Blame vs. Responsibility

This woman lives destitute.  She did not choose this life, the
Powers That Be forced it on her.  We, as a society must take
responsibility by not only offering help, but we must fight for this to stop.

Scenario #1:  Johnny is  jumping on the bed, Jimmy sitting on the floor playing with his Tonka Truck.  Mom is in the other room, ironing clothes.  Johnny jumps into the lamp, knocks it over, and breaks it.  Mom comes in, asks, “HEY, who broke the lamp?”, Johnny exclaims, “JIMMY DID!”.  THAT is blame, that is Johnny blaming somebody else for something he did.

Scenario #2:  Johnny is  jumping on the bed, Jimmy sitting on the floor playing with his Tonka Truck.  Mom is in the other room, ironing clothes.  Johnny jumps into the lamp, knocks it over, and breaks it.  Mom comes in, asks, “HEY, who broke the lamp?”,  Jimmy says, “Johnny did”.  THAT is putting the responsibility where it belongs.

The two scenarios should never be confused with each other.  Add to either or both of these scenarios, let’s say the lamp fell onto Jimmy and broke his leg, resulting in him not being able to do some things – some of his chores, , maybe he stays home from school for the first few days.  You cannot blame Jimmy for any of this, it was Johnny who caused Jimmy to have his leg broken, and Johnny who caused the subsequent inadequacies that Jimmy is now displaying.  There is politics in this.  Conservative thinking people, as well as blind followers who only know how to parrot what they hear, will say, “Jimmy is a lazy sumbich, he doesn’t do his chores, and he skips out of school.  Non conservative thinking people will say, “Jimmy needs help because he has a broken leg, so, let’s help Jimmy”.  Conservative people will say, “Hey Jimmy, get over it, buck up and do whatever it takes to do what is expected of you”.  Non conservative thinking people would say, “Hey Jimmy, what can I do to help?”.  I don’t have any political leanings, but in this case, conservative thinking people are non compassionate, even inhumane, while the non conservative thinking people are the complete opposite.  In this case, the conservative thinking people are causing great damage to society, because when you take this to a bigger scale, conservative thinking people will try to convince everyone to shun Jimmy, they will bully, lie, lobby, and whatever they feel it takes to prove to themselves that Jimmy is nothing but a lazy bum who walks around with his hand out wanting free stuff.

So, now that we can hopefully see the difference between “Blame” and “Self Responsibility”, it may be easier to deal with certain situations – our own as well as other people’s.  Johnny caused the damage, so Johnny should be responsible.  This is the only honest assessment of blame vs. responsibility that can be taken from such scenarios, and any attempts to convince you otherwise can rightfully be replied to with, “How ‘bout you take your Polly-want-a-crackering B.S. and suck on it”, or something similar.  I’m of course, kidding, but you get the idea :D .

There are two parts to being responsible for your actions.  The first is what you are morally responsible for.  This means that you are offering to pay for whatever damage you did – to anyone and anything – if you break it, you buy it.  The other part is who is realistically responsible – who , in reality, will be paying for the damage.  The sad part is, much more often than not, the people who intentionally inflict grief and loss on other people rarely pay for their own acts, and almost never pay for the damage they inflict.  The good news is, these types of people have been paying for their own stuff in a different way for a very long time – ever since they made the decision to inflict pain and suffering on themselves by such malicious behavior.  In that part of our life, we all have a choice, we can be honest, considerate, and compassionate, or we can be selfish, rude, and malicious.  One of the laws of the universe applies always – which is what makes it a law of the universe :D.  That law is that when you choose malicious behavior, you, by reciprocal proxy, and by direct cause and effect, inflict pain and suffering on yourself.  When you choose to be honest and decent, your conscience will be clear, you’ll sleep well, and you’ll be happy – of course, there’s more to it than just this one simplistic part, but it’s good fundamentals, a good start towards being happy.  The lesson is, when you cross paths with a jerk, you can honestly know inside yourself, that you don’t need to do anything to remedy a situation where the jerk is trying to bully you, or to get something from you via manipulation.  If you calmly remove yourself from the situation, the jerk will continue to pay for his own self inflicted suffering.  We will need to deprogram ourselves from all the bad input we’ve gotten – via Hollywood (Chuck Norris, Clint Eastwood, and Superman movies), and via every medium, everywhere we look (more on that at another time).  A side note:  In today’s world, it’s dangerous to “Stand up for yourself” when confronted with a bully.  Laws are always on the side of the instigator – mostly because he or she has premeditated and/or preplanned the whole thing well in advance.  He will have a gun under the seat in his pick ‘em up truck, or a tazer, machete, something, OR, he will have his lawyer on speed dial, and he will have your face, your vehicle license plate number, and whatever else, on video – many times with the help of surveillance video in whatever establishment where he put his plan into action.  There have already been many times where the instigator will taunt a person, get busted in the face, speed dial his lawyer, and, before you know it, the guy who thought he was simply standing up to a bully is in prison for 60 months (that’s FIVE YEARS).  Add to that, there are incidents of “Road Rage” (as well as Grocery Store Rage, Parking Lot Rage, and Facebook Rage), many times a day in this country, where standing up to a bully ended up in the unsuspecting victim being shot and killed.  Think about that – is getting into it with some lowlife in the street worth your safety, your freedom, or your life – I’d say not – I’d say if you’re going to risk any of that, it should be for something big, something worthwhile.

In these scenarios, the “Cognitive Behavioral Therapist” will tell you that you are responsible for your reaction.  Well, horseshit.  Any person who goes out in public and tries to bully other people – they are the ones who get to wear (morally) any and all reactions that they themselves incite.  Now, don’t confuse that with who, in reality, pays.  Recently, there was the incident where some loudmouth was in a theater disturbing the other patrons by being on his phone.  An ex cop in the row behind him asked him numerous times to take his phone to the lobby.  He also went to the management and reported it to them – nothing was done.  After several more verbal exchanges, the loudmouth reached toward the ex cop, at which time the ex cop pulled out his gun and shot the loudmouth and killed him.  In my never to humble opinion, the loudmouth is morally responsible for what happened to him.  The sad reality, is, though, that the ex cop is now in prison, and will probably be there until the end of his life.  Please don’t take this as my saying that you should shoot a person if you don’t like what they’re doing, what I am saying is that if you are the one doing the bullying, and you get your ass shot off, you wear it.  The law says otherwise, but it’s common knowledge that the law has nothing to do with what’s right or wrong.  This, my fine friends, is one of the biggest dishonesties in society today – the fact that it’s dictated to us that we cannot have a reaction that is not sanctioned by our beloved government, or we will surely pay dearly for it – and worst of all, most of us believe it so we can be thought of as good little law abiding citizens (that’s the dishonest part).  As for alternatives, as for what would have been a much better thing for the ex cop to do, was to move somewhere where he wasn’t within earshot of the loudmouth.  Here in this piece, I’m not trying to make the point on what the ex cop should or shouldn’t have done, my point is, you bully, you get hurt or worse, you are responsible.  If ever my philosophy should take hold with a reasonable percentage of the population, such situations would rarely, if ever, happen – because the loudmouth would know better, and any subsequent reactions would have no reason to be.  One step at a time :D .

So, be responsible for what you do, what you create, what you incite, but never for anything you did not cause, or for anything you have no control over.  I’ll cover this subject in more detail as I go, complete with many examples of what we should and should not be responsible for.  For now, be good, or not – your choice.

You Cannot Turn Off One Emotion And Replace It With Another

 A dragonfly is near the end of his life in this form,
and he's just fine with that.

One of the main premises of “Cognitive Behavioral Therapy” is that you must first recognize a “negative” emotion and replace it with a “positive” one.  My belief is that suppressing emotion is one of the worst things you can do to yourself.  By doing so, you are opening yourself up for whatever mental condition you already have to get worse, and for the frustration and grief to manifest itself in endless physical conditions and diseases.  This occurs in large varying degrees.  There is the person who believes he should always be “positive”.  This person will suppress anything that is labeled as “negative”, he will smile through everything, he will be thankful for all the “good” things in his life, and he will be ok with just about everybody – regardless of how badly the person behaves – at least that’s what will be on the surface.  Underneath this façade, he will be frustrated, angry, resentful, and sad, but, since society has dictated that he not acknowledge those emotions, he will suppress them.  The bad part is, those things will surface in other ways – in anger when he doesn’t realize what he’s doing, he will be passive/aggressive, he will be secretly vindictive, and he, at some point, will likely display physical symptoms ranging from mild to deadly.  The more mild cases of the emotion suppressor will be the ones who will have displayed “negative” emotions in his younger life, maybe experience some degree of depression and/or anxiety, then end up in the therapist’s office sometime in his laTE 20s or 30s.  The therapist will convince him that he must shut off these “negative” emotions and turn on the “positive” ones.  So, this person will be convinced that the therapist is offering something of value – after all, he has the credentials and experience, claims he has a “Thriving business”, has helped countless patients, and voila, he’s the guru who must be speaking the gospel.  So, the depressed person goes out into the world with a smile and a “better attitude”.  He will swallow a bully’s aggression, he will try to ignore the fact that he lost the job he’d had for the past twenty years and was close to earning his full pension, he will try to ignore the fact that he lost his home, and he’ll bull forward, trying to convince himself to be thankful that he’s not a paraplegic, that he had a place to fall, or that his homeless situation didn’t cause his immediate death – citing, “It can always be worse”.  When you try to express your frustration, anger, disgust, or other displeasure to the "Cognitive Behavioral Therapy" therapist, at whatever situation has you depressed, scared, and whatever else, he will stop you in mid sentence and say, “That’s not helpful, you can’t have those thoughts, you need to erase those thoughts and replace them with positive ones”.  Again – suppression of emotion – one of the worst things you can do to yourself.  I believe that there are very few genuinely happy people in the world – and it seems to be heading in a worse direction, not better.  The reason for this is all the bad information we are fed, morning, noon, and night.  The ones who pretend to be happy, you can’t just look at what they say, you need to look at their life (of course, if that’s possible).  Some may have tons of money, some may have a somewhat comfortable life, others don’t have much, but they pretend that they’re doing just fine.  Again – look at their life – meaning see what they’re like in stressful situations, see what they're like when they think nobody is looking.  See if they are kind and generous, compassionate.  A genuinely happy person will never be mean, selfish, or vengeful.  Genuinely happy people are inviting, glad to listen to a troubled person, and will give to someone who is less fortunate than himself.  That’s not to be confused with people who blow smoke up people’s pants, offer “help” only to have the hidden agenda of wanting something for himself, or try to take down anyone who has or does what the pretentious one wants. Keep in mind, there are worlds of difference between a happy person having the occasional down moment, and the chronically malicious, vindictive person who is constantly scheming and scamming, in order to get what he wants in some sneaky, underhanded way.  Also, a genuinely happy person will never gloat or be smug.  Does the person strike you as “real”, or does he strike you as pretentious?  Is he quick with compliments, or is he honest but kind and matter-of-fact?  Is he encouraging?  Is he in good health when relatively young?  Is his living space and means of transportation practical, or are they showy?  Does he listen, or does he insist on talking about himself, his property and belongings, and his achievements?  If you can gather the answers to these questions, you can make a fairly accurate assessment.  I believe that the single most important aspect, the single most important thing you can do for yourself is to be totally and completely honest with YOU.  Now, most people would not knock an old woman over the head and steal her purse, BUT, most people cannot be honest when it comes to things of the heart.  Most people won’t admit that they are angry, disgusted, hurt, resentful, or jealous.  What they do instead is hide from these traits and emotions, while they rear their not so pretty heads in other ways.  Denial is one of the most glaring symptoms of hiding from such societal indecencies, and for being dishonest.  We’re conditioned to think that it’s unacceptable to be any of these.  It’s perfectly ok to be angry or hurt.  As for being resentful and/or jealous, if you are honest with yourself, these emotions will not be able to enter your world.  If you are ok with who you are – which requires you to be honest with YOU, again, these things will not be part of you.  Resentment comes from self loathing, same goes for jealousy.  Self loathing is a somewhat complicated subject, and I think I’ll have to address that more completely at a later time.  For now, I’ll just say that it would be in your best interest to be ok with who and what you are – whatever that may be.  If you’re less intelligent than average – there is not a damn thing wrong with that – so be ok with it, embrace it.  If you are what is perceived as “mediocre”, same – not a damn thing wrong with that – be ok with it, embrace it.  If you’re exceptional in one or more things, be ok with that, because if you are, you will never be smug, and you will never feel the need to gloat.  FTR, gloating and being smug is for cowards – and I’m pretty sure most of you do not want to be known as a coward – especially to yourself.

So, be honest, don’t deny your emotions.  That doesn’t mean it’s ok to have a conniption every time something happens that you don’t like, what I said was “Don’t DENY your emotions, don’t hide from them”.  Accept them, embrace them, but don’t take that as an excuse to have tantrums.  Accepting your emotions, and always acting on them are two completely different things – which I’ll get into later.

I’ll stop here for now.  One of the things I’ve learned when it comes to reading is that I usually won’t grasp some of what I read the first time around, so I like to read more than once.  Many times, I’ll get a whole different meaning from passages in the second, third, fourth, and other readings.  There’s no hurry, and there’s this:  “There’s never enough time to do it right the first time, but always enough time to do it again”.  This means that you don’t want rush, you don't want to go away with the wrong message because you didn’t want to take the time to understand what is written – here or anywhere else, because then, you’ll be applying the wrong things to your life, likely you’ll find that out at some point, then have to start over – possibly thinking that the source you got your misinformation from was to blame, subsequently feeling frustrated for having wasted so much time and effort, SO, take the time to get it right before you go off half cocked :D .

Be totally and completely honest, be ok with who and what you are, and do not suppress your emotions.  More to come.

“Cognitive Behavioral Therapy” – This Stuff Is Destructive

This little guy lives with no inhibitions, no preconceived ideas, he just lives his life.  This is what I wish for me.  If others would like to do the same, that's good, I hope I can be of some help.

Who am I, you ask, well, I'm nobody, but I'm offering my experiences so that maybe in some small way, the world might move in a slightly better direction that it has over the past few decades.  I get my information on this subject from firsthand experience, from looking all around me, and from what I read.  I, myself have been on the receiving end of a few of these so called “Therapists”, as I fought with severe mental depression from around 2002.  They all read from the same playbook, use the same cheap tactics to convince you that what they say is gospel, and none of them can decipher where a certain idea or belief  may apply – mostly because this system is not designed to help us, it is designed, as I said, to convince us that we are to blame for all that affects us – which does nothing but cause more frustration.  I’m fairly recently discovering ways to not only deal with it, but I’ve been steadily making great progress - living with less grief, and more discovery – both self discovery and discovery of what goes on all around me, and I’m just now getting started.  I’m not by any means an expert, I’m just a regular guy who has had the good fortune of seeing past all the B.S. that is being fed to us day in and day out.  I’ve been seeing much better and more effective ways to deal with certain realities – which is what seems to be near the top of the list of the most important means of living with less grief.

The main mental health therapy system in place in America today is known as “Cognitive Behavioral Therapy”.  Let me tell you, this system is not only flawed, but it is designed to keep us all depressed, full of anxiety, blaming ourselves for everything that happens to us, and basically to render us mentally incapacitated.  Like other systems that are in place to keep us under control, it has been carefully orchestrated and carried out.  Also, as with all other systems designed to control and oppress us, the beta tests are done right here in the good old U.S. of A.  Any person who is under government sponsored health care, who needs to see a therapist or psychiatrist (I’ll get into psychiatry at a later time) will be ordered to see a therapist who partakes in “Cognitive Behavioral Therapy”.  Most people who have regular, everyday health care that they themselves pay for will, by default, be referred to a therapist who partakes in “Cognitive Behavioral Therapy”.  If you try to find any other school of thought, it will be next to impossible to even find, much less enroll in.

This horrid system begins and ends with “You must be responsible for your actions”.  Ok, let’s touch on that for a while.  Yes, I am in total agreement that we should all be responsible for what we do, what we create, and what we perpetuate.  But, these therapists will have you believe that everything, and I mean everything that happens in your life that affects you is somehow your own fault.  They will bully you with their “credentials”, they will bully you with their Holier Than Thou attitude, and, if you stand strong in the belief that not everything that affects you is your own fault, OR, if you dare to stand your ground on any of the nonsense that they try to feed you, they will dismiss you, tell you, “If you do not want to change, I cannot help you”, at which time, you will leave the office feeling somewhat lost and afraid of not getting the help you seek.  Keep in mind, these professionals know that the fact you were in their office in the first place means that you are in an already weakened state, that it will not be that difficult for them to bully you into believing everything they tell you.  The first few times I spent time with these professionals, I left the office somewhat dumbfounded, and a little irritated. It took me a while to realize that I was being bamboozled from start to finish.  There was one day – it was not a particularly good day for me.  One of the incidents involved riding the city bus.  The first thing I did was log onto the bus company’s website, to learn the arrival and departure times.  There was a bus stop right across the street from where I was living.  So, with the departure and return times written down, I head for the bus stop a good ten minutes ahead of time – the three minute walk would have left me approximately seven minutes before the bus arrived at the stop.  So, I’m walking towards the stop, and I see the bus – it’s a full FIVE minutes early.  I start to sprint, just had to run maybe twenty yards, then cross the street.  Well, the driver saw me, and decided to be a jerk about it, put the pedal to the metal and flew through the yellow light.  When I told my therapist about this, his knee jerk statement was, “WELL, who’s fault was THAT???”. That was the first time I suspected that something was dreadfully wrong with this “Therapy”.

To take “Be responsible for your actions” to the next level – according to these “Therapists”, one of the common lies they will tell you is, “If your life isn’t what you want, it’s your own doing, and you must change your attitude, your way of thinking”.  They will proceed to tell you that you have a negative thought process, that somehow, YOU failed.  They will claim that as long as you believe you can do something, you can do it, it’s an inevitable reward for a “Good attitude” that you will accomplish what was previously impossible – but, if you just look around you, you will see that that is a blatant lie.  They will try to convince you that throughout your entire life, you’ve been doing it wrong.  If you got laid off from your job of twenty two years, three months before you qualify for your full pension, it’s your own fault – somehow YOU did something to cause that.  If your boss was a bullying jerk, and you stood up to him and lost your job, somehow that is YOUR own doing, that you should have found some other way to handle the situation instead of inflaming your boss – and the therapist won’t care how wrong it was that you’d been bullied for years by this boss, the only thing he will try to hammer home is that your reaction was wrong, and that was what caused you to lose your job. It will not matter the circumstances that were beyond your control, the therapist will insist that you caused the whole thing with your negative thinking, your bad reaction.  Funny, I never hear of any instance where a therapist will tell a workplace bully to quit being a coward by causing his employees grief and loss, somehow the blame will, without fail, be on you, the person in the therapist’s office looking to make sense out of seemingly unfair and bizarre situations.  One of the things we all must keep in mind is that most things that happen to us are completely out of our control.  To help illustrate that point, here are some examples.  First, none of us are the reason why we must pay anywhere from $40 to $100 every time we visit the gas station.  We are not the reason for being gouged at the grocery store.  We are not making ourselves sick, it’s the food supply being poisoned, our organs begin to fail, Big Pharma shoves drugs down our throats via the “Physicians”.  The result is a country full of fat, sick people, and billions in profits for the Powers That Be.  I’ll take the time right here once again, to say that this “Therapy” is just another piece of the corrupt system that is designed to keep us all under control, to be weakened, depressed, muzzled, and otherwise mentally incapacitated.  To some, this may sound like some tin foil hat wearing conspiracy theorist who has nothing better to do but complain, but take a good, honest look around you, and tell me where my beliefs are not accurate.  Add to that, I'm not only pointing out a corrupt system, I'm offering alternatives - alternatives that are much more effective than what's in place now.  There is so much to this, you’re not going to find all the answers by skimming through the first couple of chapters.  The problems are complex, and so are the remedies.  In order to arrive at good health and enlightenment, it’s necessary to understand why the ultra powerful do what they do, and how they do it.  Just a quick note on “Enlightenment”.  This is not a magical word, nor is it a magical state, all it is, is a better understanding of what goes on around us, and how to use that to accept and embrace life as it actually is.  Even “Accept life as it is” could be taken the wrong way, so, if you want to really understand that this is not tragic, and it’s not magic, it’s just basic, realistic information, you'll have to take some time to read what I offer here.  We get bad information fed to us all day, every day – from Hollywood, News media, printed media, including so called “History books”, radio, and a lot of what we find on the internet, the good information, the things that would be good for us, are well hidden, and I’m just here to try to offer some of it to you.

So, to sum up here, “Cognitive Behavioral Therapy” is designed to keep the blame on the folks way down here at the bottom of the food chain, and the farther down you are, the more susceptible you will be to all the cheap tactics used against us to keep us right where we are.  This system is full of lies and deceptions, and is directly contributing to the epidemic of mental depression, anxiety, and other mental conditions and illnesses, not to mention, most physical conditions and diseases.  The good news is, you can overcome these things, and believe it or not, it’s not that difficult, read on and you’ll see.