establish what is appropriate

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I was in a car full of boosters driven by that "activist" yonder. He was taking us to one of his personal appearances, and we were going to be his cheering section. I didn't want to be in that car, let alone next to him in the front. One of the fans was mystified that I was some kind of authority figure in this adventure because he thought I had flunked out of this exalted endeavor. I told him, "No, I quit, and this is bullshit," being very clear about my unwillingness to participate.

We got to our destination and there was chaos there and nobody noticed this sterling personality who'd dragged his own cheering section to the event. As we were driving back he was becoming deformed. He was silent, despite many questions from the peanut gallery, and I was asking him very salient questions, trying to snap him out of this deformation trance, but he could only peep out something that made it sound as though his personal appearance, which had not happened, was a rousing success, I must be crazy and kept up this look of purposefulness in his driving as hunks of his features were dwindling and twisting and falling off. I began communicating with him telepathically and he could not respond, only becoming more and more deformed at the wheel.

I flew out of the car. I stated the truth and some directions for safety to the people in the car before, during and after flying out of the car. I don't know if anyone listened. That cannot be my concern.
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Establish what is appropriate,
Set up what should be;
Make purity fundamental.

What is not one's own norm is not done,
even if profitable;
What is not proper for oneself is not practiced,
even if profitable;
What is not one's own path is not taken,
even if profitable.
—Guanzi
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So I was vexed to find myself in that car.

Even before I took up Zen, after throwing down my social and professional status to go be of real use to the world, I very quickly realized that activists succumb almost unerringly to the politics of identification as activists—accomplishing nothing for their cause, only succeeding in making names for themselves—as things proceed in the negative spiral their activism purports to be about turning around. Once in a while this will "work" over a period of many, many years, because it has become so much a part of the mass consciousness that people just trend away from that destructive thing toward another, but this is actually because those creating the problem had in the meantime found more profitable things to destroy, NOT because of the slow trend of mass consciousness. When the problem causers turn their attention away from the fight in favor of more profitable things, the activists declare victory... over a heap of smoking rubble that may or may not recover or improve, depending on the problem, depending on society's or the planet's ability to make it right, make this "victory" flourish.

This is mostly the fault of the "activists", but they were helped considerably by the lure of the politically astute. Once you make some kind of name for yourself in your endeavor, they start giving you access to the halls of power, knowing this will tame you right away. You will be so elated by the privilege, you will not want to do anything to lose it.

And you don't.

And maniacs like me can't yank you out of your elation to put your eyes back on the ball.

Further, those who care about your cause admire you for your successes, for becoming noteworthy for insisting on the matter in front of the evil forces of capitalism, the authorities. They never notice you've ceased to have any effectiveness beyond the maintenance of yourself in the public eye. In fact, you never had any effectiveness beyond getting yourself into the public eye, and then that becomes your work. It's hard, because once they let you be seen to have accessed them, they pretty much expect this to suffice and don't give you any more access unless you work your butt off to keep the popularity that will make them cede some more access. Never mind that your input is always graciously received and completely ignored, you are a menace out there without this official, and utterly meaningless, seal of access. You don't notice it because this elation feels supremely meaningful, and there are MANY excuses you can use to keep yourself and others inside this great big relief of a delusion.

It's exciting.

After some years of this, you might be able to distinguish yourself enough to succeed in putting words and clauses into legislation that are so watered down no capitalist will have the least problem getting around them, and those capitalists will revere you almost as though you were one of them. In fact, by then, the odds are you ARE one of them.

The salient bit is: The wrong you set out to right has not been righted. You have profited. Full stop.
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It was thrilling to me to find the ancients on this subject. This and many other observations I'd made about the world were addressed by them... only vastly more elegantly... and sewing them all together to form a vessel I could ride out of delusion and into reality.

Guanzi goes on to say that it is best to follow Nature. Next best is following humanity. Following humanity is a person devoting oneself to making the best out of a bad deal. Following Nature is turning the bad deal into a good deal.

I didn't do all this work to go for next best.

So I flew out of that car.
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