When the focus/fixation is on a person, rather than performance, gossip is inevitable. Is jockeying for status equally inevitable?
What makes people think they can make others hate or like them?
Personous people. They create the illusion that they care about others, but the other is merely a foil or standard for self-significance.
The inessential and insubstantial nature of money allows it to be abused with abandon. Not only is it worthless, but there is always more. So, there is no reason to be careful, cautious or economical. That latter point is particularly significant in a society where economy has become synonymous with money.
So, while the original intent of economic behavior was to avoid waste and enhance usefulness, as money became ubiquitous, the original intent evaporated into the ether.
Is the monetary economy esoteric? I have compared it to theologians becoming fascinated by angels dancing on pins. Perhaps it is another example of the triumph of the idea over the real–or the res. The thought over the thing.
We never hear materialism decried anymore. I wonder why.
If thought is disconnected or unconnected to the material world does the lie matter at all?
When one is dealing in figments of the imagination, what consritutes a fraud?
Well, we have a large and growing body of non-productive persons who claim a share of what is produced for moving things and people around. They are the commercial class and the entrepreneurs and the “managers” whose functions and behaviors are actually left out of economic calculations. Why? In large part because economists (who are themselves non-productive) took over the binary model which accountants had developed in the interest of promoting accuracy in their summations. (If everything is counted twice and the resukts are the same, there is a better chance the sums are correct). The reality, of course, is that there are many more players in an economy than the two designated agents (sellers and buyers or producers and users). And then there is the fact that currency, an inanimate participant in any transaction, has been transformed from a practical universally available tool into an agent of restriction and control.
If currency/money were a simple measuring tool like the inch or the ounce or even just a symbol like the script we use to represent meaningful sounds, rather than being rationed and distributed to privileged entities, then it could not be used to regulate and restrict enterprise as it is. It is my sense that the accumulation of currency by select individual players, which is facilitated by exempting them from returning it to the issuer, is designed to disguise the interest in keeping currency relatively scarce. Congress is supposed to distribute the currency into the economy as needed. Instead, it distributes some and lets the Treasury distribute some to designated middlemen, the banks, who then determine who is qualified to receive and use more of this inherently unlimited asset.
Currency is an instrument of control. This leaves us with the question,”why are public servants trying to exercise control?”
What if lying, the denial of reality, is just a self-protective defensive response to psychological abuse? If so, then the intent is not to deceive, but to protect.
That might explain Sarah Sanders. Perceiving herself to be in enemy territory, she lies. If so, I would argue that habit did not just suddenly develop in the White House. Rather, she brought it with her from home and it has enabled her to persist in an environment others would not condone.
Stepford Daughters all have that same lifeless expression. For that matter, Jared Kushner has it too.
Using a directional descriptor (left, right, east, west, up, down) for a moral or philosophical belief system suggests an inability to understand the difference betwwen a symbol and the thing it represents. Direction is a physical reality related to movement from a fixed point. Most dogs seem to have a sense of direction, which is how they find their way home. Many humans don’t. Their use of directional references willy nilly tells us that. Moreover, it suggests that an individual lacking a full complement of the normal senses (order, sequence, time, distance, weight, magnitude, place, in addition to direction) does not merit much attention. Why would one follow a guide who does not know where he is going? Adopting an idiot’s mislabling of reality does not make him smarter, much as babling to a baby does not teach him to speak.
I just want to note what I awoke thinking —
While I frequently castigate the ex-men, there are also ex-positives. There is expectation, which is then validated by experience and makes human existence worth while.
What are we, if we just live in the moment sniffing fire hydrants like dogs?
Can the oblivious person expect, experience and even exist?
The other day, I enumerated the Dude’s characteristics: obnoxious, obstinate, obstructive, obsessive, obstreperous and ostentatious. I forgot oblivious, which may well be the key.
Patriotism is the triumph of the idea over the real, the intent over the act. It is why “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.” The intent disguises bad actions. The self-centered seem particularly susceptible. The suffix “ism” signals “like” but not real.
Ditto for authoritarianism, nationalism, communism, fascism, materialism, socialism, traditionalism?
It is not necessarily terror that cements Trump to Putin. The mindset of megalomaniacs is similar. They can run in tandem, like a team of chariot horses.
Russia sees itself as comparable to the U.S., made up of many cultures and having a Wild East instead of a Wild West. However, while the U.S. majority is made up the descendants of people who migrated from their homelands more or less voluntarily and developed a culture from scratch, Russia’s diverse populations have been subjugated in place and the failure of the Soviet Union is evidence that the effort to homogenize failed. Moreover, the educated ruling class is entirely derivative. That is, intellectual and technical achievements have their roots in Europe, specifically Poland and France and Germany. Being excluded from the European Union is psychologically quite devastating. On the other hand, the electronic culture lets them plug into the rest of the world, even during the isolating long winter months.
Indeed, I can easily imagine the election hackers as comparable to bored teens, just not sitting in basements, but in the high rise building above the Arctic Circle powered by the energy produced by nuclear submarines tethered just off-shore. Why can I imagine that? Because in 2005, in connection with the hundreth anniversary of the signing of the Russo-Japanese pact in Portsmouth, N.H. we hosted four wild and crazy Russian guys for a week. Although these guests, only one of whom was moderately proficient in English, were scheduled to attend all sorts of commemorative events and social gatherings, they were not interested in that. Instead, having arrived with international driver’s licenses and credit cards, they rented a car, went sight-seeing in the White Mountains and then down to New York City and back to Boston where they turned in their car before getting back on the plane to head home.
They left me their email addresses printed on their calling cards, but did not subsequently stay in touch. Nothing of interest at our house.
“Civilized” refers to cities. The European migrants to the Americas have been traditionally antagonistic towards cities, especially in the temperate climes. Indeed, most recently, the U.S. has prided itself in bombing the “cradle of civilization” back to the dark ages. Even villages are not welcome to the psyche of the idealized automaton, the solitary individualist. Whence comes this individualism? Perhaps it is the last refuge of the outcast. While Australia has always admitted to an influx of European outcasts, the European migrants to the U.S. have long pretended to voluntariness. Why is that? Was it supposed to make them superior to those who were captured and exported like cattle?
It has not been fast. Authoritarianism is always with us because people with few skills and little brain cling to fake authority to sustain themselves. Where do few skill and little brain come from? I suspect pre-natal or perinatal causes. Somehow, the link between the frontal brain and the rear goes missing and the result is that the processing function is missing or lost. Perhaps it is a matter of the limbic brain being deprived of the benefits of cognition. There is no feed back and no real learning.
Why do we miss it? Verbal acuity, which relies on imitation and repetition, masks a lot of deficits. Also, and here the authoritarian perception is correct, competent people are always ready, willing and able to help. The exploited do not mind. It does not even bother tham that the authoritarians consider them to be suckers. Competent people are creative and do not care that other people are not. Their commitment to creation is just as intense as the authoritarians’ commitment to manipulation. The only difference is that creativity has material limitations while authoritarian manipulation is boundless.