This is the fourth in an ongoing series of articles entitled The Dynamics. This installment is The World Systems – Extremes.
“The second condition is Extremes. Extremes mean extremes. It means the opposite end of midpoint. Now, what determines midpoint? Well I don’t know, but midpoints are generally determined by conceptual track records or some commonality that we can identify. Literally if we look at a scale of one to ten we can say the midpoint is five as that seems to be mathematically logical although that can be exploited by a number of other reasons. What you’re not going to see are midpoints. You’re going to see actions, people and systems in extremes. The very worst and occasionally the very best. This is going to be very confusing to you because on one hand where you are seeing the very worst that can be awful, you then turn around and see something which is definitely at the opposite end of the pole. You say to yourself oh well thank goodness that all worked out, it off balances. It may or may not. By and large I expect to see more extremes on the negative end of the pole. The extremes in this case meaning that people will move from the generally positive end of the spectrum to the negative end of the spectrum. They will abdicate the positive end. Now the way you’ll feel this is you’ll feel impressed or forced as it were into a lot of these extremes. People around you are just going to do really wacko things. You will say to yourself, I don’t understand this; I really don’t understand this at all. Because it won’t make a lot of sense to you, the effect will upset your own conceptual balances. You will you wonder if they are doing that, then where am I in relationship to all of this. Where you thought you were at say center point, now you haven’t got any idea whether you’re at center point anymore.
How would it be if only one person stayed solid and sane and everyone else went insane? How could that one person stay sane when the rest of us go insane? And on that particular basis, how long does the sane person stay sane when everyone else is insane? What happens is that it changes the commonality. It makes you look at yourself and say god if everybody else is running off this cliff something must be wrong with me. Maybe I should run off the cliff too as it seems to be the way everything is going. So by living in a state of these extremes you begin to question your stability. You begin to question your center point and you begin to think gee maybe I’m not right. And of course that is the first step towards getting yourself sucked into the vortex and losing your own stable point.
What you must do now is find where your true stability is. That’s going to take a lot of interior evaluations on your part. What are your values in life about yourself, about your relationships, about your money, about your feeling towards the country and the government, about your family, about your career, about everything? Everything has to be looked at. What you need is a clearly defined foundation that you can plant you feet in like wet cement, let it dry, and say in effect there’s my rock. I can live with this with only minor modifications. That is one of the great self-change things that are going to take place. One of the greatest is getting you to identify this stable base. Most of you if you’re pretty average, whatever that means, really don’t have that base defined. You need to get that defined. A lot of you think you know what your stable base is but you’ve never really looked at it. You must go through the whole list. And, you might say well, I thought this was it, but I really see now in looking at it that its not. If it’s not then throw it out and get the real thing in there. And don’t tell me that you can’t figure out the real thing, sure you can. It’s going to probably take a little effort, a little insight and a little time but you’ll find out what it is. It’s in there. And there is always some modicum of variables that are associated with it that will allow you your lateral movements as things begin to change, but the stable center point is not going to change at all.
Throughout the world countries, nationalities and groups are going to do extreme things. Labor Unions will do extreme things. Congress will do extreme things. Haven’t you noticed that we have a problem in the world today with terrorists? Now are terrorists stable? Everything they do is extreme. They’re just the precursors of what’s happening so all you’re looking at is the natural element and function of this particular extreme state. They just happen to be upfront with it. You will find these extremes operating literally in every conceivable phase of your life. You will again look at yourself and say I don’t understand this and maybe I’m crazy and they are sane. And unless you’ve got your stable base to work from I don’t think you’ve got anything to go back to. You’ll end up typically following the Pied Piper crowd. It’s not going to be easy because if you’re around a hundred people who are jumping off a cliff, it’s going to be very hard for you to understand that staying on stable ground is where you’re supposed to be. There’s nothing like the weight of the crowd to send doubts running up and down your spine. If you are not prepared, it leaves you in a very open and vulnerable position. Establish your personal stable base or centerpoint.” – Gregge Tiffen, 1984
TO BE CONTINUED IN PART 5 – The World Systems – Aggression.