Wednesday 27 January 2016

Talking John Birch paranoid blues for Donald Trump


Well, I was feelin' sad and feelin' blue,
I didn't know what in the world I was gonna do,
Them Communists they wus comin' around,
They wus in the air,
They wus on the ground.
They wouldn't gimme no peace. . .

So I run down most hurriedly
And joined up with the John Birch Society,
I got me a secret membership card
And started off a-walkin' down the road.
Yee-hoo, I'm a real John Bircher now!
Look out you Commies!

Now we all agree with Hitlers' views,
Although he killed six million Jews.
It don't matter too much that he was a Fascist,
At least you can't say he was a Communist!
That's to say like if you got a cold you take a shot of malaria.

Well, I wus lookin' everywhere for them gol-darned Reds.
I got up in the mornin' 'n' looked under my bed,
Looked in the sink, behind the door,
Looked in the glove compartment of my car.
Couldn't find 'em . . .

I wus lookin' high an' low for them Reds everywhere,
I wus lookin' in the sink an' underneath the chair.
I looked way up my chimney hole,
I even looked deep inside my toilet bowl.
They got away . . .

Well, I wus sittin' home alone an' started to sweat,
Figured they wus in my T.V. set.
Peeked behind the picture frame,
Got a shock from my feet, hittin' right up in the brain.
Them Reds caused it!
I know they did . . . them hard-core ones.

Well, I quit my job so I could work alone,
Then I changed my name to Sherlock Holmes.
Followed some clues from my detective bag
And discovered they wus red stripes on the American flag!
That ol' Betty Ross . . .

Well, I investigated all the books in the library,
Ninety percent of 'em gotta be burned away.
I investigated all the people that I knowed,
Ninety-eight percent of them gotta go.
The other two percent are fellow Birchers . . . just like me.

Now Eisenhower, he's a Russian spy,
Lincoln, Jefferson and that Roosevelt guy.
To my knowledge there's just one man
That's really a true American: George Lincoln Rockwell.
I know for a fact he hates Commies cus he picketed the movie Exodus.

Well, I fin'ly started thinkin' straight
When I run outa things to investigate.
Couldn't imagine doin' anything else,
So now I'm sittin' home investigatin' myself!
Hope I don't find out anything . . . hmm, great God!

The organization supports limited government and opposes wealth redistribution and economic interventionism. It opposes collectivismtotalitarianism, and communism. It opposes socialism as well, which it asserts is infiltrating U.S. governmental administration. In a 1983 edition of Crossfire, Congressman Larry McDonald  then its newly appointed president, characterized the society as belonging to the Old Right rather than the New Right.


The society opposed the 1960s civil rights movement and claimed the movement had Communists in important positions. In the latter half of 1965, the JBS produced a flyer titled "What's Wrong With Civil Rights?", which was used as a newspaper advertisement.[ In the piece, one of the answers was: "For the civil rights movement in the United States, with all of its growing agitation and riots and bitterness, and insidious steps towards the appearance of a civil war, has not been infiltrated by the Communists, as you now frequently hear. It has been deliberately and almost wholly created by the Communists patiently building up to this present stage for more than forty years."[16] The society opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, claiming it violated the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution and overstepped individual states' rights to enact laws regarding civil rights. The society opposes "one world government", and it has an immigration reduction view on immigration reform. It opposes the United Nations, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), and other free trade agreements. They argue the U.S. Constitution has been devalued in favor of political and economic globalization, and that this alleged trend is not accidental. It cited the existence of the former Security and Prosperity Partnership as evidence of a push towards a North American Union.


Tuesday 26 January 2016

Is my child being radicalised? the warning signs.


You are the music while the music lasts.

The philosophy of existentialism has made a profound impact upon the team here at Quotesome. It dates back to the first time Michelle read The Stranger by Albert Camus and began to explore existentialism, absurdism, and nihilism. She had a lot of sleepless nights and would stay up until sunrise jotting down eye-opening quotes from her readings. The eventual flood of quotes she had gathered were what inspired the idea of Quotesome.
Through existentialism we learned to take full control of our lives. Through existentialism we learned that there is no formula for life– you can choose to live your life however you wish and it wont render your life any more or less valid than anybody else’s. Through existentialism we found the courage to ditch the lives that were expected of us (graduate from college and get a respectable job) to work on Quotesome. As a token of appreciation, we’ve put together a list of quotes about Existentialism. We encourage you to bookmark this page and refer to it whenever you feel like you are straying away from yourself, or simply to replenish yourself with vigor for life.
Not all the quotes deal with existentialism from an immediate philosophical standpoint. In fact, most of the quotes capture the “feeling” of existentialism that arise from the stages of an existential crisis. There is no point in trying to label existentialism as a “bleak” or “positive” philosophy– in the spirit of existentialism, it is up to the individual to decide whether they wish to persist in despair or emerge from it.
Many thanks to the RedditFacebook, and Tumblr existentialists for recommendation!
You are free and that is why you are lost.
Do you ever think of yourself as actually dead, lying in a box with a lid on it?
This is your life and it’s ending one moment at a time.
As if the blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world.
You are the music while the music lasts.
To assert that the universe has a purpose implies the universe has intent. And intent implies a desired outcome. But who would do the desiring? And what would a desired outcome be? That carbon-based life is inevitable? Or that sentient primates are life’s neurological pinnacle? Are answers to these questions even possible without expressing a profound bias of human sentiment? Of course humans were not around to ask these questions for 99.9999% of cosmic history. So if the purpose of the universe was to create humans then the cosmos was embarrassingly inefficient about it.
We can regard our life as a uselessly disturbing episode in the blissful repose of nothingness.
The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent.
Contrary to what our brains are telling us, there’s no mystical force that imbues a winner with a streak of luck, nor is there a cosmic sense of justice that ensures that a loser’s luck will turn around. The universe doesn’t care one whit whether you’ve been winning or losing; each roll of the dice is just like every other.
I found earthquakes, even when I was in them, deeply satisfying, abruptly revealed evidence of the scheme in action. That the schemes could destroy the works of man might be a personal regret but remained, in the larger picture I had come to recognize, a matter of abiding indifference. No eye was on the sparrow. No eye was watching me.
A first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.

Monday 25 January 2016

We don`t get fooled again........


I notice that the SNP is leaving the left leaning European Free Alliance to join the same EU group as Labour. Salmond proudly declaring the SNP is 'social democratic' - well they were never socialist. wonder if Plaid Cymru will leave the EFA and join them? So much for the anti austerity Alliance....

.....

Romancing the Shadow

The shadow, said celebrated Swiss psychiatrist C.G. Jung ( A Dangerous Method), is the unknown ‘‘dark side’’ of our personality–-dark both because it tends to consist predominantly of the primitive, negative, socially or religiously depreciated human emotions and impulses like sexual lust, power strivings, selfishness, greed, envyanger or rage, and due to its unenlightened nature, completely obscured from consciousness. (See my prior posts on anger and greed.) Whatever we deem evil, inferior or unacceptable and deny in ourselves becomes part of the shadow, the counterpoint to what Jung called the persona or conscious ego personality. According to Jungian analyst Aniela Jaffe, the shadow is the ‘‘sum of all personal and collective psychic elements which, because of their incompatibility with the chosen conscious attitude, are denied expression in life’’. Indeed, Jung differentiated between the personal shadow and the impersonal or archetypal shadow, which acknowledges transpersonal, pure or radical evil (symbolized by the Devil and demons) and collective evil, exemplified by the horror of the Nazi holocaust. Literary and historical figures like Adolf Hitler, Charles Manson, and Darth Vader personify the shadow embodied in its most negative archetypal human form. (
For Jung ( the theory of the‘‘shadow’’ was a metaphorical means of conveying the prominent role played by the unconscious in both psychopathology and the perennial problem of evil. In developing his paradoxical conception of the shadow, Jung sought to provide a more highly differentiated, phenomenologically descriptive version of the unconscious and of the id  than previously proffered by Freud. The shadow was originally Jung’s poetic term for the totality of the unconscious, a notion he took from philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. But foremost for Jung was the task of further illuminating the shadowy problem of human evil and the prodigious dangers of excessive unconsciousness. 
Especially concerned with those pathological mental states historically known as ‘‘demonic possession’’ , Jung’s psychological construct of the shadow corresponds to yet differs fundamentally from the idea of the Devil or Satan in theology. As a parson’s son, Jung was steeped in the Protestant mythos, digested the rich symbolism of Catholicism, and studied the other great religious and philosophical systems. But, as a physician and psychiatrist, he intentionally employed the more mundane, banal, less esoteric or metaphysical and, therefore more rational terminology ‘‘the shadow’’ and ‘‘the unconscious’’ instead of the traditional religious language of god, devil, daimon or mana. For Jung, depth psychological designations such as the shadow or the unconscious, were ‘‘coined for scientific purposes, and [are] far better suited to dispassionate observation which makes no metaphysical claims than are the transcendental concepts, which are controversial and therefore tend to breed fanaticism’’
‘‘The shadow,’’ wrote Jung (1963), is ‘‘that hidden, repressed, for the most part inferior and guilt-laden personality whose ultimate ramifications reach back into the realm of our animal ancestors and so comprise the whole historical aspect of the unconscious’’ (cited in Diamond, p. 96). The shadow is a primordial part of our human inheritance, which, try as we might, can never be eluded. The pervasive Freudian defense mechanism known asprojection is how most people deny their shadow, unconsciously casting it onto others so as to avoid confronting it in oneself. Such projection of the shadow is engaged in not only by individuals but groups, cults, religions, and entire countries, and commonly occurs during wars and other contentious conflicts in which the outsider, enemy or adversary is made a scapegoat, dehumanized, and demonized. Two World Wars and the current escalation of violence testify to the terrible truth of this collective phenomenon. Since the turn of the twenty-first century we are witnessing a menacing resurgence of epidemic demonization or collective psychosis in the seemingly inevitable violent global collision between radical Islam and Judeo-Christian or secular western culture, each side projecting its collective shadow and perceiving the other as evil incarnate. 
The shadow is most destructive, insidious and dangerous when habitually repressed and projected, manifesting in myriad psychological disturbances ranging fromneurosis to psychosis, irrational interpersonal hostility, and even cataclysmic international clashes. Such deleterious symptoms, attitudes and behavior stem from being possessed or driven by the dissociated yet undaunted shadow. Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic story of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde can be taken as a cautionary tale par excellence: dissociation of the shadow results in a perilously lopsided development of the conscious personality and renders us susceptible to destructive possession by the disowned shadow. The excessively good (almost saintly) Dr. Henry Jekyll is at times taken over body and soul by his equally evil shadow: the depraved, nefarious, psychopathic, wicked Edward Hyde, his complete opposite. Indeed, the shadow contains all those qualities we hide from ourselves and others, but which remain active within the unconscious, forming a sort of ‘‘splinter personality’’ or complex, not unlike the relatively autonomous sub-personalities found in multiple personality (dissociative identity disorder) or in so-called demonic possession or demonism. Under stressful circumstances or in states of fatigue or intoxication, this compensatory alter ego or shadow complex can be triggered into temporarily taking total command of the conscious will. The abject negativity and destructiveness of the shadow is largely a function of the degree to which the individual neglects and refuses to take responsibility for it, only inflaming its ferocity and pernicious power. The shadow’s sometimes overwhelming strength and disturbing ability to intrude into one’s cognitions, affects and behavior has historically been experienced and misinterpreted as demonic possession, for which exorcism is believed to be the only treatment (see myprior post).
Yet, the shadow, while very real, is not meant to be taken concretely or literally but rather, allegorically. It is not an evil entity existing apart from the person, nor an invading alien force, though it may be felt as such. The shadow is a universal (archetypal) feature of the human psyche for which we bear full responsibility to cope with as creatively as possible. But despite its well-deserved reputation for wreaking havoc and engendering widespread suffering in human affairs, the shadow–in distinction to the literal idea of the devil or demons–can be redeemed: The shadow must never be dismissed as merely evil or demonic, for it contains natural, life-giving, underdeveloped positive potentialities too. Coming to terms with the shadow and constructively accepting and assimilating it into the conscious personality is central to the process of Jungian analysis.
Working with dream material () is key to comprehending and dealing creatively with the shadow. The shadow tends to appear in dreams as a figure of the same sex as the dreamer, but Jung draws a distinction between the personal shadow and the anima or animus (see myprior post), symbolized in dreams as the opposite sex. Typically, it is the subjective experience of the shadow or evil and its ego-dystonic effects (or, as in the case of the hypercivilized Dr. Jekyll, an inexplicable malaise or vague sense that something vital is missing in us) which motivates the person to seek psychotherapy and spurs one toward new growth, maturation, balance, integration, wholeness and individuation. Indeed, in many ways we need the shadow, and must therefore learn to develop a more conscious and constructive relationship to it. Becoming conscious of the shadow requires tolerating the inherent tension of opposites within: sometimes ‘‘having it out’’ with the shadow and standing up to its destructive influence; other times permitting it some measured outward expression in the personality. But always treating it with utmost respect.
Notwithstanding its negative influence, Jung well understood the daimonic nature of the unconscious, and that the compensatory effects of the shadow upon individuals, couples, groups and nations could be beneficial as well: ‘‘If it has been believed hitherto that the human shadow was the source of all evil, it can now be ascertained on closer investigation that the unconscious man, that is, his shadow, does not consist only of morally reprehensible tendencies, but also displays a number of good qualities, such as normal instincts, appropriate reactions, realistic insights, creative impulses, etc’’ (cited in Diamond, p. 96).Creativity can spring from the constructive expression or integration of the shadow, as can true spirituality. Authentic spirituality requires consciously accepting and relating properly to the shadow as opposed to repressing, projecting, acting out and remaining naively unconscious of its repudiated, denied, disavowed contents, a sort of precariouspseudospirituality. ‘‘Bringing the shadow to consciousness,’’ writes another of Jung’s followers, Liliane Frey-Rohn (1967), ‘‘is a psychological problem of the highest moralsignificance. It demands that the individual hold himself accountable not only for what happens to him, but also for what he projects. . . Without the conscious inclusion of the shadow in daily life there cannot be a positive relationship to other people, or to the creative sources in the soul; there cannot be an individual relationship to the Divine’’ (cited in Diamond, p. 109).

Friday 22 January 2016

I saw a man this morning..on war and passion

There is a scene in Homer`s Illiad where Zeus looks down and sees the futility of war. Shaw-Stewart 100 years ago saw it as he took part in the slaughter of World War 1. Zeus remarks that the tragedy of the human condition is that we see our own mortality. Yet we contine to wage war. In 2016 we have learnt nothing.

Shaw-Stewart was an Old Etonian, and a Classics scholar of legendary genius. Vandiver makes the point enjoyably and in revealingly excessive detail when she quotes at length a letter which Shaw-Stewart wrote to the most celebrated beauty of her age, Lady Diana Manners. Explaining how Lady Diana might enjoy sexual passion  with him while preserving her virginity, Shaw-Stewart has recourse to the Classics, quoting liberally (in what Vandiver calls 'ascending order of erotic satisfaction') various sexual practices as described in Aristophanes, Theocritus and Ovid. It seems that much of this may have been lost on Lady Diana, who did not have the Greek or Latin to be able to translate. Perhaps she asked her parents.

Shaw-Stewart sailed on the 
Grantully Castle to the Dardanelles with Rupert Brooke, and served in Brooke's burial party. Like many public-school-educated men of his generation, he welcomed the idea of fighting at Gallipoli: 'It is the luckiest thing and the most romantic. Think of fighting in the Chersonese... or alternatively, if it's the Asiatic side they want us on, on the plains of Troy itself! I am going to take my Herodotus as a guide-book.' Shaw-Stewart survived Gallipoli, but was killed in France on 30 December 1917.

Vandiver convincingly dates 'I saw a man this morning' to 13 July 1915, because of the reference to 'three days' peace' on the island of Imbros. Shaw-Stewart was unexpectedly recalled from leave that day, having spent three days on Imbros.

I saw a man this morning
  Who did not wish to die:
I ask and cannot answer,
  If otherwise wish I.

Fair broke the day this morning
  Against the Dardanelles;
The breeze blew soft, the morn's cheeks
  Were cold as cold sea-shells.

But other shells are waiting
  Across the Aegean Sea,
Shrapnel and high explosive,
  Shells and hells for me.

O hell of ships and cities,
  Hell of men like me,
Fatal second Helen,
  Why must I follow thee?

Achilles came to Troyland
  And I to Chersonese:
He turned from wrath to battle,
  And I from three days' peace.

Was it so hard, Achilles,
  So very hard to die?
Thou knewest, and I know not---
  So much the happier I.

I will go back this morning
  From Imbros over the sea;
Stand in the trench, Achilles,
  Flame-capped, and shout for me.

The allusion in the final lines is to Homer's 
Iliad --- the passage beginning at 18.203 --- in which Athena sets a golden cloud around the head of Achilles and kindles a fire from it: 'He stood there and he shouted... and he raised immense confusion among the Trojans'.