malice

VINEETO: I increased my attentiveness such that I became able to recognize sullen or resentful thoughts, quiet complaints, silent accusations, automatic suspicions, unfounded misgivings, subtle revenges, sneaky deceptions, surly withdrawals, petty one-upmanships, deft sabotages, malicious gossip and the like. Of course, applying this fine toothcomb of attentiveness to my thoughts, feelings, moods and vibes brought to light many hidden patterns of belief and sources of malice in my relating to people, all of which had to be investigated.

RICHARD: How on earth can one live happily and harmlessly in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are whilst one nurses malice and sorrow in one’s bosom?

But a lot of malicious, wicked people hide under the ‘social justice’ umbrella and take glee in hurting others. Emotionally and physically. Then they play victim. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1644199998496677889

The first step to resist or undo Woke Invasion in your organization (or your psyche) is to thoroughly understand its creed Critical Race Theory, so as to uncover the fact that generally speaking woke disciples care less about the problems in the world than assuaging their self-centered ideological feelings.^* The next step, obviously, is then to effectuate an elimination of the wannabe woke invaders from your organization by instituting a culture based on common sense values stripped of identity politics.

VINEETO: I am asking because when I investigated my expectations and desires that I knew by past experience would inevitably lead to disappointment and sorrow, I was then able to chuck both my expectation and disappointment, both my desire and sorrow out the window. And once I stopped doing what caused me to feel sorrowful, then the fear of this sorrow re-occurring also disappeared. Given that my aim was to become free of malice and sorrow, it became obvious to me that I also had to become free from the dreams, hopes, desires and greed that were the cause of my sorrow.

I cannot relate to a person in sorrow for I do not have the faculties – or the capacity – for pathos. Just consider the fact that where one has the ability to be able to feel pity, sympathy, empathy, compassion and love, then it is a case of the blind leading the blind. One must be totally free of sorrow – and malice – in order to be of substantive assistance to those who are trapped within the Human Condition. Life is wonderful where one is bereft of both sorrow and malice. All the terror, all the horror and all the dread are expunged when ‘I’ and ‘me’ become extinct. The slate is wiped clean, as if nothing untoward has happened. A faint intellectual memory, like a distant dream, is all that remains of distress and destructiveness. In this time and place where one is genuine, no mental or emotional or psychic scars are carried. Stress, so vividly experienced in reality, has no substance here in actuality. One has to be completely free from the grip of reality – the Land of Lament – to actually be of benefit to the one who is suffering. A person who is actually free does not offer a palliative. Such a person extends the possibility of ultimate release.

RESPONDENT: For me, while it is easy (comparatively) to label and handle obvious feelings like anger, malice, compassion, hope, I find it more difficult to label not-so-apparent feelings. These feelings create a neither-happy-nor-sad kind of state. I remember you talked of dullness in one of your mails. But I find that this dullness or boredom is not the same every time it happens and it happens very frequently.

I propose to establish another variety^* of impoliteness, namely “underpoliteness”. This is impoliteness exercised without malice or spite which occasionally appears to be incidental and a result of socializing habits. Nevertheless, similar to other types of rudeness it creates feelings of discomfort, disharmony and even revenge.

Politeness is often seen as counteracting what is known as “impoliteness” in people. Implicit in this duality is an automatic projection of malice (ie., “feelings of discomfort, disharmony and even revenge” referred to below) onto the “impolite” (regardless of actual malice being felt by the latter), while masking of the same if it exists in the “polite” (see the ‘ripples’ phenomenon in S.N.A.G. for an example).

While the author calls it “another variety of impoliteness”, I’d personally like to keep both distinct. Politeness, impoliteness and underpoliteness form three distinct corners of a triangle. Only two corners can exhibit malice.

The narrow-mindedness of NixOS moderation team is not a recent phenomenon (inasmuch as Graham’s covert influence stretches well back into the past, of course) as one can find relevant incidents as far as a little over two years ago. Take this example of the helpful Dominik Schrempf getting piled on by the pseudo-anonymous user V “deviant” (who, absolutely lacking any trace of good faith, was malicious towards another user, Sandro and later on to Dominik himself) with the unison support of the core team members (including Alyssa Ross “alyssais”, one of the moderators). After the unprompted malicious outbreaks from V “deviant” (who was tacitly given the free license to be so by the core team), Dominik sought (in vain) the support of the NixOS community by posting it on Discourse only to be met with support for the accuser based on such critical pedagogic terms as “tone-policing” (overriding the “Assume good faith” principle laid out in the new Code of Conduct). Unsurprisingly, this thread then gets unlisted by Graham and shut down, once again, by Ryan Mulligan, autocratically speaking on behalf of all (his words of finality were: “This thread [is] exhausting all of us”).

Ultimately, a “code” of conduct is only a guideline. Participants are encouraged to become harmless (i.e., being sans malice) in all of their interactions, for it will make such ethics and guidelines utterly redundant.

RICHARD: Indeed so … to actually be harmless (be free of malice) means one does not have to pretend to be harmless (be a pacifist).

RICHARD: What the word ‘harmless’ refers to [..] is being sans malice – just as being happy refers to being without sorrow – thus provided there be no malice generating/ driving/ motivating one’s thoughts, words, or actions, being no longer capable of fulfilling a previously made pledge can in no way be going against being harmless.

This meant that I increased my attentiveness such that I became able to recognize sullen or resentful thoughts, quiet complaints, silent accusations, automatic suspicions, unfounded misgivings, subtle revenges, sneaky deceptions, surly withdrawals, petty one-upmanships, deft sabotages, malicious gossip and the like. Of course, applying this fine toothcomb of attentiveness to my thoughts, feelings, moods and vibes brought to light many hidden patterns of belief and sources of malice in my relating to people, all of which had to be investigated.

RICHARD: What the word ‘harmless’ refers to [..] is being sans malice – just as being happy refers to being without sorrow – thus provided there be no malice generating/ driving/ motivating one’s thoughts, words, or actions, being no longer capable of fulfilling a previously made pledge can in no way be going against being harmless.

RICHARD: What the word ‘harmless’ refers to, on both The Actual Freedom Trust web site and mailing list, is being sans malice – just as being happy refers to being without sorrow – thus provided there be no malice generating/driving/motivating one’s thoughts, words, or actions, being no longer capable of fulfilling a previously made pledge can in no way be going against being harmless.

[Richard]: ’The felicitous/innocuous feelings are in no way docile, lack-lustre affections … in conjunction with sensuosity they make for an extremely forceful/ potent combination as, with all of the affective energy channelled into being as happy and harmless as is humanly possible (and no longer being frittered away on love and compassion/ malice and sorrow), the full effect of ‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being – which is 'being' itself – is dynamically enabled for one purpose and one purpose alone. (…) The actualism method is not about undermining the passions … on the contrary, it is about directing all of that affective energy into being the felicitous/innocuous feelings (that is, ‘me’ at the core of ‘my’ being, which is ‘being’ itself) in order to effect a deliberate imitation of the actual, as evidenced in a PCE, so as to feel as happy and as harmless (as free of malice and sorrow) as is humanly possibly whilst remaining a ‘self’.

RICHARD: As a broad generalisation: the ‘good’ feelings are those that are of a loving (ardent feelings of profound affection and endearment) and a compassionate (empathetic feelings of deep sympathy and commiseration) nature; the ’bad feelings are those that are of a malicious (spiteful feelings of intense hatred and resentment) and a sorrowful (melancholy feelings of yawning sadness and grief) nature; the felicitous feelings are those that are of a happy and carefree (blithesome feelings of great delight and enjoyment) nature; the innocuous feelings are those that are of a harmless and congenial (gracious feelings of ingenuous tranquillity and affability) nature.

RESPONDENT: For me, while it is easy (comparatively) to label and handle obvious feelings like anger, malice, compassion, hope, I find it more difficult to label not-so-apparent feelings. These feelings create a neither-happy-nor-sad kind of state. I remember you talked of dullness in one of your mails. But I find that this dullness or boredom is not the same every time it happens and it happens very frequently.

It is pertinent to note, at this point, that the root cause of sorrow – and, hence, malice (e.g., the ‘basic resentment’ above) – is being forever locked-out of paradise.

PETER: When I started to become free of malice and sorrow, I found my emotional bonds or ‘neediness’ with other people became noticeably weaker. The most noticeable effect of this was that I lost my former spiritual ‘friends’ because I was no longer a member of a group of fellow believers. As I progressively became free of malice, I was no longer interested in participating in conversations where the ills of the world were blamed on others. And as I became progressively free of sorrow, I was no longer interested in participating in conversations where being here was regarded as a miserable business and where it was firmly believed that succour or relief could only be found by retreating ‘inside’. There was a period of time where I felt an outsider or a loner but recently I had occasion to meet quite a few old friends at a social event and all feelings of being an outsider and a loner had totally disappeared. I had a pleasurable time with a group of fellow human beings, regardless of their beliefs, gender or cultural conditioning.

RICHARD: [..] Look, the whole point of minimising both the malicious/ sorrowful feelings (the ‘bad’ feelings) and their antidotal loving/ compassionate feelings (the ‘good’ feelings) whilst maximising the felicitous/ innocuous feelings (the ‘congenial’ feelings) is to make for a potent combination when this untrammelled conviviality operates in conjunction with a naïve sensuosity – whereby one is both likeable and liking – such that the benevolence and benignity of pure intent may increasingly become dynamically enabled for one purpose and one purpose alone … to wit: for the already always existing peace-on-earth to become apparent, in this lifetime, as this flesh-and-blood body. http://actualfreedom.com.au/richard/selectedcorrespondence/sc-intimacy.htm