Originally posted by: Moonbeam
Originally posted by: Butterbean
Originally posted by: Moonbeam
Originally posted by: Butterbean
This would just be another step down in the degeneration of a once great city - civilization in reverse. Humans have an animalistic side to their nature and also an awareness that separates them from the beast in their nature. If a person follows coarse appetites unmoderated it leads to more and more corruption and destructive appetites - some quite vile. People who are aware of their lower natures and desire to exceed them develop character as they direct their energies to productive pursuits and growth. This is how a good society grows.
The peace and prosperity following WWII removed certain harsh realities and then youth were intentionally enticed with a lifestyle that glorified their appetites. Sexual liberation was help up as psychological liberation by influential scholars like Henri Marcuse (Marxist of course). A generation was set free from moderation and conscience and their beast natures were glorified. Self-indulgence was honored as the only honest and free path in life. Conscience was slandered as a rigid construct, and academia and media parodied a normal life as thinly disguised neurosis that militated against self discovery and foolfillment.
So it was that men and women were encouraged to become studs and whores. Love, honor and commitment gave way to a larceny of the heart matched only be the resentment stoked between the sexes as men and women sought to plunder each other. Then government fueled these fires and made it easy break marriages and while also making fathers irrelevant. From this came legions of broken hearted children with low self esteem and a desperate need to compensate. Career and superficial relations (conquests) became the metrics to be measured by. The pain of dehumanization and the extinguishing of the soul created a need for more pleasure as a burn calls for the cold water.
Years of this sort of self destruction has created a culture that is antagonistic to self regulation and character. We have millions of degenerated people for whom up is down. Like the kids turning into donkeys on the Island of Pleasure, we have people who have lost the conflict between their animal and their higher natures and have identified with their animal. For them, vice and self indulgence seems like enlightenment - freedom from the burden conscience and self consciousness. The polarity of their souls are reversed.
These people hate anyone who still adheres to conscience because it reminds them of their fallen condition. They feel persecuted when they witness character and/or innocence. This is one reason they are in a hurry to corrupt children and want to give them things like "sex ed" when they are 4 and 5 - they want to establish the beast nature and make sure it is glorified early in the child so they reject conscience and character.
San Francisco is like a drain were a lot of these types of people have collected. They see all civilized law as oppression. They feel pseudo divine providing "sanctuary" to the criminal, the invader, the deviant, the corrupted. Every step down in the gutter seems like a step up to them because it escalates and breathes life into their evolving beast nature. Oppose these types and they can go into a rages of indignation and attack the source of opposition as if it was an evil blocking them from the unholy light of their glorious self deceptions and rationalizations. Corrupt people in denial see goodness as bad and feel persecuted by it.
By any sensible measure prostitution is a degradation of the seller and consumer. Why would it be good for someones baby to grow up taking dirty strangers into her - and what is good about a man looking to debase a wayward kid for his own corruptions? I can't even fathom why a guy with sense and a heart would even go to a prostitute. Of course to others it seems like an act of sublime discovery and honesty. San Francsico is a dump thats on the cutting edge of social devolution.
How come Jesus always hung out with those kinds of people?
To see them healed/fixed etc. Its not things that people do that make them bad - its the denial. A prostitute who feels sorry for being one (it can be compulsive - a result of trauma etc) can be better than a virgin in many ways. If it makes you feel better some really bad people can also hide behind religion - such as those that killed JC.
I think you are right. But what are the implications? What is it that people deny? Isn't it that they are full of sin, that they are evil? It is the denial of one's own evil that makes us evil, no?
So now let's look at you. You are saying these people are evil, that they are "criminal, the invader, the deviant, the corrupted" etc. no? So do you think you ameliorate or further their denial by this behavior? Don't you think that when you condemn you make people more not less defensive? Don't you think that's why Jesus had only love, that only love can save anyone?
I believe it is impossible to condemn another without first having that condemnation for the part of the self that is like what is being condemned, that it is your own hatred of yourself that makes you condemn others and that had you forgiven yourself you would forgive others and love them. This similarity of the self to what is condemned IS the essence of denial.
I don't condemn people - I discern what I see objectively. I am allowed to see Hitler is evil - to not do so would be psychotic. The problem would be if I egotistically puffed up over someone's failing - enjoying their issues as a way of giving myself a boost by puffing up emotionally in ego self satisfaction. There is a distinction between judgment and discernment. Even judging yourself can be wrong - if instead of seeing your faults you inflate in anger and condemnation of yourself. That's because its playing God to even judge yourself and that can set you in conflict with yourself. As you say it can be a person is condeming others emotionally to try to make up for the inferiority/self condemnation they have.
Love as Jesus spoke of is not the emotional love of the Renaissance. The Greeks had seven different words for love. When Jesus said "love your enemy" he didn't mean hug and kiss them. The love in that case was "agape" a more spiritual love. if his words had been translated as "dont hate your enemy" it would be closer to original meaning. A reason for that has to do with self defense. Evil wants people to hate it because that' how it gets inside people. Mean and cruel people generally became so at the hands of other mean and cruel people who caused them to fall into hate. That's a trauma in a spiritual sense and it causes people to grow from a side of their nature not organic to them.
It was Paul I believe who said "the good I want to do I cant do - the bad I dont want to do I do - therefore I know its not I who do the bad but the sin (or false) nature that dwells within me". Hes basically talking about addiction and a compulsive conditioned nature that is not really him - as the child he was in his heart at birth ( Jung also spoke of a "false self"). A lot of biblical stuff is just psychology but the churches made it all poofy. "Salvation" has been made otherworldly and it can be but it also meant escape from a false nature in this world.
A way to do that is to let go of the angers because resentment is a hypnotic emotion that sustains trauma and blocks objectivity and a return healing. "Forgiveness" is in many ways for the benefit of the forgiver and not the forgiven. Even hating and struggling with your own problems can make them worse. Once you (or anyone I mean) can step back from problems and see them with a gentle remorse without struggle or condemning most issues will clear up on their own. I quit smoking like that - poof - just went away no withdrawls.
Now one needed element is an honest look at self and others. We all inherit various flaws (i dont mean genetics) as humans. The issue is the denial because thats ego and ego is like playing God and sets one up for conflict. Indeed, we can feel inferior for say being put down at home and getting upset - and then try to compensate with achievements - but since thos efforts are egotistical we can feel more empty because of the success then the acclaim which can make one feel really lost.
So I would agree its not people who are evil but what gets inside them. Then if a person sees that and feels remorse (blessed are those that mourn bla bla) its a sign of a good attitude. If a person defends the error in themselves its essentially siding with the error to preserve ego or the false self.
I dont look at individual prostitutes, crooks, gays, alcoholics etc and say 'you are a bad person" with a sense of ego superiority because deep down anyone of them might be better than me (but I dont try to judge that one way or another). In fact, I see a lot of those things as related to problems that can block those people from reclaiming whats inside them (not that I see it as my duty to liberate them).
It can happen that a person can be driven further into denial if people use them for judgment. However a person can also see errors innocently and still people will project a bad intent in order to sustain a rebellion (often compulsive). In any case people still need to hold on to their own roots at some point. One Jesus story has him insulting a woman. She asks him for something and he says "you dont feed the dogs before the children" (she was gentile). She could have taken offense but instead said even dogs can get scraps etc. He praised her for her ability to transcend any ego reaction. Likewise people here can think I am insulting them on some deep level when emotionally I dont care what they are into one way or another. If they insult me back thats not such an issue either and they might be fine people deep down.
I don't like Obama politically but I can see where hes a hurt kid on some level and not really bad person at all.
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