John Cutler of the Ozark's Area Community Congress questions whether we humans have some biological flaw (Darwinistic Freudian fusion of biology and chemistry with psychology and the social sciences to create biological determinism and so by adding the dismal prospect of a inherent human flaw entropy human self-destruction in alliance with the nihilistic interpretation of the universal disparateness of all things) that propels us towards the destruction of each other and everything else on the planet. He says that we need to look at the causes of this human behavior which though often theoretically seen as deviant is often embraced as characteristics that make one dominate most opportunistically in a capitalistic society. And some of the cause result from what he calls personal internal pollution. Cutler see the issues of the day as evident through a series of environmental disaster which will culminate in the eventual and ultimate eco-collapse (Zendikian term) as being brought on by, or even outgrowths of personal internal pollution.
The good news (makes you think of Christian revivalist does it not?), culminates in the realization that we are all inherently good and loving people. It is this inherent goodness that is subsided and reduced to a level of unconsciousness deep inside so it is rendered inert. It is rendered inert by the social oppression and engineering of a system that runs under the program of mechanistic materialism that was reified from within as the long process of human evolution from primitivism to present day modernism rans its course and thereby transforming human existence to its contemporary state of destruction with the whole of the world it is part of and inseparable from. The social utility of oppression is to put a edifice of front on the parts of human existence it does not want to deal with ".which are often symptoms of the industrial and modern life it creates for us and then calls progress." This lifestyle makes us repressed, which leads to internal pollution which causes us to act in ways that are not beneficial to ourselves each other and the earth. Cutler says that internal pollution is residue or remnant of the process of living as humans, but it is made unsustainable or pernicious by the advent of the modern which seems often to put us in positions where we are inhibited with blockages that stem from numbness, fear and hopelessness. These feelings come from the hurts that befall us. Unresolved, they build up from the physical hurts and mentally hurtful stuff our parents and the culture dump on us (conditioning and oppression).
Humans have internal mechanisms to deal with this. Yet we are trained by the conventional social ordering of reality to disregard and avoid the constructive use of life experience. Even to see tragedy - the most valuable of life lessons - as something harmful to our emotional health, so we try to purge them to isolate them from our consciousness.
Yet it was Aristotle who said that these experiences are very valuable to us. They act as agents to provide discharge that clears out the residue from unhealed hurts, but in our culture, discharge is typically denied and subverted. Aristotle saw this discharge as Catharisis, the purging of the body. It had a very special meaning for Aristotle. The psychological outcome of the tragedy was the emotion. Plato said that we do not want people to imitate human weakness. Aristotle agrees that the same emotions are harmful pity and fear that we feel as we experience the emotions of the tragedies, but that they in effect let us purge out those feeling on the drama of the tragedy not on the people in our world. He feels that pity and fear get in the way of rationality. We do things in fear that we would not do in a more rational moment (Prof William Brown lecture notes).
By teaching us to deal with certain kinds of emotion the tragedies, so violently thrusted themselves upon us into the blood-wrenched passion that they often become, we become better and stronger as the result of them. Tragedies wake us up from our comfort zone and make us real to the reality and struggle of the humane existence. Otherwise we exist in a slumber state of corporate inspired passivity. We feel that they are harmful to our emotional health so we purge them.
Culter says we need to relate to others on the basis of their inherent nature rather than react to the defense mechanisms they have erected to protect themselves from the pollution emitted in interpersonal communication from people who are too overwhelmed to deal with the social distortion and anti-social tendencies that appear to be increasingly embedded into the modern way of life. We react to situations as we are told to do, in a way that the society demands of us. This is achieved by sending people in the society subtle messages through the programming of the culture and the schools and the myriad of other institutional structures of conformity.
The oppression we face today is mostly strengthened by our fear to go against what others of the culture demand of us. It is not physical oppression, but psychological conditioning to live in fear of what others think of you because you are to degenerated by the social culture to make the attempt to start living our lives on the basis of our inherent nature.
In dealing with this social order of dysfunctionality we are left in isolation. Atomized from the structure of genuine community and substantive interpersonal networking that of which forms the material from we can live our lives by actually having a life ".we find that our will to power is eroded while our weaknesses become more obvious. So that our helplessness becomes overpowering and we have to turn to something so we turn to our addictions, but we also turn to sadism onto which take up the craft of stepping on and brutalizing others so as to achieve a vent for our pain and suffering and at the same time achieve some sense of power and effectiveness amidst the dismal sense of the world and the events that transpire in it as result of the imposition of that structure of dismality upon us.. The dysfunction is perpetuated by us who have become convinced that there is no other way than what passes for the reality of life. The leadership class becomes sadists in turning handing down to others who aspire to be successful like them the same flawed thinking that them to inverted and devolutionary consciousness. They reward those individuals who are sadistic (for they are more realistic and in tune with the phony tune of pragmatism and realism which puts the parochial interests of the individual over the greater interests of the whole), over the people who believe in the inherent good of life and humanity.
Regardless of the outcome of the greater human reality, we do good and believe in the good within all things out of the truth by which we stand as spiritual beings. By giving of themselves to humanity and in effect spreading the GOOD NEWS of the prophesy of all the great diviners of the deity that brought forth the all of that which we see as the force of creation. All this which we call the wrongness of humanity or the human condition is a temporary state it will quickly within the permanence of the transcendent nature of that which we are in spirit. For it is the idea of this pollution or that we are polluted that is just a overlay that strips of our dignity as humane and loving beings.
Cutler tells us that there are tools and processes for removing the pollution and reclaiming our connection with our true humanity, and they are they are those things within us that give us the power to discharge, those which I had mentioned in the previous paragraph (2).
The people of the good need to reclaim the mantle of power which forms the human world as we see is in need of reform, revolutionary reform. We need to create a world which reflects and supports, rather than undermines our essential nature to be generous forgiving and loving to people as well as to the natural realm that exists outside of the human conscious reality. Cutler says that we must heal ourselves so that our essential natures can once again reign dominant over the more despotic and brutal essences that lie within us. Only by healing ourselves can reclaim the power to lead ourselves and others and stop the forces that hurt us that is how we end oppression in all forms.