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Transcendence
Transcendence
By
Cognitive Dissonance
It’s a simple enough word and one that should be familiar. A quick check of an online dictionary reveals an obvious definition, especially when we consider the root word ‘transcend’. “Exceeding or surpassing in degree or excellence” and “to triumph over the negative or restrictive aspects of; to overcome”. Simple……right?
From the very beginning, well before I selected Cognitive Dissonance to represent my online personality and certainly before Tyler plucked me from the Zero Hedge peanut gallery (aka the comment section) and offered me the opportunity to become a ZH contributor, my one and only desire when I wrote was to add perspective, to offer up what I thought was a bigger picture point of view. That purpose remains just as pronounced today as it ever was. But I feel stronger headwinds than normal buffeting me and the collective anger and loathing is rising, dangerously in my view.
But please don’t be mistaken. Not for one moment do I consider myself the Oracle from Delphi, nor some wise and giving man here to shower you with wisdom and healing. Not in the least. What I’m actually doing is simple and in many ways self serving. I’m faking it until I make it with the hope that if I give away something that I don’t really feel is fully within me, that I may further develop my empathy, compassion and perspective muscles, that I may grow stronger by offering to others what I feel lacking in myself.
This concept, my method, isn’t as counter intuitive as it might seem at first blush. Of course I am quite capable of empathy and perspective. The problem isn’t necessarily a lack of ability, but rather at times a lack of desire. You see……I was, and can still be, a very angry man. A very, very angry man. And it was slowly killing me. It wasn’t an epiphany that compelled me to begin to look within, but rather raw unbridled desperation to find something, anything, that would relieve my inner anguish and pain.
The thing was that at first I didn’t realize how much pain I was in. All I saw was my all consuming anger and indignation, righteous indignation in fact, the worst kind because it ‘allowed’ me to wallow in my own self pity while nursing my hurt ego. How dare those bastards ……… fill in the blank, there are plenty of outrages to choose from. ‘They’ were subverting the American Dream and hurting me and my own in the process. It was horrible and glorious at the same time. No critical thinking needed, just point and shoot both barrels at once. But over time it was eating me alive from the inside, and I didn’t know what to do about it. Or even if I should.
The best analogy I can find of the damage done to myself by my slow burn anger is that it was similar to eating every meal at McDonalds. While our belly is full, it’s never really satisfying and we wind up feeling more and more out of sorts with each subsequent meal, somewhat sick to the stomach and bloated. Over time we grow fat and distorted on all those empty calories while simultaneously wasting away from the lack of quality nutrition. Keep it up long enough and we will degrade both physically and mentally, resulting in a shorter life span and a marked decrease in quality of life on the way to our early grave.
I could go on describing the fallout from my lingering dysfunction (yup, still there, though less so each day) but that’s not the purpose of this article. The point is to explain the measures I continue to embrace to overcome my issues and to warn my loyal readers that I am recognizing the same dysfunction in you. Zero Hedge has always been about letting go, of speaking truth to power and venting frustrations, of finding comfort when huddled with like minded others who share a common goal, to oust the corruption and return to a more fair and equitable social order.
The thing is that the longer the social order remains……well, disorderly……the more intense our inner personal dysfunction can become. But rather than believe that society is coming unglued because of the creeping (rushing is more like it) political and financial corruption, consider that the process is actually reversed, that as we personally come apart at the seams, so does our society which in turn pushes society’s dredges (aka sociopaths) to the top of the heap in the form of thieving bankers, abusive multinational corporations and too-numerous-to-count hanger-on’s, enablers and sycophants.
Regardless of whether you agree with my analysis of the source of the cancerous lesions or not, the purpose of this train of thought is not to be ‘right’, but to (re)gain our mental and emotional health and to make this our number one priority now and forever. Regardless of whether we feel we must ‘do’ something now (anything for God’s sake) or that it’s hopeless and futile (or more likely something in between) if our inner self, our essence, is not centered and at peace, at best we will be ineffective and at worst just a miserable person.
As well there is no going back, no unlearning or forgetting what we know, no return to blissful ignorance. In fact any attempt to go back to before, to forget all we know, will only feed our dysfunction and anger that much more. We cannot be plugged back into the Matrix, at least not without a frontal lobotomy. So let us acknowledge our inner madman and begin the process of self help and healing, then move forward individually and collectively.
02-17-2014
Cognitive Dissonance
Introducing a new portal into the mind of Cognitive Dissonance www.TwoIceFloes.com
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that is funny, music gets in the way ...
The obvious road is almost always the fool's road:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hq-dMblr-fA
the body is a boat, it is full of holes." w.b.
the body is a cell . every man, full of holes
that accomplishes-keep him breathing the life he has
inside himself, a soul with a fool to
carry for a human time, and then gone from
discussion; onward!
I assume you know that 'Transcendence' has actually been trade marked as Transcendental Meditation? This kind of reminds me of the Catholic tradition of selling absolution - to trample the sublime into the dirt.
While I realize that you are simply applying the word in its usual sense - I do however recommend meditation to anyone. Meditation requires a complete disjunction from thinking and sensing - it is a very special kind of liberty, because it free's a person even from their own self judgement.
It may seem a truism to state 'No matter how far you go, you cannot escape yourself' - but I have found that meditation will take me to a place where I am even free of myself. If you struggle with inner turmoil - I recommend taking a holiday from yourself - meditation, a place where even your own mind cant go.
By the way - you can learn the basic technique in seconds - it just takes a lot of practice to really apply it for long periods, do not listen to charlatans who try and sell you something. Even if you are not good at it for a start, all it takes is practice and a desire to 'take a holiday from yourself' - I highly recommend it - I am no master, but even a few minutes a day feels like a true holiday.
I do not know you. But I've known transcendental meditators. I can say there is a danger to this type of meditation. The danger is based upon exclusion, being selective in what one meditates upon. Beneficial meditation is ALL inclusive. To exclude that which may be uncomfortable,to seek only bliss, is another form of distraction. TM is a very powerful methodology and like all meditative practices, it will amplify one's inner dysfunctions. But unless those dysfunctions are acknowledged and included in one's practice from the beginning, they will only remain out of consciousness until they suddenly and overwhelmingly appear. I believe this phenomena is referred to as " The Dark Night of the Soul".
Let me let you in on a secret that took me a while (since I understood it intuitiviely) to be able to put into words:
You don't need to close your eyes to meditate.
I started out by staring into a candle flame - which was recommended to me, and does make it easier when you start out - you can close your eyes afterwards and the image of the candle flame remains. I often had the strange sensation of passing through the image of the candle flame as if it were a window - then finding nothing on the other side.
Meditation is not a mystery, or some divine or superstitious thing - its simply a technique to clear the mind of all thought. When your mind is basically doing nothing it is not beating you up, or you are not beating someone else up internally - so of course it relieves stress, because stress is an active process. Also our brains rewire themselves according to the way we think - so being able to achieve a state of mental rest and hold it for long periods ensures that a peaceful state actually becomes wired into your brain.
Using mantra's - simple phrases that you repeat internally without really thinking about their meaning - you can actually self hypnotize yourself. As I said - I dont see anything supernatural, or spiritual or all that crap about meditation - its just a mental technique.
Which brings up the whole thought-behavior-feeling conundrum. All things are inter related. Meditation alone is nothing more than taking an aspirin.
Meditation has its place, but the more urgent task is to strip away the layers of conditioning we've been subject to since birth. That's where the stress is coming from. If you don't unravel that tangled web of half-truths, lies and contradictions, you are merely treating the symptoms.
Proper meditiation technique is the only way I know of that does what you speak of. It is a method of replacing pre-programming with truth. When I say truth, I only mean the truth of what IS in the moment.
Other methods of stripping away layers of conditioning usually involves replacing them with different layers of conditioning.
Exactly.
Until we really begin to unravel the tangle of yarn we have no idea what is really driving us forward. So many times I thought I understood my motives only to peel back another layer of conditioned responses and propaganda that I believed was 'truth'.
Well, nature conditions us to want to survive (except for junior bankers, apparently), and I'm rather pleased that it does. It's the other 99% of BS layered on top of that by other humans, including our parents and so-called elders that I'm taliking about.
As for meditation being the only way out of the maze, how do we know that isn't just another form of conditioning?
I would suggest that managed uncertainty (MU) is the goal here. We can't know everything, so we have to focus on what we CAN know and run with that. There are methodologies for that. One of them is Science.
BINGO!
"Truth always rests with the minority,
and the minority is always stronger than the majority,
because the minority is generally formed
by those who really have an opinion,
while the strength of a majority is illusory,
formed by the gangs who have no opinion --
and who, therefore, in the next instant
(when it is evident that the minority is the stronger)
assume its opinion ... while Truth again reverts to a new minority."
-- Soren Kierkegaard
"The ideal form of government is democracy
tempered with assassination."
-- Voltaire
"It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere."
-- Voltaire
Ho hum
"The ideal form of government is democracy tempered with assassination." -- Voltaire
Perhaps, but the wrong people are being shot.
a tune for a wound.
.
Stan Rogers - Witch of the Westmoreland
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nxls60aYSZA
.
Van Morrison - Enlightenment(original-HD)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELRBvDz6YgU
.
Toccata & Fugue in d minor (BACH, J.S.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FXoyr_FyFw
.
the last one to wake the dead!
Uploaded on Jan 9, 2007
Kurt Ison, Sydney Town Hall.
Edited and produced by Christopher Hayles, 2002.
There is so much that makes no sense if you believe as it is presented to us.
Then again, it is also hard to believe a view that fits the facts.
One thing is certain. I will definitely read more of the Nag Hamadi.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wn8bM4jAXWk
Yeah, starving desert mystics of ancient times can totally help.
That is because it has been presented us as a corrupted file. We need a new operating system
"eating every meal at McDonalds."
Say it isn't so. I always wonder what the attaction is. Okay, I've been there, I even took a girl to Burger King once. But I digress.
I will be checking out your site. It's pretty isolated where I live.
Cheerio.
PS: Seriously, hope you do more home cooking these days ;-)
We do eat home cooking nowadays. In fact Mrs. Cog was canning all day inbetween working the new website, answering emails, fixing website problems, fielding phone calls etc.
It was exhausting just watching her. :)
It was exhausting just watching her. :) -- Cognitive Dissonance
Try shoveling more snow... or give in to tractor lust.
I'd like to ask you a question...
[Edit and OT] What are your thoughts on our electoral system?
If you don't want to be stressed out by the corruption, wars, thieving bankers and politicians I suggest you watch this presentation http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFyTSiCXWEE and read http://ourfiniteworld.com/2014/01/02/why-a-finite-world-is-a-problem/
You will then realize that the above are all tempests in tea cups. They really do not matter. Because the reality is that we are not going to recovery -- that the world as we know it is OVER --- that the industrial revolution is OVER.
As soon as the QE stops (or stops working) all hell will break lose. And Jamie Dimon is no more likely to survive than you or me.
You can try to prepare all you like but the reality is billions are going to die - this is perhaps an extinction event.
Because most of our crops are grown using oil and gas inputs --- without them the soil is dead.
Because humans will cut down every last tree when they no longer have cheap fossil fuels to burn.
Because the thousands of spent fuel rods need high tech systems to keep the from exploding.
When I recently began to understand the real scope of this crisis I had inner peace --- 1. Because I knew there was little I could do to prepare (although I do try to prepare) and 2. Because I am not alone --- most if not everyone else dies when this blows.
Print Janet Print - Keep that fucking hamster running around the wheel for as long as possible!!!
@ Notarocketscientist
Thank you for the link to Simon Michaux's excellent seminar, watched it last night and then found another one:
? Developing a Sustainable Community - Simon Michaux - YouTube
(1.19.06)
without them the soil is dead.
note to notrocket: the "soils" are already dead, the oil & gas is just zombifying them (sound familiar?). great thing about soils is that they can be regenerated, if one is willing to risk their time & energy on helping them along and possibly never personally tasting the fruits of their efforts.
When I found out I had melanomoa I was serene. When they were able to deal with it I was no longer serene. aybe the next unseen Meteor.
End of the world or not, we all die. Not really coming to grips with this is the root of all of our problems. Deep, deep down inside, whether we know it or not, is the fear of death. It drives all human behavior. To fear the inevitable, is insane. Our collective behavior is insane. QED
I have faced death several times during my life so far. However I would be lying if I told you I had no fear what-so-ever of death. But because I have been close several times, real close, it is more familiar to me than it might be for most. I am more concerned about a lingering wasting process just to make it to what I see as inevitable.
You mean suffering? I've heard spoken that " Pain is intrinsic to life. Suffering is optional ". This speaks to resistance to what is. One resists what one judges to be unpleasant.
A good practice will show you the nature of mind in death. You will know death from the perspective of your consciousness ( which is the only perspective we have). That knowing will relieve you of that constant low grade fear essentially freeing you. You will literally feel freer than you ever imagined possible.
A good practice will also teach you acceptance of what is. One of the misconceptions of this type of "acceptance" is that it necessarily implies complacency. This acceptance is rooted only in this moment. The next moment will be different and influenced by how we abided in the last. Action, both esoteric and physical is important.
It's important to point out, I think, the type of fear you can be free of. Having fear in the face of immediate and tangible danger, for instance an angry rattlesnake within striking distance, is both natural and healthy to possess. I'm speaking of that chronic fear of what might happen ( death being the worst possibility) which is driving this insanity in which we are mired.
Sometimes when I think back, I realise in fact just how true what you say is.
It is in fact pointless to rage all the time, killing yourself from within.
It is also true that from time to time I also let rip, tearing heads off and berating in the most vicious language possible and hurling utterly abusive insults at the filth and scum that commandeer the lives of people.
But I do that for fun now and just to poke the assholes with a long stick
But I see the hurt and frustration all around and worse the impotence.
So I took a different tack.
I realised I was powerless in the face of a government, a government that by the way, whether by fair means or foul, was voted in by the very same people in the US.
If people actually learned something, anything, and took real trouble and pains to find out exactly who they were voting for, and kicked every single lying corrupt smarmy pig faced self aggrandizing shithole into touch then this could never happen.
But it did.
And that is th end of the matter.
Except that I didn't accept it.
I'm not going to whine or whinge or even get mad, that is like getting mad at a virus when you get the flu, but you can do something to fix the disease you find yourself afflicted with.
In my case it was simple, I decided there and then after some careful thought that I no longer wanted to be a US citizen.
So from that moment I planned to leave the US.
Quite easy, sold everything I owned, distributed it into several bank accounts all with ATM cards of course, bought tickets and flew out.
As I had already decided in MY OWN MIND, that I was no longer a US citizen, it will come as no surprise to you to know that as far as any US regulation or law goes, as far as I was concerned not a single one of those laws applied to me the moment I was outside US airspace.
Which means, I informed no one of my plans or intentions, I abide by no FATCA regulations, I will nor ever will comply with any US mandate with regard to rescinding citizenship.
Why should I. I am no longer a US citizen in my mind.
Now I have new passport, and my US passport accidentally got lost in bar frequented by those same people who can arrange a new passport for a small fee
In my case about $1,300
It was also a simple matter to withdraw all the funds in the US accounts over the course of a few weeks and open and deposit the funds in new accounts.
I have a business, and a life now so far removed from "home" if that word could ever be used again in its real meaning, as "home" today is so far removed from what I remember it to be that its a distant memory of a country that no longer exists.
That was over 8 years ago now.
As far as anyone in the US is concerned outside my friends and family, I simply do not exist, any more than any other foreigner in any other country exists to the US govt. And that is precisely how I like it.
Not once in that time have I ever been contacted or any attempt to contact me by any agency in the US.
Needless to say, that will never be done by me and I have no wish now or ever again for the foreseeable future to ever visit the foreign country once called "home"
You cannot imagine how peaceful it is, compared to the US even in 2005 there is virtually no intrusive bureaucracy, no local or national government agencies contact me, with my new passport I am free to come and go as I please, but sure there are some places I would need a visa when before I didn't, but that is hardly a problem when offset by the truly enormous benefits.
As my father said
Boys ask questions. Men give answers.
Boys ask permission, Men make decisions.
Boys fumble, Men just do it and do it right
Boys invent excuses for failure. Men produce strategies for success.
Boys play games, Men Build futures
I know that any sycophantic ass licker of obummer is by definition a boy and not a man so this does not apply to them.
But for the rest.
It is time to decide if you are a man or a boy.
And what do I do now; I make a very lucrative living helping others to do precisely what I have done just to make things easier for them.
Damicol - A quote from a wise, compassionate man that was once asked why he mingled with prostitutes and tax collectors "Those that are well do not require a doctor."
I like the Mayan way, be gleeful in charging the abyss to compete, for the learning lessons in pain accelerate your personal evolution. Now if one can one step further and do it by adding value in the form of solutions to rich and poor alike well I guess you call that leadership.
In 2008 I advised the President and obtained a benchmark of speculation per barrel of oil. I knew the White House desire for one was about deflecting blame for soaring energy prices in one form or another. I got the benchmark, Bernanke dried up liquidity for a week from IB's like Goldman as the process to obtain it. Oil dropped nine bucks over ten days as it spooked the speculative market and gas dropped about .20 cents a gallon. Multiply that out by a couple hundred million people times ten days. I am not vain and need a thanks from anybody and it took work and risk to approach the White House through back channels. I am not leaving America I am running toward the problems. Perhaps I was merely coded to stand more pain than you so I don't judge your decision I was illustrating mine which is to stay. I gave it thought then and now. There is plenty of suffering to ease right in my own backyard and one can make a lot of great new friends doing it, of all stripes of people.
I like your humility Cog. The pain many of us feel is shame.
Humility heals the pain of shame and clears one's mind to reflect on how to mitigate pain but more importantly how to benefit from lessons learned from rough experiences.
For those that had lots of pain and trying to get off the mat, get out to a local bar. Buy $100 worth of pitchers of beer for a few tables and have a ball. Go on a slow night and be the life of the party, if hour like me you'll remember why any lf us try and help ease suffering in the first place.Websites are safe, they minimize risk of exposure out in the physical world. But this can become your prison.
"be gleeful in charging the abyss to compete, for the learning lessons in pain accelerate your personal evolution."
This was a muchbetter response than the one that instantly leaped to my mind. And it is so true.
My own analogy would be, I took that twisty on my motorcycle at 65, can I do it at 70. Obviously a practice that could also end your personal evolution. But then the rush. The experience of being really alive. My wife tells me I am to old for such shit. SHe is probably right. I don't bounce as well as I use to.
The draw of acute dangerous activity for many folks is the state of mind in which they must immerse themselves. One has to be totally focused in the moment. This is meditation by force of fear. The fear has driven away the ego, therefore there can be a deep sense of peace. Meditation by practice, allows one to (eventually) access that immersion in NOW when one chooses. In fact, accomplished practitioners are in that space more than not.
Your Pelican Brief is saying you became a man by running away? When this next girlfriend in the form of a country upsets you, you can run from the dissonance again. Sounds like it has worked out for you, bit of a quandry your metaphorical reliance on the your maturation from boy to man though, wouldnt you say?
It is time to decide if you are a man or a boy.
And what do I do now; I make a very lucrative living helping others to do precisely what I have done just to make things easier for them. -- damicol
So this is an ad...?
Pain of growth does confer privilege CD. Keep growing young man.
An excerpt from "Mays Window"
An evening sky through my bedroom window reminds me of a dancing campfire as I watch stars self-immolate throughout the night. Green grass is comfortable for me because I know I cannot fall any further when I am lying in the soft warm grass. A blue sky leaves me in a transcendental state of wonderment. After a summer afternoon in my backyard I am left to wonder how I even got here and what my meaning for being here is. Supposing there is tangible meaning to any of us being here on planet earth.
" so does our society which in turn pushes society’s dredges (aka sociopaths) to the top of the heap"
CD, as someone who has attempted to push that message out to the masses, over almost a decade now, not in "articles" but in short little blurbs...
I am here at the moment to suggest that...
your writing/posting here is (get ready) a catharsis for you, but isn't much more.
Said another way -- the controls and failures of this society are in... humility (which is really what you have written about) is out of date, and out of time.
Control is real, mistakes are real, and humility is not in the mix until (1) a reset and (2) a critical mass understands why (1) happened.
We have been thru this before (I'm talking about history here) -- and when you put humility against control, We have learned nothing.
And I think you know that.
I wish you well.
There is little doubt in my mind that the patient will get much sicker before s/he gets better. The fever has only begun to rise, and when it reaches the delirium stage much damage will be done as s/he thrashes about.
I have talked privately with Mrs. Cog about my views on what is coming. I will express those views eventually in an article most will not like. The fever will eventually break. The questions are.....will the patient die in the process and will the patient take 'us' with her/him if s/he dies?
"your writing/posting here is (get ready) a catharsis for you, but isn't much more."
I don't much agree with this because doing what you are doing publicly will help other who are seeking. It also takes courage to put yourself out there so you gain either/or.
"There is little doubt in my mind that the patient will get much sicker before s/he gets better."
And this be very true. But you do start your journey with more resources than many. So be grateful for that. Understand the quality of what you learn can only be measured by the serenity you can have if ever faced with dumpster diving for a meal. Hunger shatters many truths.
So the question in all reality is, and I am serious as a heart attack here, will the results I am seekiing be worth all that I have? If not. Stop your journey now.
The results I'm seeking revolve around these questions:
What do I really have?
Who is this "I"?
You know, I vacilate.
Yes, doing good for others and being centered is good for me and those around me; helping them out and doing the right thing.
However, at some point, the more good we do the more we buffer the comeuppance for the malfeasant.
At some juncture we must act against the evil, the legerdemain, rather than pick up their slack.
Good perspective you have that I respect, though at some point we must take a stand.
If not for ourselves than for future generations.
"Good perspective you have that I respect, though at some point we must take a stand."
When I find myself confronted with what appears to me to be an 'either/or' 'black/white' situation I tend to pull back and say to myself "Is there not a third or even fourth way?"
I have long thought along the same lines as you do, that at some point I must take a 'stand'. But is not what Mrs. Cog and I are doing taking a stand as well? We have changed our lives to a tremendous degree. We are withdrawing our consent in increments because we understand that to stand and fight is to play into their strengths and our weaknesses.
What's wrong with gorilla warfare without the physical weapons of violence? The system is designed to repel all borders who confront it in a unified manner. It cannot hold the line against a scattered force that is entirely disinterested in fighting it head on.
Withdraw your consent to the greatest degree possible. That is the most effective stand you can take without becoming a dead martyr.
Human interpersonal communication is so very problematic. I think I understand what you are saying, but in reality I can not be sure. This quote is most likely not appropriate for your position, but your comment brought it up in my thoughts:
"All that is necessary for the triuph of evil is that good men do nothing" Edmund Burke
I have read many, many of your comments here on ZH, and that is not where I think you are coming from, but other readers who are less familiar with your writing, and perhaps less analytical, could misinterpret your meaning and find Edmund Burke's quote relevant. I fear that a moment approaches that may require many of us to lay down our lives for what we believe in and become, as you say, dead martys. Again, history supports this possibility. I would not hesitate to do so under the appropriate conditions. However, don't take that the wrong way, I have absolutely no intention of throwing my life away needlessly. I genuinely hope that moment in time never comes, but I fear it is approaching. Preventing it, which is certainly possible, will likely require an event that changes the "game" in a very big way. Maybe a technological breakthrough, like an inexhaustable source of cheap energy available to all, would change our trajectory. Unfortunately, that is not very likely, but not impossible.
Withdraw your consent to the greatest degree possible. That is the most effective stand you can take without becoming a dead martyr. -- Cognitive Dissonance
We agree.
But why not withdraw your consent explicitly? Publicly. For all to see...
Was that a rationalization?
When confined to rational thought, everything is a rationalization.
What CD seems to be both wrestling with and expressing, is the idea of breaking the habitual practice of himself and of humanity.
Human kind has continually come to these crossroads since the "rational" mind has taken over control. It's foolish to think, if we fight back against tyranny, we'll eradicte it, since in many respects, we are the tyranny. History shows this over and over.
"It's foolish to think, if we fight back against tyranny, we'll eradicte it, since in many respects, we are the tyranny."
So true. Thanks
Define for me "taking a stand". I bet if you asked 10 people you would get several answers when you asked them to explain exactly what they mean.
My view of what should be done and what I can do about it has changed as my understanding has deepened.
" I bet if you asked 10 people you would get several answers when you asked them to explain exactly what they mean"
I use to ride with a group originally formed to insure soldiers killed in battle were buried with honor. Some violated many laws, risked jobs and money they did not have to do so. As time passed misson creep did it's thing and it became more parade than anything. I asked, what honor do you provide these men standing around their graves like potted plants if you do nothing to stand against the very machine that put them here?
Taking a stand, for this writer, involves risk. The level of risk dictates my committment not to any particular cause, but to who I am. So yes, I guess one could say there are many degrees to taking a stand. And they are all balanced by risk.
I will stand for any man who is oppressed and willing to try and get up
I will stand for no man that is happy to lay there.
Not much worried about being a martyr as few will cry at my funeral.
CD-
Always enjoy your thoughtful missives. Don't always agree entirely, but they are honest, introspective, and challenging of our own views - and that exceeds most what the world today offers.