I have insisted since my arrest that the reason I did what I did (kidnappings, raping and murdering children) was mostly in order to get revenge, or "poetic justice", for what society in general did to me as a child. I realize how pathetic this sounds as an excuse. But, I'm not saying it to make an excuse for what I did. In fact, I have also said over and over, and even in court on several occasions, that there is no excuse for what I did. The only reason I insist that I was "punishing society" for what it did to me when I was vulnerable and asking for help is because it represents a critical element in my crimes that I could have easily been defused long before I ever became violent.
In fact, I believe it underscores a critical element of all crimes that is almost always completely ignored even though it could effectively stop crime, all crime, in its tracks. I'm talking about the element of entitlement.
The one thing that all so-called "bad guys" have in common is an immediate sense of entitlement to hurt, take from, or otherwise violate another person. In fact, this sense of entitlement is so prevalent in crime that it could be used to define wrong doing in general. I have often hinted that "punishing" criminals is no more than answering crime with more crime. And, unlike fighting fire with fire, all it does is cause more pain and destruction while at the same time providing a further sense of entitlement to the so-called criminals. All "criminal justice" accomplishes is insuring the need for more "criminal justice".
The author of IN DEFENSE OF CHAOS, L. K. Samuels, spends a considerable amount of time in his book developing this same idea. He writes, "Nobody sees himself as evil" (p. 99). And he gives several examples from criminals to dictators who all believed, as I once did, that they were entitled to do what they did.
But, the problem is that our culture is built upon the principle of entitlement. Our most fundamental and basic laws themselves are a list of entitlements that we call "rights". And, every conflict that has ever developed, from who gets the "Eggo" from the toaster to world war, has been an argument over entitlement. Everyone feels entitled to do what they do, no matter how "criminal" or "heinous" it seems to someone else. And that's the problem.
What if nobody felt entitled to anything? Where does the sense of entitlement come from to begin with? What would happen if instead of telling (lying to) people about all the "rights" they have we simply informed them of their "responsibilities" instead? Like the responsibility to protect our loved ones, instead of the so-called right to be safe from harm (which is just Orwellian doublespeak if you think about it). I think there are real and meaningful answers to questions like these, and, that those answers could lead us to a better, freer, and far more compassionate reality.
(J.D. February 4, 2015)
Saturday, March 21, 2015
Saturday, March 14, 2015
The Three Faces of Truth
Like the Christian God, Truth had three distinct "faces" that are presented to us according to our ability to "see" and understand.
The first and most commonly perceived face of truth is what most people might call factual truth. But, it could also be called perceptual truth, or apparent truth. This is the first and most obvious face of reality itself that we all perceive through our various senses. The sky, the earth, our bodies, the air we breath; these are all perceived, or factual, truths.
It is in the face of factual truth that the vast majority of people live their lives. It is an ignorant and extremely limited view of existence, and thus we sometimes recognize it as the "small minded" reality in others, but seldom within ourselves. And yet, it is from this "little world" of factual truth that we judge each other, and end up judging ourselves. People tend to hide behind their precious facts, and use them to conceal the greater truths that typically terrify them.
Most of the "greater truths" (though they are only arguably "greater", as we shall see in a moment) exist in light of the second face of the truth, called relative truth.
Everyone knows about the "relative truth", but few understand it, and far fewer have ever managed to embrace it. This is the face of truth that tells us plainly that there is no right or wrong, good or evil, up or down; because everything exists only in relation to everything else. The relative face of truth knows for example that time itself exist only in relation to space. Time cannot and does not exist in the absence of space, nor can an evil human exist in the absence of good humans (and vice versa).
One way to better understand the difference between factual truth and relative truth is to consider how people use them to interact. Dishonest and deluded people use the factual truth to lie to other people and themselves all the time. They commonly even think of themselves as "honest" people because of their insistence on speaking only the factual truth. Christians, politicians, and lawyers usually rely on this form of deception. It is the "safe bet", and the "wide road", which is heavily defended by state, social and religious laws that are always violently enforced lest the relative truth be known.
A person who recognizes the face and value of relative truth will appear to "speak in riddles" as they strive to be more honest and respectful of the truth in general. Such a person is more interested in what their words actually convey, rather than what they say. They strive to come out from behind their words, rather than hide behind them. Their words, when taken out of context, the way lawyers, Christians and politicians love to do, appear contradictory and nonsensical. But, in context they express the relative nature of truth, and end up being more honest, even when they are factually not true.
When an honest person is confronted they might say, "but, that's not what I meant". While a less honest person will typically insist, "but, that's not what I SAID!". An honest person uses words to EXPRESS the truth, a dishonest person uses words to DEFINE it. (A careful reader might note that this is all extremely consistent with what I have written in the past about our "deception based justice system" and helps explain why such a system can only end up bringing more pain and suffering into our world, even as it claims to bring less - i.e. it's words are empty "factual" shells that do little more than conceal the relative truth of our reality that it is necessary for us to understand if we ever want to stop ignorantly causing ourselves and others to suffer.)
And finally there is the face of Absolute Truth, which I really can't say too much about because it is by definition and by necessity an indescribable truth. The Absolute Truth though is the ultimate source of all other truth. You could say it is the greatest truth of all, but you can't really compare and grade the faces of truth like that. They are each unique and crucial to the experience we call reality. And, our world, any world for that matter, could not exist without all of them together, nor could any of the faces of truth exist without all of the faces as One. I believe this to be the mystery of the Trinity that Christian's so often misrepresent (by trying to define and confine their truth with the so-called "word of God" that to an honest person is so obviously only the words of men). I also believe that all living beings are born with an understanding of the faces of truth, and how they represent the same One Being; but men, we humans, the "fallen ones", are taught to ignore and eventually forget what we knew so naturally as children.
The "prayer" in my own life (i.e. the ultimate driving principle) has always been, and yet remains, to see a day when we all remember what we have been trained to forget. Even when I was so badly deceived myself by the world of perceptions and factual reality.
I think that if a deceived man lives in the world of factual truths, and an honest man in a world of relative truths, then an enlightened man must live in the world of Absolute Truth, from which it is plain for him to see that ultimately there is only One Truth, and deception itself - death itself - is nothing more than a shadow of the truth - a shadow of life - and certainly nothing to be afraid of.
(J.D. January 28, 2015)
The first and most commonly perceived face of truth is what most people might call factual truth. But, it could also be called perceptual truth, or apparent truth. This is the first and most obvious face of reality itself that we all perceive through our various senses. The sky, the earth, our bodies, the air we breath; these are all perceived, or factual, truths.
It is in the face of factual truth that the vast majority of people live their lives. It is an ignorant and extremely limited view of existence, and thus we sometimes recognize it as the "small minded" reality in others, but seldom within ourselves. And yet, it is from this "little world" of factual truth that we judge each other, and end up judging ourselves. People tend to hide behind their precious facts, and use them to conceal the greater truths that typically terrify them.
Most of the "greater truths" (though they are only arguably "greater", as we shall see in a moment) exist in light of the second face of the truth, called relative truth.
Everyone knows about the "relative truth", but few understand it, and far fewer have ever managed to embrace it. This is the face of truth that tells us plainly that there is no right or wrong, good or evil, up or down; because everything exists only in relation to everything else. The relative face of truth knows for example that time itself exist only in relation to space. Time cannot and does not exist in the absence of space, nor can an evil human exist in the absence of good humans (and vice versa).
One way to better understand the difference between factual truth and relative truth is to consider how people use them to interact. Dishonest and deluded people use the factual truth to lie to other people and themselves all the time. They commonly even think of themselves as "honest" people because of their insistence on speaking only the factual truth. Christians, politicians, and lawyers usually rely on this form of deception. It is the "safe bet", and the "wide road", which is heavily defended by state, social and religious laws that are always violently enforced lest the relative truth be known.
A person who recognizes the face and value of relative truth will appear to "speak in riddles" as they strive to be more honest and respectful of the truth in general. Such a person is more interested in what their words actually convey, rather than what they say. They strive to come out from behind their words, rather than hide behind them. Their words, when taken out of context, the way lawyers, Christians and politicians love to do, appear contradictory and nonsensical. But, in context they express the relative nature of truth, and end up being more honest, even when they are factually not true.
When an honest person is confronted they might say, "but, that's not what I meant". While a less honest person will typically insist, "but, that's not what I SAID!". An honest person uses words to EXPRESS the truth, a dishonest person uses words to DEFINE it. (A careful reader might note that this is all extremely consistent with what I have written in the past about our "deception based justice system" and helps explain why such a system can only end up bringing more pain and suffering into our world, even as it claims to bring less - i.e. it's words are empty "factual" shells that do little more than conceal the relative truth of our reality that it is necessary for us to understand if we ever want to stop ignorantly causing ourselves and others to suffer.)
And finally there is the face of Absolute Truth, which I really can't say too much about because it is by definition and by necessity an indescribable truth. The Absolute Truth though is the ultimate source of all other truth. You could say it is the greatest truth of all, but you can't really compare and grade the faces of truth like that. They are each unique and crucial to the experience we call reality. And, our world, any world for that matter, could not exist without all of them together, nor could any of the faces of truth exist without all of the faces as One. I believe this to be the mystery of the Trinity that Christian's so often misrepresent (by trying to define and confine their truth with the so-called "word of God" that to an honest person is so obviously only the words of men). I also believe that all living beings are born with an understanding of the faces of truth, and how they represent the same One Being; but men, we humans, the "fallen ones", are taught to ignore and eventually forget what we knew so naturally as children.
The "prayer" in my own life (i.e. the ultimate driving principle) has always been, and yet remains, to see a day when we all remember what we have been trained to forget. Even when I was so badly deceived myself by the world of perceptions and factual reality.
I think that if a deceived man lives in the world of factual truths, and an honest man in a world of relative truths, then an enlightened man must live in the world of Absolute Truth, from which it is plain for him to see that ultimately there is only One Truth, and deception itself - death itself - is nothing more than a shadow of the truth - a shadow of life - and certainly nothing to be afraid of.
(J.D. January 28, 2015)
Wednesday, March 4, 2015
The Friendly Why's
Everybody knows that flying commercially is the safest way to travel these days. But, what everyone doesn't realize is the reason why. It's certainly not because it is the safest to begin with; it's not. In fact, flying is inherently the most dangerous, by far! So why has it become so safe and becoming even more safe overall despite vastly increasing traffic and risks?
Why indeed. The answer is plain and obvious: profit! But, not just any old profit; it is all about who profits, or technically, WHAT profits. In the airline industry, safety profits, and so safety wins. If our government ran the airlines with the same blame-profit methodology that it uses to run our social institutions then air travel safety would be consistent with its intrinsic nature, and the government officials in charge would blame the "nature of air travel" for their failure to provide safety in exactly the same way they blame "human nature" for their failure to keep us safe in public and even in our homes (or, more notoriously in recent history, when catastrophe strikes; 9-11, Katrina, school shootings, etc...)
And if simple logic and reason alone isn't enough to convince you of this plain truth, then you have only to consider the safety record of the USSR government ran airline before the collapse of that social system. In Russia, when an airplane crashed, the government officials in charge made a fast scramble to point fingers and avoid blame - because that's how government officials "profit". The result is not only a failure to find the cause of the crash, but in most cases new problems end up being introduced that only caused more crashes. (A good example of this was the government instituted policy of hiring only retired military pilots for the commercial jets. The result was a notoriously dangerous clique of hot dog pilots that did nothing to decrease the accident rates but drove the passenger quotas into the ground.)
If we want to reduce crime, and "protect our children", then we must change how people profit from crime. Currently politicians, lawyers, and "law enforcement professionals" profit only if crime ensues - so why do we act so surprised when it does?
Have you ever noticed the consistency of the message in popular media against privatization of government services, even though in most (admittedly, not all, but certainly most) cases such privatized "profit driven" services have been proven to out perform government services by tens or even hundreds of times (depending on how and what is measured)? Do you really doubt that our government is still in the propaganda business? If you do then you are as much to blame for MY crimes (serial child rape and murder) as I am. It may not have been your hand that wielded the weapon, but it was your mentality.
(J.D. February 1, 2015)
Why indeed. The answer is plain and obvious: profit! But, not just any old profit; it is all about who profits, or technically, WHAT profits. In the airline industry, safety profits, and so safety wins. If our government ran the airlines with the same blame-profit methodology that it uses to run our social institutions then air travel safety would be consistent with its intrinsic nature, and the government officials in charge would blame the "nature of air travel" for their failure to provide safety in exactly the same way they blame "human nature" for their failure to keep us safe in public and even in our homes (or, more notoriously in recent history, when catastrophe strikes; 9-11, Katrina, school shootings, etc...)
And if simple logic and reason alone isn't enough to convince you of this plain truth, then you have only to consider the safety record of the USSR government ran airline before the collapse of that social system. In Russia, when an airplane crashed, the government officials in charge made a fast scramble to point fingers and avoid blame - because that's how government officials "profit". The result is not only a failure to find the cause of the crash, but in most cases new problems end up being introduced that only caused more crashes. (A good example of this was the government instituted policy of hiring only retired military pilots for the commercial jets. The result was a notoriously dangerous clique of hot dog pilots that did nothing to decrease the accident rates but drove the passenger quotas into the ground.)
If we want to reduce crime, and "protect our children", then we must change how people profit from crime. Currently politicians, lawyers, and "law enforcement professionals" profit only if crime ensues - so why do we act so surprised when it does?
Have you ever noticed the consistency of the message in popular media against privatization of government services, even though in most (admittedly, not all, but certainly most) cases such privatized "profit driven" services have been proven to out perform government services by tens or even hundreds of times (depending on how and what is measured)? Do you really doubt that our government is still in the propaganda business? If you do then you are as much to blame for MY crimes (serial child rape and murder) as I am. It may not have been your hand that wielded the weapon, but it was your mentality.
(J.D. February 1, 2015)
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