We have to ditch the mental habits of our world.
One of those habits is seeking some body of objective truth. So long as you cling to that, there will always be someone ready to crush you for having a different content in your “objective truth.” As previously noted, it’s a trick, a fundamental flaw of human nature to believe that logic and reason can bring us all to a common answer on everything. What’s really happening is that we use reason and logic to justify what’s really going on inside of us, and that’s the drive to find room for our true individual will.
If the world around us says we need objective reason and logic, then our minds will work through the inherently broken rules of logic and find room to justify what we really must have for entirely illogical reasons. And we will go so far as to play the game and hide from our conscious minds the content of that true will and where it comes from.
It’s not that your true will comes from God, but it reflects how God made us. It’s how we are wired. So it works a whole lot better to come up with a model of reality that accommodates that wiring as much as possible. This is why I state that reality is fungible: Your perception of reality, arising from your experiences and your true will, is as good as mine. We need to invest more energy in understanding how to work together within that variable reality than fussing at each other about what we find reality to be.
So this calls for developing protocols and habits that account for these very necessary differences between humans. Even when no one else involved understands or agrees with our radically different assumptions, we are accountable to God for doing it right. This is how we infiltrate a world that does not know our Creator and bring Him closer to human awareness.
This is how I deal with Western government bureaucracy. This is how I found a comfortable home in the US military. I could write a book about what’s wrong with the US military, but that would serve no purpose. It might be entertaining, and could provoke some discussion, but nothing significant would change. The nature of bureaucracy prevents even registering such input. Instead, I have to find a path of external conformance, treating the military itself as a living thing with very machine-like qualities. It evolves, but not quickly. It is what it is at the time you deal with it.
And even when individuals within the system have some discretion, it tends to run against your individual wishes by bureaucratic instinct. That’s just the way it is. You have to cultivate favor from each individual holding discretionary authority, and never be surprised at how corrupt it is. Stop thinking of corruption as evil; it’s just human relations with a bad name. Everything in Creation is personal and God plays favorites. We don’t seek corruption for hedonistic pursuits; we use favoritism to indicate that God says something different about reality than what most people believe. “Rule of law” has always been a myth.
So if you can see the difference between “kissing ass” versus serving your superior’s personal best interests as God sees it, then you’ll understand. I can assure you that military leaders can tell the difference. As long as you follow orders at all, you’ll always find someone’s going to call you names. To the degree it matters, you can remind folks that you are simply using different tactics to assert your individuality. Meanwhile, you should be looking for reasons to cultivate personal loyalty, not seeking excuses to withhold it.
Some things I’ve said to others during arguments: How does my friendly disposition harm you? I didn’t join a union; I don’t belong to your clusterf**k of malcontents. There’s no justification for an adversarial relationship with management. I didn’t come here to get my dick wet and my pockets full; my aspirations are a little higher than that.
The only things in this world you can fix are your expectations.
