How're you doing?

We are well into the coronavirus outbreak. I’m hunkered down, like most folks, with hopefully enough food for a few weeks and actually some peace and quiet. Will this be “the big one”? Cannot know. Is this virus man-made? Cannot know. All we really know is how to slow/stop the spread, and we know that for most people this will not be fatal. I have heard it called a “cull” by a friend, as the elderly are most susceptible. I have heard it called a “cull of 1%rs” as well. Cannot know. It certainly appears that the US federal government is seizing the opportunity to kill off poor and elderly people through cuts to heat (in winter!), food, and access to health care.

Certainly many of us must be reflecting on our lives in a moment like this. Have we been an asset to the world, or a liability? Probably some of both for most of us. I have endeavored to make things better for people and for animals and plants through my learning and “work” activities. I have also driven and flown and eaten etc. and been one of those consuming the world. Does it even out? Does it matter? Cannot know.

Cannot know. In the face of mystery, lack of information, or lies, people tend to make up their own stories based on their own beliefs, their own cosmology. Sometimes, in the face of mystery, humans breathe it in, open to it, allow their fear to dissipate and just experience What Is absent the mind and it’s judgments and decisions. Just awareness, it is freeing.

It’s a given that the politicians are lying and protecting themselves. It’s obvious that there is yet another huge transfer of wealth from the people to the oligarchs here in the United States. Is that happening elsewhere? The bailout of the US banks is yet another sham. 99% of us will not see a penny of that and in fact we are paying for it. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if this virus resulted in finally casting down the greedy usurpers, the psychopaths in power, the liars and false prophets of religious extremism? What an opportunity we have! All we have to do is not co-operate with them anymore. It’s that simple. Stop paying student loans and taxes and mortgages and...everything. Let it collapse, and we will rise out of the ashes of capitalism and build a world that is just, and where the aberrations of greed and racism and sexism and war and ecocide, are abolished. This does NOT mean we destroy our world, just the opposite. It means we save it.

Remember that all truly revolutionary acts are acts of love. Take your love of life, feel your love of creation, and stand up for it. This is a moment.

Leaving Facebook once and for all

Facebook is increasingly blatant about it's support for Trump, the ongoing enabling of nazis and other extremists, the fake news Facebook insists on publishing...there is no integrity in the Facebook organization. Because of this Paradigms will be closing down it's Facebook pages and groups at the end of March.  We stopped advertising on Facebook last year and urge others to do the same. 

The next month will be spent doing the usual, promoting shows, but also continuing to explore just how Facebook is part of the destruction of the United States.  

Zuckerberg, you are a traitor to your country. Your shame should cover you for the rest of your life.

The decision to leave Facebook has been coming for some time. Facebook is increasingly a destructive force in the world and the way to stop it is for people to abandon the platform entirely. Stop the money flow. Otherwise the greed of those who profit from Facebook will continue to drive this destructive dishonest force in our world.

Facebook maintains policies that allow dishonest political ads, paid for by Russians and the Trump mob, BECAUSE IT'S PROFITABLE.

I urge everyone to stop any paid advertising on Facebook, and to stop clicking on any paid ads on Facebook.

Oh the irony!

Today I am thinking about the disgrace of Trump presenting Limbaugh with the Presidential Medal of Honor. A man with no honor presents another man with no honor a Medal of Honor.

It's beyond disgusting. The hypocrisy, the egoism, the perversion. Both Trump and Limbaugh are obscenities.

A new year, same stupidity...

It seems pretty apparent that humanity is nowhere near consciousness.  We just keep doing the same stupid violent mean ignorant stuff, day after day, year after year.

It is 2020 and we STILL have corrupt politicians using war to hide their corruption and to satisfy their greed.  Still!!  How can this be?  How can we not have learned that, for instance , a Donald Trump belongs in prison not in public office?  What will it take for the world to reject the Putins and the MBSs and the rest of the psychopathic greedy bloodthirsty monsters in human form?  Why do the Americans and the Saudis and the Israelis and the Russians etc. not rise up and cast down their psychopathic "leaders" and make the world better for everyone?  I don't get it.

I was raised by parents who taught their children that we are all here to learn and to contribute to making it better for everyone, not just for a few, not just for "our own kind" but for everyone.  My life's work has been to help people to be healthier in mind and body so they can be their best selves. I've done this as a psychotherapist, a bodyworker, a teacher, and a radio broadcaster.  Like most of us, my contributions are a mere drop in the very huge bucket that is humanity.  I really wonder if what I do is of any value at all.  Is it worth continuing to do it? I really wonder.

Humanity keeps doing the same stuff over and over and over and, apparently, not learning from our experiences.  Sure there are billions of individuals doing wonderful life affirming beautiful acts every day in our villages and cities and wherever, but we are still allowing the truly insane minority to run the show.  I can only see this as a kind of herd stupidity.  I don't know how to wake the herd out of its stupor.  It seems to me that we will probably continue to be stupid until the final mistake is made, which may have already been made actually.  Eventually, probably sooner than later, our stupidity will catch up with us and we will finally once and for all burn down our house while we're inside it.  That's already in process too.

The psychopaths we call "leaders" all share something, it's an insatiable lust for power.  If we allow them to proceed unchecked, with no limits, then they will destroy everything.  They can't help it.  Look at their personal lives...disastrous, disconnected, filled with conflict and alienation.  Trump, Putin, Netenyahu, Modi, Bolsonaro, MBS, etc. these men are all psychologically deformed.  They are not wholly human, they are missing important pieces like empathy and the ability to reflect on one's own behavior, the kinds of things we make sure we teach our children.

How have we allowed such people to take power?  Are we blind? Lazy?  Stupid?  Each and every one of us is complicit in some way.  I say this not to blame or shame but to ask that we all look at how we are complicit in allowing, in the US for instance a Trump to take power, and fix it.  That means we need to speak up when religious or political extremists push their agenda in our town, on our school board, wherever they appear. We need to not allow them to do what they are doing. That means non-co-operation but it  is going to mean more than that.  Passivity isn't going to cut it.

The herd is stupid, and that doesn't seem to be changing, so we are left with our own individual hands, and what we can do with them.