On Having A Pulse
What it takes to get out of your own head and your own bubble
This post is more personal than any other post. Not because I am exposing my past or things that I did or that happened to me. It is, because this post is revealing how I think and some of the ways I may come across as pretentious and intellectual and arrogant or so… things I have been accused of being.
I will never really understand why it is not ok to talk about thinking and intelligence like you would talk about athletic accomplishments. However, here we are. In a society that really does not like the ability to think and process data mentally as a core skill.
Like most atheists of my generation, I became a big fan of Christopher Hitchens. Below is a quote that has inspired me ever since. And this is how I want to start out this post. How do you avoid getting stagnant and how do you ensure you actually think before drawing conclusions? What media are you following to stay current?
“Every day, the New York Times carries a motto in a box on its front page. "All the News That's Fit to Print," it says. It's been saying it for decades, day in and day out. I imagine most readers of the canonical sheet have long ceased to notice this bannered and flaunted symbol of its mental furniture. I myself check every day to make sure that the bright, smug, pompous, idiotic claim is still there. Then I check to make sure that it still irritates me. If I can still exclaim, under my breath, why do they insult me and what do they take me for and what the hell is it supposed to mean unless it's as obviously complacent and conceited and censorious as it seems to be, then at least I know I still have a pulse.” Quote by Christopher Hitchens
Many of the people I like following are saying farewell to Twitter or Facebook whether this is a ban or happing voluntarily does not really matter. The truth is the gathering of information is being streamlined and often moved to paid subscription models. Can I afford to subscribe to so many individuals vs following a more mainstream platform? I am very careful with money, so I did not want to randomly support, but ensure that I can actually spend the money where it is benefiting my own personal growth and need the most. So I did what I should have done a long time ago. I went through the list of my media subscription and what I pay for. The sticker shock hit me. Wow. Audible, Spotify, Netflix all add up to a significant amount when annualized. My husband Chris had often the same subscription, so we did what was easy. We consolidated a few.
With the money now saved, I subscribed to one additional person that I really love hearing from. I kept one account of someone who challenges my thought process — I do not always agree, often I do not, other times I am. He has switched from topics that are dear to my heart to more random topics outside of my interest scope. But! Her is the big but. I would never expose myself to these topics otherwise and I feel strongly that I need to keep my eyes and feelers open to ensure I am not getting stale, stagnant, rigid in my thinking. Who knows what my primary interest is in a year from now? If it is still the exact same it is today, I am no longer growing and that would make me sad.
I occasionally also check on public opinions and see how I feel about them to see if I moved on or if I am still the same. I am sometimes surprised how far I have come since 2015 alone. Here are some public opinions I used to hold and that I now hate myself for as this common type of dogmatic thinking in my generation has caused so much harm in today’s world:
A ruling class is warranted, because people lack the intelligence to vote the right person
Lawyers have the best interest of their client in mind
People will always do the right thing if given enough time
Mothers and Fathers always have the best interest of their kid in mind
Religion is always bad
Feminism is generally a good thing to drive equality
There will always be humanitarian and economic progress in this world
Technological advancement is always good
The more data and knowledge people can access the smarter they act
How are we all ensuring we continue to expose ourselves? How can we ensure, our thinking leads to valid conclusions? How do we dare to criticize others when we do not know how these people think and when we are too afraid to state the facts we have carefully learned? Bad ideas require sunlight, so they can be eliminated. Plugged out one at a time.
Do you still have a pulse?
Thank you sooo much for writing your stories and sharing them with all of us who have the privilege of reading them.
Josh Slocum recommended your Substack site — and because I soo admire Josh’s upfront, no holds barred revelations — I felt pretty positively disposed (as in biased towards) to like your writing — even before reading anything you wrote. Lolol
Sure enough, I read through about 6 of your most recent posts and I totally love and admire and applaud your courage to expose your precious vulnerable Self with all of us.
To Witness each other as we share our stories.
And as we Witness each other, we can feel the compassion and empathy and love we naturally feel for all our fellow travelers who experience life’s pains, sorrows, griefs, sadnesses, as well as joys and recoveries and healing our deeply embedded wounds.
I am sooo grateful to all the writers and commenters of the Substack community for providing this community with all their stories.
It feels to me like we are all graciously sharing and all gratefully receiving blessings from the Cosmic-Universe through our reading and writing and sharing our stories.
Re old German history.
If you’re interested, I discovered some unknown and untaught true and documented history that most all of us have never heard about before.
Which puts much of what is believed about what happened after the end of WWII — what actions were taken by the allied forces (particularly USA & General Eisenhower) — would make any normal person with a working conscious feel outraged. I certainly feel beyond furious myself.
There’s a bigger agenda operating — and Germany — like Russia — is and has been targeted for extermination.
Always the same with psychopaths.
They always target the best and brightest and most creative cultures for destruction.
It’s their recipe book.
The shaming and guilt tripping of entire nations and groups is an ongoing story.
That these psychoz have been so successful in sowing seeds of hatred against Germany, Germans, Russia, Russians, etc., et al with their narratives of lies should be shaming to those of us who believed their lies.
Mostly because, as Catherine Austin Fitts so elegantly describes the collective American psyche — we like to tell ourselves the “I am good” story. We like to think of ourselves as the “white-hats” — the heroes — the ultimate “good-guyz” — the knights in shining armor riding in to rescue the damsels in distress.
We’re a nation of mostly narcissists — who, like the Greek legend of Narcissus who falls in love with his own image reflected back to him in a pool of water — we like to see ourselves reflected back to ourselves at twice our natural size.
Germans have less to feel ashamed of than Americans. And Americans refuse to acknowledge, confront, examine, discover or admit that we individually and collectively have committed some of the most horrendously and egregiously vile and vicious and criminal acts against others in this world during any period of history with the possible exception of the Atlanteans. Who, out of hubris and arrogance, caused the world-wide flood approx 14,000 years ago.
And guess which nation most attracts and magnetizes those former Atlanteans to incarnate and be reborn again?
Exactly!! The very same.
Ok — long comment. Thanks for reading
My best wishes and hopes to you on your journey and may all your “ows” transform into “WOWs”.
Aloha blessings 🌈🥰🧚♀️
Thank you for your interesting take. I think you're making things too easy for yourself by the number of universals you are positing. "Mothers and Fathers always have the best interest of their kid in mind". Obviously untrue since one exception (and all we know of many more than one) disproves the proposition. Another formulation is more reasonable, and perhaps more reliable when determining (and this can be the only thing that is determined under such a proposition) whether an intervention (neighborly or legally) into a family's child-rearing is needed.
"All things being equal, those who have chosen to have children are likely to care for those children's interests. " You might also find this disputable, but the disputation is more likely to be a "discussion" than the slam-dunk and very obvious rejection of the universal.
Some of your other propositions are similarly modifiable to reasonable conjectures.
Again, thanks for stimulating thought.