Joseph Dillard

Do you recognize who is in this picture? That’s Smeagol in his pre-Gollum days, when he just found the One Ring in Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings. Is he joyful and happy? You bet! Emotions are a common and powerful way most people keep themselves stuck in the Drama Triangle. Fear Fear is generally viewed … Read more

Peggy Noonan, once a speech writer for Reagan and a conservative and Catholic, wrote an editorial (http://bit.ly/9kR8EK) about the crisis in the Catholic Church which was forwarded to me.  In it she argues that the presence of women in leadership roles in the Church would have prevented pedophilia from occurring. While women in the higher … Read more

Dream Politics looks at power as a function and tool of the evolving self. It sees interior and external sources of power as mirroring one another, reflecting and reinforcing one another. Attempting to discern which is prior and most important is a waste of time and energy; it is like asking, “Are the interior or … Read more

Democracy and the Evolution of Consciousness In a democracy, “deliberation is necessary so that collectively-intelligent decisions are created instead of dumb politics. Neutral, objective, quality information is the basis for solid deliberation. Curating information — sorting out intellectual quality and truth claims or communicating across boundaries — is akin to governance through deliberation.“ Deliberative mechanisms … Read more

People who project negativity typically have low self-esteem. They feel badly about themselves, and their negativity is simply a reflection of those feelings. HENDRIE WEISINGER, The Power of Positive Criticism Strictly speaking, negativity is not a cognitive distortion, but it is so fundamental, in that it supports all cognitive distortions, and it is so pervasive, … Read more

War is a social manifestation of the role of persecutor in the three realms of interpersonal, personal, and intrapersonal realities. To look at the justifications for war is to look at the justifications for the persecutor role in the Drama Triangle. The concept of social roles in interpersonal conflict is derived from the domain of … Read more

Your world view isn’t everything, but it’s close.  The assumptions that you make about what’s real, why you’re alive, and how you should relate to other people tell who you are, determine who you will be and what sort of a mark you’ll make on the world. Your world view is that important. Historically, most … Read more

Imagine that you are a big, beautiful tree in a forest. You have been growing for one hundred and fifty years. You have seen many springs and autumns. Surrounded by other majestic trees, you are home to many birds, squirrels, insects. Your deep roots, nourished by the rich earth, are home to many fungi, beetles, … Read more

“[A] bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular, and what no just government should refuse.” — Thomas Jefferson December 20, 1787 If you were to choose the single most important act in history and then, choose the single most important person behind that act, … Read more