We have entered an age in which intellect is considered a bad thing by many, creativity and honor are disrespected, integrity is confused with just being angry all the time and it seems, at times, the more ludicrous a person is, the greater their appeal to the mass market of "ideas", which is to say whatever the opposite of ideas really are. I hesitate to claim that feelings are the opposite of intellect. It seems to me that ideas and feelings are related, it is just that one arises from chemical changes in the whole body and the other is mostly confined to our heads. Oddly enough the formerly crazy, dysfunctional and dangerous are being allowed more and more freedoms while those of us who have learned to control our impulses, consider well the results of our actions and consider well the thoughts and feelings of others are held in disregard, alternately condemned and disrespected, making it difficult, if not impossible, to be taken seriously.
Many of the basics that we learned as children are completely off the table now.
The U. S. of A. now has an ignorant asshole as President and the old way of trying to not make waves has led to trying to coddle and rationalize why he is not so bad, calls for giving him a chance and excuses for why his repeated attempts to ruin our nation are something we just need to get used to. I seriously doubt that accommodating bullies has ever worked to solve the problems that follow them through life. In fact, the old reality demanded that we put down bullies, yet there are strong forces in our society today that just love bullies because they have become so used to being beaten up. People who study the psychology of victimhood will speak endlessly about the influences that we fall under when we are bullied, I have written about this myself on this blog. Power and control issues spiral out of control and the dehumanization of the victims is extremely common to be spoke of and the power and control wheel seem to help some victims get a map that can help them cut off one or two of the chords of the "wheel", breaking off the trajectory. However when individuals don't even have an effective map of the territory, finding their way can be difficult.
Less is said about the other half of the equation, the Stockholm syndrome is recognized, but the very nature of caring for your captors is abhorrent to the average person and as such it does not get spoken of nearly as often. This is akin to the male anatomy, the "outie" getting all the attention, all of their conniving attacks get attention. Looking curiously, investigating and communicating about the more internal events that take place, tend to get less attention. Even though these states skew our very biology, they get less attention. The vast majority of the population of the planet feels threatened by the incompetent asshole that the U.S. has "in charge", but the denial of that fact is manufactured, because it serves the oligarchy. No one else. The infinitesimally small .1% are like the boorish boss, because no one feels that their "ideas" are to be questioned. Here's the rub. Say a guy makes twice as much as you, what he says usually goes, but in the right business climate, or other interaction, you can talk to the guy, sharing your ideas and possibly, through this sharing, find a better outcome. When you go high enough up the economic ladder, people making ten or a hundred times more than you are part of the mix. You are sure to very rarely even see them, they frequently design their lives to stay away from "normals". Even if you tried to share an idea with them, the response would become, "You are not paid to think."
In my youth, this was why the Wisconsin Idea made those who took the time to understand it proud to be from the state. It was an overt attempt to build a relationship between the top and bottom segments of society into a stronger, more creative and culturally vivacious mix of ideas from all walks of life both feeding into the colleges and universities, but the scientific advancements made utilizing state dollars, in the form of the UW system could flow back to benefit the common man. but I digress. this post is about navigating post map, post reality, post and possible sign about what can be expected in any dimension, at any time and although we are paralyzed by not knowing which way to turn for relief, we are trying to rationalize our captivity in a horrible situation. The very sacred nature of our being is constantly under active assault by the marketplace, the government, stressors like climate destabilization, slow and ceaseless erosion of standards of living, etc. Like the abused spouse, our whole society is collectively making excuses for our bully in chief, his cast of characters who have explicitly said they want to dismantle every agency. Are these people praying for Armageddon?
The rest of the world is seeing us as completely off the rails crazy as a nation and are quite probably exactly right. Instead of honoring and respecting our humanity, treating our citizens as if they had value, we let the top down, or trickledown of power and control dynamics rule every interaction with the brunt of the burden borne by those who cannot afford it. I consider it a lavish lifestyle that I get to have occasional days off, so I can ride my bicycle, a $35 one that I bought in 1984. After I rode around the Great Lakes, using it, I calculated that total costs per mile (with the two hundred dollars of racks, panniers and new front chainwheels) at less than 1/3 of one cent per mile.
When I left home, I was stepping off into the unknown to a very great extent. all I knew about the areas that I was going to be traveling through were primarily based on a map published by Pollution Probe that gave great detail about environmental catastrophes and where they were located around the shores of the Great Lakes. much of the rest of my trip I was flying blind. One several hundred mile portion of the trip, the only map I had was one of Canada produced by National Geographic!
As we get more and more informed about the current state of the planet, we each find more and more reasons to grow a few vegetables in a healthy way for our own health and welfare and many, once bitten by the healthy food bug, want to share the bounty for the earth with others, hoping they will feel better just like we do! Our school, when fully funded will be able to teach many hundreds of people each year how to make the Earth thrive under our care, sequester carbon cheaply and easily and understand the necessity of doing so. We may not even be able to "see" the territory into which we have been thrown, but by doing simple things repeatedly, positive change can be made.
Many of the basics that we learned as children are completely off the table now.
The U. S. of A. now has an ignorant asshole as President and the old way of trying to not make waves has led to trying to coddle and rationalize why he is not so bad, calls for giving him a chance and excuses for why his repeated attempts to ruin our nation are something we just need to get used to. I seriously doubt that accommodating bullies has ever worked to solve the problems that follow them through life. In fact, the old reality demanded that we put down bullies, yet there are strong forces in our society today that just love bullies because they have become so used to being beaten up. People who study the psychology of victimhood will speak endlessly about the influences that we fall under when we are bullied, I have written about this myself on this blog. Power and control issues spiral out of control and the dehumanization of the victims is extremely common to be spoke of and the power and control wheel seem to help some victims get a map that can help them cut off one or two of the chords of the "wheel", breaking off the trajectory. However when individuals don't even have an effective map of the territory, finding their way can be difficult.
Less is said about the other half of the equation, the Stockholm syndrome is recognized, but the very nature of caring for your captors is abhorrent to the average person and as such it does not get spoken of nearly as often. This is akin to the male anatomy, the "outie" getting all the attention, all of their conniving attacks get attention. Looking curiously, investigating and communicating about the more internal events that take place, tend to get less attention. Even though these states skew our very biology, they get less attention. The vast majority of the population of the planet feels threatened by the incompetent asshole that the U.S. has "in charge", but the denial of that fact is manufactured, because it serves the oligarchy. No one else. The infinitesimally small .1% are like the boorish boss, because no one feels that their "ideas" are to be questioned. Here's the rub. Say a guy makes twice as much as you, what he says usually goes, but in the right business climate, or other interaction, you can talk to the guy, sharing your ideas and possibly, through this sharing, find a better outcome. When you go high enough up the economic ladder, people making ten or a hundred times more than you are part of the mix. You are sure to very rarely even see them, they frequently design their lives to stay away from "normals". Even if you tried to share an idea with them, the response would become, "You are not paid to think."
In my youth, this was why the Wisconsin Idea made those who took the time to understand it proud to be from the state. It was an overt attempt to build a relationship between the top and bottom segments of society into a stronger, more creative and culturally vivacious mix of ideas from all walks of life both feeding into the colleges and universities, but the scientific advancements made utilizing state dollars, in the form of the UW system could flow back to benefit the common man. but I digress. this post is about navigating post map, post reality, post and possible sign about what can be expected in any dimension, at any time and although we are paralyzed by not knowing which way to turn for relief, we are trying to rationalize our captivity in a horrible situation. The very sacred nature of our being is constantly under active assault by the marketplace, the government, stressors like climate destabilization, slow and ceaseless erosion of standards of living, etc. Like the abused spouse, our whole society is collectively making excuses for our bully in chief, his cast of characters who have explicitly said they want to dismantle every agency. Are these people praying for Armageddon?
The rest of the world is seeing us as completely off the rails crazy as a nation and are quite probably exactly right. Instead of honoring and respecting our humanity, treating our citizens as if they had value, we let the top down, or trickledown of power and control dynamics rule every interaction with the brunt of the burden borne by those who cannot afford it. I consider it a lavish lifestyle that I get to have occasional days off, so I can ride my bicycle, a $35 one that I bought in 1984. After I rode around the Great Lakes, using it, I calculated that total costs per mile (with the two hundred dollars of racks, panniers and new front chainwheels) at less than 1/3 of one cent per mile.
When I left home, I was stepping off into the unknown to a very great extent. all I knew about the areas that I was going to be traveling through were primarily based on a map published by Pollution Probe that gave great detail about environmental catastrophes and where they were located around the shores of the Great Lakes. much of the rest of my trip I was flying blind. One several hundred mile portion of the trip, the only map I had was one of Canada produced by National Geographic!
As we get more and more informed about the current state of the planet, we each find more and more reasons to grow a few vegetables in a healthy way for our own health and welfare and many, once bitten by the healthy food bug, want to share the bounty for the earth with others, hoping they will feel better just like we do! Our school, when fully funded will be able to teach many hundreds of people each year how to make the Earth thrive under our care, sequester carbon cheaply and easily and understand the necessity of doing so. We may not even be able to "see" the territory into which we have been thrown, but by doing simple things repeatedly, positive change can be made.
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