Priceless

One of our readers thought that I would be amused by this, and I pass it along in that spirit. The article endeavors to answer the age-old question, “When does a Cub Scout become a Boy Scout?”

Note, the Washington Times is a newspaper that was started and is owned by the Moonies. So it has a “conservative” ideology which can come off like a self-satire sometimes, though by some miracle the newspaper is being taken more seriously. Anyway, this is a fun article — for those abroad, a slice of American life.

21 thoughts on “Priceless”

  1. ‘Contradictions abound but the movement is of the right sort..’

    Laughing…yes, understand, identify with etc.

    That sounds like a turbulent enough time for any person, for you, and so PW does indeed provide something more than mere education. A bit like a nice cool, comforting pillow on a hot, balmy, sleepless night.

    Came across Eric same way, via JC. Different life events at the time naturally, though similar came later (and earlier), got to revisit it! Not paying sufficient attention the first time.

    Thank you, Alex – much appreciated, H.

  2. Eric was the stand-in for Jonathan Cainer’s column in the Daily Mirror at the time. I’d noticed that the horoscopes improved when Jonathan was away and this mysterious fellow was standing in. But I did not venture to PW wholeheartedly until May 2004, several months after my relationship split and redeployment in work, following some deeply traumatic material from January 10th 2003 – this stuff triggered some more deeply buried trauma – hell on earth for some time.

    Eric’s stuff was eerily spot on and sustained me when I was in fingernail grip, survival mode for over 18 months. A new world opened up where I had to plot my inner space and take more responsibility for my emotional life/health than I’d ever imagined could be necessary.

    There is so much further to go. I work in mental health and I have come to recognise many things about people and myself and relationships per se as well the rest of modern life in the past 15 years. I’m now nearly 42 and currently attempting to embrace new challenges, still in line with the motifs Eric keeps putting out there to his astrological audience (me is a Taurus).

    Contradictions abound but the movement is of the right sort..

  3. Thanks for that Alex. Blogs are indeed conduits for misunderstandings, plus lots of other wonderful things. But misunderstandings can lead to so much good stuff in the end, if perseverance and an open ear/mind prevails, so it’s not so bad!

    You’re in Bolton and I’m currently, temporarily in Norfolk, also in Blighty. Yup, a long way from Eric’s coffee shop – but with the power of technology, really only nanoseconds away.

    It’s funny, but before you responded there, I had been going to ask you what it was in particular that drew you to PW…

    Yes, here’s to deeper understanding, Hazel.

  4. Hazel, for what it’s worth I’ve read a number of your posts on the blog and like what you have to say. You seem pretty cool to me!

    Planet Waves has made a great contribution to my evolution in awareness since 2004. It is a marvellous space/place to be in. There is such a depth here. Nevertheless, cyberspace is cyberspace and, since I live in Bolton, Lancashire in good old Blighty I can’t pop round to Eric’s for a coffee in quite the same way I can connect up on here!

    Here’s hoping for exchanges yet to come, graced with deepening understanding..

    Alex

  5. …I meant to add that there are so many misunderstandings within our exchange alone, that it would take too much time to unpick each one.

    And I wouldn’t even know where to begin, in truth. Hazel.

  6. Alexander, thank you for the considered response, and more, to my post.

    It is so important to clear up misunderstandings before moving forward. I really am such an idiot! Doh!!

    Hazel.

  7. Hazel,

    I think that humans read content better than context at times. This blog is architecture.

    That means we inhabit it in particular ways – you know, some people insist that you MUST wear a suit to church. These modes are just roles we employ. Any talk of authenticity is not really a credible way of lending weight to an argument’s validity – just like talk of truth (whose truth?). I prefer integrity to authenticity because everyone’s can be different and remain valid, whereas authenticity sets a punishing standard and we fail every time.

    I am not authentic because I use a real name on here. The stipulations when signing up allow for a pen name and that is enough for me. My choice of Half De Witte was playful but is certainly linked to my roots. My mother’s maiden name (she comes from Belgium) is De Witte.

    I should also add that sharing personal experience has nothing to do with ‘authenticity’ on a forum like this. This is not a therapy group.

    My choice is to reflect upon and process my experience and to engage with my peers in both 3D and cyberspace. I seek to learn from other people’s perspectives, knowledge and experience in order to enrich my life. I wish to give something back that is constructive and adds in some way to the issues under consideration.

    I think being misunderstood is a frustration that is a human inevitability, especially in a virtual reality such as this. It is not the presence of misunderstandings that is bad – as if the goal were to excise such. The point, for me at any rate, is to learn from those misunderstandings.

    Every relationship/friendship I ever knew that went tits up was attributable not to misunderstandings but the lack of good will and commitment in clearing things up and moving forward. I share with my trusted others. That isn’t because outwith I fear ridicule or exposed vulnerability ,so much as because I have established sufficient comfort with them.

    I say my piece on here and let others make what they will of that.

    As regards my chortle, my moniker has invited much engagement through the many months I’ve worn it. Everyone does so covertly and I like the way such presentations speak. Words are often not required and sometimes you just have to leave things be..

    Alexander (Google me if you wish)

  8. ‘This is precisely why so many people who have considerable awareness remain stuck in harmful situations. They can’t separate self and other and the boundary sufficiently to make clear decisions. They are stuck in narcissism/self-abnegation complexes. The only way to evade this trap and the myriad possibilities of projection is to practice regularly a conscious focus on the other as other.

    This is interesting. I come across this a lot, I may have found myself there too – at least I think I have. Is there any way you could give a real life example to illustrate it, so I clearly understand what you mean?

    ‘We must practice taking an interest in others or else the emphasis on self will render others merely instrumental facets of our own subjectivity. This is why what we give to the group is qualitatively different than how our own growth process is tied up with it.’

    I agree – I think. I was not suggesting awareness of how one sees one’s self is ‘it’. However, it is a place to start from and then to have a good look at the other.

    Hd, it might just be me, and so I hesitate to say this, but sometimes I find your way of writing fairly dense (and I don’t mean that in reflection to your intellect, which seems to me fairly obvious, despite your chosen online moniker). What I mean is that for me at least, it is not easy to penetrate or understand your language. I’m not sure if that is your intention or not. I get the feeling that you are interested in educating here, and so if that is the case, then this way of writing might not be a method that serves as well as you’d like. I can see it will work wonders for academic peers and papers though, or people who are already very well versed in your field or similar – perhaps that is your background?

    And I can see that already I may be sounding like I want you to get it ‘right’ for me – and if that is how it’s coming over, that’s not what I intend. I just would like to understand what you say. I have found some things you have posted incredibly illuminating – when I manage to work them out!

    Not sure if this is of any help, but I may find it easier if you were to ‘wear’ your theories, to explain how this theory applies to you, personally rather than the distant ‘they’, out there, intellectual jousting type approach. l suppose I would find it more authentic, if I’m honest.

    ‘I must say, people’s investment in the ‘halfness’ or not of my De Witte-ness makes me chortle..’

    That’s also interesting, a) that you have chosen it for a moniker, given how and what you write about and b) that after all this time, you have chosen not to share your first name, which would also help with the authenticity.

    And of course, you can happily ignore all of this. Best wishes, Hazel.

  9. mystes, I’m cool with transcendental experiences as long as they remain just that – i.e. experiences. I feel that individuated spiritual practice along the lines of embracing the Tao would be a useful development for me. I do not in any way disparage a coherent perspective – such as you have developed. In the context of this thread my original post was mainly aiming at questions of identity with respect to group dynamics – what lies ‘beneath’ identity was not in view until you introduced it, along with ‘close intensive retreat’!! I think this is just the nature of diverse but highly individuated experiences jostling within discourse. You can’t legislate that – even though some have ventured recently onto that particular slippery slope.

    It has gradually crept up on me that I enjoy many things that my mind does not particularly find conducive and that spiritual practice is rising up my to-do list in importance.

    Hazel, on what one gives to the group being a somewhat different issue. Yes, you are correct and that is the problem. Focus on self is intrinsically healthy but various religious mindsets and their subspecies have rendered this problematic for eons. Self is the essence of sin in much of that dogma. Interestingly, although such ideologies are catastrophic to health they have been utterly inverted by critics who noticed the flaw (let’s start with Nietzsche as pioneer – who arguably had to advocate a transvaluation of all values).

    The corrective movement has always run the risk of amplifying the self as sin drumbeat by its radically oppositional stance. If what one gives to the group is merely some automatic outworking of an evolved self there is a loss of reference to other as separate from self and this is the essence of egocentrism. And this is why, for me, we must practice a social/inter-psychological habit of exploring the other as other. Otherwise ‘other’ just becomes a construct or idea. We can develop ideals about justice, fairness and egality around such abstractions but any meaningful notion of love is excluded, disembodied and intellectualised.

    This is precisely why so many people who have considerable awareness remain stuck in harmful situations. They can’t separate self and other and the boundary sufficiently to make clear decisions. They are stuck in narcissism/self-abnegation complexes. The only way to evade this trap and the myriad possibilities of projection is to practice regularly a conscious focus on the other as other.

    We must practice taking an interest in others or else the emphasis on self will render others merely instrumental facets of our own subjectivity. This is why what we give to the group is qualitatively different than how our own growth process is tied up with it.

    I must say, people’s investment in the ‘halfness’ or not of my De Witte-ness makes me chortle..

  10. ‘What one gives to the group is a somewhat different issue.’

    Is it really? I mean, I guess it is different and yet… is what one gives to the group not based on how one sees one’s self (what one believes about one’s self)? As well as what one believe’s to be true about the other?

    Actually, I have to say that I much prefer to use ‘I’ when I am speaking about me, ar applying a theory to me, not ‘you’, ‘one’ or ‘we’. So I’ll try this again. It seems to me that what I give to the world, to people, what I put out there is based on how I see myself, what I believe to be true about myself so far (however I may have arrived at these beliefs).

    ‘Basically, most people proceed as if “you are me”. It is necessary that people proceed as “you are you”. For me this takes practice. When we fail we instate concepts like ‘trust’ as being of the essence. But trust only matters to a person who proceeds as if “you are me” I need to be able to trust you so that my ‘me’ won’t be destabilised.’

    Yes. So I won’t say what I really mean or think just in case…I won’t be emotionally honest, or dare to challenge, or dare to get it wrong, or dare to stand out in the crowd…I will wait until I know it’s safe or until I get some sort of approval.

  11. Half (maybe) the Witte writes: “Mystes, I have a difficulty with the ‘beneath identity’ idea which can amount to a more hip version of the old religious dualisms; only cast in terms of the ego and the higher self. Personally, I find such an understanding of ‘the real’ unsustainable.”

    I figured you would, and thought thrice about writing it that way… but time is short, so is my hand right now. I’m really not quite as naive as I think you’d like for me to be (how’s that for pretzal projection!)

    I could jump to conclusions, and say you are issuing the standard postmodern rebuttals against what PM imagines modernism’s stance/romance to be. But that might be rather rude of me.

    Here’s the bottom line: Nothing dualistic can go on for long in the context of close *intensive* retreat. Most ‘religious authorities’ think it is too dangerous for the average person for that very reason. I know better. You might read my stuff on Tantra and The Real. Wherein you will see that I am a diehard Lacanian.

    Bring me to England and I’ll show you. Karma in the Crucible burns for itself.

    Uh, and I never said “higher self.” “Future” maybe. “Plenum” definitely. Authentic, above all. And I never, ever, ever pit that against… well, anything.

    ***
    **
    *

  12. Hazel, as mystes effectively says, everything boomerangs back to self. The group is, at its best, a mirror through which I may see myself more clearly. What one gives to the group is a somewhat different issue.

    Mystes, I have a difficulty with the ‘beneath identity’ idea which can amount to a more hip version of the old religious dualisms; only cast in terms of the ego and the higher self. Personally, I find such an understanding of ‘the real’ unsustainable.

    I think we can hold a dialectical theory of process that, as a concept, *seems* to shuttle between identity construct and that essence which might be considered to transcend it – but not prescriptively. The higher self is not a polar opposite to the ego (that would be psychologically untenable and ill-making) and many folk seem to get caught up with narcissism / self-abnegation complexes as a result of such irresolvable thinking.

    For me, the question as it manifests intra-psychically and socially is how to divest of self without loss of self. In terms of a ‘collective ontology’ it seems to me that the spiritual practice we need is not so much some individual *tantra* as a straightforward clearing up of a misunderstanding and putting it right:

    Basically, most people proceed as if “you are me”. It is necessary that people proceed as “you are you”. For me this takes practice. When we fail we instate concepts like ‘trust’ as being of the essence. But trust only matters to a person who proceeds as if “you are me” I need to be able to trust you so that my ‘me’ won’t be destabilised.

    So yes, I think you make a good point and self can transcend best via selves-in-relation. I think however that this is best seen as an inter-psychological discipline more than a spiritual practice, based on an illusory quest for ‘the real’.

  13. I suspect that this ‘groups’ thing plays out on blogs too. Another kind of group. It sometimes reminds me of group therapy where, over time, a person gets to see (if they are lucky) how they set themselves up in their relationships again and again. How they set themselves up to be treated by the other. How they are seen by others, how they see themselves. And basically, how a person sets about giving to others for example, and also how they set about getting their needs met (or not) in relationships. Anything from being liked and loved, to heard and understood, to included and valued, the list goes on…it happens here all the time.

    I notice myself doing it.

    Much love, H.

  14. Half “Groups always problematise identity if too closely adhered to. If they bequeath skills and basic human associative opportunities, well and good. But in any group, dehumanising ideology is never far away.”

    I read your post with more than a little interest. The bit about what ‘contains the individual being in tension with the collective’ really rings true. I organize a Meetup in Austin called “Tantra in Texas” which *attempts* to hold space for very outrigged views of Tantra – the traditional and the ‘new age’ in a space that is honestly neither.

    The question of inclusion/exclusion always being part of the game of groups is why ultimately I advocate the practice of close intensive retreat. That means: sealing yourself into a space where your *own* oppositional strategies have it out with one another!

    That is, of course, exactly what we do in ‘groups’ – but through projection. In retreat, the whole smorgasbord is obviously one’s own. And whatever the practice, even if it’s skipping on one foot and reciting the alphabet backward, will eats its way down to what (or who) exists beneath identity.

    The surprise is in finding out just exactly how compassionate, funny, creative we *really* are: Way more than one identity can hold…

  15. This human desire to belong..

    This unitary longing contains something that has the quintessence of both good and bad within it – a true ambi/valence.

    Groups of every stripe pander to the longing and the longing itself panders to the group that might sate it. This places a tension between the functional and ontological value of groups.

    What at root humanises us also dehumanises us. In terms of architecture, what contains the ‘individual’ satisfactorily is in tension with what contains the collective.

    Even groups that claim to be inclusive tend to exclude because they are organised around values that are chosen by someone who thinks they are a good idea – and others simply join in. It is difficult to find a truly evolutionary group and that is why most individuals on a growth path move beyond them (they are great for developing children and adults who want to remain stuck in child mode) – but adults who wish to evolve seem forced to classify groups as functionally useful but mostly unsuitable for sustaining being/becoming.

    Groups always problematise identity if too closely adhered to. If they bequeath skills and basic human associative opportunities, well and good. But in any group, dehumanising ideology is never far away.

  16. Carrie, what you describe is one of my biggest issues with the times we are in — this extremely strained sense of purpose, of community, of shared responsibility.

    I can tell you that this is why astrology is obsessed with “tell me about me” products, rather than doing its other job of being visionary and speaking about the meaning of collective events.

  17. I was in Girl Scouting from Brownies through Juniors (through sixth grade) and I remember it was not religious or even conservative at all. In fact, back then (the 60’s and 70’s) the focus seemed to be about building self sufficiency, self confidence, connections with others and a respect for nature. It was about learning how to do skills that would come in handy in life and not just typically feminine skills. We learned to chop wood, to build fires, to pitch tents, to tie knots, and survive off the land. We learned how to organize protests, how to get a group together, how to boycott for change. We learned how to express ourselves in a group and to build cooperation in order to accomplish goals. We worked on doing community service a lot. Back then, Girl Scouts seemed to be about building good character and learning our responsibility to each other, to our community, and to our planet.

    I loved my GS years but when I put my two oldest daughters in Brownies, I was horrified to find that they now have Brownies selling cookies (I had to wait until Juniors which was 4th grade) and they used the money to go shopping and have lunch at an expensive trendy restaurant. No projects were done to help the community, no work was done to help build self reliance or good characher or life skills. What a shame.

  18. Karen, these are really interesting thoughts. Happy to have them here, you’re bringing some sanity to the conversation. I would love to talk more about this gray area, which is why many younger women (teens) seek out older men, who risk felony prosecution for responding to them. Many women I talked to who started sex in their mid-teens chose older men for the reason you describe.

    My thoughts on ‘more sexually progressive’ for Girl Scouts v Boy is that the Boy Scouts actually will strip someone of their Eagle rank and have an open discrimination policy against gay boys that recently got their headquarters kicked out of its perpetual lease in Philadelphia City Hall.

  19. Hmmm….looking back, Eric, I recall the Brownies as being rather like church but with just a nod to religion; certainly there were lots of rules and regulations and the emphasis on being a ‘good girl’. I never saw the Brownies as sexually progressive – maybe that came later in the Girl Guides but I don’t know much about them….my mother wouldn’t let me join as they finished too late at 9pm!!! I didn’t allow any of this to deter my sexual nature though, having my first full sexual experience at 14 coming on 15, years after leaving Brownies 😉 I realise we have to protect our children but I have a grey area around girl-women of this age and the parameters of paedophilia as I (and many of my peers) were decidedly ready for these encounters….even when our boyfriends weren’t, and they were late teens! A while back a therapist suggested that I was sexualised because of certain verbal things my father had said when I was younger but on talking to one of those peers from back then, she like I felt that we were just expressing our natural nature. Does this mean we are now inhibiting our youngsters more than ever before, given that society looks at the men involved as paedophiles? I remember back then being aware that what I was doing was illegal but it didn’t seem a big thing (not like it is today) and I didn’t have any hang-ups about sex, despite being fairly hung-up about the way I looked. I am writing from the UK; perhaps all this is/was different in the US?

  20. I’ve always felt the Girl Scouts were much more sexually progressive than the Boy Scouts. In the Boy Scouts, you can lose your lifetime Eagle rank of you come out as gay. That’s how homophobic they are — and how many of us had our first sexual experience on the troop camping trip? I’ve never been a Girl Scout but I always had the feeling they were more intuitive, less judgmental and all around less Christian than the Boy Scouts.

  21. Ha ha!

    They’ve come a long way then. I recall being invited to leave the Brownies for repeatedly saying (having been asked not to) the word that caused Len to declare he can’t marry me. This early experience of being asked to fall on one’s sword was many years ago now of course, but the rejection still hurts… 🙂

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