===
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 [1].
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.
========
Footnote
(1) I know this isn't easy, I struggle across a span of self-love and loathing constantly, which is good in a way, we should be humble, but it also brings anguish--but again, this is not necessarily bad (maybe especially for poets like myself who saturate ourselves with the stormiest passions).
5/20 ... etc.
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...
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