|
Peter’s Correspondence on the Actual Freedom List Correspondent No 65
PETER: Hi, In reference to the link you posted to Grist Magazine – (http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/books/lomborg121201.asp?source) ‘gloom and doom with a sense of humour’, as it says on its banner – I read some of these criticisms of Lomborg’s book ‘The Sceptical Environmentalist’ before I purchased it and have read many more since – in fact I pointed out in my post that there were criticisms available on the Net in case anyone wanted to read them. Very few of the criticisms relate to the central thrust of the book – that life on earth is much, much better than it has ever been and that it will only continue to get even better. And further, most of the criticisms are either personal put-downs of the author, blatant denials, digressions and deviations from the book’s main focus or nitpicking objections about minutia. The belief in doom and gloom runs deep within the human condition – in fact, it is more than a belief; it is a passionate all-consuming conviction. All religious and spiritual belief is fabricated on the conviction that life on earth is a miserable business. Consequently, when someone comes along and says the doom and gloom beliefs do not accord with the documented facts, it is no wonder that he is then treated with scorn, derision and contempt. I gave up believing that ‘life is a bitch’ – which is why I could read Lomborg’s book with clear eyes and appreciate the diligence of his research in exposing the mythology and duplicity of the religion of Environmentalism. The only reason I recommended the book is that it presents facts and well-documented trends that challenge the status-quo common beliefs of the doomsayers. I am no expert in the finer technical points of environmental issues and because of this I leave it entirely up to anyone who wants to read the book to make up their own minds as to whether the thrust of the book makes sense to them or not. Did you have any particular point in mind in posting the link to this mailing list? I don’t know whether you have read the book or not or whether you simply wanted to inform the list that many environmentalists object to it. If so, I would have thought it was obvious that those environmental scientists who passionately believe in doom and gloom would be queuing up to criticize it.
RESPONDENT No 37: I did look up the word in the actualist glossary and found a few noteworthy statements: [quote] ‘As this is being written, only a handful of people have managed to become free of the Human Condition ...’ [endquote]. As it has recently been established that the number is 1 – that hardly constitutes a ‘handful’. No 37 to Richard Re: ‘Spiritual’ 30.3.2004 PETER to No 37: Much of my writing in the glossary reads as though it was written as the realization, or moments of clear thinking, were happening and some could have indeed even been written whilst I was having a PCE, which would explain the statement I made that you have queried – for when one is having a PCE, one is temporarily free of the human condition. Indeed it is my experience in being virtually free of the human condition that I am, in fact, free of most of the human condition for most of the time – which is not to deny that I will only be actually free of the human condition in toto when the singular event of self-immolation occurs. This is exactly the reason I decided to start writing when I did – I had some hands-on experience to pass on about the actualism method and the nature of the human condition that was best written raw and first-hand rather than as a hindsight account. If you read my journal and some of my early correspondence you will also find many other statements I have made that you could also rightly dispute. At the time they were written I was full-on into investigating the human condition and the very process is a daring and passionate one and whilst I fully stand by my earlier writings in terms of substance, flavour and intent, they were not necessarily intended to stand close intellectual scrutiny. At one stage I thought to go over my earlier writings and edit them for accuracy and terminology but I
realized that in doing so I would inevitably loose some of the immediacy and spontaneity of an experiential account so I haven’t bother. Thanks
for pointing out the inaccuracy. I have changed the particular statement you pointed to, but I will leave my journal unedited for the reasons
stated above. RESPONDENT: Inaccuracy my foot! The fact is you LIED period intentionally praying on the human herd instinct. PETER: If you have read my journal you would know that it is a personal account of how to become virtually happy and harmless. As such, if I were ‘intentionally preying on the human herd instinct’ what I wrote would have to be preying on the human herd instinct to be happy and harmless. Perhaps you could provide evidence of the human herd instinct to be happy and harmless in action because the reflex reaction thus far to actualism is that actualists are spoiling the game that human beings have been instinctually programmed to play. Within the human condition the instinctual reaction to whistle-blowers is to attack the credibility of those making the exposure – the aim of this fear-driven antagonistic reaction being to divert attention away from the content of what the person is saying. RESPONDENT: Yet were your fellow correspondents to do the same thing you would be throwing stones for weeks. PETER: This is nonsense as I have no way of knowing whether any of my fellow correspondents ‘have lied < ... > intentionally praying on the human herd instinct’. RESPONDENT: No, your correction didn’t wash, your hypocrisy still stinks. PETER: Given that by far the bulk of your posts to this list have either been overtly antagonistic towards actualists or aimed at encouraging the antagonism of others towards actualists, and that you have yet to engage in a conversation about the subject matter of actualism, you observation is hardly surprising.
RESPONDENT to Vineeto: Actualism won’t spread like a chain letter till we ‘actually care’ enough to learn how to observe and examine human instincts without ‘investigating’ them as though they are criminal. PETER: Your comment ‘till we ‘actually care’ enough’ caught my eye as I recently had a wide ranging conversation with someone about the topic of caring and sensitivity. We soon fell to swapping stories about certain events in our lives which proved to be significant in widening our outlook from purely self-centred to including a concern for the antagonism and despair that we both saw as inherent to the human condition. I particularly enjoyed the conversation, not only because my friend was willing to relate his stories but also that it set me thinking about the topic in general. As such I thought it worthwhile to share some of my stories of the significant events that served to set me caring about what is often called the ‘plight of humanity’. The first event of significance happened to me when I was about 9 or 10 years old. My parents had bought a television for the first time and I developed a habit of sneaking into the living room and watching it with the sound turned down after they had gone to bed. One night, as I sat on the floor in front of the set, a documentary about the Nazi extermination camps came on. For a little boy who had a sheltered life in a ‘fortunate’ country that had never directly experienced a war fought on its territory, the sudden appearance of irrefutable evidence of what human beings were capable of doing to each other was both shocking and appalling. Not a loss of innocence but a loss of ignorance. The next event of significance was leaving the working class suburbs that I had lived in all my life and heading off to other side of town to go to university. I was then confronted with the inequities of class, privilege, power and wealth that typify every society and again this left a lasting impression. In the middle of my studies at university, I travelled by ship to London to do a practical year in an architect’s office, stopping off in Durban, South Africa. Durban was a wealthy seaside holiday town for Whites during the Apartheid years and I remember seeing a little dark-skinned boy peeking through a gap in the fence of a Whites-only amusement park on the sea-side promenade. Bus stops had shelters for Whites-only and restaurant toilets had signs that said Whites only. Again the extent of man’s inhumanity to man was shockingly evident. When I eventually got to Europe and travelled around I remember being taken aback not only at how old and ‘set in aspic’ human culture is but also of being aware that literally every square metre of Europe’s soil had been drenched in blood from millennia upon millennia of almost continuous tribal warfare and reigns of terror imposed by autocratic and theocratic regimes. Travelling overland on my way home to Australia, I left what could loosely be termed ‘civilized Europe’ and travelled through what was largely at the time a dark, feudal, tribal, superstition-ridden land between Europe and Asia to eventually arrive in the mayhem of an over-populated India. Here I was confronted by poverty the likes of which I had never seen before as well as levels of squalor and disease that were mind-numbing. An incident I found particularly disturbing was being confronted in the streets of Madras by children thrusting the leprosy-ridden stumps of what remained of their hands at me, shouting ‘please Saab’ and begging for money. From Madras I then flew from a poor, unhygienic, unhealthy and over-crowded India to a wealthy, clean, healthy and sparsely populated Australia in a matter of hours … and the sudden contrast was shocking, to say the least. I remember musing for a long time at what seemed the inherent unfairness that I should be born into a position of privilege whilst billions of my fellow human beings were born less privileged than I. In the end the experience had such a profound effect on me that it was one of the reasons that led me not to pursue a materialist life – the other reason being that I had observed first-hand, and experienced first-hand, that accumulation of possessions and wealth with its subsequent power are by no means prerequisites for happiness. The next significant event in my life was marriage and child-rearing, both of which failed to quell by what was now a underlying discontent – a background sometimes-subtle, sometimes-more-evident feeling of ‘Is this all there is to life?’ In hindsight, it is quite a radical change to leave the childhood family nest and strike off on one’s own into the world at large and discover by trial and error and circumstance that, to put it bluntly, ‘the real world sucks’. And not only that, it was evident to me that everybody else was more or less in the same boat – everybody’s happiness was both conditional and brittle and harmony amongst human beings was surface-deep at best. Again in hindsight, this lack of contentment with materialism meant I was ripe for the next turning point in my life. The event that instigated this change of course was the collapse of my marriage. I was plunged into a ‘dark-night-of-the-soul’ despair as my world collapsed around me … and lo and behold, I found Spirituality. I say ‘lo and behold’ because finding God is a common occurrence after a dark night of the soul experience, so my experience was in no way as unique or as special as I though t it was at the time. A whole alternative world opened up to me and in my despair fairy tales similar to those I thought to have been weird as a kid suddenly seem to be revelations to me. Of course, my desperation at the time made me blind to the fact that what I had unwittingly fallen into was the honey-trap of religious belief largely because the stories, myths and legends were different to those of the monotheistic religion I was familiar with. At the time however, I was hooked, so much so that I left the real-world behind and plunged into living in a spiritual commune and living the spiritual life. The next event of consequence that occurred was the ending of the Rajneesh empire in the U.S. with the subsequent revelations of despotism, corruption, murder, xenophobia and acts of terrorism. I was shocked at what blind faith en masse can manifest within the human condition – indeed the combination of faith and loyalty has produced some of the most horrendous acts in humanity’s long history of heinous brutalities. After this the order of the day for Rajneesh and Rajneesh’s followers became individual responsibility, which by and large meant an individual faith. I have described what effect the death of my teenage son had on me in my Journal but that was a seminal event in my life in that it gave my search for freedom both impetus and urgency. I then knew it was up to me as an adult to be able to pass on – by example, not by theory – that it is possible to become free of the torments that typify the human condition. Within a few months of my son’s death I had an insight one evening which allowed me to clearly see that the spiritual world that I had got myself into was nothing other than ‘Olde Time Religion’ albeit one of the Eastern varieties as opposed to one of the Western versions. It took a few years and a good deal more trial and error experimenting with yet more variations of spirituality before I was finally convinced that any form of metaphysical/spiritual/mystical belief is an impassioned escapist charade perpetuated by the eons-old myth that ‘I’ can survive physical death. I then found myself at a cusp in my life – I had thoroughly road-tested the two basic alternative life pursuits that were available for a human being, materialism and spiritualism, for many years of my life and found them both to be lacking credibility and sensibility. As I looked around I found many of my friends taking the middle path of compromise – a foot in both camps as it were. Most of them went back to materialist pursuits, some of them accumulating wealth and power by inculcating yet another unsuspecting generation into Eastern Spiritualism and Mysticism, others turned snake-oil sellers by offering healings, readings and therapies to the many who have a penchant for superstition, whilst the majority became full-time materialists and part-time spiritualists – still talking the talk but having given up walking the walk. The death of my son had ruled such compromise out for me and the next serendipitous event proved another of life’s major turning points. It proved to be the most significant event because it presented me with the chance to put into action the legacy of caring I had built up from all of the preceding events in my life that had left me with both a burning discontent with the human condition and the impetus to find a way to finally bring an end to the tenacious instinctual grip it imposes upon each and every human being born. Needless to say you know what that event was so I have no need to go on. I realize that this is rather a long post, but I thought it appropriate that at least someone on this list said something substantive about actually caring. I, for one, care enough about peace on earth to actually do something about bringing an end to my malice and my sorrow – that’s what I call actually caring.
RESPONDENT to Richard: ‘Your inability to discern the difference in impact between individuals dying daily of old age accident disease or ignorance, and this on-going horror as millions of human beings try to deal with a mass tragedy on a scale never experienced in our lifetimes reveals you to be a callous and mentally dissociated sick human being.’ Mass vs. Daily Death 30/12/2004 PETER: I thought it might be an opportune moment to continue our conversation on the topic of actual caring given that you have weighed in on the current ‘lets-put-the-boot-into-Richard-because-he-doesn’t-care’ posts to the list. I’ll repost a section of our previous conversation on the topic of actually caring in case you have
forgotten the gist of what I was saying at the time – ( And just to remind you of some of what you said to me in reply –
When I read your reply it became clear to me that your idea of sharing is radically different to mine, which is why I didn’t bother to continue the conversation at the time. * PETER: As I said at the start, the time does now seem ripe to share a few more stories about certain events that have proved to be significant in widening my outlook from purely self-centred to actually caring about the antagonism and despair that is instinctually-intrinsic to the human condition. As you may have noticed the events I previously shared with you were events that occurred prior to my coming across actualism and were some of those that in hindsight proved to be significant in my making the decision to set off on the path to becoming both happy and harmless. I would like to now move on to some insights that I gleaned from watching reports on natural disasters after becoming an actualist as the topic of natural disasters has been raised on the list following the under-sea earthquake and the subsequent flooding of many low-lying coastal areas in the Indian Ocean. Several years ago I remember watching news reports of the devastation following an earthquake in Turkey that resulted in an estimated 17,118 deaths and over 50,000 injuries. As I watched the reports and the struggles of the local people, government officials and aid-workers to cope with the crisis, I was struck by the fact that, as I was watching this, all over the planet there are literally millions of trained men and mountains of equipment on permanent stand-by ready to be deployed in case they are needed to defend against the attack of another army or to attack another army, not to mention the millions of men and women who are employed in other aspects of ‘keeping the lid on human malice and violence’ – police, security guards, lawyers, judges, prison guards and so on. It then occurred to me that if only human beings weren’t so utterly pre-occupied with being malevolent towards their fellow human beings these very same men and women and resources could then be available as a world-wide natural disaster rapid-response team that would not only provide immediate aid but would easily have the capacity to then totally rebuild and renew houses, towns, cities and infrastructure. Given that I had been a practicing actualist for a few years at the time I watched the reports of the 1999 earthquake, I knew that such an ‘if only’ scenario need not necessarily be a pipe dream because I knew by my own experience that it is possible for anyone, given sufficient intent, to become at least virtually free of malice and sorrow. As more and more people decide to do likewise the need for the likes of armies, police, security guards, lawyers, judges, prison guards, social workers, psychologists, and so on to ‘keep the lid on human malice and violence’ and deal with the outcomes will subsequently and proportionately diminish. So the facts that I came to clearly see was that the pain and suffering that human beings inflict upon each other is far, far more substantial than the pain and suffering that result from natural disasters and as a consequence the amount of people and resources devoted to attempting to rectify or cope with the aftermath of human-inflicted misery and mayhem is many, many times more than that devoted to preparing for and coping with the aftermath of earthquakes, floods, droughts and the like. The next fact then follows from this fact. If I really want to make a practical difference in my lifetime to elevating suffering then I need to do what I can do that will have the most practical effect – to devote my life to ending ‘my’ malice and sorrow. And since ‘I’ am my feelings and my feelings are ‘me’ this process will inevitably result in the ending of ‘me’, thereby ensuring what I have long sought since I first became aware of the insidious nature of the human condition – an actual freedom from the human condition. The other insight also relates to what are termed ‘natural’ disasters (presumably human-inflicted disasters are considered somehow unnatural). At the time I was watching television reports of severe bushfires that ringed a city some 500 hundred kilometres to the south of where I live and I became aware of the proficiency of the response of the fire fighters, police and so on who were involved. I was particularly interested because I had been involved in fighting several large fires as a teenager so I was impressed at how much progress had been made in training, equipment, co-ordination and effectiveness. I became absorbed in watching the response to the situation and was particularly struck by the comments made by the chief fire officer in an interview conducted when the fires were finally brought under control. He said that the emergency services had learnt much from the natural disasters that had happened in this country over the years and that they had recently set up a response system that was world-class, so much so that many countries had emulated it or wanted to emulate it. Basically the approach involved the establishment of a single emergency-response command-and-control centre which acts as the co-ordinating hub of all the specialist branches of emergency response, be they metropolitan fire brigade, rural volunteer fire brigades, police, volunteer emergency response teams, ambulance, army, army reserve, health services, electricity, water, gas and telephone services and so on. Whenever an emergency arises or a natural disaster happens the appropriate emergency service immediately takes the commanding role within the centre – if it is a rural fire, then the rural fire service takes charge with the other services providing whatever support is required; if it is a terrorist attack then the police take charge; if it is an epidemic, the health service takes charge, and so on. I was struck by the practicality of the system that had been worked out and with the efficiency with which it worked in practice. Here was an example of human ingenuity, co-operation and practicality at its best. Seeing what human beings are capable in such situations despite the human condition (many of the fires were in fact deliberately lit by human beings) brought a tear to my eye at the time because I could see not only altruism in action but also the unfettered actual caring and consideration that individual members of the human species are sometimes capable of. Whilst I was aware that this potential is very often only realized in times of adversity and disaster, it did beg a question for me – if it can be so in those circumstances, why can it not be so in every moment of my mundane experience and in every interaction with my fellow human beings? As you can see, these events – or rather clearly seeing the facts that were there for the seeing in these events – acted as spurs along the path of becoming free of malice and sorrow. And if I can just return to your comment that instigated this thread –
– what you may have noticed from this post is that I do not ‘observe and examine human instincts … as though they are criminal’, I observe and examine them by simply taking a clear-eyed look at the facts of the human animal instincts in action.
PETER: I thought it might be an opportune moment to continue our conversation on the topic of actual caring .... RESPONDENT: What conversation Mr So Quick To Parrot Richard’s Admonition That Others Read What You Write With Both eyes. What I did say was ‘no doubt the ulterior motive [to your long winded spiel] is to get me to engage in dialogue, so you can indulge your favourite pass-time, arguing. Not a hope. PETER: But that is not the case at all. Below is the full text of your reply.
As anyone can plainly see, after saying you were not going to indulge in a dialogue you then went on to say ‘I will share this with you though, as I am free to’. And just in case you have forgotten the sequence – my original post on the subject of actually caring was in response to a comment you yourself you made on this discussion list about actually caring. When I responded you then continued the conversation, saying you refuse to engage in dialogue on the subject, accused me of indulging in my favourite pastime arguing and then merrily proceeded to continue the dialogue … albeit in the form of a 451 word put-down of myself, Richard and Vineeto. And now that you have again continued the conversation after my recent post on the very same topic, I will take the opportunity you have provided to respond to the last point you raised in the response that I re-posted above –
Whatever it is you imagine you are learning here and whatever it is that you ‘continue each day to
share’ with others sure ain’t actualism and it sure ain’t got anything to do with becoming free of the human condition in toto. This is
obvious given your continual refusal to participate in any meaningful discussions on this mailing list with those who have expertise about
actualism and what an actual freedom from the human condition entails and your persistent use of this forum to misinterpret and misrepresent
actualism, to indulge in put-downs and rebuttals of actualism and actualists and to promulgate your own teachings As such it is indeed appropriate that you make no reference at all to the Actual Freedom website and what is on offer there, when you share your teachings with others.
PETER: And just in case you have forgotten the sequence – my original post on the subject of actually caring was in response to a comment you yourself you made on this discussion list about actually caring. When I responded you then continued the conversation, saying you refuse to engage in dialogue on the subject, accused me of indulging in my favourite pastime arguing and then merrily proceeded to continue the dialogue … albeit in the form of a 451 word put-down of myself, Richard and Vineeto. And now that you have again continued the conversation after my recent post on the very same topic, I will take the opportunity you have provided to respond to the last point you raised in the response that I re-posted above –
Whatever it is you imagine you are learning here and whatever it is that you ‘continue each day to share’ with others sure ain’t actualism and it sure ain’t got anything to do with becoming free of the human condition in toto. This is obvious given your continual refusal to participate in any meaningful discussions on this
mailing list with those who have expertise about actualism and what an actual freedom from the human condition entails and your persistent use of
this forum to misinterpret and misrepresent actualism, to indulge in put-downs and rebuttals of actualism and actualists and to promulgate your own
teachings As such it is indeed appropriate that you make no reference at all to the Actual Freedom website and what is on offer there, when you share your teachings with others. RESPONDENT: LOL :-) not a hope PETER: I assume that your laughing-out-loud-with-a-smile-on-your-face comment ‘not a hope’ refers to the fact that you are continuing to refuse to engage in a conversation with me about the subject of actually caring. If I can just remind you again, it was you who introduced this topic to the mailing list when you made the following comment –
As can be seen you were clearly talking about actually caring about doing something about the human instinctual passions. Given that you used the word ‘criminal’ you were obviously referring to the ‘bad’ instinctual passions that society demonizes, frowns upon, punishes yet oft covets. This is the very subject I addressed in my first response to you. Not only did you refuse to discuss the matter with me, but you subsequently chose to use the misfortune of those killed, injured and made homeless by the recent undersea earthquake in an attempt to not only demean, but to pour scorn on actualists for not caring.
Switching topics is one of the standard ploys that have been consistently used by many who find discussing the instinctual passions ‘too close to the bone’. Whilst other reactions include stony silence, withdrawal, indignance, shame, guilt, denial, befuddlement and obscuration, shifting topic is very common, right up there along with mudslinging and name-calling. The most common reaction from having to face the fact that human are instinctually-driven beings is, and always has been, to seek the moral high ground – as is evidenced by the bulk of the correspondence to this mailing list. This habitual reaction is understandable because each and every child born on this planet is, one way or another, indoctrinated into believing in Good and Evil – whether it be good and evil forces, energies, entities, spirits or humans. Variations of this basic reaction that have become evident on this mailing list over time are that of the spiritual-nihilists who seek an even higher moral high ground by making sacred the notion that nothing can be done or indeed needs to be done about human malice and sorrow and that of the spiritual-intellectuals who claim their particular brand of spiritual belief is so refined and so rarefied that it cannot even be called a spiritual belief. The other refuge from having to face the fact that human are instinctually-driven beings is that of seeking the ethical high ground. This approach is usually taken by those who call themselves humanists and/or atheists. However, a little digging inevitable reveals most of them to be closet spiritualists (many Buddhists call themselves atheists with nay a blush) in one form or other, to some degree or other. We have also had several correspondents come to this mailing list and as a consequence become so aware of the folly of their own religious, spiritual or metaphysical beliefs that they ostensibly abandon them … only to then revert to one or other of the usual ploys in order not to engage in a sensible discussion about the fact that human are instinctually-driven beings. Whilst I am on the topic of being averse to discussing and investigating the instinctual passions, you might remember I recently posted the following quote with a comment to the list –
I don’t know whether you currently have your head in the sand or whether you still have your head-in the clouds but whatever your current beliefs are, you sure have a bee in your bonnet about actualism. So much so that you reply – laughing out loud with a smile on your face – that there is not a hope of you even entering into a discussion with me on the subject of how to ‘learn how to observe and examine human instincts without ‘investigating’ them as though they are criminal’. And then in your very next post to the list you merrily rejoin the mob of brickbat throwers who are giving full reign to their instinctual passions –
There does seem to be a yawning chasm between what you admonish others to do on this list –
and what you do … or rather don’t do … in practice.
RESPONDENT No 58: I don’t need to clarify a thing. A fact of life is losing loved ones. But this nonsense of feeling nothing at such an event is really something else. PETER to No 58: Did what I wrote about my son’s death completely pass you by? I’ve snipped it from my reply as you didn’t bother to respond to it but I’ll refresh your memory. <snip> Because I had felt these feelings and was aware that I was having these feelings when my son died, I came to realize that to suffer the loss of someone close is one thing but to compound the situation by having to suffer the affective feelings normally associated with such a loss does nothing but aggravate the situation. I have nothing good to say about the feeling of grief – the feeling sucks and it sucks big time. Nor do I have anything good to say about the associated feelings of sorrow and compassion (feeling sorrow for others). Contrary to popular opinion, there is no ‘good’ in sorrow – the only thing that one gets out of the feeling of sorrow is the debilitating pain and angst that comes with all affective feeling. As for ‘this nonsense of feeling nothing’ – to me, wanting to hold on to such feelings, simply
because everyone else says you should, is what is nonsense. RESPONDENT: Have you ever considered that feelings (like the feeling of hunger) are not experienced merely for self indulgence, i.e. to wallow in and ‘feel special’ as you say yours do? PETER: The feeling of hunger is a homeostatically regulated bodily response, that means the nervous system monitors levels of energy and alters motivation when these levels deviate too far from some optimum level. Current research suggests that the process of activating and deactivating hunger is caused by changing glucose levels within the blood and that this change is detected by gluco-receptors and that such gluco-receptors may reside in the liver, where new arrivals of glucose are first received and whence signals about glucose content are sent to the hypothalamic area of the brain. In other words, as the heart pumps the blood and the lungs expand and contract in order to inhale oxygen to oxygenate the blood, so to do the gluco-receptors signal that food is needed to replenish the glucose levels in the blood. Nothing affective about hunger at all – it is a physical automatic process. I personally have never had the occasion to experience what are known as the pangs of hunger although on some occasions I have not eaten for a day and still not experienced physical craving for food (having the luxury of living in a wealthy country my eating habits are habitually regulated, not necessity driven) but I have had occasions to experience the cravings of thirst and I certainly found the craving to be physical … which is not to say there was not an affective feeling on top of the physical craving which only served to aggravate the problem. RESPONDENT: Have you considered that feelings are an impetus to act, to actually get up and DO something. PETER: Of course I understand that feelings compel people to act and not just intellectually either. I fully acknowledge that at times in my life, I became so angry I literally wanted to obliterate someone or something, and that I once descended into feeling such a feeling of sorrow that I knew why human beings would kill themselves rather suffer the feeling of despair a moment longer. Facing this fact fairly and squarely– that I was ‘as bad, as sad and as mad as everyone else’ as I put it on the very first page of my journal – meant that I wanted to do whatever I could to rid myself of these insidious feelings. Why do you appear to have such a problem with me choosing to do this? RESPONDENT: Just look how grief and caring (yes those dirty passionate instincts) have mobilized millions of people into ACTION after this devastating Tsunami. PETER: You keep going on about what are called natural disasters … whereas what I am talking about, and what others are talking about on this mailing list, is doing what we each individually can practically do to bring an end to the appalling everyday disasters that result from the appalling suffering that human beings continue to inflict upon themselves and each other. As you know, I have recently written on this mailing list about some of the events in my life that set me caring about what is often referred to as the plight of humanity. In hindsight it was these experiences that caused me to prioritize and focus my caring – and it is definitely a passionate caring – on the latter, human disasters, and not the former, natural disasters. Why do you appear to have such a problem with me choosing to do this? RESPONDENT: Did you Richard or Vineeto work a little harder to help these traumatised human beings? PETER: Speaking for myself, no. It appears that there is no lack of people helping or willing to help, so much so that some of the affected countries are already turning down offers from aid agencies and governments. There also seems to be no lack of money as the donations are already at record levels for a natural disaster. RESPONDENT: Did you feel compelled to act when your son died? PETER: It appears that you don’t bother to read what I say to you because I recently made reference to my son’s death in a post to you entitled ‘actually caring’ –
Never the less, I’ll give it another go by posting a part of what I wrote about my son’s death in my journal –
Why do you appear to have such a problem with me choosing to do this? RESPONDENT: Did you get up and make every effort to help other 15 year olds avoid the same early death? PETER: As you can see from the excerpt from my journal, it was obvious that I could do nothing for my son as he was dead but his death compelled to get off my backside and make every effort to show by example that is possible to become free of the human condition of malice and sorrow in order that ‘other 15 year olds’ have an alternative to the Tried and Failed. Why do you appear to have such a problem with me choosing to do this? RESPONDENT: It’s extremely short sighted to assume that feelings affect everyone the same way as they affect you. PETER: From my own observations of people (and that of many other people I might add), affective feelings are universal to all feeling beings, no matter what race, creed, nationality, gender or age. To quibble about the degree of effect between individuals is to miss the point that each and every human being is at root an instinctually-driven being. It made eminent sense to me to work my way through my social conditioning in order that I could clearly look at the root of the problem – ‘me’ and ‘my’ instinctual passions (they are one and the same thing). Why do you appear to have such a problem with me choosing to do this? RESPONDENT: Being alive does not affect everyone the same way it affects you. PETER: This is obvious. RESPONDENT: You, Vineeto and Richard need actualism because your major focus is on yourselves. Your nature is to turn everything back on yourselves, but it is silly to assume everyone is similarly inclined. PETER: That the only person I can change, and need to change, is myself is obvious. And since I stopped focussing on everyone else and focussed my awareness on eliminating my own malice and sorrow, the change has been radical to say the least … so much so that I write on this mailing list to inform those that are interested that (despite what everyone believes) it is possible to change human nature. Why do you appear to have such a problem with me choosing to do this? RESPONDENT: Very few people would sit at the feet of a guru for 17 years as you and Vineeto did, or go into radical isolation as Richard did, and all in the hope of achieving self glorification. PETER: Speaking personally, I was attracted to sit at the feet of a guru for 17 years because he promised that if enough people did so then there would be peace on earth. By doing so, I learned by practical experience that all gurus are charlatans, which is why I gave up sitting at the feet of gurus. And you are right, there are surprisingly few Westerners who have thrown themselves into the spiritual search as experientially and as deeply as I did – by and large most choose merely to dabble in spirituality. RESPONDENT: Others not having such an introspective focus or need for self importance, find these discussions about actualism a waste of time. PETER: Given that what is on offer here is ‘self’-immolation and not ‘‘self’ importance’, many people who have come across actualism have moved on – probably about 90% by my estimation. That 10% have chosen to stick around and that some choose to spend their time discussing actualism on this mailing list obviously means they do not find these discussions about actualism a waste of time and I find that quite remarkable. RESPONDENT: They are too busy contributing in whatever field their feelings impel them to assist in and their passionate actions are evident in nearly everything we use each day. PETER: Indeed. I am astounded at what human beings have achieved despite being instinctually-driven beings. RESPONDENT: Without feelings stimulating them into action they would be like you three clones, paralysed and focused solely on yourselves and that is what sucks big time. PETER: Again I think you have missed the point I have been making on this list for the past weeks to a number of correspondents – it was my feelings that stimulated me into taking up actualism. You appear to have what is a very common misunderstanding, so I can’t emphasize this enough – actualism is not about not feeling. Actualism is about getting sufficient self-awareness up and running such that one can minimize the so-called good and the bad feelings and maximize the felicitous feelings such that one can get to the stage of being virtually free of malevolence and sadness, i.e. that one is virtually happy and harmless with people-as-they-are and the world-as-it-is. Then, and only, then is it possible to consider the next stage of the process – ‘self’-immolation and the accompanying expunging of the entire affective package. To beat up on actualists because they don’t feel is not only a straw man argument but it completely misses the whole point of what actualism is about. I’d suggest reading up on actualism a bit more so that your critiques are at least informed critiques – as is currently evidenced on the mailing list, a few correspondents are very busy wasting a lot of their time tilting at windmills.
RESPONDENT to No 66: You really know how to have yourself on don’t you mate? and the clergy recognised it too. You have all the credentials. Top quality gullible, hypnotizable, narcissistic, brown nosed, copy cat stock. I would not be surprised if you are growing a big ol’ granddaddy beard as we speak. Just like Peter did. Ugh. PETER: I see that it might well be time to set the copycat beard myth straight. I had a full beard some 15 years before I even met Richard and the reason I grew it was that I found it a waste of time to keep mowing my face in order to stop the hair that grew naturally from showing. I happened to read recently that there was a crusade against beard growing at the beginning of the 20th century on the basis that beards were unhealthy in that they were a source of the epidemics of disease that regularly cut swathes through the population, in other words, it wasn’t that men chose to shave every day, they kowtowed to social pressures from righteous ‘health’-promoters. It’s fascinating to see much the same thing happening nowadays with regard to cigarette smoking – a fear-fuelled crusade waged against cigarette smoking in ignorance of the actual causes of the many diseases it allegedly causes and to see this crusade continue to be even more strident despite the fact that not only are the actual causes of these diseases are beginning to be discovered but that targeted cures and preventive immunizations have being developed and are already being put in practice. Just on a more general note as to the thrust of your comment, I always find it somewhat perverse that people discover the Actual Freedom Trust website, apparently find some attraction in what they read such that they bother to subscribe to this mailing list and then proceed to castigate or lampoon anyone and everyone who follows Richard’s lead, in other words anyone who is putting the method he used to become free of the human condition into practice. But then again, it’s obvious that humanity at large would have a vested interest in Richard being a never-to-be-repeated freak of nature.
RESPONDENT to No 66: You really know how to have yourself on don’t you mate? and the clergy recognised it too. You have all the credentials. Top quality gullible, hypnotizable, narcissistic, brown nosed, copy cat stock. I would not be surprised if you are growing a big ol’ granddaddy beard as we speak. Just like Peter did. Ugh. PETER: I see that it might well be time to set the copycat beard myth straight. I had a full beard some 15 years before I even met Richard and the reason I grew it was that I found it a waste of time to keep mowing my face in order to stop the hair that grew naturally from showing. I happened to read recently that there was a crusade against beard growing at the beginning of the 20th Century on the basis that beards were unhealthy in that they were a source of the epidemics of disease that regularly cut swathes through the population, in other words, it wasn’t that men chose to shave every day, they kow-towed to social pressures from righteous ‘health’-promoters. It’s fascinating to see much the same thing happening nowadays with regard to cigarette smoking – a fear-fuelled crusade waged against cigarette smoking in ignorance of the actual causes of the many diseases it allegedly causes and to see this crusade continue to be even more strident despite the fact that not only are the actual causes of these diseases beginning to be discovered but that targeted cures and preventive immunizations have being developed and are already being put in practice. Just on a more general note as to the thrust of your comment, I always find it somewhat perverse that people discover the Actual Freedom Trust website, apparently find some attraction in what they read such that they bother to subscribe to this mailing list and then proceed to castigate or lampoon anyone and everyone who follows Richard’s lead, in other words anyone who is putting the method he used to become free of the human condition into practice. But then again, it’s obvious that humanity at large would have a vested interest in Richard being a never-to-be-repeated freak of nature. RESPONDENT: You guys are pathetic. The amount of time and verbage you waste protecting your ‘precious’ self on a list like this is beyond stupid. PETER: I didn’t regard my response as a waste of time at all. By and large I tend to let a good deal of the falsehoods and beat ups that pass for criticism on this list pass me by, but the reason I chose to respond to this comment was that I could succinctly point out that it was false in a single sentence. The rest of the ‘verbage’ was to do with the nature of the cycles of fashions as to what is currently believed to be right and wrong or good and bad. By the way, if you think I am protecting something, it stands to reason you must feel I am being attacked – the question then would be why correspondents choose to do so on a list specifically set up to discuss the means of actualizing peace on earth.
RESPONDENT to No 66: You really know how to have yourself on don’t you mate? and the clergy recognised it too. You have all the credentials. Top quality gullible, hypnotizable, narcissistic, brown nosed, copy cat stock. I would not be surprised if you are growing a big ol’ granddaddy beard as we speak. Just like Peter did. Ugh. PETER: I see that it might well be time to set the copycat beard myth straight. (…) RESPONDENT: You guys are pathetic. The amount of time and verbage you waste protecting your ‘precious’ self on a list like this is beyond stupid. PETER: I didn’t regard my response as a waste of time at all. By and large I tend to let a good deal of the falsehoods and beat ups that pass for criticism on this list pass me by, but the reason I chose to respond to this comment was that I could succinctly point out that it was false in a single sentence. The rest of the ‘verbage’ was to do with the nature of the cycles of fashions as to what is currently believed to be right and wrong or good and bad. By the way, if you think I am ‘protecting’, it stands to reason you must feel I am being attacked – the question then would be why correspondents choose to do so on a list specifically set up to discuss the means of actualizing peace on earth. RESPONDENT: The thing to remember when humans open their mouths and squawk like plucked chooks – as we inevitable do – is that each of us is responsible for the way in which our correspondent responds back to us. PETER: Whoever told you that this is so? This simply makes no sense at all. Methinks you are taking on a burden if you feel responsible if someone who is having a ‘bad hair day’ chooses to take it out on you, or if you feel responsible when someone who is angry at someone else for some reason takes the opportunity to dump their load on you instead. I remember particularly becoming aware of this on a building site one day when one of the men was angry at everyone and every thing. It turned out that his anger had nothing to do with anyone or anything on the building site, he was in fact angry at his girlfriend and had come to work pre-primed to be angry. RESPONDENT: If we ignore the issues (or questions) brought up for discussion and focus instead on the emotional content in which they are inevitably couched (as the instinctually driven animals we are) and use every opportunity to send out our war cry ‘attack!’ or ‘you are attacking me!’ (as we have done for centuries) we simply reinforce and inflate the very ad hominem attacks one is accusing the other of. PETER: If I can just remind you, this was the comment you made to which I responded –
The reason I replied was to correct the falsehood that I had grown a beard after meeting Richard in order to copy cat him. Not that it would matter one iota if I did, of course – there is much about Richard that I have chosen to emulate given that he is actually free of the human condition. Growing a beard happens to be not one of the things I copied – provided one is free of thoughtlessly following current fads or fashions, such things are then a matter of personal predilection. RESPONDENT: Each is equally responsible for slamming the door on sensible discussion and no lessons learned here are being applied at all. PETER: Again this makes no sense at all as a generalization. By this logic, one should make no distinction between an antagonist and his or her target and by extension no distinction between a perpetrator of violence and his or her victim. I remember at one stage thinking that I was equally responsible for the ending of my marriage – that I was equally moody, that I was equally withdrawn, that I was often resentful and so on. But I soon came to see that by thinking this I was simply avoiding taking a good hard look at myself such that I made sure that I wasn’t being a contributor to any animosity or angst this time around with my current companion. In short, the only way ‘I’ can evince change is to take sole responsibility for *my* malice and *my* sorrow. I am not saying that this is an easy thing to do because putting theory into practice initially proved to be a traumatic event for me, one that I have written about in my journal –
RESPONDENT: No 66 and Peter, if your claim is genuine – that actualism is working for you and making you more happy and harmless – then show it by example and correspond accordingly, to your passionate fellow human beings. PETER: The problem with this bit of advice is that you would have me sit back and not respond at all to any falsehoods, untruths, verbal abuse and presumable even physical attacks in order to meet your particular (pacifist?) belief as to what it means to be happy and harmless in practice. RESPONDENT: If the majority of your replies are focussed on taking them to task for being ‘who they feel they are’ as though it were a personal fault, you are not only contributing to the ad hominem attacks fully, but you are lying to yourselves and peace on earth is NOT on your agendas. PETER: If the majority of my replies were in this category, you might have a case …. but by far the majority of my posts to this mailing list have been in response to correspondents who have expresses an interested in actualism. In my replies I endeavour to pass on my personal experience of my success in becoming virtually free of malice and sorrow and to correct the usual misconceptions and common misunderstandings that I know by experience inevitably occur in trying to understand and put into practice what actualism is on about. On the occasions I do respond to ad hominem attacks, I also very often take the opportunity to include some information that may be of use to readers ... which is after all the reason I write.
RESPONDENT No 71 to Richard: No mad man would agree that he is mad, non? RICHARD: I will first draw your attention to the following (so as to refresh your memory as to just what particular type of crazy person my co-respondent, in all their sincerity, has chosen to pick on):
That term (popularly known as ‘psychopath’) properly refers to a person with
an ‘Antisocial Personality Disorder’ who, according to the DSM-IV Now, whilst copyright regulations preclude me from publicly listing those twenty-two criteria, it would
not have taken anyone with access to the internet very long at all to determine for themself that, as it is patently obvious that what [quote]
‘seems’ [endquote] to my co-respondent to be happening most certainly has no existence outside of their intuitive/imaginative facility, their
sincerity is indeed entirely misplaced ... yet it would not be at all surprising if it turns out that you did not do such an elementary thing as
that before reaching for your keyboard to type out your latest load of hogwash It is truly fascinating to sit here, at this computer, and watch the human condition parade itself daily
across this screen. RESPONDENT No 71 to Richard: Do you talk like this in live interactions as well? RESPONDENT: Most probably does, which would explain why no one from his life (other than his two doting sycophants) ever contributes here to confirm their physical witness of his actual caring in the flesh. Not a one? None of his four children or their children, none of his siblings, parents or past companions (even Irene saw thru him) no one? Not one confirmation – after all these years – of his actual intimacy from any of them. Now why do you think that is? PETER: Unlike you, I have no need to resource to speculating and fantasizing as to why this is so. Firstly, I know by personal experience that none of my children, parents or past companions have any interest in actualism whatsoever ... and why should they be simply because they either knew me in the past or still know of me nowadays? Secondly, regardless of whether or not they were interested in actualism, why should they bother to write to this mailing list to attest to the degree of my caring, one way or the other, particularly given that anyone who did so would be dismissed by those with an axe to grind as being either ‘doting sycophants’ or lauded as being another person who ‘saw thru him’. Thirdly, all of those who do know Richard personally and are interested in actualism have reported to me that they have no interest in writing to the mailing list … and why should they, given the handful of flamers who eagerly lurk, ready to pounce on anyone who has anything at all positive to say about actualism, its practitioners or its founder. RESPONDENT: My guess is his speech is exactly like his writing, chock full of derision, disparagement, scorn, mockery, disdain, belittlement, vilification, denigration, contempt, castigation, disapprobation, denunciation, condemnation and discrimination (as evidenced by bad-mouthing, backbiting and a whole range of slurs, smears, censures, admonishments, reproaches, reprovals, and so on)’. PETER: Which only goes to show how wrong one can be when one has to resort to guessing what goes on when one hasn’t a clue as to what actually goes on. RESPONDENT: And then he plays the martyr, they avoid me because they don’t want to be free of wars, rapes, murders, tortures, domestic violence, child abuse, sadness, loneliness, grief, depression, suicide, like I do? Sickest reasoning I ever heard. PETER: That’s quite a spin you have put on what actually goes on this mailing list – has it
escaped your attention that far from avoiding Richard, the vocal minority apparently cannot stop themselves from tapping away at their keyboards so
as to pour scorn on those with any interest whatsoever in becoming both happy and harmless? Apparently the status quo reasoning for those staunch
defenders of the human condition who take the time to write to this mailing list is that anyone who aims at being happy and harmless is seen as
fair game for their cheap pot-shots, derision and scorn RESPONDENT: I have heard it happens to many soldiers after returning from war. They come home with a lopsided view of the human condition as being predominately subject to wars, rapes, murders, tortures, domestic violence, child abuse, sadness, loneliness, grief, depression and suicide, so much so some of even DO commit suicide. PETER: And I have personally witnessed that many of those who have never been to war, or have never been directly affected by war, remain so utterly self-centred and selfish that they have no interest whatsoever in doing anything at all about actualizing the already peace existing peace on earth. Even the few who are interested in doing something about the perpetual conflicts that epitomize the human condition on a global, national, tribal, neighbourhood and family level, do nothing other than spend their time and expend their energy blaming others as being responsible and culpable, all the while ignoring their own feelings, their own impulses and inclinations that provide the evidence that deep down they are as mad, as bad and as sad as every other feeling being on the planet … the only difference being one of degree and not of kind. RESPONDENT: In Richard’s case he’s working on committing psychological suicide which didn’t work so he ran for the hills. PETER: Yet another example of No 65’s spin on things, yet another spin which has nothing at all to do with the facts of the matter. As you well know by what you read here, Richard did not stop at the traditional death of the ego pulp that has resulted in the folly of men and women swanning around declaring themselves to be the latest saviour of humankind – Richard went all the way and eliminated not only ‘I’ as ego but ‘me’ as soul as well … and far from running for the hills he spends a good deal of time at the computer debunking the falsehoods and fabrications that you and others similarly inclined seem so compelled to keep trotting out. RESPONDENT: Yes it truly is fascinating to sit here, and watch human benevolence parade across the screen time and time again only to be countered by His Malcontent dressed up with the glitz of fancy words. PETER: And yet another example that your derogatory repertoire is so uninspired that it rarely rises above the level of the puerile repetitive taunts that can be readily heard in any schoolyard anywhere in the world. * PETER: About half way through this post I had a phone call from a woman I had never met but had been given my phone number by someone who knew me. She wanted to know if I could help her with some queries she had about a video editing program that I use and I was only too happy to pass on my own knowledge about editing and my own experience in using the program. When I had finished the call and returned to this post I was struck as to how odd it was that I was replying to someone who spends their time sitting at their computer typing out derogatory comments and then sending them to a mailing list specifically set up by some fellow human beings in order to freely pass on their expertise and discuss with others the way and the means of becoming personally free of the human condition of malice and sorrow. The contrast in attitude and motivation between the two communications, being so close together, was and is palpable. I don’t know what motivates you to do what you do but it obviously involves a good deal of persistent cerebral activity combined with a passionate emotional-intuitive drive in order to come up with all the guesswork, speculation and imaginative scenarios about people, things and events you clearly know nothing about and that are, as a consequence, so far from the facts as to be risible. Have you not noticed that all the ‘wars, rapes, murders, tortures, domestic violence, child abuse, sadness, loneliness, grief, depression and suicide’ in the world are perpetrated by human beings who value their intuition and gut feelings to such an extent that any consideration, let alone an actual caring, for their fellow human beings is nowhere to be seen? Again I don’t know whether you have also noticed but actualism is all about having the intent, each moment again, to not only stop but to become free from this natural predilection of trusting one’s own feelings, thereby giving such credence to them that senselessness prevails. Actualism is about becoming attentive to the full gamut of one’s own feelings, both the so-called good feelings as well as the so-called dark feelings, and this very act of being attentiveness disempowers their invidious influence such that sense and sensuousness can prevail which then frees one to become increasingly able to be more and more harmless and more and more happy each moment again. And speaking of war, I don’t know whether you are concerned about the current worldwide war but I heard that someone has labelled it ‘The Long War’. I thought it an apt label, for this war will indeed be very, very, very long as it is being fought not so much by armies and not so much by nations but by a plethora of disparate and divergent groups and/or individuals from all cultures and all creeds, all of whom who all have an axe to grind of some sort – in short, any disgruntled youth, no matter what gender, who wants to express their anger can take up any one of a multitude of grievances, causes and/or ideologies, arm themselves with a gun or a bomb, a banner or a keyboard and join in waging war against whomever they currently choose to take a dislike to. Indeed a little look at history of humankind reveals that the current ‘Long War’ is only the latest episode of what has been and continues to be the ‘Never-Ending War’. In other words, whenever feelings rule the roost, sense flies out the window and human beings continue to find ways to wage war against their fellow human beings in all sorts of ways, both covert and overt, subtle and not so subtle … and not only that, to top it all off, they also passionately feel their antagonism and anger towards their fellow human beings to be righteously justified!
RESPONDENT No 60: Got it now. Finally. The survival passions create all the problems in the first place, and then stubbornly resist (or attack) the permanent solution. That’s the only circularity worth talking about here: ‘I’ am a problem of ‘my’ own making, and ‘I’ turn any attempts to solve the problem into still more problems, and it’s all born of the same blind ‘self’-assertion that creates all the problems in the first place. Having seen that now, I don’t think there’s any turning back unless I somehow lose sight of what’s happening. So let me pin it down here while it lasts, and where it can be brought up again if I ever forget it. RESPONDENT: Heh heh heh, You can always depend on some (hiding from their own game) killjoy to come along before the ink is dry and ‘try’ to rub your nose back in it, No 60 ;-). But as I saw it you brought up valid issues and are quite capable of examining any school of thought at the same time. I wish you well. PETER: I’ve watched with bemusement as the cyber-jackals on this list have circled Vineeto, snapping and sniping, literally lusting for blood, but this latest attack of yours is a real doosy. Just for the record – when Vineeto sent off Given that your post immediately followed Vineeto’s post addressing No 60’s accusations *prior*
to his having ‘Got it now’ it seems that the flesh and blood brain known as No 65 Some things never change, hey. Changing one’s identity to ‘I, this flesh and blood brain’ is a superficial change but changing ingrained habits that are instinctual in nature involves fundamental change.
Peter’s & Richard’s Text ©The
Actual Freedom Trust: 1997-. All Rights Reserved.
Disclaimer |
