Comfort lies!

That is what I have started calling them. They are the bald-faced lies of empire that we have come to rely upon as solace in a world that is rapidly destroying human decency and initiating us all into global, patriarchal, white supremacist fascism. They sound so pretty, seem like such music to our troubled ears.

And to the ears of Empire.

Empire also relies upon these comfort lies in order to perpetuate its power and to sustain itself.

The deceptive slogans of empire, are imbedded deeply within the structure of who we are on both a global and a personal level to the point where they are largely invisible to us. In this sense, they are a secret that must be uncovered and exorcised.

As a result of their secrecy, invisibility, and inherent attractiveness, they have become the lies we blindly use to comfort ourselves. They have also become the so-called truth that we uncritically believe and which distract us from pursuing real change personally and collectively. They are like the sirens! Eventually they tempt us to our own destruction.

Finally, these comfort lies arise as coping mechanisms within, and as sustainers of, any kind of inescapable, interpersonal trauma, either individual or collective, and not by accident.

To truly understand this, you must also understand that global trauma and personal trauma are not essentially different.

Both rely on the same deceptions to uphold their power over us. The lies serve as a backstop to brute force because brute force requires a tremendous amount of energy. So much the better if you can get your victims to mollify themselves as you take over every nook and cranny of their lives, but most importantly their souls.

We don't call it occupation for nothing. In order to destroy our freedoms and our humanity, empire must occupy us with its lies on a universal and personal level.

Interpersonal trauma is really just empire's legacy and it serves as empire's reinforcement. It makes the global personal by subsuming every area of our lives within one, singular, mindset and experience of trauma.

But truth can unravel the entire gambit. Truth is the antidote to empire's poisonous lies.

When anyone steps out of the system and tells the truth, lives the truth, that person enables everyone else to peer behind the curtain too. That person has shown everyone that it is possible to live within that truth despite the repercussions. 'Living within the lie can constitute the system only if it is universal.' Anyone who steps out of line therefore, 'denies it in principle and threatens it in its entirety ... If the main pillar of the system is living a lie, then it is not surprising that the fundamental threat to it is living the truth.' ∞ Walter Wink, as quoted in my book, Coming Alive!

I am here to threaten the system in its entirety by laying threadbare a few of its most significant lies.

The First Lie: This Chapter in History is All Part of Some Grand Divine Plan

I could make this point by proving (with impressive scholarly references) that religion is often the companion of empire. But honestly, just look at what Christianity (a radical challenge to the power of the Jewish and Roman authorities) became when Constantine made it the darling of Rome. Then look at what right wing Christianity has wrought by making the orange one their sweetheart false-idol, not God nor a representative of God, but a mockery.

Yes. I could trace back the ways in which people have exploited the key tenets of every major faith in order to justify occupation, caste systems, plunder, ruin of cultures, rape, genocide. I could show you how many of these tenets are rooted in the maintenance of power by the few.

But I don't need to do that. I can start and end with this:

Empire can subdue any chance of uprising if it can get you to imagine that putting children in cages and abandoning a whole ethnic group to slaughter is part of God's plan.

Plan for what?

Does God torture us into our destiny?

I think not.

What we are witnessing here is not part of some Divine plan for the ultimate advancement of humanity. This horrible age of systemized trauma (and all the ones before it) represents a grand deviation from the Divine plan because that plan is written in the language of love and human potential.

Do not stand idly and foolishly by working with the illusions of suffering and the Divine providence of torture.

Stand up for the truth:

Too many of our leaders do not have the spark of the Divine in them.

They have willingly snuffed it out for personal gain.

We are so far afield from the Divine plan that betrayal and slaughter on the killing fields of Syria along with the wanton destruction of brown, mostly indigenous children and families at the southern border of the United States have proliferated before our very eyes without a popular rebellion or a show of true leadership from those who could stop this right now.

Perhaps we are just accustomed to a world in which people of color, especially indigenous and tribal people, are slaughtered and destroyed with impunity?

Maybe we are so accustomed to the idea that "the bitch had it coming" we are fine with abandoning to genocide one of the strongest, gender equal, directly democratic societies on the planet, because that is what the Kurdish government had become. It had become a pocket of true freedom and equality standing as truth and in contravention of empire's lies.

Maybe our wayward leaders also have been deceived by some fool's errand of a Divine plan that involves unspeakable horrors?

Maybe that can explain their complicity and outright collusion.

But I think it is more likely that they simply wish to maintain and expand empire's command for their own benefit.

I could go on, but I will stop with this:

It is easy to talk about grand Divine plans when you are far from the danger, witnessing it all, perhaps with horror, but safe from being raped and beheaded on the battlefield.

Don't you fucking dare!

I know you are looking for comfort and but don't spread this comfort lie.

Tell this truth instead:

God values the people empire is slaughtering.

God values the children whose minds and emotions are being destroyed for life by family separation policies that should be called official acts of genocide.

God desires our thriving.

In the name of God, demand an end to this instead of comforting yourself, safe and sound on your yoga mat, with the lies of empire.

At the very least, gut the lie that God tortures any part of humanity in order to create some grand outcome.

THAT IS NOT GOD!

That, at this moment, is Donald J. Trump lining his own pockets and I assure you he is not in league with God. He is not the agent of any Divine grand plan. He is the ultimate deviation from heaven's expression on earth.

The Second Lie: We Should Meet Our Own Emotional Needs and Not Rely on Others to Do It.

Do you know when you teach yourself to meet your own emotional needs instead of expecting others to do it?

When you have been neglected horribly.

This idea that we should meet our own needs actually comes from traumatic relating, isolation, and avoidant attachment dynamics rather than from collaborative, loving, secure attachment bonds designed to support everyone involved.

These lies of self-sufficiency arise when the needs around us have been multiplied by a system that intends to leave millions without means, but perhaps more importantly, without strong social and emotional bonds.

Save yourself. Rely on yourself. Take care of yourself. If you do not have what you need is it your own failure.

So then, what is the antithetical, perhaps radical truth that confronts empire's lie?

I will answer with a question:

What do you think is the hallmark of secure, healthy attachment?

We rely and depend on others emotionally and otherwise. The idea that we do not is nothing more than deception.

The third hard-to-shed misconception we fell for is that we alone are responsible for our emotional needs; they are not our partner's responsibility ... In a true partnership, both partners view it as their responsibility to ensure the other's emotional well-being ... Your attachment needs are legitimate ... You shouldn't feel bad for depending on the person you are closest to--its part of your genetic make-up.

∞ From Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How it Can Help You Find--And Keep--Love by Amir Levine and Rachel Heller.

By contrast, here is a description of someone with an avoidant (insecure) attachment style (from the same book):

She sees need as weakness and looks down on people who become dependent on their partner, mockingly referring to such situations as 'jail time.' 

Avoidant attachment styles amount to a survival strategy developed and passed down as a means of adapting to extreme danger and loss. According to the above authors, it does not necessarily develop based on existing trauma. It is now an inherited, though malleable trait.

When we say we don't need others to meet our needs, we are advocating for a world built upon the survival adaptation of avoidant attachment instead of demanding a world built in alignment with our natural human design: to enjoy secure attachments in a circumstance that is not made up of ongoing, inescapable threat.

When we insist we are to meet our own needs, we are choosing to become more avoidant in our attachments (as attachment styles are not set in stone). If avoidant attachment is an inherited trait, consider the implications of cultivating it.

Bottom Line: Don't indulge in the comfort lie of self sufficiency no matter how powerful it makes you feel when you suppress your needs.

Be brave enough to require that those who say they love you actually express that love by caring for your needs as their responsibility. And vice versa, be brave enough to take responsibility for meeting the needs of those you love.

This doesn't mean we don't have to learn how to regulate our own emotions. In fact, we do. But that's another article!

It does mean that as human beings we have emotional needs that can only be met by our loved ones. Why do you think solitary confinement is so disruptive to us?

Emotional self sufficiency is a lie of empire designed to destroy (even further) our sense of allegiance to one another.

If those who benefit from our divisions over our unity can foster more insecure attachment by getting people to adopt its mores, they will have greater success in creating the every-person-for-him-or-herself atmosphere that destroys the potential for true, widespread, interconnected shifts towards a society built for everyone's thriving.

Power in the hands of the few is consolidated by insecure, avoidant attachments, which is to say, by no attachments at all.

Stand up and demand a world in which we love and care for one another and stop spreading the lie of emotional self sufficiency.

The Third Lie: You Are not Intrinsically Valuable

I know this doesn't sound very comforting. But have you noticed lately how big the self-care, self-esteem, and self-love industries have become? Not to mention the business of sin and redemption?

Some offerings do genuinely address the real issue of value. But many have you running in circles trying to make yourself feel better rather than actually touching the root of the problem and its origins.

The comfort lie is expressed in a feel-better approach to overcoming distortions of value. These approaches never push you to reconcile with yourself and to hold your true value from an internal locus of control.

This feel-better approach is so widespread and has been so readily monetized because, if you ever learn to hold your true value within, you will stand as the kind of truth that deconstructs empire and which cannot be manipulated by it.

In short, all forms of exploitation rely upon diminishment of perceived value.

Once you are lost in the process of working to achieve higher self esteem, you are alienated from the true reality that empire means to devalue. Its soldiers and enforcers must see the oppressed as worthless (or worth less) in order to justify subjugation, abuse, and despoiling. That is one side of the equation.

But the whole system of empire is made even stronger if you can be convinced that you have less, or no worth at all. Ditto all personal traumas of exploitation (rape, incest, domestic violence).

In empire's clutches, your intrinsic value is denied. But the value of your resources, your sexuality, your talents, and your labor are appreciated and looted. Devaluation, is one key means of looting.

Domination is always more than a powerful relation notes Joel Kovel. It is a spiritual state of being. The dominator exerts power by extracting being from the dominated ... This domination always entails more than injustice. It wounds--and it intends to wound--the very soul itself ... So, besides an unmasking of oppression, there must be a healing of the servile will in their victims. ∞ Walter Wink, as quoted in my book, Coming Alive!

An industry that addresses the feelings of low self esteem situates the problem in the victim's psyche when real healing comes from hearing the voice of low self esteem, recognizing it as the voice of empire, and externalizing it. This is the beginning of what it means to heal the servile will in the victims. The problem of low self esteem (diminished perceived value) isn't a matter of emotion only or even of self perception, but rather, of realizing that you were meant to be broken in this way so that someone could extract value.

Your diminished sense of your intrinsic worth is a core lie of empire expressly designed to separate you from something of monetary or other value.

But beyond this, it further erodes intimate connections because it teaches us all to either discard the intrinsic value of other people or to guard against the theft of pecuniary value by never trusting anyone.

Your self esteem issues are a distraction and a comfort lie that will have you forever seeking relief from pain rather than addressing its origins in exploitation.

When questions of value are set aside, you answer every question differently.

When you know your true value, empire's dominance is threatened.

You can no longer be commodified. Your self esteem is no longer a commodity you endeavor to buy from new age gurus and snake oil salesmen, or from the analysts couch, for that matter.

You address matters of value directly by truly valuing and accepting yourself and by externalizing the lie of your diminished value.