Emotionalism and The Good ol’ Days

This article is in response to a submission by a reader.

The subject expressed nostalgia for the “good old days.” In my opinion, they exposed the negative pole of the Emotional Center, sentimentality about the a past that people espouse and seem to yearn for.

This kind of yearning I believe, is the response to the overwhelm most people feel in regards to the complexity and intensity of the modern era. And a large number oversimplify the past and have nostalgia for a Norman Rockwell kind of illusion that is intellectually manageable and far less fearful.

Living in the country is hard work! Sometimes, as you noted, backbreaking work! I lived on the Big Island of Hawaii and built rock walls @ 50! I got in shape by sweating and lifting stones in the hot sun. I guess Hawaii was the beauty and I was the beast. Forget gyms, get out doors and work, you’ll get in shape. But I digress.

I too, like your friends, am trying to live less grid-dependant and reduce my “footprint” on the Earth. To do so, I am planting an orchard and building a garden. However, in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, where I now live, the soils are of minimal quality and the growing season only about 5-6 months. Water is expensive. These are factors that many of us have become blind to because of the luxury of modern conveniences and the fact that most of us are no longer agrarian. Regardless of Soul Age or Role this is vital survival learning that we no longer focus upon because of our technological separation from the source of our food.

That being said, this era is a struggle for Power between Soul Ages. The paradigm of rugged individualism, dominance hierarchies, status quo, and control over resources of the Young Soul mentality, is in a contest with the quest for advancement, more reasonable and practical distribution of resources, and empowerment of diverse individual expressions in collaboration as is the hope of the Mature Soul Paradigm. Both coincide and advance concurrently. Though I see the possibility of our world (humankind), in contrast to planet Earth herself, coming to an end if we fail in our endeavors to tame our Chief Features, I am hopeful that as parasitic institutions collapse and die( like the corporate structure for instance), we will once again emerge and reform. This time, hopefully, with greater respect for each other and focused symbiosis with the living environment. But time will tell.

One other note about the bubbling fear expressed as anger and even more malignantly, as hate; Baby, Young and even some Mature souls actually conceive of freedom as the right to bear arms! Oy! Guns are a tool of fear. Period! The greater emphasis on arms is yet another expression of the fear undercurrent, but largely undefined or undifferentiated by many because of the allegiance to the “MIND as superior” principle. Thus simplest dogma’s combat complex explanations and analysis, while both skirt the issue “we are all afraid!” “If we can just reason with them, or prove them wrong, then….” Ah, how I wished history and the human animal worked that way. We will all have to confront some fear in each other and ourselves to make the shift.

A treatise of my work is simply: Like it or not, Believe it or not, Emotions drive everything! Much of your post is filled with examples of your own (and validly applied) emotions, in addition to citing other examples where (I call the Preservatives – just in it for themselves), are acting with such emotional irrationality that the only cure is to openly and loudly acknowledge their fears. We don’t have to agree with them. In fact, I think both average liberals and average conservative folk are all feeling the fear and imbalance and are reacting to the lies offered by the powers that be. The only difference is the WAY each group is choosing to respond to them. Hence, for conservatives, it is those “good old days”.

I know I don’t want to regress to no or limited electricity. Or no hot showers. Or an absence of effective antibiotics. Or our inability to control destructive organisms. At the same time, there are many more sustainable but less capitalistically profitable ways to achieve all of these things.

Talking about fear in general, is abstract. Addressing the physical plane tenants upon which we attach those fears is where the conversation needs to happen.. The non-wealthy or the 95% of the population who has only limited means, must be addressed and assuaged in real terms. That is the next discussion to have. What are the tangible ways to address the instinctive needs that are boiling below the collective angst. Get people on these needs, assure them by action that you too are working toward the same ends, and the Rusch Limberger’s and Glenn Bunks of the world will drown in their own manure.

Let’s start the “Drown in Dogma” Crusade! J