The ogre is placated
Apart from its physical appearance accountability for the consequences of its flaws and transgressions may be the most obvious and ludicrous exhibition of human-ape’s zoological designation. By means subtle and not so subtle, of equating salvation and self-protection with supine. Of acknowledging that its fantasies of absolute power and freedom are no match for the monopoly on authority and knowledge at the top of the pecking order. For dispensing justice and maintaining order by every means of terror on a planet flush with them. Placing human-ape somewhere in nature’s pecking order between a window ledge and a fly-swatter.
Calling, therefore, for prudence lest higher authority swat on a whim. Going about Sapiens’ business in a perpetual state of prostration to fend off relatability. With the source of all this ambiguity and terror. That one must not relate to for fear of giving offense. By the sin of hubris — appearing to be its equal. Better to preempt defeat by accepting it in advance. Appearing to be already-defeated. There. That takes care of that. Now we’re safe and can go about our business. The ogre is placated.
The ever-mounting pile
By what? By every form of bowing and scraping. “Prayer” that’s conversation with Self deprived of its right to engage in it. Seated across the table from someone who can’t raise their head and look it in the eye. Who’s groveling at its feet beneath the table absorbed in their miseries. Standing on the table with arms upraised, shouting hosannas of praise and gratitude at the ceiling. Serenading the chandelier with lyrical tributes to its perfection. Anything but relating with a friend who loves it and enjoys being with it. Anything but affect that’s unaffected. Preferring self-unawareness to Awareness of Self that might take offense if its ass isn’t kissed.
Is there anything to Love in such behavior? In the entity that’s supposedly placated by it? Anything to Love and admire in the practices of religion that fill every nook and cranny of appearances. Not with the sovereignty and integrity of the individual but with its self-debasement. With its guilt. With symbolism of the supine. With bodies so laden with idolatry that they can barely move under the weight of it. Symbolism, ritual, dogma, sacrifice – all of it genuflection. An assault on self-Worth. A per-version of accountability that adds itself to the ever-mounting pile of stuff to be accountable for.
History no better than religion
If it adds nothing to understanding to sugar-coat badness it adds nothing to its management by condemning it. Of all the ways of avoiding accountability avoidance itself is the least rational and the least effective. For presuming to evade facts when what makes a fact a fact is that it can’t be evaded. It can be sprayed with cologne, covered with a blanket of pleasantness, and painted over to look like something it isn’t. But if it’s to be dealt with so that Movement can move forward it must be acknowledged for what it is. And if it’s a pile of something disagreeable, so be it.
Sapiens isn’t accountable for that which renders it inferior. It’s accountable for one thing that leads to another. And if the connection turns out to be misconnection, then disconnect and try something else. Until it recognizes and respects the sequence of Logic. The way things are, instead of making things up as it goes along. Until it recognizes and respects that there are two sources of guidance. Only one understands the sequence of Logic and only one is Real.
The trappings of Democracy established centuries ago fit the circumstances of centuries ago. What does it matter if circumstances today call for a fresh start? If “fresh start” means starting all over again. Taking our chances with the mindsets and cultures of the present if that’s the chance Democracy took when it was established? What are we afraid of unless it’s having to think and feel anew? To adapt when it’s difficult but also to experience the immediacy of Life lived in the moment. Without the self-imposed obligation of genuflecting to the past. To kissing the asses of the play-actors who commanded the stage then when the stage is ours to command now. When history that demands obedience to the imagined giants of the past is no better than religion that demands obedience to a bigger ape in the sky.
Here and Now
“Accountability” isn’t to anything “other.” Not in the next room and not somewhere above the clouds. It’s to our individual selves. Its purpose isn’t to force us into a position of inferiority to anything so we can somehow be let off the hook. The wrong that’s to be put to rest is the whole idea of forgiveness. The whole idea of inferiority. Letting, and being let off, the hook. Religion whose foundation is the lie propagated by the know-it-all grave-digger: that time is real, and somewhere in the darkness of its beginning all the secrets of Sapiens’ wrongdoing were buried, never to be dug up again. Trapping it in a never-ending cycle of guilt and condemnation because it’s powerless to end it. Eternally self-unaware. Eternally inferior.
Whose remedy can’t be trading inferiority for superiority. It’s accepting the Reality and Ideal of Loving Friendship with what’s within us. Of our transitory, time-limited selves while we’re here, speaking our language if that’s the language we’ve chosen. To be here with us and for us.
But to be useful for more than freeing us from our self-imposed servility in a magic kingdom of hierarchy. For helping us remove hierarchy and servility from our thoughts. The “magic” that trapped us in our kingdom of ass-kissing corruption. The delusion that we’re somebody or something other than who we are. Or that we must prostrate ourselves at its feet. An idea to be exchanged like the defective product that it is for something that works better. For Guidance connected to common sense. To the destination we seek, who can accompany us to Self-Awareness if we invite it. “Back” or “forward” either way, because what we seek with Guidance is Here and Now.
Sailing the high seas
Life on earth is one grand provocation perpetrated by one grand manipulator. A proto-“creator” who’s proud of its “achievement: a grand manipulation of facts. An insult to the Character and Integrity of its host. The event that preceded our metaphysical ancestor’s hallucination, when its Mind was disabled and it was convinced by its reverse-reflection that it needed “saving” from its Parents in another reality. Which turned out to be a time-limited “paradise” for its reverse-reflection, a herd of beasts with neither differentiation nor empathy. Populated by mirrors like itself with no substance behind them until the arrival of Sapiens. When our metaphysical Self took a major step forward toward Self-Awareness and Free Choice – provided that we choose to take it.
When all’s said and done Sapiens’ history of blunders were manipulations of fact. That one-sided arrogance demanded and expected that its alleged inferiors would accept without protest. Their crazed definition of reality: upside-down and inside-out. A perversity to which no reasonable person can subscribe. Committed by the mindsets of personality types particularly susceptible to takeover by the grand manipulator and its grand manipulation. A complete wack job. A head case. Think the Big Lie perpetrated by the loser of the 2020 presidential election and the MAGA zombies manipulated by it. Easy to be outraged by their provocations but less so by those who have no idea who they are or where they’re going. A ship of fools.
A waste of time?
You dismiss it. I can’t. Why not? It’s shabby and disgusting. Tortuous Convolvulus spitting venom and its lackeys, poor excuses for character, taking it to their own. Both so absorbed in gaining that they can’t even let a person lose everything to mortality without adding to his loss. Aren’t some provocations over the top? Aren’t some people a waste of time? Their manipulator is a waste of time if the idea is to validate it by listening to it. By letting ourselves be manipulated by its provocations.
We differentiate between manipulator and its captives and sympathize with its captives when we remind ourselves of a basic truth: that personality types and mindsets deprived of differentiation are necessarily one-sided. They can’t tell one thing from another, like Sapiens’ metaphysical Self when it was deluded by an apparition in a mirror. Because all they can be aware of is one thing. In virtual reality that’s a hallucination, what they see that’s not there is one thing with no possibility of there being another.
Not their fault
What is one-sided? Arrogance. That doesn’t differentiate between its Self and another’s Self. Its Self is the only Self and so entitled to arrogate to its one Self what belongs to an “other” that it doesn’t recognize. The whole person is two-sided with depth perception, able to see and understand that its world is shared with others and there are boundaries separating and defining them. That the world shared is two-dimensional: physical appearances on the surface, mental, emotional, and psychological beneath the surface. The one-sided undifferentiating Self comes across as arrogance for assuming that it’s the only Self to be recognized, the only voice to be heard. Where there are no defining-separating boundaries.
We experience variants of Sapiens as pure arrogance and are infuriated by it. And yet they’re oblivious. Unaware that they’re one-sided because unawareness is one-sided. Unaware that they’re behaving like arrogant shits and hated for it. Billy Budds who doesn’t deserve to be hung from the yardarm and yet they’ve caused, and continue to cause, real psychological damage. To anyone who strays into their personal affairs and would be a friend. Including their own children. They’re not Loving Friendship material.
How can a differentiating personality type stand in judgment and condemn them for a flaw in their makeup that’s not their doing? It would be cruel, unjust. The feeling they deserve isn’t anger. It’s pity. Let the provocation draw anger but not the innocent who can’t prevent it. It’s not their fault.
Go to hell
Your approach is no-fault. That’s different from forgiveness. Definitely!. Reason enough for me to disassociate myself from religion and its idea of forgiveness. From the idea of guilt I find so repugnant. In the gruesome figure on the cross and the lurid tableau of human desecration: guilt-ridden flocks being “shepherded” to penitence by self-appointed stand-ins for divine judgment. Fools being manipulated by hypocrites. When all that’s involved is a know-it-all who knows nothing peddling an absurdity: a mythical big picture idyllic for being one-sided and one-dimensional. Perfect as it is, beyond questioning. Unmoving and unmovable, where there’s nothing to feel and nothing to do. What could be better?
The image I describe is “heaven” to the hierarchical mindset prevalent in Sapiens’ animal kingdom of competition and ass-kissing corruption. Precisely because it lacks differentiation and empathy. Truman was aghast when he learned the truth about the Truman TV show and risked his life trying to escape it. Arrogance goes all out to preserve the show and its role doing it. Offended when its offer of a role is declined, as though a gift of immense value were brushed off with no word of thanks.
This madness but an equal and opposite reaction to Movement caused by Love-Life growing and relating in combination with Logic-Knowledge learning within the boundaries of discipline. Creation at its essence Loving Friendship: Spontaneity with Order and Energy in the Now. The source of a principle of physics, not overwrought Italian arias weeping veneration for a woman who had a baby out of wedlock. Not overwrought Italian Renaissance poetry profaning hapless enemies with vengeance in hell’s inferno.
Manipulation starved of guilt
If manipulators toying with Sapiens didn’t have psyches weighed down with guilt to manipulate it would put them out of business. The offense I commit is not only my refusal to be manipulated. It’s what makes it easy for me to do so, in the way that I don’t make myself relatable to provocateurs. What’s that? By not offering them guilt to manipulate me with. By not tying myself in psychological knots to “forgive” a know-it-all jerk who’s only an apparition. A bonkers idea that can’t be taken seriously. I’m infuriated and disgusted by their provocations. I do take offense for a time since it’s only human. But not overloaded with regret that I’m the cause. That I must wallow in self-recrimination the way that Sapiens’ metaphysical self was tricked into doing, before it allowed its “savior” to project its guilt out of Mind into another “reality.”
I frustrate manipulators by taking the feeling that their provocations engender and putting it to a use that they didn’t intend. Not to project guilt onto others and perpetuate an absurdity but to heal relationships among friends and family instead. Who love one another. I deny the denial that we’re friends or family. That instead of loving one another we’re meant to destroy one another in a winner-take-all competition. For a fiction: “supremacy” atop hierarchy. King Kong. King of beasts. Self-imagery. And by denying the denial I starve manipulation of its nourishment. Guilt. This frustrates them.
With a limitless bag of tricks
Some variants of Sapiens answer for provocations is to bury their heads in the sand. To de-sensitize themselves so that when the dust settles they can reappear as Imperturbability, winners of the self-image game. Having not felt a thing. My answer is to expose my vulnerability with honesty in search of Loving Friendship. To take a hit and feel the pain, and to access the energy and strength I need to get back up. Where? From Love. Feeling that feels hurt and grows beyond it. The way I did when two marriages ended. When I’m blindsided by betrayal. I get emotionally clobbered by relationships but I don’t give up on them. I’m stronger and more relatable than ever. I’ve grown.
What does the pose of imperturbability prove if some variants of Sapiens never take a hit? What does it prove if they take a hit with romance and lack the emotional courage to actually love a man or woman again? Have they grown? Are they any stronger? Not if they’re still captive to the graveyard caretaker. The know-it-all bringing up the rear with its mimicry and limitless bag of tricks.
You couldn’t demonstrate your independence and integrity by winning? Engaging in a contest of wills with reverse-reflection lets it win before the contest begins. The only “weapon” that can prevail against an imaginary “opponent” is to hold up a mirror to it. Not for the purpose of attacking it but for explaining the nature of it: that it’s not Self but Self’s reflection and has no business corrupting Self’s Psyche and interfering in its affairs. There’s no “winning” against a reflection. What we need to do is return it to its original inactive state and recover our real thoughts.