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BLANK SPACE - Taylor Swift



by Miles Mathis First published April 12, 2015 As with all my papers, this is an opinion piece, protected as free speech by the Constitution. In case you don't know, my title refers to a hit song byTaylor Swift. This paper will be an analysis of Swift, the song, and the general malaise-in-the-milieu it creates. If you visit the song at Youtube, you find it has garnered about 750 million views in just over five months. That's more than twice the population of the US, and is about 1/10th the population of the entire Earth. Her other songs from the same album 1989 have equivalent numbers. I am not prone to believe those numbers and you shouldn't be, either. Everything else is now faked, so I assume those numbers are as well. Just so you know, that is 5 million hits a day, every day, for one bad song (and Swift isn't even nude, semi-nude, or kissing Lady Gaga—yet). We know Youtube has been caught suppressing numbers on videos they don't like. See the top video on the Sandy Hook hoax, for instance, which went to 10 million hits within a few months, was linked to by mainstream sources, and then mysteriously froze when several mainstream sources started trying to debunk it. Its numbers have moved very little since then. If they can keep numbers low, we assume they can also inflate numbers by any amount they choose. My assumption is these Taylor Swift videos are inflated by thousands of times. They are heavily promoted and may be popular, but 750 million views? C'mon! Like Miley Cyrus, Taylor Swift has recently made a major genre switch. Cyrus segued from teen pop to adult pop, shedding clothing, all inhibitions, and all taste in the process. Swift has so far kept on (some of) her clothes, but in moving from new-country to adult pop, she—like Cyrus—has made all her Intelligence ties about ten times as obvious. She might as well be wearing a CIA sandwich board and ringing a bell.

If you don't know what I mean, follow along with me as we out her. It is admitted at places like Wikipedia that Swift's dad is a Merrill Lynch financial adviser, the descendant of three generations of bank presidents. Those are your first four red flags. Actually, Scott Swift is more than a financial adviser. He is senior vice president at Merrill Lynch, which is way up there. Swift's mom was also in the financial sector, working as a mutual fund executive. While Taylor is from bankers on her dad's side, on her mom's side she is from oilmen. Her grandfather Robert Bruce Finlay was an oilman (I wonder—did they call him Robert the Bruce?). Several more red flags there. Our next big flapping red flag is the Wyndcroft school, which Swift attended in Pennsylvania. Wyndcroft is an offshoot of the Hill School, one of ten top eastern prep schools that also include Choate, Deerfield, Phillips Exeter, and Hotchkiss. If you have read Catcher in the Rye, you may remember that like his author J. D. Salinger, Holden Caulfield attended (and was thrown out of) several of these prep schools. In recent papers I have outed Hotchkiss as a feeder for Intelligence, but we could say that about all the Ten Schools. Salinger was in Intelligence during WWII, and his general dismissal of the Ten Schools and the people who go to them in Catcher may be one reason he got crossways with Intelligence later on. Yes, he and Intelligence had a falling out, which is why several fake killers were later said to be found with copies of Catcher on them when they were arrested. It was a standard blackwash. At any rate, Swift's early link to Pottstown, PA, and Wyndcroft is a huge red flag, indicating probable links to Intelligence. I would say it is fairly obvious she was groomed from an early age to fill her current role as confuser of her fellow women. As with Miley Cyrus and others, they have accelerated Swift slowly into her full role, and her game wasn't as transparent in the early years. But her career arc has now reached fruition, and she is currently hitting her first full peak as a propagandist. I expect she will end up in Hollywood and hit other perhaps larger peaks there; but since her cards are already fully on the table, we can read them now without waiting for more. Before we get to BLANK SPACE, let us look quickly at another song from the same album, SHAKE IT OFF. This song is an analogue of the whole “MOVE ON” campaign of Obama and his handlers, who don't want you focusing on the past. They don't want you to think anyone in the previous administration should be prosecuted for anything. No, like the cops after an accident, they just want to “move you on.” Look to the future. Don't worry about the silly old past. That is over, dude. In the same way, Taylor Swift wants you to SHAKE IT OFF. She tells us, While you've been getting down and out about the liars and the dirty cheats of the world you could have been getting down to this sick beat.

That is her answer to people like me, the “conspiracy theorists” and Truthers who have a problem with the liars and cheats running the world: we should dance our troubles away. Her Langley lyricists are trying their best to defuse and misdirect all the current anger, and this is one way they are trying to do it. They are hoping they can convince young girls to look sideways at their fuddy-duddy moms and dads, who are worried that the world is run by liars and cheats. These girls will say, “Mom, Dad, chill out, man! It's just history. It's just the world. You're too small and isolated to do anything about that. Just come dance with pretty girl Taylor Swift!”

As you see, I am not naïve enough to believe that Taylor is writing any of these lyrics. Frankly, I don't believe she ever wrote any of her songs, all the way back to the beginning. All of them sound like they were written by a committee in a boardroom in Langley, so I assume they were. Even the personal asides in the songs ring false, as if they were written by a computer following a “personal aside” program. The songs are all of-a-piece and always have been, with the lyrics matching the performance in being utterly plastic and predictable. Just as Taylor's “voice” is completely computerized—retaining almost no human characteristics or real color—the lyrics are likewise computer-generated. They must have some sort of EdwardBernays101 psy-op program they plug in every morning, which spits out the required number of pop songs for that week, the results being mailed out to all the various Beyonces and Swifts and rappers. Notice how the “music” is more and more stripped down. Compare contemporary hits now to hits from the 70's, for example. Back then, you had a fairly rich mix of instruments, and those instruments were played by real people. Think of Chicago, for example, or Steely Dan, or Seals and Crofts, or even Fleetwood Mac. All that is gone. Swift isn't doing rap, but her pop music is stripped down almost as much. Like rap, the new pop is often just a computerized voice over a drum machine. You don't even get a guitar machine or a keyboard machine. And if you do, it is not a real person playing a guitar or a piano, it is just a machine loop. Why? Because the controllers found that was the best way to hypnotize. Machine music is simpler and more repetitive, which means it enters the brain faster and (with most people) burrows more insidiously into the limbic system, short-circuiting all rational forms of resistance. It also meshes better with the simple visuals. Everything is now sold with a video, and they don't want the music to get in the way of the pretty face and the message it is implanting in your brain. Taylor Swift was chosen because 1) she was a child of the chosen, 2) she had a face and body that could sell anything. She's gorgeous, and most people will watch her do anything and not question it. She could be selling tickets off a cliff and most people would buy. In fact, that is what she is doing. She is selling sexual problems, neuroticism, and every other form of confusion, by disguising it, glamorizing it, and monetizing it. By draping her face and body around your sad little libido, she has boxed it for you, stamped it for you, and mailed it directly to your next therapy session, where you can pay top dollar to have it analyzed. The young girls and other adolescent mentalities pulled in by her videos are pre-paving a direct road to their next crisis, and this is just as Swift's handlers want it. She plants the seeds of your dissatisfaction; TV, Hollywood, and the magazines water them in; and within a few short months or years, they sprout as a smorgasbord of mental and physical problems—all of which her handlers happen to have a product to address. Yes, the investment groups that run the world now have a product for every problem they have created: all you have to do heed their advice. And the beauty of it is, they make money causing your problems, exacerbating your problems, and mitigating your problems. Since you buy this music, you are paying them to plant the seeds of your future dissatisfaction. You then buy the magazines and TV programs and self-help books that water these problems in, making sure they take deep root. Once you have dislodged your sanity in the prescribed way, you are then ready to pay them for the pharmaceuticals, the beauty products, the alcohol, the illegal drugs, the junk food, the homeopathic cures, the gym memberships, the psychiatric care, the AA manuals, the rogaine treatments, the advanced sextoys, the tattoos and piercings, the hospital visits, and—last but not least—the extended sanatorium stays. You will say, “All that's as maybe, but how is little Taylor Swift to blame? All she does is sing cute songs.” Does she? If that's all you see, you aren't looking very closely. Let's take a nearer gander at some of her lyrics in the song BLANK SPACE.

Got a long list of ex-lovers They'll tell you I'm insane 'Cause you know I love the players And you love the game This is a 24-year-old girl talking. Tell me she isn't glamorizing bad relationships and neuroticism. She just said it. Of course, I have to admit I don't believe Taylor Swift has actually had all those relationships she is said to have had, but it is the story that matters. This is the story they are choosing to tell you. This is who they want you to think Taylor Swift is. Why? Because young girls will want to be like Taylor, and so they will act the same way. They will think being a big sexual mess is cool, so they will pursue that. Young women are actually pursuing insanity—sometimes to the point of faking it—and this is one reason why. But let me pause just a moment and answer a question about that last paragraph. I predict many readers will wonder why I don't believe Swift has had those relationships. Why would I say that? What evidence do I have? Well, I don't have any first-hand evidence. I don't know any of these people and no one has admitted that this is all another charade. But my intuition tells me we are in the grip of another illusion here. Remember, this is the entertainment industry we are talking about. Many of her alleged boyfriends are actors. These people sell fiction all day. That is their job. You also have to remember this is the entertainment industry, where almost everyone is gay. Or, I should say, where almost all the men are gay and almost all the women are frigid. Most of the women are beards, and are happy to be just beards. They get to hang out with these rich, famous, sometimes funny and talented gay guys, and they don't have to sleep with anybody. Heaven, they think. I mean, look at the guys she has allegedly dated:



Jake Gyllenhaal, Joe Jonas, John Mayer, Harry Styles, Conor Kennedy, Taylor Lautner. Also Zac Efron, Cory Monteith, Eddie Redmayne, and Lucas Till. Every flamer in the world who needed his sexuality straightened for whatever reason apparently came to Swift. This while she still has the look of a frigid little virgin. Or, that is my call. I could be wrong. I'm not in this case, but I could be. Actually, I do have a little leading evidence—beyond my past (vast and fairly spectacular) experience with frigid little virgins in their 20's—and I will share with you my path along this evidence. Notice that one of these guys is John Mayer. I actually like some of Mayer's music and think he is a talented guy. I also have nothing against gays. If these guys are gay, that is fine with me. Doesn't bother me a bit. As usual, the only thing that bothers me is the constant stream of lies we are fed. Anyway, Mayer also had a hugely publicized (alleged) affair with Jennifer Aniston. For the record, I also like Aniston. I thought she was great in Friends. I have watched every episode about 50 times (except for season 10, which is crap). In many cases, my eyes are on her most of the time, since she is quite easy on the eyes. However, I am not prone to believe her relationship stories any more than I am to believe Swift's stories, and one of her own interviews gave me the clue. It was when she was first with Brad Pitt. I think it was in Rolling Stone, but I'm not really sure. I'm not interested enough to look it up, since it doesn't matter. What she said is that she and Brad waited nine months to have sex, because she wanted to be sure he really cared for her as a person, or something like that. That isn't a direct quote, but it is the gist. When I read that, a light went on in my head. Why? Because it isn't believable. It doesn't fit all the rest of the things we are supposed to believe. What doesn't it fit? Well, it doesn't fit what we were told about Angelina Jolie and Billy Bob Thornton, for one thing. They were supposed to be highly sexual, to the point of nasty. I never believed that, either, but that was the story. Well, Brad Pitt was Jolie's next stop after Thornton. So Brad must like it nasty, right? But wait: we are supposed to believe Brad went from being the kind of guy who would wait 9 months to the kind of guy who likes it nasty? It doesn't work that way. Pitt and Aniston were already in their 30's when they were together. If Brad were the sort of guy that likes women, and was a movie star who could get almost any woman he wanted, do you really think he would wait 9 months to sleep with Aniston? No. Again, it doesn't work that way. Healthy heterosexuals in their 30's who have had many previous relationships do not wait 9 months to have sex with their girlfriends or boyfriends. Outside of Hollywood, they wait, what, 3 to 5 dates? In Hollywood, they wait, what, 3 to 5 minutes? Aniston might as well have admitted in that interview that the relationship was a sham. If it was a sham, then either Brad or Jennifer was gay, or both were. The best assumption—based on the entire history of Hollywood back to the early 1900's—is that Brad is gay and Jennifer was his beard. Well, if Jennifer was Brad's beard, she was probably John Mayer's beard as well. And if that is so, then that means Taylor Swift was also John's beard. And if she was John's beard, she was probably the beard of all these others as well. Elementary, my dear Watson. OK, but back to the lyrics. BLANK SPACE is a goldmine. But you'll come back each time you leave 'Cause darling I'm a nightmare dressed like a daydream. You can tell Taylor didn't write that. People don't say things like that about themselves. But those lines are telling, since that is exactly what Intelligence wants young women to be (and what most of them, unfortunately, are). I suspect the Langley lyricists are telling us who Taylor Swift really is, since they know. What is the worst nightmare of guy with a daydream girl like Swift? That she talks too much? No. That she changes her mind? No. That she doesn't know what she wants? No. That she is silly? No. The worst nightmare is that she isn't sleeping with anyone. She looks like that but won't sleep with you, or anyone else. She is like a cake that no one can eat. A big shiny Christmas gift that no one can open. That is the ultimate nightmare. Boys only want love if it's torture Don't say I didn't say I didn't warn ya Boys only want love if it's torture Don't say I didn't say I didn't warn ya

Those lines are the real meat of the song. All the rest is just prepping for that whopper of a lie. It isn't true, but it is what Intelligence wants young girls to think. It is the magnificent piece of bad advice that sows the seed of destruction. If girls think that is true, they will torture their boyfriends. The boyfriends will be miserable, the relationship will fail, and the girls will be miserable. Just what Intelligence wants, since Intelligence is working for the big investment groups and banks, who own all the companies in the world. When the relationship fails, both the boy and the girl will have to spend money on things. Happy people don't spend much money, but miserable people spend inordinate amount of money on things they don't need. It was discovered many decades ago that miserable people are fantastic consumers, and that happy people are lousy consumers. So do you think they want you in a happy relationship? No. They want you doing everything wrong, and they will give you the bad advice to ensure you do everything wrong. Including torture your boyfriend because you think he likes it. For the boy, Swift's Langley lyricists also have bad advice. This is from the song “How You Get the Girl.” Stand there like a ghost Shaking in the rain She'll open up the door And say, are you insane? Say it's been a long six months And you were too afraid to tell her what you want And that's how it works It's how you get the girl Yeah, that's how it works if you are a big pussy, and if you want to get the (crazy) girl for about 30 minutes. Notice the six months in the lyrics. Compare that to the nine months that Brad Pitt supposedly waited for Jennifer Aniston. See a pattern? Also notice the boy being too afraid to tell her what he wants. Do you really think that is the way to get the girl? No, just the opposite. But they want guys to be big pussies, standing around in the rain like ghosts, too afraid to make a peep. So they put that terrible advice in the mouth of the lovely Taylor Swift, and many young guys will buy it. For more bad advice to both parties, we can look at another song from the album 1989, this one called “Bad Blood.” (Hey!) Now we got problems And I don't think we can solve them You made a really deep cut And baby now we got bad blood See, they are planting the idea that if you have a fight or have problems, you can't solve them and shouldn't even try. Split up and go buy things. And time can heal but this won't So if you come in my way, just don't Oh, it's so sad to think about the good times You and I Great lyrics, right? Were these lyrics farmed out to India, or what? The computer program used to create these lyrics was apparently written first in a foreign language. “So if you come in my way.” Is that English? What is that? We find similar bad advice from the song CLEAN: Rain came pouring down when I was drowning That's when I could finally breathe And by morning, gone was any trace of you, I think I am finally clean I think I am finally clean, ah Said, I think I am finally clean, ah Ten months sober, I must admit Just because you're clean don't mean you don't miss it Ten months older I won't give in Now that I'm clean I'm never gonna risk it. The song should be retitled “How to create a born-again virgin.” Step one, convince her that relationships are hopeless. Step two, convince her that cleanliness is the greatest virtue. Step three, convince her that it is better not to risk it. Step four, step back and collect the profits as she buys everything in sight to make up for not having a boyfriend. I will be told that other songs on the album have a different message, like the song “All you had to do was Stay.” But don't be deceived. In that song we find the lyrics: But people like me are gone forever when you say goodbye. And, You were all I wanted (Oh oh oh) But not like this Not like this Not like this This gives the young girls in the audience the idea that in a good relationship, the girl gets all she wants and the boy isn't allowed any mistakes. If he says goodbye, she is gone forever (even, I suppose, if he comes back and apologizes). Again, the title of the song should be altered to “All you had to do was stay, do everything I wanted you do, agree with me about everything, and make no mistakes.” Which of course reminds us of her song “We are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” from her 2012 album Red. The title pretty much says it all. For more indication we have undue influence from Intelligence/investment groups, notice the promotion of this album even by Google and Bing and the other major engines. If you type in “Taylor Swift 1989” you don't even have to scroll down and click on a link, like to Wikipedia or Swift's homepage or Sony Records. The search engine itself gives you the album cover, all the tracks, the times of the tracks, and embedded links to every song. It also sidelists all her other albums for you, also with direct links. In the sidebar, you are given direct links where you can listen or buy. I find that curious and disturbing, and so should you.

Also curious is that Swift's handlers and promoters have seen critiques like mine coming and have prepared for them. People like me are now called “haters.” According to this theory, people like me don't critique things because we see real problems with them, we complain just to be contrary. We don't detest things because they are detestable, we detest things because they are wonderful. We can't stand to see wonderful things, apparently, because we are haters. You see this canned reaction to criticism all over youtube, but I was surprised to find it even at the Gawker, beneath an article entitled “Swift's Parents are Assholes.” Author Jordan Sargent shows that her parents are monsters, then comments on his own article at the bottom by saying, Thanks to everyone in this thread for not slandering Taylor's music, which is mostly impeccable. In other words, it is OK to hate Taylor's parents, but not OK to comment negatively on Taylor or her music. All negative comment is “slander.” But how is her music “impeccable”? It's just dumbed-down hack computer-music, written by cyborgs and played by machines. It is awful in every conceivable way, and no real musician or singer or artist could listen to it without wincing. It's not even “Taylor's music,” since we have no feeling or indication she wrote it. The vocal soundtrack is so altered we cannot even be sure it is her singing it. The voice is only remotely human, and might best be called “standard machine-female.” Some on the internet now agree with this assessment—in part—and they are saying that “Kanye was right.” This refers to Kanye West's fit at the awards ceremony, where he complained onstage that his girl Beyonce should have won instead of Swift. But no, Kanye wasn't right, since all I have said about Swift also applies to Beyonce. It also applies to Kanye and all the rest of those jokers, who are all pawns of Intelligence and the investment groups. They are just the various faces of the various machine noise that now passes for music. The best that can be said of this noise it that it occasionally reaches the level of a passable dance track. But as Yoda would say, music, it is not. [Or would he say, not music, it is. Questions for further research.] I do like one thing connected to Swift and that is the video for “Safe and Sound.” It's gorgeous and there's no denying it. But even here we have a mixture of good with bad. First of all, the song is from The Hunger Games soundtrack, which is yet another huge red flag. This is just another indication of Swift's Intelligence connections, since these books and their author Suzanne Collins also have all the earmarks of the CIA. Collins' dad was career military and she lives in Sandy Hook, Connecticut. But even without those markers on Collins, the books themselves are full of red flags. It would take another paper to list even a part of them, but the primary red flag is the towering absurdity of girls competing equally against boys in savage games to the death like this. I understand the need to put girls in heroine positions in the arts, but The Hunger Games simply inverts all reality to do it, giving young women false and frankly dangerous ideas about who they are. And again, this is done on purpose. Suzanne Collins is not accidentally giving young women bad advice concerning who they are or should be; I assume she is doing it on purpose. If young girls develop unrealistic ideas about themselves and their fellow women, they are more likely to fail at relationships, be miserable, and thereby spend huge amounts of money on things they don't need in order to compensate. This is how the investment groups who run the world want it. Your misery has been planned. The video for “Safe and Sound” is strange in yet another way, one that has nothing to do with the Hunger Games. To start with, the song doesn't sound like a Taylor Swift song. The lyrics don't mesh with her previous lyrics, and I assume we are seeing the lyrics of a different team here. The instrumentation is also different, being entirely too subtle and melodic for Swift's normal team. Finally, the voice is different. It is too polished. Taylor Swift simply isn't that good a singer, even with all the machines on her. The video may give us a clue as to what is going on here, since we see snippets of a duo called Civil War interspersed with the barefoot Swift as she walks through the forests. I find that strange and curious. I guess we are supposed to believe the lady in Civil War is acting as a back-up singer, but my assumption is that she is the real lead voice here. It looks to me like Swift is just the video eye-candy, and that she not only didn't write this but isn't singing it, either. Again, I could be wrong and this is just an opinion. You will have to come to your own conclusions. But regardless of that, the video is stunning. Swift looks fantastic and the cinematography is genuinely artistic. It is good to see that Intelligence occasionally hires some talented people, even now. Too bad they all won't just come clean. Most of these lies and impostures aren't necessary. I still have some hope for Taylor Swift. She has her youth as an excuse, and with a little intelligence (not Intelligence) could get beyond all this. Even if she isn't worth the several hundred million we are told she is, she has enough to buy herself out of this game.* Up to now she has just been following the path that was set for her, and it is never easy to swerve from that path, no matter how rich or poor you are. It may not have yet occurred to her that she is being used in the ways I have shown. But it is never too late to learn. Although she is surrounded by dark spirits and led by dark spirits, I have no indication she is a dark spirit herself. She has certainly not gone too far down the dark side to turn back. I don't think anyone has, but certainly not this 24-year-old with the bright eyes and sweet smile. The first order of business for anyone seeking the light side is to tell the truth. Refuse to be part of any lie or any scam. Don't use people or animals or the Earth as ladders of profit. Don't make them miserable to make a buck. It isn't complicated or hard to understand. It is common sense and is known by all. The dark spirits know the rule as well as you or me, and they can stop breaking it whenever they like. I encourage them to turn around. You will say that is naïve. You will remind me of Plautus, who told us 2,000 years ago that homo homini lupus (est): man is a wolf to man. I will be told that people have always preyed upon other people, just as wolves prey on sheep. Recommending they stop doing it is like recommending that lions start eating grass. But I consider that to be a poetic generalization. That is to say, it is true in part but false as a whole. Those pushing it let the part stand for the whole, thereby skewing the argument. To see what I mean, remember that man isn't a wolf to man. Rather, some men are wolves to some men. But more often than not, people do not prey on one another. In a majority of cases, people are cooperative. Most people enjoy helping one another, and that is what many jobs are about. If they weren't, the world would stop working altogether. No, it is only a small minority of men who are wolves, and they tend to be the very wealthy. We should try to be more precise, and more specific. It is the top 400 families in the US that are the wolves to the rest of us. They are the real people that comprise all these predatory investment groups and banks and consortia and think tanks and agencies. Taylor Swift's parents are part of this group, and–unless she wises up—so is she. But these families—being real people—are not just animals fulfilling some role in Nature they were born to fill. In that sense, they aren't like lions or wolves, who act on instinct and do the only thing they can do. These rich people are human beings just like the poor people, and it is just as easy for them to cooperate as it is for the poor people. It should be easier, since they have more to share. Unlike animals, everything they do is not a fait accompli; it is a choice. So the whole “man is a wolf to man” thing is just one more poor excuse. It is the rich claiming they can't help themselves, since “it has always been like that” and “you would do it, too.” It is claiming predation is human nature, when it isn't. If it were human nature, all people would be chewing eachother up every chance they got. They aren't. Yes, a few poor people also lie and steal, as we know. But again, a minority. And they aren't following “human nature” as they do it, they are following their own nature, which is—for the time being—dark. But both the rich and the poor can turn back any time they like: they can stop lying and stealing anytime they like. And they will be better off for it. You may have squirmed under that short sermon, but if you did, you aren't finished squirming, since I have another for you—although this one is likewise non-denominational and non-Christian.** It concerns the hater tag we saw above. Although the hater tag is now like the “terrorist” tag, and is completely misused, I actually embrace it. I don't embrace dismissing any negative criticism as from “a hater,” but I do embrace hating things. Hate is a natural human emotion and it shouldn't be discouraged or squelched. It should be fine-tuned and savored. If something is detestable, you should detest it. You should study your hatred for it and try to understand it fully. You should express it as clearly as you can and share it. Because if you can't freely hate, you can't freely love. By definition, they are two opposite ends of a continuum, and you can't have one without the other. In fact, you hate because you love. If you don't hate anything, you probably don't really love anything, either. Normally, you hate those things that most threaten the things you love. I hate lies because I love truth. I hate ugliness because I love beauty. Because I love art, I hate those who have conspired to destroy it. Because I love nature, I hate those who have conspired to destroy it. Because I have loved (certain) women, I hate those who have conspired to make them crazy, unhappy, confused, or dissatisfied. I don't have children, but those who do have children hate those who threaten the future happiness of their children (as they should). It is the hatred that guarantees action, since that is what emotion means. E-motion. A cause of movement or action. Those who want to curb your emotions, especially hatred, are just trying to keep you from any meaningful action. Those who teach that hatred should be avoided are hoping to shame you into permanent inaction. Possibly you can now see why I do not call myself a Christian, though having some residue of what many would call a Christian morality. Christ did not recommend hatred, and neither do Christians (normally). Neither do Buddhists (normally). But I do. I recommend it highly. It is one of the fires that keeps life burning. It is the wind in a very important sail, and without it you will find yourself trapped in some still harbor, paddling in circles. If you have read everything I have written, you may know I take yoga, and enjoy it. You may think I am in a false position in any yoga class, since yoga instructors tend to pepper their classes with “love everyone and everything” mantras. And while I do tend to ignore that part of the lesson, I don't think that puts me in a false position. Why? Because those who have actually studied Eastern religions know that “love everything indiscriminately” is not really part of the instruction. In the Bhagavad Gita, for instance, Krishna's advice to Arjuna is not to love everything indiscriminately, or even to accept everything indiscriminately. Arjuna is in battle, remember, and it is very difficult to be a soldier if you love everything indiscriminately. Very early on, Krishna says, Do not yield to unmanliness, O son of Prithâ. It does not become you. Shake off this base faint-heartedness and arise, O scorcher of enemies!

Mark that. Enemies. Which presupposes a battle of opposites. As does the whole idea of dharma, which is rightness or right action. Rightness presupposes wrongness, just as love presupposes hate. You embrace that which is right or lovable, and you push away that which is wrong or detestable. In this way, the philosophy of the Bhagavad Gita is not so far from the philosophy of the Vikings, as in the Eddas or the Nibelungenlied. There, you love your friends and hate your enemies, by definition. I will be told that you can resist your enemies without hating them, but while that is easy to say, I have never seen any evidence it is true. Those who try to love their enemies never turn out to be very good at resisting them. For me, hate is just the natural emotion you allow yourself to have, since it is the very thing that fuels the resistance. If you really succeeded in loving your enemies, what reason would you have for resisting them? More to the point, what fire would you use to fuel that resistance? The anger is what causes the action, so to suppress the anger is to suppress the action. This is the way it works in real life, so although the arguments for and against can be very long and pretty, they are ultimately just words. People who don't get angry at injustice also don't tend to do anything about it, and the unjust know that. Which is why the unjust teach the just not to get angry. Without emotions, justice ultimately fails, as it has.

*Not that you need money to go straight. In fact, it is probably easier to go straight without money. **By that I don't mean anti-Christian. I just mean I am not a Christian. Also not a Jew, a Muslim, a Hindu, A Buddhist, a Wiccan, a Satanist, a Luciferian, an Atheist, or an Agnostic.

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