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Live Not By Lies

Going forward I am going to make this my main online blog, where I can talk about what is most important to me. Let me give you an idea of what is going through my mind, so you can decide if you care to follow me or not.

The title of this post – Live Not By Lies – points to the biggest issue in our world today – totalitarian mind control, how to be aware of it, and how to stay awake and sane. I’m going to talk a lot about this.

The other big area I will be exploring is my personal life of faith. I am Christian, and my prayer and spiritual life is now at the heart of everything I do. It keeps me alive, it sustains me, it guides me. I need to be able to talk openly and honestly about that here. I’m not trying to change anyone’s mind; I just want to share my thoughts. My faith is such a big part of my life now that I can’t leave that out without being completely dishonest.

So that is my theme – Live Not By Lies. Whatever else here, I promise you I will be as honest and truthful as I am capable.

We need that honesty to get through the darkness.

—

Image of candle in the dark by monart3 from Pixabay

Fear and Shame

The two most powerful forms of persuasion – I’ll call it coercion here – are extreme fear, and extreme guilting and shaming.

#BlackLivesMatter is using both. Full bore.

#MeToo is using both. Full bore.

I’ve seen talk of coercion by fear, and not much talk of coercion by shaming. If anything, coercion by shaming is worse, and it has a horribly self-paralyzing effect.

Robin DiAngelo’s book White Fragility is not a bad book, in the sense of being poorly written. It is a masterpiece of guilting and shaming, and is very effective at both. It is very, very good at what it is trying to do.

#MeToo has coercion by shaming down to a fine art.

Racist. Sexist. If you can’t destroy someone by labeling them racist, label them a sexual predator. Better yet, use both at once – that’s damned near impossible to fight.

Put the two together and you get a message that goes something like this.

  • Something is very wrong with you, and you will pay for it.
  • If you don’t agree with us, that proves something is very wrong with you and you will pay for it.
  • Be very afraid. Tremble, and feel very bad about yourself.
  • When something bad happens to you – and it will – it’s your own fault.

Standing up to coercion by fear is difficult. Standing up to coercion by shaming is equally difficult. Standing up to both at once is frighteningly hard, and it takes a very powerful source of inner sustenance to be able to do it.

“Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely…”

Multiple Movies

I want to start this piece by referencing an article on the Heterodox Academy site, titled, Why Conservatives and Liberals are Not Experiencing the Same Pandemic. Heterodox Academy is an organization devoted to encouraging diversity of opinion, especially on college campuses, and to encouraging communication and exchange of ideas between people with differing opinions.

How people are experiencing the covid19 pandemic is strongly correlated to their political preference. Democrats and Republicans are experiencing two very different pandemics. That leads to the point I want to explore.

How we experience the pandemic is determined by the movie about the pandemic we have playing in our minds, by how we think about it. That is largely a factor of the news media we consume and take to be reliable, and that in turn is strongly correlated to political preference.

Now Playing on screen A: The Covid19 Pandemic, Democratic cut – down the hall, the Blue door on the left. Now Playing on screen B: The Covid19 Pandemic, Republican cut – down the hall, the Red door on the right.

Please note that I am NOT about saying that one of the movies is correct, and the other movie is wrong or deluded; that is a whole separate discussion, and I don’t want to get into that here. My point is that both perspectives are movies about what is happening.

We do not directly experience reality. We experience a movie in our minds about reality. Continue reading “Multiple Movies”

Coming Out

This has been a long time coming.

People who are gay or of some other alternative sexual orientation refer to Coming Out of the Closet for the time when they made their sexual orientation public. This post, and this new blog, is my official Coming Out of the Political closet. Here we go.

I am not democrat. I am not progressive. I no longer identify with the Left, and haven’t for a couple of years now. Continue reading “Coming Out”