When I was seeing a counselor, she told me that I needed to take   
   responsibility for my life. When I told her what I wanted to do with my life,   
   she said that I was being grandiose. So let me get it straight. You tell me to   
   take responsibility for my life    
   and then you tell me how to live my life? And you call yourself a counselor?   
      
   Some nerve have these people blathering on about responsibility. They poison   
   the planet; defund the academia; gut the educational system; bust the federal   
   budget; bequeath their children a toxic hell; and then they go on about   
   responsibility? I would    
   take talk about responsibility from someone who is actually doing responsible   
   things. I will not take that from someone who is leaving the world a worse   
   place than she has found.   
      
   When I was talking to a New Age guru – whom I respect as a person, but whose   
   ideas I do not – about my concerns regarding the world, he asked me, “And   
   why does this matter to you?” Why does this matter to me? Why does this   
   matter to me? What kind    
   of a ridiculous question is that? These things better matter to you. If they   
   do not matter to you, then you are a scumbag. They matter to me because I am a   
   human being, and I live on Earth, and I refuse to let the world go to hell   
   while I am here.   
      
   Some changes that people make are for the better. Others are for the worse.   
   Many of these people think that they have improved themselves; but I have seen   
   the opposite. They started out as caring and compassionate, and they wound up   
   as short-sighted and    
   careless. They let the world go to hell on their watch. So that when gen-Xers   
   describe baby boomers as the worst generation, they may not necessarily be   
   completely off mark.   
      
   “Well, you need to work on yourself before you work on anyone else.” Once   
   again, whatever work these people have done on themselves has had a negative   
   rather than positive effect. It took away their principles. It took away their   
   compassion. It took    
   away their ethics. It took away the good values and good intentions with which   
   they have started. The work that I did on myself pursuant these people's   
   instruction did absolutely nothing for me until I turned my life over to   
   Christ.   
      
   Then there is the claim that good self-esteem makes good people and bad   
   self-esteem makes bad people. Bullshit, bullshit, thousand times bullshit. As   
   a woman from World War II generation said, “Self-esteem used to be called   
   conceit”; and yet it is    
   her generation, not baby boomers, that is now held in highest regard. In fact   
   a credible case can be made that it works in the opposite direction. If you   
   have low standards for yourself, you will find it easier to feel good about   
   yourself than if you    
   have high standards for yourself. Rewarding self-esteem does not reward any   
   kind of personal good. It rewards low standards.   
      
   “The desire to save the world is a front for wanting to rule it.” I do not   
   seek to rule anyone at all. I seek to influence thought in better directions.   
   Many of the people who are in the business of ruling the world have no   
   interest in saving it, and    
   many of the people who want to improve things have no power ambitions. This   
   claim is an utter lie.   
      
   “Romantic love is about seeking external validation.” No it is not. It is   
   not about what I feel about myself; it is about what I feel about the other   
   person. I can validate myself all day long. It does not change what I feel for   
   the people I love.    
   Maybe if all you care about is yourself this is the conclusion that you will   
   reach. I however have better values than that.   
      
   So they are advocating positive thinking as a solution to everything. Positive   
   thinking does not solve shit. Real problems require real solutions. Being   
   positive may make you attractive to people who see only the front, but it will   
   not solve the world's    
   problems. Global warming requires real solutions. Gender relations require   
   real solutions. Positive thinking does not begin to accomplish that. All it   
   does is make you feel good about yourself while you are letting the world go   
   to hell.   
      
   Yes, I was myself once attracted to some of these ideas. I wised up. However   
   positive these people become, that will not solve the world's problems.   
   However positive I try to be, that will not solve the world's problems or even   
   my problems. Positive    
   thinking is not even a better solution than Communism. Their solution is not   
   an improvement upon what has existed before; it is a degradation. It teaches   
   people to be short-sighted and careless. And that is bad news for everyone.   
      
   I have known any number of positive thinkers who wound up in terrible   
   situations. The reason was that their naïve optimism blinded them to reality.   
   They kept falling for false fronts of salesmen and players who pretended to be   
   good people but were    
   anything but. Their positive outlook did not lead them to better lives. It   
   lead them into terrible situations.   
      
   There have also been many people in history – from Dostoyevsky to Winston   
   Churchill – who were of negative temperament but achieved great things.   
   Russian people are generally negative in their outlook, but Russians won the   
   Second World War, put the    
   first man in space, created amazing literature and music, and for four decades   
   credibly rivalled America for leadership of the world. Whereas positive   
   thinking in and of itself creates only a bunch of neon balloons who may or may   
   not be successful but    
   are usually full of crap and completely in denial of all sorts of important   
   things. Some people who think positive become successful; others do not. Some   
   people who are of negative mindset become successful; others do not. As for me   
   I have no interest in    
   either positive or negative thinking. I have interest in real thinking that   
   actually stands to solve the real problems that we now face.   
      
   "You are negatively impacting reality with your negativity." You are impacting   
   reality far more negatively with your blind plunder of nature. All that   
   negativity can do is spoil someone's mood; whereas harm realized through   
   plunder of nature is lasting    
   and real.   
      
   As for responsibility, it is not correctly defined as having a Hummer and a   
   huge house. It is correctly defined as leaving the world a better place than   
   you have found it. The people such as the above have left the world a worse   
   place on their watch. And    
   however positive they become, that does not correct for that wrongdoing.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)