All war is about power. Racism and divinity are only tools used by Greedy Pigs to control the masses.
Dare to be honest with me and admit that most of our fellow inmates, from family members to co-workers, are Dumb Apes needing to think they're superior so that they don't feel like Dumb Apes.
They'll never be superior, but belief is a helluva thing. If it can make money work, it can definitely make Apes think they're more special than someone else's Apes.
When I was younger, I risked becoming one of those banana thieves by foolishly using logic on believers. As an adult, I'm an Absurdist trying to be a Realist. That, for the most part, means tolerance, and acknowledgment that there are Beautiful People in every Tree, and that their belief isn't all that they are.
Deeper than indoctrination is their kindness to others, and my kindness to them.
I long to share coffee, beer, rock music and foreign movies with any interesting being no matter they're Christian, Hindi, Jew, Moslem,or Satanist. Sexy Koreans from the Watchtower are, especially, welcome at my South African gate.
However, I admit that I'm scarred, and mostly enjoy observation over interaction. But I don't enjoy Christians and Jews and Hindi killing Moslems, and Moslem Shia killing Moslem Sunni, and Christians killing different types of Christians, and so on...
It would be Apeish of me to be indifferent in exceptional moments.
Hitler and Idi Amin are valid reasons for intolerance. So are the Israeli and American governments for killing Arab children as if they’re bugs.
Consequently, I salute Ross ‘Tolkien’ Roslyn for her brave story about the Juiz and Ziobigs. I call her brave because Apes will misinterpret her motive and message, and belief is a hellish thing, particularly when used against those who don’t believe in Hell.
I think a superiority complex is sourced in an inferiority complex which is why finding a place where one feels superior never works. The inferiority complex can never be fed enough and it just gets bigger and the need to be superior, to have power of some kind over others grows.
The unconscious is a very fertile bed for such things. I have known some very devout Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus who do not suffer from a superiority complex. Sadly I think the worst, but perhaps the most necessary thing, to ever happen to Jews was Zionism and the invention of Zionist Israel. Perhaps as Ditzrael is taken apart, limb from limb, the flesh stripped, like the mythic journeys into the underworld, Jews will come to understand the work which needs to be done if they are to heal as one would wish and as is required for anyone to be spiritually whole and psychologically healed.
Being misunderstood is a common occurrence in this world, particularly when one explores things which others wish to keep hidden. I liken it to digging up a rotting corpse and propping it in a corner and then watching most people sniff a little and turn away, denying what is so easily seen.
I do believe, and I may be wrong, that people are more wounded than cruel and more damaged than evil.
I agree with your astute observations that "a superiority complex is [often] sourced in an inferiority complex" and that "that people are more wounded than cruel and more damaged than evil". I add the word "often" because the exception is the cruel and confident sociopath.
Grunge became fashion, and crippled became physically challenged, but we need to win back sociopath. My experience with them makes me believe they should be mandatory school education.
Racism and divinity is also about power and is at the heart of most serious conflict or war. Both are a reflection of conditioning, precisely what underpins most of how people think and act.
There is no God and no gods, neither is there Heaven or Hell. All of these are human constructs, predominantly if not entirely, of males.
No, I don't agree with you on the notion that: " most of our fellow inmates, from family members to co-workers, are Dumb Apes needing to think they're superior so that they don't feel like Dumb Apes. " In my view, most human beings are simply animals capable of advanced thought and, possibly, emotions. Through these they have sought to understand, rather than simply accept, the World and its manifestations through asking questions about where it originated, where they originated, what is its and their purpose and much, much more.
As social animals they have collected in groups and because each individual is unique and there are many different levels of interest, intellect, intelligence, ability and perception, as well as differences in circumstance, context, fortune and more, some of them have found ways to influence others for their own ends. Might and a supposed connection with the 'divine', have been the two most powerful influences, quickly making wealth as important.
This has led to various types and levels of conditioning, largely achieved through fear - particularly in the case of religions and schooling in the case of controlling authorities such as monarchs, governments and the alliance of church and state for the benefit of the few and the control of the many.
Wars are not so much about power as about insanity, self-aggrandisement, delusions of superior intellect, insight and ability, and the 'right to rule', almost always justified by the endorsement of some mythical entity.
It is neither useful nor appropriate to demean other animals in order to define particular individual or collective groups or cohorts of human beings. Apes, for instance, are highly intelligent and the reality is that human beings are the only animal that wages 'war' and kills not for survival and maintenance or improvement of the strength of the race but for no valid reason whatsoever other than personal whim, wish and will. It is also notable that, perhaps with some rare exceptions, the most ardent instigators of armed conflict are rarely those who kill and die on the field of battle. Predominantly, it is the young who do that, in most cases, if not what we tend to consider children, they are not much more for human beings don't reach adulthood until about age 25.
I commend Rosyln's piece for its creativity and what I believe to be its intent but I'd prefer that we tell the truth about matters such as this in a very open, plain and definitive way that illustrates all sides and blames no-one. The truth is that no 'one' is to blame, whether that one be an individual, group or nation. Blame is pointless. If it ever achieves anything it is only to increase the aggravation, hate or particular beliefs of the blamed. The fact is that if we do choose to blame then we must recognise that blame rests with humanity as a whole and with the choices we have made and where and why we have made them.
Conflict and war may stop if and when humanity recognises that it is one race, that there is no 'divinity', that education is not schooling and neither is it anything like the panacea it is painted to be and that 'freedom' is impossible without responsibility and given that, on the basis of the last 300,000 years of homo-sapiens, that probably means that although not impossible, it is highly unlikely to ever exist for all, let alone for all at once.
You said: Racism and divinity is also about power and is at the heart of most serious conflict or war. Both are a reflection of conditioning, precisely what underpins most of how people think and act.
Racism, defining the other as an other, the opposite of me, is no doubt sourced in the human need to belong, to understand, to feel familiar. While the maxim Familiarity breeds contempt is commonly believed, the findings of modern neurology would instead say, familiarity calms the Amygdala and reduces the capacity for a reptilian brain response of instinctive aggression.
In other words, first the family and then the tribe created a safe space, or a space where humans felt safe, throughout human history. The unconscious need to feel safe led to the development of rejection of the other, I would suggest.
The more humans began to mix, the more this biological/physiological/psychological need was weakened. Just as biologically humans need to intermix or genetic deformities kill them off, then I also believe that cultural, emotional and psychological mixing, by force and consent, led to greater mental health.
You said:, neither is there Heaven or Hell.
Perhaps not in a literal other dimension sense but they certainly exist as part of the human mind and human experiences.
You said: All of these are human constructs, predominantly if not entirely, of males.
I am not so sure about that. There is no doubt patriarchy led to left brain domination but my years spent living in India and Africa revealed to me the power of women in terms of maintaining hellish practices. It is the women who defend most powerfully the misogyny in India and women who defend far more than men, the practice of genital mutilation where it exists.
You said: Wars are not so much about power as about insanity, self-aggrandisement, delusions of superior intellect, insight and ability, and the 'right to rule', almost always justified by the endorsement of some mythical entity.
I think war is about fear and greed in essence because that is how it began in stone-age cultures. If you did not take by force what you needed you did not survive. I think using God concepts as the hook on which to hang such violence was an instinctive way to stave off feelings of guilt and remorse because humans are essentially hardwired to connect.
Neither do I agree humans are the only animals which wage war. Having raised cattle on a farm in my time, I know only too well the aggressive and unforgiving nature of those animals to something different. The term 'pecking order' comes from anyone who studies chickens. They too will punish and sometimes kill the different bird - that is war in essence.
You said: t I'd prefer that we tell the truth about matters such as this in a very open, plain and definitive way that illustrates all sides and blames no-one.
Perhaps I was not clear enough although fairy tales and fables are always about nuance. I was seeking to explain rather than to blame.
Oh dear, your ego is hurting, Roslyn. Be careful for it's not a good look. Relax. Your opinions are just that: opinions. You don't have to become so opinionated. Trust me, there are many people who have had as wide a set of experiences as you claim for yourself and many who have had even greater ones. For the truly 'wise', it is usual for the greater the experience to correspond with the realisation of how little they know. Clearly, you are a long way from that point.
Certainly you are more articulate than many on forums or platforms such as this but that doesn't make your claims necessarily any more valid, it simply makes them less objectionable in terms of how they are made. However, a polite disguise is still a disguise and when it is adopted knowingly, perhaps could be considered even more insulting than a common epithet.
Perhaps you are, indeed, a polymath or someone of similar intellectual capacity but, if so, you are not displaying it. On the contrary, you appear to have 'picked up' or absorbed bits and pieces, some understood and some not, which you've mashed together and in discussion drop here and there with the dubious validity of the pseudo scientist so often used in advertising.
It may be worth your noting Pope's: "A little learning is a dang'rous thing" and Socrates: "All that I know is that I nothing."
Listening and considering is likely to be more enlightening than speeding to defense of assertion.
What is not a good look is resorting to personal insults. I am well aware that with age comes the understanding we know nothing truly. However, in this fascinating exploration of life we reach conclusions, gain understandings and make connections. That is our task as humans.
Your opinion of me, including I suspect quite a few projections, does not hurt, harm or impact me. In short, I offer nothing but the result of insights, experiences and facts for others to take, or not as they choose.
And there is a difference between a substantive and credible opinion, view, belief, and one which simply hovers as nothing more than opinion.
Since I was simply responding to your statements, on my own substack, I believe I am entitled to respond as I see fit. I am sorry you took it so badly but trust me, I take nothing personally, particularly from people I do not know in any real sense.
A little learning can be a dangerous thing, but ignorance is worse.
Pomposity is a bad look. My ego is not involved in this beyond being shocked at your petty rudeness and lack of courtesy.
For what it is worth I do not believe we are all nothing. I admire the nobility of spirit which exists in every human. I am well aware that nothing matters and yet everything matters. The human conflict.
Your snide comment about polymaths reflects you, not me. Polymaths were always rare and in this age even rarer. But thankyou for making the association in a backhanded compliment. I know I am of reasonable intelligence with a good capacity to make connections, gain insights and apply common sense. You may find that offensive but that is your choice.
I do know a good level of intelligence is required for enough self discipline to not resort to insults when you do not like what someone has said or cannot make a case against it.
You come across, generally, as erudite and sensible, so I can only attribute your nasty comments to some personal sensitivity and suffering. I would advise you not to take it out on others, particularly in this medium and with people about whom you know absolutely nothing.
I will not respond further to any posts which are intended as insult, petty and otherwise.
Tsk, tsk, Roger. You made a great comment, and then Roslyn made a great comment, and then you went all ad hominem attack. No use me adding my comments here, because the goal is no longer intellectual discussion.
That which we condemn in others is that which we deny in ourselves. Or to paraphrase the Hamlet misquote: Methinks he protests too much.
There is another maxim I read somewhere:
If one person says something about you it may be ignored. So far Roger is the only one to make such comments in many years of my use of the medium. Previous insults were along the lines of, rightwing redneck and tree-hugging leftie idiot, which led me to conclude I had bases covered and walked a sensible middle line.
If two people make the same comment you would be wise to ponder what they say carefully. When a second person makes the same comments as Roger I intend to do just that.
If three people make the same comment then you would be wise to make changes. If I get to three making the same comment I will do exactly that.
Although such comments are generally meant to come from people who know you in a real world sense, and not those in the world of online ether who make strong charges with nonexistent evidence or experience.
It's not important. As I told Roslyn, we are all nothing.
Her arrogance and conceit prevented any 'intellectual' discussion. One can't discuss with someone who considers themselves, (wrongly), to be so clever and knowledgeable as to know everything and be infallible. Roslyn is a victim of conservative and obsolescent conditioning that is inappropriate and prevents her from conceding when she has something wrong or is unwilling to even consider the possibility.
Her assertions are justified by her apparent belief that her own travels and experience have somehow equipped her to pontificate about anything and e everything despite the fact that, at least in the case of the dialogue in which I engaged with her, she has shown little understanding of reality.
In any case, she chose to be offended and allege or accuse me of all manner of perfidy that I didn't commit. So be it. I've suffered all manner of abuse throughout my life from the time I first left home at 3yrs old - was returned by the police who found me sleeping in a park with ducks - but never rested from then until I made it out. I am used to being abused without reason and without having committed any offense or hurt anyone.
I have spent my life unlearning appalling conditioning and social norms that abuse and demean and enslave the poor, the ignorant, women, almost anyone who is different - in whatever way - and I have spent it also fighting for them and against prejudice and put-downs of which Roslyn was guilty, on the basis of her own words.
I won't accept it and let it go unchallenged because it is a major factor in what pollutes this world and cause so much hurt and harm to people who are least able to defend themselves.
Roslyn and others can call me what they wish as they try to defend their prejudice and falsity, whether intended or not. I accept that in Roslyn's case and, in fact, in most cases it does not emanate from malice or ill intention but from conditioning and ignorance. However, those of Roslyn's level of intelligence and ability to communicate ought to be able to recognise and change what the truly ignorant, (i.e. unschooled, inarticulate, gullible, uninformed and etc), cannot.
So Mike, I appreciate what I have read of yours so far, just as I did some of the earlier things I read of Roslyn's before she became defensive of her ego , so please, don't tsk, tsk me.
Frankly, right now, I've had enough. I've had a life of bombardment and the last couple of days have been fairly high on the trauma scale and riddled with nonsense online by defenders of injustice, horror, persecution and such which beggars belief.
I am on the verge of ceasing any engagement with these platforms because I am totally tired of what might readily be called conditioned cretinism. It is so common that even a mildly well written and cohesive comment or argument stands out like a full moon on a clear night.
Obviously I don't fit for I won't accept the hypocrisy of privilege and prejudice and put down hidden behind polite rhetoric and pretension of superior knowledge.
I grew up in the dirt and I got out of it, only to find that the people there were far better than the pretentious inhabitants of the green fields.
Yes, I tell it as I see it and that is usually as it is but I don't claim infallibility or the absence of making mistakes or getting it 'wrong' - on the contrary, I've made many and now know enough to be aware that there is no good and evil or right and wrong but only what is and how each chooses to see it. With blinkers or through shades or with open eyes and open mind. I choose the latter. I can do so because criticism and abuse no longer affects me for no one has a worse opinion of me than I do of myself nor feels the guilt I feel at the ignorance I have had to unlearn.
However, I do not believe anyone can say either that there is no God or Gods, or that there definitely is a God or Gods. It is impossible to prove either.
The concept of God and Gods has taken form as humans have tried to understand their world. For example, Gods in their various forms could be likened to the Jungian concept of archetypes, energies at work in the world and in humans. God is simply a name given to the concept of an organising principle.
From my experience of life, people and a great deal of reading, I would say that there is more evidence for something called God than not. This universe and everything in it is so finely tuned, so brilliant in its meaning and purpose, that I anyway, find it difficult to believe that there is no conscious intelligence at work (what humans call God) and that is is all random chance. The hundred monkey theory typing away for thousands of years does not work because we know, in a million years, they would never produce a Shakespeare by chance.
I agree with you that it is not wise to apportion blame, but I do believe humans, each and every one of us can and should be held accountable to principles of justice, rule of law, human rights and common human decency.
Indeed, given the understanding that immune function improves when humans care for others and demonstrate compassion, it is clear that we are hardwired to do good and not the opposite. Bearing in mind that evil can come out of good and vice-versa because both evil and good are human judgements at core.
We can only prove the possible, not the impossible. However, there is not one shred of evidence in 300,000 years to prove that there is or has been any of the thousands of gods that human beings have invented. However, there is and has been much evidence that the existence of any god or deity is highly improbable - so much so that we probably couldn't get any closer to proving such nonsense if we tried. I can agree and have said that the concept of deity almost certainly developed from human beings seeking to understand the World and its phenomena. Unfortunately, that's about all I can agree with in what you say.
"Your experience" - is something you use a lot to justify your opinions which, in the main, are nothing more than such. Unfortunately, you assert them as though they are factual when, in the case of most of what I've read from you, they are not at all but rather, simply what I've just called them - opinions and poorly supported ones at that.
You may consider 'intelligent design' to be a valid notion. I don't. I consider it no better than any of the other supposed notions of why there 'must be or have been' a 'God'. It may be that some human beings consider "conscious intelligence", (whatever that is supposed to mean), to be called "God". I have never heard or seen anyone do so but then, perhaps I am not so widely experienced as you, after all, I've only been around for almost 80 years so what would I know?
There is no such entity as good or evil, let alone any evidence that "evil can come out of good and vice-versa..." There are actions or behaviours and equivalent ones are perceived in differing ways by different people.
My experience is in league with decades of reading and researching. Having lived around the world in many cultures I find it gives greater perspective.
There is no evidence that the Gods as presented existed but there is a great deal of evidence that the attributes of such Gods did and do exist as archetypal energies if not morphogenetic fields.
There is also a great deal of evidence that conscious intelligence is at work in this world and everything in it.
Regardless of how one dresses the realities and the abiding truths, there is more evidence for an intelligent world with meaning, direction and purpose than there is for a random process which sensible scientists admit, particularly physicists, could never create or maintain this world as it exists.
I agree with you that we are all different and we perceive and interpret in our own way.
I remember a story from a friend who was a geologist searching for diamonds in the Kimberley in Australia. The region had been picked over carefully by geologists for more than a century for various resources, but not diamonds. When geologists were sent to look for diamonds they found them quickly, scattered on the ground.
Earlier exploration had not found the diamonds because they were not looking for them. In the same way our brain/mind will find what we expect to find, which is why some humans never change their minds despite the evidence.
I read a lot of books on physics and spirituality and more than one atheist scientists has stated categorically: I refuse to look at any evidence for, x, y, z, because I do not believe it could possibly exist.
So much for the scientific system of enquiry.
We only have to study history and anthropology to see how evil can come out of something those doing it call good, and vice-versa, but that is a bigger topic. Israel is of course a classic example where many people saw its creation as a good, noble even, and yet the outcome was and is pure evil. In the same way, the evil that is Israel may help to heal Jews of their tendency to victimhood and that would be a good coming out of evil.
Roger, I appreciate your thoughtful and positive counterargument.
I could counter my own, but maybe opinion is also about the weary moment in a day I read the news for 21 and a half hours.
My apes serve as a metaphor for our evolution, which is not the same speed for all. Most humans are beautiful, especially if I don't get familiar enough to know their beliefs. The clever rich see sheep (i.e. apes), and successfully herd them to atrocity and self-detriment again and again.
History isn't kind to optimists, and optimists aren't kind to the future for without confronting our bias and lack of education (and yes, as you said it, fear), we will never learn to be kinder and less stupid and less unintentionally murderous.
Well fairy tales come in many forms and all of them hide lessons within. Some humans are not smart enough to understand fairy tales or learn the lessons.
Fairy stories were always about giving us the truth in disguise to make it more appealing to our sub conscious minds. You certainly have achieved that, but in reading it as a story, it somehow seems even worse than the reality. Disturbing as the 'characters' describe themselves as superior and their enemy as nothing more than cockroaches.....
Well, fairy stories are often very disturbing and exaggerated to send the message as metaphor.
The Zionists and Jews who founded Israel, not all, but as policy, considered the non-Jews were inferior humans. The colonists were from Europe and there was a lot of bigotry toward Arabs at the time but for the Zionists/Jews it was really about people being non-Jews, Christians and Muslims. We know that because when Israel invented itself it gave immediate citizenship to all Palestinian Arab Jews, thereby demonstrating that the only crime of the rest was not being Jewish.
This is sourced in Judaic belief that Jews are superior humans and the rest, goyim, exist only to serve as their slaves. The Zionists were and often still are in Israel, atheists and so not even Jews, but they are happy to exploit the worst and most backward of Judaic teachings for their cause.
The label of cockroaches for the Palestinian non-Jews was used recently by some Israeli politician, but Israelis in general consider the Palestinians to be akin to insects, not at all human and their lives of no value. Such a depraved and debased belief can only corrupt Israelis and it has.
In 1983, cabinet minister Rafael Eitan called Palestinians living under Israeli occupation “drugged cockroaches in a bottle.” Last year, Prime Minister Ehud Barak described Palestinians as “crocodiles.”
Ingrid, isn't the subconscious by definition that which about ourselves remains unknowable? Thank you for your additional appreciation of fairy tales. Calling something a fairy tale is often a pejorative, yet, I've yet to see a dispute about their veracity. I often wonder about their association with childhood. What I see the two having in common is immediacy, the absence of intervening sophistry.
The most circulated fairy tale these days is the one about the emperor's clothes. That story, for me, pits the forces of willful blindness or denial against those that are revelatory or truth telling. Children are often credited with having a (lauded) visceral experience of truth, implying that it's an attribute educated out of adults. The emperor story doesn't progress by pedantic argument, but with the immediate perception of truth. The latter is, for me, mysterious, but then our existence is also.
What a society largely wants to believe is more tenacious than what is true, up to a point. Galileo had a hard time with his argument. I suspect he initially didn't want the earth to be the center of the universe (to extend Roslyn's diamond anecdote). I don't want the U S to remain the planet's hegemonic power and I don't want the white race to believe in its superiority. Therefore, I say fuck you to the statistics. I both know personally and observe casually when meeting them, many immigrants from the global south. They consistently are more amiable and sincere than the affluent whites I've known. That is a viscerally felt truth that I trust which opposes all the current propaganda about them. This is a sentiment similar to the one expressed by defectors from the I D F who have turned anti Zionist. I was astonished to hear one speak of having nothing else to follow except the feelings in her body. According to our propaganda the immigrants are our cockroaches.
I believe humans to be largely products of developmental influences, but subject to re-development and therefore consider ad hominem attacks (see Roger's comments) to be a mistake.
Yes, subconscious cannot be consciously known but it can be intuited and revealed in dreams. The unconscious is more knowable but again, often revealed in symbol and metaphor.
I am curious as to what you mean by white race? According to modern genetics there are no races beyond the human race given the trivial difference between what was once called races. White cannot be colour of skin because there are very pale African-Americans and in Australia we have blue-eyed blondes who identify as aboriginal. Neither can it be having anglo-european ancestry because many, often most of those who identify as African American or Australian or Canadian Aboriginal have more anglo-european ancestry than anything else.
So, how would you define white? I have asked this question of so many people and never had an answer.
Otherwise, your post has some great insights and makes some excellent points.
All war is about power. Racism and divinity are only tools used by Greedy Pigs to control the masses.
Dare to be honest with me and admit that most of our fellow inmates, from family members to co-workers, are Dumb Apes needing to think they're superior so that they don't feel like Dumb Apes.
They'll never be superior, but belief is a helluva thing. If it can make money work, it can definitely make Apes think they're more special than someone else's Apes.
When I was younger, I risked becoming one of those banana thieves by foolishly using logic on believers. As an adult, I'm an Absurdist trying to be a Realist. That, for the most part, means tolerance, and acknowledgment that there are Beautiful People in every Tree, and that their belief isn't all that they are.
Deeper than indoctrination is their kindness to others, and my kindness to them.
I long to share coffee, beer, rock music and foreign movies with any interesting being no matter they're Christian, Hindi, Jew, Moslem,or Satanist. Sexy Koreans from the Watchtower are, especially, welcome at my South African gate.
However, I admit that I'm scarred, and mostly enjoy observation over interaction. But I don't enjoy Christians and Jews and Hindi killing Moslems, and Moslem Shia killing Moslem Sunni, and Christians killing different types of Christians, and so on...
It would be Apeish of me to be indifferent in exceptional moments.
Hitler and Idi Amin are valid reasons for intolerance. So are the Israeli and American governments for killing Arab children as if they’re bugs.
Consequently, I salute Ross ‘Tolkien’ Roslyn for her brave story about the Juiz and Ziobigs. I call her brave because Apes will misinterpret her motive and message, and belief is a hellish thing, particularly when used against those who don’t believe in Hell.
And yes, all war is about power and often about a power within to quell the demons. That is why they are projected onto others so effectively.
I think a superiority complex is sourced in an inferiority complex which is why finding a place where one feels superior never works. The inferiority complex can never be fed enough and it just gets bigger and the need to be superior, to have power of some kind over others grows.
The unconscious is a very fertile bed for such things. I have known some very devout Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus who do not suffer from a superiority complex. Sadly I think the worst, but perhaps the most necessary thing, to ever happen to Jews was Zionism and the invention of Zionist Israel. Perhaps as Ditzrael is taken apart, limb from limb, the flesh stripped, like the mythic journeys into the underworld, Jews will come to understand the work which needs to be done if they are to heal as one would wish and as is required for anyone to be spiritually whole and psychologically healed.
Being misunderstood is a common occurrence in this world, particularly when one explores things which others wish to keep hidden. I liken it to digging up a rotting corpse and propping it in a corner and then watching most people sniff a little and turn away, denying what is so easily seen.
I do believe, and I may be wrong, that people are more wounded than cruel and more damaged than evil.
Thought provoking.... So true.
I agree with your astute observations that "a superiority complex is [often] sourced in an inferiority complex" and that "that people are more wounded than cruel and more damaged than evil". I add the word "often" because the exception is the cruel and confident sociopath.
I agree re: sociopaths but I think they are rare in society and the label is used too commonly now.
Grunge became fashion, and crippled became physically challenged, but we need to win back sociopath. My experience with them makes me believe they should be mandatory school education.
Racism and divinity is also about power and is at the heart of most serious conflict or war. Both are a reflection of conditioning, precisely what underpins most of how people think and act.
There is no God and no gods, neither is there Heaven or Hell. All of these are human constructs, predominantly if not entirely, of males.
No, I don't agree with you on the notion that: " most of our fellow inmates, from family members to co-workers, are Dumb Apes needing to think they're superior so that they don't feel like Dumb Apes. " In my view, most human beings are simply animals capable of advanced thought and, possibly, emotions. Through these they have sought to understand, rather than simply accept, the World and its manifestations through asking questions about where it originated, where they originated, what is its and their purpose and much, much more.
As social animals they have collected in groups and because each individual is unique and there are many different levels of interest, intellect, intelligence, ability and perception, as well as differences in circumstance, context, fortune and more, some of them have found ways to influence others for their own ends. Might and a supposed connection with the 'divine', have been the two most powerful influences, quickly making wealth as important.
This has led to various types and levels of conditioning, largely achieved through fear - particularly in the case of religions and schooling in the case of controlling authorities such as monarchs, governments and the alliance of church and state for the benefit of the few and the control of the many.
Wars are not so much about power as about insanity, self-aggrandisement, delusions of superior intellect, insight and ability, and the 'right to rule', almost always justified by the endorsement of some mythical entity.
It is neither useful nor appropriate to demean other animals in order to define particular individual or collective groups or cohorts of human beings. Apes, for instance, are highly intelligent and the reality is that human beings are the only animal that wages 'war' and kills not for survival and maintenance or improvement of the strength of the race but for no valid reason whatsoever other than personal whim, wish and will. It is also notable that, perhaps with some rare exceptions, the most ardent instigators of armed conflict are rarely those who kill and die on the field of battle. Predominantly, it is the young who do that, in most cases, if not what we tend to consider children, they are not much more for human beings don't reach adulthood until about age 25.
I commend Rosyln's piece for its creativity and what I believe to be its intent but I'd prefer that we tell the truth about matters such as this in a very open, plain and definitive way that illustrates all sides and blames no-one. The truth is that no 'one' is to blame, whether that one be an individual, group or nation. Blame is pointless. If it ever achieves anything it is only to increase the aggravation, hate or particular beliefs of the blamed. The fact is that if we do choose to blame then we must recognise that blame rests with humanity as a whole and with the choices we have made and where and why we have made them.
Conflict and war may stop if and when humanity recognises that it is one race, that there is no 'divinity', that education is not schooling and neither is it anything like the panacea it is painted to be and that 'freedom' is impossible without responsibility and given that, on the basis of the last 300,000 years of homo-sapiens, that probably means that although not impossible, it is highly unlikely to ever exist for all, let alone for all at once.
You said: Racism and divinity is also about power and is at the heart of most serious conflict or war. Both are a reflection of conditioning, precisely what underpins most of how people think and act.
Racism, defining the other as an other, the opposite of me, is no doubt sourced in the human need to belong, to understand, to feel familiar. While the maxim Familiarity breeds contempt is commonly believed, the findings of modern neurology would instead say, familiarity calms the Amygdala and reduces the capacity for a reptilian brain response of instinctive aggression.
In other words, first the family and then the tribe created a safe space, or a space where humans felt safe, throughout human history. The unconscious need to feel safe led to the development of rejection of the other, I would suggest.
The more humans began to mix, the more this biological/physiological/psychological need was weakened. Just as biologically humans need to intermix or genetic deformities kill them off, then I also believe that cultural, emotional and psychological mixing, by force and consent, led to greater mental health.
You said:, neither is there Heaven or Hell.
Perhaps not in a literal other dimension sense but they certainly exist as part of the human mind and human experiences.
You said: All of these are human constructs, predominantly if not entirely, of males.
I am not so sure about that. There is no doubt patriarchy led to left brain domination but my years spent living in India and Africa revealed to me the power of women in terms of maintaining hellish practices. It is the women who defend most powerfully the misogyny in India and women who defend far more than men, the practice of genital mutilation where it exists.
You said: Wars are not so much about power as about insanity, self-aggrandisement, delusions of superior intellect, insight and ability, and the 'right to rule', almost always justified by the endorsement of some mythical entity.
I think war is about fear and greed in essence because that is how it began in stone-age cultures. If you did not take by force what you needed you did not survive. I think using God concepts as the hook on which to hang such violence was an instinctive way to stave off feelings of guilt and remorse because humans are essentially hardwired to connect.
Neither do I agree humans are the only animals which wage war. Having raised cattle on a farm in my time, I know only too well the aggressive and unforgiving nature of those animals to something different. The term 'pecking order' comes from anyone who studies chickens. They too will punish and sometimes kill the different bird - that is war in essence.
You said: t I'd prefer that we tell the truth about matters such as this in a very open, plain and definitive way that illustrates all sides and blames no-one.
Perhaps I was not clear enough although fairy tales and fables are always about nuance. I was seeking to explain rather than to blame.
Oh dear, your ego is hurting, Roslyn. Be careful for it's not a good look. Relax. Your opinions are just that: opinions. You don't have to become so opinionated. Trust me, there are many people who have had as wide a set of experiences as you claim for yourself and many who have had even greater ones. For the truly 'wise', it is usual for the greater the experience to correspond with the realisation of how little they know. Clearly, you are a long way from that point.
Certainly you are more articulate than many on forums or platforms such as this but that doesn't make your claims necessarily any more valid, it simply makes them less objectionable in terms of how they are made. However, a polite disguise is still a disguise and when it is adopted knowingly, perhaps could be considered even more insulting than a common epithet.
Perhaps you are, indeed, a polymath or someone of similar intellectual capacity but, if so, you are not displaying it. On the contrary, you appear to have 'picked up' or absorbed bits and pieces, some understood and some not, which you've mashed together and in discussion drop here and there with the dubious validity of the pseudo scientist so often used in advertising.
It may be worth your noting Pope's: "A little learning is a dang'rous thing" and Socrates: "All that I know is that I nothing."
Listening and considering is likely to be more enlightening than speeding to defense of assertion.
Take care. Stay safe. ☮️
What is not a good look is resorting to personal insults. I am well aware that with age comes the understanding we know nothing truly. However, in this fascinating exploration of life we reach conclusions, gain understandings and make connections. That is our task as humans.
Your opinion of me, including I suspect quite a few projections, does not hurt, harm or impact me. In short, I offer nothing but the result of insights, experiences and facts for others to take, or not as they choose.
And there is a difference between a substantive and credible opinion, view, belief, and one which simply hovers as nothing more than opinion.
Since I was simply responding to your statements, on my own substack, I believe I am entitled to respond as I see fit. I am sorry you took it so badly but trust me, I take nothing personally, particularly from people I do not know in any real sense.
A little learning can be a dangerous thing, but ignorance is worse.
As I said, your ego is hurting. I understand.
Relax. You'll get over it - or not.
It's of no importance.
We are all nothing.
Pomposity is a bad look. My ego is not involved in this beyond being shocked at your petty rudeness and lack of courtesy.
For what it is worth I do not believe we are all nothing. I admire the nobility of spirit which exists in every human. I am well aware that nothing matters and yet everything matters. The human conflict.
Your snide comment about polymaths reflects you, not me. Polymaths were always rare and in this age even rarer. But thankyou for making the association in a backhanded compliment. I know I am of reasonable intelligence with a good capacity to make connections, gain insights and apply common sense. You may find that offensive but that is your choice.
I do know a good level of intelligence is required for enough self discipline to not resort to insults when you do not like what someone has said or cannot make a case against it.
You come across, generally, as erudite and sensible, so I can only attribute your nasty comments to some personal sensitivity and suffering. I would advise you not to take it out on others, particularly in this medium and with people about whom you know absolutely nothing.
I will not respond further to any posts which are intended as insult, petty and otherwise.
Tsk, tsk, Roger. You made a great comment, and then Roslyn made a great comment, and then you went all ad hominem attack. No use me adding my comments here, because the goal is no longer intellectual discussion.
I am reminded of the Jungian Maxim,
That which we condemn in others is that which we deny in ourselves. Or to paraphrase the Hamlet misquote: Methinks he protests too much.
There is another maxim I read somewhere:
If one person says something about you it may be ignored. So far Roger is the only one to make such comments in many years of my use of the medium. Previous insults were along the lines of, rightwing redneck and tree-hugging leftie idiot, which led me to conclude I had bases covered and walked a sensible middle line.
If two people make the same comment you would be wise to ponder what they say carefully. When a second person makes the same comments as Roger I intend to do just that.
If three people make the same comment then you would be wise to make changes. If I get to three making the same comment I will do exactly that.
Although such comments are generally meant to come from people who know you in a real world sense, and not those in the world of online ether who make strong charges with nonexistent evidence or experience.
It's not important. As I told Roslyn, we are all nothing.
Her arrogance and conceit prevented any 'intellectual' discussion. One can't discuss with someone who considers themselves, (wrongly), to be so clever and knowledgeable as to know everything and be infallible. Roslyn is a victim of conservative and obsolescent conditioning that is inappropriate and prevents her from conceding when she has something wrong or is unwilling to even consider the possibility.
Her assertions are justified by her apparent belief that her own travels and experience have somehow equipped her to pontificate about anything and e everything despite the fact that, at least in the case of the dialogue in which I engaged with her, she has shown little understanding of reality.
In any case, she chose to be offended and allege or accuse me of all manner of perfidy that I didn't commit. So be it. I've suffered all manner of abuse throughout my life from the time I first left home at 3yrs old - was returned by the police who found me sleeping in a park with ducks - but never rested from then until I made it out. I am used to being abused without reason and without having committed any offense or hurt anyone.
I have spent my life unlearning appalling conditioning and social norms that abuse and demean and enslave the poor, the ignorant, women, almost anyone who is different - in whatever way - and I have spent it also fighting for them and against prejudice and put-downs of which Roslyn was guilty, on the basis of her own words.
I won't accept it and let it go unchallenged because it is a major factor in what pollutes this world and cause so much hurt and harm to people who are least able to defend themselves.
Roslyn and others can call me what they wish as they try to defend their prejudice and falsity, whether intended or not. I accept that in Roslyn's case and, in fact, in most cases it does not emanate from malice or ill intention but from conditioning and ignorance. However, those of Roslyn's level of intelligence and ability to communicate ought to be able to recognise and change what the truly ignorant, (i.e. unschooled, inarticulate, gullible, uninformed and etc), cannot.
So Mike, I appreciate what I have read of yours so far, just as I did some of the earlier things I read of Roslyn's before she became defensive of her ego , so please, don't tsk, tsk me.
Frankly, right now, I've had enough. I've had a life of bombardment and the last couple of days have been fairly high on the trauma scale and riddled with nonsense online by defenders of injustice, horror, persecution and such which beggars belief.
I am on the verge of ceasing any engagement with these platforms because I am totally tired of what might readily be called conditioned cretinism. It is so common that even a mildly well written and cohesive comment or argument stands out like a full moon on a clear night.
Obviously I don't fit for I won't accept the hypocrisy of privilege and prejudice and put down hidden behind polite rhetoric and pretension of superior knowledge.
I grew up in the dirt and I got out of it, only to find that the people there were far better than the pretentious inhabitants of the green fields.
Yes, I tell it as I see it and that is usually as it is but I don't claim infallibility or the absence of making mistakes or getting it 'wrong' - on the contrary, I've made many and now know enough to be aware that there is no good and evil or right and wrong but only what is and how each chooses to see it. With blinkers or through shades or with open eyes and open mind. I choose the latter. I can do so because criticism and abuse no longer affects me for no one has a worse opinion of me than I do of myself nor feels the guilt I feel at the ignorance I have had to unlearn.
Take care. Stay safe. ☮️
r.
I've followed Roslyn for a while now, and asked her to participate in the Israeli series because I consider her brave and smart.
Roger, you make some excellent points.
However, I do not believe anyone can say either that there is no God or Gods, or that there definitely is a God or Gods. It is impossible to prove either.
The concept of God and Gods has taken form as humans have tried to understand their world. For example, Gods in their various forms could be likened to the Jungian concept of archetypes, energies at work in the world and in humans. God is simply a name given to the concept of an organising principle.
From my experience of life, people and a great deal of reading, I would say that there is more evidence for something called God than not. This universe and everything in it is so finely tuned, so brilliant in its meaning and purpose, that I anyway, find it difficult to believe that there is no conscious intelligence at work (what humans call God) and that is is all random chance. The hundred monkey theory typing away for thousands of years does not work because we know, in a million years, they would never produce a Shakespeare by chance.
I agree with you that it is not wise to apportion blame, but I do believe humans, each and every one of us can and should be held accountable to principles of justice, rule of law, human rights and common human decency.
Indeed, given the understanding that immune function improves when humans care for others and demonstrate compassion, it is clear that we are hardwired to do good and not the opposite. Bearing in mind that evil can come out of good and vice-versa because both evil and good are human judgements at core.
We can only prove the possible, not the impossible. However, there is not one shred of evidence in 300,000 years to prove that there is or has been any of the thousands of gods that human beings have invented. However, there is and has been much evidence that the existence of any god or deity is highly improbable - so much so that we probably couldn't get any closer to proving such nonsense if we tried. I can agree and have said that the concept of deity almost certainly developed from human beings seeking to understand the World and its phenomena. Unfortunately, that's about all I can agree with in what you say.
"Your experience" - is something you use a lot to justify your opinions which, in the main, are nothing more than such. Unfortunately, you assert them as though they are factual when, in the case of most of what I've read from you, they are not at all but rather, simply what I've just called them - opinions and poorly supported ones at that.
You may consider 'intelligent design' to be a valid notion. I don't. I consider it no better than any of the other supposed notions of why there 'must be or have been' a 'God'. It may be that some human beings consider "conscious intelligence", (whatever that is supposed to mean), to be called "God". I have never heard or seen anyone do so but then, perhaps I am not so widely experienced as you, after all, I've only been around for almost 80 years so what would I know?
There is no such entity as good or evil, let alone any evidence that "evil can come out of good and vice-versa..." There are actions or behaviours and equivalent ones are perceived in differing ways by different people.
Take care. Stay safe. ☮️
My experience is in league with decades of reading and researching. Having lived around the world in many cultures I find it gives greater perspective.
There is no evidence that the Gods as presented existed but there is a great deal of evidence that the attributes of such Gods did and do exist as archetypal energies if not morphogenetic fields.
There is also a great deal of evidence that conscious intelligence is at work in this world and everything in it.
Regardless of how one dresses the realities and the abiding truths, there is more evidence for an intelligent world with meaning, direction and purpose than there is for a random process which sensible scientists admit, particularly physicists, could never create or maintain this world as it exists.
I agree with you that we are all different and we perceive and interpret in our own way.
I remember a story from a friend who was a geologist searching for diamonds in the Kimberley in Australia. The region had been picked over carefully by geologists for more than a century for various resources, but not diamonds. When geologists were sent to look for diamonds they found them quickly, scattered on the ground.
Earlier exploration had not found the diamonds because they were not looking for them. In the same way our brain/mind will find what we expect to find, which is why some humans never change their minds despite the evidence.
I read a lot of books on physics and spirituality and more than one atheist scientists has stated categorically: I refuse to look at any evidence for, x, y, z, because I do not believe it could possibly exist.
So much for the scientific system of enquiry.
We only have to study history and anthropology to see how evil can come out of something those doing it call good, and vice-versa, but that is a bigger topic. Israel is of course a classic example where many people saw its creation as a good, noble even, and yet the outcome was and is pure evil. In the same way, the evil that is Israel may help to heal Jews of their tendency to victimhood and that would be a good coming out of evil.
Roger, I appreciate your thoughtful and positive counterargument.
I could counter my own, but maybe opinion is also about the weary moment in a day I read the news for 21 and a half hours.
My apes serve as a metaphor for our evolution, which is not the same speed for all. Most humans are beautiful, especially if I don't get familiar enough to know their beliefs. The clever rich see sheep (i.e. apes), and successfully herd them to atrocity and self-detriment again and again.
History isn't kind to optimists, and optimists aren't kind to the future for without confronting our bias and lack of education (and yes, as you said it, fear), we will never learn to be kinder and less stupid and less unintentionally murderous.
Consider Roslyn's article as a different tool but a follow-on to her 'Israel: The Lies' which is as direct as direct can be - https://roslynross.substack.com/p/israel-the-lies
Beautifully written.
How a fairytale can result in a Holocaust.......
Well fairy tales come in many forms and all of them hide lessons within. Some humans are not smart enough to understand fairy tales or learn the lessons.
Exactly! That's why they always ban the books first. Our true history lies nestled in our myths.
Yup!
Hi ,Roslyn 👋 👋 👋that was a nice fairytale
Thanks for sharing that fun fairy tale, Mike.
It was a nice diversion from the daily news of war.
Sexy Korean Watchtower chick's?
I'll start working on that model.
I'll even program her to sing K-Pop
🤖 🤖 🤖
You're commenting on Roslyn's page again :)
Oops 😬
I'm still gonna try to build a lovebot that can sing K-Pop.
When I'm done I'll send a bunch of them to South Africa.
Just to see how people like them.
Fairy stories were always about giving us the truth in disguise to make it more appealing to our sub conscious minds. You certainly have achieved that, but in reading it as a story, it somehow seems even worse than the reality. Disturbing as the 'characters' describe themselves as superior and their enemy as nothing more than cockroaches.....
Well, fairy stories are often very disturbing and exaggerated to send the message as metaphor.
The Zionists and Jews who founded Israel, not all, but as policy, considered the non-Jews were inferior humans. The colonists were from Europe and there was a lot of bigotry toward Arabs at the time but for the Zionists/Jews it was really about people being non-Jews, Christians and Muslims. We know that because when Israel invented itself it gave immediate citizenship to all Palestinian Arab Jews, thereby demonstrating that the only crime of the rest was not being Jewish.
This is sourced in Judaic belief that Jews are superior humans and the rest, goyim, exist only to serve as their slaves. The Zionists were and often still are in Israel, atheists and so not even Jews, but they are happy to exploit the worst and most backward of Judaic teachings for their cause.
The label of cockroaches for the Palestinian non-Jews was used recently by some Israeli politician, but Israelis in general consider the Palestinians to be akin to insects, not at all human and their lives of no value. Such a depraved and debased belief can only corrupt Israelis and it has.
In 1983, cabinet minister Rafael Eitan called Palestinians living under Israeli occupation “drugged cockroaches in a bottle.” Last year, Prime Minister Ehud Barak described Palestinians as “crocodiles.”
https://www.cjpme.org/pr_2023_10_16
Ingrid, isn't the subconscious by definition that which about ourselves remains unknowable? Thank you for your additional appreciation of fairy tales. Calling something a fairy tale is often a pejorative, yet, I've yet to see a dispute about their veracity. I often wonder about their association with childhood. What I see the two having in common is immediacy, the absence of intervening sophistry.
The most circulated fairy tale these days is the one about the emperor's clothes. That story, for me, pits the forces of willful blindness or denial against those that are revelatory or truth telling. Children are often credited with having a (lauded) visceral experience of truth, implying that it's an attribute educated out of adults. The emperor story doesn't progress by pedantic argument, but with the immediate perception of truth. The latter is, for me, mysterious, but then our existence is also.
What a society largely wants to believe is more tenacious than what is true, up to a point. Galileo had a hard time with his argument. I suspect he initially didn't want the earth to be the center of the universe (to extend Roslyn's diamond anecdote). I don't want the U S to remain the planet's hegemonic power and I don't want the white race to believe in its superiority. Therefore, I say fuck you to the statistics. I both know personally and observe casually when meeting them, many immigrants from the global south. They consistently are more amiable and sincere than the affluent whites I've known. That is a viscerally felt truth that I trust which opposes all the current propaganda about them. This is a sentiment similar to the one expressed by defectors from the I D F who have turned anti Zionist. I was astonished to hear one speak of having nothing else to follow except the feelings in her body. According to our propaganda the immigrants are our cockroaches.
I believe humans to be largely products of developmental influences, but subject to re-development and therefore consider ad hominem attacks (see Roger's comments) to be a mistake.
Yes, subconscious cannot be consciously known but it can be intuited and revealed in dreams. The unconscious is more knowable but again, often revealed in symbol and metaphor.
I am curious as to what you mean by white race? According to modern genetics there are no races beyond the human race given the trivial difference between what was once called races. White cannot be colour of skin because there are very pale African-Americans and in Australia we have blue-eyed blondes who identify as aboriginal. Neither can it be having anglo-european ancestry because many, often most of those who identify as African American or Australian or Canadian Aboriginal have more anglo-european ancestry than anything else.
So, how would you define white? I have asked this question of so many people and never had an answer.
Otherwise, your post has some great insights and makes some excellent points.