There are times when what you really need cannot come from another person, even if you have a specific exchange in mind that requires another person’s participation. Oftentimes the roles you assign to people in your life are facets of your own personality. To demand loyalty to a certain extent limits your own need to shift and change as you see fit.
This Democracy Now! special features the world-renowned linguist and political dissident Noam Chomsky. In a public conversation with Amy Goodman in April, he talked about climate change, nuclear weapons, North Korea, Iran, the war in Syria and the Trump administration’s threat to prosecute WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
There’s a theory of personality that says the only way we learn who we are is through conflict. Mostly that means the social bump and grind that comes from asserting who you are and what you want. Currently society is set on hair-trigger when it comes to expressing any desire that can’t be fulfilled by shoving a credit card into a chip reader.
You’re not someone who needs the deeper shades of life explained to you; you’re in touch with yourself on a core level that, as you’ve noticed, eludes most of your friends. Indeed, they reach toward you for validation of their inner journey, and for this unusual gift that you have of turning darkness into light.
You or others might be feeling internal pressure, impatience, or resolve to finally make some progress, try something new, or even conduct a wild experiment or two. The most important thing is that you not assume everything is done moving and shaking; we’re in the midst of a long series of shifts that persists for nearly two weeks.
Adherence to laws and social norms is viewed in certain circles as an indicator of moral character. Like other such indicators, it’s only partly reliable; the history of civil disobedience and the civil rights movements make that clear. If progress is to occur at all, sometimes we must break the rules; and this in itself can be a moral imperative.
The idea that doubt can lead to certainty is one of the more grossly abused philosophical concepts of our culture. People usually take it to mean that if they doubt enough possibilities, then they will notice the truth when they come across it. But more often we end up doubting the truth and believing lies and deceptions, then wondering how this happened.
