How difficult it is to be open about the things that you really think and hold to and subscribe to when people are so inclined to be ADHD Fox News in their reactions to each other (and that includes all of us, I'm afraid, even those of us who have more discriminating media tastes - which to me these days seems to be no media at all, but I digress).
You can say to someone, "I believe X to be true", and yet you know that this doesn't quite fit what you mean, that you hold to the general flavour of X and yet you don't necessarily hold to all the superfluous stuff surrounding X. But it doesn't feel like there's enough time to go into all of that. You feel like you would be boring your fellow listeners who are getting used to snap summations in soundbyte size.
From within that very short space of time in which we have to do anything at all, people hear that you subscribe to the truth of X; they presume that you must also accept all the stuff that surrounds X, or if you're not then you are picking and choosing to suit your own whims. But is that true, or is that just convenient for people who want things to be nicely set up with X always and ever meaning X and its surrounds? Do you have to accept the surrounds of X, when all you really want is X, because these are how X comes packaged? What if you think that the long-ranging-over-centuries discussion about X took a wrong turn in 1794 and went off on a tangent? What if you want to see things as they are, not as they appear to be in their accumulated and untested state and you cannot hold to the stuff surrounding something that you can hold to?
Some people claim that you are like the New Agey sort of person who eats from spiritual cafeterias if you claim the truth of X but discard its fuzzy or mouldy or stupid surrounds. Especially if you find truth helpful and compelling from other camps and places and times than the one your own camp deems is "right" and "safe". Then your own camp of X people view you with mistrust. And it's true, there are some spiritual cafeteria eaters who do not want to follow things down to their roots or to be have any mess but want to concoct their own thing over here, a fluffy thing called F containing bits and pieces of everything but without being earthed, but that's not what I'm talking about either. In fact, what I am talking about is almost the opposite of spiritual cafeteria eating.
Getting to the heart of things is hard work these days. Seems there is fluffy mould surrounding almost everything. I guess if you are really wanting to see things as they are, and you know that things are shakier than we would like them to be, and that your thoughts grow and change over the years and you really can't sit with conviction and say you are "right" and therefore everyone else is "wrong," you are always going to be misunderstood by people who are desperate to feel safe and who therefore do not have longer than 1.3 seconds to entirely process what you are saying, people who presume that they are seeing you as you are, but really they're just seeing you from their own preconceptions. I guess maybe that's why it's so tempting for us all to vaunt ourselves up into ADHD narcissism - we know that other people see us as too small, that they judge us too soon, that they are quick to dismiss and to scapegoat and to hate.
Unfortunately, they are we, if we are going to be honest. We are judged and so we judge and make others down small.
I think the egalitarian model is much more attractive. I'm fucked, you're fucked. I wouldn't be able to correctly summarise you in 1.3 million hours let alone 1.3 seconds so maybe we would come at a safer place if we agree that other people are both much, much bigger than we can imagine even if they have stupid wrong ideas and are stupid Fox News watchers, and that we are much, much smaller than our pride estimates when we're recalibrating our past wrongdoings and much, much bigger in terms of the depth of our true natures, the stuff that gets iceberged out in the small, small world.
Or something like that, sort of :) I think what it comes down to for me is that I need to discard this childish sort of desire to be understood by everybody, for them to see me as I really am. Or then again ... maybe that's not so much a childish desire as a childlike one, and a future hope.
Showing posts with label scapegoating. Show all posts
Showing posts with label scapegoating. Show all posts
Back at work. Listening to a particularly adept professional victim blame everyone else for his pathetic life and his horrible relationship and his shithouse attitude. It's so amazing how NO ONE is responsible for their actions. It's ALWAYS someone else's fault. She made me do it. He made me do it. It's her fault, it's his fault.
Take responsibility for being a tossbag like everyone else is a tossbag! What makes you any different from anyone else?
Thank you God I'm not like that tax collector/sinner/woman/Muslim/loser/drug addict. We all say it. We want to outsource everything. We want counsellors to counsel everyone else 'cos we don't want to get involved and we're not "professionals". We want police forces to maintain law and order because we're shit at relating with each other. We want schools to teach our kids to live out in the world but how can you do that when the world is not theory, not a goddamned book? We want other people to take the blame for the shit we do because other people have done shit to us. Where does it end?
My friend got annoyed at me the other night because I got annoyed at him because he was making a face in response to what I was saying. Okay, so I was talking about wanting to live in an intentional community in Eltham. He was screwing up his face like all people do at hippies. I couldn't help but respond to such an aggressive sort of response to what I was saying, and then HE got mad at ME for getting annoyed in the first place! But I couldn't see how I was responding to HIM, so I was probably just as aggressive as he was. And so when he retaliated to me retaliating to him, we both felt justified in doing it, and we both had a case. Every single police statement is different, every suspect sees things through their own filters. Everyone rewrites their memories and recasts themselves in candlelight when maybe they were standing in energy saving light instead. How does anybody get along ever, at all? How does anyone ever get along with each other when we are such stupid, stupid beings? :) When we all feel vulnerable and exposed, and we all behave badly? And yet we do.
This incessant ongoing blaming is so what the cross speaks to me about these days. There is a way that has been made for us to be able to be honest with God and ourselves and each other. Open hearted honesty from other flawed beings is so healing to watch.
Why is it so hard to admit our faults? Especially Christians. If a life lived in God is so good and wonderful, how come so many of us are unable to hold our shit, to hold the good with the bad, to admit our faults and our flaws? Because the stupid thing is, other people can see our stuff. We're not hiding from anyone.
Fig leaved people, just now we're wearing clothes, that's all.
Where is the freedom? It begins surely in understanding that even if bad people hadn't done bad stuff to us, we would most likely still be tossbags. And just because the bad people have done bad things, this does not mean that we get to abdicate responsibility for our own behaviour. Because unfortunately it seems to be so that being a tossbag comes with the territory. Why can't we just live in the reality of what is instead of trying to force it to be what it isn't?
That same friend and I had an interesting conversation driving over the Westgate Bridge later that same night. There's some sort of railings being constructed along the sides. We wondered if it was in reaction to that man who lost the plot and threw his child over the bridge to her death. Which was awful of course. And he said that he finally realised what the line in American Idiot by Green Day means when it says, "Where everything isn't meant to be okay."
We can't change the world to be different so that people don't throw their kids off bridges. This is what we are, folks, in all our mess and glory. You can't legislate human nature into something prettier than it is. That same legislation, trying to keep us from ourselves, is also what keeps us from the good parts of ourselves as well. Since when did the nanny culture get to prevent us from learning from our own mistakes? We're already good enough at blaming the woman, the man, the serpent. Seems the culture is trying to get us to take the searchlight off of ourselves too.
Anyway, that's enough ranting. I've given myself a headache typing this :) But I've also made myself laugh so yeah :) 'Cos of course the answer to all of this is love. Loving each other even though we're tossbags. Loving each other because we're tossbags and we all need it. Loving eaach other because we are way bigger than all the tossbaggery and we are even sometimes - often - beautiful.
And now, as punishment for writing that, Radio Susie has just begun singing Burt Bacharach numbers. "What the world needs now, is love, sweet love" Blergh :0)
This post was in part inspired by the God Journey podcast I listened to last night where they were talking about this new book that sounds like a good read: Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me). I would link to it if I could, but I can't, because WebMarshall at work will not let me access it, being a time-wasting website I am not meant to be accessing during working hours.
But luckily, it's not like I need to read anything like that anyway. You, however, with your beams and motes, could probably give it a whirl :P
Take responsibility for being a tossbag like everyone else is a tossbag! What makes you any different from anyone else?
Thank you God I'm not like that tax collector/sinner/woman/Muslim/loser/drug addict. We all say it. We want to outsource everything. We want counsellors to counsel everyone else 'cos we don't want to get involved and we're not "professionals". We want police forces to maintain law and order because we're shit at relating with each other. We want schools to teach our kids to live out in the world but how can you do that when the world is not theory, not a goddamned book? We want other people to take the blame for the shit we do because other people have done shit to us. Where does it end?
My friend got annoyed at me the other night because I got annoyed at him because he was making a face in response to what I was saying. Okay, so I was talking about wanting to live in an intentional community in Eltham. He was screwing up his face like all people do at hippies. I couldn't help but respond to such an aggressive sort of response to what I was saying, and then HE got mad at ME for getting annoyed in the first place! But I couldn't see how I was responding to HIM, so I was probably just as aggressive as he was. And so when he retaliated to me retaliating to him, we both felt justified in doing it, and we both had a case. Every single police statement is different, every suspect sees things through their own filters. Everyone rewrites their memories and recasts themselves in candlelight when maybe they were standing in energy saving light instead. How does anybody get along ever, at all? How does anyone ever get along with each other when we are such stupid, stupid beings? :) When we all feel vulnerable and exposed, and we all behave badly? And yet we do.
This incessant ongoing blaming is so what the cross speaks to me about these days. There is a way that has been made for us to be able to be honest with God and ourselves and each other. Open hearted honesty from other flawed beings is so healing to watch.
Why is it so hard to admit our faults? Especially Christians. If a life lived in God is so good and wonderful, how come so many of us are unable to hold our shit, to hold the good with the bad, to admit our faults and our flaws? Because the stupid thing is, other people can see our stuff. We're not hiding from anyone.
Fig leaved people, just now we're wearing clothes, that's all.
Where is the freedom? It begins surely in understanding that even if bad people hadn't done bad stuff to us, we would most likely still be tossbags. And just because the bad people have done bad things, this does not mean that we get to abdicate responsibility for our own behaviour. Because unfortunately it seems to be so that being a tossbag comes with the territory. Why can't we just live in the reality of what is instead of trying to force it to be what it isn't?
That same friend and I had an interesting conversation driving over the Westgate Bridge later that same night. There's some sort of railings being constructed along the sides. We wondered if it was in reaction to that man who lost the plot and threw his child over the bridge to her death. Which was awful of course. And he said that he finally realised what the line in American Idiot by Green Day means when it says, "Where everything isn't meant to be okay."
We can't change the world to be different so that people don't throw their kids off bridges. This is what we are, folks, in all our mess and glory. You can't legislate human nature into something prettier than it is. That same legislation, trying to keep us from ourselves, is also what keeps us from the good parts of ourselves as well. Since when did the nanny culture get to prevent us from learning from our own mistakes? We're already good enough at blaming the woman, the man, the serpent. Seems the culture is trying to get us to take the searchlight off of ourselves too.
Anyway, that's enough ranting. I've given myself a headache typing this :) But I've also made myself laugh so yeah :) 'Cos of course the answer to all of this is love. Loving each other even though we're tossbags. Loving each other because we're tossbags and we all need it. Loving eaach other because we are way bigger than all the tossbaggery and we are even sometimes - often - beautiful.
And now, as punishment for writing that, Radio Susie has just begun singing Burt Bacharach numbers. "What the world needs now, is love, sweet love" Blergh :0)
This post was in part inspired by the God Journey podcast I listened to last night where they were talking about this new book that sounds like a good read: Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me). I would link to it if I could, but I can't, because WebMarshall at work will not let me access it, being a time-wasting website I am not meant to be accessing during working hours.
But luckily, it's not like I need to read anything like that anyway. You, however, with your beams and motes, could probably give it a whirl :P
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