The terror of irrationality, redux

The only way forward in a conflict or problem, any troubling situation that requires thought, planning and an actual solution, is imagining, reasoning, talking and agreement. Some kind of agreement always has to come before the problem can be solved. The really scary part about human conflict is that it is often not amenable to thought, reasonable discussion or compromise. The more willful party, the one who refuses to agree to anything, will insist it has prevailed, to the harm of everyone involved.

I think of the frequent rages of my father. He couldn’t explain exactly why he was raging at any given time, but anger filled him and he needed to vomit it out regularly.

His temper was fierce and he never really forgave. He spoke and reasoned very well, so that amid his terrible curses he was able to mount an argument that was sometimes hard to overcome. Very hard to overcome, because he was adept at constantly shifting what you were actually talking about while he was angry and afterwards. Try talking something out, or calming somebody, when you can’t even agree what you’re talking about in any given moment.

We had an ongoing philosophical dispute over whether someone can change anything significant about themselves. My position was, if you are in enough pain, and motivated to be in less pain, you can change certain things that lead inevitably to more pain. For example, you can learn how to take a breath and be more patient when you are about to lose your temper. In my mind this is kind of a game changer, if your weakness is a proneness to respond to frustration with anger.

My father’s position, understandably, was that my belief in a human’s ability to change anything fundamental about himself was completely idiotic. No matter how much I may have thought that I changed he would always be able to provoke me until he proved that he was right about my fucking uncontrollably violent temper. Even after I proved to him that he couldn’t make me angry anymore, he dismissed any change in me as delusional, a superficial acting job.

It occurred to me recently, after stumbling on some literature about narcissism, and the narcissist’s need to be in control and be right no matter what the facts or the situation, that my father, speaking as a narcissist, was truly unable to change. The whole ball game for a narcissist is about winning the stark black and white conflict that is life, at any cost, no matter how small the issue causing friction. The world is either white, and everything you do is commendable and perfect, or black, and everything you do is despicable, contemptible, shameful. If those are your only two choices, you’re going to pick perfect and commendable and death to all humiliating naysayers. End of story.

What does that leave for everybody else in the narcissist’s orbit? Basically my way or the highway, asshole, you know the fucking rules of this one way road, you contemptible pile of dreck!

Look at any source of media drama and you will see narcissists, like the richest men in the world, our most powerful and greatest genius citizens, acting like petty children to assert their superiority over all of the losers in the world. Facts don’t matter when you’re a wealthy compulsive liar and there is no penalty for lying and calling everybody else a fucking liar. Would you expect a more humane rule in a world run by entitled narcissists?

Interesting how seeing this now through the eyes of narcissism, which is so prevalent in our world today, makes me finally understand that my father, for all his talents and excellent traits, actually was unable to change. The conviction that people cannot change was a core belief that went into making him what he was, because his wounds made change impossible for him. A tragedy, yes, but also very easy to understand, through the right lens.

To me, the terror of irrationality is that nothing can be agreed upon, nothing can be discussed, nothing can be resolved, no conflict can be peaceably ended, except on the terms of the more willful party. This is because all of the tools that humans have to make peace have been taken off the table in the service of one party insisting on their right to do whatever they need to do to the other party in order to control and prevail over their own helplessness in the face of their unbearable pain. So those who can’t solve their own terrible problems inflict their pain on everybody else, fair enough.

Talk about some fucked up shit, Larry...

beautiful comment

I was listening to the original Walter Huston recording of Kurt Weill’s haunting and beautiful September Song (lyrics by Maxwell Anderson), a melody he wrote for Huston’s limited vocal range. Houston’s version is indeed a beauty. So was this comment below the YouTube video, from seven years back.

Film noir true story of American Nazis during WW II

My mother loved Rachel Maddow, and I like her okay, though I was often annoyed by her coy long-windedness and premature gloating. She was at the top of the food chain at MSNBC for many years and then stepped down to do some independent research and reporting. All I can say is, holy shit, go listen to her report, an eight-part podcast called Ultra. Mind-blowing, fascinating, horrifying, typical, amazing — a film noir acted out in real life by a cast of Nazi loving villains right out of today’s Freedom Caucus.

As Hitler invaded country after country in Europe, in the USA his allies in Congress, the America First Committee, were actively supporting Hitlerism, attacking FDR and his “failed” New Deal and readying the US for Nazi rule. Senators and congressmen gave the Nazi salute at rallies and sent out mass mailings, signed by them, that were written by Nazi propagandists. This continued even once America entered the fucking war against Hitler. The federal trial of some of these insurrectionists, a raucus affair that continued throughout the war, and the angry, defiant, deflecting defenses made by the America First senators and congressmen implicated in the plot… you got to hear this.

I have to say, Maddow tells the story so compellingly, and in such piquant detail, that I don’t wonder that Steven Spielberg has already purchased the movie rights to this story. I wish it was in movie theaters right now. I can’t recommend this podcast highly enough. Here’s a link to the first episode:

https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc-podcast/rachel-maddow-presents-ultra/episode-1-trip-19-n1299374

Here’s their description of Ultra, followed by a bit from the final episode.

Sitting members of Congress aiding and abetting a plot to overthrow the government. Insurrectionists criminally charged with plotting to end American democracy for good. Justice Department prosecutors under crushing political pressure. Rachel Maddow Presents: Ultra is the all-but-forgotten true story of good, old-fashioned American extremism getting supercharged by proximity to power. When extremist elected officials get caught plotting against America with the violent ultra right, this is the story of the lengths they will go to… to cover their tracks.

American groups that were getting support and instruction and even funding from the Nazis. American businessmen who were not just personally sympathetic to the Nazi cause — they were finding ways around the law to continue doing business with the Nazis even during the war.

And these American political figures. It turns out, the Nazis had kept meticulous records about which members of Congress were the most help to them, which might be the most help to them in the future after a fascist takeover of the United States, and which were on the payroll or otherwise involved with their senior propaganda agent in America, George Sylvester Viereck.

Hart: Rogge details in great depth, the extent of involvement between members of Congress and George Sylvester Viereck

https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc-podcast/rachel-maddow-presents-ultra/transcript-ultra-vires-n1300885

Why I write everyday

The world doesn’t care very much about any one of us. In fact, it doesn’t care at all. We are fortunate if we have people who love us and treat us with kindness, but as for the world itself, it doesn’t give a rat’s ass about any one of us. It has seen billions and billions of us come and go, often dying violently for no real reason, except that somebody else is angry and takes it out on us in a lethal fashion. The universe itself is clearly indifferent to any individual’s existence.

Hey, that’s a nice Merry Christmas Eve, fella!

That’s not the point, that’s the background. In a universe that is indifferent we have a need to connect ourselves to others who care. And so in this age of the internet, with the illusion of connection to everybody else alive and staring at their phones, we send out our beacon to find others who might have suffered the same things we have, who might care, who might benefit from our thoughts and feelings if we can set them out clearly.

At this moment in history when American deaths of despair have reached these terrible proportions, when millions of isolated people have literally given up on the idea of love, kindness, companionship, decency and fair treatment, voices of calm, voices of reassurance, are so important.

When I write, I feel a connection to people I have never met. It is in part an illusion, since few people ever read these words, but the connection is also real. These posts take on a kind of life, they can be read anytime, they can be found when you might need to find something like them and derive some sense of comfort from knowing that somebody else has gone through things very similar to what you have gone through.

It may comfort you to know that you are not the only person who spent childhood in a senseless war zone, trying to make peace with an insanely implacable foe, and although you are wounded and scarred by this kind of upbringing, it doesn’t have to destroy you.

It may comfort you to know that if you love doing something very much, writing for example, if you do it every day you will get better and better at it. I don’t know that I have much native musical talent, but after half a century of loving to play music I’m a very good self-taught instrumentalist.

Love really is all you need, it makes the world go round. Lack of love is responsible for every terrible mistake that humans make, certainly every act of violence. Loving what you do is a net good. Spend some time everyday doing what you love, you will not regret it.

When somebody tells you over and over who they are, believe them

This turns out to be really hard to put into practice when you’re hearing something new from an old friend. It seems they must be going through some terrible crisis, that they’re not themselves, when they say things like “no matter what you say, you will never change my mind.”

The first time they say this to you, you will say to yourself, perhaps also to them, what the fuck? The second time they say this you should realize they’re being deadly serious. Every time after that, it’s on you that you don’t understand that nothing you can say will make any difference to their immovable position.

And what exactly is their immovable position? Only this: no matter what you say, I don’t care, you’re still wrong and I’m still right.

If you ask what they are right about they will simply repeat “whatever you say, you will never change my mind.”

When you are locked in a tense conversation only about frayed emotions, will and a need to be right, the only way out, since words, thoughts, appeals to friendship and mercy are of no use, is to finally believe that what your one time friend is now insisting on is his absolute truth. Now you will simply have to accept it. Nothing you can say will change it, as has been said over and over.

You don’t have to like it, of course. The point is you won’t like it, nobody likes to be told, essentially, to shut the fuck up. In the end though, you have to believe what they’re telling you, there’s no point wasting your breath in a conversation where nothing you say can will make a difference in any way.

One last metaphorical kick in the nuts, and be on your way, my friend, there’s no longer anything here for you.