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Culture, development, society

The Coronapandemie – A disastrous collaboration of the memes

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A consideration based on the levels of personal and collective development 

The colors beige, purple, red, blue. orange, green and more represent distinct levels of development of individuals and societies, following “Spiral Dynamics”, a theory elaborated by Don Beck and Christopher Cowan on the initial findings of Clare Graves.

How the levels express in the present crisis

What have the levels of development to do with the present Corona situation? I don’t want to waste too much time in explaining theoretically the characteristics of each of these levels, referred to by the above colours. I hope you will unterstand it while I am discussing the topic.It appeared to me lately that the levels explain a lot of what is going on right now.

What are the characteristic players in the game? 

There are people who use a lot of energy and power to fight for what they believe to be true. Depending on the objects, the intentions, the goals and the ethical majurity of the respective players, this trait can be very helpful or disastrous.

Other people feel alive and safe only in a setting which is highly reliable. They need law and order, rules and guidelines which are not to be questioned. The 10 commandments of the bible are an attempt to provide such a orientation framework. The individual is free from taking personal responsibility, because the rules are authority and to be followed, even when the resulting actions are harmful, unethical whatever. Today these are the rules of the government and the bible is represented by the mainstream media.

Galilei refused to believe in the doctrines of the church and opened up the world to scientific inquiry. Going out into the world with curiosity, question, what you find and look for even better solutions and explanations, never allow beliefs stop you from searching after truth! This gave rise to the materialistic science which observes measurable things, interprets the findings and discusses it with other findings in order to get to best possible answers.

This truth was looked for in the objective world. Our human inside world was not only neglected, but dismissed as irrelevant. We intuitively know that this is not true and new ways of looking at the world arose which not only included our feelings and personal experiences, but put them on the throne of the only way of knowing the truth. 

As we know by the work of Ken Wilber: every step into the next level leads us into denying the previous level as an error, but when settled in the new mindset, a successful development would embrace the valid findings and views of the previous levels. When this doesn’t happen, the development is unhealthy and leads to all sorts of complications and absurdities. I will talk about this below as it is a characteristic of our present moment.

How the levels operate in the corona crisis

In the following I won’t talk about where the virus comes from, if it is real or if there is some special agenda behind all that. I am only interested in the question, which sort of mindset leads to which behaviour, where mindsets enhance or hinder each other and how a solution could be found by understanding the limits of each mindset and how the disaster comes about when one or the other is believed to be the absolute truth.

What happened

In January 2020 we heard about a strange illness in China. China is far away and we would not have imagined that it could be relevant to us – except some scientists who immediately got curious and started their respective activities around the “new Coronavirus”

In March we were told that the most dangerous virus has entered Europe, especially Italy, where I live. People started to become fearful and they looked for information. In the last decades we had developed a sensitivity towards our health, we had promoted healthy food, exercise, vitamins and more to keep us healthy. We wanted to face the new illness by understanding it and knowing what we could do.

We relied on newspapers and official television channels to give us good information. Soon some of us got aware that our concerns were not satisfied by seemingly good explanations but ever increasing fear was induced throughout the population. Psychologically effective photos were published which heated up the fear because the real context was not given. They were used for propaganda – but what for and for whom? Only a few of us understood that right away, I didn’t at that time. 

We hoped for science to give us good insights, explanations and suggestions on how to deal with the situation. Very many scientists in the world started their relentless research. Soon we could see that only a handful of scientists were heard and their message spread in public media. Other specialists with long experience in the relevant fields were not heard or considered at all, they were not invited by our governments to collaborate in finding the best answers. They didn’t get a platform in our official media and soon they were ridiculed and cancelled in social media and elsewhere, one after the other.

Unhealthy memes – when development is incomplete

But how? Isn’t science a way of finding solutions by discussing the findings and improving them on the way? Science once was understood as a practice where you propose a theory and then try to falsify it. As long as you couldn’t do that, the finding was assumed as “true” – until a better argument came forth and was agreed upon. But now a different concept of “science” had gained precedence. It was alive before, but with the Corona situation, it showed its full distortion of understanding. This is a consequence of the “green meme”, prevalent now in western societies, which emphasis the relativity of “truth”. In short: “What I see as truth, is true, nobody has a better truth than mine”. Now you can call yourself a scientist if you went out to collect arguments for something which you have planned to prove. You are not inquiring to find out, you already “know” and fish for good rationalisations to convince others that you are right.

This is exactly the opposite of what real science is. It is open ended und curious what will come out when you apply the method. Now somebody – even our governments – asked scientists to find good enough arguments to “prove” that a lockdown is needed, for instance. (As was revealed in Germany) The official “scientists” avoid discussions with serious scientists who have come to different conclusions.  Why is this happening? Despite continuous invitations of alternative media to the “leading scientists” who direct the government decisions, they never show up to discuss their position. And in mainstream media hardly ever anybody is invited who has come to different results than the ruling opinion.

The developmental memes in play

Now coming back to the colors of “Spiral Dynamics”. The scientific method and good investigative journalism are expressions of the “orange meme”, of the modern mindset which is driven by curiosity. Post-modernism (green) has introduced the dogma that subjectivity is of more value than objectivity, and that there is an innumerable way of seeing and interpreting things, and therefore none is more important than any other. “Truth doesn’t exist” is the conclusion, and therefore what I personally think is as important than the interpretation of any other person. Scientist or not, expert or not. There is no difference. There is no hierarchy in the appropriateness and usefulness of ideas and strategies. Therefore I can do whatever I want, it is right, anyway. And to make it seem acceptable to those who still believe in science, I can find somebody who claims to be a scientist and ask him to support my truth.

We live in a disastrous clash between the orange and the green meme, or better between the healthy orange meme and the unhealthy green meme, the “mean green meme”, n expression coined by Ken Wilber in his book “Boomeritis”.

It is impressive how much power the “mean green meme” has gained in our societies despite the fact that not all of them have fully embraced it. But Germany has, as well as other western countries, especially the US and Canada, but also Australia and others. Its terminologies and practices have invaded most countries of the world to a certain degree, despite the fact that they, as societies, are not yet there. If the do it by free will or by pressure through the dominant countries is another question. Italy for instance, is still struggling with reaching the “blue” level (except the northern parts of the country where “orange” is dominant). The Corona measurements enhance this step into the blue level This explains why Italy is a willing player in this unholy game.

How can the nightmare end?

The “blue meme” is the mindset where following rules and obedience is most important. People rely on what they are told and are faithfully doing what they are told, even if it is to their disadvantage. When there is trust in the government, all people are likely to follow the rules and there is no reinforcement needed, as we have seen in Sweden during the past year. In Germany, where the population is in huge parts embracing the “orange” and “green” mindset, trust is only possible when reasonable, reliable explanations without contradictions are provided.

If there is transparency, and when it includes scientific findings of a whole variety of researchers, Every incongruence and censoring is a sign for them that something is going wrong, that they are subject to manipulation and they stand up to express there reasonable concerns. With every contradiction they detect in the official statements, their feeling to be deceived grows and the inner need arises to search for truth and fight for it. Then the state uses reinforcement of its rules by demanding absolute obedience and threatens with punishment. This works well in totalitarian states and generally in societies who have not yet developed beyond “blue”. It doesn’t work in more developed societies – and that is the only hope we have to end the present nightmare!

Again: the levels are the key

A society which has its center of gravity in “blue”, in the conformist stage of development, people have no major problems with following the given rules. That is their modality and the find relief in the fact that they don’t have to think for themselves and that others lead them the way. 

Societies on the modern (orange) level of development cannot just follow rules which in their own thinking don’t make sense. Individuals on this level need evidence and very good reasons before they adopt ideas and behaviours and they need permanent research for better reasons and solutions. They cannot accept rules which have no proven foundation in reality, and the more courageous and moral ones have the need to stand up against falsity and manipulation.

People in the green level of development have the sincere intention to care for others. When they are told that their grandma could die because of them not wearing a mask, they enter into emotional arousal, into a sense of guilt and shame, and therefore follow the first best idea they are offered in the sincere hope to be a useful member of society. They are not aware that the scientists they rely on are not working within the rigorous codex of how science needs to be done. They don’t notice the difference between modern and postmodern science, between the research for reliable facts as opposed to finding confirmation for ideas. So they proclaim “follow science”, but actually they ask us to believe those who manipulate or invent results in order to satisfy other agendas.

When people develop through the levels, they have incorporated the mindsets and principles of the previous ones, if they are aware or not. Now it depends on the way they have included their previous stages in order to express their latest stage in a healthy way. 

As I said before, scientists of the modern stage won’t easily follow the rules, given by the previous stage, unless they can fully understand their reason and usefulness. In the postmodern stage, people think that they are “better”, because they have compassion with people who suffer etc. And they have their own ideas about how the suffering in the world would be diminished without looking at reality, without even asking the actual people whom they pretend to care for what they want and need.  They arrogantly believe to know it better.

Those in the green stage who have not integrated well the “red” stage of development, which explores personal power, are very likely to refer to this unhealthily integrated mindset. “What I feel and think is right”, is the basic position. And if you don’t agree with me, then you are wrong, dangerous, my enemy (the “red” level is that of the warrior which is based on the distinction “right-wrong”).

Understanding better the present situation

From what I said about the stages, we can now look at the present situation in the western world and more easily understand why things are happening as they are. We see a clash of mainly three memes, the traditional, the modern and postmodern, with the insertion of “red” (the egocentric stage) in a decisive number of individuals in all of them.

Governments, or better the people who constitute governments love to use the power which hey have to pursue their tasks. This is ok as long as they use it for the benefit of their people, but when used to manifest their ideas and fantasies, it becomes a huge problem. The “red” drive in the single powerful individual is self serving, it uses the people for their own purposes. They might get suggestions, incentives or even pressure by other more powerful entities who want them to rule in a certain way ( the uncontrolled red drive of super rich individuals in the world). In order to satisfy the demands they are likely to promote rules which they believe to be useful for their goals. Here the conflict arises between climbing up the ladder and accepting immoral ways to do that on one side and on the other side wishing to serve the people of their country. Depending on their personal level of development they will chose to align with the evil or stand up against it which entails huge risks for their personal lives. We have not many heroes of this sort in the world, but fortunately there are some who feel the need for personal integrity and do what is needed to be done by taking the risks. “The heroes are the ones with the arcs in their backs”

The blue and orange stage

In a country like Germany there is a huge number of people located in the “blue” mindset, therefore they have no problems with following the rules and might not even question them. “Wanting to know” is not yet a constituent of their structure. 

But there are also many people in a modern mindset (orange) who need to understand, who want to know the truth. People in “blue” cannot understand their eagerness in questioning and trying to find out, in protesting against missing evidence because they sense of what is going on under the surface. Traditionally oriented people (in “blue”) put the truly “orange” – minded people in the corner of “dissidents”. “conspiracy theorists” and even more heavy offences. This is understandable from their point of view, but absolutely unfair towards those who happen to have different, but equally valuable  basic values.

The green stage

Many people in a genuine and healthy “green” mindset (Not to be confounded with any “green party or movement!!) are the driving forces in the protests. They intuit the danger of a totalitarian state, they want the best life for everyone, their values are love, understanding, good relationships and cooperation. They are deeply concerned about the direction our societies are going, driven by the unhealthy orange and blue mindsets. They are engaged in personal and spiritual development and they have “better” values than all other stages before. 

The green meme in its healthy form is the most advanced mindset in the world where quite a number of people are already in. There are two problems here: In their unhealthy form, green-driven people become fundamentalists and even use power over others to force them into their own ideas. This is definitely a regression into previous stages and very dangerous, as they are already more sophisticated than those who are genuinely expressing those stages.

Why all these levels cannot resolve the problem

But even the healthy expression of green cannot really resolve the problems for which they are a decisive motor. They, as any previous stage, are caught in the conviction to “know it all”, to be better than the others and that they consequently have to oppose and fight the others. With this attitude they contradict their own belief system and cannot succeed, unless…

Unless they do the jump into the next stage of development, where they would be able to see the bigger picture and to discriminate. They could recognise the value and usefulness of certain ideas and practices of other memes and use them in a constructive way. No fighting against others, but collecting every important perspective and trying to find the best practices possible in the given moment, always ready to adjust when better insights arise. With the basis of respect, care and in a loving attitude with no exclusion a better world can be enhanced.

The solution comes with a shift in consciousness

Yes, we still have to stand up against the excesses of power and indoctrination of previous memes, but mainly we have to work on the shift of individuals into more advanced levels of their personal development, into the opening of their mindsets into more complex and reality based understanding of the world, into giving up fundamentalism, power games, impotence and victimhood, and arrogance and hubris. We need to come to the very basic understanding of the interconnection of everyone and everything. 

I have faith that this will happen, some day. Until then there might be much upheaval and suffering in the world. I do hope that the birth process will be as smooth as possible, the pain tolerable and the joy over-boarding when we are born into the beauty and the miracle of life, of our planet and of existence itself.

 

 

Culture, development, Interglobal, Psychology and Spirituality, society

Ein Brief an meine Nichte

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Youtube Cover des Gesprächs

Meine Liebe,

Danke für Deine Antwort auf mein Schreiben, in dem ich die Coronamaßnahmen als unverhältnismäßig bezeichne und dass sie mehr Schaden anrichten, als der Virus selber. Ich glaube, daraus zu hören, dass Du frustriert bist und es Dir schwerfällt, zuzulassen, dass andere Leute andere Weltsichten haben als Deine im gegenwärtigen Moment. Weltsichten ändern sich mit der Erfahrung. Wenn Du zurückdenkst, als Du 5, 10 oder 15 Jahre alt warst, da hast Du über die Welt bestimmt ganz anders gedacht als heute. Und wie Du die Welt sehen wirst in 5, 10 oder 20 Jahren ist kaum vorhersehbar. Unsere Weltsichten verändern sich in dem Maße. wie unsere persönliche Entwicklung verläuft, wie wir wachsen und reifen.

Die Stadien der menschlichen Entwicklung sind reichlich erforscht und auch die Bewusstseinsebenen, zu denen die Menschen Zugang haben. Jeder Mensch kann in seiner Entwicklung irgendwo Halt machen, obwohl er weitergehen könnte, aber es gibt viele Faktoren, die eine Weiterentwicklung behindern. Momentan sind  6 Bewusstseinsebenen in der westlichen Welt bei einer größeren Anzahl von Menschen vorhanden, angefangen mit der reinen Überlebensebene, über die  egozentrische, ethnozentrische zur weltzentrixhen  Ebene. Auf jeder Ebene haben die betreffenden Menschen ganz andere Weltsichten und Werte, das, was sie für wichtig halten ist oft diametral verschieden. Je mehr Ebenen Du selbst erfolgreich durchschritten hast, desto besser kannst Du die Bedürfnisse der vorangegangenen Ebenen verstehen, denn da warst Du früher ja auch einmal, aber du siehst nicht die Weltsicht der darauf folgenden Ebenen, denn die kennst Du ja noch nicht.

Es ist charakteristisch für die ersten 6 Ebenen, dass sie voll überzeugt sind, dass Menschen, die anders denken, komplett daneben sind – weil Du selber in Deiner Entwicklung erfahren hast, dass deine damaligen Ansichten zu limitiert waren, deshalb bist Du ja weitergegangen. Oder die Menschen sind noch am Anfang des Weges und können gar nicht sehen, was noch kommen würde  für sie, wenn sie weitergingen, und es daher nicht verstehen können, was die anderen denn da so sagen und tun.

Ab der 7. Ebene kann man sehen, welche Wahrheiten die einzelnen Ebenen zum Ganzen beisteuern können. “Nobody is smart enough to be wrong all the time”, mit anderen Worten: jeder hat ein Stück Wahrheit in der Hand, aber eben nur ein Stück, nie die ganze Wahrheit, die es als Absolutum nicht gibt.

Im Moment herrscht Krieg auf der Welt, der Meinungskrieg ist ja ziemlich deutlich auch unter uns. Wenn die eigene Meinung zum Fundamentalismus wird, wenn man sich nicht mehr austauscht und gemeinsam versucht, zu besseren Standpunkten zu kommen unter Einbeziehung von so vielen Perspektiven wie möglich, dann kommt es zum totalen Krieg, wie er gegenwärtig herrscht, wenn Menschen für das, was sie sagen angegriffen, verunglimpft und beruflich vernichtet werden. Leider sind da auch viele Menschen, die schon die 5. Und 6. Ebene erreicht hatten, und jetzt auf die 4 Stufe in deren  pathologischen Form zurückgefallen, in den Fundamentalismus: “Was ich sage ist richtig, alles andere muss gelöscht werden”, z.B. auf Youtube. Vor 80 Jahren hätte man die Bücher verbrannt, der Mindset ist der Gleiche.

Wenn ich also bestimmte Sachen in der Familie anspreche, kommt das aus meinem Jahrzehntelangen Wachstumsprozess durch die Ebenen, der oft sehr schmerzlich war, aber ich bin dankbar heute, dass ich gelernt habe, die DInge aus der mir maximal möglichen Anzahl von Perspektiven zu sehen. Das ist etwa so, wenn man, statt mitten im Wald zu stehen und nicht zu wissen, wohin man gehen soll, von oben herunterschauen kann und aus dieser Perspektive erst sehen kann, wo genau man eigentlich ist und wie man aus dem Wald hinaus kommt..

Dein Vater hat mir mal ein Buch gegeben über den Nationalsozialismus in Coburg, unsere Stadt, die den traurigen Rekord hat, die erste gewesen zu sein, die mit dem Nazitum ernst gemacht hat. Ich stelle mir vor, wie unsere Eltern als Kinder in dieser Atmosphäre von Unrecht, Verleumdung, Entwürdigung, Misshandlung und Propaganda hatten aufwachsen müssen. Später sagte unsere Mutter immer wieder: “wehret den Anfängen”. Wir hatten uns so sicher gefühlt, dass so etwas nie wieder geschehen könnte, wir haben daran geglaubt, dass unsere Regierungen gut seien und die Dinge schon für uns richten würden. 

Aus meiner  jahrzehntelangen Illusion über die Realität in unseren Ländern bin ich vor einigen Jahren aufgewacht durch Geschehnisse, die ich mit eigenen Augen beobachtete und durch unbezweifelbare Belege zu einigen Dingen, die passiert sind. 

Jetzt bin ich diejenige, die der jüngeren Generation sagen möchte “wehret den Anfängen” – obwohl wir jetzt die Anfänge schon weit hinter uns gelassen haben. Ihr seid diejenigen, die ihr die gegenwärtigen gravierenden Fehler Euer Leben lang ausbaden müsst. Tut alles, euch umfassend zu informieren, von wirklich allen Seiten und überlegt selber, was Sinn macht und was nicht. Schaut nach, wo Ihr ideologische Haltungen habt, anstatt nach den Tatsachen zu forschen. Sucht nach blinden Flecken in Eurer Wahrnehmung, in eurem Denken und in eurem Herzen. Glaubt nicht, was die anderen sagen, wenn ihr es nicht selber einer eingehenden Prüfung unterzieht. Und seid Euch dessen bewusst, dass sich Eure Einstellung zu den Dingen ändern wird, wenn ihr über einen größeren Weitblick und über mehr Informationen verfügt. Haltet nicht an Ideologien fest, wenn Ihr erkannt habt, dass da etwas faul daran ist. 

Habt keine Angst, Euch zu entwickeln. Die Evolution geht weiter, auch gegen Euren Willen. Aber freiwillig sich auf den Weg zu machen dürfte letztendlich weniger schmerzhaft sein als das verspätete Aufwachen, wenn die Scherben schon auf dem Boden liegen.

Wenn Du mehr erfahren willst, dann kannst Du Dich gerne an mich wenden.

Hier ein Interview mit Wulf Mirko Weinreich, das den Dingen genauer auf den Grund geht

 

Culture, Life on earth, Psychology and Spirituality, society

Death and rebirth

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Summer is over. The trees begin to lose their leaves, nature is preparing for winter in our Northern hemisphere. Traditionally this was the time of the year which we associated with death. The death of nature, where the visible life withdraws and retracts into the potential for the rebirth next spring.

Our societies have lost many traditions, most of us are hardly aware of the change in Nature. We have heating and electric light when it is cold and dark and we have air conditioning in our houses for when it is hot. We have the possibility to survive the heat in artificial surroundings like shopping centers and recreational inside parks. 

Ignoring Nature, ignoring Death

We don’t care about Nature, in so many ways. And we don’t care about life, not really. Not at all about death. We try to ignore it as much as we can, only the names of certain days in the calendar,  like “All Saints” and “Totensonntag” (a protestant special day in Germany for remembering the dead) remind us about death and the people who have died in the past. How come that we need special periods and days to remember death and that we need to face it, sooner or later, ourselves? And how many people actually are willing to be reminded of it? Why is the topic such a taboo today which we try to avoid by all means?

The prize we pay for ignoring death and grief

Sooner or later every human being is confronted with death. Our parents die at some point, maybe a friend or our partner, even our child might be taken away from us by death. Now we cannot ignore it anymore. The question comes up now: how can we handle the loss, the grief and our new situation where the other is gone? We don’t find a lot of support in our surroundings, people feel awkward, shy away, avoid you even – and especially – in the moment when you are most vulnerable and would need their presence most. Colleagues at work expect you to show up after a few days as if you had taken a sick leave and everything was perfect again.  Death is cruel and the absence of a proper place for it in our society makes it infinitely more cruel – and we pay a huge prize for it, collectively.

Corona shows us our attitude towards death

At the bottom of how the Corona Crisis is handled by our societies lies the repressed fear of death. Death is the enemy which justifies all sorts of cruel practices. People are left alone in hospitals, entangled in all sorts of wires and tubes, unable to articulate themselves, unable to experience any benefit of being alive in such a situation and kept away from those people who could offer consolation, companionship and relief of fear and pain. They die under inhuman conditions and are taken away, somewhere, without having been able to say good bye. 

Quantity trumps over Quality

A society which sees human beings as a machine which needs fixing throws away the useless, life-less parts. Focused on the life of the body we reduce ourselves to meaningless creatures and we betray the deeper value of our existence as humans. We totally undervalue our interiority, our feelings, our psyche, our soul, as something to be discarded, unimportant. We value quantity before quality. We don’t allow people to decide if they want to enjoy their lives in the given circumstance as opposed to prolong it by any means. 

We are treated like little children – a call for personal responsibility

Many questions arise which find stereotyped answers most of the time, often even mandatory answers with the thread of punishment. Is a grandparent allowed to chose taking the risk of going to see their grandchildren despite the danger of catching Covid? Is the state authorised to forbid social contacts? Wouldn’t it be better to encourage responsibility in people and allow them to decide themselves – by giving them honestly the maximum available information – but certainly not only from the purely medical perspective – which are needed for their own decisions? Instead we are flooded with  fear mongering which is based on our collective neglect of death as part of life, which, after all, is unavoidable and needs to be integrated in life as the goal towards which every single one of us is heading.


Conscious Ageing, Conscious Dying = Conscious Living

For November 2020 I put together a short series of conversations about Death, Dying, Rebirth and the quality of Life. You find it at www.TheWisdomFactory.net

David Lorimer from the “Scientific and Medical Network” starts off the series, followed by a panel conversation among widows, an interview with a hospice worker and a conversation on how the experience of accompanying a partner into death can change one’s personal and work life.

 

 

Culture, development, Interglobal, Life on earth, Psychology and Spirituality, Science, society

Klimawandel und Bewusstsein

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Beobachtungen zum Thema “Klimawandel”.

Ich gehörte einmal zu den Menschen, die “Wetter” und “Klima” nicht unterscheiden. Wenn immer es ein Unwetter gab, in der Nähe oder irgendwo anders auf der Welt, kam es mir leicht in den Sinn, dies mit dem “Klimawandel” zu begründen. Das war begleitet von einem Gefühl der Unfähigkeit, irgendetwas dafür oder dagegen tun zu können, ähnlich wie bei Erdbeben, wofür die beste Strategie ist, sich darauf vorzubereiten, damit der Schaden begrenzt bleibt. Erdbeben abstellen zu wollen durch irgendwelche Maßnahmen scheint wohl keinem eine realistische Möglichkeit. Aber die Erde aufzuhalten sich auch äußerlich klimatisch zu verändern doch schon. Oder? 

Das Klima der Erde soll mit drastische Maßnahmen beeinflusst werden, deren Folgen wohl noch keiner der Befürworter so richtig überdacht hat. Als Mir klar wurde, dass mittlerweile nicht nur ein paar Aktivisten für das Klima “kämpfen”, sondern überall Lobby dafür gemacht wird,  machte mich das neugierig, und ich begann, mich mit dem Thema näher zu beschäftigen. Bis dahin war es mir nicht wirklich wichtig erschienen, denn ich hielt das Thema “Klima” nur für ein weiteres in der Reihe der üblichen Panikmache, die ja regelmäßig in die Gesellschaft geflutet werden.

Aus der Perspektive der Entwicklungsstufen des Bewusstseins: das alte Spiel

Ich war nicht besonders gut auf der Uni, hatte nur eine zwei im Magisterexamen, aber was ich beim Mathematik Studium gelernt habe, ist logisch denken können, wenn immer es notwendig erscheint. Dazu gehört es, nachzuforschen, Beweise zu suchen, nichts “einfach so” zu glauben, vor allem wenn es erhöhte Wichtigkeit hat. Im normalen Alltagsleben kann man ja mal ein paar MIlchmädchenrechnungen machen, ohne dass eine Katastrophe eintritt, bei Themen, von denen das Wohlergehen der Gesellschaft und eventuell der ganzen Welt abhängt, ist das absolut nicht akzeptabel.

Als ich zum Thema Klimawandel erwachte, sah ich die Gesellschaft (in Deutschland, aber auch in anderen westlichen Ländern) aufgeteilt zwischen Menschen, die steif und fest glauben, wir Menschen würden selbst verschuldet untergehen durch CO2 Ausstoß, und die anderen, die wagen, das anzuzweifeln, und dann als “Klimaleugner”, kurzum als Bösewichte, abgestempelt werden – während die Befürworter der CO2 Apokalypse selbstverständlich die Guten sind.

Gut und Böse – der Weg durch die Stufen

Gut und Böse, Schwarz und Weiß, Das alte Lied:. Dies ist der  Mindset, der seit alters her Unfrieden, Spaltung und Krieg hervorbrachte. Im feudalen Gefüge bestimmte der Feudalherr, was und wer in die Kategorie “Gut” oder “Böse” gehörte, das Volk hatte nichts zu melden. Dann erklärten die Religionen, was entsprechend richtig oder falsch war. Die Menschen verinnerlichten das, dank ihres Glaubens. Man könnte auch sagen, sie kollaborierten freiwillig mit dem System.

Mit dem Aufkommen der modernen Wissenschaft wollte man endlich ganz genau wissen, wie die Dinge bestellt sind. Man stellt Hypothesen auf, die so lange als “wahr” gelten, solange sie nicht durch Evidenz widerlegt werden. So näherte man sich iterativ an immer mehr “Wahrheit” oder “Richtigkeit” an, und damit war auch “Gut und Böse” in der Form von “Richtig und Falsch” bestimmbar, jedenfalls immer bis zur nächst besseren Erkenntnis.

Dann, in der Postmoderne, tauchten die “Gutmenschen” auf, in einer Variante der feudalen Zeit, nur das jetzt nicht mehr direkt von oben bestimmt wurde, was als richtig oder falsch anzusehen wäre. Jetzt kann scheinbar jeder Mensch selber bestimmen, was gut und was schlecht ist und sich entsprechend in Lagern von Gleichgesinnten organisieren, die kollektiv ihre Weltsicht und Glaubenssysteme als die einzig richtigen darstellen, während die anderen, die “Ungläubigen”, natürlich die Bösen sind: Und das in Zeiten, wo man sich längst vom “Opium für das Volk”, von den Religionen, losgesagt hatte und man nun annimmt, dass man selber im Interesse der ganzen Gesellschaft, ja der ganzen Welt handeln würde! 

Die Glaubenskriege des 21. Jahrhunderts. – Wissenschaft als Erkenntnis-Technologie wird auf den Kopf gestellt und damit beliebig manipulierbar..

In den 60ern hieß es, an die Selbstverantwortlichkeit des Individuums appellierend: “Stell Dir vor, es gibt Krieg, und KEINER geht hin!”  Wir sind heute in einem Glaubenskrieg und viel zu viele Menschen gehen hin, kämpfen für ihre Ideale und scheinen sich wenig bewusst zu sein, was sie da eigentlich machen. 

Es ist cool in der Postmoderne, das eigene Gefühl und die eigenen Überzeugungen als das Non Plus Ultra zu sehen, als die eigentliche “Wahrheit”. Früher sagte man zu jemanden in dieser Ausdrucksform, er habe  “die Weisheit mit Löffeln gefressen”, er oder sie galt als Schlaumeier. leichtgläubig und unseriös. Heute ist die übertriebene Subjektivität normal. Wissenschaft, einstmals ein ernsthafter Versuche, mit Neugierde Dinge zu erforschen, wird heute entweder als irrelevant abgelehnt, da sie ein Werkzeug des bösen Patriarchat ist, oder sie wird manipuliert, aufbereitet, gefügig gemacht. Sie dient nicht mehr der vertieften und ständigen Suche nach Wahrheit, sondern wird selektiv eingesetzt, um “Beweise” zu finden für etwas, was man a priori für wahr und richtig hält. Statt neutral zu forschen werden zur Hypothese passende Arbeiten selektiert und die anderen, dem angestrebten Ergebnis widersprechenden, ignoriert und übergangen. 

Die neuen Religionskriege und die Bedeutung von “progressiv”

Wer eh schon ganz genau weiß, was richtig oder falsch ist, der braucht sich ja mit Gegenargumenten nicht befassen. Er braucht sich keiner Diskussion zu stellen. Er wird eher versuchen, Diskussionen zu vermeiden, denn da könnte er ja nach den Quellen gefragt werden, auf die sich seine Überzeugungen stützen. Und auch die könnten von den anderen hinterfragt werden und da müsste man stichhaltige Antworten haben, eben nicht nur Glaubenssätze, sondern Evidenz. Das scheint mir der Grund zu sein, warum heute diese so dringend notwendige Diskussion nicht stattfindet, denn Glauben kann man gemeinhin nicht rational begründen, offenbar auch dann, wenn die Themen wissenschaftlicher Natur sind.

Bedeutet heute “progressiv” sein, den Manipulatoren zu glauben, sobald es sich richtig anfühlt?

Warum sind  heute die sogenannten “Progressiven”  – von denen man immer annahm, sie befänden sich an der Vorfront der Gesellschaft – zurückgefallen auf frühere Strukturen des Bewußtseins? Warum verhalten sich so viele Menschen wie fundamentalistisch Gläubige, was wir mit dem Abklingen des Christentums im Westen ad acta gelegt zu haben glaubten? Und warum lassen sie sich von der neuen feudalistischen Herrschern einfach so bestimmen? Warum lassen sie sich vorschreiben, was sie zu glauben haben? Und warum glauben sie, aus eigener Überzeugung zu handeln und merken nicht einmal, wie sehr sie erfolgreich manipuliert und fremdbestimmt werden?

Es gibt wohl keine eindeutige und umfassende Erklärung dafür. Sicher scheint mir, dass es zur Natur des Menschen gehört, an etwas glauben zu wollen, was Sinn macht und Orientierung bietet. GOTT ist dafür ziemlich erfolgreich abgeschafft worden, nun ist auch die Wissenschaft von einem Instrument für Wahrheitssuche zu einem Selbstbedienungsladen in Glaubensfragen geworden. Spirituelle Gemeinschaften und weltliche Kulte, politische Gruppierungen, Fanclubs von was auch immer, bieten Möglichkeiten, die Leere aufzufüllen. Nur hat man heute statt dem EINEN Gott eine Unzahl von Göttern, deren Anhänger bis aufs Messer überzeugt sind, dass ihr Gott der einzig wahre Gott ist. 

Die alten Religionskriege emergieren in neuer Form, und einer davon ist der “anthropogene Klimawandel”. Oder ist es ein  “politogener Klimawandel”, unsere politischen Mächte, die ein Interesse daran haben, uns die “Wahrheit” unserer individuellen Schuld am Klimawandel zu füttern, um uns Schuldgefühle zu machen, die sie dann ausnützen können.Sie schaffen es doch tatsächlich, uns zu Ablasszahlungen zu motivieren in Form von Steuern und hohen Energiepreisen, und mit gelenktem Konsum von favorisierten Gütern  wie E-Autos. 

Cui bono? Und die Techniken der Manipulation.

Die tiefergehende Frage wäre dann: wer steht dahinter? Jemand, der Geld machen möchte, das scheint mir logisch. Und der es vermeiden will, in eine Diskussion über den Sinn der Forderungen hineingezogen zu werden. Wer immer das ist – und ich gehe nicht davon aus, dass das eine einzige Person ist -, der, oder besser: “die” wissen genau, wie sie ihre Ziele erreichen können. Aus der Psychologie wissen wir ja ziemlich gut, wie man Menschen dazu bringen kann, Gedanken und Meinungen zu haben, die von anderen stammen, aber als eigen wahrgenommen werden. Wir Menschen sind leicht täuschbar und manipulierbar, vor allem, wenn wir nicht ständig auf der Hut sind und die Dinge hinterfragen. 

Beispiel Medien

Die Medien sind ein hervorragendes Studienobjekt für gelenkte Meinungsbildung. Es ist interessant, wie Reportagen regelmäßig auf der Seite der “Klimahysteriker” stehen, bestimmte Reizwörter benutzen und gezielt Objekte und Daten auswählen, die die gewünschte Überzeugungsarbeit unterstützen sollen. Gegenargumente werden oft gar nicht erst erwähnt, geschweige denn darauf eingegangen. Ich hatte jahrelang kein deutsches Fernsehen mehr angesehen – und aus diesem Abstand heraus finde ich es jetzt besonders interessant, zu beobachten, welche dort besprochenen Themen ausgewogenen Information geben und welche eher durch suggerierende Informationen und  “weiße Lügen”, also durch Unterlassung anderer Perspektiven, manipulativ mit unschuldiger Miene an den Mann, die Frau und das Kind gebracht werden.

Das ist im italienischen Fernsehen nicht viel anders. Umso erfrischender fand ich es letzthin, als ein Meteorologe des aeronautischen Wetterdienstes  im offiziellen Wetterbericht zum “glühenden Weihnachten” Stellung nahm: Tagestemperaturen um die 18 Grad seien punktuell in dieser Jahreszeit absolut in der Norm. Aber dass diese ausgerechnet auf die Weihnachtstage fallen, ist generell nicht vorhersehbar. Dieses Jahr war es so, und ist wohl deshalb den Leuten als Anomalie geschienen, die dann in den Medien als weiterer “Beweis” für die dramatische Erderwärmung  verwendet werden sollte. Die Nachrichtensprecherin hatte offenbar eine andere Erklärung angesteuert. Es ist lobenswert, wenn sich ein Experte um die Fakten bemüht und nicht den Einflüsterungen folgt.

Ab auf die Schiene

Ach, und noch was: ein interessanter Beitrag im deutschen Fernsehen: Der Klimawandel soll mit dem Umsteigen von Menschen und Ware auf die Bahn bekämpft werden. In der Reportage wurde überdeutlich, dass schon jetzt die Bahn mit ihrer Infrastruktur völlig überfordert ist und keinesfalls in absehbarer Zeit das Doppelte an Beförderung auch nur annähernd zufriedenstellend leisten kann. Da stellt sich ja doch die Frage, ob die Menschen, die federführend solche Entscheidungen treffen, überhaupt mal jemanden befragen, der die Realität der Situationen kennt, anstatt sich von denen beraten zu lasse, die ihre Idealsituationen am Computer ausrechnen und keine Ahnung haben, ob und wie sich ihre Utopien in der “wirklichen Welt” realisieren ließen. 

Oder E-Mobilität

Und noch das Thema Elektroautos. Wie soll denn das gehen, wenn wir in Zukunft alle mit diesen Vehikeln unterwegs wären? Nach der Arbeit abends nach Hause kommen und das Auto an den Strom anschließen? Naja, vielleicht bläst da ja ein bisschen Wind, aber die Solarpanels auf meinem Dach liefern nachts keinen Strom, und den ganzen Winter über, selbst tagsüber, auch  nicht genug, um annähernd die Batterien voll zu bekommen.  Und das in einem sogenannten “warmen Land”: Italien.

Also Bahn fahren statt Auto? Nur dumm, wenn der nächste Bahnhof 15 km oder mehr entfernt ist und dann noch nicht einmal klar ist, ob der Zug auch fährt. Wer wäre dann noch fähig, täglich 8 Stunden im Büro zu verbringen? Es sei denn, man schläft gleich im Büro und macht eine Wochenendwanderung nach Hause, um die Katzen zu füttern.

Meine Erfahrung mit Solar

Und noch ein Nachsatz zu erneuerbaren Energien: Die Solarpanels auf meinem Dach waren nach 8 Jahren kaputt, Garantieleistung vorhanden, aber noch nicht einmal 10% von dem, was ich dafür bezahlt hatte. Und mein Traum von Stromautonomie ging auch schief. Wenn der Strom ausfällt, bekomme ich auch keinen von den Solarpanels. Der Strom, den ich nachts aus der Leitung hole, kostet das Doppelte von dem, was ich für eingespeisten Strom bekomme. Die Grundgebühr und Nebenkosten haben sich seit meiner eigenen Stromproduktion drastisch erhöht. Ich zahle seither etwa ¾ der Rechnung für alles Mögliche, die erhoffte Reduzierung der Stromkosten ist unbedeutend.

Naja, selbst wenn ich off grid ginge und Batterien hätte: wie lange halten die dann? Werden sie dann weggeworfen und kontaminieren die Umwelt? Ihre Produktion ist ja auch nicht gerade umweltfreundlich. 

Ist es das, was wir wollen?

Hat da überhaupt mal jemand darüber nachgedacht, wenn sie lauthals nach “erneuerbaren Energien” und auf Elektro umsteigen schreien? Solange wir nicht wirklich revolutionär neue Energiequellen haben, sind das alles unausgegorene Projekte, die aller Voraussicht nach die Menschen in unliebsame Überraschungen führen wird, wenn nicht sogar zu einem Totalzusammenbruch von Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. 

Ist es das, was wir wollen? Es scheint Menschen zu geben, die das wollen. Aber gehörst Du wirklich zu denen? Und wirst du denken: “dumm gelaufen”, wenn du dich in vorindustrielle Verhältnisse zurückversetzt findest? Wenn Du das nicht willst, dann mache die Augen auf und beginne, selber zu denken anstatt dich von mainstream Protestlern verführen zu lassen (seit wann gibt es denn so etwas: “Revolution” Hand in Hand mit staatlichen und privaten Interessen?). 

Und lass Dich nicht einschüchtern und beschämen, wenn Du gegen die allgemeine Propaganda aufstehst, auch wenn sie dich in die “Klassenfeind”- Ecke schubsen wollen, wo immer auf dem politischen Spektrum. Bewahre deine Individualität und dein Recht, deine Ansichten zu vertreten und für die Berücksichtigung von allen Fakten und Daten zu kämpfen. 

Weg von jedweder Ideologie, zurück zur Vernunft!

Nachwort

Nun bin ich ja garantiert in der Ecke der Klimaleugner gelandet, denn sobald man die heilige Kuh berührt, kommt man unweigerlich dort hinein. 

Ich leugne keineswegs, dass sich das Klima wandelt, das hat es immer getan. Ich persönlich habe es gern warm, sitze gerade vor meinem Kaminofen mit Holz gefüttert aus meinem Wald,  und ich wäre froh, wenn wir eher wärmeren Zeiten entgegen gingen als einer neuen Eiszeit. Menschen, die gewohnt sind, den Temperaturregler hoch und runter zu schieben und dann für “alternativ” schreien, haben  wahrscheinlich keine Ahnung, wie anstrengend und “unbequem” das “einfache Leben” ist. Ich kann ein Lied davon singen, nach 30 Jahren Einzelkämpfer für alternativen Lebensstil. 

Die Lebewesen auf diesem Planeten mussten sich schon immer den wechselnden Bedingungen anpassen. Wir modernen Menschen werden wohl unseren absurden Anspruch auf Allmächtigkeit und die Idee, entgegen die Natur ungestraft handeln zu können, in jedweder Hinsicht, aufgeben müssen und uns an die Gegebenheiten anpassen. 

Die pseudoreligiöse Buse

Es ist eine leidige und potentiell für unsere Zukunft gefährliche Diskussion um das CO2.  Es ist wie ein neues Aufleben des Puritanismus, der Verherrlichung der Selbstbeschränkung und -bestrafung, nur das es jetzt nicht mehr Gott fordert, sondern diejenigen, die aus unserem Verzicht ihre Vorteile ziehen.  Wir sollen all das opfern, was uns das Leben erleichtert und erfreulicher gemacht hat für eine Sündenbockidee – ich glaube nicht, dass sich die Demonstranten darüber wirklich im Klaren sind.

Dabei soll alles Geld “verbraten” werden, so dass nichts für die wirklich wichtigen Dinge übrig bleibt. Es ist überhaupt nicht eindeutig erwiesen, dass das CO2 irgendetwas mit einer Erwärmung oder Abkühlung der Erde zu tun hat. Wir brauchen es zum Leben und es hat keinerlei Schädlichkeit für uns – ganz im Gegensatz von so vielen Schadstoffen in Luft, Erde und Wasser. 

Es gibt Wichtigeres als CO2 

Über die immanente, gegenwärtige Bedrohung unseres Lebens spricht plötzlich keiner mehr. Die Umweltverschmutzung, Trinkwassergefährdung (durch Fracking u.ä. und private Besitzrechte), der Medikamentenmissbrauch, Hunger und Fehlernährung, neue Krankheiten, Tiersterben, alte und neue Armut und mehr, auch die politischen Machenschaften und Kriegsgebaren sind vollständig überlagert von der CO2 Hysterie.

Da sollte doch die Frage aufkommen: Ist das CO2 nur ein einfach gestricktes Proxy, das Dinge gewollt unsichtbar werden läßt, die vor aller Augen passieren, für die aber keine Aufmerksamkeit übrig bleibt?

Culture, development, Life on earth, Psychology and Spirituality, society

The power of myth – The Lion King

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What an incredible beauty, where we can immerse our senses, when watching the new Disney version of the Lion King. Real landscapes, real animals in a beautiful world, this is what we see at the beginning. But is this really possible? Can you really film these scenes with real animals? 

Never mind this question, I don’t really need an answer, I just got caught in the loveliness of all, the mighty King and his wise words, the inconsciously audacious child – which reminded me of my own life when I believed to be more adult than I was -, the infantile love story of the lion cubs and the feminist ideas of the girl not to ever marry the boy. All these everyday, normal and often silly attitudes of humans represented by the intriguingly lovely lions.

The hero’s and the heroine’s journey

And yes, also like in real life, there is something going on beneath the beautiful surface. Unrecognised by those who believe in the goodness of all creatures – and who choose not to take alarming signs seriously – the evil forces develop and plan their takeover by enslaving and killing those who are in their way, threatening the whole tribe in every possible way in order to force them into submission.

Here is where the hero’s – and heroine’s – journey starts: Who will give in to the threats of the powerful and who will not? The Lion Queen does not succumb to the evil manipulations of Sherpa, the brother and murderer of the King, neither to the threat by the hyenes controlling the territory. She is wisely waiting for the right moment. However, the young female, Naia, who once, as a cub, had played with Simba, risks escape in order to look for support in fighting against the total annihilation of the tribe and its territory.

The need to take on responsibility to push against evil

The evil new king, Scar, who killed his wise and caring brother, was sure to have destroyed the baby prince, the promised king. He had relied on the report of the hyenas in charge, not realising that those are as evil and corrupt as he himself. So Simba survived and was adopted by other creatures where he lived in safety, beauty and pleasure – until Naia found him and reminded him of his sacred duty to take on his vocation as the king of their tribe, to become a responsible adult.

Why should anyone give up the easy and pleasant life, even if it is not meant for them? A lion who eats insects instead of going out hunting? A young adult who believes to have the right to idle around and follow the impulse of immediate pleasure in a surrounding where everything is provided for him? Now he experiences even  love, love for Naia with whom he had played in early childhood. He wants her to share his life of unending pleasure. But Naia is an adult and she knows about the shadowy side of life, the suppression and devastation of her tribe and homeland. She cannot accept, despite her love for Simba, to pretend that the real life out there is not happening and she chooses to leave the young man.

The role of the female: invite the male into adulthood

The archetypical power of the female over the male. It asks a lot of the female in being honest and in renouncing her personal happiness. But this is the only way to push the male out of his bohemian lethargy, to enable him to step up into adulthood and take on the task which is waiting for him. And so Simba, finally, joins Naia and returns home and confronts the evil uncle Scar who is playing all the possible cards he still has.

When Scar had come across Simba in despair near the corpse of his father, he had insinuated, that he, the little cub, had caused the death of his father The child had taken on the guilt, albeit not understanding. Scar ordered him never to talk about their conversation. Grown up he had forgotten all about it, but in the decisive moment of the final battle, the evil uncle reminded him of his “guilt”. This recognition weakened the strong Lion to the point that the evil uncle almost succeeded killing him in the same way as he did with his father.  But he reveals himself as the murderer, in his malevolent exposition of triumph. 

This is the moment when the mighty righteous male taps into his utmost power and  the female becomes an atrocious warrior. 

Betrayed mercy calls on the ultimate forces of destiny

Together they fight the evil forces, maintaining their dignity of not paying back Scar with the same cruelty he had used himself. Simba doesn’t kill him, but gives him the chance to live and to repent – and Scar, with the utmost  evil is using this gesture of compassion again to destroy and kill, fortunately without the desired outcome. At the end the creature is killed and eaten by the hyenas which he had used and abused for his evil purposes and who don’t believe him any longer.

What do we learn from this story?

The hero and the heroine have come back after life threatening experiences to defend the good and weaken the bad. They take over the place which is meant for them: being good leaders in the service of life and the community, in good relations with all other beings around.

The archetypical universal story lives on in us

It is a very old story, told  for centuries and everywhere all over the world in different forms. It is exposing the human existence embedded in the dichotomy of “good” and “bad”, of virtue and evil. The stories are told through personification of these human qualities. This way it is easy to realise who is the good and noble one and who embodies all evil. Whoever hears these stories feels a bell ringing inside, they are part of the collective unconscious. We know what they mean even if we, ourselves haven’t lived consciously any similar situation. The knowledge is in our bones -or with contemporary words: in the Akashic Field – and we understand the symbols perfectly and can relate them to our own lives. 

If we are courageous enough we can also realise that both these polarities are present in our own hearts: we are Simba and Scar at the same time, we are able to be and do both ways. We are asked to reconcile these forces in us, encouraging the good, understanding and defending against the evil without wanting to kill it. When we succeed to not indulge in revenge, the evil will be destroyed by its own doing.

The final question

What can we learn from this beautifully made film? First of all we need to ask. Why does it touch me?  What is it, that I recognise as true? Why is it that I can apprehend the future delusion when the young cub overestimates totally his understanding and his abilities? Why am I so touched when the two cubs meet again as adults? Is it just a silly story about animals or is it a metaphor for us humans, for you and me, after all? And the final question: where am I on my journey right now? And where do I still need to go to truly become an adult human being?

Culture, development, Interglobal, Life on earth, Psychology and Spirituality, Science, society

Waking up to climate change – or the shadow of GREEN.

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How Green started

I grew up in the sixties. My mother kept a vegetable garden to feed her 5 children. Working too hard, she got a heart disease and had to stop. But the idea of connecting with nature and taking care remained. In the 70ies she founded a citizen’s movement where they collected used plastic items and tried to find enterprises for recycling. This was long before the plastic waste topic entered into public consciousness.

When I lived in Berlin I had an old farmhouse in the then so called “Westdeutschland”. My biggest joy when I arrived there, was to find what had grown in my garden while I was at University. I had started out with physics, but then I  changed the subject. Today though, I am coming back to it. For 30years now, I have been living in the Italian countryside, in close contact with nature, with solar panels on the roof and organic farming. 

Physics and climate change

Now I am keenly interested in physics and other sciences. Why? Because the climate change topic is filling up every corner and people try to tell me that my car is causing the death of our planet.

Climate change  was not in the forefront of my mind so far, as I haven’t been watching the latest news for decades. Whenever the weather is different from what we would like, I certainly started to say: “climate change?” as a possible explanation. People always complain about the weather – but, weather is not the same as climate! Before the climate change discussions we didn’t have a scapegoat, except God himself who dared to send us rain or heat when we didn’t want it. Our memories are short; every time we think: “this is exceptional, it has never been like this” etc. it is not necessarily true. It is just the way we humans deal with reality.

If you don’t go for it, you are guilty

Now, when I had to defend myself why I didn’t want to join the “Friday for Future” manifestations, I started to get interested. I get accused of being in favor of the death of future generations –

WHAT? 

If people really believe things like that, then it is time to find out what information they are fed, what myths they are believing. Such an accusation is really heavy and should have some real fundament when you utter it. 

The scientist in me woke up and together with the psychologist the integralist and the life-experienced part of me started to research.

The psychological basis

When you live in another country than were you were born and grown up, you keep the memory of your home country often, at the point where you left it. You don’t live the changes, you believe, it is like then, when you knew it. It is often an awakening in itself, when you realise that things have changed there, while you were away. But this is also a huge chance because you have the possibility to see things from a distance: you are not involved in parties and power games, preferences and dislikes. You are somewhat neutral while understanding the mentality of the people inside out.

How development works and the problem with green.

When humans develop, they naturally distance themselves of what they were and believed in the previous stage. If the development goes right, the insights and skills of the previous stages  will be integrated and used appropriately. Green rejects science and acts out of the emotional center. This is understandable, but it grows into paradoxes which people in the green mindset are unable to even perceive, let alone address. The contradictions they create in their minds and actions are huge. As long as they are not in decision power, it is no problem. Everyone has the right to get himself – or herself – into trouble. But if the political powers bring their own contradictions as guiding force into the decision making process, everyone is impacted.

The green-blue-purple potpourri is not science

The present climate debate is a strange mixture of green ideals, conventional thinking and magical beliefs. Science is used in scientistic ways: The ideological scientists start with what they want to show. Then they look for arguments, or research results, which feed their assumptions. Real science, instead, is open to the outcome. It starts with a hypothesis and tries to falsify it (instead of trying to prove it!). Serious scientists assume their hypothesis to be proven only as long as they cannot find any valid contradictory argument. They use evidence instead of purely mathematical models which can be changed at will by just changing one parameter. With the last sort of science you can create whatever outcome you want. (Read “The science delusion or “Science set free” by Rupert Sheldrake”

People’s habit of fearing death

Every generation has its version of doomsday, nothing new under the sky. But when this comes out of fundamentalist beliefs in simple causes, in the “climate” case the CO2, then it is time to rethink the story. Decisions are being made which are very likely to create real damage in the short term and for the people right now (as opposed to possible humans in decades or centuries from now),.

Fundamentalist progressives – progressive fundamentalsists?

The weirdest thing, in my eyes, is that the defenders of human made climate change believe to be progressive, at the forefront of society, while in fact they are mainstream. They have succeeded to instill their ideas everywhere and are dominating the discourse. Other voices are repressed, for instance by untruthful Wikipedia entries, which are full of not proven accusations and polemics, in which the described people have no voice at all. Scientists who try their best to give a bigger picture are insulted and accused of whatever seems to make the most effect in the eyes of the listeners.

In short: the previously liberal Germany has entered into the “politically correct” society, where people are not heard and they are fought against if they happen to speak against the ruling ideology. 

Repeating the errors of the past?

I am really wondering if we are not repeating the last century? Totalitarian societies seem to be the goal, everywhere. The idea of democracy is beautiful, its birth painful and long. And its delicate flower is very prone to be destroyed by people who are not yet ready to be responsible citizens, who need an authority to tell them what they should believe and think and do. Erich Fromm wrote a book about that in 1941, in the face of WWII. “The Fear of Freedom”

We seem to be in the same situation now, again, where people prefer to live in ideologies instead of being open themselves to reality, evidence and logical empathic thinking, free of falling into the trap of the triangle: victim – perpetrator – rescuer. The climate change warriors want to “save the world” by imposing their simple and limited ideas on people of the rest of the world who are less noisy and get cut off  when they dare to open the mouth. 

The fallacy of believing in simple solutions.

The world is far more complex than imposing CO2 taxes and everything will be fine. It will be problematic, it will increase the gap between rich and poor in the rich countries and it simply cannot be followed in developing countries if they don’t want to buy into their own suicide. 

So why should we throw away our living standards for an idea which by no means is proven to be true? People are told white lies, incomplete or manipulated research data, ideological interpretations and more, they are abused like the masses who wanted the “total war” 90 years ago. 

We humans are not able to think for ourselves when we are caught in fear. The climate change movement is spreading fear in an unbelievable way.

Green started with the desire to protect NATURE.

 Before all that, we tried to protect nature by the justified preoccupation of losing too many species. Now the mass murder of birds and the destruction of woods and beautiful landscapes are ignored when it comes to windmills. The solar panel fields are not only ugly, but they destroy huge areas of nature and the natural habitat of many animals.

Shouldn’t we begin to think that there is something not right here? 

Do you want to protect nature now? Or do you agree to destroy it now for a completely arbitrary and insecure scenario in the future?

CONCLUSION

Having said all that I want to underline that I don’t ignore that the climate is changing. Everything in life is changing all the time and it is useless to try to keep things as they are. I am not sure that CO2 is the culprit, there are scientists who proof that our globe is living in cycles of warm and cold and the previous warm periods were certainly not caused by cars and airplanes. 

I am for unbiased research which takes into account as many factors as possible, from sun and clouds to regional differences. (The Arctic had increased in ice for a few years when already everyone spoke about global warming. Maybe it is not global? A detailed reading of data HERE).

I am for looking at the methods how the research is done and how “truth” is constructed. And I am for radical consideration of the do-ability and the impact which the decisions will have on all areas of life, in Europe and on the planet.

Bjorn Lomborg has done an extensive study on what to do to make the world a better place. How much money spent can do how much good to people in the world. Infant nutrition is in the first places in huge positive correlation, climate investments – you probably didn’t know! – have a minus correlation. He has written detailed books (one here) and has given easily understandable talks (for instance this one). Why not get informed about that when you want to be helpful for the people on this planet?

The Troyan Horse is lurking everywhere behind the corner!

Last but not least: “Follow the money”! Who is earning on the climate change fear?  And who will be paying it – or better: is already paying it? As long as we do not consider the other side of the medal we are likely to make huge and maybe irreparable errors which will be load for the generations to come – other than CO2! 

The color code mentioned in this article indicate levels of development in SPIRAL DYNAMICS

Culture, Life on earth, Psychology and Spirituality, society

An inspiration to become public

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For some time I am attending the frequent Zoom meeting of a group called Global Challenges Collaboration.  Yesterday the topic “journaling” came up and how to create and maintain a blog.  Harry surprised me a little when he said that he puts everything in his blog, his journaling, to be able to remember later what was going on in his life. “Really”, I said, “also the very personal stuff?”. I myself saw writing a blogpost like a task which needs to be about a topic and somehow edited, some idea of how it needs to be etc.

So far it took me some time to write blog posts about topics which are interesting to me. Yes, I shared something about myself, but would I really write everything as I do in my private journal? There I often don’t write in a coherent way, impressions, feelings, insights, not necessarily developed to a point I want to make – because I might not want to make a point, I might not want to “teach” somebody, I might not want to deliver a strategy or advice or whatever.

“But who would want to read what my day is about, what goes through my mind, what insights I have, what learnings and what opinions?”, I asked back. Harry responded that personal stories are much more touching than constructed texts, and that those people would show up and read it who are attracted to it and can benefit from it. Well, yes, probably.

This opens a can of worms. Would you openly talk about experiences with people where you might come to interpretations not completely favorable for that person? What if they read it? Wouldn’t it be better to address these things personally with the other instead of risking that he/she finds it in a public post? The feeling of shame comes up and of lacking integrity. What to do about that?

Well, this will be an adventure when I should decide to really do that! Fear comes up of being attacked publicly for saying what I say. But why is that so different from now? I already say a lot of things, here and in public videos of The Wisdom Factory, often I take a clear position on controversial topics like #metoo, gender, human development, psychology etc.

So what makes publishing a privat journal different? Only the fact that, while I am writing, I don’t have the awareness in the back of my head that I need to chose my words carefully for being appropriate for being read by anyone? I am exploring the answer to that. What do you think?

 
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Culture, development, Life on earth, Psychology and Spirituality, society

“Evil” or What is your shadow?

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I do think that I am a good person, friendly, kind, everything. I don’t want evil in the world and I am convinced that I never would be evil myself. – This is the way most of us think and believe about themselves, right? So why is there all this evil in the world? Or the precursors of evil, the things which just are not right, like poisoning the fields, the sea, even the inside of the earth by inserting fracking chemicals or nuclear waste. That’s not evil! We need to do something with that stuff and certainly we don’t want it in front of our houses. Far away we don’t need to be reminded about the evil consequences which they most likely will exhibit, sooner or later. Our thoughtlessness and inability to calculate and respect the consequences of our actions don’t seem evil right away, but they are, if you really think about it. We are all innocent evil doers and eager to forget about it: I don’t care, I will be dead anyways when the consequences will come forth!

The developmental story

There was a time where people were aware of their being part of the ecosystem and they recognized Nature, or God, or the Kosmos as superior to us and that we would be wise to collaborate with their rules instead of challenging them and trying to impose our own. This sort of morality was part of existence in tribal societies. Then again in traditional societies which used the word of their God to keep people in behaviors which were counterproductive to society and/or the world. The awakening of the ego had challenged the sense of belonging to the whole and of playing a natural part in it. The Ego had claimed its power to fight against reality in the way it wanted to, believing to be God itself. Despite of the partial truth in that idea, the resulting behavior was not sustainable. Hence the need for external authorities, a powerful  omnipotent God whose task it was to keep the destructive power of the Ego under control.

The role of religion

Whatever you want to say about religions, they succeeded quite well in guiding people’s behaviors towards the good and to have them recognize (and be punished for) the bad. We won’t discuss here the questionable development in power structures inside religions – their leaders were humans, after all, with a similar mindset of the rest of the world, but with the insight that something needed to be done to maintain “peace on earth”. It is no wonder that the power they needed to impose the obedience of certain “good” rules at the long run could transform in power abuse, but this is another topic.

From religion to mass destruction

Here I want to state that, in times where the following of rules was the normal way of human life, the damage which could be done by “immoral” people, those who didn’t obey the basic requirements of the distilled rules of “best” human behavior in a society, couldn’t do too much harm in comparison to today. Yes, groups of people fought each other, but they fought man to man, a somehow fair way to solve conflicts. With the invention of war technology, from firearms to all the range of destructive tools we possess today the picture has changed completely. The amount of evil a single person can cause upon millions of others is absolutely inconceivable if you really think about it. There is no fairness in any fight anymore, no possibility to resolve conflict on a human basis, when one person can kill huge amounts of people without even facing them, without even needing to meet their own inner knowing of “good and evil” which would mirror them back that it is not right what they are doing.

The predicament of the loss of morality

In times of developed technology with destructive potential and where everybody has the possibility to use them to a certain degree, the morality is badly needed which once was transmitted by traditional religions. But those rules of behavior have no traction on people anymore because of their connection with abused power. What a dilemma which can cause the extinction of humanity by humanity itself and its need to evolve.

When we don’t have external authorities anymore who tell us what is good and what is bad, we have several possibilities to respond.

  • There are those who believe that they have the authority and power to decide for themselves what they believe is good (for them, more than for everyone else and maybe to their detriment)
  • There are those who are deeply confused and helpless and are looking desperately for someone who tells them what is good and what is bad in order  to find orientation
  • There are those who go inside to find out what their innate intuition tells them about what is right and what is wrong

“I am my own authority” – the consequences

In the first case everything can go well if the individual is psychologically healthy and evaluates the consequences of their actions, so that what is good for themselves is also good for their families and wider community, up to humanity itself. If this attitude is adopted by an immature person, though,  who takes delight in dominating and, maybe, even in the suffering they can cause to others, then it is definitely a huge problem. These people easily collect those of the second category, the confused and helpless people and offer them a solution for their problems. The leaders know what is good or bad and the followers can give up and give over their personal responsibility to an entity outside themselves. As long as this entity was “God”, it was less likely to lead into disaster than when it is a psychologically distorted human being. Hitler was happy to have been able to mobilise a whole country for his evil ideas of total destruction. Without people who were desperately looking for a “God” to resolve their problems, he wouldn’t have been able to do what he did.

Why it is important to get acquainted with your shadow

The world today is full of potential little Hitlers, fighting each other in competition for followers. What can we do to not fall prey of these people and movements? The only solution, in my view, lies in point 3 above: Go inside yourself and discern good and evil in your own being. We can control only what we know. What lies outside of our awareness is automatically outside of our control. This is the answer to why so many ugly things happen in the world, why so many people cause suffering to others, often without even knowing about it.

How can we recognize our shadow material?

When we get angry about somebody or something and this anger keeps staying with us for a long time, this is a good indicator that, what we see in others, is what we don’t want to see in ourselves. The same is valid for other strong emotions, like deep sadness, exaggerated enthusiasm, fear and so on. We can start here and look inside ourselves to find those parts of us which mirror our emotions. We will find out that we are not as good and ethical as we believed before. Or better: yes, we are as good as ethical as we show to the world, when we have contacted our evil parts, examined them, acknowledged them and decided not to act on them.

The Million Dollar Question

How is it that “normal” people like me and you become mass torturers in a prison camp? What would you have done in WWII ? Would you have saved a jew in Germany while having a high probability to end up in a lager yourself? When you needed a job to feed your children and someone offered you work as a camp guard in Auschwitz, would you have taken it or risked to be stigmatised as a “friend of the jews” when you chose not to? How do you know that?

What we need to do if we want “peace on earth”

What we all need to do in these times of a missing common ethic: we need to understand and experience deeply in ourselves our human capacity for evil: when we tease an animal; when we  say a bad word to our spouse despite our knowledge how much it hurts her or him; when feel superior to those in need, like refugees and migrants which happen to ask something from you. So many scenarios where we can examine the parts in us which are inclined to draw benefit of the misfortune of others, our arrogance and false omnipotence which tempts us to abuse the power we have, the many ways where we delude ourselves to be someone who we are not.

Only with a radical look on ourselves. Only with getting to know ourselves very, very well, we have the chance to DECIDE which of our inner voices will speak and act in any given situation. Then we can be an example for others, like Ghandi or Nelson Mandela. Only then we can have a positive  influence on others and guide them in their struggle to orient themselves in this confusing world of individualism without a commonly accepted and transmitted morality or ethics for social behavior.

 

Culture, development, Interglobal, Life on earth, Psychology and Spirituality, society

More to Jeff Salzman’s analysis of Jordan Peterson

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After having listened to part 2 of Jeff Salzman’s analysis of Jordan Peterson I want to add some more considerations.

View my considerations to the first part here

Post-Modernism

Jeff, yes, it is true that Peterson considers that what he calls “Postmodernism” is a disaster unfolding and needs to be corrected. You remark that Jordan doesn’t recognize the good developments which came with postmodernism, like the increased sensitivity to previously neglected viewpoints and ways of being. I agree, BUT: Why do we think that our understanding of the word “postmodernism” is universally agreed upon? It might just be a clash of terminology which seems to create differences where they might not be. And he certainly appreciates what has developed in terms of increased sensitivity towards Being which we connect with the word Post-Modernism, too. He doesn’t connect those two things as we integralists do. Right or wrong? Is it really important how we name things?

The Power of Words

In fact, Peterson is VERY sensitive to words. So when one of the interviewers of the clip in this analysis mentions the word “white supremacy”, he finds Peterson in complete rejection to even consider it. What if the interviewer had used less ideological colored language? I am sure there could have been a conversation about the topic.

 

Jeff, you seem to agree with “white supremacy” as a fact in our history. I guess you mean that our story unfolded as cultures in the West driven by people who happened to be white in skin color. This is no justification for agreeing with that term as it is loaded with presuppositions like: “white people are bad, they hold power and have created this horrible culture where everybody else is suppressed. They do bad things because they are white, while all others are better and need to be superior to them”. So if you use these words then you buy into the ideological game which in itself is deeply racist. Instead of helping to overcome racism, these terms and talking about them in the leftist way is CREATING a new racism and, at the end, deepening the one we have been overcoming as a society in a possible backlash.

The Danger of Backlash

Same thing with #Metoo. Starting out as a good thing it is in huge danger to play against women instead of helping them to find their place in public. The human psyche works still in the “old” ways, despite of all the beautiful developmental steps which we have done as humanity. Not even in “Integral” we are fully aware of our underlying psychological structures and drives which lead our decisions in life, every moment. I have mentioned that before: we still don’t know the waters in which we are swimming in terms of our individual conditioning, let alone of those on the humanity level.

 

Here I want to address what you said about us being in a different level of development today than we were at the beginning of the last century. This is true to a certain degree, but there is no evidence that we could not fall back into totalitarianism, into hate and wars with the blink of the eye. What makes you so confident that that can not happen? The totalitarian explosions on both sides, right AND left, are already spreading hate speech (although the leftist project the ”Hate Speech” on people they hate themselves). Strange that left extremism and violence is tolerated by us “developed” people to a far bigger degree than right extremism!

 

So when you say that Postmodernism is just a step in human development – which it is – that doesn’t mean that we should overlook the real danger which comes from there for our freedoms and democratic cultures. We shouldn’t excuse it as young people’s follies when they violently hinder people from speaking and build barriers. This happened in the 60ies and has brought us – at least in Germany – the beginning of restrictions in personal freedom in order to handle those who had become ideological terrorists.

Compelled Speech and intollerance

It is one thing if people ask you to do something which you don’t want to do and if you are compelled to do that by the reinforcement by laws. Peterson points out clearly that the changes in Canadian law can easily be used against those people who now seem to be the beneficiaries. When there is written in law that “biological gender, gender expression, sexual proclivity and choice” etc. are independent factors and vary at will. That would mean for instance that preferring men as sexual partners as a man is just a personal choice which could be different tomorrow. And if being gay legally is not bound to what you feel to be your deepest inner feeling of identity, everyone in power can just ask you to change and become bi-sexual or whatever. This is the real danger: who is interpreting these laws have the power over you?

 

So it is better not to write laws like that. The German disaster began with laws about how people should be or not be and how they should behave and speak. We don’t know how many people have survived when they refused to say “Heil Hitler”, not many, probably. And as I pointed out in part one: people who expressed their personality in terms of their ideas, of their skin color, their religion and their state of mental health could be attacked by any means, even with physical violence, without being protected by fellow citizens or the state powers. 

I was strongly reminded of that when listening to the debate at Queen’s  where protesters banged violently on the windows of the beautiful university hall for 2 hours and even breaking them. Who gives them the right to break objects which they don’t own and to tyrannise 900 people without being stopped by the forces of order? Only because they are lefties they can use violence against non-violent others while pretending to fight the violence of the far right? What a strange world we seem to live in today where tolerance is requested by those being themselves totally intolerant!

The center of gravity 

Another thing I want to bring up which seems crucial to me: Peterson, in my opinion, is not centered in traditionalism as you say. Yes, he helps people to develop healthy ways of living with other people, especially by guiding them to a healthy Blue which had been rejected as the basis of children’s education from the 70ies on and therefore has left a void in almost all of us who are living in the Western world now.

 

Peterson is a psychologist and he sees people with the eyes of someone who has deeply looked into the human soul and has understood where the lacks and needs reside. As I said before: only because we go through the stages of development a la Spiral Dynamics in a relatively short time, our souls have a different timing and hang behind, far more than we want to admit. As humanity we are still struggling with Blue – and surprisingly not only when struggling up from Red, but also when we somehow are already in those “higher levels”. We have all the voices struggling within us which were formed by both personal and collective history and experience.

 

Although we might believe to be an integrated person, we are not really. Maybe we have learned to navigate the inner competing voices, but we are far from not needing guidelines of how to live our lives in an ever more deep and comprehensive manner. With other words: we need meaning, we need religion in all stages of our development, we are not “above” religion as you, Jeff, mentioned. We might be above the past religious dogma, christian, jewish, islam or buddhist – and that would be a good idea to weed out the culture and time dependent components of those religions. But we need stories to guide our own lives wherever on the spiral we are.

The Biblical Lectures 

Here the Biblical Lectures of Jordan Peterson come in. In my eyes he is not promoting Christianity, or any other religion, as the solution for our problems. He is digging out the wisdom of these ancient stories from a psychological point of view. He recognizes in those stories the ancient predicaments of humans living their lives on this planet. And he points out that we, as humanity, are still confronted with exactly the same problems, sometimes in different disguises. That’s why listening to the lectures can help you appreciate the attempt of Christianity to help people finding meaning and inspiration in the midst of chaos and, yes, suffering.

We modern people, even integralists, have the tendency to throw the baby out with the bathwater, especially when addressing those old fashioned topics like religion which we believe to have overcome long time ago and substitute it by calling it “spirituality”. And we confuse the institution of any church with the content of the message. Dismissing Christianity which has driven our Western culture to the point where we are now, we dismiss ourselves as human beings who live, consciously or not, as the momentaneous last piece of a long chain of collective experience. We are grounded in our culture – as well as anybody else is in their culture – and we need to take good care of it, heal it where it is necessary but not allow that it gets dumped like a worthless sack of trash.

 

The stories which Jordan opens up to us with his psychological interpretation are deeply exposing human experience and that’s why so many people have these moments of recognition when they hear his explainations. It is this “AHA” when you feel you had already known all that, somehow, and now someone gives words to it so that you can understand it better. This is the same sort of recognition that some people experience when coming in contact with Integral Theory. Both “interpretations” of the world reveal a deeper truth which we humans recognise in us, probably due to our collective memory of which we are not aware most of the time – until someone comes along to open our eyes to it again. But this time it is not a memory of understanding, but a memory of experience.

Conclusion

Why do so few people understand Psychology? – Ignorance can create  disasters. How?

For instance: “Anti bias training” is now introduced and requested, by people who are super biased  themselves in a very restricted way and have no idea that “Bias” ist not equal to “bad”. Thank God we have certain biases! For instance for keeping save our children as opposed to mosquito populations.

There are psychological rules: For instance:  pressure imposed on us will create resistance which can be met either by fight, flight or freeze. In East Germany the pressure to not say or do certain things didn’t eradicate people’s thoughts and desire for freedom. So strange that these latest super leftist practices are proposed in the name of FREEDOM although it is common psychological knowledge that they lead into suppression and tyranny.

Peterson is doing great work of letting people know about their own psychology. He is not a philosopher, of which we already have more than enough. He knows the human psyche and he is a milestone on the way of people to finally get to know themselves a little better – especially before they come out with huge claims which contradict the human psyche and cannot but lead into  huge problems. With his help we might be able to avoid  in the future some of the disasters of today.

Jordan Peterson’s new book which arouses so much public recognition:12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos

Culture, Interglobal, Life on earth, Psychology and Spirituality, society

Jeff Salzman about Jordan Peterson – some considerations

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This is an open letter to Jeff Salzman as a response to his analysis of Jordan Peterson on video at Integral Life

Hi Jeff,
We just listened to your first part on Jordan Peterson and I would like to chime in with a few thoughts.

Peterson-on-integral-life
Peterson-on-integral-life

First of all: I am happy that you took my suggestion of last summer to have a look into his work and I am very thankful that you talk about him and his appearance in public. It is really important to get him out of the corner of a “alt-right” person by which he is defamed sometimes.

Second of all: We have watched ALL his lectures on Personality, “Maps of Meaning” and the psychological interpretation of religious stories, and most of the interviews he has given. From there I want to add something to what you say.

Third of all: I truly do believe that Jordan is a thinker on the integral level and that he would hugely benefit of knowing the integral map. I actually have already written an email to him about that (when a distinction by the 4 quadrants would have resolved the seeming conflict in a conversation) and suggested a conversation with a Wilberian integral thinker, but I didn’t get any answer. I certainly understand that, as he has undergone a huge journey into visibility (and fan post) since we discovered him in October 16, a month after he did the videos you were talking about (which, btw, were NOT lectures, but just his private considerations which he recorded one night when he couldn’t sleep because of these thoughts, as he once said).

Jordan is well at home in Blue, Orange AND Green

Jordan was involved in environmentalist tasks for a while and he is well aware of the need of healthy green, but, as you said, he is not aware that this is the positive part of green. He concentrates on the pathologies and I am really glad that he does. As you might know, his main research interest was why these horrible things in Europe could happen in the last century, and propelled speech and the institutionalized equality of outcome were the main components which have led to the disaster. I am very grateful that he is pointing out this huge danger to the public and that he warns of the consequences of having these things written into law and that “special cases” can even be subtracted from the “normal” law system and given over to tribunals, as it is already written into law in Canada.

People might think that it is Jordan’s personal inclination to not use these “damn pronouns”, but it is much more than that! It is not just a personal choice, but the attempt to prevent the worst!

Stop it before it is too late!

I was grown in post-war Germany and my home town Coburg was the first which, already in 1926 or so, had a Nazi administration. Already hoards of loud young man could attack, verbally and even physically, the people they didn’t like without sanction and without many citizens standing up for freedom and personal rights of the attacked (mainly Jews, but not only, as every friend of the Jews was put into the same identity group open to be mistreated by people who had drunk Nazi ideology).

Similar things are happening now! 

I think you shouldn’t take it too lightly and really see the enormous consequences of the present tendencies to accommodate extremist ideology and to accept the fear and cowardice of most of the people who “hope for the best” but are enabling the rise of totalitarian power structures led by power driven individuals who have no respect for others.They are mainly pathological red masked as green.

Green has no idea about evil and dwells too much in “positivity”, blind to everything which doesn’t fit into the utopian picture. My awakening out of my green dreams of a good and benevolent world and people during the last 2 years where really very deeply devastating and freeing at the same time. It started before I knew Peterson, but he helped me to understand my illusions and why they had to crash in order for me to grow. It is a much deeper shadow work than I had done during the past 20 years because it was not only my personal shadow which needed to be addressed but our collective shadow as humans in this world.

You criticize Peterson’s good vs. evil position. I think he really is following the integral claim about meeting the people where they are. He is speaking to people from Blue to Green and all these stages definitely live in this polarity of knowing what is good and bad, according to their world view. So I think he is doing fine with simplifying his message into words and images which people can understand easily. I do think that he is very masterful in bringing the points across without too many “building up” explanations which intend to include everything and only after a long time come to the point – something I always get completely tired of when listening to Ken.

Spirituality: Jordan reports a few times that he has experienced deep spiritual openings that have made him understand the other reality, let’s say. His mission is to help people to live their lives better in this material reality, he is not interested in teaching them spirituality or religion.

Listening to his biblical lectures: I have understood that the Bible is not about religion although it has served to support Christianity. At that time people have interpreted it in a way that served them to construct a belief system and the Church. But because of that, it would be very shortsighted to dismiss it as “old and inadequate” for our times. When I was 14 and was “confirmed” in the Lutheran church, I decided that this is “not for me” and dismissed everything connected with the Bible, until last year, when I heard Jordan extrapolating the meaning of these stories in such a way that I could deeply relate to them and I felt reconciled with Christianity – although I still think that it is obsolete as an institution, but not as a philosophy and way of life.

I understand now that the Bible is a collection of stories which were able to transmit deep human truths in pictures, things which we now can name in psychology, biology, sociology etc., but for which were no direct words then.

Jordan explains that art and music, and especially stories being told, conceive the emerging truth long before it is visible, and they tell the story of humanity. He makes a clear case that contemporary stories and films like Harry Potter or Pinocchio have the very same function as the Bible: acting out and making visible archetypical human experience and wisdom. So why dismiss biblical stories while watching films? You love the Matrix. Same function!

Long story short: Peterson was as important for me, my insights and my development, as was Wilber more than 20 years ago. I am very grateful for that. And I am glad that he slowly is integrated in the “integral community” as someone to take into consideration. I would love to see a conversation between you, Jordan and Eugene Pustoshkin (as he is also a psychologist) and I wonder if you and Integral Life could arrange that for the fall, when all this excitement about the book has calmed down a little?

Btw: his new book is only new in terms of publication which happened this winter, mainly by chance. He said that it was distilled from answers he had given on Quora many years ago and that he was putting it into a book for the past 3 or 4 years. Serendipity!

12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos

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