A primary roadblock to collective understanding is the curious fact that there is no universal agreement as to what the psychological problem is or represents. This is a serious gap in our so-called Information Age that not only leaves us confused and suffering, it makes us vulnerable to people who prey on confusion and suffering.
Collective ignorance or disinterest surrounding our true psychological makeup is this political threat’s cue to freely exploit our psychological dysfunction with its psychological dysfunction, for example, by setting standards for how we’re expected to live, act, and think. In other words, these exploiters meld into our internal suffering worlds with seductive promises born of their internal suffering worlds creating a political world of human predators encouraging their “prey” to protect themselves from invented “evils” like capitalism or The Constitution if they just believe what they would never believe if they were not suffering, or exposed to daily servings of media propaganda.
Their mind-shaping skills are so refined, we don’t know if or when our cognition is being tampered with. Mind-shapers with more diabolical intentions take it up a notch to transform our beliefs, values, and attitudes and even cause cultural shifts that challenge cherished views of religion, morality, patriotism, and what it means to be an American.
These same people strive to give us a new identity, even though it is alien to our better nature, one we previously would have rejected outright before these mind-shapers got to us. Externally imposed transformations going on within our internal world are felt as so real, so empowering, some will fight to defend their mastermind’s superimposed convictions as if their lives depended on it.
So far I have been emphasizing political minds that live to control and minds that live to be controlled. There is a third category of the tyrannical, political mind that complements this dysfunctional duo. These are determined, humorless, highly focused minds that have been preprogrammed by elite, political mind-shapers to wallow in hate to service a political ideology dedicated to subjugating we the people by any means necessary at any cost for as long as it takes. This mob mentality is on a hair-trigger to react to whatever its cognitive handlers want and to get in the face of anyone who dares reject its ideology, or who merely disagrees. Simmering rage drives them to openly ridicule challengers up close with crude, political venom. They speak of tolerance, but tolerate no one who thinks differently. They romanticize “equality” while working for the day when everyone will be equally miserable. They speak of diversity, but openly reject critics, Christians and conservatives. They march against social ills, disrupt gatherings of nonbelievers, resist with extreme prejudice to any perceived insult, create discord, turn to violence, seek social and ethnic divisions, and work for an anti-assimilation culture in what once was America’s “melting pot” while screaming for social justice and against deniers of their “truths.” Fanatical cries of “racist” to every imagined insult ring hollow. They expect us to interpret their words of hate as justifiable in a hateful world.
Above all, they insist on being heard. Facts don’t matter. Whomever is harmed by their antisocial antics doesn’t matter. They simply want what they want—now. Holding signs, wearing body paint and masks, displaying emotion-driven symbols, marching together in heavily financed displays of social activism, and bombarding critics by talking over them with loud, angry arguments are meant to gain attention by shocking us into blindly submitting. They’re on a do-or-die quest to build a new world where injustice, racism, lack of diversity, unfairness, inequality, and old moral values shall forever be forbidden, and forgotten. This juxtaposition of working to build a pro-social future by trashing today’s world with antisocial acts and rhetoric is curiously hypocritical.
But they don’t see their hypocrisy. In their minds, doing whatever is necessary is the only way to transform America into their political Utopia. Nothing now stands in the way of these dreamy-eyed ideologues drunk on power to disrupt and destroy; therefore, they’re confident that nonstop hammering at public sensibilities will someday shut down all resistance. Social disorder sets the stage for creating opportunities to bring down the status quo so their imagined, Utopian world can emerge.
All of the above are antithetical to Mother Nature’s laws. We can’t escape them despite political attempts to replace them with man-made laws. However, for Mother Nature’s laws to play out as designed, we must be in control, notwithstanding the fact that early strivings to bring out our best are not under our control. They’re under the control—if we’re lucky—of psychologically healthy caretakers who protect us from physical and mental assault, and expand opportunities for us to learn, examine, test, and experience new challenges, but, most importantly, they allow us time and provide circumstances for us to organize our mind around moral guidelines that help us judge right from wrong.
Mother Nature designed us around a maturation process that She expects to be nurtured and protected by sensitive caretakers until inborn potential is maximized. Sadly, in most cases, these expectations are ignored, denied, dismissed, or replaced with willy-nilly interpretations of how to control the developing mind, not maximize its potential.
Maximizing human potential according to natural laws lies at the heart of human evolution, and good politics. Absolute control over the many so a few can live in opulence at the expense of the many is not in Mother Nature’s grand plan for human evolution; that’s a formula for human devolution. Nonetheless, human devolution is the unconscious effect/unintended consequence of every tyrannical experiment. Behind well-programmed displays of concern and compassion stands a political tyrant who is in a subliminal war with his people. To win over the collective mind so he remains in control, he declares war on Mother Nature so his future victims willingly reject fact and common sense for eventual political suicide. Bottom line: What Mother Nature gives us at birth is opposed to any political ideology or political movement that fails to empower the people. Government has no God-given right to interfere with our personal control, co-opt our drives for independence, or restrict inborn needs to excel or pursue happiness.
Biology is on our side. During our developmental period, brain and body grow from precarious states of dependency to more sustainable states of independence. This rush to individual independence is accompanied by internal urgings to improve the self, and achieve with all potential working together to reach its highest level of output. Don’t we already hope that our children are at their best? Don’t many of us strive to improve ourselves to find that elusive glimmer of lasting happiness?
Simply put, the goal of living is to follow Mother Nature’s laws. Achieving a true state of happiness is the result of lifelong quests that begin in the early years in preparatory struggles to become our best. Once an individual’s psychological gifts are maximized (optimized), everything subsequent to this preparatory stage of life falls naturally into place—all things being equal. Unfortunately, even a minor glitch in the mind’s processing during the early years will prove costly in later years. Traumatic experiences—mild or serious—disturb mental processing in corresponding degrees.
One feature of mental processing that is fragile to even the most subtle of insults is curiosity/motivation to learn. We’re born motivated to learn as much as possible as quickly as possible. When interrupted by abuse, for example, motivations to learn are immediately, and momentarily, redirected to raw, reflexive, defensive, survival strategies. Here’s the danger: Depending on circumstances, motivations may never return to their original baseline of maximum passion to learn. When we admire fast learners, we’re actually admiring quality of parenting that produced minds with few internal or external restrictions where passions to discover, create, and innovate were energized and allowed to proliferate. Because psychological, defensive reactions were unnecessary, mental processes were free to succeed or fail. Success is a learning experience, but so is failure. Success shows us what works for us; failure shows us what does not work for us. We can only reach the state of wisdom when we experience and understand both.
Any threatened child can learn, but what is he learning? He is learning how to fight back, hate, seek revenge, escape, deny, or mechanically submit to avoid more threats. Replacing curiosity with raw survival strategies that cause unnecessary suffering for a lifetime is not what any parent, or society, wants for a child.
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