Condolences Spurned

 

I have been noticing for some time now that when people suffer a death in the family, contract a near-fatal disease, experience financial disaster and loss, or struggle painfully to survive a bitter divorce, it is the moral thing to do to reach out to them and send them a card of condolence.

 

I have long been socially unpopular, so my condolences are now often received with reserve, forced gratitude or outright silence. Why is this occurring? I think I have discovered the answer.

 

Most people run in packs and are joiners, and social ranking or popularity is the coin of the realm. It is what joining people cherish to enjoy and increase, above all other motivations.

 

When a joiner suffers a significant loss or tragedy in their lives, they do not mind being comforted, but they only want or welcome comfort from those of equal or superior rank; that input is welcome.

 

If someone is a social inferior or absolute social outcast, hearing from that person at any time is embarrassing to say the least, and may lead to a loss of social ranking, should the word get out that one received condolences from a social inferior, and actually welcomed the kind gesture. Again, all efforts must be to prevent a loss in social rank: this trumps all other considerations.

 

Another factor may be that joiners put much energy, thought and action into promoting insiders in their group, celebrating when the fellow insider is exalted, and showing commiseration and solidarity when the fellow insider is humbled.

 

The sins of the fellow insider will be ignored, explained away or whitewashed. They achievements and successes will be exaggeratively praised and deemed praiseworthy.

 

The successes of someone of lower rank or someone so individuated as to be without social standing are to be ignored or deconstructed. Their failures are to be celebrated, publicized and made to be mountains though they are mole hills.

 

To receive condolences from a social inferior or great soul might seem to the cynical, mistrusting joiner that his enemies are gloating at his ill fortune, and are drawing attention to his demise, his straitened circumstances, when no offense was intended.

Group OUtreach

 

If an individuated and individuating great soul, is approached by a groupist, he can anticipate that the overture represents one of six instinctive/unconscious or calculated approaches each of which reveal the intention of the interloper.

 

First, it would be that rare treat if a groupist would socially approach the great-souled loner as an equal, just to be friends without competition or manipulative games played, just living-and-let-living, enjoying each other as they are, as radically different as they are.

 

That is rare and unlikely, but could happen if a groupist was a saintly, tolerant person of remarkable acceptance of others different from herself.

 

The great soul should not expect this social miracle to occur, until Mavellonialism becomes popular, and joiners finally learn how to accommodate great souls in their midst: majorities tolerating, even celebrating the most radical minorities.

 

Second, in a free and relativistically individualistic, tolerant, happy, and prosperous society like America, she will have enough legal, social, ethical restraints, which she reluctantly lives by, that she will tolerate his open rebellion or insistence on being his own person, doing his own thing, openly, stubbornly, and vocally. But she uses legal but aggressive, vicious social opprobrium and marginalization tactics to force him to submit and conform, or at least isolate and punish him for a lifetime for his sustained insistent rebellion against social expectations and norms.

 

Third, the joiner is a committed, firmly believing groupist—an altruistic, collectivistic true believer in pack-living, pack values, and pack-identifying--who plays the social game well, kissing ass above to those in the social hierarchy, and kicking ass on those below this joiner in the social hierarchy.

 

In the social game, all are enslaved, and all suffer, but the joiners are addicted to their way of living and growing malevolence in society, so all lie about themselves and each other, insisting that they are healthy, normal, happy as they are.

 

This joiner ever seeks to increase her share of the societal power of powerlessness which is identical to her social credit rating. She lives to increase her rank and popularity within her group’s social pecking order, and this is her reason for living, and all other considerations are subordinate to her growing her social rank, power, and prestige, or at least not going backwards and losing what social ranking as she had previously gained and enjoyed.

 

When she encounters the great-souled loner, all she can think is that this person is a pathetic loser, misfit, and social freak—which he is from her social point of view—but her characterization of him is actually false, not his status or condition existentially or objectively. She only judges people based upon their social ranking. If they are more socially popular and powerful than she is, then she is most eager to be associated with them because in social circles one rises or falls based upon the social ranking of those whom one associates with.

 

She is utterly selfish and ruthless: if associating with any loner, let alone a great soul, would cause her to lose social power and rank, she discards them immediately like yesterday’s used newspaper. She is without mercy or pity, and a loner’s appeal to her sense of kindness, fairness and social justice fall upon her deaf, closed ears. It would be hopeless for him to appeal to her better nature, for it is weak or nonexistent in her due to a lifetime of willed social sinning.

 

If she associates with the great soul at all, it will be only to set up social pecking order ranking upon the great soul, to let him know that he is inferior to her, and that he is hopelessly outcast and marginalized, and that is his ranking for a lifetime, and this  social destiny sentence imposed on the great soul involuntarily and without his input is permanent, irrevocable and will be enforced upon the loner until all of them are dead. No one in and no one out, and all will suffer social injustice because that is the way the social world works, and that is how things must be and will be because the majority discharges this corrupt social arrangement with zeal, consistency and deliberate willfulness, a permanent state of affairs inflicted by all upon all, and it is unalterable.

 

This is why altruism-collectivism is immoral and crippling. It keeps people selfless, self-hating and mangled by heartbreaking low self-esteem, and produces endless bout of needless social and private suffering for humans, generation after generation. This is the human tradition and social condition existing and maiming souls for tens of thousands of years in the past.

 

She instinctively knows that setting up her social rank above the great soul guarantees that no matter how she wrecks her life, suffers, or experience severe loss of social ranking, she will always be more popular and social powerful and esteemed by other joiners than this great loser, wholly without social rank or assigned coolness.

 

Her whole life has been a struggle to gain as much popularity and social rank as she can manage to muster. She will sell her soul, rob, cheat, steal, lie, even murder to gain or at least not endure a drop in social ranking, for that social rank is what she lives for, nothing else, and through the lens of pecking order ranking is how she identifies others, their personal qualities to the contrary are summarily dismissed by her as irrelevant: their explanations and protestation fall upon her deaf years—they and she are condemned to a life-long sentence of social suffering, inflicted without a fair hearing.

 

Again, she only associates with a great soul to assign inferior social ranking to that person, so she has a chance sadistically to abuse someone more individualistic, happier and free-spirited below her, a very alluring opportunity to cast upon him the unfortunate role of the masochist. To grow evil in her heart, to grow her group power at the expense of an individualist and godliness is a temptation that this born sinner cannot resist.

 

Altruism-collectivism does grow empathy, cooperation, and concern for the common good, when it is beneficial, but no one discusses how social games destroy people and my egoist morality corrections are critically needed but unheeded so far.

 

The fourth way that she may interact with the great soul is to avoid him altogether, because he is too far gone to reach, because she does not understand him, or because he is so strange and different that he can be of no use to her ambitions to gain in social rank, coolness and popularity. 

 

The fifth way by which she can relate to him is to pretend to be friendly to get inside of his defenses so that she, as the friendly front person for a cabal of group enemies plotting to destroy, repress, marginalize, oppose, defeat (Get him so vexed and misbehaving that he can get into legal trouble and sent to prison, or to have him declared mad so he can be put in an insane asylum, or to so isolate him that he loses hope and gives up the good fight, commits suicide, or accepts defeat and settles for a lifetime enduring absolute bottom rank and unpopularity and abuse for daring to be individual, independent, self-esteeming and disinterested in the sick game of climbing the social pecking order, wasting his life striving for rank in the social hierarchy.

 

She is an emissary pretending to be friendly to get inside his defenses so that she can find his weak spots, his vulnerabilities, his weaknesses, and plans. If she can gaslight him, get him fired, get him run out of his neighborhood, his workplace, or the clubs to which she belongs, then she is tickled that her malicious scheme worked. To ruin, wreck, obstruct his self-actualized plans, that makes her happy.

 

There is a demonic side to this too that underpins her hidden attack upon him: if he self-realizes and grows cosmos on earth, he advances God’s cause, and if she can slow him down, thwart him and obliterate him, she either protect Satan’s and Lera’s cause, the social structure of chaos and stagnation, or makes it worse and that is her pleasing aim.

 

The sixth way is when mass movements and totalitarian mobs roam the streets and they flat out mob him and kill him, no longer pretending to allow him or his ilk to live unmolested, sending a message to all to align obediently and complete with the mob, or be wiped out, Tolerance is now zero and their hegemony will be discharged with efficiency and brutality.

 

 

Egoism And Moderation

 

God works in mysterious ways. I feel I have a handle on morality, with this Mavellonialist-Egoist moral system, that is going to revolutionize everything for people, for the good.

 

God talks to me every day, but there is likely little or nothing I think or write which I did not learn from (perhaps subconsciously) Eric Hoffer, though this atheist’s not fully explicated moral system, fully displayed, would likely be very similar to mine. God did not talk to Eric every day, but somehow God did talk to him.

 

I go for months without a new idea, and then, out of the blue, ideas just well up in me. This is my third blog entry today, so let me lay it out.

 

I have long argued that good and evil are real, universal, eternal forces at work in the world, that they are metaphysically or spiritually real; they are not just social constructs. Good and evil operated in the natural world and in the supernatural world long before humans evolved, and will operate long after we as a race do vanish.

 

The Good Spirits have assigned to each of us, the job to self-realize and build love, cosmos, art, and more philosophy, while alive.

 

This divinely inspired duty, our telos, our calling, demands humans adopt egoist morality, the ethical system best enabling each person to do her thing as an individuator. Her primary but not sole moral motive and duty is to chase after her enlightened self-interest, but, her secondary but vital moral motive and duty is to serve others and their interests, to sacrifice herself for the good of the whole.

 

An ARI Objectivist would accuse me of self-contradiction by offering conflicting and mutually negating moral motives as one integrated ethical code; the result: I am, according to him, talking inconsistent gibberish and spouting irrational garbage, and his criticism has some bite, some merit.

 

My defense is that humans are complicated, complex creatures, born half-angel and half-beast. The nature of the world is such that mixedness and hybridization are real and of highest ethical and intellectual undertaking is to wend a middle way through all of this contradictories and contraries.

 

The black-and-white thinking of the uncompromising Christian or Buddhist altruist or the absolutist ARI Objectivist-egoist are not how the world works, and these lopsided, out-of-harmony worldviews will lead their proponents to espouse moral codes that are pure, one-dimensional, wrong, morally unproductive, stupid and increase evil in the world, the consequence they claim to wish to decrease, but cannot help contributing to the explosion of wickedness in the world.

 

Here was my flash of intuition. Humans are born wicked—mostly not entirely. Humans are born with low self-esteem and lots of self-hating. Hating is evil, so the agent that hates herself, born evil and addicted to sin, will if she refuses to become moral, will grow corruption and malevolence in the world, as she grows in hatred of herself and others, all while claiming to love what she is, addicted to what is killing her spiritually, intellectually, and even physically.

 

She is born sinful; she runs in packs and groups are evil, and the social scene is the locus of lying and wasted lives lived inside complexes and games riddled with illusion, deception, pain, and manipulation, all socially reinforced. When she group-lives and promotes group-pride, and she and others practice altruism-collectivism, they grow evil in themselves and each other. The joiner is demonic more than angelic, emotional more than logical, and fanatical or ultraist more than moderate and self-calibrating, her behaving is measured response.

 

My flash is that moderation, not in all things, but in most things, is the Good or Love or Truth or Beauty or Liberty. The avatar of free agency, of moderation, of loving, or reasoning, of ego-centeredness is the individual, the loner, not the groupist or joiner.

 

Satan, Lera, and the Evil Sprits will rule this world as long as basically evil people (naturally altruist, selfless and collectivist) group-live, practice altruist-ethics, preached at them by parents, the church, the government and the institutions. When the elites run government and business, and tyranny, class systems or stratification and communist economic systems prevail, the people must fail, suffering needlessly and excessively, though they convince themselves that they love what they secretly hate, and praise the status quote as liberating and enriching, when subconsciously they realize that it stifles, sickens, and kills the masses putting up with this rotten, dispensation.

Self-Esteem Is The Best Love

 

Self-Esteeming is the best and highest form of love. I have been looking for ways to justify me advancement of egoist ethics, and a flash came to me the other day, an insight which might be fruitful.

 

It occurred to me that egoism as a moral system is built on the principle of veridical self-esteeming and positive self-loving.

 

 Now all words, all concepts, all definitions are never 100% cqpture the whole gist of a concept: linguistic clarity is never perfect or final. My near final word about self-love, on describing or defining any idea or term of self-love, it seems to me, that positive love, whether focused on the self, on others, on nature, on animals, or towards God or one’s family, is likely the intellectual and emotional way to regard the object of affection, and nothing can be more wholesome than loving. This is spiritual and moral goodness. If one loves the self, then love will be one’s good will in action as the self operates in the world and interacts with others.

 

The counterpart of positive loving is negative hating, where the self-consciousness is focused, determined, and systematically attacking, deconstructing and destroying, perhaps even physically killing off the victim, be that victim the self, one’s spouse or partner, one’s dog, one’s nation, one’s God, or nature itself. This is the essence of spiritual and moral evil enveloping the hater’s consciousness.

 

When I promote moral egoism, I am urging the self be the primary but not sole focus of attention and interest for the individual. It is acceptable for the self to hate what is flawed, wicked or in error about the self, while working to improve these defects.

 

Beyond this point self-hatred or other-hatred turns vicious, ugly and counterproductive. One is not to love one’s self-indulgent, hedonistic, short-term chasing after pleasure, that is a negative loving of the self.

 

Healthy self-love of the egoistic individuators who esteems the self and has pride in the self and his intellect, grounded in his actual accomplishments, is desirable, even obligatory, but bragging and strutting are not good for the self, and irritates the neighbors.

Enlightened Self-Interest & Peterson

 

In a video recently, Jordan Peterson the altruist and collectivist, offered that enlightened self-interest is the same as living a life of self-denial and service to others.

 

Actually, it is the other way around. When one is an egoist and individualist, one announces that pursing one’s own interests are one’s primary (not sole ethical obligation) moral obligation. But self-interest is best served when the goals are self-realizing, serving God and creating love and cosmos in the world.

 

This is not so much a life of service and self-sacrifice in serving others, but individuators, if the majority of adults in a free country, will be reasonable enough and temperate enough to compromise with neighbors, usually working out disputes to most everyone’s satisfaction.

 

Paradoxically and perhaps the only successful way to serve others occurs as adults maverize as enlightened self-actualizers.

 

Sorry, Jordan. Your insights amaze, but your conclusions suck.

The Workplace

 

I have long been an advocate of workers’ rights. I have long worked inside of union shops and in non-union shops. There are real differences between them, and distinct advantages and disadvantages to both, but those I will not mention here.

 

This article is about what they have in common. I seek to democratize the workplace. This does not mean that owners, managers, and supervisors do not continue to call the shots. They do.

 

 But a workforce of individuating supercitizens, so smart, independent-thinking, radically individualistic, outspoken, and unwilling to be tyrannized, exploited, disrespected, abused, ignored or tyrannizez, do contribute to real consternation and paralysis of operation and decision-making for the angered, exasperated, owner or manager not trained to work with such an excellent, strong-willed work force.

 

If we can democratize the workplace, and democratize managers and supervisors, and flood the workplace with individuating supercitizen workers, this peaceful revolution would transform the workplace for the better. It would morally bring excellence to the workplace, wherein workers’ rights as human rights.

 

Once Management accepts and implements this reform, it would generally experience the pleasing outcome that happy, motivated employees treated with dignity and respect, work hard and better, and the company will make more money, provide better services, manufacture superior products.

 

My dream is that individuating supercitizens, as average and yet exceptional citizens, taxpayers, consumers, and workers, would revolutionize all institutions to which they belong and participate in.

 

Individuating citizens and citizens involved in political processes have the potential to democratize the country on the or macro-level or national level, and if the workforce in a company or college is of individuators, it will transform and democratize the workplace on the micro-level or local level.

 

I believe that the social relations between individuating supercitizens have the great promise of changing substantively social arrangements, for the better.

The Priest's View Of Human Nature

 

Two of my sisters from outside the state of Minnesota traveled to our lake cabin up north to help my family and me celebrate my 71^st birthday, and that was very pleasant.

 

When we were eating a delicious dinner made by my wife, my sister from North Dakota reported that her parish priest, a native American, 73 years of age, had told her that he believes people are basically good, because they are made in God’s image. 

 

That intrigued me that he argued that God is pure good and pure perfection. We are made in God’s image and likeness, so we may not be perfect or purely good, but we are basically good, otherwise we would not be made in God’s image and likeness. Not a bad argument.

 

My take is that we are partially made in God’s image and likeness, that part of us is innately good, but our original sin is biological and spiritual: we are mostly id, born beasts, filled with demons in our subconscious.

 

Children need moral training to civilize them, to individualize them (A moral person of free agency is a person who individuates and has learned to love herself, and through self-love and accompanying self-esteem, she is able to love others and love God, and thus esteem them too, and wish veridical self-esteem for them also.

 

We are not much made in God’s image and likeness, but if we apply ourselves and work hard, and become holy and virtuous, then we can grow much closer to being in God’s image and likeness. The similarity is created, not natural, and God orders us to make the effort or else.

 

My sister agreed that children are not born good; as a mother, grandmother, teacher, and speech pathologist, she has deep experience with toddlers. She described how selfish, violent and asocial 2-year olds are: they are born innocent, but not good, as Dennis Prager noted. They become good when trained with manners.