We need to feel safe and have our basic needs met. Something denied large parts of the world, especially the parts the West invades or exploits.
If you read, and I suggest you do, Viktor Frankl’s ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’ you will discover how people cope with a hell beyond the rhetoric of religious zealots, who believe you have to wait until you die for that option.
Austrian psychiatrist Frankl was imprisoned in Auschwitz, Dachau and other concentration camps in WW2. He talks about a state of ‘negative happiness’ a term coined by Schopenhauer to describe ‘freedom from suffering.’ Another term for the inmates’ mind-set is ‘provisional existence.’ German author Thomas Mann apparently used this to describe how TB patients felt when in sanatoriums.
Provisional existence is life with a future and a goal.
Forgive me for this comparison, for there is none, but it is relevant to my overall point. Accounts I have read reveal that Jews and others forced into railway carriages on their way to almost certain death knew what awaited them. They weren’t just dragged off the street and bundled in. They had suffered years of conditioning. The dehumanisation began with their scapegoating for pre-war Germany’s ills. Their rights were systematically denied them. They were persecuted, bankrupted and made to feel like ‘aliens’ in their countries of birth.
Some, even as they trudged naked into the gas chambers [read Frankl], never gave up hope until the end. Others, the majority, for whom the worst part of the day was waking up, had psychologically surrendered.
Clearly the Nazi’s played a tune on their need for security. A starving man or woman in Auschwitz will be ‘happy’ to be given food not fit for animals if it kept them alive. Inmates dreamed of life beyond the camps, when they could resume their jobs, careers, or strive to even greater things.
What happens when you fly? Unless you have a private jet, or are one of Teresa May’s super-rich, afforded the luxury of ‘security’ exemption, the procedure at airports is at best a bloody nuisance, at worst, dehumanising. Of course you have a choice. Go through it or don’t fly.
Remove your belt, shoes and coat. Take out your laptop or other items of electrical equipment. No liquids over 100 ml. Put your wallet, keys, watch, coins, passport etc. in the tray. Before you go through the metal detector, you are in a state of total dependency. Imagine subsequently being denied access to everything in the tray.
Your immediate fate depends on the airport staff. Full bag searches are now becoming commonplace. Of course, if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.
Just an outrageous invasion of your privacy and dignity for 5 to 15 minutes.
This is not the place to go into the deliberate governmental creation of ‘t*rr*ris*’ as something justifying the rapid progression down the slippery slope of enslavement. But let it be said that you have more chance of being struck by lightning than being the victim of a te*r*ri*t attack.
So, if you travel, you are already ‘nudged’ into giving away your power at airports. And what awaits you at the other side of the sheep dip? Designer bullshit, ‘celebrity’ perfumes and duty free. Contemporary hell and heaven on earth.
Across the West, the most weak and vulnerable are even being denied ‘freedom from suffering.’ They are being made to suffer more. Scapegoating, benefit cutting, humiliating interviews, penalties for having too many rooms, zero hours contracts and working for nothing. For them, the promise of significance, success, and being someone
is fading by the day.
But wait. Surely shelf stacking at Tesco’s could lead to a career in the company, even for geology graduates who have spent three years of their lives and got into tens of thousands of pounds of debt? And what about becoming an entrepreneur and starting your own business? ‘Pitch’ your geological survey services to Tesco’s and win that
contract!
What? You don’t agree with supermarkets and feel they are destroying local communities? And your skills have more value elsewhere? Tough. Do it or lose your benefits.
My world view is this. It all began a very long time ago when people began their separation from God. It set in train a series of events which led to the destruction of the human race. Once heart-centred, we became more and more head/mind centred and were easily influenced and tolerated oppression. Humanity has suffered two episodes of being wiped out, and we nearly had a third one a few years ago.
Or, try the Marxist view of false consciousness. Workers, i.e. most of us, have a benign view of our oppressors, the capitalists. Only socialism will deliver us from the yoke.
Anyone who has got this far will have to admit we are systematically lied to by the media, politicians and corporation bosses. The world is the polar opposite of how it is presented. I forgot to mention past lives, the power of love, the world of spirit and forgiveness.
Once awakened, people turn to higher things.
However, as Frankl and others have revealed, paradoxically, the ultimate desperation leads some people to go within, and tap into their infinite inner resources.
Some of us preach the power of love, and play down, or turn a blind eye to the bastards in power. Because the bastards in power are a projection of our own insecurity and separation from God.
Some of us go hell for leather to denounce and bring down the bastards in power, and replace them with...
Some of us are happy to give away all our freedoms, if it means being safe. Close the prison door behind you when you go. You can see it now.
In truth, everyone reading this can unleash their significance and realise their part in the greater scheme of things.
Send love to the oppressors, surround them in white light. But get up off your arse and point out to those who cannot believe their ‘betters’ are killing and abusing kids, animals and the planet it gets worse before it gets better. Or it gets worse than hell and you wake
up.
Will negative happiness stop more glimpses of hell in your ‘three score years and ten’? Or are you content to mark time until you come back again? Could it be an even rougher
ride?
Jack Stewart.
P.S. Frankl’s book is ultimately an inspiration, and ought to be made compulsory reading in schools.