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Recent Posts
- The WW2 Generation—after initial confusion over 60s events, which left them paralyzed, growing in irritation—mobilized into a comprehensive counterattack against the 60s Gen, using all the Nixonian-like tactics in their arsenal February 20, 2019
- One goes from self-understanding to worldly actualization and inevitably confronts obstacles. Leading one back for more self-inquiry; then out into the world again, to expression and participation… February 19, 2019
- we were beginning to have *fetal malnutrition*, because of our upright gait… We stood up, and our soon-to-be-born children got really crowded in the womb. They were suffocating and starving in there, too. February 18, 2019
- The Truth About Meditation Can Only Now Be Told—Real Meditation Is About Letting Go and Experiencing Not About Controlling Oneself … What Really Happens in Authentic, Deep Meditation … The Yogic Experiences No One Tells You About February 17, 2019
- consider how all the “good” humans throughout the world support the efforts to “keep out the unwashed.” Need I mention Donald Trump, his bigoted proposals, and his supporters? Yet keep in mind often these sorts of citizens are deemed the “good people” of society February 17, 2019
- God became multiple…to bring out the beauty of Love and Unity, and to create the drama of re-union. She makes Love brighter and more exquisite by making it poignant…mixing it with loss. She makes having so much better by losing, setting up the magnificent experience of getting…all over again. February 17, 2019
- Your Map of Reality Was Drawn When You Were But a Cell: We Are a Fever, Part Four — Sperm and Egg Consciousness, Spirituality and Soul, and Vision of a New Person and Society… February 16, 2019
- Reagan’s voodoo economics had distributed the wealth upward to the wealthy where it was squandered on luxury items–yachts and expensive art–and the trickle-down theory had shown itself to be a piss on the poor or, let us say, “tinkle-down” reality. February 16, 2019
- *And Burdened People Become Confused People — That’s Their Plan* … So, the electorate is swimming in these simple irrational things that have been made to sound reasonable… February 15, 2019
- *Precise and Strategic Use of “Obvious Truths” in the Creation of the American Mind* … “The Republicans’ goal, to be precisely and inexorably attained, is the creation of an American mind eroded of rationality and confused….” February 15, 2019
- there are reasons why we refrain from wholesale adoption of such easier existences and why we insist on our economic struggles *not* being alleviated. For to adopt a cooperative socialist framework… February 15, 2019
- *Prenatal Spirituality and the Devolutional Model of Consciousness: A Revolution in Child Development, Parenting, Mental Health, & Spirituality Is at Hand* … My book, *Falls from Grace*, presents a radical theory of spirituality, evolution, child development… February 14, 2019
- We no longer have the luxury of “business as usual,” with its daily creature comforts. The only ethical response left is a spiritual one: What do you do in the face of horror and death, not just of yourself, but of your children and loved ones, the innocents, the planetmates? February 14, 2019
- *Every Path Is Magnificent & Maximizing Your Poignancy: *Tae Kwon Horror Movie — New, Fun Spiritual Practice* February 14, 2019
- why we insist on our economic struggles not being alleviated … We are the ones who put the angels to guard the gates of Eden… February 13, 2019
- in civilization one gains the world in exact proportion to which a man has relinquished his soul. Correspondingly, having split away from soul, ritual steps in to fill the void and manage the discomfort… February 13, 2019
- in talking about the suffering and horror in life, no one evaluates it without bowing to social appropriateness in magnifying the pain and horror God supposedly is causing or allowing…. February 13, 2019
- having such a populace believing in a morality of obedience works toward the masses obeying in all matters resulting in profit to the elite, or to their ego-inflation…. February 13, 2019
- *Rites of Reduction, of Expansion* … by adolescence “civilized” children are programmed, with rites of passage getting them in line. The young need be cut down to the level of the controlling adults… February 12, 2019
- Beyond “Flat Earth” Materialism—Scientific Awakening Is as Crucial for Paradigm Shift as Are the Social and Political Awakenings… February 12, 2019
- We know we will remember our Divinity eventually for it is impossible to end consciousness… February 12, 2019
- We do to others what we were forced, wrongfully, to do to ourselves… February 11, 2019
- a decrease in oxygen levels prenatally of up to 25%, which is painful to the fetus, has huge consequences for human personality… February 11, 2019
- the media exaggerates the activities & viewpoint of those that support the continued march toward Doomsday… February 11, 2019
- These prenatal imprints of experience are molds for what we call “human nature” February 11, 2019
- overwhelming pain, I’ve experienced, still I have come to believe pain is never as bad as we fear it will be… February 11, 2019
- “Curious God, Infinite Poignancy, & the Mind’s True Liberation” Chapters 35 thru 43 … complete, illustrated, downloadable … of *Funny God* February 11, 2019
- An Example of Primal Spirituality, The Moments After Birth February 11, 2019
- We should never intentionally harm another. For a part of us is always like them. February 10, 2019
- Prenatal Suffocation Become Greed and Class War, PME 2: Prenatal Matrix of Human Evil 2 … Gasping, Suffocation, Drowning, Being “Cut Off” Become Greed, Oppression, Conformity … “They’re Sucking the Very ‘Life Blood’ Out of Us!” March 29, 2018
- Movements, To Foster: Think Globally, Act Nationally … Jump on the Bandwagon and Lend a Hand … Occupy, the Women’s Movement, and Democratic Socialism March 16, 2018
- Prenatal Matrices of Human Evil: Prenatal Suffering Is the Root of Virtually All Human Atrocity — Greed, War, Torture, Rape, Racism, Murder, Massacre, Bigotry, Pollution, Apocalypse March 5, 2018
- “we are players in epic stories of ends of days and beginnings of time….” September 30, 2015
- “The world needs to hear this!!” Humor and the Reemergence of the Divine Feminine, an interview with Michael Adzema September 19, 2015
- Peter Melton interview of Michael Adzema: “The Crisis and Opportunity of Impending Extinction” September 13, 2015
- The transcendent approach to activism .. the necessary hero .. the relation of activism to true spirituality… September 1, 2015
- “This end result — the Unapproved and Hidden — is the product of the billions of unallowed thoughts, lies, and denials of all the “good” people of your culture.” June 4, 2014
- How You Are God, the Universe Is Friendly … From Solipsism to Transpersonal Reality: Transpersonal Perspective, Part Three — Experience Is Divine May 3, 2014
- “The Truth is that Ultimate Reality cannot be anything but helpful in that It is you — and why wouldn’t you help yourself?” April 27, 2014
- In spite of yourself things are going to work out exactly as they are meant to. April 24, 2014
- “For the men of you, your humiliation wrought of conformity to higher ups pushed you to seek a compensating domination, of the same sort as you experienced, over your women” April 16, 2014
- “You erected walls of fear-rooted control around your fleeting havens of ease … and called it ‘family’…. You erected a shrine to family equal to your exaggerated terror of the uncontrolled” April 12, 2014
- “Marxists, in looking into the misery and injustice of the world, looked only so far as the suffering and injustice of humans … sometimes not even of women” April 3, 2014
- To most Christians, and many conspiracy theorists, I want to say, you way OVER-estimate humanity…. April 1, 2014
- Do the best that you can … but be kind to yourself. March 30, 2014
- “With humans, for the first time, we have this added labor, this added, actual, “work” — effort that is onerous because it is coerced”: The Planetmates on specialization and assembly lines, Marxism and surplus value, industrialization March 28, 2014
- “Creative people know … about that magical, “instinctual” knowledge that comes to one precisely and specifically”: Planetmates on work versus instinct, happiness, joy, play, Divine inspiration, and fun. March 27, 2014
- “You and we are the same experientially”: The Planetmates reveal instinct and “free will” … “Many of the things you do in life arise because you are born with the capacity or ability to do them” March 25, 2014
- “The extra control you brought to Nature is equal in measure to the extra pain and labor you have manifested in Nature, oh, suffering planetmate”:The Planetmates reveal the origins of work, what a Planetmate’s life is like, control, and the suffering humans brought to Nature March 21, 2014
- “On the altar of certainty and increasing control, you sacrifice your children”: The Planetmates reveal thingification, the economic lodestar, children as commodities, large families, child labor, Nature’s parents March 20, 2014
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Societal Self-Analysis, an Internet Reformation, and Talk Show Soul-Searching for Peace: The Price of Peace Is Inner Sight: Rebirthing Rituals, Part – 6
Rebirthing Rituals, Part – 6: Societal Self-Analysis and Talk Show Soul-Searching for Peace … Sorry, I Know You Wanted to Hate Reality Shows.
Societal Self-Analysis
Culture War Replaced Cold War
We see the workings of these opposing tendencies to look away from problems or to embrace them by examining the reactions in America to the collapse of the Soviet Union. The disappearance of this huge object for distraction from inner unhappiness, about which one could rationalize the use of defensiveness and scapegoating, led to continued turning away through the emergence, in America, of a search for other societal scapegoats and therefore the “Republican revolution.” Culture War replaced the Cold War as the way one could be comfortably ignorant of one’s insides and self-assuredly distracted, self-righteously engaged.
This removal of a collective punching bag or scapegoat also resulted in a healthy turning toward the darkness within and a collective self-analysis in America. This reaction has brought to the fore many of our social and political shortcomings.
Talk Show Soul-Searching
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We also witnessed the rise of reality shows as part of this societal pull to see beneath the covers of what is thought to be real. Now, progressives and intellectuals have lots of fun vamping about how superior they themselves are to such interests, as exemplified in reality shows. This can only be the position of elitists out of touch with the ways ordinary folks live their lives.
Sitcom Socialization
A Modern “Priesthood”
This is where righties have it right when targeting “hollywood” for many of the changes in our culture over the last half century…though they see that as a negative influence. But intellectuals and lefties blow an opportunity and lose support among ordinary folks through an unconscious haughtiness and a cultural snobbery they are blind to but display in their turning up their noses at popular culture.
Luckily, as an anthropological social scientist, I can study popular culture and get away with it, though not without some snide commentary coming my way from progressive and professional circles. They simply will never understand an intellectual who can speak to working folks because he’s one of them. They simply don’t get my attempts to package the crucial understandings of modern science and social sciences, on which the existence of our very world depends, in words that are not primarily directed to and meant to appease the gods of academia. They consider themselves important within their tiny professional circles, thinking they are changing the world when no one even knows what they are doing beyond that constrained perimeter.
Keeping the People Down
Indeed the attitude of academics and progressives about popular culture, especially talk and reality show tv programming and although they would be appalled to ever think it, is no different from the attitudes of the Catholic church and the clergy about matters of faith during medieval times. There, too, we had an elite wanting to “keep out the unwashed.” There, too, we had a distinction between people in the know and the rabble, with the anointed ones requiring ordinary folks to go through them for matters of truth and faith. We had then also this sharp distinction between the “high culture” of the Church and aristocracy—exemplified in the chamber music of the time—and the “low culture” of the masses—exemplified by the folk music of the troubadours of that day.
Nowadays this poo-pooing of tv culture by intellectuals is the same kind of attempt to funnel reality to the masses through the filters of a new “priesthood.” The cultural purists and intellectual elites would prefer that for truth you go through them in academia, where you ‘d have to pay a toll of course, just as the priests of the Middle Ages required you to pass their way on the road to the divine.
Therapy for the Masses
At any rate throwing off the snootiness of intellectualism, I contend, allows us to notice that sitcoms, reality shows, and talk shows serve functions in society that are, overall, beneficial in advancing our culture and catalyzing increased growth. They may not reflect, yet, where intellectuals and progressives think we should be, but for many they show something beyond where they are.
We should know that they are overall helpful in our cause from the fact that conservatives want to attack hollywood and limit freedom of expression on any airwave. The fact that many reactionaries want to keep their children out of schools, home-schooled, and away from tv sets should be telling progressives something about the value of popular culture.
Rebirth Denied
American Rehab
If there weren’t reality shows, folks would have a harder time knowing appropriate ways for men and women to act with each other. The gains of feminism would not have spread so widely or as fast if they were not being modeled and reinforced repeatedly on talk and reality shows.
They demonstrate parenting and social skills—“politically correct” ones, in the good sense—to folks who would otherwise not know any better than to behave crudely and abusively. They bring the world, geography, travel, and history to the masses.
Intellectuals quibble about the quality of that, which comes across as quite childish, for it arises as if out of a jealousy of others getting the attention they want and out of a fear of competition for informational matters around science, culture, and humanities. It strikes me as more than ironic that those on the Left who would wish people to wake up from their zombie slumber would want to push programs of literature or drama where truths are filtered through the consciousness, and unconscious, of the artist, while wishing to deprive folks of a direct look—however contrived, it is actual reality and not scripted—at the world around them and people’s actual unplanned behavior and spontaneous reactions to unusual events.
Seeing people’s behavior in some of these shows does often remind me of the dynamics I’ve seen in therapy groups, and some of the personal changes in the participants mirror some of the evolutions I’ve seen in folks undergoing deep experiential psychotherapy. The audience participation part often sounds like group therapy or an intervention. I’ve been struck by how some of the group processes in the show remind me of family day in rehab, with folks reflecting back what they see in each other and how others’ behavior has affected them. These are all things that conservatives cringe at…actually hate. Yet liberals, except for notable exceptions like Jerry Springer, are not seeing the opening they have here. Lefties are fighting rather than using these forces, which are in the direction of personal growth and, cumulatively, much needed societal change.
As a psychologist and simply someone who loves people, I am fascinated by some of the things I see in these shows. They can be heart-wrenchingly real at times. So it occurs to me that folks who disparage these shows, comparing them with literature and dramatic productions, is another thing where some are wanting to have their reality filtered, managed, and packaged for them, lest it be too “disruptive” to their prejudices of things.
The Price of Peace Is Inner Sight
For is there any doubt that either of these or any combinations of these alternatives, however uncomfortable and even violent…on a smaller scale…at times, is a small price to pay compared to the price of outright war and violence which, by any measurement, is a cost horrifyingly huge and unacceptable?
America Currently Refusing to Pay Such Price
What Is the Cost of Denial? Of Complacency?
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Internet Revolution Is Another Reformation
Luckily all this is changing as the internet and social networking have upended the academic elitists, swarming around and over their petty barriers of intellectual privilege. The blogsters and “rabble” of the net have taken over the cultural dialogue of the time as assuredly as Martin Luther and the Reformation changed religion forever and helped to bring to an end the cultural stagnation of the Middle Ages and to ignite an Age of Reason and of Enlightenment.
Continue with We Could Use More “Narcissistic” Generations. Rebirthing Rituals, Part 7: Know Thyself … Let the Buck Stop Here!
Return to What’s Involved in Stopping War and Ecocide – Peace Is Painful: Rebirthing Rituals, Part Five – But Better Psychotic Than Warring
Footnotes
22. For “overexamined life”see Keniston, op. cit., 1965; for “psychological-mindedness” and “self-analysis” see Keniston, op. cit., 1968, especially p. 81.
23. Davis, op. cit., especially Ch. 7, “The Great Society and The Youth Revolt.”
Continue with We Could Use More “Narcissistic” Generations. Rebirthing Rituals, Part 7: Know Thyself … Let the Buck Stop Here!
Return to What’s Involved in Stopping War and Ecocide – Peace Is Painful: Rebirthing Rituals, Part Five – But Better Psychotic Than Warring
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About sillymickel
Activist, psychotherapist, pre- and perinatal psychologist, author, and environmentalist. I seek to inspire others to our deeper, more natural consciousness, to a primal, more delightful spirituality, and to taking up the cause of saving life on this planet, as motivated by love.