Metamorphosis

Times are a changin'.

This post comes out of somewhat of a hiatus induced by a spiritual search for reconnection that has paused a sense of vigor and outwardness in my life.

For many years I've been on a conscious 'spiritual' journey through which I've had many amazing experiences in conjunction with tremendous struggle. I've consistently battled with depression, low-mood, low-energy, isolation, rage and other similarly unpleasant and culturally verboten feelings over the last seven years of my life. This has all occurred in a context of great social upheaval as I've become a man in this turbulent and confusing modern age.

Yet it is becoming searingly clear to me that the issues I've struggled with are not the product solely of my own will power or neurochemistry or any other paradigm that would solely assign my own culpability as the highest and most influential variable in my life. While that is to be a sure a critical factor it is by no means the only factor.

"No man is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee."

John Donne, Meditation XVII

I've come to realize that the most constant source of negative feeling in my life is no longer out of my own sense of inability to personally do or inculcate the habits necessary within my own life to get the results I want strictly for myself. I have been able to accomplish this to my own satisfaction. Instead, the chief source of my own suffering is the suffering of others that I would like to help. Yet, this is no small proposition, I am coming to realize.

Indeed, being a miniscule part of a vast community, I see that I am indeed at the behest and whim of many historical, cultural and philosophical forces hitherto I thought I could overcome with simple determination and force of will. I am realizing the immense ineptitude of this self-conception.

In reality, my life has been deeply shaped by my family, the cultural and government institutions that I attended, the rules and paradigms within these institutions and the broader pervading cultural and political milieu that these institutions both inhabit and are shaped by.

This may seem like an obvious reality to some. But as the proverbial fish in water, I have only just come to discover the existence of H2O and the profundity of this implication on my life.

The contents of the water I have been swimming in throughout the majority of my life has been to the best of my current understanding a combination of hyper-individualism, neo-liberalism, leftist progressivism and a tepid traditionalism that is so profane in it's content it has no teeth.

This has lead me to feel deeply adrift as a man due to being bereft of a legitimate tradition that inculcates true manhood in conjunction with a pro-social, pro-individual, pro-human framework for being in the world.

Instead, I have been left with a polyglot mix of jingo-ism, patriarchy hating, careerist atomization. This is the case for many Americans, especially of the Gen-X, Millennial and Gen-Z generation.

Awash in a morass of fanaticism on both sides - anti-American & masculinity, tepid Liberalism & racist leftism on one side whilst simultaneously being pummeled by banal, corporatist, hyper-individualist erosion of community and tradition on the Right. This had lead America into a great cultural stagnation that laid the grounds for the institutional cultural revolution we are now living in the wake of.

I was all only vaguely aware of these vast cultural forces in my life seven years ago when I began a journey to "Self-Actualize". Now after an immense amount of research and practice I realize that the journey of self-actualization needs to be supported and conducted with a society in tandem. Otherwise, one is simply a man on an Island, an impossible position.

I do not mean one can only pursue Self-Actualization within a society, indeed far from it. Self-Actualization requires genuine solitude, a going beyond the proscribed societal norms to gain insight and perspective from an outsiders objective eye. But a society that promulgates and rewards such a journey instead of hindering it is obviously more desirable given the two options.

This is the direction this site will be transitioning to. It's mission will be to trace the historical-political-intellectual developments of roughly the last 100 years of American politics & society to ascertain the proper location of where we're at as a country and how we got here, so as to then incorporate the genuinely helpful developments that have occurred into the principles that have gotten this glorious mess of a country this far along. I will do this in the hopes of forging the new framework that can evolve our society into a new age of prosperity, peace and purposefulness.

The opposite of that is what we're living through now. This is exemplified by the Opioid Crisis, the chemico-biologicalization of the maladies of despair predominantly seen in youth and men, the virulent political disruption and realignment, as well as the institutional ineptitude writ-large taking place in America.

These issues are caused by fissures in the fundamental world-views of the political parties. We're going to get to the bottom of that here. We are also going to get to the bottom of many other topics that desperately need investigation. Namely; the pharmaceutical industry and it's effect on society, critical race theory & cultural leftism as well as the nexus of Liberalism and Traditionalism that would still promote the three P's formerly mentioned.

Whilst I certainly have an intellectual predilection for Liberal-Conservatism it seems absolutely paramount for the continuance of America to incorporate into the Right the genuine critiques of the American system & society that the Left often raises with merit. Namely: the sexual revolution, psychedelics, racial justice and non Judeo-Christian spirituality; to name a few.

Now, off we go into these woods, where it is most dark. We know the hard right and left barriers. I don't really feel the need to go into anything on the Right, but I will just so it is clear here. This will be a reference point in the future so it is clear where I stand on these core issues.

The Right boundaries:

-Anything regarding an ethno-state. Not only is this concept totally scientifically bankrupt, it is anti-spiritual. The infinitesimally small fraction of DNA that accounts for the amount of melatonin in one's body seems in no way to be linked to one's inherent capability. It is a preposterous claim. There are however disparities at the group level. Given that the biological factor is so small, that leaves the cultural, social and political dimensions.  Analyzing these will be my key focus in attempting to ascertain the full scope and depth of problems. The same for solutions.

 In conjunction, identity is something that we can in some sense choose to lean into or not. There are healthy forms of it and there are unhealthy forms of it. Race identity is often a very unhealthy form of identification. Unfortunately it is the Modus Operandi for the much of the Democratic party. Given that this is deeply ill-founded, we're not going to play any of those games on this site, unless it is to point out the faultiness of said position. Ultimately, our identity is of a spiritual origin. We are born into these bodies from a universal source. Over-identifying with one's physical form is contrary to the deepest reality that we are all of the same source. This is something that needs to be held as true within political & cultural life in any many instances as possible, as far as it is able to.

 Furthermore on the right boundary, I am highly suspect of prescribed moral codes, given the deluded and abusive forms they can often be twisted into. Yet I am open to exploring them. Because humans yearn for these moral codes and because nature abhors a vacuum, we have the woke ideology. Yet I am wary of creating any kind of theocracy.

-On the Left boundaries, government intervention is necessary to balance market failure. Beyond this I will take every issue on a case by case basis, with the default assumption that the Center-Leftist mainstream orthodoxy that is most prevalent in society on each of the main topics is probably incorrect and at best a half-truth covered in political veneer. It seems our culture and government have gone far too left and are far too centralized. Yet politically Left laws like anti-trust laws and consumer protection are extremely important. This is the general left boundary. Any leftist political philosophy must be deeply scrutinized and rigorously investigated for me to adopt it.

That's the general framework, this is the pivot. Here...we...go...