I love this, there are many revelations to pursue here.
I never considered the relationship between the endless con of "becoming" and the increasingly dark story we're telling ourselves, prompted by the many fear-mongering tactics of the gutted ones holding so-called power, which is only violence. Dystopia becomes the shadow version of Heaven.
A merger with "Heaven's" expanded ego and a merger with a dystopic "family business" are different forms of a similar resistance to revelation.
But like Kennedy said, we can't help fearing where the fear itself will take us. In some ways, the democrats are peddling a form of optimistic delusion and the trumpers are peddling a form of dystopian salvation -- merging with the family business, even if only as pawns. I see what is happening in Haiti, where gangs have decimated every shred of decency, and I don't want to go there.
The question of whether we're living through an abrupt change in the style of society is a good one to raise. As you say, perhaps not. But there are tipping points into madness for some people that the rest of us might not experience as such (at first). If too many of the illusions of a heavenly America are torn to shreds too quickly, then a tipping point is possible, and then the empire's exported terrors come rebounding home to an unnecessary degree, adding chaos to chaos. I would like this empire to fall as gently as possible so as not to add havoc to havoc. Sometimes a loss of a single lynchpin -- such as the Supreme Court's presidential immunity decision -- reifies the dystopian fairy tale, and then the horrors of Haiti spread here too.
Sometimes I wonder if we "deserve" to face the exported terrors (the shadow we created)? But I think that's part of the morality of a dystopian tale. Maybe it's necessary to hold the system of corruption aloft a little longer, not because we believe in it or are merely seeking the higher end of a sinking ship, but because it matters how this empire falls. And a morality tale that includes barbarians sacking Rome from within and without can't help anyone anywhere. If this edifice of thought lands abruptly, then I think its diseased body upon explosion will pollute everything at once. And then the self-fulfilling prophecy of dystopian stories may create an abrupt change in style of society. Already I see ominously black versions of the US flag flying on Maga porches along the dirt roads. Dirty forms of the same old flag.
But there's something new and tremendous in what you say to this point. Non-participation. A revelatory state of mind that is no longer taken in by any of the bullshit, which sees (as clearly laid out here) the connection between the corruption of a smiley faced version of empire and the putrid and abruptly altered face of a dystopian empire. Although I don't want the second, I do recognize the revelation in this essay, that they are two sides of the same coin. I'm leaving it suspended. Election day nears, we'll soon find out whether it matters or not.
But the main thrust of what you're saying is that we have to face the fact that we're not heroes in waiting, right? Because that keeps us in the orbit of Self as Power, just as the election keeps us in the orbit of governmental power. In the same way "power" isolates the individual as an external force operating on Others, heroes are more or less atomized power units, units of violence, as we have imagined them. Power and heroism constantly tempt the individual to "become" an automated force of history propelled by currents of power.
The essay also leaves this question suspended -- what does it mean to act rightly in the absence of a somewhat dystopian/heavenly story of the hero's journey?
I think your essay landed on the single most important question -- what does it mean to cease participating at the root level? Not as an escape from the world. To step out of the world our stories are creating all at once, without the lines of old narratives chaining us to repetitive scripts?
I think non-participation refers to a very specific thing -- not being fooled (being constantly in a state of revelation). What we do or don't do matters less than our refusal to get lost in the lies of either form of fascism, whether the smiley form or the dystopian form.
I was threatened recently by an old friend who has (like Ionesco wrote) turned into a rhinoceros of fascism, merely because I told him he was kidding himself and that he was telling himself a bedtime story, believing himself to be the modern cavalry coming to save us all by burning down the whole village, me included. He couldn't take the revelation. He became somebody I never expected.
My wife told me that a friend of a friend of hers was recently held at knife-point with her whole family in a rented house in the Dominican Republic. They cut her neck a little, and she was bleeding. If the drama had escalated it was obvious she'd be killed. But she suddenly felt an upwelling of unanticipated empathy for the man holding her by knifepoint. She did not avert her gaze from him -- it was a revelatory gaze -- and she lost her fear and stared at him with unanticipated, unimaginable kindness, with sorrow and pity. And quickly, almost immediately, the whole drama quieted, and the men left them all alive.
I want to thank you for your engagement with the question. I woke up this morning to an insight into the "bargain" you propose, That by "holding the system of corruption aloft a little longer" we can somehow avert a "worse" outcome.
We need to consider where bargaining comes in. It's always an attempt to justify why we cannot face a fact as it is. The purpose of such a bargain is a form of theater. At bottom, it is an appeal to power.
We also need to see clearly how abusers work. How they work in tandem, inside or outside of family. One plays the role of bogeyman. The other, the "reasonable one." Like a pair of border collies they keep the herd together and moving towards the abattoir. Besides channeling all available reaction so that it suits their wishes they work to keep us trapped in the double-bind. Look at the way this is working in Northern Gaza right now. There are meanies with guns and bombs. There are the "reasonable ones" advising people to "evacuate." It's pretty clear they are really the same.
In this video he illuminates the motivations of the abusers. Their deepest wish is domination and to do that they must humiliate. It's not enough to kill. They must destroy "their enemies." And to do so they employ the double-bind. We are forced to be trapped in the double-binds they create. It's great if we are confused, but the ultimate "victory" is for us to despair that even after seeing how they have us trapped we still cannot break free.
"Elections" in this country and all its follower and lackey nations have not, if they ever did, exist as a means of having the demos choose who will lead us. This is a truism we so easily skip over as we have internalized the excuses and the fear, the despair of recognizing the consequences of accepting it. The purpose of these Autumnal Rights is to have us play out our fears and "hopes" and to fall for the abuser's tactics, yet again, "Charlie Brown…."
The reason this works is that we hold onto a belief in power. We take the abuser's claims on face value at some level. We believe that an isolated "action" will "create an intended outcome," like averting a "worse outcome."
We are being asked to "evacuate." Those "advising our better natures" are the abusive partners of the scary mean people. They've shown us this every election for my entire life. For a while when I was a teen, they did more than that, assassinating anyone who attempted to interfere with the family business. Again, in true abuser fashion, barely hiding their guilt and then twisting our beliefs, "…who killed the Kennedys? It was you and me!" No it wasn't Mick! It was the abusers.
Fear pushes us into reaction. Complicity traps us in guilt. Every time we accept the rationale of our abusers, we add to our complicity. We either lose what empathy and capacity for love we have left or we take on the blame for what we've been pushed into complying with. Either way we are well on our way to joining the family business.
What does it mean to stop?
I intended to leave this open and not specify what it might entail. We each need to come up with our own response. The one thing that it does require of us is to stop accepting the "reasons" of our abusers. Stop accepting that resorting to an expectation that power will give us what we want. Or that any momentary expectation of a "want," has any foundation in anything outside of this fantasy of Will and Power.
What "I want" has no connection with what might better serve our Predicament. Following some rationale that doing X will get me what I want is a compounded error.
We never can know if or when we have catalyzed a change in someone. Your Fascist Rhino has never experienced anything outside of abuse. Violent repression and violent reaction. In the moment of being confronted with something else, it's no wonder that all he could do was react harder. But, having been confronted by something else will have an effect.
Your story about the violent attacker is one we never see or hear in the narratives subsidized by the abusers. They are all united that the only way to "make us safe" is to build a most violent and total prison for ourselves.
The way your story ended is the way most confrontations end outside of the pressure cooker of abuse. In "the wild," no one wants to escalate. It's too dangerous. And, if we can see that we have been truly acknowledged, not taken as an object of domination, the strongest creature will move on.
This is very good and will take time to digest. My first thought, however, is that one meaning of non-participation is to keep doing what the abusers with knives at our throats (whether smiling or mean) are telling us to do. But do it without participating in their lies, without participating in fear. In other words, we're not voting because we believe in anyone. We do it knowing they're lying, knowing that both sides are part of the same trap. But we do it knowing that this choice at knife-point will preserve us from immediate ruin. Otherwise, there is much here and I'll let it sit. Thanks.
I love this, there are many revelations to pursue here.
I never considered the relationship between the endless con of "becoming" and the increasingly dark story we're telling ourselves, prompted by the many fear-mongering tactics of the gutted ones holding so-called power, which is only violence. Dystopia becomes the shadow version of Heaven.
A merger with "Heaven's" expanded ego and a merger with a dystopic "family business" are different forms of a similar resistance to revelation.
But like Kennedy said, we can't help fearing where the fear itself will take us. In some ways, the democrats are peddling a form of optimistic delusion and the trumpers are peddling a form of dystopian salvation -- merging with the family business, even if only as pawns. I see what is happening in Haiti, where gangs have decimated every shred of decency, and I don't want to go there.
The question of whether we're living through an abrupt change in the style of society is a good one to raise. As you say, perhaps not. But there are tipping points into madness for some people that the rest of us might not experience as such (at first). If too many of the illusions of a heavenly America are torn to shreds too quickly, then a tipping point is possible, and then the empire's exported terrors come rebounding home to an unnecessary degree, adding chaos to chaos. I would like this empire to fall as gently as possible so as not to add havoc to havoc. Sometimes a loss of a single lynchpin -- such as the Supreme Court's presidential immunity decision -- reifies the dystopian fairy tale, and then the horrors of Haiti spread here too.
Sometimes I wonder if we "deserve" to face the exported terrors (the shadow we created)? But I think that's part of the morality of a dystopian tale. Maybe it's necessary to hold the system of corruption aloft a little longer, not because we believe in it or are merely seeking the higher end of a sinking ship, but because it matters how this empire falls. And a morality tale that includes barbarians sacking Rome from within and without can't help anyone anywhere. If this edifice of thought lands abruptly, then I think its diseased body upon explosion will pollute everything at once. And then the self-fulfilling prophecy of dystopian stories may create an abrupt change in style of society. Already I see ominously black versions of the US flag flying on Maga porches along the dirt roads. Dirty forms of the same old flag.
But there's something new and tremendous in what you say to this point. Non-participation. A revelatory state of mind that is no longer taken in by any of the bullshit, which sees (as clearly laid out here) the connection between the corruption of a smiley faced version of empire and the putrid and abruptly altered face of a dystopian empire. Although I don't want the second, I do recognize the revelation in this essay, that they are two sides of the same coin. I'm leaving it suspended. Election day nears, we'll soon find out whether it matters or not.
But the main thrust of what you're saying is that we have to face the fact that we're not heroes in waiting, right? Because that keeps us in the orbit of Self as Power, just as the election keeps us in the orbit of governmental power. In the same way "power" isolates the individual as an external force operating on Others, heroes are more or less atomized power units, units of violence, as we have imagined them. Power and heroism constantly tempt the individual to "become" an automated force of history propelled by currents of power.
The essay also leaves this question suspended -- what does it mean to act rightly in the absence of a somewhat dystopian/heavenly story of the hero's journey?
I think your essay landed on the single most important question -- what does it mean to cease participating at the root level? Not as an escape from the world. To step out of the world our stories are creating all at once, without the lines of old narratives chaining us to repetitive scripts?
I think non-participation refers to a very specific thing -- not being fooled (being constantly in a state of revelation). What we do or don't do matters less than our refusal to get lost in the lies of either form of fascism, whether the smiley form or the dystopian form.
I was threatened recently by an old friend who has (like Ionesco wrote) turned into a rhinoceros of fascism, merely because I told him he was kidding himself and that he was telling himself a bedtime story, believing himself to be the modern cavalry coming to save us all by burning down the whole village, me included. He couldn't take the revelation. He became somebody I never expected.
My wife told me that a friend of a friend of hers was recently held at knife-point with her whole family in a rented house in the Dominican Republic. They cut her neck a little, and she was bleeding. If the drama had escalated it was obvious she'd be killed. But she suddenly felt an upwelling of unanticipated empathy for the man holding her by knifepoint. She did not avert her gaze from him -- it was a revelatory gaze -- and she lost her fear and stared at him with unanticipated, unimaginable kindness, with sorrow and pity. And quickly, almost immediately, the whole drama quieted, and the men left them all alive.
Jeff,
I want to thank you for your engagement with the question. I woke up this morning to an insight into the "bargain" you propose, That by "holding the system of corruption aloft a little longer" we can somehow avert a "worse" outcome.
We need to consider where bargaining comes in. It's always an attempt to justify why we cannot face a fact as it is. The purpose of such a bargain is a form of theater. At bottom, it is an appeal to power.
We also need to see clearly how abusers work. How they work in tandem, inside or outside of family. One plays the role of bogeyman. The other, the "reasonable one." Like a pair of border collies they keep the herd together and moving towards the abattoir. Besides channeling all available reaction so that it suits their wishes they work to keep us trapped in the double-bind. Look at the way this is working in Northern Gaza right now. There are meanies with guns and bombs. There are the "reasonable ones" advising people to "evacuate." It's pretty clear they are really the same.
I recently found Alon Mizrahi. https://alonmizrahi.substack.com/p/what-israel-is-really-after
In this video he illuminates the motivations of the abusers. Their deepest wish is domination and to do that they must humiliate. It's not enough to kill. They must destroy "their enemies." And to do so they employ the double-bind. We are forced to be trapped in the double-binds they create. It's great if we are confused, but the ultimate "victory" is for us to despair that even after seeing how they have us trapped we still cannot break free.
"Elections" in this country and all its follower and lackey nations have not, if they ever did, exist as a means of having the demos choose who will lead us. This is a truism we so easily skip over as we have internalized the excuses and the fear, the despair of recognizing the consequences of accepting it. The purpose of these Autumnal Rights is to have us play out our fears and "hopes" and to fall for the abuser's tactics, yet again, "Charlie Brown…."
The reason this works is that we hold onto a belief in power. We take the abuser's claims on face value at some level. We believe that an isolated "action" will "create an intended outcome," like averting a "worse outcome."
We are being asked to "evacuate." Those "advising our better natures" are the abusive partners of the scary mean people. They've shown us this every election for my entire life. For a while when I was a teen, they did more than that, assassinating anyone who attempted to interfere with the family business. Again, in true abuser fashion, barely hiding their guilt and then twisting our beliefs, "…who killed the Kennedys? It was you and me!" No it wasn't Mick! It was the abusers.
Fear pushes us into reaction. Complicity traps us in guilt. Every time we accept the rationale of our abusers, we add to our complicity. We either lose what empathy and capacity for love we have left or we take on the blame for what we've been pushed into complying with. Either way we are well on our way to joining the family business.
What does it mean to stop?
I intended to leave this open and not specify what it might entail. We each need to come up with our own response. The one thing that it does require of us is to stop accepting the "reasons" of our abusers. Stop accepting that resorting to an expectation that power will give us what we want. Or that any momentary expectation of a "want," has any foundation in anything outside of this fantasy of Will and Power.
What "I want" has no connection with what might better serve our Predicament. Following some rationale that doing X will get me what I want is a compounded error.
We never can know if or when we have catalyzed a change in someone. Your Fascist Rhino has never experienced anything outside of abuse. Violent repression and violent reaction. In the moment of being confronted with something else, it's no wonder that all he could do was react harder. But, having been confronted by something else will have an effect.
Your story about the violent attacker is one we never see or hear in the narratives subsidized by the abusers. They are all united that the only way to "make us safe" is to build a most violent and total prison for ourselves.
The way your story ended is the way most confrontations end outside of the pressure cooker of abuse. In "the wild," no one wants to escalate. It's too dangerous. And, if we can see that we have been truly acknowledged, not taken as an object of domination, the strongest creature will move on.
What she did was to stop.
This is very good and will take time to digest. My first thought, however, is that one meaning of non-participation is to keep doing what the abusers with knives at our throats (whether smiling or mean) are telling us to do. But do it without participating in their lies, without participating in fear. In other words, we're not voting because we believe in anyone. We do it knowing they're lying, knowing that both sides are part of the same trap. But we do it knowing that this choice at knife-point will preserve us from immediate ruin. Otherwise, there is much here and I'll let it sit. Thanks.