Kim Jong-Il Is Dead – The Telegraph Offers Parallels To The Power-Mad In Our Own Society
I’m not sure how the Telegraph compiled this list of propaganda about Kim Jong-Il but even if it is half accurate, there is a story here. You would think that God himself had been North Korea’s leader after reading this article. This type of extreme self-aggrandizing is common of the manufactured self-image or ego of the power-mad. The human ego is capable of amazing rationalizations (self-delusions) and self-deceit. These rationalizations and self-deceit must be created by the ego of the extremely unstable mind. Otherwise, the ego would be faced with resolving the dichotomy that who I am does not match who I believe I am. An extreme example of this dichotomy in Jong Il’s case is the unique divinity, goodness and ability to lead North Korea that he believed himself to possess and the fact that he killed his own brother and terrorized a nation. That dichotomy cannot exist in the mind without the ego’s self-deceit. So, instead the ego will do anything and everything to rationalization its behavior. There is little doubt Kim Jong-Il actually believed his own self-delusions. His mind made them real.
Self-deceit is an attempt by the ego to control its inherent instability. We all rationalize - we all tell lies. Even if they are only little white lies our mind tells to ourselves. We all seek to control. Even if it is only to control what happens within our own mind. The duality of the conscious human mind exists in everyone. It is part of the human condition. But, the ego or manufactured self becomes all-consuming and incredibly distorted in those with the most unstable sense of self. The power-mad exhibit such extreme distortions. And, it is when those people are able to impose that incredible distortion on the rest of us that we see environments around the globe that we see so prevalent today. The volatility we see today is a result of that imposition of the distorted mind failing. The system of fraud and corruption is collapsing. Everywhere. While very painful, enlightenment, if achieved on some level, is a very good thing.
While Kim Jong-Il is obviously a very, very unstable mind capable of extreme brutality and murder, (even his own brother) and the rationalizations and self-deceit that goes along with it, we can consistently see much of the behavior highlighted in the Telegraph list by looking at those who seek power and authority in our own society, Europe, Russia, China and elsewhere. In the U.S. two examples are obviously Wall Street or politicians.
Every election cycle I watch the television commercials portraying the political, often power-mad mind in a similar, if less outrageous, vein as those outlined in the Kim Jong-Il Telegraph article highlighted above. These infomercials portray politicians often as martyrs, saints and God-like. They kiss babies, tell us of their heroic exploits that qualify them to uniquely lead us, tell us the millions of jobs they are going to create for all of us, how they are uniquely qualified to be some Orwellian economic savior and other manipulations that many no doubt believe; just as Kim Jong-Il no doubt believed his own self-delusions and lies of the mind. There is no coincidence that these manipulators appeal to the ideation of being a savior. The ego in all of us loves to outsource its responsibilities to others. And, who better to outsource them to than a politician promising to take care of us. Possibly even take care of us like our parents never did.
What really catches my ear is when someone seeking power, typically a politician, starts professing their undying devotion to God. The power-mad mind is supremely gifted at manipulation and control. And there is no greater manipulation than to try to convince the rest of us (after that unstable mind has convinced itself of its own deceit) that they have some divine connection or divine authority. In fact, this God-given divinity is the very basis of neoliberalism (Social Darwinism) and the associated class warfare and economic model that exists within our society and the world today. In other words, those who rise to the level of authority in neoliberalism do so because it is survival of the fittest. So, they are uniquely qualified to tell the rest of us how to lead our lives. Nothing can be used to manipulate someone more than that they are Godly. After making a mockery of spirituality, there are no angles of attack left against someone when someone publicly professes, for deceptive purposes, their divine connection. Doing so is akin to attacking God. Don’t think this isn’t understood by those seeking power and using such manipulations. They are divine right up until they head to public office to take endless sums of money from lobbyists, or stuff their pockets while trading with insider information, or carpet bomb countless innocent men, women and children, (rationalizations) or line up their next job as a lobbyist or corporate toadie after they leave office.
Politicians and many television evangelists share much in common. They both reach a wide audience to share their ego’s own self-deceit with as many potential followers as possible. And then, depending on the gift of rhetoric, the money and power just starts rolling in. Personally, I think we can anecdotally use as a measuring stick the amount of money a politician makes using his crony Rolodex after leaving public office to how unstable that person’s ego is. The bigger the line of bullshit, the greater the ability to deceive and manipulate. Now, were any politician to leave office to start Google or Apple, well, that’s a little different. Because industriousness, discovery, merit and honest work should be rewarded. Public service is NOT politics. And a politician is NOT a leader. Not even close. Some day politics, a relic of history, will go the way of the Dodo bird in favor of post-political self-rule.
Similarly Wall Street is defined by unstable behavior of excessive and extravagant showings of power; yachts, Ferraris, estates in the Hamptons, etc. Or, whether it includes the drug use, prostitution, alcoholism or other extreme behavior sought by an unstable self-image we see as rampant on Wall Street. I remember reading some years ago in the height of the Wall Street bubble about a New York City restaurant creating a gold dessert for tens of thousands of dollars. Then there was Lloyd Blankfein’s comments about doing God’s work. Or Jamie Dimon’s comment that his bank didn’t need a bailout; a delusional rationalization with absolutely no truth to it. And, then we highlighted some years ago the talk of building a direct highway from New York to the Hamptons and the parallels to the same traffic jams to the Hamptons we saw during the 1920s before the coming Wall Street collapse. (Remember, one of our anticipated outcomes is that New York is headed for an incredibly hard landing and that Wall Street may be headed for complete failure… forever.) The list of cues are endless once you start to understand the instability of the mind consumed with power and control over truth, love, compassion and honesty.
We have plenty of our own Kim Jong-Ils here in America. And, with a corrupt economic model that rewards the traits most often shared by unstable minds, a disproportionate amount of them are going to rise to the top as we see today. But, the one thing that has protected us from seeing the level of heinous behavior seen in North Korea is a written rule of law we call the Constitution. (Although, at times, those same minds have projected their behavior outside of our country onto other peoples in the world not protected by the Constitution.) And, while many power-mad minds have chipped away at our rules of law over the years for their own ego’s personal rationalizations and self-deceit, they are substantially in the minority. In other words, they can only maintain their perceived authority over the rest of us as long as enough of us still continue to believe their ego’s endless stream of manipulations and deceit. All it takes is peaceful and nonviolent resistance and the denial of support for their endless rationalizations for the deceit to stop.
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