Space Cadet

"We are made of star-stuff." -- Carl Sagan
The universe is a reflection of everything we are thinking and feeling right now.

[Space Cadet @ScottCDunn]

Hate Is A Complete And Total Surrender Of Personal Power…to people who can’t or won’t change anyway.

There was a time in my much younger life when I hated one or more persons. I think at one point, it was a sort of searing, visceral hate. There were things that I dreamed about doing to the other person, but could never bring myself to do him or her. I couldn’t do those things because I kept thinking through what would happen to me.

I’d be embarrassed. I’d feel bad for the other person. I’d go to jail. I’d be ostracized by everyone who knew me. I’d regret it for the rest of my life.

Yet, those things that I thought of, that I fantasized about, they were obsessions. They took up space in my brain, time in my day and life away from me. Hate made me tired, so tired. And my hate required other people to change. But at that time in my life, I was not willing to change. My unwillingness to change made me tired. I ran in circles in my brain, trying to enjoy the hate and make the other person change more to my liking at the same time.

All along the way, people I knew and who knew me could see that I was suffering and they kept telling me the same things:

“You can’t change people.”

“Those people are never going to change.”

“You are filled with resentment. Resentment is like drinking poison, waiting for the other person to die.”

But no one ever told me that hate is a surrender of personal power to someone else. I had to figure that one out for myself. I had known this intuitively for a long, long time, yet had never articulated it. Now I see that I live in a culture that is filled with hate, with mass shootings being a major symptom of that hate, and I know what hate means to me now.

When I look at racism, I see people who hate other people for the color of their skin. That skin color is never, ever, going to change. There is no therapy, no cure, no magic available to change the color of the skin. Yet, day after day, I see headlines for mass shootings, hate crimes, threats, and protests against people of color. For the racists, I have to wonder, why hate people with brown skin when you know that the color of their skin is never going to change?

Then there are the Trump haters. I understand their pain, their sense of urgency, and their motivation. But Trump is never going to change. His job is not to make you happy. He is only interested in making his base happy, and if you’re not in that set, forget it. Move on. Focus on something that makes you happy.

I don’t actually hate Trump myself. I know the trap of hate well. The problem I have with hating Trump is that I don’t actually know who Trump is as a person. I’ve read reports of Trump visiting people in a hospital and they said he was warm and friendly, even personable in private. That is in complete contrast to the reports I read of his rallies. So I really don’t know who Trump is. And if I don’t know him, then it’s reasonable for me not to hate him.

And not hating Trump != supporting Trump. I don’t support his policies, and I don’t support him as president. But I don’t hate him. I don’t have enough knowledge about him to hate him, nor do I have the time or patience to hate him. I’m not sure, but perhaps I’m apathetic about him. I don’t really care what he does.

What matters then, is what I choose to do in response to the people in my life who may be irritating, high maintenance, or that lack the skills or capacity to do better.

When I hate someone, the focus is on them, not me. When I hate someone, since the focus is on them, that means the object of my hate is required to change in order for me to be happy. If they changed more to my liking, would my hate decrease or stop? Would I stop hating someone who changed in response to my hate? I don’t think so.

There is a region in the brain called the amygdala. That is the part of the brain that is responsible for identifying associations between objects in our environment and pain and pleasure. Most people have trained themselves to see someone like Trump and respond with pain, anxiety or displeasure, even hate. Hate is a learned behavior. Babies are not born with hate. Even racists learned to hate from someone, and they train themselves, their amygdala, to feel hate when they see someone with a skin color different from their own.

There was a time in my life when I hated mustard on my food. Instead of spending my time obsessing on how I hated mustard, I stopped putting it on my food. I did something else. I changed. The mustard was agnostic, so to speak. Mustard doesn’t have to change for me. Whether or not it has any consciousness is debatable, but for sure, I can say that it’s not the job of mustard to make me happy. The mustard didn’t change, I did. Much later in life, I developed a taste for mustard, but either way, I made the change. I exercised my own power.

When we hate something or someone, we are giving up our power. When we hate someone, we surrender our personal power completely and totally. That is because, when we hate someone, we are not considering our part in the hate. We may not have considered the possibility that hate is a choice.

When we hate someone, we are completely focused on the other person, our hate is dependent on the other person changing, in order for us to be happy. And I can tell you from personal experience, it is not possible to be happy and hateful at the same time. Try it sometime. You will find that hate and happiness cannot exist in the same room at the same time.

I have seen firsthand, the power of hate and how it disabled me. I guess then, that hate is a disability. Hate is a disability to love. Hate is a disability to do anything about my circumstances. Consider this in the context of racism. A white person hates a black person. A white person goes to public gatherings to express his hate for black people. Is the white person making anyone’s life any better by expressing his hate? He’s not working to make money, he’s not being of service to anyone, even the god that he purports to love. Hate doesn’t satisfy any human need that I can think of.

Therefore, hate as a verb is a complete and total surrender of personal power. Hate satisfies no human needs, it displaces one from a state of peace, it displaces self-awareness, and it’s addictive. Addiction is the pathological pursuit of reward. The reward in hate is the endorphins released when one is engaged in hateful behavior. Shouting epithets, marauding in groups or packs around the target of hate, protesting, writing hateful things, posting hateful pictures, memes, violence, and threats of violence, they all cause the brain to release endorphins. Those endorphins get us high, like the runner’s high.

When people start recovery from addiction, the first step is to admit complete and total powerlessness over the addiction. Most people who hate are loathed to admit powerlessness. Hate assumes the power to make other people change when that power doesn’t actually exist. The only purpose of hate then is to feel those endorphins, to feel the rage, to displace oneself from one’s own pain, and one’s own power.

So I avoid hate. I notice when the temptation to hate presents itself and I do something else. I write. I use the phone. I interrupt the thought pattern and think about something else. I think about what I could do differently. I think about the other as a person, with feelings like I have feelings. I think about the other person with needs like I have needs. I make the other person human. I assume that it’s not the job of the other person to make me happy. And I figure out how to make myself happy without any help from the other person. Those are habits, and I have done those habits for so long, that I don’t actually hate anyone now. Hate is not a part of my life anymore.

When I really want to grow, I figure out a way to be of service to the person that caused pain, irritation or inconvenience, however briefly. This doesn’t mean that I have to support the other person for their counterproductive behavior. I can be of service to that person in a very general sense by promoting peace. By meditating, by writing, by considering the other person as someone with unmet needs, without hate. Or maybe I can find a way to help that other person with his or her own pain. People who hate are usually in pain. People who cause pain to other people are usually in pain, retelling, recreating their own painful experience and imposing their fate upon another.

But whatever I do, I don’t take what others do personally, and I make it my job to find my own happiness. I make it my job to love others exactly as they are. I make it my job to be the change I want to see.

I do not surrender my power to hate. I retain my power to love, for love is the antidote to hate.

Write on.

https://t.co/mIVAtnC0LY

[Space Cadet @ScottCDunn]

@SpencerHakimian Trump is a socialist? Who knew? I wonder what the @WSWS_Updates has to say about this.

[Space Cadet @ScottCDunn]

The leader of Lebanon is backed by the United States. They're buying time to reload against Hezbollah.

Israel and Lebanon agree to full ceasefire, conditioned on steps by Hezbollah https://t.co/bfo6obkNP4

[Space Cadet @ScottCDunn]

@D162Michele Imperialism leads to irrational behavior by the brains of people who are enamored with it. Trump is a great example. Takaichi is another one.

[Michelle @D162Michele]

A nation of war criminals should also shut the fuck up!
🇯🇵 💩

[Space Cadet @ScottCDunn]

@ShangguanJiewen China is growing the floor of the forest with infrastructure.

[Jason Smith - 上官杰文 @ShangguanJiewen]

China's economy will eclipse the West economically for decades to come.

One of many reasons: infrastructure.

For the West, its not very profitable for the investor class.

For China, its essential, and a priority.

[Space Cadet @ScottCDunn]

Every time Trump cuts something in the government, there is this expectation. "If it's worth doing, some private company is going to do it." Trump wants to set up monopolies everywhere, private monopolies for all of his rent seeking friends. I've never seen that work out well.

[Joe Kent @joekent16jan19]

Intertwining our defense technological development w/the Israelis, or any foreign nation, is foolish & dangerous.
Section 224 of the NDAA must be rejected.
My 1st article for @RStatecraft explains why: https://t.co/HUtS2qNITX

[Space Cadet @ScottCDunn]

Don't you worry! @realDonaldTrump will cut funding to make sure the free market can handle this flesh eating worm!

https://t.co/5zTCNf5wbK

[Former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 @FmrRepMTG]

The United States of America is a sovereign nation.

Section 224 of the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act must be removed.

Our military should not be integrated in any capacity with a foreign country’s military.

Nor should we be funding it.

[Space Cadet @ScottCDunn]

@bbjess @Petco Yes, I wrote to them and they gave me a refund. The other way is to change the card number, but I've seen the card company route it to the new number. Most though, say their pet died.

[Space Cadet @ScottCDunn]

Hey, @Petco. Your Vital Care subscription is nearly impossible to kill. I called you last year and gave you verbal notification that I wanted to cancel the subscription. You told me that charges would continue until 1 year elapsed, but you're still charging me for 18 months AND YOU WON'T STOP.

You are the embodiment of American rentier capitalism.

I've look all around the internet and I learned on Reddit that the only way to cancel your thing is to tell you that our pets died.

I've looked all over your website and there is no interface, no place where I can cancel my subscription. I've tried to use your app, but your app is not working right now. Not sure why.

You guys are crooked, dishonest and do not stand behind your products. You have zero accountability.

To anyone and everyone listening, DO NOT SHOP at Petco. they are simply not worth the time or the money. They will only rip you off.

[Space Cadet @ScottCDunn]

@HFI_Research I haven't seen much discussion about the energy cliff in the mainstream press. I see it on the side, in obscure places, and that's it.

[HFI Research @HFI_Research]

Every physical trader I spoke to in the last month said something along the lines of, “Prices will stop us from hitting tank bottom.”

Fast forwarding to today, nope. Market did not price in any demand destruction in the West. Instead, we are just going full on into shortage mode.

“None of this matters,” is what I get from generalists.

Cool, enjoy the shortage.

[Space Cadet @ScottCDunn]

@ProudSocialist It would be nice if people would stop confusing wealth with wisdom. Human genes vary by less than 1%. Elon Musk isn't two or three million times smarter than the rest of us. That could boot the process.

[Power to the People ☭🕊 @ProudSocialist]

We desperately need class consciousness in the U.S.

Class consciousness is not telling people to vote for the blue or red ruling class parties.

It is educating people that both parties serve the billionaire class, which is why workers need to build our own power to fight back.

[Space Cadet @ScottCDunn]

This is the most compelling argument for renewable energy that I've ever seen. If you want run an advanced civilization, you must use renewable energy to do it.

[Chris Martenson @chrismartenson]

This is the most robust chart in all of economics, and it shows that GDP has a near-perfect correlation to oil consumption. If a shortage of oil goes on for too long, then the economy will be forced into retreat to match the amount of oil that's available. It's that simple.

Full report: https://t.co/C8zOc6mZdM

[Space Cadet @ScottCDunn]

@DanielLDavis1 Yeah, and look at the businesses that Trump is drawing from. Real estate, insurance, finance, and other entrenched monopolies. He's picking fellow rent seekers to fill the most important posts in his admin.

[Daniel Davis Deep Dive @DanielLDavis1]

The White House is placing a finance guy, with neither military or intelligence background, as the acting DNI?

WTH. It increasingly appears President Trump only wants loyalty as the *sole* prerequisite for top jobs. How can this person possibly execute the task of Director of National Intelligence when he has no clue about matters of war and peace, and hence wouldn’t b able to independently assess what is important, what is critical, or what is mere background noise?

Answer: he can’t.

He’ll simply b the next yes man in the Admin, and the president himself will suffer bc of this.

[Space Cadet @ScottCDunn]

@D162Michele I think we could start by rebuilding the Key Bridge.

[Michelle @D162Michele]

Imagine if the West put the same effort into building up their countries as they do into kicking a ball around, they might just have countries as advanced as China!