What a Way to Go: Life at the End of Empire

This is based on an interaction in the comments to a previous blog post, Shut Up and Drum!

 

James said:

Fuck you, Tim. If you had any integrity at all, you would focus on helping and saving this precious human being who is right next to you. You’d adopt the poor guy rather than maintaining your bullshit comfortable white middle-class distance. Don’t tell me you couldn’t personally guarantee his safety without begging others to help. Fuck your Boomer pseudo-objectivity. Just take the guy into your home, keep him safe, and let him drum. You say you were called to his story. Well, get involved in it in a positive way, idiot! What, is he too dark for you? Otherwise, I hope Robert eats you. If he doesn’t, my entire generation is coming to eat yours. Your fat carcasses are about all that’s left to eat, in the world you’ve destroyed. God damn you and your lazy, indulgent omnicidal ways. You think making a cheap mea culpa movie (not coincidentally starring you) is recompense? Not at all! In fact, it’s just more of your typically self-indulgent bullshit. If you’re “more aware” than others, then it’s incumbent on you to actually act with integrity. Show me something other than yet another fat white guy talking a lot of shit while covering his own self-absorbed ass. I hate you, Tim. Fuck you very much. Your (public and incredibly callous) response to your daughter just crystallized the hatred I feel for you. Get the fuck off my planet.

James

 

PS- Let me guess what the chances are of you allowing this comment to be published… You are a green-meme, narcissistic piece of crap like everyone your age, so the chances are zero. Much like your chances of improving the world through your bullshit. Walk the walk, or get the fuck out of the way, lie down and die, and let people who can clean up your mistakes get to work. Bye.

 

Tim said:

Hi James,

 

Your anger is certainly understandable and appropriate to these times, even necessary. I’ve been in it myself, many times, and will likely be in it again. So posting your comment serves the highest good, as far as I can see, as it reveals the depth of feeling now residing in the people of Empire as a result of the insanity in which we now live.

 

But the vast majority of your anger does not belong to me. I will take that part of it that belongs to me and hand the rest back to you. You will have to give it to whom it belongs. That is your work to do.

 

As for the rest, the assumptions behind your comment (and the assumptions behind any response I might make to you) would take a great deal of time to sort through, and that work is likely impossible to do in this online realm. You have almost no idea who any of us are – Robert, Sally or me. And you have almost no idea what we are up to here. Based simply on the words I see on the screen, for I don’t really know you either, it appears that you have work to do, in sorting out what you know and don’t know, in questioning the assumptions and beliefs that shape your own life, and in unraveling the “civilized” ego that now runs your own life, as a result of your own wounding in this culture. Your words feel to me like Empire itself speaking. Are you willing to look at that?

 

I do not accept your projections. And I do not argue online. If all you have is unexamined anger and name-calling and assumptions, I’m going to ignore your comments. If you are up for real dialogue, in which we suspend our assumptions and relate as colleagues in an inquiry into what’s so, you could begin by asking some questions. You might, for example, say something like this:

 

“Hey, Tim. I’m finding myself feeling really angry when I read your blog. My fear is that you are just trying to maintain some outsider objectivity, rather than actually getting involved and helping. And that feels really wrong to me. That feels like part of the problem itself. Can you talk about that, and how it is for you?”

 

Beyond Empire, healing is possible.

 

Tim

 

James said:

Tim-

Your response is reasoned, measured, and problematic. I will admit that I wanted to see if and how you would respond to a screed rather than the sort of overly-respectful polite discourse that is itself very much part of the problem. All up, you did pretty well. I give you credit for giving credit, and for responding rather than censoring or ignoring.

I wonder how you would suggest that one “give back” anger to whom it belongs? After all, what makes people angry but abuse and being made powerless? So anyone capable of really moving us to anger seems almost inevitably to be in a position of superior power, and almost certainly to be inured, immune, or indifferent to our feedback. So how would you suggest we give back our anger to its rightful inheritors?

You are right not to assume too much from words on a screen. But I wonder who and what you expect to hear speaking other than Empire, from one of its subjects? And are you saying that when you hear Empire speak through its slaves and victims, you will plug your ears and turn away?

Am I willing to look at myself? Yes. Are you willing to do more than you have so far been willing to do?

I’ll end by saying this:

“Hey, Tim. I’m finding myself feeling really angry when I read your blog. My fear is that you are just trying to maintain some outsider objectivity, rather than actually getting involved and helping. And that feels really wrong to me. That feels like part of the problem itself. Can you talk about that, and how it is for you?”

James

 

Tim says:

James,

 

Let me begin by saying that I have almost no expectation that interacting with you online will be of much service to the planet.  That is not necessarily a reflection on either of us.  This online realm is, in my experience, almost totally unsuitable for doing the work I came here to do.  It does not serve human beings well at all, I think.  It does not really serve the community of life.  This is not a place for healing, or dialogue, for finding deep wisdom and facing into what’s so.  Not in my experience, and I have made many attempts.  And because I am clear what and whom I serve, and because I refuse to struggle here, and because the work I am up to right now is compelling, I will probably not continue our conversation beyond this post.  You may respond, and I may post that.  But I am not going to give energy to that which does not serve.  You may not have noticed, but I post very little these days.  I am not much online.  And my posts have not been open for comments.  That they were open for this particular entry was part fluke and part experiment.

 

But I am open to being wrong about that, and about you.  I sense in your passion and your questioning the possibility that you may be open to what I have to say.  And it’s that possibility that has me writing now.  Perhaps you will surprise me.  But I have to say, I’m pretty despairing about human beings right now.  If I perceive that it serves the highest good, I will respond again.

 

(And please understand that I am completely aware that I am responding only to the words you wrote, those small black markings on a white screen, and that those words are not you.)

 

Onward…

 

If polite discourse is “part of the problem”, and I agree that it can be, then the sort of anger, argument, manipulation, abuse and accusation you displayed in your first post is, in my experience, just as much a part of the problem.  To my mind, both spring from the acculturated collective ego of “civilized” humanity, and neither will lead us into the sort of dialogue that I think humanity needs right now.  I speak from some experience.  I have sat in circles of human beings committed to true dialogue.  I have kept my butt in the chair for long days and nights, as we ran headfirst into conflict and peeled away the layers of shit this culture has heaped upon us – the anger, the grief, the misunderstanding, the resentment, the abuse.  I have walked through fire with people and found, on the far side of conflict, a place of peace and possibility that, in my experience, few in this culture know exists.  And I have found there a wisdom more profound than any of us know as individuals.  And it’s my experience that this wisdom is greatly needed right now.

 

Having experienced that, I have little use for either the polite discourse or the angry screeds I find online.  The online realm feels like a layer of hell to me, with wounded egos screaming and writhing in pain, flailing about, searching for a peace they cannot find.  And I don’t need to come to this online space.  If I want to experience wounded human egos, I need only open my door and step outside, where, face to face, I feel at least the possibility of healing.  If I want to experience wounded egos, I need only look in the mirror.  Wounded egos are everywhere.  As Shel Silverstein sang, “everybody’s got one”.  Big deal.  So what else ya got?

 

I say there is something else available to us.  Something other than polite discourse or angry screed.  But obtaining that “something else” will challenge our wounded egos to the very core.  Few seem called to that kind of challenge, in my experience.  Very few.   And that is profoundly sad to me.  Robert is proving to be both called to and, indeed, welcoming of that challenge.  And that fills me with joy.

 

(By the way, I don’t agree with your assessment that my response was “polite discourse”.  To my mind, it was nothing of the sort.  I set firm boundaries and challenged you directly.  I did not run from your anger or try to appease it.  What I did do was respond from some place other than my wounded, reactive ego.  And I respected you as a fellow child of the Cosmos.  It was a communication intended to engage, not to show good manners.)

 

Now… what to do with that anger, eh?  Yeah, anger in this culture is challenging.  It’s perhaps one of the greatest challenges.  I don’t have this all sorted out for myself, let alone anybody else.  Because anger is so often expressed as wanton, destructive and violent, and while I acknowledge times when containment of evil is necessary, it’s easy to slide into unconscious, raw expression that is not effective or advised.  I’ll explain more about what my experience has been and the premises I consciously hold.  There is the slight chance that what I have may be of use to you at some point.

 

Part of what I mean by saying that I hand your anger back to you is that only you can do the work of getting very clear what your anger is about, where it started, who you are angry with, etc.  When I encounter anger that is as “cartoonish” as the anger in your first post, anger that feels out of proportion to the trigger (for example not liking some words a guy uses in a blog post and responding by wishing him dead), I feel fairly confident in assessing that that anger has deep and unexplored, or at least unconscious, roots.  And so “giving that anger to whom it belongs” starts with doing the work of finding real clarity about the anger, the triggers for that anger, and then doing the even harder work of aiming that anger in the correct direction. 

 

I have had to do a great deal of this in my life.  I’ve had to sort out the experiences of my life – with family, friends, school teachers, classmates, bosses, and the many aspects of the wider culture of Empire that assault me and the community of life on the planet.  I see no point in taking one’s anger at a government official, a corporate CEO, or our own private childhood abuser, and just shoving that off on anybody we meet who happens to be the momentary trigger for that anger.  They do not deserve it, and I say that it absolutely will not work.  There’s plenty of angry screed online.  Is it helping?  Is it working?  Have we returned to a sane and sustainable way of life because of it?  I see no evidence that angry screeds are part of the answer.

 

If we’re committed to giving our anger back to whom it rightly belongs, we can look at the roster of our lives.  With whom was your anger created?  A parent?  A sibling?  Somebody at school?  A president?  A CEO?  An institution?  A system?  Some of that can be addressed directly, with the individuals in our lives, with straight communication, clear requests, or the setting of firm boundaries.  You may never be able to get the response you want from someone who has made you angry.  You have little or no control over other people.  But you can almost always set a boundary.

 

But you are right to say that there are many sources or triggers of anger and frustration out there with whom we can neither communicate nor set a boundary.  The CEO of EarthKillers, Inc is not going to care if you tell him he cannot be in your life until he cleans things up with you.  And some of your childhood abusers and tormentors may be long gone.  So what then?  My first answer is:  I don’t know.  My guess is that as the collapse of this insane culture proceeds, there will be possibilities to enact justice “on the ground”, calling to responsibility at least some of those who have created the most pain and destruction.  But I have no real idea how things will play out in any of our particular lives, and how you, or those who are left, will navigate your own, or their, way through.  As I said, that’s your work, and others’, to do.  All responses are local, to my mind, even when coordinated with others over large areas.  I’ll do my work where I am.  You do yours.

 

My second answer is that, in my own life, the question of anger has been a question of spirit, and the dance with anger has been a spiritual journey.  It’s a matter of the shredding of one’s wounded ego, of coming into a clear relationship with what’s so. It’s a matter of stepping into what I would consider sanity, getting clear about the actual nature of our power, our limits, and even the ongoing discernment of the nature of reality.  And then it’s about the need for acceptance, grieving, and re-investment in sane action based on that ongoing work of gaining clarity.  I won’t say much more about this, as I have no idea whether I’m speaking to an ego wounded by the absurd excesses of scientific materialism such that the word “spirit” is either a profanity or a joke.  Those open to this path will take it.  If not, nothing I say will change that.  Unless it does.

 

The point of all this is this:  I will not take on your anger.  The vast majority of it does not belong with me.  (I can say this because I know far better who I am than you do.)  Until you discern the exact nature, origins and authentic targets of your anger, and either find a way to give your anger to those to whom it belongs, and/or heal it inside of yourself (and thereby clean it up and put it to some constructive use beyond name-calling and accusation), my guess is that your power will be limited to little more than a reflexive and largely unconscious discharge of pent up energy that is at best ineffective, and at worst alienating and destructive.   From my experience I do not see that anger, argument and abuse, alone, will be enough to accomplish the task of cleaning up thousands of years of civilization. 

 

As for speaking with that voice of Empire, no, I don’t expect much else from most people.  We’ve been colonized through and through, most of us, robbed of our birthright, and driven to delusion and insanity.  Probably almost all of us.  So it’s certainly not a surprise to hear the voice of Empire in you, or in me.  I notice Empire speaking from my own mouth often, and work daily to rid myself of that voice.  The real question for any of us is, to what are you committed?  Are you committed to speaking with that voice?  Are you committed to staying victimized by Empire?  Are you committed to walking through the world wielding that wounded ego like a sword, entitled, by virtue of your victimization, to use that ego to cause even more destruction? 

 

The first and most obvious answer to that question, for all of us, seems to be yes, for ego is desperate to defend and maintain itself at all costs.  Of course it’s committed to staying as it is.  But I’m not asking your ego.  I’m asking your true self, the whole and sane and good soul you came to this planet to be.  To what is your true self committed?  Because if you’re committed to ridding yourself of your wounded ego, if you’re committed to de-colonizing your own mind, if you’re committed to actually doing what you came here to do, then I’m telling you that that’s possible and attainable.  That’s exactly what Shut Up and Drum! is about.  If you have no such commitment, if all you can speak is Empire, then why are you speaking at all?  Who needs more Empire?

 

Enough about anger and communication.  Lets move on to objectivity and engagement.

 

I see this question you asked as a key:  “Are you willing to do more than you have so far been willing to do?”

 

To me, this question makes little sense.  Since you have no idea who I am and what I have done and what I am doing and what am I willing to do, your request that I do more insinuates that what I’ve done and what I am doing is not enough.   As though you know what is enough, what is the right thing for me to do, and that I have not done it.  This puzzles me.  It’s like the people who’ve written to us damning us for charging money for What a Way to Go, or for not putting it out for free on Google Video.  What audacious assumptions I see here.  What entitlement.  How free these people seem to feel with the utilization of my life energy.  And how little they seem able to step into their own power.

 

Let me turn it around, so that you can feel what I mean:  Are you willing to do more than you’ve done so far?  Why don’t you adopt Robert and take him in and guarantee his safety?  And don’t tell me you’re not in the position to do that.  Do you feel the assumptions behind that?  Do you feel how crazy it is for me to say these things?  I have no idea who you are, what you’ve done, or what your situation is.  And neither do you know Sally and me.

 

You don’t know how long we’ve known Robert.

You don’t know the nature of his relationship with my daughter.

You don’t know the nature of my relationship with my daughter.

You don’t know what we’ve done to help the both of them in the past.

You don’t know what we’ve done to help them these past two weeks.

You don’t know what we’re doing to help them next week, or next month, or next year.

You don’t know our situation.

You don’t know whether we live in a big home or a tiny apartment.

You don’t know how much money we make or don’t make.

You don’t know how tight things are.

You don’t know whether we have health insurance.

You don’t know whether we’re having to go into more debt to do this new project.

 

But mostly, and this is key, you don’t know a thing about who Robert really is, and what he wants, and what he came here to do.

 

And what Robert wants is of the utmost importance.

 

Take care of Robert?  Adopt him?  Guarantee his safety?  Why would you want us to keep him small, powerless, victimized and dependent?  These are words we use for children.  Robert is not a child.  He’s a beautiful and powerful human being with an enormous intellect, a huge heart, and skills and talents most people would dream of having.  And we’re supposed to keep him small and dependent by taking care of him?  That’s all anybody has ever done for him.  That’s all the system does.  And that’s what Robert’s wounded ego has been doing to himself for decades.  Keeping himself small and victimized and dependent.  And he’s sick to death of it.  We’re going to attempt to do something way better than that.  We’re going to do everything we can to help him get back in touch with his true, powerful, and beautiful self, so that he can show up in the world as the teacher, the leader, the creator and the protector that he is and always has been.  His horrible past left him crusted with layers of disfunctional ego.  Taking care of him would simply add another layer.  We’re holding the possibility that Robert can shed those layers, and step into himself.

 

And you know what?  That’s not something we can make happen.  Only Robert, and forces beyond all of our egos, can.  But perhaps we can help.  Because we know what has been our own path to take, and the way through, and the destination.  While our own journeys through ego are not yet complete, we are far enough along that we can perhaps now help some others.  And so we are.

 

How ironic, that when finally somebody comes along who can and will actually help Robert, not just “giving him a fish” but instead “teaching him to fish,” they get flamed by somebody who doesn’t even know them.  Such is life on this tortured planet…

 

What happened, I’m guessing, is that you read the blog and thought “Ah… rich filmmakers exploiting the pain of another just to get a good movie.”  As if we’re going to just stand there with the cameras rolling as they club the baby harp seals to death.  And that sort of delusionally-objective detachment is a huge part of what makes it possible for civilized humans to murder the planet.  You are exactly right about that.  I can understand if that thought triggered your deep anger and frustration and grief over the death and destruction and pain and suffering and loss that threatens to overwhelm us all, as well as the anger and grief and loss that likely stems from your own abuse and torment as a prisoner of the dominant culture.  Triggered deeply, I assume you lashed out, as we so often do.

 

But here’s the thing:  we’re not really filmmakers, let alone rich ones.  We’re monks and teachers and healers, living as small and lightly as we can on the planet while still residing in the system that allows us to work.  Some monks make wine.  Others make cheese.  We make documentaries.  And we’ve known from the beginning that the objectivity to which we are supposedly obligated to attain as documentarians is a delusion we have no desire to engage in.  We’ve been calling the new project a quantum production.  We knew there was no way to observe Robert without changing him and being changed by him.  And we have no interest in that in any event.  There have been way too many documentaries about marginal characters and odd ducks.  Most of them have been condescending and exploitive.  Most have failed to look deeply at the insane culture which provides the setting for those dysfunctional lives.  And most have simply stood there as the baby seals were clubbed.  And we are not making one of those movies.  We are up to something entirely different.

 

It’s a no-win situation for us, of course.  We knew it would be.  You excoriate us for not getting involved enough but others have come at us for being too involved, for enabling Robert, for not holding him responsible for his own life.  And you seem to want us to be fully engaged in his life, to become part of his story, but at the same time, by putting ourselves in the story, you label us “self-indulgent” and “narcissistic”.  It was the same for What a Way to Go.  People are all over the map, stomping around with their reactive egos, wanting some relief from the pain, wanting somebody to save them.  There’s no way to do it right for everybody.  And so we have to follow our hearts, and listen to the land, and the Sage, and the Universe itself, and do the work we came here to do.  And so we are.

 

In the two weeks we’ve been here working with Robert, not only in a therapeutic way but as social workers and friends and coaches and protectors, not only have we gone through an amazing healing experience, we’ve uncovered the fact that, by getting hooked up even just slightly with the community around him, Robert has got both choices and back-ups.  As he steps fully into his true self, he’s learning to take the rudder of his own life and steer it across the seas he came here to sail, even as the dominant culture thrashes and unravels around him.  He’s got so much to offer the world right now.  So many ways in which he can help.  He knows our collective situation.  He’s aware of collapse.  He’s needed.  If he can step beyond the ego that has kept him small and confused and self-destructive, he’s going to be amazing.

 

And we have no idea where he is heading.  We have no idea where his story will go.  Just as we have no real idea about our own stories. Just as I assume you have no real idea about yours.   There is no guarantee of safety for any of us.  That’s the delusion.  And the idea that we are vulnerable, that we need that guarantee of safety that unbridled anger seduces us with, is, as Juan Santos made clear in his last post, an assumption that needs to be examined very closely now.  It’s that assumption of ultimate vulnerability that may drive the life of this planet to extinction.

 

I think I know the pain that underlies your initial post.  Empire has done a number on all of us.  It’s staggering, the loss and suffering and destruction that now surrounds us.  Beyond Empire, in the deep reaches of soul and spirit, I say healing is possible.  If you want it so much that you are willing to suspend your assumptions about everything you think you know to get it, if you are willing to sacrifice your wounded ego, if you are committed to it with every part of your being, and if you are strong enough and open enough and ready enough and able enough to actually feel, rather than blindly act out, the feelings that live inside of you, then healing is possible.

 

I’m done for now.  And I remain aware that you told me to fuck off and die.  And if this is to go any further, and I don’t know that it will, it will be because you have cleaned that up with me.

 

TTG

 

 

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