The Unseen Forces That Drive Culture Forward by Carl Abrahamsson

Compassion IS Consent

Websters Dictionary, 1905

Definition, Compassion: To suffer

A suffering with another; painful sympathy; a sensation of sorrow excited by the distress or misfortunes of another, pity, commiseration. A mixed passion, compounded of love and sorrow; pain or regret, or is excited by it. Extreme distress of an enemy even changes enmity into at least temporary affection.

Sounds like Stockholm Syndrome to me. Our virtues are being played against us.

If you’re still believing what you see on TV, you’re addicted to the McDonald’s of the mind. If so, may I suggest some proper nourishment, in the form of my current favorite philosopher, James True.

I’ve already recommended him on this blog quite a few times. Now I’m going to attempt to do something he’s asked his subscribers for, which I really respect him for asking to do: “prune my lips.” Excellent expression and sentiment.

One of Jame’s big schticks is the idea that “compassion is not consent” —he repeats it often and it’s being adopted by others. It’s gaining traction, and I don’t think that’s a good thing.

I think it’s like throwing your precious pearls of prana at swine much of the time. I’m sure there’s a few exceptions, but compassion fatigue is a real thing.

I also think receiving compassion is the favorite sugar donut of tyrants, abusers, criminals and malcontents of all flavors.

Just look at the etymology of the word—to suffer together. If you are choosing to ‘suffer with’ anyone, you’re giving consent.

When I witness the suffering of another and extend compassion to that individual, or even group, it’s a visceral experience. I feel it in my gut, it twists in my stomach and moves up my spine and into my heart space, and if I extend it even further it goes right up my chest and lodges as a lump in my throat. If I extend it even further still, my eyes well up, my lips begin to quiver, and when the tears begin to fall for them, I know we are suffering together. I hope they are touched by this, that it makes them feel less alone in their suffering, that somehow energetically I’ve lessened their burden just a bit. It’s expensive, it takes a lot of calories.

John Stoessinger, in his compassionate bestseller, Henry Kissinger: The Anguish of Power (1976), demonstrates his consent of this man’s actions in every chapter. He makes excuses for him, shows how very ‘human’ he is, and calls this ‘speaking truth to power.’ He wrote the book because, he says: “I suspect that many of those who later attacked him without mercy might have done so out of their own frustration, bitterness, and disappointment. What has been sadly lacking, however, is a sense of reality and balance.”

As James and Owen Benjamin agree, the pedestal and the pit both suck, as does Stoessinger: “I have attempted to portray the human being and the statesman behind the myths of accolade and condemnation.”

I wonder, what if Stoessinger would have thrown his pearls of compassion at the millions, perhaps billions, who continue to suffer because of Kissinger’s lifetime of global influence? I wonder if Kissinger needed his compassion or valued it all that much. I wonder, by demonstrating how ‘human’ he is, how much compassion for the man moved through his readers like a contagion, building up compassion for the man decade after decade, so that all his misdeeds piled up like good manure in the barn, to be spread over the garden to grow and grow, so that he moves effortlessly between pedestal and pit, achieving his every tyrannical dream in this alchemical process of perpetual re-consenting.

Try this aperture on for size please, gentlemen. Imagine you are Kissinger, receiving the public’s compassion, what does it feel like for you? Does it look like dissent to you, or consent? Would you have the sense your work was approved of, or disapproved of?

Furthermore, would that change much, considering he has an agenda for your life, whether or not you show him compassion? Why would you extend your compassion to someone who has not demonstrated to you he is suffering? Do you assume he suffers? Might it be a common case of : We don’t see others how they really are, we see them how we are?

Do you think Jesus would’ve washed Kissinger’s feet before or after he stomped all over the world?

Crowd the Bubble

Handy Hubby claims he’s becoming a social distancing bully.

I think he’s becoming a perfect disciple of civil disobedience and further honing his already natural aptitudes in that essential discipline. He complied with Costco’s face mask dumbass police-y, but at least he makes it expensive for the collective in so doing.

The corporations will only respond to strong collective action, strong collective action can only be flamed by the torch of the strong individual.

So, of his own accord, he chose to crowd the bubble. He wore the mask, because we have a fetish for bulk shopping, and I hate shopping. He took another one for the team.

He just made a few of his own rules along the way. Like, once a shopper’s indecision caused him a moment’s annoyance, he broached the six-foot distancing zone, causing enough discomfort for the shopper to stop hemming and hawing and make a choice already, so he could move in for his kill.

I’ve already mentioned in many posts he’s nearly an expert marksman. He shops the same way he shoots, which was the same way he seduced me—move in quietly, have a concise agenda, work fast, take no prisoners.

As further recrimination, he repeatedly pulled down his mask. Why would he pull such a stunt? Oh, just because he couldn’t breath. Well, I guess breathing is considered the entire reason for social distancing these days, so mark that another winner!

For my part, I slowly, oh so slowly, basked in the empty aisles of my favorite antique store, touching everything of even remote interest. I filed longingly through several old books and bought a few, with cash. Then I put another few items on credit card, and watched as the clerk, who knows me now, because she knows I love it there, use hand sanitizer. I said, “You know, I know you’re following police-y, but that stuff is not good for you.” She confided, I know, I’m just trying to be cautious and accommodating. I said, with a wink, refill the bottle with lavender-scented water and aloe vera gel , no one will suspect a thing.

Recently, one of Hubby’s passengers was tested positive for the cornholio, now he’s lying in the hammock drinking beer for breakfast. This is what quarantine looks like here at Chez Shell, aka Kensho Homestead.

Thanks Corporatocracy! Greatest Apocalypse Ever!

I will end here and now blessed with a river of knowing in this song, passed along through the hands of one receptive woman, and in deep bows to those who are waving along the banks as I flow, have inspired me, challenged me, caused me the pain and chaos that sparks my flame, as an individual, passing, in wisdom.

And occasionally, with great and aching discernment, even very selective gratitude.

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