Essay: Sustenance and Darkness
Birthed in a fretful, restless
haze, this essay became a peripatetic meander down a path of pain and truth,
a reflection on the rise of tyranny. It isn’t
quite an omnium-gatherum; there is some organization, split into a few sections. In the first, I reflect on the swirly chaos of
global politics, centered in the corruption and darkening of the United
States. Here I seek companionship with the
many people across the world who support human rights, while
struggling to carve out stability and purpose.
It’s as if the bullies have taken over not only the schoolyard but also the
classrooms, with the complicity of a most vile and malicious principal. The analogy falls short, however, for the
threat transcends the scholastic. We are on a mortal level, confronting the
potential end of all things, delivered in a planet-busting punch of radioactive detonations.
In the second part, I grapple with
the abhorrence of bowing down to unspeakable, disgusting kings. Following in the footsteps of far superior
thinkers, such as Hannah Arendt and Erich Fromm, I find myself both revulsed
and fascinated by the ways in which people morph to scuttle, belly down in
obeisance. I look at the evils of conformity
from various angles, wandering in a blurry, Venn-diagram-ish place. My labels include at least the
following: numbness, cluelessness, ‘neutrality,’ and the outright
soul-sell of the lickspittle, who vocally lubricates the dissemination of a
tyrant’s Big Lies.
There are, I propose, various
strains of lemming. They have their various
dispositions, but share in common the sorry trait of pushing humanity toward a
cliff with nary an objection. It could
be said that those who bow down, the facilitators and collaborators, epitomize the
subject matter in Bonhoeffer’s social theory of the stupid.
I reluctantly leave aside the
question of how much blame should be assigned to specific persons. This is a ‘deep in the weeds’ topic, ready
for multiple disquisitions. I seethe at the
people around me who refuse to challenge what’s going on, even as our country
sinks from democracy into an exigent darkness.
It is easier, though, to accuse in the abstract rather than the specific. Are
children to blame for supporting a dictator?
Teens? Young adults?
I will say this: the Niemöller’s of the world--educated persons
in positions of power--invite heaps of culpability.
Although I continue to blame and
feel hatred for certain people, I hope it is part of a larger process of
catharsis and sublimation. The goal is to
steer my rage away from people and toward the phenomenon of oppression itself. This includes racism, sexism, anti-gay,
anti-LGBTQ and other sorts of bigotry.
I strive to hate the behavioral
sink, not the people down in it. For more on this, see my essay, “On Hate.”
In the final section, I consider some
virtues of resilience. How do we align
with the Good, despite the brutish, deteriorating sadness of these times? How do we sustain ourselves?
In this regard, I begin with an imagery of beauty and purpose, and finish with a discussion of the nature of protest itself. When we listen to and validate our own inner angel,
that critical agent of the self, nestled within bridges of conscious and
subconscious, we form a lovely relationship with our intrapsychic
being. We become situated in a place of companionable joy, in alliance with honesty and Good. In a sense, we become our own soulmate.
Side Note on Global Warming
I would have liked to discuss
global warming in relation to tyranny. But
that’s yet another Brobdingnagian topic.
Suffice it to say that the leader of the USA, Donald Trump, has called global
warming “a giant scam.” This
proclamation is a prime example of the Big Lies that such dictators put forward
as loyalty tests for their cult base.
Meanwhile, environmental conditions deteriorate beyond red-line
estimates:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/mar/23/earth-being-pushed-beyond-its-limits-as-energy-imbalance-reaches-record-high
As I’ve repeatedly said on this blog,
the so-called ‘strongmen’ like Trump are better referred to as enervators. (strongman = enervator). Such leaders are political parasites. They suck the vibrancy of a nation into their
glutinous, gluttonous, depthless narcissism.
Why call them strong? They are
psychologically and ethically the weakest sort.
Mental health and ethics go together.
In conjunction, these two should be society’s highest priority. Not profit.
Not power. Not servitude to Mammon,
Satan, or Mars (taken here as symbols for Greed, Deceit and Violence).
Civilization has advanced sharply
in the last few centuries. Women’s right
to vote was the greatest invention in the entire history of civilization. We can now begin to embrace ethics as a
technology, like we have embraced medicine as a technology (see my essay “Lightcraft: ethics as
technology,” 5/20/25)
I. A Swirl Of Reflections
Mere months ago, Trump initiated
war on Iran. Before that, he joined with
Israel to continue the genocide and ethnic cleansing of the people of Gaza. This full-scale atrocity now seems to be expanding
into the West Bank and Lebanon. He
ordered the US military to raid Venezuela and abduct its leader Maduro, which led
to tribulation in Cuba as well. So much wickedness
has been dumped on the Earth since the President attained office in 2025 that
it boggles attempt at recitation. In addition to the considerable military
violence, he has wielded a whip of economics, studded with mercurial tariffs, to stagger
the stock markets and fray the global financial system.
Trump doesn’t have the foresight to
consider the risk of collapse. He needs
to be in the immediate center of things, right now, all the time. Dozens of psychologists and psychiatrists have
pinned him as a malignant narcissist (The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump). His own niece, Mary Trump, with a PhD in
clinical psychology, labelled him the same (Too Much and Never Enough; How my family created the world’s most
dangerous man).
Stupidity and narcissism
Still, a sizeable tranche of American
voters, wallowing as they are in stupidity, to use Bonhoeffer’s concept, continue
to follow their monster deeper into an abyss of ruin and depravity. The Trumpers lap up their godking’s speeches. An overarching factor is America's hideous
history of Black slavery and Native genocide. Con-man Trump taps into a cesspool of bigotries and
frauds. He barks and barks and barks, such
a talented barker, at his primary mark:
the rural White heartland. He has enthralled about 30% of the population, similar to the
historical slice in Nazi Germany.
The original Big Lie
I want to mention a social weapon often
ignored, and yet always used by dictators: the original Big Lie, which started thousands
of years ago. The original Big Lie is as simple
and obvious as it is unacknowledged; namely, that women
are inferior to men and should obey them.
Brave women and their male allies have chipped away at this enormous
deceit, making some astounding progress. And
yet the bulk of the original Big Lie stands to this day.
Lies are what give Trump power
It’s tempting to hope that Trump’s
latest evil, his choice to go to war with Iran, will sink his popularity. After all, he ran on the promise of “no more
wars.” He also ran on “lower prices” and
now gasoline prices are through the roof. And yet sadly this latest bout of stunning contradictions
is likely to bind Trump’s fawning base even more. In their eyes, he is Napoleonic. The ‘great leader’ will likely proclaim victory
in Iran, whatever the actual circumstances, while zealots and jingoes cheer him
on.
The ongoing genocide in Gaza, it is
important to emphasize, hasn’t slowed Trump down at all. So much for the Holocaust Memorial’s motto of
Never Again.
Genocide is the greatest
evil possible. Trump’s followers deny it
is even happening with the zeal of drooling dogs. It is similar to how they are in denial about Global Warming, despite the environmental evidence right before their very eyes.
Grave
Egomania runs a headlong race. When it propels the belligerence of the most
powerful man in the world, we court grave peril. Trump’s rancor blows up the room over and
over. It keeps him in the spotlight, battening
his delusions of godhood. His skill at
gaming bleachers of toadeaters means that all of us here in the USA, and
in fact everyone in the world, is stuck on
an accelerating, hell-bound train ride.
In the sense of a Nero who gets to
fiddle while Rome burns, Trump is a genius.
If escaping the verdict of decency and truth is the measuring stick, Trump is a dark god.
Give 'em the old three-ring
circus, stun and stagger 'em
When you're in trouble, go into your dance
Though you are stiffer than a girder
They'll let you get away with murder
Razzle dazzle 'em and you've got a romance
--from the musical Chicago
Apology
I apologize if this essay is a
scattered. As I type these words, the
deadline that Trump set to “wipe out a whole civilization,” is approaching. Said deadline is (… drum roll…) 8pm tonight. Such is the insanity of the times in which
you and I live.
[editorial update: no nuclear bombs have dropped ... yet …]
Significant probability of armageddon
A significant probability of
nuclear launch can be extracted from the compulsive hustle of Trump’s disordered
brinksmanship. He has menaced Greenland
and Canada. And, again, let us never forget
that the USA and Israel are engaged in a genocide in Gaza right now. This has been affirmed by many experts,
several of whom I have quoted previously on this blog.
Israeli rights groups, such as B’Tselem
and Physicians for Human Rights Israel, have called what is happening in Gaza genocide. Navi Pillay, Chair of a UN Commission, called
it genocide. The International
Association of Genocide Scholars called it genocide. Omar Bartov, a genocide scholar at Brown
University, called it genocide. He writes in an op-ed:
This is not just my conclusion. A
growing number of experts in genocide studies and international law have
concluded that Israel’s actions in Gaza can only be defined as genocide. So has
Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur for the West Bank and Gaza, and
Amnesty International. South Africa has brought a genocide case against Israel
at the International Court of Justice.
And so on.
Add to this the hell of the ongoing
Russian invasion of Ukraine under Vladimir Putin, and you get a resemblance to pre-WW2 upheavals. Today’s crisis is
worse, however, because phalanxes of nuclear missiles enshadow the globe. Tens of thousands of ICBMs poised and armed,
set to destroy the collective dreams and hopes built up over the millennia.
The Netflix movie, House of
Dynamite, demonstrates that the inbound trajectory of a single ICBM could plausibly trigger
an all-out scramble, the rush to detonate every warhead available.
“O proud death, what feast is
toward in thine eternal cell” --Hamlet
To fight hopeless, face painful
truths
Here we are, those of us who
embrace truth over lies, compassion over division, virtue over violence, pulled
into a psychotic vortex of horror and war.
We are forced toward the cliff, despite our protests. Our votes and voices feel impotent; and yet it
is not my purpose to argue for resignation.
By acknowledging the awful realities, my goal is to counter hopelessness.
Are we menaced by bellicose,
authoritarian powers? Yes. Is there a significant risk that the hostility
will increase, past the point of no return, to the destruction of humanity? Yes. However,
even under the gun of worst case scenarios, there are things we can and should
do.
As I discuss below, there is a special
sort of joy which stems from the recognition that we dared to act. We who take the tough, courageous path of the
Good in defiance of Evil.
In addition to its inherently noble aspect, such action might well save humanity, if enough people dare to believe that 'we shall overcome.'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7akuOFp-ET8&list=RD7akuOFp-ET8&start_radio=1
('We Shall Overcome' sung at the March on Washington, 1963, for Civil Rights)
“There may be times when we are
powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to
protest.” -- Elie Wiesel
II. The problem of numbness
For many of us, it is tempting to
tune out. To go numb on the sidelines. Before getting into this, I want to make clear that is healthy to take time to recuperate, to temporarily step back from
the assault of miseries and travails. A
template for my own daily routine is one or two intense writing sessions, maybe
a deep conversation with a friend, maybe grading papers or otherwise plying my
trade as a part-time instructor; and yet then the rest of the day is a medley of
life’s simple gifts: walking, gaming,
cooking, and other casual things, sometimes at random, what a friend of mine
refers to as puttering. All these ‘little
things’ are miracles. Just to look out a
window and see a tree, the sky, a bird. I
try to be mindful, outside the call of my protest. I remind myself, too, that I am lucky in
comparison to the many, many people, local and abroad, who struggle through no
fault of their own to merely subsist.
If you have the energy of a
leader--someone who sleeps four hours a night, who constantly feels ready and active--by all means go for it. The rest
of us still have our place; and we can take comfort in the maxim that no one should judge themselves in comparison to others.
Look in the mirror. Strive to advance, accept and be good to yourself.
Privilege and numbness
Numbness is an ‘easy’ option for those
who are privileged, that is, not in a group calumniated by fascists. The nature of numbness is as straightforward
as it is poisonous: just let bad things
happen to those targeted for persecution and reap benefits on the sly. A pension fund can rise on a dictator’s influence,
such as Trump’s embrace of oil over renewable sources of energy. “Let’s invest in oil stocks!”
Note that this wicked mindset need
hardly be recognized, if at all, by the perpetrator. A well-practiced pawn can bask in a seamless
continuity of blithe appearances. I discuss this more under “Cluelessness.”
‘Neutrality’
The choice to sit it out is
sometimes described as ‘staying neutral.’ But as Hannah Arendt points out, neutral is simply
another face of evil. I’ve belabored
this point in other essays. Suffice it
to say that neutrality is cowardice. It is
the acquiescence of quiet facilitation.
It is refusal, blatant in one’s inaction, to defend human rights as a
nonnegotiable aspect of a nonmalevolent society. If you are willing to scuttle human rights, via
negligence or deed, especially in times of deep social crisis, then you are propping a depravity akin to Apartheid, Nazism or Jim Crow.
"The sad truth is that most
evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil" -
Hannah Arendt
An ‘easy’ option?
It’s not really an easy option to
sit things out. People with a conscience,
which is most of us, who suppress and deny our empathic sentiments --what
classic philosophers call our “fellow feelings”-- pay a psychic price. The internalized machinery of the Big Lie consumes
a great deal of energy. Bending a
knee to Evil entrenches cognitive baggage.
Such is the heaviness of the
Faustian bent. Doing nothing while racists lay a blanket of
abominable cruelty exacts its pound of cerebral flesh. It is a pusillanimous stain not only on the nature
of one’s soul but on the very ability to function. To sell a Big Lie is on par with an attempt at sincerity when saying something like, “the sky is red,” or “the Earth is flat.” Hiding the falsity within the guise of sincerity requires the mind to erect smoke-and-mirror partitions and tricks. Such is the sheer gall, the absurd norm of the blinkered Babbitry. To flee from one's own clear-sighted analysis and replace it with murk and hedges.
The Era of Dumbing (3500 BCE - present)
Society often forgives the
complicity of the numb mind. It is
relatively easy to hide from the gavel of justice by huddling amid the bulk of
the herd. To the detriment of our past,
present and future, ethical progress has been massively hampered.
At the risk of oversimplification,
the reason that our civilization is probably about to go down is what I call
the Era of Dumbing: the reign of
ignorance-based government. It has been
going on for thousands of years. In this
primitive, immature time, this Era of Dumbing, ignorance is treated as a kind
of capital, wielded by dictators, those who would be godkings, to
turn the masses into political cultists.
We have the brain- and
cultural-plasticity to initiate the transition to a better world. We can escape the intergenerational
propaganda of Ignorance. To fully take this on, we need a concerted effort by a multidisciplinary team of intrepid thinkers. This effort would be what
I have called a Project of Light, something far greater and more ambitious than the Manhattan Project, that dark enterprise which lay a
path for Evil's ultimate triumph. (see Lightcraft, 5/20/25)
Cluelessness & White males
What is happening now in the
USA--the nationwide bullying, the sense of being trapped and destined to
sink--is most unfamiliar and shocking to White males such as myself. Other sorts of people have lived under oppression
for a very long time. Women have been pressed down since the beginning of civilization. The origin of racism, the oppression of Black folks, goes back to at least to the 16th century. We White
males have only experienced the privilege side of things. This makes us the numbest and most clueless, especially
now that we are getting a taste for what it is like to be heavily targeted.
Why is cluelessness so common? Cluelessness in the dominant group fortifies the
overarching control mechanism. A system that
is invisible to those who benefit the most is harder to
challenge. One of the patriarchate's goals is to make life easiest for the males of the highest caste, which aligns with the minimization or elimination of feelings
of guilt.
Hear evil, see
evil, and speak evil--but without even knowing it. Coasting along in White-male wonderland--except for all the crippling
cognitive baggage--the privileged segment reaps benefits
while oblivious. Not only the failure to
speak up, but the facade of ‘all is fine,’ the suavity of the gaslighter, is
damnable. Worn in a manicured neighborhood,
distant from the poverties and brutalities of the oppressed, the masquerade of denial, no matter how deeply entrenched, neither absolves nor exculpates.
This 'talk about the weather' mentality is beyond cruel. Total denial in the face of hate. The choice to stay blind is made over and over, day after day, in a continuous, deadening stream of failed ethical choices, greased
by the complicity of social institutions at every level. Without that grease, how
quickly would the masquerade become untenable and fall?
I bring this up not to mitigate what we White males generally do, 'talk about the weather,' but to emphasize that we damn ourselves by basking in the grease. We yield in our broken hearts to the mental massage of the social machinery, the financial and power benefits offered to us by the institutions of injustice. These institutions have staggered at times, and could be broken through--if only we joined the brave souls leading the charge. If we dared to raise our heads out of wonderland, we could be part of the solution, not components of the problem.
Active Complicity
There are, of course, those who vocally
endorse and enforce a dictator’s virulence and truculence. To take this route is to shirk even a trace of
disagreement and become something vile, a quisling inside a shill, a mouthpiece
for monstrosity. There is income and power to be
had for those willing to sell out, those who worm their way into the hierarchy.
It is a temptation, not only for the
privileged, but for members of targeted groups as well. The minions who served the British Raj. The Schafly-ites who fought against equal
rights for women. Vichy France. Quisling Norway.
“Every minority and every people
has its share of opportunists, traitors, freeloaders and escapists.” - Martin
Luther King Jr.
A side note on sociopathy
A small percentage of human beings do
not have a conscience. This does not
make such folks bad by nature. They can
lead noble lives. Many jobs are easier for them, such as social work that involves trauma assessment. Sociopaths frame life differently,
outside the presence of guilt or that special joy which comes from doing what’s
right. Given their lack of internal
guide rails, the choice to follow an ethical code can be a crucial moor. Good Psychiatric Management (GPM), a professional therapeutic technique, centers on establishing such a moor.
All of us are tempted at times. But for the sociopath, it can be constant and
compelling. Can I get ahead by stealing
and cheating? Yes, I can. Does it bother me? Not at all.
Is it adrenal? Absolutely. Are the people around me trusting and vulnerable? Yes, they are.
The sociopath is put
in a very tough situation. Our primitive
society gravitates toward profit, power, status and trophies. Our institutions ‘talk the talk,’ claiming to
be honorable; and yet in deed, it is greed and ignorance which hold the reins. The sociopath, lacking the experiential rewards associated
with conscience, easily gets caught in a sand trap, sliding down a slippery-slope
on a no-holds-barred ride in pursuit of shiny things and fleeting thrills.
Maybe you end up getting ahead by
being unethical--this time. But
the more you ignore the stability of moral principles, the more your behavior corrupts. Chaos is ready to pounce, just one bad dice
roll away. The need for more and more gets
riskier, tilted by the short-term benefits of nihilism.
An example of someone with no
conscience who has completely fallen is Donald Trump. He is all in on the grand deceit of an endless,
immediate power trip. Compulsive
insecurity goads him on as he plies his trade of outrage, seizing at adulation
and godhood. From outside the bubble of his
cultish sphere, he seems an empty shell, incapable of real relationship, not
only with others, but with self, art, beauty, environs, animals, the
universe, or any aspect of the Good.
There is no awe, reverence, love or spirituality in the man. His bottomless craving seeks to break everyone
and everything--people, ideas, structures and situations--and reconstruct them
as puppets in the black hole theater of an empty heart.
III. How to Stay Ethical
An Inspiring Image
The original impetus for my essay,
buried now in the unruly growth of this ponderous screed, is the following
image: the Earth as the beautiful Blue Bulb
of a Cosmic Flower. This Great Bulb has
already blossomed many ways; and yet, as it now stands, we humans are at its germinative
core. You and I may feel puny. But we have a part to play in the evolution
of ideas, what is in effect a vast social-mental web, which will craft the future of the planet.
Human choice, one way or the other,
will shape everything. Why?
The advance of technology provides tools both
physical and psychological, both architectural and ecological. Humans distill the best and worst from nature,
from kindness to cruelty. In so doing, we produce social systems with elements
of Good and Evil. Due to our power to
both rarify and magnify, the future will suffer the lens of our choices. It will bear either the liberation or the destruction
of our self-fulfilling prophecy, which is a manifestation of the status of our collective consciousness.
We will soon have the power to create a
veritable heaven or hell. The content of
the driving prophecy will derive from the wisdom, or lack thereof, that
we possess. Our level of inner awareness alters Gaia’s fate, whether to blossom or wilt, led by the transformative effect of our own psyches.
There are many sorts of knowledge, all of which relate to power. And yet physical power alone, without the emotional competence to wield it, is
what Omar Bradley warned us about, when he spoke of “ethical infants”:
The world has achieved brilliance
without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and
ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about
killing than we know about living.
Not only is physical strength,
manifested in technology, not enough; it
is, by itself, a route to total destruction.
We need psychological prowess. We
need to deal with our passions and emotions in conjunction with advances in ethics tech.
It would behoove us to embrace that ancient
axiom of the Greek Oracle:
tement nosce -- Know Thyself
The Blue Flower
How will the beautiful blue bulb of
the Earth bloom? One possibility is that
it spreads petals to other planets, or even galaxies, invigorating the whorls
of nebulas. Although the expansion of
civilization into outer space feels distant to us, we are part of an ongoing evolvement
of ideas. It is a laborious process, a
struggle whose outcome will follow us into outer space (should we survive, that is, our
own stupidity to reach such a marker).
We could, in grand egocentricity, exploit other planets to resemble the polluted environs of Earth, and pepper them with idolatrous statues of males like Donald Trump.
Ideas affect our behaviors, which in turn
shape the relevant environment:
I ==> B ==> E
As technology increases,
we gain more power, whether wielded consciously or unconsciously, to alter
things:
I ==> T x B ==> E
(see my discussion of the "Mind-World Lemma" for more on this, 1/1/26)
An analogy
Consider the analogy of an
alcoholic. All things being equal, the (non-sober)
alcoholic alters their household in ways that encourage chaos, whether they
intend it or not. This is also true of
someone who is virtuous, though the effect is opposite, toward health and
harmony. Who we are, not only physically
but psychically, manifests in the places we touch.
I ask again, with soupçon of
rhetoric, How will we, as bearers of Earth’s Blue Bulb, curate that Blossom? How will we nurture the Great Flower and trellis
its vibrance into outer space?
Millions of years await our evolving civilization, much more than the puny ten thousand years that
have passed already--if only we find a way travel in the Light. Not the dooming Darkness of myopic greed and manufactured rage.
Two worldviews compete
When it comes to how to rule and
lead, there are two competing worldviews. One started around 10,000 BCE
with the Agricultural Revolution. It is a way of living grounded in force and ignorance. In the Republic, Plato assigned this view to Thrasymachus: "Justice is the interest of the stronger.'
To exemplify this worldview: think hordes of slaves who haul and chisel stone to build a
Pyramid so that godly pharaohs can travel with style into the afterlife.
The other way to rule, more recent and less
practiced, embeds in reason and humanism.
This path underscores dignity, fairness, rights, and enough time for each and every person to expand their potential, that is, the freedom to self-actualize.
Under the auspices of such freedom, citizens would be taught to Know Thyself. They would not be raised to bow down in fearful, conformist collectivization.
We can progress on a course of reason by raising our level of ethics tech: embrace psychology, humanities and science to better achieve and define harmony, happiness, and health as aspects of the Good. Or we can shackle ourselves to idolatrous zealotry and the might-makes-right of petty godkings.
The Purgatory Principle
As I discuss in the essay, “The
Purgatory Principle,” when technology reaches a certain point, humanity
will embrace one or the other of two idea-systems. Ignorance-based government. Or truth-based government. Truth and Ignorance struggle against each other. When technology reaches a certain point--enough
to assert overwhelming control over mind and environment--then one or the
other, Good or Evil, will win out.
Light seeks to eliminate
Darkness. Darkness seeks to eliminate
Light. Ignorance and truth cannot
co-exist in a government that has the power to optimally embrace one or the
other as the driver of its function and purpose.
Technological prowess will determine when such optimal force is achieved. As I’ve discussed in other essays,
one dark scenario is the following: a
computer chip in every human head, monitored by AI and policed
by robots.
Within a few hundred years,
this kind of totalitarian dungeon will be feasible.
Whether it happens or not depends on the type
of government in play. If
insecure men with bottomless egos enthrall the world at the crucial moment, the meta-control model will lock in place.
The dark genius of fascism is that
it combines monarchy, the authority of a king, with the celebrity of a charismatic
dictator. This dangerous fusion gives the dictator
full-throttle access, even to the point of ordering people
to implant a brain chip in themselves and their families.
If Hitler had 'brainware' technology, he would've inspired those in his cultish base to have an implant put in their head--and many would have complied. Once the most loyal rushed to the accept the literal invastion of their skull by the Nazi Party, others would have followed.
The armageddon cycle
The ultimate victory for Evil is a scenario
in which humans doom themselves to nuclear war, over and over again. It happens when a small percentage of humanity
survives a nuclear holocaust, then proceeds to rebuild society along the same old worldview. They re-establish the same warlord system that cursed ancient Sumer: slavery,
patriarchy, bellicosity. War follows, on and on, mimicking our own historical pattern. Society rebuilds on the theme of fighing and weapons. At some point, nuclear warheads are manufactured. Predictably enough, they launch with the latest outburst of world war. Nuclear holocaust ensues. Once more, a small sliver of the population survives. And so the cycle starts all over, rinse and repeat, through the infernal, unspeakable, cosmically stupid trap of doom-by-war, an Earth-daming tragedy that is as avoidable as it is disgusting.
The way out would be for
the people to reject ignorance-based government. If
people accept truth, a marriage of science, psychology, humanism and ethos, we can walk together toward an ethics-based world. Given our brain- and cultural-plasticity, it is certainly possible that we someday eliminate war entirely.
Of course, possibility is not probability. We need to start the journey of putting ethics tech first. Not proft. Not power-lust.
Welcome to the present
As tech progresses, the
worldview we adapt will affect who we are, what we are, and how we live. Will it be a noble flowering? Or will we reinforce the vector of our barbaric Era of Dumbing?
These are the times in which you
and I live in. Times of rapid change and
yet also great possibility. As I said
above, the greatest invention in human history was universal suffrage: the attainment of equal voting rights by
women. This overturned ten thousand
years of the original Big Lie. It was a monumental step. It demonstrated that ‘human nature’ does not
limit us. Our potential
to adapt has been demonstrated.
The Ignorance Vortex
What stands in our way now, as it has for so long, is the
Era of Dumbing. The brain of every infant is fed the same pattern of
lies, things like women are inferior, macho is best, and war is
inevitable. Not a single person ever born to human civilization has
known what it is like to be raised in a Good world. Not
you. Not me. Not anyone. We don’t know what it
would be like, because all of us have been indoctrinated to perpetuate the
reign of Ignorance. We continue to be indoctrinated every day--saturated
by cultural messages, many of them 'innocuous' and subconscious, such as micro-expressions
on a scolding or mocking face. At other times they are blatant:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0GVm-wYBXs
(sexist commercials from the 20th centurty and some ... commentary)
I call this intergenerational acculturation trap, this trojan horse of false
beliefs for the human brain, the Ignorance Vortex. The Ignorance Vortex has adapted to disaporas of humans across the globe, but in so doing, it has retained the core
elements of its virus-like curse of brain-programming. (5/20/25, etc.)
Sustenance
Below, I approach the question of ‘how to stay ethical?’
from some other vantages, such as how best to engage in protest. Protest itself, however, requires perseverance and strength; and in support of these virtues, I'd like to emphasize an inspiring vision: sustenance and joy can arise from the simple idea that you and I
are part of Earth’s Beautiful Blue Flowering. From that purview, we
can feel a wealthy sense of place and purpose. Around us hovers the vast inky void of
outer space. Within that backdrop of millions of lightyears of emptiness, the Earth stands out, a beacon
and origin point, one that holds great promise of an unfolding Good.
If the universe is a garden, the Earth is one of its first blooms.
Perfect is the enemy of progressing ethics tech
We are, of course, frail, faltering creatures. We humans
will never be perfect. Our very nature has vampiric elements,
because we must devour other life to survive, even if it is a vegetarian’s
choice to eat only plants. We will do bad things. We will
sometimes fail to understand ourselves when we look in the
mirror. In that sense we are a bit werewolf. It is part of life.
And yet, to stretch the metaphor a little more, even a
vampire or werewolf can choose the path of the Good (as in the Twilight movies). We
can learn not only to acknowledge our dark emotions but to dance with
them. The strength to
face our own behavior, both individual and collective, and to work with our own emotions, to nurture virtue, while steering a course away from harm, this is how we
grow beyond the status of “ethical infants.”
When I Choose To See The Good Side Of Things, I'm Not
Being Naive. It Is Strategic And Necessary. It's How I Learned To Survive
Through Everything
--Waymond, ‘How I Fight,’ Everything, Everywhere,
All At Once
Variety within circumstance
We may be powerless to stop the procession of
Evil. But it doesn’t mean we should give up. This begs a question: how do we tread in a realm checkered by bullies, where our basic ‘fellow
feelings’ for others are menaced and hurting? In these fraught times, even a peace sign or a rainbow motif elicits rage. How do we wisely and effectively make a protest statement?
History offers countless paths to an effective social
statement, many of which are nuanced. Due to the brutal cruelty of
police states, a protestor sometimes must stand up without actually standing
up. A Black porter uses body language to signal resistance in
the fight to end segregation. A women works as a maid to pay for her
daughter’s college. The queer community opens a door to expression
in 1980s pop music culture. None of these are failures to protest,
even though they don’t directly call out inequality. Before bursting into outright
expression, social movements incubate in undercurrents of unrest.
Cautious or not?
That said, caution can be feckless. We should
never forget the message in “A Letter from the Birmingham Jail”:
I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate.
I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great
stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the … Ku Klux Klanner, but
the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers
a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is
the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you
seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who
paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom;
who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to
wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good
will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill
will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
A definition of protest
Drawing on Martin Luther King Jr’s words, we can approach
a definition of “protest.” A final definition, of course, is no more
possible than it is for the word “love.” This does not undercut the value
of such ‘secondary order’ concepts. Discussions of life and reality
go far beyond the limitations of linear precision or Euclidian math. They are far more
elaborate and exquisite than the nonlinear version of math, though they share some basic elements
with it, such as limitations on knowing precise individual outcomes.
Using the quote above, we see that effective protest
creates tension in order to call out injustice. It challenges the way
people listen and feel. It marshals discomfort to thaw the freeze of
complacency. “Good trouble,” to use the words of John Lewis, aims
to disrupt flawed law and order in the quest for decency and
justice.
"No justice, no peace." (there is no
peace in oppression)
A good will is not enough
To protest effectively is to have more than a “good
will.” Intent needs to be mobilized. What is the best
route for civil disobedience? Everyone must answer this question for
themselves, with the full engagement of their conscience and the passions of an
open heart.
A few months before the war with the USA, the Iranian
government killed six thousand protestors, opening fire on the
crowds. People paid with their lives for challenging the tyranny. You could ask, Did they choose the wrong form of protest?
This question can't be answered by an armchair
philosopher, such as myself. I will say this, the victims probably
weren’t thinking, “I’m going to die today." Most likely, almost surely, however, they recognized the
immediate danger. They made an informed choice.
To stand up to tyranny in this way, so boldly accepting
such fatal risk, is resounding. It is a choice that sings of moral
beauty, of the bravery of conscience, while shining a light of hope for all of us and for the future of the Earth. It is a choice that embodies a timeless statement,
not only to a nation, or even the globe, but to the universe itself.
We should embrace this immortal statement and never
forget it:
Life doesn’t have to be this way.
Goodness provides its own sort of sustenance
As I said above, choosing Good over Evil brings a kind of
joy that is sui generis . To choose Good is to
accept yourself, to work with your emotions as allies. It is to
‘Know Thyself’ and employ that knowledge for self-respect. It is to
grapple richly with your own unique personality, to initiate dialogues with
yourself. You come to know yourself in many ways, enveloped by a treasury of 'shared' memories, dispositions and dreams. You become your own soulmate.
This inward relationship-building goes outward too. When you introspect on your own exquisite being, you
come to see the uniqueness and potentials of others. Your inward empathic
relationship nurtures beneficial relationships across a spectrum: with people, animals, the environment, Earth and Cosmos.
As they say in sociology, the many sorts of relationship invent each other and have interactive effects. Maybe the only sentence worth pondering in this whole essay is this: the individual self is defined through the quality of its
relationships at all levels.
Psychic happiness, not material
Listening to one's conscience can spark a surge of
psychic happiness. A lovely self-validation. And then to engage in protest against darkness, to cast your own ripples into the sea of social interaction, is yet
another quantum leap.
I don't mean to belittle the difficulty behind the reach for such joy.
To boldly listen to yourself is to admit your failures and confront weaknesses--and then to learn from them, falteringly, slowly, struggling. It is heroically hard to converse with your
deepest traumas and wounds and thereby open a dialogue into all sides of your being. Such innerwardness invites great intensities of passion and empathy, deepfelt through layers of
consciousness. Your pain relates to other's pain, and the world's pain--not only pain but love and caring and connections and interactions with all sorts of emotions.
“We are a totality made of many interlocking parts. This
is why we must remember that our individual healing is directly connected to
our collective healing” -- Lorena Saavedra Smith
“The personal is political” -- Women’s Movement rallying
cry
Meaning
What is the meaning of life? Ignorance-based
systems, like fascism, answer this question with pathetic, simple bifurcations. What is ‘Evil’ to the facist? Anyone or anything that is a useful scapegoat for the 'will to power.' What is it to be ‘Good’ in a
fascist system? Simply this: obedience over everything, loyalty at all costs, even--especially--at
the cost of your soul.
A different future awaits us, beyond such villainous bullying
and titantic dumbing. The path of honesty is
painful, yes. It can be agonizing. But there is
also joy. There is happiness in a vision of the Earth as a Great Bulb
ready to Blossom. You and I can be part of unfurling that
Blossom, hand in hand, nestled in the profound Beauty of a vision of the Good.
========
5/19 ... way ambitious and self-absorbed
5/18... I'm just ..
5/17/ ,,, more edits, ... I say too much and know too little
5/16 ... Lots of ongoing eds...
Posts
