Politics , Psychology

Analyzing America’s Dysfunction

By Steven White January 12, 2021

Analyzing America's Dysfunction

I believe the United States is suffering right now from nothing so much as lies and distortions of truth coupled with a polarization caused by neither side listening to the other. I want to make it clear that I do not identify my political convictions exclusively with the Left or the Right. A plague on the houses of the extremists in both camps.

Some of the points in both camps are valid and deserve to be listened to. I believe we need to repair the structure of civil society by being civil to each other. If you think the other side is composed only of biased morons, then think again. If you think the other side are all devils, then you will feel justified in wiping them all out, and we will have civil war. Yet it is still possible to make valid objective judgments based on Truth.

I saw a statement in the last few days by a former Secretary of Defense. He said that without Truth there is no Trust, and without Trust there is no society. That’s our situation today in the United States. The President of the United States has so poisoned his supporters’ minds with lies about the election, despite all the evidence to the contrary, and the media and social media is so full of fake news, that people are either extremely polarized or don’t know what to believe. We can’t hold society together on this basis, and so it is falling apart. People have no basis for trusting each other in this situation.

The only way we are going to turn this around, short of an extreme situation like civil war, is by talking to each other respectfully. That means suspending judgment about the falsity of the positions of those in other camps. It means trying to understand why they believe what they believe. I’m not one of these relativists who believes there is no such thing as objective truth. I’m just saying we need to examine the evidence and follow it where it leads in a spirit of unbiased inquiry.

A big part of the mental disease we are facing in the United States, is fear of acknowledging reality. I’ve looked at this pattern of denial in the United States for decades. What we are seeing playing out now on a grand stage did not start recently. It has been brewing in the Unconscious for decades – most of my lifetime.

It starts with a pattern that has been with us as a species for no one knows how long. I mean the desire to seek pleasure and avoid pain. It appears to go far back into our animal ancestors. It is a necessary mechanism and instinct that facilitates survival.

Human beings, however, have a frontal cortex that is, at least, potentially capable of overriding these instincts, but it is not easy. We need those instincts to be there and to be strong. We cannot get rid of them. We have to struggle with them, and that struggle defines what it means to be fully human.

Most of us tend to deny and seek to blunt awareness of events and circumstances that threaten us and make us uncomfortable. We would rather redefine reality than deal with it head on. We would rather not come into contact with the hard edges that prick our tenuous grasp of reality.

Yet, it is only by overriding our tendency toward comfort that we develop character. An existence without challenges and hard edges would breed a population of weaklings and liars – spoiled children whose development was arrested and having no moral substance.

So, I’m afraid Americans have had life too easy. Most of them have taken the easy way out and have failed to grapple with the real problems of human existence.

So, I’m saying today: “Look at what our country has come to. Don’t blame the other camps and justify yourself. We are all in this together. We are all collectively responsible for what we have created. For my part, I have been quiet and intimidated far far too long. I haven’t wanted to deal with the inevitable opposition that speaking my truth would entail. I’m determined to change that now.

I look at the politicians who have been unwilling to call out the abuses and lies of our President for far too long. Yet, I can’t villify them because I see the same cowardice in myself that motivated them to keep quiet even when some of them knew there was no substance to the President’s claims.

If you disagree, then show me the evidence of voter fraud. I haven’t seen any yet. The courts and judges appointed by Trump or other Republicans, have thrown out almost all of his lawsuits summarily because they contained no evidence of widespread voter fraud or had no legal merit. Even Trump’s own Communications Director (recently resigned) said that they all knew that the claims of voting fraud were all stunts and had not truth to them. Yet Republican politicians were, until the egregious events of last week, unwilling to call it out for what it was because they didn’t want to alienate Trump’s base.

That’s what I mean about placing comfort, convenience, and supposed advantage over Truth. Not telling the Truth has consequences just as telling it has consequences. Some of the consequences are going to be painful either way and no matter what. I think the sooner we realize that we don’t get to avoid paying a price for our existence and what we do or don’t do, the sooner we will get in touch with reality and choose to live a moral and responsible life. If a substantial number of us decided on that course, it would transform society in a very good direction in my opinion.

If you are one of the many people who have as one of their top three values that you need everybody, or at least the vast majority of other people, to like you, then you will lose yourself. That is the price you will pay! You will end up having no idea what you stand for. You will easily be blown around by every collective and psychic wind that blows. You will have no center! You will be completely at the mercy of other peoples’ opinions. You will be a chameleon that always “adjusts” yourself to whomever you are with. You will be full of unconscious resentment because you went along with things that you didn’t really like. Other people will manipulate you and take advantage of you to further their own ends. You will have no moral compass. For you the Good will be the same as the Expedient.

Don’t underestimate your susceptibility to being drawn into a mob. I believe that many of the people who were in that crowd that stormed the US Capitol were people in this condition who were just wholly taken over by mob psychology and did things so they would feel somehow completed by being part of a crowd. BEWARE!

If you think it’s too dangerous to stand out and go against the crowd, then consider all the negative consequences that flow from going along to get along!

Contemporary so-called society, is mass psychology. It is no accident that so many people “adjust” themselves to their surroundings to an extreme degree. Public education, since the Industrial Revolution, has systematically inculcated a spirit of conformity and the lose of the ability to think critically.

Consider that, in order centrally to organize large companies, government bureaucracies, indeed any human system under centralized control that grows beyond a certain size, conformity and sameness is needed in order to make the system predictable and controllable. You can’t have individuals making decisions and acting independently and without coordination. The system just would not function.

So, it appears that the powers-that-be in society created the very mass psychology that came back and bit them during the storming of the US Capitol. They created this monster themselves. I am not without sympathy for conservatives who feel that change is spiraling out of control. I just don’t believe that tearing down the system precipitously is going to do anything except create more chaos and bloodshed. Instead, we need to understand how we got here and set about addressing the root causes of the phenomena. It needs very careful analysis and dialog not violence leading to chaos. Just as you don’t quit your job until you have a way to replace your income, you don’t tear down a dysfunctional system until you understand it thoroughly, where the levers are that allow it to change for the better, or you first create an alternative. When building a new bridge, you don’t tear down the old bridge until the new one is functional.

So, I’m inviting serious dialogue about how we can go about either reforming our present systems of government or replacing them in a way that does not send us into chaos.

Culture , Life

New Facebook’s WhatsApp Privacy Policy Violations

By Jennifer Lipovski January 8, 2021

New violation that you agreed to and did not read .. WhatsApp will delete your account if you do not share your data with Facebook

If you use the WhatsApp application, you may have noticed a pop-up window while using the application in your phone at some point during the past two days, asking you to agree to update the privacy policy of the application, and of course you immediately clicked on the button at the bottom to continue.

But did you read the new terms and know what they mean to you?

If you read closely, you will know that users will have until February 8, 2021 to read and agree to the new terms, and if users do not accept the new privacy terms that appear on their screens, their WhatsApp account will be deleted as of that date.

It is possible that you are not the only one to agree to the new terms without reading them, however the changes to the privacy policy of the WhatsApp application – which has more than two billion users now – are important and you must be aware of them, and they include the following: Integrate better with a group Other Facebook products, giving space to better interact with businesses, and collecting users’ financial data.

What data does WhatsApp share with Facebook?

The WhatsApp application collects a lot of data related to the account such as: phone number, your account picture, your usage patterns that include the features you use, the groups you joined, how you interact with others within the application, and other information such as the use of the status feature, device data, and much more.

Most of this data has been restructured in different sections in the old versions of the privacy policy, but in the new update of the privacy policy, the company added a new section called Transaction and Payments Data that includes the users’ financial data that is collected.

It is a step aimed at improving and developing various payment services on Facebook to allow you to pay for various goods. This leads us to the integrations that Facebook makes between its various services and products to improve ad targeting.

The updated policy states that WhatsApp will share the data it collects about you with other Facebook companies, and it includes your account registration information such as your phone number, transaction data, service-related information, information about how you interact with others, including companies, and your private IP address. It may include other information specified in the privacy policy section entitled “Information collected” or “obtained upon notice to you or on your consent.”

Advertising

The updated policy also suggests that it may send you marketing materials about the Facebook Companies. In addition, the company will use your data collected from the app and other Facebook services to provide content suggestions, person recommendations, and ads along with service improvements.

Interact with business activities

Many businesses depend on WhatsApp to communicate with their customers and customers, so the company has launched a version of the application dedicated to commercial activities called WhatsApp Business, which allows merchants to communicate with users of the application through additional commercial features.

This version has grown significantly over the past few years, and the number of its users has reached more than 50 million. To increase this number, WhatsApp will allow companies to integrate other services in the application.

Facebook says it “works with businesses that use Facebook or any other party to help store and better manage their communications with you on WhatsApp.” As part of this, third-party apps may be able to read your communications on behalf of the business you interact with.

Moreover, the third-party services that you use within WhatsApp may be able to obtain some of your information. For example, the in-app video player might know your IP address.

These new WhatsApp changes come on the heels of a controversy that indicates that the app collects much more data than the iMessage app from Apple.

After the lawsuit filed by 10 states against Google in the last period, the American Wall Street Journal reported that Facebook and Google had agreed to cooperate and assist each other against antitrust measures in the event of an investigation into their agreement to work together in online advertising.

You can read the updated privacy policy for WhatsApp through this link

Psychology

Integrating the Shadow

By Steven White August 16, 2020

Integrating the Shadow

Especially since the COVID-19 pandemic started, with all the attendant chaos that it has induced, but to a lesser extent even before that, I had retreated from the world and especially from politics and social criticism because much of what was going on just seemed crazy and was unintelligible to me. Much of it seemed intrinsically unintelligible because it just didn’t participate in any rational pattern that I could discern. Under these circumstances, I think I made an implicit and explicit decision not to engage with politics and current events very much.

I’m beginning to perceive something that changes the game for me on many levels and with many implications. I can’t express it all because it’s too big. The essence of it, as far as I can tell, is the integration of the Dark side and of Shadow. The insights are being triggered by exposure to the Rebel Wisdom channel on YouTube. I’ve been listening to Rebel Wisdom videos around the Intellectual Dark Web, Jordan Peterson. Ken Wilber, and Doshin Roshi. I will include some links at the bottom of the article. I can’t remember encountering any movement that was really seeing through the fog of mainstream society, politics, and media the way this group is and speaking about it publicly in a fairly high-profile, cogent, and clear manner.

What I’m seeing is that the seeming unintelligibility of current events and politics was due to too much identification with the Light or positive side of things. I wanted to understand myself and the world purely rationally, and much of what is going on is not rational. It does not participate in that principle of order. Therefore, it just made little sense.

I knew intuitively that conspiracy theories were too simplistic. I believe that conspiracy theories are an attempt to manufacture certainty in a situation that seems chaotic and unintelligible. I find when I examine them that they are unlikely and make no sense in terms of the effects they supposedly have coupled with the interests of those who are supposedly creating them. So, for instance, it makes no sense to me that the Chinese government created and released the SARS-COV-2 virus for the simple reason that, if true, they wrecked the world economy and therefore their own economy in doing so. If you say they did it for some longer-range goal such as world-domination, I say there are too many variables beyond their control for such a plan to work reliably and it’s too risky. The same criticisms apply to most conspiracy theories I’ve looked at. To me, it’s just an attempt to create certainty in a situation where things don’t make much sense.

I believe and am experiencing that in order to begin to make some sense of what is going on in the world today, it’s necessary to integrate within ourselves the dark, chaotic, non-rational aspects of ourselves. The reason is because most or all of what’s going on today that makes no sense to a rational perspective is being driven by these same dark forces. We can’t understand them if we have no access to them within ourselves. We can’t look at the dark aspects of the world squarely if we are avoiding and repressing them within ourselves.

The psychologist C.G. Jung taught that we each have a Shadow side that comprises all the qualities and energies in ourselves that we reject and disown. The more we are identified with the Light, positive, rational, nice, and agreeable parts of ourselves, the more we repress and deny their opposites, the Dark, negative, irrational, difficult, and disagreeable parts. In the psychological economy, just as in physics, these Dark energies don’t go away because we deny them access to awareness. Instead they tend to become darker and ultimately autonomous and demonic. The Dark energies come out in ways that are beyond our conscious knowledge and control.

The Dark energies are most dangerous when they are unacknowledged. They form autonomous complexes (aka demons in traditional terminology). This is the source, for instance, of mass-shootings and other similar phenomena. It’s these denied parts of the psyche, which without access to awareness, build and grow into autonomous dark spirits that are under the control of no one.

The situation is different, however, when we consciously allow these Dark energies access to awareness. Jung called this Shadow work. We tend to be afraid to let them into awareness because there is a fear that they would be very destructive. Actually indiscriminate destructiveness is a quality of these energies that depends on them remaining buried in the basement of the psyche apart from conscious awareness. When we allow them to come into the Light of awareness, they transform and transmute. No longer are they subject to go out of control. Awareness is the universal solvent that transforms them. They don’t become Light. They become wise and necessary balances to an overly Light-oriented psyche.

So, for example, when I have integrated the Shadow to a certain extent, I can begin to understand in myself, the darker aspects of governments, society and other people. I realize that I too have the potential to do those things. I understand what motivates them and how they operate. So, for instance, I become much more able to spot someone who is manipulating and trying to take advantage of me. Before, when I was one-sidedly Light-oriented, I could be taken advantage of because I couldn’t see it when others were operating from the Dark side. Now that I know I could do those things, I’m able to recognize them when others do them.

I also become much more able to understand the machinations of power and power-politics. The motivations and operational modes of those in power suddenly become understandable because I am no longer repressing those tendencies in myself. I’m not becoming just like those people. I don’t have to act out my dark tendencies. They are no longer arising beyond my awareness and control. They are still there and can be used in the service of myself and others. The Dark energies become tools at my disposal to use or not use appropriately.

I become a balanced rather than one-sided human being. For too too long we have been taught a one-sided morality that doesn’t jibe with the facts of the psyche. It’s just not possible to be all Light and to eliminate Darkness entirely as many of us have been taught and have believed. I’m not advocating an ultimate dualism of Light and Dark and neither was Jung. I’m just speaking to the fact that at the level of phenomena, these polarities exist and have to be acknowledged and dealt with wisely.

Mysticism, Spirit, and Shadow – Jordan Peterson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAsR6DZTvS8

Inside the Intellectual Dark Web

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOBa9sRn2zE

What the F*ck is Going On

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkKnOEQlwl4&t=734s

Spirituality and Conspiracy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZHZHygS3Es

Doshin Asks Ken Wilber about Shadows

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_lxS_blPvM

A Zen Master Talks About Jordan Peterson and the Shadow

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABWeA203Q-c

Glitch in the Matrix II: The Origin of the Intellectual Dark Web

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKeMIWVOnbo&t=1763s

Steven White

August 16, 2020

Culture , Politics

The Chaos in the United States Could be Peacefully Quelled

By Steven White June 1, 2020

Law enforcement departments need to show soliarity with protestors protesting the senseless death of George Floyd at the hands of a police officer. It’s natural that people should be angry about the racism and policy brutality that has been an ongoing problem in the United States. It’s ,however, not inevitable that property be destroyed.
I have seen two articles about law enforcement leaders who went out and talked to the protestors in a friendly way and joined them. One was a sheriff in Michigan. Another was the police chief police chief of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. These officials did the right thing. They showed solidarity with the protestors defusing tense situations that could have turned violent.

Right now, protestors are justifiably angry about police brutality. It is up to police to demonstrate that they are on the people’s side – not against them. The initiative for peace needs to come from the police. That’s what we are seeing in the acts of these two law enforcement leaders. The sheriff in Michigan told protestors, “these cops love you!”
they

I would like to see police everywhere in the United States rise up and declare that they understand and sympathize with the anger of protestors and want to make sure things like George Floyd’s murder don’t occur again. It needs to become a nationwide movement. Anger hatred, and violence never cure anger, hatred, and violence. They only make it worse. Using force to put down the riots is not the answer. The division and conflict between police and the people needs to be healed.

To me, it’s an encouraging sign to see law enforcement leaders stepping up and doing the right thing. What’s needed is people who can get beyond the oppositions and polarization and see that both sides in the conflict have valid points and deserve to be heard. The sheriff in Michigan told the protestors that he understood that they wanted to be heard. When people are truly heard, their anger dissipates. Just notice how the sheriff in Michigan defused all the tension in one to two minutes.

Yes, there’s a big problem in the United States with racism. It’s not just a problem in the United States. It’s just perhaps more obvious in the United States because of the difference of color. I have seen it in Turkey as well where a lot of Turkish people hate Kurds, Arabs, and perhaps Greeks. Racism still exists in Germany with skinheads and Neo-Nazi’s.

The essence of racism is the belief that my race is good and other races are bad. I identify with my race and I project all the evil onto other races. It’s a case of collective projection. I believe that my race is all-good and other races are all-bad. Unfortunately, a large number of people are completely caught up in this sort of polarization and projection.

I think it is unhelpful to point at others and condemn their racism without looking into myself to see where I am racist. Collective healing isn’t going to take place through external action. It can come only through each person looking into themselves and owning their own demons. Yes, I’m talking to you! Other people and the external world are never the real problem. All the ills of the world are in our minds first and then they become externalized. So we have to address them from the root.

Life , Science

Scientists are at a loss. Low-magnetic South Atlantic is expanding

By Nathan Alan May 29, 2020 Life, Science

Scientists are at a loss. Low-magnetic South Atlantic is expanding

A new scientific study has revealed that the magnetic anomaly region of the South Atlantic where the intensity of the magnetic field is declining for mysterious reasons has expanded dramatically over the past years.

Scientists are trying to solve the mystery of how this strange phenomenon and its possible effects on humans and life on Earth will form in the future.

More complicated.

The Earth’s magnetic field is essential for life on our planet, as it plays the role of a powerful shield that protects organisms from cosmic radiation and charged solar particles.

The magnetic field is often portrayed as a bipolar magnet that tilts about 11 degrees from the axis of rotation.

But the magnetic anomaly observed by scientists in a vast area between Africa and South America with low magnetic density shows that the Earth’s magnetic field is actually more complex than scientists previously thought.

Researchers from the University of Leeds and the Danish Technical University participated in a new study published in Nature Geoscience at the beginning of May.

The study revealed that the magnetic anomaly area of the South Atlantic continues to evolve and expand according to ESA satellite data.

A mystery.

Although scientists know that the Earth’s magnetic field is created by the movement of molten iron that circulates in the outer nucleus, such as the dynamo of a bicycle, generating electrical currents that in turn create the magnetic field, magnetic depressions and how they occur are a mystery to them, and the time and place of their occurrence cannot be predicted.

But some scientists link the areas of magnetic anomaly to another phenomenon, the reversal of the Earth’s magnetic field when the Earth’s northern magnetic pole becomes in its south and the South Pole in its north.

Unlike the geographical Arctic at a fixed location, scientists have observed since 1831 that the magnetic north’s location changes over time and is moving slowly from the Canadian polar regions towards Siberia.

Rapid change

Since the 1990s, this displacement has gained a speed of between 50 and 60 kilometers per year, compared to less than 15 kilometres previously, which means that the global magnetic model needs to be updated frequently, which is vital for navigation on smartphones, for example.

Research has shown that the reflection of the Earth’s magnetic field occurs every few hundred thousand years, but it is not entirely clear how these reflections can be linked to what is currently happening with anomalies in the South Atlantic, scientists say.

Some scientists have hypothesized that this could be the result of a huge reservoir of dense rocks beneath Africa called the Large African Low Speed Zone.

What is certain, however, is that the anomaly of the South Atlantic does not seem to be static, as it has increased in size since 1970 as it moves westward at a rate of about 20 kilometres per year.

New data provided by esa’s Swarm satellites also showed that a second low-density magnetic centre had emerged over the past five years within this anomaly off the coast of South-West Africa in a split.

Earth Shield Magnetic Field (ESA-ESA)

Is there anything to worry about?

At present, there is nothing to worry about, as the European Space Agency suggests that the most significant effects at present are largely limited to technical failures that can occur to satellites and spacecraft.

This is caused by exposure to a larger than usual amount of charged particles in low-Earth orbit as they cross the magnetic low south Atlantic.

But that doesn’t mean that the importance of this magnetic anomaly should be underestimated, as the Earth’s magnetic field in the past two centuries has lost about 9% of its strength on average.

“The challenge now is to understand the processes at the core of the Earth that are driving these changes,” geophysicist Jürgen Matska of the German Research Center for Earth Sciences tells Science Altert.

Source: NASA, Other News

Life

What’s Wrong with Society: Part Two

By Steven White May 28, 2020

What’s Wrong with Society: Part Two

After reading Part One of this article, you may want to know more about the dynamics in childhood that convince people they have to present a seemingly more acceptable version of themselves which is out of harmony with the way they really are. When caregivers reject certain qualities and behaviors in children and approve of others, they force the child eventually to do the same within themselves. As I explained before, the process of socialization is about internalizing the judgments of caregivers and society. The child learns that in order to be loved and approved, he or she needs to be perfect according to the conditioned standards of caregivers and of society.

Being unable to attain this perfection due to actual objective structural constraints, however, as I explained in Part One, people feel it is imperative at least to present an image of themselves as conforming to the expectations of others. Thus we have a pandemic of dishonest, inauthentic people in society. This situation is so endemic that it appears normal to most people.

The process of socialization, to give it a benign name, fosters splitting the psyche into so-called good and bad parts – positive and negative – or whatever terminology you want to use. The strong tendency is to identify with the positive parts and repress or suppress the negative parts. The nascent person in the process of formation tends to identify with the approved or positive qualities and reject the negative qualities.

The negative qualities or energies, however, do not just go away. Reality is not actually one-sidedly positive. It’s not really possible to be “all-good” or “all-light” and to get rid of the negative pole, which is always necessary to balance the positive pole. The rejected negative qualities tend to come out in various covert ways. It’s actually painful to reject half of reality. Sometimes the negative qualities form complexes which seize control of the nervous system and cause a lot of emotional pain. At such times the person may behave “out of character.” Afterwards, they may say, “I don’t know what came over me.”

One handy mechanism that tends to keep consciousness of the rejected negative or Shadow-side repressed is projection. Projection is when a quality or behavior is rejected in the self, the self sees the quality outside itself in other people and condemns it there. This is the genesis of blame. We see others as embodying the negative qualities that we cannot admit in ourselves.

It often happens that the polarization of the psyche is so extreme that the person develops hatred of others or of whole groups. So strong is the need to see oneself as wholly good and right and without any negativity that one blindly hates and even dehumanizes others. At that point one feels completely justified in treating others badly. Wars start and continue due to demonization of the “enemy” at a collective level. It’s the same mechanism of projection that operates in individuals.

Some people have a hard time keeping the negative qualities totally out of consciousness. Although such people are often perceived as weak and flawed due to their psychological and spiritual struggles, I would actually say that they are the fortunate ones. Although their life will be painful and hard to manage, they are more healthy ultimately than those who easily keep their negative side repressed. They will be forced, to differing degrees, to investigate and deal with the original polarization of the psyche.

When the fragmentation of their psyches is sufficiently painful, they will seek a resolution of the original core wound that almost everyone carries to one degree or another. Recovery requires facing and fully accepting all the emotions and qualities that were originally alienated. Doing so, dismantles the one-sided false-self system and restores the psyche to wholeness and completeness.

Life

What’s Wrong with Society

By Steven White May 25, 2020

What's Wrong with Society?

I would like to address myself to people who feel that there is something “off” about ordinary, conventional social life. If you feel completely comfortable socially and feel that you are happy with your relationships to others, then this article is not for you. You are encouraged to stop reading now.

If, however, you are having problems – maybe you are uncomfortable with other people or with standard social life – then I have some things to say to you. You are not alone, although it may seem that way. There are others who sense that something is badly wrong, but most of them are intimidated into keeping quiet about it. I want to take the lid off of this suppression and talk openly about things you may be sensing but have been unable to put into words. The details may be slightly different from one country or culture to another, but the deep structure is pretty much the same everywhere.

Standard social life is an elaborate pretense! It’s all about projecting the “correct” image. But why? People feel and are taught from an early age that their natural, authentic selves and behavior is not enough – is incorrect or wrong somehow. Now, I know that children are wayward and need some disciple and training, but the way it’s done ends up giving us a false sense of identity.

Here are some examples of what parents and caregivers say to young children. “What’s wrong with you? How many times do I have to tell you? Why can’t you do right? You are doing this to upset me! Why can’t you be more like X? Will you ever learn? Don’t ever say that again! Don’t be a crybaby (mostly to boys)! You are contrary! Why are you being stubborn? How can you be so stupid? What will the neighbors say? You’ve got to get with the program or people won’t like you! Sit up straight! Comb your hair! Don’t talk back to your elders! You’ll do it because I said so! Wipe that stupid grin off your face! Etc. al.

This kind of treatment day after day for four or five years forces most children to abandon their natural, spontaneous, real selves and causes them to adopt a false sense of identity. The mind splits and a critical superego forms whose job it is to tell the person when they are doing or about to do “wrong.” The voice of the critical parent is internalized and developmental psychologists say that by the age of seven the process is complete and the child is said to be socialized. This faulty process is repeated generation after generation.

One of the biggest problems is the fact that the mind that is trying to control and the mind that is to be controlled are the same mind on the same level. It’s a perpetual fruitless struggle and conflict like playing chess with yourself. Humanity-at-large has not noticed this fact. Because of this fundamental conflict, all our attempts at self-improvement are doomed to fail. All it really does is create a mind that is unhappy because it feels it is never good enough and can never really succeed in being like it wants to be.

But we were told by our seemingly godlike parents that we had to be “good” in order to be loved and accepted. We really want to be loved and accepted, so we seemingly have no choice but to keep trying, in the only way we know how, to make ourselves acceptable and presentable. Few people realize why their self-improvement project doesn’t work. So the only thing they know to do is to try harder at the same fruitless process they were taught as children.

Since they can’t really become the ideal person that their parents and superego want, and since they believe it’s essential that they become that ideal person in order to be loved and accepted, the only choice open to them is pretense and hypocrisy. They create a social facade and image that appears to be perfect and happy. This is the genesis of all the falseness and pretense in society.

Although it can be far from easy, the solution to this mess is to give up the self-improvement project. Seeing that it is futile is the first step. Seeing this may require suffering and being frustrated for a long time. It requires a great deal of awareness. The false identity, once it gets control of the psyche in childhood, defends itself with everything it has. It feels that to stop the self-improvement project and self-blame would be death to it, and this is actually the truth. The good news is that the false self was never actually real to begin with. It’s death is not a real loss except the loss of all our suffering. In most cases, the suffering has to become so intense that the false self system gives up and ceases to try to control. When that happens the center of gravity of the psyche returns to the natural, spontaneous self which is real.

The process of healing is the process of surrendering to What Is – both in ourselves and in the world. No matter what happens, if we say, “Thank you very much; I have no complaints,” and mean it, the false self is breached because the false self is the process of resisting What Is. It’s actually futile to rebel against what is already the case. Our resistance can’t undo what has already happened. Our worry can’t prevent the things we fear in the future. When we deeply see this, we can begin to dissolve our resistances and with them the false self-system that creates all our suffering.

Life , Travel

Finding a job abroad

By Jennifer Lipovski May 24, 2020

Got tired of your country? Can’t stand people, who belong to the surrounding your culture? Want to earn more?
It’s time to move!
Where to move?

See the map of the world’s most developed countries:

To Enlarge please click the link below
https://cdn.howmuch.net/articles/1-worlds-wealth-map-9242.jpg

The Steps are:

Select one.
Then go to an official migration site of the country.
See the requirements for different applications and choose the easiest way for yourself.
Not matching? Then choose the application, which requirements you fulfill the best, and work on the ones, which aren’t matching yet.
Contact big international companies, they might help you with the application process.
Pack your bags and go for it.

Good luck!

Life , Travel

Covid-19 – No Travel? You Should Read This

By Diane Kooiman May 21, 2020 coronavirus, Covid-19

Travelling during Pandemic

Covid-19 or Coronavirus outbreak changed everybody’s lives drastically, but it is unquestionable that travellers and adventure seekers were quite affected by the situation.
If you can’t travel because of Coronavirus, we will bring you traveling!

Thanks to our current technology, with just one click you can actually drive through the streets of many nice cities around the world. In fact, you can listen to the local radio as well. Yes, that’s right! While patiently waiting at home and keeping our communities safe, drive&listen can give you an opportunity to travel virtually. Many thanks to Google maps and good quality cameras, and the founder of the app of course.

There were even people making a living flying all around the globe. We hope that soon everything will get better, and we can mindfully enjoy our precious world again. (Hopefully more mindful this time.) After all, taking a break from the craziness and stopping many flights gave Mother Nature a break, and gave us an opportunity to experience a slowdown. But for now, we would like to introduce you to drive&listen to enjoy and soothe your cravings for traveling hoping that it won’t have an opposite effect.

Culture , Life

Benefits of the Coronavirus Lockdowns

By Steven White May 20, 2020 coronavirus

The coronavirus lockdowns have disrupted most people’s routines and way of life. The ways and methods of doing business and operating have changed in important and fundamental ways, even in “essential” occupations.

With the basic structure of our lives thus revamped we are in a position to look at the form our lives took before the changes. Much that was forming and informing our lives was unconscious and automatic – taken for granted when we were caught up in our former lives Now that things are different, we can look back at the way our lives were and evaluate them in ways that weren’t possible for us when we were caught up in them.

One of the big things that happened for most of us is that things got a lot quieter. The traffic noise went way down. Most people had probably become inured to the noise and tuned it out. Have you realized, now that it is gone, how intrusive it was before? It’s as if somebody said, “let’s turn it off for a while!” Have you realized how much easier it is to relax without all that hustle and bustle?

We now have time and space to reflect on what we have been doing and why and to decide where we want to go from here as individuals and collectively. The way things were before was, I believe, engineered to keep us busy running here and there so we wouldn’t have the time to talk to each other deeply and to question the form our collective lives were taking and the purpose, or rather, lack of purpose of it all.

I think we were brainwashed to believe that things had to be the way they were. Yet now, with the coronavirus crisis, many of those things which were considered unquestionable before have changed. One prime example is that many businesses would not allow people to work from home before, but now …. If you look around you can see many examples of formerly “unquestionable” practices which have now changed, which means they were never as unchangeable as we had been led to believe.

I think probably, at this point, many people don’t want things to go back to the way they were, even if that were possible. For instance, I’m guessing many people realize now the value of spending time at home with family rather than working sixteen hour days.

It may be too that many are having a hard time with all this new-found free time. It was possible to avoid facing ourselves and our lives while the rat-race was in full swing. In fact, I would say that the avoidance of facing ourselves was the driving force behind the rat-race. While it may be difficult to turn around and take a good look at ourselves, it’s very necessary. I don’t believe we could have gone on much longer in the way we were going before.

Something had to come along and force us, from the outside, to stop what we were doing long enough for there to be a gap so that we could wake up out of the collective madness that has been plunging our world toward destruction. I believe such things come from an intelligence that is far beyond our comprehension. You don’t have to call it God. You could just as well call it Life or the Great Tao or whatever name you choose. The bottom-line is that this virus is perfectly suited to our situation in every possible way. Yes, it brings suffering and loss, but no transformation worthy of the name ever comes while people are in their comfort-zones. As hard as it may be to hear, we are in need of a good dose of suffering to wake us up and get us to pay attention to our real needs and the needs of the planet.

(to be continued)