Sunday, February 19, 2017

Einstellung, Gender, and Sin

Please note:

This essay is NOT meant to be the definitive guide on gender and sin. These are my views as of now. I have NOT researched the topic of consciousness a great deal, and it's my fear that perhaps I may sow the worst seeds ever with this essay because perhaps I am dead wrong or worse-- partially wrong leading people to believe this is all good material but it's actually corrupted and will take a long time to figure out..

I also feel this essay is an important voice on some of the worst covered topics I know of... gender and sin.

TAKE THIS WITH A GRAIN OF SALT.
BE MINDFUL OF WHO YOU GIVE THIS INFORMATION TO.
ONE OR MORE THINGS COULD BE INCORRECT

Perhaps one of the most annoying things I find about a lot of educated and self educated people here in the United States is an adherence to the metaphysics established in the Jewish traditions. Namely, the ideas that sex is bad, there is a dark force in the universe being pushed by "the devil" and other very fundamental aspects to reality and consciousness.

There isn't a very good reason to follow this line of thought for many people that do. Many times, habits are formed by old ways of thinking. A psychological "groove" can be established and concepts which were once assumptions or simply opinions of others become used fairly often in the evaluation of how to proceed with life.

My sister for example was raised in a Hindu family, but due to being brought up in the US, once I was conversing with her about gender and I noticed she had low opinions about India. I pressed the topic and she referred to dance songs in Bollywood movies (often referred to as "item numbers") as disgusting. I asked why, I didn't have that opinion at all. I thought those songs were catchy, and the dancers were bright, happy, and attractive. There was nothing morally wrong about it to me. Women are beautiful, and people like to see them dance. Men also dance in Bollywood movies but obviously people pay more attention to female dancing in the same way that most people pay more attention to the bride than the groom at a wedding. One could argue that item numbers objectify women but the truth is simply that 

1) Pretty women are great for movies
2) Consumers like dancing, and releasing an album with your movie is lucrative
3) Films (in general) don't claim to have moral authority

O snap
Watch it or don't watch it, it's a phenomena of life and the passions evoked by these songs are considered more valuable by humans than the potential for degradation of some women by some men. I think it's great that a society appreciates and celebrates the beauty of the divine feminine.

It turned out that simply by being in a culture dominated by Christian thought, my sister (despite being an atheistic liberal feminist) had very conservative views about how women should be portrayed in films. Where did the idea that sex was bad come from then? 

Simply by being in a Christian culture. Without realizing it, she had integrated a view of sexuality  that as a feminist, she supposedly hated. 

"Those objectifying anti-woman Indians like item numbers and ideally, one should not be like that."

"Women should be free to do as they please, religious patriarchy represses women"

"Christianity is bad for opposing abortion and saying women should repress sexuality"

Rinse and repeat.

In Hindu culture, pleasure is considered to be one of the 4 main duties in life. If you aren't taking pleasure seriously, you are doing Hinduism wrong but possibly also life itself.

Obviously, people pride themselves in being free-thinking and enlightened but to be caught in the spider web of assumptions of the very forces one is trying to oppose is to be wasting time. This person cannot be a free thinker-- they aren't reflective enough to challenge why they think that way and explore other more baroque possibilities.

This phenomena has been observed in the field of science many times. Thinkers who are set in their ways often can't comprehend new approaches and progress can be stalled by these people. This phenomena is referred to as einstellung, a German word which means "mindset".

Part of the problem with Christian einstellung is that one tends to view the world in good vs. evil.

"There are good people and bad people. Everything will be better when X defeat Y"

To be fair, I think morals definitely exist. There are times when one may be forced to make a trolley problem choice

"Do I pull the lever and kill one person to save four?"

These problems are definitely hazy to say the least but I'm not concerned with them in this essay, I only care about what we know.

We know that evil does happen because of scarcity sometimes. The great thing about scarcity problems is that they're easy to fix. If people are waging war over water rights, all we have to do is build a well, water tower, or provide easier access some other way. We simply focus on creating instead of criticizing.

Problems in consciousness are much more difficult. Sometimes evil could happen because of a scarcity of love or attention. If Bill Clinton were a better husband for Hillary, would she have become a pedophile? If Bill Clinton's mom were better to him, would he become a playboy? On and on it goes.

"God does not flourish where souls are starved." - Carl G Jung

It seems today like someone just has to end up with the short end of the stick.. or put another way, someone has to be dominated, or be the loser. For there to be a good guy, someone has to be the bad guy.

Think a few steps ahead then.

The good guy simply looks like the good guy. In reality, he is indulging on dominating the bad person-- who we can tell with emotional intelligence that they are probably simply a victim of circumstance.

This says nothing about self defense. Every child involved in Pizzagate has the right to kill their kidnappers. (Let's stick to discussing adult morality though... perhaps I am wrong)The point is merely that we should try to understand what happened to Hillary to keep this ordeal from happening again. As good stewards of the earth, it behooves us to understand what is happening behind the veil.

It is quite likely in my humble opinion that Hillary sees herself as a Jesus figure. She has taken on "sin" or "negativity" from others and held it in rather than pass it on-- until she couldn't and became a pedophile. Perhaps this was an acceptable price to her so that the universe could see her visions-- in which case now what was once an obvious case of evil has become a trolley problem.

But what is sin? What is negativity? Where did it come from? Can we deal with it? Can we eliminate it from being passed around compulsively? It's quite possible that the people who appear good are actually bad and the people who appear bad are actually martyrs for the grand drama!

"All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts..."
 - William Shakespeare

 Let's continue with the thought for a bit that perhaps Hillary was trying to be an occult Jesus. 

 - Did it work? Not really. She was roundly defeated, exposed, and now there are children everywhere traumatized, further contributing to the evil in the world. Bad karma marches forth. She is quite likely neutral to the eyes of God, like most people. 

Is there a way to escape this insubstantiality? Are we nothing but dust in the wind? Is the end of the world prewritten-- will it happen when we figure out there's no point in trying?

HA!

I will challenge you dear reader to not give in to einstellung. 

Perhaps what we need is a new paradigm or mindset?

"I mean, I don’t know, uh, how Buddhism handles this, my- I, I, um, I grant you all a strong possibility of existing, but I’m not nearly as sure about you as I am about me. [audience laughs] And, I don’t think any of you should be any sure- more sure of the rest of us than yourself. I mean, the world could be anything, you know? It could be a solid state matrix of some sort. It could be an illusion. It could be a dream. I mean, it really could be a dream …"
- Terence Mckenna, 
The World Could Be Anything 

Terence Mckenna strikes again!
Perhaps if we're tired of William Shakespeare's paradigm of the divine play, we could try a new one. No harm in it.. it's just that insubstantiality can get tiresome, like building sand castles can eventually.

Here is one I thought of-- it's a blend of Hinduism and Christianity.

- The devil is not actually evil. He's simply another in God's realm, who happens to disagree with God.
- God favors mind and discipline, the devil favors heart and mercy. In between the two lies the golden mean. (Have you ever wondered with the conservatives call liberals hedonists?)
- What we refer to as the will to dominate or sin is actually masculinity. Virtue and life supporting desires are femininity.
How God feels sometimes
- There is nothing wrong with masculinity, it's the spice that keeps us from becoming deterministic female robots building the tower of Babel for no reason.
- When you desire to sin, you simply disagree and want to assert your authenticity. You know others won't like it. That's why they call it sin.
- It's OK to not be liked or disagree with everyone. When you come to agreement on your own free will, that will provide others with meaning-- the holy grail of life. There is no life with no purpose.
- Everyone is somewhat masculine and somewhat feminine.

The warning at the top of my page was mostly because of the point that negativity is masculinity. I am open to the possibility that I could be dead wrong and I've set people on a path of spiritual defeat or perhaps something even worse. That wasn't my intention. My one goal is to get you out of einstellung (even as it relates to occult matters) and set you on your way with free will.

In the paradigm I have as of now, this means that men quite frankly need to get tough and handle shit from others. In modern times (especially because of the establishment views in the field of psychology), we are told not to hit kids, men should cry it out frequently and talk about their feelings, and people should always be authentic about how they really feel.

No.

Men need to get tough. Sometimes, a woman may just kick you in the chest for no reason. A boy cries, but a man thanks that woman for choosing someone tough for her anger rather than a weaker innocent. The negativity she gave him helps him become a better man. He endures her outburst and doesn't retaliate-- verbally or in any other way. He tells himself "I'm tough", dusts himself and asks what's wrong.

This doesn't mean men should be the world's new occult Jesus figures, now that Hillary is used up. Everyone has limits and outbursts or impulsive behavior become more and more likely as more negativity comes in. This means that a man should keep his masculinity to himself as long as he can, and that opportune moments come (practically inevitably in our world...) to stand up for himself and others. A man may even be greedy for masculinity and appease corrupt figures but a confrontation will be necessary when someone knowingly is causing destruction to the objective development of humanity. A controlled confrontation in which only issues are discussed and negativity is thrown back if it feels like too much is ideal. The wrong must submit to truth. Obviously women can do the same as well, however appropriate they judge for themselves. Many people may be going through their whole lives never realizing negativity is the answer to their problems of focus and determination. Obviously, the role of feminine love, care and guidance can't be understated for a highly masculine person.

In this paradigm, we don't have a need for any occult Jesus figure-- we simply have people creating within a system of liberty and harmony. We can go as far as we like with meaning and love, and we are not living in an insubstantial play. Try it out! Ask an angry person to slap you or take their anger out on you instead of some innocent person if that's their only choice (We do love sweet justice, so we have to use negativity wisely in this paradigm). 

I personally did this within my family. I took their negativity, they were grateful for it, and now I use this masculinity for my advantages.

2 comments:

  1. Rahul, it is nice to read something written by a young person that is philosophical and thoughtful. My understanding of Vedic philosophy is that the material world is a place where the soul is covered by the illusory energy, Maya. It is that illusion that makes people believe, really believe what is false and forget who they really are. The soul goes through lifetime after lifetime until ready to seek the Truth, God.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Rahul, it is nice to read something written by a young person that is philosophical and thoughtful. My understanding of Vedic philosophy is that the material world is a place where the soul is covered by the illusory energy, Maya. It is that illusion that makes people believe, really believe what is false and forget who they really are. The soul goes through lifetime after lifetime until ready to seek the Truth, God.

    ReplyDelete