This is the third and penultimate instalment of my conversation with Meredith Miller. We talk about the victim mindset; communism/political correctness/Wokeism/social justice/critical race theory; willpower; Stoicism; vulnerability; Dialectical Behavior Therapy; euthanasia and MAiD; parenting; education vs. indoctrination; grit; thanatology; and Meredith’s near-death and out-of-body experiences. (Excerpt from a lengthy article first published on Margaret Anna Alice Through the Looking Glass and kindly sent to us by the author for re-publishing. View the full article here.)
Imagine how differently the COVID years would have gone if people had adopted Aurelius’s life-affirming maxim:
“It is not death that a man should fear, but rather he should fear never beginning to live.”
Alan Watts states:
“The fear of death is completely absurd. Because if you’re dead, you’ve got nothing to worry about, so you’ll be alright.”
This hearkens back to Jesus’s admonition:
“Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?”
Watts also says something that reminded me of what you said earlier about people having to be ready to wake up:
“If you are ready to wake up, you’re gonna wake up. And if you’re not ready, you’re gonna stay pretending that you’re just a ‘poor little me.’”
Most people are stuck in that “poor little me” self-pity trap and thus resent those who confidently take ownership of their own lives and knowledge—even though they are perfectly capable of doing the same themselves if they simply got out of their own way.
You mentioned Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT). One of the details I found so inspiring when I first learned about DBT is that its developer, Marsha Linehan, used her own creation to rescue herself from borderline personality disorder—a condition once thought to be incurable.
I think that’s a beautiful example of someone using their ingenuity and inner strength to overcome an affliction that historically drives many people to suicide, addiction, and abuse (both as victims and perpetrators).
I feel like if the tenets of philosophies like Stoicism and the other ideas I outlined above were taught in schools, people would grow up to exhibit creativity instead of consumption, empowerment instead of brittleness, and courage instead of cowardice—and that is precisely the sort of person the puppeteers cannot control.
Just because people have a healthy, non-fearful relationship with their inevitable death doesn’t mean they should welcome it, though.
You hinted earlier at the weaponization of psychiatry and medicine, which Holocaust survivor Vera Sharav has cited as the distinguishing factor that makes what’s happening right now like the Holocaust.
Countries like Canada have not only been normalizing euthanasia (MAiD) but actively romanticizing it—even touting how medically assisted suicide could save Canadians millions while pushing it on children, veterans, the vulnerable, and the poor.
The Canadian government plans to expand its MAiD program to include the mentally ill, noting:
“In 2021, it was determined that Canadians whose only medical condition is a mental illness, and who otherwise meet all eligibility criteria, would not be eligible for MAID for two years—until March 17, 2023 [now March 17, 2027]. This includes conditions that are primarily within the domain of psychiatry, such as depression and personality disorders.”
This is the fulfillment of the vision futurist and special advisor to François Mitterand Jacques Attali articulated in 1981:
“Euthanasia will be one of the essential instruments of our future societies in all cases.”
It is chilling how many of his other predictions/recommendations have already come to pass:
“I believe rather in implicit totalitarianism with an invisible and decentralized ‘Big Brother.’ These machines for monitoring our health, which we could have for our own good, will enslave us for our own good. In a way, we will be subjected to gentle and permanent conditioning.”
Given the course of history, the threats to drug the unvaxxed into submission, the concocting of new conditions like information disorder syndrome, the vilification of individualism, and the institutionalization of doctors who speak out against COVID tyranny, I am becoming increasingly concerned that mental health diagnoses will be used to lock away and maybe even euthanize dissidents.
It sounds hyperbolic, but if you look at how rapidly the world has been transformed into a totalitarian dystopia, I can envision a time when people like you and me are diagnosed with something like oppositional defiant disorder and placed in a mental institution for “our own protection.”
Saint Anthony the Great once said:
“A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him, saying, ‘You are mad; you are not like us.’”
As Andrzej Lobaczewski notes in Political Ponerology: A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes:
“If an individual in a position of political power is a psychopath, he or she can create an epidemic of psychopathology in people who are not, essentially, psychopathic.”
What are your thoughts on the growing expansion of government euthanasia programs and the abuse of psychiatry for political ends—as occurred in Soviet Russia? Do you think we’re heading toward a Soylent Green future in which thanatoria are commonplace and psychiatric diagnoses will be used to disappear nonconformist thinkers?
You named some ways in which the victim consciousness has been promoted and cultivated for a very long time because it’s an easy way for the few to control the many. It’s incredible to observe how much this dynamic has accelerated in the twenty-first century. We can see the same old tactics being applied to new campaigns and disguised as positive solutions to real or imagined problems in society.
Once again, we land on the importance of dialectical thinking to sort through it all. There are real problems in the world, and there are some truths in the manipulation campaigns. However, there are also lies and distortions of reality used to position the engineered solutions as desirable when those are often just tactics to further victimize and divide people.
It is indeed heartening to see some brave parents exposing the indoctrination campaigns in schools. Many parents are starting to see how dangerous those ideas are for the exact reasons you mentioned. I’ve known of a few parents who took their kids out of public and private schools in California during the recent years either to homeschool them or move the entire family to another state.
Orly A. Raz, health and well-being coach, gave me permission to share the following excerpt. She had sent some emails to her daughter’s school administrators in September 2020, urging them to take another approach to anti-racism. She brought to their attention that embedding shame into the children has severe consequences that will further divide all of us:
“Chloe S. Valdary of Theory of Enchantment has an anti-racist training that anyone who truly wants to unite and fight bigotry can get behind. She is incredibly gifted, insightful, and full of love and light. Please consider this for [school name redacted].
“I think the parents would benefit as much as the kids. Most people are walking around with unhealed wounds, treating themselves and each other horribly. We should hope to eliminate all forms of self-hatred in order to truly eradicate the hatred of others.
“The way [school name redacted] is approaching anti-racism will only divide us. I implore you to think very deeply about the mental health implications to our children when they are being labelled as ‘oppressor’ or ‘victim’ and forced to focus on skin colour and immutable differences of their peers.
“I am adopted. I never had the privilege of knowing my biological parentage. I went on a very long, painful search for years to try and discover my missing ‘identity.’ What I found is not a reflection of who I am. I am not my place of origin, I am not my ethnicity, and I am certainly not my hair or skin colour. Because if I had to identify with what I found—a long lineage of tortured souls suffering from alcoholism, child abuse, abandonment, and unhealed wounds, I would unravel (and I did).
“I am so grateful to have learned from this difficult experience that who I am is in my heart—it is how I love, how I help others, and how I learn and grow in this lifetime. If we teach our children to attach to their identities in a way that is external or out of their control, they will always be empty and at risk of losing it all. We need to go below the surface—to the depth of our humanity and connect with one another there. We are so much more complex and dynamic than our exterior shells, let us please teach our children to orient from the heart.”
Orly’s heart-based message is one that schools, kids, parents, and everyone else could benefit from. Nothing gets fixed, whether internally or in society, as long as we are displacing the issue and power outside ourselves and looking externally for the solutions. The change starts inside each of us. As more of us grow as individuals, society changes, too, because it is formed by all of us. The only real control is self-control, and we ought to reclaim that responsibility.
(Excerpt from a lengthy article first published on Margaret Anna Alice Through the Looking Glass and kindly sent to us by the author for re-publishing. View the full article here.)
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