This excerpt from Rethinking Survival follows the section on “Alien Invaders.” It’s written in the voice of who I was in 2014, which now feels like a lifetime ago. But the substance is just as relevant to now as it was then.
We’re In a Terrible Mess
During high school years, I shared a few lines written for Miss Elson’s English class with my brother, David. Marginally impressed, he predicted that I’d end up like the closet poet Emily Dickinson:
Somewhere, / Somehow, / Something / Is terribly wrong.
Where to look? / What to fight?
In Glenn Beck’s Common Sense, he details the mess the United States is in:
America has been slowly pulled off the course charted for us in Philadelphia more than two centuries ago. Through legitimate “emergencies” involving war, terror, and economic crises, politicians on both sides have gathered illegitimate new powers — playing on our fears and desire for security and economic stability — at the expense of our freedoms . . .
Making the same point I made much earlier, Beck holds:
I humbly suggest that our government is once again out of step with the Laws of Nature. The government by, of, and for the people has been turned on its head. It is now a government by the government, of the government, and for the government, the people be damned.
Beck gets the basic law karma: Actions have consequences.
However he lacks an in-depth understanding of the dynamic laws of nature. And he needs a functional paradigm to put us (not just the U.S.) right-side up again. He challenges Americans to stretch outside their comfort level. But this requires expanding the array of tools in our repair kit for achieving positive ends.
Correctly, Beck recommends that we “declare the causes that unite us.” But while I look to the Quantum Paradigm for that foundation, he outlines Nine Principles which only add to the mess. His openly emotional biases are a disservice to his undeniably good intentions.
It’s important to clarify the points of agreement and difference here. I’ve used the Common Sense concept in my own work for more than thirty years. Especially because he’s become a spokesman for America’s ideals and best hopes, it’s important that I clarify my position.
We do have universal causes that unite us, but not the ones Beck lists. I’ve limited myself here to answering the first five of his Nine Principles:
1. “America is good.” This generalization is full of assumptions. It’s too simplistic to be useful. America is not a static or uniform entity. The nation has evolved over time. Its components are mixed. We can love our homeland without having illusions about its unqualified “goodness.” Beck’s tacit premise, that he can single out one (superior) country to the exclusion of others alienates other nations. He’s slicing the pie the wrong way. Everyone everywhere is sometimes and in some ways “good,” in others not.
In addition, time doesn’t go backwards. Beck’s sentimental attachment to America’s past is unwise. It’s a disservice to the immediate cause of human survival.
2. “I believe in God and He is the Center of my life.” Sincere truth seekers everywhere hold a variety of beliefs. Not all assign either a name or gender to the Creator. Further, the nucleus of our lives remains the same, whether we acknowledge it or not. Agnostics who say they have no experience upon which to base religious beliefs can still be truth seekers. They’re often decent human beings doing their best as they understand it.
Though they see things differently, atheists also thirst after truth and have been known to return full circle.
3. “I must always try to be a more honest person than I was yesterday.”
Fine. But using what methods? The Quantum Paradigm MPI approach, “Be aware of what you are doing and why,” is an excellent start.
4. “The family is sacred. My spouse and I are the ultimate authority, not the government.” This is a mish-mash of culturally-conditioned assumptions. First and foremost, individual conscience that depends on the Universal Center is sacred — not family.
An either-or choice between biological family and governments — as if either were “the ultimate authority” — is unacceptable. Otherwise, where do those raised as orphans or whose experiences of family were damaging and degrading look for authority? What about celibate adults or those who choose not to marry? Or people who abide by communities of choice – their soul families. Do they matter in Beck’s worldview?
In practice, his grounds for common cause are painfully exclusionary.
Further, families change over time (as those who’ve been widowed or married more than once are keenly aware).
It’s the silent source which remains is constant.
5. “If you break the law you pay the penalty. Justice is blind and no one is above it.” This feels good, but it’s way too general. What law — the laws of man, of Nature or Nature’s God?
This seems to refer to human law. But considering how laws are made today and by whom, that’s dicey. Consider the evolving, punitive tax code, for example. What about the fact that laws are so numerous that you can’t do anything without violating one law or another? And what about our elective, highly politicized [and oft times blatantly corrupt] justice system?
Principle Five is wishful thinking. It doesn’t match actual experience. Perhaps if Beck thought in terms of the three-tiered wheel, this would be better phrased. Certainly God’s justice is impartial and karmic consequences return to everyone across the board. But that’s a different subject.
How have we gotten into such a deep mess, so far away from common sense?
In large part, it’s due to the intentional strategy of polarization. The diversionary tactic of bad-faith bad guys is to confuse people with an overwhelming number of phony half-truths. We’re forced to choose between false, equally unacceptable either-or options.
The noisy, superficial clash between apparent opposites bombards our senses through the daily news: Republicans versus Democrats. Conservative libertarians versus liberal progressives. Christians versus Jews versus Muslims. Atheists versus theists. Optimists versus pessimists.
Then there’s the straw dragon strategy. Virulent atheism is a product. It’s accomplished by setting up an illusory bogeyman in order to shoot it down. This is the inherent danger of claiming “divine right” for kings, emperors or tzars.
Associating kings (or communist leaders, for that matter) with omniscience leads to an opposite and equal mistake. Disillusionment with individual rulers is mistakenly transferred onto authority in general, whether organized religions or governments. Bouncing off of one problem, we’re pushed in the opposite direction into even worse ones.
To repeat, this misses the point. In Quantum Paradigm context, what authorities do or don’t do is irrelevant to the Creator’s existence. Human misbehavior has no direct bearing on timeless truth.
Dispensing with an entire belief system indiscriminately — emotionally, bitterly — is like shooting oneself in foot to get rid of a blister. We’re rarely taught the skills to discriminate between distortions — abusive misrepresentations — and enduring, substantive value. The extreme position of “all or nothing” is dramatic but self-defeating.
Another invader strategy is to blame human suffering on God. In the face of tragedy, people are tricked into believing that God has abandoned them entirely. Numerous popular songs plead with the Creator: “Can you hear me?” To ask is to admit we’ve forgotten about God.
Of course the Creator is intimately aware of all creation. Better questions would be, “Are we quiet enough to hear? Are we really listening?”
A great deal of the mess comes from the lack of a complete and accurate paradigm. There are different levels of knowing. It’s essential to prioritize them. Con-fusing sub-rational with super-rational ways of knowing is a major mistake. It’s an alien sleight-of-hand to lump these extremes together and write them off them as “irrational.”
More of the mess is due to failing to adhere to a common center which serves as the fulcrum between see-sawing extremes. Here the law, “The larger the front, the larger the back,” comes into play.
For example, extreme rationality generates opposite and equally irrational results. Barring sub- and super-rational alike, atheists who claim to hold the rational high ground can be extraordinary irrational. They come across as angry, rude, intolerant and demeaning.
Peter Hitchens, for example, describes ironic inconsistencies in the wake of the Russian revolution. As a journalist, he observed that what claimed to be an egalitarian society was in practice highly stratified and unequal. Extreme corruption enriched a handful of vastly wealthy elites at the expense of the masses who lived in miserable poverty.
Peter’s brother, atheism apologist Christopher Hitchens, who claimed that religion spoils everything, called for a “new” enlightenment. This is nonsense. Light was, is, and always will be light. Reason is necessary, but not in itself sufficient. It’s not all there is. It occupies a middle ground, serving to link the material plane with the center.
Reason is not qualified to enter into super-rational realms. It cannot be appropriately used to critique what’s beyond it. But it can play an important part. At its best, used with Sherlock-like skill, it’s indispensable for detecting and foiling the schemes of alien enemies.
Once reason clarifies how we’ve gotten into such a mess — exposing the hostile aliens’ rules and methods — it’s important to move on to the next question. What are we going to do about it?
How can using the Quantum Paradigm of Change be applied to protect us from evil aliens and lead to positive solutions?
Patricia West is author of The Common Sense Book of Change and Two Sides of a Coin: Lao Tze’s Common Sense Way of Change. She’s currently working on The Phoenix Response: Dying To Be Reborn – in the Same Lifetime.
Rethinking Survival 