Thread by @mhbx

@PIgnoramus @MZHemingway It is precisely this question I am trying to sus out. If you get the tone of my overall postings you'll see I am asking the question,"How did we get here?"; "What is 'here'"? & is there a better place we can actually get to. Not in wan hope, but a pathway from here to there.

@PIgnoramus @MZHemingway Historically there are a few paths available to us. Most of them involve pain and suffering in varying degrees. Some of the degrees are unimaginable. Even those who happen to be aware historically, which are v.few, are stunned into silence on encountering them. I continue to

@PIgnoramus @MZHemingway think, if not simply hope, there is a path of lesser pain & suffering available. If there is it is well entangled w a great thicket of thorns and brambles & growing thicker daily. But still there.
Lincoln called it in his appeal to the "angels of our better nature".

@PIgnoramus @MZHemingway 3/ But even in Lincolns time, with all the vision & strength & hope he could muster was met by the ominous phrase..."And so the war came".

@PIgnoramus @MZHemingway 4/ I often think of the metaphorical power of Dicken's Christmas Story". Beyond the individual redemption story, there is the pattern of redemption of all gone afield lives & "systems". There is the past, the present and the ominous as yet unwritten future that is the natural

@PIgnoramus @MZHemingway 5/ consequence. The past is prelude. The present is doorway. And the insight of the unblinkered, and unflinching review of what has got us here may loom a future so frightening that we ask the, finally, self-aware question: "Are these the things that must be or only might be?"

@PIgnoramus @MZHemingway 6/ In my POV, it is the final exposure of ones self to ones self, and peering into that darkspace - what Jung & others call the Shadow - that is the beginning of redemption. By asking the question (think Parcifal here, and the Wounded King, & the Wasteland) the opportunity for

@PIgnoramus @MZHemingway 7/ a choice is created. And the choice then is presented in stark terms...
In other examples we are all aware of the 12 step programs. (Did you know that AA was started by a student/client of Jung?!). The first thing is to recognize where you are. The next that there is a

@PIgnoramus @MZHemingway 8/ choice that Can be made. And the next is to make the Choice, and then live the choice.
What Rilke identifies as "Living the question...".

Anyway... this went afield! A bit too long of an explanation of what I think I am trying to accomplish here on twitter as a platform.

@PIgnoramus @MZHemingway 9/ as a way to "listen" to all the radio channels at once; to try and find the heart within the anger and anquish. If there is to be an avoiding of the contemporary version of "And then the War Came", not a certain proposition, it will come, I think, through a devotion

@PIgnoramus @MZHemingway 10/ to first principles, and abandoning the angry dismissal of "the other side" as unredeemable idiots or worse, enemies. That is the language of the lower consciousness. The one that has as its primary goal to Win; To Dominate; to destroy what is perceived as a threat.

@PIgnoramus @MZHemingway 11/ So saying... I do not countenance some fairy tale pastel "everyone is beautiful" hope. We have a very difficult balance to acquire and maintain. But that is the essence of what comes after the Question has been asked, and the choice made.

@PIgnoramus @MZHemingway 12/ I'll just say, regarding that line of thought, that what "we" (those opposed to trumpian/gop principles & assaults on america) need in our 'champions' is being honed (in one public level) in the Democratic Prez Candidates. How they understand the issues, and tell us about

@PIgnoramus @MZHemingway 13/ how they understand them; their ability to tell the truth - the whole truth, not just more banal recitations of "We are better than this"... and etc. I don't know if that champion has emerged yet. It certainly is not Bernie. IMO. And won't be Biden. Many of the others,

@PIgnoramus @MZHemingway again, IMO, have good, some even great ideas. They will be more suited to lead cabinet positions if the Dem's win. There is time yet, but so far I am not seeing the one who can occupy this position. And maybe, likely, this position will not be occupied.

@PIgnoramus @MZHemingway 15/ It is another serious question whether, even now, are we -America as a country, the West as a civilization, & globally, the world, prepared to make the necessary choices. (Here introduce all the great issues that are daily being told & retold...that are our choice points.)

@PIgnoramus @MZHemingway 16/ And now I see I have outlined my paper or article that I have been pondering on. Sorry for the deluge... I'll try to cobble it into a more coherent form in the next few weeks.
A rather long-winded response to your question eh?
/out