Multidimensional food for thought...
~The political system we have today is not the democratic republic it pretends to be. National elections are orchestrated public relations events, engineered to serve the complex interests of the plutocracy and shadow government. The perception of differences between major party candidates is limited to within a narrow spectrum of mainstream ideology, and voting has become a tool used by the oligarchy to routinely refresh the illusions of choice and consent.
Indoctrinated to believe this system is mandatory for human prosperity and security, consideration of alternatives is practically unthinkable to the citizenry. Most have their entire lives and fortunes invested in this game, and as such, a truth this heavy is simply too much to process and too painful to accept. Obedience and compliance to state and culture have their sleepy, comfortable perks, but the natural inclination of the human spirit is to gravitate towards truth and freedom. When this is ignored or denied, inner peace is impossible, and outer chaos inevitable.
For this, the free-thinker will always emerge as the winner in a contest against the statist, for, it is the soul who needs no illusions and carries no attachments which can look upon the ashes of ruin and give them credit for being the first signs of new bloom.
Now that the unbelievable spectacle of election 2016 is complete, here are some critical things that free-thinkers can take away from this rather insane and revelatory experience.
1.) The mainstream, corporate media is unashamedly here to convince and distract you, not to inform or empower you. Most media outlets, including many alternative outlets, have fully exposed themselves as partisan organizations with no commitment to objectivity or logic. We are at last free from the chokehold of this organized form of propaganda and ideological occupation.
2.) People still do not yet understand the true nature of government as an organization which derives its power and authority from the superior application of violence. They don’t yet fully understand that in order for government to offer a solution to a problem, it must first create that very problem. Many are still unready to admit that we are ruled by a plutocratic, oligarchical, corporate state that does not take orders from elected politicians.
Because of this, there are now plenty of opportunities to inspire and Awaken people with serious information.
3.) Social chaos and mindless incivility has been properly revealed as a reflection of inner chaos, fear and disharmony. It’s clear now that many have been trained to choose team loyalty over personal independence. To choose destructiveness instead of creativity, to build echo chambers instead of round tables, to relish conflict over curiosity, and to seek the comfort of group-think over the uncertainty of individuality.
These programs are socially engineered diseases and their chief symptoms are violence in word and deed. This is out in the open now, for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear.
4.) There is no place on planet earth where free-thinking people can enjoy voluntary community and peaceful coexistence without interference by the state and its sympathizers. Sad, but true. The entire world is colonized by statist ideology and there is no where to run or hide from this mindset. Yet, there is sufficient living freedom in this revelation alone, because from anywhere now, we can openly engage in any one of a million simple acts of revolution and independence, and they will be witnessed and absorbed by those most in need.
5.) At long last, some of the darkest, ugliest and most difficult to look at issues are bubbling up into mainstream consciousness. The long and well-documented history of occultism, pedophilia, human-trafficking, human sacrifice, Satan worship and dark ritual among the world’s ruling elite can finally be openly discussed without instant mindless backlash. The proverbial black cat is out of the bag now, and there has never been a better time to participate in the work of waking people up to the high crimes of the elite.
Final Thoughts
In 2016 your personal Awakening counts more than your vote, for the only thing that can turn the tide on endless war, unstoppable surveillance, the strategy of tension, weaponized stress, environmental ruin, and unchecked debt-slavery, is a large enough and spiritied enough class of fearless, righteous individuals. Until free humanity emerges victorious from the mental slavery of the state, we will get the president that we deserve.
AsWithin... SoWithout
AsViewed... SoAppears
@http://www.wakingtimes.com/2016/11/09/5-key-revelations-free-thinkers-enjoy-election-2016/
Replies
Trumpocalypse & 5 Ridiculously Outdated Assumptions Every Statist Makes
by Gary ‘Z’ McGee
“If the matrix gives you Trumpocalypse, then use secret alchemical means to create matrix-shifting Trumpocalyptic lemonade.” ~Rob Brezny
When people asked Carl Jung, who actually met Hitler, how he manipulated the psyche of the German people, Jung replied, “Hitler didn’t manipulate the psyche of the German people, he was the psyche of the German people.”
If, as Mark Twain said, “History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes,” and you’re still wondering how this racist, xenophobic, authoritarian, climate-science-denying, misogynistic, “grab-them-by-the-pussy” candidate somehow made his way into the presidency, then look no further than a mirror. For far too long you have given into the idea that an authority will save you. You were under the delusion that you needed someone to rule over you. That delusion has led to someone who just so happens to want to rule over you. Are you really that surprised?
If you’re not careful your own Stockholm syndrome will have you thinking the state is moral and just and wants to empower you to be free. It doesn’t. It’s the complete opposite, in fact. It wants you to remain blindly subservient to its outdated laws and its chain of obedience which leads right up the immoral-laden ladder to the president who holds the violent monopoly on power.
This isn’t about who won the presidency. This is not about bipartisan f#ckery. This is about the illegitimacy of any presidency, ever. This is about the illegitimacy of authority and the immoral nature of entrenched power. The state is unhealthy, unsustainable, immoral, and violent, and who ever rules over it is thereby illegitimate; whether it’s the orange-headed, spoon-fed baby of a man, FrankenTrump, vomiting hate and racism through narcissistic, ignorant, misogynistic, and bigoted bully tactics, or the status quo queen, Killary Clinton, spewing Military Industrial Complex rhetoric from her plutocratic pulpit backed by greedy corporations from Wall Street calling themselves “persons” backed by even greedier corrupt banksters with their vampire-tentacles in every country’s pie. As Larken Rose said, “The only “us versus them” that matters is not about race, religion, nationality, or income level; it is about aggressors and their victims.”
1.) They Sheepishly Assume They Need Someone to Rule Over Them
“A man is no less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years.” ~Lysander Spooner
It’s not your fault, really. You were born and raised in a culture that conditioned and brainwashed you into believing that you must answer to someone. From your authoritarian upbringing to your indoctrinated school years, you were propagandized and persuaded into thinking people are inherently bad so they must be led by people who are… somehow not bad? Huh?!
Here’s the thing: people are, for the most part, a product of their environment. We’ve all been programmed to be kowtowing statists by an extremely unhealthy, unsustainable, immoral, and violent state. To break the cycle, we must break our addiction to being ruled over by such a state. We must reprogram our programming. Unlearn what we have learned. Recondition the precondition. It’s time to rise up and become an author of self (self-authority).
This is your life; not your parent’s life, not your peer’s life, not your state’s life. As Eliezer Yudkowsky said, “You are personally responsible for becoming more ethical than the society you grew up in.” It begins by admitting that you need neither masters no rulers, neither president nor queen, to rule over you. It begins by empowering yourself and taking responsibility for your own power.
2.) They Falsely Assume Leadership Means Rulership
“I find it extremely liberating to see that I was the cause of all my problems. With this realization, I have also learned I am my own solution. This is the great big gift of personal accountability. When we stop blaming external forces and own up to our responsibility we become the ultimate creators of our destiny.” ~Jenna Galbut
Contrary to popular statist dogma, it is possible to have rules (cosmic law; Golden Rule; non-aggression principle) without the need for rulers and masters. Through bottom-up leadership as opposed to top-down leadership. It begins by not being an ignorant statist who gives his/her power to a tyrannical state. It begins by speaking your own truth to power, and then becoming a leader of your own. It begins by being proactive with the power you’ve wrestled back from the state and then leading by example. It begins by realizing that nobody –no president, no king, not even God– can give you permission to be free. In fact, every single president from Washington to Trump only had power because people believed it. Without that petty belief, they were nothing more than charismatic, fallible men.
You, and you alone, must become a freedom unto yourself. And that may require a little revolt. Especially if you discover that you’re not so well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. As Neils Bohr said, “Every valuable human being must be a radical and a rebel, for what he must aim at is to make things better than they are.”
3.) They Ignorantly Assume Voting and Taxation are Moral and Just
“If taxation without consent is robbery, the United States government has never had, has not now, and is never likely to have, a single honest dollar in its treasury. If taxation without consent is not robbery, then any band of robbers have only to declare themselves a government, and all their robberies are legalized.” ~Lysander Spooner
Taxation without consent is immoral. There is no way to wriggle out of this profound truth. It’s especially immoral in a state where violence is threatened if you do not consent. Most naïve statists assume they must pay taxes in order to live freely. When, really, it’s the exact opposite of that. You’re only free if you’re able to choose to pay taxes or not without the threat of violence or imprisonment hanging over your head. Otherwise it’s just soft slavery. Deep down, we’re all anarchists. We know, inherently and instinctively, that all transactions should be voluntary. We’ve just been programmed to make an exception for the state.
Voting is indirectly violent, as the result directly forces majority rule on the minority who did not consent. Voting is a profound futility, an egregious gamble. As Robert Rorschach said, “If the outcome of a vote is unknown, then voting is tantamount to gambling. If the outcome of a vote is known, then voting is futile.” Most naïve statists have been conditioned to believe that voting is the only way to change things, that one must do it from the inside. Nothing could be further from the truth. Real change only occurs outside the doing-things-over-and-over-again-and-expecting-different-results ballot box. No matter what, you’re only ever going to get a puppet popping out. Trump just happens to be the latest jack-in-the-box, albeit orange, ugly, and dumb.
4.) They Blindly Assume Their Nation State is the Greatest Nation State
“Don’t believe yourself, and don’t believe anyone else. If you don’t believe, what is not true will dissolve in front of your eyes. Only what is true will remain, because what is true doesn’t need anyone to believe it” ~Don Miguel Ruiz
Men never act so contentedly (and conveniently) evil as when they do so from a patriotic conviction. With hyper-nationalized perspectives whipping their brains into xenophobic scrambled eggs, and border-worshipping divisiveness cutting them off from any authentic engagement with the rest of the world, statists are the new dogmatists. They are brainwashed extremists, worshiping law and order, power and violence, and grossly outdated notions of how to be a flourishing human in an ever-changing world. They assume waiving a flag is an honorable thing. When flags are nothing more than propagandized “bits of colored cloth that governments use first to shrink-wrap people’s minds and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead (Arundhati Roy).”
“Flags don’t unite us” as Belfast surmised; “they only reinforce our false sense of entitlement to lands we were born into by sheer chance.” And yet the inured statist myopically moos, ignorantly sneering at other nations from a platform of convictions gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from “authorities” who have had their own convictions spoon-fed to them by parochial forefathers who themselves didn’t have the courage to question the legitimacy of authority. As Mark Twain cryptically stated, “To create man was a fine and original idea; but to add the sheep was a tautology.” Indeed. Avoid the tautology (and the Trumpocalypse). Progressively evolve. Liberate yourself from the outdated ill-reasoning that you ever needed a chain of obedience, let alone a president.
5.) They Tragically Assume Violence is the Answer
“Like all great ideas, anarchism is pretty simple when you get down to it –human beings are at their best when they are living free of authority, deciding things among themselves rather than being ordered about.” ~Clifford Harper
This is by far the worst of the five outdated assumptions. The fact that people still think that peace comes from waging war is mind-boggling to those of us who have freed ourselves from the state and discovered empathy and compassion from our interdependence with each other as free human beings in solidarity with leaving a healthy world for our children.
It’s simple, really. To become a better human all you need is a simplified perspective: Your birth place –Earth, your race –Human, your politics –Freedom, your spirituality –Love. It’s so easy it’s stupid. All it requires is a shedding of your statist skin, and a transformation into a free human being who seeks to free others from the sickness of statism.
The only way all of us win is through horizontal democracy that’s void of centralized government. In other words: no masters, no rulers. In short: democratic anarchy. The Mohawk, Onondaga, Oneida, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tuscarora peoples did it through the Iroquois Confederacy, living in authentic democracy for hundreds of years before the tyranny of the state ruined everything. So it’s not some far-fetched utopian dream. If they did it, so can we. Democratic anarchy, combined with the non-violent non-aggressive principle, has the potential to usher in an age of peace, and a progressively sustainable evolution for our species.
@http://www.wakingtimes.com/2016/11/13/trumpocalypse-5-ridiculously-...
by Christina Sarich
~You can only get so far with orders, and the misuse of power. The same goes with the restriction of human action. The war on drugs has been an abject failure, as has been the American ‘democracy.’ It is the same with a corporatized prison system, and so too, will be the attempted overtaking of the American people by a corrupt cabal. If the 2016 elections have taught us nothing else, it is that we should be very careful who we make into our political martyrs.
Despots and tyrants can rule effectively for a time, but in the end, they always perish – their civilizations and accomplishments with them. The fall of Rome ring any bells? It doesn’t matter if you voted for Hillary Clinton with her ties to the Rothschilds and Rockefellers, or for Trump who has alienated women, minorities, gays, and educated leftists alike with his misogynistic comments, and brash unpredictable actions. This election is a call to find our inner hero. We need her/him, as never before.
This election has caused monumental stress because it has exposed our deep, perhaps subconscious desire to shirk responsibility and off-load it onto a public figure. We want an external hero. What happens when someone truly leads, is a different, and positively inspiring story altogether.
1.) What a Leader Isn’t
“When we quit thinking primarily about ourselves and our own self-preservation, we undergo a truly heroic transformation of consciousness.” ~Joseph Campbell
A true hero, or heroin — the quintessential leader of our time is not a politician. The etymology of the word leader comes from the root word ‘lead’, which means, to guide and inspire. The word hero is derived from both Greek and Latin words meaning to watch over and to protect. It doesn’t mean to lord over. It has nothing to do with warnings and chastisements, nor the use of force, either legislatively, financially, socially, or politically to get people to do what you want them to do.
A true leader doesn’t divide and conquer. They gather masses without trying in a unified cause by being in service… Many leaders are quiet. Others are bold, but they are never self-serving. A tell-tale sign of a true leader, is one who needs no ‘credit’ for what they have given to society, and who simply thrives on the action of their own internally driven inspiration. They don’t check the poles and they don’t need your ‘vote.’ As Lao Tzu has said, “A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.”
Hitler wasn’t a true leader, nor was Stalin. Their rise to fame and power was brief. Add to that list, George Soros, Bill Gates, The Clinton’s, the Trumps, the Rothschilds, the Rockefellers, et al…
R. Buckminster Fuller would say, “You never change things by fighting existing reality. To change something you create a new model which makes the old one obsolete.”
The self-appointed ‘leaders’ of our time fight against the masses. They fight against Mother Nature, and they torment themselves trying to accumulate more power to wield over the world. What could they be reflecting in us is the question we should really be asking.
2.) A True Leader Often Won’t Fit in with ‘Regular’ Society
“Men do not accept their prophets and slay them, but they love their martyrs and worship those whom they have tortured to death.” ~Fyodor Dostoevsky
Between the years 325 and 787 A.D., many people were treated poorly by society at large because of the different conflicts that were going on. One of the main conflicts in this era surrounded religion. If you were not like the Roman Catholics, and decided to believe in freedom of religion, you were “excluded” from the Roman Catholic Church and thereby, society. Those seeking religious freedom were deemed sinners, and lawless hooligans.
This is just one of many incidents in history that we can look back on and observe that the societal conscience always changes. It isn’t absolute. A leader is never swayed by the ‘popular’ or the ‘common.’ They think only about what is best for society in that time and space.
There have been numerous outcasts of various degree who were true leaders. Malcolm X, Bob Marley, Indira Gandhi, Hatshepsut, Aung San Suu Kyi, etc.
3.) A True Leader Can’t Solve All of Your Problems
Number three is a big one. A true leader will never solve all your problems, and they don’t even try. Their sole purpose is to help you find the strength to display heroic acts of your own. They inspire. They exemplify, but they realize that by solving your problems they would actually be taking away your opportunity to learn, and grow. You’ve earned whatever lessons you currently face, but you will also receive the gifts hidden in a challenge, only when you take full responsibility and face your shadowed projections.
The wicked will shout for you to change your ways. The divine will whisper, and wait for you to heed the encouragement of grace.
4.) A True Leader Will Never Ask You to Follow Them
Saints and yogis are notorious for sending aspiring followers away. They’ll ignore them, cajole them, and even ridicule their seemingly fervent desire to learn from a master. That’s because they want you to do your work first. If you are expecting some miraculous cure or salvation from anyone, even a saint, you’ll be waiting a good long while. This doesn’t mean that divine intervention doesn’t happen, or that we shouldn’t look to others for help or advice, but ultimately, a leader shows the way simply by doing his own work. The one thing we can learn from this example is to do ours, too.
A final note — A true leader is ‘God’ in action. As Joseph Campbell has said, “What is a god? A god is a personification of a motivating power of a value system that functions in human life and in the universe.” No credentials or filibusters needed.
AsWithin
SoWithout
@ http://www.wakingtimes.com/2016/11/10/4-secrets-true-leaders/
~One Love Revolution, Ashtar Massive! As I've been suggesting from the inception of this carefully orchestrated political charade, ever since the demagogue, Donald Trump descended from his golden staircase to declare his run for the presidency... Actively Observe. The interpersonal chaos, fear & anxiety generated by this latest installment of Archon Theater, is by design. As people hunker down in the trenches of imposed & illusory 'difference', feeling apprehension about anyone & anything they can label as 'other'... it is important (from my perspective) to real'eyes' that investing one's consciousness in the darkest aspects of these Archontic works is a choice. You don't have to play their game! Most important to remember...
“Their stupidity is amusing.”
“Stopping Trump is essential. Anyone who says otherwise is either foolish or blinded by privilege.”
“People should get hated for voting for Johnson because he is a moron.”
“Are Trump supporters too dumb to know they’re dumb?”
“Hillbots have complete inability to do anything except parrot their hero Shillary's endless lies”
“Anyone who votes for Killary has already been drugged and taken the stupid pill.”
“They will never change.”
“Disgusting, twisted human beings.”
Anyone who reads Facebook or pretty much any political website is sure to see comments like these that dehumanize not only the opposing candidate, but the candidate’s supporters too. This polarization and vitriol, unprecedented in my lifetime, has me more concerned than the prospect of an evil candidate winning. It is as if what is really going on here is a preparation for civil war.
Dehumanization is a predecessor of war. When you see your opponents as subhuman in their morals, conscience, or intelligence, then you will have to defeat them by force. Moral or rational persuasion won’t do it. That is what the above-quoted comments imply.
The dehumanization runs top to bottom, from the headlines in major news outlets to the comments on Facebook and Twitter. Photos of political candidates chosen to provoke contempt, statements taken deliberately out of context... the no-holds-barred tactics of war. Both sides feature the most outrageous comments made by partisans of the other side, seeking to indict all of them through guilt by association. Similar to the atrocity stories used to whip up war hysteria among a pacifist public before World War One, these reports polarize the electorate and sow paranoia and distrust.
If you read only one side, you don’t know that the other side expresses the same outraged grievances as yours does. Most of my readers are probably familiar with articles about gun-toting “poll watchers” sent by Trump operatives to intimidate voters. But unless you read right-wing media, you won’t be aware of its earnest, indignant articles about agents provocateur from the Clinton camp seeking to sow violence at Trump rallies. Each side claims the other exaggerates and misconstrues. Each side is constructing a reality in which the other is hideous.
Reading right-wing and left-wing news sites side by side, one gets the impression that reality has diverged into two. I read both, in order to understand the sickness that has infected my country. Headline news in one camp is totally absent from the other. It isn’t just the interpretation of the news that is different - the two sides don’t even agree on fundamental facts. Here’s how one Facebook commentator, Amelia Bagwell, describes the experience of reading a conservative friend’s news feed: “News agencies I have never heard of with bold headlines of’Breaking News’ announcing HRC's pending arrest. Trump is second to none in morality, decency and honor...loves Jesus...and is a perfect example of a godly family man. If the same stories are reported, they are akin to reading two different languages. We are divided not just ideologically, but at a core level of raw information.”
Such a gulf of perception inflamed by hatred presents a very dangerous situation.
I will not venture an opinion on whether the candidates themselves are hideous. We live in a system that encourages and rewards corrupt and even psychopathic behavior. What I do know, though, is that the vast majority of ordinary people are not the cartoonish caricatures of human beings that political rhetoric has made them out to be. They have an experience of life, a history, a convergence of circumstances that has brought them to their opinions. Just like you.
Statements like those quoted above create a climate for extreme measures. Take them seriously, and you have to conclude that there are an awful lot of people out there who just need to be locked up, medicated, forcibly re-educated, or maybe shot. They are reprehensible, appalling... they are deplorable.
Once the name-calling starts it is self-perpetuating, since anyone who says that you are a deplorable person will seem to you deplorable themselves. How could they be so wrong about you? How could they not see your deep humanity, the good reasons you have for voting the way you do, your sincere attempts to make the world a better place? They seem just hateful.
And so, the body politic tilts further and further into extreme polarization. This will not end well, no matter which side wins.
Dehumanizing narratives are never the truth. The truth can only be sourced from the sincere question, “What is it like to be you?” That is called compassion, and it invites skills of listening, dialog, and communicating without violence or judgement. Now there may be times when such skills fail and there is no choice but to fight. Failure is guaranteed, though, when the surrounding narrative casts the opponent as evil, twisted, disgusting, or deplorable. In that case, war is the likely result.
Can we please stop creating conditions for war? Can we please stop demonizing those who disagree with us? Can we stop the cheap and degrading psychoanalyzing of our opponents? These tactics might seem to succeed in the short term - one side or another will win - but in the end we have only strengthened the climate of hate and the mentality of war.
What can you do about it? I suggest the following: see to it that you imbue everything that you post to social media, every comment, every reply, with a spirit of compassion and respect. Do not let your pain erupt forth as an implicit call to hatred. Do not beat the drums of war.
The Election: Of Hate, Grief, & a New Story
by Charles Eisenstein
Normal is coming unhinged. For the last eight years it has been possible for most people (at least in the relatively privileged classes) to believe that society is sound, that the system, though creaky, basically works, and that the progressive deterioration of everything from ecology to economy is a temporary deviation from the evolutionary imperative of progress.
A Clinton Presidency would have offered four more years of that pretense. A woman President following a black President would have meant to many that things are getting better. It would have obscured the reality of continued neoliberal economics, imperial wars, and resource extraction behind a veil of faux-progressive feminism. Now that we have, in the words of my friend Kelly Brogan, rejected a wolf in sheep’s clothing in favor of a wolf in wolf’s clothing, that illusion will be impossible to maintain.
The wolf, Donald Trump (and I’m not sure he’d be offended by that moniker) will not provide the usual sugarcoating on the poison pills the policy elites have foisted on us for the last forty years. The prison-industrial complex, the endless wars, the surveillance state, the pipelines, the nuclear weapons expansion were easier for liberals to swallow when they came with a dose, albeit grudging, of LGBTQ rights under an African-American President.
I am willing to suspend my judgement of Trump and (very skeptically) hold the possibility that he will disrupt the elite policy consensus of free trade and military confrontation – major themes of his campaign. One might always hope for miracles. However, because he apparently lacks any robust political ideology of his own, it is more likely that he will fill his cabinet with neocon war hawks, Wall Street insiders, and corporate reavers, trampling the wellbeing of the working class whites who elected him while providing them their own sugar-coating of social conservatism.
The social and environmental horrors likely to be committed under President Trump are likely to incite massive civil disobedience and possibly disorder. For Clinton supporters, many of whom were halfhearted to begin with, the Trump administration could mark the end of their loyalty to our present institutions of government. For Trump supporters, the initial celebration will collide with gritty reality when Trump proves as unable or unwilling as his predecessors to challenge the entrenched systems that continually degrade their lives: global finance capital, the deep state, and their programming ideologies. Add to this the likelihood of a major economic crisis, and the public’s frayed loyalty to the existing system could snap.
We are entering a time of great uncertainty. Institutions so enduring as to seem identical to reality itself may lose their legitimacy and dissolve. It may seem that the world is falling apart. For many, that process started on election night, when Trump’s victory provoked incredulity, shock, even vertigo. “I can’t believe this is happening!”
At such moments, it is a normal response to find someone to blame, as if identifying fault could restore the lost normality, and to lash out in anger. Hate and blame are convenient ways of making meaning out of a bewildering situation. Anyone who disputes the blame narrative may receive more hostility than the opponents themselves, as in wartime when pacifists are more reviled than the enemy.
Racism and misogyny are devastatingly real in this country, but to blame bigotry and sexism for voters’ repudiation of the Establishment is to deny the validity of their deep sense of betrayal and alienation. The vast majority of Trump voters were expressing extreme dissatisfaction with the system in the way most readily available to them. (See here, here, here, here) Millions of Obama voters voted for Trump (six states who went for Obama twice switched to Trump). Did they suddenly become racists in the last four years? The blame-the-racists (the fools, the yokels…) narrative generates a clear demarcation between good (us) and evil (them), but it does violence to the truth. It also obscures an important root of racism – anger displaced away from an oppressive system and its elites and onto other victims of that system. Finally, it employs the same dehumanization of the other that is the essence of racism and the precondition for war. Such is the cost of preserving a dying story. That is one reason why paroxysms of violence so often accompany a culture-defining story’s demise.
The dissolution of the old order that is now officially in progress is going to intensify. That presents a tremendous opportunity and danger, because when normal falls apart the ensuing vacuum draws in formerly unthinkable ideas from the margins. Unthinkable ideas range from rounding up the Muslims in concentration camps, to dismantling the military-industrial complex and closing down overseas military bases. They range from nationwide stop-and-frisk to replacing criminal punishment with restorative justice. Anything becomes possible with the collapse of dominant institutions. When the animating force behind these new ideas is hate or fear, all manner of fascistic and totalitarian nightmares can ensue, whether enacted by existing powers or those that arise in revolution against them.
That is why, as we enter a period of intensifying disorder, it is important to introduce a different kind of force to animate the structures that might appear after the old ones crumble. I would call it love if it weren’t for the risk of triggering your New Age b******* detector, and besides, how does one practically bring love into the world in the realm of politics? So let’s start with empathy. Politically, empathy is akin to solidarity, born of the understanding that we are all in this together. In what together? For starters, we are in the uncertainty together.
We are exiting an old story that explained to us the way of the world and our place in it. Some may cling to it all the more desperately as it dissolves, looking perhaps to Donald Trump to restore it, but their savior has not the power to bring back the dead. Neither would Clinton have been able to preserve America as we’d known it for too much longer. We as a society are entering a space between stories, in which everything that had seemed so real, true, right, and permanent comes into doubt. For a while, segments of society have remained insulated from this breakdown (whether by fortune, talent, or privilege), living in a bubble as the containing economic and ecological systems deteriorate. But not for much longer. Not even the elites are immune to this doubt. They grasp at straws of past glories and obsolete strategies; they create perfunctory and unconvincing shibboleths (Putin!), wandering aimlessly from “doctrine” to “doctrine” – and they have no idea what to do. Their haplessness and half-heartedness was plain to see in this election, their disbelief in their own propaganda, their cynicism. When even the custodians of the story no longer believe the story, you know its days are numbered. It is a shell with no engine, running on habit and momentum.
We are entering a space between stories. After various retrograde versions of a new story rise and fall and we enter a period of true unknowing, an authentic next story will emerge. What would it take for it to embody love, compassion, and interbeing? I see its lineaments in those marginal structures and practices that we call holistic, alternative, regenerative, and restorative. All of them source from empathy, the result of the compassionate inquiry: What is it like to be you?
It is time now to bring this question and the empathy it arouses into our political discourse as a new animating force. If you are appalled at the election outcome and feel the call of hate, perhaps try asking yourself, “What is it like to be a Trump supporter?” Ask it not with a patronizing condescension, but for real, looking underneath the caricature of misogynist and bigot to find the real person.
Even if the person you face IS a misogynist or bigot, ask, “Is this who they are, really?” Ask what confluence of circumstances, social, economic, and biographical, may have brought them there. You may still not know how to engage them, but at least you will not be on the warpath automatically. We hate what we fear, and we fear what we do not know. So let’s stop making our opponents invisible behind a caricature of evil.
We’ve got to stop acting out hate. I see no less of it in the liberal media than I do in the right-wing. It is just better disguised, hiding beneath pseudo-psychological epithets and dehumanizing ideological labels. Exercising it, we create more of it. What is beneath the hate? My acupuncturist Sarah Fields wrote to me, “Hate is just a bodyguard for grief. When people lose the hate, they are forced to deal with the pain beneath.”
I think the pain beneath is fundamentally the same pain that animates misogyny and racism – hate in a different form. Please stop thinking you are better than these people! We are all victims of the same world-dominating machine, suffering different mutations of the same wound of separation. Something hurts in there. We live in a civilization that has robbed nearly all of us of deep community, intimate connection with nature, unconditional love, freedom to explore the kingdom of childhood, and so much more. The acute trauma endured by the incarcerated, the abused, the raped, the trafficked, the starved, the murdered, and the dispossessed does not exempt the perpetrators. They feel it in mirror image, adding damage to their souls atop the damage that compels them to violence. Thus it is that suicide is the leading cause of death in the U.S. military. Thus it is that addiction is rampant among the police. Thus it is that depression is epidemic in the upper middle class. We are all in this together.
Something hurts in there. Can you feel it? We are all in this together. One earth, one tribe, one people.
We have entertained teachings like these long enough in our spiritual retreats, meditations, and prayers. Can we take them now into the political world and create an eye of compassion inside the political hate vortex? It is time to do it, time to up our game. It is time to stop feeding hate. Next time you post on line, check your words to see if they smuggle in some form of hate: dehumanization, snark, belittling, derision.., some invitation to us versus them. Notice how it feels kind of good to do that, like getting a fix. And notice what hurts underneath, and how it doesn’t feel good, not really. Maybe it is time to stop.
This does not mean to withdraw from political conversation, but to rewrite its vocabulary. It is to speak hard truths with love. It is to offer acute political analysis that doesn’t carry the implicit message of “Aren’t those people horrible?” Such analysis is rare. Usually, those evangelizing compassion do not write about politics, and sometimes they veer into passivity. We need to confront an unjust, ecocidal system. Each time we do we will receive an invitation to give in to the dark side and hate “the deplorables.” We must not shy away from those confrontations. Instead, we can engage them empowered by the inner mantra that my friend Pancho Ramos-Stierle uses in confrontations with his jailers: “Brother, your soul is too beautiful to be doing this work.” If we can stare hate in the face and never waver from that knowledge, we will access inexhaustible tools of creative engagement, and hold a compelling invitation to the haters to fulfill their beauty.
@ http://charleseisenstein.net/hategriefandanewstory/
He is so very on the point about this. There are over 140 of these right wing news sites that blast out fake hate based ´´news.´´These have been traced to a small town in Macedonia. Not sure who is behind this, but whoever it is, their intentions are not good. (VT thinks it is CIA/Mossad). I have not seen much of what is coming from the left, but, for sure there is something for these folks in the street are both angry and frightened. Another tactic for dehumanizing the protesters is to say that they are all being paid to protest by Soros. This denies that they are real people with real concerns and at the same time ties them together with the bogeyman Soros. Even before the election there were memes around saying ´´do you think there will be civil war after the election.´´I almost felt they wee planting the seeds somehow. I´ve been spending a lot of time explaining the other side´´s point of view and trying to calm down some of the fear, hate and confusion. Really the folks on both sides of this are just people like you and I who want a normal life for them and their families.I do hope things settle down before it gets worse.