How to take the power away from it, how not to be a good example for it?
How does a good public figure not be a profitable thing to destroy, I mean how would a JFK or a Malcolm X or an MLK set it up so that their assignation destroys the assassin’s message? Is it possible to turn the lesson of violence around, make it work against the aggressors? I don’t imagine it’s possible, but it’s today’s interesting thought to hopefully bring me out of my catatonia and give me a reason to be.
The message is terror, of course. There’s a demand for obedience, but it’s terror first. Terror and it’s gone legit brother, authority, comes first, otherwise obedience is just a rational matter of argument. So how does violence not terrify? First, easy, it fooking doesn’t not, Mate, it terrifies. Of course that’s true, the question is, if there were no way out, if solving that impossible thing was your only option somehow, what would you try? It’s an impossible exercise for you and me, but this is what evolution does all day long, except when it’s just selecting you out instead, exactly impossible stuff like this.
Right? If we had somehow found a way out of the obvious blind endgame we’re in, if this were the future and we had made it and were looking back now, trying to figure out how we managed it, what could it possibly or failing that, impossibly have been? I think terror would have had to lose some bloody how. It is clearly authority and terror driving us off the cliff.
Back to the start, turning the message of the never-ending assassinations around, I know most of the world is doing that now, calling it out, telling the truth, I’m just saying in that contest, terror vs truth, truth could use some help, we still generally look to be short on truth and long on terror. It’s obvious we expect to drive off the cliff, never even touch the brakes, what miracle is there even to dream for? We think it needs seven and a half billion miracles simultaneously, right? We expect the bad ending, which is one more indication that we think we’re bad.
We think that to change anything, we have to stop being bad, stop having already been bad, we think that meme, that sentence is about the “be,” we think that existence is the verb in that sentence. It’s not, you fools.
It’s the “think,” that’s your verb!
“Being” isn’t up to you, you aren’t “doing” that. Existence is a noun, if we didn’t notice, and yes, I insult you this way, we didn’t, did we? Seven and a half billion people have to stop thinking we’re bad, that’s closer to the truth of the matter.
Of course, it’s complicated, in that terror tends to convince us people are bad, and by me, that is its primary use in human affairs, the details are rather fluid. I never understood the trope from Bowling for Columbine, that fear makes folks consume, consumption is a big issue, but it isn’t a central, human nature issue like fear and ideas of human nature. Fear does more than that. It becomes an important meme to me at the level of nations, not that folks are buying too much junk, but that nations are consuming all the Earth’s resources and killing the wildlife all as part of our hot and cold wars. It’s not an untrue soundbite, but if fails to show any causality and I found it a distraction. Again, I think the main product of fear, abuse and terror is just this, the idea that people are bad, because if you assume all people are bad, then you are more committed to your group, more ready to fight other groups.
This talk leads to politics, of course, it’s a human thing, abuse and fear and group life, it’s a thing all human groups use, fear for social control, and so when we hear a leader use the soundbite that “we don’t negotiate with terrorists,” it should be obvious to us all that there is no need to negotiate with terrorists when you use it yourself, that they are basically working for you, helping you terrorize your people for you and I’m sure they don’t negotiate, I expect they pay a flat rate! Perhaps there’s a union.
It is my view, perhaps only an insight that us thinking we’re bad is factually causative of everything we blame on our supposed actual badness. Next in these conversations follows that it’s a self-fulfilling thing, thinking it, and it is, but it’s not some inner life phenomenon, not from belief to reality like magic, not like that. You talk like that they’ll call you New Age and ignore you. It happens out here in the world, in real life. It’s a circle.
One, the adult thought, people are bad, enables a certain amount of child abuse, our good and proper social control, makes it seem necessary.
Two, the developing child, encountering a socially abusive environment, makes genetic adjustments, part of which is “learning” that people are bad, his disciplinarian made an example of themselves, and a memorable one, again, provided an abusive environment for any genes that exist for that to respond to.
Three, child grows up, repeat.
The thought is activated in childhood, and played out always, but played out in its genetic, intergenerational way in childhood where it is made a part of us. Note, it’s an epigenetic effect in the child, and whether it is the parent, the unrelated schoolmaster, or the older children dishing out the pain doesn’t matter. Threat is real, physical, hormonal and affects development if a kid is never touched, the message is still written oh their developing brain in cortisol.
So, you see, the bad attitude shows itself, it appears out here in real life where it’s not an inner life, automatic thought we’re all stuck with, it’s just a garden variety, easily understood ass kicking. It pokes its head up in childhood in this way, the bad attitude needs a push from us. We could, in theory, deny it that push.
We all know, art of war, Chinatown tabulation, nothing really matters, there is no good or bad, God or Devil, and this is not dark, I’m saying we all know things are equal and sort of cold, I’m saying we know, deep down, that the bad attitude can’t be true, that people can’t “be” bad anymore than grizzly bears or viruses can. Right? It’s a bias, set in childhood, not some magic link to some awful true state of affairs. I’m sure you know what I’m after. You can’t fight a grown-up, cynical terrorist, but you really, really could have not abused them. Not saying it’s easy, not spanking and such is not easy, again, the apparent triviality of spanking and child abuse is a camouflage.
But it’s possible. It is literally the only chance we get to change anything.
Jeff
Sept. 3rd., 2020
Abuse with an Excuse 