Please send $100 to my Venmo account, each week, indefinitely. It will help me immensely and support my growth in self-awareness. I promise. Barring your ability to do that, become a paid supporter of my substack account. What? No good reason to unselfishly support others? LOL
But I WILL unselfishly support you by not sending you anything to foster your exploration of lack of abundance to assist you in your quest for self-awareness. ;))
My point is that everyone is selfish to various degrees. I'm not interested in making the definition of selfishness as confused as biological gender. Thank you for your support. LOL
I think that people often make the mistake of thinking freedom is happiness. Freedom comes with a massive amount of responsibility and accountability. Freedom is often painful, uncomfortable and terrifying. That's why some people unconsciously run away from freedom like it's a predator in a dark alley. ;-)
The dizziness o freedom is not for the faint of heart. That's why the herd huddle together to fight the dizziness. The outliers seem strange and dangerous. Dangerous ways of being that don't conform with the collective security. It matters not that these outliers ways of being do not directly affect them but only that a theoretical harm seems imminent. So the Collective imposes a Security State to keep the bounds of orthodoxy with some theater to keep the masses entertained.
Anyone who does a deep dive into his or her religious tradition will find riches galore and the solution to the gaping black hole in the middle of what they are surprised to find is their soul.
I will say that I'm very picky about my music being a GenXer myself. On that note I was pleasantly surprised by this song. It has a great message and a cool 80's kinda feel to it. Thank you for sharing this.
Additionally, on the freedom message, and more specifically, ,in the area of where people break from the understanding of it as you and I see it (as you clearly defined in this piece) is when people fail to understand that subsidized markets, entities, and businesses are NOT the makeup of a freedom oriented environment.
The issue we have in our society here in the states on a broad scale involves the problem that people have understanding the difference between a free market and a captured market where the latter is often referred to as "capitalism."
Indirectly their label of the term capitalism could be construed as being correct if one sees a business accepting a government handout in the form of a subsidy as "capitializing" on an opportunity.
However, I prefer the term "free market" when referring to a free economic system where the lines of public/private partnerships aren't blurred to the point where people confuse free market (capitalism) with cronyism.
This is where many of the people confuse this understanding entirely when they say to you: What about duties and responsibility? You want freedom—but freedom to do what?
That statement on "duties and responsibilities" is a valid statement, but they are making that statement as if we are living within a system where we have a free-market environment when we actually exist in a more cronyistic system that has created an ecosystem of inflationary pressures, complex system disasters, and a centralized financial system that is literally marching towards a totalitarian level of control over the entire population.
The point here is that I don't want to continue to perform "duties and responsibilities" to feed a Global Communist Totalitarian system that is proving how evil it is literally everyday of the week.
To me their thinking is very simplistic and lacks understanding of the very environment in which they exist.
What we have now is miles from a proper free market. It is somewhere in the mixed-market/fascist-corporatist/crony-capitalist range, depending on the sector. Basically neo-fascist-corporatist. (I was gonna share a chart with you from my book, but it is part of the very last chart in the last chapter, and I just cannot give that away yet :-)
And yes—we Gen Xers have the best taste in music of any cohort who has ever lived!
The Spiritual Life in general and Orthodox Christianity in particular is about something that we were given no context for.
The Spiritual Life is actually meant to be a course of therapy that results in something called, 'Anamnesis', which is, in essence, a cure for amnesia.
If we don't know that we are suffering from amnesia, if we have forgotten that fact, how can we ever expect to understand or be able to make use of something, let's say, like the Bible, or any other of the elements of the Spiritual Life, which are all intended as a cure for amnesia?
No wonder we are in the condition we find ourselves and the world at large in! We have constructed a 'False Personna' for ourselves out of bits and pieces of information that tried to give us some clues to who and what we are, but could never deliver the whole story.
And the 'world' we have built can't help but follow suit.
Who and what we really are and what the Human Potential actually is - We are meant to be a race of Clairvoyant Wonder-Workers to whom Time/Space and the Laws of Physics are the loosest of frameworks, if at all applicable.
Once we begin to remember this and begin to enter into a symbiotic relationship with the Larger Consciousness which is the ground of our being, whatever we Intend comes into being instantaneously in complete balance and harmony with All-That-Is.
Some are Spiritual Beings of the Divine Trapped in a Material Existence to steal from them their energy and essence. Just think about the good ol Food Chain. CAUSES THE MAXIMUM HARM TO THE MOST.
Oversimplification leads to oppression. Take an example such as "Everyone should be allowed to choose their own lover." - Few argue with that statement until a 40-year-old man and a 12-year-old boy take up residence together. Can a 12-year-old boy choose such a thing? (Let's avoid the consent to incest discussion.)
Should a child be subject to any limitation that s/he has not consented to?
What is the age at which one can be self-determining? Infants can be very expressive regarding what makes them unhappy. Should we follow the legal age of majority for sexual consent? (12-16 depending on region) The age of conscript for army service? (18 in the USA, or 17 with consent of a guardian). Or the age at which science states that the physical brain becomes stable? (Around the age of 25).
While your freedom statement is a good sales pitch, it fails in actual application. People are not like you. People are not like me. Perhaps our only similarity is that we are all driven by selfishness.
There is no society when "everything goes".
As for the song, he has flipped the logic. There's nothing on the surface to indicate that this is anything but a material world. So, he's a spiritual boy, living in a material world, or a material boy living in a material world, but not a material boy living in a spiritual world.
If one hopes to rule the world, as we all do (our ideas are the best), semantics are important. Stop using the tactics of the oppressors such as promising an unqualified ideal or exchanging material reality for a fantasy.
Basically, I think that children’s rights need to be protected just like anyone else, but the realities of life require that parents hold the child’s right of consent in conditional and temporary proxy.
V. PARENTHOOD
To nurture and protect one’s children: to discharge one’s parental responsibilities to provide for their physical, spiritual, intellectual, and emotional care; to protect their PERSONHOOD and individual RIGHTS until they are able to enjoy full communion with those RIGHTS, and thus conditionally to hold their RIGHT of consent in temporary proxy; and to determine the means by which best to accomplish these aims and raise them successfully to adulthood.
Children and childhood are just one example. Any overarching statement for humanity leads to oppression because it makes the assumption that all are capable of the same emotional, intellectual, and physical actions and choices. Too bad for you if you are not able to work as hard as I can, to understand concepts as well as I do, or to apply information to your own material advantage. Too bad, indeed.
Perhaps you and I vary at a basic level regarding the definition of anarchy. To me, anarchy requires both self-discipline and personal responsibility. Anarchists choose to be healthy members of society by whatever their understanding allows at that time. Their personal responsibility includes helping others within the community who have different strengths and weaknesses even as those individuals should assist us.
But the NAP >is< a universal statement. There may be edge questions as to what constitutes force in marginal cases, but there is no questions about the NAP as a fundamental principle. And the NAP is really the only overarching idea I am promulgating. So I guess I am a bit confused by your objection…
As am I. I think everyone reading your article will understand perfectly well what your getting at. Ed seems to consider himself an anarchist, an uncommonly altruistic one at that, and I guess he's a bit of a contrarian also.
I think you are all making my point for me. So, I can be an anarchist even if I don't fit in with your favored group. A wise friend recently suggested that "You expect understanding that people simply are not capable of conceiving." No one is inherently better or worse, just guaranteed to be different.
I am not making any statements about what you are, or can or ought to be. You made a point about overarching statements, which seemed to be an objection of sorts. I replied that I am not making any overarching statements—meaning any holistic programs of any sort. I am just promoting one principle: the NAP. The NAP, in some form or another, is sine qua non for anarchism. But other than that, I am not making any prescriptions or proscriptions.
People are not inherently bad, evil or selfish.
A balanced, self-aware, cohesive personality is automatically integral.
We have been taught not to trust ourselves and fear our own freedom.
This is what we need to overcome. And we will.
Yeah buddy!
Please send $100 to my Venmo account, each week, indefinitely. It will help me immensely and support my growth in self-awareness. I promise. Barring your ability to do that, become a paid supporter of my substack account. What? No good reason to unselfishly support others? LOL
People selfishly support others all the time.
People also DON'T support others unselfishly.
We need to redefine terms.
But I WILL unselfishly support you by not sending you anything to foster your exploration of lack of abundance to assist you in your quest for self-awareness. ;))
My point is that everyone is selfish to various degrees. I'm not interested in making the definition of selfishness as confused as biological gender. Thank you for your support. LOL
We are spitiual beings having a human experience.
We try to fill our spiritual needs with material things ...
That's how greed, gluttony, envy and all such things are born.
No amount of money can fill that hole in our soul.
Nor can a new house, pills, a new face or a new car.
That is short term relieve.
Yup. Some things are needed, some things are nice, but we need more than things.
Yes. Big difference between needs and wants.
I need 1,000 acres of land REALLY BADLY.
LOL! Me too!!
I think that people often make the mistake of thinking freedom is happiness. Freedom comes with a massive amount of responsibility and accountability. Freedom is often painful, uncomfortable and terrifying. That's why some people unconsciously run away from freedom like it's a predator in a dark alley. ;-)
100 percent. And then they impose their fear upon us, curtailing our freedom to placate their cowardice.
The dizziness o freedom is not for the faint of heart. That's why the herd huddle together to fight the dizziness. The outliers seem strange and dangerous. Dangerous ways of being that don't conform with the collective security. It matters not that these outliers ways of being do not directly affect them but only that a theoretical harm seems imminent. So the Collective imposes a Security State to keep the bounds of orthodoxy with some theater to keep the masses entertained.
I want out!
Yes. It's known that societal groups fear atheists more than a person with extreme religious believes.
Why would that be?
I'm speaking to Felix Culpa's statement on groups not wanting to see those that to them are challenging gravity's hold on everybody.
Or in other words, it's seems like when one has a fear of falling, you don't want to see someone standing on a ledge?
Nice metaphor.
I will let Felix answer for himself, then 😌
Anyone who does a deep dive into his or her religious tradition will find riches galore and the solution to the gaping black hole in the middle of what they are surprised to find is their soul.
We have a God-shaped hole in the soul that only God can fill. Accept God’s sovereignty in life to be completely free.
Another great post my friend.
I will say that I'm very picky about my music being a GenXer myself. On that note I was pleasantly surprised by this song. It has a great message and a cool 80's kinda feel to it. Thank you for sharing this.
Additionally, on the freedom message, and more specifically, ,in the area of where people break from the understanding of it as you and I see it (as you clearly defined in this piece) is when people fail to understand that subsidized markets, entities, and businesses are NOT the makeup of a freedom oriented environment.
The issue we have in our society here in the states on a broad scale involves the problem that people have understanding the difference between a free market and a captured market where the latter is often referred to as "capitalism."
Indirectly their label of the term capitalism could be construed as being correct if one sees a business accepting a government handout in the form of a subsidy as "capitializing" on an opportunity.
However, I prefer the term "free market" when referring to a free economic system where the lines of public/private partnerships aren't blurred to the point where people confuse free market (capitalism) with cronyism.
This is where many of the people confuse this understanding entirely when they say to you: What about duties and responsibility? You want freedom—but freedom to do what?
That statement on "duties and responsibilities" is a valid statement, but they are making that statement as if we are living within a system where we have a free-market environment when we actually exist in a more cronyistic system that has created an ecosystem of inflationary pressures, complex system disasters, and a centralized financial system that is literally marching towards a totalitarian level of control over the entire population.
The point here is that I don't want to continue to perform "duties and responsibilities" to feed a Global Communist Totalitarian system that is proving how evil it is literally everyday of the week.
To me their thinking is very simplistic and lacks understanding of the very environment in which they exist.
Ok my rant is over. Ha...once again, great post.
Very well said in all regards.
What we have now is miles from a proper free market. It is somewhere in the mixed-market/fascist-corporatist/crony-capitalist range, depending on the sector. Basically neo-fascist-corporatist. (I was gonna share a chart with you from my book, but it is part of the very last chart in the last chapter, and I just cannot give that away yet :-)
And yes—we Gen Xers have the best taste in music of any cohort who has ever lived!
Ha... absolutely.
Congrats on the book and you're 100% correct on neo-fascist-corporatist label.
You are 1000% correct on GenX having the best taste in music and I would also add that we own that title for our movies as well.
You just can't beat the testosterone fueled 80's action flicks. Ha.
Keep up the great work.
Check out the song, "Kicking and Screaming" by Blues Saraceno. Listening now. Kick-ass groove!
I am married to a woman who loves 80s/90s action movies. How lucky am I?
We were misinformed.
The Spiritual Life in general and Orthodox Christianity in particular is about something that we were given no context for.
The Spiritual Life is actually meant to be a course of therapy that results in something called, 'Anamnesis', which is, in essence, a cure for amnesia.
If we don't know that we are suffering from amnesia, if we have forgotten that fact, how can we ever expect to understand or be able to make use of something, let's say, like the Bible, or any other of the elements of the Spiritual Life, which are all intended as a cure for amnesia?
No wonder we are in the condition we find ourselves and the world at large in! We have constructed a 'False Personna' for ourselves out of bits and pieces of information that tried to give us some clues to who and what we are, but could never deliver the whole story.
And the 'world' we have built can't help but follow suit.
Anamnesis. Interesting. What exactly have we forgotten?
Who and what we really are and what the Human Potential actually is - We are meant to be a race of Clairvoyant Wonder-Workers to whom Time/Space and the Laws of Physics are the loosest of frameworks, if at all applicable.
Once we begin to remember this and begin to enter into a symbiotic relationship with the Larger Consciousness which is the ground of our being, whatever we Intend comes into being instantaneously in complete balance and harmony with All-That-Is.
Creation by mere thought.
Why haven't we seen this all along?
We forgot.
Pretty cool. And this is part of Orthodox Christian tradition?
This IS Orthodox Tradition to the Max!
https://substack.com/@stevenberger/note/c-55558500
Sharing with a friend.
Some are Spiritual Beings of the Divine Trapped in a Material Existence to steal from them their energy and essence. Just think about the good ol Food Chain. CAUSES THE MAXIMUM HARM TO THE MOST.
Hey, Christopher! Check out Heroes of Underthrow: Nick Szabo by Max Borders. I just restacked it in my notes.
I saw it this morning. Love it. Thanks! Now I have to read Szabo.
Oversimplification leads to oppression. Take an example such as "Everyone should be allowed to choose their own lover." - Few argue with that statement until a 40-year-old man and a 12-year-old boy take up residence together. Can a 12-year-old boy choose such a thing? (Let's avoid the consent to incest discussion.)
Should a child be subject to any limitation that s/he has not consented to?
What is the age at which one can be self-determining? Infants can be very expressive regarding what makes them unhappy. Should we follow the legal age of majority for sexual consent? (12-16 depending on region) The age of conscript for army service? (18 in the USA, or 17 with consent of a guardian). Or the age at which science states that the physical brain becomes stable? (Around the age of 25).
While your freedom statement is a good sales pitch, it fails in actual application. People are not like you. People are not like me. Perhaps our only similarity is that we are all driven by selfishness.
There is no society when "everything goes".
As for the song, he has flipped the logic. There's nothing on the surface to indicate that this is anything but a material world. So, he's a spiritual boy, living in a material world, or a material boy living in a material world, but not a material boy living in a spiritual world.
If one hopes to rule the world, as we all do (our ideas are the best), semantics are important. Stop using the tactics of the oppressors such as promising an unqualified ideal or exchanging material reality for a fantasy.
Children are always a challenging topic. Have you read my human constitution? (https://christophercook.substack.com/p/human-constitution) In it, I do attempt a partial reconciliation of these difficulties (below).
Basically, I think that children’s rights need to be protected just like anyone else, but the realities of life require that parents hold the child’s right of consent in conditional and temporary proxy.
V. PARENTHOOD
To nurture and protect one’s children: to discharge one’s parental responsibilities to provide for their physical, spiritual, intellectual, and emotional care; to protect their PERSONHOOD and individual RIGHTS until they are able to enjoy full communion with those RIGHTS, and thus conditionally to hold their RIGHT of consent in temporary proxy; and to determine the means by which best to accomplish these aims and raise them successfully to adulthood.
Children and childhood are just one example. Any overarching statement for humanity leads to oppression because it makes the assumption that all are capable of the same emotional, intellectual, and physical actions and choices. Too bad for you if you are not able to work as hard as I can, to understand concepts as well as I do, or to apply information to your own material advantage. Too bad, indeed.
Perhaps you and I vary at a basic level regarding the definition of anarchy. To me, anarchy requires both self-discipline and personal responsibility. Anarchists choose to be healthy members of society by whatever their understanding allows at that time. Their personal responsibility includes helping others within the community who have different strengths and weaknesses even as those individuals should assist us.
But the NAP >is< a universal statement. There may be edge questions as to what constitutes force in marginal cases, but there is no questions about the NAP as a fundamental principle. And the NAP is really the only overarching idea I am promulgating. So I guess I am a bit confused by your objection…
As am I. I think everyone reading your article will understand perfectly well what your getting at. Ed seems to consider himself an anarchist, an uncommonly altruistic one at that, and I guess he's a bit of a contrarian also.
I think you are all making my point for me. So, I can be an anarchist even if I don't fit in with your favored group. A wise friend recently suggested that "You expect understanding that people simply are not capable of conceiving." No one is inherently better or worse, just guaranteed to be different.
I am not making any statements about what you are, or can or ought to be. You made a point about overarching statements, which seemed to be an objection of sorts. I replied that I am not making any overarching statements—meaning any holistic programs of any sort. I am just promoting one principle: the NAP. The NAP, in some form or another, is sine qua non for anarchism. But other than that, I am not making any prescriptions or proscriptions.