OTHER AND SELF

marino marini

We're in a time of being manipulated into division over caring and not caring. All my life the people who go by conservatives, who used to be called reactionaries and hawks, have looked down on the progressives, the doves, the peaceniks. It's like the heat is turned up and the parts in the stew are swirling in the pot, the bottom rising to the top and the top going to the bottom. In our democracy where we are declared created equal as the foundation of our law, the present illustrates the movement cut loose by the Reagan Revolution of belief that one man's ignorance is the equal of another man's knowledge. It's frightful that the political party representing half the population, the below average half, believes education is misleading religiously and politically. The half of the population that sometimes entertains rational thought is largely overwhelmed by aggression of the ignorant obsessed with abortion, pussy, racism, in other words, smokescreen. Everywhere I go I hear somebody making a declaration that starts with "This country." It's all mental generalizations categorizing the unknown.

 

marino marini

 

 

It has become amusing to hear the varieties of the lists that follow this country. It's like a collective wave is going through USA that seems like self-examination, but turns out to be figuring out what's wrong and pointing the finger of blame. Blame the other while three fingers point back at self. We're picking it apart relentlessly, even mindlessly albeit by way of mentation. The trend coming into the new century is surrealist slayings in random locations all over the country. By surrealist I mean in the time of Surrealism in Paris between world wars one and two. One of the surrealists declared the ultimate surrealist act would be to carry a pistol into a crowd and shoot someone randomly. The other surrealists did not take to his idea and soon after put him out of the group. They were creators, artists, not killers. Love was the surrealist theme. Killing did not file well with love. The so-called ultimate surrealist act is now common news in television world where fantasy is reality. Somebody with advanced degrees in psychology, a guy not long out of high school, a guy working at a shipyard. Before the surprise mass shootings were the post office shootings by frustrated employees let go and denied their pensions.

 

marino marini

 

 

It's easy to say it's an expression of disregard unto contempt for others. Killing anyone who is present with no personal reason is an obvious expression of contempt, the most obvious. Looking at the lists of comments after almost any kind of article online, often the rudest, most contemptuous language is used by somebody who doesn't even know who it is on the receiving end, the other. Disregard for others is from ego and the Western attitude toward self in relation to others: me first, others last. The people committing these  outrageous acts for television news show absence of regard for other as a self. No empathy. Throughout my lifetime, experiences in this world trained me away from empathy until the time the Light revealed itself to me. Once I've seen it, I cannot live as though I had not. It's only then that empathy became important. In the time of developing my ego, the time before my understanding, empathy wasn't even a word I knew. I don't mean to sound like a preacher who tells about himself as the worst sinner who drank, played cards and danced, until Jesus turned him away from his evil ways. Not that at all for me. I wasn't living an evil life. I was just trying to make my own light and it never worked.

 

marino marini

 

 

On this side of the divide of empathy / non-empathy, I can see that somebody who has watched people killing on tv every day of his life since a baby can act without empathy. The other is the same as a mushroom. So much contempt for the other indicates three fingers pointing back at self. Self-loathing appears to be an epidemic of this time of the center not holding. The people who commit these slayings most often kill themselves. The guy in Aurora, Colorado, who did not kill himself is a mystery to me, something like Bradley Manning who released a Pandora's box of US government secrets knowing he'd be in maximum security prison for life, no parole. You don't do something like that not knowing what is next. I believe he wanted prison. That's not a psychic insight. It's how it appears to me going by what I've seen about him. The Colorado shooter evidently wanted to live the rest of his life in torment. I don't understand these people, because I don't understand anymore the absence of empathy. I don't believe it's widespread as these psycho actions make it seem. I don't believe these isolated incidents of zero empathy tell anything about the rest of us.

 

marino marini

 

 

I see the news, hear the talk, read articles and books, hear interviews, and I see the people in the world I live in. We're not anything like the generalizations and categorizations we're pigeon-holed by. We're under immense stress as a culture, stress factor kept up by television that tells us relentlessly we're not good enough. It's the weakest link in the chain that snaps. Everybody I know has strength of character that could never allow themselves to sink to that self-centered a way of life. That kind of self-centered behavior is particular to the individual. Each of us has our own karmic history that is particular to self, same as personality, fingerprints and horoscope. In the rainbow of human experience we range from the lowest down dirty chickenshit emeffer from hell to the most gracious flow of helpful kindness in an uplifting spirit. We run the scale of everything between these poles in what we call duality. Most of us waver in the middle somewhere. A swing to the right is balanced by a swing to the left, back and forth, the pendulum of time. I live in a world of wonderful people who would lend a hand before they'd take from behind your back. Empathy is slow to leave mountain culture, despite several generations of television stripping away empathic values from traditional beliefs. Yes, the end is near when the false values are cleared from our traditional beliefs to make way for the new. The beginning is next. That's the part I'm looking to. The day after the last day is the first new day. The last day has to happen to let the new day come in.   

 

marino marini

 

 

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