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Richard’s Selected Writings on Aggression
The Need For Any Aggressive Tit-for-Tat Modus Vivendi Vanishes Richard (21st of January, 2016): Bullying in childhood is all-too-common—the identity inhabiting this flesh-and-blood body all those years ago fell victim to the bully-boys and feisty-femmes due in no small degree to being a particularly sensitive feeling-being—incurring all manner of childhood hurts. Yet, even so, anyone who carries those hurt feelings, no matter how deeply felt, over into adulthood (and stubbornly nurses them in their adult bosom) is surely yet to have earned the title ‘mature adult’. Speaking personally, the feeling-being inhabiting this flesh-and-blood body all those years ago instantaneously rid ‘himself’ of the bulk of those school-age hurts and slights—whilst sitting out in the sunshine one fine morning, putting pencil to paper in order to finally record those dastardly events for posterity, as per a long-held and cherished ambition to do so at length—via seeing-in-a-flash that, as it was simply not possible to ever physically be a child again (and thus juvenilely susceptible to not only those bully-boys and feisty-femmes but any enabling teachers and principals as well), there was absolutely no need whatsoever to continue nursing them as a carryover grudge. It soon became increasingly apparent, thereafter, how those childhood hurts had been vital to the maintenance of the righteous indignation which fuelled ‘his’ plaints of injustice (a.k.a. ‘unfairness’) and, thus, ‘his’ mission to bring justice (a.k.a. ‘fairness’) to the world. Also, with the dissolution of those childhood hurts the (deeply felt) need for any aggressive tit-for-tat modus vivendi also vanishes—leaving one free to treat all others as fellow human beings rather than as adversaries to gain dominion over. In biblical terms tit-for-tat When the identity inhabiting this flesh-and-blood body in 1981 took ‘his’ first steps on what has become known as the wide and wondrous path to an actual freedom from the human condition (i.e., from identity in toto) ‘he’ quickly ascertained that whilst ‘he’ could not stop people giving offence and/or being offensive what ‘he’ could stop was taking offence and/or being retributively offensive as ‘he’ knew of the tit-for-tat nature of the ever-recurring wars between neighbouring tribes in the New Guinea Highlands (what they called “pay-back” warfare) which stretched back millennia in the past such that the specific nature of the initial offence was lost forever in the mists of time. What ‘he’ also knew of was the archetypal “fightin’ & feudin’ hillbillies” of legendary North American folklore—who also typically knew not of what had started it all back whenever—and the break-up of the modern nation of Yugoslavia is another example of inherited ancestral scores being settled. Obviously, someone had to ‘break the chain’ of such never-ending tit-for-tat feuding—else the term ‘mature adult’ was bereft of meaning—and ‘he’ could see that only unilateral action would do the trick. Accordingly, ‘he’ conceived of being akin to a sponge—absorbing all the rudeness, all the insults, all the slights (no knee-jerk reactionary rudeness; no retaliatory retorts; no keeping score, even, of past incidences)—and duly ‘wringing it out’, if necessary, from time-to-time were ‘he’ ever to become too full to absorb any more (which latter ploy was, curiously enough, never necessary). And it worked! My usage of the word ‘conceived’ in the above “tit-for-tat” passage—specifically, in that illustrative paragraph (“illustrative” as per its ‘being akin to...’ wording) recalling how “not taking offence” was envisioned by the identity in residence circa 1981—is predicated upon what is conveyed by the term ‘Conceptual Art’. Viz.:
Thus the short answer to any query regarding those ‘wringing it out’ words is that the resident identity (who was successfully making a living as a practising artist at that time) viewed it as a figurative ‘wringing it out’ which, as already remarked upon parenthetically, turned out to be not necessary anyway. Nonetheless it may be helpful to expand somewhat upon what that feeling-being was involved in (when 33-34 years of age) and what was going through ‘his’ mind at the time. First, a brief background sketch: my (now-deceased) first wife had inherited a volatile temper from her father such as to erupt on a near-daily basis (sometimes violently) and, on occasion in the latter years of her marriage, several times a day. Indeed, the fundamental reason for eventually bringing the marriage to an end, after the firstborn scion had matured sufficiently to have left the family home to make his own way in the world, was because of choosing to no longer live in what is nowadays known as ‘an abusive relationship’ (i.e., female-on-male domestic violence). The two of us had a long-running difference of opinion as to how to deal with moods, in general, and with temper, in particular. I had been raised in the ‘stiff upper-lip’ school of thought (a.k.a. being suppressive of anti-social feelings) while she was of the ‘blow off steam’ variety (a.k.a. being expressive of same) inasmuch she firmly believed that ‘bottling it all up’ was futile, as the ‘cork would pop’ eventually, anyway, and how it was better to ‘let it all out in the moment’ before it could build up into ‘a full head of steam’. As the resident identity back then would tend to lose ‘his’ temper only every four-to-six weeks, or so, on average—usually over something quite trivial, mind you, whilst valiantly tolerating the major issues—and then juvenilely sulk for several days afterwards, because of having succumbed in such a puerile manner yet again, ‘he’ was not inclined to join the ‘let it all out in the moment’ school of thought despite being oft-times urged and constantly provoked to do so. Consequently, as ‘his’ intent was to imitate the actual, as experienced six months prior in a memorable four-hour pure consciousness experience (PCE), it soon became apparent to ‘him’ that only the third alternative to either suppressing or expressing would do the trick. Upon advising ‘his’ wife of fifteen years standing of the course of action ‘he’ was putting into place—and likening ‘himself’ to being akin to a sponge and soaking up any and all offence given (i.e., by thus not taking offence in the first place ‘he’ would no longer be putting ‘himself’ into the suppression-expression dichotomy) as a descriptive analogy—she of course asked what ‘he’ intended to do upon becoming saturated which, to her mind, was the equivalent of her ‘full head of steam’ analogy. As the two analogies have no such equivalence—the one stems from taking offence (thereby generating ‘steam’ aplenty) and the other is founded upon not taking offence (which obviates any such generative process)—then the ‘wring it out’ ploy, which ‘he’ conceived of in reply to her query, never eventuated in practice as the amount of offensive language and/or offensive gestures thusly absorbable approaches a near-infinite quantity. Thus the longer answer to queries regarding those ‘wringing it out’ words is that because ‘he’ was focussed upon not taking offence in the first place—which mostly forestalled having to be either suppressive or expressive—‘his’ conceptualisation did not include any specific way or particular means by which a ‘wring out’ would take place. The quite magical outcome depicted earlier, in “The Power to have me Annoyed, Irritated, Irked, or even Peeved” mouse-hover tool-tip further above, by being mirifically enabled to neither be suppressive nor expressive after having succumbed once more, despite such focus, was a serendipitous discovery (there being no published praxeological works whatsoever, at the time, for field-tested accounts of what worked to deliver the goods, and instead being drawn ineluctably to ‘his’ destiny by pure intent, resulted in many a disclosure of that ilk occurring as the wide and wondrous path became more and more apparent). As I have written elsewhere about a preliminary step towards ‘not taking offence in the first place’, without explicitly naming it as such, it may very well be worthwhile to re-present it here. Viz.: __________
• [Richard]: Given that people are as-they-are and that the world is as-it-is there are more than a few things which are ‘unacceptable’
(child abuse, rape, murder, torture and so on). What worked for me twenty-odd years ago, as a preliminary step, was to rephrase the question so that it
makes sense (rather than vainly apply any of those unliveable ‘unconditional acceptance’ type injunctions): This way intelligence need not be compromised—intelligence will no longer be crippled. ~ (Online Exchange; August 18, 2001). ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ * Before proceeding any further it is important to note that the entire giving offence and/or taking offence phenomenon is a very
big deal, in regards to human relations, for the denizens of the ‘real world’—in centuries past potentially-lethal duels would be fought between offendant
and offendee (with ‘seconds’ in attendance to ensure agreed-upon rules of engagement were observed) as a means of obtaining the restitution of honour for
the offended party—as is also evidenced by the increased incidence of modern-day ‘hate-crimes’ legislation whereby the concept of lèse-majesté By way of illustration, as to just how big a deal that giving offence and/or taking offence phenomenon is in the ‘real world’, it might be useful to draw attention (as it may have escaped notice due to extensive media focus directed elsewhere) to how the triggering-event which set off all the subsequent multifaceted sequences of events which, arguably, eventually led to the potentially-historical episodes of el-taḥarrush el-ginsy (a.k.a. sexual molestation and/or harassment of women in public) by a thousand-plus malefactors in the city centre of Köln, Deutschland (a.k.a. Cologne, Germany) on New Year’s Eve 2015-2016, was the public humiliation, on December 17, 2010, of a twenty-six-year-old male street vendor of fruit and vegetables in Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia, by a forty-five-year-old female municipal official who (allegedly) made a slur against his deceased father, spat at him, slapped him on the face, cast aside his unlicensed produce-barrow and confiscated his weighing scales. According to his mother, ‘It got to him deep inside, it hurt his pride’ (i.e., to be humiliated, publicly, by a female). Viz.
Thus the identity in situ at the beginning of 1981 went right to the heart of the matter from the get-go. The crux of the issue is that, as each and every identity is a feeling-being at root (i.e., ‘I’ am ‘my’ feelings and ‘my’ feelings are ‘me’), all identities are hereditarily programmed by blind nature to emotionally-passionally react, instantaneously, to affectively-felt and/or psychically-intuited threats to their existence because, at their very core, it is ‘being’ itself at dire risk (i.e., ‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being is ‘being’ itself). (It is a genetic hangover from long-ago ancestral eras already many millions of years old when sapience emerged around hundred millennia ago—as a boy, a youth, a young man, hunting game in the wild plus interacting daily with domesticated animals, revealed to me how they relied as much, if not more, on what was known generically as a ‘sixth sense’ as upon an acute sense of smell, alert hearing and keen eyesight in order to evade predation—which has become a liability, for modern-day humankind, rather than the asset it once was). Now, because the pure consciousness experience (PCE)—where ‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being is in abeyance (unlike an altered state of consciousness (ASC) where ‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being reigns supreme as ‘Being’ itself) for the duration—experientially demonstrates how each and every identity has no existence whatsoever in actuality then any such offensiveness (previously experienced as affective and/or psychic threats to ‘my’ existence and/or to ‘my’ very ‘being’) loses its existential sting and/or no longer has its dire effect. Indeed, all the rudeness, all the insults, all the slights, and etcetera, soon become rather exquisite aids in ferreting-out any aspects of ‘me’ which have eluded exposure through hands-on inspection up till then (hence my parenthetical remark about the metaphorical ‘wringing it out’ ploy not being necessary, in practice, and my further above observation regarding the absorbability of offensive language and/or offensive gestures being nigh-on infinite in regards quantity). Incidentally, the reason why the nursery-doggerel ‘sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me’ was largely ineffectual in childhood is because truisms such as that do not take into account the affective vibes and psychic currents—transmitted instantaneously via the psychic web connecting all feeling-beings regardless of spatial extension—which are part-and-parcel of the very act of giving offence and/or being offensive and the vital element in the entire giving offence and/or taking offence phenomenon which bedevils life in the ‘real world’. As I have oft-times said, it is the psychic web where the real power-play takes place. Howsoever, once the practice of not taking offence becomes habituated even the most virulent affective and/or psychic power-play—being thereby recognised for what it is—can thus be weathered with relative ease. Ha! ... being alive is such a fascinating adventure.
The Power to have me Annoyed, Irritated, Irked, or even Peeved Richard (speaking in the third person on the 13th of January, 2013): In the late-afternoon of an otherwise typical summer’s day, in 1981, a six-foot-two man was standing in the kitchen of his ex-farmhouse being soundly berated, as was also typical, by his four-foot-eleven wife; he was in a bind, a double-bind, in fact, and of his own making insofar as he had formed the intent, a few weeks earlier (on the 1st of January), to live life as it had been in their all-too-brief honeymoon period a little over fourteen years previously; his intent to do so was formed as a way of having it segue into the pristine purity of the four-hour perfection experience, indelibly imprinted in his memory, which he had experienced in all its marvellous wonder in the mid-winter of the previous year; his wife, having impetuously agreed that day to travel in concert with him, had already succumbed to the same-old same-old and was out to have him crack, too, so that their life together could revert to normal (having put all that pie-in-the-sky romantic nonsense back where it belonged in the wishful-thinking department). As he stood there, with the slowly-setting sun streaming yellow through the wide-open French doors leading out onto the brick-paved patio, he was quite aware that a similar scene had taken place only the day before, plus how he had managed to keep his act together only by the exigency of abruptly vacating the scene, until the barely suppressed anger she had invoked in him had subsided enough to return; he was acutely aware, also, that she had his number and, as far as she was concerned, it was only a matter of time before he too succumbed to the same-old same-old; and as he stood there he was uncomfortably aware that the same anger of yesterday was rising, slowly but inexorably, from the solar plexus up toward the rib-cage diaphragm. There was no way he was going to suppress it—he’d had a lifetime of the failure of the ‘stiff upper lip’ approach—and he was damn’d if he was going to express it, either (for then this four-foot-eleven female would have triumphed over this six-foot-two male yet again); the vision of having to vacate the scene once more—and again and again off into a sombrely-looming future—was not at all an attractive option, yet, if all else failed, he supposed he could always make the unseemly dash to the door. Thus he stood there still, despite feeling the anger rising ever upward, through the rib-cage diaphragm, and now suffusing the thoracic region with its all-too-familiar temptation. And he could see her eyes begin to gleam, even through the wrathful glare which had transfixed him all the while, and he just knew she was zeroing in for the kill; his own anger was mounting, ever-simmering and seething it was brimming at the region of the lower throat by now; her face was flushed with purple, with nostrils quite distended, and spittle flecked her livid lips as her shrilling rose to fever pitch; he had left it too late to beat a hasty retreat and his throat muscles quivered as the brimming anger shimmered and shifted into a pre-shout mode born of old and ... and, wonder of wonders, that oh-so-familiar throat-muscle quivering skipped a beat or two and began to ease! With a rapidly-mounting amazement and delight, he marvelled at the fact that he had, in some way, neither suppressed nor succumbed and that he had finally freed himself of domination by this four-foot-whatever fleshly package of seething anger and hatred that had usurped the mother of his and her children. And as the slowly-setting sun streams golden from the west another world entirely hoves into view. Pristine and pure, ever-fresh and new, peerless perfection permeates all and sundry, without exception, and he knows with a certainty that his life is never going to be the same ever again. Ain’t life grand!
RETURN TO RICHARD’S SELECTED WRITING INDEX The Third Alternative (Peace On Earth In This Life Time As This Flesh And Blood Body) Here is an actual freedom from the Human Condition, surpassing Spiritual Enlightenment and any other Altered State Of Consciousness, and challenging all philosophy, psychiatry, metaphysics (including quantum physics with its mystic cosmogony), anthropology, sociology ... and any religion along with its paranormal theology. Discarding all of the beliefs that have held humankind in thralldom for aeons, the way has now been discovered that cuts through the ‘Tried and True’ and enables anyone to be, for the first time, a fully free and autonomous individual living in utter peace and tranquillity, beholden to no-one.
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Actual Freedom Trust: 1997-. All Rights Reserved.
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