Allan G. Hunter's Blog, page 77

Murdoch and The Riots

Perhaps it's a stretch, but think about this: The News of The World spent 40 years denigrating and begriming every celebrity and public figure - especially the Royals. Now it comes out that they illegally hacked into phones, and were aided and abetted by the Metropolitan Police, quietly sanctioned by ministers and Prime Ministers, including this one. The Metropolitan police, notice.  The same people who fired the shots that sparked off the riots.

Corruption at every level, and a war that was widely seen as being merely for the benefit of the wealthy. A volatile brew.

If we are to look at the way parts of society slipped into anarchy we cannot ignore the media's role. And that includes Murdoch's best selling papers, which outsold every other half-way respectable newspaper.  For forty years.

Thus are moral codes eroded.

England's on fire

My old home country is, truly, on fire, as gangs of rioters (better named as looters) roam to wherever the overstretched police are not, and smash their way into shops which they later torch.

Think of it as a crowd heading to your local Mall, driving a stolen car through the doors, and then helping themselves.

So far only one person has been killed, the person who resisted arrest and sparked the whole thing. So this is not about killing; this is about people who don't have what they feel they ought to have.  This is about the under-privileged.  This is about the poor and the hopeless, in every class and at any educational level.

I'm not condoning anything. But then, in their shoes and under slightly different circumstances, I just might, perhaps, have been driven to do the same thing…..

But it makes me weep, all the same.

Staying Positive. Sometimes it's not that easy.

It's easy to stay positive when things go well.  But when things don't go well it can be a dismally hard grind. Of course, we're supposed to say, "Oh, good.  Here's an opportunity to deepen my awareness and stay positive". Those words don't always work, though. I can't always get there in one bound. I'm supposed to be able to access that feeling right away, yes?

So, what are we to do to stay positive?

I find only one thing works: slow down. Breathe, look around, and notice that the world is still there, still that wonderful mix of ordinary, tawdry, visionary beauty it always was. Slow way, way down. Even the worst day on Earth is still better than no day at all — and believe me, most of what we go through is not even close to being the worst day on Earth.

Inevitably this makes me feel grateful.  And that's when my mind and my heart change and become positive again. Slow down. I can get there. Then the rest follows.

Deserving and Getting

Most of us pine for good things and good people in our lives.  We wonder why we don't have them, and envy those who seem to be better placed than we are. Yet the problem is that although we want these things most of us don't believe we deserve them.

That's like pressing your nose up against the baker's window, salivating at the breads and pastries, and yet refusing to walk in and open our wallets, even though you have the money.

You can get what you want and need. But first you have to believe you deserve those things and then you have to invest in that course of action.

No one's going to do it for you.

Let it come at its own pace

Yes, I know.  But I'm sometimes impatient and I want to get things done and so I try to force things along. Once again I re-discover that things happen at their own rate, and attempting to force anything is just going to lead to problems.  After all, why should it go at your or my pace? That's the ego trying to order the universe around.

With my writing, too.  For a long while now I've been stuck, trying to pull some threads together.  And then, today, the sun broke through and I knew what I had to do. All that time I was afraid I was wasting time, all I was doing was stopping myself listening to the real message that wanted to get me to shut up for long enough so it could make itself heard.

Thank goodness it did.

Kierkegaard and Us

In 1834 Soren Kierkegaard looked at all the wonderful labor saving devices of his age, and saw that life was becoming easy for most people. Nearly 200 years later we may feel that he was a little optimistic, but he had a point. And yet, Kierkegaard's response was that we need some things to be difficult so that we can stay in touch with the important issues of our lives. If we expect everything to be easy we'll lose sight of some important truths.

And what are these truths? First and foremost is that we have to find our own truths, and do so with integrity.

Why does this matter?  Today, many people, used to a life of comparative ease, will accept any old 'truth' that wafts their way. Any belief will do. And if it has a sugar-coat, all the better.

Dealing with life requires some real fortitude. Perhaps it's time to accept that some aspects of life were not meant to be easy.

The Debt Ceiling Fracas — and Synchronicity

I know - you've probably heard enough about this.

But what if we looked at this dreadful us-against-them entrenchment on both sides as a flagrant example of politicians refusing to accept a synchronous opportunity? What if Capitol Hill were to sit up and say, "Oh, I guess it really is time to do things differently. All the signs point to it.  Perhaps we should think again?"

But no.  We seem to need to learn the hard way. Harder for the poor, of course, than for the rich.

Political egos cannot be shaken, can they? And we need to learn from this, because we all have egos, and we all have a desire to be right rather than, say, happy. Old, very old stuff.

Norway

Thinking about the shootings and bombing in Norway I couldn't help noticing that 150,000 people took part in the quiet, respectful, sad "Rose March" yesterday.  No rioting.  No burning of cars or foreign flags. No political posturing or calls for reprisals.

Then a friend of mine posted this on Facebook:

Aina Bjornstad

G.W. Bush after 9/11: "We're gonna hunt you down." Stoltenberg after 22/7: "We will retaliate with more democracy and humanity".

We can learn a great deal from Norway, if we choose to.

Harry Potter and the Horcrux, and you.

As we recall, a horcrux is formed when someone kills someone else, and part of the killer's soul is split off, taking up residence in a convenient object.

It's elegant - since any killer has to deny his/her link to the rest of humanity in order to kill, and so has to lose part of whatever it is that makes us human.

Except — that we do it all the time, all of us, without killing. We attempt to console ourselves for our imperfect lives by buying things, and we put part of our immortal souls into that purchase. Ask anyone who has made a major purchase (car, home, expensive toy) that is an important part of their emotional life — something they'd weep if they lost, perhaps. That object has stolen part of your soul from you.

Loving an object too much will prevent you loving people.

So how will you deal with your horcruxes?

Archetypes and Synchronicity

The PCP conference session I ran yesterday was unexpectedly diverse (Poles, Italians, Czechs and Australians present, as well as some Americans) and was a real delight.  The concepts about archetypes went over well, or so people were generous enough to tell me.

The point is that I'd long wanted to present the material to mainstream psychologists of all kinds, but until recently this hadn't seemed possible.  Then along comes this conference, practically on my own doorstep, and they were looking for exactly this kind of cross-discipline view. Coincidence?  No; Synchronicity. When we work hard and keep our eyes open we discover, very often, that what we need is exactly before us, waiting for us to notice….

And –  I'm very grateful to have been included in the lively, friendly, stimulating discussions.