"Ethically Non-Monogamous"....

Yes, you read that right.  Someone told me the other day about someone who posted this as part of their online dating profile.  "I am ethically non-monogamous."  Okay!  Time to chat.  Here we go...

To be ethical...and to be non-monogamous.  Is that the same as....

"Incorruptibly corruptible"

"Intellectually vapid"

"Honestly dishonest"

"Thoughtfully sociopathic"

"Pro-life abortion advocate"

"Nutritionally-trained anorexic"

Need I go on?  When we start describing ourselves and/or others like this....we are in desperate need of a reality check, just a reminder!

To be "ethically non-monogamous" translated means this:  "I am more devoted to cheating than I am to being committed...to anyone."

Wow.  Let's all message this person stat!  Who wouldn't want to start dating and then sleeping with someone like that?!  Too bad I'm married!  :-P

I was watching a clip from an interview with Dr. Oz this morning.  He featured a former teen idol who was part of a highly successful television sitcom back in the day.  Unfortunately, this actor developed schizoaffective disorder since that time....and it showed.  For those unfamiliar with this particular disorder, it represents as a combination of the symptoms typically associated with both bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.  In other words, when there is a mood change, there is also a psychotic episode that occurs.  These episodes last for at least two weeks at a time...and take place when one's mood changes "up" (mania), "down" (depression)---or simultaneously (feeling both "up" and "down" at the same time).

As the actor was sitting there, she was having a difficult time articulating her thoughts to Dr. Oz.  No wonder why.  When a person is schizoaffective, there is a whole other thought-based reality that competes for the reality which actually is.  It is a highly disruptive form of mental illness to manage, since sufferers have to remain psychiatrically connected and medication compliant in spite of their ongoing battle with distorted and delusional thinking.  Without remaining connected and compliant, there is little hope of someone with schizoaffective disorder to manage themselves successfully enough within the environment they inhabit.  When a person is actively psychotic, they believe things that are not based on real life reality;  they may also see, smell, hear, touch, or taste things that are literally figments of their own delusional mindset.  It is a terrible disease and one that absolutely requires the right psychiatric intervention and continual monitoring utilizing the proper psychotropic medication.

Why have I shared this story here?  I have shared it because "ethical non-monogamy" is its own form of delusional thinking, just sayin'!  If you want to cheat on anyone you choose to be sexually involved with, call it for what it is.  There are no ethics associated with anything humanity pursues that is potentially and/or absolutely harmful to another human being's mind, body, and spirit.  The ethically non-monogamous among us may not realize it "now", but they are on a self-destructive path---and are merely seeking company to join them on that path when they do (via online dating).

So...next time you see or hear the term "ethically non-monogamous", stop and think about what that truly means.  I did.

Until next post....

From the Mouth of Henry Ford...Part II (Column from Feb. 21, 1920)

Last post presents the first half of a newspaper column Henry Ford wrote 101 years ago this month.  Upon reading it, it is beyond timely today in 2021.  As promised, here is the second half of that column taken directly from "Mr. Ford's Page.."

"Revolutions are not orderly, social forces marching to the establishment of a new and better order.  They are an outlet of hellish hatreds and unbridled passions, massive thefts, the death of moral and social responsibility, a most horrible debauch of all that is rottenest in human nature.

Humanity does not know of what stuff it is made until the restraint of society is taken off, and the mask is taken off, and human greeds and jealousies and ignorances and passions are given full sway.

The revolutions of which we may read comfortably in the books are not at all the revolutions the people went through.  The real thing is the collapse of every element that justifies mankind considering itself as a high animal.

However, it is not alone to the disgruntled man that we must look for these destructionist influences.  We are far too prone to talk as if the "Reds" were the only ones engaged in destroying social order and the solidity of social institutions.

Not at all.  Any man, rich or poor, in business or in politics, who does anything that undermines men's faith in the essential justice at least of society's intentions is thereby destroying society as rapidly, as menacingly, as criminally as any "Red" could do it.

What you find at one extreme of society, that you will find at the other.  Rich criminals make poor criminals.  Lawless millionaires make lawless miners.  Lawless statesmen make lawless citizens.  It works out inevitably this way.

If you have profiteers in the big brownstone buildings, you will have hold-up men in the streets.  If you have a "to hell with the people" spirit in your higher offices, you are going to have a "to hell with the government" spirit in the lower sections of your cities---and don't you forget it!  What's sauce for the capitalistic gander is sauce for the laboristic goose.

It is not too much to say that the whole impetus of this present plague of lawlessness came from the top.  Its whole reason for being comes from what we so wrongly call the "upper classes".  These more favored classes were lawless first.  And their lawlessness is coming back upon them with redoubled retribution, for the very fact that it is they who are now pleading for law and order is the reason why the plea is laughed at.  Yes, law that the people may be kept in order, but no order so strict as that the privileged ones shall have to obey the law!---that is the mocking answer.

When they are trying the criminals of the Great War, they ought not to overlook the profiteers.

The profiteer is the most dangerous of all the "Reds" that have ever appeared on earth.  He is more dangerous than kings---for we can get rid of kings.  He is even more dangerous than militarists---militarists turn out to be very fallible men when their helmets and gold braid are removed.  But the profiteer is always there, playing inside all the lines, making money out of soldiers' deaths and the distress of nations---the dirtiest money that ever found its way into a pocket!

The profiteer ought to be charged specifically with (a) defrauding the government, (b) treason to the Army, (c) giving aid and comfort to the enemy, and (d) fomenting disloyalty in time of war.  It is pretty hard to gainsay the now common argument that a society which harbors the profiteer is itself in need of reform.

The profiteer is one of the excuses---one of the good excuses---which the "Reds" offer for their present attitude.  And if the "Reds" would only center their attention there and help us get rid of the profiteers, that would be doing a regenerative and constructive act.  

The crimes of the profiteer after the war, the increase of his already too big gains by speculating with the food of the people, certainly point him out as the one influence which more than any other has driven people into enmity toward our present form of society.  This is where the destructive spirit was born.

Why would it not be a wise move to attack the destructive spirit at its source?  Why not go after those men whose actions destroy the people's faith in the possibility of justice?  They ought to be made to pay the penalty, and not society."

Tru dat!

Until next post....

From the Mouth of Henry Ford....101 Years Ago This Month

 The Dearborn Independent was the circulating newspaper in my hometown 101 years ago.  Henry Ford had a weekly column in it aptly entitled "Mr. Ford's  Page".  In light of "everything" that occurred this past year in our country and across the globe, I have to ask myself "When will we ever learn?"  I am reprinting "Mr. Ford's" column from Saturday, February 21, 1920 in its entirety here....

"Mr. Ford's Page...

The ROOT problem, after all, is human nature.  But to say that is to lay oneself open to the charge of platitude.  There is an almost instinctive human dislike of any reminder that it is humanity, and not something outside of humanity, that is responsible for conditions.  Even our wise men would rather talk learnedly about the effects of faulty human nature, as we view those effects in society, than about faulty human nature itself.  However there is a very good object to be secured in compelling people to think deeply enough at times to penetrate as far as themselves, as far as their own secret natures, and as far as their individual responsibility for conditions.

We don't want to standardize human nature---we could not if we would.  It is the endless variety of individuality that makes society endurable.  But what all of us would like to do would be to standardize human moral dependability.  We should like to be sure that to a certain essential degree we could absolutely depend on human nature "staying put".  We are not sure of that now.  We are not sure that we even shall be sure of it.  

We can depend on the ability of certain elements which affect human nature.  Man's need of food, sleep, clothing, and family life will influence him to a considerable degree;  but even in spite of these he will still remain an unknown moral quantity.

When you form blocks of granite into the shape of a house, you are pretty sure that the granite is going to stay.  But when you form men into an orderly society, you are not at all sure how long that form of society is going to stay.  Unlike the material of the house, the material of society changes under your hands.  There is no forecasting whether it will turn into adamant or sponge.  It is now solid, now fluid, now hot, now cold, now orderly, now exulting in vast confusion.

Whatever may be the conditions in which we find ourselves present, this is absolutely true of them;  they were caused by people:  they are being continued by people:  they will change when people change, and not before.  We cannot control the weather, not every plague, but we can control---rather---we could control if we would---our social weather with its storms, uncertainty, its destructiveness, and its unequal seasons.

One of the strange phenomena of the present is the ascendancy of the destructive type of mind.  The world at large seems to be infatuated with the idea that if something is pulled down, something is thereby built up.  If something is destroyed, something is thereby created.

There is in every country a party which believes that if it could destroy the orderly institutions of that country, it would thereby create a new era of social justice.  Every community has a group which believes that if only the channels of orderly justice and decency could be smashed, a new brotherhood of man would rise automatically out of the ruin.  Would-be philosophers preach the doctrine of the necessity of revolution:  never was any progress made, they say, except through violent revolutions.  But everybody knows that every revolution was a mistake and disgraced or postponed the liberties it sought.  The most revolutionary thing in the world is an idea, and a conquering idea does not need to imprison, punish, or kill a man to make itself powerful.

In the name of Order, disorder is counseled.  In the name of Liberty, the dictatorship of a few idle and non-productive agitators is urged.  In the name of Brotherhood, profound and venomous hatred between classes is fermented.  Surely, human nature is the sum of all contradictions!

What every thoughtful man should fear about a possible revolution is not its occurrence, but the course it would take after it was started.

The difficulty about revolutions is the impossibility of controlling them....an impossibility shared even by the men who start revolutions.  They get out of hand.  They rage like forest fires.  Very often they destroy even those who instigated them..."

Next post...the remainder of Henry Ford's column, reprinted here, from February 21, 1920