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UFOs and Wars
How do you rush a madman who is holding a bomb and a dead man’s switch? I suspect you can’t come at them straight. Maybe you can’t come at them at all. Do you tell a joke, establish rapport, and try and talk them down? How do you stop crazy? Do you ridicule them? Do you ignore them? How do you de-escalate a situation that’s dire? How do you take away the person, or persons, or situation’s power without assuming the power and becoming the very thing you oppose? Is there a path out of what seems like a done deal without resulting to clichés?
It is so easy to go into darkness and despair. It’s harder to make jokes and laugh, and try to find ways of expressing love when the world around you seems hell bent on blowing itself up. In my own life, I could rarely tackle a problem head on, especially if that problem had other people involved. Yelling, screaming, tantrums- never worked. Using force, never worked. Being a smart ass and passive aggressive, didn’t work and it left me feeling like a jerk. I probably was a jerk.
Listening and empowering people helped. Divesting myself in outcomes and talking things through so other can make a choice, that helped. Not imposing my will helped. But this is small scale stuff, one on one, not big stuff, right? How do you help a divided nation? Can multiple positions, a myriad of…