Addictions

We might not agree on the perfection of the way the world is set up. I was just watching some interviews with addicts and their stories are horrible. I’ve read one of the best and most sophisticated examinations of the problem from the perspective of a man who has reached the highest level of understanding of anyone I’ve read is the book In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts by Dr. Gabor Maté. In his book Dr. Maté takes us to a deeper look at addiction from his own relatively less serious addiction (buying classical CDs) to serious street addicts. The difference is that street addicts use more drastic drugs to hide the problems of trauma and self-loathing and, of course, the working-class nature of these serious addictions. The other factor of course is that certain drugs are illegal which makes them expensive and causes addicts to scrounge for money and pay multiple times what the drugs actually would cost if they were legal.

My point here is that many people whether they are addicted to porn, alcohol, crack, heroin, gaming, or whatever have the same problem—unresolved trauma, pain, and self-loathing often as a result of their addiction which further causes themselves to hate themselves for failing to live up to their image of success whether it is caused by social conditioning or not. My point here is that everyone, at all times, is perfect as a spiritual person and their path always makes sense no matter how destructive it might appear. That does not mean an addict should continue with their addiction but there is no way to end addiction unless the pain is dealt with. In the US, in particular, the philosophy is to make people suffer more and thus they will be “scared straight” an idea that is and has been utterly discredited as a method. Yes, in the short term, fear may motivate people to stop their addiction but eventually they will find their way to some other addiction or a return to their previous addiction. Fear brings are consciousness back to the limbic system which is incapable of wisdom or insight just flight or fight. Prison, for example, helps sometimes, to stop an addict if that prison does not have a thriving drug trade and it makes sense in many circumstances but then the prisoner is out of prison with a record that makes it very difficult to find work particularly work that would lead to promotions. Drug offenders cannot get student loans and are always distrusted. It takes a positive turn perhaps a religious or spiritual experience and a lot of regular therapy from a highly intelligent and able therapists who are not that numerous since, for those who are poor, are always underpaid and often inexperienced.

The answer to all this is, of course ever present, and that is love and compassion. We need a social system that automatically values people not for their money (money is the final arbiter of all moral values in the US) but for who they are as a whole. Most of us represent a lineage, a set of positive and negative attitudes that we picked up from those who have caused us pain or brought us happiness—usually a mixture but always unique to a culture, tribe, or family. We in the US often think we can escape our upbringing and “start anew” but the road to truly starting anew is much more difficult than most of us understand. We have no choice but deal with the results of our upbringing, our culture, our traumas, our values and so on. For some this is not hard because they are able to live on the surface. To climb the career ladder by finding ways to make money for their corporate bosses looks, on the surface, as a good thing but that corporation may be making toxic substances and be corrupt and destructive to the environment but we ill ignore it because we have to make a living and the best livings are made by playing along with the corporate or governmental agenda which is often destructive. For example, if you go in the military and kill a lot of people but believe you are doing it because you are “defending our freedoms” and are told that by most people you meet that does not mean you are “good” because, in fact, all the wars the USA has been involved in since WWII have been fought for reasons that have nothing to do with protecting anyone but the oligarchs in charge. I know this is one of the taboo subjects in our culture where worship of the military and the use of physical force to further an agenda is almost on the par with the virtue of money.

Whether the toxicity is based on killing people, or exploiting others, or producing carrying out destructive (to society) policies in government or the corporate world where financial shenanigans and speculations bring the greatest rewards, it is the same thing. We are traumatizing others and ourselves though we don’t feel it because of the fact our society enforces living on the surface and not looking deeply into life. But, usually, this living on the surface produces strange cravings and desires and various addictions. Most of them are legal, most of them can be easily bought and afforded.

The biggest addiction I see is shopping and entertainment as a way to ease pain or not think about the incredible contradictions each of of us lives with. This is particularly the case today with the stunning growth of technology as place to go with pushing our addiction to various chemicals our body produces. We produce chemicals like dopamine—when someone “likes” us on social media, or even when we start clicking links, little surges of this chemical are produced which make us feel good; oxytocin—the hugging drug happens when we hug or when, for some people, a baby smiles, or when we watch a sentimental movie about love and it all works out or even; serotonin—which gives us the feeling of accomplishment or domination which can happen in fact accomplishing something you really want and getting approval whether real or in a gaming or virtual situation; and endorphins—usually associated with working out or just being in pain. When I was a child I went through a time of feeling sorry for myself as a way to “hug” myself (since I had no hugs). I remember when the rush of oxytocin particularly if I was crying and then I’d feel better.

Anything that makes us feel one way or the other can be addictive and most of us are addicted to something. Addiction can only truly stop when we meet each moment on its own merits and we stop living largely meaningless (often even when we find “meaning” it is often a fantasy meaning), materialistic, and fearful lives—this can change however so don’t lose heart. Finding true meaning and being in the moment are practices not ends. Thus none of us should pay any attention to whether or not we’ve met our goals or even approximate some goals of clarity or enlightenment. If we do, we’ll never feel good. As we practice techniques that work for us with determination our lives will improve quite a lot.

The World Is Perfect

Every now and then I have an intrusive thought though it’s not really a thought but something else. It’s like something suddenly comes over me like a cloud over a sun or, maybe, the sun briefly breaking through the clouds. It doesn’t happen often, thankfully, because it’s a disturbing thought. Still, I really like this thought. I get it, I’ve trained for it but I still can’t accept it because it forces me to utterly reorient my life or, I should say, my idea about my life. That thought is “what if the world is actually perfect just the way it is.” But, as I said, it’s more than a thought. As a thought it doesn’t “do” anything it’s another interesting concept that might come out of any abstract concept or even mind-game like Schrödinger's cat. But this thought is way different—there’s something magnetic about it that suspends all the thoughts I’ve ever had about anything in the air as the world suddenly stops. Of course, the reason for all this is I’ve had very directly a strong sense that everything is perfect in the ultimate sense. I’ve experienced, for a few moments, a vision of perfection at various times the most dramatic was about fourteen years ago when the whole vision was complete in terms of body-mind-spirit. I was there in this timeless space without drugs just during meditation—I felt joy and because I was swimming in a sea of love. That is, love not as a concept of having a direction but love as something essential to me and the universe. But in my life thinking life is perfect, even though I’ve experienced it in various ways several times in my life, even though I’ve studied Buddhism, Yogic philosophy, Sufism, Christian mysticism and a variety of spiritual teachers who teach just what I’ve experienced—yet, I resist it. Why, because my concern for the world in general and my own life and its associations seem to violate perfection. If someone I know is sick, how is that perfect? If some small child is tortured and killed, as many are today, how can that be perfect? Yet it is somehow not because it’s a good thing not because we should not try to help people who are sick or save children from sexual tortures but because it is what it is and arguing with reality lessens our ability to push for justice and push for health. The reason I sense, at times, that it is all perfect is because it is also perfect that I am unhappy about sickness and even more unhappy about child sexual torture. Perfection is not about goodness it is about saying “yes” to the world AS IT IS!

I give this example of bowing in martial arts. Bowing to your opponent is about honoring the art and about honoring your opponent who will be your teacher in the fight you are about to engage in. With that mentality you are more free to learn the defects of your technique—your opponent will illustrate, like no other person can, the strength and weakness of what you bring to a fight and you have a clearer more focused mind rather than blaming yourself from messing up and getting into an emotional swamp or, if successful, being too prideful of your victory thus creating a false sense of security. All arguments, disagreements, rivalries need to be viewed in this manner if you are interested in living fully. Through this practice, though I often fail, I have come to realize I don’t want to fight or argue unless I can’t avoid or justice demands I state clearly my opinion. But this does not mean I negate my opponents and that’s the trap I and others fall into particularly at this time in history where everyone is confused and, and to compensate for that try to narrow my conceptual framework of the world to good vs. bad which simplifies everything. As many of my FB friends seem to believe—Republicans are bad and Democrats are good and that’s as far as they can go so that, at least, there is some certainty to be had where, in reality, there is very little ground for certainty.

Thus carrying the assumption that all is perfect, even your enemies (who are here to teach you), as Jesus did when he said to love your enemies. You still have enemies, Jesus did not deny that, but when you love your enemies you are not trapped into fear and loathing but can, if you are true follower of Jesus’ teachings (very, very few are), see things clearly. That’s true faith in the perfection of the world. We’ll go deeper into that in subsequent posts.

x

Thoughts on Spirituality and Philosophy

We require coherent conceptual frameworks to live a convivial life. When we have some way of evaluating our lives and the society around us we are happier because it helps us to know what to do in any situation in life in a mechanical rather than thoughtful way. In this historical age, our conceptual frameworks have become disordered and confused and thus we aren’t really sure what we should do. In terms of human evolution, this is not a bad thing—it is, in fact, an opportunity to explore new directions because only the new can provide a way to move beyond the deep contradictions of our society today. I suggest to you that politics and working within our current cultural institutions is totally counter-productive. Why? Because our current reality is that these institutions exist not to help us, not to enhance life but very specifically just to exist. Our public education exists to exist, not to educate, if education happens by accident then great, but the real focus is survival of the institution. That system ignores much of the findings of science of learning and developmental psychology in favor of a variety of techniques that help the system endure and, coincidentally, also produce citizens unequipped to handle real problems in the world and are sufficiently compliant to listen uncritically to authority. The same basic idea is behind our medical system which, again, largely ignores science in favor of profits.

Protesting, writing Congress and all the rest of it has been shown, time after time, to be largely waste our time. Elections are mainly bogus because the various systems we have are designed to be gamed and hacked if needed by the ruling elite. Even if we get someone in office who is honest and cares about people his or her first duty (as they see it) will be to survive in office. If they don’t do as they are told by the leaders of Congress and the well-funded lobbyists that continually surround them and their staffs they will not return and may suffer severe sanctions. If they do as they’re told they will live on easy street for the rest of their lives. We can complain and shake our fists but it will make no difference whatever. True social movements will be taken over by government and/or corporate agents as almost every movement I’ve seen since the early seventies have been whether it’s Q-Anon or BLM. If, by some miracle a major figure emerges that person will either suffer the fate of Martin Luther King and be shot down by government agents or end up like Julian Assange who is being tortured in a British prison (on the orders of the Washington regime as a warning to anyone who may desire to tell the truth about the National Security State). So don’t think you or anyone you know is going to lead a major movement will be able to do anything other than what the oligarch-dominated government wants. Those of you who doubt this only have to look at the following following story: “Princeton Study: The U.S. Is Not ‘Losing’ Its Democracy, It’s Already Long Gone.” Given this situation the only way to move towards a less authoritarian society is through an attitude of non-violent non-cooperation (which may still get you in trouble if the current Biden anti-terror laws go into effect, i.e., any opposition to any authority can be called “terrorism”). But this is all a kind of dry-hump. One and only one clear path, in fact, a highway awaits those of us who dissent from the mass-culture imposed on us from the oligarchy as well as those who aren’t sure and who are just feeling a vague distrust about our current situation. That highway now opening up to us is called “spirituality” a loaded term I will try to unravel.

For me spirituality is the practice (and it evolves through practice and practices) that reveals our authentic self. In Yogic philosophy it is described as “Atman” which the ancients describe as the same as the Creator which in their mythology is called “Brahman” in our mythology it’s called “God.” Without, at this time, going into detail, I believe that Jesus of the Gospels is pointing us in exactly that direction. This idea and practices and ideas surrounding us is present in all major spiritual traditions in one way or the other as documented in Aldous Huxley’s book The Perennial Philosophy. There is no need to follow any particular path because, as I’ve implied, we have a highway available and all we have to do is go straight down and follow the road wherever it goes. The road signs will be available when we decide we are going to follow this road and begin some basic practice because our consciousness and priorities will change.

The first thing we encounter on this highway is that it is covered with brambles—these brambles are the sum total of our conditioning whether it’s trauma or just indoctrination/conditioning from our education and the mythos of our society we accept to find meaning and to live smoothly in our society but, as I’ve alluded to, lack solid foundation in reason and philosophical rigor. The reason for that is that the rapid and unprecedented change in our most basic assumptions about life have already revolutionized our society to a degree most people seem not to have noticed. We assume we are the same society we were in the late 1940’s where actually we are utterly different. Our daily lives are different, our modes of communicating are different, our sexuality and sexual identity is different, our view of our society, values, and so on are all radically different. Almost nothing our society is saying collectively at this time makes much sense; it is, at best, a hodgepodge of myths and vague notions that constitute the “philosophy” we see in movies and “news” programs or other cultural events that tell us what to think. Almost all of those ideas, particularly those presented by the news media are mainly false and some just invented to achieve control for the ruling class. T

These basic structures in our minds are added on to by our constant mental chatter and constant attempt to create a viable identity within the context of those bramble-bushes. When a society has does not have a coherent and well-structured mythological/conceptual framework our own psychological processes fill in the blanks, connect and connect whatever dots we perceive into some sort of temporary value system even if it is absurd. In contrast, traditional societies I’ve encountered and or read about in my studies of anthropology, have a conceptual framework that works because it’s been tested in tried for sometimes centuries, sometimes millennia. Only when they are exposed to an utterly materialistic and hedonistic (all societies that are adrift end up being hedonistic) society do they begin to falter or rapidly and successfully transition taking in the new data as in Chinese, Indian, and some others more robust traditional societies.

As we clear the brambles of our own habits of thought and the unexamined myths we live by the truth of who we really are will gradually emerge. The truth of who we are is quite simple to find. If you’ve ever experienced pure joy then you know who you are—you are that which experiences that joy or more truly, joy itself. There is absolutely nothing fundamentally wrong with you or anyone else. The spiritual path starts with this notion and will give you the energy to remove the brambles that impede you. Once you realize who you really are the next technique is to “remember” the joy you’ve experienced and bring it up in times you feel badly. The next part of this is to also remember to observe yourself particularly when you are reacting to things with negative emotions. For example, when you are angry with another or something happening in politics, observe your body and where the anger or tension is and observe what your mind is doing and what is fueling it. This doesn’t mean you will not be angry only that you are looking closely at the feeling. In no way does this act of observation “resolve” any conflict or bad habit only that it remains, as you practice this diligently, less and less powerful in your life. I’ve noticed that several bad physical habits and habits of negative thinking have gradually dissipated as I’ve continued this practice.

That’s it for today.

Thoughts on the 20th Anniversary of 9/11/01

 Twenty years ago on 9/10/01 I felt anxious and a bit deranged towards the end of the day. The morning of 9/11/01 I was desperate, something was happening to me--I had nothing to be upset about yet I felt I was going crazy. I called in sick to work and my wife told me to focus on doing something that required no thought and she had a little project for me to do requiring me to go to the hardware store. There I saw people looking at a small TV that showed that a plane had just crashed into a WTC tower and figured it was an accident. The towers had been built specifically to weather a crash of the a Boeing 707 then the largest commercial plane so we had no idea what would happen next, certainly no one thought the buildings were in danger. Then shortly after that another plane hit the other tower and suddenly we knew some shit had hit the fan. I went home, I was concerned, but I was no longer going crazy nor did I feel anxious. I understood why I felt that way and I also knew everything would be different from now on. 

Later, a plane hit the Pentagon in a very bizarre way and that was basically a fifteen minute drive from my house--what next I thought? For the next several days I was listening to C-Span radio and as many talk shows as I could. The basic theme of those few days was around this concept--what had we done to cause a suicide attack of that kind and the mood was not warlike. After about three days the tone changed to revenge and war and that has not changed to this day.

Over the next couple of years I researched the 911 events and quickly realized this national tragedy an apparent "attack" was clearly something very different. In the 90's I had read many articles by the suddenly emergent "neoconservative" movement that, in the publication, Rebuilding Americas Defenses by Project for the New American Century, counselled war as the only thing that could keep the USA whole and somewhat virtuous. The problem, they claimed, was that without a "mission", the country would sink into hedonism, and some form of tribalism. I believe the group was laying the groundwork for a structure of permanent war out in the open (the first time I think I saw the term "homeland" ascribed to the USA). I believed, based on my knowledge of the culture of the foreign policy and national security establishment that the 911 operation was set in motion somewhere in the early 90's when the neocons, who had hoped Bush I would have taken Baghdad during the first Iraq War, managed to take over the National Security State and to a great extent the Republican Party. The chief protagonists in those days and during Bush II were Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld but they represented a faction within the Pentagon, the CIA, State Department and so on that agreed that the US needed a mission (because the Cold War that kept the Deep State in business had ended) and since the military was, by far (and still is) the most trusted and popular institution in the US permanent imperial war was the way to continue to keep Washington Empire in business (the Executive Branch knew that it was war and only war that expanded its power). They were not only going to save the country, give life meaning to the masses but they were also going so save the world from the Chinese "yellow peril." I know for a fact that the saying then and now was it was either us or the Chinese that would rule the world and it had better be us--this was a constant refrain within foreign policy circles which I knew for a fact from my contacts in Washington. 

I'm not going to go into what actually happened on 911 but, despite the obvious bumbling and draconian measures used to hide the actual facts of those events, the planners knew that no matter how silly the conclusions provided to the media the people would accept this, frankly, silly story at face value. The US public has a long history of believing nonsense and lies more readily than real facts because they swallowed the obvious fakery of the Warren Report on the JFK assassination and other events from the major assassinations of the 1960s or the Tonkin Gulf "incident" (that never happened) or the attack on the USS Liberty or various foreign assassinations and coups that the CIA carried out since 1947 abroad and more recently the utterly fabricated Russiagate narrative. I say all this not as some wild-eyed, paranoid "conspiracy theorist" (a term invented by the CIA to staunch critics of the Warren Commission) but as someone who has read widely in world and US history and studied the matters I'm discussing here in some detail over the decades. 

As a student of psychology, anthropology, and sociology I am not in the least bit surprised that the forces of Empire were able to foist any lie as long as it's big enough because of a collective mythological framework callded "American Exceptionalism" which tells us that the USA is a unique society (it is) that has a sacred mission to spread democracy, equal rights, and consumerist/capitalist culture to the world. Of course, this myth states that the whole world wants to be like the USA but is blocked by evil societies and religions and fanatical ideologies (communism, Islam, nationalism and so on) aided by the evil countries who similarly want to conquer the world and who the US must overcome, conquer and rule (for their own good of course). This semi-religion is one generally held by Americans of all social classes and, strangely, by the intellectual class above all. 

I no longer have much interest in "news" that I've been almost religiously been following since I was twelve years old--I recognize that almost all stories are some form of propaganda meant to manipulate not so much ideas as such (no important organized political force in the US has any ideas) but emotions. In fact, after 911 it became clear that we had moved a post-rational historical age where myth, symbol, emotion, and tribalism dominates in our national culture along with the constant of consumerism and hedonism which in some ways betrays the vision of the neoconservatives who, in some ways, appreciated that we were straying very far from being a largely virtuous country and we are, in fact, beginning to disintegrate internally and certainly internationally as the utter failure (except to enrich the military-industrial-complex) of the massive wars as well as smaller covert actions always ongoing. We are, collectively, less virtuous, less coherent, less educated, and poorer as a result of 911.