Nihilism is a distinctive human quality. What other living thing plans its own annihilation and intends to bring everything else along? How many of these Trump Nihilists are Christians steeped in apocalypse claims? Oh, right, Evangelicals are his staunchest supporters. How many are cowardly sadists who want others to suffer because it somehow serves their personal pathology? Right, they support child separation and babies in cages because they want "strong borders." The real world around them burns but they deny climate change and any effort that might effect their immediate economics. Right, in fact, their economic situation will collapse with the planet. What fuels this sociopathy?
It's built in. We need an Alfred Pennyworth Moment. He tells Bruce Wayne: "Some men just want to see the world burn." The Republican pathology requires this constituency to stay in power. See the Edsall article cited in the first comment.
Oh, and Rajanaka folk: Duryodana is the archetype for this sickness. Not even five villages for the Pandavas. Not even the fear of a rebirth is enough. But why, when Duryodana has everything a person could want? It's because nihilism is real, it's not been selected out. And why is that? Mahabharata gives us the first clues.
The shadow left unattended, fed and nourished like the demon of narcissism, born of fear, denial, rejection of the very real process that we _need_ to become socially viable. We must all "repress" to flourish and all of that we stuff in the bag and drag behind us: hopes, desires, expectation, dreams, we stuff them away. Much of this we must do, just to do the next thing. But we can unpack these experiences and accept the complex process that tells us that our freedom is more than doing whatever we want, whenever we want that.
Our problems arise from our unwillingness to take these matters to heart, from our lack of skill to examine them, from our rejection that claims we're all just light. Or we believe someone else---God, Jesus, thoughts and prayers---are going to do the work. We're more confused than that because we possess a deeper consciousness that reside beneath the surfaces, every one of us is more complex than we imagine, all are more messy than all that.
And again, this is not the problem nor something we can "fix," remedy or repair. We can, however, learn to live with it and flourish. But only if we are honest enough to want to learn. And this is why we need the myths.The nihilist wants a simpler world, one with only his own light, one that never looks into those feelings and unrequited desires, incomplete dreams.
We are broken beings, we have missing bits, we have extra things we don't even know we have---and none of that is the problem. So much of what hurts we did not create, it was done; we're not in control of it all and never have been. That is where we can start.
Our problems arise from our unwillingness to take these matters to heart, from our lack of skill to examine them, from our rejection that claims we're all just light. We're more subtle, more complex, more messy than all that. But only if we are honest enough to want to learn. And this is why we need the myths.
Look here for the data: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/04/opinion/trump-voters-chaos.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
It's built in. We need an Alfred Pennyworth Moment. He tells Bruce Wayne: "Some men just want to see the world burn." The Republican pathology requires this constituency to stay in power. See the Edsall article cited in the first comment.
Oh, and Rajanaka folk: Duryodana is the archetype for this sickness. Not even five villages for the Pandavas. Not even the fear of a rebirth is enough. But why, when Duryodana has everything a person could want? It's because nihilism is real, it's not been selected out. And why is that? Mahabharata gives us the first clues.
The shadow left unattended, fed and nourished like the demon of narcissism, born of fear, denial, rejection of the very real process that we _need_ to become socially viable. We must all "repress" to flourish and all of that we stuff in the bag and drag behind us: hopes, desires, expectation, dreams, we stuff them away. Much of this we must do, just to do the next thing. But we can unpack these experiences and accept the complex process that tells us that our freedom is more than doing whatever we want, whenever we want that.
Our problems arise from our unwillingness to take these matters to heart, from our lack of skill to examine them, from our rejection that claims we're all just light. Or we believe someone else---God, Jesus, thoughts and prayers---are going to do the work. We're more confused than that because we possess a deeper consciousness that reside beneath the surfaces, every one of us is more complex than we imagine, all are more messy than all that.
And again, this is not the problem nor something we can "fix," remedy or repair. We can, however, learn to live with it and flourish. But only if we are honest enough to want to learn. And this is why we need the myths.The nihilist wants a simpler world, one with only his own light, one that never looks into those feelings and unrequited desires, incomplete dreams.
We are broken beings, we have missing bits, we have extra things we don't even know we have---and none of that is the problem. So much of what hurts we did not create, it was done; we're not in control of it all and never have been. That is where we can start.
Our problems arise from our unwillingness to take these matters to heart, from our lack of skill to examine them, from our rejection that claims we're all just light. We're more subtle, more complex, more messy than all that. But only if we are honest enough to want to learn. And this is why we need the myths.
Look here for the data: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/04/opinion/trump-voters-chaos.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
