Trans people have taken something fun - dressing up as something you're not and having fun acting the part - and literalized it by claiming it as objective reality. But it's the opposite, & the opposite of reality is delusion. Once upon a time that was classed as a psychiatric diagnosis but no more.
Great Essay! Excellent insight as to what is driving the madness. I lack much confidence it can be contained at this point though. I am certainly not trying to talk anyone out of trying however.
A good portion of our society is more afraid that the sea levels may rise in the coming years than Thermonuclear War. This is lightspeed insane. It’s as if Mother Nature programmed humanity with a self destruct sequence.
I spent a lot of time after covid trying to find a way to decommission this genetic code. Thought if enough people were to simply come to rational conclusions we might be ok. I totally misread that situation.
Now we sit idle while The Global American Empire crosses redlines after redlines in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. The voyeurs out their make it a point to call people like Putin weak for continuing to let these lines get crossed without much of a response. It only takes one time before the world is embroiled in hell.
A good portion of the society don’t have a clue about sea level levels much less what’s going on with our undiplomatic US diplomacy that might cause Russia to use tactical nukes. Sea levels are just fine.
Agree and Russia is not our enemy. The enemy is is DC and Brussels. We collectively are being lead by these sexual mental narcissists' who have zero moral anchor, look at the sexual confusion of Barak and Michael or Macron and his Man wife. They look at the population the way you look at ants. No thought to stepping on them.
Psychiatrists, who should ostensibly be opposed to narcissist behavior as well as dedicated to curing it, are instead aiding and abetting both its normalization and its promotion. They devise specious psychobabble rationalizations, thereby allowing it to be forced down the throats of traditional society, especially its children. This process embraces mental illness and weaponizes it, which is thoroughly evil.
The psychiatric establishment is not the only organization that's been politicized by wokust ideology in its march through the institutions. Surgeons and other medical 'experts' no longer believe in normalcy, instead they want you to permanently alter yourself with gender surgery, drugs, hormones, and RNA modifying vaxxines. Now that the almighty state and its wokust religion drives every aspect of such medical tyranny from the top down, the only recourse by the tyrannized is to find ways to destroy the entire rotten structure from the bottom up. We're already being accused of terrorism just for voicing political opinions, so we might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb.
If it were only about money, the problem would be predictable and straightforward to solve. But that's a simplistic explanation. The underlying problems of the medical establishment and the country in general are far more serious than just greed, and they DO include the rancid wokust ideology. Greed is at most a tertiary concern. Anyone who thinks every problem in the world can be reduced to greed has a lazy mind, and/or they have an antiquated world-socialist agenda.
The medical malfunction long predates wokery which has certainly exacerbated the problem. Much of the problem is conflicted interests between med schools, pharma, government and doctors. I agree that "greed" is a sloppy shortcut but the power of economic incentives, intended ir not, is very powerful. Not sure we have the civic will to deal with it.
The severity of the medical malfunction has increased exponentially.
Before wokism, it was predictable and manageable, and was thus relatively contained. But now with wokusts, it is totally out of control. The problems involved are both quantitatively and qualitatively different. For example, never before have I had a doctor who wanted to kill me with an untested poison deliberately misrepresented as a vaccine, supported by the medical establishment, who then mandated ventilators and remdesivir to finish the job if the vaxxine didn't already get me. That is certainly not just a matter of money, it is an entire sea change in medical ethics and basic morality. And it is in addition to the vile transgenderism and narcissism already mentioned.
There is not only no straightforward answer to all this, there is no viable solution whatsoever.
I get this feeling you just want to argue. Unfortunately, you're still wrong.
A couple of years ago, I made the observation and conclusion that enlightenment is achieved through the body and not a thought process or the will, it’s not achieved through the mind.
Enlightenment has to encompass the unconscious and the conscious at once, and the body is connected to the unconscious.
The Greek myths explain this in detail. Absolutely bizarre but if you could take a one year-old child, who’s connected to the unconscious, still after leaving his mother‘s womb is connected to the source and the Jungians out there might know what I’m talking about. One could manifest the self-awareness and be one with all things. Hehehehe.
Most people going insane when they get that close to the unconscious in their adulthood
This is pure stupid bullshit. I assume you are trolling. If I was to take it seriously I would tell you to start by defining what you mean by enlightenment.
Interesting article. If I might give some respectful and hopefully constructive criticism, if it is to present an objective theory, I would like better for it to be longer or multi-part and with references and sources for further reading and inquiry.
Very interesting is the part where you mention having done face-to-face interviews with school administrators about problems they are facing; I would love to see that elaborated upon in detail.
1. "[I]f their behavior is not controlled by an external agency, and a fixed moral system is not enforced on them, they will revert to the physical – which is their ‘natural’ state."
According to historian Jim Penman, this is caused by epigenetic switches supported by zoological studies and behavioural patterns found in almost all other mammals. He has a well-referenced academic book on this subject available for free on his website (https://biohistory.org/), called Biohistory, and which I highly recommend. It is falsifiable and good science; not simply opinion or speculation, but backed up by actually looking at e.g particular hormones, how they are affected by environmental factors and epigenetics, and what they do.
2. Regarding the idolatry and fear common in primitive societies and the reversion to some natural state (as well as the failure of reason and its apotheosis), I have been reading John Ralston Saul's book Voltaire's Bastards recently, which goes into these subjects and the power of the electronic image, and I can thoroughly recommend it in general and for touching upon a lot of what is mentioned here, too.
3. Your outward-inward dichotomy seems to touch on something real, and the conclusions are interesting, but I think the premise can only be partially correct and might be true for many people, but can't be for all; of course any hypothesis is only as strong as the weakest link upon which it breaks apart.
While I'm generally not fond of using anecdotes, my own tell me this cannot be an accurate dichotomy because I know I fall outside of it: overwhelmingly externally focused in terms of personality, on the external object: statistics, arithmetics, what can be externally observed and tested; I love physical sensations of all kinds; yet I am very much self-aware with high insight, and motivated by and focused in life on what is mental as opposed to the needs of the body, and if I am not careful, I will even end up ignoring them from treating my body like a machine too much.
So it must be much more complex than that some are focused inward, some outward, and I suspect many others reading might have temperaments that violate this dichotomy in some way or another, as well. Of course, something needn't be perfect and infallible for the general point made to be valid, as certainly some are more or less obviously focused on 'their body' or an inner life (what Jung originally meant by extraversion and intraversion, I believe), but I still feel the imperfection worth noting that these are not mutually exclusive.
Thank you very much for your comment. It is quite informative.
Regarding the interviews, those were about problems in hiring and touched on a 'group' or a 'type' of people which is getting bigger and bigger and causes greater and greater problems for companies. This is not just in schools and such but in other companies as well - particularly certain types of companies. I'm being cryptic here on purpose but I might write a piece on this at some point. The pedophile stuff just came out of the blue, I didn't even ask about that specifically.
Regarding the inward-outward stuff, it is nothing new. Jung, as you pointed out, was interested in this stuff and a pretty well known personality test, the Myers-Briggs, is partly based on this. It is very likely a real trait or dimension, but the physical aspect may not even a part of it at all. Perhaps it's another trait which is only correlated to it. In that case, exceptions would be excepted. I personally think that is likely.
There are other variables or 'dimensions' which interact with the inward-outward thing without doubt. Some inward looking people are quite good at dealing with people while others have poor social skills and suffer from shyness for example. Some people can overcome shyness while others can't - and perhaps that is caused by some other personality trait. This has been a problem in personality tests that are trying to measure introversion-extroversion.
I suspect there are also differences in inward-looking people in how easily they can move their focus outward. Some of them can be very perceptive and good at reading people, but only if they intend to be while others don't seem to be able to read people very well no matter how hard they try - and so on and so forth. The interactions between personality traits are a nightmare to figure out - especially because we don't understand basic personality traits particularly well. It's not surprising that people do not all fit inside this paradigm. I would be surprised if we ever found a 'clean' dimension which would describe everybody without taking interactions from other traits into account.
The Myers-Briggs test solves this interaction problem by splitting people up into 16 different clusters or types. Each types represents a set of interactions, so to speak.
I would be very curious to see what type you are on that test considering your description. :-)
Most psychologists don't like this test but I've found it to be useful. I recommend you all go and give it a try and I would also like you all to guess which type I am based on what and how I've been writing. It could be fun.
Very thoughtful well reasoned and well written. Sadly there is a rather large cadre of people on a collision course with reality, similar to what occurred in Sodom. Like bankruptcy, it is coming slowly and will arrive all at once with a shock. Denying reality has been, throughout history, a poor choice of life trajectory. Want to encourage you to carry on steadfastly when the inevitable fireball denial based hatred comes your way. You have already laid out here your intellectual redoubt. Being correct on how the world really works is solid ground.
Part of the problem is the words we use to describe the problem. Abstract nouns. They mean different things to different people. This article is (unavoidably) filled with abstract nouns, and as such limits our ability to discuss the problem.
The basic assumption of course is that there actually IS a problem. This takes us into the realm of what Korzybski called "belief systems." The Author believes he has identified a problem and is attempting to define its source(s), characteristics and effects. Not everyone would agree with that assessment however, certainly not some of the personality types defined in the analysis, if those are indeed accurate, another topic for debate.
A dichotomy (possibly false) is established - a division between inwardly and outwardly oriented behaviour, but this division is not as clear as it may first appear, possibly being a continuum rather than sharply defined characteristics. At the extremes these characteristics may be obvious and appear as useful categories, but that may be misleading. Outward appearance isn't always a good judge of character - the old 'don't judge a book by its cover' truism that my mom taught me. As someone who, in the course of their life has interacted with literally thousands of people from many different cultures and backgrounds, this truism has held up fairly well, although some books are obvious and don't need to be opened to know what's inside.
For me, as someone who identifies as inwardly motivated (using the author's category) the basic element I've searched for is the common denominator that motivates ALL of us, regardless of where we sit on the spectrum. At the moment I believe that's best described by what Alfred Korzybski in his 1933 book 'Science and Sanity' called 'belief systems.'
The premise is that we all have one, but that not all of us are aware of that, taking our beliefs to be self-evidently true and therefore not subject to examination. A key feature, perhaps the defining one, of belief systems is that they don't have to be true to be effective as an organizing principle, both at the social and individual level. Religion is of course the obvious example. As societies and as individuals, we organize our thoughts and behaviours in accordance with a belief system we commonly identify as 'culture.' This is invisible to most people, including those 'introspective' persons the author identifies as a category.
Self-reflection and self-doubt are manifestations of a dawning awareness that one's own beliefs are subject to doubt, but the analysis is usually incomplete because it fails to take account of the default assumptions embedded in our belief system, for example, that a phenomenon once identified, can yield to rational analysis. If this hidden assumption weren't present, the motivation to examine the subject wouldn't be there in the first place. However, some problems may be intractable, and the inability to distinguish them from those that aren't may itself be a source of anxiety, even despair.
This sounds somewhat circular I know, but such is the nature of self-referential systems, of which human thought and behaviour are no doubt the best examples. I'll just leave it at that because although I've developed what I believe to be a good system for dealing with the problem, more often than not I find myself talking to the wall. No reflection on present company, author included, I've just found it useful to hold something back to pique the curiosity of the reader, since it's the curious that I'm attempting to engage. If you don't have curiosity as your starting point I've found that it's generally pointless to engage, since all you do is run smack into a rigid belief system that brooks no compromise - kind of like discussing Christian exegesis with a Jehovah's Witness.
If we were able to return to the Balance of Thought within which "sex is a biological reproductive function" and absolutely nothing else... We would be wasting resources with this idiocy. But, since we cannot return to that Balanced state, here we are!
I think your warning was a bit overcautious. There was nothing salacious in that argument. I really enjoyed it. Thank you.
We are overclocked chimpanzees, our physical corporeal existence rules us in unforeseen and sorry, unforeseable ways, it is our fate and ensures we will be reliably stupid.
War is our alma mater.
We will return to relearn, we must relearn, it is the consequence of our ancient animal wiring. So, lest we forget is an ironic statement 364 days per year. We always forget.
I feel like this piece could be rephrased as such:
There are some people, about 30% of the population, who have a strong sense of existence and therefore understand their own desires and live for themselves. Most of the population has a weaker sense of existence, and thus becomes infected by various complicated egregores, logic viruses and Moloch, which taken together, we call civilization.
Civilization wants people to spend their efforts on inhuman rituals that, being uncorrelated with comfort/well being/satisfying desires, tend to make people miserable (the vast majority of possible states someone can be in are torture). Civilization stays in power primarily by propagating "identities" into people. If a person "identifies" as a good citizen, then he'll be violently opposed to things destructive to civilization, and will attempt to spread his "identity" to others, particularly his children. It does not matter to him that civilization makes him miserable, because his morality is not about physical wellbeing, but is refocused on "spiritual" wellbeing, or, in other words, his standing in society.
Naturally, those who are most fully embodied in the world around them, see those less embodied than themselves as a threat. Among strategies to defend themselves from those who would try to pull them deeper into civilization, is to attempt to spread embodiment, particularly, to convert moderates by teaching them they exist as a specific object, with their own interests and objectives, and that they can, by affecting the environment around them, achieve things they want, which are not the same as things other people want for them, or more particularly, the same as what civilization wants.
This leaves us with a tension between civilization and humanity.
Those who exist as humans push for a natural order where people live around trees, and water, and animals, in places like those that humans evolved to exist in, and where humans do things that they want, as evolution intended of them.
Those who exist as components of civilization push for an artificial order where anything that would distract them from the values of civilization are paved over with concrete, and people live in a gray boxes where they're kept from any sense of being real or living in a actual physical space with a location and rules and physics. People are inculcated with a sense of learned helplessness, a sense that the environment is totally out of their control, doesn't contain anything, and is not a physical object. While the final goal is for these people to unlearn living entirely, and become a pure function of civilization, only a small percent of the population can totally wipe out their sense of existence, and thus, a well designed civilization attempts to direct them inward, to assert that any displeasure or want they may experience is a flaw in their self, and what needs to be corrected is never the environment, but always the failure of the individual to live up to the identity inculcated within him.
Same societal confusion happened in the post WW1 Germany; a defeated crushed nation. The sexual activists pushed and pushed, and then the pendulum swung hard, the other way, with the society condoning the extermination of them. Will happen again in the west.
Perhaps not. Aggression is said to be the emotion and violence the result. However, in a psychopath the unchecked emotion expresses itself as compulsive images of violence and violent scenarios, which are then (sometimes) acted out. In that case the emotion (without any suppression) actually is violence - so I'm not sure the distinction between the emotion/urge and what it motivates is real. Perhaps it is, but it's probably just a question of how it's defined.
Wrath, Anger, Rage, are I thought? Or should they be classified as behaviors or actions? I have been pretty pissed off plenty of times and done nothing so I assume they are emotions.
We don't really know how this works, at least not completely. Presumably 'something' creates a mental state under certain circumstances, which then motivates us to do something. Is the emotion the mental state (for example rage) or what created it? It's usually defined as the mental state or the subjective feeling it causes.
Self-control almost certainly a blocks you from acting out the emotion/urge rather than the emotion itself. You are still angry even if you decide not to punch someone.
I have a problem with the ideea of self-control. Which part of my mind has the authority to control an other part?
What controls what?
I know by self observation that is a kind of reaction. You let yourself going or draged by your thought. Or you sit still and watch until the next thought is arising. In this case you miss to act when you are angry. I would not consider it as a control. More being conscious.
This is one of the most interesting aspects of the brain and involves the question of consciousness. It's like one part of the brain 'observes' emotions and decides what to do. Same with memory. So who or what is watching what?
I remember the words of Jiddu Krishnamurti: the thought ist the response of the brain to stimulous. I have no idea if is true, but in case it is, than all we think is a result of the circumstances. And our action also.
Then what makes the difference between humans and their actions? Is the access to the civilisation, to the collective observations (individual and shared) and knowledge which we share. That includes also the tradition. Isn't it?
Trans people have taken something fun - dressing up as something you're not and having fun acting the part - and literalized it by claiming it as objective reality. But it's the opposite, & the opposite of reality is delusion. Once upon a time that was classed as a psychiatric diagnosis but no more.
Great Essay! Excellent insight as to what is driving the madness. I lack much confidence it can be contained at this point though. I am certainly not trying to talk anyone out of trying however.
A good portion of our society is more afraid that the sea levels may rise in the coming years than Thermonuclear War. This is lightspeed insane. It’s as if Mother Nature programmed humanity with a self destruct sequence.
I spent a lot of time after covid trying to find a way to decommission this genetic code. Thought if enough people were to simply come to rational conclusions we might be ok. I totally misread that situation.
Now we sit idle while The Global American Empire crosses redlines after redlines in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. The voyeurs out their make it a point to call people like Putin weak for continuing to let these lines get crossed without much of a response. It only takes one time before the world is embroiled in hell.
A good portion of the society don’t have a clue about sea level levels much less what’s going on with our undiplomatic US diplomacy that might cause Russia to use tactical nukes. Sea levels are just fine.
Agree and Russia is not our enemy. The enemy is is DC and Brussels. We collectively are being lead by these sexual mental narcissists' who have zero moral anchor, look at the sexual confusion of Barak and Michael or Macron and his Man wife. They look at the population the way you look at ants. No thought to stepping on them.
Psychiatrists, who should ostensibly be opposed to narcissist behavior as well as dedicated to curing it, are instead aiding and abetting both its normalization and its promotion. They devise specious psychobabble rationalizations, thereby allowing it to be forced down the throats of traditional society, especially its children. This process embraces mental illness and weaponizes it, which is thoroughly evil.
The psychiatric establishment is not the only organization that's been politicized by wokust ideology in its march through the institutions. Surgeons and other medical 'experts' no longer believe in normalcy, instead they want you to permanently alter yourself with gender surgery, drugs, hormones, and RNA modifying vaxxines. Now that the almighty state and its wokust religion drives every aspect of such medical tyranny from the top down, the only recourse by the tyrannized is to find ways to destroy the entire rotten structure from the bottom up. We're already being accused of terrorism just for voicing political opinions, so we might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb.
Affirming delusion is far easier than addressing it and assures a paying client for ever. A bit like the current medical profession.
If it were only about money, the problem would be predictable and straightforward to solve. But that's a simplistic explanation. The underlying problems of the medical establishment and the country in general are far more serious than just greed, and they DO include the rancid wokust ideology. Greed is at most a tertiary concern. Anyone who thinks every problem in the world can be reduced to greed has a lazy mind, and/or they have an antiquated world-socialist agenda.
The medical malfunction long predates wokery which has certainly exacerbated the problem. Much of the problem is conflicted interests between med schools, pharma, government and doctors. I agree that "greed" is a sloppy shortcut but the power of economic incentives, intended ir not, is very powerful. Not sure we have the civic will to deal with it.
The severity of the medical malfunction has increased exponentially.
Before wokism, it was predictable and manageable, and was thus relatively contained. But now with wokusts, it is totally out of control. The problems involved are both quantitatively and qualitatively different. For example, never before have I had a doctor who wanted to kill me with an untested poison deliberately misrepresented as a vaccine, supported by the medical establishment, who then mandated ventilators and remdesivir to finish the job if the vaxxine didn't already get me. That is certainly not just a matter of money, it is an entire sea change in medical ethics and basic morality. And it is in addition to the vile transgenderism and narcissism already mentioned.
There is not only no straightforward answer to all this, there is no viable solution whatsoever.
I get this feeling you just want to argue. Unfortunately, you're still wrong.
True, they have become more overt in their disdain for us. In the past they were content to kill us and our children slowly.
A couple of years ago, I made the observation and conclusion that enlightenment is achieved through the body and not a thought process or the will, it’s not achieved through the mind.
Enlightenment has to encompass the unconscious and the conscious at once, and the body is connected to the unconscious.
The Greek myths explain this in detail. Absolutely bizarre but if you could take a one year-old child, who’s connected to the unconscious, still after leaving his mother‘s womb is connected to the source and the Jungians out there might know what I’m talking about. One could manifest the self-awareness and be one with all things. Hehehehe.
Most people going insane when they get that close to the unconscious in their adulthood
This is pure stupid bullshit. I assume you are trolling. If I was to take it seriously I would tell you to start by defining what you mean by enlightenment.
hear hear
The SELF/SPIRIT fully manifested in the body/mind of the individual.
Interesting article. If I might give some respectful and hopefully constructive criticism, if it is to present an objective theory, I would like better for it to be longer or multi-part and with references and sources for further reading and inquiry.
Very interesting is the part where you mention having done face-to-face interviews with school administrators about problems they are facing; I would love to see that elaborated upon in detail.
1. "[I]f their behavior is not controlled by an external agency, and a fixed moral system is not enforced on them, they will revert to the physical – which is their ‘natural’ state."
According to historian Jim Penman, this is caused by epigenetic switches supported by zoological studies and behavioural patterns found in almost all other mammals. He has a well-referenced academic book on this subject available for free on his website (https://biohistory.org/), called Biohistory, and which I highly recommend. It is falsifiable and good science; not simply opinion or speculation, but backed up by actually looking at e.g particular hormones, how they are affected by environmental factors and epigenetics, and what they do.
2. Regarding the idolatry and fear common in primitive societies and the reversion to some natural state (as well as the failure of reason and its apotheosis), I have been reading John Ralston Saul's book Voltaire's Bastards recently, which goes into these subjects and the power of the electronic image, and I can thoroughly recommend it in general and for touching upon a lot of what is mentioned here, too.
3. Your outward-inward dichotomy seems to touch on something real, and the conclusions are interesting, but I think the premise can only be partially correct and might be true for many people, but can't be for all; of course any hypothesis is only as strong as the weakest link upon which it breaks apart.
While I'm generally not fond of using anecdotes, my own tell me this cannot be an accurate dichotomy because I know I fall outside of it: overwhelmingly externally focused in terms of personality, on the external object: statistics, arithmetics, what can be externally observed and tested; I love physical sensations of all kinds; yet I am very much self-aware with high insight, and motivated by and focused in life on what is mental as opposed to the needs of the body, and if I am not careful, I will even end up ignoring them from treating my body like a machine too much.
So it must be much more complex than that some are focused inward, some outward, and I suspect many others reading might have temperaments that violate this dichotomy in some way or another, as well. Of course, something needn't be perfect and infallible for the general point made to be valid, as certainly some are more or less obviously focused on 'their body' or an inner life (what Jung originally meant by extraversion and intraversion, I believe), but I still feel the imperfection worth noting that these are not mutually exclusive.
Thank you very much for your comment. It is quite informative.
Regarding the interviews, those were about problems in hiring and touched on a 'group' or a 'type' of people which is getting bigger and bigger and causes greater and greater problems for companies. This is not just in schools and such but in other companies as well - particularly certain types of companies. I'm being cryptic here on purpose but I might write a piece on this at some point. The pedophile stuff just came out of the blue, I didn't even ask about that specifically.
Regarding the inward-outward stuff, it is nothing new. Jung, as you pointed out, was interested in this stuff and a pretty well known personality test, the Myers-Briggs, is partly based on this. It is very likely a real trait or dimension, but the physical aspect may not even a part of it at all. Perhaps it's another trait which is only correlated to it. In that case, exceptions would be excepted. I personally think that is likely.
There are other variables or 'dimensions' which interact with the inward-outward thing without doubt. Some inward looking people are quite good at dealing with people while others have poor social skills and suffer from shyness for example. Some people can overcome shyness while others can't - and perhaps that is caused by some other personality trait. This has been a problem in personality tests that are trying to measure introversion-extroversion.
I suspect there are also differences in inward-looking people in how easily they can move their focus outward. Some of them can be very perceptive and good at reading people, but only if they intend to be while others don't seem to be able to read people very well no matter how hard they try - and so on and so forth. The interactions between personality traits are a nightmare to figure out - especially because we don't understand basic personality traits particularly well. It's not surprising that people do not all fit inside this paradigm. I would be surprised if we ever found a 'clean' dimension which would describe everybody without taking interactions from other traits into account.
The Myers-Briggs test solves this interaction problem by splitting people up into 16 different clusters or types. Each types represents a set of interactions, so to speak.
I would be very curious to see what type you are on that test considering your description. :-)
You can find it here: https://www.16personalities.com/free-personality-test
Most psychologists don't like this test but I've found it to be useful. I recommend you all go and give it a try and I would also like you all to guess which type I am based on what and how I've been writing. It could be fun.
When you were born as Peggy Sue - and now you're Desperate Dan
Very thoughtful well reasoned and well written. Sadly there is a rather large cadre of people on a collision course with reality, similar to what occurred in Sodom. Like bankruptcy, it is coming slowly and will arrive all at once with a shock. Denying reality has been, throughout history, a poor choice of life trajectory. Want to encourage you to carry on steadfastly when the inevitable fireball denial based hatred comes your way. You have already laid out here your intellectual redoubt. Being correct on how the world really works is solid ground.
Part of the problem is the words we use to describe the problem. Abstract nouns. They mean different things to different people. This article is (unavoidably) filled with abstract nouns, and as such limits our ability to discuss the problem.
The basic assumption of course is that there actually IS a problem. This takes us into the realm of what Korzybski called "belief systems." The Author believes he has identified a problem and is attempting to define its source(s), characteristics and effects. Not everyone would agree with that assessment however, certainly not some of the personality types defined in the analysis, if those are indeed accurate, another topic for debate.
A dichotomy (possibly false) is established - a division between inwardly and outwardly oriented behaviour, but this division is not as clear as it may first appear, possibly being a continuum rather than sharply defined characteristics. At the extremes these characteristics may be obvious and appear as useful categories, but that may be misleading. Outward appearance isn't always a good judge of character - the old 'don't judge a book by its cover' truism that my mom taught me. As someone who, in the course of their life has interacted with literally thousands of people from many different cultures and backgrounds, this truism has held up fairly well, although some books are obvious and don't need to be opened to know what's inside.
For me, as someone who identifies as inwardly motivated (using the author's category) the basic element I've searched for is the common denominator that motivates ALL of us, regardless of where we sit on the spectrum. At the moment I believe that's best described by what Alfred Korzybski in his 1933 book 'Science and Sanity' called 'belief systems.'
https://oceanofpdf.com/?s=science+and+sanity
The premise is that we all have one, but that not all of us are aware of that, taking our beliefs to be self-evidently true and therefore not subject to examination. A key feature, perhaps the defining one, of belief systems is that they don't have to be true to be effective as an organizing principle, both at the social and individual level. Religion is of course the obvious example. As societies and as individuals, we organize our thoughts and behaviours in accordance with a belief system we commonly identify as 'culture.' This is invisible to most people, including those 'introspective' persons the author identifies as a category.
Self-reflection and self-doubt are manifestations of a dawning awareness that one's own beliefs are subject to doubt, but the analysis is usually incomplete because it fails to take account of the default assumptions embedded in our belief system, for example, that a phenomenon once identified, can yield to rational analysis. If this hidden assumption weren't present, the motivation to examine the subject wouldn't be there in the first place. However, some problems may be intractable, and the inability to distinguish them from those that aren't may itself be a source of anxiety, even despair.
This sounds somewhat circular I know, but such is the nature of self-referential systems, of which human thought and behaviour are no doubt the best examples. I'll just leave it at that because although I've developed what I believe to be a good system for dealing with the problem, more often than not I find myself talking to the wall. No reflection on present company, author included, I've just found it useful to hold something back to pique the curiosity of the reader, since it's the curious that I'm attempting to engage. If you don't have curiosity as your starting point I've found that it's generally pointless to engage, since all you do is run smack into a rigid belief system that brooks no compromise - kind of like discussing Christian exegesis with a Jehovah's Witness.
If we were able to return to the Balance of Thought within which "sex is a biological reproductive function" and absolutely nothing else... We would be wasting resources with this idiocy. But, since we cannot return to that Balanced state, here we are!
But are you SURE?
If this question is directed at me regarding the content of the essay, then the answer is no. I'm rarely sure of anything, including my own theories.
Me?
I think your warning was a bit overcautious. There was nothing salacious in that argument. I really enjoyed it. Thank you.
We are overclocked chimpanzees, our physical corporeal existence rules us in unforeseen and sorry, unforeseable ways, it is our fate and ensures we will be reliably stupid.
War is our alma mater.
We will return to relearn, we must relearn, it is the consequence of our ancient animal wiring. So, lest we forget is an ironic statement 364 days per year. We always forget.
The divine comedy.
I feel like this piece could be rephrased as such:
There are some people, about 30% of the population, who have a strong sense of existence and therefore understand their own desires and live for themselves. Most of the population has a weaker sense of existence, and thus becomes infected by various complicated egregores, logic viruses and Moloch, which taken together, we call civilization.
Civilization wants people to spend their efforts on inhuman rituals that, being uncorrelated with comfort/well being/satisfying desires, tend to make people miserable (the vast majority of possible states someone can be in are torture). Civilization stays in power primarily by propagating "identities" into people. If a person "identifies" as a good citizen, then he'll be violently opposed to things destructive to civilization, and will attempt to spread his "identity" to others, particularly his children. It does not matter to him that civilization makes him miserable, because his morality is not about physical wellbeing, but is refocused on "spiritual" wellbeing, or, in other words, his standing in society.
Naturally, those who are most fully embodied in the world around them, see those less embodied than themselves as a threat. Among strategies to defend themselves from those who would try to pull them deeper into civilization, is to attempt to spread embodiment, particularly, to convert moderates by teaching them they exist as a specific object, with their own interests and objectives, and that they can, by affecting the environment around them, achieve things they want, which are not the same as things other people want for them, or more particularly, the same as what civilization wants.
This leaves us with a tension between civilization and humanity.
Those who exist as humans push for a natural order where people live around trees, and water, and animals, in places like those that humans evolved to exist in, and where humans do things that they want, as evolution intended of them.
Those who exist as components of civilization push for an artificial order where anything that would distract them from the values of civilization are paved over with concrete, and people live in a gray boxes where they're kept from any sense of being real or living in a actual physical space with a location and rules and physics. People are inculcated with a sense of learned helplessness, a sense that the environment is totally out of their control, doesn't contain anything, and is not a physical object. While the final goal is for these people to unlearn living entirely, and become a pure function of civilization, only a small percent of the population can totally wipe out their sense of existence, and thus, a well designed civilization attempts to direct them inward, to assert that any displeasure or want they may experience is a flaw in their self, and what needs to be corrected is never the environment, but always the failure of the individual to live up to the identity inculcated within him.
Same societal confusion happened in the post WW1 Germany; a defeated crushed nation. The sexual activists pushed and pushed, and then the pendulum swung hard, the other way, with the society condoning the extermination of them. Will happen again in the west.
Excellent thesis that goes a long way to making some sense of the craziness out there today. Shared!
The best narcissistic ego-defense is an offensive ego... Got it!
;-(
Violence is not an emotion...
Perhaps not. Aggression is said to be the emotion and violence the result. However, in a psychopath the unchecked emotion expresses itself as compulsive images of violence and violent scenarios, which are then (sometimes) acted out. In that case the emotion (without any suppression) actually is violence - so I'm not sure the distinction between the emotion/urge and what it motivates is real. Perhaps it is, but it's probably just a question of how it's defined.
Wrath, Anger, Rage, are I thought? Or should they be classified as behaviors or actions? I have been pretty pissed off plenty of times and done nothing so I assume they are emotions.
We don't really know how this works, at least not completely. Presumably 'something' creates a mental state under certain circumstances, which then motivates us to do something. Is the emotion the mental state (for example rage) or what created it? It's usually defined as the mental state or the subjective feeling it causes.
Self-control almost certainly a blocks you from acting out the emotion/urge rather than the emotion itself. You are still angry even if you decide not to punch someone.
Carl Trueman's "Rise and Triumph of the Self" is a long form treatment of this question and well worth reading.
I have a problem with the ideea of self-control. Which part of my mind has the authority to control an other part?
What controls what?
I know by self observation that is a kind of reaction. You let yourself going or draged by your thought. Or you sit still and watch until the next thought is arising. In this case you miss to act when you are angry. I would not consider it as a control. More being conscious.
This is one of the most interesting aspects of the brain and involves the question of consciousness. It's like one part of the brain 'observes' emotions and decides what to do. Same with memory. So who or what is watching what?
One's conscience (assuming its development).
I remember the words of Jiddu Krishnamurti: the thought ist the response of the brain to stimulous. I have no idea if is true, but in case it is, than all we think is a result of the circumstances. And our action also.
Then what makes the difference between humans and their actions? Is the access to the civilisation, to the collective observations (individual and shared) and knowledge which we share. That includes also the tradition. Isn't it?