Tag: psychology

The Story Arc(h)

So many stories not told. They don’t fit the mold.

While the same stories are repeated over and over. The approved stories, with the approved arcs and twists, capturing audiences beyond time and space.

Hero or Villain? Victim or Culprit?

The ordinary stories of ordinary folks are bypassed. Not sexy enough. Not dramatic enough. Too slow-paced. Not Catchy. Or spicy. Or click-baity.

Not nearly sticky enough.

Stories must be sending the right message. Clicking the right boxes in the right moments in the accepted paradigm according to the right models.

Triumph over adversity are ultimately the only stories allowed. Even the stories of failed heroes are spun in such a light, otherwise they are considered ‘dystopian’. And even then we see tragic heroes ‘set free’ by their surrender to the ‘greater force’ or ‘liberated’ by a merciful death.

How the stories are told indicate what the audience will perceive. Here I provide some examples.

These are all still ‘my stories’, just spun to be acceptable, or not. My goal here is to get folks to question WHY certain stories sell. Is it a matter of authentic taste? Of expectation? Of social programming?

Is it the audience who choose, or someone else, perhaps more subtly who chooses for you?

Here are some stories never told, true (ish) stories from my own life. You be the judge/critic/pretend publisher and let me know.

***

While in NOLA, a hurricane. The story that would sell: Young teacher moves to New Orleans for her new position at a prestigious Southern university one week before the most devastating hurricane in its history. She evacuates to a remote part of the Louisiana bayou and learns about Creole and Cajun history and music and cuisine and finally settles in the region of the native Caddo tribe to study Pre-Colombian cultures of the Deep South.

The story that won’t sell: Young teacher moves to New Orleans for her new position at a prestigious Southern university one week before the most devastating hurricane in its history. She evacuates to a remote part of the Louisiana bayou and learns about weather modification and clandestine military operations pertaining to centralized, unelected power structures controlling the U.S. government.

***

While in Galveston, a hurricane. The story that would sell: Couple not long ago evacuated from New Orleans experiences second 100-year hurricane evacuation after just three years. After being forced to split up in order to continue working, they blow through a decade of savings, suffer marital issues and nearly divorce, but are called by God to settle in the remote hills of East Texas to build a homestead.

The story that won’t sell: Couple not long ago evacuated from New Orleans experiences second 100-year hurricane evacuation after just three years. Wife begins seriously researching ‘chemtrails’ and learns about the 70+ years of weather modification that leads her to the ongoing Geoengineering projects—that is the global ‘climate remediation’ experimentation, much of it covert operations of global public-private partnerships with zero accountability or known oversight.

***

While in Elkhart, a tornado. The story that would sell: Couple experiences third weather disaster and nearly loses home and wife talks of ‘meeting death’. She finds God, Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, Enlightenment and starts a fundamentalist cult which then gets attacked Waco-style by the government and all cultists die in flames.

The story that won’t sell: Couple experiences third weather disaster and nearly loses home and wife talks of ‘meeting death’. She turns to herbalism and organic gardening and a life of quiet reflection about the nature of evil and tyranny and the statist system broken beyond repair and the inadequacies of every group-think solution to this issue, including the anarchy renamed voluntarism and the so-called ‘mystery schools’ and the exhausting rehashing of ‘Prophecy’ and is just generally permanently dissatisfied with all the solutions and proposals she’s ever heard, and she’s heard a fucking ton of them by now.

She discovers a mass effort at brainwashing against the ‘victim’ —some kind of crazy signaling effort of victims to rally other victims, and wonders who does this attitude really serve? So, we ‘victims’ are now considered by the establishment as of a ‘dark triad’ type (witches?) if we don’t spin our circumstances to always be whistling while we work, in whatever chaotic wind they care to bare down on us. Or so it would seem.

“Victim signaling, defined as ‘public and intentional expressions of one’s disadvantages, suffering, oppression, or personal limitations’ is strongly correlated (r = .52) with Dark Triad personality traits”.

The Psychology of Social Status and Class: A Conversation with Jordan Peterson

So, so many stories not told. But don’t worry! We’ve got a new generation now, selling the same story in a whole new way!

Stop complaining! Smile. Be happy now.

Creating the Global Citizen

“Alvin Toffler predicted ‘demassification’: a process ‘in which a relatively homogeneous social collectivity (or one conceptualized as such) is broken down into (or reconceptualized in terms of) smaller, more diverse elements’. This is the prize for big social networks: compartmentalize people into echo chambers and bombard them with confusing distractions and dead ends.”

Confuse the words, creating a smokescreen of misunderstanding: Like: community=network=market
Obviously these words used to mean very different things in the actual world, before the virtual environment muddied the waters. The market wants all kinds of personal details about you and so they pretend they are in a community with you. Your network of friends and acquaintances and business relations may indeed form a community at some basic level, but to expand this concept out in an attempt to create from this a sense of ‘global community’ is preposterous. It is a Benetton ad, not a community.

Yet it has infiltrated and infected the actual world as we’ve all experienced. The great Convid is example enough. But, there’s more. 

Even small local shops in rural Texas feel entitled to ask shoppers for their phone number, to use video surveillance indiscriminately, to appeal to shoppers for ‘community’ donations and to shove their mailing list and ‘loyalty card’ at you. I seriously doubt they will draw the line at the next big thing the big box markets teach them.

“Please take a sensor bracelet at the entrance, this will ensure you a positive shopping experience.”

That is no community for me!

Deb Filman does a fine job of ranting about this, and an even better job breaking it down for folks, especially parents, because it really is the kids they are after. They always start with the easiest targets.

Are We Educating Children or Training Bots? That is the question!

More concept confabulation: Training=programming=learning
Deb has some choice words to share about this, so I’ll be brief. These words and concepts are being deliberately confused in order to create cognitive dissonance in order to get us to comply. Social engineering has become an acceptable system for indoctrination of populations and is being normalized and implemented by the United Nations and cooperating global partners through our institutions, and directly into our LOCAL communities, all of them.

The U.N.: Creating child social activists all over the country on our dollar.

More muddying of words and concepts happens all the time. This is to be expected. This is not a new tactic at all. If they still teach Animal Farm in school, let’s hope the correct message is still being taken from it. The rules written on the barnyard wall keep shifting. (Therefore, it must be my job to keep shifting with the rules, right?)

More word meshing:
Individuals=collectives
Regulate=Control=Master=Suppress

“It is the responsibility of civil society to experiment with models of effective global citizenship.”

To experiment with models! It is our responsibility, as global citizens, to experiment with our populations through education, to create good global citizens.

That is, for one, to train children in ‘Emotional Regulation’ in order to make good ‘Global Citizens’. Soldiers are trained in emotional regulation. As much as you might get annoyed at the Hobby Lobby with the number of emotionally unregulated children, this is not something that we want as institutional directives aimed at children. Why? Because as the establishment experts know very well, it leads to neuroticism. One kind of behavior required at school, another one at home, another one in public, another one at church, another one here and there and everywhere, and what the kids end up with is not an education, but the essential life skill required of a psychotic society: Mask Juggling.

In other words, become better adjusted at nebulous, shifting, always uncertain unreality. Who does that serve?

From Wiki, the ‘experts’, right?!

“Psychodynamic therapy uses the idea of a Faustian bargain to explain defence mechanisms, usually rooted in childhood, that sacrifice elements of the self in favor of some form of psychological survival. For the neurotic, abandoning one’s genuine feeling self in favour of a false self more amenable to caretakers may offer a viable form of life, but at the expense of one’s true emotions and affects. For the psychotic, a Faustian bargain with an omnipotent self can offer the imaginary refuge of a psychic retreat at the price of living in unreality.”

I can’t help but wonder, as illogical as all this obviously is, could it actually be the setup for the next great fall?

“We had created a global civilization, and for what? So the whole thing could come crashing down into the ocean, bringing unimaginable misery upon the earth? What purpose could such suffering possibly serve? The answer—in truth, the loss, death, despair, desolation, sickness, ill-treatment, indignity and, as Nietzsche wrote, ‘profound self-contempt, the torture of self-mistrust and the wretchedness of the vanquished’ rarely change ordinary men and women. Extraordinary people change through the good thing, and through the self-mastery that yokes them to it; the joyous source of the world. But such types are few and far between. For the masses, there is no hope because all they have is hope, and habit, and expectation, and desire, and possession, and progress, and business, and money, and all the other illusions of the egoic system.
That man had to be disillusioned was not, quite obviously, a message which could find very much popular support in a world of illusions, but then no message worth hearing ever does. The individual knows that the evil and pain and suffering she has gone through has not been for naught. Being sensitive and kind—those rarest of qualities in the civilized system—the individual finds no pleasure in the idea that everyone has to go through hell to reach heaven.” 33 Myths of the System by Darren Allen

We SO Rock!

Times are tough, the mood around here is tight and demoralized. I won’t sugar coat it. Two months of 100+ degrees and no rain is bound to have emotional as well as physical consequences. We are victims and I refuse to pretend otherwise.

It’s one thing after another and because it’s so hot everything takes far greater effort. I’d go down the big list of all the things breaking down and all the things we can’t keep up with, but it’s way too long.

And no one likes a complainer, right? Don’t wallow in misery, right? Don’t bring others down?

If I had a dollar for every time I read or hear somewhere some version of—“Don’t play the victim”or “You’ve got to get out of the victim mentality” —I’d spit on it, wad it up in a tight ball, and shoot it out the barrel of a gun right between the eyes of every idiot who repeats such self-serving nonsense.

We ARE victims and there are a great many of us. Victims of medical experimentation, victims of weather warfare and disaster capitalism, victims of theft, victims of bullying and coercion, and that’s just those who are lucky enough not to be victims of far worse.

What is the ‘victim mentality’ exactly and who does it serve if we all bypass it? Who does it serve if we swallow our anger and resentment and bitterness?

Folks like to say it serves oneself, as in, then the dark emotions don’t haunt you and bring you down. They say we shouldn’t be vindictive, or hang on to past abuses and that hate will eat away at our souls and even cause cancer and other serious diseases.

In fact, it’s blind optimism and relentless positivity that keep folks stuck in denial and complacency, which can easily prove fatal, for the individual and the culture.

It is considered extremely ‘uncool’ to ‘play the victim’ even when you are a victim. Why is that? The media would have us believe everyone is playing the victim and that’s what’s wrong with our culture—so litigious, everyone looking for a handout, too many snowflakes.

While that may be partially true, and most certainly exploited, they leave out one very big piece of the social puzzle. Like, should we not be concerned that we have created a culture with so many victims, whether perceived or real?

I’ll leave y’all to ponder that question for a bit while I digress.

Because, we SO ROCK!

Sure, it really sucks at the moment. But at such times I take more notice of all the things we’ve done right. It’s not bypassing all that’s gone wrong, it’s holding both reality extremes in my mind at the same time.

We recently celebrated our 20th anniversary, and 15 of those years we’ve had this property, which we purchased, BASED ON BEING VICTIMS. After Hurricane Katrina, we saw first hand what the government response is to a crisis and we also saw how helpless most folks were. It was very eye-opening. We took action, to make sure we were not victims again.

We were victims again. And again. These are not ‘natural’ disasters, not one of them.

But for argument sake, even if the hurricanes and tornado were not manipulated by man (they were!) the consequences of those disasters were most definitely exacerbated by man.

These are disasters with perpetrators. Each time the (supposed) natural disasters were made far worse by people. We were robbed after the first one, as well as permanently losing my teaching contract at that time. The second time we were left paying 3 rents—one on the apartment we couldn’t live in, the mortgage on this property that had no finished home to live in yet, and the house to which we evacuated. The third time saw more grifters try to take advantage of our compromised and very stressful situation under the guise of helping.

Each time we’ve taken action based on that victim status to try to ameliorate it for the next time.

That’s why we rock. In the last 15 years we have carved out an awesome wee homestead. We cleared loads of land, just the two of us and a little old tractor. Built a cabin, 3 chicken coops, a corral, a large garden, a large orchard, remodeled our home, acquired many different kinds of livestock, have been learning beekeeping, foraging, cheesemaking, herbalism and LOADS of other life skills that were completely new to us, and have helped a few others on their journey to do the same.

As victims it is our duty to arm others (or at least try, especially for the next generations) with the tools they will need to bring down the perpetrators who currently evade us. It only serves the perpetrators to pretend there are no victims, or to micro-manage others’ victim status and behavior.

A victim mentality can be healthy, or it can be destructive. What most folks do is try to exploit it or minimize it.

They try to exploit it by using it as an excuse to do nothing—this is not a victim mentality—this is a grifter mentality. They try to minimize it because the folks around them are too lazy, indifferent, busy, selfish, adolescent, or cruel to listen to them and allow them to express their true feelings rather than those that are socially acceptable and make everyone else feel comfortable.

The guilt and shame should go squarely and solely on the shoulders of the abusers and those making excuses for the abuse. If victims of repeated abuses turn into individuals with a grifter mentality it could be because they’ve witnessed so often first-hand that this is the winning strategy in our culture. I seriously doubt telling such individuals to stop ‘playing the victim’ will do a damn bit of good. And, why should it?

So, all hail the victims! And more power to us. Not the corrupting brand of power that turns us into tyrants and perpetrators ourselves, but the inner-power it takes to hold that victimhood out for all to see, in order to enlighten, to righteously blame and accuse, and to give the next generation a better chance at identifying their abusers, holding them accountable, as well as in fortifying their own lives and livelihoods against further victimization.

Feast or Famine

We are just days away from no tomatoes. Just as I was really getting sick of them.

There’s an attitude to surplus, just as there is to scarcity. Maybe we could even call it opposing frequencies.

I’ve known wealthy folk, in my younger days, who refused to eat leftovers, ever, no matter what it was, even lobster or filet mignon. One could almost be convinced of a certain ‘trickle down’ economic theory when in their presence.

While I was really lucky to be friends with them, because I got a lot of free upscale leftovers, I did find that attitude to be wasteful, and was not shy about expressing it.

It behooved me to see all that good food go into the garbage, not even composted. I couldn’t eat all the leftovers created from a weekend lake house party, and there certainly weren’t any livestock to benefit, not even doggie bags.

I think my 2nd favorite thing about having pigs, after the sausage and bacon and ham, is that I feel zero guilt about throwing away our surplus. It’s not throwing it away at all, I’ve come to realize, it’s really more like pre-seasoning our sausage.

So it was interesting to read an article the other day from an author who presented a graph from the “Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data demonstrating a substantial decrease in household food expenditure as a percentage of income—from 44 percent in 1901 to a mere 9 percent in 2021.”

It was considered a ‘good thing’ according to this graph and this author that food prices had become so negligible in the modern economy.

I’d be willing to bet the farm that the general public agrees with this premise. To have the essentials of life—that is, food and water—as cheap as possible, indeed feels like a good thing. If those are brought to them poisoned is mostly not a thought at all.

Once the essentials are met, as in our modern Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, we can move on to entertainment.

Oh, except for that other pesky thing, energy. Because WiFi and game boys and television aside, we do still NEED our fridges and freezers and air conditioners.

And if you think that’s exaggerated, watch the mass exodus from the South to the North if the World Economic Forum has their way and all those civilizing conveniences disappear before too long. All while we are sweltering down here under the umbrella of ionospheric heaters up there.

But, aside. Let’s get back to the basics. Food and water, even before energy. You already know the feast or famine feeling. I know you do.

Do you give a care when you shower that 5 more minutes will break the bank? Have you ever lived in a situation where you carried all the water you needed for the day?

Do you consider when you buy your groceries that 5 more dollars will break the bank? Have you ever lived in a situation where a few dollars meant dinner or no dinner?

Every technology is a Trojan Horse. From shoes, to language, to music, to roads, to windmills, to combines, to bombs, to telephones, to cybernetics. Every one. Man existed before all of them. Somehow. Not even the ionospheric heaters causing us drought and weather chaos will bring about the extinction of man.

Man, in whatever form, of whatever species we care to classify, is a feature, or a bug, of this ‘solar system’.

Or, maybe I’m wrong, and we will perish like the supposed dinosaurs.

But my sense says, its otherwise. It says we survive in surplus, in scarcity, in love and in hate. We remain under masters, in servitude, and occasionally at some magnificent moments, I imagine, its otherwise.

We survive wars and diseases and lies. We survive pop music and step mothers and manufactured weather.

They say we must thrive, to thrive is to succeed. To succeed is to know progress. To progress IS.

To succeed is to feast.
Yet to feast indefinitely, is impossible. It will eventually lead to famine.

Because failure IS the inevitable consequence of success.

Chop Wood, Carry Water

Trip to town, so sad. Two machines tried to rip me off and no working humans looked capable of anything.

Don’t load, don’t count, don’t smile. What do ya do?

Hostessing was once a thing, like customer service. I was a really good hostess once, let me assure y’all!

It’s more than charm and service, it’s an art and a craft.

So, it’s no mystery to me why the cats eat with the dogs on our back porch: Good food + Good vibes= Good company.

Being a good hostess is similar to being a good teacher—observation, agility, ingenuity—are higher qualifications than even empathy, discernment and a sense of propriety—all already a challenge for most.

A teacher cannot play the same role as a bouncer, though that is mostly what is required these days.

My greatest failures in the classroom mirror my greatest failures in life. I’d sum them up to a kind of mis-navigation of the cherished Comfort Zone. As an example I offer a brief recap of my worst classroom lesson ever.

It was taken from a book of suggested lessons for EFL/ESL (English as a Foreign/Second) students and it was called: ‘Dog or Wolf?’

These are lessons designed to generate conversation in the target language, so students learn new vocabulary, practice old expressions, participate with one another, and ultimately create a student-centered learning environment. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, occassionally it’s a classroom catastrophe.

This is where the observational and flexibility skills of the teacher can really shine. Or, really, not.

I thought I knew these students well enough to pull it off. NOT!

Was it my mood? My confidence? My lack of fluidity that particular day? I really can’t say, even now, but oh how that failure, just that one day out of how many other lesser failures, who knows, but that particular one has stuck in my craw still 2+decades later.

They were mostly Japanese students, from various cities, all college-aged. The caliber of student willing and able to travel to the desert US to immerse themselves in American life, indoctrination, and university culture. We had a good rapport, they were good students. Their English was at a level I knew they could perform well with the material.

I presented it, gave the requisite handouts, grouped them in fours as per the instructions and posed the preliminary question:

If you could choose, would you choose to be a dog or a wolf?

There were follow-up questions about culture and civilization, surplus vs scarcity, independence and hierarchy. In my mind it generated a brilliant potential conversation and I was looking forward to it.

The question was meant to lead to an exchange between group members who would discuss the merits of their choice, as opposed to the deficiencies of the other option. It was based on the assumption there would be some who would choose dog and others who would choose wolf, for various reasons, creating an atmosphere for debate.

Except all the students agreed on dog at the preliminary question, leaving me standing there with my mouth agape and no further game plan.

I nudged, painfully, at my more philosophical follow-up questions and got crickets. Obviously, everyone would be a dog—comfort, ease, predictability, discipline, training—DUH!

The ‘best’ student, a relatively large young man from Okinawa, who was more bold and out-going than the rest, immediately intuited my dilemma. He raised his hand and said he wanted to change his answer.

But, I was stuck in my own personal baffledom. I tried to go with it, push through, take the ball he’d so generously tossed me and run with it, but I remained, I don’t know, just sort of, stranded there, for way too long a moment.

And then I couldn’t get it back.

Anyone who has never stood in front of a classroom most likely underestimates the skill it takes to be good at it. And when I say good, I don’t just mean popular. And I don’t just mean effective. I mean the kind of good where one can walk the line between popular and effective, because it is impossibly narrow. Those who pull off that level of impossible should be studied and duly rewarded and I’m sure there are more than a few. So, it’s not actually impossibly narrow. Just too narrow for me that day, that lesson.

They should also study bombs like mine that day.

After missing the generous handoff, I was so tongue-tied and disgusted, with it all—them, myself, the lesson—that I dismissed the class early.

The Okinawan student stayed there, obviously to discuss it with me. He wanted to make me feel better about the clear and dismal failure, I think. It was a really sweet gesture and very appreciated, even in the moment, but it didn’t really help me make sense of it all.

Like, why was I so confident that lesson would work? So confident, in fact, that I didn’t even have a Plan B. Bad teacher! So confident, in fact, that I became rigid. And frankly, still feel judgmental of those students (so passive, so acquiescent, so like, totally lame!).

Not really like me. So stuck in my own thinking that it’s not conceivable to me every student would choose dog over wolf that I could not, in fact still feel challenged to, mentally adjust from my misperceptions. Yes, even now.

A room of 30 students and only one wolf, and that one only under pressure, and with a savior complex no less.

What happens in world become so ‘civilized’ we’ve all become obedient dogs? And, obedient to what, and to whom?

Don’t think, don’t fight, don’t roam, what do we do? What happens when man becomes too civilized? Too domesticated? Too content?

I still don’t know what to do with such a muddle. Would you?

Laughing at Tyrants

From the best essay I’ve read all month (not James Corbett, but I was reminded of his excellent vid on the topic, so I used that image).

This one comes from a ‘new to me’ writer on Substack called ‘The Upheaval’:

“The most obvious answer is that ridicule undermines authority. Or, perhaps more accurately, it is inherently destabilizing to brittle, illegitimate, undeserving authority. Hence why, as Milan Kundera put it in The Joke, “No great movement designed to change the world can bear sarcasm or mockery, because they are a rust that corrodes everything it touches.”

Me: Milan Kundera was my favorite writer for years and I’ve read most of his works, some of it multiple times. I find it extraordinary that despite his popularity among New York intelligentsia, that same circle has not understood its deeper implications, clearly, otherwise they would’ve seen right through the corporate-fascist institutions they are still supporting even now.

“The answer strikes to a much deeper insight: genuine humor is utterly reliant on its connection with the truth. As any good comic could explain, the best jokes play off the gap between expectation and reality; or between propriety (social pretense) and reality; or on irony, the gap between words and their real meaning; and so on – in all cases the most effective humor functions through revelation.”

https://open.substack.com/pub/theupheaval/p/humor-and-humanity?r=apljy&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post

“Nor perhaps why, pearls firmly in hand, a 2021 EU report literally titled “It’s Not Funny Anymore” warned breathlessly that, by “blurring the lines between mischief and potentially radicalising messaging,” the “transgressive humour” of online “meme culture” threatens to expose people to such amorphous “far-right” and “extremist” notions as “anti-elite arrogance and condescension,” or jokes making fun of those who “do not question the information that comes from mainstream press and politics.” And why, decrying that “humour has been weaponised as a form of resistance against a political culture that is supposedly curtailing free speech,” it called for increased global efforts to “monitor” and “quarantine” such humor in partnership with tech companies and “progressive communities.”

Me: Indeed. Just try to find funny political memes on a basic Google search today. Hardly a laugh to be found.

“But humor’s intimate relationship with the truth also explains why the authoritarian is typically incapable of it. If the punchline of a joke is not the revelation of the real but simply the reiteration of the lie, no genuine laughter – of the kind that seems to well up unbidden from deep within the listener – can be produced. Hence why most mainstream comedy has long since replaced laughter with “clapter,” why the left can’t meme, and why the EU report bemoaned the fact that “attempting to counter extremist humour with a form of alternative humour has proven very difficult.”

Me: As much as I agree and appreciate this entire essay and hope ya’ll will go read it, I also need to add that seed of doubt, because it’s there.

A question for y’all: Does humor also serve the tyrannical system by normalizing its crimes and diffusing the hostility of the masses? After all, back in the day it was the ‘court jesters’ who performed at the behest of the rulers. It is part of the ‘bread and circus’.

And so far, it has proven to be completely ineffectual at curbing the influence of the unelected elite whose power has only increased despite all the best efforts of George Carlin, among precious few others.

It may make us feel better, but does it really have any chance of changing the game? Because, if it did, wouldn’t it have worked by now? Is humor just the new ‘Opium of the masses’? After all, the ‘Emperor With No Clothes’ remains the Emperor.

Beauty is Intoxicating

Every gift is a curse. But, is every curse also a gift?

I’m going to take the long way around a pretty basic question, but one that I am honestly curious about and would love to hear any thoughts on the matter.

When I was a teenager, I had a number of “love interests” that were short-lived, but intense enough that I remember them vividly. I went from Tom-boy to boy-crazy fairly quickly, in just one summer actually. For someone so young I found myself navigating very choppy waters without a smidgeon of skill.

Two of them, around the age of 16 and 17, are fit examples for this story. One was a short-term boyfriend, another was a near miss.

The near miss was a one-legged salesman. I was a shoe sales clerk at the shopping mall in Chesterfield, Missouri. It was actually a really good job and I was glad to have it. Suburban life before car age is brutally boring for someone like me. I finally felt free and so adult-like as I strutted through the mall on breaks in my heavily discounted Overland Trading Company shoes.

I don’t remember which shop it was now, but I would expressly wander in that direction just to see if he was there. He would smile at me, I felt he was even waiting for me to pass by, and I would smile back, maybe give a cute little wave for added effect.

That he had only one leg was not what made me want to gawk at him. But rather that he was gorgeous. I mean, seriously Gorgeous. Handsome, amazing build, confident, well-dressed, and just the right amount of older for a 16 year old to get herself swooning in his direction.

We talked at some point. Went to the food court together. Became, not exactly friends, but something like ‘mall buddies’. Then somehow it happened that we decided to have a real date, where he came over to my house to pick me up in his car.

And I will never forget that moment. It was a sudden disaster. That he had one leg did not phase me in the public sphere, not at all. It felt like a non-issue. Sure, I was curious what had happened, and I’m sure I asked at one point and he answered, but I don’t recall his story. I liked him. I especially liked looking at him. I liked that he liked me. I remember, I really liked that.

I remember he was kind, and a gentleman. And I hated myself. I hated myself that suddenly, seeing him in my house, something switched for me that I could not comprehend. I sensed overwhelmingly, all of a sudden, that I could not be who he needed me to be. It was a shameful, and quite devastating feeling for me at that ripe young age.

On one other occasion not long afterward I again became intoxicated by another young man’s beauty. He was my age and the son of a family friend from church. Everybody loved him. It also ended badly, despite my genuine feelings for him, that certainly went beyond just his great looks. And that also came down to the same issue, in 20/20 hindsight: I can’t be who you need me to be. The realization coming too late to avoid the associated pain. Their beauty, I really believe, clouded what I should’ve seen before leading them on.

And my point in sharing these very old recollections is, could the opposite also be true? I guess I feel it would be nice if it were. I saw a man the other day who was clearly very compromised—and my heart went out to him, in a very pitying way. I knew, from his appearance, he suffered many hardships in life. I’d like to believe that in his apparent curse, he has found a deeper gift. Sort of like the opposite of the gift of beauty that invariably bestows pain due to all of us who are so entranced by it.

Or, I’m just looking for an avenue out of my automatic pity for him? Thoughts?

Random Notes: Understanding False Hierarchies

Digging through my files for content. Make of them what you will. Or won’t. Comments most welcome!

False hierarchies, that is all hierarchies not based in nature, are crippling our civilization. And maybe, that’s just natural.

They are invariably:

~Based on fluffing not rivaling, so that the leader is replaced by a Yes-man rather than an honorable man.

~Confusing true power with temporary status

~Leading a horse to water, noticing he does not drink, and blaming him for being stupid. Rather than questioning if the horse is intuiting more about the contents of the water than you are.

~I’m in charge, you’re responsible. That is not meant to mean you are to act as my scapegoat. It is meant to represent the bond between the care-givers.

~Helping people adjust to their servitude is not actually helping. It’s akin to helping addicts find their next fix, you are opting to make yourself feel better in the moment by helping someone else feel better in the moment, at the expense of long-term solutions. The proverbial thumb in the dike.

~Hardest lesson for an empath (or a yes-man) to learn—stop cleaning up other people’s messes—you are only making it worse for the next generation.

~America has roughly 35 million acres of lawn and 36 million acres housing and feeding recreational horses. 

https://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.htm

~The tragic hero is brought down by his virtues, not his vices!

World War I: The Great War Was also the Great Enabler of Progressive Governance

“It was decided to make [the soldiers] help pay for the war, too. So, we gave them the large salary of $30 a month. All they had to do for this munificent sum was to leave their dear ones behind, give up their jobs, lie in swampy trenches, eat canned willy (when they could get it) and kill and kill and kill …and be killed. But wait!

Half of that wage (just a little more than a riveter in a shipyard or a laborer in a munitions factory safe at home made in a day) was promptly taken from him to support his dependents, so that they would not become a charge upon his community. Then we made him pay what amounted to accident insurance—something the employer pays for in an enlightened state—and that cost him $6 a month. He had less than $9 a month left.

Then, the most crowning insolence of all—he was virtually blackjacked into paying for his own ammunition, clothing, and food by being made to buy Liberty Bonds. Most soldiers got no money at all on pay days.
We made them buy Liberty Bonds at $100 and then we bought them back—when they came back from the war and couldn’t find work—at $84 and $86. And the soldiers bought about $2,000,000,000 worth of these bonds!”

Click to access warisaracket.pdf

~As Carroll Quigley writes, its success was partly due to “its ability to present itself to the world as the defender of the freedoms and rights of small nations and of diverse social and religious groups”. (2)

Empire of hypocrisy | winter oak

Happiness vs Joy

Have you ever pondered the difference of certain words often used interchangeably? Or, what that difference, or obfuscation of difference, might mean?

There seems little doubt the art of subtlety is being systematically erased from human consciousness.

One coy glance to move a man, or your entire derrière in the air?

If this is a natural phenomenon resulting from the rise of systems thinking, or a top-down control mechanism, or desensitization gone amok, or devolution, or democratization, I can only speculate. And stay open to suggestions.

But I do find it to be a personal goal and an evolutionary imperative that we don’t let subtlety die in the nebulous gray zone.

I kind of relate it to the difference between American cheese and aged chèvre. And the difference between emotions, feelings and sensations.

Our culture has become increasingly sensationalized. It’s become a gamers’ world of goal-oriented stimulus that must be fed on a constant basis.

Fleeting hits of happiness have all but replaced the finer nuances of lasting joy. Considering absurd comments like Hilary Clinton’s ‘Americans have a happiness deficit’ I can’t help but consider the context conspiratorially. She is not blind, or dumb. So she must be bullshitting on the commands of her handlers.

Do a quick search on ‘Americans and Happiness’ and it’s clear this relationship is not only Big Business, but Big Science, as well as Big Politics.

“Further complicating matters has been the bias critics have shown when examining happiness. Sociologists have viewed happiness through the lens of society, psychologists the mind, physicians the body, preachers one’s faith, politicians the government, and so on. This has made the field a jumble or hodgepodge of viewpoints, more so I believe than most other subjects. As well, all sorts of experts have attempted to control or take ownership of happiness in America in some way, this too contributing to the scattered nature of the subject. Businesspeople, government officials, and religious leaders have seen themselves as arbiters of happiness and have assumed responsibility for delivering it to Americans in order to solidify their own power. Likewise, politicians from each persuasion have often claimed to be the greater instrument of happiness than their competitors, making it appear that the emotion can be bestowed rather than earned.” The (American) Pursuit of Happiness | Psychology Today

Is happiness an emotion? Indeed, it is not. Joy is an emotion. Happiness is a mood. A sensation. Have any of the mainstream consensus trance defenders bothered to notice that?

Joy is bound to life itself, its opposite is pain. Together they create a kind of ‘trauma bond’ that keeps us engaged and inquiring incessantly into others and the world around us. It comes from the well-spring of the eternal natural world. Or, God, if you prefer.

Happiness is a day at the games or a fine concert or great sex. I’m not knocking it! I’m just saying, there’s far more to life than that, and if you can’t taste the difference between American cheese and aged chèvre, then perhaps you should not be speculating on the condition or the ills of the American culture.

Special is the New Deranged

You’ve gotta love the myth-makers’ knack for crafting novel ‘non-judgmental’ lingo.

After all, who wants to say anything too closely resembling honesty about someone who caused loads of damage to their own lives and those of nearly everyone around them? That would be so mean.

Especially, obviously, on their deathbeds. This is when kind lies are most required, for the good of those gathered, who definitely do not want to be reminded that they rubbed elbows with such creeps and degenerates all their lives.

Especially, obviously, if there’s inheritance involved. Everyone wants to believe they inherited good, clean money and stuff, not funds garnered by drugs (unless they’re legal!), or theft, or blackmail, or you know, god forbid, blood money.

Who can help but to consider the grandchildren of the Great Fauci, as just one example?

Sure, they can go to his Wikipedia page and read how awesome he is once he’s dead. They can brush up on all his prestigious awards before hearing the sweet tinkling chimes of their personal portion of his vast estate which they have rightfully earned through his unfortunate passing. They can tell their own grandchildren how many lives he saved and how much of their own fortunes they owe to his generosity.

But, what if those poor future grandchildren get ahold of some of the fake news available today? Just imagine how this might affect their innocent psyches? And who would be responsible for this psychological torture?

Well, all the disinfo agents, clearly! Those evil-hearted, hate-spewing degenerates who are never grateful for their assigned heroes. Those same miserable wretches who believe Bill Gates and Klaus Schwab and the Bush & Clinton clans and even Trump are ALL deranged psychopaths.

All those crazies who are ruining our democracy!

If you can’t see it yet, put your rose-colored glasses back on!

Doctor’s orders: 3 puppy videos, 10 deep breathes during your time out, 33 rainbow drawings with your permanent markers, then you can re-join us nice, happy folk in civilized society.

Oh yes, that’s so much better! I can see clearly now!

It’s those people who believe the world reeks foul at every turn when in fact the stench is coming from within their own selves! Ahhhh, yes.

If they would just look in the mirror and smell themselves.

If they would just see the world as we do, so full of wonder and joy, then the world would magically shape-shift right before their very eyes and they would be filled as we are with the light of love and joy radiating outward at every angle of the sun, especially from their eyes and anus.

If those haters see a drug-pushing, lying, greedy turd in the mirrored face of the Great Fauci, then they just don’t realize the world is a kaleidoscope of marvels and all they have to do is change their black lenses for pink ones, which would undoubtedly turn their subjective hell into a fantastic earthly paradise!



Put your rose-colored glasses back on, Dude, before you bum everybody out!