(as posted at Huffington)
When oh when, dear God or universal life force? When will we be able to have a public discussion in this country about FEAR, why we are so vulnerable to its FALSE stimuli, and often so blind to the real dangers we face? These right wing fanatics are either blinded by their own unconscious fears, projecting them onto everything and everyone threatening their world view, or they are consciously manipulating their gullible base by hyping false fears merely to expand their power over all of us. Human intelligence will never get ahead in the battle with human stupidity, until this sadistic and paranoid use of false fear is called out and deflated. Until then the intelligent humanists and genuine innocents of the world will continue to have their future defined by sociopaths, liars, and goons. The human need for power and the fear of losing it are at the structural base of all our unconscious minds, and these needs and fears, as expressed in the cultural unconscious, are right now the biggest threat to human survival.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Friday, September 11, 2009
Rep. Joe Wilson Proves Evolution True
In an ultimate irony, S.C. Rep. Joe Wilson has swept away any doubt, even among Christian Evangelists, that Darwin’s Theory of Evolution is in fact observable scientific truth. He’s done this by acting as a living example of the “Missing Link” between the semi-intelligent apes and “Homo Moralis” or the species represented by humans capable of self-reflection and moral judgement.
Creationists across the country have been thrown into the stark and unfamiliar state of having to question, even abandon their most cherished “exceptionalist” prejudices. Because Rep. Wilson, as if acting as a mirror to them, has demonstrated the “Monkey Mind” that represents the previous phase of evolution (most commonly occupied by Republicans, Fundamentalists of all stripes, morons and the otherwise cognitively challenged) that preceded our own. This state or phase is most graphically illustrated by those who are incapable of controlling their emotions, of questioning their most deeply held superstitions, or of any kind of self-reflection.
The unavoidable comparison jumps to mind: an adolescent ape, chimp or vervet monkey (let’s not insult the Orangs or Bonobos) who screams and gestures threateningly at the default figure of authority, in a futile attempt to draw attention to himself, to attract young females or gain status among the lesser males.
The most identifying characteristic of the “pre-cognitive” “Homo-hothead” has yet to be fully acknowledged, even among many of the educated elite: it is the inability or unwillingness to examine one’s emotions, reactions and responses, while or after they occur, or to question the origin of the intensity of one’s fears. The ignorant assumption is to assume they are rational and appropriate in the real world. The resulting knee jerk oral ejaculations are inevitable.
The knowledge emerges slowly in our culture, so bound by the mental inertia of consumption, arrogance and entitlement: that the role of the unconscious mind in all aspects of human behavior is vastly more powerful than previously acknowledged. When we see that the unconscious mind is dominated by the lust for power and fear of the loss of power, it becomes clear that the many crises facing the human race (at both levels of evolution) are simply manifestations of greed and denial, which in turn are distorted manifestations of primitive lust and fear.
We will ultimately come to thank Rep. Wilson, (just as Arianna Huffington thanked the archetypal “Monkey Mind” Glenn Beck for unmuzzling Van Jones and spotlighting the 911 Truth mission so clearly). Because Rep. Wilson has acted out on the world stage the graphic differences that separate the sides of the cultural / political divide, also noted by Keith Olbermann: it is quite simply the opening salvo in the final battle between human stupidity and human intelligence.
So carry on Rep. Wilson and your defenders. Hold high the flag of myopia, racism, denial and prideful, willful ignorance. March ahead into the brick wall of physical and political reality. Sprint off the twin cliffs of paranoia and shared illusion. Smash your heads bloody in the expression of your own misunderstood fear.
If it weren’t so sad it would be hilarious. The apes and the monkeys are laughing uproariously at their more unconscious descendants. They somehow see the paradox of impaired minds turning away from the threshold of higher thinking even more clearly than the Birthers, Deathers, twits and screamers can see themselves.
Creationists across the country have been thrown into the stark and unfamiliar state of having to question, even abandon their most cherished “exceptionalist” prejudices. Because Rep. Wilson, as if acting as a mirror to them, has demonstrated the “Monkey Mind” that represents the previous phase of evolution (most commonly occupied by Republicans, Fundamentalists of all stripes, morons and the otherwise cognitively challenged) that preceded our own. This state or phase is most graphically illustrated by those who are incapable of controlling their emotions, of questioning their most deeply held superstitions, or of any kind of self-reflection.
The unavoidable comparison jumps to mind: an adolescent ape, chimp or vervet monkey (let’s not insult the Orangs or Bonobos) who screams and gestures threateningly at the default figure of authority, in a futile attempt to draw attention to himself, to attract young females or gain status among the lesser males.
The most identifying characteristic of the “pre-cognitive” “Homo-hothead” has yet to be fully acknowledged, even among many of the educated elite: it is the inability or unwillingness to examine one’s emotions, reactions and responses, while or after they occur, or to question the origin of the intensity of one’s fears. The ignorant assumption is to assume they are rational and appropriate in the real world. The resulting knee jerk oral ejaculations are inevitable.
The knowledge emerges slowly in our culture, so bound by the mental inertia of consumption, arrogance and entitlement: that the role of the unconscious mind in all aspects of human behavior is vastly more powerful than previously acknowledged. When we see that the unconscious mind is dominated by the lust for power and fear of the loss of power, it becomes clear that the many crises facing the human race (at both levels of evolution) are simply manifestations of greed and denial, which in turn are distorted manifestations of primitive lust and fear.
We will ultimately come to thank Rep. Wilson, (just as Arianna Huffington thanked the archetypal “Monkey Mind” Glenn Beck for unmuzzling Van Jones and spotlighting the 911 Truth mission so clearly). Because Rep. Wilson has acted out on the world stage the graphic differences that separate the sides of the cultural / political divide, also noted by Keith Olbermann: it is quite simply the opening salvo in the final battle between human stupidity and human intelligence.
So carry on Rep. Wilson and your defenders. Hold high the flag of myopia, racism, denial and prideful, willful ignorance. March ahead into the brick wall of physical and political reality. Sprint off the twin cliffs of paranoia and shared illusion. Smash your heads bloody in the expression of your own misunderstood fear.
If it weren’t so sad it would be hilarious. The apes and the monkeys are laughing uproariously at their more unconscious descendants. They somehow see the paradox of impaired minds turning away from the threshold of higher thinking even more clearly than the Birthers, Deathers, twits and screamers can see themselves.
Friday, July 3, 2009
When the two shall meet
I've been a Socialist and an Environmentalist since my teens in the early 60s and I'm tired of feeling schizo about it.
We take great guilty pleasure in the writhing contortions of the Republican / NeoCon ghost dance, in spite of our supposed liberal sense of empathy. It's OK. Enjoy it. Revel in it. Liberals question themselves to a fault; it has led to rubber stamping or failing to confront the right wing assault of the last eight to thirty years. So we have to give ourselves permission, for good and bad reasons, to celebrate, to gloat, to scream "we told you so" in the streets. To be vindicated and returned to power while the right wing mindset self-destructs is plainly thrilling. The "liberal" label no longer triggers kneejerk contempt or guilt. The accusations spewing from the right wing nut farm are scarcely less funny, only a touch less ironic than the Olbermann / Maddow / Stewart / Colbert renditions. "Facism," "Communism," "government takeover," "the Obama dictatorship." Ha. Democracy, once corrupted and defiled, rises up finally, vindicates itself and buries the cancer that now can only eat itself.
But our Schadenfreude will subside as a larger reckoning looms: the scale of the tasks ahead make the changes in the works seem trivial. We liberals have also been sad victims of complacency and the assumption that a battle won will turn the war. The raw power, physical momentum, mental inertia and inherent greed in the bestial, unregulated "market" will never give up and could rise again without legislation, enforcement and public outrage should it try.
Call it what you will, the "liberal," "progressive," "leftist," or "socialist leaning" camp has yet to see past its own myopia, infighting and obsolete mindsets. There is a pattern connecting the war, the crash, the climate crisis and the health care dilemma, and most leftists have yet to recognize it, and the few that do have not had the courage to spell it out and make it the strategic spur that it should be.
I'm sick and tired and angry hearing leftist economists and strategists talk about labor, gender-age-and-race equality, economic justice and regulation without a mention of the environmental crisis. And I'm impatient at best when the environmental alarmists, still too timid to cite the worst case scenarios, fail to discuss the radical re-structuring of the economy that is now absolutely essential to our security if not our survival. And hardly anyone but me is talking about the massive mindshift that will be necessary to envision, let alone execute that new economic structure.
The Environmental Movement and the Socialist model share much more history and many more values and goals than is acknowledged in the public discourse. The corrupt "market" forces that exploited workers, accumulated vast wealth and then gambled away most of the shared benefits of "progress," are the same forces that stripped massive regions of the globe of their natural resources, at "prices" equivalent to theft. They are the same forces that have willfully ignored the "externalities" of pollution, child labor, resource wars and habitat degradation. It's not hard to see why we are so slow to arrive at an integrated, holistic set of policies to address the convergence of crises we now face. But to ignore this shared history is to blinker our vision of a just and sustainable future and to barricade ourselves from the road to get there. Because ... God help us, why is this not obvious? ... to achieve an egalitarian and equitable economy and to salvage a viable and sustainable environment, the values, objectives and goals of the Socialists and the Environmentalists are EXACTLY the same.
The Socialist Movement will never achieve credibility or viability, and the Environmental Movement will never turn the tide of eco-destruction unless and until they acknowledge, organize around and act on the fact that their paths have merged.
Economies and societies, to the degree they can be intelligently willed by groups of humans, are little more than sets of relationships, which are defined by values cum organizing principles within the culture. The organizing principles of an unregulated market dominating a finite environment, has OBVIOUSLY led us into the myriad set of crises we now face. No wonder we seem to be in a state of cultural denial.
There are organizing principles inherent in nature, evolving toward consciousness. They include some combination of these two: ONE: "from each according to ability, to each according to need," and, TWO, to live in shared moderation, in harmony with the planet, with the absolute minimum waste of human energy and natural resources.
A massive, global mindshift is inevitable. It will occur one of two ways, in one of two time frames: sooner as a collective act of human awareness, will and shared mission; or later, after the planet and civilization have passed the tipping point of no return.
We take great guilty pleasure in the writhing contortions of the Republican / NeoCon ghost dance, in spite of our supposed liberal sense of empathy. It's OK. Enjoy it. Revel in it. Liberals question themselves to a fault; it has led to rubber stamping or failing to confront the right wing assault of the last eight to thirty years. So we have to give ourselves permission, for good and bad reasons, to celebrate, to gloat, to scream "we told you so" in the streets. To be vindicated and returned to power while the right wing mindset self-destructs is plainly thrilling. The "liberal" label no longer triggers kneejerk contempt or guilt. The accusations spewing from the right wing nut farm are scarcely less funny, only a touch less ironic than the Olbermann / Maddow / Stewart / Colbert renditions. "Facism," "Communism," "government takeover," "the Obama dictatorship." Ha. Democracy, once corrupted and defiled, rises up finally, vindicates itself and buries the cancer that now can only eat itself.
But our Schadenfreude will subside as a larger reckoning looms: the scale of the tasks ahead make the changes in the works seem trivial. We liberals have also been sad victims of complacency and the assumption that a battle won will turn the war. The raw power, physical momentum, mental inertia and inherent greed in the bestial, unregulated "market" will never give up and could rise again without legislation, enforcement and public outrage should it try.
Call it what you will, the "liberal," "progressive," "leftist," or "socialist leaning" camp has yet to see past its own myopia, infighting and obsolete mindsets. There is a pattern connecting the war, the crash, the climate crisis and the health care dilemma, and most leftists have yet to recognize it, and the few that do have not had the courage to spell it out and make it the strategic spur that it should be.
I'm sick and tired and angry hearing leftist economists and strategists talk about labor, gender-age-and-race equality, economic justice and regulation without a mention of the environmental crisis. And I'm impatient at best when the environmental alarmists, still too timid to cite the worst case scenarios, fail to discuss the radical re-structuring of the economy that is now absolutely essential to our security if not our survival. And hardly anyone but me is talking about the massive mindshift that will be necessary to envision, let alone execute that new economic structure.
The Environmental Movement and the Socialist model share much more history and many more values and goals than is acknowledged in the public discourse. The corrupt "market" forces that exploited workers, accumulated vast wealth and then gambled away most of the shared benefits of "progress," are the same forces that stripped massive regions of the globe of their natural resources, at "prices" equivalent to theft. They are the same forces that have willfully ignored the "externalities" of pollution, child labor, resource wars and habitat degradation. It's not hard to see why we are so slow to arrive at an integrated, holistic set of policies to address the convergence of crises we now face. But to ignore this shared history is to blinker our vision of a just and sustainable future and to barricade ourselves from the road to get there. Because ... God help us, why is this not obvious? ... to achieve an egalitarian and equitable economy and to salvage a viable and sustainable environment, the values, objectives and goals of the Socialists and the Environmentalists are EXACTLY the same.
The Socialist Movement will never achieve credibility or viability, and the Environmental Movement will never turn the tide of eco-destruction unless and until they acknowledge, organize around and act on the fact that their paths have merged.
Economies and societies, to the degree they can be intelligently willed by groups of humans, are little more than sets of relationships, which are defined by values cum organizing principles within the culture. The organizing principles of an unregulated market dominating a finite environment, has OBVIOUSLY led us into the myriad set of crises we now face. No wonder we seem to be in a state of cultural denial.
There are organizing principles inherent in nature, evolving toward consciousness. They include some combination of these two: ONE: "from each according to ability, to each according to need," and, TWO, to live in shared moderation, in harmony with the planet, with the absolute minimum waste of human energy and natural resources.
A massive, global mindshift is inevitable. It will occur one of two ways, in one of two time frames: sooner as a collective act of human awareness, will and shared mission; or later, after the planet and civilization have passed the tipping point of no return.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
The Meaning of Change
I've been given an opportunity to rant in a video interview, conducted by Opal Palmer Adisa and her team in the Center for Art and Public Life at the California College of the Arts. Her project is called "Change it up with Obama" and includes an extensive collection of interviews with artists, students and faculty. You can access my interview here. The blog for the project is here. And the YouTube page for all the interviews is here.
The Human Experiment
A new on-line zine, "nthWord" has published a piece of my writing in their first edition. The founders, Ryan O'Connor and Robert Frigault, define their central mission as, "Adjust Your Thinking," which is completely in line with my fundamental premise: that a wide and deep paradigm shift must precede the massive cultural shifts essential to survival. They have featured my essay "The Human Experiment," which expands on my "Crisis and Denial" theme, in their first issue. Check it out at http://www.nthword.com/toc.php
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
As published at AlterNet
AlterNet is inviting essays on a vision of Obama's first 100 days in 100 words. They have just posted this piece from me:
A comic framed the issues precisely, “I don’t wanna be an alarmist. Lemme rephrase that. I’m an alarmist.” When Obama said he wanted to “change the mindset that took us to war,” he elevated the global conversation and created a new profile for American leadership. It’s the perfect moment. The outlaw capitalism driving the warlike mindset has just crippled itself. Simultaneously the Earth screams out it can’t tolerate the inherent destruction and waste. If Obama can model a new mindset in calm, confident and reasoned terms, the path to sustainability, no matter how radical, will emerge spontaneously, obvious and welcome.
A comic framed the issues precisely, “I don’t wanna be an alarmist. Lemme rephrase that. I’m an alarmist.” When Obama said he wanted to “change the mindset that took us to war,” he elevated the global conversation and created a new profile for American leadership. It’s the perfect moment. The outlaw capitalism driving the warlike mindset has just crippled itself. Simultaneously the Earth screams out it can’t tolerate the inherent destruction and waste. If Obama can model a new mindset in calm, confident and reasoned terms, the path to sustainability, no matter how radical, will emerge spontaneously, obvious and welcome.
Saturday, November 15, 2008
As posted at Huffington
(Arianna asked for suggestions for her upcoming appearance sitting in for Rachel Maddow.)
Arianna, The nation owes you a lot. You and a couple other activist sites helped make this huge possibility for change ... um, possible. The second time I saw Rachel appear on Olbermann, I said, "she's going to have her own show on MSNBC within six months." I was pretty close. So thanks to the two of them also. I'd like to hear the question of Larry Summers raised. If he's appointed to any high position in the Obama administration, I'll see it as the first major betrayal of an Obama promise, because Summers was at the helm when the groundwork for the financial crisis was laid. Also, any mention of Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine, or reference to the need and opportunity for a "reverse shock" would also be great.
Arianna, The nation owes you a lot. You and a couple other activist sites helped make this huge possibility for change ... um, possible. The second time I saw Rachel appear on Olbermann, I said, "she's going to have her own show on MSNBC within six months." I was pretty close. So thanks to the two of them also. I'd like to hear the question of Larry Summers raised. If he's appointed to any high position in the Obama administration, I'll see it as the first major betrayal of an Obama promise, because Summers was at the helm when the groundwork for the financial crisis was laid. Also, any mention of Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine, or reference to the need and opportunity for a "reverse shock" would also be great.
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