I want to follow-up with one more aspect to this.
By way of my ongoing investigations into social desires[1], I’m coming to see just how much better it is to … actually/ finally … allow others to be (and thus effortlessly treat them as) fellow human beings. It deprives me of all power-dynamics. The need to have power over others (‘social desire’[2]), or let others have power over me. There’s no need for retributive malice, for example … because in an emotional sense only I’m responsible for my feeling hurt or ‘marginalized’ or ignored or whatever. The actualism method of feeling good come what may makes it possible to diffuse these interpersonal power dynamics rather easily, simply from the awareness of ‘no longer feeling good’ (and when I’m even irked, I ain’t feeling good), and ‘no matter what it is’ (link). It is like “Ah, a glitch…. Umm. What was that? Oh, right. So that is how it works. Interesting” … all done with the intent of feeling good come what may.
This is all in start contrast to myself from a decade ago Mailing List 'D' Syd wherein I was advocating, among other things, for (Devika’s) ‘standing up for oneself’ which was just retributive malice in disguise. Unless it is a threat to my survival, in one way or the other (which requires action), there generally is no need to fight or defend anything; so there’s no excuse not to feel good. It also reminds me of this exchange:
RESPONDENT: [..] While entering the security check-in gates, I was frisked by a rather rude group of security staff and I realized that my bad feelings were coming because of seeing them in a position of power and ‘me’ being helpless and at their mercy. [..]
RICHARD: G’day No. 32, In regards to the first of the two things which happened to you while on a flight trip: the realisation that your fellow human beings, when in an everyday position of power and control, will (on occasion) pull a power-trip on their fellow human beings – per favour blind nature’s rough and ready software survival package – can be of an on-going benefit (as well as that immediate long-term benefit, which you have already reported, of it hitting home to you more deeply how there is just no long term solution to be found in the human condition) but only provided your on-the-spot realisation manifests as an actualisation, of that valuable insight, in your moment-to-moment living.
An anecdote might best illustrate what I mean: many years ago my then-companion Devika would oft-times say to me that I should stand up for myself and not let peoples (such as you describe) push me around … indeed, it was one of the reasons she created a psychic force-field in her psyche (which is, of course, the human psyche) so as to protect what she saw, experientially, back then as innocence personified.
(She was wont to exclaim, on occasion, how ‘Richard brings something marvellous – something absolutely wonderful – into the world and yet everyone deposits ordure on it’ … albeit not expressed quite so politely as that).
What she did not realise – except during a PCE of course – is that innocence itself (the genuine article and not the so-called innocence of children) requires no affective vibe/ psychic current protection whatsoever and, therefore, in vain would I explain to her that, in everyday situations such as you report (where the whole point of the exercise is to walk out the door with the goodies which those in a position of power and control can either dispense or withhold), I had no interest whatsoever in futilely striving to win a puny ego-battle with some officious power-tripper but, instead, walk away with the said goodies each time. Selected Correspondence: Authority
In the real-world, injunctions like ‘being kind to each other’ are provided as a (spurious) moral solution. But there’s no need for morality here. It is simply silly to feel malicious (it is both personally insalubrious and harmful to others), when I could be feeling good. It is very freeing, to weaken these covert ‘bonds’ with people.
cf. ”I desired being like them (popular)” in Just feel good, bro - #4 by syd ↩︎
cf. ”I desired being like them (popular)” in Just feel good, bro - #4 by syd ↩︎