GreenMan Substack Podcast

Let that sink in. That phrase keeps coming to mind. I think we're so task-oriented that we move on to the next challenge or class, the next problem, the next fault. What we often forego is looking around and assessing with gratitude and admiration, the fruits of our labor. We might forget to take stock of what we just accomplished and how we've grown. If we did, we might notice that we slayed a dragon. We took risks and were rewarded.

We may be acting as if we were the same person we were yesterday or last year. But we're not. We're in constant motion. We're learning, growing, opening, and that can be in stark contrast to our previous configuration. And yet game theory reminds us that we must trade out the rickety old sword and shield for the shiny ones we valiantly won in the last round as we eat the leg of mutton and drink the magic elixir. If we don't, we might just keep acting like those victories never occurred.

We have to let it sink in. We must give ourselves and others credit where it's due. We must at least temporarily stop the search for faults and problems to solve because a victory lap is in order. Gratitude is hard enough to practice, but turning it toward oneself can bring up resistance.

Not even just gratitude, but wonder, amazement. It's ok to look back and realize you didn't think you could do it but you did. A pattern is broken or interrupted. Realizations abound. Old curses are now lifted and a new sense of embodiment of our essence is unmistakable.

And yet old habits die hard and other challenges await. We can be forgiven for our habit of rushing headlong into the next fracas with an urgency that believes we could solve all of our life's problems and still catch that spin class and pick the kids up from their grandmother's on time.

Let us not forget that some amount of reorientation is needed and deserved. Watch all the victories sink in, through all the layers, the defenses, the armor and the resistance. Allow your newfound blessings to be relished, the soul parts welcomed home and absorbed back into the fold. Try your new powers on for size. You've earned it.

I always appreciated the idea of the soul fragment. It's easy to visualize. We then consider the notion that we experience traumatic events which dislodge soul fragments, which leave our energy body getting stuck in a place and time.

Perhaps what we call stored 'trauma' is the cement that holds the remaining fragments together. It hardens and keeps the soul mirror from disintegrating, but perhaps also, from fully re-integrating.

Perhaps grief fills the heart spaces that our lost loves, friends, and family members filled when they were available to us.

Instead of cement we could envision the traumatic scaffolding as ice. As the love interest or friend approaches and the soul parts have an affinity, that creates warmth. The soul shards vibrate and dance and reach in anticipation for those of the other. The warmth creates melting, which would seem to threaten the stability of the structure of the soul mirror, as it were.

This awakens the sleeping trauma, the sentinel. The trauma then does what it does. Maybe it attacks. Maybe it runs. Maybe it freezes or fawns. Perhaps it attacks, runs, freezes then fawns. I've seen it or done it. But always it mistakes the intention of the pure-hearted lover.

I love every fuzzy animal. I have birdseed out for the birds and squirrels. I want nothing more than for a raccoon or a squirrel to eat from my hand. Then I could pet it, name it, put it in my pocket, build it a little house etc. It's just how I am.

But that squirrel doesn't understand. His survival instincts tell him I want to eat him. And these crude instincts work--they keep him alive. And yet, they're absolutely wrong about my intentions. This is, in a nutshell (see what I did there?), trauma. It keeps us alive. But maybe only half-alive.

And just like the squirrel, the trauma survivor sees the love interest resembling the narcissist that caused all the wounding. The compliments, the promises, the apparent empathy. This is the trauma employing pattern recognition and it can be a shortcut to, or a faulty means of discernment.

And yet, if we probe deeper, the trauma does serve a function. It does hold the shambles of our weary souls together. The threat IS real. Not because the lover intends any threat, but because the frozen and crusty trauma glue is a provisional solution--often the best a scared kid’s subconscious could do in a pinch. It's not a workable long-term plan. This becomes all-too-evident as these lovers attempt to court or integrate their lives and the walls come up. We thought this person was the one that didn't/wouldn't illicit such responses, as if we had kissed enough frogs and now our Prince Charming had arrived at last. And then we feel even more broken.

We vilify the other or ourselves or both. We blame, we draw the wrong inference. We see from the sentinel's guarded perspective. We dehumanize the other and traumatize them. Hurt people hurt people. We conclude that we might as well just withdraw.

And I guess I bring this up, not to merely describe the human condition as it pertains to romantic love, but to offer that this moment where the warming occurs might be the most opportune place to start doing the work again in earnest. We can work on ourselves when alone, when not triggered. But when we are wide open and our defenses keep coming up, we see it in technicolor.

We might seize the opportunity before us. This is our chance to release more of the provisional soul crust and to invite those alienated parts back into the fold. We can mirror this to our lover. We can assist the lover in their personal archaeology and/or be working on ourselves in parallel.

Imagine the trust we could build. And yet, since love is giving, we may find ourselves in a situation where the only way to truly give that love is to not try with them. Not to reach out. Not to soothe or seek soothing. The only option we are given to be truly loving is to let go. No asking. No explaining.

And it's in that place where we discover if we're capable of absolute altruism. And maybe that's where the most basic foundation of trust is built, in our acquiescence, however reluctant.

Not so long ago, the picture below was our national reality. And yet so many urge us to wash away these memories and to burn the books that tell stories that make certain people uncomfortable. Let's not learn about Tulsa. Let's not try for diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace. Let's ship off those migrants to camps and back into harm's way in the nations they left out of necessity. Does this sound familiar?

Black people won Civil Rights by being inconvenient, by being uppity. By demanding equality and paying heavy costs for those demands. See Emmitt Till. See how virulent racists still shoot up monuments to him to the point of the federal govt having to make a bullet-proof monument 70 years later.

Hatred is alive and well. So we must be more alive, more present, more connected and more resilient. We must be allies to those who sadly still need them. Conversely, we get to decide what America will become (after the fever dream has been quelled) with our every choice and word.

For me, America will be the place where we expand rights and protections outward until everyone is protected and honored. It will be a nation where speaking the truth is art and the ultimate act of bravery. Where fear doesn't win. Where hate goes to die.

Further, it will be a place where the laws protect us and empower us. A free place where the power derives from the consent of the governed. And the leaders will know this, and they will see their job as one of service to the people. A place where businesses exist to profit, to pay taxes that feed the fertile ground on which they prosper, to employ people, and to provide a useful service or product. Not to extract wealth or dominate the people.

A place where women can feel safe. Where the marginalized become the formerly marginalized. Where we can afford to live and rest and explore the world around us. Where animals have rights and forests abound. Where we honor the planet that sustains us. Where we have the freedom of religion and the freedom from religion. Where aboriginal people are honored.

Much deception, thievery, mischief and sophistry stands between us and that vision. But we must embody that vision if we are to rise to the very real and immediate occasion. We were born for this.

Let's look back on courageous leaders of the past for our inspiration and realize that our lives are fleeting. But we can make a real difference. And that difference may be the only echo that remains when our lives are over. We will NOT be returning to our regularly scheduled program.

But we may be able to save our nation and make it that 'more perfect union' in the process. Death and rebirth. Here we are. What part will you play?

The Song "Streets of Philadelphia' by Bruce Springsteen, popped into my head last night. The movie 'Philadelphia' came out a long time ago. I was a senior in high school. It was about an HIV-positive gay man and his interaction with a hostile society.

What a different time that was. We were debating 'Don't Ask, Don't tell' in the military. That was Bill Clinton's effort to move the needle to the left in an administration and a general political zeitgeist that was moving to the right. Even his VP Al Gore wanted to put warning labels and ratings on CDs. Such was the mood of the nation. Even the liberals were conservative.

Hollywood, via such movies, was able to shame us into caring about (in this case) gay people: humanizing them. Such was its bully pulpit at the time. That bully pulpit, that prestige, has all but vanished. Movies, tv, music and sports have always been political, whether we knew it or not.

A conservative backlash has pulled the nation rightward since Nixon. Each GOP President since has been an overt attempt to undo Civil Rights and to facilitate the wealthy getting wealthier. Each Democratic President hasn't been far behind, with some window-dressing and the occasional assist to those marginalized.

But the arts were pulling just as hard to the left: humanizing minorities, asking us to care, to feel, to empathize. To imagine the streets of East LA via the hard-hitting music of NWA. To humanize black people. To celebrate LGBTQ culture. To be grateful for what diversity has brought us. Showing us the historic and current plight of women.

The arts and sports have been about subverting the power paradigm. And yet we find ourselves in a place where the cool kids are no longer in Hollywood. The heroes are the ultra-wealthy and the MAGA movement. They have a vice-grip, not only on all levers of power in Washington, but on the narrative that used to be provided by the arts.

And as such, we are sorely lacking inspiration. Where is the national moral compass? We are missing the calls, the demands on us to feel the suffering of those who pick our food and clean our homes. No, now we are told to scorn them, to blame them. Round them up and all of our problems will go away.

Cut all this supposed deep state government waste and we will be prosperous again. Slash all those safeguards that insulate so many from the ills of the corporate domination of every facet of our economy and society. Let’s blame the poor!

It's a far cry from 1993, where we could be reached by a movie like 'Philadelphia.' A movie that asked, 'who are you? Are you your brother's keeper?' A movie that demanded that we not only humanize our brother but that reminded us that we revivify ourselves via our acknowledgment of the needs and frailties of these 'others' that those in power now want to eliminate.

The left, via the media, is now a victim of its own success. So thoroughly have we embraced multiculturalism that a rage-filled backlash has swept the nation and threatens to wash away all the gains, all the protections and all shreds of mercy from our national institutions.

The choice we have now is absolutely ludicrous. Only a Scrooge, a Mr Potter, would support the policies of the current regime. And yet half the nation did just that. They eat it up. And just like Scrooge, they are under a mind virus called Wetiko. This term was coined by Native Americans upon noticing the greed and malice of the European settlers.

No amount of money is enough for Elon Musk or any of these oligarchs. Notice there are no Musk Cancer Centers. No Bezos homeless shelters. These men are absolutely under the spell of greed. And the dupes that follow them think they can amass more wealth, or at least not lose what they have if they follow this scorched earth regimen. Consequences be damned.

And yet these are the scenarios where heroes emerge. This is where the arts become subversive again. Where they hold up a mirror and show us how ugly we've become. That's what 'Philadelphia' did. The TV character,Archie Bunker, was a stand-in for us. But so was Meathead. We just had to be shown the options. We had to be willing to be the fool, like Meathead and Gloria. To trust our guts and our hearts to lead us to right action.

To fully embody our humanity, despite the ways that society glamours us and busies us with the toil of its wealth extraction games. We sit befuddled, divided and looking externally for a hero that was and is indwelling.

With these posts I've tried to rouse the populace. It sure hasn't made me rich. But it has made me feel human.

I was musing about the 'con' in con-man lately. It's obviously short for confidence. The con-man sells you something false, empty or non-existent. We get glamoured by his confidence. We eat it up. He could sell us anything: snake oil, Trump Steaks, a degree from Trump University, we could donate to the Trump Foundation. But those were the wares he offered when he was merely a grifter on the economic stage. His power to promise (and fail to deliver) has multiplied and metastasized as he tasted actual political power when a plurality of voters actually chose him to lead our nation in 2016 and again in 2024.

I keep hearing how 2025 is going to be better economically and I welcome this. While certain people don't want to talk politics, they allude to things getting better under Trump, even though this didn't bear out in his first term. And since Musk is signaling he won't let Trump tank the economy to please the racist whims of the base, I can only imagine it will be more of the same tough talk and empty promises. Clearly the ultra-wealthy run Trump and prefer the policies of Biden so we will have more Neo-liberalism sprinkled with Trump's attempts to tear down entitlements and the regulatory state. Doing so would further assist the oligarchs in their relentless extraction of wealth from every crack and crevice of the economy.

But what the common Trump voter wants is a quick fix of confidence: a reason to trust that the economy will be ok, even as they vote against their interests. And to that extent, Trump has delivered. Even if his collection of promises is a cesspool of hate and bluster, lies and bad ideas. Because they voted for the dictionary definition of the Anti-Christ.

And who could have been more of a polar opposite of Donald Trump, you ask? A true Christian, a tireless worker, devoted husband and family man, a soldier, a farmer, a nuclear engineer, and an honest man. That man was former President Jimmy Carter.

Carter died recently. I was discussing his life and Presidency with some friends at the gym and came to the conclusion that the narrative around his Presidency was as negatively mythologized as Reagan's was falsely inflated. I watched a speech where Carter spoke of a 'Crisis of Confidence.'

It was an interesting speech to watch and read all these 48 years later. An honest man shared what his constituents had told him about the economy, energy crisis and inflation, high interest rates and the Iran hostages. He spoke candidly to a weary populace: a nation reeling in the wake of Watergate and Viet Nam where we lost almost 60,000 soldiers and killed more than 2 million in Southeast Asia. Our nation was lost in a morass of political corruption, endless war and economic stagnation. A nation that had lost its innocence in the 60s was losing its trust that our government could shepherd us through a changing economic landscape. The economies that had been destroyed in WW2 were catching up to us and we didn't have an answer. Gas lines and high interest rates made the formerly prosperous Middle Class suffer.

A deeper dive into the complexities of the economics and politics that informed Carter's Presidency is needed. But the more I read and listen, his one term in office sounds suspiciously like some other Presidents in my memory: a good man comes to power with idealism and gradually becomes a pawn of Neo-liberalism. Carter had his share of decisions that created major blow-back. Later presidents would double down on these errors and further destabilize the Middle East, South America and beyond.

Carter was a good man who came to power in tough times and was, perhaps, not a great leader. He was too honest, too serious and scolding. Too ethical to rouse the populace with false promises. He had zero guile. He placed too much trust in certain advisors, with devastating consequences. He couldn't inspire American citizens to trust that the economy would turn around so they left him for a man who told them what they wanted to hear. This was another con-man. Proto-Trump. Grampa. A wolf in sheep's clothing.

His name was Ronald Reagan. He was a far better orator than Carter and it showed in their one debate. Reagan had an answer for everything Carter threw his way. He had a firm grip on the narrative; It was absolute horse-s**t, but it sounded good. And it felt good to be American again. And it inspired confidence in our exceptionalism. Reagan reinvigorated our mythological frame of reference via the slogan, ‘A shining City on the Hill.’ He gave them something to believe in, even if his prescriptions wouldn't actually take us there. Compare this slogan to ‘Make America Great Again.’ Notice how the tone and imagery change to the mythic, the heroic. Consider what often follows when the populace is roused in such a way.

Reagan made our nation's key issues worse: higher taxes for the middle class with the wealth gap exploding, deregulation of key industries, the dismantling of the labor movement, arcane drug laws and mass incarceration. But he used pageantry to pretend he single-handedly tore down the Berlin Wall. He managed his image quite well. When he was caught selling arms to Iran with drug money from Central America, he 'didn't recall.’ A B-movie Hollywood actor finally found the role that he could portray effectively: a grandfatherly anti-Communist moralist who could blame the ills of our manufacturing collapse on 'welfare queens' and the 'gay lifestyle.' And when it was time for accountability, he was a dottering old man with memory issues. Can you feel my love for Reagan? Me neither.

Fast forward 50 years and we have an economy that works for the very few. Regular people have legitimate financial concerns about affordability, employment, health care, retirement and so on. But a new con-man has them believing the previous administration is corrupt and feckless when it was a successful administration, by and large, even if the prosperity didn't reach the middle and lower rungs of the workforce substantially enough. At least that administration fixed our roads and bridges and lowered drug prices and addressed many glaring issues that have been piling up since the collective malfeasance of Reagan and Nixon and the Bushes.

Trump has them convinced the economy will get better despite high tariffs and migrant camps and other terrible policies. But attaining their confidence was the point. The demagogue first distorts and decries the ills of the status quo to varying degrees of accuracy. He then sells the solution: himself. He peddles a fantasy to the people. A people so fully disillusioned about the American government and their shot at a good life that they would support a criminal failed casino-owning wanna-be autocrat. Such is the disconnect from reason, such is the desperation.

I'm sensing that each President ends up being the mouthpiece for Neo-liberalism and the big international businesses that it serves. And Carter just couldn't do that effectively. It wasn't in his character. It's easy to be the pitch-man when things are going well for the average Joe. But those days are gone.

The Robber Barons have gotten insidiously more greedy and vastly more wealthy. Yet we are more aware of the ways in which they're fleecing us. So the Bread and Circuses have, by necessity, become all the more convoluted, soap-operatic, racist, captivating and surreal.

Trump wears so many ill-fitting hats: the savior, carnival barker, culture warrior, economic guru, and, spiritual leader and somehow, this laughably false anti-establishment elite that is surrounded by ultra-wealthy elites. He himself is a billionaire elite from New York who inherited $400 million from his father.

In a sense, I guess it's our elites versus your elites. The left has their mega-donors too. May the best cabal of money hoarders win.

And these wealth addicts are all Riding the Tiger. How long will Trump bear the humiliation of Musk dictating policy to him via Twitter takedowns and tantrums? Does he go fu…

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I can listen to a podcast and ruminate about a happenstance and then a salient insight comes up and ties these disparate events together . I then run over to the computer to save and plant and create an essay to do justice to this insight---one that has been expressed but bears repeating.

We are in the wake of an unfortunate but inevitable election result. One of the many themes of the victor was dehumanization. The scapegoat must be dehumanized in order to galvanize the base and persuade moderate voters to be afraid. This worked. The migrants are vermin, poisoning the blood. The trans people are taking over your bathroom. The godless liberals are trying to brainwash your kids. Kamala is a Communist. And on and on.

But we libs can dehumanize too. This is a human trait that was cultivated by Trump though he didn't invent it.

So when searching out the ways in which a humanist dehumanizes, one must search openly. It's easy for a liberal to humanize those less fortunate, the marginalized. But it's hard to humanize those who violate our laws, our norms, those who act against their own interests. Nations who cause harm and escalate conflict.

And we should reject the actions of rogue nations and their leaders. We should judge those who voted against humanity. We should blame Netanyahu for ethnic cleansing. Those actions are abominable. But the core need, want, fear, desire---now that's a different subject.

Each human, each animal, each nation, each company are legitimate. Their needs are legitimate. They may act wrong, but the impulse to serve oneself is not wrong. We must find a way to see this distinction, to not muddy the waters between the act and the core needs of the actor. Between the crime and the urge to protect oneself, one's family, one's interests. Because that urge is valid. And that human or that entity is as well. He, she or it may be acting unethically in service of that valid impulse, that drive to survive. This drive unites us all.

In a sick world we must realize that many will misunderstand the urgings of that drive. They will kill, harm, maim, steal, mislead, manipulate for selfish ends. We must bring accountability to those who do wrong. But we must also honor that the urge to survive is innate. Every person has been wronged. So has every nation.

It's so easy to use the past to justify future wrongs. We must use restraint to not join in the folly of perpetual war, endless revenge and endless vilification of those who have done harm.

How do we break the cycle on the micro and macro scale? I don't have those answers. But I do have one insight to share today today. To re-humanize everyone and every nation and every entity. Not to look the other way on crimes. Not to absolve anyone. Just to come back to the basic knowledge that they deserve to exist. They deserve to fight for themselves. They have been wronged. Whoever wronged them was also wronged.

This not only rehumanizes them, but us as well. We are not human when we do not honor the humanity in every other person. And we must see nations and governments and businesses as collections of humans, even when they are inhumane in their dealings.

Those human groupings act in destructive ways so we must hold them accountable. But I must search deep within myself to ask why they do harm. The answer is always, because they think it will make them secure. They may be wrong. They may have lost access to their individual or collective humanity. They may have done unspeakable acts. And we must humanize them anyway.

Because if we don't then we become them: in little yet insidious ways. We can then rationalize hating a group or a nation or a friend who voted this way or that. Or for an abusive person or a criminal. Or someone who lives differently.

Criminals may be held in prison, but still get visitors and meals and clothes. Because they’re still human.

Humanizing everyone is an inside game. And yet we are bombarded with messages telling us to dehumanize whole swaths of our nation and our world. We dehumanize the other side for dehumanizing the marginalized. We must recognize this and decide to stop this at the only place we have power: within ourselves. We can and should be intolerant of intolerance, but still humanize those who will not return the favor.

Proclaim to yourself, your friends, your family, your church, your lover, your children and everyone else that you won't do this anymore. We can choose to humanize others because their essence is human and deserving.

I don't remember where I learned the term, but it stuck with me: probably an English or Film class. This morning as I awoke, the term 'suspension of disbelief' came to me.  I'm sure it's in part because I have been watching Marvel Movies lately.  I was imagining Iron Man and thinking how silly it was that we could see him inside his suit.  It doesn't make sense, but that's where we have to suspend disbelief.

We have to turn off or at least turn down this hyper-critical, analytical voice long enough to give the story-teller time to weave his tale.  Time to create the backdrop and build the world, to set the stage.  To invite us in and show us the stakes, the risks and the rewards, to introduce us to the characters.

And if the story-teller is any good, it's relatively easy to stay there, spellbound by the scenery, the dialogue, the high drama and the mirror that the narrative holds up to our lives.  Especially when you're watching a movie where characters can fly and do magic, you have to pretend for a while.  It's easy too because we all wish we could zap the bad guys or have super strength.

We are kids again, imagining ourselves as powerful but seeing it played out on the silver screen instead of the screen of our imagination.  And there's the rub.  We are so screen-oriented that I wonder if we can imagine anymore. The screens curate our imagination.

I have stopped reading books and seldom meditate anymore.  I used to be able to do basic shamanic journeying but now struggle with that as screen addiction seems to have taken its toll on my eyes and my mind's eye.

So I keep refusing to imagine for myself.  Day-dreaming is one way, imagining what I want.  Another type of imagining occurs when going to sleep and it reminds me of the journeying piece.  Can we let our minds dream?  Can I turn off the noise and screens enough to let my inner voice speak?  My inner story-teller wants to show me images.  Maybe they don't all make sense.  Maybe it's just churning out imagery.  It's an inner landscape that I want to familiarize myself with, despite its shifting sands and disjointed timelines.

And just like with movies and plays and novels, again we need to suspend disbelief.  This is not the arena of the ego-mind, of the thinker, the scientist, the skeptic, the guardian.  This is the dreaming self, where truth is revealed in a different language: the language of visions and dreams and symbols and archetypes.

But I say we don't even need to worry about interpretations and journeys and all that choreography.  We need to be willing to just sit and watch the movie.  To welcome the inner storyteller.  To prime the pump and wait for it to catch.  To re-enter our overgrown and unkempt inner world.  To inhabit ourselves.

And when this inner world revivifies, it may show us and remind us who we really are and how we may have transgressed against ourselves and our ideals.  How we have turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to our calling.  And this may be what's behind a deep agony and the existential dread that we so easily externalize in such confounding times.

But maybe these times are an expression of billions of individuals turning away from their truth, their inner worlds and seeking solace in false messiahs and empty enterprises.  Synthetic hive minds distract us from the inner-net that we have access to but for which few of us have an owner’s manual.

So disconnected are we from our aboriginal roots and the activities that edified and cradled the individual within a framework of meaning and connection that we knowingly follow false charismatic charlatans.  We laugh at and silence that calm, still voice.  We destroy our home and its capacity to house us.

Unquestioned nihilism is so much easier than being curious and risking being a fool.  But that's where we must find our courage and choose a different path.  We must go within.  An old friend who I miss dearly would say, "You gotta get in to get out.'  I see it now.

Thus, again, we must suspend our disbelief.  We must be willing to listen to a different story, one where we are empowered to change our course, our decisions.  Where we seek answers from within.  Where we control what we actually can: our attitudes, our plans, our thoughts, and our inner dialogue.

We may not be able to put out the forest fires that rage across the planet.  We may not be able to stop the desertification on the outside.  But on the inside we can and must.  We start by suspending disbelief.  Because the ego-mind is a great detective, a great protector, but a cruel master and the worst storyteller.

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After watching Avengers End Game, some good insights came up. One is that mythology can inspire us.  Another, that these movies have amazing casting.  All the best actors in Hollywood are in the Marvel movies.  Sci/fi fantasy used to have b list actors and you could feel the difference.  Another insight was that the theme of time-travel is fun and allows the character to consider his/her life in a different way.

It was fun to see how traveling back in time affected each character.  Some got to visit a parent or lover.  Some suffered deep loss in order to do what is right.  Others made the ultimate sacrifice.  Some found their purpose or a missing piece.

But for each character, you could see how the events of this movie (and all the other movies they appeared in) changed them, developed them, broke them, healed them, polished them and revealed their true nature and character.  This is why we watch.  This is why we pay money and expend our precious time to sit still long enough to experience this modern take on the ancient undertaking of mythology. 

We see characters develop and grow and learn and feel and grieve.  We see ourselves in the most heroic and tragic of grand stages.  We see our lives mythologized.  We see our struggles in the toil of these heroes.  We see these others, these foils, experience our pain at the loss of love.  We learn to recontextualize our lives as we watch our heroes do so.

Tangent: I also enjoyed how male and female characters were friends with each other. It was not always about sex and sexuality. They were friends because they fought and risked together. They supported each other. Their looks or their sexuality weren't avoided, but the characters were not overly sexualized. Or, in the case of Black Widow, her attractiveness was used as a weapon on unsuspecting enemies. Everyone was humanized.

We can find all sorts of fault with Marvel or modern movies and Hollywood.  But we must give credit where credit is due.  The Avengers franchise especially has been amazing.  These movies are hilarious.  The actors are exceptional.  The movies constantly make fun of themselves.  The writing is mostly flawless.   The stories are captivating.  But all this really works because of character development.

We come to know these characters for their changes, their struggles, the flaws and their growth.  And we see growth and progress and self-exploration as worthy goals because we see our heroes do so.  We learn by example.  A person could do a lot worse than watching the Avengers movies for inspiration.

But however you find it, please consider letting literature, movies, books, fantasy, mythology, history or some artistic creation inspire you.  Let this art turn off your world for a couple of hours.  Escape into fantasy.  Not this social media trance.  Let a story captivate you.  Let the struggles of titans break you out of the humdrum.  Slip out of the dread, the demands, the sleep-walking.  I promise, you'll walk out of the theater emboldened. 

Story-telling is an ancient tool to help us embrace the mystery and link ourselves to our tribe, our community, our family and our ancestors.  Most of us don't live in villages anymore.  We don't know who we are.  We don't know why we're here.  But we can find out.  We can begin the search anew.

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This essay was a Facebook post I wrote in 2022.  I’ve been meaning to discuss the idea and figured this would be a worthy foray into the subject.

I see friends and family who have capitulated.  I notice public figures, once intellectually rigorous, who have fallen into charlatanism.  I see people give in and live small lives.  I wonder what's at hand when people acquiesce to the destructive forces of cynicism, of deception and of despair.

I know that I feel a sense of mounting dread at the collision-course upon which we find ourselves concerning all our cultural systems: politics, society, the environment, and the economy.  Personally, I dread a microcosm of said issues internally as well. Many of us do. We have our finances, our relationships, health and meaning to contend with.

Any one of these internal or external calamities are enough to make one hide under the bed.  The amalgamation of all of them at once can be too much to bear. As within, so without. As individuals, as a nation and as a planet, we are struggling.

But this all gets magnified by a non-stop disinformation campaign. For 10 years, a news outlet fused with a political movement pushes all those buttons to the point of madness, then offers a convenient cast of scapegoats and a Messiah to save us from all the problems they constantly portray.  "Only I can solve this problem" is a very alluring statement.  It's utter hogwash, but it must be fun to bask in the fantasy.   As our existence becomes more and more maddening, the urge to escape into such a fantasy grows. For some individuals, this urge must be satiated.  Like giving into an addiction.  This is capitulating. 

And just like an addiction, one eventually realizes they have been had, but are now fully invested in putting off the crash and the hangover, trying to ride the high that is quickly becoming a low.

When one capitulates he/she stops fighting, stops resisting, stops using critical thinking as bulwarks against these urges.  He/she gives in to the massive and insidious psy-ops program being used against them.  The more people who are lost to the propaganda, the more they feel safe in their numbers. It’s like a see-saw. A battle for what is real.

Remember: a whole nation of Germans capitulated to disastrous results.  The lesson?  We sometimes even acquiesce to genocidal killers, as long as they provide us with a suitable cover story, a narrative that rationalizes the inevitable killing of the scapegoats.  A story where we can believe in our nation again, and can see ourselves as an important cog in the wheel of its rejuvenation, its purification and inoculation.

Most of us have so much trauma that we are easy marks for this manipulation.  We just want the pain to stop.  I see the scapegoats as a ready-made stand-in for that family member who hurt us, for the lover who betrayed us and on and on.  It's our brokenness that so wants to heal via the fantasy of and affiliation with the movement.  The microcosm of our inner sickness, healed via the macrocosm of the nation defeating its supposed foes, internal and external.

Maybe the best medicine against this experiment is to not capitulate in our personal lives.  To communicate what we need.  To rest.  To call that old friend.  To believe we can have joy.  To face the issues we want to hide from.  To take political action.  To rediscover who we are and what our purpose is.  To reach others with the medicine that is our authenticity.  To laugh again.  To join our hearts with others in a hug.  To be truly accountable to ourselves and others.  To demand it from those around us.  To grow up.

Maybe then we won't be so susceptible to the soap operatic yarns being sewn and thrown at us via the 24 hour news cycle and the politician who uses it to his ends and at our peril.

There is still time.  There is still hope.

And those who have capitulate may always come back.

Let's all search ourselves for how we capitulate and how, in some ways, we may have capitulated long ago. If so, we can and must stand up again. This is the part of the movie where the hero rouses the complacent. What follows is uncertain.

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I wrote a few years back about racism. There I made a seemingly pedantic distinction between racists and people who are racist. I argued that some people may hold racist beliefs, but do not act on them. They could be described as racist. But people who define themselves this way and act as such, could be called racists. These are subtle yet important nuances.

Similarly, I see the idea of corruption as needing a closer inspection.

As we see more and more institutions across the globe lose credibility due to accusations of corruption, it's easy to cynically believe that everyone and everything on the planet is corrupt by nature. From religious institutions to federal state and local governments, businesses, sports leagues, and courts, we have seen serious accusations sully the names of our formerly most trusted institutions. At such times, we are prone to follow and empower demagogues who would gain and consolidate power by focusing our attention on this corruption. What demagogues never tell us is that they are even worse and will not solve the issues they bemoan. They seek only power and are usually running from accountability for their illegal and immoral actions.

But witnessing the corrupting of our institutions in real time (often by the demagogue) shows us distinction and nuance. We see these institutions being poisoned in real time by monied interests as opposed to being corrupt by nature. This is a subtle yet profound distinction. Consequently, would-be autocrats use demagoguery to influence us to believe that all politicians and all institutions are corrupt by nature. This is sleight of hand. This is designed to muddy the waters because they themselves are seeking power by corrupt means and for nefarious purposes.

So if we come to believe that everyone and everything is corrupt, we’ll feel overwhelmed, give up and look for the strongest among the criminals to lead us. Guess who that would be? Especially when other nations have an autocrat, we can capitulate to our own strong man and stand behind him as he supposedly champions us against these others. And a global domino effect can ensue. This is the ultimate nightmare scenario: a cascade into a scheme where mafia bosses carve up the world into spheres of influence for the sake of each dictator/don. We already have such bosses in China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, Hungary, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia.

An example of real-time corruption and disintegration of public trust is the current US Supreme Court. I had never thought of the Supreme Court as a corrupt institution. I thought they made some bad decisions at times, but I blamed that on an ideologue or two swaying enough members to vote in their favor. I always believed that these men and women were making their decisions in good faith. I certainly never thought of these men and women as overt partisans until recently.

Recent decisions like: Citizens United, the Chevron doctrine, overturning Roe V Wade and the eye-popping presidential immunity decision, among others, has many of us taking notice. Hearing of Justice Thomas’ $4 million windfall from a wealthy conservative donor with business before the court and connections to the Justice’s wife and her non-profit would be the scandal of the century in less momentous times. Justice Alito’s flag debacle, the Chief Justice refusing to meet with Congress or the White House and still other strange decisions have led many to dig deeper and learn about the Court and its history.

The implications of these events and circumstances are staggering. They are unwelcome and present grave danger to our nation and our way of life. But the silver lining in the dark clouds of this gathering storm is that we can see the corruption of our highest court happening in real time. We see the court being corrupted before our eyes: the big moneyed interests bribing a Supreme Court Justice. The Justice is now beholden to his rich benefactor. He refuses to recuse himself for cases where there is an obvious conflict of interest. The other Justice who is so partisan that he flies flags of insurrection at his home, not even feigning impartiality. This is uncharted territory.

But seeing this happen puts the lie to the idea that this institution is just corrupt old white men doing what they will. We must remember our history. The Supreme Court is the same institution that ruled to desegregate schools under the Warren Court in 1954’s Brown vs Board of Education decision. This decision fueled the Civil Rights Movement which effectively toppled Jim Crow Laws across the South in the 50s and 60s.

But those who would corrupt our courts, our Congress and our Presidency will continue to do so by bribing these politicians with money, prestige and influence. Thus, we can and must reform our Supreme Court with a code of ethics, potential term limits, and other measures. We are a nation with a long and strong history of reform. We can do this. We must. But we can only succeed if we start with the basic belief that our nation, our government, our society and our institutions are salvageable.

To believe otherwise is to capitulate to the demagogue and his bleak view of our civilization, our institutions and by extension, his view of us. Let’s remember that our government and institutions are just a collection of us. We hire these people to represent us, to serve us, to stand for us. If they are corrupt, if they are broken, then so are we. I reject that notion wholeheartedly.

We are easily fooled. We are motivated by self-interest, yes. But we also feed homeless people. And we take in stray animals. And we forgive. We plant crops to feed each other. We reach out to former enemies. We risk our lives in service of ideals. We are not our lowest drives, even if there are those who would convince us otherwise.

Beware those who would convince you of the fallen nature of our institutions. At the core of this argument is a dagger pointed at your heart. It whispers disempowering lies. But we have agency and can develop discernment. We can rehabilitate our view of ourselves and our brothers and sisters by right action. We can and must believe in our good nature but more importantly, in our ability to change and grow and rise to the occasion.

The occasion has arrived. What will you do with it?