On the Existential Threat of Selective Censorship

(A loving reminder and warning I offer out of heartfelt concern and genuine compassion for you all.)

The society we have known thus far is unraveling and failing for many reasons, but let me try to briefly identify one particularly fundamental cause based on the behavior I have noticed people actively engaging in lately: namely, disconnecting from others who challenge us to grow and learn and be invested in one another. People have generally forgotten or were denied the gift of knowing how to truly listen to each other with genuine presence and emotional investment. Many have forgotten how to respect others by giving them their full, open-minded attention and appreciation, denying the dignity and invalidating the existence of the other person. We do this quite commonly while failing to recognize that such treatment is a major source of our own suffering, loneliness, and despair when the tables are turned.

When there is a society-wide culture that promotes a disrespect for and avoidance of different points of view, that society is inevitably doomed, because society is a system and all healthy systems require healthy feedback loops. We all need to be heard and have our concerns acknowledged and our fears validated, or we start to go a little crazy inside because suffering must be transformed for it to not consume and corrupt us. Although transforming our suffering requires personal courage and personal effort, we all need our pain to be acknowledged and validated along the way, and we need others to help guide us through the difficulty. Through truly listening to one another, we can see that all misbehavior stems from ignorance or a place of deep suffering. When we recognize this, we lose our instinct to be fearful and mistrustful of others by default.

The potential destruction of civilized society will, ultimately, be a result of this behavior of willful avoidance generating a huge buildup of anger, resentment, fear, and despair in us all. Why deny others the kind of attention and appreciation you want others to pay you, and that you need in order to be sane and happy? Being truly emotionally invested and involved in the wellbeing of others, as well as in their hopes and doubts, dreams and nightmares, staves off disaster for us all.

– With Love, Respect, & Gratitude for You All

How Do Beliefs Close Our Minds?

How adaptable are we really, when operating without the daily support and insight of others to serve as a mirror reflecting back the imperfections that exist in our own way of seeing the world -- without brethren helping us to see the stale frailty of our ingrained biases? The capacity for genuine, lasting behavioral change for a person can only occur within a nurturing social environment. Devoid of a regularity of positive feedback from the environment (that is in excess to the negative), there can be no lasting change or growth of character, for it will sink and drown from exhaustion otherwise.

 

Our own beliefs can cut us off from being able to recognize the fundamental cracks in our accepted worldview. Beliefs are a self-fulfilling prophecy, for better or worse. Beliefs inform our intentions inform our actions. Beliefs create blind spots within the light of our own consciousness, like shadows cast in broad daylight. Our judgment is limited by our degree of mindful awareness, which is limited by the beliefs thus far attached to. It is only through personal abandonment of fixed attachments and static conceptions about the world, while abiding within a loving web of family and community, that we can restore an inner-equilibrium and equanimity of mind -- a state of consciousness that is the source of all inspiration, wisdom, hope, joy, and righteous agency in the world.