: In a mood this AM because prior to bedtime I was on the phone with an old friend who wound up trying to convince me that people's behavior and the things that they do (or don't do) is not at all something they can or should be judged on... of they didn't mean it, i.e., if it was due to mental illness, "trauma", having only "no good choices", or whatever. I mean treating people like shit consistently, including but not limited to lying, stealing, cheating, abusing, ghosting, benching, and more.
^^^ (cont'd.)
"Intention is everything", she claimed, and not even real intention but intention stated ex post facto when they get criticized/busted/called-down for it by the victims/recipients or bystanders.
She is not alone in her espousal of this kind of, what I can only really classify as, gaslighting and passive-aggression, this desperate avoidance of criticism, judgment, or accounting of people or themselves. Truly, I was astonished to hear her say such things, but she's been doing...
^^^ (cont'd.)
...a lot of "shadow work" and the like. I know the books and practices she talked about. Many are Psychotherapy 101, but they've been serially rebranded since the '60s and had some blendings-in of a fair dose of rather doctored/edited Liberation Theology, (fake, a.k.a. US West Coast) Buddhism, a salamagundy of bumper-sticker high-school socialist and communist political theory, and other essentially Me Generation pollutants.
I love Phillipa to death. We've been friends since...
^^^ (cont'd.)
...January 5, 1990 (2nd semester, freshman year, transfer student orientation), and this is the first topical conversation we've had where she got openly angry with me. It was so strange. I dreamt some relatedly to it overnight, because I spent a while after the convo sorting through aspects of its meanderings, to re-examine points made and to roll things around some to look at from different angles and distances, just to see if I missed stuff.
Experiential frames of...
^^^ (cont'd.)
...reference are a bear.