Making peace with a world of manipulation and control

I have spent a lot of time in the last 5 years or so thinking about the psychology of control. Why people want it, despite never having it in the most meaningful ways. How people rationalize it, no matter what ugly consequences its pursuit creates (except in circumstances of physical aggression where the threat is genuinely eminent and no other means is possible). What role it plays in all of the most serious tragedies and crimes against humanity in long-standing and near-term history.

And most difficult of all, I have thought about all of the ways that others will and do rationalize controlling me and anyone else, no matter how well they lead their lives and no matter what quality of person they might control -- no matter how much a world that tries and went to great lengths to control and dominate Jesus of Nazareth, the Buddha, Martin Luther King, Mohatma Ghandi, and Desmond Tutu seems perverse and distorted, and yet how the rationalization persists despite that distortion. I have thought long and hard and I think I'm beginning to finally come to terms with the fact that if I want freedom to live my life and to champion the cause of freedom and to work to excel beyond my own and others more minimal and smaller expectations for myself and people, then I will have to embrace that freedom despite the efforts of others to control me, not wait for their permission.

Freedom and the responsibilities that come with its higher ideals, I have decided, is a cause that will have to be pursue of my own accord despite the efforts to control and manipulate and pressure and otherwise bully me without respect for my conscience and free thought and choices.

It is a moral cause as much as it is a concern for stronger solutions to humanity's problems.

And last night and today, I think I am finally coming to terms with my need to embrace the freedom that is necessary to be a genuinely good human being (and not just be fearful and repressed and persistently trying, fruitlessly, to control what I fear) regardless of what others think, regardless of how I fit in or do not with people, regardless of whether my freedom is respected or not by others.

This is the only life I've ever dreamed of. And whether or not it manifests itself ideally or not in my own lifetime, I intend to live a life committed to my own freedom of thought and conscience and where love rather than power or wealth or control or darker desires are my center.

That is where our truer center is found. Our moral center. Our political center. It is found in the heart. It is found in our more genuine love and compassion for others and the understanding that develops out of that compassion. And it is that compassion, hence, that those who live out of fear and control fear most; fearing that they are weak the more they love. Because love does not control. And love challenges us to let go of fear and our need to control.

If you love something, set it free.

It's a principle that those who seek to repress and control fear because it means opening up beyond their defenses -- which are useless in the biggest sense, no matter how much they buttress them -- and make them vulnerable to a world full of pain but also full of life and love. Love and pain come hand in hand. And it is pain that people waste so much precious time trying to protect themselves against with controls that make it all the more likely, sadly.

Luckily, we seem to find our way out of the shadows that we too often mistake for sunshine, as Plato observed, and to be led by love more than by fear, as Martin Luther King insightfully noted.

Today and last night, I have been making my peace with a world where some people will persistently try to manipulate and control me, no matter how much respect for my freedom and the freedom for others is fundamental to a responsible life, a responsible politics, and a responsible morality and humanity.

And it is the most freedom that I have felt in a long time.

Love,
Ben

Joe Biden is a scary motherfucker

Biden: Blame immigration woes on Mexico

Speaking of people who operate out of insecurity and D-values.

Joe now favors a fence on the Mexican border to deal with immigration and the dreaded drug trade.

Joe Biden is now officially a scary motherfucker.

Thank God this guy will never be President. Now if we could only get him off of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Where is Dick Lugar when you need him?

Our worst natures

The darkest feature of our free will, I'm learning, is that we can rationalize anything with a cover of being righteous.

Abraham Maslow was right. Most people operate with D-values, meaning values of insecurity. All of us operate with D-values, at some level. But some people operate more out of this level of values rather than out of higher B-values or our higher values and ideals.

And the most basic need that impedes our growth and that is so easily manipulated and exploited is our desire to be viewed favorably by others. All of us have this tendency, and we are either more or less honest with ourselves and others about how much we want to look good at the expense of being honest with ourselves and others, which would better facilitate our actually being good and better people.

And the worst feature of this insecurity is when we enforce our fear of who we might really be, inside, on everyone, because staying our fear is more important than growing beyond them.

Fear is both the most dangerous and notorious weapon of the weak and the most serious impediment to our growth.

Our saving grace is that fear cannot lead to anywhere where we can thrive.

And eventually, we need real nourishment.

We must fumble around in our own internal darkness, I am discovering, before we can finally see the light. All of us. Without exception.

And the most fearful and insecure among us fumble for longer than others because they keep mistaking the darkness for light. Fear for understanding.

Fear of understanding mistaken for weakness and reflective of our own weaknesses we prefer to remain blind to is one of the most serious obstacles to personal and cultural learning, growth, and progress.

We only find strength and understanding when we let go of weakness rather than defending ourselves against its presence. And this weakness most of all -- our propensity to protect our ego from facing our weaknesses for fear of acknowledging them-- is the most pernicious frailty of all.

Love,
Ben