1. What to do
when it's
time to go.
What to do
The Holistic Handbook
to a Successful Suicide
By James Maginnis
Every 31 seconds someone
in the world dies by suicide.
Every 32 seconds the world
heals by making sure it's seen
only as a personal mental illness.
2. I dedicate this tome to the sister who broke my spine before I
was even one year old and who still refuses to talk about it, the
brother who claims I'm to blame for his meanness and then lied
and even faked my signature to steal my mother's inheritance
as "therapy," the childhood bullies well know by teachers who
abused me even more, the wives and children whose love was
wrapped in alienating insults, the pastors who've called me evil,
exploitive therapists, friends afraid to really know me, even you
the reader who has accepted little or no responsibility for the
tyrannical hunger, violence, and ignorance that so fills our lives
even though how to end such trape
ills being well documented, and
most notably my fear of being ridiculed for complaining. These
monstrous actions are daily committed by every one of us due
to an overwhelming fear of being known. In my worst moments
of despair, I've tried to remind myself there were good reasons
to feel so inadequate with the only true insanity being the silly
imaginary and tasteless happiness we all struggle to preserve.
Yes, Virginia, there are monsters.
There are brain sucking Lizards and blood sucking Zombies. Worse, if you
look closely under the bed you may catch a glimpse of yourself down there.
Pretty scary stuff except the plan to shut down your brain or heart rests but
on the sole premise you forfeit reverence for yourself. So, "be careful when
you fight the monsters, lest you become one of them." Nietzsche (1886).
(http://www.epilogue.net/art/9585-monsters-under-the-bed)
Copyright 2012 - 2014
3. The Holistic Handbook to a Successful Suicide
by James Maginnis
Table of Contents
Abstract .................................................................................................................................... 1
Why I wrote this ...................................................................................................................... 1
We have met the enemy and he is us ..................................................................................... 2
Only a crazy person wouldn't want to die .............................................................................. 3
I told you I was unhappy – so, why are you only here NOW? ................................................. 5
This is the postmodern desert ...............................................................................................10
Do I just not like people? .......................................................................................................17
Great and good are seldom the same man ...........................................................................21
And so, there are some things you should consider before you go; ....................................27
The Zombie next door .............................................................................................................28
What does it mean to be a man in the modern world? .........................................................33
What does it mean to be a child of a divorce in the modern world? ...................................38
Trash talk: what is it good for? ..............................................................................................40
101 ways to kill yourself and do it again tomorrow ..............................................................44
The thought of suicide is a powerful solace: ..........................................................................44
Just because you can, doesn't mean you should ...................................................................50
For the lotus flower to fall is for it to rise to the surface ..........................................................55
Knowledge is not power ........................................................................................................55
Life, if defined by growth based on conflict resolution, is best shared ....................................59
How do you die to self without actually dying? ....................................................................59
Every exit is an entry somewhere else...................................................................................61
I know what it feels like to want to die ....................................................................................66
Positive Psychology believes grief is always short-lived .....................................................66
Let me tell you more of my circumstances .........................................................................69
Sanity is madness put to good uses; waking life is a dream controlled .............................69
We must imagine two different things for forgiveness to work ............................................71
Perhaps we're asking the wrong questions ............................................................................73
What might families look like? ............................................................................................74
It's not a question of ideas – there are already too many ideas ..............................................74
"Now," said the doctor, "we will begin, yes?" .........................................................................77
4. Suicide is painless. It brings on many changes and I can take or leave it..........................78
Few people have the wisdom to prefer the criticism that would do them good .......................81
Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them .....................................................................82
Self-trust is the first secret to success ..................................................................................84
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act .........................................85
How would you define the perfect parent? .........................................................................85
You cannot understand a system unless you change it .........................................................87
Do not teach your children never to be angry; teach them how to be angry ...........................87
There are many icons in our art, language, and culture .........................................................91
Without the rain, there would be no rainbow ........................................................................92
Truth is stronger than lies and love is stronger than fear........................................................94
Today's mighty oak is just yesterday's nut that held its ground. ........................................96
Student: I don't feel like living. Teacher: Then find ways to not live. .......................................99
Without doubt, certainty is what drives one insane ........................................................... 101
If anyone thinks he knows anything, he does not yet know it as he ought to know it. ........... 102
Is the glass half full or half empty? ....................................................................................... 103
Rule #1 in life: Be great at what you do: life is short. ............................................................ 105
Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise. .............................. 105
Be yourself, everyone else is already taken........................................................................ 106
Let's Talk About: Violence Against Men .............................................................................. 106
What is Heaven and Hell to me? .......................................................................................... 112
(http://arth-karm.blogspot.com/2012/11/is-suicide-end-of-all-troubles-or.html)
Will you live?
Will you die?
5. The Holistic Handbook to a Successful Suicide
1
Abstract
We need to be honest about suicide and the ways we make others feel the need. We do such
harm, like a young girl striking her schoolyard affection to hide her loneliness, to withhold the
very intimacy after which we all hunger. We insist others learn to take responsibility and change
despite life's one most essential truth being (as per AA) that our life is unmanageable and we're
powerless to change it. Depression is the natural response to guaranteed to fail self-reflection
and self-correction. Dr. Jung believed such difficulties start when being a distinct homogeneous
individual is an unhealthy choice for one's environment corrupted by such lies. We focus on but
building great leaders rather than great societies (based on great followers). Our movies never
show heroic teams and we rarely teach how to build them (such as with team charters). Being
called untalented, unintelligent, unattractive, unfaithful, or unpleasant is far more offensive than
hearing we are unsure of our beliefs, unclear of our goals, disorganized in our efforts, uncertain
of where we would stand, are without a long range plan, or misguided in our worldview; those
things that actually matter. Lastly, we prefer hearing only how special we are to ever addressing
real world egos, nepotism, and codependent relationships. We've done a repositioning of life as
a commodity we consume rather than one in which we might consider to invest ourselves. So
what if researchers have identified how to end most all hunger, violence, and ignorance? I don't
get to live in such a wonderful world until you gain a greater respect for truth. People often say
they don't believe in a God that allows suffering but I say that's why I have yet to believe in you.
Why I wrote this
Penny Coleman says suicide is "the most secret death because no one wants to talk about it."
She says about 120 returning Iraqi vets kill themselves every week. This is an estimate as the
numbers aren't tracked by any agency. There are more suicides in the military (same for cops),
as soldiers (and cops) die mostly by their own hands, but after controlling for gender (men), the
military (and cops) has a lower suicide rate than the country as a whole. Animals occasionally
kill themselves due to misery but it's our primary motivation as modern life is damn lonely and
cruel. "Older white men are more likely to take their own lives than any other demographic, and
suicide rates among that group have shot up [50%] in the past decade." (Dr. Arean, 2014) Dr.
Rosenthal showed (Pygmalion in the Classroom: Teacher Expectation and Pupils' Intellectual
Development, 1962) kids have little input to grades and yet we still yell at them for bad grades.
Dr. Brame says men have almost a 50/50 chance of being arrested by age 23 (more than twice
that for women). Dr. Brodsky (1976) and Dr. Leymann (1984) demonstrated all stress is typically
the consequence of groupthink mass "mobbings" overwhelming targets of STJ psychopaths into
hopeless positions (and then chronic stress can cause incurable brain damage). And then, the
Columbine Threat Assessment Group found the primary antecedent for such school violence is
the forced focus on athletic heroes. Suicide usually says none of it and none of you are worth
living for; nothing is better for saying "I hate you all." It's time to let suicide out of the closet and
admit the many ways we set people up for absolute failure, not just ex-husbands but everyone.
We have but a singular recommendation for a better life: you need to change. If your grades are
poor, you need to change. If people don't like you, you need to change. Even if life has dealt
you a crappy hand, you must change as there's always something wrong with you (say teachers
and peers). Every one of us, every day, goes past something like 50,000 declarations detailing
our faults. For instance, few of us are thin and pretty enough, few of us are popular enough, few
of us are happy enough, and without doubt very few of us are rich enough. To no one's real
surprise, each of these problems, even the not rich enough one, can be fixed with money. But,
6. change is not possible. Your character and temperament is fairly set by puberty. Golfers know
the better plan is not to change for the course but to change the course for you; if you have a
natural slice then use it on a dog-leg right. It is life that should change. This is such good advice
characteristically unavailable anywhere, not from your therapist, your boss, or your family and
friends that I need to say it again. When people say you need a better attitude, to work harder,
or just to be more agreeable you need to raise both birds high into the air and just scream, "No!"
"We have met the enemy and he is us." – Pogo, 1953
We're great at telling others to start taking responsibility and yet never take any ourselves. For
example, teacher quality has fallen by half while salaries have doubled. The only two positions
you're likely to take is 1) that statement is wrong or 2) someone else, such as say the Teacher's
Union, is to blame. There is no chance you take responsibility. When the principal asks all the
teachers before an important standardized school-wide exam in the movie Stand and Deliver
whether every teacher was doing all they could, only Escalante stated he knew he was not. Be
honest, you're not doing enough to improve society; all your limited efforts miss the big picture.
I once made a resolution to make the world better by baptizing others. I found Bill Bright had
prophesied in the 1950's as a "slave to God" he would fulfill the Great Commission of bringing
every man, woman, and child to Christ in a single life, one generation, or 50 years, and later by
2000. His first step in this plan was to travel the U.S. looking for biblical scholars who had been
successful evangelists. Many came to interview but he could not find a single individual who had
both studied the Bible as well as worked to baptize people. I've visited about a hundred Tucson
churches and have not found a single person who has even met a single spiritual grandchild (a
person baptized by someone they had baptized) or a church that encouraged or tracked such
efforts (since they grow but by pilfering as per Barna and Polomar). Bright resigned in 2003 after
50 years of leading Campus Crusades for Christ and died shortly after with over 16,000 full-time
employees sadly having made little real headway in his mission. I asked a national missionary
for the group if they were considering reworking their Mission Statement and I was asked firmly
to leave and to never come back. Previously, I baptized an employee I had sponsored at AA
(despite not being a member) and two of my pastors visited the person with dire warnings about
"evil" Jim. Both pastors confessed to never baptizing a single person themselves (and one was
even nearing retirement). I've concluded geometric success requires a supportive community of
like-minded believers I am unable to find, true for any and all social problems. Personal issues
like suicide and salvation are social problems that necessitate coordinated community solutions.
Religion was not the answer. So, I tried being a Precinct Captain working to get "better" people
elected. As you can guess, I found most candidates grossly incompetent. Even sadder, I found
the few good and not-bad candidates to be either fully engrossed in useless platform issues (by
their own admission) simply to get elected or else incessantly hindered into comparable futility. I
found politics was not the solution either. So, I volunteered at my kid's school but somehow got
voted off the parent-teacher Site Council at the PTA president's request for the "ethical violation"
of campaigning. The only person to say anything nice was an ex-wife. I cried inconsolably, not
from being so rejected but from a death in which I finally gave up on you all. My best friend told
me if I was a "real man" I wouldn't need defending (I still have my hateful ex-wife) and how likely
it is that I will die alone (not accepting that being alone is better than poorly accompanied). Drs.
Cloud and Townsend propose I just need better "boundaries" but when someone in your poultry
shed turns out to be a fox in a chicken suit, bravely standing up and clucking "no" is bad advice.
You must either quickly flee the coup or submit to the fox. Chickens simply never fight together.
The Holistic Handbook to a Successful Suicide
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7. The Holistic Handbook to a Successful Suicide
3
Only a crazy person wouldn't want to die
If you're normal, you find suicide (or at least passive self-destruction) attractive because;
1. You want to go to heaven to be reborn in a perfect human body somewhere else
2. You want to reincarnate as a cow but forgot how many cockroaches you have to be first
3. You want to get away from self-deluded religious fanatics preaching about some afterlife
4. You want to be a martyr for some foolish cause that probably doesn't really help anyone
5. You want to just get away from everyone constantly bitching about how much life sucks
6. You want to serve a capitalistic society and ideally die right on schedule with no overtime
7. You haven't accomplished a damn thing or know how from having wholly inept teachers
8. You've fooled yourself into thinking you've achieved everything when it's in truth nothing
9. You're tired of feeling life is beyond your control, just a series of unrelated country lyrics
10. You're just drunk (or high) and naïvely stupid: one third of adolescent suicides are drunk
11. You're a have-not of a casted society: most minorities are shut out of higher paying jobs
12. You're a veteran sick from U.S. weapons like depleted uranium tank shells or the quarter
of enlistees and half of reservists insane with never ending nightmares and flashbacks
13. You're an alienated father (knowing how to solve social ills in a world that doesn't care);
and, of the 38,364 Americans who killed themselves in 2010, 30,277 (4 of 5) were men
14. To emerge from nothing yet have a name, deep inner feelings, and time to dwell on how
at any moment your life will disappear leaves you yearning for the sickening wait to end
The Who sang in 1971, "As people assemble, civilization is trying to find a new way to die." If
you are born in a time or place without technology, your death is likely to come from a natural
disaster, fire, unsafe living conditions, poison, or disease while death in industrialized countries
is more likely to come as the result of a plodding suicide. America is reaching a grim milestone
this year: 40,000 deaths by suicide. In the developed world, suicide became the leading cause
of death in 2010 for people age 15-49. Free access to the suicide of our choosing to escape any
external threats and the naturally resulting pathologies is becoming our most fundamental right.
The world loses a million people each year to willful fatalities and that's more than deaths due to
homicides and war. The most fashionable method with a gun, called "eating lead," occurs more
often than traffic deaths. Then, all of the top ten ways Americans die involve some sort of "slow-kill"
self-harm; eating lead is only tenth overall. Half of all deaths are due to a pathological thirst
for cigarettes and fatty foods. Other fashionable options include drugs and alcohol at #3 as well
as the consequences of sex at #7. I had a crush on a girl who over dosed in middle school while
another four kids ended it all using drunk joy riding. We are also a primary reason that life sucks
for others. Our poor treatment of nature is evidently in our nature. Animals might commit suicide
due to the so called rights of the many but Terror Management Theory supposes that humans
are principally attracted to death as a result of our singular ability to picture it coming; causing
colossal control issues. According to the CDC, any sexually active teenager has roughly a 50/50
chance of contracting an STD. Perhaps, the draw of the possible death is even greater than the
natural attraction for the intercourse. It is sadly vey likely that you are not already dead only due
to not having sufficient "rope." For example, the most effective way to increase people's craving
to smoke is to remind them it will kill them just as criminologists say people commit crimes often
only out of a perverted need to take great risks. This is just as true financially as it is physically.
The reason you've not yet declared bankruptcy may be only because you've never had enough
opportunity. Bankruptcy seems but the natural result to winning a large lottery (or rope). Lottery
winners, like all of us, tend to live wholly self-destructive financial lives but have just never had
sufficient resources to completely fail until that lucky day when their number gets picked – yea!
8. One remarkable suicidal method had a big impact on psychologist Dr. Martha Stout. She begins
The Myth of Sanity by talking about when her Grandmother chose congestive heart failure. Her
grandmother, lying in a hospital bed and being attended for minor problems, informed her nurse
she planned to "go to God" before morning and then quietly was no longer a burden to anyone.
Dr. Stout explains "Voodoo victims die that way, victims of their own strength of belief, and other
mammals, swimming against the tide for too long, let death come, and die of exploding hearts,
before the water has a chance to drown them. Having decided it is time, one simply dies." Dr.
Benson explains in his Beyond the Relaxation Response how religion can greatly facilitate one's
ability to make physical changes (far greater than any TM guru) even to one's own willed death.
Research has shown "religious belief alters the brain" including a faith-based analgesia not for
Atheists. Our refusal to talk about suicide, its stigma, results in a poor job of counting suicides.
Stout's grandmother's death was not counted as a suicide. "It's vastly underreported," states Dr.
Phillips, who has written much on rising suicide rates. "We know we're not counting all suicides."
Just as every business plan should include a detailed exit plan, living intentionally means dying
intentionally. But we don't have such a pragmatic relationship with death. We refuse to listen or
even taste our food to ignore it. My parents both wanted to die horribly painfully and alone but
fairly quickly at home. My father went insane, defecating himself for days, while my mother 12
years later lay alone on the floor also insane for days. This sounds horrible and I believe either
would have changed their minds in the moment, true for most any suicide. I understand all of
the few who've survived jumping off of the Golden Gate Bridge have said they quickly changed
their minds on the way down. But, no matter how detailed the data available to my parents may
have been – even if they could have gone forward in time and watched their deaths, I believe
they would have chosen precisely the same way to go. I have found this true for nearly all of the
Great Generation (born before 1925). I instead want to die a lingering death with full access to
unlimited drugs and people to clean me up after I've soiled myself and hold my hand with great
encouragement in a nursing home allowing me to think and write as long as possible. Now, my
grandmother was sadly hospitalized for two years unable to do anything but blink her eyes. That
doesn't sound appealing to me. It would be best to think about how you want to go and not just
put if off for some last minute collection of bad choices you'll regret for the rest of your life (LOL).
My parents' preferred means of gaining advantage over their pitifully lonely lives was food and
smoking. Mom died with oxygen in one hand and a pack of Camels in the other while dad grew
to almost 300 pounds by his end. They also lived lives of social suicide. I heard of parties with
over 50 guests before I was born. But, they only had 4-6 couples over when I was young. Then,
no one came over after I was 12. My last conversation with my father included a statement that I
didn't have a clue about who his friends might have been and he yelled, "Do you want to know
who my friends are?!? I'll tell you – no one!" Well, relationships only end up thorny things if you,
as we are taught, separate people over whether they are nice or nasty (rather than valuable vs.
harmful). I think they most respected honesty due to being so poor at recognizing it. Now, my
parents did spend time with an attorney and his wife. He generously allowed me to record him
for a character in one of my puppet shows and he provided the only practical advice when my
first wife left me for a High School Junior. When I would attend his parties, I noted how he was
the first one drunk although he never drank. After a lifetime of abusing food to help medicate the
pain of such constant social deceit, he was driven to quickening the process by "eating lead."
I'm not interested in detailing the "quick" death options as that's been done to death (I'm sorry
for that intentionally bad pun). The Complete Manual of Suicide written by Wataru Tsururni in
The Holistic Handbook to a Successful Suicide
4
9. 1993 sold over one million copies. The manual evaluates eleven categories of suicide methods
including overdosing, hanging, jumping, and carbon monoxide poisoning in terms of pain, effort,
chance for success, and final resulting appearance of the body. Wataru does not cover any of
the many reasons for suicide but does pose the very important question, "Why must one live?"
The Final Exit by Derek Humphry, Hemlock Society founder, also provides assistance for stuff
from making decisions about whether and when one is ready to die to financial considerations.
When it came out in 1991, it was the number one bestselling nonfiction book in America for 18
weeks and it has sold over a million copies. In 2007, the editors and book critics of USA Today
selected Final Exit as one of the 25 most memorable books of the last quarter century. One of
the more notorious suggestions from Dr. Philip Nitschke's The Peaceful Pill Handbook is his
classic "Mexican option." Due to the high cost of travel, Mexico's high crime, and problems with
drug reliability, Dr. Nitschke no longer recommends this. Finally, we all know of Dr. Kevorkian,
whom we all hope we never get as our emergency room doctor. He said "Dying is not a crime."
60% of the people he helped kill themselves, however, neither had fatal illnesses or complained
of any pain. Many were rather just sufferers of clinical depression or hypochondria. One woman
simply had a husband who told Kevorkian it would be better if she was gone (believe it or not).
Over tall buildings and guns, "doctors have found the use of helium (within a bag-like tent) is the
speediest and available method to end life." (To Die Well by Drs. Wanzer and Glenmullen 2007)
Here's an important point to consider: I've seen two movies where people consider suicide after
being diagnosed with ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease. In truth, half of those told they have ALS live
more than five years and so end up "re-diagnosed." Forget about getting better and think about
hearing "Woops, turns out the bad news wasn't entirely true." You wouldn't want to miss getting
to see your doctor all red faced having to admit to making a mistake – would you? Therefore, I
support considering "direct" methods for but the last few days or totally paralyzed when you can
have some certainty your motivations for such a final choice won't out of the blue poof be gone.
Pain is not a good reason for suicide as it's not real (being it's transitory), not like being useless.
What is your favorite penance: smoking, over eating, unprotected sex, eating lead, tall building,
drug overdose, risky lifestyle, or several of these and then suffocating alone on the floor? I am
amazed how most women prefer a drug overdose even knowing it will likely fail and they thusly
be forced to try again just to not make a mess. Men are ten times more successful than woman
when it comes to killing themselves. I assume this is due to being raised with a greater need to
be successful, even in failure, and that women are raised to be drama queens and blame their
problems on men. But, having a gun in the house removes most all of a woman's normal ability
to fail (as it's hard to miss). Any honest endeavor requires being clear about your vision and
understanding the resources needed for your personal meaning for success with a detailed plan
for execution (that time, no pun intended). Suicide is no different. Most suicide attempts are so
amateurish and messy they rarely provide what people intended. In truth, most people consider
suicide only as an in the moment resolution to some meaningless situational problem without
thinking things through. We all die, but few do it and leave a meaningful and lasting impression.
There are pre- and post-mortem questions to consider, later will not work for obvious reasons.
For one thing, you will need them for the suicide note, for brainstorming ideas for your epitaph,
as well as for your headstone. For instance, I would like the following text put on my memorial:
The Holistic Handbook to a Successful Suicide
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I told you I was unhappy – so, why are you only here NOW?
In addressing why kill yourself – there is an inexhaustible list of good reasons to hate life. Most
are but smoke screens hiding the real reason: being alive is a very lonely proposition. Many use
10. the logic, "I will no longer have to be untalented, unintelligent, unattractive, or unpleasant." The
reality is that you will clearly not only be useless, stupid, ugly, and nasty, you will also be dead.
Then, the Flynn Effect is about how people are getting smarter every decade so a person born a
century ago is likely borderline retarded as calculated today. Technology has similarly made us
twice as productive as our parents who were twice as productive as their useless parents. Then,
there's appearance. Forget about the modern options for cutting stuff off and getting it replaced
or straightened and think for a moment about how people smelled a century ago. So, any of our
stupid and ugly issues can be minimized by just becoming associated with an older crowd. We
are also becoming a wholly faithless group of sub-humans. Larsh's Culture of Narcissism was
made famous by President Carter's Malaise Speech in which he pointed out social programs
can't fix the real problem of people becoming self-absorbed jerks. Therefore, no matter how cold
hearted, simply looking to the next generation for friends can secure your fitting in just perfectly.
Also, when it comes to suicide, people often think, "I drink, abuse drugs, or am so sick or injured
that I'm half dead already so why not just finish the job?" Remember that our grandparents were
a quarter of the people we are and they were called the "Great Generation" because they were
more literate, more loving, and more courageous. It clearly doesn't take much to flourish. Heck,
even Romanian orphans with heads flattened from being left lying all day as infants as a rule
flourish quite well. People also think, "Well, suicide was the solution favored by a family member
or friend – so, why not give their solution a try." Of course, the obvious problem here is "trying"
generally implies non-destructive testing. And, this is typically not an option with suicide (duh). A
genetic component has been indentified for the aspiration to kill oneself; it's not all your choice.
The common reason why all normal people think about suicide (if just subconsciously) each and
every day is people suck and are wholly impossible to live with. When my eldest daughter tried
to explain dating a 19 year old when she was 14 (whom she eventually married) by exclaiming
"Dad, have you seen the boys my age?!?" I replied, "Yes, I have. And, they remind me a lot of
you. And so, the feeling that they're not good enough can only be a result of some pretty poor
self-esteem and the resulting self-delusion you've used to cover up the fact you suck as well."
And yes, that was me sucking and being impossible to live with. And so, my daughter then left.
But, Dr. Anna Freud asks "who promised you that only for joy were you brought to this earth?"
AA's 12-step recovery plan starts by recognizing that your life sucks and there's nothing you can
do about it. First, life has no problems, it only has symptoms. This motivated Toyota's founder to
develop a Five Why Analysis as dealing with symptoms can only make things worse. Then your
memories, what makes you you, are very unreliable. DiSalvo explains in What Make Your Brain
Happy and Why You Should Do the Opposite that most people shown a manipulated photo of a
fictitious childhood event will create a detailed false memory. Dr. Kassin also showed innocent
people will confess and even create details to a crime a confederate falsely claimed witnessing.
Dr. Loftus showed leading questions can also create false memories, though often with a delay.
She also wrote "there are now no reliable ways to distinguish a true memory from a false one."
Dr. Spanos even showed hypnosis only diminishes the already irresistible power of suggestion.
The LA Rampart investigation began when it became clear LAPD divisions regularly sold drugs,
robbed banks, and even killed while forcing 30,000 innocent people using such "interrogation"
techniques to confess. Dr. Kahneman won a Nobel Prize in Economics in 2002 for his Rule of
Small Numbers stating people prefer to make decisions with the least data possible. Numerous
Nobel Prize winners have similarly shown how our brains seem optimized for self-destructive
decisions. Malcolm Gladwell says in Blink that no more than 5% of our choices are our own. Dr.
The Holistic Handbook to a Successful Suicide
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11. Simon says such limited rationality is why we all rely so heavily on rules of thumb. Dr. Stanley
Milgram showed all women (and half of men) would torture a stranger to death if firmly asked to
by any authority. Dr. Paul Ekman (basis for TV show Lie to Me) showed we all lie three times
every ten minutes for social glue and we all work hard to miss lies. Ekman counted a lot of lies
by omission; others say we overtly lie only ten times a day. Dr. Elgin also believed we never say
what we mean and 80% of products popular in surveys never sell. The MMPI (the grandfather of
all personality tests) uses the failure to admit the fear of getting caught is the only thing keeping
you from say sneaking into a movie theater without paying as evidence of a lying personality as
science has long documented we all know deep down (if honest) what thieves we are. It seems
only a self-deluded sociopath can sincerely assert that they are sane, smart, kind, truthful, and
without blame (required to be a leader). I would argue the most emotionally healthy men I have
ever met may be self-aware convicted serial killers and child molesters who grew to recognize
they are not safe in public. Mental health is often seen like physical health to be the absence of
disease, but it is more about coming to terms with things the way they are (and not an either-or);
the most disabling disease being the self-hatred we stuff inside (what the Bible call "demons").
While people suck on their own – they only really get going in groups. Dr. Brodsky in 1976 and
Dr. Leymann in 1984 independently showed most all stress is the consequence of "mobbings"
that overwhelms victims into helpless, defenseless positions that usually persist continuously
over a prolonged period of time. Bullying is but the "hard sale" for a win-lose conclusion based
on a position of power (a net zero sum called politics) every parent has done with the words,
"Because I said so." Mobbing, in contrast, is about using the mindless masses, I call Zombies,
to commit the abuse, leaving the bully's hands clean. Dr. Nicola Bunting also describes people
whose personalities are so impoverished and immature they only mouth the thoughts of others
as Zombies. She states the popularity of manipulating others is a totally postmodern situation. It
turns out the most likely reason you feel bad (whether emotionally or physically) is because of
stress and the mostly likely cause of stress is poor treatment by a mob of manipulated Zombies.
Dr. Kevin Dutton (2012) argues we should encourage psychopaths as they tend to be fearless,
confident, reward focused, charming, and excel at reading emotions – leadership qualities that
seem tailor-made for success in the 21st century. The situations that most haunt me with what I
should have said or done always include some sort of panic attack. Our natural fear system is a
bit too sensitive for a modern world without cobras and lions. Emotions can be a real hindrance
when working towards individual goals; they're only valuable to group aspirations (emotionless
Dr. Spock wouldn't do well in the real world). Identified genetic factors imply some evolutionary
advantages and in fact callous Alphas can often be found in nature. Dr. Sapolsky found tit-for-tat
bullying in a group of baboons he was researching. His baboons, however, changed in just one
day from a violent might-is-right culture to one that was far more peaceful. What happened? The
baboon troop happened across some tainted meat in a garbage dump and since the Alphas got
to eat the most, only they died. Without "leaders," the meek inherited control. Rising frequency
of psychopathy suggests a mostly nurture origin and Dr. Reicher believes identifying with any
leader or cause is the surest way to lose one's mind. Any "leadership skills" are but poison to
healthy team development. While anti-mobbing laws with an anti-psychopathic intent spread
across Europe in the 1990's and in Canada in 2006, there are no such laws being considered in
the U.S. Our country seems to be overly manipulated by the iron grip of psychopathic baboons.
What kind of remorseless person would choose to empty people of their voices to but puppet
opinions they often don't even understand? Dr. Martha Stout writes in The Sociopath Next Door
one of their chief characteristics is a kind of glow or charisma making them more charming or
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12. interesting than the other people around them. They're more spontaneous, more intense, more
complex, and sexier (although they dislike sex and only use it as a weapon) than everyone else,
making them hard to identify and very seductive. Harvard's Dr. Howard Garner showed most
children score genius level IQ's up to the age of four, but that percentage goes down to 10% as
teenagers and 2% for those over 20. While natural and statistical, this also happens due to the
discouragement from the mobbing efforts orchestrated by what Drs. Livingston and Rosenthal
called Negative Pygmalions and Dr. Satir called False Levelers producing what Dr. Michael Ray
calls the Voice of Judgment. For some reason, we turn our eyes from such monsters. Dr. Satir
only identified False Levelers as the hardest to spot and with which to deal. Dr. Livingston even
wrote in 1992, expressing great surprise over, how he never studied Negative Pygmalions in his
career despite knowing full well they were more prevalent and effective than caring individuals.
As we ignore the realities of suicide (or sexual abuse), we likewise hide from the known cause.
After hearing the stories of my fitful marital relationships, many have suggested that I am a poor
picker. But, since psychopaths are far more attractive, my picking is fine. The problem is I don't
think a mature adult should believe in monsters (and I attract them). I had convinced myself the
occasional odd behavior or statement could not have been real. I am not alone in this affliction.
Dr. Robert Hare's 20 question survey is the standard rubric for psychopathy as he is seen as
the world's top expert. He wrote a paper showing when people were given random series of
letters and asked if they spelled a word that normal people find emotional words like cancer or
rape faster than neutral words like tree or plate; but not psychopaths. Astonishingly, his paper
was rejected. Dr. Hare had measured EEG brain patterns of the subjects and the journal simply
didn't believe the ones for the psychopaths could have been accurate as they showed them in a
constant state of lethargic emotional sleep. To suggest monsters are real doesn't seem "adult."
Many estimate over 1 in 25 are such fiends - the DSM-IV states psychopaths will exhibit at least
three characteristics of deceitfulness, impulsivity, recklessness, aggression, remorselessness,
faithlessness, and never honoring financial obligations. But, these describe our base character,
what exists beneath any of our own pretenses. They're simply better at being us. So, we end up
worshipping them. All they're really missing is the social connection and motivation to be better,
something that's not possible alone. They are but nature's perfect Army of One. They're simply
far better at living alone, to even embrace the soul numbing loneliness (if left untreated) of being
alive. Our individualistic culture fosters such antisocial behaviors (where the only area in which
they're not better is in functioning in a team) so an alienated father can only watch his children
(especially a son) develop selfish behaviors. 80% of male rapists motivated by displaced anger
and 85% of teenagers in prisons come from homes with displaced fathers (Criminal Justice and
Behavior, Vol 14, p 403-26, Fulton County Georgia & Texas Dept of Corrections, 1992). We all
love watching sociopathic TV characters like Dexter because they live like we secretly all wish
we could. They ignore the rules doing whatever they want and don't take any crap from anyone.
Plus, they're popular; and, we are taught from birth that popularity is better than all the money.
But most importantly, we admire psychopaths because they give us what we want more than
anything: they make us feel good with lies. Everyone knows if something feels good, you should
do it. Turning over our lives seems like a small price; besides, we don't like making decisions.
The fact is the only thing harder than being an adult today is to be a child, defined expressly by
how one is not an adult: without access to information, powerless, and insignificant. Childhood
seems little more today than the development of shame and inhabitations by identifying who is
not good at academics, sports, or social behaviors. Children are systematically dehumanized
with route memorization, lengthy lectures that discourage questions, adults talking for them, and
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13. criticism for their "wrong" questions or goals. Who cares if medical dictionaries define childhood
from infancy to puberty, when medical information becomes legal property? Jewish ceremonies
traditionally claimed ethical responsibility to happen at puberty when Christian Confirmations
awarded adult rights including marriage – but we're modern now. That the Christian Church of
the Middle Ages considered the age of accountability when a person could be tried as an adult
and executed to be seven seems archaic. Conventional wisdom is children are but a fragile lot
with Martin Luther King's assertion of "a right delayed is a right denied" being only for us adults.
The Greeks did not see childhood as any specific category of life. Children of old were afforded
no protections from witnessing sexual behaviors, violence, or even death as they were not seen
as weak or in need of any discipline. Heck, they were often running their own homes and having
children by thirteen. Dr. Aries documented how childhood was of no consequence in medieval
time (in Centuries of Childhood, 1962) and Dr. Postman (The Disappearance of Childhood) says
such was true up to modern technologies such as the printing press. Psychological immaturity is
clinically defined by the absence of real responsibility and yet our world is engineered to restrict
accountability for kids. With the resulting rise of monsters, we permit such awful child abuse that
LA kids exhibit PTSD more often than Baghdad kids and their parents only act far more childish.
Dambisa Moyo's new book "How the West Was Lost" (famous for her "Dead Aid" in which relief
efforts were shown to be the actual cause of hunger and violence in Africa) argues the reason
efforts to change the world normally fail is because real world egos, nepotism, and codependent
relationships are never addressed by wholly shortsighted policy decisions (pretending monsters
aren't real). Management gurus have been similarly saying for decades that most organizations
are but wholly over-managed and under-led with bureaucratic, arrogant, and uncreative cultures
due to delusional quality programs designed to fail. The resulting poorly implemented strategies,
ineffective mergers, and costly re-engineering can carry a large toll due to the immense impact
work and governments have on our personal identities (Dr. Bruce Hood). If we don't ever dare
face our love affair with monsters, we are guaranteed to produce only more of the same results.
Many people tell me (as they would Christ), "I don't like your tone. Your good points are simply
buried in dogmatic arguments. Your dismissive language and over generalizations are hardly
stimulating; in fact, they only silence others. You should respect differing opinions more. But no,
you have to be right and claim everyone else is wrong, even scholars and preachers. You don't
seem to know you can't change anything but yourself. I find myself wondering who hurt you so."
If you did say this to Jesus, it would all be true and the answer to the last question would be, of
course, yourself as we all have hurt Christ to death. Christ (like I) often also gets to hear, "You
mean well, but I need an 'adult' relationship." Jesus (and I hopefully) came just to have an adult
relationship but you've forgotten what one looks like. You may feel comparing myself to Christ
isn't right. Amy Carmichael said, "If you have never been hurt by a word from God, it is probably
you have never heard God speak" and (like Deming or Hosea) I know how it feels to be unseen.
Instead of adult relations, a new kind of rapport stalks the land, the chief characteristic of which
is the rejection of absolute truth. The battle cry is "What's true for you may not be true for me."
The 2013 Scientology Super Bowl ad said, "The one thing that's true is what's true for you." We
are repeatedly told we must respect all opinions even though such advice is not very scientific,
which instead holds most opinions are but wishful thinking by mindless peacocks (Zombies) or
blowing smoke by deceitful weasels (psychopaths). This idea got started with a wave of great
dissatisfaction with the prevailing concepts of truth ("the Great Apostasy") that swept across the
America 200 years ago based on improved access to conflicting information (due to the printing
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14. press). Attempting to reconstruct new doctrines without any real basis, however, only led to a
variety of novel and pedantic dogma. Joseph Smith, for one, told everyone to "push the delete
button on all the stuff you're arguing about" as it was only part of the world's "corruption" (Dr.
Richard Mouw). "Smith was the Henry Ford of revelation as he wanted everyone to have one."
(Dr. Kathleen Flake). The Twentieth Century Age of Faith revival (like the previous one during
the Dark Ages) attempted to counter the Age of Enlightenment's established materialistic values
of the then growing middle class's social "betters" (or "old money") by trusting the heart more
than the head, prizing feelings more than thinking, and revelation over reason. The knowable
God-centric worldview that had once birthed scientific exploration melted into distain for science
and logic. In our post-modern world, it's clearly easier to just plagiarize popular politically correct
opinions. It's much safer to argue "you can't trust science; common sense is a far better source
of wisdom." Any freshman psychology text includes a chapter on the limitations of intuition but
we've been raised to believe rational thinking is simply no longer socially unacceptable. Trying
to base a social solution on the reality of poor character intrinsic to humans is seen as uncouth.
"This is the postmodern desert inhabited by people who are, in effect, consuming
themselves in the form of images and abstractions through which their desires, sense of
identity, and memories are replicated and then sold back to them as products."
Larry McCaffrey (Storming the Reality Studio, 1991, p.6)
In psychology, lying to ourselves is referenced as the self confirmation bias (or myside bias or
when wishful thinking meets sorely inadequate brainpower). Nothing pleases us more than the
rejection of unwelcome information. But, doing so takes great mental effort and so results in us
only becoming even dumber. This is what makes the self-help industry so worthless. We end up
with only magic answers. Researchers explained the many ways this affects the thinking of all
people to test subjects. They explained how 90% of people think they drive better than average
even though statistically impossible, how people with low IQs usually believe they have high IQs
(while people with high IQs tend to see themselves as having low IQs), and that since this bias
is done in the unconscious about how self-reflection (as required by self-help) only produces our
biggest lies. Then, the researcher asked the subjects to rate the affect of this bias on them and
they found a new winner in the world of lies as everyone said, "not me." Google Bias Blind Spot.
Feminism occurred in three waves. Any ism begins with how its members are extraordinary and
deserve special "rights" (but never additional responsibilities) to validate our fragile self-esteem.
Feminists from 1850 to 1950 won equal rights to vote, to own property, and equal employment
opportunities but at the same time managed to keep women out of the draft, maintained primary
guardianship of their children, and retained for husbands the liability to support their wives (men
could still go to jail for their wives' financial crimes). Second, every ism must identify the enemy.
All the way back to first women's rights convention at Seneca Falls in 1848, every line of their
Declaration of Sentiments started by blaming what oppression "He has" done (and not what the
law or the system had done). The 32 men who signed the declaration (when only 20% of the
attending women dared do likewise) were initially turned away and, after insisting on staying,
were forced to sit in the back and not speak. It was common for suffragettes to carry signs that
stated "Down with men." The New York Times September 26, 1908 published a letter from the
anti-feminist Mrs. Francis M. Scott that refuted the lies and misquotes of Mrs. Harriet Johnston-wood
(yes, they had hyphenated names a century ago) as quoted in a March 26, 2008 letter.
The feminist theme of "death to all men" continued in the 1960's and so Valerie Solanas' SCUM
Manifesto naturally urged women to "eliminate the male sex." Doing her part, she fired a gun at
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15. Andy Warhol three times; the third shot went through both of his lungs, spleen, stomach, liver,
and esophagus. She then shot art critic Mario Amaya and placed her gun against the head of
Fred Hughes, Warhol's manager, and fired but the gun jammed. Despite being her own attorney
and pleading guilty, she went to jail for only two years for "reckless assault" (after being indicted
on attempted murder, assault, illegal firearm possession, and admitting it was a premeditated
murder attempt). In comparison, a man in NYC walked into a bar and non-fatally shot 3 people
was sentenced to 240 years and a young teenage boy in Florida who found a gun and winged a
local shop owner was sentenced to 70 years. Solana continued to stalk Warhol with very little
consequence. I've heard sermons in 3 different churches on how heartless men are physically
just not capable of loving another person like any wholly superior woman. One big feminism win.
Solanas had told playright Margo Feiden before shooting Warhol, "I'm going now to shoot Andy
Warhol and that will make me famous, and that will make my play famous, and you will produce
it. You will." That came true, and more (as she was also able to produce the movie I Shot Andy
Warhol, 1996). Trying to kill a man not only doesn't get a woman much jail time - it will make the
girl rich and famous. Feminist Robin Morgan (later editor of Ms. magazine) even demonstrated
for Solanas's release from prison and Ti-Grace Atkinson, the New York chapter president of the
National Organization for Women, dared described Solanas as "the first outstanding champion
of women's rights" and as "a 'heroine' of the feminist movement." Morgan's 1970 Sisterhood Is
Powerful was cited by the New York Public Library as "One of the 100 most influential Books of
the 20th Century." It claimed everything was due to a deeply patriarchal misogynist rejection of
women (even male homosexuality). This was the height of Lesbian Feminism when both men
and women could be gay but only women had the privilege of getting the separate label of being
lesbian; heterosexual men who like to shop, cook, or accessorize are still "metrosexuals" while
women who do something masculine are "empowered." During this period it was common for
fire departments to lower requirements for women (only requiring them to drag a body out of a
fire); what's the value of a human life when compared against a woman getting what she wants?
Finally, to be truly fashionable, every ism must eventually emphasize individual glory. Thus, the
feminism focus after the 90's is defining "girl power" as whatever any woman needs it to be for
herself. The idea today is feminism should change with every generation and each person. "All
Women Are Bitches" by the all-woman band Fifth Column and the 1999 book Bitch: In Praise of
Difficult Women by Elizabeth Wurtzel are modern declarations of a woman's right to "scream,
shout, race the engine, call when I feel like it, throw tantrums in Bloomingdale's if I feel like it
and confess intimate details about my life to complete strangers. I intend to do what I want to do
and be whom I want to be and answer only to myself: that is, quite simply, the bitch philosophy."
The Third Wave of Feminism is about women never being blamed and men being seen as the
root of all evil. The first time a niece got me alone, she quietly asked the pressing question of
whether what her mother, aunts, and teachers kept telling her was true: are men responsible for
all the evil in the world? There's a growing number of women's groups (like Facebook's Women
Against Feminism) forming in opposition as feminists overtly promote greater condemnation and
hate for all men. Today's feminism (like any ism), opposed to all external restrictions, is heavily
tied to atheism. The final phase of any ism is to raise the individual as the highest authority -
even Atheism, which instead of being tied to a belief there is no god is now more about seeing
any ecclesiastical organization or power as distinguished from the state as harming people.
All this was equally true for America's religious reformation - it also came in three waves. Martin
Luther had sadly written against the Peasants Revolt he inspired (supporting even executing the
budding Anabaptists) but he couldn't prevent the Cultural Revolution he unintentionally started.
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16. Luther's Reformation ended up helping bring an end to feudalism (and separating church from
state), birthing Laissez-faire capitalism, as well as starting a revival in public education (based
on needing to read the Bible for universal salvation). His priesthood of all believers became "all
men are created equal" and birthed democracy. The idea was not to end the established clergy-laity
division but to return ownership of the church back to the whole parish. Religion came to
America on the wave of emotional revivals that fed the creation of the Stone-Campbell churches
(Disciples of Christ, Christian Church, Church of Christ, etc.), Seventh-Day Adventist, Mormon,
Jehovah's Witnesses, the Unitarians, Wesleyan Church, the Free Methodist Church, the Church
of the Nazarene, Salvation Army, Church of God, World Gospel Mission, Pentecostals, as well
as countless others. Focusing on customer satisfaction, the Methodists told their preachers to
avoid arid theology, "always suit your subjects to your audience," and "choose the plainest texts
you can." The Methodist camp meetings (the 19th-century equivalent of mega-churches) rose
membership from a thousand in 1770 to a million, or one-eighth of the population, by 1815. All
were told how God saw them as extraordinary and how they deserve special "rights" in heaven.
Next was the focus on great enemies and I'm not just talking about Satan - there's homosexuals
as well as homophobia; other great religions as well as just other denominations, materialism as
well as sexism, right to choose as well as right to life, and political issues as well as politicians.
Missions changed their focus to Third-World countries despite that most were more Christian (or
Catholic) than America. Christianity couldn't survive today without enemies and without asking
God to destroy them. While we are constantly reminded that we are at war (a wholly pagan and
unbiblical idea), we go to church not to seek a safe haven from such enemies but to be assured
that we have no enemies (after detailing them all). A "good" church is one simply without conflict
(expelling any who disagree), assigning a committee to any controversy, and that comforts with
stories of pluralism (and the right to be wrong) but always providing assurances with relativism
(the right to be right all the time). All churches generally opts to criticize, marginalize, and even
expel their most creative thinkers. The first secret to success has always been finding someone
to blame for our failures. Kirk Duggan says "Once a scapegoat is identified, the dominant group
can release its rage and fear and violent sensibilities, and gain a sense of peaceful community.
By psychologically or physically eliminating or purging everybody who is different, an assembly
establishes itself." Core to fanaticism is the belief that others, like the unsaved, are inferior and
that they must come to conform to the group's absolute truth and live by the group's regulations.
Religion also grows today by the glorification of self over any group identity (where none could
get in heaven if entrance took broad endorsement from all denominations). The Mega-church or
Saddleback / Willow Creek Movement of the 1990's is founded completely on a seeker-friendly
come-to-church approach (rather than a God-friendly come-to-Jesus) using modern marketing
techniques to produce a highly polished product for a baby boomer demographic (foregoing the
traditional church symbols such as stained glass and candles as irrelevant) purposely designed
to produce church growth at the expense of other less "cool" churches. Over 70% of growth is
accomplished at the intentional expense of the "saved" members of neighboring churches and
30% is "biological" from their children (Berger, Barna, and Polomar). Their success means most
Christians at some time feel so incompatible with their church that they are compelled to leave.
A mega-church (over 2,000 members) requires a choreographed production using amplified
contemporary upbeat praise music as well as a projected video on a big screen. The production
efforts forced many to skip worship services on Christmas Day in 2005 and 2011 when it fell on
a Sunday to allow the overworked staff to spend some time with their family. These churches
have nicknames of "big box," "Wal-mart," and "Disney Churches." They focus more on personal
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17. issues rather than any social justices, their message is uncomplicated and neo-conservative,
and they are champions of the universal virtues of strength, courage, and honor. The $50 million
Willow Creek Worship Center completed in 2004 (twice as big as the Hollywood Kodak Theater
and so is the largest American theater) pales by comparison to those in South Korea and Africa.
The Emerging Church Movement arose to similarly deconstruct modern Christian "dogma" and
Christian-ese "increasingly irrelevant to the prevailing culture" to maintain a safer environment
for those with opinions ordinarily rejected by traditional conservative fundamentalism. With a
focus on individual narrative experiences (ie. postmodern literary theory, social network theory,
and narrative theology), the Internet has become the central medium through blogs, websites,
and online videos. One of the fastest growing mega-emerging churches is Rob Bell's Mars Hill.
Time magazine called Rob Bell "The Hipper-Than-Thou-Pastor (Dec 6, 2007) and Christianity
Today (Nov 1, 2004) sees him as the future of Christianity with his strong appeal to the urban,
white, self-conscious, "hip" youth. Key is being "cool" with a central message that since knowing
isn't possible, let's just stick to feeling what's right. The result is surveys show ideas about who
Jesus is, grace, sin, forgiveness, faith, repentance, and obedience varies with every Christian.
I've been requested to never come back (and actually called "evil") for the questions I asked and
owning up to feeling there was significant evidence for evolution by numerous local Baptist and
Mega churches. I have also created much discomfort at many more liberal churches by voicing
arguments for the idea of objective biblical truths, but none ever outright asked me to disappear.
While the "Do-it-yourself" Home Church Movement may sound like more conservative theology,
it likewise works to bring about an "open" dialog with the surrounding culture. Many characterize
them as primarily a protest against inflexible church heritage rather than actually presenting any
genuinely constructive agenda by deriving truth with a popular "wikiality" of a group consensus.
Attempting to end theological arguments, they also believe it is better to define a person by their
actions than their beliefs. My biggest complaint about the Quakers I grew up with is that they've
made being non-violent more important that whatever motivation one has to being non-violent.
Like mega-churches and Atheists, the home-churched often preach against specific theological
doctrines, rituals, or creeds. Large institutions are increasingly incapable of meeting the needs,
or fostering the capacities, of those whom they serve and have failed to arrest the deepening
crisis in personal identity and relationships. This universal homecoming of the church is one of
the most significant social and religious movements of our time. Unlike movements of refuges or
emigrants, this is a journey toward home rather than a flight from it. Barna estimated 20 million
are so churched despite several local governments trying to use new zoning laws to bar house
church meetings (Denver and New Milford, Conn.) or limit the size and frequency of meetings.
Eckhart Tolle is the first religious prophet with corporate sponsorship. He worked with Dr. Helen
Schucman on her book "A Course in Miracles" in which she supposedly channeled from a spirit
calling itself Jesus the following truths: 1) "There is no sin," 2) "Never having sinned, man has
no need of salvation," 3) A "slain Christ has no meaning," 4) "God is in everything I see," 5) "The
recognition of the Creator is the recognition of yourself," and 6) "The oneness of the Creator and
the creation is your wholeness, your sanity, and your limitless power." The primary philosophy is
"Everything you see is the result of your thoughts." In 2008, about 35 million people participated
in a series of ten live webinars with Tolle and Oprah Winfrey. The ideas seem to be shadows of
Buddhist philosophies as Wikipedia says, "From the particular perspective of Tibetan Buddhism,
when one conceives of a particular object, the mind gives rise to the appearance of that object."
Just thinking about money can produce checks to appear in your mail (like "The Secret" movie).
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18. "[Tolle] told an interviewer that he stopped going to school at age 13 and didn't resume any
education for at least a decade. In the same interview he says he graduated 'with the highest
mark at the London University.' The press rep at the University of London says there's simply no
way to verify that. 'You might as well say you graduated from here,' joked the person I spoke to.
Clever. He says in interviews that he had a personal epiphany in 1977 at age 29 after a life of
suffering from suicidal depression. For the next 15 years, no one knows much about what
happened to him, and he's not saying. He says he spent time wandering and sitting in London's
parks, with 'no relationships, no job, no home, no socially defined identity,' but a sense of
'intense joy.'" (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,351545,00.html) His "glazed-over look,"
much like the stoned stare common for people in state hospital wards, is famous. Tolle claims
he didn't write his books but that they wrote him just as life is the dancer and we are the dance.
Tolle has been called "the most popular spiritual author in the United States" (2008) and in 2011
Tolle was listed by the Watkins Review as the most spiritually influential person in the world. It
would make a grand movie - history's largest revival based on someone heavily drugged in and
out of institutions, wandering homelessly for years, with only an Elementary School education.
Stephen Covey (author of the very popular wishing will make it so text, Seven Habits of Highly
Effective People) similarly states, "The more closely our maps or paradigms are aligned with
these principles or natural laws, the more accurate and functional they will be. Correct maps will
infinitely impact our personal and interpersonal effectiveness far more than any amount of effort
expanded on changing attitudes and behaviors" (7 Habits, p. 35). In The Devine Center, Covey
asserts, "Because of the incorrect map, inherited through centuries of apostasy, the sectarian
world does not understand the above concepts. It impels their minds to great accusations and
criticism of those who are correctly programmed in these matters. They call the LDS concept of
an anthropomorphic God arrogant, presumptuous, and narcissistic. Their concepts drastically
reduce man's ultimate potential (to become like God – to have the kind of life and character that
God has). As man now is, God once was. As God now is, man may become." Covey also warns
against seeking "any kind of special relationship" with Jesus Christ (Devine Center, pp. 67-69).
Many believe the old religious economy (based on bureaucratic denominations whose members
rarely attend services) should be soon replaced first by Charismatics and Pentecostals and then
by emerging home churches, as the next religious market will be based on mass customization
for more personal choice with total doctrinal flexibility, emotional support, and social services.
Finally, the Chicago Tribune (1998) called neo-paganism the fastest-growing religion in America
and Europe (where postmodern technology shock has been the highest) with the Internet also
as its prime means of proselytizing. Phyllis Curott estimated there are 5 to 10 million Wiccans in
in her 1999 Book of Shadows while others estimate as many as 10-30 million. Allied Astrology
believes that we are leaving the Age of Pisces that began about the time of Christ and are now
entering a new world order in the Age of Aquarius of one government, one language, and one
religion where everyone will be recognized as gods (during this century). Many claim "being a
Pagan is believing whatever you want" and the first Wiccan Rede is, "Do whatever you wish."
Popular Wicca book titles include "Nice Girl's Book of Naughty Spells" with spells for how to get
everything you want and "Power Spells" on how to get the upper hand in any situation. They're
formal enough to have initiation rites and Witchcraft diplomas. But, since lying, forced control
over others, casual sex, drugs, and any disobedience is encouraged by the religion, it's hard to
imagine what Wiccan followers might consider to be an "evil" deed. Many believe in a path for a
sort of salvation but it's without repentance (Wicca means never saying you're sorry) and based
on a pantheism perceiving little difference from person to person, person to god, or good to bad.
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19. Popular films and television programs, such as The Craft (where spells were intentionally done
with mistakes in order to mislead viewers), Practical Magic, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Buffy
the Vampire Slayer, Harry Potter, Blair Witch Project, Free Spirit, The Worst Witch, Teen Witch,
Sorceress, Witchcraft 1-8, Sleepy Hollow, Teen Sorcery, Simply Irresistible, Charmed, and the
Witch's Daughter are aimed at attracting children (especially girls, as most characters are very
pretty young females) to the idea that being a witch is like being a superhero born with special
powers that ordinary (mostly male) "Muggles" lack and can never attain. The claim is made in
the movie Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone: "There is no good and evil, there is only power
and those too weak to seek it." The Key of Solomon is the most famous of all Wicca textbooks.
It is supposedly written by the Biblical son of David. This should not be confused with the Key of
David (to all Godly power) John wrote about in Revelation, the key to Hades (Revelation 1:7), or
the Key to Heaven (Matthew 16:19). The Key of Solomon offers lessons in using the positions of
Jupiter for acquiring all you want, Mars to cause "ruin, slaughter, cruelty, discord, to wound, and
to give death" and summoning souls from Hades (especially those of violent deaths), Sun for
wealth, favor of princesses, and (also using Jupiter and Venus) for invisibility, Venus for joyous
undertakings, poisons, and provocation of madness, Mercury for fortune telling, thefts, deceit,
and merchandise, Moon for envoys and nocturnal visions, Saturn (with Mars and the Moon) for
summoning Spirits and stealing back what had been earlier taken by others and experiments of
hatred, enmity, quarrel, and discord, as well as Mercury for experiments in raillery and jests.
Such powers are even mentioned in the New Testament as the Magi bearing gifts for Christ
were members of a Zorasterian priestly class of Persians who had occult knowledge and power,
skills in astrology, dream interpretation, fortune-telling, and mediation with the spirit world.
In 1951, laws prohibiting the practice of witchcraft in England were repealed and soon thereafter
in 1954 Gardner published his book, Witchcraft Today, though many viewed this as a violation
of their vows to remain secret. One of his students Alexander Sanders later rewrote Gardnerian
rituals and practices into yet another Wiccan tradition. In 1971, Dianic Wicca began to emerge
and focuses on the worship of the ancient Greek Goddess and consequently, a high percentage
of women and feminist beliefs are found in Dianic covens. By far, most modern pagans are
estimated to be members of Dianic type (that exclude men) or eclectic covens (not part of any
specific craft). Those not part of a coven are called Solitaries. Some groups, such as the Church
of All Worlds, acknowledge one another as manifestations of deity, addressing each other in
ritual as "Thou art God, Thou art Goddess." In some groups each person has their own deities.
Many observe dancing naked under the moonlight. All Wicca traditions have three main beliefs:
1) The Wiccan Rede related to Aleister Crowly's statement that "Do what you will is the whole of
the law;" 2) The Threefold Law (mostly confined to the Gardnerian-based Wiccans) which states
a person's deeds return to him/her three times over; and, 3) Reincarnation where some believe
a soul is continually reborn while others believe once a soul learns all their life lessons (I have
never found what these lessons might be), it is granted eternal rest in Summerlands. Satanists
(such as the Temple of Set) don't want to be lumped with the Wiccans (any more than Wiccans
want to be lumped with them) and consider Wiccans to be weak and ineffectual. As proof, world
order groups are often satanic: Skull and Bones, Brotherhood of Death, and Knights of Eulogia.
Defining and prioritizing one's needs and the acquisition of relationships in order to meet them is
the basis for the personality development arrestment or inflated "false" self called Narcissism
(synonymous with lying and intimacy problems). A narcissist might exclaim, "What have you
done for me lately" while building a false self-worth beneath a layer of deception. They thusly
often seek people who can be controlled and manipulated emotionally. Being depressed, upset,
abused, and discussing it openly, is something they will look for – in other words weaknesses.
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20. The driven, high energy, hard working, hard playing, focused and occupied, success oriented,
and dedicated person is often ignorant of owning such strategic vulnerabilities. Narcissists are
characterized as very possessive, describe others in relationships as needing them, as well as
generally find a high degree of congruence between controlling behavior and their world- and
self-view. Narcissists focus on but complaining about external issues and people rather than the
internal self. Real love and respect is not about what one gets from a relationship and does not
come from control. "Real" love is not possible for narcissists which is impossible for them to see.
Any wide-ranging cause, religion, corporate identity (or gang or cult) will naturally encourage
such personality impediment to allow for replacing individual thinking with the group fanaticism.
Any attempts to override such natural group identity that but lives off of the human essence of
its members by defining overriding moral imperatives after the naturally blood sucking group
character has been defined will fail (as per Six-Sigma studies) and must be done at the onset of
developing the group to be effective. A corporate Value Statement is a list of things the group
commits to never doing even if required for the group to survive or to flourish. A Team Charter
includes expectations of members and consequences of failure including fulfilling such values.
In his "Religion and Naturwissenschaft," Dr. Planck (famous for his quantum theory work and
Plank's Constant) stated, "There can never be any real opposition between religion and science;
for the one is the complement of the other. Every serious and reflective person realizes, I think,
that the religious element in his nature must be recognized and cultivated if all the powers of the
human soul are to act together in perfect balance and harmony. And indeed it was not by
accident that the greatest thinkers of all ages were deeply religious souls." Nobel Prize winner in
Physics Dr. Millian additionally wrote about the important relationship between faith and reason
in "Evolution in Science and Religion" and physicist Dr. Jaki authored dozens of books on the
relationship between modern science and orthodox Christianity (like The Savior of Science).
Additionally, books have been written by Drs. Barbour and McMullin. Christianity has always
been a great patron of science (historians of science widely recognize the contribution of the
Roman Catholic Church) just as the Vatican is currently the world's largest private financial
supporter of large telescopes. In "Science was Born of Christianity," Dr. Trasancos writes how it
was only by the church bringing an end to the ancient worldview of an eternally cycling universe
that we led to the Scientific Revolution and its key concepts like the Big Bang Theory. The point
it not about some superiority of thought by Christians but a concern that science is returning to a
time when it did not thrive as a self-sustaining enterprise that discovered systems of physical
laws but instead viewed the world as unpredictable and magical. Forcing patterns (by fudging
data) with suggestions that not everything is knowable and measurable seems the new religion.
Not only has science, paganism, and national causes failed such healthy self-sustaining efforts
for honest accountability, so has Christianity and no new American denomination has been able
to sustain early geometric church growth past the lifetime of their charismatic church founder.
The "Great Awakenings" did however drive the scientific age (based on more public access to a
basic education), the industrial age (based on fairer access to opportunity and social systems of
support like welfare to encourage greater risk taking), and the information age (based on more
democratic access to decision making). Poverty was seen as the by-product of broader flaws in
society rather than as but the wages of sin. Economics Nobel Prize winner Dr. Fogel argues we
are again passing through a fourth Great Awakening of equality of purpose (based on values
and visions) adding to that of knowledge, opportunity, and politics as a fresh relational base for
a new Symbiotic Age as the foundation to a New Economy where end-to-end solutions are built
on large networks of small companies (already producing over half of all U.S. growth). This will
naturally cause disruptions in any old social norms that fail to cross ethnic, class, and status
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21. boundaries. And so, we are left unable to trust our families (and so experience higher rates of
divorce) as well as strangers (and experience higher rates of crime). "Spiritual (or immaterial)
inequity is now as great a problem as material inequity, perhaps even greater." (Fogel, 2002)
Through all these revolutions, though, we have forgotten how to have a real adult conversation.
Brief tweets with fragmented sentences and truncated words leave little room for complex ideas.
Wiccans, Christians, Atheists, and Feminists all base their realities primarily on control by all
powerful individuals based on secret knowledge and a basic belief that life is somehow fair. All
with a sort of mysticism that maintains ultimate truth is knowable intuitively or apart from rational
thought or objective reality and only subjective experiences should define doctrine (it's easier).
David Koresh, David Berg, Reverend Moon, Victor Wierwille, Lord Maitreya, and even Charles
Manson managed "good" deeds but also made megalomania claims of being divine sovereigns.
The reality is that you are not special; you have no special powers, intelligence, or talents. You
are not better in any way than others (as any small differences bring just as many advantages
as disadvantages). The best solutions are not simple. Surface issues are always but symptoms
and attempting to solve or cure them will only make things worse. Working to construct a core
group identity that is honest and meaningful is more important than even our individual identity.
How we recreate ourselves, first in things like our phone, our music collection, our home, and
our heroes, but finally in the mash-up collage of our associations is nothing but a marketed self.
"I believe that there are no innate, intrinsic differences among a human being, a baboon,
or a grain of sand." ― Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (The Essential Holmes, 1992, p. 108)
Do I just not like people? The only way I can like people is to assume the problems are with
me – leaving me a codependent, overworked, depressed neurotic toiling to help; and two thirds
of us are exactly such dissociated neurotics (half even clinically so) with doctor visits, aging, and
employee absenteeism (in the extreme, even autism) being most often the result of but neurotic
stress. But, not liking people would create a disconnected persecuted personality at high risk for
addictions and reckless behavior as an emotional vampire; and a third of us prefer jobs allowing
the control of others in counseling, teaching, law enforcement, religion, and middle management
(with half clinically so disordered). Drs. Brodsky and Leymann have long shown such disordered
bullies are the primary cause of absenteeism and health problems (in schools and workplaces).
We are all but live roles today as either anti-socials (or Lizards - later), Zombies, or Fresh Meat.
The choice may not be ours to make but may be but our genetics that decide for us. It seems
the third of us with personality disorders have a genetic predisposition and those with neurotic
fears have a different predisposition to the great abuse that occurs to about half of all children.
Why are there basically only two choices: neurotic or disordered? Being raised on Entity Theory
concepts such as a spiritual war or yin and yang left us only able to see problems in our "bad"
selves to still love them or to blame others ("bad" manipulative or weak people) in order to love
ourselves. No matter how we define Hell, we all know somebody belongs there. In fact, no one
has a greater need to blame and polarize than Americans: we have 4% of the world's population
but 25% of its prisoners. How I met my best friend from college was by asking him if thought he
had to have the "right" beliefs to get into heaven and he agreed. I asked if not agreeing meant a
person, say myself, would go to Hell and he agreed. Then, I asked if he could suspend disbelief
for just a moment and imagine an ironic situation where my beliefs turned out to be "right" and
his were "wrong" and whether that would mean I would go to Heaven and he to Hell and he also
agreed. I said that it then seemed his belief in Hell and that damn someone had to go there was
greater than any other. Failing to separate problems from individuals, we end up seeing people
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22. only in terms of being disobedient, cruel, lazy, embarrassing, or just looking for attention instead
of in the far more useful environmental terms of whether the required effort is simply too hard,
too stressful, or merely about needing some help. Although we prefer to deny our effects on
others, ALL emotional problems are at least partially brought on by unhealthy environments. No
matter how much we might claim to love our kids, we never admit to our part in their troubles all
the while making big speeches about them taking more responsibility. That's why the unknown
effects of harsh untested drugs are preferred over any family therapy that might include parental
blame (certainly over Multi-Systemic Therapy with its review of counselor competency issues).
Despite all the evidence suggesting the quality and fit of our environments trumps any genetics
(Dr. Phelps, 2005), Americans refuse to consider anything but a fate from birth. It doesn't matter
that "the Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance (2006) makes a rather
startling assertion: the trait we commonly call talent is highly overrated. Or, put another way,
expert performers 'whether in memory or surgery, ballet or computer programming' are nearly
always made, not born." (Drs. Steven Leavitt and Stephen Dubner, from The New York Times
Magazine, authors of Freakonomics). Dr. Bruer states in The Myth of the First Three Years how
no early stimulation can do better than later encouragement and deep practice with effective
feedback in overcoming any birth deformity or home life. Using instead the idea of just "smart"
or not, seven of ten employees are neither motivated nor competent to perform the basic tasks
of their job. Malcolm Gladwell tells in Outliers: the Story of Success how today only lucky breaks
and arbitrary advantages are the real source of most successes. He tells of Dr. Barnsley finding
how the best hockey players are five times more likely born in January than November, baseball
players are almost twice as likely born in August than July, and soccer players are most likely
born in September (now January), due to the arbitrary age cut offs done in the respective kid's
leagues. Why is this? Young children born just after the cut off age are quite logically larger than
those born just before and so perform better. Kids bigger from being older are called "naturally
gifted" and receive the most encouragement and training, what is in reality key for any success.
But, we completely reject any possibility that this might be true as doing so would open the door
for facing the reality we must likewise take responsibility for creating "stories of failure" as well.
And so, we all tell the lie that not everyone can be a champion, that only a few have the chance.
Dr. Donald E. Simanek wrote in 1995, "I feel we'll NEVER make progress toward reversing the
decline in academic achievement until we purge the schools of the scourge of sports." Studies
have reported higher rates of substance use among males involved in male-dominated sports
(Drs. Eitle and Turner, 2003: The deterrence hypothesis reexamined: Sports participation and
substance use among young adults; Drs. Moore and Werch, 2005: Sport and physical activity
participation and substance use among adolescents). Moreover, economists at the University of
Oregon in 2011 showed when a college football team is successful; all students (and not just
the athletes) put down their books and pick up some beers. "Our results support the concern
that big-time sports are a threat to American higher education," wrote the paper's authors, Drs.
Jason M. Lindo, Isaac D. Swensen and Glen R. Waddell. They said their work was among the
first to take a look at the "nonmonetary costs" of college sports. After statistically tying student
GPAs to team successes, a follow-up survey additionally confirmed that both male and female
students were more likely to skip classes and party in the wake of a win as compared to a loss.
"Conditional sports scholarships based on athletic performance (presently awarded on a year-to-
year basis in NCAA Division 1 colleges) may imply that access to education depends more
on athletic rather than academic performance. Such scholarships may also suggest that sports
receive too much emphasis in college." (Neil Laughlin, Journal of College and Character, v4i7,
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23. 2003) High non-graduation rates of college athletes is especially distasteful to those who think
the mission of colleges should be the intellectual and moral development of students and raises
concerns related to the exploitation of athletes. Plus, the national Threat Assessment Group (or
TAG) report on Columbine showed the number one antecedent for Columbine like violence is a
school whose heroes are athletes instead of academics (whose trophy case should be filled with
math, engineering, and chess awards). I like to compare sports to sex; participation is good but
only the most perverse need to watch (ha ha). But, why do we need athletic heroes? Why do we
need heroes in general? I don't mean mythical stories of hope, but golden pedestals for a few?
When my youngest son was studying the differences between various dragon myths, I told him I
thought the similarities were more interesting. All dragons steal: German dragons hoarded gold,
Iranian dragons horded water, and Japanese dragons horded knowledge. Why isn't this taught?
I asked my son if he knew how a dragon could be blamed for failing farmland to get the farmer
off the hook. He answered using dragon spit for English dragons. I then asked him whose job it
was to "solve" any dragon problem; the farmer? No, it's the knight's job. In this way, the farmer's
natural laziness to not work in the farthest field is never exposed and everyone is happy. This is
exactly why we are still so passionate about identifying the "dragons" (bad people) and "white
knights" (super heroes) – it removes any need for us to be personally responsible for anything. If
we are going to universally refuse to accept any responsibility for our children's actions, clearly
we're not going to admit to any social responsibility for hunger, violence, depression, or lack of
awareness in others. For one thing, doing so would lead to accepting blame for our own failures
as well. And so, I think we can all agree stories of unfair Murphy's Law are far more entertaining.
In Shakespeare's Richard the III, Lady Anne has every reason to hate Richard. He murdered
her father-in-law and her husband and helped to kill her father. And yet, she marries him. Her
transformation provides Richard his first real success, and he is elated by it. Why does Anne
capitulate? She tells us she had grown grossly captive to his honeyed flattery. There is no force
but Anne is unable to maintain her strong rejection. Richard also plots to kill Clarence for the
crown. When the assassins arrive at the prison where Clarence is held, they present their pass
to the head officer, Brackenbury. He is faced with a choice: Should he let the murderers in to kill
Clarence or not? He says, as he reads over the commission, "I will not reason what is meant
hereby, because I will be guiltless of the meaning." Brackenbury may think this evasion makes
him innocent; quite clearly it does not. Richard's successful climb to power in this play is not
simply a tribute to his own skill; it is also a manifestation of the moral weaknesses of others.
Richard's success depends upon the refusal of others to stand up and see him for what he is.
Providing Richard this "gift" allows others to similarly refuse to see themselves honestly either.
We refuse to see the innate destructiveness in others as that would only allow others to see us.
My third wife and I went through pre-marital counseling through our church in which she was
deemed an unfit mother and the counselor beseeched my pastor to break us up. Neither he nor
I would listen to this excellent advice. How could anyone fail counseling? I would suggest it was
done intentionally as a way of saying, "I can say or do anything without consequences." Our gift
of giving her the benefit of doubt allowed us to avoid seeing our own involvement. Moriarty in
the second season's concluding episode of the new Sherlock series says the same thing when
he intentionally gets arrested and mounts no defense. Psychopaths succeed in this world due to
the guaranteed moral complicity of all involved. We're all either Lady Anne or Sir Brackenbury.
I will describe four married men to you. The first admitted to Dr. Frank Farley (past president of
the American Psychological Association) to having hundreds of affairs before 40 and then joked
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24. how he had tried to cut down. The second only had affairs with powerful women (sharing with
his brother), emotionally breaking them to the point one committed suicide. The third guy liked
to sleep with weak, poor women and was so flattering he managed to seduce 5 or 6 women into
his bed every night (Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall is quoted to having personally
reviewed the extensive documentation in both the Williams and Abernathy autobiographies).
The final man beat his wife and children and after turning 30 only slept with teenage girls. He
doggedly lied about such crude behavior despite confirmation from photos and his closest aid.
All of these men are widely loved and respected (and their wives stayed married to them). So,
they are not the problem ; we are, as is the basis and process we use to develop our opinions.
While being a sexual predator is a characteristic of the sociopathic lack of empathy, we routinely
excuse such men (and similar "spider" women) for their indiscretions and low morals. So, which
of the fore-mentioned sexaholics do you think would make the best role model for your children?
Perhaps, their names will help you choose: President Clinton, President Kennedy, Martin Luther
King, Jr, and Gandhi. Despite all your life experiences, I bet your "picker" is no better than mine.
Dr. Ghaemi asserts in his latest book, A First-Rate Madness (2011), that mental illness and a
self-destructive manic daring makes people more attractive to us as leaders. Churchill made
frequent references to his manic depression (he called it his "black dog") that were sometimes
connected with traumatic external events such as his dismissal from the Admiralty, but often
not. In times of great stress, crazies can be helpful by being good at recognizing loonies. Bi-polar
Churchill saved the world by recognizing and being willing to confront Hitler's monstrosity.
Dr. Anthony Storr wrote, "A leader of sober judgment might well have concluded that we were
finished." The incurably depressed (like Lincoln) often exhibit characteristics of great empathy,
creativity, and stark realism which can be useful in identifying and confronting the paranoia and
impulsiveness of psychopaths (exacerbated in Hitler by massive doses of methamphetamine).
Such a task should not be taken lightly for any empath (now, I don't mean someone capable of
psychic connections to ETs, but someone who excessively feels emotions, the opposite of a
psychopath as measured by Hare's Checklist). First, the psychopath is smart and organized.
Then, other monster personalities will be attracted to you due to your excessive emotions with
the hopes of controlling you (as psychopathic manipulation has been linked to empathy) as well
as seeing the control of your emotions as fit replacement for having any of their own. Finally, the
world of other Zombies will likely take their side; a University of North Carolina study found rude
sociopaths are three times more likely to be promoted. So, NEVER take them on by yourself.
Chronic anxiety helps one identify anger in others and severe despondency (even if forced) can
contribute to increased attentiveness and enhanced problem-solving. Great fear and sadness
have been seen as advantageous in every society. While even under the most trying conditions,
a psychopath will never worry about, for example, leaving the gas on or experience the pain of
creation (nor consider either of any value). A psychopath doesn't see clouds, only silver linings.
They also have no ego problems. They can easily make themselves small by being the cripple
or the freak so that others will underestimate them. "If there's one thing that psychopaths have
in common, it's the consummate ability to pass themselves off as normal everyday folk while
behind the facade -- the brutal, brilliant disguise -- beats the refrigerated heart of a ruthless,
glacial predator." (Dr. Kevin Dutton, 2012) You might hire or partner with one, but you can never
trust or turn your back on one. They're powerfully wild animals that can never be domesticated.
What type of person can get us to gleefully surrender our money, relationships, and happiness?
Dr. Ted Bililies and Dr. William Bridges say they're STJs on the Myers-Briggs personality test.
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