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Sadism Cruelty and Depravity are Unnatural (Pt 2)
Sadism, Cruelty and Depravity are Unnatural (Pt 2)
Can humanity liberate itself from the scourge of sadism, cruelty and depravity? Sadly, history is hardly forthcoming with hints about how to do so. Agricultural societies, built as they are on the dubious (if not to say downright fraudulent) premises of intercession and ownership, created a swamp-like breeding ground for them to collect at the top and spread from there. They have seamlessly transitioned from agricultural/religious societies to colonial/imperial, and then industrial/financial societies, coalescing at the topmost layers where monsters like Jeffrey Epstein, Elizabeth Bathory, Gilles de Rais, Wu Zetian and Nero have echoed throughout history, completely bereft of morality and completely unconcerned about being brought to justice.
One thing we can be sure of: these monsters don't have any desire to change. They cannot be coaxed into a shameful admission that they are wrong, that they need to find some kernel of morality and decency within them and change their ways.
Everyday people often have such self-reckonings. Life changes us. We realize we have harmed ourselves, harmed others, and damaged relationships that are dear to us. And so we rise up from our dark night of the soul determined to change. Here again, we can draw a stark comparison between the 7 'deadly' sins and the TRUE deadly sins of sadism, cruelty and depravity. Many people, perhaps even most people, hit bottom with one or other of the deadly sins at some point in their lives and feel ashamed, thereby committing to better themselves.
We do this because we know that we are the same as our brothers and sisters with whom we live in our communities and our societies. We see that we broke important rules that hold society together by behaving selfishly and recklessly. We recognize that we must pay the price, in terms of shame, in terms of atonement, in terms of recompense in some cases, and try to be worthy of society's trust and acceptance through our better behavior.
But sadistic, cruel and depraved people are not like that, least of all the ones at the top. They LIKE their lives as they are. They are so convinced that they are better than the rest of us that their hearts are not moved at all by our suffering. They simply don't care. To them, we are cockroaches. Why should they listen to moral lectures from cockroaches?
So, history is not hopeful. Sadism, cruelty and depravity emerged from early agricultural societies and have held on like barnacles ever since. Revolutions haven't done away with them. Perhaps nothing will. It is impossible to overstate or overestimate the damage they have inflicted, particularly when they are ensconced among the rich and influential (I prefer not to use the word 'powerful', as I feel that gives more credit to these creeps than they deserve. What they have is NOT power). Not only in terms of the misery and suffering caused, but equally importantly by the truncation and diminishment of human potential, at both collective and individual levels.
Taking Epstein's victims as an example, many women's lives were ruined, some even ended. And each of those victims had potential; they had dreams. They imagined themselves as doctors, painters, performers, writers. They dreamed of working to end poverty and hunger. Our world would be a better place if they had accomplished some of these things.
Among their loved ones, the damage is just as horrendous. There are parents who went into deep depression after realizing their precious child had been abused for the pleasure of another, in ways they can't bear to imagine. Some of them can no longer work, or can no longer continue working with the dedication and fulfillment they once experienced. Some of them have become almost like empty shells. That truncated potential has also diminished humankind.
Collectively, we all have been diminished. We think about how dangerous sadism, cruelty and depravity make our world. We think about how other people, just like us, are suffering this very moment in ways that we hope we will never experience. And for what? So that the sickest, most perverted humans on Earth can derive temporary pleasure from inflicting pain on others.
We cannot tolerate this. Not one second longer. It is completely, outrageously unacceptable. Cruelty, sadism and depravity ruin everything. They have made what could be a world of beauty and abundance into a dysfunctional shadow of what it could be for some of us, and a hell for others.
For people who are sadistic, cruel and depraved, it is not a part time thing. One cannot debase one's personality to such an extreme degree and then just slip into and out of it like a mood. In other words, you could say that they make a 'daily practice' of being sadistic, cruel and depraved. Thus, we who wish to expunge sadism, cruelty and depravity need our own daily practices. We have to be at least as committed to liberating the world from the scourge of sadism, cruelty and depravity as the worst among us - whether they realize it or not - are committed to maintaining it.
If you already have a daily meditation practice, it would probably be helpful. The daily practice of meditation will have strengthened your ability to focus intently. If not, what matters more than skills is intent. If you are willing to commit to a daily practice, perhaps 10 to 20 minutes a day, of fighting back against sadism, cruelty and depravity in some form, then welcome to the team!
Being nice, being kind and generous, being loving and forgiving, etc., all of these are very beneficial in their own way. But they don't help defeat sadism, cruelty and depravity. Sadistic and depraved people aren't concerned about kind people. They are just as willing to make nice people their victims as not nice people. THEY aren't going to change because someone else is better than them. As I wrote earlier, they actually LIKE their lives as they are, parasitical though they be.
So we need to go beyond individual activity. We need to reach deeper into the heart of humanity. We need to get to that Elemental Human from which all human activity and thought arises. I have written about this in essays that appear on my blog, such as 'The Transpersonal Aperture', 'The Omega Option' and 'Transcending the Plane of Personalities'. A consistent philosophy is laid out in these and other essays on my blog. In a nutshell, I propose that we are more than our individual selves, and furthermore that we have the ability to act, and achieve things, beyond individual acts and achievements. Our transpersonal identity isn't just some nifty thing to have; it is something to explore, and more importantly, to use.
From the fingernail to the finger to the hand to the arm to the body to the......? The intricate organization and structure of your human form extends beyond it. Surely you didn't imagine it just stopped there as if the human organism were an endpoint. No, there is a 'meta' you, and just as a fingernail has no separate functionality that provides purpose and meaning to its existence unrelated to the finger/hand/body, you also have a meaning and purpose beyond your biological organism, waiting for you to acknowledge and discover it. Certainly great composers such as Bach and Beethoven understood this, but this is hardly something that is limited to the few and 'special'.
For me, my 'meta' purpose is to bring an end to cruelty, sadism and depravity insofar as my abilities will allow. As I wrote earlier, this has precious little to do with merely being a good person and hoping that drop in the ocean will shift the tide. Hint: it won't. Cruelty, sadism and depravity are perfectly capable of coexisting alongside kindness, generosity and compassion. And cruel, sadistic and depraved people clearly exist amongst us alongside all the kind, generous and compassionate ones.
As individuals, we may be extremely limited in what we can accomplish. Beyond the limitations of individuality, we are considerably less so. Cruelty, sadism and depravity arise within that 'meta' human organization and structure that holds your body in place and also extends well beyond it. The names keep changing throughout history (Nero, Genghis Khan, Beria, Ishii, Epstein) but the template that births them remains. This is where we need to do our work, at the place within the Elemental Human that tolerates cruelty, sadism and depravity and engenders cruel/sadistic/depraved impulses. In other words, we must teach the Elemental Human that ‘he’ has it all wrong. The only reason I write about sadism, cruelty and depravity is because I think we can end them. Strange as it sounds, I believe we have that skill in our toolbox. It is not pleasant to write about them. It would be in and of itself an agony to write about them if I felt that humanity was stuck with them, forever, like Cyrano de Bergerac's nose, or the mariner's albatross. I wouldn't write about them if I thought that. I would try not to think about them and try not to remind readers of them. I would push them out of my mind as much as I could, and try to think about more cheerful things than all the misery they cause. But that is not what I think. I may be in the minority, but I absolutely think that humanity can rid itself of sadism, cruelty and depravity. They are not natural, and we can cure ourselves of them like some people beat cancer. We CAN.
But, we have to become transpersonal in order to do this. Not all the time. Most of the time, I will be me, and you will be you. I will have my personal missions: to make art, to write, to teach, to create as much as I can in the time I have. And you will attend to all your personal goals. They bring you pleasure and give meaning to your existence. But they don't defeat sadism, cruelty and depravity. For that we need to transcend the personal and move into the elemental and transpersonal.
We meditate to access and pass through the Transpersonal Aperture. There, we are much more than individuals. There, we are connected to the Elemental Human from whom all human activity arises. There we are One. There we can appeal. We can speak on behalf of the Elemental Human and claim the moral and ethical authority, as well as the logical and rational clarity, to declare that sadism, cruelty and depravity are a plague. We are SO DONE with them. They do not serve any positive purpose. They provide nothing of value to the Human Collective. They have to go. A future with them is bleak. A future without them is the best thing imaginable.
Every day, in meditation, I take up the mantle of speaking on behalf of the Elemental Human. I know that, regarding the matter of sadism, cruelty, and depravity, I have a greater understanding than the collective. This is a responsibility I do not take lightly. I know that most human beings within collective humanity are resigned to thinking that very little can be done about sadism, cruelty and depravity. I refuse to let that hold me back.
Representing as collective humanity, representing as the Elemental Human, I make my declaration daily that I am SO DONE with sadism, cruelty and depravity and I never want to see them again, and never want to deal with them again. I am immensely better off without them. I pledge to do right by my offspring and remove, repudiate, relinquish, reject, repel, release, revoke, refute, extinguish, exterminate, expel, expunge, erase and eliminate them, with ZERO tolerance/forbearance.
I ask you to consider joining me in this. If you have a daily meditation practice, integrate this into it. If you don't, consider starting one. You can merge yourself with the tip of the spear.
We are absolutely right to declare that sadism, cruelty and depravity are unnatural and valueless. We REFUSE to believe that they are part of 'human nature'. Let us stand in that truth and end the scourge. If limited to outliers such as serial killers, sadism, cruelty and depravity would be bad enough; still capable of destroying countless lives and driving pangs of fear deep into the collective soul.
However, the problem grows exponentially worse where sadism, cruelty and depravity form the infrastructure of society, as in our case. Down throughout history, torture has been used as both a political tool of 'leaders' to instill fear in the masses and a rite of passage for them to attain higher positions. They have convinced themselves that their willingness to exercise sadism, cruelty and depravity elevates them above the rest of us.
This is an unnatural state of the world, and it has persisted far too long. We need to imagine a world free of this scourge. We must build it in our hearts, share it in our words and convey it through our thoughts. Far too many people look at the state of the world - with its Epstein files and insane wars and rampant ecocide - and say, 'it sucks, but I guess that's human nature'.
It ISN'T, I tell you. It is a freakish plague that prevents us from creating a TRUE civilization, worthy of the name and conducive to our TRUE nature expressing. If you take nothing else away from this lengthy essay, at the very least I urge you to consider, 'there's this guy who insists that sadism, cruelty and depravity are not natural, and he seems pretty worked up about it. And you know, maybe he's right....'
May we meet on the other side.
One thing we can be sure of: these monsters don't have any desire to change. They cannot be coaxed into a shameful admission that they are wrong, that they need to find some kernel of morality and decency within them and change their ways.
Everyday people often have such self-reckonings. Life changes us. We realize we have harmed ourselves, harmed others, and damaged relationships that are dear to us. And so we rise up from our dark night of the soul determined to change. Here again, we can draw a stark comparison between the 7 'deadly' sins and the TRUE deadly sins of sadism, cruelty and depravity. Many people, perhaps even most people, hit bottom with one or other of the deadly sins at some point in their lives and feel ashamed, thereby committing to better themselves.
We do this because we know that we are the same as our brothers and sisters with whom we live in our communities and our societies. We see that we broke important rules that hold society together by behaving selfishly and recklessly. We recognize that we must pay the price, in terms of shame, in terms of atonement, in terms of recompense in some cases, and try to be worthy of society's trust and acceptance through our better behavior.
But sadistic, cruel and depraved people are not like that, least of all the ones at the top. They LIKE their lives as they are. They are so convinced that they are better than the rest of us that their hearts are not moved at all by our suffering. They simply don't care. To them, we are cockroaches. Why should they listen to moral lectures from cockroaches?
So, history is not hopeful. Sadism, cruelty and depravity emerged from early agricultural societies and have held on like barnacles ever since. Revolutions haven't done away with them. Perhaps nothing will. It is impossible to overstate or overestimate the damage they have inflicted, particularly when they are ensconced among the rich and influential (I prefer not to use the word 'powerful', as I feel that gives more credit to these creeps than they deserve. What they have is NOT power). Not only in terms of the misery and suffering caused, but equally importantly by the truncation and diminishment of human potential, at both collective and individual levels.
Taking Epstein's victims as an example, many women's lives were ruined, some even ended. And each of those victims had potential; they had dreams. They imagined themselves as doctors, painters, performers, writers. They dreamed of working to end poverty and hunger. Our world would be a better place if they had accomplished some of these things.
Among their loved ones, the damage is just as horrendous. There are parents who went into deep depression after realizing their precious child had been abused for the pleasure of another, in ways they can't bear to imagine. Some of them can no longer work, or can no longer continue working with the dedication and fulfillment they once experienced. Some of them have become almost like empty shells. That truncated potential has also diminished humankind.
Collectively, we all have been diminished. We think about how dangerous sadism, cruelty and depravity make our world. We think about how other people, just like us, are suffering this very moment in ways that we hope we will never experience. And for what? So that the sickest, most perverted humans on Earth can derive temporary pleasure from inflicting pain on others.
We cannot tolerate this. Not one second longer. It is completely, outrageously unacceptable. Cruelty, sadism and depravity ruin everything. They have made what could be a world of beauty and abundance into a dysfunctional shadow of what it could be for some of us, and a hell for others.
For people who are sadistic, cruel and depraved, it is not a part time thing. One cannot debase one's personality to such an extreme degree and then just slip into and out of it like a mood. In other words, you could say that they make a 'daily practice' of being sadistic, cruel and depraved. Thus, we who wish to expunge sadism, cruelty and depravity need our own daily practices. We have to be at least as committed to liberating the world from the scourge of sadism, cruelty and depravity as the worst among us - whether they realize it or not - are committed to maintaining it.
If you already have a daily meditation practice, it would probably be helpful. The daily practice of meditation will have strengthened your ability to focus intently. If not, what matters more than skills is intent. If you are willing to commit to a daily practice, perhaps 10 to 20 minutes a day, of fighting back against sadism, cruelty and depravity in some form, then welcome to the team!
Being nice, being kind and generous, being loving and forgiving, etc., all of these are very beneficial in their own way. But they don't help defeat sadism, cruelty and depravity. Sadistic and depraved people aren't concerned about kind people. They are just as willing to make nice people their victims as not nice people. THEY aren't going to change because someone else is better than them. As I wrote earlier, they actually LIKE their lives as they are, parasitical though they be.
So we need to go beyond individual activity. We need to reach deeper into the heart of humanity. We need to get to that Elemental Human from which all human activity and thought arises. I have written about this in essays that appear on my blog, such as 'The Transpersonal Aperture', 'The Omega Option' and 'Transcending the Plane of Personalities'. A consistent philosophy is laid out in these and other essays on my blog. In a nutshell, I propose that we are more than our individual selves, and furthermore that we have the ability to act, and achieve things, beyond individual acts and achievements. Our transpersonal identity isn't just some nifty thing to have; it is something to explore, and more importantly, to use.
From the fingernail to the finger to the hand to the arm to the body to the......? The intricate organization and structure of your human form extends beyond it. Surely you didn't imagine it just stopped there as if the human organism were an endpoint. No, there is a 'meta' you, and just as a fingernail has no separate functionality that provides purpose and meaning to its existence unrelated to the finger/hand/body, you also have a meaning and purpose beyond your biological organism, waiting for you to acknowledge and discover it. Certainly great composers such as Bach and Beethoven understood this, but this is hardly something that is limited to the few and 'special'.
For me, my 'meta' purpose is to bring an end to cruelty, sadism and depravity insofar as my abilities will allow. As I wrote earlier, this has precious little to do with merely being a good person and hoping that drop in the ocean will shift the tide. Hint: it won't. Cruelty, sadism and depravity are perfectly capable of coexisting alongside kindness, generosity and compassion. And cruel, sadistic and depraved people clearly exist amongst us alongside all the kind, generous and compassionate ones.
As individuals, we may be extremely limited in what we can accomplish. Beyond the limitations of individuality, we are considerably less so. Cruelty, sadism and depravity arise within that 'meta' human organization and structure that holds your body in place and also extends well beyond it. The names keep changing throughout history (Nero, Genghis Khan, Beria, Ishii, Epstein) but the template that births them remains. This is where we need to do our work, at the place within the Elemental Human that tolerates cruelty, sadism and depravity and engenders cruel/sadistic/depraved impulses. In other words, we must teach the Elemental Human that ‘he’ has it all wrong. The only reason I write about sadism, cruelty and depravity is because I think we can end them. Strange as it sounds, I believe we have that skill in our toolbox. It is not pleasant to write about them. It would be in and of itself an agony to write about them if I felt that humanity was stuck with them, forever, like Cyrano de Bergerac's nose, or the mariner's albatross. I wouldn't write about them if I thought that. I would try not to think about them and try not to remind readers of them. I would push them out of my mind as much as I could, and try to think about more cheerful things than all the misery they cause. But that is not what I think. I may be in the minority, but I absolutely think that humanity can rid itself of sadism, cruelty and depravity. They are not natural, and we can cure ourselves of them like some people beat cancer. We CAN.
But, we have to become transpersonal in order to do this. Not all the time. Most of the time, I will be me, and you will be you. I will have my personal missions: to make art, to write, to teach, to create as much as I can in the time I have. And you will attend to all your personal goals. They bring you pleasure and give meaning to your existence. But they don't defeat sadism, cruelty and depravity. For that we need to transcend the personal and move into the elemental and transpersonal.
We meditate to access and pass through the Transpersonal Aperture. There, we are much more than individuals. There, we are connected to the Elemental Human from whom all human activity arises. There we are One. There we can appeal. We can speak on behalf of the Elemental Human and claim the moral and ethical authority, as well as the logical and rational clarity, to declare that sadism, cruelty and depravity are a plague. We are SO DONE with them. They do not serve any positive purpose. They provide nothing of value to the Human Collective. They have to go. A future with them is bleak. A future without them is the best thing imaginable.
Every day, in meditation, I take up the mantle of speaking on behalf of the Elemental Human. I know that, regarding the matter of sadism, cruelty, and depravity, I have a greater understanding than the collective. This is a responsibility I do not take lightly. I know that most human beings within collective humanity are resigned to thinking that very little can be done about sadism, cruelty and depravity. I refuse to let that hold me back.
Representing as collective humanity, representing as the Elemental Human, I make my declaration daily that I am SO DONE with sadism, cruelty and depravity and I never want to see them again, and never want to deal with them again. I am immensely better off without them. I pledge to do right by my offspring and remove, repudiate, relinquish, reject, repel, release, revoke, refute, extinguish, exterminate, expel, expunge, erase and eliminate them, with ZERO tolerance/forbearance.
I ask you to consider joining me in this. If you have a daily meditation practice, integrate this into it. If you don't, consider starting one. You can merge yourself with the tip of the spear.
We are absolutely right to declare that sadism, cruelty and depravity are unnatural and valueless. We REFUSE to believe that they are part of 'human nature'. Let us stand in that truth and end the scourge. If limited to outliers such as serial killers, sadism, cruelty and depravity would be bad enough; still capable of destroying countless lives and driving pangs of fear deep into the collective soul.
However, the problem grows exponentially worse where sadism, cruelty and depravity form the infrastructure of society, as in our case. Down throughout history, torture has been used as both a political tool of 'leaders' to instill fear in the masses and a rite of passage for them to attain higher positions. They have convinced themselves that their willingness to exercise sadism, cruelty and depravity elevates them above the rest of us.
This is an unnatural state of the world, and it has persisted far too long. We need to imagine a world free of this scourge. We must build it in our hearts, share it in our words and convey it through our thoughts. Far too many people look at the state of the world - with its Epstein files and insane wars and rampant ecocide - and say, 'it sucks, but I guess that's human nature'.
It ISN'T, I tell you. It is a freakish plague that prevents us from creating a TRUE civilization, worthy of the name and conducive to our TRUE nature expressing. If you take nothing else away from this lengthy essay, at the very least I urge you to consider, 'there's this guy who insists that sadism, cruelty and depravity are not natural, and he seems pretty worked up about it. And you know, maybe he's right....'
May we meet on the other side.
