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Well, that escalated quickly. Or did it? While it feels like what’s happening in the world today - in Minneapolis, in Tehran, in other places - is a new depth of cruelty and corruption and brutality…is it? Don’t mistake me here, it is brutal and cruel and breathtakingly, almost impressively corrupt. It’s just that, if we look back through the history of human societies and empires (however long they last), most of them eventually end up more or less like this…right before the fall. (See: Spain/Brazil/Chile and others under dictatorship, the British, Greek, Mongol, and Roman empires, now the American empire). What we call “civilization” has always been the crucible in which humanity works out the supposed conflict between its heart and its ego. Among the problems that are born from that fallacy - hate, war, oppression, Capitalism, Sharia law, Nazism, MAGA - the most fundamental is that it is fabricated. It’s only this way because we have decided that it is. We’re told that we can either be on the side of ambition, strength, dominance, success, and often God (the side of RIGHT) or that of compassion, ethics, reason, and humanism (the side of GOOD), but not both. In fact, the ego can serve the heart, bringing to bear the best qualities and positive potential of each. Instead, we have…this. People on the side of RIGHT believe that power is everything, that dominance at all costs is the only way to establish order, and that only a select few truly have the capacity to preside over that order. These people often claim to have been given a Divine mandate to rule, and use their unwavering “faith,” charisma, fanaticism, and intelligence to gather or coerce others to their cause. There is no endgame here, only the perceived scarcity of power and the calculating, unyielding, maniacal and zero-sum quest for accumulating however much of it there is. There is no room for anything that is not strength by their definition. This is, of course, a dangerous delusion that ignores our natural and genetic, animal inclination towards social connection, homeostasis, and collectivism. People on the side of GOOD believe that equality is everything, that order is established by making sure that everyone has the same, and that no one should have power over anyone else. The endgame here should be balance, but has become, out of desperate necessity, the overthrow of the powerful and the empowerment of the oppressed. As with the “other side,” there is little nuance here, making this perspective also at least partly delusional because it ignores the fact that every animal social system is stratified - in nature, social orders are complex and the weak are often culled in order to maintain the sustainability and long-term perpetuation of the pack and/or species. Before the “right” people say that this is proof of their concept and justification for genocide, it must be clearly pointed out that Nature doesn’t deal in GOOD or RIGHT and doesn’t differentiate based on made-up values - these are human concepts that have grown into human opinions and human systems. Nature - of which we are a part, no matter how hard we try - simply deals with what IS and the resulting necessary adaptations and evolutions that maintain the whole system’s ability to survive and thrive. What we’re seeing today - the kidnapping of people off the street and children from their homes and schools; the brazen, broad-daylight execution of people exercising their constitutional rights; the loss of sanctity of places of learning, employment, and worship; the once-again establishment of concentration camps that have been present in every empire; the open corruption and cruelty; the encouragement and celebration of the worst human instincts put to action; also the hand-wringing, inaction, capitulation, and violence-through-silence of other supposedly better powerful people - is all the product of ego-subsumed humans hell-bent on being RIGHT or GOOD, and fighting about it in the never-ending scarcity-driven crucible of our collective social and spiritual evolution. It’s all about short-term gain, and at this moment, that obsession is killing us. It’s not entirely our fault; humans are built for short-term survival rather than long-term planning. This is why we look at a huge winter storm and say, “look, it’s cold and snowing in the winter! I told you all that global warming was fake.” Unfortunately for our president, there’s a difference between weather and climate, and we can’t have it both ways: We don’t get to claim Nature when it’s convenient, but ignore it when it stands in the way of our objectives. It is crystal clear to me that we are not good students of our own history; until we - as a race, as a people, as creatures with the power to choose - decide to take and act on those warnings rather than, generation after generation, thinking we can do the same thing right this time where our predecessors failed (see: hubris) it can only end with our downfall. Or maybe the machines will just take over. People, have you not seen Terminator, Battlestar Galactica, The Matrix? What are we doing? Please click the button below to check out the updated and expanded website, peruse blogs and performance tips, find past newsletters, learn more about PLAYfree, and to connect with me! If you have feedback or questions; if you want to explore working together; or if reading anything here inspires you to think, feel, or connect, please reach out. And, if you know anyone who would enjoy this newsletter or could benefit from it, please forward it along! Thanks for joining the conversation.
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