TR!UMPH of the ANGELS:

Narcissism is simply delusional and tautological; you begin by projecting your own selfishness and dysfunction upon others, and then you use this projection in turn to reinforce your own selfishness and dysfunction, as though they had been set as an example and justified in defense. (“Of what?” one may ask.) Conversely, it is not delusional to expect kindness and empathy of others if one has been met with it, for that at least establishes its existence, and while narcissism is the systematic NEGATION of something, kindness is an affirmation. One can disprove the nonexistence of kindness by its sheer existence.

[({Dm.A.A.)}]

Ne != empathy.

It is not uncommon for fans of the Myers-Briggs test to confuse extroverted feeling for empathy, confining introverted feeling to the realm of self-interest or delusion. Were this a valid tendency, we should have to conclude that Camus, Kierkegaard and Kafka all derived their philosophy from their own autism, and we might also have to consider that Joseph Goebbels was a heyoka. (While I am relieved to find my suspicions corroborated by IDR labs, namely that Goebbels was an ENFJ, especially since his psychological influence surpasses that of others listed in dark boxes on that website, I derive little satisfaction from this except for intellectually.) In Truth, extroversion does not lend itself to empathy, and while extroverted empaths exist, as well as narcissistic introverts, it’s not as though half of introverts are empaths and the remainder narcissists. While these extremes in empathy do exist, the quality in which feeling is directed is largely independent of them, except perhaps where changes in empathic power might alter the course of feeling in an individual who has adopted a neurotic conscious attitude based upon ignorance of the opposite extreme. Whatever the individual’s capacity, however, the direction in which he or she feels empathy varies based upon temperament; at the most, empathy is but one factor in this, if it is at all causal, and it favours neither temperament, where feeling is concerned, to the exclusion of the other.

Extroverted feeling, as a rational function in the strictly Jungian sense, (by this I mean Jung’s words exactly, both in print and a recorded interview) is that Avenue by which the conscious ego makes decisions. Accordingly, a preference for extroverted feeling does not necessarily represent the capacity to which an individual perceives or judges feelings in others (“reading a room”, for example) but rather the place that these feelings hold in one’s own rational process; it is effectively a political rather than a psychological leaning. Conversely, empathy as a unit of measurement represents the extent to which one perceives feelings in others, but those others may be regarded EITHER collectively OR individually, usually depending upon the individualism of the perceiver, and in the case of the extremely sensitive introverted feeler (the “psychic sponge”, as it were) these perceptions may be interpreted as one’s own feelings. It follows accordingly that while extroverted feeling types tend to prioritize propriety and group thought over personal feelings of righteousness and entitlement, individuals in whom introverted feeling predominates tend to sympathize more so with deviants and outcasts, often at the expense of diplomacy, and they derive their sense of security from a theoretical, at times even metaphysical, order rather than social dynamics. On the narcissistic end of the spectrum, introverted feelers can be histrionic and self-entitled, though they are much too easy to identify as this by contrast with extroverted feelers afflicted with the same narcissism, who will often rally the group against the minority, as well as the sovereign conscience, for their own personal benefit, often regarding everything in their vicinity as an extension of themselves. The finest counterpoint by which I can think to illustrate this fact is in the polarity between Hitler and Tolkien. No question can be raised that the former, an INFJ whom Jung himself identified as a “medicine man”, regarded the German people as an extension of himself. But proto-Fascists of all walks of life have three fingers pointing back at them if they mistake Adolf Hitler’s “common good”, represented so persuasively (before that biased audience which had produced him) by his Minister for Propaganda Josef Goebbels, for the felt altruism of a man like J.R.R. Tolkien. Tolkien felt no tangible affiliation to any political party, and even his kinship to his fellow Englishmen was mythological and academic, born out of a purely personal and not at all nationalistic interest in linguistics. Yet what one may identify within this man, without fail, is his ability to speak out against any sort of inhuman device, no matter the extent to which the common good has been used to rationalize it, almost always on behalf of the underdog and invariably in defense of the opressed. Introverted feeling remains a channel by which empathy is expressed to individuals everywhere, whereas extroverted feeling tends to work best when what the general public wants is, in fact, good.

Dm.A.A.

The Liberal Advantage: a Summary of All My Work.

It may be true that anyone who adheres to a liberal value must eventually become dependent upon it, but liberals still hold the moral advantage over conservatives by avenue of this same self-sacrifice, for in order to be a conservative one must be dependent already upon the established order PRIOR TO the fact, whereas the only reason that liberals are held responsible for their conditions, by conservatives, is that liberals actually DID something by which the world might become more habitable, and only an ignorant fool seems to think that any such progress could be made on behalf of the World by an agent corrupted by true self-interest. At any rate, if both schools could be reduced to self-interest there remains no rational justification for why either party SHOULD be rewarded for its self-interest, as the conservative position attests, and yet the latter party continues to behave as

 though its flimsy meritocracy has been given by God, certainly because, as I have indicated, the consciousness of the conservative is not the product of reasoning or compassion but rather of an existing status quo, one that will appear incontrovertible by those too weak to controvert it and too mean to value those who do.

Dm.A.A.

Logical Proof for the Nonexistence of Racism: a Summary.

Logical Proof for the Nonexistence of Racism: a Summary.

Reality is fairly ridiculous, if you think about it, though if one doesn’t, then it’s fairly straightforward. Consider this: the possibility that an entire group of people is wrong, and that if they take offense to being wrong that is only an extension of the same falsehood they believe in. Well, clearly, in matters of politics one never precludes this; after all, historically, entire nations have been wrong in their policies and views, and many of these policies and views began when the nations were a shattered and oppressed minority. Verily, it is the simple presence of a group which leads the individual into spiritual, moral, and metaphysical error. Furthermore, it is often upon the prevalence of such an error that a group depends for its identity, so much so that an individual who happens to fall into the group cannot be condemned for “having” a view if he or she does not “hold” it. It is when the individual is condemned for the errors of his group that an injustice has come to pass, whether the condemning party is the group itself or an outsider. Regarding race, therefore, it is only those who identify the individual as a representative of the “race”, at the expense of that person’s individuality, that are truly at fault, and those who champion the cause of any “race” are thereby especially at fault accordingly. The battle against racism, expressed as a conflict between a group of people that holds one view and all others, on behalf of other divisions of people, but at the expense of individual dissenters of all sects, is no different from that phenomenon which it combats. Since such a hypocrisy renders the fighters themselves biased, even the nature of what they are fighting must be called into question as nonexistent.

[({Dm.A.A.)}]

CAESAR's DUE:

Caesar’s Due: a Very Long Paragraph in Defense of Christ, Buddha, and Karl Marx.

In my research into the Latter Day of the Law, specifically in search of Buddhist iconography with which to illustrate the concept of spiritual decline in modernity, I happened to stumble upon an ironically appropriate symptom of decline, as represented by a leading figure in the Church of Latter Day Saints (as I had feared that my search would produce something from that most peculiar of American cults).

The gentleman, balding, wearing a red tie under a suit and a dreamy look in his eyes, argued thus: that “The government will take from the ‘haves’ and give to the ‘have nots’. Both have lost their freedom. Those who ‘have’ lost their freedom to give voluntarily of their own free will and in the way they desire. Those who ‘have not’ lost their freedom because they did not earn what they received. They got ‘something for nothing’, and they will neither appreciate the gift nor the giver of the gift.”

Of course, the poster who contributed this farce to Pinterest.com had spaced upon the entire irony of the dogma, judging by the fact that quote is labeled “AWESOME”, in all capital letters. It’s left to me to elucidate this irony accordingly.

The religious underpinnings of reaping the fruits of one’s own actions have always sat in troubling counterpoint to the condemnation of avarice, yet if one studies the history of the Christian Church, especially against the backdrop of more subtle and less authoritarian Eastern traditions, at least the existence of the contradiction, if not its validity before God and man, may be accounted for. Let us begin with the Protestant Reformation, the result of which this country was founded. The premise of Protestant thought was initially that one attains salvation not by good works but by one’s faith alone. This was so stirring a sentiment to come out of such a conservative institution that even Karl Marx quoted Martin Luther, founder of the Lutheran Church and catalyst for the Protestant Reformation, in one of his many brilliant footnotes in his later works on Capital. The idea is simple, especially when observed in the context of rebellion against a corrupt institution of profiteering such as the Catholic Church prior to the Council of Trent. “The world is full of great, excellent daily services and good deeds,” concludes Luther ironically after reflecting upon adultery, extortion, (usury,) robbery, torture, imprisonment, and the Devil himself. Doing good things “of one’s own free will” is in fact to predispose one’s self to sin, not only because the human being’s will can be easily led astray and perverted without guidance, but also because it is most likely to be perverted by the desire to aggrandize one’s self through false charity. True charity must be born out of a genuine, selfless interest in the Other, irrespective of that Other’s qualities or “qualifications”. For Luther, only faith in God and Scripture (admittedly, one’s own interpretation of Scripture, or perhaps just Luther’s interpretation, though one can see very quickly how so nebulous an episteme would lend itself far less to tyranny, since faith cannot be measured in the way that deeds and money can) can bring one’s Soul closer to God, and if this is a God who requires us to love our neighbours, then it is not merely by giving to them “in the way that [we] desire” (in other words: through the filter of self-interest and egocentric worldviews, based on merit and the quest for status) that we serve God, but it is by having faith in THEM, sufficiently to take their own needs and their own perspectives into consideration in our actions towards them. In theory, all enlightened, “holy” beings will not only value their neighbour’s perspective but, recognizing the clarity of his point of view and its validity as it is represented, will side with it. Such is the religious vision as it is depicted by Martin Buber in his text on I and Thou, and it is practically universal in Hinduism and Buddhism as well. While the ego may be exceptionally cunning in avariciously protecting its own feelings of entitlement, especially to atone for that work which it only weathered for its own sake, the mind of the Buddha is one that sees the Other as being no different from one’s “self” in quality, except that extent that the other is also afflicted with egoism. While enlightened men and women, and in some cases animals, can read the characters of those who come to them with precision, many people sadly cannot do so, and their own self-interested imagination fills in the gaps in genuine knowledge. It follows logically that every religion has a clergy that mediates conflicts, not only between practitioners and their own spiritual attainment, but also, amidst practitioners, between one another. Charity is a tricky thing when in the hands of the sinner (who is apparently everyone, however we may deplore being fallible), especially when employers abuse their power to such an extent that even a man as notoriously areligious as Karl Marx would appeal the ethos of Martin Luther in protesting this. The prostitute, of course, must “earn” her money from her “generous” clients and “discerning” employers, and there is nothing in the Christian faith that would totally condemn her, especially considering that the Lord and Saviour himself traveled with Mary Magdalene, no doubt enjoying her company, if only to that extent that we would considerable commendable in a Son of God. Prostitution is only one example of some very non-Mormon practices which are not only brutal but protected by both Scripture and the Church. While the contradictions in the Bible seem so daunting that they would cast doubt upon Martin Luther and thereby empower the perception of the Catholic Church’s necessity, is it not possible that, by extension, the State must be likewise empowered? This much is clear: in Eastern religions, contradictions in text become less problematic for two reasons. One is that the text is seldom taken literally. The other is that the text is always open to interpretation, by anyone, on principle, so even an orthodoxy avoids the risk of blatant hypocrisy and public outrage, especially because rage itself is considered a form of Hell and the well-being of All Beings is the essential and ultimate goal of Spirituality. Altruism FOR THE SAKE OF altruism, and especially for the Other, thereby becomes not only crucial but a matter of common sense. Buddhism does not appeal to people living at the bottom of Kohlberg’s Moral Hierarchy by threatening them with damnation or incentivizing them with passage to Heaven, all to be delivered in the Future, as salesmen often promise. It rather appeals to people living on the Sixth stage, recognizing the well-being of all beings as the only ultimate good, its fulfillment to be experienced in the Present. This was also what the Greeks meant by “virtue as its own reward”. It’s also why Hindus sought liberation from karma NOT simply by doing good works and collecting the rewards, but rather by RENOUNCING THE FRUITS OF ALL THEIR ACTIONS, in effect putting an end to pragmatism, to the past and future, and to the wheel of birth and death. This is in fact what the term “yoga” used to signify, and an entire half of one’s life was devoted to it. In context, the idea of “earning” anything seems absolutely arbitrary and in fact laughable, until one’s laughter turns to shock at the extent to which the joke becomes cruel mockery at the expense of the innocent and the unassuming, who would gladly settle for the sort of life that both Jesus and Buddha lived, which is so typical of the religious individual: a life of RECEIVING ALMS. When men TRULY give “something for nothing”, with total faith in both their neighbours and their God (who are of a common character to the religious mystic who always somehow manages to find God in the face of his neighbour), there is nothing left with which they might judge their neighbours for receiving “something for nothing”. Whereas capital is oriented in respect to the ego, and giving something results in one’s having nothing, religion, in its purest practice, understands what physics understands: energy is neither created nor destroyed, and, if we are careful, environmentalism tells us that neither is wealth. Things pass from one form to another, from one being to the next, and the only true freedom is in this process of passage. Whether or not this is supervised by a State makes not the slightest difference, unless the State becomes corrupt and falls short of this task. It is quite apparent that where the critic is himself corrupt, there is no reason to value his criticism above the State itself. The goals of the State were never antagonistic to our most fundamental Nature and our highest moral goals; in fact, we needed the State in order to attain those goals most efficiently, for any saint must at some point acknowledge the tragedy of human ignorance, and if that saint too had to live off of “your tax dollars” in order to adhere to her own view of God, rest assured that she is probably on her way to becoming a great Bodhisattva, just as the holy men of old were. If one worries that the recipient will not be “appreciative” of the gift, then simply renounce the praise, and your love for the receiver will leave little room for judging him. If you are no longer seeking profit, that great parasite, either in this World OR the Next, then simply creating a World that wherein suffering is forestalled by your example will satisfy you in the moment that you give, and when others take from you by force you may very well forgive them, even to the point of trust, for you know that they are holding others to not only that example which you would have gladly set, unmoved by provocation, but that example upon which they would have come to depend, granted they were not proud in poverty, had fate, which is often outside of the control or interest of God, even in many interpretations of Christianity, chosen for them to be the sacrifice. Faith in one’s Government is crucial to justification by faith alone, for even Jesus advised us to give unto Caesar Caesar’s due, NOT because Caesar’s rule is absolute, (since the Son of God knows better) but rather because God Himself wills for those who CAN pay their taxes to the beggar to do so, even if only that more beggars might become holy men. The goal of Enlightenment is so fervent in Buddhism that Christianity even pales before it, especially when leading Christian figures simply use Scripture to serve themselves. It is telling that the pathos of the miser is this: the fear that the beggars we are universally compelled to feed “will neither appreciate the gift nor the giver of the gift.” The last word is of course supposed to be decisive rhetorically, and it establishes the motivation of the speaker: to be regarded as a great giver, much as Satan took pride in being God’s favourite Angel. “The devil himself [truly] does his servants a great, inestimable service”, as Luther put it. As for the concept of a corrupt State that falls short of its own altruism, rest assured that even a theocrat such as the Dalai Lama will speak out against this, as he has done on behalf of his own people, not in the spirit of competition for salvation but rather in terms so much in accordance with the individualism of Thoreau, Emerson and the founding fathers that one may be surprised to learn he is a Marxist. The mainstream media reported this in early 2015, as though it were news, but in fact I was already discussing it with a hitchhiker and fellow Buddhist back in 2013; it would not have been in news to me in 2015, and had it been news I would have certainly remembered it, though admittedly at that time I expected all people to be Marxists, just as I tried to see all people as Buddhas, and entirely for the same reasons. At any rate, I recall having known this and discussed it for the longest time, but one can’t expect the media to. Even back then, it bothered me that a Marxist would speak out against Communism, but now it makes sense: the Dalai Lama was not criticizing what the Chinese government was supposed to be, either in terms of what it claimed to be or what it ought to be. All of those are good ideals, and they are indispensable goals. He simply spoke out against what they WERE. Yet to dismiss the possibility that such a State could work at all is to turn one’s back on both spirituality and government, and the Dalai Lama can afford neither. Nor should he. This much is certain: the Dalai Lama does not mistake egoism for freedom. Unlike SOME religious leaders, he understands that freedom does not belong to you, like a possession that the State can take away; the failures of the State are not in their Orwellian mind control but in their actual, physical human rights abuses, and capitalism is no better. WE belong to FREEDOM, and ours is a common freedom that cannot be destroyed but that is only expressed when we give. Being compelled to give is only problematic once we have FAILED to give freely, and to defend those who wish not to give is to predispose us to tyranny, which simply becomes necessary when people are systematically deprived. Deprivation by force of Nature is understandable; deprivation on principle is atrocious, since all human beings ought to become Buddhas. So it is that if we wish to know God, we must have faith in our neighbours and our Government, and if our Reason challenges this faith, that much more sacrifice may be required of US, which condescension to the poor does not compensate for. It is all our karma; we either advance towards enlightenment freely or we are dragged forcibly, either by the force of Nature or by the force of State, but until we stop blaming either Nature or the State for our own miserliness we cannot be free of it, since we have not sought TRUE freedom for our neighbours but only advantage for ourselves. I do not doubt that this is all very contradictory to you. But this is my advantage, if I may aggrandize myself for the sake of argument: that so long as those who “have not” are permitted to “have”, in accordance with nothing save for their own needs and views, then no single interpretation of any single religious discipline, biased by pride and avarice, as well as fear, to the exclusion of that message which ALL religions have in common, can allow Evil to work its magic upon the World of Men. So tyranny will be assuaged through faith in liberal government.

[({Dm.A.A.)}]

Lettre:

I must comment out of character upon this concept of altruism. It’s quite apparent to me that the happiness of others is crucial to my own, and the simple fact that this is so means that the lifestyle that I lead cannot be “reduced” to self-interest at the expense of others, nor is it identical to that sort of life. I struggle to express this longing to Joseph; he only understands it from a distance. I must confess: I am deeply attached to other people. This is one of the reasons I stopped practicing Buddhism. I don’t UNDERSTAND people so much as I depend upon them for my happiness; trying to detach myself eliminates it. I can only imagine that I favoured Buddhism for its emphasis on the interdependence of things and its nihilation of the separate ego, which is perpetually impeding the flow of life from others through me. I have always really been more of a Taoist, though it seems like I was Buddhistic longer than I can recall. The ideal of attaining enlightenment drew me to Buddhism, but this same ideal is supposed to be misguided. I am more of a Taoist pantheist. I can’t simply deny the world and be content.

Dmytri.

ROXTARZ:

Everything controversial about the rock star lifestyle has been the case since long before rock-and-roll. Mozart’s operas were DEEPLY controversial. Beethoven was a manic-depressive with an abusive childhood who nearly committed suicide when he started to go deaf but remained alive because he saw his musical career as a service to humanity. Bach was arrested for breeching his contract with the Church. Haydn was expelled from music school for cutting off a classmate’s ponytail, once he was too old to sing Soprano. Wagner was a proto-Fascist; Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring started a riot. It doesn’t get much tamer going back in time. Gesualdo had his wife and lover murdered, (and when I say “his wife and lover”, I am referring to TWO people,) Weelkes was a notorious drunk, luster and gambler, and Hildegard von Bingen was practically excommunicated from her Church, only to form her own female choral group IN THE MIDDLE AGES. If you are playing it safe, you are probably playing Salieri. And while I am certainly NOT equating debauchery with genius, I should remind you that genius tends to beget debauchery, so if we are to protect genius it must be from the Court of Public Opinion.

Dm.A.A.

LUDW!G:

Ludwig van:

At this point, finding evidence for the social cause for mental illness is like finding Volkswagen beetles on the road. Almost invariably, if not invariably, one discovers that an artist reputed for having bipolar disorder suffered from some sort of abuse, often starting early on. In Beethoven’s case, it was his alcoholic father, who insisted that Ludwig ought to be the next Mozart. Beethoven succeeded, of course, but it is difficult to say whether he did this to spite his father or to appease (read: assuage!) him. It’s simply mindboggling that non-creative people tend to associate creativity with mental illness as though the former caused the latter, rather than both originating from a common and external cause. Yes: prodigy and talent often occur intrinsically, but is it not an envious reaction to this which seeks to “supplement” the praise we accord to natural talent with the condemnation with which we treat “natural illness”, thereby more effectively employing creativity towards our own, uninspired purposes? The statistics themselves tell us nothing, although uncreative people will fail to interpret statistics except as “truth”. My theory is this: that abuse heightens the necessity for a naturally gifted individual to use art as a COPING MECHANISM, and as this habit becomes a clinical necessity the drive to do so professionally, thereby escaping any worldly impetus to its expression, becomes more fervent, and the pain required to reach the professional state must by necessity always surpass the pain one fears of losing that creativity, which even the most banal headshrinkers call an “outlet”. Art, to these people, becomes not a means to an end, but an end in and of itself, whose rewards are mere sanity. In Ludwig van Beethoven’s case, the drive was to assuage his father’s rage, but by one’s own means, most probably long after the father had passed away or given up. Beethoven would not even let deafness stop him, for though he was immune to any further acts of parental abuse at that point, the pain was still real, and just as he could never lose that internal scarring, neither could he halt the symphonies in his head.

Dm.A.A.

IMBALANCE:

The term “chemical imbalance” is often used as though groveling before sheer fact, yet thinkers and meditators alike have known for a long time that the mind is not simply a slave to matter. In large part, what you choose to think determines how you feel, and, as I have established previously, this choice is not one of absolute freedom that must be judged according to an absolute rubric, but rather it is conditioned by forces outside of one’s control. Consider the Ideal of Balance, for instance. We ordinarily think of Balance by analogy to moderation, such as in Aristotle’s virtue of the mean or the Buddhist Middle Way. Yet imagine a situation wherein there is no middle ground available. Suppose you have a parent who is never ambivalent to you. Your mother may praise you for doing things that you were supposed to, and for some brief time you might feel good about yourself for having volunteered to such a task. Yet the moment that you abstain, now you are condemned for not having fulfilled your duty. Desperate to restore your honour, you perform the chore again, only to be met with the same praise you had heard before. It might feel false to you the second time around, though this is only because you have all ready begun to think in absolutes. This is not altogether inappropriate, since you have only been presented with absolutes; in such a situation, so long as your identity depends upon the approval of the parent, there is no distinction between being less miserable and being more happy, and feeling good about yourself can only be won by avoiding feeling bad. It is only inappropriate to question the sincerity of your judge because she is in fact ESPECIALLY sincere; her entire emotional outlook depends entirely upon your choice. And this is certainly the very conception of manic depression. All psychoanalysis amounts in large part to the excavation of upbringing, and the most successful psychology accepts this role successfully, just as the child has no choice but to accept, so he or she becomes the model for both innocence and the proverbial tabula rasa.

Dm.A.A.

POSSESSED:

It is to our tremendous disadvantage that we have ceased to describe people as having been possessed. We are much too severe in treating people for having been, even temporarily, out of their right minds. Everything is reduced to a strictly chemical, impersonal, and logistical problem for which the individual is held responsible, only as a practical formality for purely utilitarian purposes. Invariably, an adult, and even in some cases child, “should have known better”: he should have KNOWN better than to take those drugs, or to work so many hours, or so few; his health was his own responsibility. Outside forces can be considered catalysts, but only to the extent that they are written off as injustices which are part of a LARGER PLAN in an impersonal political agenda; as for INTERNAL forces, if the cause is not chemical, we MAKE it chemical, so that being “possessed” by a sudden fit of madness, lust, or apathy is considered that sort of illness for which one is not only hospitalized but imprisoned, within an institution that does not even grant one criminal rights because the crime is presumed to be inevitable and therefore the punishment absolute and no less depraving.

The origin of this problem, as far as I’m aware, both internally and externally, lies in the radical responsibility of Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre’s philosophy sought to eliminate all arbitrary appeals to an absolute moral authority. Instead, the individual was to be freed of the confines and strictures of group thought and dogma by being held responsible for everything he did and even said, not so much before a jury of one’s peers (though they would end up invariably acting as judge, jury, and executioner), but rather before the blatant facts of a godless universe where he is responsible for himself.

What IS this self, exactly? It is not simply the sum of one’s actions. Unfortunately, though we might like to romanticize Sartre as a deontologist, the logical consequence of Kant, whose philosophy was a philosophy of duty and conscience before an impersonal and hypocritical system, Sartre really all ways was a pragmatist. In the Sartrean worldview, you are not only responsible for everything you DO, but also everything which HAPPENS to you. This means that you are never a victim of anyone else’s karma, so it really does not matter how your actions affect OTHERS except insofar as that effect upon them MIGHT inspire them to act in a manner which disadvantages (or, in some devious cases, ADVANTAGES) YOU, so the manner of your dealing with others “ought” to be such that it will advantage YOU, IRRESPECTIVE of such “abstractions” such as social duty, so long as you would PREFER for it to be so, and the nature of this moral epistemology is really only as valid as the physical ability for men such as Sartre to remind you of these facts.

If that sounds fishy to you, it is because it is. Yet that does not prevent modern schoolboys who in the same breath criticize Freud for “being wrong” from behaving in a blatantly Sartrean manner, especially in judging others. I still remember my early Jungian days wherein I first suggested to a Berkeley student and former schoolmate that most of our actions could be seen as the expressions of internal archetypes, and that perhaps we should revert to the Greek model wherein we describe our actions as expressions of the wills of the Gods. To my mind, this was a path of liberation from that ego which takes far too much credit for the workings of these internal forces. While Buddhists strive, of course, to be independent of these forces, even the Buddhist mythology can be understood in terms of them, and those subtler Western minds (and even Eastern minds!!) who have rejected Buddhism argue that “disowning” these archetypes is folly, probably because they are too powerful to be denied and must be accepted in order to reach Enlightenment.

My associate from Cal did not think it through to that extent. His kneejerk reaction was to say, “that seems like a way of avoiding responsibility. Like: you could just say whenever you mess up that, ‘oh, that was Dionysus.’”

Needless to say, though I shall underscore it, he went on to judge me with such severity and pretense over the years that I severed ties with him before long.

Sartre had the same effect upon many people. Yet the reason that I ascribe so much to him is not purely personal. It may be true that his peculiar brand of sociopathy was the cause for a great deal of personal recrimination in my early adulthood, and it was out of a fervent drive to escape this specter of constant guilt that I ended up getting myself into these situations wherein the demons of my unconscious might more easily possess me. Yet part of what makes the Sartrean worldview seductive presently is that it is so pervasive; even had I not been an existentialist, I would have learned Sartrean existentialism, under the guise of maturity and common sense. Most young people who are “educated” will parrot Sartrean thought when they blame you for your own misfortune. It’s not that abstaining from self-interested pursuits, for instance, entitles you to immunity from ill fortune before a jury of your peers. Even judges tell you that you should have been more self-interested.

In other words, your happiness is your own responsibility, and altruism is never an excuse. Human beings are creators of themselves, so they are not borne out of necessity or as expressions of a higher cause. Nor can they be.

What if we COULD be? What if Sartre was wrong? To begin to answer this, we should examine his assumptions. Sartre disbelieved in the existence of a transcendent subconscious mind. To his mind, all must be made conscious. What we do when we are half-asleep belongs to us. What we say and think when we are high is our own.

Jung disagreed. According to Swiss psychologist and genius Carl Jung, the unconscious more often than not has the first and last say in our lives. Jung does not reduce us entirely to puppets of unconscious forces, however; the gods themselves grant us free will. Jung’s concept of the freely willing ego is incredibly generous to free will by contrast with the views of modern atheism; we are not puppets, but heroes on a spiritual quest of self-discovery. We do make our own decisions, most of the time, but often we are choosing from several preordained responses, and at any moment we might have our power usurped by whatever deity we ally ourselves with, a choice that, like in Sartre’s worldview, is often without guidance, so, UNLIKE in Sartre’s view, it is one for which we cannot be blamed, BY THE SAME TOKEN. The fact that I do not know what the nature of the unconscious is, by its very nature as being unconscious (and knowing that much about its nature does not really help, except for the sake of arguments such as this one) means that when I choose a life path I am innocent. The fact that it’s the path ITSELF that determines my course means that after a certain point I am no longer in control, which means that, even as the consequence of my own actions, the things that I do, AFTER A CERTAIN POINT, are no longer my own, because anything that I CAN do, in terms that can be understood within the scope of society, a society that inherits this understanding just as helplessly, has been inherited and effectively programmed thousands of years before me.

That might seem like just a long escape from responsibility, except that refusing to think things through is surpassingly irresponsible.

In the real world, Sartre’s philosophy cost a lot of people their freedom. Even Bojack Horseman alludes to the capacity for Sartrean thought to be misappropriated for hegemonic purposes. One must wonder: how did Sartre manage to be remembered as a “Marxist” when he blamed people for their own victimhood? Would he have held the child labourers of the nineteenth century responsible for “choosing” to abide by their parents’ will and submitting themselves to slavery? Arguably so, since Sartre claims that man is responsible from the moment that he is borne. Perhaps it is the first kick of the fetus?

Corporations and ostensibly Marxist dictatorships perpetually hold the individual responsible for what happens to him, and the presumption that he cannot of his own will will anything of universal value creates a power vacuum that tyrants feel entitled to fill. If man is truly a worthless passion, then clearly his value is to be supplemented and assessed by the State. Of course, the same problem arises in Sartre’s most revered critics, such as Foucault, but for different reasons. Foucault’s folly was that he dismissed the individual entirely; Sartre took the introverted path, reducing everything in the World to the individual.

Now let us examine some advantages to the alternative view. If I define my mistakes as the actions of various forces, I not only open my mind to extreme possibilities, allowing myself to encounter those forces as a mystic. I also strike a most diplomatic balance between two extremes, effectively coming closer to the Buddha and Aristotle, all at once. I do not simply renounce my actions or attempt to defend their merit, but neither do I go beyond acknowledging them as events. Since I could not have reasonably prevented them, they cannot weigh upon my conscience, nor is there any reason for you to believe that I will repeat them; I am just as likely as you are, and perhaps unlike you I’ve come to acknowledge the possibility, whereas you may commit the same wrongs and deny the fact. Mine is an antihegemonic posture; I answer only to my instincts, though I do not claim any personal entitlement, for these instincts are expressions of universal principles and the most fundamental human goods, to be explored instead of ignored outright. My will is not absolutely responsible, but neither is it totally powerless, and this power is one that cannot be tamed and therefore cannot be regimented in an authoritarian fashion. What we have achieved is a success both spiritually and socially. Socially, we have eliminated the necessity for blame, though we can now avail ourselves of blame AS AN ARCHETYPE in dealing with those people who are CONSCIOUSLY evil, who now can no longer hide behind their kinship with those who are ACCIDENTALLY so. If the Unconscious truly MUST become conscious, which both Sartre and Jung aspired to do, though Sartre, by denying the Unconscious perpetually, failed, then it is only by this road of acceptance that it can. We are not responsible for being accidentally ignorant, but rather for being willfully so. And we are just as responsible for pardoning those who are accidentally ignorant as we are for condemning those who remain willfully ignorant on purpose. We must trust that our inner wisdom will discern the difference. Spiritually, we have opened a doorway to wisdom that may transcend life itself. Getting to know ourselves on this level is a birth right, so no humane institution can dismiss it as a mere feeling of entitlement. Dionysus is more than an excuse; he is our savior. We must be saved.

Dm.A.A.

RAFAEL:

Rafael: you and I had the same class in ethics together. I know that I do not need to pardon your trespasses based upon assumption of ignorance, as I must do in far too many cases. I do not recall you storming out of our professor’s classroom in a stifled rage, as you may recall that I had done, only to return and to sit twitching at the front, practically pulling out my hair, indignant. You never took issue with his teaching, and I agree to it only to that extent that the giants whose shoulders he stood upon I studied. Our frame of reference is equal here, and if I can make decisions for myself, I certainly can do so for you, since there was never any moral provision made for your self-interest working against mine. You are not entitled to that sort of autonomy, and I shudder to imagine a society wherein you might advance by that line. I know what I need from you, and I don’t doubt what it is that the World requires of you. You should be thankful that you have me here to remind you, especially since I honour your own feedback with the same attention as I would have you give me; I simply cannot continue to respect your feedback the moment that I have reason to believe that you have become corrupted by some egoism. Believe me: it is not a sight I dream of seeing. As far as I can recall, there was always ONE right answer, or at least one uniform set that was apparent to all rational beings, since there was never any criterion by which they could be divided and segregated from one another, with brutal alienation. I will no longer be accused of harbouring any self-interest in the pursuit of this right answer, and you WILL answer to the answer itself, as we all are obligated to.

Dm.A.A.

Is Vanessa Gecko a Parody of Reese Witherspoon???

This is very minor, but it just occurred to me. Vanessa Gecko, despite her animal name, is a human being. Conversely, Charlie Witherspoon, despite his human name, is a Gecko. Both Charlie and Vanessa represent the opposing poles of Princess Carolyn's corporate discontentment; Charlie represents the nepotism and incompetence she has to answer to, (made more frustrating, surely, by the fact that she may never even have a son to spoil in this manner) whereas Vanessa represents the worldly, idealized success which she all ways falls short of: the woman who Has it All.

Now, there is only one celebrity "Witherspoon" that I can think of off the top of my head, and that is Reese Witherspoon.

Reese Witherspoon, the start of Legally Blonde and many other "chick flicks", is sort of the same sort of chimera that Vanessa Gecko is. Not only does she depict these career women who also lead extraordinary sex lives and very happy family lives; her public persona as an actress has always been cast in this light as well. She's been married twice, each time for about eight years, she has had three children, she is considered a beauty queen, a philanthropist, and a homemaker, and she continues to act in the hit television show Big Little Lies. In truth, most of the really "well-rounded, worldly" women that I knew growing up had an idealized view of Reese Witherspoon, and plenty of men clearly would have seen her as "wifey material".

Is it impossible that the ever-subtle minds that created BoJack Horseman deliberately switched the names of Gecko and Witherspoon in order to make their satire less transparent and heavy-hitting? Maybe Reese just has one of those faces that you don't want to piss off by being too blunt.

[({Dm.A.A.)}]

The Third Eye and the Pelvis: Monologue.

I don’t think that you see people for who they are at ALL. Only because you all ways choose to focus on some minor fraction of their characters. You tend to describe people NOT in terms of their idealism or their convictions, nor their virtues or their vices, but rather in terms of what they want or what it is you THINK they want FROM YOU, and in practice I see that your sense of service to these banal desires is tempered only by an entirely egocentric sense of justice; behind the scenes, you all ways try to figure out what THEY can do FOR YOU and what YOU want FROM THEM. It’s very base and quite transparent, to be blunt and honest. You might mistake my idealism for some sort of self-centered aggrandizement of the ego, but in fact it is a testament to my ability to think outside of my own wants and outside of my entire culture. If my fellows are so weighed down by their own egos that they cannot see beyond our culture and to appreciate my vision, must I be penalized for their cowardice? You know: our friend here thinks that he is leading a crusade against the ego, but it is simply the egoism in others that he cannot stand, since they contradict his own. But you are not far better, since you clearly seek to use the selfishness you see in others to serve your own selfish purposes. What you “accommodate” in others perpetually fuels your own descent into narcissism; your self-destruction is not martyrdom but exhibitionism. Your life is governed by a constant striving for some sort of balance between “giving” and “taking”, as though by maintaining the status quo we might preserve a state of perfection that you KNOW does not exist. And you will never break even without feeling cheated, or otherwise cheating others, since the proverbial “ego” accounts for the entirety of your worldview, and as far as matters of genuine import are concerned, the EGO is the only truly universal problem. If I must forego my moral obligations in order to accommodate your egocentric sense of debt, it would be bad, and if you were to make a sacrifice for me to serve the Greater Good, it would be Good. Likewise, if you were to commit a crime against humanity to serve me, I could not feel any debt towards you, though if by repaying you I could also repay your own debts to humanity, I would, though you’d be wrong to think I do that for your sake alone. We owe each other nothing; our debt is to a Higher Power, always. And that’s far too great for me to simply dream up as a fabrication. If you don’t believe me, I invite you to contribute your own views on what this Higher Power is. You’ll notice I have always entertained those views religiously. But you have taken little credit for the consequences of “your” convictions.

[({Dm.A.A.)}]

MAYDAY:

May the day come when we never hear the educators speak against philosophy, and may the day never come when they are right, when truly NO one has time left to truly THINK. It may be true that SOME people have no such time, as philosophy itself understands, but never has it been that NO one can have sufficient time. Time is itself a conceit as well as a mystery. Imperatives themselves are theoretical in origin and nature; nature itself is a set of presumptions, as well as presumption itself. Even to say that those who have time to think, be they great or small in number, do not deserve to lord their values over those who don’t is to recite philosophy, to parrot others’ thinking rather than extending it. Since thought itself has not yet reached the Ideal State which thought itself prescribed, there is no right, in fact, to simply “stop” the Life of Thought and to continue to force one’s way through Life according to those presumptions which simply HAPPEN to BE the most recent thoughts, stopping the process of thinking which had kept those thoughts alive, halting their growth so that they harden into desiccated dogma. To truly stand in wonder before the ontological questions is so profound that it is demonstrably indispensable; all genuine transformation and any hope of appreciation in the present rests in the ability to turn one’s back, even if only for some time, on the familiar problems and their all too familiar solutions, to restore one’s sense of sanity and to think philosophically. In truth, any truly active thinking and any truly active living are indistinguishable from the formal study of philosophy, so the term “philosophy” itself is simply a derogatory term for sanity. And there is ALWAYS time for that.

Dm.A.A.

ADDENDA:

Interstellar Pig may be read as a satire of science in general. William Sleator claimed that were it not for the influence of his parents, he might simply have written a work of nautical fiction: a “nautical yarn”, so to speak. This is unlikely, given that he is an Aquarius, however I don’t preclude the possibility that the Piggy’s “game”, one which threatens entire species with extinction purely owing to boredom and the need for a constant vacation, is a jab at the attitude of pure research. MUST we explore the earth and the heavens, just in order to survive?

Ashton Kutcher’s identity as an Aquarius can lead us to several presumptions about his character which render his various peculiarities unsurprising, such as his fiscal conservatism, his social liberalism, his enormous commitment to the exploration of space, his philanthropy, and his general inability to relate romantically, except when in character.

The popularity of organized crime in a culture is directly proportional to two factors: group alienation and superstitious national traditions.

I tire of hearing the term “privilege” to describe what I was raised to regard as a simply decent life. If my upbringing was itself the product of undue privilege, upon what grounds can I continue to support those groups and individuals who seek what I have out of envy? Why should I be denied an “advantage” over these people as if in a game? If one precludes the ability to use power effectively, why try to empower people by preaching the good life? What right do they have to lower their standards, fueling their base contempt towards me, when I have only wanted for them what I have had? Why should they sever themselves from my support by alienating my own suffering? Have I not been far less dismissive??

Dm.A.A.

From Each, to Each, Accordingly:

From Each, to Each, Accordingly: defending the irrefutably obvious.

Should implies can, and by the same token cannot implies should not. It follows logically, even prior to this aforementioned syllogism, that one cannot be rightfully expected to do that which rests outside of one’s ability, and yet one must perform to the extent of that ability in order to fulfill one’s social duty, insofar as it does not impede that part of the social order which must preserve one’s own needs. In actual practice, people know not what value to assign to their work, since all such valuations are arbitrary expressions of power; instead, people do all that they can and demand compensation only in accordance with what they perceive themselves to need. The ostensibly free market is no exception to this, and wherever beings fail to realize the sanctity of this principle there is corruption within the system. Marx’s dictum is beyond reproach, and any permutation imaginable imminently would immediately become the very description of Kafkaesque disaster: Absurdity.

Dm.A.A.

F!NALE; Asking for It: my Last Post on Feminism. (for Now?)

So far, the global feminist movement has been as effective at stopping violence towards women as the Catholic Church, prior to the Protestant Reformation, was at halting sin, and by the same means. In both instances, the clergy collected a large sum of money for sins for which the public was supposed to repent, as dictated by the solitary authority of the Church. Prevention became a pretext for punishment, and humanity had to learn the hard way, yet again, that the latter is no means by which to arrive at the former.

How then are we to proceed in combatting violence, if not with greater violence in a hopeless and depraving arms race? Well, it’s one of those questions so simple that a child could answer it, and perhaps only a child would. A man attacks a woman, insisting that she treat him with the kindness that he feels entitled to. He fends off all of her defenses by arguing that this is not “what a good girl does”. The feminist, naively, concludes that by attacking his convictions she can disarm him. The child, profoundly, listens, trying to set a kinder example, knowing that her assailant just might follow it. After all: he clearly needs someone to show him the way towards kindness, and he’s literally asking for it. Maybe that is why, when met with arrogance and dismissiveness, the assailant knows what example to follow in his next encounter, thinking “if this is what kindness is, let me show them a taste of their own medicine, except for the few who prove exceptional. If love is what anyone would want, then THEY are asking for it, too.”

It’s not as though gentleness is ineffective. Judo is the Gentle Way, after all. Only what you resist seems truly to persist.

Dm.a.A.