Choice
Where do Uncle Melvin’s differentiation and empathy lead Sapiens in the end? You want the bottom line. I want strength. Differentiation is clarity of choice:
- Between strength expressed in the ideal of Loving Friendship or “soulmate” in service to the shared meaning and purpose of Creation vs. the “ideal” of obedience to the will of the absolute owner, possessor, and ruler of its domain.
- The former moved by empathy and intuition to connect with soulmates in emotional support, mutual trust, respect, and kindness, the latter driven by animal instinct, distrust, disrespect, and insensitivity, to make itself invulnerable, inaccessible and unrelatable.
- The former focused on open-hearted usefulness to a Self and a cause larger than itself, sharing happiness, the latter obsessed with cause defined exclusively by its own selfish interests, directing all benefits including happiness to itself.
Two diametrically opposed visions of strength differentiated by:
- One being the metaphysics of Love, Logic, and spontaneous Energy in the Now. Growing with the Force of Life-Creation and evolution originating from Mind-Relationship and shared by Self-Awareness.
- The other being the physics of religion in the “present” of illusory time. Stuck in the mud of an illusory unchanging status quo, ruled by an atheist “God.” Itself.
- The former being the gift of Loving Friendship with Guidance from open-hearted vulnerability, idealized in the hallucination of life on Earth by soulmates among equals in support of individual character and integrity.
- The latter being the “gift” of belonging to tribal invincibility in exchange for obedience. For “relationship” to tribal arrogance in exchange for individual sovereignty, personal character, and integrity.
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Ideas
Dr. Strangelove loving it
Why does this sound familiar? Because I’ve just described the stratagem used by the herd mentality of human-animals to have their way with our country and the world. To have their way in our everyday relationships, taking all the mystery out of what character and integrity must do in response. To give them what for!
Yes, but doing it in a way that, hopefully, is smarter than before. More nuanced than leaving behind a battlefield that only George C. Scott could admire. In his portrayal of George Patton, the WWII Third Army general, who responded to a sweeping view of battlefield carnage with “I love it!”
The Autobahn to nowhere
The arch-reversalist fuhrer of National Socialist Germany built its Autobahn to expedite military mobility, but then expedited military, Autobahn, his country, and much of the rest of the world into rubble. Victims of mistaken perceptions and illogical beliefs: the wrong version of strength.
- The per-version of “power” and the per-version of “relations” in hierarchy
- the per-version of Relationships’ empowerment recast in the hallucination as an abomination: “power relations.” Meaning not relatability but its reverse-opposite unrelatability.
Der Fuhrer’s imitator in the White House now programmed by the same mad idea of separation to finish what his idol started. By reducing all the world to rubble. By a crescendo of provocations, building up from mock “wars” over trade, until culminating in real wars over the mad idea of supremacy. All of it preceded by proclamations of good intentions to do what separation can never do: Create. To be Good and do Good. All of it in truth a Machiavellian immorality play whose arch-enemy is anything “good.” Anything Conscience. Anything ethical. Anything Creative. And so reverse-reflections must therefore be destructive.
The nature of Creativity
What makes ideas creative?
- The nature of their source, Mind-Parents the Creator, by virtue of
- Who it is – Relationship between Love-Spontaneity and Logic-Order
- What Relationship does – express the beauty, essence, character, and strength of Loving Friendship.
- The nature of their source, Mind-Child Free Choice
- motivated by its Parents’ Love and Logic and empowered by the Energy of their Spontaneity in the Now:
- to serve the cause of Creation when it freely chooses to relate to its living Guidance in Loving Friendship. To be and act as Creation’s guarantor of Character loyal to its Vision of Resolution. The ideal of Wholeness. Served by the Reality and Truth of Character.
- Creation that couldn’t exist in Reality if there weren’t a Mind to think it. Everything, no matter whether thought, shared, and integrated by Self-Awareness or hallucinated, monopolized, and dis-integrated by Mind-Child in self-unawareness, being a consequence of Mind.
Movement that’s for the Good
Treated like Play-Doh in unreality, ideas are Force itself in Reality. That nothing can do without. Indispensable.
The idea that a group of young New Year’s Eve revelers getting wasted with drink, getting physical, or getting depressed with an idea of “fun” gone wrong, could be the occasion for one reveler experiencing the wisdom contained in “Youthful Folly.” A name taken from The Chinese Book of Changes that describes the idea behind the practice of ethics. Getting it right by doing what’s right and doing it right.
The idea that there should be embedded in any movement, any activity, differentiation between what simply is, without value, and what is with value. That’s good. That cares. That feels the life and vulnerability within itself that’s shared with other lives. Empathetic, and so accommodating and relatable. Experiencing within itself not just an impulse to benefit without being told but a need to benefit because it’s always there. Who it is because what it does. Nothing to define and differentiate except function. Usefulness. Reason for being.
Real consequences, real stakes, real Life
Thus meant to enhance self-worth with acts of kindness, generosity, and helpfulness. Instead of validating and enhancing self-worthlessness with competition. With acts of ownership, possessiveness, jealousy, insensitivity, and unkindness, all for the sake of supremacy.
An idea of Life growing with meaning and purpose, so at odds with New Year’s Eve, contrivance of clock within contrivance of time, devoid of meaning and purpose, that between the two only one may survive to live another day. An act of sublime ambiguity to start another chapter of “being”: arbitrary and meaningless in the unseriousness of time.
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Awareness
You’re going to all this trouble to increase my awareness? No trouble at all. Like the love songs all say, you’re all I care for. And your awareness is safe for all eternity from interference since you can choose anytime to shut down sensory perception. My head is buried in the sand already.
Level of awareness is the central issue with every human-ape. Why? Because it varies with each personality type and each individual. Those who identify with tribe more than individual are acutely aware of some things and oblivious to others. Same with those who don’t advertise tribal allegiances with body adornments, language, and other symbols. We all have blind spots that can elude our awareness and get us into difficult situations for a lifetime. In the case of Sapiens for generations. When Loving Friendships open us up to shared experiences, increased Self-Awareness can be among its most useful, most loving gifts.
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Differentiation
When change is the “enemy”
Sapiens broke away from its common physical ancestor “ape” with faculties animal brain lacks: differentiation and empathy. With animal-thinking it’s either this or that and what happens to other animals, especially prey, evokes no sense of loss to the predator. No feeling. So when a certain specimen of Sapiens “goes over to the dark side,” like Adam Skywalker, it’s because he’s still back in ape-hood, lacking human-ape empathy.
This specimen is responsible for the considerable drag on movement forward in Sapiens’ evolution, raising the question whether differentiation, the basis for Free Choice, can keep it going. The possibility that it can’t would be unthinkable if it weren’t part of a larger issue: whether built-in resistance to change initiated by the dynamic of Relationship will eventually reverse movement itself. Bringing an end to evolution and Creation.
Going all the way back
There being two sides to everything: what it is and its reverse-opposite reflection, implied and inactive in Reality, express and active in unreality. There being only one Real Self in Reality but not here. Here we contend with two “real” selves and only one wants to move forward. The other doesn’t.
If we let Sapiens’ story go no farther than the threshold of its origin in metaphysical Reality then “going back” means retreating from civilization back to a wilderness without differentiation and empathy. A planet-earth jungle ruled by the king of beasts, and it won’t be Sapiens. If we let the story cross the threshold into metaphysics then “going back” means retreating from Creation back to before Love and Logic, Life-Growing Energy, initiated evolution with movement. Back to not even matsukaze.
Differentiation gives us the ability that apes and other animals don’t have: to see things differently. Their point of view is once and done, locked into what their five body senses dictate. The idea that there’s any way of looking at things other than by animal instinct doesn’t occur to them.
And when their mindset shows up among human-animals their once-and-done perspective can block communication altogether. It can wreak havoc on established ways of getting along and getting things done, as it’s doing now from Washington.
Sapiens has to contend with multiple possibilities in a fast-paced world of change. Choices and relationships requiring flexibility. Perceptions and perspectives that adapt. Navigating through it can be challenging and the task of managing the challenges more so. It’s good that Sapiens acquired new talents of Mind when it broke away from ape because they’re all needed: introspection; reflection with intuition through our sixth sense; sorting and analyzing with reason, feeling, and values; judging and integrating with discipline.
They’re all related to differentiation.
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Movement (the Force)
Be nice to the Force
Star Wars is a long-running morality play about strength. One version abusing the “Force” to force its will on others, the other helped by the Force to resist its abusers. Neither getting it right. Ensuring that the franchise will keep going like the value of pi without ever coming to resolution.
What do you mean neither getting it right? Wasn’t the Force on the side of the good guys? Didn’t Rey out-duel Palpatine with her nifty moves at the end? Yes. Both exhausting themselves wielding super-fancy Force-zapping techno-wizardry from Dollar Tree when they could have gotten the job done faster with Saturday night specials from their dads’ night table.
Want to stand up to adversity with strength? Won’t happen just because you ask Force nicely to “be with you”. “Please, dear Force, would you mind terribly taking a moment from looking for your glasses to help me out here? I’m trying to stick a torpedo in the Death Star’s exhaust port, Darth Vader is on my tail, and Obi-Wan says it will help if I “use the Force.” Instead of the bad guys thinking they own the “dark side” and it will do whatever they will it to do.
Getting to know you. . .
Well, it worked didn’t it? Han Solo arrived in the Millennium Falcon in the nick of time, got Darth off Luke’s tail, and Luke got a three-pointer. What’s your problem? My problem is audiences got a big thrill when special effects blew up the Death Star but it had no effect on the bad guys. It didn’t change anybody’s minds or take them off stage. So the bad guys hung around on street corners smoking, cursing, and scheming until they came up with a new and improved Death Star.
You want they should do their smoking and cursing in an airline VIP lounge? They could try being with the Force. How can a Force that’s supposed to have a nice side and a mean side be persuaded to be nice for someone needing help if they treat it like an object? Like a slot machine at the Hoover Dam Casino that if you yank the lever often enough it will throw up in your lap. How about relating to it first? Getting to know it. Showing some respect.
Melvin in the Bardo
Uncle Melvin? Yes dear. Maybe it’s the name. What do you mean? Would I want to snuggle in bed on Sunday morning with the “Force?” Better I stay in my own bed wondering if Darth Vader is under it. How can anyone relate to the “Force?” Or “God,” for that matter. They’re both terms taken from hierarchy where getting anything done requires a monolithic boob bossing everyone around from the top. Well then we can adjourn while you come up with a better name.
Lee Remick. (swoon). A male name, please. I don’t snuggle in bed with males. Then how about Jacob Elordi? (swoon). You’d rather start Sunday morning in a kissing booth with . . . Watch your lip! The power behind the throne is. . . teenage girls! WE are GOD. Mess with us and you’ll be messing with the real DEATH STAR. BWAH!
OK, uh, supreme nitwit. Do you prefer that we call the Force “Jacob” or “Elordi”? My name for him is the one-and-only-Dude. Wasn’t that originally yourself, a girl? Then one-and-only-Dude can be hermaphrodite. Perfect! How about “Dude” for short? OK. Just so long as it isn’t “Melvin.” Now when we say our prayers at bedtime it will be “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Dude my soul to keep.” You’re laughing. Yes, but you know what? The Dude is laughing too.
Inexorably, irresistibly good
You jest. Maybe, But if us and our make-believe universe could disappear with the flip of a switch without any of it mattering, the same is true of the Dude and its “Creation.” Where does it say that there has to be anything? If there’s no be-all end-all Who in charge of the be-all end-all Big Picture, no poo-bah “other” whose opinions and feelings require pampering, then the answer to Who cares? is nobody.
Nobody to care and nothing to care about except this amazing thing called “Creation” that literally created itself out of the marriage between two infinitely good, infinitely relatable functions of Mind: Love-Spontaneity and Logic-Order. That didn’t happen because a self-centered boob imagining itself to be authority beyond questioning willed it to happen, but because it just happened. Spontaneously, as an act of Energy in the Now. Relationship + Energy + Now = Mind Self-Awareness and a bunch of other stuff.
The power of Movement
Love and Logic together can’t be who they are without doing what they do: movement. Forward with Life-Creation and evolution. That started like a sprig of green poking through a tiny crack in the pavement, then to grow into a majestic oak tree. Spontaneously, creatively, in Loving Friendship. Inexorably, irresistibly Good. Still here and now, still growing.
Only forget the pavement, because before Love and Logic got movement going they wasn’t nuthin’. Not even wind in the pines – matsukaze. “Pavement” gets the point across that what Love and Logic together accomplished was the prototype for every Force behind change to follow: inexorable and irresistible. When not even pavement could keep growth beneath it from breaking through. From causing change.
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Learning & Growth
By learning from experience that whether lives are wasted in combat or in any other contrivance the point is to grow with Life, Worth, and evolution into the maturity of competence and Understanding. That the point of learning and earning, of awareness and striving, is to align with the nature of who we are as individuals. As persons of good Character who have freely chosen the morality of individual Conscience over the amorality of animal-tribal expedience. Personal integrity over tribal corruption. To be and to do Good.
Official aptitude test:
To answer with Logic questions put to us by Logic:
- If “strength” that blocks Movement were stronger than strength that causes Movement then why did Movement happen in the first place? Why are we having this conversation?
- How can all the ways that obstruction manifests itself in a hallucination be stronger than Movement forward when the “reality” of obstruction is time-ending and the timeless Reality of progress has no ending?
- When Logic says that physical “reality” continues evolution from metaphysical “reality” rather than originates it. That body-matter doesn’t create Mind, but Mind unconscious can hallucinate an alternate “reality” of body-matter.
- When what is and forever shall be came first in the sequence of Logic-Love and its reverse-reflection necessarily came after. When the former is original, the latter derived, unoriginal. A copycat in reverse.
Official answers:
#1 Movement got the dynamo going by distracting its enemies with conspiracy theories.
#2 Hallucination will “end” with its takeover of timeless Reality.
#3 What fool would want to argue Mind over matter in the current political environment?
#4 Putting horse before cart takes away my shtick. Copycats in reverse make big bucks — all that matters to me anyway.
To what’s really at stake
So if I sign onto the wrong side in this piddling disagreement you won’t approve of me. That’s what’s at stake. Exactly. The whole world awaits your decision because it wants Uncle Melvin to be nice to his adorable niece. Actually the whole universe. Everyone on tenterhooks waiting to see which version of strength you choose because if you choose the wrong one Uncle Melvin Easter Bunny will lay an egg. No more treats for cute little bunny rabbits.
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Perspective
The elephant not in the room
Uncle Melvin? What, sweetie? Do you really believe all that stuff about Jesus? Depends on what stuff you mean. That his mother didn’t conceive the usual way. That he walked on water, “arose from the dead,” raised guys from the dead? You left something out. What? Fed people who’d come a long way to hear him speak with “loaves and fishes” that materialized out of thin air.
All of the above magic by a magician the way people might have thought of it as first. Doing weird stuff with bodies and their material environment. Harry Houdini making an elephant disappear, his audience not really thinking he did it yet there was never any explanation how he did it.
All a matter of perspective
Maybe better to ask how and why Jesus’ story could include the unexplainable than whether it does. How and why we live in a world where anything and nothing seem possible at the same time and we don’t know what to believe. A world that divides itself into believers and non-believers, idealists and “realists,” and everyone else in between. People like me, who just want to mind their own business and be left in peace.
Without a static big picture that brings all the answers together into the one-and-only answer nothing can be “normal.” The way things are and deal with it. Everything instead is perspective and that’s not good enough for the mindset of an ape. An animal whose five body senses tell it everything it needs to know about its external world and its place within it. Where an idea crucial to differentiation and empathy is missing. What’s that? Perspective. Like I said: what’s that?
One look is all it takes
You don’t understand “perspective?” I understand what my five body senses tell me and if that’s enough to know the difference between bigger and smaller ape then I’m good. I got it covered. “Perspective” sounds like there’s another way of looking at things which sounds wonderful except that who needs it? I don’t. Once the verdict is in from what I see, hear, touch, taste, and smell, I don’t need a second opinion from a consultant. Or a judge and jury to confirm what’s obvious. What I already know.
I have to admit, you’ve got a point. The one your head comes to. Make your case, Bishop Berkeley, before Samuel Johnson kicks you and his bucket. The whole case for reliance on the “force of nature” to wield superior strength against mindful enemies is based on appearances. All that body-brain senses are able to detect without sixth-sense intuition, without Guidance from the way things really are, is what’s going on outwardly. With no allowance for the possibility that something different is going on inwardly. Emotionally. Psychologically.
So defined, the choice has your thumb on the scale. Why should I trust it? Since everything is perspective, here and in metaphysical Reality, and everything here is two-faced with two versions of Self, the noisiest one being the wrong one, you can’t take mine or anyone’s word for it. There will always be a thumb on the scale. You’ll trust what makes sense to you in your individual circumstances. With what you’re aware of in the moment. Making awareness critical to whether independent judgment is accurate or misleading.
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Reality
As seen on TV
I’ve heard of emotions. They’re like feelings, right? But psychology – that’s Hollywood special effects. Mysticism. I don’t know anything about it and could care less. I see. Out of sight, out of mind. You got a problem with my behavior you can fix it by just getting along. You don’t need to fix nuthin’ with fancy falootin’ psychology.
Then there’s the possibility that this one-and-only “reality” is weird for a reason. Because it’s made up. Raises more questions than it answers and still, after centuries of study, can’t be relied on except to raise more questions. While Sapiens continues inventing ever more dangerous tools for making life on Earth unlivable.
Wouldn’t you rather go marching off to your doom with an air of supreme confidence than worry all day about how to avoid it? Don’t you see? “Strength” is all about who looks stronger on TV. Who doesn’t look scared or worried because he’s the man. Nobody cares about consequences. Same with governing: “political power” is play-acting. The appearance of getting even while certain elements make sure that things stay uneven.
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Spontaneity
Real choices with real meaning
Just as the presence of Jesus can’t be taken for granted, neither can the Self he represents be taken for granted: the combination of Love, Logic, and Energy. Spontaneity in the Now. The product of Movement that, because it was Spontaneous, didn’t have to happen. Precarity for which willfulness, another “vision” of strength, is supposed to be the remedy when it’s the opposite of Spontaneity. Invincibility. Guaranteed winning. “Triumph of the Will.”
When it’s the precarity and vulnerability of Life, of its Worth assured by the Character of Free Choice that can be mistaken, that gives it its strength. The real possibility of loss. The strength of Life that responds to loss with renewed growth.
Being engaged with real consequences at risk in Reality instead of being staged with nothing at risk in unreality. Why Bogart complained that there must be a better way to make a living. Why Greta Garbo described her profession as “making faces.” In both cases because play-acting only makes sense if it can be put to use. For training to get it right.