psychology – Page 76

Why Alt-Centrism is Necessarily A Spiritual Movement

Central to alt-centrist philosophy is that, although it’s possible to understand why people support the other political positions, all those positions are fundamentally misguided by ignorance of the true nature of reality. Because the Establishment positions, the alt-left and the alt-right are all materialist, alt-centrism must distinguish itself from materialism. As this essay will explain, alt-centrism is necessarily a spiritual movement.

Keeping in accordance with the Five Rejections, the alt-centrist believes both that: 1) the current political system has failed and is causing misery, and 2) that the most popular of the proposed solutions to the current system will also fail and will cause more misery.

The ultimate underlying reason for all of this is the process of spiritual degeneration that has taken place over many centuries. Since the destruction of the Eleusinian Mysteries by Christian zealots in the 4th century A.D., the Western World lost touch with the methodologies they once used to connect to God.

Over the past 1,600 years, we’ve gradually come to believe, more and more, that materialist solutions are the only possible ways to alleviate suffering. This morphine-over-meditation reasoning has made us creatures of sensory pleasure. We have abandoned the old ways that led to acceptance of the world and the truth that life is transitory suffering on the way to reunion with God, and replaced them with a child’s narrative that we will never suffer again if we have enough stuff.

This has led to great innovations for making war on our enemies, but has done little to alleviate the suffering of sentient beings. The hyperfocus on knowledge that would allow up to build better weapons or to manufacture greater volumes of widgets has allowed for great physical wealth and power, but it came at the price of a commensurate lack of focus on spiritual knowledge.

We no longer know the spiritual truths of existence. We no longer know that the material world is an illusion borne of God’s will to play, and we no longer know that consciousness survives the death of the physical body and comes thereafter to associate with other consciousnesses on a similar frequency. Because we now believe that this world is all there is, no concern is given to one’s situation after death. It’s simply assumed that, upon the death of one’s physical body, one simply stops existing.

Therefore, much like an 80-minute game of rugby, one must score as much as possible as quickly as possible before one’s time is up.

This leads to a scramble for material wealth and power. Because spiritual knowledge and wealth is considered to have no value, the order of the day is to accumulate as many resources as possible. In New Zealand, and many other places, this has taken its most obscene form in the obsession with rent-seeking. The praised man is not one who has found peace and set his heart to order; the praised man is the billionaire.

The ultimate materialist dream is to own a large amount of property, because then rent can be charged. With enough property, it’s possible to charge enough rent to maintain a lifestyle without doing any work. It might sound incredible, but the popular model of success in our society is someone who has become the largest parasite they could manage to be.

In our severely degraded culture, the man who absorbs wealth from the wider system without working for it is lauded and envied.

The problem exacerbates when crude displays of success at resource accumulation is the only way to attract women. In a degraded age, women are not able to perceive or value higher qualities in men, so they become attracted to superficial ones. This leads to immense resentment, both from men and women, as they come to feel that their chances for a happy marriage were robbed from them.

The alt-centrist rejects this materialist obsession with resource acquisition. It’s obvious that the crude obsession with wealth has locked the vast majority of us into a zero-sum contest for the best-looking women, the trendiest places of residence and the highest positions in the social dominance hierarchy. This is zero-sum at best when the population is small; with a population as large as that of the current world, it’s a recipe for widespread misery.

As mentioned above, however, it isn’t just the Establishment and our inherited culture that is materialist.

The alt-left are atheist and Marxist, and therefore utterly materialist as well. The alt-left, like the original left, considers spirituality a means by which the poor are tricked out of their real wealth. In accordance with the Five Acceptances, alt-centrism accepts that there is some merit in this concern, and that many people claiming to possess spiritual truths were really crooks. The alt-left, however, has gone too far.

In any case, we insist that no number of religious criminals can invalidate the value of genuine spirituality.

The alt-right recognises that the left is materialist, and that this leads to death camps and gulags, but their error is to demand a return to Abrahamism. Alt-centrism rejects this nostalgic attempt to return to the past. Abrahamism has always been a millstone around the neck of the world, and currently it serves only to further entrench pre-existing hatreds. The world needs a new spiritual methodology that unites people across divisions.

The alt-centre, therefore, must be spiritual by way of contrast to the materialist ideologies that have caused so much suffering.

This is another way in which alt-centrism is entirely different to centrism. A regular centrist is likely to also be a materialist, on account of that they are trying to find a balanced compromise between other materialist positions. They note that the left and the right are both materialist, so agreeing on that point seems like a good start. The regular centrist merely follows along with social convention.

The alt-centrist says “Fuck that!” and declares that the fact the paradigm is materialist is evidence to support the case the paradigm needs to be overthrown. If all of the corrupt actors responsible for a failing system tell us that materialism is correct, then it is more likely to be false.

Alt-centrism then, is about a return to spirituality – but not a return to religion.

A return to spirituality would allow for the genuine moral and spiritual self-improvement that materialism denies is possible. If people would focus on this, instead of on acquiring more physical possessions, achieving liberation from suffering would be more realistic. A spiritually improved population would succeed regardless of the political system they laboured under.

If you enjoyed reading this essay, you can get a compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2018 from Amazon for Kindle or Amazon for CreateSpace (for international readers), or TradeMe (for Kiwis). A compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2017 is also available.

Te Reo With Mnemonics: Recreational Drugs Words

Cannabis – tarukino

The Queen sits on a throne smoking some cannabis. A truck backs up to her and dumps a pile of tar in front of her. The cannabis is being smoked by the Tar Queen.

Beer – pia

A man walks along a pier while skulling a bottle of beer.

Tobacco – tupeka

A pouch of tobacco lies on the ground while two chickens peck at it. The tobacco is under attack by two peckers.

Wine – wāina

A family sits at a table in a restaurant. The young boy of the family is sipping from a glass of wine and screwing up his face. He says “But Mum, I don’t like shiraz!” His mother says “Drink up and don’t be such a whiner.”

to smoke – auahi

A man sits at a table, smoking one cigarettes after another out of a pack. A woman comes up to him and says “Where did you cigarettes go?” The man replies: “I smoked them all away.”

to drink – inu

A man sitting at a bar skulls a bottle of hard liquor and then falls on the ground unconscious. Another man asks the barmaid if the man knew he was drinking hard liquor and not lemonade. The women shrugs and says “He knew.”

Spirits/Hard Liquor/Alcohol – waipiro

A man sits in a car drinking hard liquor from a paper bag. It’s raining, and although the car is parked the window wipers are going full tilt.

Methamphetamine – tioata whakaihi

Two men are sitting at a table, smoking meth out of lightbulbs and chewing on rocks in their mania. One of the men says “Chewing all these rocks is making me hungry.” The other man fixes him with a baleful stare and says “Chew harder! Fuck eating!”

Cigarette – hikareti

If you know anyone named Eddie, imagine them hiking along a trail. Then they stop and pull out a cigarette, light it and smoke it. The cigarette is being smoked by Hiker Eddie.

Rolling papers – pepa hikareti

If you know anyone named Eddie, imagine then hiking along a roadside. He comes to a tree that has cigarette rolling papers instead of leaves. A strong wind blows, and it blows the papers off the tree and into Eddie’s face. The rolling papers pepper Hiker Eddie.

to be drunk – haurangi

Two drunks are sitting around in a flat, drinking. The phone rings, and one of them tries to answer it but ends up knocking the phone out of the wall and then falling on his face. The other drunk looks up and slurs: “Who rang?”

to be stoned/high – māngina

Two stoners are sitting around smoking from bongs. One of them says: “I think this weed has got us more stoned than the last stuff.” The other one looks back, shrugs and says “It’s marginal.”

This wordlist is an except from Learn Te Reo With Mnemonics, a book being compiled by Jeff Ngatai for an expected release at the beginning of 2020.

Why Beneficiaries Are Morally Superior to Workers

It’s a nearly universal assumption nowadays that people who work are morally superior to people on welfare. People on welfare, we are told, are essentially parasites that do nothing but suck wealth out of the system, and we’d all be better off without them. As this essay will explain, this is almost the exact opposite of reality. People on welfare are, in fact, morally superior to those who work.

The vast majority of human history has been one of deprivation and toil. Having evolved from a common ancestor with chimpanzees and bonobos, the primary survival challenge facing our species for almost the entirety of its existence was finding enough food to meet the metabolic needs of our bodies. For the most part, this was a brutal and bloody struggle against the world – and each other.

This had a powerful effect on the evolution of human behaviour – and our morality.

Because resources are scarce, and the metabolic clock is ticking, humans have always needed to be active. We have always needed to work, whether that be hunting, gathering, fishing or working the land in the form of agriculture. This was how we gathered enough resources to survive. The alternative to activity was death.

Because working was necessary for survival, we have always praised those who did it, and always excoriated those who did not. It was probably necessary to do this, because, had we not done so, the lazy would have dragged all of society down with them. Our culture, especially Northern European culture, came to consider work something almost holy, as if the meaning of life.

Working more and harder is how wealth is built, but as can be seen in the graph at the top of this essay, the planet cannot support the level of consumption that humans are currently subjecting it to. There simply aren’t enough of the necessary resources. The resources that do exist are being depleted at such a pace that we can see hard physical limits approaching, and there’s no escaping it.

The fact is that a profound paradigm shift has taken place over the past few hundred years, and we’ve barely even noticed it, let alone adapted to it.

American agricultural productivity increased 1200% between 1950 and 2000. This was thanks to something called the Green Revolution, which increased agricultural productivity severalfold all across the world. What this means is that it requires far, far fewer people to feed society today than what it took in the past. Therefore, most people are now surplus labour.

We have adapted to this by setting the now-redundant agricultural workers to work in other industries. First was manufacturing, then service industries. This worked out great for a long time, because all of these non-essential workers were able to produce things that raised the human standard of living, even if those things weren’t necessary.

This was pretty awesome for a few decades, and arguably continues to be. However, we are now aware of some things that we once didn’t know. In particular, we are now aware of the pressure we’re putting on the natural environment through shifting those surplus workers into manufacturing all sorts of things. We now know that we can’t keep doing this.

The world doesn’t need hard work and production any more. Those days are over. What the world now needs are people who can restrict their consumption to a level that the world can sustain. As seen on the graph above, that level is about half that of the average Chinese level of consumption, some $15,000 of resources every year.

In other words, a First World standard of living will, necessarily, become a thing of the past sooner or later.

For the average Westerner, restricting one’s consumption to about $15,000 worth of goods and services a year will not be easy. This will demand an extremely sharp curtailment of material desire. It will mean that far fewer international trips can be taken, and far fewer new cars or big screen televisions can be bought. It may require vegetarianism or something like it. It will require great sacrifice.

Without such a great sacrifice, our planet cannot survive, or at least not in a form that can sustain human life. Therefore, doing so is a moral imperative.

The average Western beneficiary has already achieved this. Considering that the average Western beneficiary already survives without the excessive consumption displayed by almost everyone in a job, they are in fact showing the way forward for the rest of the Western World. They are the pioneers of the future, demonstrating the correct way for the rest of us to behave. They are the Men of Gold.

Like the holy ascetic men of the great Eastern religions, the Western beneficiary class has liberated themselves from materialism. They are therefore showing the way forward for the rest of humanity, and ought to be praised as spiritual masters. The rest of us need to follow the path of the beneficiary, and stop following the path of the worker/consumer. The first step is recognising the moral superiority of the welfare recipient.

Te Reo With Mnemonics: Media Words

Report – pūrongo

A TV presenter speaks to the camera and says “The Government claims that this network is fake news. This report shows why this idea is purely wrong.”

Reporter – rīpoata

A journalist is standing at ringside for a women’s Mixed Martial Arts event and, when they are fighting, he screams “Rip her heart out!”

according to – hei tā

A new reporter walks up to a woman, points to a man and says “According to that guy, you’re a hater.” The woman protests “According to who? I’m no hater!”

Television – pouaka whakaata

On television, there is a show where Dan Carter is sitting at a table at a restaurant. He makes an order to a waiter, and the waiter calls out “A porker for Carter!”

Message/Messenger – karere

A uniformed man walks briskly, carrying an envelope. A woman approaches and asks him “Are you the messenger?” The man replies “I’m a courier.”

Radio – reo irirangi

A radio plays to an empty kitchen. The music stops and then the radio broadcasts a strange and haunting ringing tone. It is a real eerie ringing.

Newspaper – nūpepa

A man is reading a newspaper, and looks closely at an advertisement for some “New Pepper“.

Magazine – maheni

A supermarket shopper looks at a magazine for poultry enthusiasts. The front cover has an image of a woman holding a pet hen, and the title is “My Henny“.

Website – pae tukutuku

A young girl looks at a website on a laptop computer. It’s a website about a service that delivers pies by tuk-tuk, called Pie Tuk-tuk.

Social media – pae pāpori

A flamboyantly-dressed man speaks to a camera, flanked by two assistants. All three are part way through wrapping up a pie in paper. The central man says “The most important thing about pie papering is getting it on social media! Put your pie papering videos on FaceBook, Twitter and others!”

Electronic magazine, ezine, zine – mahenihiko

An inventor shows a clockwork magazine to a friend. It walks across the table. The friend says “That looks like an electronic magazine.” The inventor says “No, it’s mechanical.”

Media – hunga pāpāho

A prostitute made out of paper is about to be executed by hanging. The media is all gathered around the watch the spectacle. They are about to hang a paper whore.

This wordlist is an except from Learn Te Reo With Mnemonics, a book being compiled by Jeff Ngatai for an expected release at the beginning of 2020.