I find it incredible that politics is increasingly making people so angry and hateful. This was not the case when I was young. It has grown over the years.
I am most startled that Baba's followers are increasingly buying into the over-amped emotionalism entering into politics, considering all that Baba said on the topic.
This is getting seriously out of hand. I first noticed it when I arrived back in Myrtle Beach five years ago, and first commented on it in this blog in 2014.
Politics is a very small part of life, and an even smaller part of the divine life. How has it become front and center for so many Baba lovers? Why are hostile emotions so easily stirred by media?
Such passions were stirred by the press during the rise up to the French Revolution. Why are people so easily swept by media, and why are they so willing to bring such passions into their own hearts? When does it become OK for a Baba lover, due to political certitude, to commit slander and backbiting?
and for all slander and back-biting. (Meher Baba's Prayer of Repentance).
Backbiting: malicious talk about someone who is not present.I thought Baba lovers would be above all this? What is happening concerns me very deeply, and it makes me despise politics and be suspicious of it.
Nowhere on this site have I said a single political opinion, because I have none. There are wonderful people of all parties. I don't even hate politicians, not even the despots. It's not a high minded subject.
Baba said that one very high kind of meditation is to take a spiritual topic, one from a perfect master, and concentrate creatively on it. I've tried to do this in this blog over the last decade.
But lately I've felt it necessary to warn people of some of the fraud that has been done over the years. These things are recorded facts anyone can go and find, if they know how to do deep research.
I'm warning people out of love, not hatred. But I'm also trying to shock people into some wakefulness, especially younger Baba lovers and potential Baba lovers.
At the bottom of my post on Politics, written in March 2014, I included an article (with permission) by Ward Parks, Ph.D., editor of numerous important Baba books including Infinite Intelligence, Meher Baba's Early Messages to the West, and A Short History of the Sixth Edition (4th volume of the Discourses reprint). That article is very well written and should be read by every Baba lover. It is a cautionary tale to people swept up by politics in media, covering events that happened in Baba's life from 1929 to 1931.
Ward has long expressed concerns about the odd political obsession among Baba lovers, and the increasing mean-spiritedness since the build-up to the second Gulf War.
The motives were deceitful for that war, and I knew it and stated it at the time.* Yet this is no reason for Baba lovers to become so impassioned. Such worldly passions (and hardly anything is so worldly as politics) have to be tempered with reason. People need to calm down. They should also take the time to examine their assumptions. This is why I posted Call me a stick in the mud.
I don't hate anyone over their politics. I do, however, dislike this growing ick. Someone I don't know recently reached out to me with hate and truly grotesque sarcasm.** I realize I am sticking my head out and in a sense have it coming, and ought to be ready.
Finally, something on opinions. Plato called opinions doxa, and said it was the lowest form of knowledge. It is doxa that Plato meant to convey by his analogy of the cave. My own opinions are only that, but I try to allow them to be informed by reason, critical thinking, skepticism, and most importantly Baba's words. The original title of this blog was Meher Baba Words, until I ran out of things to say on them and decided to extend it to include my own personal thoughts on a broader range of subjects. I still try to relate things back to Baba when I can. Baba frames my thoughts, and what doxa I may have is simply my best guess as to the truth. But I also try to share a lot of research that I think is important and relates to many of our current common opinions, including ones I once shared.
But people are getting awfully assured of their political doxa, to the point where they may wind up finding themselves terribly vulnerable to manipulation. The most dangerous thing in the world is group-think, for it seems to give the ego assurance it is right and beyond question.
The opinions I give in this blog, on nearly everything, are almost always unique. They are mine, based on my own introspection, and my own best guess. But they are never ever informed by what is the most popular view, the trends, or what views will garnish me approval. My training is in philosophy, not public relations. I am not running for office or a popularity contest.
I would never in my life troll another person's blog where they expressed their opinion. I am amazed that people do this. People ought to express opinions, but disparaging a person for having one is not an opinion. And this is what I see increasingly happening. The growing opinion is that there ought not be other opinions, and that is a truly frightening development. I hope that my writing, even if it changes no opinions at all, will be a demonstration of honesty and courage.
Baba is not a political party. And I would never attach Baba to any political opinion of mine, because I don't have any.
Footnotes
* Research with a cool head reveals that all the military engagements by the US and European nations over the last eighteen years have been conducted under false pretenses, and that this has absolutely nothing to do with any single political party, but with a deeper undercurrent of military hawks across the political spectrum both in America and Europe. This includes the Kosovo War (under a Democrat administration), the second Gulf War (under a Republican one), and numerous military engagements in the 2010s including Egypt, Libya, Syria (again under a Democrat).
** The irony of what was sent to me (by a Baba lover I had to look up) was that it accused me in ugly tones of having crazy delusions of Baba people being mean-spirited. The irony is that he was, in his comment, affirming the very sort of ugliness he was trying to deny.
Did you scrub your Facebook home page, Chris?I have never, ever posted political content on Facebook, and anyone can look through this blog and see that I have never spoken of 'radical political activities' on the Center. I have spoken of people breaking Baba's directive that politics not be discussed on the Center, along with backbiting and drugs.
You accepted their request.
Yes
Reasons?
Let me guess: anger, hatred, and paranoia, especially of the political variety. Why not just deactivate your account and come in under an alias? I have never received any Circle of Friends activities emails. I need to keep up with that hotbed of radical political activities.
By Meher Baba's Directive:
. . . G. Please remember that Meher Baba does not wish us to indulge in conversations regarding: backbiting, politics or drugs. (source)
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