Sometimes people get very squirmy about authors, or any authority for that matter, revealing the more intimate experiences that provoked their investigations or fuel their passion. But there are these motivators and I believe it is an important part of our healing to be prepared, willing, and able to reveal the “hidden history,” to quote Morris Berman’s subtitle from his Coming to Our Senses. I applaud those who bring the intimate, the emotional, the holistic real into their gifts to humanity, for what is a book but a gift to our fellow humans, come what may?

He - like all of us - has plenty of reasons to be angry quite irrespective of his own personal background. That experience only makes his understanding of systemic violence and oppression more profound, in my opinion.

Regarding the idea of hardening our hearts and learning to kill, it is simply not possible to “root out” this metastasizing illness that has as its keynote symptoms: conquest, exploitation, intimidation, shortsightedness, and includes the whole dominator disease profile, by killing or disabling some abusers. You could just keep lining legions of people up and “taking them out;” and the disease would continue to spring up like weeds or cancer cells in yet another crop of new flesh. In fact, the incessant language of fighting everything: Fight cancer! Combat climate change! – can’t we see it’s just all more of the same? It’s like trying to deal with your diabetes by pouring on some more chocolate sauce and then, saying oh no, maybe I should be using caramel sauce instead, oh gosh no-no that didn’t work out, pass me the raspberry sauce.

Another metaphor: you can smash out all the lightbulbs, but the electricity is still right there in the plug for the next set of lamps.

All this foolishness. Most of what goes on in the halls of argument and the great fields of dispute is just more bombastic dust in the wind. So, what would be the wise place to put our limited time and resources? This isn’t the place for me to go into this but, to say the least, it has much more to do with cessation than with the next colloquium or “solution.”

Something far more brilliant and creative than “the mental and physical illnessness of humankind” will be orchestrated by the great reality from which we all spring. If the people alive now who claim to think and care deeply would only cease and desist from feeding the addictive system more of its toxic fixes today (that’s shorthand for a lot of stuff being bought, eaten, used, driven and flown) we would see some healthy use of power. But no, they want to fly around and yack about it or create the next package, the next pitch for save the trees written on yet another pile of paper . . . it’s all so full of that electricity, that hypocrisy, that me! look at me! pass the money over to me! Meanwhile, not only people, but all life on this planet will continue to be dismayed, baffled, maimed, outraged and endangered.

There are human beings out there who know how to deal with abusers. They are from indigenous cultures who have known for some time that the dominant culture of this civilisation is pathologically suicidally insane. They know most of it’s members are unreachable. The Wetiko disease runs deep!

It’s time we ‘civilised’ face up to the fact that there is nothing wrong with humans as a species, or human nature, but with the insane culture that fills our ‘civilised’ view points wherever we look. ‘We’ are like fish in water, the last to discover it, swimming through unconscious of it.

You said: “all in all psychopaths and egomaniacs are the single most insidious problem on this planet.” Put the word “civilised” in after “all in all” and I’m in complete agreement with you!

Gandhi probably wasn’t the best example, because he was entirely non-violent. Passive resistance hasn’t proven very effective against some forms of abuse; I have no starry-eyed illusions about that. I’m not sure Who my hero would be, only that their actions, even if occasionally pushed to the necessity for violence, would be based on a powerful, peacefully certain heart, not terrified rage. Perhaps there’s a place for both.

I was thinking about the advice “harden our hearts”. I *think* I understand what she meant. Consider someone like Gandhi - or at least the ideal he represents. To me, his internal strength was the secret. You could call it a ‘hardened heart’. “I understand why you want to do this, yes, it’s very understandable given your starting point (that’s the compassion part) and NO, I’m not going to let you. Period.” Seeing oneself as the parent figure, rather than the powerless abused, and backing it up. I do think there is a place for force, the ‘machine guns’, but I view it as something that can coexist with compassion. “I am sorry that you have made this necessary, but you WILL NOT be allowed to perform this rape.” “Compassion” doesn’t necessarily have to mean compromise.

And so I wonder: did you listen all the way through?

Human beings really don’t know what to do about abusers, predators, invaders. Again and again they come stomping in to have their way with whatever they currently want for themselves.

You can lock them up, disable them, kill them; you can go through all kinds of therapy and cathartic work in an effort to mitigate against the damage, but all in all psychopaths and egomaniacs are the single most insidious problem on this planet.

One area in which I understand but disagree and I occasionally feel Jensen has been blinded is his unwavering hostility toward ‘the enemy’. “Compassion” does not mean compliance. To comprehend the depth and origins of an attacker’s behavior is not to condone it; it is to have a weapon against the behavior that might save both attacked and attacker. There are times for force against the attacker, but that doesn’t preclude an acknowledgement of the attacker’s damage as a painful burden on the attacker as well as the victim.

It was you, Anthony, who first brought Jensen’s work to my attention when you commented on the Morris Berman interviw. Thank you so very much for that and for continuing to listen and be in touch.

He is an example to all scientists.

May he succeed in all his endeavors.

Bravo !