Aug 18, 2022·edited Aug 18, 2022Liked by Harrison Koehli
This was one awesome tour de force... Bravo!
One thing that came to mind: it is of course reasonable to criticize the old Enlightenment dogma that "man can be formed and changed", whether by making him more rational or more "communism-compatible". Yes, these things go against man's nature, if we define nature as his spiritual nature. But this move by the Enlightenment/Communist types could be seen as another example where ideologies exploit something true, like the psychopath exploits something true when seducing women: namely that man CAN change, and even overcome his "biological nature" in a sense, à la Dabrowski. It's just that it must happen at an individual level, not collectively, and happen in a very different direction than the ideologues want to push us.
If any of the terminology or ideas seem to come out of nowhere, just let me know. I've been working with them for years so sometimes err on the side of not giving enough background explanations. Translation: happy to mansplain. lol
Well, considering I’m green to your writing, I’ll adapt accordingly (Google will help) but yes, I might ask for some references here and there. And by the way, I learned of your work when I read Claudia Moscovici’s “Dangerous Liaisons” in 2018. Dark and necessary work you all are doing. It helped me immensely with some brain altering cognitive dissonance I’d been living with for almost a decade. High praise.
Excellent and engrossing. I'm wondering if you have studied the various types of "ground" and the pre-conditions for each. What makes one hard ground or good ground for the anti-word? And how is the status of one's ground formed by his relationship to the death instinct?
My ideas on that come from Dabrowski. I think it's the best system for understanding this kind of thing. Roughly, hard ground = level I (primary integration), rocky and thorny ground = levels II-III, good ground = levels III-V. I get into that a bit more in my next piece, which I'll publish early next week.
I found this very carefully written but for me including some difficult vocabulary.
Your rejection of socialistic childcare based on the child's need for a "stable mother figure" comes directly out of attachment theory, does it not? I am not too familiar with that research.
You have covered a variety of researchers and thinkers who have noticed certain peculiar aspects of the human condition. The "death instinct" has to be one of the most peculiar. It seems to be related to the willingness of the individual to play the game of life in a body. When socialism goes insane (or criminal) its supporters gush about utopia but advocate policies that will result in human genocide.
The perspective of seeing human personality as spiritual opens the door to a fuller understanding of what death is and how its desire or avoidance plays out in the games of human life. But it has also resulted in various therapeutic processes that go deeper than most we hear about, including even the possibility of curing the psychopath. It has also resulted in a set of guidelines for organizing and operating a human group, though those guidelines don't directly touch on many of the social issues we deal with all the time in politics and social policy (such as working mothers).
It is difficult, even with an improved understanding of the situation, to decide to act. One must have some faith that their actions will make some difference, even if they don't seem to in the short run. And so one seeks out actions that are tested and supported by someone's experience, if not their own. I am happy to have learned some such actions. I wish more would.
"In 1945, Spitz investigated hospitalism in children in orphanages and foundling hospitals in South America. He found that the developmental imbalance caused by the unfavorable environmental conditions during the children's first year produces irreparable psychosomatic damage to normal infants. His observations recorded the precipitous decline in intelligence a year after three-month-old infants were abandoned by their mothers.[2] The experiences of the infants in these institutions were captured in a black-and-white documentary called Grief: A Peril in Infancy (1947).[3] Another study of Spitz's showed that under favorable circumstances and adequate organization, a positive child development can be achieved. He stated that the methods in foundling homes should, therefore, be carefully evaluated.[2] However, he still maintained in a comparison between orphanages and nursing homes that even if the former provided good food, hygienic living space, and medical care, the children raised in the former were more susceptible to infections and had higher death rate than the latter due to social deprivation.[4]"
Synchronicity rules! I am just now reading about the Cathars in a biography of Richard the Lionhearted. Thanks for posting the Master's Thesis as part of this fascinating essay.
I am noticing a rising tide of anti-humanism in the world, a belief being held by more and more people that humanity is irredeemable, a scourge that should be wiped from the planet, and the Earth would just be better off without us, which would seem to be connected to a "death cult". This is a pernicious form of collective self-loathing. These feelings, chronically held, about our fellows, block the healing.
This is why I keep speaking out about the dehumanization, demonizing, name-calling, scapegoating, blaming, shaming, castigating that is going on. This is terrible for us, a significant detriment to our individual and collective physical and mental health. The communist types, but also the globalist types (if there is a difference) are very proficient at this. Divide and conquer tactics.
We are all, whether the purveyors, or those on the receiving end, diminished by it. It will be our undoing.
Yes, I agree collectively, we are prone to very stupid and self-defeating behaviours, actions and deeds, capable of atrocities and evil. Yes, we are very much on the wrong path right now, and doing enormous damage to ourselves and the planet. Yes, there are also amongst us, a few individuals who are totally irredeemable and lost.
Yet, I now see that a lot of people, perhaps the majority, are capable of change, have the capacity for acts of kindness, are striving to be good in terrible circumstances, are seeing the folly of our current path, and who are wanting and yearning for something better for everyone.
Indeed, I encounter more and more people who have seen the error of our ways, both on a personal and collective level, who are speaking up and speaking out, who are also striving to change, heal, improve, to become and be better.
To counter the brilliance of socialist psychopaths appeal to be a helper-enslaver, see what outcompeted slavery and indentured servitude in early America: Percentage As You Earn %PAYEment Finance of Immigration families by merchant-adventurers providing an expensive passage, tools, and grubstake. Price 7% of income for 7 years, an idea gained from the native Algonquian speakers at Jamestown and Plymouth for fushing rights, hunting/trapping rights, farming rights. Yes, the locals were into property rights both individual and tribal.
See PAYEhome.org/tool-kit for 350-years of business precedents vs the socialist slavers of Calhoun, Fitzhugh, and Hughes. They wanted everyone to be a slave, and rights from the state to decide who is in manacles and who is not. Ahem.
Then see %AYE MUTUAL MEDICAL FINANSURANCE for all de facto in the free-market making useless the single-payer fuehrer. HealthPortalHome.com for Health Portal interactive TV Network,
Women Leading Interactive Television Network WLIT WomenLeading.info and
This was one awesome tour de force... Bravo!
One thing that came to mind: it is of course reasonable to criticize the old Enlightenment dogma that "man can be formed and changed", whether by making him more rational or more "communism-compatible". Yes, these things go against man's nature, if we define nature as his spiritual nature. But this move by the Enlightenment/Communist types could be seen as another example where ideologies exploit something true, like the psychopath exploits something true when seducing women: namely that man CAN change, and even overcome his "biological nature" in a sense, à la Dabrowski. It's just that it must happen at an individual level, not collectively, and happen in a very different direction than the ideologues want to push us.
This is exactly the thrust of my next follow-up piece.
Whew. This one’s gonna take a couple reads for me. Very good stuff here. Looking forward to more of your content.
If any of the terminology or ideas seem to come out of nowhere, just let me know. I've been working with them for years so sometimes err on the side of not giving enough background explanations. Translation: happy to mansplain. lol
And PS You technically cannot mansplain your own work. I digress.
Hoisted on my own petard! Womansplaining deals the death blow.
Ha! Keep it up, Koehli!
Well, considering I’m green to your writing, I’ll adapt accordingly (Google will help) but yes, I might ask for some references here and there. And by the way, I learned of your work when I read Claudia Moscovici’s “Dangerous Liaisons” in 2018. Dark and necessary work you all are doing. It helped me immensely with some brain altering cognitive dissonance I’d been living with for almost a decade. High praise.
Cool. Thanks, Kathryn. I cited Claudia's book Velvet Totalitarianism a couple times in the notes to PP.
Excellent and engrossing. I'm wondering if you have studied the various types of "ground" and the pre-conditions for each. What makes one hard ground or good ground for the anti-word? And how is the status of one's ground formed by his relationship to the death instinct?
My ideas on that come from Dabrowski. I think it's the best system for understanding this kind of thing. Roughly, hard ground = level I (primary integration), rocky and thorny ground = levels II-III, good ground = levels III-V. I get into that a bit more in my next piece, which I'll publish early next week.
Looking forward to it. Just discovered your stack. Will be reading more.
Cheers, Don. Glad you found it.
I found this very carefully written but for me including some difficult vocabulary.
Your rejection of socialistic childcare based on the child's need for a "stable mother figure" comes directly out of attachment theory, does it not? I am not too familiar with that research.
You have covered a variety of researchers and thinkers who have noticed certain peculiar aspects of the human condition. The "death instinct" has to be one of the most peculiar. It seems to be related to the willingness of the individual to play the game of life in a body. When socialism goes insane (or criminal) its supporters gush about utopia but advocate policies that will result in human genocide.
The perspective of seeing human personality as spiritual opens the door to a fuller understanding of what death is and how its desire or avoidance plays out in the games of human life. But it has also resulted in various therapeutic processes that go deeper than most we hear about, including even the possibility of curing the psychopath. It has also resulted in a set of guidelines for organizing and operating a human group, though those guidelines don't directly touch on many of the social issues we deal with all the time in politics and social policy (such as working mothers).
It is difficult, even with an improved understanding of the situation, to decide to act. One must have some faith that their actions will make some difference, even if they don't seem to in the short run. And so one seeks out actions that are tested and supported by someone's experience, if not their own. I am happy to have learned some such actions. I wish more would.
Yep, the death instinct is strange and interesting!
As for attachment theory, the answer is yes. Though Shafarevich cites this guy's orphan study: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Spitz
"In 1945, Spitz investigated hospitalism in children in orphanages and foundling hospitals in South America. He found that the developmental imbalance caused by the unfavorable environmental conditions during the children's first year produces irreparable psychosomatic damage to normal infants. His observations recorded the precipitous decline in intelligence a year after three-month-old infants were abandoned by their mothers.[2] The experiences of the infants in these institutions were captured in a black-and-white documentary called Grief: A Peril in Infancy (1947).[3] Another study of Spitz's showed that under favorable circumstances and adequate organization, a positive child development can be achieved. He stated that the methods in foundling homes should, therefore, be carefully evaluated.[2] However, he still maintained in a comparison between orphanages and nursing homes that even if the former provided good food, hygienic living space, and medical care, the children raised in the former were more susceptible to infections and had higher death rate than the latter due to social deprivation.[4]"
Found the documentary on YT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyVkXaqXOv4&ab_channel=TheNationalLibraryofMedicine
Synchronicity rules! I am just now reading about the Cathars in a biography of Richard the Lionhearted. Thanks for posting the Master's Thesis as part of this fascinating essay.
I'll have a bit more to say about them in the next couple posts.
I am noticing a rising tide of anti-humanism in the world, a belief being held by more and more people that humanity is irredeemable, a scourge that should be wiped from the planet, and the Earth would just be better off without us, which would seem to be connected to a "death cult". This is a pernicious form of collective self-loathing. These feelings, chronically held, about our fellows, block the healing.
This is why I keep speaking out about the dehumanization, demonizing, name-calling, scapegoating, blaming, shaming, castigating that is going on. This is terrible for us, a significant detriment to our individual and collective physical and mental health. The communist types, but also the globalist types (if there is a difference) are very proficient at this. Divide and conquer tactics.
We are all, whether the purveyors, or those on the receiving end, diminished by it. It will be our undoing.
Yes, I agree collectively, we are prone to very stupid and self-defeating behaviours, actions and deeds, capable of atrocities and evil. Yes, we are very much on the wrong path right now, and doing enormous damage to ourselves and the planet. Yes, there are also amongst us, a few individuals who are totally irredeemable and lost.
Yet, I now see that a lot of people, perhaps the majority, are capable of change, have the capacity for acts of kindness, are striving to be good in terrible circumstances, are seeing the folly of our current path, and who are wanting and yearning for something better for everyone.
Indeed, I encounter more and more people who have seen the error of our ways, both on a personal and collective level, who are speaking up and speaking out, who are also striving to change, heal, improve, to become and be better.
More and more, every day.
Very well put, Gary.
To counter the brilliance of socialist psychopaths appeal to be a helper-enslaver, see what outcompeted slavery and indentured servitude in early America: Percentage As You Earn %PAYEment Finance of Immigration families by merchant-adventurers providing an expensive passage, tools, and grubstake. Price 7% of income for 7 years, an idea gained from the native Algonquian speakers at Jamestown and Plymouth for fushing rights, hunting/trapping rights, farming rights. Yes, the locals were into property rights both individual and tribal.
See PAYEhome.org/tool-kit for 350-years of business precedents vs the socialist slavers of Calhoun, Fitzhugh, and Hughes. They wanted everyone to be a slave, and rights from the state to decide who is in manacles and who is not. Ahem.
Then see %AYE MUTUAL MEDICAL FINANSURANCE for all de facto in the free-market making useless the single-payer fuehrer. HealthPortalHome.com for Health Portal interactive TV Network,
Women Leading Interactive Television Network WLIT WomenLeading.info and
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