Stone #2
First Stones NewsLetter
‘… let he among you who is without sin cast the first stone …’ Christian’s Holy Bible, Book of John 8:7
by Gary Dean Deering, caster of first stones
Some say the Cultural Wars will be won by Reason
Some say Faith
From what I know of my Christain upbringing
If Reason loses, we are all f*’d
ref: Gary’s Prayer from the last Millenium
Stone #2
Even though money—contrary to the Christian Religion—is the root of all good it doesn’t follow that money can buy you the ultimate good: a life of happiness.
Happiness, which we understand to mean true or authentic happiness, can only be obtained by direct pursuit and desire on the part of any particular (live) individual who wants to be authentically happy. Money can help here as a tool, but it can’t pinch-hit for any deficiencies of character and/or self-esteem you might have: only you can do this. (If you are an adult and not authentically happy then you do have some flaws—but fret not, they are correctable, albeit not before you figure out what they are and then proceed to correct them. Pscyhhotherapy—by which I mean, of the Biocentric Psychology type of Dr. Nathaniel Branden (Chapter 12)—might be required to succeed at this.)
Similarly, Religion, by which I mean Christianity, didn’t help me obtain authentic happiness because it couldn’t—not that it didn’t, but that it couldn’t because it was metaphysically impossible for it to do so. (See Pebble #1 below for what it could do and did do—granted, I let it do it, but jfk it got me almost two decades before I’d even heard of Ayn Rand).
As a 5-year-old who “chose” religion as the ‘way and the light’ I didn’t know about Christianity’s limitations. However, such lack of knowledge didn’t matter in the long run. (Though lucky for me—see Stone #1—I avoided filling in my lacks with incorrects and being stupid for all of eternity. You might have to think about this last one, but since thinking is good, it is good.)
The thing that mattered most to me was for me to recognize religion’s shortcomings: initially, the fundamental ones and then eventually, all of them—or for sure, most of them.
If you desire, you can see all the identifications I made about “the errors of my ways”—including how I corrected almost all of them by now—by linking my written material by searching my name in amazon.com and starting there.
Then continue reading my stuff and following the links and discovering what I discovered about myself along the way. That is, IF YOU ARE SELF-AWARE enough while you are doing this you should be able to discover some of your own similarities (especially if you want your Christianity to be your ex) that you can then use to follow down your own exciting, joyous path to achieving your own state of authentic happiness. (See ABC’s of PsycHHology Engineering for discussion of happiness—section C, What’s a teleömeter?)
First, however, let me pause here and disclose a disclosure: Ayn Rand, Nathaniel Branden and Dr Peikoff were my intellectual guides (and bodyguards) that I took with me on each and every inner hunting trip I went on in the jungle of my own mind as well as each and every inner archaeological dig site I visited there. I owe well more than 76% of my success in these inner trips and digs to their help and guidance (thank you guys for your wonderful help):
* Ayn Rand for epistemological guidance (see this embarrassing letter to her I wrote in my day—about 50 years ago now—but never sent for obvious reasons. It is a testament to how much I was hurting at the time for some parental-level-guidance in my intellectual development—also link this (key word search (kws): “continue: e” and read to footnote #78) for proof I tried it heroically on my own for as long as I could—seeking help ‘just in the nick of time’—that is, when I needed it most. Also notice the suggested need—yes, need—for troubled adult souls to become their own parent(s).)
* Branden for psychological guidance (If Peikoff was the original straightener of my crooked psychoepistemology, then Branden was the straightener of virtually everything else that was wrong with me psychologically: from my learned ability to be the world’s best repressor, to my developed and honed over time inability to cry, to my fear of being ridiculed for being right by those who prided themselves in being wrong. And to countless other things making up the “bundle of obsolete” responses that I was when I first met him. Which I did in his Beverly Hills Office for my intake interview with him during the first week of April 1976. If you are going to link this link, link this one first.)
* Peikoff for practical philosophy guidance (e.g., “he told me”—after I took his taped logic course on deductive and inductive logic back in the 1970’s—that when I go back to studying formal philosophy to stay away from predicate logic. This proved beneficial for me because the first time around for me—college freshman mid 1960’s—with my formal philosophy studies (Introductory Philosophy 101) the engineer in me excelled at predicate logic but I couldn’t understand the other philosophy concepts at all. Second time around with Peik’s advice and help I did pretty well with the concepts. See my writings for proof.)
So, I have no choice here but to highly recommend The Big Three (Father, Son and Holy Ghost? No, smart a …) Rand, Branden and Peikoff and not always in that exact order for you to learn BEFORE you embark on any of your own hunting trips and digs into the jungles and deserts of your own mind (Pebble #2 for more). If you have better ways, by all means use them. (But make no mistake about it, if you so embark you need to end up at the end of the process with tons and tons of corrects not tons and tons of incorrects, so, be goddamn sure you know what you are doing before embarking. Follow my advice is the best advice I can give: Start with Objectivism, it is the strongest intellectual bodyguard and guide—at this point in the Third Millennium—that you’ll ever find anywhere: be it here on planet earth or anywhere in the known Universe of beings—which, for right now (in the half dozen or so years shadow of humans establishing bases for the first time in human history on the moon) is planet earth.)
There were three fundamental shortcomings in my Lutheran Christianity that were critical in my case and that had to be identified and changed by me in order to successfully reprogram my own soul so as to ready it for authentic happiness:
1. Become a person who is not a god-believer—authentically not, not phonily not.
2. Stop being a person who felt it was morally good to sacrifice self to others. That is, stop being the person who thought he was morally superior to others because he could nail his own self to the cross: he did not need anyone else’s help in doing this—that is, stop taking pride in being an ego hunter-killer.
3. Become the person who recognizes that in spite of the fact that his dad’s brow-beating his mother every single time she expressed some version of the idea that: charity begins at home, he would assault her with his standard sneer by sneering “I, I, I”, catch your breath, keep sneering: “I, I, I” and so on until he made her succumb to his belief that the church’s teachings were correct and she always did so succumb—that is, inside my own mind start using the “I” concept in my thoughts and writing and stop reeling away from the anxiety in my center chest back up into my “safe-heaven” head whenever I felt an “I this” or “I that” coming on—that is, start living and earning the value that says: Selfishness is a virtue.
TBC – that is, to be continued.
Oops… I meant “safe-haven”. I wonder, is this sOs? I’m thinking first s for slip, not second s for slop. (Here footnote 71 for sOs explanation and how you too might be able to use it in your own PsycHHology Engineering soul re-remodeling/improving efforts.)
Pebble #1: One—that is, me—could conclude—based on my own first-hand experience—that young developing human minds are pretty fantastic—flexible and robust in so many ways—including in making sense out of nonsense and getting away with it—for a time.
In my case, my time ran out during my transition from twentysomethings to thirtysomethings.
That is, this is the time zone for me when I discovered that the bundle of obsolete responses that I had become existentially also included psychoepistemologically.
And that something had to be done in both cases—and sooner would be better than latter—else the bundler (i.e., me) would be forever in psychological trouble.
So as part of my psychological reTraining—Branden Psychotherapy via his 40-hour intensives in California and Chicago and New York and follow up back here in Minnesota with other therapists in between intensives—I decided that dream analysis could be helpful in my recovery from a life up-to-here of growing disappointment with it.
As part of these endeavors, I eventually got into Lucid Dreaming for a time and managed to do it in several dreams.
One of these was a dream I titled, Snakes-in-the-belfry.
I had had this snaky dream several times before—each time the snakes in my environment were many and yucky to say the least.
I always shied away from them (I don’t like yucky).
Enter lucid dreaming where I had learned how to make choices in my dreams while I was dreaming (hence, lucid).
One night, to sleep, perchance to dream.
The snakes appeared—rather, a sense of snakes started in—I chose to not abort but stick with it.
The quantity of snakes just increased—they were everywhere around me, albeit, underground but you could see the ground move here and there so you knew they were there.
I persevered; they grew in number until they got so many that the entire lawn/yard around me was undulating with subterranean snakes—felt like there were thousands of them.
I started to abort but then thought, f* it, I’m tired of these little bastards.
I picked up one and cut it in half. (Where the knife came from I don’t know, it just appeared.)
Then I picked up a couple more and did the same, cut them in half too.
Then more and more until I was picking them up by the bundle full and cutting them in half and watching them squiggle off into oblivion.
Wow this was kinda fun.
Then that’s it, they all—for sure most of them—were done for.
I woke from this dream (unbeknownst to me at the time, never to have it again) recorded it and went back to sleep.
Woke the next day, went about my business for the day and the day after.
Then on about the third or fourth day it all of a sudden dawned on me: I no longer believe in god.
And not phonily (Pebble #3) but authentically: I did not believe.
Pebble #2: Since I was formally educated and College trained in the ways of professional Engineers and even had a successful career as one my extrospective abilities were pretty highly developed and honed before I even met the big three for the first time. I mention this here because one ability you need to develop in order to succeed in your happiness quest is your introspective ability. Since good introspection is leveraged good extrospection, it follows that, if your extrospection abilities aren’t good, then fix them first (Yes. kws: “Pick up any good”). If however, your extrospective abilities are good then continue on your way to a life of happiness and bliss and fulfillment, albeit, be prepared for some misery and disappointments along the way too because such is the nature of human struggle and success. (That is, when the going gets tough—which it will—don’t accept the all of Religion or Formal Secular Humanism or even for that matter Biocentric Psychology but rather accept the totality of my BiO Spiritualism which teaches that you have to, you must, you should—because your human nature requires it of you—deal with both the good and the evil. It’s a self-responsibility issue with the thing you have control over is how much of your divided time: 76% on the good and increasing and 24% on the evil and decreasing or as the case may be from time to time, reverse it. But usually as a rule you want to get to the 76+/24- good/evil state ASAP. (See herein for links to proper definitions of good and evil.))
Pebble #3: Elsewhere(kws: organismic)s I’ve talked about me knowing self-facts organismicly. And here with my comment about me not believing in god: that is, in regard to this particular new fact about myself: I am not a god-believer, I know it authentically, not phonily. This is an example for me to pause on and elaborate as part of my ongoing investigation into PsycHHolgy Engineering’s new science: Teleömetrics, not psychometrics. I don’t think I’ve ever argued for knowing things outside-of-the-self as knowing them organismicly. One main reason for this is because of Dr. Peikoff showing us how this was a mantra of the Nazi mentality—Read this, kws: “organic”, and recognize it’s a dangerous concept. However, for me, for right now I use it in the specific way that I do and will try to defend it. If in the long run I can’t successfully defend it, then perhaps along the way I will discover a better concept. But like I’ve also said elsewhere, until and unless….
So:
Like many of my psychhological self-facts, my anchor for them is inside me inside gNFT’s—gary’s Non-Fungible Tokens, or more accurately gNFI’s, gary’s Non-Fungible Images and this one is one. The image for me is the bar scene in the novel Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (circa page 172, paperback) that I read for the first time in 1971 (when I was still a god-believer). That scene I remember rather well because it described me at.the.time in a certain way. I was in the throes of challenging my believe in god; in conversations with others I could easily say, “Naw, I don’t believe in god either”. That is, I could easily say it without fully meaning it until I read Catch-22 and what I refer to as the bar scene. The essence of the scene as I have it stored in me is: “that’s not the god I don’t believe in!!!”
Even now this line causes me to laugh a bit. But not like it did when I first read it. Had I had a set of false teeth then they would have flown out of my mouth so violently when I burst into laughter that they’d ah stuck full open imbedded in the far wall from the chair I was sitting in and laughing and reading that book:
In this bar there were several characters standing around drinking and discussing whether or not god was real. The more articulate one was making his point about their not being a god because of all his negative traits (allowing evil, etc.) ‘he was a mean and stupid god’. To which the listening character who also supposedly didn’t believe in god either, blurted out: “that’s not the god I don’t believe in!!!”
Now (2022) some 50 years later—qua an authentic non god-believer since the 1980’s—I do not get defensive to any degree—not even one eye droppers drop amount—when others talk about there not being a god. That is, I am not a god-believer, authentically not and not phonily not, and I know it.
PS
If you look for this “bar” scene in Catch-22 you’ll not find it as I’ve tried to find it for past couple of years and since I’ve lost track of my copy of the book I can’t keep looking. However, a week or so ago I discovered Google Books and did a kws on “god” and found the essence of the scene and it turns out it wasn’t in a bar. This to me is immaterial, the essence is what’s important and I remembered that very well—so much so that I am almost ready to conclude that not only is our perceptual ability inerrant but so too is our memory. (Chapter 18 all the way to 235.236.237)
Cultural Wars 2.0 (For me)
(Link 1.0: http://www.doorsign.biz )
Cultural wars have as much to do with philosophy and psychology as they do with politics.
This is easy to see in the case of those advocating teaching CRT (Critical Race Theory) in the public schools.
Everybody knows, or rather, everybody feels that CRT is like all woke processes: an attempt to use the best within us to destroy the best within us. (The best within us is our ability to flex our volitional power and use it to exercise our ability to reason to figure out the reality-meaning of things—including cultural war things—to our Selfs—for the benefit of same).
Well, obviously not everybody feels this way about woke policies but a whole lot of people for sure do and even a whole bunch of those—including me now who, after re-reading these excellent (Symposium) articles—know it in addition to feel it.
That is, I see what I see and I know what I know. Critical Race Theory—as one application of the current day cultural philosophy known as Critical Social Justice Theory—is an attempt to seep into the unused spaces of my mind that are surrounded by what I was taught to be good by the philosophy of Objectivism and the psychology of Biocentric Psychology. Namely, that selfishness is a virtue, Objectivism; and that I have a right to exist for my own sake, Biocentric Psychology. (If you think mouthing this last phrase is the same as owning it, try standing up in front of a pretty large group of people and saying it out loud to them and do so repeatedly several times mater-of-factly, not belligerently, but with a calm, communicated certainty. That is, I see what I see and I know what I know: I have a right to exist for my own sake and I know it.)
Critical Social Justice Theorists—qua the intellectual parents to the CRT’ers qua the intellectual guardians of wokeism—are people too and as such have to make sense out of the same world as I do.
Unfortunately for them they hitched their wagon to the Immanuel Kant line of philosophers that traces back to Plato.
I on the other hand (and fortunately for me) hitched mine to the Ayn Rand line of philosophers that traces back to Aristotle.
One big difference between these two lines is the Kantian line says that we humans can’t know reality whereas the Randian line says we can.
Both lines write tons of books and articles about the truth of their ways as they try to persuade themselves to the rightness or wrongness of their view of the world—with us others as beneficiaries, or victims as the case may be.
In this sense then (can know reality versus can’t know reality) there are only three lines of philosophy: the Aristotle line, the Plato line and the Gary Dean Deering [that is, insert your name here] line that when drawn in the sand is the middle line between the Aristotle one and the Plato one. (Which one you saddle up to is up to you.)
The main difference here is that the Kantian line is backed—in large part unwittingly, albeit, not totally—by the American Taxpayers’ money that props up the Public—read Government—School System but the Randian line has to make it on their own in the free market place of ideas.
Everybody knows that the Government (outside its requisite function to protect us individuals from thugs: thugs foreign and thugs domestic) is pretty inept at doing anything.
So why do “we” think it’s going to be adept at educating us? (This is a rhetorical question—or that is, how do you spell naive? (Notice the date))
Unbeknownst to me in my pre-formative years (birth-to-four and a half years of age) I was an Aristotelian sympathizer and by the time I went through High School and graduated from college (4.5 years to 22 years of age) I was a complete Aristotelian-Christian with Kantian pit bulls snapping at my heels chasing me down the (inner) roads of my psyche. That is, I was this just before I met Ayn Rand and her philosophy she labeled Objectivism. So, in retrospect, it makes sense for me to now be an Objectivist—or more accurately, not a professional one, but what I call, a super-duper Objectivist sympathizer.
I also now am an adult and not a child still in his development line of going from programmed self regulation – to – volitional self regulation—that is, I’ve gone the route, arriving some time ago at the Volitional Self Regulation level of being.
So, as infuriating as the woke Kantians are to me I have to do battle with them (again) as best as I can—and of course on my own terms.
So, for starters, one thing we can know about Kantians in general and specifically about one of their modern day battalions of foot soldiers known as wokeism is that which I said in the opening line here about the woke’s intellectual parents—the Critical Social Justice Theorists: they have to make sense out of the world they live in just like I do.
Unfortunately for them they have to do this in a self-made universe of their own volitional choosing that is characterized by the ‘fact” that they can’t know.
Imagine yourself in their shoes: you have to know things to live but by nature you can’t.
WTF …
jfk ..
What the f… am I suppose to do?
Sounds like a dilemma to me—what are t,h,e,y to do? (This is not a rhetorical question.)
Their only choice of course is to give themselves the illusion that they know and since delusions (irrational illusions) that are simple are easier to maintain than ones that are complex, it is understandable that they chose simple. (Not that complex ones can’t be maintained, as an ex-Christian educated in the Kantian Public School system such as my Self knows first hand—that is, see Pebble #1.)
An example of a simple delusion is concluding that, good and evil are not real things—they of course are and everybody knows it.
For example, I think it highly probable that a woke person reading this article would view me—at minimum—as bad and at maximum as evil.
On their own terms they would be “right” but since they have reversed the objective-reality matching definition of good and evil I have to evaluate t,h,e,m as objectively evil. (FREE Book, Epilogue for elaboration.)
Like I said, it’s a dirty job but somebody has to do it. (Plus, in BiO Spiritualism terms, just because you hold a bad/mistaken philosophy it doesn’t mean you are evil in action. Woke people are still human beings and as such have the power of volition like the rest of us do and can use it to choose to not be evil in-action in spite of their wrong philosophy—i.e., good Christians do this every day of the week, and sometimes even on Sunday. However, and as a preminder, volition doesn’t mean omnipotent. One way we can notice this is through the Robert Tracinski identified and named principle: “There are no good Nazis” (The Tracinski Letter—I think—somewhere post Charlottesville car attack—I think—sometime, guessing 2017, or later maybe) so that whatever the Nazi philosophy is it is evil to the core and: so will anyone who accepts Nazism to their core end up being.)
So, a wokeism person judging me to be bad or evil would do so precisely because they are human beings who—by the nature of human nature—have binary wiring rules which nature used to form their volitional pre-development years into an embryonic self—culminating in the terrible two’s where they—along with the rest of us—were transitioning from a binary pleasure/pain programming-by-nature being into a binary, good/evil inclusive-add-on for our starting child-level power of volition and growing being. And then continuing on using the same binary wiring rules through their formative years until they transition to full, adult, volitional self-regulating beings. That is, the two wiring rules we all use as questions to be answered for the all of our life are: is it good OR is it evil? (With the physical binary pleasure-pain wiring rule set there also. That is, there too in our psychology as an example of a both\and (Chapter 11) phenomenon.
As adults we know that our definitions of these terms (good and evil) are very very important.
So, if you don’t know what your personal sand line definition of these two terms are I suggest you check in with your favorite philosophy and at least try to know.
If you want to talk about something that is “critical”—very critical, super critical, critical in spades—this is it: what you personally consider to be good or evil determines who you are—just as it determines who you will be.
Up to a point—the point of using your volition to choose the reality matching good and rejecting the reality matching evil.
At some point though, we have to notice volition is not omnipotence—which is to say, Beware the slippery slope.