This latest installment hopes to prove that the edicts of conservatism are counter-productive in natural systems.
It is recommended that you read the Assignee's Prerogative blog chronologically.
Best Thoughts,
Brian Taylor
Conservatism is Unnatural
It’s difficult to effect change in this flesh bound paradigm because to have opinions different that the norm is to be branded as having some form of deficiency. Even people who currently look at the human condition with the awareness you now have can see it as lacking. Yet we do or are capable of nothing to facilitate any change. Why? Is it that we hide our alternate views from others for fear of persecution? Is it that the change that is required is too great to be formulated, packaged and distributed - except perhaps through the acceptance of a religion or other collective movement?
Of course, you can’t start an alternate religion or political party either. Politicians who stir the pot don’t get voted in and if they do, they’ll shortly be killed by professionals just doing their job. Start a religion and you’re immediately reduced to a loony tune, likely to be killed by anyone and perhaps rightly so. You are, regardless, no less dead either way. So the most common way to affect change is to find how to change yourself and then share the knowledge with others or lead by example.
If ideas and concepts are understood in networks of relations, can an ideal series of correlations be achieved? This is the domain of social engineering. New paradigms in our understanding of the evolution of everything have led to the development of new concepts and the redefining of old ones. Continuously and with an increasing rate of intention there have been large scale shifts in the understanding(s) of people. In, for eg: psychology, technology, politic, economy, ecology, bio, chem, geo.
Unfortunately, the surge of “society as an organism” thinking lends itself to find controls, whether or not it seeks them. We can then use these controls for our own detriment or gain. Interesting that by also studying other societal systems, like that of insects, we can see that there are illogical steps taken to cause systems of a counterproductive nature to fail, or force change. In other words, if an ant colony is getting too big it will sacrifice a part of itself for the good of the whole.
That is not the nature of our conundrum for we, lest we forget, are the species that doesn’t always work in it’s better interests. We can, at the least, gain an ability to recognize when we’re being handed our hat. (Anti-Social Engineering...)
Change always waits until the last minute. Whatever shift is required will only occur when it becomes a necessity. In a natural system the preceding statements are true. If there is interference then change can be created, destroyed, controlled, etc. It was this realisation that caused the first Enlightenment. French philosophers, unhappy under what they considered the tyranny of their own leaders, woke up and started asking questions. “Why does the church have to be linked to the state?” “Why do our young men have to join the campaign or be labelled traitors?” “Why does life have to be like this at all? How did we get to this point?” To put it bluntly, the Enlightenment came from the realisation of “the common people” that things didn’t have to be the way they are just because the powers that be said so.
It wasn’t just the French, there was a vast uncorking of new ideas all over Europe, into Russia and carried over into the “New Land.” Stemming from the growing ease of travel, the printing press, the chemical, medical and mechanical advances in industry and other conveniences, a new society of powerful people was created. Modern philosophy was born and shortly thereafter, secret philosophy came along too. For if the masses decided they are going to be aware, if they are going to literally revolt in the streets to get what they want, then leaders must find a subversive way to tell them what it is they desire.
Change comes last to the unaware. (Often too late, you might have just enough time to think, “Oh, I was wrong,” before it is proven to you.) People are often made aware of the need for change through personal suffering. Because they have suffered they are angered. When they react they do so from unconscious paradigms. Sometimes it’s garbage in garbage out. Many sleepers will not clue in, even after realising the need for change, that by having that realisation they have proven to themselves that they should examine their paradigms and decide each worthy.
During the Enlightenment questions were posed of the implications of mixing church and state in ways that go beyond allegiances in courtrooms and politic in sermons. There was a realisation that it was morality legislated and categorisation by belief. I like to imagine it this way, for thousands of years, peoples all over our lovely little planet have been experimenting with types of societies.
After all that time, a system began to be duplicated, by desire or by force, that was able to have control of it’s people while giving them the opportunity to live happy, healthy, productive lives. The system was, in a word, “Money.” This system had been used for quite a while before the enlightenment turned it into the physical manifestation of the middle class. The difference between the old Enlightenment and the new is that we now are waking up from our subconscious servitude (social engineering) whereas during the Industrial Revolution we were waking up from our conscious servitude (serfdom.)
Therefore, back then we learned that we were real individuals, that we had rights as humans and we were going to exercise them. Now we "wake up" to learn that we're being controlled with ideas, our rights aren't really "ours" and we are only allowed to "exercise" within a fairly rigid framework (reality.)
The powers that governed over this transformation sought out controls that could be accepted by the masses. They hid them in the morals of church, law, and the accoutre that complicates the logic of trying to correlate them. They set controls into church and state that made it so we wanted to follow the rules, because it seemed right, even though we’re not sure why.
It is against the law and it is morally wrong to kill a person. (Of course I mean a person who doesn’t “deserve” it, both God and Governments have people who kill in their names.) Just generally, murder is wrong. I think a lot of you will agree with that, but why? Because it ends the life of someone who could have done good, been loved and will be missed. No! Stop it, don’t think that way, you’re categorising him. By doing so you imply that there could be a circumstance where murder could be right if he couldn’t have done good, been loved and no one missed him. You’re completely missing the point.
It isn’t about deservedness. “Rights” have been created. You’re judging things by standards that are going on three hundred years old, and they were based on standards that came from two thousand years ago. To say "Yeah, but it’s working so well," is to deserve a smack upside the head! If the man who was killed was a wife beating child molester would he then deserve to die? Of course not, he could be treated and go on to make amends with all those he hurt, even help others, so inclined, turn their lives around. Who are you, judge, jury and executioner? Yes, actually, you are but you’re off the hook because you’ve been made that way.
The decisions made in the establishment of the Establishment have decided who you are and what you believe. (Sanctioned killing is okay, murder is abhorrent.) Nature tells us that we kill whatever we want. Consider believing what you’re shown, not necessarily what you’re told.
Is it natural or instinctual to know to allow certain impulses or emotions and suppress others because of a set of predetermined guidelines? If you answer yes, you’re buying into what they’re telling you. If you answer no, you’re denying all the evidence around you. People today are allowing and suppressing because of their paradigms.
That means that in order to rid us of these binding perceptions we must consider all paradigms. Even and especially disturbing ones. The reasons are twofold: Firstly, it’s just healthy for an open mind to think about the unthinkable. (More on that later.) But we must also question every paradigm because the foundation of our natural instinct could be a fabrication. How are we supposed to know, after three hundred years, or two thousand years if a particular set of guidelines has steered us well? To contemplate the ancient concept of self with a being that is truly “not-self” without even the ability to conceptualise having rules put upon you is to perpetuate ignorance and demonstrate the absurdity of modern human existence.
To even achieve the question requires a paradigm shift that instantly opens an endless stream of possibilities. Furthermore, paradigms once found, put the mind into the flow of enlightenment. It is this new modern enlightenment that will spread the understanding to the point of beginning to answer difficult questions, and undoubtedly pose new ones.
Why do we even have the desire to answer metaphysical postulations?
When exactly have humans demonstrated a long-term foothold of human rights?
Are we not acting contradictory to our apparent natural expectations?
If we are, what does that mean for our future?
How trustworthy is moral reasoning?
What is the domain of morality?
How am I to adjust accordingly if I can’t trust myself?
Some of these questions have been answered in previous pages, others in previous works by people like, Dan Dennett, Eckhart Tolle and Andrew Cohen. Cohen’s ideas being the most similar to what we’ve learned so far. He calls your understanding of Assignee’s Prerogative “Authentic Self” which is a fantastic name. But even Andy, so close to the ring he can almost grasp it, has to take that final leap, into the unknown, to declare that God is creation and the act of it.
It’s not enough for the new modern Philosophes to acquaint you with yourself, they want to push into the unknowable and declare the fantastic. Similar to Mr. Dennets' work, my philosophy dares to answer: You exercise your Assignees Prerogative and decide only what is needed when it’s needed. It takes time, (a lifetime, it doesn’t end) and practise but it’s completely achievable. And despite the lack of comfort provided by the truly reality based point of view, the empowerment of knowing truth outweighs the need for faith. (Faith, however biased, is still welcome with your Assignee’s Prerogative, as it is your own.)
We’ve examined only one aspect of morality, murder, or more rightfully, killing. There are many more illogical, or at least, demonstratably placed morals in our modern society from ancient times. Ideas like the sanctity of places, people or objects and automatic respect or reverence are still around. Ideas of class structure, blood or relation being of some worth or relevance to anything and the gauge of fairness and harm are all prevalent. In fact, we use this standard of Fairness, Harm, Ingroup, Authority, Purity as the measuring stick of our sociological or moral makeup. The stronger the assignation of importance to the beginning of the list, the more left leaning, liberal, democratic, etc. you are.
The more importance you assign to the latter three the more right leaning, conservative, authoritative, etc. you are. I’m sure we can agree that the utilisation of judgement where Fairness and Harm are the standards we use is much more logical and productive that using the considerations of Ingroup, Authority or Purity. In fact, the latter three paradigms should be almost entirely dismissed, they are, for the most part, antiquated and spent.
Ingroup leads to nepotism, racism, classism. How many of you have helped a friend do something illogical? Authority is weighed well by many still. Despite murderous cops, self-serving politicians, and abusive priests... Purity doesn’t refer to the wholeness or correctness of something, but it’s deemed worth. The Dome of the Rock is one of the most traveled to places on the planet. It is a manmade structure where people come to pay homage to a rock. Were they able to, the pilgrims could pick up any rock and assign the same purity to it. They can’t because they’ve been instructed that this rock is special and deservedly so. (In fairness, this last point is why I say we should all but dismiss Ingroup, Authority and Purity considerations, for what if I am wrong and someday an irrefutable force proves to me that the rock is special. Furthermore, Ingroup facilitates family responsibility and cultural comfort which are not unhealthy. There is also Authority in the Universe as there is Purity, I just haven’t found either yet. I know they exist because their opposites are so prevalent.)
It seems, therefore, that Nature is left leaning. If considering Ingroup, Authority and Purity is far less important that considering Fairness and Harm, Society is in a state of illogical, counterproductive denial. Granted, things are beginning to change. If they weren’t you wouldn’t still be reading this. If we can accept that Nature’s default is that of an open, flexible, dynamic system, then we should be able to accept that we are working against it.
If we know that we have been socially engineered to be the way we are, then the forces that made us that way, want us that way. So why do the powers that be want us to work against nature? Why have we been programmed to fail? What else have they programmed us to do? These are the questions of the new enlightenment. They may seem scary but the fact that we can figure out to ask them gives me hope for the future.
The reason we are even capable of asking these sorts of quandaries is through our understanding and facility of Superego, Ego and Id. Ego is the mediation between the conscious and the subconscious. It is your perception of reality, both what you experience and think about and what is beyond your understanding, but no less influential. You’re ego knows your consciousness and feels your subconsciousness. That means that basically you are your ego, built out of your paradigms.
Your Id is your innate primary instincts.
Thoughts of fight or flight come from the id, beyond your subconscious, past what you’ve leaned in this life, to what all humans (all creatures) are pre-wired to know. (I know there is an argument for plant life having id, and even ego, but there is also an argument for animals having superego and we don’t have time to cover everything.) The basic differences between ego and id are the basic differences between man and beast. When we are able to question our instincts, examine our id, we have developed ego.
Superego is the term used to indicate the conscious determination of ego. Where ego knows our consciousness and only feels our subconscious, the superego knows both. Where the ego can be faulted by a misinterpreted bias hidden in a memory, superego knows that bias already and can compensate for it.
By understanding and exploring superego we discover all our secrets, all our “why’s.” Assignee’s Prerogative is a method to appreciating your superego. By deciding the worth of paradigms based on full disclosure of where those paradigms came from we have created Superego type Awareness. The next achievement to strive for after mastering your superego is superconsciousness, the recombination of the conscious and subconscious minds. (Or perhaps with a Universal form.) But I digress...
Well, that’s all well and good for sheep, but I am already aware of myself.
Are you really? A dog is aware of itself, a cat can recognise itself in a mirror. Knowing yourself and knowing why you are yourself are two different things. The former is the genetic default of what I’ll call the substantive mind, the latter is the achievement of the practised mind. Let’s examine one quick example of the difference. Suppose you are aware that you are an overtly friendly, helpful person and sometimes others take advantage of your willingness to assist.
That knowledge gained is half the battle true, but why is it that you are that way? Knowing you are like that will give you some ability to compensate but knowing why you are like that will give you the ability to conquer it. For the sake of our example, lets say your parents both worked long hours and you are the oldest of five kids. Growing up, it was just your job to take care of everything and everyone.
A person who knows self can compensate to the point of “I don’t need to do everything for everyone,” (which can be enough.) A person aware of the why’s of their self can know, “My parents have their own paradigms. I don’t blame them for my being the oldest. It makes sense that I should be the one to help, but I am not responsible for everyone, not even my siblings anymore. I am responsible for myself.” Someone who only has awareness of this problem may feel guilt with not assisting, someone who has conquered it through self-examination can just “say no.” Tackling problem paradigms starts a snowball effect of discovery that can avalanche into healing just as easily as absorbing them can lead to further pain.
Psychological Resistance is something that you’ll have to contend with, both in yourself and others. Especially if you were very asleep and you are soaking this information in like a breathing sponge. People close to you are going to notice your changing. Depending on circumstances of your life they may or may not accept the changes. You might find you have to rethink your whole life, who you’re friends with, who you accept, reject, like, love, ignore, respect, etc. I realised, for example, when I began to wake up, that my wife was, (still is,) very asleep. She is now my ex-wife.
Unfortunate to be true, but I was not the same person when we met that I was when we parted ways. My paradigms, after awakening, became a shifting, pliable mess of associative doubt, and how can anyone compete, even understand, someone who questions every aspect of everything? Indeed, how could my wife even see the point of trying to understand me? She felt I was wasting my time thinking about such things and couldn’t see the worth of any explanation I gave.
Furthermore, you might find things in yourself that you have trouble accepting needing change. During my early awakening I found I had felt quite worthless because, although I was now further along in my appreciation for true reality, I was needy, I was ugly, I was cold, I was lonely, I was a poor provider, I lied to my wife and to my God when I said “Till death do us part.” etc. Of course, I was none of those things. It took me three years to figure that out, but I did and you will too when you come across barriers. (You must, your only real option is to stop breathing.)
Combatting resistance in others is not easy either, but it won’t take as long because you’ll give up sooner. As you should. Don’t try too hard to change someone else’s mind, try harder to understand them and worry about yourself. If you lead by example and your acquaintance begins to feel you’re on to something, they’ll come around. Besides, in a way, psychological resistance is the great equalizer because to resist an idea is to concur with it’s opposition and thus you can develop an understanding. It’s not empathy, it’s an appreciation of an opinion.
The way to defeat psychological resistance in yourself is to test the boundaries of your paradigms. You can do this by thinking about things you don’t want to think about, however you must remember that you probably don’t want to manifest these things, so you must think about them in a certain way. For instance, in our earlier example of the person who feels they must help everyone, all the time, it was firstly a discovery of that habit that led to the examination. Let’s assume the habit was self-evident (perhaps it was pointed out to you, but until you accept that it is ‘what you do’ it is meaningless.) You might imagine scenarios where people you care for are failing miserably, you’re watching them, and letting them fail.
You might imagine the exact same scenarios but this time, the people you care for are exceeding even what your assistance would have provided. You might even try out scenarios in life, purposefully letting “them do it themselves,” if only to watch them fail/succeed without you. The careful non-manifestation enters into the equation at the point where your paradigm boundary exercises could cause actual harm. Further to this, you may not even believe that thoughts can be manifest into reality. REGARDLESS, BE CAREFUL! The Universe doesn’t bother separating it’s manifestations from those that believe and those that don’t.
What about more benign paradigms? They could stay vested in your mind your entire life without you realising they were there or that they were in need of sharper definition. I’ve noticed that some people in my generation and many more from the next are perturbed by silence. That means that they will do things like turn on the t.v. just for the sake of noise. It doesn’t matter what is on, they’re not watching it, they just want “chatter.” Why? There may or may not be some actual deficiency there. Perhaps when they are alone with their thoughts, horrible memories invade their mind and it is far less painful to distract. Or it could be that they grew up in a noisy environment full of love and the “chatter” takes them, in some way, to a calmer place. (My kids think quiet stillness is boring yet it’s amazing how much sleeping they do.)
The point is that almost every opinion you have could mark an association to a necessarily correctable paradigm. You won’t know until you examine them all, (and as you’re constantly making new ones, it seems that is perpetual.) It is also possible to have benign paradigms present themselves physically. Restless Leg Syndrome is something that when I was a school age boy, we didn’t have a name for, we were just kids who couldn’t sit still. Now you can drug your children so that their legs stop “wanting to move.”
Modern Humans don’t investigate problems anymore, they just beat them into submission. This is wrong and is strongly indicative that we should consider the fact that there are no benign paradigms because they are attached to at least one other idea. (A more strident example would be going on anti-depressants without working out the problems. Sure, you’ll feel better, the chemicals are balancing you. Are you going to stay on them forever or are you going to address your depression?)
For the few brazen souls who feel they want to push the envelopes inside their heads, I applaud you. It can be done but you must be willing to go into some dark places. The reason you don’t like to think about certain things, for the most part, may have a very reliable source. Maybe you don’t want to think about child abuse, not just because you know it’s wrong, but because you’ve been abused. Wouldn’t it make sense for the abused to work on these paradigms harder than the non-abused.
Surprisingly, not always. What if the abused person has spent years in therapy just to get to the point where he or she can go about their lives normally and to stir up these thoughts would send them spiralling into there own private hell, rendering them useless? It’s up to you to decide what envelopes need pushing and what you can push healthily. Now that does not mean that thinking about, imagining, child abuse is healthy. It simply means that child abuse is a reasonably accepted paradigm that we don’t want to think about. Therefore any and all associations attached to child abuse can become atrophied. While that doesn’t seem like something that could prove problematic, unless you are truly capable of child abuse, it can’t hurt anyone.
I use child abuse because there is a common revulsion to it, but you can exercise your mind with any paradigm that turns your blood cold. Think about partaking in homosexuality if that is what disturbs you, think about murder, sex with your mother/father, whatever you find that grosses you out, tackle it, grind it into the ground in your imagination. Name it, claim it, take away it’s power but never forget to reserve any opinion of it. The idea is to beat it, and if it doesn’t need beating, stretch it, but do not manifest it. Banal paradigms get associations firing every day. Crazy ideas you don’t even want to think about stop you from thinking forward. Appropriately, child abuse will undoubtably not become a popular social habit but what if the “crazy idea” was that of “The Earth isn’t flat,” or “This mold will cure your infection?”
The reason for pushing paradigms is to produce the ultimate open mind. If you can contemplate something as horrible as child abuse with a clear mind, unfettered with opinion, you can address less volatile paradigms easier. Is it necessary? Absolutely not.
But used properly it could give your strength, even an idea of why you are here. It might be the most effective, non-invasive technique you have for balancing your faults. You may or may not find use for exercises of the more extreme nature, I only mention it because I enjoy being in control of my own thoughts and the extreme nature of the thoughts make every other paradigmic challenge bearable. So when I see a television commercial with starving, fly riddled children from Africa I no longer turn away.
I know I don’t want to see that, so I stare at it hard. I make sure I take in every little detail. If I know that I have proclivities for one particular behaviour, I take measures to inflict the opposite on myself. Nature tells me what I need to work on by telling me what is easy for me. If it’s easy, I work on the opposite of it. If it’s hard, if it seems impossible, if I don’t like it, there’s a reason that should at least be examined.
Patience isn’t only a virtue, life without it is madness. The most important person you should have patience for, yet never tolerate, is yourself. Push yourself to the limits, it’s why you’re here. To do anything less is pointless, rendering you pointless and ensuring you’re gonna have to do it again, until you get it right or die trying.
Or such is my prerogative assigned....
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