Consortium of Cognitive Distortions

The Inner Asshole on a Collective Scale

Activism in the west has become grievance club for first world society elites and wannabes whose main oppressor is the asshole inside their heads.

Meet The Inner Asshole—full of horsesh1t lies, s/he tells you smack such as: you can’t, you are weak, you are a victim and therefore not responsible, you need a saviour to fix you, any refusal to validate your ideas is bigotry, disagreement is hatred. The Inner Asshole likes to play ego games—the blame game being amongst the favourites. Pin the tail on the Scapegoat! The Inner Asshole tells you stupid sh1t such as everyone who disagrees with you is a Nazi or it’s not up for debate. The Inner Asshole represents the portion of the Self we cannot accept, the part of us that carries the stuck trauma, that houses all the trigger mechanisms—the wounded part of our Selves. Our wounds ooze emotional exudate, such as disenfranchisement, disillusionment, rage, grief, + despair. Our wounds speak through The Inner Asshole, that consortium of cognitive distortions clamouring to tyrannically rule our thoughts and the thoughts of all around us.

Those who seek to control everything and everyone around them do so out of an inability to control themselves. Those who need to exert power over others to feel good about themselves lack inner strength.

So, what am I talking about? What’s this look like? Extreme thinking. Radicalism. Fundamentalism. Identity Cults. Also the propaganda machines driving them—it is all the cognitive distortions of The Inner Asshole.

• I’m talking about the subject matter of this Meg Smaker film.

• I’m talking about the unhinged reaction Margaret Atwood received, to the point of violent threats, for posting this article on her Twitter feed.

• I’m talking about a Muslimah posting hands off my hijab on her social media account in response to the video footage of women in Iran taking their headscarves off and setting them on fire.

• I’m talking about an Epidemiologist stating in a hearing for a health care professional’s licensure that its doing harm to say sex is real and immutable.

• I’m talking about female identifying males being accepted by the MSM, human rights worker, and even UN activists, as representing women.

• I’m talking about rape survivors being called hateful bigots when they ask for rape counselling that excludes male people.

• I’m talking about Muslims who claim to have memorised the Quran, insisting that the niqab or the burqa is not radical and that it’s indeed Islamic and that to even insinuate the niqab or burqa is radical = bigotry.

• I’m talking about those same Muslims who have memorised the Quran, claiming to have forgotten the most important line, 2:256, there can be no compulsion in religion.

• I’m talking about a highly educated and accomplished wife of a Quranic + interfaith scholar who has met with heads of state, giving a commencement address and the Facebook commenter responding to the post demanding to know why she doesn’t have her hair covered.

• I’m talking about the cultish insistence on using the word Islamophobia to describe hatred against humans who follow the Muslim faith and the unhealthy obsession of progressive Muslim organisations with islamophobia, to the exclusion of other arguably more pressing issues.

• I’m speaking of the alt-right assholes who think they’re being clever when they trot out ex-Muslims visibly struggling with fixed + refractory trauma responses in order to fight their fake war on terror, which is a horsesh1t western hegemony game of Judeo-Christian supremacy mind-fcuk against Muslims masquerading as concern about extremism.

• I’m talking about the woke sermons by self-appointed anti-racist activists who spew brimstone verbal diarrhea rants about white feminism + who evangelise the white privilege gaslight like it’s the new original sin.

• I’m talking about the shameless thought controlling + power-mongering inherent in the amplification of obvious contradiction—such as girl babies get killed in China + India but sex isn’t real that’s super colonial boomer —such as the lack of access of toilets in the Indian subcontinent is a major factor holding back female people in that region of the world but western female people are bigots for insisting on sex-segregated toilets —such as there is no cancel culture it’s called accountability despite knowing full well the machinations: 1) which chased Kathleen Stock from her position at University of Sussex, 2) which got Maya Forstater fired from her job, 3) which has subjected Graham Linehan to numerous frivolous litigations + destroyed his marriage + tanked his career, and 4) which has tried very hard to disinvite J.K. Rowling from her own Harry Potter world.

• I’m talking about a large swath of Canadian society buying into the genocidal state mass graves narrative despite no evidence yet confirming GPR findings and despite existing explanations about the unmarked graves.

• I’m talking about how we’re currently pretending in Canada that mass graves and unmarked graves are synonymous.

• I’m talking about the burn it all down human rights activist, who clearly was the victim when called to account for her words after a person did actually heed her call and set a church on fire.

• I’m talking about how we in Canada have collective amnesia about the reality that the Catholic Church abused far beyond the indigenous community in this country and worldwide and those victims have cried for anyone to hear their stories, which have fallen on deaf ears. The largest pedophile ring in the world has an observer seat on the United Nations and has a charitable organization tax status, facts.

• I’m talking about why a large swath of Canadians think the sell-out way Harper paid to protect the Catholic Church is an event to celebrate under the guise of Truth and Reconciliation.

• I’m talking about how we think wearing orange shirts and infantalising the indigenous population will make up for the lack of basic physical and social infrastructure on reserves— such as running water, evidence-based + family centred + intergenerational trauma care + opportunities for innovation.

• I’m talking about how we have never discussed in vulnerable honesty the fact that The Greatest Canadian was a promoter of eugenics, and why the entire Canadian media has for several years ignored the fact that a “human rights” movement sweeping through every institution of government and society is actually a eugenics movement and promotes policy that violate at least three current UN declarations.

• I’m talking about how we have a PM calling Canada a genocidal nation, and this same PM has been instrumental in promoting a movement which is targeting specific profiles of children for indoctrination + removal from their parents, the very UN definition of genocide.

• I’m talking about how we find ourselves in a culture of human rights activism that believes destroying the integrity of the family unit is promoting decolonial thinking + tolerance + inclusivity.

• I’m talking about how, in the days immediately following the murder of George Floyd by a police officer, we all watched mobs of raging humans throng and swarm around monuments which they destroyed in a mass rage and called that violence justified and called that mob anti-racist protesting.

• I’m talking about how we are pretending PQ’s Bill 21 is not a response to extremism triggered by memories of the Duplessis era + also about how survivors of theocratic regimes trend toward high valuation of laicite, and how instead we choose to believe the narcissistic woke lie that it’s racist to want laicite in PQ.

In the Shoppe.

10 Things You Can Do Now

You can keep wanking on acrimony and antagonism and activism wars. You can keep arguing with those committed to misunderstanding you, you can project all of your anger about everything onto the target you painted onto your political opponent’s back. Or you can get with yourself and take the keys from your amygdala. Making friends with asshole inside your head will be the best thing you did for yourself — take back your life by living in in the here and now as opposed to inside an idea about a thing or person. How can you make friends with The Inner Asshole? There are 10 things you can do, they don’t cost money and or require you to buy expensive professional services that cost several hundred dollars per hour. These are 10 things you can do for yourself in your relation with yourself.

1. morning routine—commit to yourself by providing the consistency that will help you thrive: early and consistent wake-up time, sunlight + overhead light in your eyes as soon as possible on waking + daily exercise, ending your morning shower with a cold water flash. Avoid social media on first waking, and for several hours, using it sparingly + intentionally when you do + read + do some writing + meditative practise instead.

2. gratitude practise—the human brain has evolved to detect danger and so it will direct your focus to problems and potential dangers in an effort to protect you. Reframe, lean into embodiment and be in the present moment and ask how your life could feel better if you decided to focus on creating a gratitude list.

3. feel, don’t think, your emotions—stay with yourself, resist the urge to tell a story, state follows story and you can easily take yourself down a spiral when you create a dramatic narrative about your felt sense. Lean in and resist the urge to ruminate on what you cannot change. Binge watch netflix or prime, go outside and play in the forest, or dig your toes in the sandy beach or the mud puddle. disrupt your maladaptive circuitry in self compassionate ways—find awe and humour and joy in the world around you.

4. stop thinking, just stop it. Overthinking = the bane of existence. really, it’s my personal kryptonite and I have to set limits because my inner asshole can go wild in the overthinking department.

5. set limits on the bad news you shove into your eyes and ears, set limits on the amount of manipulative drama posing as news you indulge—saying no to something can mean saying yes to you.

6. know and live by your values, as opposed to the cause célèbre du jour—do you know why you are supporting that cause, whatever it is? Are you doing it because facebook or some mindlessly simping journo said to do it or are you genuinely living by your values?

7. learn to tolerate being misunderstood, how others perceive and treat you is about them not you, and how you perceive and treat others is about you, not them. Stop making what others do and say about you; take responsibility for you + your behaviours.

8. seek acceptance and tolerance and validation from yourself above all others.

9. replace the urge to judge yourself or others with compassionate curiosity—seek to understand instead of label and compartmentalise.

10. notice how you treat yourself—are you bullying yourself? Be your own beloved. Are you running from yourself? Where are you running to? Remember, wherever you go there you are. Behaviour is a thing you do to yourself first and foremost.

What’s the worst thing that could happen if you chose to stop letting fear govern you? How would your life change if you decided to commit to joy rather than misery? How would your life look and feel if you decided to let go of the negative judgements you have about others + embraced compassionate curiosity? What if you decided to focus less on the behaviours of others you cannot control and focus more on your thoughts, the feelings they create and the behaviour they fuel in you? What if you changed the way you respond to stuff that harshes your buzz, pisses you off, generates uncomfortable feelings within your body? What if you could observe your trauma responses and study their triggers?

What if the real revolution was simply showing up every fcuking day, especially when you don’t want to or feel you cannot, to turn that bloody flywheel of life? A revolution is a complete turn of a circle. Show up and turn your flywheel.

That’s the compassion revolution.