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Peter H. Kahn, Jr.
Peter H Kahn Jr., Ph.D.
Anger

Glimpsing the Beloved

Toward the rewilding of the human spirit.

I've been writing of the importance of interacting with the wild "out there"[click here]. I've also said that wildness exists within, and is readily accessible through the passions - primal passions based on responsible use. I've expressed this idea as a rant.

Here's another, which again I think reads best read fast and read aloud. See what you think.

You can be sold to White masters and told to say: Yes'sir, yes'sir, you're so smart. You can say that all day and not believe a word. You could be the half-black child that Jefferson sired. You can be seduced by women. You can be seduced by men. You can be seduced by corporate food, chowing and chewing and choking on those super-sized French fries and fat-dripped grease. You can be the whipping boy of corporate greed. Have you ever seen a person spend their life working their bones thin to buy junk because they think of the junk as pearls and even when it is, when they are pearls, when you finally worked the job decades past your strength of youth, those pearls are nothing more than what you could have picked up for free strolling on a beach, but they made you think otherwise. Have you ever seen a fool taken, conned, and done up so well that he doesn't even know, like the sucker who leaves the used-car dealership with a stupid grin that he can't wipe off his face because he thinks he outfoxed the fox but doesn't even know that he overpaid by five thousand and change. It's a terrible thing when one is sold into slavery. Freedom. That's what we cry for. What do we get? We're free to be slaves to ourselves. We do the bidding of our jealousy and anger. We do the bidding of our hatred. We do the bidding as procreation thrives. There are as many ways to mask a slave as there are rooms in my Father's mansion.

But what if the truth is this:
Once the Beloved is glimpsed, freedom lies in being a slave to that vision.

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About the Author
Peter H. Kahn, Jr.

Peter H. Kahn, Jr. is Professor of Psychology at the University of Washington and the author of Technological Nature: Adaptation and the Future of Human Life.

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