I remember the first time someone told me, in effect, that I was an asshole. “I see you don’t suffer fools gladly,” a fellow barfly at the Lion’s Head bar remarked one night.
And I love you for that. I have come to that time and place in life where I look back and laugh and gloat and wince and realize, yes indeed, I was a fool of the first order. Makes me laugh and cry.
From a friend who has never, nor will ever, feel hip, (okay, maybe a tiny bit the 3 years I worked on Pee-Wee’s Playhouse) I share your admiration of the people of Kansas. They did the seeming impossible. They pondered the realities and voted with humanity rather than tribalism. Let’s hope that others notice what democracy really is about.
Hi Lucian, I always enjoy your articles. This one brought back memories from when I was in my 20's. I lived in the Village on 13th St. west of 6th Avenue in a six-story walkup. I was a newly married baby- sitter for an adorable boy, the son of the female editor of The Village Voice. When I was about to give birth, my father-in-law arranged for my husband and me to move to Stuyesant Town so I wouldn't have to walk up five flights with my big belly. I'm a retired clinical psychologist and author of six books. If you're curious, you'll find me on Amazon and Google, Edith Fiore, Ph.D. Thanks for stirring up my memory bank.
Dr. Fiore, your name sounded so familiar then I remembered I read one of your books several years ago. I'm sure you are familiar with Dr. Greyson and Dr. Tucker's work at the University of Virginia's Perceptual Studies group I corresponded with them after I had a series of very vivid dreams of incients (mostly my deaths :) in seemingly past lives, the theory of reincarnation being that we are all on an evolutionary journey, not just physically but spiritually and that very little progress can be n made in one lifetime, especially if we are stubborn and egotistical and are determined to barge ahead as we please and not listen to that inner voice. (anyone you know like Trump? and those like him). The overall goal is to reach a certain spiritual level where it is no longer necessary to reincarnate (were we all fallen angels trapped in the physical reality I wonder? In a near death experience over 50 years ago I was "taken" to observe the various leels of consciousness on the other side and those various "realities" were just real as our present reality. Some more so. It seems all is mind. Our everyday thoughts and actions determine our future, not only here but in the hereafter. Too bad people like Putin, Trump, Jones and all the rest would sure change their ways if they knew that (or would they, even then?) If you wish to write me maybe Lucian wouldn't mind giving you my email address. Of course at almost 90 now maybe not too many mote years to see how right I am. Of course if I am wrong and there is no afterlife I won't know I was wrong :)
Yes, that was the one. very very interesting,.There was a great presentation a while back ny John Cleese where he hosts Dr's Greyson & Tucker. I'm sure you must have had your share of academic resistance especially in the early ears. So many are quite certain (without doing any research) that it is a ll bunk. Just because they can't imagine how consciousness could possibly exist outside of a physical body, yet they can't explain exactly what consciousness is. If you email me at ozauthor@yahoo,com I'll send you a sort of an essay I wrote about my out of body experiences. Proven real by the way by a sensitive that could not possibly have known anything about my experience yet described it in great detail.
The Cleese panel are all pretty bright people and difficult to imagine after this hour and a half discussion any halfway intelligent person could still be skeptical. but then again some super intelligent people are just too intelligent for their own good and can't see the forest for the trees.Here is the link:
How very interesting to learn you regressed to five lives in one session. What a good hypnotherapist! I'm sure it solved some issues. Stay well and happy.
Well, Kansas does have quite a history as a state in the Union, and we may be headed back into another version of that but for votes like Tuesday's.
I get the point about having a sense of being embarrassed by the "hicks and right wing kooks" who have emerged in your state from time to time, I am from Iowa.
Thankfully "transhistorical collective moral guilt" is a bogus concept. All we can do is try our best not to perpetuate various outrages and oppressive nonsense, right? I can even work up some quantum of sympathy for people who fought for "the South" against "the war of Northern Oppression" with the essential caveat that they were deeply mistaken but hardly in any situation to easily, what, defect to the Union? Etc.
That was definitely our nadir as a society and any moves to bring it back are as evil as it gets. And yet Trump has been playing the race card since his b.s. about Obama's birth certificate, and before that, the Central Park Jogger fiasco! The kids he insisted were guilty found innocent and he persisted, persists to this day as far as I know.
if she thinks it's an excessive award for punitive Ds, but by all that's just and fair, almost no public figure in the good ole USA today deserves to be slapped upside the head with FORTY-FIVE MILLION DOLLARS in (theoretically) legally extractable damages as much as does Alex Jones.
ARGUABLY, only Trumpsky rivals his recent record as a skunk and a completely amoral liar. By "recent" I mean, the last hundred years or so? Who else is a candidate for that level of vicious slandering crackpottery, I ask you?
Future historians and generations yet unborn are going to gawk in shocked amazement at the sheer nastiness these people and their slimy ilk engaged in, as they were cheered on by a mob of dunces, a confederacy of dunces, so this jury evaluation, still awaiting finality in case the remitittur doctrine takes it down a few million, is one sign that karmic retribution is in the works.
In any case it's one thing to do your best to refrain from savage put-downs, or worse, of fools who patronize you directly, or insult you in other ways, and quite another to allow our collective revulsion at Trumpsky and Alex Jones, etc., to to be stifled. I say, I urge: do not stifle that moral outrage, but do not become "holier than thou" in the process, it can be pretty tricky at times but not when dealing with bombastic quasi-fascist oafs like Trump or Jones, that's for sure.
"And so too are they all, all honorable assholes" - said Brutus in the vernacular, at the funeral of Julius Caesar. When we have seen the corruption of our Presidency and the politicization of our highest court, the necessity of a public campaign to regain basic rights is critical. Thankfully that groundswell has reached Kansas. This is what it takes to redirect representational government, democratic or republican. It's the right thing to do, and it doesn't take a violent insurrection.
As a Kansas-born person who still has many strongly right-wing relatives living in the state, and with many of whom I now have much less contact than I used to, I was absolutely thrilled by this outcome. I was also absolutely stunned by this outcome, in a good way. Way to GO, Kansas!
KU has one of the best college rousers ever created. That musical punctuation, perfect for a huge crowd with its attention on all the other hullabaloo.
when you write about the Head, it makes me happy. it SHOULDN'T, since a lot of the time I spent there is lost forever, for the most obvious reason. but thinking about the way it felt entirely different from every other bar makes me happy. and it was certainly the regular clientele. it's even possible that I was the fool you wouldn't suffer gladly....
I know I've said all this before, but hey....
and yes, the Kansas thing indeed demonstrates that hipness can be a pretty limited strategy for getting a lot of serious shit done.
I believe that that the fool's in Kansas were Republican legislators, bigwigs, and poobahs who schemed against women generally to end abortion as a realistic alternative to carrying a pregnancy to term. Those fools lost big time.
The fools who thought that by putting this anti-abortion initiative on the primary ballot, the few people who showed up to vote would support it. Ha! The long lines proved that the majority of voters were there to vote against it.
I, too, said and did regrettable things when I was young. Many were alcohol fueled, which added
to the arrogance. But, life can be humbling and one grows. What is annoys me now is elders who are still entitled and arrogant. They have made no progress, which makes them uninteresting.
When I hear a young person make an insensitive or grandiose statement, I am more tolerant. They'll learn.
I became much more tolerant of fools one I figured out that I was one.
And I love you for that. I have come to that time and place in life where I look back and laugh and gloat and wince and realize, yes indeed, I was a fool of the first order. Makes me laugh and cry.
my sentiment exactly.
From a friend who has never, nor will ever, feel hip, (okay, maybe a tiny bit the 3 years I worked on Pee-Wee’s Playhouse) I share your admiration of the people of Kansas. They did the seeming impossible. They pondered the realities and voted with humanity rather than tribalism. Let’s hope that others notice what democracy really is about.
You worked on Pee-Wee's Playhouse?! I am so jealous. I loved Pee-Wee. Still do.
Hi Lucian, I always enjoy your articles. This one brought back memories from when I was in my 20's. I lived in the Village on 13th St. west of 6th Avenue in a six-story walkup. I was a newly married baby- sitter for an adorable boy, the son of the female editor of The Village Voice. When I was about to give birth, my father-in-law arranged for my husband and me to move to Stuyesant Town so I wouldn't have to walk up five flights with my big belly. I'm a retired clinical psychologist and author of six books. If you're curious, you'll find me on Amazon and Google, Edith Fiore, Ph.D. Thanks for stirring up my memory bank.
Dr. Fiore, your name sounded so familiar then I remembered I read one of your books several years ago. I'm sure you are familiar with Dr. Greyson and Dr. Tucker's work at the University of Virginia's Perceptual Studies group I corresponded with them after I had a series of very vivid dreams of incients (mostly my deaths :) in seemingly past lives, the theory of reincarnation being that we are all on an evolutionary journey, not just physically but spiritually and that very little progress can be n made in one lifetime, especially if we are stubborn and egotistical and are determined to barge ahead as we please and not listen to that inner voice. (anyone you know like Trump? and those like him). The overall goal is to reach a certain spiritual level where it is no longer necessary to reincarnate (were we all fallen angels trapped in the physical reality I wonder? In a near death experience over 50 years ago I was "taken" to observe the various leels of consciousness on the other side and those various "realities" were just real as our present reality. Some more so. It seems all is mind. Our everyday thoughts and actions determine our future, not only here but in the hereafter. Too bad people like Putin, Trump, Jones and all the rest would sure change their ways if they knew that (or would they, even then?) If you wish to write me maybe Lucian wouldn't mind giving you my email address. Of course at almost 90 now maybe not too many mote years to see how right I am. Of course if I am wrong and there is no afterlife I won't know I was wrong :)
Hi Robert,
What a great email!
You probably read, You Have Been Here Before: A Psychologist Looks at Past lives.
I'd love to hear more from you.
Edee
Yes, that was the one. very very interesting,.There was a great presentation a while back ny John Cleese where he hosts Dr's Greyson & Tucker. I'm sure you must have had your share of academic resistance especially in the early ears. So many are quite certain (without doing any research) that it is a ll bunk. Just because they can't imagine how consciousness could possibly exist outside of a physical body, yet they can't explain exactly what consciousness is. If you email me at ozauthor@yahoo,com I'll send you a sort of an essay I wrote about my out of body experiences. Proven real by the way by a sensitive that could not possibly have known anything about my experience yet described it in great detail.
The Cleese panel are all pretty bright people and difficult to imagine after this hour and a half discussion any halfway intelligent person could still be skeptical. but then again some super intelligent people are just too intelligent for their own good and can't see the forest for the trees.Here is the link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RGizqsLumo
How very interesting to learn you regressed to five lives in one session. What a good hypnotherapist! I'm sure it solved some issues. Stay well and happy.
Edee
As a Kansan, I’m often embarrassed by my home state, but not this week.
Well, Kansas does have quite a history as a state in the Union, and we may be headed back into another version of that but for votes like Tuesday's.
I get the point about having a sense of being embarrassed by the "hicks and right wing kooks" who have emerged in your state from time to time, I am from Iowa.
www.britannica.com/event/Bleeding-Kansas-United-States-history
And I am from Alabama and Louisiana by way of a stint in a much better Texas of yesteryear.
Thankfully "transhistorical collective moral guilt" is a bogus concept. All we can do is try our best not to perpetuate various outrages and oppressive nonsense, right? I can even work up some quantum of sympathy for people who fought for "the South" against "the war of Northern Oppression" with the essential caveat that they were deeply mistaken but hardly in any situation to easily, what, defect to the Union? Etc.
That was definitely our nadir as a society and any moves to bring it back are as evil as it gets. And yet Trump has been playing the race card since his b.s. about Obama's birth certificate, and before that, the Central Park Jogger fiasco! The kids he insisted were guilty found innocent and he persisted, persists to this day as far as I know.
We are all assholes--just a question of when it is your turn to flame.....
Aren't we glad one of us brought it up and confessed to it? Youth has a lot of opportunities to be a gigantic asshole.
Yet some just never progress past that
Well, way too many and I don't know what happened to us. I am shocked every day at how American citizens are. It breaks my heart.
I think all of us cringe at things we said or did when we were young and knew it all. Wisdom comes with age (at least for some of us--MAGAs excepted).
Some good news amid the dire accounts of all sorts of eco-problems and political chicanery, skullduggery and downright terrorism:
www.npr.org/2022/08/05/1116099506/alex-jones-infowars-sandy-hook-lies-45-million-in-punitive-damages FORTY-FIVE MILLION DOLLARS, MISTER JONES....
Yeah yeah yeah, the judge can, maybe must, apply the doctrine of en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remittitur
if she thinks it's an excessive award for punitive Ds, but by all that's just and fair, almost no public figure in the good ole USA today deserves to be slapped upside the head with FORTY-FIVE MILLION DOLLARS in (theoretically) legally extractable damages as much as does Alex Jones.
ARGUABLY, only Trumpsky rivals his recent record as a skunk and a completely amoral liar. By "recent" I mean, the last hundred years or so? Who else is a candidate for that level of vicious slandering crackpottery, I ask you?
Future historians and generations yet unborn are going to gawk in shocked amazement at the sheer nastiness these people and their slimy ilk engaged in, as they were cheered on by a mob of dunces, a confederacy of dunces, so this jury evaluation, still awaiting finality in case the remitittur doctrine takes it down a few million, is one sign that karmic retribution is in the works.
In any case it's one thing to do your best to refrain from savage put-downs, or worse, of fools who patronize you directly, or insult you in other ways, and quite another to allow our collective revulsion at Trumpsky and Alex Jones, etc., to to be stifled. I say, I urge: do not stifle that moral outrage, but do not become "holier than thou" in the process, it can be pretty tricky at times but not when dealing with bombastic quasi-fascist oafs like Trump or Jones, that's for sure.
This is just an absolutely fabulous piece. Thanks, Lucian.
Very nice juxtaposing, Lucian.
"And so too are they all, all honorable assholes" - said Brutus in the vernacular, at the funeral of Julius Caesar. When we have seen the corruption of our Presidency and the politicization of our highest court, the necessity of a public campaign to regain basic rights is critical. Thankfully that groundswell has reached Kansas. This is what it takes to redirect representational government, democratic or republican. It's the right thing to do, and it doesn't take a violent insurrection.
As a Kansas-born person who still has many strongly right-wing relatives living in the state, and with many of whom I now have much less contact than I used to, I was absolutely thrilled by this outcome. I was also absolutely stunned by this outcome, in a good way. Way to GO, Kansas!
"Rock-Chalk Jayhawk!"
KU has one of the best college rousers ever created. That musical punctuation, perfect for a huge crowd with its attention on all the other hullabaloo.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRcFMcvS5eM
when you write about the Head, it makes me happy. it SHOULDN'T, since a lot of the time I spent there is lost forever, for the most obvious reason. but thinking about the way it felt entirely different from every other bar makes me happy. and it was certainly the regular clientele. it's even possible that I was the fool you wouldn't suffer gladly....
I know I've said all this before, but hey....
and yes, the Kansas thing indeed demonstrates that hipness can be a pretty limited strategy for getting a lot of serious shit done.
Hope is hip. Thank you, Kansas.
Go for it, you Leavenworth High School Pioneer!
I believe that that the fool's in Kansas were Republican legislators, bigwigs, and poobahs who schemed against women generally to end abortion as a realistic alternative to carrying a pregnancy to term. Those fools lost big time.
The fools who thought that by putting this anti-abortion initiative on the primary ballot, the few people who showed up to vote would support it. Ha! The long lines proved that the majority of voters were there to vote against it.
I, too, said and did regrettable things when I was young. Many were alcohol fueled, which added
to the arrogance. But, life can be humbling and one grows. What is annoys me now is elders who are still entitled and arrogant. They have made no progress, which makes them uninteresting.
When I hear a young person make an insensitive or grandiose statement, I am more tolerant. They'll learn.