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Published on Leave a comment on Can One Personality Type Help Its Opposite Grow?

Isabel’s theory

Isabel Myers’ theory of personality types* says the answer to the question posed by this essay is yes. In theory one individual can coach a personality opposite in the use of faculties that his or her type typically underutilizes. In the example addressed here those would be introspection, reflection-intuition, thinking-reasoning, feeling-evaluation, and judging (INTJ), faculties typically under-utilized by the opposite type extravert, sensing, feeling, and perceptive (ESFP).

According to Isabel’s theory the faculties that make up our types are preferences, and since they’re largely responsible for performance it’s only a matter of preference whether we improve our performance by making better use of them, specifically by expanding into faculties associated with our opposites. This must happen routinely, for example when circumstances compel perceptives who prefer to experience life in the moment to use their judging faculty to plan ahead. What seems less likely is that any type would seek help from an opposite to gain competence with the opposite’s faculties.

Isabel’s theory is intriguing nonetheless, not just because it makes sense but because, if it could be put into general practice it would help with personal growth and better relations. How often do relationships and projects come apart because personalities lack the will or ability to share what they’re experiencing? Because, lacking a feel for other types, they blunder unintentionally into misjudgments that end goodwill and cooperation.

One faculty too many

The ideal setting assumed by Isabel’s theory would be two individuals with opposite personality types in cheerful collaboration. Two opposite types could be the best of friends, and if they are one might even welcome the other’s kindness. But what if the type being coached senses that the other is turning him into a copy of himself? Is manipulating preferences to assume control over the relationship?

It would be remarkable if even an individual crippled by ineptness with under-utilized faculties were aware of it. Or, if he were, comfortable exposing his ineptness to an opposite type for strengthening unless the other were already a trusted personal friend or a paid professional. Our personality types and how we go about relating to them are our psychological underwear. By a certain age we’re partial to our preferences. We don’t take change lightly if it can just as easily create distance as close it. Perhaps help with one or two faculties won’t feel like a humbling makeover, but what if help is needed with three or four?

Guides locking horns

Isabel’s theory would still be feasible in the right moment for the right relationships. That is, if they’re the only voices in the room. But what if one or both is self-consciously submitting its judgment -- the product of its Judging faculty -- to guidance from another voice? What if “opposites” are not only opposite faculties but opposite guides? The individual might be the soul of agreeability but not if his guide recoils at being sidelined by an opposite guide. By the competition. By the enemy if the guides represent opposite takes on the values of moral character or competitive prowess.

We may have begun not with John Locke’s tabula rasa but with Carl Jung’s psychological types locked and loaded for combat. Which means there could be four voices in the room to manage instead of two. There could even be a situation where two plus two doesn’t equal four. Where the guides of one or both have become so involved in shaping their personalities that the boundary between self and guide is obliterated. Two plus two could now equal three or only two. Two individuals with opposite personality types who consciously or subconsciously identify with their guides. Guides who themselves are personality types with their own faculties and preferences. Committed to blocking their host from even detecting another voice let alone listening to it. 

Two models of authority

The mind’s faculty of sixth sense or Intuition that led to the theory of psychological-personality types presupposes a quasi-professional setting where self-analysis can be conducted objectively and safely. Where both parties are open to faculties of mind -- introspection, reflection, reasoning, evaluation, and judging. But if one or both has identified with will instead of mind to direct behavior, for the very reason that its perceived strength compensates for weakness, then self-analysis isn’t an option. It will be strenuously opposed. The type who identifies with will won’t want anything to do with it because of its purpose: to overturn the iron rule of mindless will with the civilizing governance of mind.

The theory of personality type opposites has then strayed into the great divide in human thought and behavior: between the “realist” model of authority that deifies rule without opposition from the top down -- the authoritarian “triumph of the will” that crushes individuality and free choice -- and the democratic ideal of Lincoln’s Gettysburg address: governance from the bottom up that cultivates and respects individuality and free choice. Absolute authority, a mythical beast, vs. the indomitable spirit of freedom. Not absolute freedom without limits that’s another mythical beast but freedom of thought, expression, and choice that recognizes the necessity of Order in a shared world.

Respect for Free Choice

Personality types in the grip of either of these impossibilities -- absolute authority or absolute freedom -- will treat self-analysis as an existential threat because it threatens self-delusion, the state of mind of anyone lost to nonsense. All that can be done to rescue mind from captivity, with Isabel's theory, is to coach an empty room, record the attempt, and leave it to the spontaneity of intuition to bring it to its host’s attention. That is, when the beast has let down its guard. When its host decides with his own intuition, on his own, to exercise his indomitable Free Choice.

It's all an act

Alternate “reality” is an intentional act of self-delusion by Child-Mind, disabled and disempowered by unconsciousness, corrupted by misidentity with its own shadow, the code that defines its opposite, the Joker-magician. Which makes alternate “reality” an act. A performance by a magician. A magic act meant to hypnotize and captivate with its “entertainments:” hilarious perversions of Truth and horrifying perversions of Justice. All of it an impossibility that can’t be taken seriously. Adding the lure of magic and retribution -- the consummation of victimhood -- to the lures of the absolutes: authority and freedom. The lure of “fun.”

Plato’s Cave would then be a stage and its occupants play-acting puppets. Like the actors in the Truman TV Show, some so deluded, so closely identified with the Cave master, that they think they’re the producer. The occupants would then resist Truth because it would turn up the house lights. It would ruin the atmospherics of darkness, disembodied voices, laughter and screams, flames and flickering shadows -- the smoke and mirrors required to sustain illusion and fend off disbelief. It would expose the trick and stop the show. It would take away everyone’s “fun,” and, make no mistake, they think this is fun. So long as it’s “others” who are at the wrong end of violence and retribution they’re living the dream.

The boredom of “fun”

The Cave and its magic act are the production of a split Mind that’s Free Choice as well as corrupted. Its occupants may be deluded and confused, but given direction and incentive, they’re capable of folding the show on their own. The Mind that was lured into the Cave still retains the faculty of Intuition. The portal to spontaneous insights and understanding that is the sixth sense, that can neither be blocked entirely nor indefinitely. From awareness of an incentive to stop pretense more powerful by far than the magician’s lures: the will to Freedom. The indispensable function of Free Choice. Somewhere in the back of their minds is the memory of Free Choice and the ability to reclaim it. Whenever they choose.

When “fun” isn’t fun anymore. When Pete Hamill looked down at his drink and realized he was done with it. Done with the drinking life and its one-dimensional comic book “reality.” Done with “Brooklyn.” Done with adolescence, taverns, street fights, and mock comradeship. Ready to live a life with intimacy, maturity and responsibility, talent and creativity. Ready to have fun.**

The delusion then isn’t fully a delusion. It’s a self-willed adventure-fantasy conjured by adolescence to get into mischief with impossibilities. With dangerous toys in a shallow make-believe world. A universe of scary objects like black holes that fascinates with its vastness, complexity, violence, and pointlessness. All to avoid Reality mischaracterized by the Joker as boring.***

Bubbles within a bubble

Preoccupied with its production, the Cave’s fantasy troupe is inaccessible to anyone but its own members. It can’t be concerned with consequences beyond the show that must go on. And if any of its members carry the fantasy into their own lives; if they choose to live an adventure-fantasy, they, too, will be inaccessible.

For what will their lives be but re-enactments? Mimicking the Joker-corrupted Mind’s projection of an alternate reality. Monkey-see, monkey-do. Dragooning family and friends into playing scripted parts to keep the act alive. The wishful thought that action-comic impossibilities are possible: fantastic characters, hair-raising encounters, nonstop “action.” To keep themselves persuaded that it’s “real.” To keep the “fun” going at all costs. At the cost of wholesale disrespect for character, honesty and integrity, individuality and creativity. Their own and the captives to their adolescent, senseless will.

What will their lives be but alternate realities within an alternate “reality.” Bubbles within a bubble. Detached from reality. Wholly out of touch. 

Persuasion from a leash correction

An adolescent Child’s corrupted mind intentionally “choosing” self-delusion was an act of wrongdoing and so is its re-enactment. While the Cave’s troupe gets around to stopping the show it might motivate them if individual re-enactments in our midst receive a leash correction. The correction administered to untrained dogs by leashes when they race off in pursuit of prey. They learn that the costs of misadventure can’t all be displaced onto others with impunity. That there’s a price to pay -- a dose of Reality.

What then is Isabel’s contribution? An intelligent analytical approach to the problem posed by Plato’s Allegory of the Cave that complements leash correction. That will work beautifully someday when its light reaches the occupants of the Cave not from without but from within. When they tire of delusion and choose of their own free will to work toward self-awareness instead. With help from Intuition’s gift: respect for Free Choice and the Logic and Love of explanation that leads to Understanding.

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*Gifts Differing (Consulting Psychologists Press 1980) based on Carl Jung’s Psychological Types (Must Have Books 2019)
**A Drinking Life (Little, Brown 1994)
***Jerry L. Martin, God: An Autobiography (as Told to a Philosopher) (Caladium Publishing Company 2020)

Published on Leave a comment on Resurrection: Life and Love Unyielding, Life Eternal

When Soul walks among us, loves us, teaches us
and is taken away
When mind and heart cry out for Love
and all that can be heard is silence
Their voice expands into every corner of time and space

With the Force of Truth:
That Soul can never be taken away
That mind and heart crying out for Love will aways be heard.

We return today in observance of the Truth
The Life of Soul that was shared with us intact
Its example an inspiration yet

When the mistake cycles back on us like a shadow
from Groundhog Day
Lifting us from sleep to getting it right

From giving up to never giving up:
To theft of Soul, silencer of voice
To self-regard, its voice the only voice
Denial of Truth, hope and Soul, mind and heart

The imposition of mistake upon itself
Silenced by its own crucifixion, denied its own resurrection
The emptiness of authority for its own sake
That would replace the fullness of Love

It didn’t happen then and it can’t happen now.
When will it happen? Never.
What the Life and example of Jesus mean to me.
Resurrection. Life and Love unyielding. Life eternal.

Published on Leave a comment on Authoritarian Rule: Fact vs. Fiction

Fiction:

  • All relations are power relations between groups / tribes-herds competing for dominance.
  • Individuals “exist” with voices and feelings worthy of recognition only to the extent that they belong to groups, identify with groups, and are loyal to groups.
  • The gift of belonging that groups confer upon their members substitutes for Love and reciprocates individuals’ Love for their group.
  • Love of individuals for their group is to be encouraged. Love between individuals that can take precedence over group loyalty is to be denied and suppressed.
  • Group / tribe-herd loyalty is the highest good, the most important core value. More important than individual sovereignty and integrity. More important than respect for morality and the truth.
  • Questioning the supremacy of group authority is a sin. There is no worse sin than disobedience to group authority.

Fact:

  • One Child is Real and True. Child-the-many is a delusion perpetrated by the Child’s mistaken identity, its shadow-reflection opposite. By its “dark side” that can only be detected by Mind while in an unconscious state dreaming illusions.
  • Power relations between groups / tribes-herds competing for dominance are illusory “action” meant to distract their audience of individuals from the Truth, to convince them that Child-the-many is not what it is: the opposite of the Truth -- one Child -- and therefore unreal. It is an illusion.
  • Individuals have Free Choice enabled by Mind thinking-loving that is not subject to the mindless-loveless animal will of groups / tribes-herds.
  • There is no substitute for Love.
  • Group “belonging” that condemns its members to the suppression of sovereign individuality, the denial of Mind, Free Will, and Love, and to endless conflict is a curse, not a gift or blessing.
  • Free Will is the natural birthright of every individual. Bodies can be controlled and behavior suppressed. Minds and hearts endowed with individuality and Free Will cannot.
  • There is no more important core value than valuing the one Self that is Love shared and expressed through Oneness-individuality. There is no higher good than respect for Good itself -- morality, Logic-Love, and the Truth.
  • There is no more harmful mistake than loyalty to the mindless, loveless, soulless animal will of group / tribe-herd taking precedence over the mindful, loving Free Will of individuality.

Fiction:

  • Consideration whether the ownership and use of a product is to be adjusted to accommodate others affected by its use, that denies them feelings and a voice with which to express their feelings, that ignores what their voice has to say, is moral and “reasonable.”
  • A response to a request that’s accompanied by reasons based on values, that makes no reference to the reasons and values given, is moral and “reasonable.”
  • Ownership that confers the right to do whatever the owner wants without regard to the interests of others affected in a shared world is ownership that’s responsible, moral, and “reasonable.”
  • It is “reasonable”-possible to have and do whatever you want without violating the natural rule of law that defines morality and enables civilization.
  • Explanation and understanding are possible without analysis. Free Choice is possible without analysis. Analysis is possible without reasoning and evaluation. 

Fact:

  • In a shared, just, civilized world no one may have and do whatever they want with ownership or any other context without conflicting with the natural rule of law and morality.
  • “Doing” is process that always requires structure. Structure is Order that consists of natural laws of cause and effect, sourced by Benevolence -- Logic and Love -- and backed up by the Force of Necessity. It’s morality and it applies to owners as well as everyone.
  • It applies to Benevolence -- the Authority that governs all of Reality-Creation because otherwise its governance would be arbitrary and capricious and therefore immoral and lawless.
  • The “right” to have and do whatever anyone wants in any context is a myth that authoritarian narcissists employ in order to “justify” injustice: acts that are inherently selfish, insensitive, cruel, and therefore immoral.
  • It is being promoted today by selfish, immoral demagogues to “justify” the takeover of democratic bottom-up governance by authoritarian top-down rule.
  • It is a lie that accounts for humanity’s long history of unresolved tension between civilizing Reason and tribalizing herd-emotions, between harmony and conflict, Good and evil, peace and war.
  • It is the ultimate affront to the rule of law that enables a just, reasoning-accommodating, egalitarian civilization as opposed to authoritarian dominance by unreasoning, unjust, combative tribal will.
  • The idea that anyone can have and do whatever they want without violating the natural rule of law and morality is detached from Reality, psychotic, and therefore insane.

Fiction:

  • Having a voice and the right and duty to be heard is the sole prerogative of authoritarian rule. No one else is entitled to it.
  • Denying others a voice when they have the right and duty to be heard cannot be of any consequence to them or inflict any cost on them.
  • It is of no consequence and inflicts no cost because others are not entitled to feelings. Having feelings that can be offended is the exclusive preserve of authoritarian rule.
  • Authoritarian rule that claims exclusive rights to a voice and feelings can do no harm to those denied a voice and feelings and is therefore exempt from responsibility and accountability since there are no consequences-costs to account for.
  • Authoritarian rule is exempt from accountability because rule that’s arbitrary, capricious, and lawless may do whatever it wants. 

Fact:

  • Everyone in a shared, just, and civilized world is entitled to a voice and has the right to be heard when their interests are affected.
  • Everyone has feelings and the right to use their voice to express their feelings when they are offended.
  • Authoritarian rule that denies others a voice and deprives them of feelings when they are affected is unfeeling. It’s insensitive, cruel, immoral, and uncivilized.
  • Unfeeling authoritarian wrongdoing can evoke feelings of rage, hatred, and a “terrible resolve” to right the wrong among its victims. Admiral Yamamoto feared that democratic America would be filled with a “terrible resolve” to punish authoritarian Japan for its attack on Pearl Harbor, and America did so.

Fiction:

  • Authoritarian rule must be unquestioned because it is flawless as it is, it is absolute, and has no opposite. 

Fact:

  • Authoritarian rule can have no opposite because it is an opposite: the opposite of the natural laws of cause and effect and morality backed by the Force of Necessity that govern supportively and compassionately from the bottom up instead of ruling cruelly, destructively, and lawlessly from the top down.

Fiction:

  • Structure-Order is possible without natural laws of cause and effect and a moral code backed by the Force of Necessity.
  • Structure-Order is made possible by arbitrary-capricious authoritarian rule that’s lawless. That “rules” by the “laws” of chaos.
  • In Structure-Order made possible by lawless authoritarian rule it’s possible, moral, and just to have and do whatever you want without consequences or costs.

Fact:

  • Arbitrary-capricious authoritarian rule that’s lawless is the opposite of Structure-Order and morality.
  • Freedom is impossible in the absence of Structure-Order.
  • The absence of Structure-Order -- lawlessness -- is the denial of Freedom. It’s imprisonment, enslavement. 

Fiction:

  • “Action” is mindless, loveless, and soulless.
  • “Action” is bodies directed-disciplined by animal herd instinct toward dominance-supremacy of will in physical competition-conflict.
  • “Action” that results in winning and losing in physical conflict stands for the ultimate purpose and meaning of Life: the “Triumph of the Will.” 

Fact:

  • Action that stands for purpose and meaning is mindful, loving, and soulful.
  • Action is self-directed, self-disciplined minds and hearts functioning with guidance from their sixth sense -- spontaneous insights from Intuition -- toward explanation that leads to understanding how to address issues and solve problems with honesty, integrity, and compassion.
  • Action is the application of understanding that addresses issues and solves problems, that alleviates suffering and advances the cause of a just and free society.

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“Wildness” that translates into authoritarian supremacy is a joke

“Wild card” autonomy logically implies detachment from controls -- anything that would limit its range of movement, any superior authority that would “tame” it. The Joker’s pitch would have offered unconscious Child an alternate reality where there would be no limits on its movement, no structure to contend with, no interconnectedness. Where the Child Free Choice, Creation’s wild card, could be wild -- a definition of “free” that the Interconnectedness of Reality can’t satisfy. Our unreal material world is a fantasy of “wildness” which implies chaos -- no laws. It’s Ivan Karamazov’s “lawlessness” which implies arbitrary-capricious top-down rule.

This is the philosophical root of Palpatine’s authoritarian supremacy, the “wildness” of the Child Free Choice, a ”wild card.” In Truth nothing in Reality-Creation can be a wild card without definition, without the structure-Order of Interconnectedness that Freedom requires. The alternate reality offered by the Joker-opposite was an impossibility without the definitions-connections of Logic-Love.

A perversion that’s a joke: “wild card”-“wildness” that translates into authoritarian supremacy, the opposite of freedom-wildness. Plato’s Cave occupants are fools imagining themselves to be “wild and crazy guys.” “Born to raise hell” motorcyclists are expressing a version of “freedom” that’s wildness: impossible, delusional foolishness. Freedom without Order is delusional. Yet Child Free Choice can logically imply wildness because it’s free of Parents’ control. It’s not free of Creation Structure-Interconnectedness but it must be free of Parental control within Process.

How the Joker pulled it off -- the reversal of Creation

The distinction between Creation’s Structure and Process is critical to understanding the Child’s loss of Consciousness. The Child’s wild card freedom from Parental control of its choices within Process may have implied to an inexperienced Child, lacking self-direction and self-discipline, that the laws of cause and effect and the Force of Necessity in Process didn’t apply to Child. It thus may have implied that laws-Necessity in Structure didn’t apply either. It may have implied that wild card absence of Parental control of Free Choice exempts Free Choice from laws-Necessity in Process and Structure of Creation both.

Humanity attempting to express Free Choice wild card as “liberty,” i.e. as exemption from laws-Necessity, is an impossibility that can only be re-enacted in a dream where “anything goes.” It’s re-enacting the Child’s confusion of its wild card autonomy from Parental interference with a broader exemption from laws-Necessity. It’s the impossibility of authoritarian supremacy that is specialness. That leads not to “liberty” but to surrendering of Free Choice to an arbitrary-capricious captor, to lawlessness-chaos. It is the opposite of Structure-Order required by Freedom.

Correction of error addressed by A Course in Miracles (ACIM) was mis-identification of Self caused by confusion between real Self and illusory shadow-reflection inside unconsciousness. Correction of error addressed by The Story of the Child was confusion between Free Choice’s freedom from Parental control and the impossibility of Freedom from laws-Necessity within Consciousness.

The Joker’s perversion of Creation is its reversal of definition within Creation’s Process and Structure that disables both and renders their connection-relationship meaningless. Process Free Choice becomes no process because no free choice, i.e.  imprisonment in Plato’s Cave. Structure becomes top-down authoritarian because no Parental support from bottom up and thus becomes no structure. Allowing the Joker’s “authority,” the chaos of no process-structure, to replace them. Coming apart within and between both is the consequence of the Child’s mis-identification with coded separation-disconnection. With coded coming apart -- its shadow-reflection opposite.

The lesson

The practical lesson for humanity is to use metaphysics to understand the Reality-Creation that preceded and produced the Big Bang -- our material, illusory universe. That exists not within the dream but whose story furnishes the root of every event, every interaction, that comprises it. The practical lesson is that Reality-Creation consists of Structure and Process, that process requires structure, and structure must be bottom-up to enable process that’s Creativity with Free Will.

The lesson is that unfeeling top-down authoritarian supremacy gets Structure wrong and smothers the Free Will and Creativity of Process. It's irrational fear of change and innovation -- “conservatives,” “traditionalists,” and “realists” -- forcing Structure onto Process not to enable and empower Free Choice and Creation but to disable and disempower it. Not to break humanity out of its self-destructive cyclical status quo but to lock it permanently into place and thereby preserve its unquestioned "authority." It’s serving the wrong guide and its wrong, self-destructive agenda. The exact opposite of what Logic-Love, the Parents of our ancestral Mind in Reality, intend. It's a massive offense to the laws of cause and effect that presumes supremacy over the Force of Necessity -- an absurdity whose proud achievement is the dominance that homo sapiens has always craved: the Anthropocene that's taking it to its own extinction. Worse than madness -- it’s evil.

“Doing whatever you want” is a fantasist’s dream. It’s exactly what the Joker promised to the unconscious Child because the Child’s opposite code, the Joker, is a fantasist. Surrendering Free Choice / Mind to the Joker is what enables us to be fooled. To cling to the fantasy because only Mind thinking with Logic-Love -- making sense -- can explain the Truth.

How long will we be fooled without it? Indefinitely.

Published on Leave a comment on Individuality Rules, Group Drools

Be specific!

On a blackboard in Bulfinch Hall, at Phillips Academy Andover, the debate class teacher, “FAP” Peterson, had written BE SPECIFIC in big block letters on the blackboard. Though I wasn’t a debater I could see it whenever I mounted the stairs to my senior English class, with a twinge of awareness that learning to debate might be a good thing. Meanwhile, English was taught by “Black Mac” McCarthy who also taught philosophy, another course that would have been a good thing. “Philosophy” and “be specific” thus lodged in my subconscious like two pieces of unfinished business, and now, almost seven decades later, the connection has stirred back to life.

The idea of individuality permeates Reality because it’s rooted in Oneness, its center. And since our alternate “reality” is its reverse mirror-image reflection -- unreality -- getting right with individuality, as much as any consideration, will be the difference between getting back to work in Reality or spinning our wheels here. It’s a factor particularly in understanding our universe, A Course in Miracles, and personality type theory.

Our idiosyncratic world  

The idiosyncrasy of the universe and the planet earth, of circumstances, and A Course in Miracles -- their uniqueness -- all trace back to the implications of Oneness. Of the Being-Self of Reality-Creation: This Being. Not any being but This Particular Being. “Oneness” implies specificity. There is no meaning without specificity. Gertrude Stein had no choice but to answer Alice Toklas’s “What’s the answer?” with “What’s the question?” Be specific.

Generality implies meaning and applicability across multiple expressions of a subject, object, or principle. Across the many, which in Reality is an impossibility: making unreality real. Meaning can only apply to One: This One. “That one” cannot exist. Only one One.

Generalizing is of Child-the-many. Sean Carroll’s A Series of Fortunate Events (Princeton 2020) describes earth’s idiosyncrasy without asking Why its story is idiosyncratic. It’s because the story of anything can’t encompass cookie-cutter sameness across multiple expressions of the same idea. Had earth’s been a replication, with a predictable formula or pattern, it would be something other than an expression of the uniqueness of Oneness in Reality, an impossibility. If the laws of cause and effect say that Oneness in Reality-Creation is unique, then it’s necessarily unique. And, being Oneness at the center of Everything, it sets the mold for everything that comes after. For everything that its Logic necessarily implies.

“Individual” is unique. An individual’s story is specific to that individual, otherwise it can have no meaning for that individual. The same principle applies to the story of the universe and the planet earth: each is unique. And what makes each unique is specific, idiosyncratic circumstances that apply only to each. The Oneness of Reality-Creation must be unique if there can be no “other” Oneness. The story of Oneness in Reality-Creation is idiosyncratic, unique.

One beats many

Oneness is individuality. Each individual on earth, our state of unreality, has their own personality. ”Personality” is an expression of the uniqueness of individuality and individuals’ stories. Personality “types” implies individual-the-many, e.g. ESFPs, INTJs. Myers-Briggs personality type theory expresses Carl Jung’s and its authors’ intuition that humans all appear to be different but the differences can be grouped into types. Types and their interactions are orchestrations of Child-the-many groups. Being an INTJ I am therefore a type which puts me into a group. Groups conflicting must be illusory, a part of the dream, since Reality-Creation is the fitting together of Logic-Love in harmony.

Child-the-One is unique. Each part of Reality-Creation is a unique oneness-Self. The INTJ personality type aligns with Child-the-One uniqueness because its components all align with individuality. The ESFP type is the opposite. It aligns with Child-the-many because its components all align with group.

When it self-identified with its shadow-Joker, Child-the-One misidentified with its opposite, Child-the-many. With group, an illusion that contradicts Oneness. “Group” contradicts Truth and laws of cause and effect because it conflicts with uniqueness of Oneness. Expressions of Reality-Creation, of Life-Being Oneness, must be individual, unique. Viral replications of the Child’s opposite shadow-self, the Joker-magician, are the opposite of uniqueness. They are an illusion. 

The labor of Love that brought about the Course

By addressing individuals A Course in Miracles denies the illusion of Child-the-many replications, affirms the Worth of Creation, reciprocates the Logic-Love of Reality’s governance, and aligns with its laws of Necessity. If the Author of the Course were to address group it would perpetuate the illusion by making it real.

The Course can’t be “group” and therefore can’t be “religion,” “Christianity,” or any particular school of psychology. This is true even though concepts familiar to Gnostic Christianity and Freudian analytics help to construct its thought system. The manner in which it came about attests not to the dynamics of organization but to personal engagement. To individual minds and hearts opening to another perspective that values their individuality, their independent judgment and Free Will.

The Course’s Author, Jesus, established one-on-one relationships with his scribe, Helen Schucman, and her co-worker Bill Thetford over a period of years. He helped to apply the Course’s psychology to their intimate relationships at home and professional relationships at work. He related to Helen and Bill in a language that they could understand. It was through their help with the editing and publication of the Course that they accepted and reciprocated the gift, by sharing it. Though neither Helen nor Bill took an advocacy role in putting the book into circulation their interaction with Jesus throughout was marked by openness, honesty, and trust. It was, throughout, a remarkable labor of Love.

The universe in every particle

All aspects of our alternate “reality” imply its unreality, including and especially multiple copies of isolated-separated bodies. All unreal. Oneness implies the impossibility of replication. The viral replications of the Child’s shadow-opposite, the Joker-magician, are an impossibility in Reality. “Humanity” composed of multiple individuals, multiple copies of bodies, is an impossibility, an illusion. Oneness means the specificity of individuality with no possibility of replication or separation. Each “clone” can only be unique. The only possible story-meaning of every “separate” body is an idiosyncratic story specific to that body and the Story of the Child.

The same applies to every “separate” inanimate object including the planet earth and the universe. Spacetime-matter is all one “particle” with its own unique idiosyncratic story, the story of its individuality -- its sovereignty. Within the story of the whole each individual particle is but a manifestation of the whole with its own unique story. Its individuality. There is no getting around the Reality of Oneness. Of individuality.

Each particle, each object, body, blade of grass contains within it the contradiction of the unreality, the illusion that replication implies. It accomplishes this through the unique meaning, the idiosyncratic story, of the entire universe of spacetime-matter contained within it. Just as each individual person contains within its Psyche the Story of Child-the-One, each particle contains the idea of the whole universe: the thought of Oneness-uniqueness which contradicts Child-the-many group-herd sameness.

So much for “littleness”!

Consciousness is uniqueness. “Self-awareness” is the awareness of one’s uniqueness. The Joker’s perversion of Oneness-uniqueness is specialness, the apotheosis of separation: authoritarian supremacy seated on its throne of having and doing whatever it wants without limits or opposition. Uniqueness within the unreality of the Child’s own opposite: Child-the-many replications. The crowning achievement of the Joker -- an absurdity. A joke.

Our alternate “reality” that receives so much hand-wringing attention is an absurdity. An attempt to copy uniqueness which by definition can’t be copied. There can be no “alternate” reality if Oneness by definition can have no “alternates.”

The Course addressing individuals stands as the ultimate affirmation of individual Worth: The Child is unique. There is only one Child. “You” are not real. The only Reality is the Reality of “I.” “You” are I-Child. The individual bears the whole Child-the-One Psyche-Soul within because it can’t be fragmented, can’t be separated. It can be addressed by the Author of the Course only as an individual containing the whole Child-the-One within.

Which makes the Course the ultimate affirmation of Worth because it couldn’t address the individual at all if it weren’t the bearer of One Child-Self. To address an individual otherwise, that’s a separated fragment, would make unreality real. The Course’s relationship to each reader is unique to that reader. Each relationship is unique -- the empowerment of “individual.” The phenomenon of the Course, its meaning and impact, is its validation of the individual’s true Self: the Reality of the Oneness-Soul, the Logic-Love, that we are. Just to be addressed by the Author of the Course is to have the individual’s Real Self affirmed whether or not we share the awareness of its Author.

The dark side of humanity: “relationship” that isn’t

Worth derives from the sovereignty of individuality which derives from the uniqueness of Oneness. The source of the Energy-Force that enables and empowers the Child-Parents Relationship to extend and expand the Interconnections of Reality-Creation through the Creation of new Life-Worth is the Relationship between Child Free Choice and its Parents Logic-Love and between Parents Logic and Love. Creation is process that “adds value.”

The source of the energy-force that animates our alternate “reality” is a “relationship” that can’t be and isn’t: between an unconscious Child and its own shadow-opposite. A “relationship” that’s only “possible” in a state of impossibility -- unconsciousness that’s illusory by definition. Unconsciousness detached from Reality where only dying dreams detached from Reality are possible. Animated by the dying energy-force of entropy.

If the Relationship that powers Creation is doing right, then the non-relationship that animates a dying dream with dying energy is doing wrong. It’s wrongdoing. The dark side of humanity. Where our troubles come from.

The mistake that herd-loyalty replicates

The group identity of the ESFP personality type -- its copycat sameness -- contradicts the individual identity -- the uniqueness -- of the INTJ personality type. They are opposites. Individuality connects with and relates to individuality. It’s where passion between loved ones and friends comes from: like things attract one another.

ESFP’s identity with group denies and invalidates individuality. There is no point of contact between opposites, and without connection there can be no feeling. The Love that unites all individuals in the Soul of Oneness beneath the appearances of our alternate “reality” is blocked on the surface by incompatibility. By the preferences of personality type. The ESFP personality type can’t befriend individuals so long as it remains loyal to its “social” herd-tribal identity that opposes individual friendship. The mistake by our ancestral Mind that the ESFP type replicates. 

Weakness in numbers

The ESFP type asserts the “reality” of the body through its preference for body-sensing over mind-Intuiting. Asserts the “reality” of the herd-tribe composed of replicated bodies in competition with individuality. It can express “strength” only in numbers, the source of its “power.”

The source of the ESFP former guy’s “power,” dependent on his group-“base” for existence. Deriving its “strength” from alignment not with Reality’s laws of cause and effect and their Force of Necessity. Not from Logic and Love their Source or from Child-the-One, but from alignment with our illusory world’s non-alignment. From alignment with unreality: the former guy’s obsession with sizes of audiences and crowds, with numbers of illusory replications. 

The crybaby at the top

Authoritarian supremacy is the ultimate Boo! by the Joker-magician that the self-deluded Child has projected onto our alternate reality’s stage. It replaces the Child’s Parents Logic-Love with a smear, then crushes the Child by depriving it of its voice, by disablement and disempowerment. By denial of its Free Will and individuality-uniqueness. It tosses the Child into an illusory group of sameness, of nobodies.

One tipoff of authoritarian supremacy and self-delusion, its “author” the Joker-magician, is its refusal to come down off its imaginary throne. To acknowledge responsibility for the consequences-costs of its acts, to learn from its mistakes and grow. What is it but fear of accountability? What is it but fear of criticism?

So this is authoritarian supremacy, the armor-plated action-hero thundering dominance from the top: a crybaby who can’t take criticism.

Published on Leave a comment on Personality Type: Where Wrongdoing Hides and Hope Abides

The Course isn’t doctrine

The lesson taught by A Course in Miracles is not presented for acceptance by any group. The Course does not insist upon its acceptance without regard to practical considerations. Its intended audience is individuals not groups. Readers are discouraged from forming groups,. As theory it is not only fit for application to practical problems this is its purpose. It is not doctrine or doctrinaire, dogma or dogmatic. To treat it as such, as though it were a commandment or a party line, is not understanding and use but misunderstanding and misuse.

If the Course is to be distinguished from established religion this will explain why. If established religion is to understand why it is incompatible with the free spirit of inquiry and thus has earned the distrust and enmity of science, philosophy, psychology, and other fields this explains why. The Course is not doctrine meddling in anybody’s business, group or individual. It is a sharing of mind and heart from another perspective than our own, that can be put to anyone’s use not only for what it teaches but how it teaches it: by making sense with Logic and Love. By setting an example that Free Wills can choose to follow by making sense. With help from the Logic and Love they can access through their own minds and hearts.

This is not a formula for setting up an ideological mass movement of any kind, religious or otherwise. It is Authority from the Reality of Logic and Love that serve every individual, that could never be or do anything authoritarian. It is gentle loving kindness that could never be or do anything coercive, unloving, or unkind.

Is the Course practical?

If the Course does not aim to assert the supremacy of its wisdom over the consciousness of humanity then how can it be expected to be of practical use to humanity? If only one individual puts its lesson to use and truly Forgives, this will undo the delusion our ancestral Mind has brought upon itself. It will end the dream. “Every vote counts.” The Course isn’t handing Free Will a fish. It’s teaching Free Will how to fish. It’s the ultimate affirmation and empowerment of individual-personal Worth: the Authority of Logic and Love from Reality explaining to individuals, where they’re at inside the dream, that anyone of us has the power to awaken our ancestral Mind from its dream.

Is it possible? What is a dream but a state of mind  where anything is possible? If unconsciousness that’s dreaming could make a metauniverse “possible,” where we the projections of a dreaming mind carry its Soul within us, whole and inviolate, animated by the same Force of Energy that animates the universe, then who’s to say that one individual contradicting the lie of guilt that the whole edifice of lies is built upon, can’t bring it all down? Translating theory into practice must involve mind-changing on a scale that’s been role-modeled for us but never yet achieved by us. It must involve self-awareness  brought into intimacy with our role model with such passion that they function as one. There is no possibility that a Free Will compromised by any vestige of self-delusion can truly Forgive. But mind changed and functioning as one with its Guide, with the Voice for Logic and Love, can do it. In theory it’s possible.

When the herd transforms itself into One

When will it be possible? When the conditions that enable it are met: circumstances that have enabled every step forward in Creation since the first step was taken by Logic and Love. The indispensable element of every context that defines purpose and meaning: circumstances in the here and now. What is the gift of the Course? The light that it shines on our circumstances so one individual can take it from there and change them if Free Will chooses. If Free Will abandons its infatuation with the voice of its self-delusion and aligns with the Voice for Reality and Truth.

So that one member of the herd that is humanity may break free from the herd and assert the Truth: that “herd” is a lie. That Child-the-many is a delusion That our ancestral Mind is Child-the-One and all it takes to restore sanity is one. All it takes is for “herd” to do what it does best: to follow wherever it’s led. And if circumstances change that have placed the wrong “guide” at its head -- the self-delusion of Child-the-many -- then exposing the lie will place the right Guide at its head. The right Guide that is the herd itself transformed by its own Free Choice back into one. Self-delusion restored to Truth. Wishful thinking giving way to fact. With the guidance but not the coercion of metaphysics going behind appearances to explain with Logic and Love. With Intuition.

The gift of metaphysics that’s role-modeled by the Course

What does this suggest for how individuals can help to bring about the circumstances that will enable Forgiveness? That we look to personality types. That we follow the wisdom of Isabel Myers, who intuited from Carl Jung’s intuition that personality types are dynamic rather than static. That they are subject to direction and discipline by their hosts. Personality types are composed of preferences among functions that can change. Functions divided between bodies, minds, and feelings that, depending on how the individual configures them, determine how individuals judge their situation. That is, how they understand.

Personality types reliant on body-sensing to understand their world judge humanity’s situation to be the opposite of the situation described by the Course. Judge themselves to be members of a herd or tribe. Accessing their personality’s capacity for Intuition could change that with Intuition’s access to Logic and Love. The gift of metaphysics that’s role-modeled by the Course.

The circumstance that needs to change

Circumstances are always idiosyncratic. Because the essence of circumstances that make up context is always unique to the individual. This is what gives them meaning. The circumstances that produced organic matter on earth -- “life” -- are idiosyncratic, unique to the earth and its situation. A tale told by Sean B. Carroll in A Series of Fortunate Events: Chance and the Making of the Planet, Life, and You (Princeton 2020). The circumstances that produced our universe are idiosyncratic, suggesting that other universes exhibit different physics and that the differences imply the existence of a great many universes -- a “metaverse.”

The choice of the individual to remain deluded by the deception or to gain self-awareness comes down to a preference starting with two functions of personality type: between body-sensing and Intuition. Between seeing ourselves as bodies or seeing ourselves as minds. And ending with two other functions: judging and perceiving. Which do we prefer? If we wish to judge our situation differently so that our circumstances will align with the possibility of true Forgiveness, then the way forward is clear: recognize ourselves as minds not bodies and seek the Truth of our situation through mind-Intuition rather than preferring body-sensing. 

The trouble with humanity’s “feeling” 

Brain matter that registers and processes relations between physical objects, the body and its physical environment, is distinct from mind producing thoughts, from feeling producing empathy. The personality type extravert-sensing-feeling-perceptive (ESFP) can be a suitable stand-in for humanity when generalizing about personality type and its role in mind-changing. It’s all in for body vs. mind. It registers and processes all things physical, i.e. appearances on the surface. Anything beneath the surface escapes its notice. It isn’t felt and doesn’t register. Another’s physical pain registers but if it’s emotional pain that body-sensing can’t detect it makes no impression.

The ’F’ for feeling in the ESFP syndrome isn’t what “feeling” would normally imply -- empathy and compassion. A point where my interpretation and Isabel’s may diverge because my understanding goes beyond the scope of Gifts Differing. As I see it Intuition-Logic and Love-feeling guide thinking-reasoning toward judgment-understanding, much like organic entitles in constant motion acting upon one another. Body-sensing navigates spacetime-matter to keep bodies safe. But when body-sensing teams up with the perceptive function that’s opposite to judging, it can connect with specialness.  With body-brains’ animal herd-will that interferes with thinking-reasoning instead of guiding it.

The trouble with humanity’s “specialness” 

Specialness denies that either thinking or the direction and discipline of judging is needed. What’s needed is itself: one supreme authority without opposition. The impossibility of Freedom without Order. The bogus ideal of “liberty” without limits that fuels political polarization. The ESFP who takes the lure chooses in effect to elevate body-specialness to authoritarian supremacy to the exclusion of introspection, reflection, thinking, feeling, and judgment -- every function of mind needed for understanding and compassion. At great cost to itself in impaired vision and feeling, psychotic denial of reality, separation from valued relationships, lack of self-guidance and self-discipline, and stifled learning, growth, and creativity. “Lord” Vader in lordly isolation on his throne. The apotheosis of humanity's animal brain, the "triumph of the will."

Those of us who recoil from this behavior do so for self-preservation because, without feeling, ESFPs can’t understand. And if they tread on us there’s a good chance they’ll do it again. Not feeling the cost of their missteps and not understanding how it happened, they’ll assign responsibility to us for protesting and carry on unaccountably. And if we stand up for justice we will be smeared. They are not safe to be around. Many of us have had run-ins with ESFPs so we know the type. But if we haven’t noticed the Former Guy, an ESFP, is making sure that we do.

A way to facilitate personality type change

Personality types are supposed to protect us, like the body’s immune system, with failsafe mechanisms against wrongdoing. But this requires that the working parts of personalities function in harmony. In our separated world they don’t. Without feeling which derives from Love we can’t know the difference between right-doing and wrong-doing. Feeling is the wall between right and wrong and in some personality types it’s missing. The result is serial offenders like the Former Guy whose “reality” is the one-dimensional world of entertainment, populated by figures deprived of feelings and the values that go along with them. A “reality” of chaos that aspires to its apotheosis: authoritarian supremacy.

One possible remedy is for ESFPs exercising Free Will to shift their preferences from body-sensing that validates self-identity as body toward mind-intuiting that validates self-identity as mind. I can’t vouch for its effectiveness from personal experience but that may change.

Lunacy on an epic scale

Why is it important?

Because physical appearances and humanity’s body-identifying, body-sensing mindset deluded by spacetime-matter are enormously harmful. A mindset that deprives itself of sensitivity to circumstances beneath appearances deprives itself of feeling essential to compassion, loving kindness, and understanding. The damage isn’t limited to relationship friction or even the communal wreckage that one noisy demagogue can cause. It’s a curse that’s built into the human condition -- historic and universal.

How fundamentally nuts is this? Take another look at circumstances. Circumstances are with us always. They provide meaning from the bottom up: the essential element of the construct that would collapse if it were not grounded. The essential element of presence of mind, the first line of defense against misperception and misjudgment. Against mistake.

Detachment from circumstances commenced our ancestral Mind’s loss of Consciousness. Defined its situation while it deluded itself into recognizing its own shadow-reflection, its own opposite, as an “other.” Surrendered its independent sovereign judgment -- Free Will -- to the delusion so that a substitute will, another “parent,” would find and attach it to better circumstances. The opposite of where it had been so that it would be safe.

So that this couldn’t happen again because now it rules. Alone from the top down instead of sharing governance from the bottom up, grounded in circumstances that might change and rob it of Consciousness again. Rules from the top down where it can never again be blindsided by change because now it is the logic that defines both: its circumstances and change too. Where detachment from circumstances that define Reality from the ground up, rather than attachment, is now the order of the day.

Applause, please

And what is the order of the day? Psychosis. Unreality detached from sanity that can make sense of its circumstances. Recognized by itself not as a sign of madness but as the emblem of cool. Detached from awareness that knows who and where it is -- the very definition of a fool. Finding safety, the why and how of it, in wishful thinking that buries its head in the sand. All of it a magician’s act that accomplishes the impossible with one simple trick: making circumstances disappear. The act of a mind unconscious and delusional: getting rid of the foundation of all of Reality-Creation -- its circumstances. The act of a fool captive to authoritarian supremacy.

This is why it’s important.

Published on Leave a comment on Disrespectful Parenting and the Fallacy of Authoritarian Supremacy

Kindred spirits

“Value individuality and don’t try to dictate what. . . kids are curious about or how they express themselves. [Respectful parenting] is about seeing children as independent rational beings [instead of taking an] authoritarian [approach] where communication is one way with little consideration of a child’s emotional needs.” 

CNBC on Apple News Feed 01/07/23, quoting Margot Machol Bisnow, author, Raising an Entrepreneur (BookBaby 2022).

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In “Respectful Parenting” (January 8) I anticipated reading Bisnow’s book “in hopes that it will help with one of the main concerns of this website: the undoing of authoritarian “realism,” a dominant strain of philosophy that’s neither realistic nor rational. Responsible, in fact, for the abuse of children and every other living thing. The signature human mindset that’s become the signature of an entire geological epoch: the ongoing global atrocity we now call the "Anthropocene.”

I’ve since read the book and found that it has helped. In its author I feel a kindred spirit who shares my dismay at authoritarian insensitivity when the spirit of a vulnerable child is stifled by “authority.” By the misreading of authority by self-centered parents who turn its kindness meant to support with sensitivity, responsibility, and accountability, from the bottom up, into unkindness that rules with insensitivity, irresponsibility, and unaccountability, from the top down. Hallmarks of the authoritarian “realist’s” temperament, the root of troublemaking in every cause, every relationship.

The “bad thing” that Freud spent his career trying to understand and the friction that drove two professionals to pleading for “a better way.” The clinical psychologists Bill Thetford and Helen Schucman, who collaborated on A Course in Miracles, the guidance from metaphysics channeled by a perspective in but not of our world. Whose name was Jesus but could be any name we choose so long as its voice speaks for Logic and Love. For the Parents of their Child, Free Choice. Of us its projections.

The duty to speak, the duty to listen

The sentiments that follow speak from experience with disrespectful authoritarian parenting. Living it as a child and witnessing it as an adult. “Disrespect” is not meant for my own or others’ parents, who in their misreading of authority were no less motivated than I to do what’s right and in dealing with externals, with the necessities, did do a great deal that was right. Where we differ is in getting it right: what I perceive is a flaw in thinking so prevalent that it’s corrupted nearly all of Western thought. I don’t see the parents of my experience being other than human, only misled by the twists and turns of personality, genetics, and externals that account for personhood. By the same misperceptions that misled our ancestral Mind, the One Child that we are. "Disrespect" is meant neither for the Child nor for its projections but for the nature of the mistake. Authoritarian anything in human relations is inherently disrespectful.

It’s not for my sentiments to correct the flaw. It’s only my duty to use the gift of Logic and Love to think and feel. To observe, reflect, and analyze. To judge with conscience and compassion and then, when the time comes, to act. To use the gift of Voice to speak up and be heard. Whether my sentiments ring true or arrive at the right time is up to Authority. It’s not for me to say. But if authoritarian parents are serious about parenting; if they care for their children, it is their duty to listen. Not necessarily to change. To get it right, but to hear a voice other than their own and reflect on it. To look beyond the “authority” that stands in the way of understanding. Beyond the “authority” that isn’t, to the Authority that is.

If authoritarian parents want to silence me and my kindred spirit, all they have to do is listen. 

Voices that can’t be silenced 

Excerpts from Raising an Entrepreneur (New Harbinger 2nd ed. 2021):

  • All children thrive if they learn: to believe in themselves; to pursue their true passions; to find new ways to solve old problems; to see opportunity where others see the status quo; to be willing to take on a challenge without proper credentials; to work with single-minded determination to achieve a goal; to take a risk if the project is worth trying; to learn that building something wonderful is its own reward. . . . ; to view failure as feedback and setbacks as learning experiences; to dream big dreams. (368)
  • The more freedom you give kids, the more freedom they have to come into conflict with other people about the way things should be done. . . . [T]hey don’t have to fear conflict, and. . . it’s okay to challenge conventional ways of thinking and doing things. . . . (190)
  • The ideal mentor is driven by a different impulse -- to expose the child to challenges and equip the child to handle them. A mentor can also give a much-needed kick in the pants their parents are reluctant to give. And a child, especially a teenager, may listen to a mentor precisely because the mentor isn’t a parent. . . . [A] mentor with the right values becomes even more important. . . . (136)
  • A mentor just has to be someone the child respects, someone who comes into their life and shows them a new way of looking at the world, or who validates their self-worth by understanding the way they look at the world. (136)
  • [M]entors. . . could be family members other than their parents. . . . (364)
  • [A]n adult who demonstrates that it’s OK to do things differently, to color outside the lines, can be powerfully validating. . . A mentor can also broaden a young person’s view of available possibilities. . . . [A] mentor can show kids a whole world beyond the world of their parents. (135)
  • One way a mentor can serve as a bridge to the adult world is by giving your child a different perspective from yours. Even though it may not be easy, you need to trust your child to make the most of that different perspective, because it’s a key part of letting them create their own perspective -- the one they’ll keep refining for the rest of their life. (161)
  • [A] mentor provided not just guidance, but guiding principles -- attitudes and beliefs to be drawn on over a lifetime, especially in adversity. (150)
  • Mentors are good for everyone. But if children feel underappreciated at school, few things do more to boost their confidence than having someone who appreciates their talents. (136)

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Friendship requires mutual affection, respect, trust-honesty, and understanding between equals. Silencing a person’s voice with intimidation and bullying to assert authoritarian supremacy destroys affection, respect, trust-honesty, and understanding. It can never destroy a person’s inherent Worth but it does destroy friendship.

Anyone serious about respectful parenting must know that they may not ever, for any reason, assert authoritarian supremacy over their children. They may not silence their children’s voices with authoritarian intimidation and bullying. Nor may they attempt to do so with anyone who has a legitimate role in their children’s care and development. This includes role-modelers and mentors that every child needs.

The care and development of a child calls into play many more voices than the voices of their parents. Many more perspectives, talents and resources that children need. Cutting a child off from these resources to assert authoritarian supremacy is disempowering not empowering, mis-guidance not guidance. It is not respectful parenting. 

Persons are not objects

Private property is objects, not persons, that may be owned, possessed, and controlled provided that their use is responsible. “Responsible ownership” means exercising due care to recognize and mitigate its costs to others and to the community at large. In a shared world it can never mean doing whatever you want with what you own without regard for the interests of others.

Groups compete for competitive advantage or in games to win. Friendships are between individuals not groups. Individuals in friendships do not compete to win except at play. Authoritarian competition for supremacy defeats the purpose of play: excellence and good relations. It belongs neither in competition between groups nor between friends at play. Whether friends are competing at play or not it destroys friendships.

Individual persons are not objects. Individual minds, hearts, and souls may never, ever, be owned, possessed, and controlled for any reason. Behavior needing social controls is another matter. In mortal combat it doesn’t matter.

“Winning” in competition at play occurs between persons, not objects, where its purpose cannot be authoritarian ownership, possession, and control. “Defeat” is acknowledgement of superior performance. It can never imply submission to personal dominance. Totalitarian dictatorships fail for a reason: they are an affront to human nature.

Authoritarian supremacy is a sickness 

Excerpts from Raising an Entrepreneur (New Harbinger 2nd ed. 2021): 

  • Here’s the tough part for a lot of parents. If you want to incubate an entrepreneur, you need to lead by following. . . . It’s one of the hardest things for most parents to do: knowing what your kids’ strengths are; understanding what path would be good for them; and judging when -- and how -- to support that path. (319)
  • [E]ntrepreneurs need space and freedom to find their own way -- and, paradoxically, that makes emotional support from their parents even more important. When they’re not getting the immediate rewards and positive feedback that conventional jobs bring, their parents’ belief in them becomes even more valuable. (325)
  • Few things give kids more confidence than seeing their parent stand up for them. These moments also teach them to stand up for themselves. Future entrepreneurs learn how to argue for their own interests -- and . . . how to stand up for their vision. . . . By standing up for a child, you not only give the child confidence, you also model how to be an advocate when it’s called for. (190)
  • [S]howing [your child] how you do it when you stand up to authority on their behalf is. . . teaching a sense of entitlement (in the best sense of the word) . . [G]iving your child the tools to stand up for themselves by standing up for them when they are young helps them navigate the world successfully as an adult. (190)
  • The parents in this book gave their children the following messages: We love you. We trust you. We believe in you. We support you in whatever you want to do. We . . . encourage you to pursue [your passion]. We know you’ll do great things. We’ll always be here for you. Don’t worry if you make mistakes. . . . We’re excited to follow you on your journey. We can’t wait to see everything you’re going to accomplish. (367)
  • This kind of wholehearted trust in a child’s capacity is the secret to raising an entrepreneur. . . . (368)
  • The true test for parents is whether they can remain supportive even when their children seem lost or haven’t yet figured out how to make a career out of doing what they love or when they take a turn that makes their parents nervous. Following children’s lead. . . means supporting and encouraging them even when parents wish they were doing something else. (342)
  • [P]arents may tend to focus on what society thinks are good qualities, rather than on what motivates their kids. They ask, “Why don’t they have more discipline?” when the better question is often “How can I help them find something that inspires them to work hard?” (321)
  • Some parents get out of the way. . . , but others aren’t passively stepping aside and waiting for their children to do amazing things. Many of the parents I talked with did a lot to help their kids identify what it was they loved to do. (348)

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Civilization in a shared world requires democratic governance under the law that supports cooperation by sharing, affirmation, enablement, and empowerment from the bottom up. The assertion of authoritarian supremacy above the law, from the top down, has no place in civilized society and destroys democracy.

Civilization and democracy both begin at home. With individual relationships among equals who practice mutual respect, trust-honesty, and understanding. Civilization and democracy cannot be sustained by acts of will alone. They require the guidance of intelligence that applies responsibility and accountability to every decision. That applies every function of Mind -- introspection, reflection, and judgment based on logic, analysis, reasoning, evaluation, and understanding.

The assertion of authoritarian supremacy destroys civilization and democracy because it would rule by will alone. Because it excludes and silences the voice of intelligence. Because it is the sworn enemy of intelligence.

The assertion of authoritarian supremacy provokes and perpetuates conflict, combat, and violence. It is a perversion of “authority” that is a barrier to world peace. In individual relationships it is a sickness. A psychiatric disorder that is a barrier to mutual respect, trust-honesty, and understanding among equals essential to good relations.

The superficiality of sociability

Sociability confined to group-social relations where it belongs can be helpful, harmless, and playful. But anything “social” is associated with groups and anything “groups” implies power relations. Sociability that brings power relations into individual-personal relations doesn’t belong. The implied threat of authoritarian dominance is not helpful or harmless. It's hurtful. It can never be playful. It destroys friendships.

Sociability in group-social relations only requires displays of mutual affection, respect, trust-honesty, and understanding among equals. The agreeability and pleasantness of group-social relations is sustained by appearances. Group-social relations are necessarily superficial. Superficiality is the enemy of individual personal relationships sustained by sincerity. By the reality of mutual affection, respect, trust-honesty, and understanding and not just the appearance. Superficiality in individual personal relationships conveys hostility, insincerity, and misunderstanding. It is inherently disrespectful.

Causes that require respectful parenting 

Excerpts from Raising an Entrepreneur (New Harbinger 2nd ed. 2021):

  • A]ll entrepreneurs face moments of crisis when everything seems aligned against them -- when the world is telling them they’re crazy, their ventures won’t work, and they should take a safer, less turbulent path. It’s at moments like these that they may need a motivation bigger than themselves. . . . [M]any entrepreneurs are brought up to believe there is a larger purpose to which they are called than their own happiness or material success. . . . For some, the belief in something bigger came through religion. Others are fueled by a more general sense of morality or ethics. . . . (294)
  • Kathe, mom of the WordPress founder. . . always stressed values, not as abstract concepts, but as guiding principles for taking action. [emphasis added] (294-295)
  • For many who grew up to be entrepreneurs, the sense of belonging to something bigger than themselves is fundamental and has shaped their lives and contributed to their unshakable belief that they are in the world to make a positive difference. (295)
  • The webMethods co-founder explained. . . “I think about . . . my children from a perspective of what’s their purpose, where did they come from, and why are they here. . . . [P]art of why they’re here is to make a contribution. . . . Service has always been an important part of our lives.” (297)
  • [E]ven if you don’t believe in an organized religion. . . -- it’s important to raise children to have a strong character, to be moral, to be honorable, to have a set of values, to care about their community, and to recognize that today, their community may be the world. . . . [I]t was important for [these entrepreneurs] growing up to believe that there is something bigger than them, that there is a higher purpose than making money. . . . They all care deeply about making the world a better place and giving back. And that desire was bolstered by a moral perspective instilled in them in childhood. (317-318)

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The assertion of authoritarian supremacy is an attempt to adapt to a shared world that is fundamentally misunderstood as a world cast in its own image. As a world ruled from the top down by an arbitrary authority, above the law, ruling only for its own preservation and for nothing else. It is a failure of Logic whose function is to support understanding with explanation. It is illogical, and no function of Mind or will that’s based on it -- on getting context wrong -- can end well.

The assertion of authoritarian supremacy is wrong in any context, even in combat where neither victory nor survival requires it. This was supposed to be the lesson of the Versailles treaty that concluded World War I -- an assertion of authoritarian supremacy that produced World War II. Getting context wrong is a grave mistake. The retaliations of victimhood and vengeance, authoritarian trademarks, are always illogical.

The assertion of authoritarian supremacy that treats individuals as objects, that deprives them of a voice, is always a grave mistake that destroys the possibility of friendship and world peace. Causes that every voice from the next generation will be called upon to serve. Causes that require respectful parenting. 

Inspiration from a revered leader 

Excerpts from Raising an Entrepreneur (New Harbinger 2nd ed. 2021): 

  • [M]ost of the entrepreneurs believed in something: their beliefs fed their commitment to service, and their sense that they have a duty to contribute to the world. (365) 
  • Nurture Compassion. . . . Many of the entrepreneurs . . . were raised with the strong belief that they had to give back and, in fact, most of the entrepreneurs in this book do give back today. . . . (364)

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Abraham Lincoln reframed American democracy eloquently with his Gettysburg Address. He wanted to conclude the Civil War “with malice towards none; with charity for all.” In the spirit of understanding, not in the spirit of the Versailles treaty that came later, an authoritarian calamity. Lincoln was one of history’s most inspiring advocates of civilization and democracy and one of the most persuasive opponents of authoritarian rule.

He was one of history’s most loved and revered leaders, a role model for all seasons. Why do his image and monument in Washington resonate with the heart and soul of America? Because the gentle loving kindness that he spoke for was the antithesis of authoritarian supremacy. He was our respectful parent.

God bless Abraham Lincoln. God bless every parent who practices respectful parenting. And God bless you, even if you don't, for listening.