Doing daily commentary on world power dynamics feels a lot like staring up at the sky watching clouds. Sometimes you see a three-legged pony up there, sometimes a gargoyle, sometimes a laughing baby, but really you're only ever watching tiny water droplets being moved around by atmospheric winds. They can take on any number of different shapes, but no matter how long you lay there staring up at them you're really only ever seeing one dynamic play out with different appearances from moment to moment.
Brilliant, and so true. Unfortunately we're not seeing puffy clouds but millions of people starved by siege warfare or blown to bits by bombs. Good that Caitlin encourages us to go the whole 500 rounds.
As I write in 'World 5.0 - We Move From Here', we have been abused and 'propagandized' for generations. Bernays in the 1930s spoke of 'Manufacturing Consent', giving Noam Chomsky and excellent title for one of his tomes. With the corporatization of media from the 1980s on, Groundhog Day became cemented into our culture.
The way out of our personal struggles is the release of fear. It is done through forgiveness and gratitude. The way out of our shared cultural hell is to ban the legal status of corporations. They've been destroy lives, cultures and the Earth itself for 1,000 years. We need a new o/s, which I call World 5.0.
Thank you, really good and important analogy... and the tenacity of the One Opponent is a reflection of the ego’s tenacity. In fact you can’t have one without the other.
Round 500 with the ruling hierarchies of our species happens because its round 500 with the ego. However, making an opponent out of the root cause, the egoIc conditioning, leads to defeat inside and outside. Resistance is fuel for the ego’s survival.
We must have no enemies even as we take a stand against the cruelty and oppression of those who dominate. We can do so with equanimity whenever possible. (Sometimes rage is useful but if you’re politely complying with a request from a cashier or driver or teacher the same day you vent online then you have more control over your responses than you admit to yourself or others.)
Let’s remember that those who dominate our species are also dominated by thIs egoic lack of awareness just as we are. They are mentally ill and lost like virtually all of us.
When we are rooted in Being, in simply what is Now, we can have compassion for all, even those that resist and dominate. But we have so much self love/ dignity/integrity that we do not tolerate the cruelty and domination that comes from being unconscious (unaware).... we take a stand firmly holding our ground...even when we pivot and dance and inspire and fly.
The corporate-run world hides behind flags and -ism's, but any system that creates great inequality is sustained by bribery, conformity and disinformation because it is so unnatural, undemocratic and anti-life. It detests the individual spirit.
"What do we mean by “authoritarian personality”? We usually see a clear difference between the individual who wants to rule, control, or restrain others and the individual who tends to submit, obey, or to be humiliated. To use a somewhat friendlier term, we might talk of the leader and his followers. As natural as the difference between the ruling and the ruled might — in many ways — be, we also have to admit that these two types, or as we can also say, these two forms of authoritarian personality are actually tightly bound together.
What they have in common, what defines the essence of the authoritarian personality is an inability: the inability to rely on one’s self, to be independent, to put it in other words: to endure freedom.
The opposite of the authoritarian character is the mature person: a person who does not need to cling to others because he actively embraces and grasps the world, the people, and the things around him. What does that mean? Children still need to cling. In their mother’s womb they are — in a physical sense — one with their mother. After birth, for several months and in many ways even for years, they remain — in a psychological sense — still a part of their mother. Children could not exist without the mother’s help. However, they grow and develop. They learn to walk, to talk, and find their way around the world which becomes their world. Children possess two skills, inherent to the individual, which they can develop: love and reason.
Love is the bond and the feeling of being one with the world while keeping one’s own independence and integrity. The loving individual is connected with the world. He is not frightened since the world is his home. He can lose himself because he is certain of himself.
Love means recognizing the world as an emotional experience. However, there is also another way of recognizing, understanding with the mind. We call this kind of understanding reason. It is different from Intelligence. Intelligence is using the mind to reach certain practical goals. A chimpanzee demonstrates intelligence when he sees a banana in front of his cage but cannot reach it with either one of the two sticks in his cage, then he joins both sticks and gets the banana. This is the intelligence of the animal, which is the same manipulating intelligence that we usually call understanding when talking of people. Reason is something else. Reason is the activity of the mind which attempts to get through the surface to reach the core of things, to grasp what really lies behind these things, what the forces and drives are that — themselves invisible — operate and determine the manifestations.
I have given this description of the mature, i.e. the loving and reasoning individual to better define the essence of the authoritarian personality. The authoritarian character has not reached maturity; he can neither love nor make use of reason. As a result, he is extremely alone which means that he is gripped by a deeply rooted fear. He needs to feel a bond, which requires neither love nor reason — and he finds it in the symbiotic relationship, in feeling-one with others; not by reserving his own identity, but rather by fusing, by destroying his own identity. The authoritarian character needs another person to fuse with because he cannot endure his own aloneness and fear." ~ Erich Fromm
Brilliant, and so true. Unfortunately we're not seeing puffy clouds but millions of people starved by siege warfare or blown to bits by bombs. Good that Caitlin encourages us to go the whole 500 rounds.
As I write in 'World 5.0 - We Move From Here', we have been abused and 'propagandized' for generations. Bernays in the 1930s spoke of 'Manufacturing Consent', giving Noam Chomsky and excellent title for one of his tomes. With the corporatization of media from the 1980s on, Groundhog Day became cemented into our culture.
The way out of our personal struggles is the release of fear. It is done through forgiveness and gratitude. The way out of our shared cultural hell is to ban the legal status of corporations. They've been destroy lives, cultures and the Earth itself for 1,000 years. We need a new o/s, which I call World 5.0.
Thank you, really good and important analogy... and the tenacity of the One Opponent is a reflection of the ego’s tenacity. In fact you can’t have one without the other.
Round 500 with the ruling hierarchies of our species happens because its round 500 with the ego. However, making an opponent out of the root cause, the egoIc conditioning, leads to defeat inside and outside. Resistance is fuel for the ego’s survival.
We must have no enemies even as we take a stand against the cruelty and oppression of those who dominate. We can do so with equanimity whenever possible. (Sometimes rage is useful but if you’re politely complying with a request from a cashier or driver or teacher the same day you vent online then you have more control over your responses than you admit to yourself or others.)
Let’s remember that those who dominate our species are also dominated by thIs egoic lack of awareness just as we are. They are mentally ill and lost like virtually all of us.
When we are rooted in Being, in simply what is Now, we can have compassion for all, even those that resist and dominate. But we have so much self love/ dignity/integrity that we do not tolerate the cruelty and domination that comes from being unconscious (unaware).... we take a stand firmly holding our ground...even when we pivot and dance and inspire and fly.
Again, what an pithy metaphor; but I'm afraid those most in need of this are huddled in front of Rachel Maddow marveling at the animal shapes.
The corporate-run world hides behind flags and -ism's, but any system that creates great inequality is sustained by bribery, conformity and disinformation because it is so unnatural, undemocratic and anti-life. It detests the individual spirit.
The film Rollerball best analyzes this unevolved mindset that requires loyal subservience to its toxic communitarianism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnMHvISlrHM
"What do we mean by “authoritarian personality”? We usually see a clear difference between the individual who wants to rule, control, or restrain others and the individual who tends to submit, obey, or to be humiliated. To use a somewhat friendlier term, we might talk of the leader and his followers. As natural as the difference between the ruling and the ruled might — in many ways — be, we also have to admit that these two types, or as we can also say, these two forms of authoritarian personality are actually tightly bound together.
What they have in common, what defines the essence of the authoritarian personality is an inability: the inability to rely on one’s self, to be independent, to put it in other words: to endure freedom.
The opposite of the authoritarian character is the mature person: a person who does not need to cling to others because he actively embraces and grasps the world, the people, and the things around him. What does that mean? Children still need to cling. In their mother’s womb they are — in a physical sense — one with their mother. After birth, for several months and in many ways even for years, they remain — in a psychological sense — still a part of their mother. Children could not exist without the mother’s help. However, they grow and develop. They learn to walk, to talk, and find their way around the world which becomes their world. Children possess two skills, inherent to the individual, which they can develop: love and reason.
Love is the bond and the feeling of being one with the world while keeping one’s own independence and integrity. The loving individual is connected with the world. He is not frightened since the world is his home. He can lose himself because he is certain of himself.
Love means recognizing the world as an emotional experience. However, there is also another way of recognizing, understanding with the mind. We call this kind of understanding reason. It is different from Intelligence. Intelligence is using the mind to reach certain practical goals. A chimpanzee demonstrates intelligence when he sees a banana in front of his cage but cannot reach it with either one of the two sticks in his cage, then he joins both sticks and gets the banana. This is the intelligence of the animal, which is the same manipulating intelligence that we usually call understanding when talking of people. Reason is something else. Reason is the activity of the mind which attempts to get through the surface to reach the core of things, to grasp what really lies behind these things, what the forces and drives are that — themselves invisible — operate and determine the manifestations.
I have given this description of the mature, i.e. the loving and reasoning individual to better define the essence of the authoritarian personality. The authoritarian character has not reached maturity; he can neither love nor make use of reason. As a result, he is extremely alone which means that he is gripped by a deeply rooted fear. He needs to feel a bond, which requires neither love nor reason — and he finds it in the symbiotic relationship, in feeling-one with others; not by reserving his own identity, but rather by fusing, by destroying his own identity. The authoritarian character needs another person to fuse with because he cannot endure his own aloneness and fear." ~ Erich Fromm
i'm trying to go for an "edge of tomorrow" analogy.. i'm learning and getting further ♥️