The Rival Angels Of Our Nature

 The most important moment in this interview is at

 Time index 8:34

"There is not a theory. 
[never just 1 specific theory] 

"(Their narrative) contradicts itself all the time. 

(For example)
One minute, Covid is a bio-weapon. The next minute, it's (just only) a cold.  

They never try to resolve it (their own contradictions)." 

--

So now why do I say this was the most important observation? 

She is noticing the fact that (for such-minded people) it's never really about truth, nor even a coherent view of the matters they rumble on about. 

They are expressing two extremes;
their fears and their egos. 

Whenever their fears run to "What if X?",
X becomes fact.

As society's self-appointed sentinels,
they sound the alarm.

Whenever their fears run to "What if Y?" (opposite theory of X),
Y becomes fact. 

Here, again, they sound the alarm. 

They never notice that they have switched from X to Y; and back again later.

Nor do they care. Because it's never about facts, nor logical reasoning, nor ethics. 

They imagine it's about all of that. But it's really not.

   

Enlarged amygdala;

hyper-stimulated by predatory media shamans in daily ritual rain dance.

 Mental skies ignite with brilliant flashes of fear and violence. 

All too selective in which homes they should level and which lives they should end, ...

Perpetually panicked clouds of darkened spirits  

thunder from storms that rage within. 

Fear.

Fear of being controlled by enemies.

Fear of losing the comforts of their "absolutely and exclusively right" foundations of identity. 

Fear of some 'lesser person' getting something they didn't earn. 

Fear of blurry figures on the horizon.

Devious enemies are coming for them and for "their" stuff.  

Better the contemptable 'lesser people' should suffer and die.

Truth, for the righteous, is always a feeling;
a feeling deep in their bones. 

--

I've seen this up close and personal. 

I've seen my own haters alternating frantically between mutually exclusive theories about my thoughts, intentions, and actions. 

I've seen them somehow totally overlook how "the truth" can't be both of their imagined narratives.

I've seen them resolute in the idea that I must be up to something because I'm evil. And I must be evil because I'm up to something. 

Often, it started with me .. presuming to be worthy of health, life, and love.

They hated that. 

To them, all such things should be reserved for "the worthy". 

At the core of it all?

Cultural Narcissism's "transactional values". 

Narcissists have what's called "transactional values".

It's the only framework they have for understanding the value of anything; even life itself.

This is why so many Narcissists find Christianity so resonant with their own intuitions.

It makes sense to them that people must either "earn" personal value and personal rights,
or (if they can't) ... "be purchased" by a powerful male who can GIVE them value in trade for the services they provide (mostly to his ego). 
 
This is what gave my ex (Theresa) a sense of value.

Jeremy was a blue-collar man.
He wasn't her first choice.
She wasn't even remotely attracted to him.
But he had pre-established clout within her social network.

She was a covert clinical Narcissist (more accurately, a "Dark Triad"). 

I had lost all patience with her games.
And she was tired of feeling so empty. 

He promised to give her a sense of worth
in trade for
trad-wife services. 

So she married him. 

In truth, he was not a powerful person.

He was (and always will be) a violently insecure child.

He never put in the work it takes to become ethically strong. 

But at the time,
he was a prison guard.

A lot of those prisoners were in prison for especially heinous crimes. 

That allowed him the opportunity to feel virtuous by comparison to the prisoners he controlled.

Set a very low bar.
Step right over it.

It also gave him the superficial appearance of being powerful, because of all the big bad men he wielded power over.

The whopping $18 bucks an hour he made as a glorified security guard with no special skills ...
also meant a steady paycheck.

That afforded him the chance to pretend being a grownup as a family's "man of the house".

She used him as a cuckold to raise other men's offspring. 

All the while, she cheated him, 
got pregnant by someone else,
and he never realized it.
So he ended up raising (yet another) child that wasn't his. 

But he offered the one thing she thought she needed.

She perceived that he had earned his way into being a valuable human.

She didn't think she could have any value
except for
whatever someone (anyone valuable) could grant her;
in trade for her services. 

At the time, I wasn't in a position to purchase her respect;
nor any basic human rights.

Nor was I willing to pretend that I should.

I absolutely did earn her respect.
But everything I provided that a healthy person would find immensely valuable ... meant nothing to her.

She needed a story to identity with.
And it had to be one that a hyper-Conservative society would dignify;
because that's the values-paradigm that she was raised with.

She knew that her adoptive mom and stepdad were super evil predators.
And she realized it was THEIR values system she was trying to satisfy.

But she was desperate to ease the powerful empty ache where her soul should be.

So she found a man with a similar personality as her stepdad;
 to help define "who" she is in the world. 

They tried every method of peer-bonding they knew of.

They role-play bonded with the "husband/wife/parents roles.

They sex-bonded.

They even used me as a way to hate-bond with each other.

Everything they tried helped a little.

Nothing they tried helped enough.

But they weren't going to realize how much an enemy they were to each other ... until they were done focusing on me.

This was one of the many reasons I eventually stopped trying to work out something amicable for the kids' sake.

It's really not possible to co-parent with monsters. 
But I could at least spare myself further indignities and dangers.

 I was a "them".
They were the "us".

In their eyes,
the laws and ethics of our land were really only meant for the proper "us".

 Our laws aren't worded that way.
Our society doesn't even speak that way. 
But my haters reasoned that such "truths" are implied. 

During the course of my great journey,
I've had certain specific and rational interests.

Among these?
* To be a rightly respected parent in the life of children I loved (and who loved me).

* Fair access to education, employment, 

and essential health services.

* To be not-abused by anyone (not even licensed healthcare providers).

* To speak with the same practical limits of speech (no more; no less) as everyone else. 

 etc..

 

Predators behave badly; 

in gross violation of the laws of our nation and the ethics of our species. 

It's how they want to behave. 

But in order to keep being able to do as they please,
they also need to avoid accountability.

They imagine their evils are justified as righteous.

After all, they were only ever doing whatever it took to pre-emptively safeguard their personal and collective interests from a terrible "them".  

In every such encounter, 

I was thinking cooperatively.

My haters were thinking competitively. 

I was honoring all-involved as equals.

They were offended by the audacity of equality. 

I was being unrealistically idealistic.

They were embracing the truths of the animal kingdom; 

where Might Makes Right and "good" is whatever they can trade for the pleasures of body and ego.   

Time and time again,
my enemies had enough power to win the day

and then to write the history unchallenged. 

Counting on the better angels of their nature to win out,

I kept naively thinking that mine could sway theirs. 

My thinking was, to coin a popular leftist trope, very "Starfleet". 

But theirs was decisively not.

["Here we come upon a terrible facet of ethically asymmetric warfare: when your enemy has no scruples, your own scruples become another weapon in his hand."

-Sam Harris]

Having the power to take and destroy 

somehow meant they were "right" to. 

 Only then
could they rest easy. 

To justify it all, they would assist each other in weaving fantasy narratives.

Cooperative lies become perceptual reality. 

 This is the true power
of carefully chambered echoes. 

"Righteous" predators are generally poor writers of essential fictions.

But they've never really needed to be great at it.

They only need to write unchallenged.   

It's also easier to avoid attacks of conscience, if they can avoid eye contact during their crimes.

It's the same reason most bank robbers want everyone else in the bank to stay looking down. 

If the robbers can't see your face,
then you won't be entirely human to them. 

This is how they accidently admit to having something of a conscience and some level of awareness that what they're doing is wrong.

Sociopaths have no such internal struggle to worry about. 
This is why they can look you dead in the eyes, mid-crime, and not lose a moment's sleep over it. 

Meanwhile,
today's Conservatives aren't all sociopaths.

But they have all been manipulated and conscripted by sociopaths.

Natural predators have climbed into positions of power within political and religious organizations. 

It's a very easy climb,
within structures designed by-and-for predators. 

Insecure followers mistake such strength for virtue. 
 
Their ideals actually are virtues for animals.
So then they reason "Shouldn't it be virtuous for us to emulate the ideals of the animal kingdom?
Isn't that the natural order?"

This is how they rationalize racism as "not racism", sexism as "not sexism", classism as "not classism", and every other shallow pretense for selfish dominance hierarchies.

They can't even recognize their own gross sense of entitlement AS entitlement. 

That, instead, feels like something:

a.) deserved-ness they innately have as part of the natural order,

b.) is made possible by gifts from a higher source of greatness (in whose image they were made) 

and
c.) is something they've additionally "earned".

It's how they justify the idea of disposable people as a necessary sacrifice for a nebulous "greater good".  

They need to be allowed to do "whatever they gotta do";
 for the sake of that fictional greater good. 

Anyone in the way of those ambitions ... needs to be subdued or otherwise eliminated.

 Lions do not loose sleep
over the opinions of sheep. 

Nor do they meet sheep as equals.

 Narcissists never indulge civil and equitable conversation with those they've deemed disposable.

Nor are they ever interested in any truth that isn't ... useful for their own interests. 

Thus, they will seek to avoid discovering any facts that might make it harder to justify their choices. 

They are always busy; mentally and orally creating stories that justify their bullshit.

It really never needs to be verified or true.

It doesn't even need to be reasonable.

It only has to justify and exalt them over everyone they want to feel superior to. 

For that purpose, they can and must make shit up and then just assume the shit they imagined ... is all totally real. 

But it's not so simple when a progressive collective has powers which rival their own. 

So far, I've lost every battle that really mattered in life.

Why?
Partly because I didn't usually understand the situation I was really in ... until it was too late.

 This is the natural consequence of being 'starry eyed' with optimism; always assuming the best of people.

But it's also because I always stood alone. 

The laws of our land 

hold great promise for the powerful.

The only time those laws protect the vulnerable is when the powerful stand with the vulnerable.
But they only do so
when have something to gain for themselves. 

Every great battle I fought 

was a battle that no powerful persons had a stake in. 

It really is the same as there being no laws at all.

I did not yet understand.

In practice, 

in truth, 

nobody has "rights".

"Human rights" are a beautiful lie.

As a "metaphorical truth", that lie sometimes inspires our better angels.

I certainly do hope
more and more people
will keep making
greater and greater investments
into that idea as a "metaphorical truth". 

But until we start having more honest dialogues about it, 
that same lie will keep providing cover to our worst citizens. 
 
It's a fictional set of assurances.

It lulls sheep into a false sense of security. 

It entices the vulnerable to sacrifice themselves in killing fields.

How so? 
Because the vulnerable keep thinking brave and powerful eagles are perched 'at the ready' to assist in noble defense of those "rights".  

This causes the vulnerable to take unwise risks and then suffer catastrophic losses.

Power exists.

In any situation, you have however much you have.

Your enemies are everyone who isn't willing to compromise about an incompatible interest; especially where the stakes are high. 

They too have however much power they just happen to have.

When the less empowered person(s) are at least close in power, 

strategy counts for a lot.

Otherwise, it will not.

Greater power wins.

Lesser power loses.

With effectively no power, 

I am only ever allowed
to do,
or to have,
or to be, ... 

whatever nobody cares about. 

It's a curious and ironic necessity,

to make sure I do not ever matter enough to become dinner.

Meanwhile, 

the exactly same breed of hungry predators
(the same kinds of people I've lost so many vital pieces of myself to) ...

are still outnumbered and outgunned by humanity's ideological Starfleet. 

The Better Angels Of Our Nature do not fight for me.

I'm no longer naïve enough to think so. 

But they do still fight. 

Both factions seek an authoritarian dystopia. 

Neither honestly recognize their own tragic flaws.

But the lesser harsh of those two families will absolutely do the least damage and provide the greatest gains; for everyone. 

If the more severely narcissistic cult of personalities wins,
the entire world would surely catch fire and crumble.

It would lead to a very ironic and final peace. 

If the progressives prevail, the future will have gradually fewer predators and better health for all.  

 By some real measure,
progress would heal the world. 

Much like Thomas Jefferson and other progressives, they would pen imperfectly true words.

From there, ever more people
would be inspired to ever greater heights. 

Turn the page. 

Time will tell.
But it only ever speaks to the living. 

Whatever it decides, I can only hope and struggle against the odds that I'm still around to hear it. 

For that, I'll need powerful allies.

For that, I'll need to become more of an asset. 

For that, I must finally win the great war within; resolving the rival angels of my own nature.