14 Comments
Nov 2Liked by Guy Duperreault

It's fun to see my article re-appear in your piece, Guy. I would say thanks but I read rather than listened, so didn't hear why 'thank you' is a bully phrase. But I'll avoid it here nonetheless.

I know you heard this one at the time, that cited yours on good and evil: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/yuval-bibi-and-maajid. Your article writes:

"This telling by Nawaz downplays, by completely disregarding, the broad, horrific and brutal presence of Hamas in Palestine and the ostensible support given to Hamas by a significant percentage of the Palestinians themselves as Arab-Moslems who voted them into power many years ago. And so Nawaz has used his own magical word spells to remove from the dialogue Hamas’s extremism towards their own Palestinian people let alone Hamas’s open and public avowal that until every Jew and Christian is dead they will continue the jihad against the non-believers. They are brutal, and not just to Israelis. Side picking is to pre-define our spell casting of words. (For more context on the nature and extent of the one-sided and shrill spelling language that is propagandised in order for us to pick correctly the good side and vilify the bad side."

What is your first hand knowledge of Hamas? Is your knowledge secondhand from Palestinian sources? Thirdhand from journalists who directly live with and interview Palestinians? Do you know who funded them and put them in power? You speak with absolute authority about who they are and what they think, and your pronouncement supersedes Maajid's. Is that not a form of authoritarian 'bully language' to declare this is just how things are with no qualifiers?

In the article you cite, Whose Side Are You On?, you change my definition of the sides as Empire vs. [community] Sovereignty to Authority vs. [individual] Sovereignty. When I look at my article, I couch what you call 'bully words' into questions, statements of logic or personal opinion: "I believe that we need to think through what our own positions are ..."

Women, in my experience, are more likely to preface their ideas with "I think," "I feel," "I suspect," "I lean towards," "From my research," etc. This leaves room for someone else to have an equal point of view and discuss it.

You are, in fact, telling other people "You should never use these words because you need to stop bullying yourself and other people." It doesn't matter what words you use, that's still what you mean. A non-aggressive way of phrasing it would be, "I've found it useful to ..." And then it gets tricky because are you 'trying' to stop using these words or do you 'never' use them?

It's an NLP technique, btw, to eliminate the word 'try' from your vocabulary. I think of NLP as learning how to subtly bully other people through manipulating them but that may be because of an ex-boyfriend who tried to use it on me. Other people have found value in it.

I recognize that I'm agreeing with the person in the group about whom you said "all he heard from my talk was how I was telling him how he should talk without using the word should." And so, by your definition, I am also the swine you 'shouldn't' cast your pearls before lest they turn and rend you. That sentence itself is telling others what to do, and 'othering' anyone who disagrees with you, in a pretty insulting way. And then you psychoanalyze him that he's projecting his own 'should' onto your words, when you're the one who told others what they should do--whether you used that word or skipped it as unnecessary.

I don't disagree with your ideas, Guy, but I do dispute your authority to tell others how to speak.

Expand full comment
author

hola teraza.

nice to see your long comment and i loved being told so bluntly and authoritatively how best to tell / share my ideas. and i also smiled because one of the key arguments you repeat in your writing is about the critical importance of definitions of words. and so this was a deep dive into the unconscious 'meaning' of some of the common words we use and that are in fact aggressive words whose use disempowers us, removes from us our sovereignty and possibility of 'real' intimacy. that in turn brings to mind one of the key 'problems' of words, as seen by word police who strive to control thinking by controlling the meaning of language. the debasement of meaning is the current 'flavour' of that! make it so no one can know even loosely what common language words that connect us to the tangible reality of life. omg! we now have disconnected sex from the body to an idea about the body! total gaslighting narcissistic style mind control. so funny. and at the same time, so powerful, it has the possibility to collapse the society! that was nietszche's argument, bascially, at what collapsed the greek, roman and catholic 'societies' — supremacy of idea over substance.

the problem of pinning down language was referred toin edward de vere's play love's labour lost, with a character who mocks another for being a fan of the language police who were looking to enforce static meaning to words in order to straighten up and make 'proper' language. that was one of johh dryden's big things and i think alexander pope's, too, if memory serves. both dryden and pope spent a lot of effort to 'clean up the debased language of de vere' (shakespeare) with extensive re-writes of his plays.

you're right. i've not told you what to do and ... you are very directly telling me what would be be the best way for me to not tell you what to do. that has me smiling too, an action that might suggest that i am being disrespectful. as i thought about this, my mind rolled over to: so, i've not told you what to do, and you have reacted to what i wrote as if i did tell you what to do and what i didn't tell you what to do had you push back against what i didn't tell you to do in order to kindly tell me that what i didn't tell you to do was maybe some kind of nlp manipulation that may or may not be there. hmmmm.

as to hamas, sorry, your argument about my having first hand experience is... weak. i'm not a journalist, i haven't travelled to palestine and talked to hamas, etc. however, i have spent the last year listening to various arguments and some of the history that has been lied / manipulated about the the conflict in order to take away nuance and allow for moral justification for violence — in both directions. and on our side, mostly mushy feely new age kumbaya bullshit. there is no possibility of nuance when the fixation on dogmatic black and white moralistic rhetoric is the foul smelling gas that passes for understanding. on the other hand there are some actual black and white aspects of the history i did query: did the rabbi tell my friend in a telephone conversation that palestinians are 'animals' and so why worry about them? (he wasn't lying.) and have hamas vowed the jihad until all non-believers are dead? both sides well represent with dogmatic moralism and fervour the rationalisation of the other as an undeserving best to be killed. and so both are 'happy' killing the other as an undeserving (non-human) other with dogmatic moralism to justify violent and murderous rationalisations.

and i'm not othering anyone! (okay, maybe the dogmatic moralists who, having killed from themselves humour, morally rationalise creating in the undeserving pain and death.) again, this brought a smile to my face, especially by how well you brought in your self reference to create a confrontational nature to my essay which isn't there. i really don't care if you agree or not. i am not out to convince you of my truth — that unstable 'truth' that has been on a huge 'change trajectory' in the last year. and i know that 'truthing' you is a waste of both our times. sorry, i have no interest in doing that.

what i did was to present my best coherent description of what i have experienced from this simple language awareness and the associated changes — for me. this is my experience and with twenty years of looking at this this is what i understand about why i've had that experience, which is that these word changes have gave to me a profoundly powerful upgrade to my life and with the very few other people who have had the courage to change their mind-sets. many, in my experience, which would seem to include you by your own description, find it anathema.

fine. i didn't post it in your space and tell you that i have the truth and you have to listen to me! lol! how did i put it in the essay? i did not come to you like 'a progressive liberal humanist woke language activist and blast you with how you have to stop using have to!' nope. you came to me and read it and reacted. and that is wonderful, to get such a great reaction to something a wrote! love it.

perhaps you may find it interesting to re-read it in a few months — if you find yourself curious enough to practice the suggestions. there is a great comment when the constructive living therapists would get criticised whenever a client pushed back and said that the suggested practices didn't work: 'did you *do* the exercises?' of course not! why would they, since reading an idea is enough in bodiless world. a huge challenge with the head-centric society — certainly i have been one of them to the nth degree! — is that in the depths of our brains we think something like 'awwwww. do i really have to — do it!? i read it, isn't that enough?' (actually, this has been a cornerstone of the progressive liberal destruction of the schools: the ideas do not to be touching reality, because ideas are more alive, vital, important than the body, and all the 'dirty' material stuff that makes life work: plumbing, telephone poles, roads, etc.

and your funny weird comment about 'thank you.' what is that about? that really has me puzzled what you were looking to communicate there. i have some ideas, and was initially tempted to comment and in the end didn't because i wasn't confident that i understood what you meant.

my writing has taken up huge amounts of time, lately, in combination with my having begun teaching yoga in exchange for spanish lessons and doing a deep dive into the leftie-rightie thing at this time. i've recently discovered konstantin kisin, candace owens, mary harrington, pealy davis, michael knowles, charlie kirk, ben shapriro, thomas sowell. the so called 'lefties' whom i don't list here, are ... how to put it? brain dead, basically with very dead eyes generally, of whom david pakman might be the best example. so i've not be active in reading other people's substacks because i have chosen to follow where my intuition is calling me to investigate. as a result i've been experiencing an incredible number of life and writing synchronicities, a few which occurred with this re-writing of the year old essay.

all the best with what is changing. everything changes! with peace, respect, love and exuberant joy.

Expand full comment

thanks for sharing

Expand full comment
author

de nada, minnie.

i appreciate your visit, read and comment.

all the best with what is changing. everything changes! with peace, respect, love and exuberant joy.

Expand full comment

Nice to meet you and read your work, I follow you

Expand full comment
author

and lovely to meet you too, minnie.

and i appreciate being followed. if you have questions about anything i write, i love to engage in conversations.

busily working on my next two pieces. i'll see if i can finish it before dawn: a kind of companion piece to this one - yoga a spiritual by-pass.

🙏❤️🧘‍♂️☯️🧘‍♂️❤️🙏

Expand full comment
Nov 2·edited Nov 2Liked by Guy Duperreault

🙏💞💞💞

Thank you for this and for bringing word spells to my attention, Guy. It's helped me to be more aware of what I'm putting out there and why.

Best wishes always. I hope your health is good and your endeavors are fruitful. 🙏❤️💐

Expand full comment
author
Nov 3·edited Nov 3Author

hola, heidi,

i read the long comment you deleted. be aware that your comment was in no way offensive and was, as often is with you, a deep look at the very core issues of what makes us human!

would all of us be in utopia if there were no 'bully' language?! omg! such a funny thought, now.

is there an actual *the* answer? [headshake.] not likely. in samkya theory of life, existence began with an imperfection that created the friction that created existence.

so, likely 'friction' is a core part of existence. as i continue my look at what Gautama may have taught, versus, what Buddhism teaches, his practices are about *reducing* suffering, not creating some kind of utopia. that idea of utopia is, imo, one of the more clever psyops of the new age movement, what i call new age denialism.

physical existence, by definition, is comprised of the discomfort of physical material reality rubbing against something ineffable that seems to animate life and create synchronicities, dependent co-arising and karma — as the same thing! omg! life has a wicked sense of humour.

i receive with my open heart your best wishes! and be assured that my physical health is great at this time. and, at the same time, i share my joy and love with you with a huge appreciation for your amazing courage and stamina for what you have taken on in this lifetime. i bow to your heart!

all the best with what is changing. everything changes!

Expand full comment

🥰🙏💛🙏💛🙏💛🙏

I'm so happy to hear you are doing well.

What you are saying makes so much sense.

Expand full comment
author

🙏🧘‍♂️☯️🧘‍♂️❤️🙏

Expand full comment
author

hola, heidi.

you may find it interesting to do the practice formally in a diary and notice how your mind-body continuum calms down, centres and becomes more powerful. great stuff.

i would love to talk with you about this, if you feel inclined. i find it fascinating to see how others take to the ideas. in general, not many people 'wake up' to it. tc's reaction is not atypical, as a matter of fact.

Expand full comment

As a child, my Grandpa used to smile really big. Grab my hand and pretend hit myself with my own hand. Then he said, stop hitting yourself. Why are you hitting yourself.

Who's doing what to whom? Lol. I find in life it is many times me who is hitting myself, no outside assistance required! 🤣

I would definitely love to continue the conversation on this. Is it possible to direct me to a video or teaching of yours which elaborates more?

Expand full comment
author
Nov 3·edited Nov 3Author

ah, i am tempted to say that i love your grandpa. when we are children, that advice is likely really unnecessary and much like the child being puzzled by the need for 'thank you'. and yet, as adults, oi vey! so important. [headshake.]

at this time i don't have videos, just my writing. although i am growing my audios — my muscle testing is really directing me very strongly to make them. and for the next few days, two more audios to create that connect to the spell making words essay/audio.

all the best with what is changing. everything changes.

🙏🧘‍♂️☯️🧘‍♂️❤️🙏

Expand full comment

He was a very lovable person.

I really love your audios! So happy to hear you are continuing with them ❤️ 🙏

Expand full comment