Beyond Greed

"A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true."                 Demosthenes hfx_ben: Maybe I owe folk a bit of an explanation  posted July 18, 2006 at 10:48 a.m. MDT X-posted to Togo's LiveJournal In a previous post I had written: "Guess what: once you're addicted to dishonesty you're just another junkie ... just another whore. That's the best you think you deserve? Sure ... it's like that ... the fuckers have messed with your brains. My experiences didn't make me a loser. I may not have succeeded in my work but I'm still hard at it. What are you doing? Are you just another loser? So okay, let's say you deserve the shitty situation you're in ... what about the rest of the people that are in the situation right along with you? You just gonna shrug 'em off? Bitch. Don't you realize that you're going to go insane? Really and truly ... you don't have the balls to handle the guilt. You ain't no Wolfowitz or Perls or Cheney. One of my readers replied with a question: "What if you can admit that to yourself? Then what do you do?" In the moment I came up with was this partial reply : "Every successful project I've ever worked on succeeded because everybody involved did what they could, whatever they could, in whatever way they could. A lotta times over the past ?what? 20+ years I've come up with lists of tips or actions or entry points or something like that ... one time, early 80s (I was giving talks about the "slippery slope" of small smart weapons like the cruise missile) someone asked me something like that and I answered, "The biggest thing you can do for the movement is to find an answer that fits you and your own situation." Now, so much further down the road, so many times waking up and realizing *shit!* no milk for coffee and 10 days of macaroni to go, I've boiled it down to something simpler: not nothing. See, the mind-phuck / blue pill reality of it is that it all hinges on self-determination, self-authorship ... what I think is the core of real citizenship. (When I get into this theme I point to a little page I made: CityZen ... I put some time in to make that page, and I put some time in creating support material, but fact is that almost 0.0% of the people who visited the page bothered to click the email button. The real gold mine, to my way of thinking? Like minded folk ... course there's always the possibility of group-think, but still. Anyhow, the real pathology comes when we stiffle the intuition, the urge to do this or that or the other ... nipped in the bud. That "stiffling" poisons us ... we end up sabotaging anybody who shows initiative. ("Who the hell do they think they are!") Sorry I can't advise "Insert credit card and press the keypad to indicate your selection" ... it isn't like that. Follow your bliss!" I felt that was incomplete (of course!) so I tried to flesh things out a bit. hfx_ben: Maybe I owe folk a bit of an explanation Stalin and his supporteres were on the left ... but monstrously inhuman. Hitler and his supporters were on the right ... but, again, monstrously inhuman. So guess what: those simple categories don't turn the trick. So what, then? Being hyper-zealous? (That produces dangerous clones.) keeping our head down and doing our daily thing? (That produces slave-like clones.) Here's my bottom line when it comes to things political/sociological: there are basically two modes of being ... in one we push our worldview onto everyone and everything around us; people become objects, means to an end (convince, coerce, conquer. or, more passive-agressive, manipulate and con and ignore) ... in the other we're responsive, as though not needing to deal from the bottom of the deck, as though not thinking we can author a fiction that will work better than actuality, as though there's something to "The truth shall set you free." See clearly ... know what is ... act with confidence. The most radical aspect of revolutionary activity is open responsiveness, an authentic engagement with whatever's at hand. Blue pill gets us to justify and rationalize anything, whether that's eating shit from the boss ("It's just the game people play to weed out those who shouldn't rise") or being heartless to the people around us ("S/he has to start taking responsibility for his/her own shit.") The successfully corrupt share a set of basic lies. Look at the way the Vice President of the United States has skewed things around so that his former corporation gets sweetheart deals ... or the way a massive institution failed to respond to the victims of Hurricane Katrina. And what if most Muslims in developing countries are ignorant peasants (which really isn't true)? They don't hate Americans cuz Americans listen to iPods; they hate Americans because Americans are cheats and liars and thieves. That isn't true? Try living the life of a straight arrow ... first thing you'll realize is how there just isn't community anymore; the best a person is likely to encounter is more like a band of thieves, or a frat ... foundationally corrupt ... corrupt at every turn. What if only 1 in 1000 are hero like you? You think that 1 will be obvious to you in 5 minutes? Decades of blue pill activity have left folk brain-damaged. Fact is, most folk actually don't believe in anything ... the situation is ripe for fascism (as if right-wing fundamentalists haven't already screwed the nation). Anybody who devalues themselves or another human being is anti-democratic. The whole point is that the development of the individual is the key. 4 comments   |   4 Comments: I really like what you're saying about individual development being the point of democracy. I'm not sure yet if I agree (have not fully thought it through) with the statement, but I really like the direction you're headed in. By  reversibleraincoat, at Tue Jul 18, 11:07:00 a.m. MDT   Very nice of you to let me know I struck a chord; with the increasing fragmentation in cyberspace we're in danger of losing touch with one another. Thanks kindly for your comment, but there's one thing I'm left wondering about:"I'm not sure yet if I agree with the statement ..."*blink* The statement? I made a whole lotta statements, so I'm curious which one stuck in your craw. cheers By  Bernard (ben) Tremblay, at Tue Jul 18, 12:44:00 p.m. MDT   Thanks for the tip Ben! I fixed the error of my ways. :) If was left over from some experimentation. Sorry about that. By  Unknown, at Fri Jul 21, 10:34:00 a.m. MDT   it might take a min to refresh though... By  Unknown, at Fri Jul 21, 10:36:00 a.m. MDT

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