Commenting on RS

Hi Jonathon-

I think the basic outlines are good (albeit I enjoy the occasional curse word as a mark of Satan's passion coursing through my discordant veins).

No but siriusly- I have noticed a lot of unnecessary personal attacks lately and it makes me want to become mediator, protector and psychologist and tell people to start taking personal responsibility for their hurtful words.

I believe the only times I have made personal attacks (aimed at specific people), are when I myself am being personally attacked or when I notice how non-cooperative someone else is and do my personal best to get them to shut up and keep from polluting everyone elses' earholes. Poo flingers is what I call them.

I have to admit I get a vampiric thrill when someone throws the first stone and gives me a chance to express my inner evil clown and dom warrior femme. But I could also do without a lot of the unnecessary conflict, and it seems like it is becoming just that. Reality Sandwich seems to be reflecting a lot of the unnecessary conflict in real reality, and I wish for the sandwich to be a place where people can come and feel safe to express their opinions and explore others' viewpoints.

I have been hurt by comments which have taken a few days to get over and that had no philosophical bearing on my growth as a person. They have usually come from people I find to be intellectualy inferior and so the fact that somehow I have to digest their crap and spit it out ('cause I'm a hyper-sensitive freak-fuck shamaniac) makes me want to throw a shoe through the computer screen. I don't come online to get psycho-analyzed and judged by squares, ya know? At the same time- sometimes the conlict is assuaged and both the other person and I gain some great and unexpected gift. The shamaniacal transmission works and I aid in some 5th dimensional alien realization in which I painfully played martyr for a moment. (a painful reflection of our culture at large and what they do to heroes and prophets). Am I playing self-important? Sure- I'm the bomb!

It's a crap shoot, and I think some room needs to be left for people to sort out projections to come to some kind of truth granted their intent feels aligned. Intention is the key word here. Set your intent- you- and everyone- but don't go getting all Victorian about it. You would lose a lot of the color and respect from the truly free thinkers on the site. You need us. And we want you.

I feel that there still needs to be room for the spirit of Kali- and that destruction and !compassion! must be leveled at ideas and sometimes at people (but only if we sincerely feel we have a transmission for them). Otherwise- yeah- the conversations degrade to useless insult and non-cooperation which I personally get tired of. I swear to God if you guys' don't start editing some of these idiot boys' comments, I will personally see to it myself that they taste the wrath of Kali. (That might be fun!)

Might I add that most children in this society have heard adults' swear and that I don't think a lot of 10 year olds are reading about "Non-Violent Action as Spiritual Practice," or "Psychic Science?" They're doing South Park impressions of Cartman going, "hey man- your poo stinks- go shit at your parents before you come over."

That being said, I especially enjoy the intentions of supporting people, not attacking others personally, and communicating ie listening to each other through written responses that reflect our hearing of each other. I get tired of the continuous separatist strands that mostly seem to come from the boys on the site. (Are you feeling the fed-up dominatrix in me yet?) I think staying on topic is perhaps a bit over-rated and often enjoy peoples' strange tangents. And sometimes- sure- I think "WTF?" But I just don't bother reading those. Free will, ya know?

I think by merely putting this intention out there, you will see a lot of change necessary on the site. In fact, I encourage the cooperative intention while kindly asking that you leave room for the rabble rousers and discordians to have their voices heard too without feeling the need to be patriarchal or fascistic about deletions. If it's really really hurtful and could psychologically damage someone- yeah- x it- it's a waste of emotional energy.

At the same time- I've seen scathing attacks on here- though I think could have been more tactful- that have had fearless depths of truth that if the other person could receive- might change them in fundamentally profound ways. The Buddha says to thank someone if they hurt you, because they've just showed you where you're stuck.

The only thing that really threw me off in your text is the support of Burning Man as the most radically expressive arts venue in the country which tacitly made a martyr and giant hypocrisy of Paul Addis, and, eh hem, yours truly at L.A. Decompression. I think people need to jump off the Burning Man's burning wagon.

If you're interested in my martyr arts' B.M. piece, google Joan o' fArt and my tribe.net profile should pop right up. The blog is called "Burned at the Mistake," and is a scathing analysis of that culture and its underlying hypocrisy. If you knew B.M. like I knew B.M. (and it's safe to say that I'm at the absolute edge of anarchistic performance art and radical free expression), you would jump off the dying donkey that is Burning Ass.

If I even had the motivation to start a tribe called The Burning Man Commutiny- a tribe dedicated to those who want to destroy Burning Man- believe me, I would. Try Autonomous Mutant Fest if you want radical free expression.

In my world, I was taking respnsibility for my projections through a mini psychodrama. I don't believe McN would have been drawn to me had we not had psychic issues to resolve.

These perspectives reflect the philosophical idea that everyone is you and vice versa. My experience is that everything that comes my way is a reflection of my own self. If it's not a reflection of myself - say, if it's a life insurance salesman - I ignore it as neutrally as possible. But someone as in my face as this fellow required some perspective adjustment. I related to him, on the whole, as I would my own self, my own shadow. Essentially I was enacting the Golden Rule, which is the last thing people consider when they are being treated like dirt, but it might ought to be first.

Hi, mabus It’s the Dream interpreting girl. I much prefer “Amy George.”  

Said attacker left RS with middle finger high and didn’t look back. He had been an RS member for 3 weeks. I apologized to him publicly and privately for disrespectfully exposing his psychic brokenness by posting a dream I had about him and interpreting it.

I think the suggestions below, posted by Daniel P, are very useful.

One issue I am not on board with is the prohibition of curse-words. They are empowered when they are prohibited. They need to be responsibly owned – not used as weapons.

Anonymously being a jerk to people to get out aggression is not communication – so issues of whether or not it is acceptable are irrelevant. In actual communication, listening is as practiced as expressing.

I have read observations about people being too flippant and too serious as well. Perhaps a balance of both is called for. Compassion is much better than flippancy for diffusing hyper-seriousness.

Hi All,

A number of you have commented on the harshness of some of the exchanges that followed the posting of  “Adam Clay, Lazarus Mouse and the Kingdom of Eros.” Being a big fan of Amy’s work, I submitted the first comment on this essay, which I ended: “As the pendulum swings, both separating and then joining the Eros and Ares archetypes, each incompatible viewpoint serves to generate still greater energy. A war between the worlds precedes the marriage between opposites.”  

Little did I know that I was describing the controversy that would soon erupt around the piece. 

Unfortunately, the controversy had almost nothing at all to do with “Adam Clay”, whose ideas- both provocative and profound- became the pretext for a series of theatrical proclamations on the part of those with their own agendas to advance. Much of the back and forth had to do with the nature of “male anger.” It did not seem to occur to either of its prime advocates that this anger- both intense and free-associative in content- had no connection to its immediate object: Amy George.  

Lion Kimbro, a representative of the “3rd generation men’s movement”, was one of the most passionate participants in this forum. On several occasions, I had attempted to challenge his interpretation key issues, but was not successful in eliciting a response. Over the past few days, however, a small window of communication has been opened up between us.

Here are several of Lion’s comments, the first from one of his posts about “Adam Clay”, and the other two from an exchange of emails: 

“It's essential to acknowledge my anger, McNuggetz anger, the anger of just about all conscious man(male)-kind.

If you (and woman-kind) don't acknowledge our anger, then you don't know what we're upset about, and you (collectively) won't change. Can't change.”  

“My internalization is not that anger is spiritual, but that it is psychic. That said, I don't view it as bad, either.  Rather, I see it as part of the automatic proper flow of consciousness.”

“It was after this that I realized, in a very visceral way, the myriad sufferings that men receive, and the nature of the changes required to resolve the situation.

Voicing of angers will be part of this; "Fire in the Belly" by Sam Keen (a book I have mixed feelings about) nicely describes how there is legit anger, and illegit anger, and separating the two is valuable.

But voicing anger is imperative.”

Here are two of my responses to Lion- the first posted and the second not- in which I attempt to address our differences on the public use of anger:

“Hi Lion, 

I’m afraid that we strongly disagree about the nature and the origin of anger, as well as its usefulness as a tool for the transformation of consciousness.  

My own feeling is that anger, male or otherwise, to the extent that it is acceptable as a spiritual emotion, must be driven by empathy for the injustice suffered by others, and by a desire to prevent harm. Thus, the operative principle is “Do No Harm.”  

It is very easy to fool oneself about the origin of one’s anger.  

Confrontation with one’s shadow, and the integration of any traumatic or uncomfortable contents that are exposed, is a prerequisite for any conscious interaction with the world. Anger driven from behind by unresolved personal agendas may very well produce a political result- but that result will in turn be subject to the law of unintended consequences. 

(Heads will roll.

Those wearing glasses will have them broken by the Archetype.)

I do, however, want to offer you my sincere thanks for forcing me to think again about such issues. The impetus from the “Adam Clay” discussions, to which you contributed so much of yourself, has pushed me to revise my essay “The Goddess as Active Listener”, which is a mediation on a period when I also saw anger as a kind of liberation. 

I have just heard back from Ken Jordan, and the revised version of “The Goddess as Active Listener” should be going up sometime over the next week. 

Again, thanks. If your work schedule lets up a bit, perhaps we can continue our discussion with the posting of this piece.” 

“Hi Lion, 

1) I was fascinated by the journal excerpt that you sent. As I mentioned earlier, I think your writing is at its strongest when you simply present and analyze your own experience, and allow a bit of your vulnerability to show. When you present your ideas as experiences rather than as arguments, it is far easier for your readers to tune in to both your emotions and their own.  

This is not to say that aggressive argument has no place in an essay. Noel Ignatiev, my American History teacher from Mass Art, who wrote a fairly subversive book called “How the Irish Became White”, use to encourage all of his students to “charge the ball” whenever they were writing.

I took his words to heart. On a stylistic level this can be excellent advice, and often, this is just what it is necessary to do; in writing as in football, however, strategy is even more important than the direct expenditure of force. 

2) (Slightly revised.) I am very much conscious of the role of anger in my nature, as well as that of the other primordial forces that prompt both constructive and destructive action, but my relationship to these forces has changed radically over the years- as I have learned again how to breathe. The anger that I experienced full force when I was younger is still present, but, when I choose to let it out, I tend now to employ it like a targeted explosive charge.

On a good day, it can look no different than any other virus to which a metaphysical antidote has evolved.

Also, being a father has changed my whole concept of the emotion. In some ways, I have become even more short tempered, but my anger now is almost entirely situational. It arises and subsides quickly. No parent wants to stay angry at his child. 

Where anger is still present in my work, I tend to utilize it as a catalyst for deeper connectedness or as a tool of social justice. For example, here is an excerpt from my essay “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness; On the Interdependent Origins of the Good Society and the Telos”, which illustrates the use of steptic irony as a means of speaking truth to power:

“As the atom itself is reconfigured, free individuals can consult the global positioning system to determine their exact relationship to nature. Best buy science has proven there is no hole in the ozone layer. In fact, there is such thing as ozone, as there is no Big Lie, and if there were there would be no self to perceive them. 40% of wealth is not now and has never been controlled by 1% of the population.(2) The most grotesque of birth defects are not caused by dioxin; they are gifts from the hand of the oligarch.”

A certain degree of impersonality is an absolute requirement; anger should never be used as a means of escape from the confrontation with one’s personal demons. A short leash is a must, as is an exact examination of one’s motives, not only on one occasion, but each time that one chooses to take it out for a walk.  

If anger is to be of use as more than a form of personal psychodrama, it should never be quite as impulsive as it appears, but should always be directed from the cool seat of one’s larger consciousness.  A sense of emptiness transposes the whole context of an emotion. To get from the experience to the secret cause of anger is like navigating across the ocean of the Bardo- the intermediate state after death- in which nothing is ever quite as it appears. 

In my essay “Memories of Mr Trippi; The Trauma of an Urban Shaman”, there are a number of sections in which I attempt to meet this challenge. Among other things, the essay explores my anger towards and demonization of Mr Trippi, my high school art teacher, who I much later realized had been essential to my growth. Here is an excerpt that deals with the integration of the shadow: 

“No act of will could restore my freedom of association with the double.  

That would come, at the end of a long war. It would be necessary for an enemy to prepare the way for my breakthrough. 

The dream that we called consciousness was a joke- whose punchline had not yet arrived.”