

A Public Service Announcement to the Dark Side and Other Essays

by Joe Blow

Copyright 2017 Joe Blow

Table of Contents

Introduction

A Public Service Announcement to the Dark Side

Why Do We Have a Dark Side?

Will Policing Our Cultural Expressions Discourage Violence?

"Thou Must!" vs. "Fuck That!"

Freedom vs. Political Correctness

Thoughts on the Male Feminist

"Toxic Masculinity" or Toxic Idealism?

Trying Too Hard to Be Good Made Us Capable of Evil

The Oasis : A Parable

Me... Or My Disease?

The Psychology of the Right Wing and the Left Wing

"Social Justice Warriors" or "Social Fabric Healers"?

The Problem With "-Isms"

The Life Raft of Dogma

Eating the Chocolate Bar

A Free Society Can Only Grow from Psychologically Secure Individuals

The Pleasure of Love

The Hammer or The Key : Exposing the Dictatorship of the Ideal

Is Reality Real? : From Plato's Cave to The Matrix

Selfishness Is Self-Denial

Unlocking Love

Introduction

As with my first book – How to Be Free – I make no claims for the ideas expressed in these essays. I'm not an authority. I haven't studied psychology formally. My ideas are largely the product of introspection. So these essays should be viewed as experiments in free thought. Please take from them what you may find of value and reject the rest. Although each essay has been written to stand alone, How to Be Free, which is available as a free download from Smashwords and anywhere else you may have found this book, may be the better introduction to these ideas.

My essential message is : "Accept all of your thoughts and feelings unconditionally rather than fighting with them or criticising yourself for having them. If we try to impose virtue upon ourselves we will arouse resentment and rebellion against that which is virtuous. Letting go of repression of our thoughts and feelings need not lead to acting upon destructive urges, but beneath the thoughts and feelings we shamefully repress we will find our courage and our capacity for love."

About the Author

Joe Blow is the pseudonym for a man who, though currently happy and high functioning, has had a long history of mental illness, including endogenous depression, bipolar disorder and obsessive compulsive disorder. His writing is the product of a lifelong struggle to integrate flashes of insight and powerful symbols which appeared to him, often during what we might define as psychotic episodes, with observable reality and a rudimentary knowledge of science by appropriating useful concepts from the work of such iconoclastic thinkers as Wilhelm Reich, R. D. Laing, Keith Johnstone, William Blake and Oscar Wilde.

If asked whether this approach and this conceptual framework have provided him with a secure foundation for emotional stability, happiness and flowering creativity, Blow would reply, "Well, so far so good."

He also writes humorous erotica under the pseudonym Aussiescribbler.

A Public Service Announcement to the Dark Side

If you could beam a message telepathically into the minds of everyone on earth who was contemplating a destructive act, what would you say?

Here is what I would say :

"There is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to harm someone - wanting to kill them, rape them, torture them... Fantasise about it as much as you like. But if you do it, you will lose more than you gain. No matter how much momentary satisfaction it gives you, that satisfaction will be fleeting and will be outweighed by the negative effects on your life of the consequences, even if you don't get caught and punished."

Why would I take this particular approach?

Our feelings, thoughts and desires arise from the interaction between our current psychological structure and our environment. We chose neither. It is no good chastising someone for something over which they have no control. The sensible thing is to help them to understand what they can do about it.

Hostile feelings are essentially defensive. They arise from deep-seated feelings of insecurity. A hostile individual is like a dog who has experienced many beatings. He doesn't feel safe, so his impulse is to bite first. Now if we show acceptance of his situation and give him plenty of room to run around and bark and growl, he may gradually realise that we don't mean to kick him. But if we back him into a corner, he may be unable to do anything but bite us. This is why expressing acceptance of the hostile feelings makes us less likely to be a victim of them.

In my message, I wouldn't mention morality. I wouldn't try to appeal to their better nature. I wouldn't ask them to have compassion for their prospective victim. If any of these arguments would work, they would have worked already. Everybody has heard them before. And each of them is an implied criticism, an expression of an implied lack of acceptance. This kind of approach tends to back the savage dog further into the corner.

Throughout the history of the human race we have had many organised systems for preaching morality. We've had the Ten Commandments for thousands of years, but they don't seem to have done anything to curb our propensity for murder, theft or lying. Perhaps we need to try a new approach. Perhaps we need to begin preaching unconditional self-acceptance and enlightened self-interest.

Why Do We Have a Dark Side?

What produces the dark side of we humans?

Some think that we are instinctively competitive and that the roots of our dark side can be found in our underlying animal tendency to form a dominance hierarchy.

We are biological entities with biological needs. It makes sense that a shortage of something we need might lead to conflict in the absence of a very strong cultural structure to restrain that tendency. If there is a shortage of food we might fight over what is available because our desire to remain alive overrides any disinclination to deprive others.

Among other animals there is often a breeding imperative which leads to competition for a mate. Does this apply on a biological level for humans? That's hard to say. As intelligent beings with imagination we don't have to follow our instincts. If we don't listen to what our instincts would tell us about what food is healthy to eat, why would we think that we listen to our instincts when it comes to striving to win the most biologically healthy mate we come in contact with? Of course we often do put a great deal of effort into winning a particular kind of mate, but is it for biological reasons or psychological reasons? A millionaire's trophy wife will win him the envy of his peers, but she may not necessarily be the best breeding prospect.

One of the factors which has given us the power to dominate the global environment as a species is our ability to cooperate and to override our instincts with the use of our intelligence and imagination. When faced with a food crisis, I imagine that chimpanzees don't have much option but to fight it out. We humans can come up with a strategy for rationing the food and setting off in search of a new home where food is more plentiful.

We are less likely to compete for biological reasons than other animals, and yet, as a species, we have been far more brutally destructive for reasons which are not immediately obvious.

We follow the pleasure principle and the pleasure principle, in the absence of the kinds of dominating biological factors which lead to conflict amongst other animals, fosters love. The most pleasant form of life for us is to live in a close community, easing the burdens of life through cooperative strategies and sharing the sensual pleasure that comes through affectionate interaction of all kinds.

So what is the darkness that plagues us, standing in the way of such a blissful existence?

Psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich points out that the stifling of natural drives channels that energy into malignant symptoms. Our instincts are to love, to engage in productive activity, to learn, and to enjoy an erotic relationship with another individual. Hatred is generated by the frustration of the instinct to love. This can be the self-hatred characterised by depression and other forms of mental illness or hatred felt towards others.

But it is not simple barriers which impede the loving instinct in this way. We can see plenty of evidence that love is able to stand firm in the face of the obstacles life throws at it. It is when the loving instinct is frustrated at it's very base that it gives rise to toxic secondary drives.

Love is a form of communication characterised by openness, honesty, spontaneity and generosity. Only if we are capable of being open, honest, spontaneous and generous in our relationship with our own self can we interact lovingly with others. Any lack of honesty with self will compromise our honesty with others. When we fear aspects of our self this compromises our capacity for spontaneity. We don't trust ourselves to be spontaneous. And if we are not generous towards our self, then we won't be able to be generous toward others without resenting the fact that we are treating them better than we treat our self. The ability to love our self is central to the ability to love anyone else.

So what threatens our ability to love our self? To love our self is to accept our self. Why would we fail to accept our self? What makes us feel that we are not worthy of acceptance?

I think the answer is idealism. It's necessary for us to have some kind of system of thought to guide our behaviour. We need to understand that some forms of behaviour will lead to bad results for us, either directly or because they lead to bad results for others, which will be disadvantageous to us as well. But it is possible for such a system to be so strict or so harshly imposed that it comes to oppress us. It is one thing to be guided by a gentle hand and it is another to be kicked and shoved and berated by the one who would direct our behaviour. There are times when doing what is right is intrinsically very difficult. The question is whether our guidance system helps to foster courage or leaves us weak by undermining our capacity to feel good about ourselves at all. If idealistic expectations, either personal or from peers, are too strict, they will tend to engender in us increasing levels of resentment towards them. This resentment will then spill over into our behaviour towards others, and, in the extreme, can manifest as a drive to inflict suffering or death upon the innocent and defenceless.

How does this work? Well, if you feel oppressed by the demand that you be good, if you experience this demand as something which gradually erodes the self-acceptance which is, metaphorically speaking, the floor of the house in which you live, so that you just get angrier and angrier as you are backed further and further into the only remaining corner, the one thing which might give you some temporary relief is to rebel against that demand, to respond to its demand that you do the best thing by deliberately doing the very worst thing.

How did I come to this conclusion? I looked into myself, into the heart of my own darkness. I remember once seeing footage of a group of men attacking a pod of dolphins with machetes. They hacked and hacked and hacked and the bay was filled with blood. Everyone was saying : "How horrible! What monsters those men are!" I was thinking : "Hacking dolphins to death might provide a kind of relief." This was at a time when I was prone to depression. When we are depressed we don't love ourselves and we don't get any consolation from the love of others. It's almost worse to be loved when we feel we don't deserve it. Either the other person is a fool for not realising how unworthy of love we are, or we are a fraud for not disabusing them.

I could have identified with the dolphins. Many, including many depressed people, probably would. I don't know why I've always had a tendency to identify with victimisers rather than victims when confronted with these kinds of scenarios. But this tendency has an advantage for someone who wants to understand human problems. If our imagination tends to take us into the position of a victim then we may have the basis for extrapolating what is going on in their mind when they are being victimised. But if we want to understand why it is happening we have to understand what is going on in the mind of the victimiser.

I don't think that this impulse toward defiance of the good is the only reason for the victimisation of the innocent. Another element is the resentment of the unlovable for the loved. The individual whose self-acceptance has been eaten away until they are backed into that final corner, cut off from all capacity for joy, hounded by condemnation on all sides, unable to defend themselves because their behaviour has been genuinely destructive, is the rejected of the world. How are they going to feel when people talk about how much they love the cute dolphins? What about when they see the devoted mothers dropping their children off to the pre-school? Isn't that the darkest point to which a human can sink? The point at which a young man may take a bunch of guns to that pre-school.

We can say that the school shooter, the terrorist, the child molester, is a individual starved of love. So what are we to do? We have barely enough love for ourselves and those closest to us. We can't go throwing our precious love into the black hole at the heart of the sociopath. It wouldn't do any good if we did.

So what can we do about the problem of evil?

If we understand the roots of the problem in the tendency of idealistic demands to undermine self-acceptance, then we can develop a culture of unconditional self-acceptance in our own lives. If such a culture really does foster love, courage, creativity and an enhanced capacity for problem solving, then it will spread quickly. Eventually it will spread even into humanity's heart of darkness, bringing the redemption which is urgently needed to free us from our capacity for evil.

Will Policing Our Cultural Expressions Discourage Violence?

Why does violence occur in our society? Clearly the reasons are complex and variable, but by asking ourselves a few questions we may be able to assess the best strategies to tackle the problem.

What has got me thinking about this issue are some recent examples of a particular strategy to fighting the problem of violence - particularly violence against women - in our society. This strategy argues that visual depictions of such violence and jokes about such violence are likely to be seen as condoning this behaviour. The strategy gives birth not just to censure of free expression but the production of media campaigns which try to convince us that this violence occurs in our society because we are too tolerant of it.

Our culture tells us that violence - except in self-defence - is wrong and that violence by men against women and by adults generally against children is especially heinous. As a general rule we no longer condone corporal punishment.

So the problem of violence in our society is not due to moral ignorance - it isn't because we don't know that violence of this kind is wrong. Or, at the very least, we know that society generally believes that it is wrong, even if we do not.

For most of us there are two reasons to obey a socially shared moral principle - to have a clear conscience and to avoid the censure of others. A psychopath might have no conscience, but even they might benefit from avoiding social censure.

Violence may occur where a subculture gives the individual greater acceptance because of this behaviour, for instance in a criminal gang. The social censure motive is then working in the opposite direction and overriding the conscience, if there is one.

A powerful physical or psychological need can override moral principles as well, e.g. the need to obtain the next fix of a drug.

And the generation of destructive impulses in the ego through a breakdown in its healthy functioning can propel the individual to act violently towards others, just as, if the impulses are directed against the self, the individual may commit suicide.

There is a great deal of speculation about Omar Mateen - the man who killed 49 people in an Orlando gay nightclub. He may or may not have been bisexual or homosexual himself. But his progressive radicalisation and eventual violent behaviour would make more sense if he were, because it would indicate the presence of a double bind - he can't let go of his religion (which condemns homosexuality) but he can't rid himself of the desires which are so condemned. His fear of his desires causes him to cling more tightly to the religion which causes him to feel an increasing fear of his desires which causes him to cling to the religion... It's an untenable situation. Double binds can lead to insanity or suicide. They can also lead to murder. If one interpretation of the religion is that homosexuals should be killed (this is the interpretation given by the religious rulers of countries like Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Iran) then killing as many homosexuals as possible is one way out of his double bind. On the one hand it lets him express his anger against those who have a happiness he can never have. Secondly it becomes a way for him to atone for his sinfulness. "I may desire to commit sodomy but I can make up for this by ridding the world of more acts of sodomy than I could ever have committed." If life in the double bind is intolerable then this provides a way out which can be viewed as something other than suicide, because the final shot is not self-inflicted. Of course this is all speculation, but it is a theory which has explanatory power.

This is a very dramatic example, but something similar happens in less dramatic ways all the time. I've experienced it. In my case the double bind led to me being self-destructive, but I can understand how it could so easily go the opposite way and does. A man whose self-acceptance is inextricably linked to being a provider to his family who then loses his job may express his frustration - his self-hatred - in the form of violence against his wife or his children. If he can't escape his situation by getting another job, then he is stuck with the irreconcilable dilemma that he is unemployed and unacceptable to himself because he is unemployed. The continued love and faithfulness of a sexual partner can very often become an absolute requirement for someone's self-acceptance, leading many men and women to violently attack someone who cheats on them or breaks up with them.

So the issue underlying the problem of violence in our society is one of self-acceptance. The problem to be addressed is anything which undermines self-acceptance. If a philosophy or religion says we should not accept our sexuality, then that is a potential source of problems. If we promote the idea that anyone who does not meet a particular ideal of success or physical appearance or mental health should feel ashamed, then this could be a source of problems. (This doesn't mean not celebrating people's success or physical appearance or whatever. It is not a problem to have positive aspirations, the problem lies in backing them up with the threat of shame.) A lack of self-acceptance can lead to each of the problems outlined above - addiction, conformity to a violent subculture or a tendency for the ego to temporarily break down in the form of an violent outburst, something which can also become habitual.

We are presented with public service advertisements which tell us that domestic violence is a terrible problem. If this helps us to have the political commitment to support better methods of early intervention and policing of protection orders and providing more therapy services to both victims and perpetrators, then this is a good thing. But the key issue is the one not dealt with. What are the psychological factors which drive a person to violence and what can we do to help to free people from this compulsion? It isn't simply a matter of us being too tolerant. At the moment someone lifts their fist or picks up a knife, they don't care if we approve or not. The key to helping their potential victims is helping them. If the ads were telling us what we should do when we feel like hitting someone they might do more good.

In our impotence we turn to attempts to police culture. A poster for the movie X-Men : Apocalypse (2016) (dir. Bryan Singer) which shows the villain attempting to strangle one of the female superheroes was criticised as something which might promote violence against women. The studio apologised. It is clear that the big guy is the villain and thus his behaviour is not being validated. Big guys who pick on women who are smaller than them are not the heroes in super-hero movies. So critics are saying that to even depict bullying behaviour is to promote bullying behaviour.

This is an important issue because culture - from high art to popular entertainment - is the space in which we give free play to our imagination and by doing so allow our culture to evolve in more creative and effective ways. This is an improvisatory process which requires freedom. If we try to control culture to produce a specific end we will kill it. We will kill what gave us Shakespeare and Jane Austen and Hemingway. And we won't end violence by doing so, because nobody hits someone just because they saw a picture of someone hitting someone. No-one kills someone simply because they saw someone kill someone in a movie. No-one kills people just because they played a video game where people killed people. Cultural representations may be imitated by someone who is propelled by some deeper motivation, but as long as those motivations remain we will not be made any safer by ridding ourselves of violent imagery.

An image like the one on the movie poster may be disturbing to some people. To someone who has been a victim of violence and is still suffering trauma as a result, such an image may be triggering. And those of us who may have a lot of generalised anger or specifically misogynistic feelings which we are trying to keep repressed may find such an image a disturbing challenge to our repressive strategy. So a major part of defending artistic freedom is addressing the problem of psychological insecurity. If the traumatised don't find healing for their trauma and the repressed don't find liberation from their neurosis, then we will continue to have a conflict between the desire to provide them with protection and the need of the rest of us to be free in our expression. Acceptance is the source of such healing. Avoidance, while it may be desirable as a temporary strategy, is not the solution. If something produces anxiety the answer is to expose ourselves to it and wait until the anxiety dies down. For the repressed individual it is important to learn that it is O.K. to have hostile and misogynistic feelings. It is O.K. to have any kind of feelings at all. That realisation that they are O.K. and that there is no need to fight against them as feelings will lead to a drastic decrease in their severity. It is when we don't accept something negative about ourselves that that thing increases. So the irony is that, by over-reacting to images we feel are misogynistic, we may actually be increasing the hold of misogynistic feelings on many individuals.

Another example of this strategy is an increasing tendency for media personalities to be heavily censured for making jokes about violence towards women, etc. Again the argument seems to be that someone who hears such a joke is going to be more likely to be violent towards a woman or be tolerant of someone else being violent towards a woman.

Humour is a safety valve. It has the ability to release the kinds of tension which, if they build up too much, as in the examples above, can lead to violence. Everyone who knows me would say that i'm a very peaceful person. But I make jokes about killing children, raping women, torturing animals... Taboo humour is a great release of tension and thus a great aid to remaining peaceful. And it is a way to own our own dark side. It isn't everyone's way of dealing with things and I wouldn't argue that it should be. But we should not make the assumption that tolerance of bad taste jokes will promote what they joke about, because the opposite may be true.

"Thou Must" vs. "Fuck That"

This essay was written before Donald Trump became President of the United States.

I've always experienced a tension within me between feelings of frustration and the imperative to "do the right thing". When the frustration dies down, "doing the right thing" comes naturally. But when it builds up, there is a part of me that doesn't want to "do the right thing". To do so at such times requires discipline. But it is right. This I don't question.

When I feel at peace and full of generosity, I just want to be kind and helpful. But at other times, reason and conscience act like an electrified fence to keep frustration from bursting through. And just as an electric fence is hardly likely to truly pacify the herd, but rather make them feel resentful and oppressed, so the feelings of frustration can be exacerbated by the pressure to "do the right thing", even when it would come naturally in a peaceful state of psychological freedom.

We are surrounded by messages of what not to say about people. How are we supposed to referred to the intellectually disabled? What kinds of things should a man say to a woman, and what should he not? What are we to call people of particular races? How are we supposed to respond to people's religious beliefs, especially if they seems silly to us or we feel that they are hurtful to others? What about personal appearance? What if someone is really obese? What if we find someone physically repulsive?

There is no doubt that being polite and tolerant is the right thing. But when the pressure builds there is a little man inside me that wants to say the cruellest thing possible. He's fed up with "doing the right thing."

There is no problem when I feel at peace, and that is most of the time these days, but when I feel this contrary spirit well up in me and yet I continue to "do the right thing", I feel like a liar and a hypocrite, because I'm putting on a false, socially-acceptable front. This in spite of the fact that nothing would be achieved, and much would be lost, by not doing so.

And it seems as if this contrary spirit can be conjured up where it didn't exist by the preaching of the well-meaning. Tell me I mustn't be racist, sexist, homophobic, or whatever and I want to use terms like "nigger", "slut" or "faggot". Because "doing the right thing" feels like oppression when you are implicitly threatened with punishment if you don't do it.

I think this is why offensive humour plays such a role in our culture. We'll "do the right thing" as long as we can let off steam by watching Borat do everything we know we mustn't.

At the moment, I think this contrary spirit is contributing to the popularity of Donald Trump. He's a real-life Borat. The only problem is that he is a politician who wants to lead one of the most powerful nations on the planet. I love Borat, but I wouldn't vote for him. To many Trump no doubt feels "honest" for the same reason that I feel like a "liar" when I don't allow myself to express the offensive things that are going on in my head.

Now I'm not suggesting that we stop being polite and respectful, or that we just give up hope of the Trumps of the world ever finding that inner peace that would enable them to be polite and respectful themselves. But I do think we need to try to come to a better understanding of the relationship between that part of us which says "thou must" and the part that says "fuck that".

I use my own inner life as a way to try to understand the world around me. If I find that the "fuck that" feelings are increased when the "thou must" comes on strong, is it not possible that the way we push for greater tolerance in the world may not be generating more intolerance? The "fuck you" may be offensive, but it is also defensive. It is a response to what feels like oppression. And if it feels like oppression then it is oppression. The problem is that we can't see internal psychological oppression. Haven't we all felt it though at some time, in some way. That point where there is just too much exploding in your head and someone tells you you shouldn't be unkind and you just want to punch their face in.

There are no easy answers, but if we want to avoid social disintegration - if we want to achieve a society of sustainable equality and respect - if we want to be able to work together to solve the problems which face us - there is a commodity we really need to make our number one priority and that is what I would call "psychological space". When we feel pressured to "do the right thing" it makes us want to do the opposite. This is especially true of those who do the wrong thing most of the time. Instead of concentrating on arguing about who are the good guys and who are the bad guys, it would be more useful to view every human being as a resource the efficient functioning of which is in the interests of us all.

We could think of ourselves as cars. The people who do the wrong thing are like cars which are very short of petrol. We try to get them to go down the road. We stand in front of them giving them a lecture on which road to take. If they don't move we get behind them and we try to push them. We get frustrated and we kick them. But the reason they don't do what a car is supposed to do is because they are all out of gas. We tell someone off for their bigotry or selfishness or violence, but if they don't have the psychological room needed to do any better, then we are wasting our effort.

When we confront the terrible conflicts raging through the world, from the battlefields to the boardrooms to the bedrooms, it may seem that what I'm saying is impractical philosophising. If someone is trying to make your life a misery, you can't just say "I know it's just because you're out of gas" and expect that to make things better.

But I think that acknowledging that we are all in the same boat, that each of us behaves only as well as our psychological space allows, is a good starting point. Then we can work on what opens up that space within us. How can we find a way to let out all of our frustrations in a non-destructive way? How can we learn to be guided by the principles that foster community without feeling oppressed by them? How can we learn how to unconditionally accept ourselves?  
The more space we make in ourselves, the more capacity we will have to help those who are "out of gas".

Freedom vs. Political Correctness

Idealism is the root of all evil. The fact that this is so counter-intuitive gives some idea of why evil has been with us for so long.

This is how it works. The better we feel in ourselves the more generous and loving we are towards others. To feel good in our selves we must be self-accepting. Idealism, i.e. an unforgiving insistence on certain standards, undermines our self-acceptance. If someone says to us "I will appreciate it if you do your best" then that encourages us to do well. But if someone says "You must meet this goal" then any inability to meet that goal will be interpreted as failure and this will undermine the good feelings that would feed our efforts in the future.

What we term "political correctness" is a form of idealism. It involves an insistence on certain forms of behaviour and particularly certain forms of expression, based on whether or not they reflect a sense of equality.

A society in which all members treated others as their equals would be a very healthy society.

But does the kind of idealistic insistence represented by political correctness move us toward such a society or away from it?

The roots of injustice lie in fear. It is not for no reason that we describe intolerance towards homosexuals as "homophobia". Very often the fear is not of the person themselves but of what they represent to the discriminator. A sexually repressed white man may fear that black men will rape his wife. He is seeing in them a reflection of his own disowned self, rather than seeing them as individuals. And embattled men often fear women because they see them as an embodiment of their own critical conscience. This doesn't mean that black men never rape white women or that women never nag men over their unethical behaviour. What it does mean is that the fearful individual will focus on those instances where these things happen, and ignore the massive amount of evidence which demonstrates that these are exceptions.

Authoritarian structures of social organisation, such as patriarchy, take the form of a rigid defence against such fears. Much of the emotional energy arising from these fear-based feelings of hostility is channelled into maintaining the social order. Some may also be channelled into aggression against other nations. What is left may feed open acts of aggression against the underclass who represent what is feared.

Since these feelings of hostility arise from fear, any sense of threat will increase them. So one of the problems faced by social reformers is that fear of change increases the level of hostility of those whose insecurities were accommodated by the old order.

So where does political correctness come in? It is intolerance of the expression, in any form, of these fear-based feelings of hostility. It is the new Ten Commandments. One big "Thou Shalt". And the fear of God is instilled by the threat of ostracism.

Political correctness can't expel hatred from someone's heart and replace it with love. All it can do is to intimidate someone who has these feelings into pretending they don't have them in return for social acceptance.

I'll give a personal example of the effect of political correctness on myself. My tendency has been to be very open to transexual culture. Diversity of sexual behaviour fascinates me and I get great inspiration from movies about gay men, lesbians and transvestites because they illustrate the struggle involved in being true to oneself in the face of demands for conformity. On the other hand, I don't share the view that most transexuals have of themselves, i.e. that they are "a woman in a man's body" or a "man in a woman's body". As long as I recognise their right to have this self-perception, it seems to me that I have the right not to share it. (A recent viewing of the movie The Danish Girl tended to back up my view that transsexualism arises from a fixation on an aspect of the individual's nature which they feel is not accepted. Einar felt that his father disapproved of his feminine side, as evidenced by his response to finding Einar wearing an apron and being kissed by his male friend, and so he fixated on this part of himself for which he desperately desired acceptance. When he got that acceptance in the form of Gerda wanting him to dress as a woman, it was intoxicating to the extent that it overwhelmed and destroyed him, replacing him with Lili.) Now I find it harder to access my warm feelings towards transexuals because I feel I may be accused of being "transphobic" if I have an heretical belief about their psychology.

Freedom is essential to progress. That especially includes the freedom to be mistaken and the freedom to have negative emotions.

If we see a particular way of thinking as correct and unquestionable then we will never learn whether it is the truth. All ideas have to be questioned. They must prove themselves to be the fittest if we are to evolve towards greater understanding.

The word "emotion" contains the word "motion" for a good reason. Emotions are indicators of change occurring in our psyche. The natural movement of the psyche, when give its freedom from cultural expectations, is towards wholeness. So it is important to accept our emotions. This doesn't mean acting on them if that would be wrong or counter-productive. Who among us has not felt like punching someone at some time when we've been very angry? We don't have to do it to feel our anger and let it flow out of us.

So if someone thinks differently than you, don't condemn them. Challenge them to a debate.

If someone expresses feelings of hostility towards someone, don't judge them as a person. Express understanding of why they may feel that way and encourage them to give expression to those feelings in a way which won't be hurtful to others.

Recognise that the hostile and intransigent are frightened and in need of reassurance. It isn't always easy to find a way to give them what they need, but it is at least worth thinking about.

This is addressing political correctness for what it is on the surface. For many I think it is something else again.

For many of us, to push political correctness is an outward expression of our internal battle with our own dark side. This explains the vitriol and contempt many of us express towards those we find incorrect in this way. We need a scapegoat for the stew of hateful feelings we feel building inside us.

What is needed most is honesty. If we try to deny that we are frightened and insecure, then our fear and insecurity will divide us. If we admit that we are frightened and insecure, then we will be united by this recognition that we are all in the same boat.

Thoughts on the Male Feminist

I want to sketch out some rough ideas which have arisen from contemplating the behaviour of some men who support feminism. There are risks involved in speculating about what goes on inside people's heads. But it is also dangerous to leave ideas unformed and unexamined in our minds. Laying them out on the table and assessing them seems the way to go.

When trying to understand a phenomena, sometimes the best place to begin is with its most exaggerated manifestation. If we can see meaning in the bold shape of the extreme, then it may enable us to see the same pattern, but with softer edges, elsewhere.

I've noticed that there are some men who, having adopted the cause of feminism, become almost rabidly savage in their condemnation of any signs of sexism they find in the speech or behaviour of other men. This is the relatively rare extreme. That someone with a generosity of spirit and ethical integrity should decide that equality between the sexes is a goal worth pursuing enthusiastically is understandable enough, but where declared support for that aim takes a form in which generosity of spirit to one's own gender seems seriously compromised the behaviour makes less immediate sense.

I have misogynistic thoughts and feelings. I have racist thoughts and feelings. I have homophobic thoughts and feelings. None of this is much of a problem for me, because I accept these thoughts and feelings when they arise, and so they quickly depart.

Life and our interactions with other people involve a degree of frustration. When we feel frustrated, the process of interacting with someone of a different mindset or culture than our own may be a little more difficult and low level hostile feelings may be generated. If we accept them, they will quickly dissipate, but if we feel ashamed or guilty about them they may become a fixation and grow.

Misogynistic feelings, from the fleeting to the ingrained, have clearly been common in men from the beginnings of civilisation down to the present day. When we men have oppressed and mistreated women it has been an expression of such feelings.

Now if a man takes up the cause of feminism, doesn't it make sense that he would take this approach in interacting with other men :

"Look, guys, I know you have these feelings of frustration with women. It may have got to the stage were you feel embittered and hateful towards them. I understand. I've had those feelings too, maybe not as strongly as you do, but I know. The thing is, though, that allowing those feelings to determine how we interact with women isn't doing us any favours. I'm not talking morality. Stuff that. I'm talking about our own self interest. We share this planet with women. The happier they are, the happier we'll be. Happy women are generous women. And no amount of power or wealth is more valuable than being surrounded by people who are fond and supportive of you in a way which comes from the heart."

There may be some men who take that very approach to promoting the cause of female equality. But what of the guy who is screaming at his fellow men about what sexist pigs they are?

Let's skip to another cultural phenomenon in which someone becomes very angry and contemptuous in support of a cause. I was watching a video recently of a man who considers himself a Christian. He was strutting around a stage, spittle flying from his lips, as he condemned homosexuality and called for the state to execute all gay people. Why the extreme hostility? Does it not seem likely that he is caught in a negative feedback loop arising from the anti-homosexual beliefs he has either adopted or been indoctrinated into? It seems likely that most non-gay men have at least passing homosexual urges from time to time. Some may indulge them, others will let them slip away and go back to lusting after women. But if you believe that homosexuality is an abomination, you don't have the luxury of taking twinges of this kind so lightly. There may be a moment of horror when you face the possibility that you yourself may be the abomination, then you shove that thought deep down into your subconscious, and you begin to build a wall to keep the horror contained. You can't accept this part of yourself, and thus you fixate on it, but because you can't even bare to face the fact that it is a part of you, you split from it and become deeply paranoid, going to battle in the world around you with anything which resonates with the monster within. You would slay all the gay people in the world if you could, but it could never satisfy you, because that monster within would not have been slain. The irony is that all that it takes to make the monster go away is to own it. It is denial which feeds such monsters, and acceptance which slays them.

Is it not possible that the angry male feminist is in the same position as the gay-hating preacher? He has gone to war against the misogyny of his fellow males (something which, unlike homosexuality, is genuinely a problem) as a way of maintaining his denial of his own repressed misogynistic feelings.

Generosity of spirit requires what we might call psychological room. If we are caught up with internal battles we have little room to really listen to others or accommodate their needs or desires.

I think that most of we men have a battle going on within us (often one of many) between our misogynistic feelings and our conscience which tells us that it is wrong to have these feelings and even worse to act upon them. If we could tell our conscience to back off a little, we might be able to simply accept the feelings and allow them to dissipate. The more our conscience crowds us, the less room we will have and the more likely we will be to accumulate further misogynistic feelings.

And the more insecure we feel because of the turmoil of this kind of battle, the more we need to cling to some kind of "proof" of our worth. We may try to "prove" ourselves by some kind of competitive activity or by accumulating material goods or whatever. One way that we may try to demonstrate our worth is by taking up a cause. At least with regard to this cause we are on the side of the angels, we tell ourselves.

Just as Saul of Tarsus, having been battling the Christians, renamed himself Paul and tried to leave his angry self behind by taking up their cause, so the man who feels guilty about his misogynistic feelings may decide to rise above them (i.e. repress them) and become a champion of women's rights.

This can seem like a good idea. He doesn't have to view himself as the bad guy. He may get superficial acceptance from feminist women (I say superficial because they are accepting only the front he is putting on and not the repressed misogyny which really needs the healing touch of acceptance). And he gets an outlet for some of his frustration, in the same way the preacher does, by expressing anger towards men who give outward expression to the feelings he is repressing in himself. But this won't bring him healing. It won't give him the room for generosity of spirit, even to women, let alone his fellow men.

If he could own his own dark side, then he could bring to other men the release that they need. He could show them how to make the monster inside go away. By doing so he could be a part of melting away any barriers to equality for women, rather than leaving women to have to break them down, as no doubt they do have the capacity to do.

Now you may be thinking "Hang on a minute. I know men who accept that they are misogynists, and their misogyny hasn't disappeared, rather they aggressively and unrepentantly act up on it." This is bravado, not acceptance. Such aggressive, arrogant behaviour is defensive. An army is not needed when there is no insecurity to protect.

The Achilles heal of feminism has always been the tendency for its criticism, real or implicit, to make it harder for we men to learn to accept our misogynistic feelings and thus let them dissipate. Generosity of spirit is the natural state of the non-embattled human, but we, men and women, have been so embattled - so troubled by all the things we have found it next to impossible to accept about ourselves - that it has been easy for us to fall into conflict and drive each other deeper within those battlements.

We tend to view the concept of confession of sins that we find in the Christian religion as a form of reparation through the humbling of oneself before God. But I wonder if that is how it was originally intended. I have a different vision. I see a bunch of people sitting around in a circle. A woman says, "I'm pretty lustful you know. All I think about is sex." Another says, "Wow! What a relief! I thought it was just me." A man says, "I get so angry at my wife I just want to sock her in the face." "I feel that way, too," says another man. "And I want to kick my husband in the balls when won't listen to what I'm saying," says another woman. "You and me both, sister," says another. No-one feels particularly repentant, but as they open up to each other in this way their self-consciousness, their selfishness, melts away. They laugh about their aggressive feelings and they don't feel aggressive any more. And once their sexual feelings are expressed they no longer have the selfish, i.e. self-directed, quality which comes with hiding and repressing something. A key aspect of this is that nobody is judged or expelled because of their confession, because it is understood that the process is a healing one, if they are expelled because they admit to bad behaviour then they will most likely return to that bad behaviour, but if they are shown acceptance and remain within the community the acceptance they find there will heal the motivating force behind that behaviour.

Perhaps this is too simple, too naive, a fantasy for our troubled world, but sometimes things have to begin with unrealistic dreams.
"Toxic Masculinity" or Toxic Idealism

How often does domestic violence take place because the perpetrator doesn't know that it is wrong? Assuming that we are talking about violence inflicted upon the physically weaker individual, it is one of the most obvious of injustices. It is true that some highly regarded religious texts attempt to justify it in some cases, taking the same kind of reasoning which has been used to justify the corporal punishment of children - i.e. a theorised larger benefit for the individual through violence-induced self-discipline, so the possibility is there, especially in those cultures still dominated by such religious belief structures. But I think that it is safe to say that educational programs based around telling us that domestic violence is a bad thing will not have a major effect in minimising the problem as they are telling us what we already know.

As with any other form of destructive behaviour, domestic violence is counterproductive to the larger best interest of the perpetrator. Any relief from pent-up frustration experienced in the act of violence is liable to be offset by the longer-term disadvantages - feelings of guilt, possibility of punishment, progressive decline in benefits available from the victim through decrease in physical and emotional health. This may seem very cynical, but I present it this way for a reason. We have to understand that, even from the most clinical viewpoint, the abuser experiences a net loss. Once this is established the emphasis falls on the question of how the individual can gain the ability to behave differently - or, to look at it from a different perspective, what is driving the behaviour which is unhelpful both to themselves and to the victim.

Domestic violence may involve violence by men against women, men against men, women against men or women against women. There is also violence by adults against children, children against children and children against adults. But since a large slice of the problem is violence by men against women, this tends to be the main focus of educational programs aimed at addressing the problem.

One radical feminist approach which is gaining popularity describes aspects of archetypal masculinity as "toxic" and attempts to re-educated males out of them. I think this provides a good example of how an idealistic approach to a social problem can exacerbate rather than help it.

Before we take a look at the problems inherent in an idealistic approach to the problem, lets look at what we might achieve through a more pragmatic approach.

Domestic violence is usually a form of expression for feelings of anger. So, given that anger is occurring, what can we do to channel it into something other than violence. As Bernard Lafayette said : "Violence is the language of the inarticulate." Anything we can do to encourage people to give verbal expression to their feelings of anger is liable to reduce the incidence of violence. And this applies also to those who might end up on the receiving end of violence. A person who feels able to express their anger outwardly rather than adopt a submissive approach to life is less likely to end up being victimised by others. If walking away or seeking help are options they will be more likely to take them more quickly.

But where does the anger come from in the first place? Each of us has our character armour - our personality structure - the purpose of which is to protect us from threats internal and external. An internal threat might be feelings of worthlessness. We may have particular kinds of behaviour on which we pride ourselves because they carry the meaning for us that we are not worthless. Essentially the character armour is built from the conditions of our self-acceptance. If we use the example of an archetypal masculine persona, a young boy may have been taught that he's not a real man if he cries. Thus not crying becomes a condition for his self-acceptance. All of us have some form of character armour. Playing on other's pity by crying excessively and playing the victim, for instance, would just be another form of armour.

Insecurity in the armour can lead to outbursts of anger. When we don't feel under threat, everything is peaceful, but when we feel our self-acceptance is under threat we will defend it aggressively by expressing angry feelings toward the source of the threat.

The more self-accepting we are, the less prone we are to anger or violence. Of course this doesn't mean that people who don't feel angry are necessarily self-accepting. The negative feelings can be directed inwardly rather than outwardly, thus many non-self-accepting people become depressed rather than angry.

Through cultivating unconditional self-acceptance we can increase the integrity and thus the health of our personality structure. If we have many conditions for our self-acceptance then we are like a hollow tree which many things can break. If we are self-sufficient in the maintenance of our self-acceptance then we are like a healthy tree which can resist or bend as required.

We achieve unconditional self-acceptance by learning to accept all of our thoughts and feelings. Let's take a man who has been violent towards women. Telling him that his masculinity is "toxic" isn't going to help him be more self-accepting. He feels angry. He wants to beat a woman. So this is the place for him to begin. He needs to accept that it is O.K. to feel angry and that is O.K. to want to beat a woman. He will feel these things whether he thinks they are O.K. or not, but recognising that the thoughts and the feelings do no harm in themselves and can be accepted in themselves will help to take the pressure off. The fact that he has, in the past, been violent, is an indication that his particular character structure and situation have resulted in a level of pressure pushing him towards violence which he was unable to resist. A demand - from the individual's conscience or from others - that they be different from the way they are when they have no way of accommodating this demand can be a source of unbearable pressure. Drawing a distinction between the deed and the thoughts and feelings which lie behind the deed can be enough to free the individual from a good deal of this pressure. If they are made to feel that they are unacceptable for feeling like beating a woman then there is far less motive for resisting that urge. And if insecurities about self-worth are what lie at the heart of the character armour then we are hardly helping someone to free themselves of a destructive form of such armour by insisting that they are a bad person.

Let's look at a little myth or parable about the masculine and the feminine to see if we can put that aspect of the issue into some kind of historical context. The virtue of this format is that it allows for simplification.

A tribe live in the jungle. Both men and women spend time looking after the infants. Leopards from time to time eat one of the infants. The men make spears and head out into the jungle to kill the leopards and protect the women and children. (As child bearers the women are too valuable to be hunters.) Hunting requires the cultivation of competitive and aggressive abilities. The hunting culture comes to clash with the nurturing culture. The women tell the men not to be so macho when back amongst the tribe. Suppressing the voice of the nurturer within was a necessary part of becoming a successful hunter, so giving in to the critical voice of the nurturers would endanger the group, but resisting that critical voice means an increase in the behaviour which is being criticised. It is a negative feedback loop. This cultural divide between men and women determines the structure of our character armour with some of those made most insecure by the negative feedback loop feeling the need to exercise more and more control over society.

We can't know if things actually happened like that, but I think that the pattern of criticism leading to an increase in the thing criticised is something we can see in society today. Constructive criticism is helpful to the secure individual, but if the negative behaviour arises from a state of insecurity then reestablishing a state of security is a prerequisite to being able to change for the better, and in this case criticism can be counterproductive.

While idealistic criticism leads to insecurity and retaliatory hostility, idealism itself is driven by insecurity. The more someone doubts their own worth the more addicted they may become to "proving" their worth by championing "the good". If we have a lot of psychological room then we can think about all the shades of grey regarding any moral issue and we can recognise the underlying psychological issues which need to be addressed if we want an improvement in people's behaviour. But if we are so insecure - so backed into a corner by our own dark side - that only a simplistic division between good and evil is possible and no strategy more complex than an insistence on the good can find a hold in our mind \- then idealism is the result.

Which brings us back to the idea of trying to educate young men out of their "toxic masculinity". This reminds me of the Chinese Cultural Revolution or the discipline and "consciousness raising" approach of religious cults. Education should be about giving people facts and tools, not trying to shape intentions and personalities. The shaping of intentions and personalities should be an autonomous process. We may be able to "educate" people to be submissive to our demands, but a society of such people is a dictatorship waiting to happen. If we want a truly healthy society it needs to be made up of individuals with the kind of integrity which can only grow naturally.

The concept of unconditional self-acceptance is very simple. At its heart is the idea that thoughts and feelings, in and of themselves, do no harm, but, no matter how apparently sick, may be steps on the way to a healthier mode of being. It isn't an attempt to "educate" anyone out of anything as it is offered as a tool to be used only if the individual finds it useful.

Carl Jung said : "The healthy man does not torture others - generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers." If we apply this to those in our society who are given to violence, we are left with the question : "What is the nature of the violence which has been done to them?" Is it not possible to conceive that that violence is/was a lack of acceptance of some kind - a message conveyed by those around them (from parents to peers to religious teachers) that they were, in some essential way, unacceptable? Is it not the same kind of invisible violence that drives so many to suicide?

Of course here we find another negative feedback loop. The more violent acts a person commits the further recedes the possibility of the acceptance - both from themselves and others - they might require to lose the violent impulse.

It may be easy to lose hope for our society - torn as it is between those whose insecurity makes them cling to various forms of idealism and those who are driven to hostility by the wounds that that idealism's lack of acceptance inflicts upon them (neither of those positions being mutually exclusive). But each of us who learns - through unconditional self-acceptance - to achieve reconciliation between the warring factions of our own psyche is an island of strength in a sea of weak and frightened individuals. The advantage lies with us.

Trying Too Hard to Be Good Made Us Capable of Evil

There are two forces at war in the human breast - love and idealism.

Love is the impulse to accept. To accept ourself. To accept others. To accept the world as it is. To accept life as it is.

Idealism places limits on our acceptance of ourselves, others, the world and/or life as it is. Idealism is a bottle of poison labelled "medicine". It advertises itself as the road to Heaven, but is really the road to Hell.

Love gives us the ability to cooperate. It gives us the ability to heal social divisions. It allows us to forgive. Love is the road to Heaven, but sometimes it is portrayed as the road to Hell. If we view life as a battle between Good and Evil, then to accept evil would appear to mean letting it win. But fighting against evil is what generates evil and always has. Accepting evil is what heals it. This is true of the evil within us as well as the evil of others. If we find a flaw in ourselves, it will grow only if we fixate on it, that is if we fight against it. And the evil behaviour of others is defensive. It arises from fear. The fear may not be of a threat to the body, but to the individual's ability to accept themselves. A guilty conscience is a major motivator of hostile behaviour. What all of us desire in our heart of hearts is to be accepted totally, so that we can give up our defensive battle. All of the atrocities which have been committed through the whole of human history have grown out of a lack of acceptance.

In the history of religion we can see the intertwining of these two elements.

On the one hand, a religion is a repository of ideals, of high standards, and thus an eroder of self-acceptance. If we accept ourselves unconditionally, then we tend to be loving and cooperative naturally, because such behaviour makes us feel good. When we set high standards for ourselves and come to believe that anything less is unacceptable, we rob ourselves of the joy which would feed loving behaviour. If we beat ourselves up about being "sinful", that will make us more "sinful".

The unconditionally self-accepting individual - the individual who loves himself - has no resentment toward others. He has his bliss.

But those of us who strive to meet our ideals by an act of will unavoidably build up a well of resentment towards those how are not suffering as we are suffering. We envy those who allow themselves to commit the "sins" we won't allow ourselves to commit. And we resent the joyful existence of the innocent. The innocent also confront us with the falseness and misery of our own state.

From this arose the concept of the blood sacrifice. Unable to acknowledge that idealism itself was the source of all "sin", religions often came to accept that resentment towards innocence needed some kind of outlet. Unable to see that what needed to die, if love were to rule the world, was idealism, they substituted the resented innocent. In some religions the sacrifice would be a lamb. In some a baby. In some a virgin woman.

Some interpretations of Christianity view Jesus the same way. They say that what frees the believer of sin is that the messenger was killed.

This isn't just a religious thing. Men raping women or molesting children are acting on exactly the same impulse. Trying to find relief for the pain of their guilty conscience by inflicting suffering on those who are psychologically healthier and freer in spirit than themselves.

But the possibility of forgiveness and redemption and an admonition to love one another is also often present in religions. The problem is that this would always remain an unfulfilled potential until we came to realise that idealism and the idea that we need to strive through discipline to be better people, or that we need to insist that others do so, was the very thing which gave rise to our capacity for greed, murder, rape and domination.

The Oasis : A Parable

There was once a people who lived happily at an oasis in the desert. There was plenty of food and water and the people were full of love for each other.

But one day a curse fell upon this tribe. It came with the wind which whispered in an ear here and an ear there a simple message : "You're not good enough."

No-one told anyone else about the voice that they heard. And each privately argued back against it. The more they fought this inner battle the less attention they had for each other, and so gradually the warmth of their love grew cold.

There seemed no local answer to their growing problem. And so, one by one, they were driven out into the desert in search of an answer. They were driven as a slave is driven with the crack of a whip across their back. And the name of that whip was You Are Not Good Enough.

Some lingered at the oasis, some set up camp at various distances from it, but those most cursed walked far out into the desert. Thirst, hunger and the blazing heat of the sun took their toll. Some grew weak, some went mad and some thrived by killing and stealing water and food.

Horror stories of life in the desert filtered back to the people at the oasis from those who had set up their tents along the way. Some of the tent dwellers would return to the oasis to replenish their supplies of food and water, but the further the tents were from the oasis, the shorter they would be of such supplies. So news would come often from the tents close by, but only occasionally would they hear from the outlying communities, and the stories were blood-curdling.

"We must help them," the people of the oasis cried. So they gathered together supplies of food and water and maps of how to get back to the oasis. And they set out on an expedition to help those who needed these things the most.

But when they arrived at their destination, the desert dwellers - crazed by hunger and thirst and the blazing heat of the sun and embattled by constant fighting with each other - turned on their would be rescuers and killed and ate them.

"That didn't go so well," said those left at the oasis, when the news was relayed back to them by tent dwellers coming in for supplies. Then an idea occurred to one of them. "Why don't some of you guys move back here. We can help you take out more supplies to those of you who decide to stay where you are. And then we can work together to get more supplies to the next lot of tents and maybe some of them would like to come back and help to get a steadier supply of food and water to those further out.

One day a man, not much more than a living skeleton, caked with blood, crawled up to an outlying tent. His plan was to steal some food and water, but he didn't have the energy to do more than collapse. Hands reached out and picked him up and carried him into the shade. Cool water met his lips. The next day, when he opened his eyes, he knew that he must still be out in the heat of the sun, hallucinating as usual. Around him was a crowd of people, laughing and joking as they put up new tents and unpacked supplies. All of them were wearing garments emblazoned with the message "Everyone Is Good Enough".

When his strength was restored, the desert dweller headed back out from whence he had come. He was carrying a message.

"It must have been a mirage," they told him. But they couldn't explain his state of health.

"They have enough food and water for us all," he insisted. "And they can lead us back to the oasis."

Some were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and came to the tent city. Others died in the desert. But soon the people of the oasis were as one once more and preparing a united effort to find more sources of food and water.

* * *

It's easy to lose hope. I was reading recently about people who make anonymous threats over the internet to rape or kill people who happen to express a view contrary to their own. And then there are real murders and rapes and terrorism. And increasing incidence of suicide and chronic depression. All of these problems are expressions of deep psychological insecurity. If we are secure in ourselves - we have unconditional self-acceptance - then we want only good things for others as well as ourselves.

And so I came up with this story of people wandering away from an oasis. When we look at those who have been most damaged by life - those who are defeated or so embittered they live only to inflict suffering on others - the problem seems too big to be solvable. How can all of those people be helped when it can take many years for any one individual, and even then they need to want to be helped.

I think that our hope lies in those things which can foster mental health in ourselves - unconditional self-acceptance - and a sense of fellowship in society - through encouraging a spirit of mutual acceptance.

A major part of this is renouncing the idea of using mockery or shame or appeals to the conscience in order to try to persuade someone to do what we want. If we feel the need to make someone else feel bad in order to promote our interests or beliefs or to hold someone else up to distain, then we haven't yet realised what the roots of loving behaviour are. You can't cure a dog of rabies by beating it. The violent and crazy behaviour of the desert dwellers comes from want. The need to respond with mockery, shame or guilt-tripping is an indication that we too are desperately in need of the sustenance that is love.

But love can be found. The voice that whispers "You are not good enough" can be silenced. Forgiveness is possible. We may not be able to offer love directly to those who need it too much, lest they suck us dry. But where open, honest, spontaneous and generous communication is possible, love can grow and travel to where it is needed most.

The distance we travel away from the oasis isn't a physical distance, but a distance which opens up between us as individuals. Community will form where it can.

Where do we want to be led? If we allow ourselves to get too caught up in the conflict which arises in and between the most insecure, then we will, unwittingly perhaps, take them as our leaders and follow them out into the desert. If we give them only the attention we must to protect ourselves, but remember that our own wholeness and the creative bonds we have with others are most important, then we can ourselves be leaders out of the desert and back to the oasis.

Me... Or My Disease?

Recently I was reading some feedback comments on Natasha Tracy's Bipolar Burble Blog. The idea was put forward by one sufferer with bipolar disorder that it is important to understand that the turbulent behaviour of individuals with the condition comes from the disease and not from the individual who suffers from it. Unfortunately my manner of questioning the usefulness of this attitude caused some offence to the individual in question. I realised in retrospect that the best way to discuss such difficult topics without giving offence tends to be to speak of personal experiences. So I thought I would use that exchange as inspiration to give a very personal and detailed account of my viewpoint here.

I've experienced bipolar psychosis. To clarify my take on the "Is it me or is it my disease?" question, I'd like to look at two examples of my behaviour in a hospital emergency room while experiencing a psychotic episode.

One of my delusions at the time was that an apocalyptic transformation of human society was taking place and that, in this new world which was coming into being, things were acceptable which would not have been acceptable before. I thought it was O.K. for me to grope the bottoms of nurses. It took a couple of experiments before I recognised that I might be mistaken. One nurse responded angrily, another broke down in tears.

Was this me? Or was it my disease? I wasn't to blame for my behaviour, because, had I not been confused by psychosis, I would not have behaved in that way. I had no desire to cause offence or distress. It was the delusion that my behaviour would not cause such feelings which made it seem acceptable to me at the time. But where did the impetus for the behaviour come from? It came from my desire to grope women's bottoms, something which had nothing to do with my psychosis. I wanted to grope women's bottoms then. I want to grope women's bottoms now. I have two reasons for not doing so :

1. Such behaviour would lead to me being excluded from civilised society.

2. It would be liable to cause distress the women involved.

One of the symptoms of the manic phase of bipolar disorder is a loss of inhibitions. When we lose our inhibitions, and thus our tendency to censor our expression of our feelings, what is revealed is, arguably, more our real self than the sanitised version we present when we are concerned about making a good impression.

Something else I did during this wild evening in the emergency ward was to point at a fellow patient and shout : "You're not my father!"

Was that me? Or my disease? Once again, I would not have done this if I had not been psychotic. I had no desire to confound or frighten some poor fellow patient. In my confused state he looked like someone I knew, someone from whom I felt a desperate need to declare my independence. (Not my actual father I should point out.)

My disease was the source of my confusion. But the message of defiance, misdirected as it was, was very much my own.

Stability in the personality comes from integration of all of its aspects. If we accept all aspects of our psyche as a part of who we are, then wholeness is possible. If we view some aspect of our thought, feeling or behaviour are something alien and/or hostile which we must contain, fight against or attempt to expunge, then it will tend to become more severe.

Let's look at a hypothetical situation now. One of the major problems we may have if we are suffering from some form of psychological condition such as bipolar disorder or conventional depression is the pressure which it may put upon our relationship with a loved one. No doubt I was a source of distress not just to nurses but to friends and members of my family when I was ill. But I've never been married or had a comparable kind of relationship. What if I had?

When we are suffering it is natural for our attention to centre upon ourselves. If we are depressed or manic we will be selfish. This is inescapable. We may fight against it. We may try to force ourselves to recognise the needs of others. But our heart won't be in it. Maybe we will feel guilty about putting an emotional drain on our partner. If we do, it will make us more depressed or it will add to our mania. The essence of mania is escape. Our situation seems intolerable, so rather than facing it our mind races away into wild dreams or spending sprees or sexual escapades, anything to avoid facing what would otherwise seem to be our reality. I say "seem" because often what is so unthinkable is unthinkable only because we have not yet discovered a comfortable way to think about it. Our problems are not necessarily objective problems.

"I know I'm treating you terribly," we might say, "but it isn't me, it's the disease. I love you."

What is love? It's a form of communication characterised by openness, honesty, spontaneity and generosity. Often what we think of as love is something else - attachment, commitment or sexual attraction. Attachment is when we desire the presence of a person or a thing. When we pick someone to be our partner, we make a commitment to be supportive of them and to try to keep our love for them alive. Love exists when it can. It requires the qualities listed above. If we have to hide something from our partner - be less than open - then that compromises the love between us. The same is true if we lie to a partner, if we fall into patterns of rigidly formulaic interaction or if we are selfish.

If we feel the need to say "I love you" then love at that point is at best tenuous between us. Since love is a form of communication, both parties can tell if it is happening or not. A more honest approach might be to say : "I want to be with you" or "I want love to occur between us".

One of the barriers to love between someone who is suffering from depression and the person who cares for them is the feeling on the part of both parties that they need to be fair.

We all have desires and needs. If those desires and needs are not met it can cause feelings of frustration. This is irrespective of why those desires and needs have not been met. First we feel disappointed or angry, and only after that do we ask ourselves whether we are being reasonable to feel this way. If we come to the conclusion that we are not being reasonable, all the worse for us, because then we have two layers of bad feeling - first the frustration, and, on top of that, the sense that we don't even have a justification for that feeling of frustration.

The loved one of a person suffering from depression can't possibly give them all that they need. And it is unreasonable to expect it. But the unreasonableness of such an expectation only makes it that much harder to bare. This can become a negative feedback loop. The depressed person places a burden on their partner. They know this is unfair to their partner. So they feel guilty. The guilt makes them more depressed. The more depressed they are the more of a burden they put on their partner, which leads to more guilt, and so on.

But feelings are only feelings. Once we have established that they do not conform to what is reasonable, we can see them as a quality of being and not as a message. What hurts is the implication that we are at fault. If we understand that the other party is just "letting off steam", i.e. giving vent to the frustration of their position, rather than taking what they say as a criticism to be taken on board, even if that is the verbal form it takes, then we can come closer together. It is the log jam of "shoulds" that blocks the passage of love in this kind of situation.

If we were to insist that the bad feelings and the behaviour they impelled us towards were "our disease, not us" then we would not be able to come to an understanding of the dynamics that generate them or those which could ease them.

And if I told myself my desire to fondle strange women's bottoms was a symptom of a chemical imbalance in my brain rather than an intrinsic part of my sensual nature, then I might live in fear of an unpredictable fit of glute groping rather than being able to look back with amusement at my moment of madness.

The Psychology of the Right Wing and the Left Wing

The state of mental health for humans is one of unconditional self-acceptance. When this state is compromised we become selfish, that is our attention is naturally directed away from the interests of others and towards the problem of our malfunctioning psyche. It is just the same as when we are using a piece of machinery and some part of the machinery begins to perform inefficiently. We will naturally direct our attention there.

The compromising of our self-acceptance begins in childhood. We may be treated by some others as unacceptable in some way for long enough to come to believe it. And we will tend to come into contact with some form of idealism/perfectionism, approaches to life which bring with them the idea that self-acceptance should not be unconditional, but has to be earned. At that time, of course, we are learning the rules of civil behaviour. Criticism of our behaviour is often simply helpful feedback which, all other things being equal, we won't take personally. What eats away at our self-acceptance, and thus sows the seeds of selfishness, is anything which gives us the message that what lies behind our behaviour - i.e. our thoughts and emotions - are unacceptable.

There are many ways in which we may try to fix the problem once our self-acceptance has been compromised. We may use material things. "I'm acceptable because I wear a Gucci dress." We may use religious affiliation. "I'm acceptable because I'm a Christian." We may use token acts of kindness. "I'm acceptable because I have a sponsor child in Africa." We may use our political affiliation. "I'm good because I vote Democrat/Republican." We may use sport. "I'm acceptable because my football team won this week." We may use our own achievements. "I'm acceptable because I got my Phd./climbed a mountain/had a hit record."

These methods of addressing the problem of our compromised self-acceptance, while often effective in the short-term, are generally not effective in the long-term. Like the junky we are fine when we get our fix, but when it wears off we need more. We are trying to fill the hole, but we don't know how to heal it.

Healing the hole requires learning the habit of unconditional self-acceptance, learning to embrace all aspects of our thinking and emotion, no matter how frightening or repulsive some of what we find in ourselves may at first seem.

There are other things which can have a healing effect. Physical affection and physical pleasure (as long as it is achieved without causing harm to ourselves or others) has the power to reconnect us with the state of unconditional self-acceptance (and acceptance of others) which characterised our infancy. And anything which enables us to achieve a cathartic release of repressed emotions - of anger, sorrow, etc. - helps to drain off that which separates us from that emotional state. Anything from crying at a sad movie to pumping one's fist to death metal may be a way of getting back in touch with our deeper humanity.

It is no wonder that we see so much anger and violence in the world. To lack self-acceptance is to be deeply needy. There isn't enough attention from others, enough material goods, etc., to satisfy the ravenous hunger of our need. Imagine putting a pack of hungry dogs in a cage and only giving them enough food for a quarter of their number. There may be enough food to feed us, but not enough of the requirements of our ego-satisfaction. So our frustration and feelings of hostility toward others builds.

To what degree do we try to accommodate selfishness, and to what degree do we try to suppress it?

In politics, the right takes the approach that the freedom of the individual takes precedence while the left takes the approach that curbing the freedom of the individual is justified by the need to prevent the domination of the powerless majority by the powerful few.

Both of these approaches are compromises, and neither even attempts to do anything about the deeper psychological problem which makes a compromise necessary. The dialogue between left and right is a dialogue about how much discipline needs to be imposed within the cage of hungry dogs. The only way to provide more food is to address the psychological roots of the problem.

If we were to go all the way to the right wing, we would end up with a dog-eat-dog society in which the weak would be totally dominated by the powerful. If we went all the way to the left wing, we would end up with an oppressive and dishonest society in which feelings of frustration and hostility would build and build beneath the surface, unable to find any expression because of the need to maintain some illusory state of politically correct harmony.

Each end of the political spectrum represents a dangerous form of idealism. Political decisions need to be realistic and pragmatic - they need to find the best compromise between the two sides of our nature.

Compromised self-acceptance can draw us to either end of the political spectrum. "I'm an heroic defender of the rights of the individual!" we may cry. Or : "I'm an heroic defender of the downtrodden, the planet, the animals, etc." Just two different brands of junkie-dope. And there are plenty of pusher's selling both brands.

The unconditionally self-accepting individual has no desire to be seen as a hero or to view themselves as a hero. They may do something which others regard as heroic, but the desire to be perceived as heroic is a form of competitive thinking which makes sense only from the perspective of the neurotic character armour.

From political leaders to church leaders to cult leaders, there are plenty of people offering up a steady supply of junkie-dope. To keep getting it you have to keep supporting them. None of them want to set you free, because they are junkies too. They've forgotten what freedom feels like.

In most cases this compromised self-acceptance leads to a division in the psyche between our repressed feelings of frustration and our conscience.

The conscience is that part of our ego where we store our learned expectations about ourselves which includes any form of morality that we may have been taught by our parents, teachers, religious leaders etc. Our conscience contains our ideas about what constitutes good behaviour. Of course the feelings of frustration and hostility, which grow out of the selfishness which is a product of our compromised self-acceptance, are often in conflict with our conscience. These feelings lead us to do things we believe to be wrong, and we feel guilt as a result. This is the war within us.

In trying to make sense of the conflicts in the world around us we come to see them as outward manifestations of this inner conflict. The individual on the left is trying to live according to their conscience, and thus will see the individual on the right as a representation of their own rebellious feelings of hostility to that conscience, a rebelliousness they are trying to tame. And the individual on the right identifies with the rebellious tendencies in themselves and identifies those on the left with the oppressiveness of their own conscience, which tells them that they should be more concerned about the welfare of the powerless, the planet, the animals, etc.

I'm speaking here of very general tendencies, so I'm grossly oversimplifying. Within every individual, right or left leaning, there is a complex of elements of conscientiousness and rebelliousness against the conscience. And the conscience of every individual is different. But I think it is worth considering how the individual's view of and interaction with the world around them tends to be a reflection of conflicts going on within their own mind.

The central irony of this dualistic strategy is that, if the hero-status of those on the left is dependent on fighting against the right and the hero-status of those on the right is dependent on fighting against the left, then the continued existence of the opposition appears to be in the best interest of both, even though the conflict itself is damaging the survival chances of all.

Ideological dogmatism - left wing or right wing - compromises the effectiveness of any attempt to manage society, because such ideology is the warped product of our internal neurotic battle. It is not founded in a rational assessment of our situation, whether that be an acknowledgement of the psychological state of individuals, the way an economic system actually works, or what our ecological limitations are.

The key factors for effective politics are -

1. Accurate information.

2. Capacity for cooperation.

3. Pragmatic rather than ideological decision making.

1. We have an unprecedented ability to gather and process information, but there are those who, rather than assessing information honestly, will cherry-pick data and present it out of context to support a personally or ideologically predetermined course of action.

2. Our capacity for effective unforced cooperation depends on our level of self-acceptance. If we are a well-fed dog we will be able to work happily with others, but if we are hungry we will only cooperate if beaten.

3. What matters is whether or not something works. "By their fruits shall ye know them."

"Social Justice Warriors" or "Social Fabric Healers"

Sometimes the examination of a disease gives us a better understanding of the workings of the body which has manifested that disease.

There is a particular character type which has been given the pejorative label "social justice warrior". The term is used ironically to describe the individual's glorified self-image, but I've seen some people say : "Why is that a bad thing? If justice in society is a good thing, who is it a criticism to say that you are somebody who is fighting for it?"

The simple answer is that the term is generally applied to people who are not actually fighting for social justice but rather boosting their ego by pretending to do so on the internet from the safety of their own bedroom.

But I think we can learn more by analysing the term further. Sometimes we can better understand the constituents of a healthy society and how to achieve it by looking at what is not working and asking ourselves why.

Justice is important, but there are problems with making it our primary focus. Let's use the example of disease once more. What is the best way to promote physical health in the community? We need to treat diseases when they arise, but more can be achieved by preventative measures - encouraging people to eat well, exercise regularly and pay due attention to safety in all that they do. When it comes to problems in the social system - justice is like drugs and surgery - an approach to righting wrongs after they occur rather than looking at why they occur and seeking to prevent them from occurring.

Another problem is that it is possible to see injustices everywhere we look if that is what we are looking for. If we really set ourselves to rid society of injustice we would end up making a major battle out of every tiny slight. Attempting to right an injustice always has a cost, and so we need values other than justice which recognise the human bonds that might be severed by trying to right a particular perceived wrong.

In our society as a whole justice is often punitive. But punitive justice is a superficial approach to problems. A man comes home and finds his wife in bed with another man. In a fit of jealousy he kills the man. We put him in jail. We punish him. That may or may not act as a deterrent to others, but it does nothing to address the underlying problem. Will he be less prone to jealousy or loss of temper when he gets out of jail than he was before? Will jealousy and violent anger become less of a problem in society as a whole? Some societies concentrate on rehabilitation of criminals. Thus they go deeper than justice. They seek to heal the problem that led to the unjust action.

Before we make justice our primary goal, perhaps we should consider it's application to ourselves. If our own life were to be assessed by some cosmic judge, would we ask for justice or mercy?

What we really need are SFHs - Social Fabric Healers.

The world is torn apart by conflict. Everywhere we look we see a battlefield. On Facebook, we crouch in our trenches - political, religious/atheistic, etc. - hurling memes like so many grenades.

Such conflicts arise because none of us are truthful. The warrior stance is grounded in denial. We can see the errors of our enemies clearly, but not their virtues, just as we can see our own virtues and defiantly resist acknowledging our weaknesses. The battle with others is a battle with our own denied self. We would ignore something as trivial as an opinion expressed on the internet if it didn't resonate with a canker of doubt at the base of our psyche.

So what is a Social Fabric Healer? Someone who doesn't take sides. Someone who acknowledges what someone says which is valid while questioning what is not - playing the same role on both sides of any debate.

This element of truth which each of us denies need not be factual truth. Some of us are very good at getting our facts straight but are not truthful about the emotions which underly our social interactions with others. Recently I read a comment on a discussion board where a Christian was talking about how the sexual revolution led to the idea that it was O.K. to "kill unwanted babies" (i.e. to the legalisation of abortion). Now there is no doubt that sexual promiscuity increases the likelihood of unwanted pregnancies and thus is likely to lead to more abortions. Regardless of what our attitude is to that, there is the question of what emotional subtext lies beneath the argument. Does this individual feel sexually frustrated and jealous of those whose sexual life has been more exciting - thus making it important to view them as "baby killers"? We can't know. But this gives an example of how a denied emotional subtext could effect a divisive publicly expressed opinion. And if we are to promote a healthy society in which loving community is the norm, emotional honesty as well as factual honesty is required. A similar example occurs with some angry atheists who will focus only on the worst aspects of religion because doing so provides them with some kind of therapy for the wounds inflicted by their own religious upbringing.

Few people change their minds about anything because of combative exchanges. The character armour is the problem and attacking someone's position only reinforces their need for that armour. But perhaps there are ways that can be developed to open others up instead of closing them down.

Listening is very powerful. We might know someone is telling us a lie or a delusion, but let them lay it all out on the table. Ask them questions with the genuine intention of finding out more about what they believe or what they would like us to believe. Sometimes they may come to the limits of their own story, find themselves tangled in its own inconsistencies. Better that they arrive there by their own narrative, because then they will have no out - they can't blame it on us.

The other quality required of a Social Fabric Healer is the willingness to self-reveal - to admit their own short-comings and ignorances. To set the example asked of the others.

The Problem with "-isms"

There is nothing wrong with ideals. It is one of the roles of the imagination to conjure up a picture of what might be, possible or otherwise.

The problem comes when those ideals become an -ism - when they become a demand. We see this pattern in quite a few -isms. In communism we demand that people behave communally. In conservatism we demand that things remain the same or return to some past state. In feminism we demand that an envisaged relationship between the sexes be achieved.

Often the aim is a good one. It is good for people to be communal - to work together to meet common challenges. It is good to conserve aspects of our society which have been beneficial to us and to be wary about rapid change lest it be in the wrong direction. And it is clearly a healthy thing for the relationship between the sexes to be one in which nobody feels oppressed and all are empowered to live their lives to the fullest.

The problem with idealism is not with aims but with process. When we demand we are responding to outward behaviour only, yet that outward behaviour is a symptom of the inner psychological state of the individual. Resistance to change which would ultimately be healthy is defensive.

This may seem contradictory. Why would we protect ourselves against becoming healthy?

This is the nature of our deep-seated state of neurosis. We live on the edge of self-condemnation. Only precariously do we maintain our self-acceptance. Whatever our habitual mode of being is is our defence. For some of us it is being trendy. For some of us it is being wealthy. For some of us it is being a supporter of good causes. Just because we think we are "on the side of the angels" doesn't mean we are not neurotic. As an example, Gandhi said : "For it is an unbroken torture to me that I am still so far from Him (God), who, as I fully know, governs every breath of my life, and whose offspring I am." An Autobiography : Or the Story of My Experiments with Truth (Public Affairs Press, 1948) So if even Gandhi felt he had something to compensate for, can we see anyone's "good deeds" in this world as necessarily free of the motive of "proving" they are not as bad (i.e. "far from God" metaphorically speaking) deep down as they feel they may be - i.e. expressions of neurosis?

The exception is any beneficial act done for others which corresponds with the direct enjoyment of the person performing the act. Mutual self-interest is the soundest grounding for healthy human interaction.

The problem with idealism - the way of the demand - is that it is generally experienced as judgement by the insecure individual whose behaviour we want to change. It may reinforce the defensive behaviour or it may lead to breakdown of the defence. A breakdown of the defence may lead to inoperability (possibly even suicidal depression) or it may be the kind of breakdown which leads to an, ultimately, positive breakthrough for the individual. It's a painful, risky way to bring about change.

What is the alternative? To learn to understand our own neurosis and use it as a point of connection to that of others. To find a love for the non-ideal through an understanding of it's essence. To see in the act of refusal to conform to our demands a courageous declaration of personal dignity.

Those of us who have the courage can take personal responsibility for the part of the social system which surrounds us as a gardener might take responsibility for tending their garden. And love is what weeds the garden. Love means paying attention - listening and honouring the experience of the individual without trying to impose our will or our ideals upon them. They say that there is no rest for the messenger until the message is delivered. Only when we listen and honour the cry of inherent dignity - albeit expressed in ways we may view as selfish and/or anti-social - will it die down and be replaced by something healthier for all.

If we think that knowing how to respond to the behaviour of others is simple then we are probably caught up in some kind of self-protective delusion ourselves. I know that I tend to use my writing as defence. Because I have expressed something in beautiful words, I think I'm excused from putting it into practice. I get caught up in simplistic attitudes because I find it hard to tolerate uncertainty. I want to feel that I'm for this thing or against that thing - on the side of this person or against that person. But I wonder if truly appreciating the subjective positive which lies at the heart of even the worst behaviour is the key to freeing ourselves from such behaviour.

Perhaps Jesus' advice that we love our enemies can be understood as a call to use our imagination to better understand the subjective experience of our enemies. Then we can respond, not reactively to their behaviour, but directly to the needs which drive it.

The Life Raft of Dogma

Often we will cling to dogmatic beliefs in the face of all rational arguments against them. We will ignore or dismiss contrary evidence. We may try to defend our belief system by making ad hominem attacks on those who criticise it.

Why does this happen? Why don't we assess all of the evidence provided to us objectively and shift our beliefs accordingly?

The problem is that our psyche is divided against itself. We feel that we have within us a battle between good and evil in which our position is precarious. We feel shame about the dark side of our psyche - the selfish impulses, the depraved thoughts, the hostile feelings - and we cling to anything that helps us to keep that in check or, at the very least, maintain a sense of our own worth in the face of it's existence.

In such a situation, the most important thing to us is not whether something is true, but whether, if we believe it, we will be able to remain viable. Will we lose all of our friends? Will we still be able to maintain a degree of self-discipline? Will be still be able to view ourselves as a person who deserves to live?

Our dogmas - and this is not just religion, but also political world views and general philosophies of life - are our life raft in the storm that rages within us, beneath the surface of our consciousness if not above.

But we can calm that storm. If we recognise that our thoughts and feelings are natural responses to our environment (the ideas we have absorbed culturally and the experiences we have had interacting with others) and that they are phenomena which exist but do not have to be acted upon, then we can bring calm. The turmoil is not a necessary response to having selfish, depraved or hostile feelings or thoughts. It comes when we feel fear and shame in the face of these facts. When you look directly at the monster you find that he is really just a scary looking shadow cast upon your bedroom wall.

When we find internal security, then we will be able to look at evidence - assess it rationally - and base our beliefs and behaviour upon it. We won't be ego-embattled because the war within the ego will have ended.

Eating the Chocolate Bar

We tend not to fully appreciate the level of desperation which lies behind the kinds of behaviour in others which we would like to change.

It is easy to get frustrated when we see someone behaving in a destructive way. We want them to change their behaviour. But how easy would it be for us, if we were in their position, to go from a position of denial of the effects of our behaviour to a full acknowledgement of those effects?

The destructive side of human behaviour is a response to idealism's tendency to undermine self-acceptance. If we are very self-accepting then we have a great deal of room to acknowledge our short-comings and to respond to criticism, but in the absence of self-acceptance such criticism is oppressive.

It is much easier to play conscience to someone else than it is to respond creatively to such criticism. And the motivation for playing the conscience is a selfish one - to stake a dubious claim to moral superiority.

Understanding motive is important. If my motivation is to stake a claim to moral superiority then a positive change in the other person's behaviour is actually counterproductive to my achieving that end. The more their behaviour improves the less superior I look when compared to them.

If I do something which I hope will be helpful to others, to what degree am I doing it for egotistical reasons - so that I can use it as evidence to answer the black hole question "Are you a good person?" \- and to what degree am I doing it for some other reason? What other reason is there? The answer is love or the creative principle. What is the reward? Is the reward intrinsic? Does the action enrich my life directly with either meaning or pleasure? Meaning can take away the sting of suffering. You could think of it this way. Imagine that you are rewarded for a good deed by being given a chocolate bar. Do you eat the chocolate bar or do you display it on your mantlepiece so that everyone can see that you did a good deed.

The potential for improvement in the world is just sitting there like that chocolate to be eaten. There are connections to be made, wounds to be healed, problems to be solved - a feast of meaning and loving connection to feed and enrich us.

What we have to leave behind to enter than world is moral judgement, of ourselves or others. Nobody is morally superior to anyone else. The conscience (idealism) vs. embattled ego formula lies behind the dark side of human behaviour. To be less entangled and thus "better behaved" is to be fortunate. To be more entangled and thus "worse behaved" is to be less fortunate.

In time we will understand that there is no rational basis for either pride or shame. There is nothing to prove and much to be done.
A Free Society Can Only Grow From Psychologically Secure Individuals

How often have you been in a situation where someone has said something which caused offence to someone else, and then that person criticised the first person, who responded defensively, and thus the fabric of the mini-community of which you were a part at that time was temporarily, or perhaps permanently, torn apart? Isn't the world as a whole like that, with conflict all too easily arising and often becoming entrenched?

The root cause of this propensity for conflict is compromised self-acceptance. If our self-acceptance is dependent on the words or actions of others, then we are in a very insecure position. Were this not the case we could laugh off any insult, feeling no resonance between it and some internalised sense of self-contempt. But we do tend to internalise the negative feelings of others towards us, and by carrying around this toxic sludge, we make ourselves vulnerable and thus prone to falling into conflict with others. As long as we see the problem as an external one and fight for a change in the behaviour of others, we will be disempowered. But if we make a conscious decision to learn unconditional self-acceptance, we can "hurt-proof" ourselves, and thus make of ourselves a still centre for the growth of a healthy society.

I discuss the concept of hurt-proofing in more detail in the essay Hurt-proofing Ourselves which is available as a free ebook from the same place where you downloaded this one.

If we don't feel compelled by our own insecurity to react against the anti-social behaviour of others, then we can come to better understand how that anti-social behaviour is essentially defensive. Just as we were trying to protect our compromised self-acceptance, so is the person on the other side of the conflict. Our state of relative security will enable us to make no demands on others, and this can gradually drain away the defensive motivation for their anti-social behaviour.

There are two forces at war within the human psyche and the society to which it gives form. Let's call them spirit and repression. The spirit is the outwardly motivating force of the individual. It has no morality. It can propel us toward generous acts or it can propel us towards violence. Repression consists of the forces of restraint imposed on the spirit, essentially by fear. To the extent that our conscience may restrain our behaviour it does so essentially through fear of incurring feelings of guilt. And we obey the laws of society, to the extent that they may contradict our personal desires, for fear of being ostracised or punished.

When in a state of freedom, enlightened self-interest leads us to loving cooperative interaction with others. To the extend that our behaviour deviates from this state of health, it does so because we lack the freedom which arises from unconditional self-acceptance. So, ironically, it is the force which would curb and control the spirit which, by restricting its freedom, drives it further into the tight corner that produces hostile behaviour.

When we try to curb the anti-social behaviour of others through criticism, we are trying to make their self-acceptance conditional on their behaving in the way we think they should. It is natural that, in our insecurity, we will attempt a control strategy of this kind, because we are simply externalising the strategy we use internally to keep our own anti-social behaviour repressed. But the net result will be a negative one. We may force good behaviour on someone, but only at the expense of engendering feelings of frustration which will come out in some other way. Sustainable good behaviour can only come from love and love can only come from unconditional self-acceptance.

To renounce control strategies in all situations where they are not unavoidable (as they sometimes are to restrain violent behaviour) requires being free in oneself.

From the perspective of the free individual, where does the problem lie and what can be done about it? There are anti-social feelings which must not be repressed and there is an insecurity at the heart of us all which responds poorly to criticism and may try to defend itself against such criticism through anti-social behaviour. Where insecurity is extreme, such criticism - or even implied criticism - may be experienced as a form of oppression so severe as to drive the individual towards extremely hostile forms of retaliation.

If we are to have a healthy culture it depends on two things :

1. Freedom to express our frustrations. If we have anti-social feelings we will never move beyond them by repressing them. We need a culture in which it is O.K. to be as "politically incorrect" as we want to be within the understanding that feelings are not fixed beliefs. Of course this may be hurtful to those about whom insulting things may be said, but that is why "hurt-proofing" is so important. The more sensitive we are to being hurt by what other people say, the more we will require a society based on repression, and thus the more insecure and incapable of freedom we will become in a dangerous negative feedback loop. This is something which has been happening recently with calls for universities to offer "trigger warnings" about works of literature which might be emotionally disturbing to insecure individuals.

2. When we are not blowing off steam in this way, but genuinely want to address ourselves to solving social problems, then an accepting non-reactive approach will often be the most effective. (Of course I'm not saying that we should be accepting of violent behaviour.) We need to avoid attempts to control others behaviour by shaming them or threatening them with ostracism. We need to accept that their anti-social tendencies arise from insecurity and that acceptance is the answer to that insecurity. What our "enemies" need most is love. If we really want to help someone then we need to recognise that they have legitimate needs and that their anti-social behaviour is simply an ineffective way of trying to meet those needs. In this way we can find our common ground.
The Pleasure of Love

Most of us have probably had times when we experienced intense pleasure in providing for the needs or desires of another. This can be a common feeling in the early stages of a romantic relationship, when nurturing one's child or when caring for a pet. At other times, helping others can be a duty which requires discipline. This produces a sense or frustration because our action does not correspond with our basic desire. We may desire to go to a concert, but have to stay home with a sick child instead. If we experience this as a duty rather than a pleasure in itself, then we will feel frustration and resentment, no matter how much we may try to repress or transcend such feelings. Either we find an outlet for such frustration or it stands as a barrier to reconnecting with the feelings of pleasure which originally accompanied the act of caring for the other's needs.

The experience of pleasure we feel in answering the needs or desires of another is what we mean when we say that we "feel love".

Our primary motivation in life is to seek pleasure and avoid pain. And when we are born it takes a while to learn the difference between "me" and "not me". This suggests that our original nature is one which desires pleasure not just for ourselves but for others.

Love is the path of commonality of pleasure. If the increase in total pleasure is our aim, then any pleasure we give ourselves which does not detract from another's pleasure serves this process as does anything we can do to increase another's pleasure or reduce their suffering as long as it does not reduce our own pleasure or cause us suffering. If it does reduce our pleasure or cause us suffering, we will need some form of outlet to ease the frustration caused. This is often quite easily achieved, so it need not be a serious problem. And since the experiences of love mentioned above show that the giving of pleasure or easing of suffering can in itself give us pleasure, we can see that there is great potential for finding commonality in pleasure.

The key question then is what blocks this most natural experience of mutually shared and binding pleasure. Why do we make ourselves suffer? Why do we make others suffer?

Of course, suffering can arise from non-psychological factors - disease, age, natural disaster. But these forms of suffering can be significantly eased through mutual aid. A community bound by love will deal more effectively with such problems and thus the suffering of individuals in such a society will be less than it otherwise would be.

The big barriers to our experiencing the pleasure of love to the fullest, and thus realising our full potential to contribute to the wellbeing of others, are guilt and fear.

Guilt arises from "shoulds". Let's say, when you were a child, you wanted to watch your favourite television show, but your little brother asked you to help him with his maths homework. Your parents have told you that you should always help out your little brother. If you decide not to help him, but to watch your television show, then you will feel guilty. If you decide to help him out of a feeling of duty, then you will feel resentment about renouncing your pleasure for his need. Guilt is a problem in either case. It either forces you to do something you don't want to do and thus breeds resentment, or it stays with you as a thief of pleasure if you go against it. Either way, it ends by making us more selfish. Selfishness is the natural self-directedness of the suffering individual, so when we feel guilt, our attention is directed towards ourselves and we become less available for others. And resentment also stands as a barrier between self and others.

One of our most pernicious cultural concepts is that we shouldn't be motivated by our own self-interest. It is inevitable that we will be motivated by our self-interest. But this is different from selfishness. Selfishness is that state in which our self-interest turns in on itself in a way which is unhealthy for us and for the wider system of which we are a part. When we become selfish we cease to successfully cater to our own self-interest. Take gluttony. If we over-eat we may feel that we are meeting our own self-interest, because we are doing what we want to do, but costs to our health and freedom are greater than any benefits. Ultimately, we will cause ourselves more pain than pleasure.

The same is true when we take pleasure at the expense of others. We are not serving our net self-interest. How many of us take a half-hour's pleasure in an activity we then spend months or years worrying someone will find out about? Even someone in a position of power who thinks they can get away with taking pleasure at the expense of others will have to pay a price through the knowledge of the enmity they have spread for themselves. So often the pleasure at the expense of another is fleeting and the price perpetual.

Fear is also a barrier to love. Love is expansive. It reaches out to others. Fear causes us to retract.

What about Jesus statement that "greater love hath no man than that he give his life for his friends"? How does that fit with pleasure and self-interest? Reportedly suicide bombers, who falsely believe that they are giving their lives for the benefit of their community, experience a tremendous sense of joy before blowing themselves up. While this is clearly not serving the interests of others, even their own community, since such behaviour only serves to motivate retaliatory attacks, what matters is that they believe they are serving the interests of others and thus it seems fair to assume that others whose sacrifice is more appropriate feel similar pleasurable feelings. This seems a mystery to us, if we haven't been in that situation. But it is similarly a mystery that saints reported feelings of intense bliss when they kissed lepers. If we haven't experienced these situations, all we have to go on is the reports of those who have, and there are such reports which support the idea that even in the acceptance of self-annihilation there may be an intense experience of pleasure.

So lets forget about "shoulds" for moment. Lets accept that what we want is to maximise our sustainable pleasure. We need to recognise that, while personal cost-free pleasure is sometimes possible, the sustainability of our total pleasure rests with its mutuality. That mutuality rests on open, honest communication - so that we can see where we can get pleasure from helping each other - and also on non-destructive outlets for the feelings of resentment which result both from the pain inflicted on us by others and the frustration we inflict on ourselves through "shoulds".

There is a tendency to view our aggressive or selfish impulses as the base from which we hope that ethics, morality or love may raise us. This is what I would call a control strategy. But I believe that the opposite is true. Love is the base. Unhelpful (and unrealistic) patterns of thinking act as a block to that deeper pattern. Rather than trying to impose further control, what we need to do is to find ways to dismantle the forms of control which already exist in us, and to set love free.
The Hammer or the Key : Exposing the Dictatorship of the Ideal

All of us maintain some kind of relationship between the world as we can perceive it with our five senses and that which we can only imagine.

The approach of science is to study what we can perceive with our senses and deduce from this evidence the laws of nature which cannot be directly perceived but only imagined.

Religious belief often takes the opposite approach. Through our culture we absorb beliefs about something we cannot directly perceive and then allow these beliefs to shape our interpretation of what we can perceive.

I say "often" because religious belief doesn't always work this way. Some observe the physical world of nature and from its orderly creativity deduce the existence of a deity of some kind. They may add to this perception moral principles derived from observation of nature or society - a direct assessment based on sensory evidence of what produces a harmonious and creative society and what does not.

The relationship between the real and the imagined is a key issue for all of us regardless of our belief system. Every day we make decisions which mediate between the world we can perceive with our senses and that which we can only imagine. If I'm saving up my money to go on a holiday, something imaginary is effecting how I manage my real physical environment. My holiday will be purely imaginary until it occurs.

The imagination is crucial to our existence as creative beings. A healthy relationship to it is one in which it grows like a plant from the soil of our sensory perception of reality. Let it be as wild and prolific in its growth as it wants to be as long as it doesn't enter into a relationship of hostility to the world of perceptible reality which gave birth to it.

In the extreme, some insist on the submission of the human individual and society generally to the will of a deity who can only be perceived through the use of the imagination. Yet we can all be prone to just such a tendency - trying to make ourselves or others conform to an imaginary vision of how we think things should be.

Love is the alternative to such an approach. Love arises from the forging of connections within perceivable reality. It is improvisational in its nature. It is the creative process through which the potential intrinsic to any social situation realises itself. Thus it cannot be imposed on the basis of a belief in something imagined, but it can be the key to the realisation of that which has previously only been imagined.

When we attempt to make ourselves or others submit to something imagined - be it a deity or a personal ambition or a utopian concept of how the world should be - it is as if we are taking a hammer to reality. We are engaging in an act of violence. This is idealism. It is the root of all evil.

What we need is not a hammer with which to shape reality but a key to unlock its intrinsic potential.

When we gather information and seek understanding we are using a key. When we open ourselves up to listen to those with whom we have been in conflict and engage in civilised debate with them we are using a key. When we accept ourselves as we are as a basis for healthy growth, rather than trying to force ourselves to conform to something we imagine, we are using a key. The path of the open mind is the path of the key. The path of equal communication is the path of the key. Love is the path of the key.

It is easy to become confused by all of the conflict in the world. The tendency is to chose sides. By so doing we can find ourselves committing complimentary mistakes. We can end up becoming more like that against which we fight.

A wiser approach is not to look for right or wrong sides in a conflict but to look for creative or destructive strategies. On either side of any conflict we might find those who use the hammer and those who use the key. If we seek the people of the key and shun the people of the hammer, regardless of their allegiance, then we will be moving towards real solutions to the problems we face.
Is Reality Real? From Plato's Cave to The Matrix

A philosopher walks into a cinema that is showing a very old soft porn movie.

"This is not reality!" he shouts, pointing at the screen.

Then he casts his fiery glance around the audience with their eyes fixed on the screen.

"You're just sitting in the dark watching the shadows of dead people pretending to fuck," he points out.

He starts trying to tell them about the world outside the cinema and what sunshine is like.

The audience members tell him to shut up so they can hear the movie.

He grabs one of them and tries to drag him out of the cinema. The patron puts up a hell of a fight.

Eventually the usher arrives and throws the philosopher out into the street.

This is the essence of Plato's famous cave analogy from his dialogue The Republic. Since they didn't have cinemas in 380 BC when Plato was writing he had to resort to talking about people being tied down in a cave while watching the shadows cast on a wall by clay figures being moved back and forth in front of a fire.

What did Plato mean by saying that what we think of as reality is not reality?

Plato believed in a world of ideal forms of which the details of the world we can perceive with our senses are a poor copy. Numbers and geometrical shapes are examples of ideal forms. And he also believed in an ethical ideal which he referred to as the Form of the Good.

So the cave analogy seems to be saying that what we take to be real blinds us to what is ideal.

We could see the cave analogy as a bit of a confidence trick. If the ideal forms exist only in the imagination, maybe we are really outside the cinema living in the real world and Plato is trying to persuade us to go into the cinema to watch a movie called Ideal Forms (not a bad title for a soft porn flick.)

Sometimes a symbol is so powerful that it transcends the ideology of the person who gives expression to it. I think this is true of the cave analogy.

Plato's cave helped to inspire the 1999 science fiction film The Matrix. Here it turns out that humans are living in a simulated reality while actually being used as bioenergy batteries by parasitic machines. The hero Neo is given a choice to swallow a red pill which will enable him to see reality or a blue one which will allow him to go back to the illusory world.

This has provided a powerful metaphor to conspiracy theorists, libertarians, anarchists, and other critics of "the dominant paradigm." The world is full of red pill pushers.

Is there a sense in which the world we take to be real is not real? Is there a reason such ideas resonate with us?

I think it may be helpful to turn Plato on his head. What keeps us from seeing reality is that we are blinded by abstract forms.

Here is an example. I love the sight of a beautiful woman. Am I really seeing the woman? She is a living organism performing a vast variety of functions. She is an ecosystem within which live a multitude of other living things. She is a conscious entity alive with emotions, memories, thoughts and desires. She was once an egg and a sperm. One day she will be dust. Her beauty blinds me to much of this. Only as I become desensitised to it somewhat do I see more. What am I seeing when I see her beauty? What we call beautiful in a woman is generally that which gives a youthful appearance. When we were young we were free of the bitterness or egotism which blocks love. So beauty is a symbol for love. So I'm blinded to the reality by an idea - the idea of love.

All the time we project and we filter. The world we see around us is a world distorted by our needs. We will see those things which serve to boost our insecure ego and we will block out those which might threaten it.

This is particularly true if we are believers in a dogma. We maintain our belief by concentrating on that which appears to support it and evading that which contradicts it. This is known as confirmation bias.

So how can we leave the cinema and live in the real world?

We need to have a secure ego. The ego is the conscious thinking self. We put down "ego" because our ego is usually insecure and thus embattled and thus a barrier to love and truth. But our conscious thinking self can become secure enough to go wide-eyed and naked in the world.

If we don't become secure then we may take someone's red pill only to find that they have led us from one Matrix into another. We may be woken up to how we have been a slave of capitalism only to find ourselves a slave of socialism. We are in the cinema because it makes us feel secure. Unless we learn to provide our own security, the best we will be able to do is to go from a cinema showing one kind of a movie to one showing another.

We cultivate our own security of ego by practicing unconditional self-acceptance. Our insecurity comes from being at war with our self, feeling we need to try to control our thoughts or our emotions. We don't need to think the right thoughts or feel the right feelings. All of us are a mess of contradictions, but when we allow ourselves to be such without judgement, a deeper and truer integrity gradually forms.

The sunshine which lights the world outside the cinema is love. Love is really being with others, not just with the forms our embattled ego needed to project onto them.
Selfishness Is Self-Denial

The key problem in human societies has always been selfishness. It puts us in the position of competing with each other when cooperation is the way to maximise our creativity and make sure that the needs of all are provided for.

But how well do we actually understand selfishness?

Selfishness is the natural self-directedness of the suffering or insecure individual. If you hit your thumb with a hammer you find it hard to think of anything else. It is a natural process that our attention focuses where there is a need or a threat.

Sometimes we are encouraged to feel guilty about being selfish. This doesn't help. Guilt is a source of pain and pain makes us more selfish. It's a negative feedback loop.

We may think that we have to chose between selfishness or self-denial. This is a false dichotomy. Selfishness is self-denial.

The fact that we want pleasure for ourselves is not a problem. It may very well be the solution. Selfishness consists less in the seeking of personal pleasure than it does in lacking the courage to truly maximise that pleasure.
Unlocking Love

Every act of unforced cooperation is a manifestation of love.

But sometimes we feel compelled to manifest non-cooperative behaviour - to compete with each other, to opt out or to boss others around.

How can we creatively respond to an unwillingness to participate in love?

It is no good to demand love. It cannot be conjured up by an act of will. If one of us has an incapacity for love, either generally or when in specific circumstances, their innate capacity for it has to be unlocked.

One mistake we can make is to read such an incapacity as critical information about ourselves. We may ask ourselves what is wrong with us that the other person does not show us love. But the incapacity lies with them and does not reflect on our worthiness.

But also we should not look on an incapacity for love in ourselves as evidence of our own unworthiness.

What is needed is the key to that lock. The question of worthiness is the lock itself. As long as we are asking why we are not worthy or trying to prove our worthiness our attention is being drawn towards our self and away from taking in and processing the stream of information from others which love requires.

Unconditional acceptance, i.e. unconditional love, is the key to the lock.

We are all worthy of love, so the worthiness question is irrelevant. What matters is not worthiness of love but capacity for love and this means relieving ourselves (or being relieved by others) of the need to prove our worthiness in any way.

Unconditional acceptance of others does not mean we have to do what they tell us to do. And it doesn't mean that we shouldn't restrain them from hurting others when we can. What it does mean is that we don't demand that they change and we don't accuse them of being unworthy. Because they cannot open up their capacity for love through an act of will and to challenge them to prove their worthiness is only to strengthen the lock which holds them bound.

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