Tag: Unconsciousness

A Non-Dogmatic Structure of Thinking

negativegeography9 Comments

The Buddha Gate

I wanted to write because I needed to bring some order to the swirling fog of my own experience. Not a belief system that pins thought down too tightly, but a lattice of sorts it can safely grow, so it knows its place and doesn’t keep sprawling chaotically like Kudzu over every aspect of life, drowning out the world in this relentless voice, which is perpetual self-deception.

It’s not easy to look for the source of this restlessness. It’s easier to find a job or some other way of occupying our thoughts at a safe level of magnification. It’s easier to focus on the practical necessities of navigating this crazy highway of life, a perpetual state of semi-emergency that becomes routine, but a tenuous routine that can’t afford to be interrupted by larger questions about the underlying infrastructure of belief we’re riding upon. Accept the crazy beliefs, the nationalism, the war-state, the cut-throat economic system, the values and goals this emergency approach to life forces on us — accept all that at face value and call our subjugation to this mad system of thought “a practical approach.”

(By the way, some people like to say that they’re not philosophers. Still, we’re all running on vast infrastructures of metaphysics unconsciously, in the same way that anyone driving on an interstate is unconsciously following the infrastructure of road-building ideas. We may not consciously reflect on why we’re heading in this or that direction as we exit onto overpasses and circular entrances to a highway, but our lives are following patterns of an infrastructure of belief nevertheless. So we may not be capable of understanding the descriptions of these philosophies, but they’re still under-girding the way we live).

The restlessness is the same for me, but the practical approach wasn’t helpful. And leaving behind the highway metaphor, the practical approach constructs a solid floor to everyday life, and all the restless energy of a constantly swirling brain gets kept in the crawlspace. Then it becomes a taboo or “simply uninteresting and pointless” to look beneath the floorboards at one’s own churning mind. And this is a clever tactic if all you want from life is the kind of happiness that remains circumscribed by a repressed turmoil. And what goes missing in life isn’t missed, because nobody misses what they don’t notice.

But still they compensate themselves for everything that gets left out by making an art out of the minutiae of life, appreciating the “little things” as you would admire a knick-knack shelf, but always remembering that what’s important are the practical necessities of maintaining this bubble of unconscious repression wherein happiness can reign. In fact, the rule is, don’t indulge in any larger questions, which tend to pry open the floor boards and release all sorts of religious and political demons that ruin dinner parties. 

Now and then, of course, a few pressing questions and confusions nevertheless erupt from the floorboards and circle the brain in repetitive patterns all night like giant mosquitos. And until a distraction is found (a way to nail the boards down again), the person is forced to see themselves as powerless victims of these escaped thoughts. And this reinforces the conviction that our own turmoil is something external to us, a fact of nature that can’t change. That’s one of the strongest nails keeping the flooring in place: we’re helpless victims of our own brains, so ignore the brain and just focus on this nice little space we’ve created.

If any readers have made it this far then they also probably can’t ignore the racket from beneath the flooring any more than I can. The pursuit of happiness begins to feel like a shallow sitcom, devoid of all real adventure and danger. 

So you and I (the nervous ones essentially) couldn’t follow their lead and rest comfortably while the floor kept popping and creaking all day. Every belief that was designed to nail down those loose boards — whether it was religious or patriotic or careerist beliefs —  included the same taboo against questioning the framing, which made them feel deceptive.Read More »

Starving the Tree of Racism or Reparations on a Psychological Level: How Seemingly Moral Values and Beliefs Feed Racism

negativegeography6 Comments
Photo by Nadezhda Moryak on Pexels.com

“We know the predator. We see them feed on us. We are aware to starve the beast is our destiny.”
— John Trudell

Dear fellow white men, but I hope others stick around as a Greek chorus.

An honest recognition of this culture’s history of treachery, kidnapping, torture, and murder is needed to read this. 

However, that doesn’t mean that white men can claim a supremacy here — as if we were a supreme example of human violence and domination. Every empire is racist or murderous.

However, our own empire is not yet history. And ours has become more destructive than any previous empire, because it coincided with the development of new technologies of control. And this gives our own brutalities more destructive force on a global scale, compared with other violent organizations of the past, such as the Roman Empire. 

So, even though this is a human problem, the hypocrisy of my “own” people (our conviction that we’re the good guys no matter what history has to say) is the particular expression or surface bark on this trunk of human suffering, through which we need to start drilling, in order to reach the common roots of the problem. 

So, I start by the simple and now seemingly obvious confession that America has not been a “good guy”, like white people believed. We are like all empires, a sociopathic institution that is more concerned with maintaining its position of power, and was not often a light unto the world, as white people have been led to believe.

The “citizens” (or subjects) of every empire are blackmailed pawns in service to the crime syndicate of the military industrial complex. So, they are also perpetrators (administrators and soldiers) of empire. They are both victims and perpetrators. The self-righteous anger felt by any victim is manipulated by forces of carrots and sticks into serving the very power that subjugates them.

It’s easy to blame MAGA for their loyalty to a corrupt system. But the liberal establishment blames MAGA far too much, because then they don’t have to look in the mirror. Their contempt for the “ignorant working class” distracts them from noticing their own forms of collusion. The denigration of deplorable, white working-class voters is itself a form of supremacy, which prevents a coalition of white-collar and blue-collar from forming, thus protecting the empire from any true rebellion.

In other words, it’s not just MAGA who have misdirected their slings and arrows at fellow peasants, rather than aiming them at “the Epstein class”. The liberal management class does this in blaming the stupidity of the MAGA class. Both liberal and MAGA elements of society merely show different forms of allegiance to the corrupt organization of empire. The one gives its bodies, its muscle, its enforcement; the other works to interrupt the formation of a peasant-wide coalition that would bring the whole thing down.

Furthermore, the liberals still show allegiance to the system itself, from which they derive status and money. And the conservatives still show allegiance to Might as Righteousness, from which they derive purpose, place and power as servants. So, even if we all managed to quit going at one another’s throats and turned the pitchforks towards the Epstein Class, our own colluding tendencies would end up leading to a similar system of supremacy and racist empire, without deeper introspection. 

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