- A recent article, "Happiness Consultants Won't Stop
A Depression" by Chris Hedges really hit home for me.
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- I live with a man who wants to believe that if you put
a "positive" spin on something, that something will magically
become truly positive.
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- This sort of crazy culturally induced wishful, magical,
narcissistic, childish, cowardly thinking and intellectual, psychological
& spiritual laziness makes me absolutely insane.
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- Hey it's self-benefiting reciprocity all over again
meaning that I won't call you on your lies if you won't call me on
mine.
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- I address this dangerous thinking in my 4 part, 3 12
hour presentation, as well as the causal factors of this death dealing
mindset. I'm not kidding. Check it out and please, watch the presentation.
I promise you that you won't be sorry or maybe you will, but at least
you won't be quite so asleep anymore.
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- Whom do you think this sort of lying-dog craziness benefits?
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- When I was doing some research on depression in the US
recently, I noticed at the right side of the Google results page (where
they put links to stuff people want to sell you), all sorts of links to
"happiness" sites. Wow. It's everywhere. And if you want to investigate
something truly relevant, you will be bombarded with stuff that will try
to talk you into going into a different direction altogether.
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- I was reminded of the shockingly awful "The Secret"
that was all the rage a while back. What terrible narcissism and
a cunning effort to keep our populace brain dead and deluded.
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- There are many well intentioned but misguided people
who think that they are going to live in some nirvana with lush gardens
and glorious community. We can and must work and pray that future generations
will inhabit such places, but that way of being is far, far off into the
future, if at all. Our culture has no earthly idea how to live in true
community.
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- This is due, in part, to the fact that our society is
founded upon a Puritanical mindset, which is hierarchical, controlling,
and ultimately pathological. James Morone, in his book, Hellfire Nation
suggested that opposing trends within Puritanism such as the desire to
create a just society, opposed by its moral zeal in attempting to bring
about that just society, often created and continues to create paranoia
and intolerance of other viewpoints. This is at the core of America's current
political and social realities.
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- All hierarchical and controlling systems fear difference
because difference, interestingly, begets freedom, and difference, paradoxically,
is one of the key elements of union. (The word paradox comes from two Greek
words para and doxos para meaning around and doxos meaning
glory.) Clarity and union are the greatest threats to a dominating psychopathic
worldview and, interestingly, are also the harbingers of real joy.
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- Of course, laughter, genuine happiness, and joy are good
for the body, mind, and soul IF they are authentic and spontaneous
NOT if they are manufactured and fake.
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- If we all insisted on being "happy" all the
time, no matter what our souls and reality were trying to tell us, we would
get well GOSH we would get what we have gotten
a city/town and a nation and a world and a human species that is seriously
dysfunctional and in dire straits because we are simply asleep to the underlying
psychopathological truths that rule the planet today and that have for
centuries.
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- Maybe we should try seeing if we still have a pulse
and a brain and a soul if we can sit still with truth for just
a little bit.
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- As time goes on, we are going to need every human being
who knows how to grieve, how to rant, how to feel sick at heart how
to be REAL how to minister to those who are new at this game called
"reality" and new at feeling authentic feelings. Once we surrender
to what is real, we just might have the opportunity to feel moments of
genuine joy.
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- Who's with me?
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- Martha Ireland is an entrepreneur, author, poet, educator,
public speaker, organizational and social theorist, human performance and
business consultant, futurist, and social architect. She lives in the Pacific
Northwest.
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