Thankyou so kindly for sharing this story. I was arrested by the scope of his conjecture, inclusive of simultaneous radical acceptance and love. I think you philosopher's, you wisdom lovers, have called the scripts of seekers, seers and servants of wholeness: tragic vision. Parodixically this leads to ackind if beatific vision: Thomas Merton's contemplation-in-action, Simone Weil's "cracks that let grace in", Gabor Maté's 2022 book "the Myth of the Normal", summarized in its beautiful closing paragraphs.
You show that critical and creative approaches to our planetary predicament are congruent and necessary.
May the road rise to meet you, and your coracle bear your voice hence, daughter of us children of the Nuclear Age.
The author writes, "Perhaps tanks will roll into fields and the illusion of democracy will be shattered."
Yes, tanks can help set the stage and install conditions for killing democracy, but it requires much more in the aftermath of wars to succeed in that assassination.
It has been the institutions, the "leaders", the "laws", the "education"/indoctrination that reflect the true motivations and actions of our rulers, that have long-ago forfeited any claim to endorse such an aspiration as democracy.
Whether Democracy actually deserves to be elevated to the semi-sacred, communal ideal that it's rhetoric has enjoyed in the west is a questionable fiction anyway. I've seen the results of the last fifty-to-sixty years that I have intelligently experienced through an increasingly "adult" perspective, and any gloss of conditioned admiration has worn to now where I can barely discern a sheen.
Given that something admirable may be found anywhere in the past, current western "democracies" have been pirated via the iron-fisted manipulations that government-applied psychological techniques have applied through mass media's Skinnerian methods , and international Ponzi schemes, to elevate the tiny oligarchy and prostrate the rest. The manipulation (brainwashing) has skillfully produced the trapped, numbed, indebted & passive populations of the west.
Face the facts. Wash that lipstick off the reality that actually exists. Real freedom can't exist without telling the truth. Let's start doing that all the time.
(Do not assume that I praise the rest of the planet's realities. I do not recognize admirable alternatives anywhere I look, but some locations appear to be be preferable. I lack the necessary and sufficient information/knowledge to intelligently judge, so I defer for now.)
Thankyou so kindly for sharing this story. I was arrested by the scope of his conjecture, inclusive of simultaneous radical acceptance and love. I think you philosopher's, you wisdom lovers, have called the scripts of seekers, seers and servants of wholeness: tragic vision. Parodixically this leads to ackind if beatific vision: Thomas Merton's contemplation-in-action, Simone Weil's "cracks that let grace in", Gabor Maté's 2022 book "the Myth of the Normal", summarized in its beautiful closing paragraphs.
You show that critical and creative approaches to our planetary predicament are congruent and necessary.
May the road rise to meet you, and your coracle bear your voice hence, daughter of us children of the Nuclear Age.
Kia ora
Kia kaha
Kia manawānui (Māori blessing)
Be well
Be strong
Be steadfast (lit. "big heart")
The author writes, "Perhaps tanks will roll into fields and the illusion of democracy will be shattered."
Yes, tanks can help set the stage and install conditions for killing democracy, but it requires much more in the aftermath of wars to succeed in that assassination.
It has been the institutions, the "leaders", the "laws", the "education"/indoctrination that reflect the true motivations and actions of our rulers, that have long-ago forfeited any claim to endorse such an aspiration as democracy.
Whether Democracy actually deserves to be elevated to the semi-sacred, communal ideal that it's rhetoric has enjoyed in the west is a questionable fiction anyway. I've seen the results of the last fifty-to-sixty years that I have intelligently experienced through an increasingly "adult" perspective, and any gloss of conditioned admiration has worn to now where I can barely discern a sheen.
Given that something admirable may be found anywhere in the past, current western "democracies" have been pirated via the iron-fisted manipulations that government-applied psychological techniques have applied through mass media's Skinnerian methods , and international Ponzi schemes, to elevate the tiny oligarchy and prostrate the rest. The manipulation (brainwashing) has skillfully produced the trapped, numbed, indebted & passive populations of the west.
Face the facts. Wash that lipstick off the reality that actually exists. Real freedom can't exist without telling the truth. Let's start doing that all the time.
(Do not assume that I praise the rest of the planet's realities. I do not recognize admirable alternatives anywhere I look, but some locations appear to be be preferable. I lack the necessary and sufficient information/knowledge to intelligently judge, so I defer for now.)