Unvoiced but true: The diva is the socially-acceptable form of the supremacist. It’s always about ego first, when that detracts from any culture we might be expected to share in. It doesn’t matter who you are, it’s not about you. Indulgence before charity is not what decent people do. I’d even say religious leaders are the worst here, keeping in mind that celebrity couture is ultimately just religion without damnation, transferring centerpieces from your ego to another. You too can be rich and famous if you play the game = feverish fervency. My heroes can do no wrong = cultist cultism. Why do we need centerpieces and their cults of personality at all?
If self-respect is contingent on being held aloft (normally at a safe distance) by others, it is not respect that’s being sought. Each and every political candidacy in the known world always misses that, on purpose. Show me the angel investor free of a control freak messiah complex, and I will show you terror in a handful of dust dumped all over their motherboard. Any theism bent on self-help should be no license to self-help yourself to everything under the stars, the moon and sky. Others probably may need some of that.
I want peace, but there will always be someone else who needs it more.
I’ve OCD for not allowing others to take blame or credit for anything I do. That divide I think allows the universe to show me where my successes and failures ultimately stand and what I do deserve for good or bad. I trust its intent, as it’s always been there and doesn’t need me. That said, when I do get ass-fucked it’s usually in response to something I’ve done, or it’s unprovoked by persons who mistake their own ego for the universe.
You will rarely see me write how I respect anybody, but I do Bruce Lee to an extent, and his whole hoodoo was about being as formless as water. Not going with a flow but of finding one’s own way, while neither obstructing or complimenting said flow. And I have plumbed enough to know water flows along outsides of pipes just as easily as inside. Oscar Wilde had the line about all of us lying in the gutters, but only some of us look to the stars. AA has a bit about how the only way to objectively look up is when you’re down on your back. Alan Watts wrote that followers suckle the finger instead of looking to where it points. All of them feel right, but all of them omit self-observation as a key or the key to finding guidance. Social media, selfies, live-vlogging and all that jazz are relatively new. Most of the lives of our species had no audiences. Lord Byron had another great line, how the dust below us was once alive. I feel wrestling ourselves without angels or demons picking sides is the point to everything, certainly not catering to lunacy.
Power should absolutely never be given to self-serving people, instead it is given only to them. There was a meme for anonymous that said real leaders make more leaders, not followers. I think healthy relationships have to be the same way. Not riding coattails or seeing the other as a fixer-upper. Trees don’t push or pull each other, they get up the same way.
These self-idealized proxies and avatars of our private cults are blunt enough. But when an environment does the scripting for us, we really ought not turn a blind eye to what that implies, regarding the platform or software, but also about ourselves, our limitations and our definitions to allow it. Transparency and accountability matter in all matters, always and forever. Almost 30 years ago I read a paperback book called Gods of Eden, by William Bramley, which laid groundwork for much of the Ancient Aliens trash. But it had a smart line, about how if we do not create our own environment someone else will, and that there’s no reason to presume we’d care for those results. The truth is that the only threats to our lives, liberties and pursuits of happiness are bastards frantically mistaking the American flag for their own ego. It’s not foreigners or the poors, not anyone but those gifted free reign over the here and now by idiots sold on baubles and jingoism.
We can choose to have and to maintain conviction and principles. And it has nothing whatsoever to do with asserting our egos, but of acknowledging that we can be willful enough and self-dependent enough to feel no need to use or abuse others, or to enable others to use and abuse ourselves. It is neither a free society or a healthy relationship when there is pushing or pulling for self-interest. Contrary to the vanity our culture sells, consider the distinct likelihood that any circumstance is not actually about you, that you are better the benefactor than starlet. Because when everyone is either pushing or pulling for themselves, the relationship is one-sided, the society self-destructive. Instead of arguing over who is to go down, just 69 like good Christians do behind closed doors.