Preamble
“Nothing binds people more firmly together than deeply rooted social usages that are observed because they appear to each member of society as something beautiful and worth striving for.” ~ The I Ching
Ladies and Gentlemen, rest assured, there is a Fun Police. They oversee many divisions, including the Thought Police and the Joke Police. Just saying this, you will run into them. They will say, “No there isn’t!” and chide you for your wrongthink—despite the fact, of course, that they supposedly believe personal experience is sacrosanct. They will say, “There is nothing fun about white supremacy, white innocence, toxic masculinity, the patriarchy, or oppression! We are just against what is obviously bad!”
The proper response here is “Sports were fun.” Then watch them try to gaslight your past (and personal) experience of sports and tell you how you were secretly participating in one of those most heinous atrocities—for which they have so many made-up, but intelligent, official, and scary sounding names—when you thought you were just enjoying sports.
Sports were fun. And—although I am sure there were frequently racist things said and thought and acted out in all sorts of ways all over the country across billions of interactions surrounding sports—sports were also, and much more frequently so, the most common place where people met and transcended these cares of race, politics, religion, etc.
Sports—both in playing and watching—have been a tremendous good for so many people. And they have been incredibly fun. Recently, they have become markedly less fun—even America’s game, though it stood strong much longer than others, has been blemished and stooped lately—and people have been tuning out. Those turning away know there is a Fun Police, and only those acting in support of the Fun Police would try to convince them they don’t know what they’re talking about.
You know what else was fun? Fantasy fiction. I particularly loved Star Wars and the Tolkien universe—and woe is me, for both have been brought into the realm of the political through vicious manipulation by those for whom a) everything is political and b) any means are acceptable because anyone who disagrees with them is evil (a hallmark of the Sith, as we shall address later).
Harry Potter took possibly the first public blows as people began substituting racist political analyses for their enjoyment of good stories; but J.K. Rowling basically invited and aided the defilement. She took a stand later against the encroaching absurdities, and came out standing—though battered—after the storm, and she deserves respect for that; better late than never, no matter how late—after all, she wasn’t nearly as late as Percy!
Star Wars has fared worse. It fell, has fallen, and will remain fallen as far as “official” cannon goes—the “rise” of Skywalker being a horribly ironic misnomer. It has been so decimated that the only hope of any recovery is a full and official ret-con of the attempted sequel trilogy along with most other Disney ransackings. There won’t even be short negotiations on this matter; negotiations are not offered.
George Lucas had a price, and sold his soul-child to the devil. Still, I cannot hate him by any means. Fiction is more alive than a commodity that can be bought and sold and destroyed by some outside forces—whether by ideologically possessed mega-corporations or the Nothing and Gmork; you can tell me Disney makes cannon the same way you can tell me all white people are racist—no matter who you are, I don’t have to buy it.
But the real sacking of the temple is to be found in Tolkien. When I wrote most of this, I still had some hope the travesty would never really manifest itself. I, for one, won’t bother watching and pretending it is in any way relevant to my beloved stories. This is made all the easier by the Tolkien family retaining the rights to the Silmarillion, and thus the necessary distinction of a “reimagination” (displaying such an ironic, though characteristic lack of imagination!). But while the Tolkien family holds strong, we should not consider them any more impervious and everlasting than the walls of Helm’s Deep.
A few years ago, some of the well-milled college idiots wrote a piece of garbage on the walls of our world-wide latrine about how orcs are stand-ins for black people or minorities in general. Hopefully you didn’t hear it here first, but Tolkien was not a racist and his books are not racist. Orcs do not represent black people or any other definable, particular minority groups.
A search of the lore—that is, a search for the truth—would have revealed letters between Tolkien and his son wherein the term the term ‘orcs’ was used to describe real world people. Entire masses of people were termed an “orc-crowd”. What an extreme characterization!
But what was the characteristic that linked these individuals, making them worthy of such vile description? It wasn’t along official geo-political lines, marking their declared “enemy” at the given time as the irredeemable orcs; it wasn’t along national lines—the closest Tolkien gets to disparaging a nationality (as far as I am aware) is insisting that the Irish do not have any “true” fairy-stories in their heritage in some of his earliest drafts and notes; and it most certainly wasn’t along racial lines. It was along behavioral lines.
Orcs could be seen within the ranks of the enemy, but also in their own ranks—their fellow Englishmen. Orcs were people who were carelessly and callously destructive. They might beat and break shrubs as they went through, just for the sake of enjoying destruction. As Tolkien saw it, they were the kind of people who delighted in warfare—even among his own countrymen. He was happy the war was being won, and won by the side standing for what was good and right in the end, but he was appalled at the necessary conditions and price of warfare.
In one of his letters, J.R.R. Tolkien bemoaned the “appalling destruction” of the “common wealth of Europe… the loss of which will affect us all, victors or not” and remarked mournfully that “there seem no bowels of mercy or compassion, no imagination, left in this dark diabolic hour.”[i] (How hauntingly these words return!) He was for compassion and he was downhearted because of the evil natures he could see within those who were supposedly his allies and brothers.
“People gloat to hear of the endless lines, 40 miles long, of miserable refugees, women and children pouring West, dying on the way,” Tolkien wrote with horror. “We were supposed to have reached a stage of civilization in which it might still be necessary to execute a criminal, but not to gloat, or to hang his wife and child by him while the orc-crowd hooted.”[ii]
Orcs are destructive beings, who delight in carnage and have no compassion for the suffering around them, so long as they are winning. It is a behavioral type; a judgement of character.
But the truth and reality of the matter is not part of the assessment; indeed this is no surprise for, by the criteria of these assessors, the “truth and reality” of the matter do not exist—these ideas of truth and common reality are merely tools of the oppressors to keep their hold on power. Those who tear down all of society by painting it as inherently and inescapably motivated by evil at every level are as orcish as you can get.
Fiction can be fun, and fiction did used to be fun—and, honestly, it is still alive and kicking in many areas. But the raping and pillaging of universes for the sake of racist politics is not fun; it is also quite obviously seen as completely unnecessary—regardless of the relative importance of politics—to everybody except those few louts who are doing it, for whom politics are everything. The same is true of the politicization of sports. Use this reality-check as your reference section to consult when some shirriff of the fun police comes at you with emotionally-manipulative jargon.
For those to whom the call backs to the glory days of sports aren’t as effective, Just Some Guy on YouTube has both catalogued and rebutted the smearing of fiction in the name of racist politics. He also found the best term for the works of the twisting ones who name themselves and their work in deceptive ways—racist politics. James Lindsay spent enormous effort in coming up with a more technically accurate, damning nomenclature—Race Marxism—but “racist politics” is more visceral and less esoteric, but equally accurate and damning. JSG FTW.
Those who see orcs as representative of racial (or other) minority groups have racist-goggles on. End of story. Get your racist politics out of Tolkien, and the rest of fantasy for that matter. And sports.
Defund the fun police.
“If one sees good but is dilatory [in doing it], if the time for action arrives and one is doubtful, if you know something is wrong but you sanction it—it is in these three that the Tao stops. If one is soft and quiet, dignified and respectful, strong yet genial, tolerant yet hard—it is in these four that the Tao begins. Accordingly, when righteousness overcomes desire one will flourish; when desire overcomes righteousness one will perish.” ~The Six Secret Teachings
Ch. 1: Remediation Required
“These educators and sophists… punish anyone who isn’t persuaded, with disenfranchisement, fines, or death… A teacher in such a community is afraid of his students and flatters them, while the students despise their teachers or tutors… The old stoop to the level of the young… for fear of appearing disagreeable and authoritarian”
~ Plato, Republic
I recently withdrew from a Master’s of Science in Counseling after just a little more than one semester. I am a Parsifal. I blundered into this situation and made a fool of myself in many ways, not least because I should have been more prepared, more aware, given the opportunities and ample information I had been exposed to. Reality was just as bad, if not worse, than all the horror stories I had been told. Yet I thought these only exceptional examples, only fringe freak occurrences—fairytales. Had I heeded these fairytales, I would have been better off.
“When puzzling over an ethical dilemma, we often turn to authorities. The law, a supervisor, and the ethics code can provide invaluable help. We misuse these resources, however, if we use them to short-circuit our ethical judgement… We cannot hide behind ethics codes as a refuge from an active, creative search for the most ethical response.” [i]
“The standards, principles, and guidelines articulated by our profession, the licensing boards, and the civil and criminal courts should never serve to inhibit careful ethical deliberation or serve as a substitute for thoughtful decision making and personal responsibility… constant questioning [is] an inescapable part of what we do as therapists and counselors.” [ii]
I brought up these quotes from our ethics textbook to my professors point blank in expressing my concerns and confronting their dismissal of any and all my attempts at discussion. Apparently, these are mere platitudes, as they ignored them as well and insisted the doctrine could not be questioned.
This book is not an attempt at retribution on others for my own foolishness. Things were more crooked and convoluted than I had expected—though I had expected them to be out of place to some degree. But I was far less composed and effective than I believed—and still believe—I should have been. This is merely my next step in trying to help set things straight, though I have had to step back and start again from another place.
As the formerly known and accepted pass of working from within has been covered and blocked by an avalanche of absurdities (encouraged by fell voices in the air, indeed!)—far more than the usual acceptable roughness of the road, as I will show—this new way through must be made by a more disagreeable road, by more disagreeable means. We must risk alerting the Balrog to our presence and facing him already. Therefore, if you have no sword or shield to protect you from his dark fire, it would be wise to procure both.
Thorny as this book is, and what may be called partisanship (though “non-universalism” is more accurate) notwithstanding, my intention in writing is to help. In order to help, we must talk about responsibility, for without responsibility there is no change. That being said, it is not helpful to “blame” very much. I do not want to point fingers more than is necessary to illustrate the issue. The responsibility must ultimately and always most importantly resolve back to “What should I myself be doing now and going forward?”
No doubt some of the illustration will seem to entail some degree of finger pointing. Yet I am certainly not in any stable position to point fingers—the three pointed back at me have plenty to say. I did not comport myself anywhere near flawlessly, and I will make my concessions more specific as we go on and not leave my fault to vagaries. Still, though I made many mistakes to be detailed, I believe my blundering efforts to address the issue were well founded in their concerns, and the failure of my efforts on the whole still says something worth looking at and seeing for what it is, despite my flawed execution.
Moreover, the issue is not so simple; direct responsibility for the issues I tried to bring up does not necessarily lie with my professors, who some might see as the most salient “villains” and want to stop there. The problem has been imposed from the top, and the professors are just “doing their jobs”; they are mere antagonists in this story—and of course, not from their own vantage point. Unfortunately for them, ultimate relativism is wrong. But we must see how alluring it really is, and how we have all been convinced to fall so far into it that we have come to this point where it is a monster we must vanquish, rather than a small absurdity to merely be stepped around.
It is a part of the irony so prevalent in our modern story that it is now academics and the more “educated” types, who for decades have been the most vociferous prosecutors of those “just doing their jobs”—whether domestically enforcing (real or imagined) racist laws, or at Abu Ghraib, or in the Nazi concentration camps—and hailing the necessity for independent thought and ethical decision making as the obvious solution, who will now have no other defense to turn to as their horrendously skewed ethics and unrepentant groupthink become more and more clear as the cause of so much modern suffering.
I did not come into this situation as a neutral party, and, knowing my own position, I tried to evade as many foreseeable problems as I could. I looked into and talked to people with firsthand experience of the options for becoming licensed to practice in a counseling/psychology role—something that could serve as my base requirements for ultimately pursuing Jungian Analysis. LCSW, LCPC, and Psychologist (Ph.D.) were all options on the table.
I was not terribly interested in performing research and wanted to get into the practice more quickly, so I crossed a Ph.D. off my list—not to mention having been acutely aware of the nonsensical and counter-productive dogma being put out by the APA. Between the LCSW and LCPC degrees and programs, I looked into the requirements for which one was more heavily inundated with Social Justice curricula. LCSW was by a fair amount. So, I decided to pursue LCPC to skirt these issues as much as possible.
At this point, I assumed and expected the Social Justice requirements that were listed as part of the LCPC program were more or less what I had encountered in college 6+ years ago, and occasionally in the work setting since. I had been following all the outstanding cases covered by some media, but surely it was not all that bad everywhere. My first significant mistake.
I assumed the Social Justice types would be there to say their thing and make their show, but that most people—even most of the ones professing these “lessons”—weren’t actually that committed to the imperialistic evangelism inherent in the doctrine. I was expecting lip service and passing interest. So, even if I had seen that the ACA officially declared Social Justice as one of the “core values” of the profession, I would have assumed this same sort of relationship. A PR statement, not an ideology which actively guided pedagogy and enforced ethical standards. So, mistaken as it was, this ignorance wouldn’t have been avoided given any reasonable amount of further effort on my part.
I also chose not to even consider going to a big-name school, though I certainly had the test scores, resume, and recommendations for it. The bigger schools have seemed to have gathered more attention, and therefore more Social Justice pressure. A smaller, obscure school, in a location nowhere near notorious for Social Justice activity was surely a better bet. Aside from all that, I wanted online school and a cheaper school.
This was a multifaceted mistake; not only was there no less Social Justice presence, enforcement, and commitment, but also the undershooting of the school caliber (compounded probably by the online factor) negatively affected my outlook on the classes and materials overall, and honestly on the faculty and students as well. It has been shown that students placed in schools above their capacities do worse than students placed in schools that fit their capacities. The incidence is undoubtedly much smaller—though perhaps still understudied—but I can say the effect almost certainly runs in the opposite direction as well.
So, while I made some efforts to avoid the issues I could foresee, the efforts were at best mixed in their efficacy. Then came a mistake outside of my control, but which we can generously chalk up to seemingly pernicious serendipity. In my interview for the program, one of the questions I was asked was what were my views on and definitions of culture and Social Justice.
I had not particularly expected this question, and I decided to take it one step at a time. I defined culture as at least a two-part phenomenon consisting of what might be called super-ego material conferred on you, and later developed through more conscious choices about what to keep, get rid of, or take on additionally. I paused after defining culture in this way, and without further question or address, my interviewing professor moved on without seeming to notice or care that I had not commented on Social Justice. We all might have been saved much grief if I had been weeded out as a dissident at this point. But I took it as a confirmation of my expectations at the time that the attitude toward the “necessary” Social Justice elements of the program were passing formalities.
Still, I was not nonchalant, and was very much on my guard for shady shenanigans around expectations and implementations of the Social Justice dogma. I rigorously documented its presence in the readings and textbooks. This hawkish attention was double-edged. It gave me plenty of cause for concern, and cause to take a stand, but it also set me up to be less effective in my communication as I felt these problems were so blindly obvious, since I paid so much attention to them. Somewhat of a mistake. Certainly, I could have handled this better.
Things came to a head very quickly. I had expected to eke by until the actual Multiculturalism class in my 3rd semester, where I expected to have to work harder than in any other class I had been in to make my case and retain my values (though not to say I wouldn’t have been open to any change upon encountering new, well supported information—that itself being one of my values). Yet, merely at the end of our first semester, each class had a special section on Social Justice and Multicultural issues (except, I believe, the Neuropsych elective class, which was part of a different department).
In one class, I did both of my required article critiques throughout the semester on Social Justice issues, and even had email correspondence with the professor where I directly mentioned the contents of my critiques. It turns out—I found out later—she never bothered to read those assignments (this being the same professor who didn’t notice my lack of answer in the interview), even though she gave me full credit and commented “good job” on the assignment—for when she joined the second meeting addressing my issues, she was quite confused and surprised by my “difficulties” and “issues” with the material.
Still, it is probably for the best, or I would have had more to answer for and had less ground to feel secure on; the second critique I wrote—after dealing with the material for weeks and being frustrated about it in other classes as well—was so scathing it was, in places, unprofessional. Luck alone (of having a ‘professor in name only’) saved me from paying more for that mistake.
Later I will describe some of the specifics of the conversation as well as some potential counterpoints to my conclusions. For now, let me say that I came to the discussions prepared and ready to discuss the many articles I had read on the subjects at hand. I had read all the assigned material, looked into many of the citations provided by those articles, and done much of my own research into contrasting opinions and findings in peer-reviewed literature as well. I had given an enormous amount of my own time and effort into preparing to make my case and support my perspectives. I was also open to hearing about studies and findings that I had not found or heard of, and where to go and look to be all the more assured that I was wrong and the instituted values of Social Justice and Equity were very much well-founded and in the right. No such discussion or instruction ever occurred or was offered.
I brought up the importance of definitions and the ethical mandate to question ethical mandates and not fear accusations of wrongthink which was stated so many times in my ethics book it was like a broken record. I tried to point out the issue with focusing on a particular archetypal reality as the bedrock for all social interactions, present though it may be. I tried to bring up clearly misused statistics, and clearly unparsimonious implications flooding any given Social Justice-bent text, with several particular examples at hand.
I had brought up in class the issue of rejecting and discrediting efficacy testing and outcome research, and still pretending to the prestige of “science”. I was prepared to talk about citations in our text supposedly supporting Multiculturalism and Social Justice, but which, when looked up, were neutral at best, if not outright supportive of the contrary. I was prepared to talk about articles—written by overtly pro- Social Justice researchers—citing negative outcomes of race competition, and the obvious effects of emotionally charged language and labels. I was prepared to talk about the distinction between “implicit bias” and “racism”, and the implications thereof. I was prepared to discuss, question, and possibly learn why IAT studies exclusively tested white subjects and the possible value and implication of the data being intentionally omitted. I was prepared to talk about the assumptions being made about the simplicity of the unconscious in presuming to know the cause of any given complex. I was prepared to talk about the ridiculousness of assuming corresponding outcomes based on microsecond variations in hesitation (and lack of empirical evidence supporting this tenuous hypothesis).
Instead of a chance to “discuss my concerns” (as the meetings were advertised) and achieve clarity, or even be rigorously educated and enlightened about my own benighted perspectives, we stalled out at the start. According to my professors, Equity explicitly defined as equality of outcome was not only a completely acceptable goal and value, but a necessary, mandated goal—one that it was unacceptable to question. Because Social Justice as such (and with it, its views of and definition of equity) had been elevated to a “core value” of the profession, it was now no longer an idea or theory that needed to be explained and taught, nor could it be questioned. It was merely to be accepted—even though there are, of course, no end of ethical mandates to question not only ideas but values as well; and never mind the fact that Social Justice philosophies are some of the chief proponents of the necessity of questioning so-called values.
I had a hard time keeping my cool at the beginning of the first discussion, when Equity was outright avowed. Maybe if I had been more even keeled, and rolled off this point sooner I might have found some other inroads elsewhere. Maybe, even, I completely screwed up the situation by getting affected by the discussion, and did so badly that my entire analysis and conclusions are wildly off the mark. Maybe if I could just not have appeared in the ballpark of being an angry straight-white-male, I would have found discussion of varying views in this academic context completely open, pleasant, and tolerant. I admit, my case is not clean; and if it stood alone, it would be entirely dismissible because of my incompetence in execution.
But it doesn’t stand alone; it fits a well-known pattern. Perhaps that is just my bias speaking, hoping to see what I would hate to see (but secretly want to be right about, despite the unpleasant implications); but I don’t think so. And I think many people will know exactly what I am talking about, and will have been through or seen others go through very similar situations, and have been uneasy about the ideas that wander through their head with alarming frequency which cannot be uttered in “professional” company. (Which, incidentally, is why my ethics textbook points out one of the symptoms of groupthink is “assuming silence means consent,” and why my professors only bear a small part of the responsibility for this mess.)
All in all, regardless of my blundering muddying the water, regardless of how accommodating and understanding my professors might have been, at the end of the day I would not have been able to say I am committed, as one of my highest values, to Social Justice and Advocacy; and realistically, I wouldn’t have been able to hold it in much longer anyhow given how many more times I would have heard people flippantly supporting “equality of outcome” and paying lip service of high praise to emotionally loaded terms stoking race- and class-based resentment as wonderful additions to addressing individual and national mental health issues.
As such, that makes me an incompetent and unethical counselor, and the ACA and however many of you are seemingly glad to have barred me from practice—for no matter how bad the mental health crisis may be, could you imagine if all of our counselors weren’t Social Justice Advocates above all else and didn’t believe in equality of outcome as a good value, even the highest value? I was put into official “remediation” processes and threatened with “dismissal” (because changing the word makes the reality go down so much easier than “expulsion”), and given the choice of completing the remediation requirements or withdrawing.
When I chose to withdraw, I felt like a coward; I felt like I was betraying my own ideals; I felt like I sinned even against the will of God. The right thing to do seemed to be to bear up under the burden, to accept the suffering and keep pushing through, to let the injustice be done—document it as much as possible—but let it play itself out upon me and not back down or flee. I decided to take the easier road, that my own indignation, my own emotional reactions, were too much to bear and overrode my duty. I too am a child of these times—a lover of comfort, ease, and used to my entitlements.
I don’t say this to win sympathy, nor am I writing this book as a personal charge of righting wrongs I feel were inflicted upon me. It was just a feeling I had to deal with, including seeing my own weakness to feelings and failings at enacting an ideal. I felt I should have gone through with the remediation process as much as I could, if nothing else for the sake of documenting the absurdity of it. But I took the easy way out, as so many of us have. I gave into the pattern that got us into this mess. So not only did I make so many mistakes in my approach and execution, I proved myself no better than anyone else at standing up to it and making a difference when the time came.
Hence, I can understand why we find ourselves in this situation and how we got here; we all walked here together—I as much as any of you. Life is difficult and these issues are difficult—it is no wonder why we all fail so often to do (or even know) what is right.
I gave up on academics and left it to the dogs, turning now to the private sphere where things are more comfortable and hospitable (relatively speaking—of course, I received no offers from publishers or agents to support this project either). I retreated, even though I was in the right. I proved no real advocate for Justice against the anti-justices of Social Justice, and no ideal, stalwart, rational citizen helping to make the world a better place by being the best that a man can be.
I am quite certain I am The Fool writing this. Yet I do not know truly whether this is my red knight moment, or my facing of the shadow cast by the hideous woman[1]. I am also Isabella, and this is my cactus. I have tried to be universal and perfect (and of course failed and been foolish about this already, even for having such pride as to try), now I will make something more real.
The world is difficult, and it is also harsh and—as it includes people—can be malevolent. You need a sturdy set of spines to resist those looking to incorporate your life force for their own ends. In any case, it’s time to air the shadow.
“Since mindfulness, of all things, is the ground of being, to speak one’s true mind, and to keep things known in common, serves all being, just as laws made clear uphold the city, yet with greater strength. Of all pronouncements of the law the one source is the Word whereby we choose what helps true mindfulness prevail.” ~ Heraclitus
~The complete story can be found as a PDF on my Thinkspot page or my personal website: Jnanayogaphilosophy.com/my-books ~
[1] See He: Understanding Masculine Psychology by Robert A. Johnson.
[i] Tolkien, J. R. R. (1945, January 30). Tolkien Estate. Retrieved from https://www.tolkienestate.com/letters/christopher-tolkien-30-jan-1945/.
[ii] Ibid.
[i] Pope, K. S., Trinidad, V. M. J., Chavez-Dueñas Nayeli Y., & Adames, H. Y. (2021). Ethics in psychotherapy and counseling: A practical guide. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., p. 29.
[ii] Ibid, p. 153.