I’m writing the persons who will replace us. At present we can only see the magnetic flash of someone in utero; that potential, which is more communal than personal. Some fetus audacious enough to see through its own charades.
I’m writing because this is the performance of a new way of being, this is how it begins to take shape. It’s you and I facing our shame, not I alone.
We don’t give birth to a new being by ourselves. This is an alchemical experiment, a shamanic dance. The eyes dance the words, and this ceremony creates someone capable of seeing the Self as a construct of self-deception. A way of being rises from the ashes of who we thought we were.
Imagine the courage it takes to not fool yourself.
Even the imagination of this person can’t be sustained without deception. The effort to do so creates a positive ideal, which is a desire for transcendence, and that desire is opposed to being seen as a fool. It doesn’t want to see how it fools itself. It hides from reality and never acknowledges that it does so.
This is the origins of our political situation also. The system is running from reality as fast as it can, right into the arms of a narcistic dictator.
It’s up to the relatively sane to turn and face themselves, which is to face our own deceptions. This will take incredible courage, and something else as well, which none of us can formulate just yet.
Have you ever noticed that most of the things we say to ourselves (those voices “in our heads”) are subtle attempts to maintain a deception in the face of reality, to bend memory in order to preserve self-admiration (which is all we can reach in lieu of love)? That voice is constantly rehashing scenes to place itself in a better light, to convince itself of its own righteousness. That voice is a liar. I am a liar.
This is precisely where most readers will switch to a different train of thought, because what I’m saying Seems to head towards an almost claustrophobic despair. To encounter this train of perpetual self-deception in ourselves – a train chugging its way towards a mirage in the desert we call Relief, or Confidence or Happiness or Peace, or Righteousness, or mere Distraction, etc — is too much for most of us. Exposing these transcendental objects of desire as illusions in us (not at first in others, though the deceptions of others are also revealed in this act) takes more than mere courage. It takes riding this train of thought to the bitter end, not changing tracks. It takes the choiceless futility of a dead end to move us in a new direction.
This dead end that brooks no pretense. We can’t pretend that there’s a way out. We can’t pretend we have a different choice. Choice is a luxury for those who are dreaming their life away.
Stick with this, it’s not as bad as it sounds. This isn’t in favor of suicide, or violence, far from it, it’s more optimistic than it seems, it comes from a love of life, earth and the human animal. But only love has the courage to face who we have become.
There is no real choice in this observation of our habitual self-deception either. Those who think they have a choice are the ones who recoil from this perspective, and refuse to complete the ceremony of reading, overwhelmed by a sickening self-judgement. They would hate themselves for their deceptive behavior, so they refuse to look. An open acknowledgement of this sort would strip them of the only bulwark they have built against the unspeakable emptiness that surrounds them. What we’ve built as a bulwark is our selves, which is a structure of pretense. Those who quit this ceremony of healing would prefer to retain the pretense of being honest even as they hide from reality, and pretend they never hid from anything.
Trump is a stand-in for this Self, this transcendental object that can escape reality. Trump is an ally to those desperate enough to Believe in something, which makes them “choose” to be gullible. (Nobody believes in Biden; he can’t deceive because we don’t believe him. He is merely the choiceless option, the only way to avoid immediate ruin). But Trump only exists by virtue of belief. He builds his own reality, as long as his admirers keep clapping. Call him Stinkerbell. If we believe in him strongly enough, then all these horrible realities descending on us can be scoffed away as if they weren’t real. It’s a way to keep dreaming. Keep clapping long enough and the newspapers clap back, because insanity sells.
Maybe all this ruin, and all our running, hiding, pretending, lying, won’t be true if we clap long and hard enough. This goes for “us” as much as “them.” Our way of life is heading for ruin, but we keep going.
Call this indifference bold, equate these postures of brutality with bravery until you almost believe it. Notice the level of fear – the desire to rid ourselves of anyone who throws cold water on our intoxicating pretenses, especially this pretense of belonging to a Movement. For many, Trump is the last chance to escape the world as a Movement of tribal cohesion, and tribes need opposition to feel cohesive. Otherwise the chaos of self-deception consumes them from the inside out, and the dream falls apart.
This is just as true for the technological movement, the transhumanist tribe, as well. The delusions of Elon Musk and company, and the delusions of The Rapture, fall apart in the same way. Everyone is in the business of escaping reality at present, just when courage and maturity are needed. I imagine a white-hot rage building in the earth itself, the earth is not kind to those who lie to themselves. And a bunch of motherfucking twinkerbells having AK47 temper tantrums is not a sign of strength. Where are the real warriors who can face themselves without flinching?
We are forming as we speak.
Negative Geography 
Jeff,
Stunning and wonderful! You’ve managed to find a way to lay out our present condition clearly and clear of retreaded language and tired tropes!
So glad you’ve written this!
Tony
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Thanks. Lots happening here, wrote this in a couple of hours without much editing. Got some bigger things simmering, but who knows when I’ll sit down to write them. On standby lately. Will talk soon.
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Let me know if you get this. I couldn’t like on WordPress without changing password and such. I liked your essay, agreed with lots, enjoyed your take on Trump and Biden and that you expressed a take.
I wonder if there are different types of people; maybe I’m different than you describe as the general run of people, which it may be. I certainly look for peace, maybe for happiness, but mostly am motivated by obligation, responsibility, avoidance of pain. The voice in my head about myself is very critical, not confidence-buliding. There’s a range, I’m capable of most anything, I contain multitudes.
How are you guys? How do you cool down in the heat?
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Hi Barbara, Yes, the heat is slowing us down, but I don’t mind.
As far as the essay, you may have come away with the wrong end of the stick so to speak. It’s this very Lack of confidence, this presence of duty, obligation, this presence of pain that drives the brain in circles for a way out, without even knowing it is doing so. We are busy in our heads because the pain and self-criticism drive us towards an unexpressed “transcendental escape” — a desire for peace implicit in the pain itself. The voice in the head is never confidence-inspiring. It’s acting from a deficit. It’s the deficit driving us in circles that implies the unspoken longing for confidence and peace. Thought (regardless of whose) is constantly inventing a “multitude” of tricks to deceive itself into avoiding a confrontation with its own trapped predicament as much as possible. Whether the style of thinking is optimistic or pessimistic doesn’t matter — it’s all being driven in circles by a perpetual escape from its own futility. To do this it will even claim to know that everything is futile, but it does this in order to feel above it for a moment, to get some relief, to feel that we’ve faced it and can do no more. This is a form of transcendental seeking without even knowing it. Calling attention to this more subtle shared level of escapism is hard to do because the system of thought (regardless of the multitude of forms it takes) is designed as a kind of anti-“missile” defense system, shooting down any message that reveals its own self-defensive tactics.
This isn’t meant to add to your depression. It’s meant to reveal the underlying dynamo of self-deception that is driving the world (not just you or me) in circles. It’s the circling that is causing the pain, nothing more.
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During a meeting last night, the chairperson talked about how difficult it was to deal with being uncomfortable. Indeed, it is often said at meetings that alcoholics can handle a lot of pain, but cannot stand discomfort.
Most of what I would call discomfort comes up to “me” through what we call conscience. Some context I find myself in rubs up against whatever notions had been compressed into generalizations about how life “ought to be”. This “rubbing against” I often equate to tectonic plates. When these two forces move against one another, the magma of my fears, and thusly, frustrations build.
The difference between me and tectonics is that introspection, with humility at its heart, dispels the forces at play. The definition for humility I’m using at this point is: a clear recognition of what and who I am in this moment in time. There is no place for rationalization or justification in this kind of inspection. A business which tries to justify its losses is missing the point, and will only lead to its own demise. A business which blames others for its shortcomings, likewise. In either case, self plays the hapless victim as a sympathetic fool. There is no honesty to be found in this level of deceit.
The great thing about this is that the discomfort is a necessary component of the entire process which calls awareness into action. One of the first hurdles I had to jump was: what fear do I have with discomfort to begin with. After all, this was the first level to peel away. I recognized that discomfort wasn’t as uncomfortable as my fears would have me believe. Through this, I also recognized that discomfort was not the enemy I once thought it was. Same with fear. That these wiggles of conscience were actually invitations to look inside to discover what is happening to cause such things.
This process gets behind behind decision making. This changes the course of displayed behavior. Trump is not detestable to me because he is “pure evil” as some would like to depict. He reminds me of what I once was as well. I see him trapped by self just as I was. I have been confronting the inner “Trump” (but really add just about any name for those whose displayed behavior shows the same level of self-centered, self-seeking, conceited, and self-assuredness.) for a long time. This game doesn’t end, it gets subtler and subtler.
Over time with this process, I have been honored by being able to develop such levels of intimacy with “what lurks below”. I’m very thankful for this. Is it over? Not by a long shot, but I’m psyched to continue to see how it develops. Society moves slower than the individual, so I cannot expect it to waken to these kinds of ideas with the same speed. It CAN happen, for sure. But how these sudden movements become is a mystery to me. Why do I get to see from my perch and Trump doesn’t? Why does Trump get his point of view, and I don’t. Life seems to be gleaning something from all of our unique experiences, but what is, at this moment, completely beyond me.
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Well said!
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Corrected a contradictory section. Sometimes it takes months to notice obvious errors. 9/11/2024
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