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The Middle Way

~ A journey between extremes

The Middle Way

Category Archives: Fear

Bop Bop Bop – Bop Bop

11 Monday Jan 2021

Posted by themiddlewaythrough in Brain Droppings, Change, Conspiracies, Corruption, Depression, Emotional Intelligence, Fear, First Amendment, Hate, Open mind, Patriotism, Politics, Revolution, Terrorism, Trump-Hole

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I’m just going to put these thoughts down for my own purposes. Predictions for posterity, I guess.

When I run this stuff around in my head, I time-trip and visit each scenario as it plays out, including each possibility in the multiverse of choices that branch off from it. It’s exhausting. Anyway, when I run this stuff through in my head here is what I keep coming up with. (Yes, I keep… Meaning I have done this a few times. I’m in quarantine like everyone else, so I might as well time-travel.)

Pundits and talking heads keep saying Donald Trump is going to fade away once he is out of office. I don’t see it, I really don’t.

Here’s the problem -— Some of his followers think he is the great and powerful Q, and then a bunch of other ones that think that he was sent by God as wrecking ball to help clear out the unworthy. And, as we now know, Trump will do anything to stay out of jail.

When those things get tossed around together, they add up to “He’s not going to just slink off into obscurity”. I just don’t see it. Not him, maybe someone normal, but not him.

Emptiness

07 Thursday Jan 2021

Posted by themiddlewaythrough in Buddhism, Change, Death, Ego, Emotional Intelligence, Environment, Fear, First Amendment, Human, Indivisible, Meditation, Middle Way, Open mind, Patriotism, Politics, Revolution, Terrorism, Trump-Hole

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One of the exercises that I found particularly helpful when discussing the concept of ’emptiness’ in Buddhism, was trying to figure out at what point a car is a car.

For example: We have a car in front of us…

If I remove the engine, and the leave the rest of the body, frame, etc., is that still a car?

What if I then take off all of the doors, is it still a car now?

Or how about if I took out all the wiring and stuff, is that still a car then?

You can see how the exercise goes. At some point the realization began to set in that all things are all composite. We ourselves, are not singular. And we really are not separate from other beings. We are all made of of countless other components, and those things themselves are made up of even smaller elements. You can follow this logic as far down as you like, ultimately splashing around in the quantum foam like are in a 50’s surf movie.

But what if applied this logic to other things? Like what happened yesterday at the capital.

At what point does a protest become a riot?

At what point does riot become sedition?

At what point does a sedition become an insurrection?

At what point does insurrection become civil war?

What I have discovered is that rarely are there clear lines showing separation in nature. We tend only to be able to identify things after a new form has become apparent to us. In Buddhism, I have found this very humbling. When it comes to public safety, things get very messy and dangerous very quickly.

separation anxiety

19 Thursday Nov 2020

Posted by themiddlewaythrough in Brain Droppings, Coronavirus, Dingleberries, Ego, Emotional Intelligence, Existential Risk, Fear, Healthcare, Love, Politics, Sameness, Spirituality

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The molecule that makes people camp out for days just to get a new iPhone a few weeks before their neighbor, is the very same one that drives people to rapidly refuse to wear a mask the more we ask them to. We need to de-escalate the stigma of it somehow.

The ego is the non-Newtonian fluid of our spirit. The more we force this issues, the harder they’re going to push back on it. More PSAs, less confrontations folks.

Painting himself into a corner, in an oval room

02 Monday Nov 2020

Posted by themiddlewaythrough in Change, Conspiracies, Corruption, Fear, First Amendment, Indivisible, Mental Health, Moscow Mitch, News, Patriotism, Politics, Putin, Revolution, Terrorism, Trump-Hole

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So, the only organization that has called winners and losers in a U.S. Presidential elections on election night have been news organizations. They make predictions based on the percentage of counted votes that the States themselves make public. But suddenly this president is demanding that “we accept the call that’s made on TV the night of the election.”

Okay, so ignoring the fact that anyone who voted 20 years ago knows that’s not true. And ignoring the idea that most people prior to the mid-20th century must have just stared at the blank spot on the wall where their future TV would go, and waited for some answers from it. And ignoring the fact that the only reason he is president right now is because of the electoral college, which does not vote for at least a few more weeks (you’d think he’d want to wait around for that one, right? [*cough* *cough* 3 million votes *cough* *cough*])…

Putting all of that aside, you’ve got to wonder why the guy who has been doing his best to delegitimize “the fake news media”, suddenly wants to hang all of his hopes on what they have to say tomorrow night.

Editorial comment: Somehow a very important few words disappeared from the first sentence when I first published this. The first sentence has been changed to reflect that I meant ‘on election night’.

The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity

30 Friday Oct 2020

Posted by themiddlewaythrough in Art, Change, Emotional Intelligence, Environment, Fear, Hate, Human, Indivisible, Music, Poetry, Politics, Putin, Revolution, Terrorism, Trump-Hole

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It seems that I tend to post this once in a while, and there’s usually good reason each time. Aside from the fact that this is one of my all-time favorite poems, for me it also calls up a reality check. I’m not alone in that fact, either. And, I have always loved the version that Joni Mitchell arranged, so today I am posting that with the text of the poem. Read deep.

We humans have enough of a history that shows how clearly we are capable of existential damage to each other, as well as our environment. I don’t believe there is anything particularly prophetic in this poem/song, but there are some huge reminders.


The Second Coming
by William Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Melanistics For Trump

24 Saturday Oct 2020

Posted by themiddlewaythrough in Change, Coronavirus, Corruption, Environment, Fear, First Amendment, Indivisible, Moscow Mitch, Patriotism, Politics, Race, Revolution, Terrorism, Trump-Hole

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Today I saw two fairly typical rural New Hampshirey kind of guys (white males, beards and baseball caps, obligatory work boots, and a variety of apparel from famed designers such as Mossie Oake and Coco Flanell) slogging hip deep through the roadside tick-grass dragging a massive sign that proclaimed: “Asians for Trump”. These guys were in the process of hammering it into the ground directly between myself and a bunch of very beautiful fall leaves. I absolutely hate political signs.

I suspect if I had actually pulled over and pointed out to these guys just how dense their political irony was, it would be as welcome from me as breaking the news about where fortune cookies actually come from.

The problem is that publicly voicing any sort of political speech these days is just as likely to get you shot, as get you are to get run over by a muscle car or big-ass truck with giant tires and a Punisher sticker on the back window. All while sustaining a barrage of colorful potty words, and various observations about your appearance and pedigree.

I am afraid that no matter who wins this presidential election, there will be violent reactions across the country, leading to far more deaths than there should ever be in a country with free and fair elections. And if you’re wondering just how many deaths should happen as a result of free and fair elections, the answer is zero.

News in 2020

02 Friday Oct 2020

Posted by themiddlewaythrough in Brain Droppings, Dandelion Break, Fear, News, Revolution, Trump-Hole

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“They’ve gone to plaid…”

the centrifuge

12 Friday Jun 2020

Posted by themiddlewaythrough in Fear, Indivisible, Poetry, Revolution, Trump-Hole

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the world’s become a centrifuge
us whirling out of balance
speed’s increased across the board
without a check on stress

we elements’ve begun to part
our ‘us as one’ to fragments
homogeny begins to slough
in final fail we crumble

Who will blink first?

31 Sunday May 2020

Posted by themiddlewaythrough in Conspiracies, Fear, First Amendment, Guns, Patriotism, Revolution, Terrorism, Trump-Hole

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Stepping back and taking a 50,000 foot view of the current state of things in the United States of America right now, I see an apocalyptic wasteland, crippled by financial uncertainty brought on by rampant disease. As it’s citizens attempt to protest inequality and racially-charged police brutality, additional racial tensions erupt and are made vastly worse by (wait for it… ) riot gear clad police violently lashing out at the citizens they are charged with protecting. All the while, the president encourages escalating tensions by threatening additional brutalities from the safety of the people’s White House.

He said he would run this country like his one of his businesses, right?

The “S” Word

13 Friday Mar 2020

Posted by themiddlewaythrough in Brain Droppings, Democratic Socialism, Dingleberries, Fear, Healthcare, Open mind, Politics, Sameness, Trump-Hole

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As usual, I am having trouble with the fact that Donald Trump’s base of support would eat a shit sandwich if he said it was a big brown chicken nugget.

As Agent Orange spitballs ideas such as paying people who don’t have sick leave, massive financial stimulus packages, and other socialistic methods to help patch the smoldering wreck that was his ‘beautiful stock market value’, I can’t help but wonder why no Republicans are screaming about Trump’s sudden socialist shift. I mean, this is obviously going to taint the free market.

Just to be clear, right now the biggest difference between Bernie’s version of socialism and Trump’s is that Bernie’s would actually be part of a cohesive plan, and not part of some knee-jerk, radioactive act of desperation.

In the world of material worship, socialism is an old testament god that may only be summoned in the event of an apocalyptic event. Specifically one that threatens the wealthy, as well as us lowly serfs.

“What did you just say?!”
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