Sunday, November 11, 2012

Anomie and you

anomie
n 1: personal state of isolation and anxiety resulting from a lack of social control and regulation
2: lack of moral standards in a society
Source: WordNet (r) 1.7
Or
anomie
an·o·mie [an-uh-mee]
noun Sociology.
a state or condition of individuals or society characterized by a breakdown or absence of social norms and values, as in the case of uprooted people.
Source: Dictionary.com
This concept of anomie is one that is targeted at individuals who are the basis for society. Social isolation, societal removal of norms, and the result of them create a more isolated set of individuals that no longer work as a cohesive society. This trend pre-dates the internet and was worrying sociologists for decades long before you ever get to Facebook, Myspace or 'social media'. One of the causes for concern in those days was the concept of 'media' being an isolation system that left the individual with few tools to reach out on the problems of society. The telephone is person-to-person, the television, radio and film are one-to-many and neither of these offered the capacity to actually get mass interaction amongst individuals. What these shared were an isolating interposition of technology turning individuals into passive viewers of information or at least being able to deal with a single other person from the comfort of your kitchen or bedroom while talking.

Movies, while seen together in a theater, were only a 'social' event if you actually were able to socialize with others afterwards, and that was limited to art house venues or similar small venues that gathered like-minded viewers together and then had a post-viewing experience to actually share the experience and find out what others thought about that shared experience. Big Box Multiplexes, the multi-screen venue, and even the large and ostentatious theaters of the 1920's and 1930's, while having lovely settings, did not offer the ability to interact and even discouraged it by having the ushering of audiences out so the next one could then see the film.

Media, be it newspaper, radio, television, film, or any other process of presentation of information to a mass audience lacked the ability to bring individuals together to actually discuss topics: media is anomic to the individual by definition as it only presents information in a relatively static way and even the interaction with a known other on a telephone is not the same as being together physically.

Being INTP

INTP is a personality type derived from using the descriptive Myers-Briggs test(s) and is one of the earliest attempts to do this to help individuals understand just why they act, think and feel in the way that they do, and there is The Myers & Briggs Foundation dedicated to this task and resources to help you find out about what your personality type actually is. Actually there are lots and lots of MBPT tests out there, from quick and easy to the multi-session ones that take a few days. What you get are Type Indicators (MBTI) for your personality, which are rough outlines of what the basis for your personality actually is. This does not mean you adhere to it in all instances, in fact no one does because personality has many different modes of expression because of individuation, so that you have a unique personality type that is individual to you. While identical twins will often have many of the same personality characteristics, because they are individuated they will have slightly different responses via their personality that are distinct to them, even when having a high degree of similarity.

The rough basis of the MBTI is based upon dichotomies of personality preferences as expressed by individuals (that is not only expressed as in 'taking the test' but as how traits drive certain responses) that serve as the basic four letter encapsulation of one's personality. There are refinements to the test, yes, but they are refinements to the rough outline of one's MBTI. They are as follows:

Extraversion/Introversion (E/I) – Extraversion is outward turning, while Introversion are inward turning personality types. This set is first and primary and helps to determine the main social outlook of individuals via the MBTI.

Sensing/Intuition (S/N) – How do you perceive the world and gather information about it? The Sensing (S) person takes in what is around them via their senses and trusts that as this data has meaning in a concrete way. The Intuition (N) person takes in data and then abstract it and associate it with other information to find out how current information fits into a larger scale of information.

Thinking/Feeling (T/F) – These are judgmental functions of personality. Thinking for judgment allows for decisions to be made based on the rational factors presented by such data utilizing an understanding of interactions between events by rules such as causation and consistency within a given framework of known information. Feeling for judgment utilize empathy and internal weighting to attempt to get a harmonization of what has happened and consider such things within the framework of how it affects other people.

Judging/Perception (J/P) – These two are lifestyle determinates and they serve in reference to the other functions. Judging personality determinates have a preference to settle matters and for Extraverts can be the dominant mode of personality, while for Introverts it is an auxiliary to their personality to seek conclusion only after introspection. Perceptive types utilize the framework of keeping options open and that what is set today may not be the best way to do things. Again the driver for Extraverts with Perceptive is that openness to keep understanding open as a dominant function, while for Introverts it is an auxiliary function. For Introverts either of these can become a driver, but only when the internally understood worldview is unsettled by them.

As an INTP, then, these modes put the Introversion thinking as dominant to the Extraverted type, utilized a dominant Intuition perception over the inferior Sensing type, have a Thinking dominant and Feeling auxiliary judgmental type, and utilize Perception over Judging as an auxiliary to my Introversion personality type. I have a flexible world view that must have not just hard data, but have conformity between such data and known frameworks via abstraction of data for a coherent world structure.

Or, as one of the books looking at how often personality types put it, the INTP appears in less than 5% of the population and appears to be a space alien to everyone else.

Anomie and Personality

The vast majority of the population is of basic Extraversion type: gregarious, able to get along with each other, socially needing other people and generally those having a better time working with people than working alone.

Our media enforces just the opposite of that. As I see it (P) that is not in accordance with social norms (T) which creates a disassociation amongst individuals who are not temperamentally suited to such activities (N) and no good for anyone in such a situation (I). That is a worldview expression based on the information and derived abstraction of it utilizing observations of society and individuals to derive an end view that is open to change but serves as a foundational piece for then putting forth that something is horribly out of whack.

No good shall come of that.

The G.O.D. Theorem

The G.O.D. Theorem (as I call it, there are other names for it) is pretty simple: everything was better in the Good Old Days. If you watch any of Bill O'Reilly raging against the machines, you know exactly what I'm talking about, and his tirades against the use of modern technology is both deplorable and comedic, simultaneously. All this technology is killing society, is the short of the BOR rant, and it has been heard for ages about pool halls, pinball arcades, that decadent artwork that actually put perspective into paintings and the Waltz. All of that has been driving the morally upright society downhill, forever and this modern technology will be the end of us all.

Hey! I'm the guy who just said that no good will come of technology, right?

Yes, yes I am, but I am telling you in a bit more refined mode than BOR and NOT telling you pithy little tips of the day nor bemoaning about the harmful crudities of society caught on YouTube, not fit for children, save the teasers which show the worst of it and aren't fit for children, but you don't tell anyone about those. That is a bit on the hypocritical side utilized to build audiences. Building an audience that sits isolated in their homes, watching the program... on a machine... which is evil in the BOR mindset. Don't ask me how that works, I am clueless.

No, what I am pointing out is from my prior bit on the media as a dissociative factor as it is meant for passive or at most response only interaction. Both of these put individuals in isolation and passive response, very much like the educational system that emphasizes 'learning' (passive intake of information) instead of critical thinking (analyzing information to put it into a contextual framework). That dates back to the 1920's and the Progressive movement's March Through the Institutions where Progressive thought would be pushed out at every venue available to disrupt the coherent society and reform it into a passive edifice under hierarchical control. The modern schooling movement of the late 19th and early 20th century helped to foster this as did the Dewey Decimal system which attempted to order information and teaching along strict 'scientific' lines (that is to say lines that Progressives liked, instead of lines towards creative analytical thought).

The main institution for this societal change would be via politics and that meant having to break up the old internal party structure and put in a Boss (top-down) based system. This would be utilized to slowly remove the easy association of individuals to their local party system and seek to support apparatchiks over true representatives at all times in all political venues in each political party. By utilizing governmental power granted to it by the people, government would then begin remolding the people and society to the ends of those who controlled government, who saw themselves as 'enlightened' and you as ignorant. These were the idea put forward by Edward Bernays via the conceptualization of Propaganda which he gained from his advertising background. If you want the man to blame for getting women to smoke, it is Mr. Bernays.

Edward Bernays saw that the subversion of choice preferences for goods could be translated into politics. In politics advertising would be utilized to 'shape' opinion and form it within society to the benefit of those benevolent know-it-alls that should be the ones ruling over you and making decisions for you. He worked with Woodrow Wilson and others and only came to realize what he had actually created after WWII and the explicit use of internal Propaganda by the Nazi Party to have passive social distancing of society from the death camps be put in place after years of advertising against Jews as a whole. And yet that end is not out of the normal course of events when society has individuals get a feeling of isolation, powerlessness and a morally perverted sense pushed at them as 'normal'.

That is anomie.

And it is pushed by the passivity of the educational system, the power structure of the political parties and sustained by socially anomic media that discourages physical interaction save for the most base sort of sexual distraction. This enforced isolation and lack of external social contacts in a real, physical way leaves those using Extraversion with few outlets and those that are left are the most base sort and encourage no thinking whatsoever.

If you have a personality type with an E at the beginning, then you are the target and you are not temperamentally suited by your personality to handle enforced Introversion. This is done with malice aforethought since the late 19th century and the goal is to reshape society but its actual outcome is to liquidate society and remove moral and firmly rooted concepts for the basis of society from individual support. You are isolated and taught to be docile, to have an imposed exterior mental framework of pre-decided moral relativism fed to you, to have any moral standard run down, to no longer invite critical thinking about societies and their relative value but to put forward that all societies (even those that encourage infanticide) as being 'equal' and that you are powerless and should only entertain the most base thoughts towards your fellow man.

I am an Introvert and know how to handle my own internal world domain and situation. Self-imposed isolation and having few friends is not a problem to me and gives me leeway to decide just who is and isn't a friend and doesn't leave me grasping at any 'Friend' in the cyber-way as a means to uphold my personality needs for Extraversion. Because I have a firm reference basis built up of observation and yet one that is flexible to all of mankind, I can utilize my auxiliary traits to understand just what the goal and object of such things are. I can then utilize an understanding of history and tell you that enslavement is the BEST end scenario for individuals at the end of this and the total decay and collapse of modern civilization the WORST end for this scenario. And I can reference at least 3 'Dark Ages' (pre-Ming Dynasty China after the takeover by non-Chinese creating social isolation, Late Bronze Age with Egypt, the Hittites, Achaean Greeks and arguably all those effected by the Sea People, and the end of the Roman Empire) to demonstrate that enforced isolation (social or physical) means that individuals are ill-prepared for what comes when their world is reshaped by external events.

Note that this is Perception talking not Judging: the interior framework of world understanding that I have must have a high degree of correlation to the exterior world so that I can survive. I am willing to do the hard work, hunt down sources no one is even willing to talk about to find answers and I share them with you and encourage you to seek them out, read them, and then examine your own internal worldview to see if where we are in the modern world can come to ANY good end. What I do that is more than BOR is to hand you alternatives, outlets and other means to deal with things, although I also encourage you to get out to coffee shops, go out to see real, physical friends and to really think long and hard about your social valuation structure.

Family, Friends, Associates

My basic structure for social needs and interaction on a personal level are simple and stated above.

Family, first – these are the closest associates you have and biology is only a part of it, as this also includes those others that you have mutual agreement with to share the most personal aspects of your life. If Marriage is the basis for the Nation, then Family is the first social structure of the Nation we make. You can't help the family you were born into, but you can help who it is you pull in close to you in your life. If you value your online 'Friends' that you have never met, that you have never physically associated with, that you have not shook hands with face to face, then, not in a Judging way but in a Perceiving way, you have a problem. I am not here to Judge you, I am here to say that you social structure and Extraverted nature is being used to isolate you and this will cause you to be dependent on the first thing offered to you. It is intentional, malicious and means no good end for you... that is the framework and pattern you get when you passively allow these things to happen to you. You are in extreme danger, personally, and by not being an active part of the physical society, you are part of the destructive Progressive methodology to control even you cyber 'Friends'. I'm sorry if I'm the one that has to break this to you. There is good in having such 'Friends', but only if you actually invest time, effort and real physical location displacement to meet them and understand them directly, physically, as individuals.

Friends, second – the real thing, the ones where you get in a horrible accident, the family is on vacation and have just one or two people to turn to for help. The person who will get to the hospital to see you. The person that will bail you out of jail, give you a ride home, and tell you that you don't have to pay them, just do your duty to show up and they will stand by your side. That person is a FRIEND. And as someone who has gone friendless most of his life, I can tell you that such a person isn't to be passed off lightly. If you ignore this person (or if damned lucky a handful of them) for your cyber 'Friends' you are asking for a world of hurt even if you are interacting with these people as cyber 'Friends' because only the physical bonds of common projects sustain friendship. Trust me on that if you can't figure it out for yourself. Because I am Introverted and self-reliant, I damn well do my best to avoid such situations: you can't. Being basically friendless by choice is one thing, disdaining that person that will get to the hospital to make sure you are OK is lethal. If you lose that person, you have lost your back-up and if you aren't thinking ahead of time to get other back-up in place, then you will be dead in that crisis. Physically spend time with your friends, especially those close friends as an Extravert you need it and deserve it and so do they. Even those Introverts who are your friends... especially them as they are more likely to show up when NO ONE ELSE WILL. Just let them know they are your back-up, OK?

Associates, third – The people you meet up with in your life on a relatively frequent basis at work or at school. You have little choice but to have such associates unless you are: an author, run a sole proprietor business, or are in a cave living off of investment income. Authors who work alone get much say in how their works get distributed, and thus have the ability to choose who they will work with to a great extent. Running your own business and being your own boss and employee means you do have work contacts, yes, but they tend to be commerce related and not a daily recurring physical meeting situation. Then there is Ted Kaczinski, Howard Hughes and the totally bugged out that are self-sufficient and are rarely seen. If you aren't any of those, and do have daily contacts in business or school, then you have associates: those people you associate with frequently. This also includes church organizations, charitable work, helping to run a scout troop, and a whole host of activities from sports to games to reading circles and everything in between that you do for a social life. Your co-workers are those people you may go out and blow off steam after work, fulfilling a good social function and decompressing from the day to be sociable in the rest of your life. These also tend to be cyber 'Friends' that you may interact with via video, instant messaging or text messaging with or without images. This is by no means an unimportant category of people in your life, but they are in that next shell out and the least tied to you even when you physically meet up on a regular basis.

All of these people, plus the casual acquaintances, are a necessary and vital part of staving off anomie in one's life and help to gain some social grounding for you in this life. And while you may be in the situation where you have no choice but to spend time with Associates as a majority of your time, they in no way make up for Family and Friends. All three are critical to all humans, save the Kaczinski types, of course, but everyone needs them in different amounts and spending too much time with groups of people can even be stress inducing to Introverts, who tend to take the rest of humanity in smaller and measured doses. As humans grew up and got acculturated to each other through history, from pre-historic times to present, there are strong bonds that all people form to emotionally sustain them and give them moral and ethical roots in society. I stress physical meeting because there is no substitute for them: actually being in someone's direct presence has physical, psychological and emotional feedback into your psyche that is, generally, positive.

Just don't save up negative feelings for Thanskgiving and Christmas time with your family. Having positive time together as a family with friends is one of the most important things that can be done: let the preachers do the preaching that everyone wants to hear, not what you need to get off your chest or pontificate about. You are better than that. If you have bothered to learn self-restraint, that is.

The Body Politic

You participate in the Body Politic even if you haven't registered to vote, disdain the political system, and generally decry it at all turns. You are a member of society and are to be considered part of the Body Politic no matter how little you want to have to do with it.

Using the G.O.D. Theorem, I can state that there used to be a different era of politics that were not centered on elections, not centered on candidates, and were centered on the positive social impact of being in a political party that met up as smaller units for social gatherings. There are very, very, very few positives in growing up in a socialist leaning family, let me tell you that right off. In fact the only great aspect was seeing how the traditional, old-line socialists actually ran their political lives together at party meetings. Party meetings were things like: barbecues, a day at the beach, spending a day to celebrate one of the respected people in the party chapter on their birthday, stuff like that. Maybe 3 meetings a year, tops. The total time spent on politics at a typical 5-7 hour meeting was 1 hour or less, usually with a speech or two. You have to give the old line socialists credit for continuing on a tradition that had been lost in the late 1960's and early 1970's by the mainstream parties. But then the old-line, First International Socialist types had speeches on actual political outlook, dogma and not about plans or policy, by and large. Really, what sane person would attend a nice day at the beach to talk about the intricacies of tax policy or which programs are actually doing any good? Those get shuffled off to meeting rooms, run by party apparatchiks... and that is in the mainstream political parties as well as the old line socialists. No one wants to see how political sausage is made, these days.

With the shift in party power in the mainstream parties from wards, precincts and districts to the higher level offices until the National offices came to run the party, also came the distancing of people from actually discussing politics as a moral, ethical and popular matter. Political parties used to be about ideals and moral viewpoints, not about getting a slice of the power pie. The Body Politic only works well when there is a healthy discourse and intercourse amongst individuals and parties based on ideology, dogma, and arguing the basics of each to see how viewpoints that differ lead to different conclusions. It is society that creates the requirement for government by having a commonality of understood law amongst all members of society, and Nations are formed to differentiate societies due to the ideological, ethnic, religious and moral differences between them.

To unmoor individuals from this connection, those connections must be devalued, slowly removed and the ability of individuals to have say over the Body Politic and the organ of society we call 'government' must also be distanced. This is generally not a fast process and takes much time to degrade and demoralize society via other organs of education, church and the law. Government is created not to think for society, but to be a Punisher and ensure that those that would attack society are punished. It is given power to do those things, but they are safeguarding powers, not productive powers. For all the great edifices put up by government, they come at the expense of human liberty and freedom and the larger the edifice the greater the expenditure in lost productivity to gain it. Necessary infrastructure is to be created and safeguarded as directed by society through government for the benefit of all members of society and the welfare of society as a whole. This requires active participation in the political process to ensure that government only safeguards society and does not think that it is the determinative organ of society.

When government assumes that latter role we have various names for it: tyrannical, authoritarian, and imperial. Those individuals that wish to remove differences across all society are putting forward an imperial dogma as the ones doing the pushing are also the ones doing the deciding on what, really, you need in the way of liberty and freedom. Similarly those trying to liquidate national boundaries are trying to homogenize mankind to end its differences and reduce mankind to the lowest common moral denominator which, when done across cultures, is called savagery. The very worst components of all cultures, taken as the base of all human culture, is a savage thing and it is the conscious effort to move away from infanticide, slavery and so on, that gives a higher moral standing to those who eliminate such things in their own society. Yet this is diminished in 'moral relativism' that says that all good things are only good on a sliding scale and not a positive good in and of themselves.

This end is reached by starting to alienate individual from government by utilizing government's punitive powers against individuals of a certain group or class. Income tax was put into place on a class basis to 'tax the rich' and would 'never go above 7%'. Yet within 7 years it went to 70%, and still the insatiable appetite of government was not assuaged. Also demonized were the 'fat cat' tycoons of the trusts: Carnegie, Rockefeller, and those who sought to purchase corrupt politicians to their cause. While the anti-trust act was passed to break up the large trusts, the large banks counter-attacked because of the problem government had in funding itself. JP Morgan floated loans to the US government and prior to WWI the largest bankers in the US got together to put together legislation to put a Federal Reserve run by them into legal form, via the Progressive banner. The very types of trusts Progressives decried in industry, were most amenable to them in banking and their reach, to this day, is much larger than any or all of the tycoons in business combined. But you will not hear their modern day counterparts talking about breaking such an establishment or member banks up as they are 'too big to fail'. If the public had gotten any word of this legislation, at the time, it would not have passed. The public was not consulted, however, because the new Progressives didn't want the public to know of the deal that went down. Really, parties are only for passing legislation, not representing people, right?

With the Anti-Trust Acts, Federal Reserve and Income Tax, the Progressives had already changed the basis of government to exclude popular oversight and distance government from the Body Politic and society as a whole. It was an intentional set of acts to start creating anomie and isolate the individual by class, by economic status and to then punitively utilize the tax code to further isolate those that politicians didn't like. The media played its role as purveyor of information from government, but rarely, if ever, serves as a feedback instrument past that era of partisan newspapers that populated all sides of the political spectrum. By choosing who is and is not worthy to propagate information, government chooses the propagandists who then change their tune to better suit what government wants purveyed. You have little to no say in this, it is taken from your hands intentionally and you are no longer taught about your right to publish as part of your freedom of speech. It is implied that the freedom of the press is held by the press, not by the people, and yet it is the people who set up the organs that create the press, not the other way around.

The goal of this agenda, started over a century ago, is to install a small group of Elites as those who will dictate your life to you via government. If you depend on government for 'retirement', medical care, and even something like surviving a disaster, then you are no longer doing the basics necessary to secure your own life and survival. Such programs are sold as one thing, that is being a positive good, but they come at a cost of productivity, lost investment opportunity and having you as a thinking, vital member of society. Instead the individual becomes a mere cluster of group overlaps where any single group might be demonized to distract from the work and lacks of the Elites. When you group together to 'protest' against 'banksters' you are no longer holding government to account for it NOT allowing the process of justice work its ends on them. A bailed out company is one that is inefficient, poorly run and no matter how big it is, deserves to go through hard and deep restructuring of all of its elements just to survive. When allowed to tell people what energy is good and what energy is bad, then the most efficient and economical forms of energy can be marginalized so as to jack up the cost of actually having a modern life until the economy grinds to a halt and the dissociative media can soothe you by letting you know that this was the fault of this or that evil company, not your fault for helping to foster such government which wishes to impoverish you after driving you apart from your fellow man and making you dependent upon an authoritarian government that changes how you learn, what you learn and diminishes the ability to think critically.

As an individual I do not sit in judgment of you but tell you of what I perceive and the changes in the course of the world due to the structure of how society works and what part in it you play or do not play. When you hand over government by not even participating in its functioning, then you are giving the assent of apathy to have your life dictated to you by others. You could have a say, you could create a vibrant society that is rich in thought and discussion, and you could hold government to account to yourself and your fellow citizens by actually being a citizen and doing the job of a citizen. That job requires thinking and not just superficially but the deep and profound thinking of what it actually means to be you beyond distractions from media and seeking an easy life of doing what you are told by a set of Elites you do not elect but assent to by being passive. This passivity creates a frail society, a weak society and one that then gains fewer and less robust points of failure, until only a few are left that have no back-up, no capacity to respond to any failure because they all must do those things which you no longer do. And then there is a failure that cascades and your world disappears as the complex systems have gained simplistic governance that has a reach that is vast and a grasp of very little at all. That governance will seek to vilify and displace blame from itself so that you will be angry at anything, anyone, any group but those who have claimed so much and now can perform nothing and fail.

In anomie the individual becomes dependent, all moral decisions including that of which to sustain, life or death, becomes equal as all morals are rendered to have no value. That cannot sustain a society. That cannot sustain a government of any sort as you no longer self-govern. And those who fostered this have forgotten that they sit atop this set of vast and complex systems and for all they say they do not understand that complexity one whit better than those they are trying to control. When such vast societies fail they fail for the rich and poor alike, and while the rich might gain a cushion from their wealth, their very lives have the exact, same value as the very poorest who bear the brunt of their decisions. Soon there are fewer wealthy, fewer poor, and society is reduced by fire and iron to base survival where those who think and can plan are left to pick up the pieces to try and create a better world out of ruins. That is how such plans end as raw power is not competent in anything, save savagery. In that it excels because it is loosed from the bounds of having to weigh and judge towards civilized ends and is no longer held in check by citizens, but is used over mere subjects who are just subject to power, forgetting that they are its very author.

You cannot forget what you have not been taught. Sadly the Elites suffer this as badly in their quest for power. Once your life becomes all about you, then you are the absent author of power, the absent creator of society and the present instigator of your impoverishment by doing nothing to stop it on your own behalf. One cannot be sustained without work and without fear of outcomes: these two things do not go together and allow survival of society.

I prepare and plan for the failure of my fellow man writ large.

I do my part in warning and in letting you know that thinking, while difficult, is worth it as it is the creative process necessary to have a society that upholds your right to think. I see the destructive ends of anomie applied to my fellow man and what its effects are over time and point them out. That is my duty as a citizen to my fellow countrymen and as someone who loves his fellow man globally. I can still do that even with what I see happening around me because judgment is open-ended, adaptable and what is as it is can change. If you believe that being civilized is easy, then I ask that you look at where such ease ends and point out that those ends are savagery. I will, however, not step on the path of savagery with my fellow man and must point out the better, harder, tougher, nastier and yet more fulfilling way that allows you to be the great author in the hardest work of all: civilization.

You have been lied to not just as an individual, but your parents and grandparents and great-grandparents as well. Fed a belief that is destructive to self and society for generations, we are now near the end of that anomie that it has fostered. You have not been taught the basics and, instead, learn only to be dependent upon power held by the Punisher which is authored by us all, and it is base and raw in every instance, at every turn, and in every way. Power is a slavering beast inside us and manifests in that one organ of society that must process the rough and harsh people who forget what it means to be civilized. That is not the brain of society, but that most base organ that is yet so essential to the health of society. It grows cancerous through inattention, spreads its cancer when unchecked and when it claims to be the author of itself, then its true author is reduced to subjugation to it. Thus are the Elites turned into the savages they so desire you to become. That takes work to stop with your fellow man, and it cannot be done without you. For you are also the author of Hope. Unfortunately she got stuck at the bottom of the box and someone has to reach in and help her out after all the demons of savagery have been loosed upon the world and this task cannot be done alone. You must change to get hope, not ask for hope and change inverted for it does not and cannot work that way.

Hope is not bestowed, it is reached for.

Hope does not arrive upon a litter borne up by vast multitudes, but alone, unclothed and shivering when she must be helped up from the box of terrors.

Hope is not released but must be set free by those who change their viewpoint and will to no longer indulge themselves but to offer a hand of kindness to her with their fellow man.

Hope is many things.


Hope is not a strategy.

Hope is not delivered it is built.

Hope is not the product of government, but its dearest enemy for she offers to hold it accountable for its deeds.


You are the author of Hope.

I hold my hand out to you to help you out of the box of terrors.

There is a better way and you are the light of your own life and of our own world once out of that box of horrors and to love those around you and not demonize them for not being you.

I say that not in judgment of you but for the simple fact that it is true.

It takes effort to step out of that warm, dark, and lethal box and a lifetime of work to stay out of it as it is so warm, so dark, so cozy, and if you stay too long the horrors then put the top back on the box and then you are dead and Hope extinguished.

I ask you unleash the power of Hope in yourself, to hold the Hope enslavers to their deeds, to free yourself from the shackles of dark comfort and ill ends and to transform the world together by holding a hand out to the oppressed and a shield against the savage.

You cannot fail me.

You can only fail yourself.

And in my deepest love of you I do not want to see that happen.

2 comments:

Peregrine John said...

I'm not sure what's up with the formatting, but I'm only getting the first part of each graf, sometimes cutting off partway through a letter.

A Jacksonian said...

John - I did a reformat... blogger is doing a 'new' system which, unfortunately, has a few settings that cannot be globally changed. It is messing with my formatting no end since the 'new' system went in.