Spiritual and Intellectual Thoughts For The Fourth of July
Insanity Is Maladaptive & Creates More Insanity
INSANITY MEANS REPEATING THE SAME MISTAKES REPEATEDLY
Forward:
If you are at all like myself and my family we seem to go back and forth between being overwhelmed by our present dystopia and feeling that how bad things are indicates the need for - and will provide the stimulus for - tremendous beneficial change.
This essay is being written from the potential energy which exists within that very dichotomy.
We are beings of energy, live as part of the energy which surrounds us - and the course of our lives depends on our being capable of absorbing and transforming this energy into a useful state.
Thus this tremendous potential energy we feel bearing down on us today may well represent a source of energy we may use to benefit us all.
CHANGE IS THE ONLY UNCHANGING REALITY
Although we may feel at rest and to be a stable unchanging biological entity this is an illusion.
Our bodies, our culture, our civilizations are engaged in constant change and are in a perpetual state of becoming.
Thus we are never really at rest - but our entire beings in a state of vibrating energy - always transforming and always becoming.
Fortunately for us the vast creative intelligence of the universe has set boundaries in which this transformation is always seeking balance and harmony within the whole.
If this were not true we simply could not exist at all.
We posit a creator not just because we can feel it - but because our very mathematics and true science indicates that a creative intelligence greater than our own must exist to explain our existence at all.
For as any math geek will tell us - or any good gambler - the odds against us existing at all are so large as to be unimaginable.
Existence posits many necessary balancing acts in the real world as well and that is what this essay concerns.
DYSTOPIA, SPIRITUALITY AND TRANSFORMATION
There remains only one answer to this latter day dystopia we live in and that is a change in consciousness - a spiritual awakening.
Our men and the pitiful handfuls of women who attain leadership or become celebrated in our society are the same sort of psychologically distorted beings and are symbolic of much we will discard if we are at all intelligent or spiritually aware.
There really are no political sides - although we are manipulated everywhere to believe there are two distinct sides.
My readers are very familiar with my contention that these “sides” in fact represent two sides of the very same coin.
Sides which offer no potential for desirable change and which are purposefully put forward to manipulate us - creating a divide to pit us all against each other.
From the point of view of our leaders - our serially manipulative men and women who live as parasites on us - the more divided we are the better.
In other words as long as we are coming from one side or another - either a liberal or a conservative - we are totally lost and part of the problem.
The proof of this is available but takes a long deep dive into history, into the nature of civilization and into how all of our civilized institutions exist to keep us domesticated and enslaved.
This is a radical view and thus not easily defended - and like all radical views difficult to explain to those who remain defenders of the status quo.
The real problem I see when I cut to the chase is that our psychological makeup has changed as a result of our relationship with our civilizations.
Our agricultural civilizations - from the very first one many millennia back - created an institutional hierarchy where certain humans lorded it over others.
The reasons for this lie deeply rooted in our genetic and anthropological history - a group of subjects I am not motivated to write several encyclopedias on - for today at least.
Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof and my days are just as busy contending with the real world results of the evil which rules over us as anyone’s.
Contending with this evil gets seriously annoying and leads to all sorts of negativity.
Negativity is a real downer and since it prevents us from either positive psychological or spiritual growth - in other words from having a good life - I take serious issue with it.
But simultaneously I recognize that we stand - me and everyone else - at a crossroads where either we figure our way out of this point at which we are stuck - between this Scylla and Charybdis - or we are quite literally toast.
As a student of life on planet earth I also recognize that most life forms - most species have gone extinct.
In fact the real history of life is the extinction of species - species which for whatever reasons could not adapt to prevailing conditions.
In our case however the problem would be - we had all the right conditions - so how did we go so wrong?
The problem would seem to lie within our big brains and our consciousness which led us to change the conditions rather than failing to adapt to them.
Because before we gathered together in agricultural civilizations -humans had lived for far longer as small bands of hunter gatherers.
This hunting and gathering suited our biological, spiritual and psychological make up - what we had in fact evolved to be.
In what may be the ultimate example of “it’s not nice to fool Mother Nature” - we convinced ourselves it was better to live in a manner to which we were neither physiologically or mentally suited.
As hunter gatherers we had developed a cooperative and interdependent culture - a highly spiritual one - one where it was to our advantage as individuals and as groups to live in harmony.
As hunter gatherers it was to the benefit of all of us to cooperate and share.
Agriculture led to the opposite - to the independent holding of land, food and possessions - no longer to our advantage to share and cooperate.
Previous to agriculture - as hunter gatherers - there was no benefit to a hierarchical society where some well born families lorded it over others.
In the agricultural civilization the presence of hierarchical families and leaders allowed us to depend on others to protect us and our holding of lands and possessions - leading to both a privileged class and to institutionalized war.
But where the rubber hits the road - the root of the problem - exists in the fact we were not adapted in evolutionary or psychological terms to live in such a way.
We had evolved as fiercely independent individuals who had learned it was to our advantage as hunter gatherers to share and cooperate and to be compassionate and respectful.
These adaptations allowed us to continue to evolve in positive ways for everyone by creating a culture which reinforced our continuing positive evolution.
This evolution was how we developed these big brains, these flexible strong bodies, this cooperative and loving human natures in the first place.
We however - with the choices - or free will - offered by our big brains decided to take nature into our own hands - literally.
We came to the erroneously conceived conclusion that agriculture and hierarchical civilizations were to our advantage.
We were wrong - spectacularly and utterly wrong.
For our biological evolutionary advantage as humans essentially ceased under civilizations.
One of the biggest stumbling blocks was physical evolution itself as we are not adapted to eating grains as a fuel source - never have been and never will be.
Sure we could benefit from small amounts of grains but our source of biological fuel we are adapted to survive on are the fats and proteins from fish and animals.
Switching over to grains led to disastrous results which haunt us even more today.
Massive tooth decay, diseases of civilization like diabetes, cardiovascular problems and plague - or other infectious disease.
It has been determined by anthropologists that plague was first recorded in vast numbers among earlier agricultural cultures.
Agricultural civilizations furnished rapidly expanding human populations and the rapidly expanding populations of rodents - which meant fleas and the perfect conditions for plague.
The rampant tooth decay found in agricultural people versus almost none in hunter gatherers is a big clue to maladaptive behavior.
It is not difficult to see that a population weakened by physical decline at this level is an easily conquered and enslaved people.
The psychological maladaptive behavior is even more stunning - as societies of hunter gatherers are well known to be so highly resistant to tyranny.
Hunter gatherers will normally choose death rather than submit to being enslaved.
But agricultural people - especially after being ruled over by a bureaucratic hierarchy for generations - convince themselves this is adaptive rather than maladaptive.
But evolution did not favor cooperative interdependence over millions of years only to see it overcome in a few millennia.
Our evolutionary psychology - our desire to live in peace and to love each other and to cooperate and share did not disappear.
Not at all - instead we became pitted against our own nature - desiring one thing but getting another.
We don’t need to be psychologists to see how living against our own nature leads to a kind of insanity.
We evolved as a cooperative individual living within highly social and compassionate groups for millions of years - our psychological makeup and physical make up dependent on one way of life - hunting and gathering.
Our entire life lived as a culturally, spiritually and biologically evolved being within the bounds of reality.
Then a measly few millennia ago - a blink in evolutionary time - we take it upon ourselves to change all the rules.
We cannot change the bounds of reality however - the rules of life and evolution are our reality.
These remain our reality still - these bounds of how we evolved and why we evolved are well beyond our ability to change.
To put it another way - when we decided to change the rules of this universe we live in we came up against a hard reality - that in our very ability to change the rules - our egotistical stupidity - the universe answered back.
The universe answering back is now our reality - learning that endeavoring to fool Mother Nature is in fact our downfall.
The question remains - and our survival depends upon - our ability to see our errors and correct them before the universe ends us as just another maladaptive species.
It is our ability to understand our spiritual nature - how our spiritual evolution allows us to either comprehend the presence of a creative force which sets the rules - or to go our own ways and perish - where any conceivable future lies.
Today we live in the proof of how wrong we have been.
We have a massive military industrial complex which is parasitic on us remaining fearful and domesticated, a massive health care industry which is parasitic on us being sick, and a privileged political class dependent on us remaining manipulated by them.
To say this is hardly evolutionary is a vast understatement.
The answers to how we might overcome this are far beyond my own comprehension or imagination but I am more than willing to engage in evolutionary theories.
And what little understanding I do have begins with our spiritual knowledge and pursuits.
I am convinced we can make no headway unless we stop the lies, stop allowing ourselves to be manipulated, begin to discuss and question the maladaptive culture - and recognize we were given these unalienable rights by a creator for a very good reason.
And I offer the following quote on mutual benefit or interdependence from the essay linked here
When the power to co-create is used with integrity, great beauty and benefit flow to all. When this power is used for personal gain only, everyone suffers.
The Psychotherapist and the Shaman, The Rainmaker
Take heed star seeds and light bearers - it really is up to us.
Fear, doubt and pain are nothing in the face of extinction.
The universe is more than poised to chalk us up to just another maladaptive species among many and to shrug us off into eternity as just one more evolutionary experiment gone wrong.
Ever feel like we are on an endless loop - rather like an Ouroboros eating its own tail?
Maybe this is related to the fact that our civilizations keep repeating the same maladaptive actions and receiving the same maladaptive results.
Healthy, well-adjusted, psychologically and spiritually sane humans simply do not accept such an insane culture or civilization.
That is the most basic point.
As this Fourth Of July approaches consider our options - maybe not asking what our nation can do for us - but what we as human beings can do for each other.
We are all one - one species - and behaving as if we were not all one has led us straight into this hellish dystopia.
What is good for us is good for all and what is good for none is not good for any of us.
Maybe we might begin there.
And for those reading here who need far more information I recommend parts of the attached video as a quick guide to the kinds of things our educations should be teaching us but would not dare.
Additionally I offer the wise words of a fellow writer and expert in spiritual matters
Thanks for the reminders and the encouragement. Somewhere in the distant regions of our psychic past there remains a memory of that interconnected and respectful and sacred interdependence with Nature and all that is. Thanks for waking us up. And thanks for sharing The Rainmaker.
Great points about hunter gatherer societies. A great example of that can be seen in the Haudenosaunee (6 Nations/Iroquois) Confederacy, which is still the oldest living participatory democracy on earth. Clan mothers choose and can depose chiefs, who are men, while all decisions require consensus among the chiefs...all under the Great Law of Peace. These are concepts that seem foreign in a system that allows cold hard cash to make decisions instead. That's why the US government attempted to destroy or assimilate Native America. Those humanistic values, which had long been crushed across much of the world, were still alive and well in indigenous cultures on "Turtle Island", cultures that didn't even have a written language and hadn't invented the axel wheel - a good reminder that more technology isn't the key to a healthier society.