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Breaking Broken Connections
Breaking Broken Connections
By
Cognitive Dissonance
From the moment we exit the birth canal we begin the process of making and breaking life’s connections. For example, our very first broken connection is the cutting of the umbilical cord which was our link to the gestation cocoon within the mother ship. Upon breaking this connection we immediately transition to bonding with mother and breast and the physical world outside. How we accomplish this, how we cope while doing so and the process we follow as we make and break life’s connections are ultimately what define us as fragile human beings and spiritual entities.
During the first five years of life, and arguably the first twenty, being human is mostly about making connections, initially instinctual and physical, then slowly progressing to emotional and intellectual. This is considered the natural process of growing and maturation and I would never argue this point. However, whether by omission or commission, and most likely a substantial portion of both, huge gaps are left in our development that leave many of us emotionally stunted and spiritually shriveled. Intentionally formed with feet of clay and then stranded in this condition, we are extremely vulnerable to external, and therefore ultimately internal, manipulation and grinding exploitation.
Becoming a healthy and whole being, living as both a physical and spiritual entity, is so much more than slavishly following the early imprinted connections that come to first rule, then dominate, our lives. What we are rarely taught as children and are often too set in our ways or too frightened to learn as adults, is how to break free from our already broken connections. Because we are rarely able to do so completely and of our own volition, our Self, our culture and our nation are littered with dysfunctional nonworking relationships that destroy so much more than they should or could, but for our own deliberate inattention.
Image by CD at George Washington Birthplace National Monument 10/08/2011
Natural healthy connections are obvious when seen.
I suppose this is where I should attempt to more clearly define the obviously broken principal connections along with the supporting secondary and tertiary bindings (also just as broken) that are the fundamental problem. The former associations are easy to describe for they are clearly seen as huge steel cables securely tying our lives into the dysfunctional sociopolitical web.
From a purely US centric point of view they are represented by God, Country and the American Way, a gloriously entangled trinity that rivals the Catholic Church’s own creation. Each global culture and/or state has its own version of this central meme, only theirs is not as pure and righteous as ours; an example of one of those broken programmed belief connections.
These artificially created and seemingly impenetrable primary meme structures skillfully hide the deliberately concealed smaller, and often broken, personal connections we create within until finally the rust and rot can no longer be painted over and the whole stinking edifice falls into the sea.
It is these smaller, more highly specialized, even customized connections that defy accurate description since they are literally a product of the beholder’s belief system. Since I can never ‘see’ the world in exactly the same manner as you, these subtle connections, these ties that thoroughly bind us into the main cables of the social, economic and political web, are often used (and abused) very differently even if they look the same.
Moreover since collective denial is an integral part of our social belief system, as we self sort into various sub groupings, we all use the same broken connections in entirely different ways and at cross purposes to each other. This concept becomes self evident when we see the same set of ‘facts’ being used in different ways to support conflicting beliefs by opposing groups. To avoid recognizing this basic truth I simply don’t internalize it as applying to my Self since I (as part of my grouping) wish to believe that we, and only we, know the truth and all others as just silly deluded fools……or worse.
This dynamic holds true deeply within my Self as well and is often the reason behind my own fuzzy thinking. As long as I don’t look too closely within, logic and reason need not apply to my worldview, allowing me to get away with all kinds of twisted thinking. Instead of breaking down and discarding these already broken connections, what we find ourselves doing again and again is supporting, even rebuilding, them as both we and our world death spiral down into the black abyss. We become one with the mob because we have thoroughly broken the only connection that really matters, with our sovereign Self.
Image by CD at GW Birthplace National Monument 10/08/2011
Two old souls who have weathered the breaking of many broken connections.
The best I could do here is to describe my broken connections, a useless exercise since it is yours you need to dig up, examine, and then discard for good. This is why the journey within in search of truth, of our true inner spiritual being, is intensely personal and completely unique. Even close family members have stitched their personal beliefs together using vastly difference life experiences colored by their own uniquely distorted and twisted perceptions. The world really is as we perceive it, not as it is.
It stands to reason then that nearly all of us have little more in common than those enormously flawed steel cables, at least when measured by the false reality of the Matrix. It is the deliberately created and manipulated illusion of a common false ideology, one that is actually designed to divide and conquer, that effectively paper’s over most of our differences and builds a false sense of shared belief or purpose and thus a binding connection. This bag of broken connections, this false ‘shared commonality’, is not only encouraged by, but is in fact created by, the cultural programming of the corporate owned, and government supported, mainstream media machine.
These broken connections, the ones we refuse to break and discard, are intimately woven not only into the very fabric of our lives so as to render them nearly seamless, but often they originate within our manipulated culture and are fed back into our 6 senses (the 5 accepted physical ones plus our spiritual sense of Self) in order to create and sustain the perfect positive feedback loop.
I’ve talked about this before, how everything we see all seems to make some sort of sense because it fits our programmed worldview, thus there is no urgent need to seriously question anything. We are mesmerized while at the same time terrorized by our own false creation, convinced that this and only this is our true reality and anyone speaking contrary to the consensus view is totally bonkers and off his feed.
But if we were to pop our heads down below the surface streets and poke around in the utility conduits and sewer system, we cannot shake this deeply unsettling sense that something is terribly wrong and that nearly everything is not as it seems. Even those who don’t look are beginning to feel that things are falling apart and the emperor has no clothes.
Image by CD at GW Birthplace National Monument 10/08/2011
The sheltering canopy protects us while we may break our broken connections.
Our inner being, the source of our true Self from which springs our inner knowing and its realty creation imagination machine, has become overgrown with choking weeds and tangled vines, all a direct result of not breaking free from our broken connections. We wind up devoting all of our time attempting to cope with our inner dysfunction, which in turn leaves us completely unable to deal with (never mind heal) the insanity outside that presses in on all fronts like a cold winter’s wind. We are constricted within while simultaneously set upon from without.
Thus we are marginalized and immobilized by severely damaged souls whose only purpose in life is to take from others in order to increase their own personal stake. Vampires within and without is the perfect analogy in this case. And worst of all, we enable them in our present state. Trapped by the artificial boundaries we have enabled externally, we are never able to withdraw within to clear the weeds and return our inner being to a proper state of health. Unable to muster the courage to face those oppressive external forces that rape and pillage, effectively we are reduced to a vegetative state of abject apathy, impotence and long term decay.
This explains perfectly the dysfunctional insanity of our world, for our external chaotic reality is simply an outward projection of our inner individual and collective disorder. As well, it also explains why ultimately any social upheaval or outright rebellion or revolution eventually fails. As the initial burst of external house cleaning wanes and falters, once again we invite back within the very same demons we just expelled. Because the inner dysfunction is never corrected, our external projection reverts back to the mirror image of our own inner cluttered house. The leopard’s spots never change because the inner decay always remains.
We are endlessly trapped within our own insanity because we are unable to create new functioning realities until we are able to effectively purge the old ones. And we won’t expel the old ones because we are bound to them with those steel cables that falsely appear stronger than us as individuals. This is the supreme illusion for we enable the ties that bind us to our own insanity. The dirty little secret is that for the vast majority of us, those who are fully assimilated slaves, we welcome the illusion of unbreakable ties that bind. Why struggle needlessly when victimhood is so warm and fuzzy. After all we can’t fight city hall, especially when we are city hall.
As long as we cling to our deepest darkest secrets, our false hopes and self deceptions, our blame shifting and dishonest personal and professional relations, our mind and spirit is permanently bound to the old social structure. We cannot create new realities while we remain so tightly bound to the old. In our mind the present dysfunctional reality remains more real than the new one ever could be, thus the new reality is never properly birthed and lay stillborn and discarded by the side of the road; tragically the only connection actually worth nurturing dies the cruel cold death of an abandoned orphan.
Image by CD at GW Birthplace National Monument 10/08/2011
Healthy connections blend naturally with nature and our Self.
The end game of the endless cycling of insanity is always the same. Externally oppressed and internally tormented beyond our capacity to tolerate, ultimately we are compelled to fight or flight in order to escape our demons. In order to overcome our apathy and perceived impotence as we try to remove the irritant, we convince ourselves well in advance that it is the external problem that is making us internally sick, rather than the other way around.
Eventually a small minority of us work ourselves into a murderous lather. Sufficiently emboldened, we then blindly strike out at everything and anything within reach in fits of near mindless rage. The vast majority of the rest remain barely contained within the distractions of mindless consumerism, idol worship and televised violence porn. This plays out regardless of whether we are rejecting a government, politician, Ponzi banker, employer, spouse or significant other or even our Self, especially our Self.
Once the frenzy has passed and whatever our rage has been directed towards lay in ruins, not to mention all the inner spiritual collateral damage, we turn our heads and avert our eyes in utter shock at our savage and ultimately dishonest display of the very same brutality we condemn. ‘This can’t be me’ we say and everyone shakes their heads in affirmation. Yes, it was the evil external devil that made me do those bad things. Then we rush home to count our looted things and return to ignoring the root of our global insanity.
Of course, what I’ve just outlined above is the extreme home version of the inner hide and (never) seek game, something a minority of us actually play. For all the rest of us, we get to wallow in intellectual self deception territory where we claim we aren’t that bad, so what we just witnessed on the idiot box can’t be us. Our confirmation bias (that we aren’t the problem) now properly stroked and carefully tucked away for future retrieval, conveniently relieves us of any personal responsibility. Sated and satisfied, we go about our business of enabling the exact same insanity we claim to disdain and dismiss.
And so on it goes, back and forth into infinity. Or at least back a few thousand years through a list of tyrant Pharaohs, Popes, Prime Ministers and Presidents. And all because we refuse to break free of our broken connections, the one task we must tackle if we are ever to reclaim our inner sovereignty. The ultimate self deception is to claim we are enslaved when we never really wanted to be free in the first place.
True freedom, not the artificial and external construct presented for our blind consumption, always begins within. Our sovereign being remains in chains because we wish to remain in chains, an ugly truth that once fully confronted will quickly break our broken connections. As long as we remain slaves to our own self deception, as long as we can hide from ourselves within the endless distraction and ego stroking of the modern meme machine, we will remain captured slaves and indentured servants.
Regardless of whether the machine falls apart of its own greed and corruption or if it’s pushed off the cliff by the previously described screaming mob, unless we begin here and now a process of inner reflection and inspection in order to break all our broken connections, all that will come from our latest exhortations is more of the same old insanity, recycled for the nth time.
10-27-2011
Cognitive Dissonance
Image by CD at GW Birthplace National Monument 10/08/2011
The control system placed their middle finger in front just for you.
- advertisements -
"I think one thing holding me and probably others back at really giving up the past indocrination completely is that it is difficult to be so different from the others around you. It is difficult to give it all up, when others around you will think you odd for giving it up."
Dolly, i think that is what CD alluded to when he wrote...
"From the moment we exit the birth canal we begin the process of making and breaking life’s connections. For example, our very first broken connection is the cutting of the umbilical cord which was our link to the gestation cocoon within the mother ship."
Our natural instinct is to build a new cocoon, surrounding ourselves with the familiar. Seeking the safety of the womb, we are assimulated by society as we look to society for answers... security.
It IS difficult to give up the familiar. Just be assured that when you do, you are on your way to becomming that which you were before entering this earthly coil, a spirit... enlightened.
Good to see you back, but very depressing outlook. (At least to me)
CD, You've written a number of excellent essays at ZH but this one is your best IMHO... Thanks & I'm going to have my two kids read it...
Thank you.
The greatest compliment anyone could ever pay me is to find such value in my writing that they wish to share it with someone else. So thank you again for passing it on.
.
Not into infinity Cog, but into a false-finite, that likes to pretend to be limitless, .. and also likes to build the illusions that it is all the the mind there is.
What goes on in the thinking aspect of the mind is the generation of a fake-finite
A closed self-referencing process, that seeks to occur within a cosmos that actually has no real finite in it, of any kind. That this fake formulation of finite 'exists' ONLY in and AS the thinker, and not outside the thinker, not outside the skull of man.
Just like you get a closed repeatable pseudo-'random' algorithm (the 'random' you are having when you are not having random), you also get a pseudo-finite (the fake 'finite' you are having when you are not having any finite), generated via thinking (itself), in closed terms, about arbitrarily-defined abstract boundaries that we call 'objects', which form the basis of 'objective thought'.
The fake-finite 'thinker' is thus created. ... but it is a actually a fake ... a fake mind no less!
In an actual cosmos that has no actual finite, how representative, or accurate is any representation of actuality, thus determined as an objective thought construct, an idea, a world-view ...
How 'true' potentially can it ever be, or become?
ZERO ... and people fear that ... for they think they will lose their minds ...
And they should! ... lose their FAKE MIND, that is.
That is 'Enlightenment', in a nutshell.
(and yes, I know you did not understand it, I would know you were lying if you said you did)
And if you happened to learn that DIRECTLY ... (i.e. not from someone else) then you sure won't be to bothered by the pseudo-finite products constanty plopping out of the rear-quarters of the closed-loop 'modern' mind of any 'thinker'.
You would actually have seen DIRECTLY that they are fake. Not fake(s), not even fake somethings or other.
Nope, just fake ... the fake MIND.
I suggest (an without a shred of evidence I might add) that, that is not the real mind of a man, or woman, at all.
the real mind is infinitely beyond and completely without connection to any sort of fake-finite 'objective-mind' process, or processing.
L O S E Y O U R M I N D
(Yes, I know, I know, ... your objective fake-mind is right now going, "well just how the fuck do I do that?!" ... it doesn't have ANYTHING to do with it, is how )
Actually do that and you'll be astonished to DISCOVER that you already have an ACTUAL MIND in there - as well as that shitty fake one, that you think so highly of up untill now, and you will discover is completely fake, and out of touch with the physical infinity that you in fact are.
Just sayin
Not a bad writing, Element. This is why the real teachers speak in what sounds like paradoxes and riddles. Facts/ideas, etc in the ordinary sense are created by attempting to rip/isolate bits from the fabric of reality. So many modern thinkers get stuck on the way and conclude there is no truth, only relative perspectives. Some mystics go for silence while others try to inspire and guide with allusions to what can only be experienced directly, not referentially.
Ah, nice to meet you, I expect there are many more about. Silence is tempting, given verbal communication is a total fail.
Same here, Element. I was impressed that you were able to communicate this with just a few words.
BTW, I'm guessing you are fairly young. Arrived at a young age for me, but it has taken years to assimilate and integrate.
I both appear and sound a lot younger than I am, people are always amazed when they find out I'm older. It was mid-30s for me, I had a lot to sort out, it didn't end easily. It's great to meet someone like you, thanks for piping-up.
Need to rise early tomorrow ... cya
pretty impressive... french door refrigerator
"L O S E Y O U R M I N D" - going purposefully 'insane' to find a new own sanity might be the only way to break free, however it's a dangerous experiment you might loose parts of your self and in a worst case scenario never come back, I favor a hybrid approach show and tell people what they want to see and hear and at the same time have your own opinion 'deep inside', build a firewall around your consciousness a mental barrier that way you keep what you have and not let others infect you with their bullshit, you need a very strong will for that and it's not easy to make compromises as society will constantly test your resolve to remain independent(< 120 IQ need not apply)
Nope, that ain't it.
You put too many '...' in there how do you expect any1 to understand what you're trying to say :)
heh ...
I'm being 100% literal above ... It's not a plan, or a metaphore, or an idea ... it's literal.
... and no, you can't think about it ... literally, you can't.
Mind altering assistence is needed, please apply outside the realm of consciousness to your subconscious. Unlock the serotonin.
pretty impressive discussion. i really like it. thanks! Power4Home
The new Political Correctness crowd are dead set on destroying the Classical culture we've had, that was the same reason for the Mao's Cultural Revolution, you need to stomp out all the roots of a culture so that you can indoctrinate the new generations in New Truths for the purpose of better control, that is why you have this 1 World Movement trying to merge the 3rd world with the West to weaken it and divide it, at least the Asian cultures are not falling for it yet and I think Asia will be my next destination of choice, I only can have respect for people who have respect for them selves.
nice to see another CD post
Azannoth, CD, please, a dumb question from a foreigner: are you, by blaming the PC crowd, automatically positioning yourself against Democrats? If yes, are you automatically positioning yourself with the Republicans? (no pol affiliation, myself, just curious).
I'm asking because for me the political landscape of the US is really, really baffling for me as an external watcher. I think CD is looking it from the perspective of how you feel, I'm more into how you talk about.
A lot of the comments here seem to address "indoctrination" and I was particularly touched by the comment further up where a lady was mentioning a special moment she had when she was reading "US, why are you supporting a dictator?". But why? I am baffled.
There is "something different" in the US I still can't define, all I come up with is that you have in theory the same electoral system as in the UK, but they do have third and fourth parties. Would you say you are having a Cultural War (Red/Blue? City/Country?) where the positions are fixed and all is in a stalemate? Sometimes I think my understanding of the American Culture is decreasing steadily since the eighties...
I am not American never been to America and don't know the American perspective, however America is the point of interest to me because of their global dominance. And no I am not talking about political parties or religious affiliations and am not interested in discusing those, they are merely a by product of society and not what drives it.
I am trying to get to the empirically definable and comprehend able roots of society/nation/country/race
I don't think we have a race or religious war(yet), but I think this is what the people holding the strings want or are pushing us into, they are not concerned with that maybe even want it, they think they are separate to society so all they care about it to keep us in submission to them. The whole multiculturalism fad is only there to weaken the Caucasian race and if possible annihilate it
This is a war of genes, a certain Middle-Eastern race that has been 'persecuted' over centuries wants to kill off it's 'arch-enemy' 1nce of for all, because it's obviously impossible to kill 2-3Billion people you need to use social and genetic engineering for that purpose
Every creature/species is defined by it's genes and that is the ultimate base everything starts from, even if your not willing or able to admit it, you simply can't cheat Nature, different human races even different families compete with each other for survival that is what drives all of us in the end, people who are trying to prohibit you from stating this obvious truth only want to make it impossible for you to defend your self, it's like making it illegal to say that Plutonium is poisonous and than putting it in drinking water(cough Fluoride cough), the PC crowd is trying to take away all means of defense so they can eradicate their genetic competition un-impeded, and reshape the world in their genetic image, the majority of them are only 'useful fools' but the Brains behind it know exactly how this game works
thanks, I misunderstood your comments because of the terminology you used
now I think I understand better...
"I only can have respect for people who have respect for them selves."
I couldn't have said it better myself. Thank you.
Our experience before the interpretations we place on it is not illusory. We overlay everything with our assumptions but... that is the human predicament.
If we strip it all back to the initial pure experience before judgements, aversions and commentary, we can find the kindness to understand (not accept)and transform our situation.
I think you Americans can pull it off.
Have you read "Man's Search for Meaning" by Victor Frankl?
I guess if you can deal spiritually with Auschwitz, you can change the world.
"Have you read "Man's Search for Meaning" by Victor Frankl?"
Can't tell you how many times I cried while reading that. I have wanted to pick it back up recently, but I do not as yet have the courage to do so again.
Returning to the place just prior to birth, before those connections were broken is as unlikely for most as a wooden tank is to escape those tank trap fences you photographed.
You once said that you wrote for your own therapy and exploration. It's more than that! Smile, and know your words haven't been falling into earwax clogged ears, even if those who have read, bitched, and complained about style are unaware that their subconscious has been digesting it all.
"Smile, and know your words haven't been falling into earwax clogged ears, even if those who have read, bitched, and complained about style are unaware that their subconscious has been digesting it all."
I still do write for myself first, then share what I have found. But your observation above is something I realized fairly early on. It is my secret pleasure to know that those who hate my written word are still being infected by it. Call it the CD virus. It was even why I selected Cognitive Dissonance as my ID. It is always there, front and center, a tiny little irritant, scratching at the blackboard.
Look at what you are trying to avoid, listen to what you wish to ignore.
I was a fully propagandized slave myself. Alex P. Keeton was my role model as a teen. I worked hard to get ahead, and I did. Then at 34 I had my first child and my belief system got a crack in it. I've always had extremely strong instincts when it came to procreation. I was purely boy crazy in my younger years. Then after I was married, I obsessed on babies for 4 years until I finally got one. But before I got that baby, I could still go on being the good slave. After I had the baby, it all changed. Now, to be a good slave I had to leave my baby, and that was soooo wrong. Still, I had to pay the mortgage, so I had to leave my baby, but I was never that driven of a slave again. Three years later I was laid off, and I have never had a paying job since. I've done my own businesses, so I've always been able to be with my babies ever since.
More cracks have come here and there. The last few years I was really feeling like my life and the life portrayed on TV were very different, when I had always felt they were pretty similar before that. The final crack came from one sign on Al Jazeera during the Egyptian revolution. It said, "US, why do you support a dictator?" Bam, my indocrination crumbled.
I think I have escaped the ties of my past more than most. and I keep trying to go further, but you're right not 100%.
I think one thing holding me and probably others back at really giving up the past indocrination completely is that it is difficult to be so different from the others around you. It is difficult to give it all up, when others around you will think you odd for giving it up.
"I think one thing holding me and probably others back at really giving up the past indocrination completely is that it is difficult to be so different from the others around you. It is difficult to give it all up, when others around you will think you odd for giving it up."
It takes great courage to walk alone among the crowd. Baby steps my friend, baby steps. It doesn't need to be done all at once. We must replace the old programming in small increments.
How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.
Thank you for exposing yourself. That is very brave.
Thank you CD for your insightful work. I always make a point of paying attention to what you write.
I am interested to know what you think of the role of spectator team sports in the global society. It strikes me that the obsessive behaviour shown by team supporters (especially for example football supporters in Europe, the UK, Africa and Latin America) speaks of a tribality and a deep need to forge the connections you speak about. At the same time there is a mindless religious vervour to it that I find sinister for reasons I can't put a finger on. There is too much power in it for my liking.
Always listen to your gut instinct. If you think it stinks- there is probably something rotting there. FFAC- great name- you are correct. It is a planned distraction to dehumanize us and to bring out the tribal nature (not the positive things about tribal culture)- of humans when they gather. It is easier to control men when they are frozen in a teenage or adolescent state of maturity and their aggressions can be taken out on a team with the us/against them mentality. That is one reason we do not have more protests and why ponzi schemes (choose your scheme- there are plenty to go around) have been going on so long with very little resistance.
I have wanted to tackle organized team sports as the supreme distraction employed against the population, played out as divide and conquer. But I am afraid that if I do so I will be beaten, bloodied and left for dead. :>)
CD, having spent 20 years in advertising twisting the sheeple's perceptions of brand desirability up more than a few notches I escaped the death star and went looking for something useful to do that wasn't going to have the insidious unintended consequential outcomes of that existence. I nearly ended up as a sports commentator but for a twist of fate that saw me on a far more useful endeavour for all of us on spaceship earth. Would have been an ironic transition on one level, from supporting a brand (team) against it's league, albeit as a mercenary, to promoting the game as a whole and, most likely, the idea of sport in competition to other options for consumers to spend their cash. I played several sports at a serious amatuer level and for many years was an avid sports fan, but not any more. I enjoy the capacity for endeavour, the creativity inherent in the games, but the results are of little interest. I do not drink the kool aid any more.
Sport is a thing quite separate from professional sport. One is wholesome energetic fun, the other but a circus around which we raise an ever larger tent full of clowns and showmen, all hell bent on extracting your pound of flesh in exchange for the right to belong to one of the tribes of blind obedience. Professional sport is the masculine version of what shopping is for most women. Instead of seasonal fashions men have players who come and go like the wind and to these are pinned our hopes for our side's glory. The teams change formations and strategies, we are caught up in their battles, owned by their fortunes and our desires to be as one, to be the one, the winner. Meanwhile women shop for self gratification of another kind in a battle no less hideous, the media a willing tool, complicit in both journeys that are but searches for belonging and, in truth, nothing but an unmissable opportunity to extract revenue from the gullible in exchange for denial dressed up as pleasure.
Think of sport as a series of layers laid out for us to emesh ourselves into. American sport is perhaps different, given your franchise mentality, but in the end most games are transported from club v club to state v state and finally country v country we are witness to the ringing of the jingoist's bell, that tuneless harmony of anthem and cash register, and swept into a Pavlovian drool of auto-erotic conditioning by the pre-game prognosticating, the uniforms, the cabalistic fervour of the baying crowd becomes us and we it, the tyranny of distance made nought by television, we are there in mind and in body, sinews straining, nerves a-jangle, we live and breathe every moment on their road of hope. Yet for every winner there are a myriad lot of losers and though we taste defeat we come back for more, because we are invested. Our soul was sold for us, long before we knew what the trade was, we bought the hype and keep alive the myths handed down from parent to child. It is religion with a twist, there is no eternal salvation, only a trophy which you might never hold, even if you did you have to hand it back wthin the year. It is timeless, pointless and all too often corrupt anyway. Nothing but bitter fruit to taste here.
From then you live on memory and hope, dreaming of the resurrection, a new champion to lead you to the promised land and all the while you shell out for merchandise, tickets and pay per views while devouring every media tidbit you can find about your side and the side you hate the most, discussing the minutae as if it meant the world. It's not a matter of life and death as Bill Shankly most famously put it, it's more important than that.
We stand deceived, entranced and trapped by our investment, held captive by a force you can't explain. You're a lifelong fan, even if your team never has a hope in hell, a diehard relishing their underdog status, waiting for the rare day to crow about the one time you knocked off the champs. Sad isn't it, glorifying mediocrity, proudly waving your scarf, your badge of honour for failure.
Professional sport is there to fleece us, to keep us distracted, but also to maintain our readiness to fight for our flag. It is a devious weapon of control, a subtle set of orders a layer beneath the surface and we're too blind to see it for what it is. If diplomacy is war by other means then professional sport is the army's drill sargeant. It is but a step removed from battle itself, the only questions to ask are when does battle commence and whose side are you on? You will not be allowed to stand aloof, this time we are taking no prisoners...
How eloquent! Thank you for writing "most women". I have always been seen as a bit strange because with the exception of 4 or 5 years in my early teens, I have been totally unaffected by fashion. Even my husband remarks that I own the fewest clothes of all of us in the house. As long and I look clean and neat and am very comfortable and wearing timeless clothes- I am content. There is so much more to learn, do and be a part of in this world without wasting time on meaningless distractions.
As usual kind sir, you have woven a tapestry of concept written in thread spun from the loom of a bountiful lexicon carefully harvested from fields of reasoned thought. Your articles are artforms of travesty and solemnity and point out the optimism of being hopelessly human....as can only be described by cognitive dissonance.
Wow
From the bottom of its heart my ego thanks you for such a wonderful compliment.
I try very hard to craft an interesting and thoughtful dinner. As in all things in life it is always a matter of taste. Thank you for enjoying my feast.
"The hidden harmony is better than the obvious." -Heraclitus
This bitch be cuhrazy!
The boundaries in relationships vare all that can keep them functional. Yet, humanity violates those boundaries, by agreement.
http://georgesblogforum.wordpress.com/2011/07/02/the-three-areas-of-rela...
Glad to see you back, Cog. I have missed you.
Thank you for missing me.
I have missed being around ZH on a daily basis. While I was never gone I have been scarce. Hopefully I can make up for lost time.
Yeah, where have you been? I was just thinking this the other day. Nice trees. I enjoy your writings.
Nice images, Cog. I would love to get the jpg's if you're in the sharing mood.
There is a neat story behind the images if you have a minute.
I was in a middle of a personal crisis and decided to go looking for inspiration anywhere I could find it. After several hours of driving nowhere I came upon the sign directing me to the GW national monument and I knew I had arrived.
For three hours I found magic wherever I looked and had the presence of mind to snap over 400 images. A good friend of mine told me I was talking to the trees. I think they are right.
Email me at ZHCognitiveDissonance at gmail dot com and I'll send you some samples. I was very surprised how well they came out since all I had was an iPhone4. Dumb luck was walking with me that day, along with a brilliant blue sky and dry weather.
It was a day I will always remember. I came back refreshed and ready to move forward from there. Crisis gone in a flash.
Thanks.
So, do you believe in magic?
I guess it's only fair that you ask since I used the word "magic" to begin with. I have spoken often that our language has been hijacked and this is an example of a hijacked word that conjures up all types of dark meanings.
I use the term "magic" with reverence and honor to reflect my state of mind and spirit as I walked among, and talked with, the trees, the earth and the sky that day. I went looking for meaning and inspiration, to talk with my inner being and to consult my inner knowing. And I was answered, for wherever I looked for inspiration I found it.
What else can one call that but magic.
but it's so much easier looking outside rather than within
I only look for one word in internet posts now: girls. girls, girls, girls, girls, girls, girls, girls. you know...it's true what they say about them....
Tainter collapse at the personal level.
This Tainter?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Tainter
Self-Righteousness is the roadblock. Good to see you back.