Introduction
The question we asked ourselves at the end of our last entry was Can it be done? Can we develop the attributes of wisdom? Of course, it's our position here at PRC that the answer is "Yes. It can be done." But, as this subject will take us far, very far, or, as far as we want or can, we'll make a start now and continue the discussion in future entries. Naturally, we'll make no attempt to be exhaustive. So, today's entry will be our first attempt to answer the question Can it be done? And we'll begin by asking another more general question that will hopefully point us in the right direction. What Can We Do? First things first.
It’s important to know that there’s always more we can do than we think. But we’ll never know that for sure until we get started.
So, let’s get started.
Rick Warren once said "All leaders are learners." If you stop learning, you stop leading. But this could apply to everyone, not just leaders. For this reason we’ve come to the conclusion here at PRC that the #1 Problem In The World Today Is Learning!
Now, whether or not the reader thinks that Learning is the #1 most important problem in the world today, we think it’s safe to say that they do think that it is a problem, or, that it is a problem, and that something should be done about it. After all, how can we solve our problems or develop the attributes of wisdom without learning? Certainly, no one’s going to walk around saying it’s not important to learn. Could you imagine that? Actually, of course we can. In fact, not only individuals, but entire groups of people see nothing wrong with being learning-averse. They simply do not want to learn. And Dios mio! do they make problems whenever they enter our social-institutions. As the employee of one of our partners once said to him, “I don’t want to learn.”
So, if we asked such an employee the question, “Do you want to learn?” The employee would answer, “No.” But if we asked the employee “Do you want to be paid?” He would probably answer, “Yes.” The problem would then become getting the employee to see the connection between two. But this case is relatively harmless compared with those out there, many of them young, but, depressingly, not all, who actually demand that we Become Ungovernable - at institutions of higher learning!
These dupes are the frontline useful idiots the hostile elite use to disrupt a relatively functioning geographical area (a country) so as to ultimately replace the host population. Replace them with what? Well, other people, of course. Oh, and robots. Naturally, the hostile elite is counting on both being very governable indeed.
Note: The robots, maybe. But the jury's still out on the replacements.
How else is the hostile elite going to pursue its single-minded obsession of making a big pile of cash by any means necessary while sadistically scapegoating the host population of the countries they control (so as to conceal the crimes of the former while justifying the replacement of the latter), without ever thinking about anything else - especially the consequences?
In fact, regarding the machine toads, tax slaves, "sex workers" and robots, all under the control of the hostile elite, a better word than governed would be programmed. The one by computers, the other by propaganda. Naturally, this all has to be paid for, which helps explain the eagerness of those in Washington D.C to turn the country over to Silicon Valley, Wall Street and the Military.
Fortunately, not everyone is interested in having their lives programmed by computers or propagandized by the "educational" system and their deposits in the MSM (both of whom under the direction of an elite that has long since forfeited its right to be taken seriously, let alone assert its control over the rest of us).
On the contrary, there will always be people who are committed to living in reality and determining their own destiny through daily renewal and continuous learning, change and growth, and relating that destiny to something bigger than themselves, something both more personal and more social (if you want to meet them to see for yourself come visit me in Argentina).
And when it comes to living in reality, it's essential to face the obvious fact that reality consists of both the individual and the group, and that reality itself can't be explained away by preferring one over the other, ie; preferring the individual over the group, or visa versa; and certainly not by preferring a particular "charismatic" individual (dictator) over the group, or a particular chosen group (chosen by itself, of course)* over all others and the individuals in them. But, to navigate our way through all of this, at least reasonably well, requires that we ask ourselves an important question. What Can We Do?
*The only truly chosen people in the world today are Family Scapegoat Survivors, because they chose themselves. Their interest is in discovering, uncovering and recovering, the sense of value and identity and the power of choice taken from them by having been scapegoated. Recovery for them means going No Contact for the purpose of learning to love themselves so that they can love others.
Technically, since this is an inside job, it's more accurate to ask, What Can I Do? But, since it's impossible to experience the joy of the self without any reference to a social context (we really do need each other), and since our job here is to simplify complexity, and search for whatever convergence we can find, we'll go with What Can We Do? for the title of today's entry.
And, since life is dynamic, not static, and we're imperfect, not perfect, no one can ever know everything. So, one answer to our question What Can We Do? is obviously - We Can Learn!
Part I A Brief Q & A
Q: Ok. So far, so good. But, so what? Exactly what is it we’re supposed to learn?
A: Well, we can learn what's worth knowing.
Q: Ok. What's worth knowing?
A: Well, whatever is relevant and useful.
Q: Ah! Come on! Just get to the point! Who's to say what's relevant and useful?
A: You are! I am! We are! We all are.
Q: Ah, The meaning of life is your response to it?
A: Exactly. But, since I can't speak for all of us, haven't been asked to, and wouldn't want to even if I was, I'll have to answer your question Who's to say what's relevant and useful? for myself here and now, and hope that whatever answer I have to offer will be relevant and useful to you and anyone else.
Q: Fair enough. But, what......?
A: And, modest as that might seem, I obviously thought this out before publishing this entry. So, what I'm about to offer is something I'm already convinced will be relevant and useful to everyone else. Naturally, whether it is or not is another matter. But, we'll never know until we get started. So, let's do just that.
Q: Sounds good. Is this Q & A over? Because if it's not I'd like to...
A: Yes. It's over.
Part II
Let's begin again, for the first time. As we've said before, we could begin anywhere, but we have to begin somewhere. And every time we begin it feels like the first time and like we've been here before. Choosing to accept this contradiction instead of trying to resolve it one way or another, and resisting the urge to explain it, we'll simply start, again, for the first time.
So, naturally, at PRC, we would begin with What Matters.
Every single one of us, every individual, is involved in one way or another with some form of social management. And Social Management includes The Irreducibles. But what do The Irreducibles involve? Well, a lot. But, if we had to choose one thing, an obvious answer would be - problems. So, here's a question. What happens to us, all of us, whenever we are engaged in problem-solving? The short form of that question would be, How do human beings react to problems? And, so we don’t lose focus here, What does that question have to do with learning?And, What is the connection between learning, wisdom, social management, the Irreducibles, and the individual and group?
Like just about all of the questions we ask here, this one could be answered in any number of ways. So, once again, in our effort to simplify a complex matter, we could ask another question,
What happens to us whenever we try to solve a problem?
There are three things that happen to us, all of us, whenever we engage in any kind of problem-solving.
Those three things are:
1. Intellectual Tension
2. Psychological Disorientation
3. Emotional Disturbance
See why people avoid problems?
In fact, so much so, there's a common expression in just about every language that is used to assure us that we won't be exposed to those three things, the expression "No problem."
By the way, a more academic term for Intellectual Tension would be Cognitive Tension, which has to do with identifying and assigning attributes to whatever it is we're responding to (more on that in a future entry when we’ll talk about mental models).
In any event, the above three are easy to verify. After all, we know about our own behavior the way we know about anyone else’s, by observing it. So, just think about all of those people who don’t want to learn, like our one partner’s employee. Such people are instinctively avoiding the tension, disorientation and disturbance that comes with problem-solving. Which is what learning is – a form of problem-solving.
I don’t know something. And it’s something I need to know. So, it’s a problem that I don’t know it. Therefore, I have to learn about that something so I’ll know it. The good news is, I have a desire to learn about that something (whatever it might be).
But, desire isn’t enough. To satisfy that desire, so that learning becomes knowledge, we have to learn! And on the way to learning we experience the aforementioned tension, disorientation and disturbance. When it comes to problems we can literally feel the tension; and the more intense the problem the more disorienting; the more disorienting the more disturbing. But, remember what we said in our second entry Emergent Innovation, with every breakdown there's a breakthrough. The happy few are the ones who get good at problem-solving.
How?
By becoming competent at managing their relationship to the problem-solving process. That is, their emotional, psychological, intellectual, and social relationship to the problem-solving process. And how do they achieve this competence? By learning how to respond more adequately to the tension, disorientation, and disturbance associated with learning itself.
The best problem-solvers display a certain grace under pressure. This is what is meant by self-mastery. The ability to put the essential elements and principles of problem-solving before the personality of the problem-solver. And what are the elements of problem-solving? Briefly put, they are
Problem-Awareness
Problem-Location
Problem-Identification
Solution-Postponement
Data-Gathering
Proposals
Problem-Solution
And, surrounding the above at all times,
The Creative Imagination.
Problem-Solving is the meeting place of The Arts & Sciences.
Think of the value to any social-institution filled with people capable of demonstrating that acquired skill. Think of the value to yourself and those you love. Then ask yourself why this isn't being taught anywhere today in any of our teaching-learning institutions, from high school (where is should start) to the Phd.
Self-mastery in any social context benefits both individual and group. This destroys the myth that fully actualized individuals are bad for groups and that only socially conforming groups can solve the problems created by socially conforming groups - an impossibility. Unfortunately, the idea that groups are better than individuals because groups "care" and individuals don't is very common. At PRC we're here to expose and explode the absurdity of that myth. No social-institution commited to conformity can solve its own problems. Why? Exactly because individuality isn't valued. So the group functions like an undifferentiated ego mass.
Cultures of Conformity are incompetent at problem-solving.
The great paradox of cultures of conformity is that their incompetence at problem-solving makes it impossible for them to achieve their stated purpose - stablity and security.
Another related paradox of cultures of conformity is that they produce a lot of egomaniacs. Cultures of conformity do not produce caring people, as they often claim. They produce people who pretend they care. Big difference.
Note: For anyone who doubts that cultures of conformity produce self-focused, low-character leaders, consider The CCP, Big Tech, Corporate America, the US Government, The EU, Canada and of course, Academia, the MSM, Hollywood, the NBA, NFL, etc, etc. I could go on but I'd never finish.
In the worst case scenario, when those egomaniacs become leaders they become meglomaniacs, solitary and grotesque figures demanding blind obedience to their authority (incompetence). The irony is that the culturally transcending individual values the group far more than the conformist.
Because such an individual knows that any individual is a We before they're an I and that what they have learned in becoming an I, the experience and knowledge they've acquired, can help the We. Or, as Muhammad Ali once put it (though possibly with a different intent and emphasis),
"Me,
We."
Cultural Transcendence is Self-Transcendence and visa versa.
Both of which can help the group improve its adaptability. How?
Because, in order to achieve a certain stability, necessary for survival and for the basic economic activity that makes survival possible, groups must organize around their beliefs. So far, so good. But now the process tends to work the other way.
Our beliefs can blind us to the necessary changes we need to make when the changes that happen outside and independent of us are more than our current beliefs can manage (this will be very important when we discuss mental models; especially in relation to education and leadership development). Put bluntly, to the extent we can't manage the many changes between ourselves and the world we become maladaptive. Or, as some might put it, we become irrelevant. And how do we become irrelvant? As Rick Warren said, in so many words, in answer to that very question,
We become irrelevant when the changes around us are faster than the changes in us.
The problem with that, of course, is that the rate of change around us today is so fast that unless we get a handle on the problem the human race will become irrelevant - to itself. It very well may be. The point is, cultures of conformity, that by definition deny the validity of the individual, actually work to speed up the process of the group's irrelevancy. We can see this in the fake rise of China and the deliberate destruction of the entire Western world, both of which orchestrated by a hostile elite so self-centered, money-hungry and corrupt, that their continued "success" will be our destruction. A better example of a Pyrrhic Victory would be impossible to imagine. But, again, it's important to remind ourselves that there's always more we can do than we think. And "do" is an action verb, and, as Goethe said,
Action has magic, power, and grace.
So, prefering action, thoughtful action, to resignation, or thoughtless impulse and conformity (same thing), and valuing the individual's contribution to the group in their love for problem-solving, we'll muster the courage to face our problems head on, and continue in our effort to answer the question
What Can We Do?
Part III
The great challenge to acquiring self-mastery as a problem-solver is that these three things, Intellectual Tension, Psychological Disorientation, and Emotional Disturbance, are often accompanied by the loss of one’s sense of identity and their sense of value, which go together, like the inhale and exhale of the breath of life. Why is that? Because human beings need to feel oriented. We long for harmony and balance. In a word – Atonement. At One Moment. And not just when we’re alone.
In fact, for some people they literally can not be alone because, well, it’s a problem. Now you see why cultures of conformity are a problem. Because in trying to solve the problem of aloneness they create the problems that come from not being able to be alone. In short, cultures of confomity seek "stability" at all costs, even at the cost of adaptability! This is why the members of such a culture are always together, but never united. And, to the extent they are "united" it's by force, internal or external, implied or stated. As Pascal once wrote, All of the evil in the world is the result of a person not being able to sit in a room alone.
This is why many people live their entire lives without ever knowing who they really are. That’s bad enough. The problem is made worse when we realize that they don’t want us to know who they are either. And they're certainly not interested in what others have learned about themselves. That would give them away.
This is a fact that any child of a narcissistic parent, or employee of a self-focused leader, can easily confirm. This anti-reality hatred of self-awareness, ie; of learning, is the foundation of all individual narcissism and group fanaticism. Such people require Scapegoats who they routinely Gaslight and ultimately Exile.
When a self-focused person runs an organization, or company, or is the head of a family, they inevitably create more problems than they solve - way more. In fact, some of those problems turn out to be unsolvable. This is what leads to the ruin of many organizations, companies, and families. Again, just look around.
Note: We'll have more to say about scapegoating below. For now it's worth pointing out that psychologists, counsellors, and competent, committed social critics, might not agree on much, but they all agree that the worst thing that can happen to a child in a family, or an employee of a company, or member of an organization or society, is to be scapegoated. So, the worst thing a family, company, etc, can do is engage in scapegoating. But, because such families and organizations, being headed by self-focused, low-character people, are tenaciously resistant to exposure, it is often suggested, and wisely, that the scapegoat go No Contact so as to recover their freedom, move into a larger world, and become who they are. Difficult as this may be, the rewards are incalculable. As Nietzsche once wrote, No price is too high for the privilege of owning yourself. No one knows this more than the scapegoat.
In any event, conformity for conformity’s sake is a very typical human strategy for avoiding problems. So, the problems multiply until the conforming group crashes and burns. This is why Nietzsche said that the shadow of conformity is – stupidity.
We’ll have more to say about conformity in a future entry. For now, the important thing to keep in mind is that conformity inhibits intellectual development and personal growth, two essential by-producrs of learning, which, it will be remembered, is one answer to the question What Can We Do?
And, since one important by-product of intellectual development and personal growth is happiness, cultures of conformity ultimately inhibit happiness as well. Which is exactly why cultures of conformity compensate by promoting compulsory optimism, or, Don't Worry, Be Happy, a silly cliche that fails, or refuses, to consider the obvious fact that people are rightfullly worried about being deprived of the opportunity to experience genuine happiness by being bullied to conform to compulsory optimism. Given that conformity is so pervasive, and that cultures of conformity are at bottom the madness of a crowd's flight from reality, is it any wonder that virtually every culture has some kind of reality-defying after life, or here on earth fantasy retreat, in the form of a heaven, nirvana, or revolutionary utopia?
The mad desire behind this rage for order is because only in those places are all of our problems solved – and solved forever.
Talk about taking all of the fun out of life. This is why, no matter how intelligent they might be, people who can't admit that they're wrong are, in the end, not very interesting. On the other hand, they are unquestionably dull. So at least they have that going for them. And, while we're on the subject, exactly what is heaven?
Heaven is a place where no one creates, where no one learns, or innovates.
How's that for limiting the range of behavior? Afterall, in Christian mythology the only one in heaven besides God who thought that innovation was a good idea wasThe Devil.
Though, since according to their own mythology, God created everything, The Devil was God's innovation too. Not to be outdone, Marxist mythology's hatred of innovation is far worse and has done way more damage in a much shorter period of time.
Which is why, of course, it can't shut up about religion, and why it indoctrinates its followers to blame everything on everyone else. In fact, there's not a belief-system in world history that can compete with Marxism's bitter hatred of an unyielding and concrete reality, nor with the destructive force it uses on anyone who prefers that reality to Marxism. What are they so afraid of?
Salvation Systems
The point is, the pattern is the same in all Either/Or Cultures of Conformity, ie; Salvation Systems. It's very common for those who believe in salvation systems to turn whatever they once idealized into its degraded opposite. If not God, then the Devil. If not individual conscience, blind obedience. If not capitalism, communism. If not democracy, communism. If not a constitutional republic, anarcho-tyranny. If not men, women. If not straight, gay. If not Christian, then Jewish, or Muslim. If not a believer, an atheist. If not White, Black. If not North, South. If not West, East. Finally, and in a way that strikes to the heart of all political behavior, If not Masochism, Sadism. That's why after every "revolution" we end up with the same thing we started with. Fools led by Knaves. Both believing in the illusion of permanence. Or, as Pete Townshend said as well as anyone else, "Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss." If anything points to the value of cultural transcendence it's this insanity.
In any event, because it makes them money and increases power, all Salvation Systems value most technological innovation, but believe social and moral innovation to be an impossibility. It's exactly this that accounts for the absurdity and maladaptive character of all Salvation Systems. For example, if life is dynamic, not static, and we're imperfect, not perfect, then learning, change, and growth, in all of our affairs, is essential, not only for our happiness, but for our survival as well.
Nowhere is this truer than in the intellectual, social, and moral realm. In other words, the spiritual. This puts our moral focus on development and growth, not acquisition and power. And yet, today, people who identify as "progressive" see themselves as the moral authority on matters of social justice. Since, from their perspective, they're already intellectually and morally superior, there's literally nothing for them to learn. So, thought becomes the slave of belief, which is never questioned. Since there's nothing for them to learn, there's no possibility of change and growth. Let's call it The Progressive Utopian motto:
Whatever we conceive we believe.
Whatever we feel is real.
More interested in congratulating themselves on their superiority, and not at all interested in learning (what's the point?), they actively prohibit all change and growth. In short, Progressives are incapable of progress. Since there's no check on their belief, it doesn't take long for the believers to become fanatics. And, if there's no check on their fanaticism, the more power they acquire the more they'll kill life and all the good things in it - for everyone else. And "everyone else" just happens to be a group of people fanatics aren't really all that interested in. Unless, of course, they can use them as either proxies or victims in their cynical and sadistic lust for power (concealed under a veneer of We Are The World sentimentality, of course).
All of this just so they can sit in their own collecitve heaven and feed their addiction to mood-altering through self-righteousness while looking down on the rest of us. Not only that, because they are at their core greedy and selfish, they never really benefit the people they claim to be helping. They're just using them. Often enough, a closer look at the personal lives of these utopianists reveals that their relationships with their siblings and spouses is never very happy. How could they be? Since it's all about them.
The reason for this isn't hard to find. People with savior complexes are carried away by abstractions and, correspondingly, aren't all that interested in concrete reality, unless it has to do with looking good and making money. They usually manage those things very well. Which is enough to feed the delusion that they're good people. When, in fact, no one who uses one group of people as abstractions to feed their addiction to virtue signalling, so as to ignore the needs of the very people they have the most direct and intimate contact with, can ever be good. So called "progressives" of today are only progressive in the way an addiction is, as a progressive disease.
Of course, all addictions have the potential to hurt both the addict and those around them. The problem here is, though there are lots of opportunities and programs for genuine and lasting recovery from chemical addictions like drugs and alcohol, there is, as of yet, no recovery program for what is without a doubt the worst addiction in the world - the addiction to words in the form of beliefs asserted to be ultimate truths, ie: Salvation Systems.
Any belief-system, religious, political, or popular, that people use as a way to mood-alter through self-righteousness is an addiction.
The fact is, whenever operating in the realm of the absolute, all ideologies, Right or Left, end up in this same cul-de-sac. Which explains why, for all one's initial sympathies with some of their ideas, they're both ultimately so repellent and obnoxious. And, if not stopped, capable of great evil. An unpleasant fact that a glance at history and current events makes perfectly obvious.
This should come as no surprise. Because, the real enemy of salvation systems, whether political or religious, is the real world we all have to live in. All evil is the result of turning one's back on reality. And this is the ultimate objective of any salvation system. So then, if progress is being blocked by progressives, what is meant by the word "progress"? Progress is the result of closing the gap between who we are and what we could be.
A real progressive would acknowledge and accept the tension between the actual and the potential instead of complaining about it. And they certainly wouldn't judge the past using present day standards as if those standards could have been known and put to use by those living in the past. No. A real progressive would see the space between fixed habits and unachieved possibilities and work toward building a bridge between them both.
Unfortunately, this is an impossibility for those who already believe themselves to be politically correct.
Part IV
Meanwhile, back on earth, we’re interested in learning and growth, not in anti-reality oxymorons like political correctness.
Specifically, we're interested in learning about ourselves in relation to the problem-solving process. In other words, we're interested in learning so that we can better live in reality.
And that means, in part, freeing ourselves from a dependency on explanations that support salvation systems. Since we live in an interpreted world and are free to look at this from any possible angle, we have chosen to answer today’s question What Can We Do? by focusing on learning itself and its relation to problem-solving, the attributes of wisdom, and our social-institutions.
And what have we learned so far?
Well, we’ve learned that some people don’t want to learn.
We've learned that some people prefer avoiding problems to solving them. We've also learned that many today, including and especially the hostile elite, know nothing about the attributes of wisdom, nor that their development is and should be the primary purpose of our teaching-learning institutions.
We've also learned that some of those people are willing to wait until they get to heaven via religion, nirvana via drugs (or yoga), or some feel good progressive utopia, rather than actively learn, change, and grow, so as to avoid the tension, disorientation, and disturbance that comes from solving the problems of the very social-institutions they long to occupy and control, and now do.
Note: Drugs can be fun, and yoga's awesome, and a lot better than drugs (in the long run), but they're hardly the answer to our problems; no non-verbal response can be a solution to any problem that requires an explanation. And our problems require explanation because life is impossible without it.
It's worth noting that some aren't willing to wait at all. This is best expressed in a demand heard often in the late 1960's, "We want the world and we want it now!" What is that if not the rallying cry of spoiled brat adult-children the world over? Committed problem-solvers they are not. In fact, they don't even care about the things they claim to care about. How could they?
In any event, all of them, heaven, nirvana, and utopia, are essentially the same thing; a salvation system that promises a static lubberland sometime in the future, or in a present with no past, where everyone gets to do their own thing. Something any three-year-old child already knows is impossible, but that adults tend to forget.
Ah, and we've also learned that, because we can’t always avoid problems, but often do, it might help to learn why we avoid them and how the knowledge we acquire about ourselves in that regard might help us become better learners, better problem-solvers, and, therefore, gradually develop the attributes of wisdom.
Why would we want to do that? Well, in our case, it’s to satisfy the ultimate aim of PRC, which is to help each other achieve the fullest and freest expression of our powers. One way we can do this is by becoming competent learners and problem-solvers.
Because competency in learning, problem-solving, and developing the attributes of wisdom, help improve the quality of life for both individual and group. What else have we got better to do with our time? Gossip? Judge others without really knowing them? Or cruelly ignore those we should care about?
Or, maybe we'd prefer to make problems when there aren't any? Problems that we like to cause (while blaming someone else, of course), but have no intention of solving? But, again, that's not what we are about - at all. We don't want to be robbed of our lives by predators and parasites, whether local or global. Again, we want to help each other experience the fullest and freest expression of our powers. So, how can we do that?
Part V
Certainly one way would be to know something about human beings in general and ourselves in particular. And, since we are about asking and answering questions about problems - the harder and more difficult the better - one question we could ask ourselves would be, What is Mankind? And that question would lead us to the most important question of all, Who am I?
Before coming to the end of Part I we’ll offer one answer in an attempt to link the two questions. Self-Awareness leads to Self-Creation leads to Self-Mastery which is how we experience the fulleset and freest expression of our powers - our spiritual powers. And that includes managing and being a part of a social-institution. Whether that social-institution is a relationship, a friendship, a family, a football team, a recording studio, a hospital, a small or medium-size business, or a corporation.
Note: It can't be denied that self-awareness can lead to self-destruction if one doesn't survive the process. Is it any wonder then that people live their entire lives without knowing, or wanting to know, who they are?
Self-Mastery is Self-Transcendence is Cultural Transcendence.
This is what learning can do. Learning helps us solve the problem of being alive. Or, at least helps us work toward a solution. Learning to acquire knowledge of ourselves and others is how we experience the sense of identity and the sense of value in both ourselves and others. This is no small thing. Since the sense of identity and the sense of value are two things no human being can live without. That is what is meant by the self.
The self and its sense of value is experienced in its quest for identity. And the self can not be experienced without the other.
Note: This is why we can not allow these things to ever fall into the hands of individuals and groups who do not have our best interest in mind. If we do we lose ourselves, literally.
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