Amerika: The Drama

Andrea Muhrrteyn
12/21/2011 at 6:16 am

“Perhaps that is our society’s dirty secret: for all of our science, we cannot analyze the problems that originate within.”

That is very true statement; except for the word ‘cannot’. I imagine once you experientially learn that the word cannot is really not accurate, and that the accurate word is ‘don’t want to’…. you see the your whole picture from a new perspective.

Choosing to be responsible for our own happiness, which necessarily includes embracing our sadness and anger and fear and rage, is a choice; it is sort of like making a commitment to find out how to love yourself. It is impossible to really unconditionally honestly and sincerely love another, until you have leant to love yourself. Loving ourselves means loving our dark sides, our crazy, our eccentric, our skeletons we would prefer to hide not only from the world, but also our own consciousness, so we can pretend that aspect of who we are does not exist.

That is the difference between ‘I cannot’ (which is really denial of the responsibility of saying: I don’t want to, I am afraid)…. and once you have made the choice to face your fear… it becomes ‘I WANT TO’…


Andrea Muhrrteyn
12/21/2011 at 6:39 am

Very cute goat!! Was that intentionally Baphomet symbolic; or just cause the picture was cute?

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Amerika: Apolitical

Andrea Muhrrteyn
12/27/2011 at 8:16 am

“This process is separate from diagnosis. When we say that liberalism is a mental delusion that destroys civilizations, our message is clear: avoid liberalism, and do find another way to rule ourselves.”

I am not quite clear what your definition of civilisation is, in this context. Derrick Jensen defines civilisation as “a way of life characterized by the growth of cities”; where a city is defined as “a collection of people living in large enough numbers that require the importation of resources”.

Jensen’s view is that ‘civilisation’ as defined above is unsustainable.

If we follow Jensens definition, it is not liberalism that destroys civilisation, but civilisation that destroys itself due to its refusal to live in harmony with its carrying capacity.

How do you define civilisation, or what does civilisation mean to you?


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Brett Stevens
12/27/2011 at 9:15 am
Civilization is the outward expression of culture. Jensen’s definition is sadly tainted by modernity.

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Andrea Muhrrteyn
12/27/2011 at 11:45 am

“Civilization is the outward expression of culture.”

Is that your definition Brett? Never heard it, but very interesting. What do you mean by ‘outward expression of culture’? I guess it also depends on how you define culture. Would that not mean that every culture’s outward expression can be considered civilisation? Also you would consider hunter gatherer or village agrarian cultures that existed prior to cities, to have been ‘civilisations’?

According to Jensen the word civilisation is based on the latin word for city.

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Amerika: Us versus them

Andrea Muhrrteyn
12/28/2011 at 5:54 am

I don’t subscribe to any particular ideology as a statement of my identity. I think ideologies are simply tools, and any ideologies principles can be relevant in any given circumstance; it just depends on the circumstance.

I imagine your problem is that you are attached to your ideology — conservatism — and wish to insist that it should be applied in every single circumstance; as opposed to simply considering it one of many useful ideological tools. Sort of like the man with the hammer who thinks everything is a nail.

Then you meet liberals who only have one ideology in their toolbox: a screwdriver, who wants to screw everything in sight; and the two of you meet; to fix the problem of some dust on the floor, which would require the tool known as a brush and dustpan.

Instead you are both beating the dust to smithereens with your hammer and screwdriver, and blaming each other for the fact that your problem persists.

There are sincere truthseekers who may at any given point of time in their life be exploring either liberal or conservative ideology to see if its principles are applicable to any issues they wish to test their application.

There are conservative and liberal individuals who have attached their ego to their ideology, instead of using their ideology as one of many problem solving tools. The latter in both camps believe that they are ‘right’ and everyone else is ‘wrong’ and unworthy of entering into a sincere enquiring conversation. Both appear to get a sense of self righteous superiority by denigrating the other as being unworthy a enquiry minded sincere listening conversation.

For an observer; its a bit like watching Tom and Jerry cartoons.

The underlying possible truth of the matter being, both sides get some kind of ego-socio-political status benefits from their respective fanclubs and are essentially participating in a faked staged kind of political wrestling game.

In Radical Honesty we have a kind of practice that if you find out you start getting a few followers, the first thing to do is, make an absolute fucking fool of yourself in front of them. If any of your followers are not capable of ego-existential death; and you accept such a person as a follower, because of your ego’s greed for quantity of followers, instead of quality of followers capable of ego-existential death;… then you thereby allow your ego’s addiction for ever greater number of followers to imprison your rational and enquiry minded processes, that are quite happy to admit when they have made a mistake, and to laugh at ourselves for taking ourselves so serious, into its ego prison of ‘always being right’.

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Cantillon
12/28/2011 at 7:50 am

Ideology is based around an overly rationalistic, analytical, partial, abstracted, Cartesian perspective on the world.

The conservative tradition (pre-WW1) is based on an older kind of Reason – not disembodied, but somatic; contextual; imaginative; incorporating knowledge about concrete aspects of the world – particular knowledge of time and place.

Ian McGilchrist explains very well the difference between ideology and tradition, tying it back to insights from both neuroscience and the history of literature and art.

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Andrea Muhrrteyn
12/28/2011 at 10:54 am

Cantillon,

Are you referring to: The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World?

If so: are you implying that there is some relationship between the political terms of ‘right/conservative’ and ‘left/liberal’; and the terms of ‘right and left’ brain?

My understanding of the political terms ‘right’ and ‘left’ are that the further you move to the right, you move towards anarchy and libertarianism (smaller goverment) to no goverment; and the further you move to the left, you move to larger goverment (socialism, nazism, communism, corporatism, fascism).

My understanding of the neurological terms ‘right’ and ‘left’ brain, are simply that the one is on the right, and the other on the left.

Am I missing something?

My definition for any ideology, whether it be political, religious or cultural tradition is that it is in essence “a group-shared system of thought and action that offers the individual a frame of orientation and an object of devotion”.

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Brett Stevens
12/28/2011 at 11:22 am

My understanding of the political terms ‘right’ and ‘left’ are that the further you move to the right, you move towards anarchy and libertarianism (smaller goverment) to no goverment; and the further you move to the left, you move to larger goverment (socialism, nazism, communism, corporatism, fascism).

I can’t speak toward Cantillon’s response, but to my mind this is the division:

Left: Individualism, egalitarianism, freedom = society geared toward the individual.

Right: Consequentialism, structure, naturalism = society geared toward process, order and design.

As part of that, rightists tend to support “Social Darwinism” based upon a theory of quasi-libertarian laissez faire and meritocracy. This does not exclude monarchy, caste systems and nationalism.

American rightists are roughly as you describe, but I would refer to all of them as “neo-liberals” at this point, although I think the founding fathers were probably farther right than most imagine, e.g. would have more in common with Machiavelli and Hitler than our current “wage patriotic war for world equality, gender rights, multiculturalism and McDonald’s” conservatives.

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Andrea Muhrrteyn
12/28/2011 at 11:41 am

Left: Individualism, egalitarianism, freedom = society geared toward the individual.

Right: Consequentialism, structure, naturalism = society geared toward process, order and design.

So it would appear that your political terms of ‘left’ and ‘right’ are rather different to my political terms for left and right. As I imagine others terms for ‘left’ and ‘right’ may also be different to both of ours.

So: could you elaborate a bit further on both concepts and each term you use being a bit more specific; and would you fit what you call ‘liberalism’ into ‘left’?

Would you also agree that not everyone who uses the political terms ‘left’ and ‘right’ mean them in the same way that you do?

It is my opinion that a majority of the misunderstandings, disagreements and general animosity between all individuals on planet earth are a result of people’s lack of communication skills, and lack of listening and enquiring to determine whether what we thought we heard someone say (our interpretation), actually was accurate in terms of what the speaker meant.

We project our interpretations of anothers spoken or written words, as being an accurate interpretation of what they mean, without enquiring to determine whether they are indeed accurately interpreted. To a greater or lesser extent, depending on the particular relationship; we are all in self-delusion about what we think others are saying!! Its quite funny, if it weren’t so tragic; considering our belief that we are ‘communicating’! ;-)

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Andrea Muhrrteyn
01/01/2012 at 3:43 am


Common to all cultures, disgust and taboo seem universal. What are the origins of curse words, vulgar language, dress codes, obscenity and censorship in general?

We declare some things taboo or obscene to remind us of the boundary where appearance ends and reality begins. Curse words and vulgar behavior are cultural manifestations to remind us that there are limits and boundaries. Did you ever keep a secret with a friend? Have you ever winked at a girl? It’s in bad taste to blurt out the obvious. Some things must be left unsaid. This is the wink and nod of reality.

In my culture -- Radical Honesty -- we do not have 'appearances' or 'reality'. We dont practice image management and bullshitting each other with political correctness, or ettiquette or political correctness.

Your statement is perhaps accurate if stated as 'common to most cultures'; but it is clearly false when you say 'all cultures', cause I know one culture (which you have made no effort to investigate or enquire into, yet claim to be an expert of) where your statements do not apply, regarding being fake () and being sincere (reality).

Interestingly, our cultures decision to avoid all fakeness in our culture means, we take responsibility for resolving our disagreements with each other face to face, we do not run to lawyers, courts and police. We encourage and support each other to negotiate clearly understood simple language fully informed consensual agreements with each other, irrespective of whether other people in our tribe/culture do not practice the same agreement. If two people in our tribe decide they wish to be a cannibal/and be eaten by the other as a cannibal, we have no political correct bullshit fascism demanding that we own their lives and should enforce our preferences onto them.

We have no murderers, no rapists. We enjoy honest sincere conversations that exclude two faced hypocrisy and pretending. we live as close to reality as we are possible to support each other to do.

We don't have any problem with sincere curse words; we do have a problem with insincere fake arsekissing.

Whereas your culture abhors honesty and sincerity; our culture thrives on it!

Your 'reality' is a bullshit lie, that you all agree to bullshit each other with pretending it is reality.

Thats okay.. just please don't go around bullshitting yourself, that all cultures are so gutless to confront each other and live being sincere towards each other; just cause your culture does so.