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Gaslighting that's for fun

Before you and I get to the matter at hand, I just want to remind us both of the importance of coordination. You know, being able to walk and chew gum at the same time. Now, that’s never been a problem for me. But I do have a problem with something else, and I’m sure you’re just the one to help with this. Being able to walk and fart at the same time.

The word all over is that you can do anything and fart at the same time. I’ve worked so hard at this, and I just can’t seem to do it. I hope I never see another can of beans! They say you don’t even need to eat beans; it just comes naturally. What an incredible talent! I’m so jealous. I wish I could be just like you and sit down to dinner with a room full of people all dressed up in white tie and tails and evening gowns and light up the place. Awesome! Everyone looking shocked, disgusted, holding their noses, excusing themselves to go throw up or just throwing up right there in their Vichyssoise.

We should wait to get your sister's opinion because she’s really good at describing vomit. Maybe it would have a more dramatic effect if people threw up in their caviar. What do you think? But, of course, I’m talking to the world record holder for throwing up and farting at the same time. Now, that’s coordination!

Next week I hope we can have another great discussion like this. Maybe about how important it is to always be grown up and display good taste. That would be very timely because I have no talent for that, and you don’t either. Being really coordinated is no help here at all. Anyway, I don’t want you to change. I’ll never be grown up and have good taste, and if you’re grown up, we can’t be friends. So, I’m counting on us both being rotten little kids forever so we can be best friends forever. Here – have a nice steaming hot bowl of beans. Let ‘er rip!

Gaslighting that's not so much fun

People who think they’re bodies call themselves “realists.” People who identify with their minds think of themselves as “idealists.” There are a lot more “realists” than “idealists.” Still, that’s one of the main ways people divide themselves up because their differences show up everywhere. Like in how things are explained, how they’re governed or managed, how they’re decided. Realists being more numerous doesn’t make them right, but then the way things are going it doesn’t look like either one is right. Body-realist or mind-idealist = perfection to some, a big mess to others.

Have you thought about body vs. mind since I brought this up? Once a person decides which they prefer it’s pretty hard to change. It has consequences for themselves and others, too, because what will prevent consequences we don’t want may just be if idealists make better use of their minds. Body-realists tend to be OK with things as they are, and since they let their bodies do their thinking for them, they’re not likely to change. If idealists using their minds do change and get it right, maybe there’s hope.

The part of the body that does the thinking for a lot of “realists” is the base of the brain that sits at the top of the spine. It’s the part of the brain that connects us to our ancestors who swung from trees and lived on bananas. It’s actually called our “reptilian” brain, so I guess dinosaurs figure in there somewhere, too. It’s never evolved, and it doesn’t actually think. It directs us to act from instinct. You know, forget about being fancy with clever reasoning: just pounce on prey or snatch food or a mate, or beat up an enemy. Or run away if your enemy is bigger. “Fight or flight.”

King of the beasts

You’d think even realists who identify with their bodies wouldn’t want their behavior to be ruled by something so primitive. But there was a time and a place when a lot of them made a point of it. When they caused a whole lot of trouble -- 1930’s Germany. They associated instinct with action and action with having a will of steel and a will of steel with power that always dominates. That puts the “winner” on top with no more competition because everyone else is defeated. All by letting themselves be ruled by their bodies – by instinct acting -- instead of by their minds and hearts – by reason thinking and affect feeling. Letting themselves be ruled by instinct rooted in a part of the brain that links us to animals. That’s how Nazis “thought,” and when they let it turn them into an unthinking mob that attacked its neighbors, they started World War II.

The way they glorified their awful attitude was calling it “The Triumph of the Will.” You can Google it. It sought to put all of humanity under the yoke of one person’s mindless animal instinct. Its name was “Hitler.”

You’d think that everyone would be horrified but they aren’t. There’s a whole strain of art, music, literature, philosophy, and political ideology that glorifies “blood and soil,” tribal loyalty, racial supremacy, right-brained mysticism, and such. It’s what motivated the mob that attacked the capitol in Washington on January 6. All friendly to body and hostile to mind. All dangerous nonsense. But if you identify with your body instead of your mind, this is where it can take you.

Let's be rotten little kids forever

So, with your principal’s honor roll mind and talent for writing, maybe becoming a mind-idealist will make more sense and someday they’ll erect a statue in your honor at Andrews Park. To attract pigeons, and it will be engraved “Tomb of the Unknown Nobody.” OK, I’m being silly. Of course, it will say “World Class Coordinator.”

I’m sorry. I was trying to set an example for mindful idealism and got distracted. Not growing up is so much more fun. All the same, “World Class Coordinator” sounds pretty cool!

I have to go now. My limousine is waiting. I’ve been invited to a Hollywood dinner party where everyone will be dressed in white tie and tails and evening gowns, and they’re serving Vichyssoise. They told me there will be a young guest who will demonstrate her special talent. I can’t wait!

Reflections to share with adolescents

Reflections to share with adolescents who may be wondering about affect: its role in relationships, in adolescents’ future, in mythology, and in all of Creation. How does it figure in the choice between what is Real and unreal, True and false, Good and evil? Why does it matter?

The usual poetic content is heavy with subjective thought and feeling. Grief and romantic Love are common types of feeling but there are others. Many are related to the values listed in my piece on adolescence [Thirteen: Reflections on Character and Values at the Beginning of Adolescence. 08/28/21]  T.R. Hummer’s non-rhyming poem, “My Mother in Bardo” (New Yorker 01/24/22 p. 50), is an example of a poem infused with grief. But if I’m assigned to compose a rhyming poem and I have no particular talent for lyrics, I might produce something lifeless, without affect.

Literature and poetry in particular say a lot about who we are and what’s important to us. For adolescents coming into their own it can be an effective way to gain self-awareness. If they feel a sense of loss, say, for a deceased grandparent, they might express it in a non-rhyming poem. It might be strikingly different from a poem whose search for originality, beauty, or other effect is through rhyme.

Before the Big Bang

Absence of affect in subjective, creative expression is a red flag. For an adolescent it might or might not have implications for character development, but, if so, they can run deep. Star Wars mythology is based on it. What turned Adam Skywalker toward the dark side and service to Palpatine, the galactic emperor? What made the galactic empire evil? Absence of affect.

Explaining Why requires theorizing with Logic about the antecedents of our material universe -- what I call “Reality-Creation.” It preceded the Big Bang, exists in parallel with our material universe, and heavily influences our behavior and its consequences beyond our awareness. It holds sway over the origin and fate of the universe and the meaning of life. Its context is Mind-Love, not spacetime-matter. I use initial caps to set terminology that is of this other Reality apart from the lower case of our un-reality.

The “Child” is the One we were in Reality before the Child lost Consciousness and became the many. While unconscious, it mis-identified with its shadow-reflection, went into a dream state corrupted by its shadow-code, dreamed our un-reality, replicated itself in isolated-separated human bodies, projected the material world detected by their bodies’ senses, and continues to replicate itself within its dream world under the influence of its shadow-reflection. An explanation for all this is the subject of my book-in-progress with the working title, The Story of the Child.

Affect is feeling -- emotional sensitivity. Feeling is value or Worth – things cared for. Gifts with talents the Child was given at birth with which to exercise Free Choice in Creation. Affect is rooted in Mother-Love, the source of all feeling in the Child’s phase of Reality-Creation.

The dis-integration of Love from Mind

The Child has Free Will or Free Choice because the Child is Free Choice, its role in Reality-Creation. In the Child’s phase with Free Choice, the loss of Consciousness produced a dream-world of un-reality where all ideas-thoughts and their associated feelings have opposites. Opposites are the reverse mirror-image shadow-reflection of the Child and all of its values, all of its gifts including its talents.

The code that defines all opposites is derived from the Child’s Being. The code is non-being. Which means it’s insane. Nuts. The appearance of a “system” which is the opposite of system. A system ruled not by laws but by chaos -- arbitrary rule where “rules” apply to everybody but the ruler. The reverse mirror-image of sanity, what we know as the “dark side.” Everyone and everything in our un-reality has a shadow-opposite. A dark side. No exceptions.

What makes the dark side “possible” in the dream state is the separation of Love-feeling from Mind-thought. The marriage between Father Mind / Logic-Choice and Mother Love / Freedom-Creativity not only produced the Child. It’s what holds all the Implications and Interconnections of Reality-Creation together. In our un-reality that integration is gone. Science’s search for a perfectly ordered, perfectly integrated cosmos ended over a century ago and now it’s even giving up on a cosmos that just makes sense. Because it doesn’t. Meanwhile, the judgment we need to manage human affairs, to maintain order in harmony, is equally dis-integrated. It needs to be constantly re-integrated, constantly pieced together, in all our choices.

The Reality-Creation of Consciousness knows nothing of shadows, reflections, or opposites. So, shadow-opposites played no part in the Child’s Conscious exercise of Free Choice in Reality. In un-reality it’s different. “Dark side” shadow-reflections very much represent a choice for us, the unconscious Child’s replications. The choice between Right and wrong, Good and evil, where good values-gifts are the product of Mind integrated with Love-affect and their evil shadow opposites are the product of Mind absent Love-affect. We choose correctly when we discipline our thoughts and feelings, our ideas and values, always to keep Love combined with Mind.

The pussycat “Lord Vader”

One of the traits that distinguish personality types is variation in levels of affect-feeling. In importance attributed to values because feeling is value rooted in Love, the Mother of everything cared for, everything of Worth. What distinguishes character is its values.

Adam Skywalker belonged to a personality type described in Isabel Myers’ Gifts Differing. He “went over to the dark side” because his type’s level of affect-feeling and therefore his character was relatively shallow. Absence of affect-feeling translates to a relatively shallow-weak connection with the Good-positive and therefore a relatively strong susceptibility to, or attraction for, the shadow-negative.

The choice posed by Good-positive – who we are in Reality -- and evil-negative – our shadow in un-reality -- pulls different personality types in different directions. The son Luke Skywalker’s character was relatively deep with feeling-affect, strongly anchored to values, and therefore less susceptible to the attraction of shadow-opposites. The character of Darth Vader – “Dark Father” – was relatively weak with feeling-affect, loosely anchored to values, and therefore more susceptible. Adam Skywalker, who became the mythic “Lord Vader” feared by trembling subordinates, was a personality weakling -- a pussycat. Captives of shadow-reflections can impress with the appearance of strength but their reality is weakness.

Lack of values rooted in affect-feeling translates to a weak or missing internal moral compass. To a weak sense of right vs. wrong -- a lack of conscience. To insensitivity and therefore to predilection for cruelty. What defines the galactic empire and its emperor Palatine as “evil” is an absence of affect-feeling. It’s defined by Mind-thought without Love-value and therefore as character without conscience: insensitive and prone to cruelty. It becomes a universe where harm is done and pain inflicted because it is not felt, because character and values don’t matter.

Guidance from Isabel Myers’ Gifts Differing

Isabel Myers’ Gifts Differing intuits clues from personality types to differences that can account for and predict relative attraction for the dark side. The ESFP type with relatively weak feeling-judgment is a type that, if it’s not disciplined by its social culture, can be misled into shadow-opposites and wrongdoing. It happens to be the type exhibited by the current idol of the Republican party, a body-matter idolater, serial wrong-doer, and a menace to democracy, civilization, and world order. But any type weak on affect-feeling and character-values is a candidate.

My piece about adolescence listed both positive values and their shadow-opposites – the dark side. What an interest in the opposites might indicate about an adolescent’s developing personality type we don’t know. We do know that an ‘S’ (sensing) in preference to an ‘I’ (intuition) would fit an engineer or craftsman working with material objects. Sensing would account, say, for a poem engineered rather than intuited. Intuited, that is, from psyche or soul, from thoughts-feelings stored in humanity’s collective Memory.

We also know that Gifts Differing can help predict choices that different types tend to make and therefore where on balance they may be headed: To promoting humanitarian kindness and freedom (the Jedi Knights) or engaging in inhumane cruelty and oppression (the galactic empire). Definitive conclusions can’t be drawn by outside observers. They can only be drawn by subjects themselves who monitor their personality types – the building of character through their preferences.

While Isabel distinguishes between the light and dark sides the distinction is indirect. It’s implied, for example by reference to “wrongdoing,” inadequate consideration of costs, shallowness, insincerity, and other tendencies. But otherwise her “feeling” doesn’t account for dark side opposites. The difference between thinking (T) and feeling (F) isn’t necessarily what she’s intuited. Nevertheless, the difference is significant and deserves reflection. All of the differences – between introvert-extravert, sensing-intuition, thinking-feeling, and judging-perceptive – are relevant for types’ tendencies toward positive values and their opposites and therefore toward their subjects’ ultimate ending in fulfillment or disappointment.

The turning point: adolescence

Adolescence is a critical phase in establishing these tendencies. It’s the phase when Luke Skywalker committed to the cause of the Jedi Knights after the loss of his foster parents. It’s the phase when his father, Adam, started to part with Obi-Wan, his Jedi trainer, betray the Jedi cause, and go over to the empire. For many, our personal fortunes literally hang in the balance when we are adolescents.

May Affect be with you!