Challenges For Liberals And Conservatives

Both people who want to implement change and people who want to restore a previous state of existence first need to understand what they are dealing with.

The people who want to change the status quo – any status quo – need to understand why the status quo exists. If you want to change the gender roles, you need to understand why the gender roles are there. Once you do that you have two choices. One is to agree with the reasons for the status quo and keep it. The other is to see how the status quo is due to wrongful influences and be able to make a more convincing case for changing it.

The people who want to restore a previous state of existence need to understand why the changes have happened. If you re-create a state of affairs before the change, you will be re-creating the state of affairs that lead to the change, which means that you will be met with similar forces that lead the change to take place. If you want to re-create 1950s, you will be re-creating conditions that lead to 1960s, which means that you will be met with something like 1960s further down the road. Similarly if you want to re-create the conditions preceding the labor movement, then you will be re-creating conditions that lead to the creation of the labor movement, which means that you will be slammed with something like the labor movement yet again.

In both cases it merits to understand the reasons for what one does not like. You need to understand the reasons for the status quo. You also need to understand the reasons for the changes from a pre-existing status quo.

Once that is done, you can either agree with the status quo or the changes; or you can see where either have gone wrong and pursue your course in a more informed and more effective way.

Beauty, Feminism And The Arts

The Greeks extolled beauty as an ideal, and any number of others today dismiss it under the claim that it is only taste-dependent, culturally relative or “in the eye of the beholder.” Both are part-right and part-wrong.

Judith Langlois, an American scientist, ran an experiment that showed that people cross-culturally will all regard a face with a certain set of proportions as being beautiful. Another experiment showed 500 faces to 20,000 participants resulting in every face being picked as the most beautiful at least once. The first shows the existence of absolute beauty; the second shows the existence of relative beauty.

Both studies validate the correct claims on each side while invalidating the wrong ones. The existence of absolute beauty shows that the artistic search for truth in beauty is a valid one and invalidates the abuse by feminists against women who are physically attractive. The existence of relative beauty shows that there is someone for everyone and invalidates the abuse by bad parents and stupid teenagers against those they regard as being unattractive.

I had a girlfriend whose neighbors never saw her as being attractive, but many others did. I had another girlfriend whom everyone saw as beautiful. In the first case we see relative beauty; in the second case we see absolute beauty.

There is nothing at all incompatible between the two.

Many artists are known as being arrogant; and while some are in no way do they begin to own arrogance. When you are in a field that is not appreciated, as opposed to a field that is appreciated, sometimes you have to blow your horn. This may be regarded as egotistical, even narcissistic; but the process demands it.

When I was writing on the Internet in favor of beauty, people accused me of thinking with my penis. That is completely not the case. I have no sexual attraction to my female relatives; but all of them are very beautiful. Appreciation is not the same thing as lust. For that matter I can also appreciate the build of a man with a good physique, but I am not a homosexual.

Stating that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” or anything along the same lines is like saying that it does not exist. In fact, true beauty takes talent and effort to produce and deserves respect. There is nothing “in the eye” about Sistine Chapel, Burmese stupas or the works of Monet. All these are amazing accomplishments. They deserve respect.

I see no reason at all why the Renaissance Italy, with 3 million people and per capita GDP of $1500 a year, would have better art than America, with 300 million people and per capita GDP of $45,000 a year. We should have 300 Sistine Chapels. American people are in no way less talented than the Italians. The problem is one of values. If you do not value beauty, you will not create a demand for beauty, and most artists will either go starving or have to do something else.

What we do see in many people who regard beauty as solely being relative is self-refuting behavior. They claim that beauty is relative; then they attack women who are beautiful and do not attack women who are not. This shows that they, like everyone else, know what beauty is and what it isn't; and their claims are therefore refuted by their own behavior.

When beauty is under attack, anything that either possesses beauty or loves beauty will be in one or another bind. This reinforces the slander that something is wrong with beauty. The real reason is that these people are under attack. When women or blacks are oppressed, they do not accomplish very much, which then reinforces the slander that women or blacks are inferior. When beauty is oppressed, it will be found in all sorts of bad ways, which then will reinforce the slander that something is wrong with beauty.

Beauty is innocent of its abuses by stupid teenagers and unscrupulous plastic surgeons. It existed long before they existed; it will continue existing after they are gone. That something can be used for wrong does not mean that it is a bad thing. Anything that has appeal to people will have someone wanting to use it for wrong. That is as much the case with intelligence, money or patriotism as it is with beauty.

Then there is the case that valuing beauty destroys women's self-esteem. This is completely an invalid claim. That some students get D's does not mean that nobody can get A's. That some people are poor does not mean that nobody can be wealthy. Different people will be endowed differently, and they will go to different lengths to develop or not develop their gifts. In no way is such a thing limited to beauty.

The women who are regarded as unattractive by bad parents or stupid school cultures can take heart. If every face in an experiment gets picked as the most beautiful at least once, then someone will find even them beautiful. They have no business however at all attacking women who are more good-looking than they are. It is valid to look outside bad cultures that treat the person like dirt. It is wrong to attack beauty.

Once again, there is absolute beauty and relative beauty. Search for truth or goodness in beauty is valid; so is search outside of the place that treats you like dirt for people who would appreciate you. Take what is right with each side and discard what is wrong with them. Value beauty for what it is. And if someone does not value you as being beautiful, look for someone who would.

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"Nerds" And "Jocks"

When I was in school, the attitude that many people had was that academic learning was worthless and that the only thing that mattered in life was common sense and social skills. You may want that attitude if you are raising salesmen and lawyers. But the country needs many people besides just that. You also need engineers, programmers, doctors, scientists, teachers and many others. And for these people, they better have academic knowledge.

Having that attitude is one of the most irresponsible things that one can have. You are attacking your best minds and making enemies of people who otherwise would be your greatest contributors. And that hurts your country.

So we have idiots riding around with signs that say “My son beat up your honor student.” Once again, these people are hurting mostly themselves. They make enemies of people who otherwise would be their greatest contributors. And that hurts their country more than it hurts anything else.

For this state of affairs they blame – liberals, Jews, Communists, you name it. They should be blaming themselves. They destroy their best minds, and that renders them non-competitive.

So then the minds attacked that way go into the academia. They are rightfully full of hatred. They buy into bullshit such as political correctness and Andrea Dworkin - Catherine McKinnon feminism. This does not serve the country at all. This serves its enemies.

In school settings, the “jocks” are seen as exciting and the “nerds” are seen as bores. In the adult life that changes. The “jocks” settle into a predictable existence. The “nerds” keep learning, and they become more interesting people over the long run. At this point the “jocks” decide that the “nerd” types are evil. They are not. They are simply people who've bothered to educate themselves about many things, and they become more interesting over the long run than the people who have been “jocks.”

Now not everyone who is a “nerd” is a good person, and not everyone who is a “jock” is a bad one. However for as long as people insist on destroying their best minds, they are going to lose. The correct solution to all this mess is to support and encourage academic learning. And then the people who tend to such things will become your country's contributors, and the influence of people who have a grudge against your country will be reduced.

Deconstructing Gender War

I have been called a misogynist and I have been called a male feminist. I am neither. My stance is the rational one: That anything capable of choice can be good or bad regardless of gender. I want the choices made on both sides to be the right ones. I want men to be good to women, and I want women to be good to men.

I judge it wrong to take sides with one half of humanity against another half of humanity. Among both men and women there will be ones who choose to act rightfully and those who do not. It does not make sense to take the side of men against women, and it does not make sense to take side of women against men. It makes sense to take the side of men and women who choose to be good people against men and women who do not choose to be good people. It makes sense to reward rightful choice both by men and by women and to confront wrongful choice by both.

In recent times, we have seen the opposite on both sides. On one side of town, violent and truly misogynistic men brutally abuse women who, for the most part, have good will toward men and are willing to be good to their partners. On the other side of town, nasty women viciously attack men who, for the most part, have good will to women and believe in women's rights. In both cases ugly behavior gets rewarded and goodness gets punished. And this teaches everyone – both men and women – that it pays to be a jerk. The result is a worse world for everyone.

I have known a man in Tucson who went to jail for “beating up [his] wife's fist with [his] face.” I also know a woman in Kansas whose husband broke her skull so badly that she needed over 40 stitches and walked away with the child. Both the man in the first case – and the woman in the second case – were good people. They were the last people in the world who deserved such treatment. I would much rather see Eminem or Ayatollah or Michael Murphy in prison than the first man. As for the woman in the second situation, she was kind, hard-working and beautiful. But even if she had been Andrea Dworkin, she still would not have deserved either to get her skull broken or to lose her child.

When scoundrels win and good people lose, we see a wrongful set of incentives in society. People – both men and women – decide that being a jerk pays, and being good gets you abused. This makes everyone worse, both men and women. Men become violent and corrupt, women become vicious. Everyone becomes the worst thing that they can be.

I believe that we can do better. No; not can; must. We must do better than that. We must be better people than either the followers of Andrea Dworkin or the followers of Eminem. We must be better to our partners, and we must be better to those of the other gender with whom we interact outside the home. We must resolve to be loving and kind to our partners. And when some scumbag of either gender tells us that we owe it to our gender to either (in case of men) control women or (in case of women) be ugly to men, then we must have the strength and the courage to tell them to fuck off.

And if they press on, we can tell them that absolutely nothing is owed to a gender, and that rather things are owed to those who have been contributors to humanity in all aspects, whether they were female or whether they were male.

At the stake is nothing less than what kind of world our children inherit. Do you, as a man, want your daughter to be a punching bag for some idiot? Do you, as a woman, want your son to be maliciously abused by Dworkin - McKinnon feminists or falsely portrayed as a misogynist or a sociopath when he is not? Do you want your children to live in a world where these are the two possible options? Or are you – and your children – better than that?

In their single-minded push for equality, the leaders of feminism have denied women things that may in many cases be more important than mere equality, attacking such things as family, love and religion. In their psychological deconstruction of men, they have taught women who listened to them to suppress their best qualities and turn from kind and compassionate human beings into vicious monsters. For a long time they have denied women the right to family life even if the woman was choosing such willingly. And this was in many cases more oppressive to women than much of what we see done by men. If a woman wants to be an Amazon, fine, let her join the military or the police. But do not deny women the right to family life or beauty or romantic love or children or Christian religion if such be her deliberate inclinations.

As for the reaction against feminism – led by people such as Eminem, Osama Bin Laden and Michael Murphy – it has taught men to be brutal and corrupt. It has told men that real men beat women and then sneakily cover it up in court while subverting the police and the social services to maintain the deception. I can think of no more contemptible standpoint. It takes absolutely nothing for a man to beat up on a woman. It takes a lot more for a man to love her.

And I, as somebody who can do 200 fingertip pushups at age 41, am hardly weak for my age.

In both cases the bad guys won and the good guys lost. This is the case for both men and women.

The solution is not the gender war. The gender war is the problem. The gender war teaches everyone – both women and men – to be the worst thing that they can be. The worst choices are being taught and encouraged, and the better choices put people into ugly situations. And this sets up a dynamics by which everyone becomes the worst thing that they can be.

The solution to the gender war is the opposite. It is to inspire men and women to be good to one another, and to give them the courage to stand up to the scoundrels on both sides of the gender war who exploit people's failure and misery to advance a destructive agenda while making the world worse for everyone. It is to give men and women the courage to love one another and treat one another rightfully. And it is to respect and reward the men and the women who choose to do so while confronting the men and the women who choose to treat their partners – or people of the other gender in general – like dirt.

It makes sense to side neither with men nor with women. It makes sense to support the men and the women who are willing to treat the people of the other gender right. It makes sense to encourage, reward and support kindness toward one's partner and confront abusive behavior. It makes sense to support the better choices in both men and women. And it also makes sense for men from the first side of town to get together with women from the second side of town, resulting in matches in which each party will be treated better than it expects to be treated at home.

The last of this, I call the economic solution. A major theme in economics is that, when left to their own devices, people will seek what benefits them, and that competition among the producers rewards those who can deliver the best product at the best price. Here, people will naturally gravitate toward those who are willing to treat them rightfully. The men will go to women who are willing to be good to men, and the women will go to men who are willing to be good to women. This will reward rightful behavior by both men and women, resulting in more people choosing that rightful behavior.

And this will do more to correct both injustices of which I have spoken than either government-enforced feminist action or man-on-woman violence and court abuse.

So this is the solution. Reverse the incentives. Make it pay for men to be good to women and for women to be good to men. Create a large-scale flux between the side of town where nasty women abuse men who have goodwill toward women and the side of town where nasty men brutalize women who have goodwill toward men. Let men who are willing to be good to women get together with women who are willing to be good to men. Create better relationships for the participants. But more importantly, improve the incentives within society, rewarding good behavior and punishing ugly behavior both by women and by men.

The result of this will not only be better relationships. It will be a better world.

You Are A Masterpiece

You are a masterpiece; true work of art
And your whole being, and its every part
Is masterwork of nature and mankind
Which in you is accomplished and refined.

Your hair, like hanging gardens of the queen
Of Babylon, swing down, and in them seen
Are ivy, cherry blossom, orchid, rose
Blooming together in resplendor. Those

Blue eyes, in which we see Monet, Renoir -
The beauty fathomed specially from afar,
That are more haunting, beautiful and true
The greater distance between me and you;

A nose that like a yacht upon the seas
Engulfs the essence of the ocean breeze -
That stays aloft in turmoil and in flood
And sends the chastened air through the blood -

The lips that like the opening to a cave
Conceal a warm and delicate enclave
In which the sparkling teeth and gentle tongue
Lead food inside and air into the lung;

A neck that like a Doric column stands
Majestic, long and white; the lily hands
That craft calligraphy and highest art
Sustained by rushing turbines of your heart;

A chest with pair of Taj Mahals adorned
That puts all human craftsmanship to scorn;
The voice, like a piano or a flute
Resounds through many octaves or stops mute,

The strands of spirit that are entertwined
In the refining furnace of your mind
That fills itself with majesty and love
And forges them into a treasure trove:

The legs like those of cheetah or gazelle
Are elegant and long and run like hell;
The stomach that like delta river's sand
Is smooth and soft and tender to the hand;

And terraced hills and paddies of your ears,
And morning dewdrops of your gentle tears,
And the Saharah Desert of your back,
And the Forbidden Palace in its track:

In you the world is manifest, in you
Is sun and sky and every worldly hue,
The flowers, stars and sculptures and the word
Of masters and the dreamers and the Lord.

I love you all; and, feeling with my heart
Your whole entity and every part,
I rise in passion and, inspired, fall
Into the Sistine Chapel of your soul.

Wrong Thought On Relationships

Sigmund Freud's most famous error is his claim that children are in love with the parent of the opposite gender, and that love in adulthood is transference of that love. This idea is very easily refuted in contemporary society. At the time there were very few single parent households to study; now there are plenty of them. And what we find is that people raised in single parent households fall in love just as readily as do people raised in nuclear families.

Since they do not have a transference figure, their love cannot be transference.

Finally, since the feelings of the people raised in nuclear families are of the same character as theirs, their love cannot be transference either.

The two women with whom I've been for longer than a year were both raised without a man in the house. Yet both of them have been in love a number of times. Their relationships with the women who raised them differed, and in both cases the women raising them discouraged them from going with men. However both of them found men attractive, and both of them have been with any number of men. Neither one of them had an extensive relationship with the father, and one of them only met her father at age 24 and the other has decided that her father is a bad person and wants nothing to do with him.

Neither one had a male parent present; yet both have been in love more than once. This proves that love is not transference.

This idea has been far too big for its merits. In 2000 I was in love with a woman named Michele. She kept claiming that I saw her as a mother. In fact I saw her, if anything, as a sister figure, a fellow traveller. She was a poet; so was I. She had finished Caltech in three years; I had finished University of Virginia in two. Eventually she admitted that the reason she had espoused those kinds of beliefs was to soothe her for a previous situation in her life when she had a beautiful relationship with a young man, only for the man to leave her. Those beliefs may have helped some jilted lovers to soothe their feelings; but they have been very ruinous to society and to many, many people.

Then there is the claim that there is a pattern to people's relationships. That may be the case in some situations but not in others. Looking at the history of the two women with whom I have been for a long time, I do not find a pattern for their attractions. The first went for everyone from a gentle-hearted tattoo artist to an acerbic engineering student to a much older right-hand man of a Hindu swami. The second went for everyone from punks to a “nice guy” who did not turn out to be all that nice to an older musician and chef who is both strong-minded and kind. Some of their men were abusive and some were not abusive. Some of their men were jerks and some were not. Many in psychology would postulate a pattern; but I do not find any in either case.

Another claim frequently made is that people who are raised in bad households go for bad partners, whereas people who are raised in good households go for good partners. I know situations to contradict such a claim. The lady for whom I wrote my first poetry book “Poems to Julia” was raised in a very good family by a father who had been Vice President of the National Academy of Sciences; yet she was married for 15 years to an absolute brute. I know a lady on the Internet who was raised in a horrible setting, yet men in her adult life have treated her very well.

I know a lovely lady who used to work at a school for disturbed students. She said that when the students formed emotional bonds with each other, the teachers defused the situations by convincing them that because they were raised in bad backgrounds they would have bad relationship situations. My response to that kind of thinking is that people are not their parents but themselves; and that just because their parents behaved badly does not mean that they would as well.

They are however at a disadvantage. They have not been raised with good habits; they have been raised with bad ones. Many people who are raised in negative situations reject the way in which they've been raised, but they do not know any other way. If they start out with ideals about treating their partner better than one of their parents treated the other, often they do not know how to put these ideals into practice. Sometimes they encounter a situation that they do not know how to handle and slip back into the wrongful practices with which they were raised. This may get them accused of being – hypocrites, predators, whatever. In fact the real problem is that they have learned wrong habits – which they rightfully have rejected – but have no practice of any other way.

If the school wants to teach them these better habits, that is a rightful and noble endeavor. It does not mean however that they should keep them from forming relationships with one another.

Another frequent claim is that the partners that you attract are a result of your self-esteem or what is in your consciousness. I know any number of people who had both good and bad partners, and I do not see how what they attract had anything to do with their self-esteem. I know a lady who went in a short period of time from a violent Greek jerk to an excellent gentleman; and it is not likely that her self-esteem had gone from pits to tops in the short period of time between one and the other. Certainly being with a bad partner who tears you down can undermine your self-esteem. What we see is reverse causality. It is not bad self-esteem that has taken you into a bad situation. It is a bad situation that has undermined your self-esteem.

Finally there is a claim that men who love their mothers will treat their women well, and men who hate their mothers will treat their women poorly. There are many situations in which this is not the case. In African-American culture in particularly, men worship their mothers but treat their women like dirt. Sometimes mothers sabotage their sons' relationships with their women; and I am personally acquainted with a situation in which a young man from a country town in Australia went for a young woman who came from the city, only to have his Jehovah's Witnesses mother turn him against her; at which point he started acting like a bastard and is continuing to act like a bastard till the present day. My sister was married to a man in a similar situation; but she had good training from her mother and was able to leave the man before he could do anything truly ugly.

On the obverse, do men who hate their mothers treat their women badly? Eminem certainly does. To these people the correct response is that women – like men – differ from one another, and that their mothers are bad people does not mean that all women are bad people. Anything human is capable of choice; anything capable of choice can be good or bad. It is wrong to punish an innocent woman for the sins of a guilty woman. Similarly it is wrong for feminists in the academia to abuse young men nearest the liberal centers of learning and culture who, for the most part, are the least misogynistic men out there, just because any number of Muslim or conservative or inner-city men are misogynistic idiots.

All of the above ideas have many people espousing them, including intelligent people. Yet there are very obvious refutations for all of the above. I want to see thought on the subject improve. Most of these attitudes are wrong, and any number of them have been destructive. Thought on relationships must evolve past these errors and toward more rightful understanding of the subject.

Beauty And Its Abuses

I have know any number of women who said that they were physically unattractive, who described the nastiness that they endured for that reason. Many blame beautiful women, or even the concept of beauty as such.

The correct response is that beauty is not responsible for abuses of beauty by ignorant high school kids and unscrupulous individuals. That unethical plastic surgeons exploit women's insecurities to convince the already attractive women that they cannot be beautiful unless they keep coming back for more treatments, does not damn beauty any more than does Hitler's misuse of Germany's national pride to start the Second World War damn national pride.

Anything that has any appeal to people will see any number of people wanting to exploit it. That is as much the case for beauty as it is the case for such things as money and intelligence. That some people use money for wrong does not make money bad; and that some people use intelligence for wrong does not mean that intelligence is bad. The problem is unscrupulous use of what has appeal to people, not what has appeal to people in itself.

I was unattractive in school, and yes, many people treated me badly. I became more attractive as I grew older, and in my adult life I have been at no shortage of female attention. I have also known any number of women who had been unattractive in school, who later became attractive physically, personally, or both. Having seen this from both sides, I say very clearly that being unattractive when one is young does not have to be a death sentence. It is possible to become physically or personally attractive as an adult and attract attention of frequently better people than do the people who have always been attractive.

I know a woman named Louise whose family made her feel like she was the ugliest thing on earth. She never became conventionally attractive; but she became very personally attractive. In her adult life, men went after her in droves. She still has many people who love her. If you are an unattractive woman, it doesn't mean that you are doomed to a life of loneliness. There are many things that you can do to improve your lot.

The problem is not with beautiful women, and it is not with the idea of beauty. The problem is with the misuses of beauty by people who are either unintelligent or unscrupulous. It is not the creators of beauty who are at fault, and it is not the people who appreciate beauty who are at fault. Michelangelo and John Keats, or the people who go to museums and poetry readings, are not responsible for the actions of stupid teenagers and unethical plastic surgeons. The stupid teenagers and unethical plastic surgeons are responsible for these actions.

So it is time to stop blaming beauty or love of beauty and confront the problem for what it is. Nasty school cultures and unethical plastic surgeons do not own beauty. Beauty existed for a long time before they existed, and it will continue existing for a long time after they're gone. Equating beauty with its abuses gives far more credit to the abusers of beauty than they've ever merited. They did not invent beauty; they did not create beauty; and they do not own beauty. Beauty exists, and has always existed, in and of itself.

There is certainly far more beauty in art – both Western and otherwise – than in American high schools or in the offices of plastic surgeons. For that matter there is also more beauty in nature than in either of these things. Nature is a better craftsman of beauty than even the most accomplished plastic surgeon. And there are many, many people in the world who are also fine craftsmen of beauty, for whom abusing an unattractive teenager or exploiting a woman's insecurities is the last thing from their minds.

The problem is not beauty – the creation thereof or the love thereof. The problem is exploitation of beauty by people who either don't know what they are doing or are wilfully doing wrong. Stop blaming beauty and its creators and confront the abuses of beauty by ignorant or unscrupulous people. They did not invent beauty; they do not deserve credit for beauty; and beauty itself is innocent of their misdeeds.

Justified Anger And Misuses Of Spirituality

I have seen a game played by any number of people who consider themselves spiritual. They would do something that would deliberately bring on an angry response. Then they would claim that the person is negative or evil or a neanderthal for getting angry. The person playing this game would then walk away feeling superior to the person whom he has played in this manner. The anger would be the proof of one's superiority and the inferiority of the other person.

The game is quite similar to a related game that is played by some people who consider themselves rational. These people would make some kind of a poisonous statement; that would bring on an emotional response; then they would walk away saying that the other person is irrational or crazy or neurotic.

Seeing such abuses, there have been any number of people deciding that there was something wrong with, respectively, spirituality or reason. That is wrong. The problem is that these things get used for wrongdoing. All sorts of things can be used for wrongdoing, including many things that are not at all bad in themselves. Money, intelligence, beauty and all sorts of moral values can be used for wrongdoing; but that does not make any of them bad. However the more they are used in this way, the more they become discredited, and the more credible becomes the case of the people who want to see them as something bad. And of these there are plenty.

So for example we have any number of people in the baby boom generation going around that the people younger than themselves are negative or neanderthals or evil because any number of them have negative or angry feelings. I am sorry, the conduct of any number of these people deserves angry responses. If you have left the world a worse place than you have found it, then anger at you is legitimate. These problems will not be solved by “positive thinking” or anything of the sort; they will be solved by informed and directed action. For a problem to be solved it has to be seen, and if you think that this is negative then being negative is part of the process. Failing to do so is not enlightenment or anything of the sort. It is lying to yourself and others. Many of these people started out seeking to do the right thing, then they did the wrong thing. So when someone else seeks to do the right thing, these people smugly claim that they have been in the same place and then moved beyond it to better places. They did not move to better places. They moved to a worse place. They started out caring about the world and its future and became short-sighted and careless. That is not an improvement, it is a degradation.

Of course many of these people have availed themselves of all sorts of spiritual knowledge, and not all of them have been using it for right things. If they are using it to aggravate people in order to make them look bad, or to make it look like legitimate anger at them is something wrong with the person who has it, then that is not rightful use of spiritual knowledge. Neither predatory behavior nor dishonest behavior counts as enlightenment. Misusing this knowledge in such a manner discredits spirituality as such. And that makes things bad even for people who are using spirituality for rightful purposes.

I have seen all sorts of misuses of just about everything that is there. Just about anything that is good can be made bad. This is the case with both spirituality and reason. Reason is a good thing, but it can be used for all sorts of wrong things. Spirituality is a good thing, and it can also be used for all sorts of wrong things. It is important that people who stand to be hurt by misuses of such things have the knowledge that they need not to fall for predatory conduct. Then they will be able to separate the value from the misuses of the value. They will be less likely to turn against the value itself, and the value will remain free to be used for rightful purposes. This is the case, once again, with spirituality and reason both.

As for anger, no, it is not always a wrong thing. There very much is such a thing as righteous anger. Once again, being angry at people who've left the world a worse place than they found it is righteous. You can get as positive as you want to get. That will not solve the problem. In such situations it is rightful to get angry or negative. Only by being recognized first will the problem stand a chance of being solved.

So the misuses of spirituality for wrongful ends have lead many people to conclude that spirituality as such is a bad thing. That is wrong as well. Once again, reason can also be used for all sorts of wrong things, but that does not make reason bad. Anything that is good can be used for wrong ends. Any value can be corrupted. That does not discredit the value; it discredits those who use it for wrong and make good things into bad things.

So no, being angry or negative is not always unjustifiable. There are many situations in which such responses are correct. When a nuclear reactor blows up you have to tell people what has happened. Failing to do so because doing so would be negative is not enlightenment; it is lying. When people are poisoning the planet and leave it a worse place for their children than they have found it, being angry at such a thing is right. Misusing metaphysical concepts to make it look like it is the other person's problem makes metaphysical concepts that much less credible, and it also makes you look like a jerk to anyone who has any insight into the matter.

The correct approach is to actually solve all these problems. The people who work on such real solutions deserve all the credit that they can. The people who misuse metaphysics or anything else to hide from or deny these problems are the true villains. It is rightful that they be seen in the negative light. And it is rightful that people go to work solving these problems head on so that the world that they leave behind for their children be a better place than they have found it, however "negative" anyone paints them to be for that reason.