WWJD (What Would Joe Do?) What Does Joe Say?

 

From the editors of the journal the article was featured in, we have this famous quote about THEIR definition of “radical love” (NOT Joe’s definition):

 

Love of this sort is not romantic, rather it is an “armed love” or “fighting love” fueled by anger and outrage (p. 72). But for love to lead to action it must always be in dialectical relationship with the act of dialogue; we cannot love that which we do not know. At the core of dialogue is the act of what Joe Kincheloe called “radical listening” (Tobin, 2009; Winchell, Kress & Tobin, 2015), that is, a commitment to dialogue in which the listener opens himself or herself to change by hearing others and not imposing his or her own schema and judgment upon the other. (p.6)

 

First, the idea that “love of this sort is not romantic, rather it is an ‘armed love,’ fueled by anger and outrage” indicates that the authors are firmly stuck in the very FIDURODian Thanatos-infested matrix Joe’s work is devised to get us out of. They are hypocrites, for in the very same paragraph they tout a “commitment” to “not imposing his or her schema or judgment on others.” And yet that’s exactly what they have done! They have IMPOSED their view of radical love (which is NOT Joe’s view of radical love). They are also PROMOTING violence by defining radical love as “an ‘armed love’ or ‘fighting love’ fueled by anger and outrage.” This is counter to discussions that should be logical, rational, and respectful. As for radical love and romance, I can attest (and this website proves) that Joe’s radical love is the MOST romantic love achievable. And their contention that anger and outrage is necessary is contemptible. We do not put radical love into such FIDURODian boxes as the authors have done here. Of special note, with which we agree, “we cannot love that which we do not know,” as highlighted. This is a truth. And corresponding to that truth it is crystal clear that the authors nor the editors really know Joe and therefore cannot love him—according to their very own words. This explains why they can’t write about his work; if they don’t know him, they don’t know his work. So they did what most educational dictators do—they attempted to cover their hypocrisy by transmogrifying Joe’s beautiful radical love to their own deficient version of what they call “radical listening.” Joe is a critical analyst and promotes critical analysis. Do we really believe that he insists that we do not judge other perspectives? The truth is quite the contrary. Not all perspectives are created equal; face it: some people just have dumb ideas. Are we going to support dumb ideas just because we “must not judge?” As Joe wrote in Understanding the New Right and Its Impact on Education, “With extreme positions exposed, rational and productive interchange of ideas becomes possible” (p. 40). If we play kindergarten and fail to expose extreme positions that are doomed to fail, then I guess we deserve the world we create as a result. The greater truth is that we MUST learn to both judge and be judged—or we shall be subject to the Greatest Final Judgment in history—very soon. One of the products of judgment is justice, one of Joe’s most important missions, as I have identified in the free online lessons based on his book, Knowledge and Critical Pedagogy: An Introduction.

 

And why have these authors not defined their use of “dialectical”? As you can see it has at least two very different meanings. Thus, those in power, the educators running this show may be referring to one definition, while those being subjected to it may have a different meaning. This is a strategy used for political power and here it’s being used in a domain that purportedly is about hearing all voices (which is a blatant lie):

 

1.      relating to the logical discussion of ideas and opinions:

"dialectical ingenuity"

2.    concerned with or acting through opposing forces:

"a dialectical opposition between social convention and individual libertarianism"

 

The first meaning relates to discussing ideas back and forth—the “rational and productive interchange of ideas” that Joe promotes in the quotation from Understanding the New Right. The second form of dialectics can be extremely harmful if used improperly. The controllers use it to divide us and then slam us with THEIR solutions (their Hegelian dialectic that can get very diabolical). We see it in action every day in politics with the use of “political correctness” that keeps getting more and more insane. There is no good purpose to the tactic when connected with the form of "radical love" these authors have defined. And then the discussion is brought into the classroom where people must be allowed to express their feelings and thoughts without critical analysis (“don’t judge,” the authors of this education journal instructs). This sets up cognitive dissonance….and quite frankly, the courses I have taken that do this gave me severe headaches. Often people do express their racist attitudes, and there is no critical discussion of that—anything goes. I have actually experienced this. The “don’t judge” meme comes from satanist Aleister Crowley’s “Do what thou wilt” mantra. It has infiltrated into religions and education—it is “postmodern” madness. No critical discussion can take place under these conditions.

 

So what can people do? Grow up, for one thing. Shake your narcissism. Your IDEAS are just ideas—nothing more, nothing less. They do not define you unless you choose to allow them to define you. And given this is supposed to be critical pedagogy, learn to analyze all ideas CRITICALLY. We also need to learn to transcend previous social injustices. If we stay stuck, again, it becomes impossible to rationally consider workable solutions. I have had to learn to transcend some horrific crimes committed against me, so I do know it’s possible.

 

What Does Joe say?

 

What does Joe say about ignorance?: “Ignorance is a more subtle concept than Westerners have traditionally understood it to be. “Ignorance of what” becomes a very important dimension of how ignorance is designated.” (Knowledge and Critical Pedagogy: An Introduction, p. 235).

 

In my use of the word, I am referring to ignorance of Joe’s work, including his conceptualization of radical love and radical listening, which brings us back to the premise that you can’t love what you don’t know—and these authors clearly do not know Joe. This definition of ignorance does not imply that the person who is ignorant of something is ignorant. We are all ignorant of some things. This is an area where people really have a hard time separating themselves from what they do or do not know. It is true that Joe did much for many of these authors  and he probably was a great friend to them. And so, I find this very sad….they do not know Joe and they have not even taken time to get to know his work. But this is not new. When I did my research back in 2013, I found only a handful of authors actually citing his work, and when they did it was most often in very superficial ways. I guess people just don’t understand his work. As I wrote in my Venus letter for today, Joe is one of God’s chosen 144,000 singing a new song and there will only be 144,000 on this planet who will understand these new songs. And so we get authors who are purportedly writing about Joe’s concept of “radical listening” AND YET they have failed to radically listen to him. They cannot hear his most beautiful music. :(

 

What Does Joe REALLY Say About Enactivism? Enactivism – a theory of mind that begins with an understanding of the relationship between mind and its contextual surroundings. Such an understanding demands that we ask why we see mind or any other phenomena as separate from its surroundings. Enactivism places great emphasis on how an entity interacts with its environment. In such interaction, enactivism argues, entities actually create themselves. (Critical Pedagogy, 2008, p. 176).

 

This provides entirely different meaning than what is quoted on page 70 of Agnello’s article in the journal. She writes, “In his words, Kincheloe declared that…” and she TOTALLY MISQUOTES him. For the record, her statement is as follows:

 

In his words, Kincheloe declared that “…enactivism is a theory of mind that begins with an understanding [of the relationship] between mind and its contextual surroundings. Such an understanding demands that we ask why we see mind and its contextual surroundings. Enactivism places great emphasis on how an entity interacts with its environment. In such interaction, enactivism assumes that entities actually create themselves” (p. 176).”

 

Excuse me…those words have lost something in the translation and make little sense, unless one goes back to the original quote and find out what he actually said. Compare what she has written with what Joe actually wrote, above. It is unclear why she placed “of the relationship” in brackets because normally you add brackets only if you add words to the quotation, but in this case the words were in the original text. Her quotation has turned the words she claims are Joe’s words into gibberish with no meaning at all.

 

And lest people think misquoting in education is always an accident, I have seen gibberish presented in the educational literature to PURPOSELY confuse students and ensure they do not have understanding. It is a real tactic in the war against our minds that gets used by the knowledge power wielders. Is that what’s going on here? I don’t know and that’s not what I am claiming—but it does happen. Either she does not understand what Joe is conveying (for if she did the error would have been glaring during the proofreading process; and what happened to the peer reviewers and editors here?) or it’s that “sleight of hand” Joe discusses in his work, but that we are supposed to use for GOOD purposes, not for the purpose of destroying other people’s GREAT WORKS. Joe writes:

 

Shifting discursive constructions are constantly shaping and reshaping the world and the individuals who populate it. Critical magicians study the specifics of these dynamics and use them to perform epistemological and ontological prestidigitation (p. 216, Knowledge and Critical Pedagogy: An Introduction).

 

Thus, we do need to be aware of these tactics and call them out. It is surprising to me that given the stress that’s placed on format, peer review, and other technicalities that an error like this was able to slip through.

 

What Else does Joe say about Enactivism? These quotations from Joe to more fully convey what he meant by activism are justified due to the botched presentation that had been put forth by the education “experts” who wrote and published the article under discussion. I encourage people to do more research and to go to the primary sources—Joe’s work and the various references he has provided. DO NOT RELY ON HERSY.

 

From Knowledge and Critical Pedagogy: An Introduction

 

Engaging complexity theory Umberto Maturana and Francisco Varela over the last quarter of the twentieth century constructed the Santiago theory of cognition— known as enactivism. Maturana and Varela’s basic idea here is that living beings constantly remake themselves in their relationships with their environments and contexts. When such an idea is applied to a critical complex epistemology, we can visualize the emergence of a critical ontology—a notion of an autopoietic selfhood where we constantly reconceptualize ourselves in relation to the demands of the contexts in which we operate, social justice, our confrontation with differences of various varieties, and the knowledges we encounter. In this context FIDUROD’s mechanistic psychological notion of individual ability becomes a de-essentialized postformal cognition of possibility. This means that we have a far greater ability to increase our cognitive ability than cognitive science has said we have. No essentialized, fixed notion of selfhood can profit from the intellectual possibility offered by encounters with different people, ideas, and epistemologies. Indeed, we can remake ourselves in ways never imagined by mainstream reductionistic cognitive science (Maturana & Varela, 1980, 1987). (p. 179).

 

This is a good point to bring in the powerful insights of Humberto Mautarana and Fransisco Varela’s Santiago Theory of Enactivism. Enactivism posits that living things constantly remake themselves in interaction with their environments. Thus, invariance is overturned and human possibility is dramatically enhanced. Critical pedagogy’s notion of a new self (a critical ontology) and new modes of exploring the world are grounded on the human ability to use new social contexts and experiences to reformulate both subjectivity and knowledge. In this context the concept of personal ability, of being itself becomes a de-essentialized cognition/ ontology of possibility. No essentialized, intransigent, bounded self can access the intellectual potential offered by epiphanies of difference or triggered by an ostensibly “insignificant” insight. As teachers, psychologists, social workers, physicians, and other professionals begin to identify previously unperceived patterns in which the self is implicated, the possibility of cognitive change and personal growth is enhanced. As the barriers between mind and multiple contexts are erased, the chance that more expanded forms of “cognitive/scholarly autopoiesis”—self-constructed modes of higher-order thinking and intellectual work—will emerge is increased. (p. 147)

 

Enactivism a theory of mind developed by the Santiago School where the mind is viewed as a self-creating organism that produces meaning instead of merely processing information as mirror images of an external reality. Cognition in such a context emerges from the interaction, the relationship between the mind and its context—its external environment. This emergence is an enacted phenomenon—enacted in the interaction of mind-environment—that leads to an entity’s awareness of its self and the context around it. (p. 172)

 

What does Joe say About the Politics of Knowledge:

Tracing the Footprints of Dominant Power: The Complicated Task of a Critical Politics of Knowledge, a Critical Complex Epistemology

Critical knowledge production always involves pointing out faulty argumentation, unsupported generalizations, and unexamined actions of a knowledge community. What separates the critical sheep from the uncritical goats is that a critical pedagogy/ epistemology also involves exposing the cultural, epistemological, and ideological assumptions that shape the knowledge individuals produce and the oppressive actions justified by such information. With such a task before us, I guess we just have to give up any aspirations to winning the Miss Congeniality contest. Such work will inevitably anger the guardians of the status quo. Relax, it’s our existential burden—go with it. In the spirit of critical theorist Max Horkheimer’s (1974) description of critical theory, a critical politics of knowledge/critical complex epistemology understands the social construction of reality. The knowledge position embraced here appreciates in this constructed context the complex socio-political processes that have shaped both the researcher and the researched. Thus, a key dimension of any critical complex epistemology involves the rigorous and difficult task of tracing the construction process. Critical theory—CSI (crime scene investigation). {Knowledge and Critical Pedagogy: An Introduction, p. 176).

 

Here, we return once again to Joe’s reference to Jesus sorting the goats from the sheep. I did an extensive analysis of that back in Lesson 1 for the Knowledge and Critical Pedagogy: An Introduction online course HERE. We also return, again to the “Miss Congeniality” contest. I have always loved that statement and have always felt he wrote it especially for me. But the point he is making here is that for his critical pedagogy, we must always be open to critically examining knowledge and the assumptions upon which it’s based—including (and especially in a “knowledge community”). Knowledge is “socially constructed,” we don’t create it in a box, and as I have written about many times, group think is a powerful force that can lead to false conclusions and beliefs, and oppressive actions. I do believe that educators have a great responsibility to do this critical examination.

 

It is interesting to observe something here. Joe is a very sweet and mellow person. I love that about him. He is very, very loving, forgiving, and he completely empathizes with the people of the world who are trapped in harmful ideologies. He understands to a depth and cares to the extent he is attempting to teach us his same skills. In his writing, he is also direct and straightforward about his observations in relation to how damaging these ideologies are. Being his twin flame, I can see all of this and we have much in common. At the same time, there are differences between couples who are twin flames (they are not carbon copies of each other, one soul, or “One” as the New Age agenda likes to promote)…the differences can be even more powerful toward “enacting” change and creating anew. Together, we know how critical it is for change to take place, for ideologies to be examined and changed, even if only among a few individuals…we share that mission. But in contrast to him (but I do have his input or this would never be possible), and while he wrote extensively about these issues, my role is to bring to critical clarity daily real-life, as-it-happens contexts that really brings his messages home. He foresaw that we would be working this way, thus, he had written the “Miss Congeniality contest,” and now our complementary differences have come together in a powerful way. He carries the “sword” (the word) and I walk behind him and open the meaning of his word so that more people can learn from it, and also, hopefully, will actually READ his work and LISTEN to him. I know that for those people who knew Joe personally, what they might learn can be somewhat shocking. They are entrenched in their own ideologies about Joe and who he is as a person. But he is definitely not like some politicians. From my perspective, not being able to see Joe as more than what they wanted him to be is their own fault. They chose to see him as “one-dimensional.” He has expressed in his writing better than anyone in the past that we are multidimensional beings. This must necessarily mean that he knew he, himself was “multidimensional.” What does he mean by this? I am still exploring that question because it has multiple meanings, one being that he exists in a higher spiritual dimension. He let people believe what they wished about him (and based on my own personal experience, that is what we must do; we must learn to transcend what other people think). My work brings out on the table that multidimensionality Joe spoke of, which is probably hard for people to accept…and that is his point here. He makes it perfectly clear that my role (or anyone else’s who does similar work) is not a job whereby I can expect to win friends or gain notoriety…but that doesn’t matter since my true friends and true recognition are in much higher places.

 

I love his CSI metaphor in that quotation—and that’s how this should be viewed. So many ideologies and how we are complicit with them are, in fact, crimes against humanity. The way education has been (and continues to be) employed on this planet is one of the greatest crimes of all….it must change.

 

What does Joe say about Insiders? We don’t just take our data from the elite knowledge producers who publish in the most prestigious academic journals—we look for knowledge in a variety of places. Many of these locales in the dominant matrix of power are low-status places. Indeed, it is in these low status places that we often find the most transformative of insights that change ours and many other people’s lives.(Knowledge and Critical Pedagogy: An Introduction, p. viii).

 

Joe is telling us here that we do not need to place higher value on the information from “elite knowledge producers,” in particular when they don’t seek outsider’s input. The articles were published in an academic journal that REQUIRES only specific sources of information—the very type of sources he is saying we need to seek beyond. In the big picture scheme of things, this journal is nothing, but it does provide insight into how knowledge is controlled during the production, dissemination, and applicative processes at the level of the university. THEY define what’s what (and never mind that they “appropriate” ideas and twist them to suit their purposes). This inbreeding of knowledge continues today. A major complaint from the highest level elite at the university I attended was the fact that I had used “outsiders” as sources for my dissertation…and so knowledge is forced to suffer the diseases that inbreeding leads to. There is value in peer review, but only if that peer review is done in an honest, sincere, and critical analytic manner. We need to move beyond the "touchy-feely" walking on eggshells mentality. Radical love allows for this...there is never a question of love in the real world. Of course, this planet is far from being a real world.

 

What Joe Says about Insiders’ Attitudes toward LOVE: This epistemological conversation cannot be separated from the future of the human species. Thus, it percolates into the depths of our humanity, our being in the world, raising disconcerting questions that offend individuals who have bought into some form of authoritarianism—whether its source is religious, political, or philosophical is irrelevant. In this hidden but powerful domain I wanted to help develop a view of knowledge sufficiently evocative to move people to concurrently weep and metaphorically pee in their pants as they brought together logic, emotion, and action. Hell, I wanted an intellectual aphrodisiac that put libidinal energy into a staid domain run by an elite crowd who looked down their collective nose at passionate behavior—an epistemological Viagra that was unafraid of flashes of scholarly arousal that last more than 4 hours. Lord, they loathe high affect. A critical complex epistemology is dedicated to bringing individuals who had been traditionally excluded to the scholarly conversation no matter how déclassé such an objective appears to the privileged epistemological trolls at FIDUROD Bridge. (Knowledge and Critical Pedagogy: An Introduction, p. 57)

 

As you can see, he reveals how much the “official” knowledge producers, the Elite “insider” group hate love…it is why they refuse to acknowledge the romantic in their definition; it signifies true love. Joe stresses the point, “Lord, they loathe high affect.” He confesses that he wanted a worldview that has a huge impact, that brings in libidinal energy to the knowledge production process…a sort of natural “Viagra.”

 

Well, he may be “gone” but I am here to tell you HE HAS SUCCEEDED IN DOING EXACTLY WHAT HE STATES HERE. And the educational community will either have to “get with the program” or continue to suffer like lost sheep about ready to wander off a cliff.

 

Please see my Venus Speaks letter for January 3, 2017, as well as Lesson 29 of Knowledge and Critical Pedagogy: An Introduction titled "Concluding the Section, 'Getting Started: Studying Knowledge and Its Production, Paragraph 28,' also dated January 3, 2017, for more analysis of the journal articles under discussion and additional important information. You will find Lesson 29 HERE (scroll down to locate).

 

Reference: RADICALLY LISTENING TO RADICAL LOVE: TOWARD ENACTIVISM IN EDUCATION AND EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH; INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CRITICAL PEDAGOGY TRICIA KRESS UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS, BOSTON PATRICIA KRUEGER-HENNEY UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS, BOSTON Home > Vol 7, No 3 (2016) > Kress

 

 

Additional Analysis: February 1, 2017

 

20161118-1905 Enforcing Love & Truth S1

 

This is an interesting video in that it presents the consequence of women in groups who exhibit “emasculating” behavior toward men. The group Jesus and Mary have been teaching for many years has trended toward fewer and fewer men participating, which creates and maintains a dysfunctional imbalance. Here, Jesus is bringing the issues out and correcting the behavior. While this may seem “sexist” according to many women’s rights groups or some versions of “feminism” it brings to light how imbalanced their perspectives can be and the damage this imbalance causes to relationships and productive group interactions. This is important to consider for any group, particularly discussion groups, which one wishes to establish for teaching and learning purposes. In order for productive discussions to take place, the environment must be one of LOVE. As Jesus discusses in the video, this type of behavior that emanates from negative attitudes toward men is not loving behavior.

 

It is interesting to also note here for those who wish to form various types of discussion groups, courses founded on love, and online classes with active participation, based on studies it takes up to a full year to develop love in a group situation, or in other words for people to actually build loving relationships that create a safe, loving environment so that they share honestly, openly, and can grow emotionally, spiritually, and intellectually. This will never happen in the event that unloving behavior flourishes among the group in the manners discussed in the video.

 

In my own personal experiences, I can reflect back on these issues in various situations. Statistically, very few men participate in online courses compared to women. Of course, it depends on the subject matter and there are a variety of other factors that cause this, but if these types of actions are occurring within online discussions, then it will likely have this same chilling effect that results in decreasing numbers of men who willing to participate.

 

Even more relevant, I observed this with Joe’s online research group. Here, we have a group of people who are supposed to be sensitive to gender issues, but the prevalent goal among a few within the group was to emasculate men and prop up women. It was a powerful force that Joe had to contend with, as there was apparently a group of women who exerted their power toward this end, even bossing around other women and forcing them to comply with their goals and agendas. Joe made me laugh one time though, over the issue. I honestly think he found so many antics people went through out of imagined fear to be hilariously funny. That’s not to say he did not suffer over these issues though, and he knew I empathized with his rather precarious position of being so brilliant, wanting to share his brilliance and yet having to stay in the background with his work while propping up others. He had posted a photo of himself on facebook right after surgery (he had a large, would right behind his ear), and he was laughing, apparently. When I saw the photo, the pain would have made me cry. So in a message I had sent to him through facebook I had commented: “Oooooooweeeeeeeeeeee.’ I knew he was probably laughing in the photo, but I asked him to make sure. He wrote back saying that he was, indeed, laughing, that it didn’t hurt. He clarified that he was not being “macho” but that it really hadn’t hurt. His denial of being macho made me laugh and I sent some smart comment back to him with the undertone message that hey, being macho is just fine by me (along with his divinely sweet, loving, and compassionate side as well).

 

It’s sad when men can’t be men and women can’t be women. Men and women have many similarities and yet many differences……. However, in this world we force people into roles by socially defining them through dysfunctional group processes. We have things all mixed up. We have a long way to go, a lot of correction and healing to do to change this so that we are all free to be the person God has intended us to be.

 

Discussion Questions (Write and Discuss the above video)

 

What is the ratio of women to men in the group Jesus and Mary are teaching? How does Jesus delineate the various groups of women who contribute to the problem? How does he delineate men who contribute to the problem? What are possible actions to correct the issues he has raised?

 

Reflect on your own experiences in groups. Did any of these inter-gender issues hamper the communication within the groups? What basic emotion hampers us from making changes? How can we override it? What will you do differently if you encounter similar situations?

 

Reflect on your personal relationships. Do any of the issues presented in the video present within them? If so, how do they damage your relationships? How do your current actions facilitate the continuing damage? What should you change about your behavior? What do you fear should you make these changes? Do you desire to make changes? How might you increase your desire to make the changes?

 

Learn more about these issues as they apply in your life or in the lives of people you teach and/or assist. Knowledge: Love and Truth are power.

 

In this next video (Enforcing Love & Truth S2, below), Jesus took it to the next level. Watch the video and take notes. Reflect on situations in your own personal life that relate to his observations. Do you agree with his assessments and the actions he has taken? Why or why not? What would have been the likely result, had he allowed the dysfunctional interrelating to continue? If you are a teacher, reflect on how these dynamics are represented in the domain of education and in your classrooms. Could it help explain (in part, perhaps) why few men are teachers compared to the numbers of women in certain disciplines or areas of education? Do women make it safe for men to participate in teaching?

 

 

Extrapolating

 

I am posting links to these next videos because they provide some extremely valuable learning for us all.

 

20161120-1050 Enforcing Love & Truth S2

 

20161122-1020 Enforcing Love & Truth S3

 

 

Notice in the second video, despite the person’s immense contributions to the project, she was still asked to leave, including terminating her volunteer services. There are many possible reasons a person’s participation may contribute to their continuing emotionally unhealthy behavior. This is something to examine in all groups. Are people contributing unconditionally? Do they expect something in return? Do they expect to use the group as a means of support for their belief system or to justify their attitudes and actions?

 

Side Note: It seems I am on a new mission, which is to critically consider the same sorts of dynamics that Jesus and Mary have touched upon in their videos above. I have had many signs of the direction my teachings from the Higher Realms have been heading, as discussed in my Venus Letters and my new designation as the Queen of the South:

 

"The queen of the south shall rise up in the judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: for she came from the uttermost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and behold, a greater than Solomon is here." Matthew 12:42

 

I have long ago learned that it is no accident that I get “handed down” such things and the various teachings that come my way, such as the teachings from Mary and Jesus, posted on YouTube on our wedding anniversary, January 28, no less. It feels like an anniversary gift. Of course, we are working WITH them in the Higher Realms, so they are aware of our relationship and work.

 

What are we to do with these current teachings? I had mentioned that I wished to understand better how a group can get together with the goal to focus on Joe’s work and “radical love” and yet totally miss that his entire body of works is based on the foundation of radical love, and that he had dedicated his entire last book expressing this fact. How was it missed? What were the group dynamics involved?

 

When we compare the ratio of men and women in the group that produced the journal, including the three main editors of the journal we have a total of 10 women and just 3 men, which equates to 23% men and 77% women. How does this compare with the ratio Jesus had discussed in the first video? Given that the introduction to this current journal presents the issue of rage, even defining radical love as rage (which I can assure you Joe would never do, just as Jesus would never do), could that set up such a dysfunctional environment that 1) they were blinded to what Joe had actually written? 2) the underlying anger from the women resulted in very few men wishing to participate in the group? Discuss.

 

As I stated earlier, I saw these dynamics operating within the research community that Joe had been facilitating back in 2008. I think his hands were pretty well tied over the matter due to some complex socio-political issues; sometimes we have to choose our battles, depending upon the circumstances—but we should not have to! He did manage to transcend the issues. I made the mistake of caving in at the time, which I should never have done. When people are neutral, passive, or succumb to the dictates of others, it gives the people involved the message that what they’re doing is ok and it hands over our power to them, along with a license to continue with their bullying, controlling, and/or manipulative behavior. It will not stop unless you call it out and refuse to tolerate it, which I think is demonstrated lovingly and effectively by the actions Mary and Jesus have taken. They have been working with some of these people for as many as 10 years and still many have not changed. I thank both Mary and Jesus, as well as the people involved who handled this with great composure for providing us these learning experiences. It will be interesting to see how this changes the future of the groups. I have watched many of their videos and have often thought they have been so patient with people. But there comes a time, if we really want changes, those who are impeding change must be given the firm message that their behavior will not be tolerated. Society has a lot of work to do and until these issues are resolved, severe actions may be necessary in other social settings, such as Jesus and Mary took, so that those who want to move forward can do so. If these types of behaviors continue, truly, very few people will be in the soul condition required for union for a very long time. In the N.E.W. era, no longer will those stuck in old ways and systems of domination, nor those who passively support such behaviors, hold back those who want to move forward in their educational, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual progress.

 

Well, given the current situation (see my Addendum to the Addendum to The Last Venus Letter for more information), we will have little more to say about this issue, as far as I know. From this point forward, I will be working on the online lessons and developing courses in various related areas.