Across the Mason-Dixon Line!
Nothing exists whether in Mind Self-Aware, thinking in Reality, or Mind-Child self-unaware, hallucinating in unreality, that isn’t Mind. And so the “ideal” beloved of authoritarian willfulness is a fallacy, of an idyllic status quo “paradise” of anything-goes that preceded Mind and was therefore not-Mind. A failure of differentiation that’s impeded Sapiens’ progress since the ability to differentiate and to empathize let it climb down out of the trees. Differentiation between logic and illogic, sense and nonsense, Reality and fantasy. The “conservative” mindset chronicled in the adventures of Tarzan, the noble savage.
A fallacy because it’s a thought. An idea, and however mad it may be it’s still an act, a function, of Mind. Dotted-line nonsense whose purpose is to be mistaken for solid-line sense so that Newton’s law will be what it seems in the hallucination: movement forward cancelled out by movement backward, and so going nowhere. The state of Sapiens’ evolution forward that’s moving backward at the same time.
The state of our “reality.” Feynman’s sum of histories: everything all at once instead of sorted out and happening one step at a time in logical sequence. Minds thinking, feeling, and acting with Energy in opposite directions. The tin can that Einstein considered “spooky,” not realizing that it sat on top of a town dump of tin cans. Unaware of the scope of his misperception, imagining a universe of elegance like his equation E=MC2 that’s a representation of anything-goes mayhem instead.
The fatuous idea of a state of not-Mind at the “beginning.” Something that was to be rudely interrupted by the first stirrings of Movement. As if it had got there, like Hawking’s boundaryless universe, by a flip of a magician’s silk. Voila! The immaculate existence for lack of anything to explain it or Mind to do the explaining. When all it could be was an abstraction once Mind was activated to think it. A monolithic big picture with everything already taken care of. No reason for W. Edwards Deming’s continuous improvement, so let’s send the Yankees and their fanciful ideas about changing the way we do things back across the Mason-Dixon line where they belong.
Two competing conceptions of Reality
You invoke a chapter of American history to explain this? It works if Southern resistance to abolition was the emotional antithesis of change. The “beginning” was the start of something “new” for which there was no “old.” That had no name, no story of its own to tell. It was to its “advantage” that, being an implication, having no definable existence of its own, it could make up its story. So it did. The “Lost Cause” of somebody-done-somebody wrong that echoes down to the present. The current version of vengeance cutting a swath through every stanchion of progress back to a halcyon past that never was. In service to a “cause” that was never to be “lost.” Its appeal entirely limited to mindsets brought forth from their ape origins missing differentiation and empathy.
What we’re witnessing is the life-on-Earth equivalent of the phenomenon at the beginning when Movement initiated by Love-Logic-Energy – spontaneously not willfully – was necessarily accompanied by an implied reverse-direction movement. Caused by “anything goes.” The absence of an all-encompassing, static big picture. Manifest in the activation of Mind-Relationship as its implied reverse-opposite and in Creation as part of its Definition. Its constitution-Conscience which contains its own implied reverse-opposite. Always implicit rather than explicit in Reality. Always inactive because it was its inactivation by Spontaneity at the beginning that enabled Mind to get going without itself being corrupted by big picture nonsense. The way now clear for the forces of Love, Life, and Creativity, nothing already “there” to impede them. The impossibility of two competing conceptions of Reality – the way things are – had been resolved by Spontaneity with Order and Energy in the Now into Movement Real-active and anti-movement reverse-reaction unreal-inactive.
Caught up in their own apocalypse
A different story for Mind-Child self-unaware training here. Big picture nonsense has a “life” so Mind-Child can learn its function Free Choice. Where learning must be from experience until character with integrity knows what it’s doing and chooses correctly. Accompanied as Mind-Relationship was by its reverse-reflection and facing the same need to inactivate it, only going about it in an entirely different way.
How so? Mind-Parents had to rid Reality-Creation of self-contradiction definitively. That meant spontaneously, leaving no chance of intrusion by willfulness. Mind-Child, to choose freely, can’t have it done for it. It must always be at risk of intrusion by willfulness and it must always prevent it by strength of character and integrity. Essentials of Worth that in turn are essentials of Creation. Free Choice earning and learning its integrity, here in virtual reality, and so qualified to function in Reality. That is, should it survive the peregrinations of human-apes dragged down by the “Lost Cause” dismantlers of progress. Ape-humans.
Say again? This is already the best I’ve been able to say it so far. But hard to wrap my mind around. It’s important, right? I think so. Any field trying to figure out why the pieces don’t fit together would benefit from understanding what looks to me like the reason. Science, philosophy, psychology, theology – they have their moments and their great minds, but when critics take to them they don’t have the answers. They’re struggling badly, in fact. Trying to fit the pieces together so that Sapiens dumps ways of thinking and behaving that get in its way. We’ve been getting help since forever and yet all we have to show for it is longer lives that for some are just more Hobbesian nastiness. Not just for individuals but for the entire species when a planet is being exploited to death and its inhabitants caught up in their own apocalypse.
The very first “fact of life”
You say the dismantlers of progress are a pain in the butt and yet they’re part of the price to be paid for Movement and Creation. So we have to put up with them. The price to be paid for the condition I call “anything goes.” The door to Movement and Creation that opened when an all-encompassing big picture at rest, presided over by a know-it-all “creator,” can’t be. Both logical impossibilities. Contradictions of Reality-Creation that itself is a contradiction of big picture one-sided nonsense. The “issue” seized upon by dismantlers of progress to justify their mischief is chicken-or-egg: claiming that anything goes came first, not Mind-Relationship. When it’s obvious that Mind-Relationship, being Movement and Creation, has to come first. Nothing “exists” without there being a cause for it. What could cause anything-goes nihilism if it has neither motor to drive it nor ignition to start it? The argument that it could “exist” and pre-date Mind-Relationship Reality-Creation is equivalent to saying that the cart could be mobile before the invention of the horse. Cart-before-the-horse thinking is, in fact, characteristic of Sapiens illogical approach to solving problems. Its chronic irrationality.
The absence of an impossibility had nothing to acknowledge or define it until Mind-Relationship was itself activated from within. So “anything goes” couldn’t have come first. The door open to the way things are itself had to be defined by Mind-Relationship. In the way that Mind had to be activated logically by functions present within it. Once this was accomplished spontaneously it became the task of Mind-Relationship to manage the presence of an idea that conflicts with Reality. What might be thought of as the very first “fact of life” — Its contradiction. In the same way that Mind-Relationship did it originally. By inactivating it. Recognizing that it’s unreal.
The politics of Reality
And, in our virtual reality, by choosing to keep it unreal. By choosing not to be guided by its voice but by the voice offered to us through our sixth sense. Our intuition. The signature of the idea of contradiction that’s to be managed is willfulness. It’s kept out of Reality by Spontaneity. Not the way it can be done here in unreality or “virtual” reality. Here it has to be kept out of Sapiens’ affairs by contending with it in an active state. Made so when Mind Free Choice – Child not Parents – experienced what its Parents Self-Awareness can’t experience: self-unawareness. We think of ourselves cursed by all the ways that we get in our own way and yet we’re blessed at the same time. To have the opportunity to learn what we’re about and to do what our situation calls for if we value life and one another – the good things in life. That originate with Reality-Creation, not anything goes.
And yet “anything goes” has a mystical hold on Sapiens’ imagination. On the imaginations of its contradiction: ape-humans lacking differentiation and empathy. Nihilists. Anarchists. “Conservatives.” The “opposition party” in perpetuity. And sometimes on the imaginations of human-apes when they’re in a developmental stage. Once they’re fully evolved and practiced at differentiation and empathy they’re capable of mistakes and being misled. But their North Star is choice. They’re not captive to mystique or any other form of anything-goes nihilistic nonsense. Liberals. Progressives. es. Yes. Mind-centered personality types who practice choice. We’re talking in a sense about the politics of Reality: the script and who gets to write it. Free Choice or willfulness opposed to choice. The prefrontal cortex or the animal brain when we consider the role of both-brain senses along with Mind-Relationship ideas.
One perspective and done
What is this quote you’ve been waving at me while I speak from the lectern? Something I dredged up from the Internet:
“Repetition is often called the ‘mother of learning’ and the ‘father of action’. It’s a fundamental principle in learning and skill acquisition, helping to solidify knowledge and skills through repeated exposure and practice. This process is crucial for transferring information from short-term to long-term.” — AI Overview on the Web 06/16/25
Going over old stuff is boring. But then something new turns up that wasn’t there before. It puts things in a new light. What’s going on is Mind-Relationship in the absence of a mythical big picture is necessarily perspective. And to understand what it’s all about and what we’re all about requires that we come back to our subject and view it from different perspectives. Sapiens’ progress doesn’t happen by one perspective or one insight and done.
A truth that one-sided minds lacking differentiation and empathy – ape-humans – seem unable to grasp. They’re locked into one way of looking at things and that’s it. Their way or the highway, when the approach called for by the way things are – perspective – can be many perspectives. Open-ended since in the presence of evolution-Movement there can never be one big picture at rest. The idea of one perspective and done is animal-human thinking, not human-animal thinking. Animals dependent on sensory perception and their one-sided, one-dimensional animal-instinct brains – willfulness – “think” this way. It’s anti-thinking. Choice made for it by the ruler of virtual reality to do what its “instincts” tell it to do. Manipulation.
“I’m doing this for your own good.”
Gimme some repetition! Contradiction from anything goes had to be re-born in Mind-Child so that it would repeat its Parents’ act only now as an act of conscious Free Choice. Adding Character with Integrity to their act of Life, Learning, Growth, and Direction to Creation. To be earned and learned in an “alternate reality” of reversal, separation, hierarchy, competition, corruption, guilt, and self-destruction. That had to be projected out of Mind in order to make it “real,” when projection and its “reality” both are impossible. Insane. The consequence of Mind-Child deprived of Self-Awareness and now trying, with Sapiens’ differentiation and empathy, to recover it.
The urge of the mindset controlled by its reverse-reflection is relentless, to complete itself by taking over and replacing its beholder, its host. The per-version of Love and Logic pairing together to complete themselves through the Creation and activation of one Self. Composed of two functions which individually cannot perform the functions of their combined Self. Its per-version not-function “creating” one self by eliminating function. Dotted-line denominator dividing, “conquering,” and replacing enumerator to transform fraction into a whole number. Utter nonsense that can only make “sense” in a hallucination of reversals.
In situations we experience when another person attempts to complete himself or herself not by joining with us in Loving Friendship but by replacing us. Sometimes after disabling and disempowering us so that they can hoist the Lombardi Trophy, emblematic of the triumph of the will. A dead virus celebrating its replication through its captured living cell. All the while imagining themselves giving us a precious gift. Doing this for our benefit, for which we should be thankful. Says the beast to the woman he’s battering: I’m doing this for your own good.
Free Choice makes it Real
Standard fare for a morality play pitting good against evil, isn’t it? As you were saying, good guys vs. bad guys, other person-predators and we their prey. What else could it be? Staged re-enactment of Mind-Child’s encounter with its reverse mirror-image. Until Sapiens, its fractured self inhabiting a hallucination, realizes that offering Loving Friendship to a reverse-reflection of itself is a mistake. That the offer was meant to be extended to the Real and not to the implied unreal. To whole beings who can reciprocate with affirmation of self-Worth and not to lifeless fractions coded to retaliate with dis-integration of character.
Staged re-enactment where our task is to interact with one another until we learn the roles we were programmed by our personality types and character to play. The masks we were handed to wear. Then to apply the judgment available to us through Free Choice to choose our roles. Until we get it right and choose to be done with roles altogether. To wake up to Reality that isn’t play-acting. That’s for Real because Free Choice — Mind-Child’s inheritance from Empathy-Freedom’s marriage to Differentiation-Choice – is part of what makes it Real. Its Parents whose imprint upon their Child is indelible.
Enough material to last a lifetime
I apply this perspective to encounters I’m about to have with others and I see the gift in it. The opportunity to advance with evolution instead of being thrown back. They’re going to eat your lunch and you’re going to thank them. If the point of our being tossed on stage to play-act with other actors is to learn from the experience, the script and its pairings will affect the outcome. Run-of-the-mill pairings fill the books with run-of-the-mill lessons. The faceoff between our reverse-opposites and us can’t be run-of-the-mill. Nor can its lesson be either. Or lessons, because they’ll keep coming, from different perspectives.
You say intuition connects us with another perspective as if it’s one. You’re saying it’s more than one? Given that circumstances change in the Now and change is constant one of its consequences is that perspectives change constantly. Sometimes imperceptibly but also sometimes radically. Standing pat on one perspective makes sense in certain circumstances, like when you’re defining the way things are and how it got to be that way, but not in others where you’re applying those principles under changing circumstances.
My Idealist comes up against the “realist.” The two being defined by their attributes as close approximations of Mind-Child – idealist – and its reverse-reflection – “realist.” If the goal in make-believe play-acting is to land leading roles in stories that are about something, idealist drawing “realist” for an encounter is a lucky break. These kinds of encounter can provide enough material for learning and growth, character development and passion, to last a lifetime. It can take us to the next level overnight and sustain it without letup indefinitely.
The Force of feeling
What about the “realist”? The book so far says they’re safely locked inside their fortress of denial. That there hasn’t been, and won’t be, a reaction to what’s changed within the idealist. Actually, to any stimulus. You disagree? I do. In expressing a range of feelings in response to their “gift,” from hurt and outrage to unconditional love, we make a point of our humanity. We don’t try to place ourselves above questioning but to reveal our vulnerability and to encourage it. To make ourselves relatable. Knowing that no matter how we explain ourselves their mindset will “understand” it in reverse. That since the story we have to tell involves others it can’t be told in its entirety without their perspectives anyway.
I disagree that Sapiens is safely locked up inside his fortress of denial. Eros was safely locked up in his room on Mount Olympus by his jealous mother, yet he got out and brought Psyche back to the home of the gods anyway. How did he manage that? The same way that anything can be managed whether it’s in Reality, in the land of make-believe anything goes, or nothing goes. By letting Love handle it Which means getting out of the way. How do you propose that we do that? By putting to use what we’re taught by our encounters with contradiction though those we love.
Which is? That learning and growth are an essential part of Life and Worth, and mind-changing is an essential part of learning and growth. That it’s not to be achieved by any kind of willfulness, force, or manipulation. By manuals of instruction or “commandments.” It can never be one-sided any more than it can be competitive and hierarchical. The real “force of nature” isn’t the will of a wild beast. It’s the Force of feeling that moves within the individual whole-person’s Psyche.
What’s going somewhere?
The difference between them being one is going somewhere and the other isn’t. What do you mean? The “realist” touting its “force of nature” delights in its “action:” competition that produces a temporary feeling of satisfaction if it’s fun and games. A state of affairs that however satisfactory can’t last if it’s death-to-the-enemy combat instead. The former fluff with air turbulence, the latter fluff that forces passengers out of their seats and out of their planes, and planes out of the air if there’s too much turbulence. But circular nonetheless since time covers anything over of consequence with something else in its temporary world of sensory-perceived competition. Of bodies thrown into competition and combat. Like the serial adventures of the body are a big deal. “Serial adventures of the body”? Cool! Yeah. I got it from the Course. Puts things in perspective, doesn’t it.
So what’s going somewhere? Loving Friendship. An Ideal that’s moved by Vision to define itself, to recognize itself in the flow of constantly changing situations, and to apply itself to address the needs and opportunities they present. All of it integral to evolution that’s Movement forward and open-ended.
Not a closed-loop of cyclical rounds of combat and competition for which there’s no other “ideal” than temporary advantage over an adversary. Temporary gain at the expense of someone else’s loss. Where relationship and its ideal, Loving Friendship, is considered an obstacle to having “fun.” Beating the other guy psychologically, physically, and emotionally. Quantitatively by the numbers and qualitatively by mind-fucking ownership, possession, and dominance. “I own you” the ultimate expression of “realist” “victory.” “I own your body, self, and everything within it including your brain.” The reverse-opposite of Loving Friendship.
. . . and powder my nose
There’s an irony here. Yes. The “realist” objects to the circularity of re-examinations from different perspectives going somewhere while its linear one perspective takes it nowhere in circles. All the more reason for the “realist” to back off and look at itself in the mirror. It can’t. Why not? Because it thinks it is the mirror. Oh. Then I guess I’ll have to brush up on my act. What’s that? Being a mirror to their mirror. I thought that’s what we were doing. It is. How am I doing? Stay still so I can finish putting on my lipstick.