Post by ck4829 on Dec 26, 2016 2:58:33 GMT
What a Person Can Do to Regain Influence
What turns natural human instinct into a distorted cruel beast that is willing to destroy others of the same species is that beast’s master. Program natural instinct to serve human Ego, and it will turn against others who look and think differently. Program–or reprogram– it to serve humanity’s universal Self or Soul, and it will serve and seek to protect the lives of all humans. Not only that, it will propel a person to individuate and drive humanity to evolve.
Who can lead us out of cruelty, when the beast goes wild? Not a leader who sees the world through Ego’s eyes. He will only deceive, distort, bully, entice and mislead human instinct further. The way out of darkness is not by projecting the hero, or the anti-hero, onto an authoritarian leader such as Donald Trump; it would merely energize him; the way out is by gaining insight into the three layers of human character Wilhelm Reich discovered in “the average individual.”
To become fully human and naturally social, Reich recognized that a person has to eliminate “the false, sham-social surface,” penetrate through “this second, perverse and antisocial layer,” and arrive at the “natural core.”
Whether our thinking is liberal or conservative, if the first character layer (root of liberalism) is not in contact with the third character layer (seat of humanity’s universal core Self), it likely means that we were raised in an authoritarian system where we learned to participate in creating the “cruel” second layer of instinctual rebellion and reactionary social ideas (root of fascism). Reich understood that, “A mechanistic authoritarian civilization only reaps, in the form of fascism, … what it has sown. (This is why) there is… not a single individual who does not have the elements of fascistic feeling and thinking in his structure. … One cannot make the Fascist harmless if, …one does not look for him in oneself; if one does not know the social institutions (or family systems) which hatch him every day.”
We are in the middle of a reactionary movement right now. Reactionary movements appear revolutionary but aren’t, because they are supported and energized by distorted instinct gone wild. Deplore and keep instinctual impulses down! Unfortunately, that’s what many of us learned. And every time we oppress our instinctual self, we deny its intelligence and feed an antisocial beast.
Today, we are caught in its claws and the only way forward is to change our relationship with it and heal the oppressor/oppressed split.¹ Reich gave us a key: if we make contact with the third layer of character and let our universal Self inform and lead us, we can become genuinely honest and cooperative human beings, ”capable of love and also of rational hatred.”
We can beat fascism by connecting to our “natural core,” which in turn makes us willing to understand and care about each other. There is a beautiful Zen teaching that invites us to seek “the truth” and represent all sides.
www.laprogressive.com/trump-triumphant/
What turns natural human instinct into a distorted cruel beast that is willing to destroy others of the same species is that beast’s master. Program natural instinct to serve human Ego, and it will turn against others who look and think differently. Program–or reprogram– it to serve humanity’s universal Self or Soul, and it will serve and seek to protect the lives of all humans. Not only that, it will propel a person to individuate and drive humanity to evolve.
Who can lead us out of cruelty, when the beast goes wild? Not a leader who sees the world through Ego’s eyes. He will only deceive, distort, bully, entice and mislead human instinct further. The way out of darkness is not by projecting the hero, or the anti-hero, onto an authoritarian leader such as Donald Trump; it would merely energize him; the way out is by gaining insight into the three layers of human character Wilhelm Reich discovered in “the average individual.”
To become fully human and naturally social, Reich recognized that a person has to eliminate “the false, sham-social surface,” penetrate through “this second, perverse and antisocial layer,” and arrive at the “natural core.”
Whether our thinking is liberal or conservative, if the first character layer (root of liberalism) is not in contact with the third character layer (seat of humanity’s universal core Self), it likely means that we were raised in an authoritarian system where we learned to participate in creating the “cruel” second layer of instinctual rebellion and reactionary social ideas (root of fascism). Reich understood that, “A mechanistic authoritarian civilization only reaps, in the form of fascism, … what it has sown. (This is why) there is… not a single individual who does not have the elements of fascistic feeling and thinking in his structure. … One cannot make the Fascist harmless if, …one does not look for him in oneself; if one does not know the social institutions (or family systems) which hatch him every day.”
We are in the middle of a reactionary movement right now. Reactionary movements appear revolutionary but aren’t, because they are supported and energized by distorted instinct gone wild. Deplore and keep instinctual impulses down! Unfortunately, that’s what many of us learned. And every time we oppress our instinctual self, we deny its intelligence and feed an antisocial beast.
Today, we are caught in its claws and the only way forward is to change our relationship with it and heal the oppressor/oppressed split.¹ Reich gave us a key: if we make contact with the third layer of character and let our universal Self inform and lead us, we can become genuinely honest and cooperative human beings, ”capable of love and also of rational hatred.”
We can beat fascism by connecting to our “natural core,” which in turn makes us willing to understand and care about each other. There is a beautiful Zen teaching that invites us to seek “the truth” and represent all sides.
www.laprogressive.com/trump-triumphant/
