Personality Disorders And Social Rules

There are many people who are of the opinion that the people who make trouble are “sociopaths” and “narcissists,” and that if we were to get rid of such people then the troubles will go away. There is a problem with that stance. The people who can be accused of such things do not only include criminals and dictators, but very many other things, including:

• The ancestors of most people in America, Canada and Australia, who did not like the social covenants of which they were a part and moved halfway across the world to start a better life elsewhere;
• The founders of America and its greatest industrialists, scientists, authors and stars;
• The founders of psychology itself;

and of course

• The feminists, who have been most aggressive in pushing this view.

If it is narcissistic to seek great success or to have original ideas, then the world owes vastly to its narcissists. It it is narcissistic or sociopathic to dislike authority, then the bulk of the contemporary world, which formed in reaction to the monarchic order of the time, was founded by narcissists and sociopaths. If it is narcissistic or sociopathic to have views that differ from those around you, then just about anyone who came up with anything original was a narcissist or a sociopath; which means once again that we owe greatly to people with these disorders.

As for the claim that it is narcissistic or sociopathic to dislike social rules, in fact there is a much more valid reason to do so. Unspoken rules – or unofficial rules – are an attempt at hidden totalitarianism. Nobody has voted for these rules. Nobody has signed them into law. Which means that on such rules there is no accountability, check or balance, and that they constitute an attempt to sneak in hidden totalitarianism into nations that are intended to be free.

Should societies have rules? I would expect that any society will have rules. However if people are to be legitimately demanded to follow these rules, then they have to be made official. Sign them into law. Have the Congress vote on them. Make it official what life people can lead, what relationships they can practice, what personality they can have. Only at no point begin to claim that what you are offering is liberty.

Now there are certainly rules that should very well be there. However once again, they need to be made official. They need to be signed into law. They need to be subjected to accountability, check and balance. They need to be consistent with institutions of liberty and to not violate these institutions by pushing on people unofficial tyranny.

As for the people who violate rules, some have wrong reasons and some have right reasons. If your society's rules tell you that you should worship Kim Jong Un, then a conscientious person will not follow such a rule. Once again, some rules are valid and some are not valid. But for a rule to be rightfully binding in a democracy, it has to be signed into law. Otherwise, once again, we see an attempt at hidden tyranny – tyranny that is not even honest enough to be made official and that as such is in many respects worse than actual totalitarianism.

Not everyone who violates or dislikes rules of the place in which he lives is a bad person. The ancestors of most Americans did not like the rules of the places in which they lived, and they moved elsewhere. According to the definitions of these disorders, these people were all narcissists or sociopaths. The same category, once again, includes America's founders and most of its industrialists, scientists, authors and stars. As well as the founders of psychology, who militated against the ideas of the time. As well as feminists, who likewise militate against an order that has existed for many centuries.

So it is time that hypocrisy on this issue be overcome. Maybe Hitler and Genghis Khan had these disorders; but according to their definitions so did Rockefeller, Gates, Trump, Clinton, Chaplin and Jefferson. As well as Freud, as well as Catherine McKinnon, as well as many, many others.

Are people who violate social rules sociopaths or nacissists? Some are and some are not. Same is the case with people who follow social rules. A person who is totally self-oriented will not care about what social climate he finds himself in and will go with whoever he thinks to be the winner. If he thinks that rebels are ahead he will go with the rebels, and if he thinks that conformists are ahead he will go with the conformists. I see no reason at all to see a greater presence of such people among rebels than I would among anyone else.

Are people who dislike rules better or worse than people who do not? Depends on the person, depends on the rule. Some rules are there for a good reason. Others are there for a bad reason. Once again, if societies want to have rules then they should make them official and sign them into law. This will give these rules a legitimacy. And then people who do not like them can work to change them, and those who do like them can protect them visibly. This is how democracy is meant to work, and if this is done then democratic intent will be made real.

On Structure And Limitation

It appears to be human nature for people to be hateful to wherever they get their structure and limitation. For a long time people got their structure and limitation from work as farmers; so they created a technological civilization in which they rose above these limitations. This in turn became a source of structure and limitation in itself; and there have been many people who saw that structure as the universal source of evil.

Jim Morrison got his structure and limitation from his father, so he wanted to kill his father. Eminem got his structure and limitation from his mother, and he wanted to kill his mother. There are many people on the Left who see the Western civilization and Christianity as the universal source of oppression. This stance is psychotic. There are many places besides the Western Civilization in which the situation is much worse.

So we have seen feminists claiming that the Western man was the source of evil. Some of them married men from Native American, African-American or Indian or Chinese cultures and found out how wrong they have been. I have known an American woman who married a Native American man who broke her skull so badly that she needed 40 stitches. There is a movie about an American woman who married an Iranian man only to experience from him severe brutality. That there is a source of structure and limitation for you does not mean that it is the only possible source of structure and limitation. Compared to the Muslims and any number of others, American conservative men are mild.

If you are being seen as a source of structure and limitation, the correct solution is to get out of the way. Do not paint yourself as the source of structure and limitation. Let the person learn from life. Let the person see how things are elsewhere. In most cases they will miss what they had when they were with you.

It appears that structure and limitation is an inevitable aspect of life. So if you are experiencing these things from one source, it does not mean that it is the only possible source of such things. There are many possible sources of structure and limitation. Some of them are part of the Western civilization, and some are not.

This is an error of which I have been guilty myself. Once again, I have learned to the contrary.

So we see any number of women in feminism claiming that the Western white men are the root of oppression. They then themselves created a structure that has been in many respects more cruel than what it had replaced. So now we see many men – and women – hating this structure. We see, among other things, many young women falling for the line of people such as Eminem and preferring violence by mean but sexy young men over emotional bullying by mean and unattractive older women.

Once again, it appears that structure and limitation are inevitable aspects of life. A person who rejects the structure and limitation with which he has been raised is often vulnerable to worse forms of structure and limitation. The correct solution is to recognize such a thing and to work with people whose values are more compatible with their own. In most cases they will end up missing what they had been raised with and developing appreciation for it as they deal with people who are much worse.

Is Donald Trump A Misogynist?

When someone on an Internet forum called Donald Trump a misogynist because he called some woman a dog, I pointed out that the fact that he did not like one woman did not mean that he did not like any of them. Someone responded by saying that if he says that about any woman he is a misogynist.

By that standard just about any woman is a misandrist because she would call Ted Bundy a dickhead.

When dealing with human beings, it is to be expected that they will like some people and not others. That is the case both with women and with men. Some people appear to be of the opinion that liking women who act in the way of which one approves, and disliking those who do not, are an attempt to control women. Yet women, too, like men who act in a way of which they approve and not men who do not. Similarly they extend the same partiality to women who act in a way of which they approve and not women who act in a way of which they do not. Expecting anything else is not enlightenment or anything of the sort. It is failure to understand people. People will like those who act in a way of which they approve, and they will dislike those who act in a way of which they do not approve. The feminists of course do the exact same thing.

So for a long time these women have claimed anyone who had disagreement with their party line, no matter how minor, as a misogynist or worse. Yet they have themselves proven to be completely misogynistic as well as more abusive than most men. They have been viciously abusive to women who were nicer and prettier than themselves. They have been viciously abusive to men who like such women. They have fomented the worst hysteria in the history of America, claiming cruelly and in violation of all reason that some people are basically inhuman and can only be evil whatever they do. As for their claim that beauty is relative or anything of the sort, it is refuted by their own behavior. They attack women who are attractive and not women who are not attractive; which means that they know what beauty is and what it is not, and their claims on this matter are a pack of lies.

In the process they claimed themselves to be enlightened. In fact the women whom they attack are vastly more enlightened than they are. The “feminists” come from a place of hatred and viciousness. The women whom they attack, for the most part, bear them no ill will and, in my experience, have even been willing to help them. They think that they speak for humanity and that attractive women are basically not human. They think that many men are basically not human. Meanwhile they have themselves shown what is often exceptional cruelty; and it is in every way correct that such women be called femi-Nazis.

Why am I writing this? Mostly to get their crap out of my head, which has been stuck there since mid-1990s. Also to help others get their crap out of their heads as well. It is valid to forgive one's transgressors, but it is not valid to allow fascist attitudes to dominate the society. It is important that more people repudiate this fascism and overcome it. It is important that freedom, honesty, and – yes – love and beauty – have currency in the world.

At this point these people will say that I am dangerous. I hope to be dangerous to them; I hope that more people be dangerous to them. Once again, we are seeing here a very real fascism. And it then becomes incumbent on anyone who holds things such as liberty dear to fight this fascism.

Is all feminism bad? No, there have been good things that have come out of feminism. This direction however is wrong absolutely. This is fascism done in the name of feminism. And that is no more valid than what existed in the Soviet Union. If there is such a thing as danger to the institutions of liberty, this is it.

Now I started out on the Left, but I have come to respect a number of people who are conservatives. I would most certainly rather be dealing with people such as the conservatives I know than with such women. A former classmate of mine has become a successful salesman and manager and married a Russian woman. He says that their marriage is great. I recommend that more men in America and other places in which these ideas propagate go with women from places such as Russia, who have much more of a sense of perspective and know what abuse and misogyny is and what it is not.

Back to the original point, is Donald Trump a misogynist? I do not believe that he is one. He does not hate women. He likes some women and dislikes other women. That is not misogynistic. That is human. Once again, most women like some men and not others, and that does not mean either that they are misandrists or that they are seeking to control men.

Exonerating Clinton And Nixon

Richard Nixon is one of the most hated figures in American politics; and I think that he gets a bad rep. He did things that both the Left and the Right should be grateful to him for. On the Left, he started the EPA, opened the door to China and replaced the conscript military with a professional military. On the Right, he made the South a Republican territory, greatly strengthening the stance of the Republicans. And on both sides, he kept the nation on a mostly constitutional path when it was losing its head in the far-left direction. Personally he had admirable traits, such as grit and willingness to work very hard, and he dearly loved his wife.

Bill Clinton, like Nixon, is also seen as a bad person. However I would venture to say that he was a better husband than most men who wanted him deposed. If Hillary Clinton had been with a “redneck,” she would have been a pregnant and barefoot punching bag and most likely would not have survived the first five years of the marriage. Instead she was with Bill Clinton, and she became the most powerful woman in the world.

Now there were things that were wrong with both men. However I take issue with people being maligned as much as both have been. That is especially the case with people who worked as hard and did as much for the country as did Nixon and Clinton. Clinton was personally corrupt? Much less so than a quarter of American men who rape their children. Nixon was politically corrupt? Much less so than Exxon or Westboro Baptists. Now it may make sense to hold leaders to a higher standard than others. However most people who impugn Clinton are worse than hypocrites, and the same is the case with many who impugn Nixon.

Having myself being much maligned – including the latest, a ridiculous claim made on the Internet that I assaulted a police officer – I see in this behavior the worst traits in humanity. The people are feeling like they are better than the other person when they are not. Now maybe the men who attacked Clinton's behavior did not cheat on their wives, but many of them did much worse things than cheat on their wives. Many of them beat their wives. Many of them raped their children. As for Nixon's Watergate scandal, how many private businesses are there out there that do crooked things?How many communities do crooked things? How much crookery is done in law, courts and mental health?

So it is time that this behavior be challenged. Most people who attack Clinton and Nixon are not better than either one; they are worse. And I would much rather be dealing with Clinton or Nixon than with them.

Slanders Against Jews

We are seeing many people attacking the Jews these days, and it is important that these attacks be rightfully refuted.

One claim is that the Jews are in control. If Jews were in control – and if Jews were bad – then people saying such things would be facing a firing squad. That they are instead free to spread their lies and their errors shows either that Jews are not in control, or that the Jews are so good that they would even let live the people who want them dead.

Another claim is that the Jews are taking over. The correct response is, Which Jews? There was a Jew named Karl Marx who invented Communism, and there was a Jew named Ayn Rand who made a lifelong cause of fighting Communism. There was a Jew named King David who wrote the Psalms, and there was a Jew named Alvie Hoffman who militated against Judeo-Christian heritage. There is a Jew named Sam Vaknin who made a name for himself on the Internet by popularizing the Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and there is a Jew named Ilya Shambat who writes on the Internet to say that, according to the definition of this disorder, the world in general – and America in particular – owes vastly to people who have it. So how can the Jews be taking over if they disagree on just about everything?

Then there is the claim that Jews killed Jesus. I did not kill Jesus. I have accepted Jesus. I refuse for myself or my family or other Jews to be blamed for the actions of Herod or Caiaphas. I do not speak for them, they do not speak for me. The people who attack Jews have much greater and much more recent crimes in their history. Jesus resurrected after three days. The 100 million inhabitants of the American continent who died from Spanish and English colonialism did not.

We see claims such as that Jews are unethical, or that they are cowardly or weak, or that they are money driven. I find it ridiculous for people who believe such things as that “money talks bullshit walks” and that anyone who does not have money is a loser to claim that being money-driven is wrong. As for being weak or unethical, do not tell that to Yitzhak Rabin or Donald Rumsfeld or Mark Spitz. Of course the people who espouse pacifism – as have many Jews in history – frequently do get labeled as cowards. After the Second World War many Jews decided that pacifism does not work, and they founded Israel, which they designed to have a very effective military. So when faced with the militaristic policies of Israel, the same people who used to accused Jews of being cowards when they were pacifists are accusing them of being brutes. With some people you just can't win.

As for Nazism and anything similar, I do not see why there would be any excuse for it whatever. If you are German, you have many legitimate thing to be proud of. You do not need to look back to the worst time in your history in which your people not only perished to the tune of 10 million but also gave your people a lasting reputation for cruelty and brutality. If you are American or English or Russian, the Nazis were your enemies. Your grandparents died fighting them. To follow your country's enemies is called treason. I am a firm believer in free speech, and not even the Nazis should be censored. They can however be refuted; and I hope that more people do just that.

Now I firmly oppose political correctness and have done so ever since I knew what it was. I do not need political correctness to defend my interests as a Jew. I can do so myself. I want to see more people – both Jewish and not Jewish – confront these directions. Do not try to censor them; refute them. And there are many valid arguments one can make to do so effectively.

The Errors Of Baby Boomers

The baby boomers get a bad rep, especially in Generation X. On some matters gen-Xers are right, and on others they are wrong.

One of their most common claims is that baby boomers were spoiled. They were not; they were raised with the whip. Another is that they are selfish. While many of them did act in a selfish manner in 1980s, they did not start out that way. They started out fighting for various altruistic causes while foregoing many selfish rewards. They were confronted in the name of self-interested capitalism, at which point many of them joined it. Some really did become selfish; but once again that is not where they started.

There is however something I noticed about baby boomers that really is wrong. I call it the bad neighbor policy. They tend to identify with their generation at the exclusion of other generations. When they were young it was “trust nobody over 30.” When they themselves became parents, many of them saw their children not as their future but as their competition. This lead many of them to do very wrong things. For a grown man to be competing with a child is a contemptible standpoint. For a man in his 40s to be beating down psychologically on an 18-year-old is a contemptible standpoint. Not only is this contemptible, but it is exceptionally irresponsible and short-sighted. This way you raise emotional cripples who either will need loads of help or be awful citizens.

The women of that generation who were a part of feminism were afraid of masculinity. So they would effectively castrate their sons, resulting in them becoming whipping boys for nasty women. Any number of these men ended up finding strength later in things such as gangs and Jihadist Islam. Of course these men, having been raised in this way, are not going to be nice to women, and what these women have done has been exceptionally self-defeating. They themselves may or may not see the results of this; but many innocent younger women do.

Then there was the New Age movement and its idea that everything that happens to people is a reflection of what's in their consciousness. Now maybe you can believe such things if you have lived all your life in a protected environment; but do not tell that to people who've lived through the Second World War. The beliefs of this kind create complete jerks who would suck up to you when you are up and kick you when you are down, regardless of whether either one is your responsibility. For liberalism and its main thrust of compassion and kindness to have turned into a sociopathic ideology is a betrayal of the worst kind.

We also see the idea of positive thinking. Positive thinking is not the solution. Positive thinking is part of the problem. When you think positive, you fail to anticipate problems and do foolish things. You may want positive thinking in a salesman. But if you are an engineer and you think positively, you will design equipment that will blow up on use. If you are a policy maker and you think positively, you will impose a policy that causes more problems than it solves. It is wrong to think positive. For that matter, it is also wrong to think negative. What is needed is real thinking.

A related claim is that the like attracts like, and that people draw to themselves what they esteem themselves to be. This is completely wrong. In fact in many cases I have seen the opposite. If someone thinks that you think too well about yourself, they will want to tear you down. If they think that you do not think well enough about yourself, they will want to raise you up. Sometimes the like attracts like, but it can work out in any number of possible ways, this being only one of them.

Another very wrong thing that I have seen has been a ideology of self – and not only a supporting ideology but a coercive ideology. I once heard a brilliant, compassionate and naturally altruistic young woman say that if she cannot live for herself then she cannot live. That is a horrible way to think. You can live for any number of things beside yourself. You can live for God. You can live for your country. You can live for the people or causes you care about. Being encouraged to live for yourself is wrong; it being demanded that you live for yourself is monstrous.

Then we see what they have done with romantic love. They have decided that romantic love is about seeking external validation, which is completely untrue. What you feel about someone you love is not about what you feel about yourself; it is about what you feel about them. Maybe if all you care about is yourself you may buy into such ideas. However I have better values than that.

As part of that thinking has been training people who experienced one or another kind of abuse to be strong in themselves and have a high self-esteem. Once again, completely wrong. The self is not the only, nor the best, source of strength. If your only source of strength is yourself, then you are going to be selfish and you are going to be weak. Whereas if you find strength in something greater, you are more likely to be actually strong, to be willing to make sacrifices, and to act with actual courage.

As for self-esteem, it is a completely wrong thing to encourage. This does not improve people, it makes them worse. What it rewards is low standards. If you have high standards for yourself, then you will find it harder to think well of yourself than you would if you have low standards for yourself. Encouraging and rewarding self-esteem does not encourage personal good. It encourages low standards.

There are many people among baby boomers who think that they are better than everyone else because they follow such crackpot ideas. They are in no way alone in that conduct, and there are many people – from Nazis to Communists to feminists – who think that they are better than other people because they espouse an ideology that they believe to be right. This is intellectual hubris. You are not made better than others by espousing an ideology. That is especially the case with ideologies such as preceding that are dead wrong.

We are of course awash in these and many other errors. And, sadly to say, many of these have been practiced and popularized by the baby boom. On these, people responsible for them should be confronted. However do not throw the baby away with the bathwater. The baby boom is also the generation of Steven Jobs, Oprah Winfrey and John Lennon. Cast away the wrongful ideas, but do not crucify a whole generation in the process.

God And The Four Modalities

Sometimes people think that they are great because they have been in the presence of someone great. I had a girlfriend who had been married to the right-hand man of a swami, and his initiates acted in an arrogant and abusive manner toward her. They made the mistake of thinking that they were great when they only had had the good fortune of knowing someone great.

Sometimes people think that they are great because they have a relationship with God. That is wrong. That is Phariseeism. Jesus correctly militated against such a thing. They followed the Biblical law, but their hearts were not pure. For them it was about social status and feeling that they were better than other people. This is not the attitude that God wants us to have.

Now God most certainly is a loving God. He loves us. However if we prove too hard to love, then He will love someone else. We see this for example with the Jews. God loved the Jews, then many of them decided to act wrongfully, so He started loving other people, such as the Americans. God is not at a shortage of people to love. If He pays attention to us, then that is something to be treasured.

Regarding the Jews, probably the worst relationship that they had was with the Germans. Both populations however share qualities, both good ones and bad ones. On the up side, both are intelligent and hard-working. On the down side, both are arrogant and unfriendly. They have many things in common, both good and bad. Sometimes people dislike others for qualities that they themselves have that they themselves do not like, sometimes people dislike others for qualities that others have that they themselves do not like. Apparently many Germans think that Jews are unethical and unmanly. Do not tell that to Benyamin Netanyahu.

At the time of the Second World War, many Jews were liberal pacifists. This got them accused of being cowards. Then they decided that they were not safe in the world, so they created a super-militaristic state. So now the same people who called them cowards call them brutes. With some people you just can't win.

Who can however win – and who always does win – is God. I started out as a militant atheist, and it took many events with less than a billionth of chance happening to turn me around. I had many reasons to dismiss Christianity. Christ has proven me wrong. A priest once told me that God did not give me a mind so that I can serve Satan but so that I can serve God. He was correct. Some people – and this at one point included me - see Christians as being stupid. However my mind has been working a lot better after I came to Christ and have experienced His instruction and His presence. Whatever your own level of intellect, that of Christ is greater. So then it becomes the job of the intellect to make sense of the teachings of God and communicate this understanding to other people.

There are many people who seek God. Sometimes they find God and sometimes they do not. There are many dangers along the way. For me it has become the matter of distinguishing what comes from whom. Sometimes I get intuitions that are precisely right. Sometimes I get intuitions that are precisely wrong. Obviously we are dealing here with different forces, and some of them are good and some are not. There are many people with knowledge of spiritual forces, and not all of them are using that knowledge for rightful ends. Most things can be used for wrong. Money can be used for wrong. Intelligence can be used for wrong. Spiritual powers can be used for wrong. However Christ does not do things that are wrong, and relying on His wisdom leads you to make better choices without yourself being given tools that you can use to commit wrongdoing.

Now I have written about four modalities of discerning reality: Intellect, common sense, wisdom and faith. Intellect is capable of losing touch with ethics and reality. Common sense can get mean and oppressive. Wisdom can be used for wrong things or become arrogant and self-satisfied. But faith is reliance on wisdom greater than yours and as such can only be used for the ends that the source of the wisdom wants for you.

Can faith go bad? Certainly there are many wrong things that have been done in the name of faith; but in many cases it was a misuse of faith and not faith itself that caused this wrongdoing. Another potential for error is if something that is not good impersonates something that is good. I have heard some Christians say that the angel who gave Mohammad the Quran was not Angel Michael but Angel Lucifer. Whether or not this is the case, we can certainly see people in possession of one or another form of spiritual knowledge using it for wrong and making it look to others as if it is God doing it when it is in fact them. When this happens, intelligence is the correct solution. You use your mind to break the spell and see through the deception. When intelligence goes Trotskyite, it is replaced by common sense. When this becomes mean and oppressive, it is replaced by wisdom. And when people who think themselves wise start acting like Pharisees, faith is re-introduced to remind us of who is the boss and what attitude He wants from us. The four modalities work as a spiral, with the flaws in each creating ground for the next modality.

But with actual faith, you cannot go wrong. If you are really relying on Jesus, then you will have the wisdom that you need to carry out the tasks that are meant for you. You will not however be given tools to do wrong. Intelligence, common sense and wisdom can all be easily used for wrong. However actual faith – reliance on the wisdom of Jesus – cannot be used for wrong. Whatever your intelligence level, faith will guide you rightfully. So we will see many people who do not have high Iqs or bad natural predispositions acting with wisdom and righteousness, and these people will do the work that is intended for them.

So of course we see people thinking that faith is wrong. No, it is not. For me it is not a matter of faith. For me it is a matter of having experienced many miraculous situations even though I militated for a long time against Christianity. We see the same people thinking that Christians are sheep. There are many people who are sheep for different kinds of mentalities. How sheepish were many Communists. How sheepish were many Nazis. How sheepish – and how vicious - are many people in political correctness or personality psychology. We are dealing here with something that appears to be a part of human makeup, and it is in no way limited to Christianity. And I have found again and again that the Christian people are much more tolerant and accepting than followers of any of these beliefs.

I for one am not a sheep at all. I have scrutinized many things and found most of them lacking. But there is absolutely nothing lacking in the wisdom of God. And I say this as someone who likewise have put much effort into attempting to disprove it.

Have there been wrong things done under the claim of God? Yes. But greater wrongs have been committed for other things. Phariseeism and Inquisition are tame compared to Stalin's atrocities. Bad things have been done under the banner of faith, but not according to faith itself. Once again, faith as such is the one of the four modalities – intelligence, common sense, wisdom and faith – that cannot be used for wrong. Which means that encouraging faith averts potential for many errors and instead results in better actions on the part of everyone.

Certainly there is a need for the other three. Much is owed to all four modalities. We need intelligence, common sense and wisdom as well. However, once again, it is faith that is the least capable of being used for wrong. And that makes it the most valuable modality of all.

Racism And Multiculturalism

There are many black people who militate against white people. It is correct that white people treated black people badly. However they did so with the agreement of African leaders, who sold their own people into slavery in order that they could make a buck.

After colonialism, for a long time the situation was not much better. A Mobutu or a Mengistu was not better than the white colonists. From the position of the person who is being oppressed, it does not matter who oppresses him. Whether a white man cuts off your hand or whether a black man cuts off your hand, your hand has been cut off.

Now some people would see such opinions as being racist. They are in fact the opposite of being racist. They are opinions that hold the black man to the same standard of accountability as they hold the white man. They are opinions that do not treat black people as children, but as adults. And that, once again, makes them the opposite of racism. It makes them the opinions that treat black people as grownups who are responsible for their actions.

I am close to a number of women who are black. Many of them have negative things to say about how their own black men have treated them. When I care about someone, I stand against the people who treat them badly. That, once again, is the case regardless of their race.

I find it infuritating how some white women see anything that white men do to them as abuse, but excuse even the worst abuse against women who are not white under the claim of mutliculturalism. Equality means accountability, and that is the case both for men who are white and for men who are not. If a man from Iran or Uganda is treating his wife like dirt, then that is just as much the problem as is the case if a man from Indianapolis is treating his wife like dirt. I stand against the disgusting behavior by both parties.

When I was a part of a mostly-black poetry reading in DC, a young black woman was reading a poem that kept going on, “Just say you are sorry.” I do not see for one moment why I should be sorry for the actions of the people whom I would have opposed if I had been alive at that time. I am against wrong treatment of people, whoever does it and whenever he does it.

So then there is the claim that I benefit from the system that has oppressed black people. So do many of the black people in America today. Most American black people enjoy a standard of living that far surpasses that of their own countries. As for the white people, it bears stating that during the Civil War many white men lost their lives in order to liberate black people from slavery. It is completely wrong to attack white people for sins that they themselves did not commit.

I am not a racist. I am the opposite of a racist. I hold black people to the same standard to which I hold white people. I treat black people as adults, not as children. If a black person is doing the right thing, I support him. If a black person is doing the wrong thing, I want to see him confronted on that.

Do the black people have a long history of victimization? Yes, but they are not the only ones. I am ethnically Jewish. The Jewish people have experienced horrors like you would not believe. However I do not seek a destruction of Germany or Poland. I want to see both places fix whatever is wrong with them and become the best places that they can be.

If you are black, that does not mean that you should be treated like a child. You should be treated in the equal way as white people: As adults. You are responsible for what you are doing to your own people.

And once black people – both in Africa and outside of Africa – understand this, they actually have a chance of making their own people well.

Appreciation And Happiness

Once in rural Russia, a priest asked a newlywed couple how their life was. They said that everything was great, but the house was too small. So the priest told them to bring a goat into the house. After some time, he told them to take the goat out of the house. They said after this that the house was big enough.

Some things are like that. A strenuous effort will improve you while you are doing it, and you will have appreciation after that for the time that you are not putting in a strenuous effort. And if you have been given one or another kind of privilege that you do not appreciate, having that privilege taken away for a period of time will create rightful appreciation for it.

Sometimes people do not appreciate what they have. Instead they envy what others have, even though by historical and global standards they have it very well. I have been one of these people. Then I have been through different kinds of unpleasantness, and I developed appreciation for what I had had. I am reminded of a poem by Anna Akhmatova,

We thought we were beggars, we thought we had nothing at all
But then when we started to lose one thing after another,
Each day became
A memorial day -
And then we made songs
Of great divine generosity
And of our former riches.

So now I appreciate what I have a lot more, even if I do not have a mansion and a Mercedes.

The same is the case with other things than wealth. It can also be the case with human relationships. Sometimes having relationships is for the better, at other times it is for the worse. With anything that people want, appreciation grows if you have lost it and then found it again.

Right now I appreciate just about anything. That I am in comfortable quarters. That I have a good family and good friends. That I am healthy. That I have decent food. That I have known wonderful people who think well of me in return. That I have a lovely daughter. That I can have insights. That there is a power in my life that is guiding me toward better character and better choices.

Often people do not appreciate what they have, and they make themselves and others miserable that way. The correct solution is to build appreciation for such things. One way to do that is to take such things away from them and leave them without them. Then, once appreciation grows, return those things.

Of course there are times when what one has really is unwanted, and something quite different is wanted. If this is the case, what is unwanted can be taken away as well. Then the person will decide whether to want it and go back to it or to make do without it. In either case, taking away what is unappreciated is warranted, allowing the person to decide whether to have it and appreciate it or to make do without it altogether.

In my case, once again, I now appreciate just about everything. And that makes me much happier than I was when I had many things and acted like a brat.

Reflected Glory And Great Men

I had a girlfriend named Layo who had spent slightly over a year married to the right-hand man of a deceased swami named Adano Christopher Ley. The swami's other followers were nasty to her, and she came away from the experience with an impression that God had rejected her.

God did not reject Layo. People who thought they were God rejected Layo. These people were bullies and usurpers. They had been in contact with a great man, and they made the mistake of thinking that they were great themselves. They were not great. Not anything close to it. They simply had had the good fortune to have their lives touched by a great man. The knowledge and power that they had came from him, not from them.

There are many people who make the same error. And the correct solution is to remind them of what is actually the case. They did not author the wisdom that they have been given. Somebody else did. And that means that the credit belongs with the source, not with them.

At least the Christians are commanded to be humble. But many followers of gurus are not humble, but both abusive and arrogant. Once again, they make the error of thinking that, because they have been in contact with somebody who was great, they are great themselves. In most cases they are not.

We see a similar error on behalf of any number of people who live in great countries. They think that, because they live in a great country, they are great themselves. In most cases they are not. They simply have had the good fortune of having been born in a great country. They get a bloated ego without having done anything to deserve it. Whereas in countries that are not great, people do not have that crutch, and someone who wants to feel great has to work at it.

As should be the case for anyone who wants anything like greatness or sense of accomplishment.

Now there are some things that should be extended to most people, such as tolerance. But greatness is something that has to be earned. And in case of people such as Adano's initiates, it was not earned. It was bestowed on them by a great man who believed that he owed them a karmic debt. So they decided, once again, that they were better than other people, such as for example Layo. They were not better than her. They were worse than her. She had a brain and went to a great length to make sense of what Adano had stated and what others had stated. Whereas these people simply had had the experience of being around a great man.

I think that there are many situations in which such things need to be clarified. I will not respect you because of whom you have been around. I will respect you because of who you actually are.

From Militant Atheism To Christ

Rationalism is followed by romanticism, and romanticism is followed by religion. Romanticism deconstructs false logical structures and opens the way to spiritual experience. This in turn opens the way to Christ.

In 2000 I had a great spiritual and romantic experience. As I opened my mind to spiritual forces, thus came in the mindsets of practicing Christians and, after that, Christ Himself. When spiritual energies become inescapable, also becomes inescapable the greatest spiritual energy that is there. Christ comes in and takes the person to the true source.

Of course religion is often followed by rationalism; but there does not need to be a contradiction between the two. As my mathematics teacher who was a devout Christian said, there is no contradiction between science and Christianity. Physics, chemistry, biology and suchlike reveal the divine design, and genuine understanding of these subjects builds respect for the universe as well as what it came from. Science and religion can, and should, work together. One does not preclude the other.

So we see people saying things such as that religious people are stupid. I used to think the same thing; but the experiences that I have had are so numerous and so unavoidable that it would make a believer of a militant atheist such as one used to be, much more a regular skeptic. Reason and logic are tools, not ideologies. A truly rational person, when met with something that does not parse with his worldview, changes his worldview. A person who tries to deny the evidence is not rational and he is not logical. He is dishonest.

We especially see this dishonesty in some in the academia, who claim that an extraordinary claim requires an extraordinary level of proof. I see nothing at all extraordinary about something that the bulk of humanity believes. Far more extraordinary – and far more arrogant – is the claim that most people are stupid or crazy and that the only people who are not stupid or crazy are ones who do not have religious or spiritual beliefs. Some people who believe such things think that spirituality is narcissism. I can see no more glaring narcissism than theirs.

Then there is the claim that religion leads to fanaticism. Probably the most fanatical people I knew were Soviet Communists, and they did not believe in God. I have also seen fanaticism – as well as in some cases exceptional cruelty – in people who called themselves skeptics. Christ teaches mercy and humility, which these ideologies do not. This means that Christianity is far less likely to lead to cruel, fanatical or destructive behavior than these ideologies.

So then there are people claiming that Christians are brainwashed. They understand the transmission mechanism; they do not understand how it came about. Any ideology can be transmitted through generations. This includes anything from Communism to Islam. What these people do not understand is how – and why – something originated. Christianity began during the Roman Empire, which had advanced philosophy and science. The people who became Christians were not sheep; they were frequently fed to the lions. Yet Christianity outlasted the Roman Empire. Clearly we are seeing something far more viable working here than mere brainwashing.

Then there is the claim that religion is something archaic, and that progress means moving away from religion. Once again, that is completely wrong. Roman Empire had advanced science and engineering. They moved toward Christianity instead of away from it. There is such a thing as scientific and technological progress; but I do not see social progress or progress in thought. Societies change in different directions at different times, as does thought. Both the Western civilization and China have had periods of relaxed social attitudes and periods of stringent social attitudes. Philosophy of the Greeks and the Romans was quite advanced, but it gave way to Christianity and Islam. The idea that we are moving away from religion toward feminism or psychology or anything of the sort contradicts the most basic historical facts. In fact, religion is light years ahead of psychology. Psychology states that some people are evil and can only be evil whatever they do. Religion says that all sinners can be redeemed – which is a much more humane, a much wiser and a much more rational standpoint.

I of course got attacked a lot when I had that experience in 2000. Most of what came my way, I found ways to deconstruct, but it was not an easy task. Some was wrong beliefs that people had, and some was personal nastiness. You can deconstruct falsehoods, and you should. You can deconstruct abuse, and you should. You do not however deconstruct Jesus.

Right now in the world, there is a lot to deconstruct. We see fascist trends in psychology claiming, cruelly and in violation of all reason and all sense, that some people are evil and can only be evil whatever they do, however hard they work and whatever work they do on themselves. We see wrongful trends in feminism viciously attacking beauty and love and those who have or value love and beauty. We see postmodernism and avant garde making a huge mess of the culture and pushing ugly cultural products while viciously attacking real art and real poetry. We see corruption in courts, using a racket disorder called Parental Alienation Syndrome to take children away from mothers reporting abuse. We see New Agers teaching cruelty and lack of compassion, claiming that everyone is responsible for everything that happens to them and that if I were to rape you and kill you it would be your fault. We see self-esteem movement rewarding low standards and punishing people who have higher standards and thus find it harder to feel good about themselves. We see a rise in militantly racist and misogynistic ideologies. All of these things are wrong.

What is not? Once again, Christ. Most things can be taken apart, but you do not take apart someone who walks upon water. And in my own life, He has been working a change in my character. I find myself monitoring every action and every thought that I get and finding most of them sinful, even ones that I did not think were sinful before. So I work to change from within. I work to become honest for real, including honest with myself. I work to become more careful and more considerate and attentive. I work to take resposibility. I work to become humbler. I work to become understanding and compassionate. Most of these things I either did not see as virtues or did not consider relevant to my own purpose; but Christ shows me to the contrary.

This is the way in which Christ saves. He works to change you from within. He shows you where what you are doing is wrong – even at levels at which you would not expect – and what wisdom and righteousness and love actually mean. And then, inspired with the wisdom of Christ, you improve your own life and those of others.

At the church I attend, there is an older Aboriginal woman who lost her daughter to domestic violence. When she prays or preaches fireworks go off. She says that Jesus turned her from a victim into a victor. She admits to having felt like a social outcast, but she is full of confidence and courage now. The psychologists want to teach women who've been through things like domestic violence to be strong in themselves. They are wrong. They should be teaching them to be strong in Christ. Here, the woman will be on the right side of the greatest power in the universe. And that will allow her to have genuine courage and genuine strength, as does this woman, as opposed to the bad attitude and venal conduct that we see in many women who've been through the system.

At another church I attended, the preacher said that we must be dangerous people for God. He was absolutely correct. We are living in a world in which fascist ideologies have decided that some people are dangerous to society and that this justifies their permanent demonization, dehumanization and evisceration. I hope that I be dangerous to people who think such things; I hope that more people be dangerous to people who claim such things and make tons of money from sowing misery and confusion. These people claim to be serving society; but they are undermining what made it great or even possible at all. According to their logic, their ancestors were narcissists and sociopaths, since they did not like the way their societies ran and left them to seek freedom across the Atlantic. According to their logic, the most significant contributors to the world are narcissists, as the definition of the disorder includes seeking great success or having original ideas, meaning that most people who achieve great success or have original ideas are narcissists. According to their logic, America's business and political culture – including its great founders and its great industrialists and entrepreneurs - is composed of sociopaths and narcissists; and if they think that they as psychologists are exempt from this they are wrong. Original psychologists made claims that were against what society believed at that time, meaning that they were narcissists and sociopaths by definition. I have had it with this hysteria, and so should everyone else. I hope that people see through the ideological poison such as what these people perpetrate and come to actual wisdom.

Many of the things that I mentioned – self-esteem psychology, personality psychology, Third Wave feminism, use of Parental Alienation Syndrome in courts, and teaching strength in self rather than strength in God – are done in the name of science and in many cases at taxpayer expense. Far more effective than any of these things in affectuating personal betterment and solving social problems is experience of Christ. So I ask Christ to attend other people, including the feminists and the skeptics, and impart them of what He has shown me. If He could work what this has worked in the situation of a militant atheist such as one I used to be, then He could solve the problems of anyone else.

So this is where it stands. A militant atheist from a Communist background has come to Christ. I did not do this by being a sheep. I did this as an intellectual rebel who was availed of truth that I did not expect and did not anticipate and that was completely against what I had been taught. I certainly hope that Christ does the job on many others as well. There are certainly enough people who found wisdom and courage in Christ and are doing genuinely good things.

Qualities And Their Potentials

When a good person experiences suffering, she will want to keep others from suffering similar things. When a bad person experiences suffering, he will want to make others suffer similar things.

Sometimes the position of the latter is not altogether evil. In some cases he wants people to understand things that he understands and that they do not. If someone has been through war, he may want to make people who are used to peace have a sense of perspective. Even in less difficult situations it often benefits for people to see how life is experienced by someone else; and it benefits more for them to have an external perspective.

It most certainly is beneficial for people to understand one another. And that means among other things teaching good people what bad people are like. When a lady who was a wonderful person was saying that she was a bad person, I told her that a bad person would not care what kind of a person he is. Some places set unrealistic standards for character and behavior, and it takes seeing someone who is genuinely bad for people in those situations to realize how good they are.

Now I do not claim to be a good person – although some do – but I definitely know some very good people, and some of them have been attacked by others. Often a quality can be seen as good from one perspective and bad from another. A person who's kind to others can be seen as either good or naïve. A person who's not always good to others can be see as either mean-spirited or perceptive. Both qualities can work for good or for ill. A kind person can do good, but naivete can lead people to misjudge character and make frequently bad mistakes. A meaner kind of person can be bad to be around, but he may see what others do not and do the dirty work that others would not.

Sometimes the two make a good team. One practices soft power and the other practices hard power. We see this in politics, where the diplomats act nicely while the military does not. We see Jesus revealing Himself to Paul, who seemed to be not a very nice person, and Paul used his intellect and obsessive focus to become a great moral teacher of Christ.

Sometimes people see potential virtues as flaws. A person who is an engineer or a manual worker may see potential people skills as deception or manipulation. A businessman or a lawyer would see such qualities as intelligence. Similarly, a jock type may see academic intelligence as being arrogant or effeminate. In fact you want such qualities in a scientist or an engineer. The correct solution is to nurture the qualities into positive manifestation and directing them toward endeavors where they stand to do good.

The rightful solution is to see the qualities for what they can be and guide them toward what they can be. That is the case whatever the attitudes of others around the person. Often people have a negative attitude toward potentially positive traits and attack them or snuff them out in those around them. This is a bad idea. A quality that is not valued in one place may very well be valued in another place. The correct solution, once again, is to see the qualities for what they can become and guide them toward that direction.

Sometimes doing such things can be socially disruptive. People are often attached to their beliefs, and when they believe potentially positive qualities to be negative qualities they are not likely to be good to people who have them. If such a person does good, this refutes their beliefs, and that can violate their sense of right and wrong. Also there are many people who want a Confucian type of arrangement in which the son does what the father does, and if he does not then he is seen as bad for society. However society actually benefits when people contribute the most of what they have to give; and this is the case with people who have people intelligence but are born among those who see such things as deception or manipulation as much as this is the case with people who have academic intelligence but are raised by salesmen.

Conformity And Feminism

One question that has been on my mind has been, can conformity pressures be for the better? I suppose that if correct qualities are being encouraged, they can. However in many cases what we see is potentially good qualities being attacked.

If you are raised in a macho culture and you have scientific or artistic inclinations, you get attacked. If you go to a school where most kids want to be salesmen or lawyers and you have academic interests, you are seen as a freak, a loser or worse. In these situations, potentially good qualities get devalued or even demonized. This results in any number of potential high contributors becoming victims, rebels or even criminals. And that has very negative effects on the country.

One correct line against conformity pressures has been taken by feminists. They have righfully seen that girls are under intense pressure to abide by the media standard of beauty, and that the girls who do not meet that standard are devalued. They are correct to say that this is wrong. A girl who does not mee the media beauty standard can have any number of other potentially positive qualities; and having such girls having it drilled into their heads that they are worthess is wrong.

However the feminists have made major mistakes of their own. They decided that beauty as such is the problem. It is not. They are confusing a value with the misuses of the value. Most things that have appeal to people can be used for wrong. That does not make such things wrong in themselves. Money can be used for wrong, but that does not mean that money is wrong. Intelligence can be used for wrong, but that does not mean that intelligence is wrong. The same is the case with beauty.

So they have decided that beautiful girls are the problem. That is just as wrong as workers wanting to slaughter the propertied class. Beauty, once again, is not the problem. Vicious coercion toward a media standard of beauty is the problem. Disrespect for other positive qualities that women may have is the problem. Michelangelo and John Keats are not responsible for the actions of teenagers who do not know what they are doing or parents who have much less of an excuse of ignorance for the wrong things that they do.

Some of these women have decided that girls who are beautiful do not have other positive qualities. They think that beauty is incompatible with such things as intelligence, strength, spirituality or being a good person. They obviously have not met very many Russian women. Many of them are beautiful, intelligent, strong and good people. Much more so than any number of women in America who hide behind feminism to be bad people.

Then there is the claim that such women are arrogant. I think that just about anyone is capable of arrogance. Some attractive women are arrogant, and some are not. I know any number of beautiful women who are absolute sweethearts. And I know any number of unattractive women who are arrogant and mean. The Japanese women tend to be very humble and also attractive. Whereas there are many women in Third Wave feminism who are very arrogant and think that they are better than everyone else because they have what they think to be an enlightened ideology and that everyone else is a bigot, a misogynist, a sociopath or a brainless bimbo.

As for the claim that beautiful women are narcissistic and as such bad for society, that is completely wrong. By that standard, most Americans are descended from narcissists. Most Americans are descended from immigrants. Immigrants are people who did not like where they were and moved to another place where they thought they would have a better life. According to the beliefs of such people, these people were narcissists or even sociopaths. However without them America would not have existed, and a feminist would be a punching bag for a European peasant living until age 30 and having her sons drafted into the military and her daughters into domestic servitude.

In many cases, the solutions for social problems are worse than the social problems themselves. We see this, once again, with Third Wave feminism just as much as we see with such things as Communism and Nazism. The interest in advancing the benefit of the girls who do not meet the media beauty standard is correct. Much of what the Third Wave feminists have done is however even worse than the problems against which they correctly militated.

As somebody who has loved a number of women who were beautiful, intelligent and kind, I consider it my duty to stand for their interests. And that is as much against the people who think them to be freaks as it is against people who attack them for being beautiful. The correct solution is to see all potentially positive traits for what they are and guide them into correct expression. That is the case with beauty; that is the case with intellect; that is the case with good personal qualities; that is the case with everything that is good.

Money And Misuses Of Money

In a movie, a man from New York moves to the country to buy a house from his wife's relatives. The house turns out to be haunted. The man confronts the relative under the claim that he wanted his money. The response is, “The money makes the world go round, home boy.”

The man from New York made a wrong argument. The problem is not that his relative wanted money, but that he sold him a defective product. This has implications for many other situations.

In seeing wrong things done in the name of money, some people decide that the problem is with money. They are met with the correct argument that their lifestyle is based on money, and that in attacking money they are hypocrites. There is however a correct way to address this problem.

Money is not the problem. Wrong ways to make money are the problem. We see confusion between a value and the misuses of the value. I have an education in economics from a conservative American university, and I am not against money. I am however against short-sigthed and destructive ways in which some people make money; and it is these, not money, that should be addressed.

We see a similar thing with beauty. Feminists attack beauty because there are some people who use beauty for wrong. The problem, again, is not with the value but with the misuses of the value. That unscrupulous plastic surgeons exploit women's insecurities to convince already attractive women that they cannot be beautiful unless they keep coming back for more treatments does not damn beauty; it damns the plastic surgeons. That some parents and school cultures attack girls whom they do not consider attractive does not damn beauty; it damns them.

We see the exact same thing with money. Once again, money itself is not the problem. The problem is the wrong way in which some people make money. If you are making quick buck by destroying what you have not created and what you cannot re-create, then you are doing a wrong thing. This does not damn money. It damns the people who do such a thing.

There are many ways to make money that are good. A person who makes money by computerizing the world is doing a right thing. A person who makes money by feeding people is doing a right thing. A person who makes money by building houses is doing a right thing. A person who makes money by producing valuable thought is doing a right thing. But the person who makes money by burning rainforest in order to make ranches that become useless in two years is doing a terrible thing, as is the person who poisons the air and the oceans when there are many better ways to provide for people's energy needs.

The correct argument therefore is not the one against money. The correct argument is the one against wrong ways in which money is made. Similarly, the feminists are confused about beauty. The problem is not with beauty but with misuses of beauty. A value is itself innocent of its misuses. The problem is the misuses of the value and not the value itself.

Is money a bad thing? No, it is not. However there are any number of ways to make money that are destructive. In wars, the victors at first get money by looting; but over the long run they lose money as there becomes less and less money to loot. And when people make money by doing wrong things, they are likewise destroying wealth in the long run. The rainforest turns into a wasteland, and rich and beautiful environments that people have not created and cannot re-create turn into mud plain.

The correct argument therefore is not one against money, but against wrong ways to make money. And when this correct argument is made, the people who make it are less likely to be labeled as hypocrites and more likely to actually make a correct influence in the world. Do not militate against money. Militate against wrong ways to make money. And that will result in a much more effective argument than what we see from any number of people who militate against capitalism.

Cynicism And Christ

The cynical worldview portrays anything good as yet another, sneakier way to do evil. There are some situations in which this approach is justified, but there are many situations in which it a completely wrong thing to do. This kind of thinking attacks anything that is good – sometimes viciously. And that creates a worse world.

There are certainly many things masquerading as good that are not good at all. But there are also things that are genuinely good. When dealing with someone who has a cynical attitude, it takes extreme amounts of patience to have anything to do with them. Any number of people, when faced with such things, are likely to give up and do something else. In my case, there were situations in which I wound up heart-broken. The cynical person would keep finding ways to portray anything I did or said as a way to do wrong; and even when I genuinely loved such a person I got attacked. I finally had had it with such people, and after a while I left them alone even when I actually loved them.

Now I was never a cynic, but I did have a negative attitude. It took amazing amounts of patience on the part of Christ to bring me around toward His ways. For me to become a Christian is about as likely as it is for a Nazi woman to marry a Jewish man. I come from Jewish atheists, including a grandmother who was a Communist, and Christianity was one of the last things that I was likely to believe. However Christ has proven Himself to me again and again; and as persistent as I had been in dealing with the cynics, He has been much more persistent with me as well as much wiser and much more effective in what He did.

Looking back at it I find a number of people who had positive intentions toward me whom I thought to be doing the wrong thing. In some situations I was nasty to them, and I recognize now how wrong that behavior had been. Goodwill is a precious commodity and should be respected. That is even the case when it comes from a place that you regard wrongfully as being hostile or from a place from which you would not expect it to come.

Now any number of cynics are, as Clinton said, disappointed idealists, and any number of them want to be proven wrong. However they set the standard so high that no human being can meet it, and in any number of cases wanting to be proven wrong turns out to be a game. They would look for anything to pick on, and they would demand impossible standards. Nobody would meet these standards; so they will say that they have been right all along.

So that when you are dealing with a cynic, be careful for this behavior. They will pick on anything. You have to be perfect to get through to them; and the only perfect being is Jesus Christ. It took Jesus Christ to get me to turn around. It may take a lesser being for many others; but in some cases the job is too hard for anyone except Him.

Values, Bullying And Rebellion

A person is more likely to do something if it is presented as something he values than if it is presented as something that he does not. If cleanliness is associated with thoroughness and excellence, which are virtues, then a person is more likely to pursue it than if it is associated with anal retentiveness, which is a flaw. It therefore makes sense to explain such things in a way that is positive and reasonable rather than in a way that is bullying or controlling. And if one explains such things in a way that is bullying or controlling, then one risks alienating the person against them for a long time.

When I was 12, I was in a summer camp, and kids were trying to get me to behave their way by telling me that if I did not I would get beaten up. This was precisely the wrong thing to do. It lead to a power struggle. Consideration is a virtue, but bullying is not. If you try to instill consideration through bullying, then consideration is identified with bullying, and what is in fact a virtue is seen as a part of the problem.

Similarly we see people attempting to get their way with their children by telling them that if they do not they will suffer consequences or die. That once again is precisely the wrong thing to do. The child sees bullying behavior and he correctly rebels against it. And even when one is right – as for example if one wants the child to work hard or to act ethically – these virtues are associated in the child's mind with the bullying behavior, and that sets off a struggle that leads to these virtues being fought against.

The correct solution is to use righful arguments. It is to explain why certain actions are rightful and why they benefit others and oneself. But if you are being a bully, you are doing precisely the wrong thing. Once again, you are identifying virtues with flaws, and that leads to these virtues being fought against because they are identified with bullying behavior. This results in rebellion on the part of anyone who correctly stands against bullying and aggression. And then the virtues themselves get a bad name, and we see the kinds of people who are naturally idealistic and rightfull against such things as bullying and aggression becoming rebels.

So we see any number of people raised in WASP culture deciding that the WASP culture is the root of all evil. It is in no way such a thing. There are many that are right with the WASP culture. However in any culture, if you are teaching your values through bullying and aggression, you will make rebels of people who are against bullying and aggression. And in America we have seen such people go to places such as the academia and foment youth revolts against the WASP culture under the names of such things as political correctness, Third Wave feminism and religion-hating ideologies. If you teach your values with violence, bullying and threats, you will associate your values in the child's mind with violence, bullying and threats. And then the youth who are against such things, identifying your values with this misconduct, will revolt against your values, even on matters on which your values are right.

In my case, I have had to search long, far and hard to figure out what actually is rightful and what is not. One example we see toward what I speak of is Nietzsche. He saw many things wrong and correctly named them, but he also attacked a number of things that were right. He spoke against “small considerations.” That is wrong. But when the real virtue such as consideration is taught as part of the same mindset as any number of actual wrongs that Nietzche correctly confronted, it is very easy to make the error of conflating it with these wrongs. So if you teach your values incorrectly, expect any number of people to revolt against these values.

The correct way to teach one's values, once again, is to explain why they are there. That way you are engaging the mind of the person, and you are making the mind your friend rather than your enemy. At which point the mind then picks up on these values and correctly applies them and communicates them to others. And then we run a much lesser risk of rebellion and a much greater chance of raising wholesome people who practice correct concepts of right and wrong.

Treatment Of Rape And Wrong Sexual Urges

From what I've heard, it appears that the biggest trauma of rape is that of disempowerment. The woman feels like her body has been taken from her. I have suggestions on how this trauma can be effectively overcome.

One suggestion is to take martial arts. Martial arts not only teaches the person that she can defend herself; it also addresses the trauma directly. Martial arts builds a relationship of self-mastery with one's body. The person gains power over her body and thus becomes empowered over her body – even to a greater extent than she had been before the rape.

Another suggestion is inviting God into her life. Here one is in touch with a power far greater than that of the rapist, and this power is righteous and good. God gives meaning, wisdom and a workable concept of ethics, and He is far more powerful than any man. If the trauma is that of disempowerment, then being in touch with the most powerful force in the known universe stands to go a long way toward solving that problem.

Right now, the leading approach to helping women who have been victims of such things is teaching them self-esteem and strength in themselves. That may work for some, but in any number of cases this can be a self-defeating approach. The self is not the only, nor the best, source of strength, and a person who is strong only in herself may not be actually strong. Such a person is likely to be selfish and also not to have a broad enough perspective. Whereas if a person is strong in God, she identifies with something much greater than herself, which means that she is more likely to take risks, make sacrifices and act with genuine courage.

For people who experience sexual urges that they do not want, I can think of two approaches. One is practiced by Buddhist monks. They meditate on decomposing corpses in order to do away with their sexuality. If they can do away with their whole sexuality that way, then people who experience pedophilic or otherwise unacceptable urges should be able to use this meditation to do away with these urges. Another is simply to hit yourself if you get urges of that kind. That should use classical Pavlovian reinforcement to de-condition the urge.

Now certainly I would not expect government-run centers for helping women dealing with things such as rape to preach Christian religion. That would be seen as violating the separation of church and state. However both churches and martial arts outlets can do outreach to these women and get them involved in something that works in overcoming their trauma. And that should help in solving this problem.

Knowledge Of God, Compassion And Salvation

It is the nature of God to be unpredictable, nor does He exist according to ordinary logic. There is a good reason for this. Whenever people think that they have something figured out they try to replicate or control it; which means that, if people ever understand God, they will try to be God themselves and will most likely do a bad job of it – as well as of course trying to replace or compete with God. I do not anticipate that God would want such an outcome, and it is likely that He will deny people the ability to have that kind of knowledge.

On some forms of knowledge there is a prohibition. That is because it can be used for wrong – sometimes serious wrong. Hitler had knowledge of the occult, and he used it for awful things. I used to believe that Biblical prohibitions on such things were a case of a priestry not wanting competition; but now I am seeing more clearly the rationality of these prohibitions.

Compassion and righteousness are both demanded, and sometimes people will practice one to the exclusion of the other. Compassion by itself fails to see where the other person goes wrong; and sometimes the right thing to do to a person is to rebuke them when they are doing the wrong thing. Whereas righteousness by itself becomes judgmental and even hateful, and it creates fanatics who think that they are being righteous in doing harm to other people. In both cases harm is done. The correct solution is to practice both. That way each checks the other's capacity for wrongdoing, with compassion checking righteousness's capacity for hatred and uniformed judgmentalism and righteousness checking compassion's capacity for enabling wrongdoing.

In any number of situations one person takes one role and the other person takes the other role. Needless to say, in such situations the first person is loved and the second person is hated. However the first person is not always doing the right thing. In some cases it is important to confront people; and the person who takes the role of compassion without righteousness fails to do that and creates monsters.

There is a saying that God helps those who help themselves. In fact there is very much a valid mechanism by which Jesus becomes the savior. Jesus leads people away from sin and toward righteousness and wisdom. Possessing such things, people set their lives and themselves straight. Jesus helps by teaching people whatever is missing in their character and what righteousness actually means. Armed with such things, people do in fact help themselves, and they do in fact end up in many cases living saved lives.

Charlottesville And Domestic Terrorists

After the recent clashes in Charlottesville, Virginia, I have been seeking to make sense of the reasons for them, and I found very little sense in them.

One people whom they appear to be against are the blacks. What they appear to not understand is that they and the inner-city black men have a lot in common. They both are Christian, or so they think that they are. They both are macho, violent and anti-intellectual in their thinking. When I was in Northern Virginia I saw groups riding the subway that consisted of young men who appeared to be from the inner city and young men who looked like what some call “rednecks.” These two groups have culturally more in common with one another than either does with the liberals, and I think it the height of foolishness for the two to be hateful to one another.

They also appear to be against the Jews. Apparently they think that the Jews have bad morals. They obviously have not met my grandmother. She was a Jew, a Communist and a Russian; but she had every virtue that the American conservatives claim to have. She worked hard. She was honest and responsible. She was dedicated to her family and put its needs above her own. She is the proof that what these people are saying about the Jews is completely wrong. Yes there are Jews who are scoundrels; but Jews do not own scoundrelhood.

Homosexuals – well. Homosexuality is a sin, but hatred is a bigger sin, and while I myself have no interest in homosexual matches, despite many offers toward that effect, it is far worse to be ugly to people than it is to be homosexual. It may very well be that God hates homosexuality, but Christ demands that we love our neighbor, and that is the case even if he is gay.

Feminists – there are good ones and there are bad ones. I have nothing at all against women who want women to have careers or to have a safe life at home. I have a lot against women who want to be jerks, but once again these women do not own jerkhood. A jerk is a jerk, whether a woman or a man. A man who drives his car into a crowd of people and kills or injures 20 people is a jerk; and even Catherine McKinnon is not a bigger jerk than is he.

Probably the most ironic thing about this is that these people are not looking at who actually is a threat. China is rising, and it is Communist, even if only in name. India is rising, and it is not Christian. We all know about Cuba, Venezuela and North Korea. The Jews who are doing well in America are doing so entirely in agreement with American stated values. They get where they are through education and hard work. That means that they are better Americans than these people, who think that they are American patriots but who so far have done very little for America except make American people look like jerks.

You want to do something good for your country? Then do something good for your country. Build better cars, invent better software, construct better skyscrapers. You want to do something for your culture? Then do something good for your culture. Write a good song, make a nice painting, write a poem. Do not think that injuring innocent people makes you look like anything better than a terrorist.

So this is where I leave it. There is very little of merit in what these people are doing, and while I have absolutely no use for political correctness neither do I have any respect for what they do. There are real ways to benefit your country, and there are real way to benefit your culture. They do not consist of acting like the Al Queada and making your people look like jerks.

Common Sense, Science And Christianity

Many people consider themselves Christian yet constantly go on about “common sense.” I do not see how such a thing is possible. It is common sense that, if someone punches you, you punch back; yet Christ says turn the other cheek. It is common sense that you hate your enemies; but Christ says love your enemies. It is common sense that an emperor of a huge nation is a winner and that a carpenter who dies on the cross is a loser; yet Christ outlasted the Roman Empire and is worshipped by people in much more powerful countries than Roman Empire ever became.

In science, common sense is known as bias. There is a reason for that as well. It is common sense that saving is good for you and spending is bad for you; yet in economics spending increases the GDP and as such adds to the country's economic might. There is nothing commonsensical about quantum physics or game theory; yet they are very much real. People think it common sense that a race that has had political success is better than the race that has not, but the reason for that has nothing to do with racial superiority and everything to do with superior methodology.

As for common sense itself, it is not nearly as sensible as it thinks that it is. It is common sense that “life is not fair”; it is common sense that “you get what you give.” These two statements are mutually contradictory. If life is not fair then you don't get what you give, and if you get what you give then life is fair. Two mutually contradictory statements are seen as part of the same mentality, which mean that the mentality is not nearly as sensible as it considers itself to be.

I have heard a priest say that common sense is something that God gave people to help them in having a moral compass. I find statements of that sort to be hypocritical. There is the line of thought that God created people rationally and with rightful capacities, and there is the line of thought that human nature is poisoned by sin. Which parts of human nature are good and which parts of human nature are bad? Why see common sense as better or worse than reason or feelings? I see no reason at all why common sense would achieve better outcomes than either of the above. Reason is responsible for most of what we have, and feelings are necessary all around. Yet many of the same people who demonize feelings and cast doubt on reason worship common sense – in some cases in the name of Christ, when we just saw that Christ's statements are anything but commonsensical.

I have been accused all my life of lacking common sense, and I came to the conclusion that I do not need it. There are many better things out there than common sense. Christianity is better. Science is better. Poetry is better. Who is a better moral guide: Jesus or a six-packer? And what is a better source of knowledge, Harvard or the school gym?

So I prefer Christianity, science and poetry to common sense. And I advocate the same for others.

Mature And Immature Manifestations

Just about any new thing goes through birth pangs, and in many cases the immature manifestations of things are destructive. Many get better as they mature. When I first began developing my opinions, my expressions of them were angry, they were rude and they were mean. Now, after putting significant intellectual effort into developing my opinions, I can express them in a calmer and more reasonable manner.

We see this with both liberalism and the Christian Right. The 1960s liberals were seen as irresponsible and unrealistic, and the Christans were seen as stupid bigots. Both have improved their operations. The liberals became more informed and more effective, and the Christians expanded their worldview and have been in many cases doing actual good. The original manifestations were flawed in many ways; the mature manifestations have become a lot better.

It appears the nature of most things in their original stages to be flawed. One starts on a journey on which there are few stars on the perimeter. Where one goes, either people have not gone before or they have gone before one's time or, if they have gone in one's time, were suppressed. One is groping in the darkness, and one frequently makes mistakes. But in any number of cases he emerges with valuable insight or valuable new directions.

The original cause is frequently not rationally known, or at least not well expressible. If the culture is turned against love, then people who seek to embark upon love are at a disadvantage. They do not have knowledge or practice or support. If they fail – being as they are at a disadvantage – then that feeds the cultural claims that love is a myth or a racket or mental illness; which reinforces the widely held falsehood. However they do part of the job to help pave the way for others on the same journey, and that makes what they do a contribution to society.

Of course anything new will be seen by somebody as being disruptive, and that would feed the claim that it is bad. However everything that they have was once new, and that means that it was disruptive to somebody. That does not make it bad. Electricity was disruptive to candle makers, but that does not damn electricity. The American Revolution was disruptive to English monarchy, but that likewise does not make it bad.

Original manifestations of electricity were clumsy. The American Revolution had to involve a war. The ideas behind American democracy were in contradiction to the order of the day and were ridiculed by many. We see any number of similar things with just about anything that is new.

Are there bad things that come about? Of course there are. There are plenty of new things that are no good. The question that needs to be asked, when faced with anything that is new, is, What would be its mature manifestation? Once again, immature manifestation of things are flawed in most cases. Many get better as they mature; some get worse.

So yes, the immature manifestations of things – both good things and bad things – will be obnoxious in some ways. That is not because of the thing itself; that is because it is an immature manifestation. The important question to ask, once again, is, What would this thing be like if it becomes mature? And then it becomes possible to see which beginnings lead to bad outcomes and which beginnings lead to good ones.