Five Studies: The Psychology of the Ultra-Rich, According to the Research

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OLIGARCHY

Bernie Sanders says that billionaires have “psychiatric issues.” He’s not entirely incorrect.

By Livia Gershon

Source: Pacific Standard

“Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald

Bernie Sanders’ unexpectedly popular presidential campaign features a lot of rhetoric that we don’t usually hear in mainstream politics. One striking example is the Vermont senator’s contention that the ultra-rich suffer from “psychiatric issues” that manifest in an addiction to money and a worldview divorced from reality.

When we talk about inequality, we often spend lot of time considering poor people’s attitudes and behaviors, from whether they get married to how they talk to their kids. We’re less likely to stop and look at how the rich are different. But extremely wealthy people play a huge role in increasing inequality. With their heavy political clout, they help shape government economic policies, supporting very different positions from those of average Americans. From their perches on corporate boards and compensation committees they also give direct raises to their fellow oligarchs.

As inequality grows, in the United States and in the world, the shape of the wealthiest classes is also changing. The significance of inherited wealth fell rapidly in the mid-20th century, making way for the “self-made” rich. Now, though, there’s growing evidence that, as Thomas Piketty has famously argued, dynasties are making a comeback.

So there’s good reason to pay at least as much attention to the behaviors and beliefs of the rich as we do to those of the poor. But what does research tell us about the nature of wealth? How does it affect those who have it? Studies suggest the wealthy really do have significant psychological differences from the middle class in how they view money, and how they look at their relationship with society.

1. MONEY BUYS HAPPINESS—KIND OF

Richer people tend to be happier, but not by all that much. And it’s not really right to say money makes them happy. Wealth only makes affluent people more satisfied to the extent that it gives them more control over their own lives, making them feel richer. (Anyone who feels financially and personally stable because they’ve got a steady job, enough money to get them through an emergency, and a nicer house than their neighbor is likely to be happier than the poorest multi-millionaire in a hyper-rich enclave they can’t really afford.) Still, holding everything else equal, people who have more money have more stability. Of course, they also usually know they’re well off. And those two factors make them happier.

—”How Money Buys Happiness: Genetic and Environmental Processes Linking Finances and Life Satisfaction,” Wendy Johnson and Robert F. Krueger, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 90(4), Apr 2006

 2. BUT RICH PEOPLE HAVE DIFFERENT CRITERIA FOR HAPPINESS

Asked about what makes people happy, extremely rich Americans, just like average Americans, typically put love first. But the ultra-wealthy are more likely than everyone else to say happiness depends on winning the appreciation and respect of others. They’re also more likely to cite the realization of personal potential as a key to happiness. But they’re much less likely than non-wealthy people to say that physical health is most important. (Perhaps because they’ve never been uninsured?) Rich people are also a bit more likely than the rest of us to say having a lot of money can occasionally present an obstacle to happiness.

—”Happiness of the Very Wealthy,” Ed Diener, Jeff Horwitz, and Robert A. Emmons, Social Indicators Research, April 1985

3. THE WEALTHY ARE MORE AND MORE LIKELY TO IDENTIFY WITH AN INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ELITE

Board members of the world’s largest corporations—a significant and influential segment of the ultra-rich—are increasingly likely to serve on the boards of foreign and multinational companies. Even directors who don’t serve on the boards of foreign companies usually interact with others who do. In other words, modern corporate elites are likely to be part of cosmopolitan, global social networks, whereas most poor and middle-class people are more likely to identify with their home populations.

—”Transnationalists and National Networkers in the Global Corporate Elite,” William K. Carroll, Global Networks, June 2009

4. AS A RESULT, THEY’RE NOT GREAT AT EMPATHY

People from higher socioeconomic classes do worse on a test where they’re asked to identify emotions in photographs of human faces. They’re also less accurate at perceiving the emotional states of others in real-life interactions. In fact, researchers can reduce people’s empathy just by prompting them to think of themselves as relatively high-status. Test subjects who are asked to imagine an interaction with someone from a lower social rung get worse at understanding other people’s emotions. The trouble higher-status people have recognizing emotions is tied to the fact that they tend to think about themselves and others in terms of fixed traits (“She’s a nervous person.”) In contrast, people from lower social classes are more likely to use contextual explanations for people’s behavior (“This interview is making her uncomfortable.”)

—”Social Class, Contextualism, and Empathic Accuracy,” Michael W. Kraus, Stéphane Côté, and Dacher Keltner, Psychological Science, October 25, 2010

5. AND THEY THINK DOMESTIC INEQUALITY REPRESENTS JUST DESSERTS

Americans are known for our trust in an ideal of meritocracy. When you ask the general public to assess statements like “most people who want to get ahead can make it if they’re willing to work hard,” well over 70 percent of us agree. But what happens when people see high levels of income inequality in their daily lives? It turns out that low-income Americans are less likely to believe in meritocracy if they live in counties with extreme economic inequality—places where they’re likely to run into much richer people a lot. For high-income people, the effect is exactly the opposite. The study’s authors suggest that rich people could be using a defense mechanism to stave off guilt and justify their relatively privileged position within a visibly unequal system. But, for whatever reason, the more inequality rich people see in their home county, they more likely they are to believe that meritocracy is working.

—”False Consciousness or Class Awareness? Local Income Inequality, Personal Economic Position, and Belief in American Meritocracy,” Benjamin J. Newman, Christopher D. Johnston, and Patrick L. Lown, American Journal of Political Science, April 2015

 

America: Dangerous Curve Ahead

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By Helaine Olen

Source: The Baffler

At some point in the early 1980s, a large yellow placard began turning up in the back window of cars proclaiming “Baby on Board.” At first it seemed a joke, an inadvertent high-sign that the driver was someone who took this parenthood thing a little too seriously. Even as the shiny placards became omnipresent, a lot of us dismissed them as yet another badge of Baby Boomer self-importance.

Of course we were wrong. It’s now conventional wisdom that the Baby on Board sign was one of the precursors to a more widespread change in parenting from a time when, to us, children appear to have been neglected to our present situation in which doting over children is every parent’s self-congratulatory purpose in life. But those Baby on Board announcements dovetailed with something else too, something we don’t normally connect them with: the decline in the United States’ spending on infrastructure. As we were begging people to give special consideration to this babied-up car or that screaming station wagon, even as we were increasingly crazed with protecting our own individual children, we were not exactly securing their future.

According to a report released last year by the Council on Foreign Relations, spending on transportation went from more than one percent of the gross national product in the 1960s to just under one percent by 1980. That latter percentage point, which would have seemed at the time to be low, is now considered a 35-year high point. If you are looking for a common point of reference for our nation’s crumbling bridges—which received a C+ for maintenance from the American Society of Civil Engineers for 2013—or train derailments, like last week’s fatal Amtrak wreck outside of Philadelphia, look hard at that number. The most recent grade for our overall infrastructure? A D+.

The collapse in public funding for our transportation needs did not lead to anger by the vast majority of the population, however. While our leaders ran the country off the road and into the ditch, we coped. And truly, no one seemed to want to pay the tax bill to fill potholes, but we were happy to spend more and more of our money on things ranging from ridiculous bright yellow signs begging other drivers to take care of our children to purchasing ever larger cars and trucks that we thought would keep us personally safe, and damn everyone else.

Those driving SUVs certainly thought they would receive a safety boost, and didn’t seem to care that it came at the cost of driving a weaponized car known for a design that actively and provably caused disproportionate damages in collisions. As New York Times Hong Kong bureau chief Keith Bradsher noted in his 2003 book High and Mighty: The Dangerous Rise of the SUV, market research showed many consumers buying the behemoth automobile were “self-centered,” willing to “endanger other motorists so as to achieve small improvements in their personal safety,” adding “the public perception that SUVs provide considerable protection in a crash has been an important factor in their sales for many years.”

And if something did go wrong in an SUV? Well, the sad tale of Ellen Brody, the suburban New York City woman who drove her Mercedes SUV onto the tracks at a notorious Westchester County Metro-North crossing this past winter during a massive traffic jam, is instructive. Six people—including Brody—died when the safety gates came down and, apparently discombobulated, she drove onto the tracks instead of backing up.

But inquiries into how and why Ellen Brody ended up making her fatal wrong move seem almost designed to obfuscate the fact that if it hadn’t been this luckless woman, then it would have been someone else on those tracks eventually. As it turns out, there have been transportation reports going back to 1970 begging for investment in the area and recommending sane reforms such as eliminating the crossing entirely or at least adding gates and lights to make the sight lines significantly safer for drivers. None of it happened.

The Amtrak derailment last week is bringing us more of the same blame game. There’s the open question of why the train’s engineer permitted the train to reach 106 miles-per-hour as it approached a curve with a speed limit of 50 miles-per-hour, for example. And the accident exposes the political lobbying that persistently enervates our society, possibly preventing the installation of a safety system that would have slowed this train automatically. These are all legitimate and important lines of inquiry to pursue. But the search for individual villains and lunge toward stop-gap safety solves is also a wreckage clearance and scrubbing operation, allowing us to forget that the number one cause of the Amtrak accident is the United States’ tax and spending policies and priorities that have left us with transportation system falling apart a little more every day. The kids grow up, the world spins in reverse.

Hmm. What about those goddamn Baby on Board signs? A survey from 2012 found they might have contributed to an increase in car accidents by blocking driver sight lines. Self-absorption left too many of us blind to the curve ahead.

Helaine Olen is the author of Pound Foolish: Exposing the Dark Side of the Personal Finance Industry, a contributing editor for Pacific Standard, and a regular Slate contributor.

Life Imitates “Black Mirror”

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Fans of the superb dystopian series “Black Mirror” (including myself) had our collective minds blown by recent claims (first widely reported by the Daily Mail) that British Prime Minister David Cameron performed a sexual act with a pig carcass as part of a depraved initiation ritual. The story would be very bizarre even had it not mirrored a key plot point of the premiere episode of Dark Mirror. No doubt besieged by questions about the recent news, Dark Mirror creator Charlie Brooker took to Twitter to state: “Just to clear it up: nope, I’d never heard anything about Cameron and a pig when coming up with that story. So this weirds me out.”

These are the most recent statements on the topic from Brooker’s Twitter feed (as of 9/21/15):

  1. 16h16 hours ago

    Perhaps the least prescient line from the script.

    Embedded image permalink
    4:18 PM – 20 Sep 2015 · Details
    2,262 retweets 2,519 favorites

     

    16h16 hours ago

    I hope White Bear doesn’t come true next.

    4:17 PM – 20 Sep 2015 · Details
    1,280 retweets 1,563 favorites

     

    19h19 hours ago

    Just to clear it up: nope, I’d never heard anything about Cameron and a pig when coming up with that story. So this weirds me out.

    4:17 PM – 20 Sep 2015 · Details
    5,223 retweets 5,143 favorites

 

Read more about David Cameron’s days of elitist debauchery at Oxford.

Was this a case of insider knowledge, extra sensory perception, retrocausality, premonition, intuition or coincidence? Watch the full episode and judge for yourself.

Are Neocons an Existential Threat?

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By Robert Parry

Source: Consortium News

The neoconservatives arguably have damaged American national interests more than any group in modern history. They have done more harm than the marginal Communists pursued by Sen. Joe McCarthy in the 1950s, more than the Yippies of the 1960s, more than Richard Nixon’s Watergate burglars in the 1970s or the Iran-Contra conspirators in the 1980s.

The neocons have plunged the U.S. government into extraordinarily ill-considered wars wasting trillions of dollars, killing hundreds of thousands if not millions of people, anddestabilizing large swaths of the planet including the Middle East, much of Africa and now Europe. Those costs include a swelling hatred against America and a deformed U.S. foreign policy elite that is no longer capable of formulating coherent strategies.

Yet, the neocons have remained immune from the consequences of their catastrophes. They still dominate Washington’s major think tanks as well as the op-ed pages of virtually all the leading newspapers, including The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and New York Times. They hold down key positions in the State Department, and their “liberal interventionist” pals have the ear of President Barack Obama.

Clearly, the neocons are skilled operatives, knowing how to arrange a steady stream of funding for themselves, from military contractors donating to think tanks, from U.S. taxpayers footing the bill for organizations like the National Endowment for Democracy, and from ideological billionaires set on aligning U.S. foreign policy with hard-line Israeli desires.

The neocons are adept at writing op-ed articles that twist any set of facts into support for their ideological cause; they supply just the right quote that fits into the news cycle’s latest narrative; and they host policy conferences that attract powerful politicians and fawning media coverage.

But are the neocons a force that can coexist with the American Republic? Have they become an existential threat not only to the constitutional structure crafted in 1787 but to continued life on the planet? Are they locked on a course of action that could lead to a nuclear holocaust?

Clearly, the neocons’ commitment to Israeli interests violates a key principle established by the nation’s early presidents who all warned against “foreign entangling alliances” as a fundamental threat to a citizens’ republic that would transform America into a warrior state that would inevitably sap the nation’s liberties.

That loss of liberty has surely happened. Not only is there now bipartisan support for a surveillance state that can spy on the personal lives of American citizens, but the U.S. government has wedded itself to the concept of “strategic communications,” a catch-phrase that merges psychological operations, propaganda and P.R. into a seamless approach toward managing public perceptions at home and abroad.

When information is systematically pushed through a filter designed to ensure consent, the core democratic concept of an informed electorate has been turned on its head: The people no longer oversee the government; the government manipulates the people.

Neocon Tactics

All this has been part of the neocon approach dating back to the 1980s when key operatives, such as Robert Kagan and Elliott Abrams, were part of inter-agency task forces designed to whip the American people into line behind the government’s aggressive war policies. Guided by seasoned CIA propagandists, such as Walter Raymond Jr., the neocons learned their lessons well.

But the neocons are no longer just threatening the existence of the Republic; they are now endangering the continuation of life itself. They have decided to launch a new Cold War against Russia that will push the world toward the brink of thermo-nuclear war.

Of course, the neocons will frame their doomsday strategy as all Vladimir Putin’s fault. They will insist that they are just standing up to “Russian aggression” and that anyone who doesn’t join them is a “stooge of Moscow” or “weak.” They will dictate the shape of the debate just as they have in countless other situations, such as guiding Americans to war in Iraq over non-existent WMD stockpiles.

The neocon pundits will write seemingly authoritative op-eds about devious Kremlin strategies which will glue black hats on the Russians and white hats on whomever is on the other side, whether the neo-Nazis in Ukraine or the Islamic State/Al Qaeda terrorists in Syria. Americans will be whipped up into a frenzy that will demand a direct clash with the “Russ-kies” or “regime change” in Moscow.

There will be little or no concern about the risks. With the neocons, there never is. The assumption is that if “Amur-ika” is tough, the other side will back down. Then, with U.S.-led economic sanctions from the outside and U.S.-funded NGOs stirring up trouble from the inside, “regime change” becomes the cure-all.

Everyone who’s important in Official Washington – everyone on the talk shows and op-ed pages – knows that these disruptive situations always play out just the way they’re diagramed inside the top think tanks. A hand-picked “democratic reformer” who’s traveled the think-tank circuit and gotten the seal of approval – the likes of Iraq’s Ahmed Chalabi – will easily be installed and then the target country will do whatever the neocons dictate. After all, that approach worked so well in Iraq. The neocons always know best.

Raising the Stakes

Yet, with Russia, the stakes are even higher than with Iraq. Yes, it’s easy to find fault with Vladimir Putin. I myself have a personal rule that men over 40 should keep their shirts on when out in public (unless maybe they’re actors in a Bond film or going for a swim at the beach).

But Putin at least is a rational player in global affairs. Indeed, he has tried to cooperate with President Obama on a variety of key issues, including convincing Syria to surrender its chemical weapons and getting Iran to make concessions in the nuclear deal – two contributions to world peace that infuriated the neocons who favored bomb-bomb-bombing both Syria and Iran.

At a dinner party in Europe this summer, I was asked by a well-informed British woman what should be done with Putin. My answer was that Putin doesn’t frighten me; it’s the guy who comes after Putin who frightens me – because despite the neocons’ confidence that their “regime change” plans for Moscow will install a malleable moderate, the more likely result would be a much harder-line Russian nationalist than Putin.

The idea of the nuclear codes being handed to someone determined to defend the honor of Mother Russia is what scares me. Then, the clumsily aggressive neocons in Washington would have their reckless counterpart in Moscow, with neither side having the wisdom of a John F. Kennedy or a Nikita Khrushchev as displayed during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.

Would American neocons or a Russian super-nationalist have the wisdom and courage to back down, to compromise, to make the concessions necessary to avoid plunging over the edge? Or would they assume that the other guy would blink first and that they would “win” the showdown?

I recall what William R. Polk, one of Kennedy’s mid-level aides during the Cuban Missile Crisis,wrote recently about what happens to the human mind under such stress.

“Since human beings make the decisions, we must be aware of decision makers’ vulnerabilities,” Polk wrote. “During the Cuban Missile Crisis, I was one of about 25 civilians fully engaged in the events. I was not at the center but in the second or third ‘echelon.’ So I did not feel the full strain, but by the Thursday of the Crisis, I was thoroughly exhausted. My judgment must have been impaired even though I was not aware of it.

“I do remember, however, a terrible episode – fortunately lasting only a few minutes – at which I thought to myself, ‘let’s just get it over with.’ When later I met with my Soviet counterparts, I got the impression, although they denied it, that my feelings were not unique. How the strain impacted on the inner group I can only guess.”

If someone as stable and serious as Bill Polk had such thoughts – “let’s just get it over with” – what might happen when American neocons or hyped-up Russian nationalists are inserted into the decision process? That is an existential question that I don’t want to even contemplate.

Endless Putin-Bashing

And, if you doubt that the neocons will engage in over-the-top Cold War-style Putin bashing, you should read the op-ed by The Washington Post’s neocon deputy editorial page editor Jackson Diehl on Monday, entitled “Putin shifts fronts: With a move into Syria, he continues his in-your-face maneuvers.”

Diehl delves into Putin’s psyche – a process that is so much easier than doing real reporting – and concludes that Putin’s decision to join the fight in Syria against the Islamic State and Al Qaeda is just another attempt to stick his finger in the eye of the righteous but clueless United States.

Diehl, of course, starts off with the neocon-approved narrative of the Ukraine crisis, ignoring the key role of neocon Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland (Robert Kagan’s wife) in midwifing the Feb. 22, 2014 coup that overthrew democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych and installed an intensely anti-Russian regime on Russia’s border. Nuland even handpicked the new Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, telling U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt in a phone call several weeks before the coup that “Yats is the guy.”

The coup-makers then dispatched neo-Nazi militias (and Islamist militants) to wage a bloody “anti-terrorism operation” against ethnic Russian Ukrainians who resisted the “regime change.” [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Ukraine Merges Nazis and Islamists.”]

But all that complexity is neatly boiled down by American neocons and the mainstream U.S. media as “Russian aggression.” Regarding the Syrian civil war, some neocons have even joined with senior Israeli officials in claiming that a victory by Al Qaeda is preferable to the continuation of Assad’s secular regime. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Syria’s Nightmarish Narrative.”]

Yet, however the story goes, the biggest bad guy is Putin, always with sinister motives and evil intent. So, in explaining the situation in Ukraine and Syria, Diehl writes:

“Throughout the summer, Russia’s forces in eastern Ukraine kept up a daily drumbeat of attacks on the Ukrainian army, inflicting significant casualties while avoiding a response by Western governments. On Sept. 1, following a new cease-fire, the guns suddenly fell silent. Optimists speculated that Vladi­mir Putin was backing down.

“Then came the reports from Syria: Russian warplanes were overflying the rebel-held province of Idlib. Barracks were under construction at a new base. Ships were unloading new armored vehicles. Putin, it turns out, wasn’t retreating, but shifting fronts — and executing another of the in-your-face maneuvers that have repeatedly caught the Obama administration flat-footed.”

The rest of the op-ed is similarly didactic and one-sided: Putin is the villain and Obama is the rube. In Diehl’s world, only he and other neocons have what it takes to take on Putin and put Russia down.

Any alternative explanation for Russia’s action in Syria is brushed aside, such as Putin deciding that a victory by either Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front – as favored by Israel – or the even more bloodthirsty Islamic State is unacceptable and thus Assad’s regime must be stabilized to avert a major geopolitical catastrophe.

Typically, the neocons breeze past the frightening logic of what the collapse of Assad’s military would mean for the Middle East, Europe and the world. After all, once Israeli leaders decided to throw in their lot with Al Qaeda in Syria, the die was cast as far as the neocons were concerned.

But the notion that the neocons can micromanage the outcome in Syria, with “moderate” Al Qaeda taking Damascus rather than the more “radical” Islamic State, reflects the arrogant know-nothing-ism of these U.S. opinion leaders. More likely, Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front would coordinate with their former allies in the Islamic State and share in the Sunni revenge against Syria’s Christian, Alawite, Shiite and other minorities.

So, while the Islamic State would busy itself chopping off heads of “heretics,” Al Qaeda could use its new headquarters in Damascus to plot the next round of terror attacks against the West. And, as destabilizing as the current refugee flow into Europe has been, it would multiply astronomically as the survivors of the Islamic State/Al Qaeda bloodletting flee Syria.

With Europe in chaos and the neocons still insisting that the real enemy is Russia, the possible consequences would be frightening to contemplate. Yet, this is the course that the neocons have set for the world – and nearly all the Republican candidates for president have signed on for the journey along with Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton.

In 2014, arch-neocon Robert Kagan, whom Secretary of State Clinton selected as one of her advisers while also promoting his wife, Victoria Nuland, told The New York Times that he could embrace a Clinton presidency: “If she pursues a policy which we think she will pursue … it’s something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not going to call it that; they are going to call it something else.” [For more, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Is Hillary Clinton a Neocon-Lite?” and “Obama’s True Foreign Policy ‘Weakness.’“]

So far, virtually no one in the 2016 presidential race or in the mainstream U.S. news media is seriously addressing the reality of the neocons’ “regime change” chaos spreading across the Middle East and the prospect of a destabilized Europe. What limited discussion there is on the campaign trail mostly echoes Jackson Diehl’s Putin-bashing.

No one dares confront the existential question of whether the United States and the world can continue to tolerate and accommodate the neoconservatives.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon andbarnesandnoble.com). You also can order Robert Parry’s trilogy on the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives for only $34. The trilogy includesAmerica’s Stolen Narrative. For details on this offer, click here.

Drop the Rope

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By Zen Gardner

Source: ZenGardner.com

It’s interesting how we get entangled in compromising situations and interactions, often unwittingly. We all face this challenge continually. So often the very encounter itself is predestined to failure without our even knowing it and results in a sense of energy sapping futility.

If you find yourself in such a tug of war, it’s time to rethink your entire stance. In fact, it might be time to drop the connection all together. Winning ain’t what it’s cracked up to be, nor to your benefit in most cases in these circumstances.

This happens because we get snared into lower level thinking on a preset playing field designed to do just that. Ensnare and entrap. This societal mechanism is designed to set the parameters and disguise the real solution which is way outside this constructed paradigm. When we join into the “contest” we subject ourselves to the win-lose dialectic, the pitting of one versus another paradigm that has beset humanity for eons.

That’s not to say there isn’t a time to attempt to illuminate ignorance or expose manipulative mechanisms, we just can’t expect to “win” in an arena built for pointless conflict that distracts from seeing the essential and empowering reality that blows their entire construct to bits.

If we’re too busy fighting amongst ourselves, physically or intellectually, we’ll never see that bigger picture where the true problem truly lies.

The conscious conclusion to draw on such encounters is clear. If you don’t want to play their insidious, pointless, draining and distracting games of tug of war, simply drop the rope and walk away.

The Conflict Dialectic

Society has been manipulated to such a degree that the easiest way to control us is through simple distraction. Bread and circus competitive sports and similar mind-stinting entertainment, right-left paradigm political charades and society dividing issues such as race, immigration and social, economic and class status are furiously alive trigger points of distraction running rampant in this seriously dysfunctional world mind.

We help define and reinforce these memes ourselves by our participation. Without rising above this imposed playing field and understanding the world we’re already living in we certainly cannot find the way to change it, never mind the way out into a new paradigm without their constrictions.

Simply said, if you don’t want to play their insidious, pointless, draining and distracting games of tug of war, simply drop the rope and move on. Let them fall in their own devices.

Dropping the Rope

When dealing with this seeming “conflict resolution” we appear to be confronting on many levels, “dropping the rope” is a very interesting way to break this sycophantic relationship with our oppressors. What invariably surfaces in our left brain human response in these sorts of circumstances is a sort of contest between people or situations. One side opposes the other in some form, and one or the other or both sides express umbrage at what the other is saying.

It’s a programmed and mass entranced conflict, the “strategy of tension” as they call it, utilized by the media and military with very successful abandon.

When we find ourselves in these situations it can be quite stressful. Reflexive thinking usually kicks in and we take sides, concentrating on the “issues” at hand while ignoring the overall. Even in a personal heated exchange, subtle or obvious, no one wins. They can’t. The overarching truth is being missed in this morass of “logical” confined thought subscribed to by the perspective of the participants.

Overall social psychosis perhaps, or the left brained reptilian mind going to work, who knows. It’s just futile in that type of paradigm. These types of conflicts are an exercise in futility. Oh, we may bring some light of truth to the conversation or situation but the problem is that we’re buying into their boxing ring. Someone has to come out the “victor” and the game goes on, without addressing the underlying reality outside the ring, or imposed and deliberately created stadium of conflict.

This realization is a blow to the egoic mind set and, while essentially counter intuitive, it’s only destined to be repeated. And the pointless game goes on. Don’t fall for it. You’re well above all this.

Spiritual Scoliosis and Letting Go of the Unchangeable

The application of this realization can get quite personal.  Those we’re closest to can often display usage of this dialectic and it’s not easy to discern up close and personal, nor know how to respond to it.

There’s often an embedded agenda to what is being said or proposed, as exemplified by news outlets, or as we usually see it by people around us, that is much more profound than the surface argument. You’ll often hear sweeping language with generalities that appear to be true in such contests of mind but these can have a much more insidious nature.

People, as well as social engineers, often use this technique.

It’s usually very cleverly embedded, be it by an individual or ideology. But on an individual basis it can get pretty dicey.

The Personal Touch

It’s naive to think we could correct spiritual scoliosis or perform some kind of exorcism or somehow overwhelm this mechanism to get it into its proper place and perspective when dealing with an infected individual with such a mindset. In fact, those are the things and persons that conscious people sidestep until the subject really wants help and starts to see the light of day and fully lets go of their petty shibboleths.

These are issues that really aren’t so petty when you get down to the spiritual nature of it and difficult to discern as well as confront.

But when you’re awake to these traits you don’t argue with them or plea with them to let go. They either do when confronted with conscious awareness or they don’t. Otherwise you leave them alone until there’s a change, and move on to those open to real dialogue. This kind of conscious awareness is sadly thin in today’s world but people are catching on.

No players, no game is a great default setting.

Their approach has a lot to do with posturing, as if they’re authoritative on some subject. Unthinking people often submit to that. When someone comes on pretending to be an authority on anything and speaks in that tone and posture it’s time to sit up and take notice – carefully. Not sit back in acquiescence. Real truth sharers propose and entreat. Remember, words, which carry spirit, can eventually overpower you if you keep listening to where you sense it’s empowering rooted in truth and love, or isn’t healthy.

It’ll be clear. Just listen.

Be Like Water

Avoiding these kinds of obstacles is a bit of an an acquired art, but it can be learned. This has to do with the nature of on going change. Water just goes around the rock, or over it, or both. Sometimes rocks move with the water a little but never fully. Like those set in their ways.

They’re rocks. That’s the attached baggage people won’t let go of in their hearts and it clogs up the works and infects anything it embeds in. They’re fine, or should I say less dangerous, on their own and they have their place despite their issues. But they’re not water; and if you expect them to come along like water it’s going to be a long and arduous journey that pretty much is playing the rock’s game.

Water moves on to where its welcomed. Go with the flow. Let the rocks be, i.e; let go of the rope.

Conclusion

It’s important to not get caught up in futile and ultimately destructive contests of any sort, be they relationships or unconscious dialogue as they can have very deceitful and disempowering consequences.

That’s how the system works. Getting everyone caught up in lower vibrational interactions that muffle the call to conscious awareness and activism in avenues that have real meaning. It’s something to which they are clearly diametrically opposed. They’re more than happy to entangle you in anything petty to keep you from realizing that.

You can’t win on their level. Don’t even go there. But if you do and find yourself in a tug of war with ignorance, egos or manipulating entities…..just drop the rope. It’s that simple.

Let ’em fall on their asses and you go merrily on your way.

And go take a nice walk in our majestic freedom and glory in your independent magnificence! Then turn and do and say what’s right – in every situation you come up against.

Screw the programming. We’re free.

That’s how truth wins out.

Much love,

Zen

ZenGardner.com

 

One dog’s solution to overcoming lower vibrational conflicts:

Saturday Matinee: High Velocity

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“High Velocity” (1976) is an obscure b-movie starring Ben Gazzara and Paul Winfield as Vietnam vets hired by a corporation to rescue a CEO kidnapped by an underground resistance group in the Philippines. On one level, it’s an early version of the heroic mercenary film which had a resurgence in the 80s after the success of Rambo and Missing in Action, but it’s also unrelentingly cynical with a surprisingly astute depiction of colonialism, government/corporate corruption and the power elite. The film is further elevated by a great lead performance by Ben Gazzara and atmospheric soundtrack by Jerry Goldsmith (famous for his work on Star Trek). Interestingly, High Velocity was the first film produced by Takafumi Ohashi, who later produced tons of great (and not-so-great) Japanese genre features.

The Golden Era Of Knowledge Resistance Is Upon Us

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By Bernie Suarez

Source: Truth and Art TV

With the recent Virginia shooting false flag incident now blown wide open it occurred to me recently that humanity is in the middle of an era of all-time highest abundance of knowledge and information.  We are swimming in knowledge thanks to the internet and technology. This knowledge is easily available to almost anyone in a moderately developed country. Even children have access to this abundance of knowledge. Used properly, the technology and information available to us today gives humanity the tools it needs to overcome and even replace the dying new world order empire seeking control of it.

That’s the good side of today’s technology, knowledge-sharing and information available to humanity. Here’s the dark side of the story however. With much knowledge comes much responsibility and intellectual expectation from the species. Given how much knowledge there is available to humanity, we must face objectively what is transpiring before our very eyes. A large percentage of humans are still blinded by the controllers because they are deliberately resisting this otherwise easily available knowledge and this almost unique first-of-its-kind level of resistance seems to be at an all-time high.

I say “resistance” because more than ever before in the history of mankind humans can rapidly educate themselves about almost anything. Anyone can easily get past the information bottleneck of mainstream media and do their research and discover how real the globalist new world order plans are. After all, they are not even hiding their intentions. Ask yourself why would they publish the Project for a new American Century BEFORE 9/11 telling the world what their intentions would be? How is it that we have access to ‘Operation Northwood‘ documents clearly outlining the controller’s plans for staging false flag terror attacks throughout the U.S. to use as a pretext for war, yet people still think this is not possible? They’ve admitted Vietnam was a war based on a lie but does anyone care? Crisis actors are now regularly being used to stage sloppy staged shootings but many refuse to look into this too deep for fear of what this new knowledge will require of them. Thus today it requires more mental energy to fend off the knowledge that is easily available at everyone’s fingertips. People are apparently willing to put lots of energy into resisting this knowledge just to preserve their paradigms.

Consider that today’s generation has easier access to concrete proof of false flags faster and more accurately than at any point in history. Much of this information can be obtained in almost real-time. Today, unlike any point in history, people who are privileged to this surreal flow of amazing information simply ignore the information like its not there. This unique engineered modern day complacency and resistance to easily available knowledge I believe is very special and must be pointed out to understand where we are and what possible solutions will work best.

Think about that next time you hear people still clinging on to government engineered “official story” lies, false flag events, planned agendas and propaganda. One of the reasons people cling to government lies and resist easily available truth and knowledge is because people don’t want to believe things are that bad. They would rather believe that government is looking out for the greater good of the people. They don’t want to believe anything that will compromise their view of the world and their paradigm about life. Paradigms are very real and many refuse to change how they think to accommodate a new paradigm. They will ignore logic, avoid tough questions, even ridicule the messenger to protect their belief systems and all of these examples are forms of resistance to knowledge.

Cognitive dissonance is at an all-time high. More than ever, people prefer to keep the conversation light. They just don’t want to discuss “conspiracies” or government corruption for fear of getting into an unwanted debate. So in order to avoid a debate or conflict over a political issue it’s better to avoid the topic. Today many work places expect their employees to avoid discussions about controversial topics because it’s not good for the work place. This is an institutionalized resistance to knowledge and it’s all deliberate and engineered. This resistance is cognitive dissonance at a mass scale.

So, although many people are waking up to the nature and true meaning of current and political events both domestically and globally, there is a great sifting going on and more than ever people are resisting simple truth that would have easily persuaded and awakened the average person many centuries ago if they had the same available information in their time. Thus, I believe this is widening the knowledge gap within the species and this knowledge gap widening is part of an intellectual and consciousness extinction phenomenon that I believe is happening. Sadly, many humans are deeply mentally tangled in the matrix of lies and will likely die in the matrix never having understood how or why they died. Like sheep led to the slaughter.

You may wonder, how did we get here? Perhaps due to several factors including that today, propaganda is much more sophisticated and thus more effective. We have sophisticated sensationalized mass media, advertisements, billboards, radio, TV, Hollywood movies, video games, news papers, magazines, social media, cell phone apps and more. All of these sources of information are well equipped to manipulate the human mind especially knowing that today people are subjected to these devices and distractions every day.

Solutions

You may be thinking, what can we do about this mass resistance to knowledge seen today. For one, keep the information awareness circulating. Don’t get too worked up every time they execute another false flag. Instead see the false flag from the point of view of the usual script blueprint they implement almost every time and do your best to share the information with those who are still living in the matrix of lies. Then move on and continue focusing on viable solutions for the problems we face.

Still running into people clinging on to government “official stories” on one false flag event after another? Realize who you are. Remind yourself that truth exists on its own and it’s not up to you to convince anyone, just show them the truth and let them recognize it for themselves. Realize we are living in an era of unusual resistance to knowledge because this resistance is engineered. Realize that it’s not about you winning an argument or convincing others of your personal point of view. It’s about putting out the objective truth and hoping people see the bigger picture for their own survival benefit. You can lead a horse to water but you cannot make it drink.

I believe understanding this engineered resistance to common knowledge we see today is a big part of the puzzle in terms of staying mentally healthy and staying focused on solutions. It’s all about keeping things in the right perspective and maintaining your own personal mental, emotional, spiritual and physiological balance.

Realize that for as much as people resist knowledge and information freely and widely available to humanity today, there is a constant hope and positive outlook that is burning in our hearts that reminds us that we may be part of an inevitable and important mass human awakening phenomenon.

Also lets consider that this knowledge resistance is equivalent to the diver who is too afraid to jump from the high diving board for fear of what will happen if he does. All those people who are afraid of giving up their current paradigms wouldn’t be if they were assured that everything was going to be all right.

Finally, realize that as things get worse many more people will be inclined to want to change their paradigms for a better one. That is why we need to offer hope to others. It’s not enough to point out false flags and focus on the fear and government corruption. We must answer back with some kind of solution and hopeful strategizing. Deliberate knowledge resistance is best met with the fewest amounts of words. Show someone the truth don’t debate with them so much. Allow them to believe whatever they want and move on after telling them what they need to hear. It’s not about convincing these people or winning an argument, it’s about being mentally stronger, more assured and wiser as you expose the other person to objective truth. It’s about staying focused on the bigger picture not about burning energy to fix someone else’s resistance to truth.

Bernie Suarez
Creator of Truth and Art TV Project

Bernie is a revolutionary writer with a background in medicine, psychology, and information technology. He has written numerous articles over the years about freedom, government corruption and conspiracies, and solutions. A former host of the 9/11 Freefall radio show, Bernie is also the creator of the Truth and Art TV project where he shares articles and videos about issues that raise our consciousness and offer solutions to our current problems. His efforts are designed to encourage others to joyfully stand for truth, to expose government tactics of propaganda, fear and deception, and to address the psychology of dealing with the rising new world order. He is also a former U.S. Marine who believes it is our duty to stand for and defend the U.S. Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. A peace activist, he believes information and awareness is the first step toward being free from enslavement from the globalist control system which now threatens humanity. He believes love conquers all fear and it is up to each and every one of us to manifest the solutions and the change that you want to see in this world, because doing this is the very thing that will ensure victory and restoration of the human race from the rising global enslavement system, and will offer hope to future generations.