The Circular Ideological Spectrum

In theory, ideological positions fall along a spectrum.  In practice, it is more a loop. The more extreme, the more a mirror of the opposition. This is intuitive for anyone aware of history, or detached enough from the current Right/Left dichotomy in the West at least to grasp. The historical example is how much Nazism Stalinism, although mortally opposed, were in practice merely different shades of the same brutal, totalitarianism, attempting to build utopia out of a mountain of skulls, and failing at the cost of tens of millions of lives.

In terms of the current Right/Left dichotomy, there is little to practically separate an actual "Alt Right" White Supremacist from an actual violent Anarcho Communist. Both espouse violence in favor of debate, forgo personal responsibility in all areas of life except in the practice of extreme ideology, and squarely place the blame for perceived ills on others, not to mention both are fundamentally detached from reality. 

Any addiction, including to ideology is unhealthy. It substitutes fantasy for truth, and destroys the agency of its victim. In the case of ideology, it is the beam in the eye of one trying to remove a speck from the opposition, or in this case the black hood on the one trying to remove the white bed sheet from the other.  Fortunately, vocal minorities in both directions do not generally speak for the majority of people simply more concerned with their day to day lives than media sophistry and rhetorical noise. The ratings though do seem to benefit. 

On the other hand, the hidden deception, far more banal because it passes as virtuous, possesses those claiming a position of faith in opposition to one of the two extremes. In the West, this often means Christians who may perceive themselves as boldly opposing injustice when they decry the rise of Fascism, Communism, Islamism, whatever happens to be readily and obviously worth opposing. Evil must indeed be opposed by the person of faith. It must be named, defined, its victims protected, if need by at the greatest risk to the person of faith. We rightly remember those from the past who have done this as heroes. However, just as ideological extremes mirror each other the farther apart they become, so too does moral outrage become moral panic the more fashionable the object of that initial outrage. 

Both extremism, and moral panic are fundamentally disconnected from the complexity of the world. Both grossly oversimplify day to day existence. Both are evil manipulations of the human tendency for availability bias, and both are far more in keeping with mob behavior than heroic courage. Furthermore, both are fundamentally lacking in introspection. 

For the person of faith, the beam to be removed is the deception that the methods of the City of Man can bring the outcomes of the City of God. It is possible to work to good effect in the City of Man, but using its methods to further the latter will turn in into the former far more surely than the alternative.  Evil must be opposed, and preferably by rules it does not play and cannot beat. Leftist and Rightist extremism are both ridiculous at best and abhorrently sinister at worst. However, using one to combat the other, focusing on one while ignoring the other, or allying with the methods of one to confront the other, no matter how noble on the surface, is nothing short of moral prostitution, and idolatry. We do not look to win the game, but to destroy it. It is not that such idealism seeks too much, but rather too little. 

The methods of the City of God are faith, hope, and love. Forgiveness, reconciliation, compassion, mercy. It is ridiculous to expect these virtues from the City of Man, neither is it its place to exhibit them. The best it can do is equality before its laws. To think otherwise ignores history. The methods of the City of God though are firmly the responsibility, and unique capability of the individual and community of faith. Even in a totalitarian regime, the most important problems to fix are often right next door in the form of those needing shelter.  

In general, if it's easy to condemn, it isn't the deeper problem. Moral courage generally means taking a stand that actually assumes risk. Both ideological extremism and moral panic are hubris fueled mass self deceptions. The real extremism is to put childish utopianism behind us, and seek to change what we have the opportunity to. Perhaps with faith in these smaller works, greater ones will be opened. The homeless alcoholic, teen mother, depressed family member, etc need your help as much as the nebulous masses.  You will sooner see results with such skin in the game.          

Mental Slavery

There is an old adage that being unforgiving is like swallowing poison and expecting it to kill someone else. In truth this is not far off the mark. Not only does grudging anger have no direct effect on someone who offends you, the absence of satisfaction gnaws the psyche on its own. Even if you were to effect revenge, this is as likely to perpetuate a cycle of retaliation that will assure the poison swallowed not only kills you, but everyone around you.

To be unforgiving is to allow another to hold power over you. To harbor resentment, no matter how valid, is to be in mental slavery. As thought becomes intention, and in turn action. The physical reality may become a reflection of this mental state. One becomes constrained to a world defined by anger and resentment, by the actions of someone or something else. The locus of control is outside the self. Such a person is truly enslaved.

Never the less, far from being the sole behavior of uneducated underclasses, unforgiveness, accompanying resentment, and self pity are high fashion and moral orthodoxy in modern western culture. This is a huge mistake, and a bright example of both profound ingratitude, and incredible ignorance of history.

It is true oppression, murder, rape, exploitation, even genocide are a part of modern history. However, any honest individual may as easily look to their own family for examples of the people who carried out these atrocities. They are in no way unique to any culture, time, or place. They must be opposed, but the time for this is in their commission, not during the search for justice long after the fact. On the personal level, forgiveness does not mean allowing one's self to be victimized. Pacifism is incredibly anti-climactic. The only cases we recall were made possible by many supporting actors carrying on the fight and thus providing a stage for pacifism to be heroic. In general, fight back.

And fight back too when doubt, uncertainty, shame, and outright deception lure you into vindictive, unforgiving resentment. Outrage, abuse, and evil are circumstances, not identities. No human is so worthless as to be defined by their victimization. In general, fight back, forgive, and free yourself from mental slavery.

Alternative Thanksgiving

On the surface, it appears the current obsession in the Modern World is evaluating and coming to terms with the past, mostly the shameful parts. This is useful in so much as it is important to cast off the polite fictions we use to convince ourselves of inherent superiority, manifest destiny, or self referential virtue. However, as C. S. Lewis said, "It's not out of bad mice or bad fleas you make demons, but out of bad archangels."

Looking closer, it becomes more obvious the current obsession is judging the past in terms of the present, and especially taking a biased selection of past events to confirm present narrative.  It's true that much of public education glosses over, or ignores anything other than signal events. We learn that the Pilgrims came to New England, but we don't look at daily life for Native or Euro-Americans.  We learn that the Civil War was about States Rights, specifically the right to own slaves, but we don't hear much in the voice of former slaves, or  drafted Union soldiers, or immigrant New England housewives back home for that matter.  However, all this so called hidden information is actually there if we look.  The issue isn't that it is being suppressed, but that it is being ignored.  The problem isn't that it is dangerous to teach it, but that it is easier to not pay attention, not in favor of some dominant power structure, but simple distraction, at all levels, including those who hold fashionably negative views about the colonial past.  Thus just as manifest destiny and inherent superiority did two centuries ago, narrative masked as justice fills in now.

The reality is this oversimplification of understanding, in-group favoritism as defined by whatever the fashion of the day is, and corresponding rejection of those who are not "in" combined with ignorance of history to justify current bias is nothing new.  The Greeks and Romans, and the Egyptians and Sumerians before them had their iconoclasts, cultural awakenings, and progressive regimes seeking to usher in a utopia, as has every other long lived mass civilization to our present day.  Meanwhile, a glance at history simply confirms this. 

A glance at history also confirms the futility of these efforts.  Even though the arch of progress is positive, the down trends carry away far more lives the higher up it goes.  Just look at the signal events, which are mostly related to wars.  However, we must look past signal events here too to see the whole story. 

The further truth to refute the dangerous notion of inherent superiority is fairly simple for the majority of us to find if we simply look at our own families.  It is a fortunate and possibly non-existent person who, growing up, had no bad experiences, was never disappointed by parents or siblings, does not have an aunt or uncle who is broken in some way, does not have criminals in the extended family to name a few banal examples.  Going farther back, in every culture, in every period in recorded history to include the current one there were rapists, murders, slavers, drunks, prostitutes, war criminals, abusers, womanizers, oppressors, losers, outcasts, slaves, and even sacrificial victims.  Many of these people had children.  It is staggeringly likely that all of us carry the genes of such ancestors, if not in living memory, at some point in our family story.  Jesus certainly did, and they are named in His genealogy. 

We are all, at some point the product of those who have done evil, who have contributed to those down trends in the arch of progress, and certainly from their victims as well.  If we look even closer, we will find we too fall short of any sort of ideal imaginable.  We have all hurt, been hurt, manipulated, been played, and carry scars, regrets, pain and disappointment.  Suffering, though more spectacular for some than others, is a universal human experience, and so is committing evil.  

However, here we are.  Some better off, some homeless alcoholics.  Some freeing the oppressed, some recovering from trauma.  Some trying to mend their wrongs, and some still ignorant of theirs.  We substitute narrative for reality to make sense of it.  To bring purpose to the pain and suffering.  But it is a delusion when it doesn't attempt to take into account as much of reality as it can.  If we aren't careful, we descend into vengeful, petty, self centered, and self imposed suffering.  The alternative is freedom, as no one can compel us to to respond any other way than we will to a circumstance. 

Thus the narrative I substitute for chaotic evil is one of thanks.  It is a powerful narrative because I am the one in control of it.  Though I am the product of suffering, and evil, though I have fallen short of any ideal, both through my own choices and the actions of others, I am thankful, and I have the choice to be thankful.  I am thankful because all these variables have contributed to my life, and to my current moment.  These inputs have given emergent rise to non-linear potential.  Potential that every human life shares in its basic substance, even the homeless alcoholics.  Even you. 

Happy Thanksgiving. 

   

A Few Nights In Bangkok

Walking the streets of a metropolis. It could be anywhere in the world. This time it's in Southeast Asia. It was The City of Angeles to be specific. For me, the mystique of the exotic, other, different has long since worn off. It could be Los Angeles at this point. It could be anywhere because I am struck now by the visceral understanding of what I have intellectually known for some time. Strip away birth place, opportunity, privilege, life experience, a few few good choices and a few bad, and there is not that much different between anyone, from the street beggar dangling a bit of rice to draw a rat out of its hole to the frat boy chugging a nati light at whatever elite institution. They are both filling a void. There isn't that much different between the Hi So socialite speeding down the way in whatever European Sports Car, and the street prophet in San Francisco preaching of the end times. They both live for the spotlight. Even when survival is at stake, we seek meaning above all else.

Then there are the harder workers too. The prostitutes, many supporting their children. It seems most people anywhere will do anything for their children. Then there are the street children themselves, capable of sophistication and manipulation that would make a politician blush. Never assume youth means lack of intelligence. There are savants in every slum in the world, as surely as there are child prodigies getting into elite institutions.

There are the street walkers, the poorer country refugees, bar girls/boys, the tourists for sex and to discover themselves. The homeless, the well off. The men and women doing hard work to bring a better future. The men and women chasing away the pain, and those just floating through. 

I walk on by observing everything, and trying to admire nothing. And then I hear it, and in the way it always comes as a small enough voice, but one that I imagine echos across eternity. "I am here. I am love. This is my world, and you may say this is my Father's world". And just like that, the visceral understanding hits. 

Strip away cultural biases, historical context, language, upbringing, experience, everything else that differentiates, and there it is. Everyone from the street hooker, homeless drug addict, single mother, gang member, government official, religious leader, academic, CEO, etc, we are all made in the image of the Creator. Everyone you meet is made in the image of Creator, including you. 

Now consider that same Creator never left. That Creator was our Father and our Mother. That Creator made a point of entering the world as creation. That Creator had skin in the game. That creator died. 

And He is Risen

South Park And Complex Problems

To every complex problem, there is a complex solution. This is to say that anyone saying that we need a common sense answer to nearly anything we face doesn't actually know what they are talking about. And yet, with our fruit fly attention span, we are ever ready to throw our support behind someone offering to let us forget our responsibility for self discipline, avoid harsh realities, and fall into a delusion of a golden path to utopia.

Take poverty for example. Any number of solutions to poverty can be proposed, from taxing the 1% who ostensibly horded all the wealth, thus creating poverty, to increasing social services to those in poverty with no clear path to actually getting them out of said poverty, but only keeping them on life support. Compassionate provisions for the the lowest members of society ensures we do not lose our soul. Likewise, expecting those with the most to also give the most is only in keeping with our notions of civic virtue. However, the simplistic theorizing of the application of these notions is akin to the South Park underpants gnome get rich quick scheme.



Needless to say, some important detail is missing.

We don't live in a simple world. We cannot will or ignore this important fact away. There is no perfect system and the reason we elect, employ, and allow people to run our political, economic, and social systems is because all these things require constant management and supervision. At the same time, we still cannot shake the messianic delusion of a clear path to utopia.

Complicate this with the understanding that for nearly all complex problems, there is no perfect complex solution, but only gradient of worse and less worse. Tax the 1% into oblivion and see in the same instant all major economic activity move somewhere else, but tax reasonably, and you will find there are loopholes the law didn't even know about. Likewise, as long as welfare is more profitable than minimum wage, you can figure out what the most economic solution is. Raise minimum wage and you will see that there are a lot more minimum wage workers allowed to work a lot less. But create more higher than minimum wage jobs, and see just how far reaching from environmental policy, to education, to urban zoning, to law enforcement, such a feat must be to be supportable.

There are many details to complex solutions. However, the first and most important is action down to the lowest level. This is the 1st civic virtue and one we blatantly ignore when we expect someone else to fix our problems. Rather than waiting for some policy to be voted on and executed to deal with the homeless man on the side walk, go by lunch for him yourself, and you will profit far more than these guys.

Paradoxical Illusion

Viktor Frankl once said suffering ceases to be suffering when it has a meaning. Meanwhile, we worry about the slightest bit of discomfort in our children for fear it could damage their self esteem. We take offence at the slightest notice of something tangentially relating to identity, and we construct a notional agenda of oppression being propagated by the dominant culture against the masses to justify this offence.

At the same time, the slightest bit of suffering, just like CS gas, manages to fill the entire void of our existence even though we have established the meaning of our existence to be the avoidance of suffering. We rage against the dominant culture, the 1%, the patriarchy, the ignorant, the right wing, the left wing, etc, because of the assumed agenda of oppression that is supposedly being consciously propagated like the reptilian conspiracy, the Illuminati, whatever flavor of tin foil hat wearing nonsense you are most amused by.

I propose that rather than a shadowy agenda, as always we need look no farther than ourselves for both the cause of and the solution to our sufferings.

We are attempting to transcend ourselves and in so doing transcend our own mortality by creating a Utopian equitable society. We are stifling all meaningful discourse and respect for opposing view points along the way to this pipe dream. The paradox of pursuing a Utopia is that you must run a police state to get there. And yet this delusion is somehow favorable enough for much of our public sentiment to conform to it.

The search for meaning to transcend our own mortality is the central drive of all humanity. We are apes that are aware of the universe and this paradox of the infinite and the certain and ever approaching mortality of us all is simply too much to tolerate without delusions. This drive is even more central than basic biological needs. Those address immediate survival, whereas the search for meaning is a question of our ultimate immortality.

The Opposite Of Political Correctness

For those of you who watched the recent fox news broadcast of the first ever debate between the Republican hopefuls for President of the United States, you may have noticed that Donald Trump, as expected, acted like himself.

I have limited patience for his positions, and do not intend to defend them here. However, it is noteworthy the extent to which he has, in a short time, generated considerable support simply because he is himself. The absurdity of his proposed positions does not seem to shake the majority of his supporters who I strongly believe do not support him so much for his proposed policy as for his seeming lack of ability to behave like a decent human being in front of an audience.

This signals confidence, decisiveness, and even clarity of thought. All these attributes are markedly lacking from postmodern society. They are also high human virtues that we are deeply attracted to, and for some of us this is regardless of content, as Mr. Trump has demonstrated.

We easily assume that Donald Trump is the opposite of political correctness from the opinions he shares regardless of if anyone asked for them or not, and it is easy to say he is as successful as he has been to this point because of his disregard for political correctness.

However, I challenge this position to ask who defines PC. It is often assumed that PC is a virtue of the left wing. It certainly is, but it is also of any point along the political spectrum that forgoes critical thought in favor of prepackaged platforms and rehearsed outrage at whatever is assumed to be destroying society. Outrage at the state of immigration, debt, foreign policy as apposed to income inequality, gender inequality, opportunity inequality, or anything held dear by the left wing is nothing more than what is PC for the point on the political spectrum from whence the position arises.

And increasingly, anyone who holds to any particular form of political correctness is causing flashes through my conscious of this character

and his supporters.

The actual non-PC path is to apply critical thought to the aspects of your own world view so that you have content worth raging for to begin with. Everyone may have an opinion. However, only those who understand theirs are entitled to one.

To take a your non-PC path into reality, you must exercise the above mentioned virtues of confidence, decisiveness, and clarity of thought, or to simplify, you must exercise both wisdom and courage, the true opposites of political correctness, and which I argue the majority of our problems stem from a lack of.

Postmodern society does not require more mass followers. It requires more individual leaders willing and capable of wisdom and courage. This does not require your candidate to win, or your position to be validated. It rather requires you to actually do something. Individuals remain the greatest potential black swans in existence.

The War On Poverty 50 Years Later

Today marks the 50th anniversary of President Lyndon Baines Johnson declaring war on poverty. Over those 50 years the percentage of people living in poverty in the US has declined from 19 to 15 percent. At the same time the actual population of people living in poverty has risen from 36 million to 47 million today because of the population increase over the last 50 years.

Now, it is a simple thing to declare this something of a success with the perennial qualification of "but there is still much work to be done". At the same time, those on the other side of the political spectrum can just as easily claim it to be a Pyrrhic victory  because, for all the financial, political and emotional resources that have been expended in this "war", a 4 percent decrease is indicative of a waste of time.

It has already been shown from all that has gone before that neither side will win an argument as to the validity or even the existence of victory in the eyes of the other. However, this has as much to do with how the problem of poverty has been framed and it's supposed solutions derived as it does with partisan opinions. 

Poverty is and has always been a serious problem and a stain on the honor and conduct of any nation that has willfully allowed practices that dispose people to it. Although it is also true that poverty in much of the rest of the world is relatively and actually far worse, it is none the less the case that to the degree to which it exists here, it is unacceptable.  These are high ideals and high ideals are required if a society wishes to aspire to something greater than it is now. However, as always, what goes unseen is more important than what lies on the surface. 

Poverty, and the so called war on it has become nothing more than a convenient rallying point for differing political positions to gain legitimacy by seeming to do something without doing anything at all. This is not an indictment of any politician or political position in specific, but simply a description of what has been the case as long as people have appealed to mass society in order to gain favor. A four percent decrease over 50 years is not indicative of a dysfunctional government hampered by partisanship, but rather that the programs in place have maintained the status quo at best and kept people in poverty at worst. 

It is far easier to appear to be doing something when the measures of success are unclear or non-existent than it is to actually do something meaningful that lasts. As has been said before though, even those with the best intentions in the current system are and will be restricted by the nature of the system itself. In a world of finite resources in which a zero sum game is the regime, zero will always be the sum. No amount of policy and legislation will solve something as deep as human suffering. Thus it is better to stop waiting for such to come about and campaigning for it as if it were a life and death struggle. It is better to actually act on supposed personal ideals and do something. 

Doing something does not require quitting your day job. It does not so much even require going out of one's way. What it does require is putting words to action. The poor are closer than you think. Many of us avoid their neighborhoods on our way home every day. Many of us ignore them when we pass them on the street corner. Many of us claim we are too busy to pay attention, or too broke to contribute to legitimate organizations dedicated to providing for those in need. 

Until we start fighting the war on poverty one individual at a time, why should we expect something as systematic and machine like as the government to do a human's job? Some may complain about freedoms being limited. The freedom to have compassion is not, and it benefits all who take advantage of it.  

LBJ did because he experienced it first hand

Affluenza

Affluenza is a term that was recently made famous when 16 year old Ethan Couch was let off easy for causing the deaths of 4 people and critically wounding 2 others. He was reported to have been under the influence of several substances at the time in quantities that would make fraternity initiation nights look weak by comparison. The defense made the case he did not understand the consequences of his actions because his perspective was distorted by the amount of affluence he grew up in.

Now, a major sub-theme to the outrage against this ties into the ongoing observation prevalent in modern society that there is growing inequality and that more and more wealth is being pooled by the people at the top of the hierarchy. This truthful observations has often lead to the idea that the people taking over this wealth are bad and that being wealthy is somehow a crime in and of itself. Whether this is openly expressed or not, it is hard to ignore it's reality when people say things like the so called 1% should pay 90% tax on what they take in because no one needs (the implication is that they should not have) that much money.

The absurdity of this statement aside, it is indicative of deeper socio-emotional issues that do in fact require addressing. Protecting and expanding the middle class is important for economic and security reasons in and of it self. However, redistribution of wealth has been shown in so many ways and so many places before this to not be an effective measure for achieving this that there is no need to address it at length here. One does not need to go to some extreme right wing outlet for this information, only look at the countries in the world with large populations that have attempted the same and see that, not only was it not effective for protecting the middle class, it lead to the creation of a new hierarchies completely out of touch with reality.

However, the opinion still creeps that those on top should not be there and that penalties must be inflicted. So seldom though do we turn the leans of examination onto ourselves and look for what lurks beneath the surface.

It is not the case that inequality in the developed world is not a problem. Indeed it is and the resulting poverty is an insult to free and prosperous societies. However,  most of those often commenting on it from the angle that the rich must be punished to pave the way for justice have no perspective on poverty and justice and are themselves afflicted with affluenza.

There comes a time when it is important for those who wish to have a truly global perspective to recognize that "first world problems" are not the same as those faced by the multiple billions of people in the world below even the third world's poverty line, either in severity, scale, or otherwise. Poverty is a problem anywhere. Having to make fuel cost conscious choices about what type of car you drive, having to take a job you are over qualified for, even not having a job for an extended period of time is simply not the same thing as being faced with the choice of which child you will sell in order to pay for food for the other ones.

The wealthy are not the problem and being rich is not a crime. The discourse must focus, not on the redistribution of wealth to create pseudo-equality, but rather on limiting the ability of non-benign actors and organizations at the top of the hierarchy to make choices, which create the systemic conditions by which inequality grows, both here and abroad. Then again, doing this effectively will entail sacrifices. You will have to not buy what you cannot afford. You will have to pay attention to what you spend on, and you will often have to give up those low prices.

At the expense of those now unemployed because the production of those low cost goods went to an oppressive totalitarian regime in which workers lives are as expendable as the products they make.