Still pecking.
I decided it would be a good idea for me to try to get up to snuff on ongoing horrors in Ukraine and Israel. So I listened to a current 30 minute conversation between Judge Napolitano and Professor John Mearsheimer.
Reflections:
As usual my heart goes out to the people who live in both areas, the ones under the thumbs of those in and around their so-called governments who seek power over others.
(Remember, the etymology of the word “govern-ment”: govern, the mind . . . Mind control.)
And, as usual, I was left with dangling questions, applicable to any contentious situation: how did it begin? And deeper: How do we start at the beginning and not go further back? How far back is far enough? Putin at least pretended to address this question with his initial 20 minute monologue on hundreds of years of history of Ukraine when he spoke with Tucker Carlson.
There’s always a larger context (overton window) to every contention. Usually that context is at least in part unconscious, and taken for granted. By everyone.
And usually, people have no idea this is the case; plus, that the context is (always? usually?) at least slightly different for each person.
Every single person has his or her own unique “point of view” — center point of his or her own unique circumferential perspective, which is, in turn, fed by memories, dreams, and reflections. And that perspective itself can be of any size!
Which to me means that the most relevant question we can ask of each other in any conflict is, “Where are you coming from?”
And then to listen, closely, to their attempts to put in common language what may be a mass of chaotic, inchoate feelings; or, it may a learned discourse that ranges over worlds, centuries (and likely as not, covers up a mass of inchoate feelings), or anything in between! Everything depends on all sorts of considerations, both conscious and not.
In other words, our only choice, if we wish to create a peaceful world, is to climb inside the psyche of The Other.
Which usually means, start here, right here, at home.
Which usually means, start here, right here, at home.Inside the Self.
The Other is first of all, inside me,
it is the unconscious mind.
And when we back up far enough
into the darkness of the unknown,
we begin to recognize that the unconscious
has no absolute rock solid boundary,
that it is ours, all of ours.
That we are all swimming or drowning
in the same cloudy, stormy sea.
