@RealSteveHolmes – – 40 years of exploring ideas and now for 20 more

At the age of thirteen Diderot was the main character in a solemn ceremony that made him a priest. The Bishop of Langres conferred the tonsure on Denis Diderot, a rite consisting of cutting off some locks of the candidate’s hair in the form of a cross. He was expected to wear a short mantle and an ecclesiastical collar with its white tabs. Thirteen, that’s very young, though…

For people who know only the Diderot of later life – a spirited and emphatic freethinker – it may even come as a surprise. The fact is that Diderot’s relatives hoped that he would be allowed to succeed to the lucrative prebend that his uncle, Canon Didier Vigneron, occupied at the local Cathedral.

Unfortunately after Diderot’s ceremony the uncle found that his chapter objected to his being succeeded by his young nephew. Thus the Canon sent one of his men off to Rome to ask the Pope’s permission. Alas, five hours after he had sent his representative, the uncle died. The planned succession was not binding unless the Pope had accepted it while the Canon was still alive. So the chapter immediately elected someone else and the young Diderot’s religious career was over…

Today we don’t know if this ambition was completely Diderot’s own, or at least in part. What do any of us know at the age of thirteen? We have an idea of the difference between good and evil, but perhaps insufficient to guide our choices and society makes allowance for this.

On the other hand it does sometimes seem as though young people stay childish for longer nowadays: irresponsible; dependent. Is this an improvement, I wonder…

Tomorrow: Diderot goes to Paris…

I think it’s time for this theme to emerge into the daylight because during the six years of my online “community” life I have so often been accused of having a hard, heartless, sarcastic or even brutal tone – which is absolutely not my intention, nor my character. The Real Steve Holmes is kindly, generous, amusing, amiable, thoughtful, intuitive, supportive in a crisis and always the first to recognise and celebrate the talents of others, often before they get there themselves. This it not a boast, just a fact. Every month several people travel for hours just to have lunch with me because I am not strong enough to meet them half way and usually they go away full of possibility. That’s how I really am.

So where does this apparently confusing and supposedly brutal tone come from? Why do so many people find me aggressive?

Historically, the turning point of my life, in 1981, was my participation in Werner Erhard’s EST training, which was a very challenging 4 day and 4 evening event in which people were not allowed to leave the room except for designated breaks and the eventual catharsis was essentially produced by breaking down the facade of the participant. Some people would hate that but I adored it. I felt I’d come home to the truth at last and I watched in spellbound amazement as one “Asshole” after another gave up the struggle and turned back into a human being. It was exactly like a mass exorcism and I still believe in that method today, no matter what a shyster Erhard himself was. He was a natural, primitive and profound philosopher and he understood the underlying ontology of emotions and behaviours as no one else has ever done, Shakespeare included. Because Erhard set out to “make a difference”, not just to observe and dangle pretty truth that would further enhance the egos of his audience. He went for their egos like a Terminator, and in most cases it worked. (Life does this to you anyway, but very slowly; Erhard saves you many years.)

So to me, what appears to be brutality means nothing at all. If someone else has the best truth in the room I will acknowledge that, no matter how they speak to me, even if they find me exasperating, even if they talk down to me, even if they are sarcastic. Providing I know they aren’t merely trying to triumph over me…

But almost everyone is trying to dominate, covertly or blatantly: all those nice people out there, all those jokers with all their social grease, all those clever businessmen, all those nice ladies with smotherly advice, the superfit, the superstrong, the tasteful and informed, the chess players who argue well and the Little Professors who know their stuff, the logicians, the creatives, the sad people who challenge you not to be able to help them – almost everyone you ever meet is trying to gain advantage over the situation and has no concept whatsoever that the space of soul was meant to be shared.

This infuriates me, ongoingly. And, since I have survived two killer cancers against millions to one odds, lived through the tortured death of a wife, succumbed to heart disease from the ensuing stress and got absolutely nothing left to lose as the world throws away what little interest it had in real ideas… I tell you honestly: I don’t care what you “think” or feel about my tone. I can’t do anything about your feelings – they belong to you.

Those who know me, love me. And those who don’t need to learn something. End of rant. I imagine you feel something similar but express it more pleasantly and covertly. But if you still don’t even know what a cruel, vicious and grandiose Asshole resides underneath your surface then you desperately need to learn because you haven’t reached step one of the awareness you are here to develop and your life has passed in a perfumed dream. Suffer. Rage. Grieve. You must do these before you find joy. You must break down to build up. There is no other way.

Watch your own tone, will you, and leave mine alone.