Exhaustion from moral insanity

When surrounded by those pursuing self-will we are buffeted and depleted; so rest!

Yesterday evening I turned right at a junction on an empty Alabama highway, and my passenger exclaimed “NO, WRONG SIDE!”. I was tired after a long day of socialising and travel, had mistyped the destination address into my satnav, so I defaulted to my autopilot left hand side of the road in a moment of confusion. There is no deep moral lesson, as negligence was not involved. I was making an ordinary error of unintended “freestyle driving” while drained, and it resulted in no loss or harm. That said, I know that my own internal depletion is felt widely, and is the result of both macro crazies of society as well as the localised relational difficulties we experience.

Anybody with a conscience right now is feeling the chronic effects of moral insanity around them, as narcissists, psychopaths, and weaponised bystanders inflict conflict and change upon us. There is only so much “no contact” you can establish to distance yourself from the abusers, whether they are the rapacious taxman, a deranged ex, a harassing neighbour — or even your own children whom you have to care for. While there are obvious crimes against humanity that need to be prosecuted, the frenzy of demons about us also inflict lesser harms through betrayals that do not meet the threshold of criminal law. We almost long for the “old dysfunction” of family and professional life before Covid’s murderous rampage and mass exposure of corruption.

Inside of me are a dozen essays I feel I “ought” to put out, and another dozen “poverty walks” from the summer in the UK that “need” to be processed and told, and a collection of course materials for “spiritual exit from the law” seminars that “must” be written. None of those will happen today, and I am deliberately writing about the need to rest, and hand many of our problems back to providence. If you are leading your own family out of its generational curses, or evicting the sociopaths in your life, or rebuffing the fallout from someone else’s crazies, then you have enough on your plate already. As long as you still have your daily bread every day, the rest is surplus, and a waste of worry. As an “achiever maximiser” personality this is particularly challenging.

At the weekend I attended a Bible seminar by Hassan Boyle, who shared a simple framework that I wish I had in my pocket years ago:

• Theology — study of God and worship, which begets…

• Philosophy — study of purpose and reality, which begets…

• Psychology — study of mind and behaviour, which begets…

• Sociology — study of social interaction as the base.

In retrospect, I can see how many of my social issues derive from theological roots, most notably the divergent spiritual beliefs of my own parents. Meanwhile, I can observe how religious friends struggle to ground their exalted faith in the reality of actual fallen social relationships. Each of us is challenged to span and integrate all these domains in our life. Everything behavioural is downstream of what we edify, and every worldly choice we make edifies something in a higher realm. The exhaustion we collectively confront is from “polyinsanity” — madness that spans every single one of these, making ordinary interaction with our context painfully capricious and crooked. The maddening banality of evil assails us at all levels of societal abstraction.

As a result, we are in a kind of hostage crisis, and the proportion of our own life that flows directly from our own choices is forcibly restricted, and ever more time is dedicated to dealing with crises and chaos. Those who kept a lid on their dark personality traits in the past are acting out in ways that expose them, yet at a cost to us all — at everything from government policy to shared childcare. At some point the mind virus of self-sabotage devours its hosts, but we have not yet reached that final denouement yet. When most people were conned by the cult in culture, there was a false peace; in future, post-collapse, there is a real peace; at present we are in the transition zone of “peak pathocracy”.

Right now I am in my seventh Airbnb in a month, having also enjoyed the hospitality of three patriot homes in that time. The ongoing legal matter means I cannot write about the details, but I can say that I am being thrown about by external forces, as if I had been kidnapped by clowns who keep moving me around and holding me to ransom. The best I can do is stay healthy via nutritious food, enjoy the sun while it is out (I am typing this on an outside bench), and relax as best I can in the circumstances. Rather than force myself into work today, I had a hot bath, and resolved to write about my own self-care to encourage others to do the same. This feels more loving than to inflict yet more mad stories or fresh wisdom on others.

The faith aspect of this is the deep knowledge that the wages of sin are deadly, and that every form of bonkers burns itself out eventually, even if after war and genocide. I can see those around me setting themselves up for an automatic fall, so there is no need for me to rush to seek accountability on my own terms or timescale. Once sufficient exposure is achieved, there is a natural course to events. We are instructed to stand and hold the moral line, not to advance or retreat. Having an infinitely large receptacle for “God problems” is reassuring, and lets me relax back into what is truly my own mission. After I have cleaned up my own house, the family is the next priority. If I have capacity for public creativity, that’s a bonus.

One of my lessons in doing this public advocacy role is to stop whipping myself for how many posts I do or don’t make. The minority who choose to support me financially grasp that they are paying not for me to type, but to have experiences that are worth reflecting upon and sharing. I do not control how those adventures arrive in my world, and there is no editorial schedule as a result. Resting is an intrinsic part of the pioneering journey. The moral insanity — knowingly doing wrong and causing harm because it pleases you — is pervasive and the effects are debilitating to empaths. We are constantly having to reassert our boundaries and renew our resources as they are wasted on fights we did not choose.

The solace we can take is that full exposure is looming large, and that while distressing, the truth naturally reunifies us and resolves the higher-order forms of spiritual psychosis. Those who awaken to their own delusion and deception may act out at the sociology level, but they are at least now aligned to a single source of truth at the theological one. Removing the poison of living by lies paradoxically makes things look worse as it comes out of the vital organs of existence to the surface and the societal skin slews off. The sicker that things look in public, the healthier the condition of the collectivist patient as it recovers from the media-induced hallucinations it was under. Healing was always a tiring business; rest is the only prescription for recovery.

The ultimate irony may be that to endure a Great Awakening we have to sleep more. The general absence of alarm clocks from my own life is essential to my welfare; I let my body have the rest it needs when I can. I guess the writers of Ephesians felt that the “Pillow of Protection” didn’t sit so well with the Belt of Truth, Breastplate of Righteousness, Gospel of Peace, Shield of Faith, Helmet of Salvation, and Sword of the Spirit. The greatest spiritual weapon of all seems to be stopping and being silent; a prayer without words, only connection to all that there is. My own “fight for freedom” today ends with this: after I post this article, I resolve to take the remainder of the day off. Maybe you should, too, after reading it? Moral insanity is exhausting.

Playing on swings in Florence, AL.