Businessmen they drink my wine
Plowmen dig my earth
Not a one of them down the line
knows what any of it is worth.
– Bob Dylan
Everybody knows that this world is in Deep Trouble AND that WE are that Trouble.
If what I was told by the Students of the Ascending Masters is true – the Van Allen Radiation Belts (which surround the Earth) were PUT here. To help keep our Negativity from polluting the neighborhood.
And if the teachings in the Urantia Book are true: Our planet (which is referred to by the Celestials as: ‘Urantia’) has the ‘distinction’ of being the only world in the entire history of the Grand Universe whereon a Divine Son (during his planetary bestowal) was MURDERED by his own children. and because of this, our world is known locally as the “Planet of the Cross”.
(and yet we have the CHEEK to refer to the day of this disgraceful murder as “Good Friday” ! Which hardly sounds like Repentance, Accepting Responsibility, and a commitment to do better)
In any case – if we simply CAN NOT do better than we have been, then the Sixth Mass Extinction (which is now underway) will proceed.
I do not wish to lead you astray; so I just now checked in with AI (a i), and here’s (part of) what Gemini told me:
“Research published in institutions like PNAS demonstrates that current vertebrate extinction rates are up to 100 times higher than natural background rates, driven entirely by human activities such as habitat destruction, climate disruption, pollution, and overexploitation.”
It was more than 8 ½ years ago that I began publishing essays on this site mostly about Planetary Survival.
[Our culture uses the term – “Sustainability” as a euphemism for ‘Survival’ ]
FOR ME this has been an EXPLORATION: I’ve been trying to understand WHY we haven’t been Taking Care of Business / (attending to the Existential Crises confronting us) and ~ ‘ How can we turn ourselves around?’
Considering the beginning of 2018 and comparing it to now our Situation is pretty much the same … (except that we’ve wiped out somewhere between 85,000 and 850,000 species in these past 8 years)
At the beginning of 2018 the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ “Doomsday Clock read “two minutes to midnight”. It currently reads: “85 seconds to midnight. So I do not think that the Human Family has woken up in any significant way.
We are toying of course with Self-Genocide THROUGH Planetary Destruction.
WHY is it not universally (globally) ILLEGAL to harm any of the planetary life-support systems upon which we all depend?
I think the short answer is that it’s because we have NOT made up our minds that we are going to SURVIVE.
Survival is a CHOICE ! – (one we have NOT yet made)
I am (by now) aware of quite a few reasons / (mostly internal obstacles) ~
WHY we are not dealing with the Existential Crises confronting us as Problems we are Determined to Solve:
- Ignorance
- Obliviousness
- Distraction
- Tunnel Vision
- Alienation
- Exemption (an erroneous sense of exemption)
- Self-sufficiency (an erroneous sense of self-sufficiency)
- Self-absorption
- Arrogance
- Longstanding Habitual Semi-conscious Commitment to Personal Comfort
- Previous Procrastination
- Selfishness
- Collective Ego
- Materialism
- Greed
- The Predicament of the Commons
Okay, first let’s talk about Ignorance.
Humans have lived here on this planet for a long time. And our living here has never been a problem. Not till quite recently, anyway.
It’s true that we’ve been somewhat aware that we’ve done some things which have had a destructive ecological impact; but ~ that our collective footprint might be SO big and SO heavy that WE have become the dominant force shaping major trends … this development kind of snuck up on us. It happened SUDDENLY. And there was an (understandable) LAG between the occurrence itself and our becoming AWARE of it.
We are able to see (now) that it is fair to say the Anthropocene epoch actually began in 1952. But it took us till about the year 2000 before we got very far with figuring it out.
[which is a Comprehension Lag of nearly half a century ]
However ~
I am sorry to say that of ALL the obstacles listed above THIS aspect of our ignorance is really the ONLY ONE which does not attest to our pathology. All the others basically describe and illuminate the nature of our insanity.
Now, being an educator ~ when I look around and see the individual casualties and the societal casualties, I’m inclined to blame Education:
The obliviousness that afflicts us is a cultural phenomenon, is it not?
We (white) “Americans” are fond of the phrase – “the middle of nowhere”. (We think it’s cute, a bit funny, and we like saying it).
I live in the woods, in Central Oregon. Ponderosa pines. Two miles down a gravel road. And I have before picked up, while walking along the road – (a one-mile stretch where no houses are visible from the road) one hundred pieces of trash: mostly pop cans & beer cans. These having been thrown thoughtlessly out a car window by someone who reckoned they were in the middle of nowhere.
Whereas ~
In 1811 the Shawnees (of the Ohio valley) walked for 70 days to Florida to a big meeting (convened by Tecumseh to try to make a plan to resist the existential threat of white encroachment) … and, I am confident that at NO time during their 70-day walk did they ever think that they were in the middle of nowhere. They did not think like that.
We (white Americans collectively) have an Industrial-grade Ego:
Not only do we believe that we OWN the world, we tend to think the United States is the BEST country in the world.
(and THIS despite the fact that objective measurements of American Life (in comparison with life in other countries)
tell quite a mediocre story (at best).
And how do we describe someone who is predisposed to think they are better than other people?
We say that they are arrogant.
We are mighty fond of the ease afforded to us by Civilization. I do not think it an exaggeration to say that we are civilization worshipers.
Certainly – we are the beneficiaries of modern science and technology, miraculous medical procedures, public education, good roads (& cars), energy and communications systems – the internet (the world’s collective knowledge & memory at our fingertips).
All these things (and more) make our life better. Or at least they make it easier. But ~ does that mean we should think we can TAKE CREDIT FOR IT?
Hardly !
Nor does it mean that we can twist and shape our (imagined) relationship with Civilization & privilege to where we think we have ‘risen above’ Nature. And that now we Preside over it.
High Responsibility and Low Power is the recipe for Stress. But Low responsibility and high Power is the recipe for disaster: A Brat. A Punk. (a hazard to himself and others) The Mafia.
The closest thing to a Creation Story that white America has is the story from the book of Genesis. Which story tends to place man outside of and superior to Nature.
So the high correlation here makes me suspect that even though most people who know the story do not believe it to be literally true it has nonetheless found its way into our collective psyche. And now the planet is paying for it. (Because of the story’s embedded notion of our being SEPARATE from Nature)
It is, of course, impossible for us to escape Nature. Nor could we OWN it.
(Like Crocodile Dundee says – it would be like fleas arguing about ‘who owns the dog’ that they’re on)
When Black Elk told his people that there would come to this land a people who would erect FENCES and CLAIM OWNERSHIP of the land itself, the people he was speaking to just could not imagine such a thing.
And of course the racist nightmare which to this day continues to afflict the Blacks & all people of color including the Native Americans is a tragedy and a disgrace. And by saying that it’s a tragedy I mean that not only does it generate continuous suffering but ~ it could have been prevented and could be ended (hypothetically) by ‘Better Education’.
[it is error-based ]
It is not easy for us (the Dominant, white) American culture to see that these riff-raff, primitive “colored” people come from cultures which are actually in some important ways superior to ours.
It seems to me that the Black people in this country enjoy a culture superior to white culture in some ways. I think they are more emotionally more healthy . From their roots:
Nikki-Rosa
childhood remembrances are always a drag
if you’re Black
you always remember things like living in Woodlawn
with no inside toilet
and if you become famous or something
they never talk about how happy you were to have
your mother
all to yourself and
how good the water felt when you got your bath
from one of those
big tubs that folk in chicago barbecue in
and somehow when you talk about home
it never gets across how much you
understood their feelings
as the whole family attended meetings about Hollydale
and even though you remember
your biographers never understand
your father’s pain as he sells his stock
and another dream goes
And though you’re poor it isn’t poverty that
concerns you
and though they fought a lot
it isn’t your father’s drinking that makes any difference
but only that everybody is together and you
and your sister have happy birthdays and very good
Christmases
and I really hope no white person ever has cause
to write about me
because they never understand
Black love is Black wealth and they’ll
probably talk about my hard childhood
and never understand that
all the while I was quite happy
– Nikki Giovanni
Thomas Berry says this about the Native Americans:
The Indians have never accepted human life as ordinary,
as something that can be managed
in a controlled or painless manner.
They realize that life tests the deepest qualities
within the human personality,
qualities that emerge in heroic combat not merely with others
but also with oneself and with the powers of the universe.
Thoreau was aware of how much life energy his own white culture invested into the problem of providing shelter for ourselves compared to what the Indians devoted to the same problem. A HUGE difference.
And he made sense of it for himself in terms of penance.
Emerson too had some thoughts about our separate-from-Nature hyper-civilized condition:
“We are students of words: we are shut up in schools, and colleges, and recitation-rooms, for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last
with a bag of wind, a memory of words, and do not know a thing.
We cannot use our hands, or our legs, or our eyes, or our arms.
We do not know an edible root in the woods, we cannot tell our course by the stars, nor the hour of the day by the sun.
It is well if we can swim and skate.
We are afraid of a horse, of a cow, of a dog, of a snake, of a spider.”
I quite suspect that the Latino cultures are superior to the American white culture in some important ways. I think that white America cannot really conceive of how much love there is in the families of Latino cultures.
I would recommend to you the film “Bella” (2006 Eduardo Verastegui, Tammy Blanchard ).
I think it shows the difference between the American white culture and the Latino cultures (particularly with regard to how much love there is in the Latino Family contrasted with many white American families)
We are oblivious.
While we dote on the perks of Modern Civilization we give hardly a thought for the Great Mother
Who nurtures us and takes care of us all day every day.
And we show our love and respect for her by throwing our beer cans and cigarette buts out the window.
We like to say ‘You can’t stop progress’. And we imagine that progressing is what we’re doing.
But ~
To what condition have we delivered ourselves?
We’re in a stupor. In obliviousness.
And as long as we stay in this condition what should we expect from ourselves?
Distraction
Americans spend more on entertainment than we do on Education and Healthcare COMBINED.
Whaddaya think? Doesn’t that sound to you like (deliberate) DISTRACTION ?
We go to great lengths don’t we? to keep from considering our actual (cliff-edge) situation.
Tunnel Vision
We COULD spend a bit of time making sure we’ve got it straight – HOW we humans fit into the Whole Thing.
I mean GOSH it might take us twenty minutes of genuine enquiry maybe even an HOUR !
But on the back side of that hour of honest enquiry it would be CLEAR to us that
Human beings are part of a Biological System WAY before we’re part of any Political System.
So
How the Heck did it happen that when Barack Obama was elected President the Republican Party made it their MISSION
to OPPOSE him NO MATTER WHAT HE DID ? !
(Besides being wonderfully un-American) such a decision could only have been arrived at by strenuously AVOIDING the above-mentioned ‘hour of honest situational enquiry’)
This is not simply being ‘unable to see the forest for the trees’ …
It’s sitting under your own (single, private) tree while pretending that there ARE NO OTHER TREES.
THAT THERE IS NO FOREST. NO BIOLOGY. NO PLANTS or ANIMALS. NO WEATHER. NO PLANET.
It’s self-absorption indulged and morphed into solipsism ! (‘nothing exists but me’)
Alienation
If we find ourselves in a condition wherein we do not feel connected (on a heart-level) with our own Mother
or with each other (fellow humans), or with the animals, or the plants, or with the Life-support Systems that keep us alive all day every day,
Then we could fairly describe ourselves as “alienated”.
What do you think? Do we qualify? I’m afraid we do.
The thing is ~ we ARE connected but we do not FEEL connected.
Which is to say that we have CONCOCTED this error (or inherited it) and now we find ourselves LIVING in it.
If we were RIGHT: if we were really NOT connected to everything else, then it would not be fair to say that we are in this way “crazy”
But that’s not the case.
Once you discover that a single Snapping Turtle exists, then THAT implies OTHER such turtles – PARENTS, and habitat, and food supply … and THEIR food supply and so on.
There’s no such thing as just ONE snapping turtle. Or ONE Bigfoot.
That cannot be. [unless it happens to be the last one]
ALL of us … we ALL grow here on this planet the way apples grow on an apple tree.
Exemption
Psychologists used to think that the crazy way teenage boys drive was due to a Death Wish. But eventually they came to understand that’s not what’s going on. They drive like that (partly) because they think they’re invulnerable.
I don’t know. What do you think? Too many comic books maybe?
Or
Maybe it’s something deeper. Maybe they’d be like that even if there were no movies or comic books.
And keep in mind that it’s not “teenage boys” that we’re trying to understand here … we’re trying to understand us. Ourselves.
I have read that when a soldier is contemplating a dreadful battle (which he knows will happen tomorrow) he is more inclined to feel sorry for his comrades being killed than himself.
Many decades ago some historian figured out that civilizations Rise AND FALL according to a fairly predictable pattern and when that Headline landed on our collective breakfast table did we (all schools and universities etc) straightaway begin enquiring into this issue? :
( “Is this really TRUE? And if it is – where are WE in this cycle? Are we still rising, or have we started to unravel [as a society, a culture] ? Is there anything we can DO to prevent our society from simply coming apart? Is the process inevitable? Or can we intervene to save ourselves?” etc.)
Hardly. It’s almost as though the discovery never even happened.
It seems like quite a bit of Death must happen in a person’s life before we accept the fact that WE are actually going to die.
“It’s not that I think the PRINCIPLE is untrue I’m just not ready to believe that it applies to me.”
This is what I mean as having a sense of EXEMPTION: (an erroneous sense of exemption)
I do not entirely understand it, but I’m pretty sure that it’s part of the ‘brew’ ~ the tea (or maybe kool-aid) that we all seem to be drinking. The internal stuff that keeps us from dealing
with what’s in our face: – that we are all teetering on the existential brink.
Self-sufficiency
Part of our toxic masculinity is our principle of never needing to ask for help. Our fond story of ourself includes the notion of self-sufficiency.
It’s validated in part by our shared notion that we’re the Best.
[Americans are not really ‘wrong’ in believing that we ‘own the world’; but it’s an idea that we’re FOND of and that we’re pretty inclined to ‘run with’]
Our toxic sense of self-sufficiency renders unattractive to us all of our ‘dependencies’ and, so – tends to render them invisible:
But –
we are dependent are we not? – upon Adequate Rainfall. Fair government. Impartial Courts. The sun. The Soil. (and on and on)
When we find ourselves stuck in bad traffic, it probably will not occur to us that the people we are currently surrounded by make up the tax base that allows the road we’re on to be built and maintained so we can actually drive on it.
No. We’re all upset – as though it’s OUR road and all these other people are simply in my way.
Our erroneous sense of self-sufficiency is tangled up with our ego and our arrogance.
Just one more aspect of our debilitating craziness.
Self-absorption
A decision about what’s the best thing to do at any given time is always SITUATION-DEPENDENT.
If you happen to be the first on the scene of a car accident, and there’s someone there who has a broken arm and who is also bleeding (hard) from a leg you better do whatever you CAN to stop the bleeding before worrying about anything else because if you don’t that person could BLEED OUT then they’ll never even get a chance to heal up from their broken arm.
One time I was driving a one-ton van (fairly well-loaded) north on Arizona I-17 maybe an hour north of Phoenix.
A 4-lane (divided) highway. We were on an upgrade, doing about 65. My partner was sound asleep in the passenger’s seat; and I was in the driver’s seat: half asleep. We had gotten up at 4 in the morning to do the errand we were on; and it was now mid-afternoon. The weather was good, the pavement dry. But I had become pretty groggy. We were in the right-hand lane. I had been watching my left side-mirror; and I knew that there was a semi (hauling empty) coming hard from behind about to overtake us in the left lane, when I realized that WE were closing hard on a (fully-loaded) semi-truck directly ahead of us.
Well THAT woke me up. If I had been fully awake (which was, of course, ‘part of my job’) I would have seen the situation BEFORE we were in a CRISIS. And I would have slowed our vehicle gracefully beginning well BEFORE where we were when I came-to. I knew that the lane to our left offered nothing but death. And I MIGHT have been able, by standing our van on its nose to slow it enough and SOON enough to keep from rear-ending the slow-moving semi ahead of us, but THAT scenario also seemed pretty unattractive … so I passed the semi ahead of us (at the last second) by using the shoulder lane on the right !
It seems to me that what I just described bears more than a little resemblance to our (collective) Situation that we’re currently in ~ (You know – the Sixth Great Mass Extinction being already underway and all … )
Maybe you’ve been spending the past twelve years trying to become wealthy. (This IS America, after all) and then you come to the realization that the planet you live on is in Deep Trouble. EXISTENTIAL Trouble. And that WE ARE that Trouble.
WHAT do you do? Does your program of Getting Rich keep its status of “My Only Mission”? Or do you adjust your priorities expanding them to include the Life-Support Systems of the Great Mother? (the systems which keep YOU [& everybody else] alive) ?
It is very easy for us to observe whatever it is we see ourselves doing and then conclude ~ that’s my life. And it’s IMPORTANT.
(no matter what is happening around us)
We are TOUGH. By that I mean that once we become habituated to drawing a Very Small ‘circle’ around us –
almost NOTHING can get us to ‘draw a bigger one’.
Once I find out that there are homeless people living (somehow or other) in (or around) my town ~ people who have some Basic Human Needs going (routinely) UNMET do I then INCLUDE THEM in my assessment of “my Situation” or do I manage to keep my ‘circle’ completely small? {And – they’re on their own. And Good Luck to ‘em. And – why don’t they get a job, anyway?}
We’re pretty good at tolerating Human Suffering (as long as it’s not our OWN).
This (strong) reluctance to expand our circle of care
THIS is selfishness & Self Absorption.
(maybe consider revisiting Jesus’ story of the kind Samaritan)
Arrogance
I feel a little relieved to comment on ‘arrogance’ – not because it’s easy to understand, (it isn’t) but at least it’s easy to recognize, to define.
Arrogance is a version of aloofness wherein one is predisposed to think he’s superior to others in some way. “Better” or ‘Smarter’. ‘More deserving’ … or whatever.
Probably the key ingredient though is the disconnect. The (imagined) Separation from other people or from The Mother.
Suppose you had a 4-year old boy-child who has figured out on his own how to start up the family car (which he has now done, and has driven the car down the driveway into some bushes. You have tried talking to him, but he seems impervious to counsel and to have no sense of Natural Consequences. AND, let’s say – he has somehow managed to get his own key) Would you feel worried?
Should you?
This is what our ‘above-it-all arrogance’ (with its ‘disconnect’ and its sense of exemption) turns us into.
The “Buffalo Grass” that we turned upside down at the beginning of the Great Dust Bowl disaster was composed of FORTY species of plants.
The gasoline-powered tractor showed up and became available … WHAT (among this group of ‘let’s pull the pots out of the cupboard’ 4-year olds) could possibly go wrong?
Tons of soil fell on Chicago. Soil fell on ships in the Atlantic.
We (civilization lovers) didn’t like the buffalo. Too uncontrollable. Too uncivilized So – we did not respect their pasture, their habitat.
You know where the term “buck” comes from (when used to refer to “a dollar”)?
We made a decision to eradicate the deer that lived in the eastern forests. So: open season.
There were wagons piled HIGH with deer skins on their way to be tanned.
These hides were each worth a dollar .
A poster-child example of human arrogance is the Titanic. A product of our desire to demonstrate that we are the masters of the universe. That we can do anything ! That we are above it all.
We wreck the soil, so we invent artificial fertilizer which gives us a crop but pollutes our water.
We do whatever we can think of, then when we’ve made a mess – we try to solve that problem with some other technological contrivance and so on.
We act like children.
Our arrogance makes us dangerous.
You know who among us does not behave like this? The Amish.
They do not presume that just because some new piece of technology is now available that they should automatically adopt it.
I have read that ‘What Americans have in place of a culture is a fast-moving economy.’
In order for (any group) to have an actual CULTURE the people involved must communicate must have discussion(s) about values, options, predictions and so on (like the Amish do) and then make a CHOICE: [a genuine attempt to optimize life for the whole]
On that matter (of communicating) ~ Artificial Intelligence (& the ramifications of its use) has enough Americans sufficiently scared that DISCUSSION is actually happening right now. (which is wonderful, really.) Acting like grownups for a change. Taking responsibility. TOGETHER. Trying to choose a good future.
Commitment to Personal Comfort
This one is probably the most invisible of the whole batch of inner obstacles (as it is, quite likely: longstanding AND habitual And we began it by a decision that we were hardly even conscious of making. And that was many years ago)
Chances are pretty good that when you were in the 7th grade (& even later on) that you did not think that Story Problems were fun to work on.
Maybe we had become reasonably competent at doing the abstract arithmetical computations but we found that dealing with Story Problems was painful anyway. Even when we managed to eventually solve the thing – the process was rather uncertain and it likely forced us to bump up against the limits of our capability to figure it out. “How do we get from the story to the (doable) math?” These problems made us feel inadequate and stupid. It was quite distinctly unpleasant.
And there was probably no wise & kind adult by our side sympathizing with our discomfort and offering us encouragement: “You are a warrior in training. Your current assignments might seem trivial, as well as uncomfortable. But even though what you are doing is painful, if you can learn to tolerate all of it – the uncertainty, the bruising of your ego, your feelings of inadequacy and stupidity if you can train your psyche to just keep moving forward despite all the discomfort you may find that some years from now you may be among the (few) people who will have the necessary qualities to address the issues which in that future time will constitute an existential threat to our entire species and to our Planetary Home itself.
When the Long-distance Runner is in the middle of his run he KNOWS that if he were to simply STOP RUNNING that his pain would soon stop. So, if he is to choose to keep running and put up with the pain of doing so he must have a REASON.
I am trying to describe to you such a reason: Personal Power. To be used when needed, in your own life and perhaps at some time in the future for the benefit of All.
But what is the more typical outcome of our early run-ins with psychic (or physical) pain ? Well – we just decide whenever possible to avoid it.
Many of the assignments we were obliged to take on while in school were unpleasant enough that we decided (perhaps at some quiet inner level) to protect ourselves from such abuse once we’ve graduated and have more control over what happens to us.
I can tell you that every time in my life that I ran the 440 (the Quarter-mile: one lap around a standard track) it was always the same: I’d get half-way through (looking across the field, down the 50-yard line, at the start/finsh line) and I’d be completely spent. Out of gas. And I’d have to run the whole second half on nothing. Very Painful.
So – did I train to run the quarter mile? (or the half-mile … or whatever) ? Nope. Way too painful.
I cannot say that I’m proud of this. Maybe, if I’d been a ‘real man’ I’d have trained to run the Half-mile (or something). No doubt – it would have been good for my character; but there was no one encouraging me to run Distance; and I didn’t have a Good Reason of my own. (so I threw the shot put and discus. These require training also. But not pain.)
There’s a way, of course, in which Pain is Pain. Whether it’s physically induced or psychically – it’s all the same.
I HAVE endured more than a little physical pain training for football and for track or working construction or hiking;
but I’ve probably done better in the realm of psychic pain. (I could talk about it, but I’ll spare you)
In any case most Americans (being Civilization Lovers / Comfort Lovers) do not have what you’d call a robust working relationship with pain.
Here’s a little test (if you’d like one): if your toilet acts up will you take the lid off and try to figure out what’s wrong in there?
Or
If your car breaks down, when you’re driving it somewhere, what will you do? Get your hands dirty? Try to figure out what’s wrong?
Not counting “flat tires” – how many break-downs end this way: the people in the car figure out what’s wrong then do something about it and drive away? It’s probably somewhere around 1%.
(in spite of the fact that [if you have a few tools, and if you can figure out what to do] 75 or 80% of breakdowns are ones you can drive away from)
For me this is adequate evidence that (as a culture) we are in the habit of avoiding psychic pain.
The main reason, when our car breaks down – that we don’t even try to figure out what’s wrong is because we know (that if we try) we’re risking feeling stupid and inadequate. And we’ve already (long ago) promised ourselves we’d just spare ourselves such feelings.
It’s just basic “self-care”, right?
Procrastination
Even when it becomes clear to us that the Great Mother is in serious trouble we know that we’ve already (almost by default) decided NOT to try to intervene maybe for quite a while already we find that our previous procrastination has WEIGHT. Inertia.
This alone makes it hard to make a beginning.
This (we all know) was NOT the response that Greta Thunberg made when she learned that the Earth was in serious trouble. Even though she was quite young; but it just made NO SENSE to her WHY our great Existential Crises were not on the News EVERY NIGHT !
‘HOW could we know the truth of this and just ignore it ? and go on with Business As Usual ?’
So she straight away took herself off to the Halls of Power and (for the most part) just SAT in silent protest.
She sacrificed her own Education to by her actions demonstrate that THIS was NOT the TIME for BUSINESS AS USUAL.
And of course she was RIGHT.
There ARE of course groups of people here and there in this world who are working hard to try to save us.
But such efforts are relatively few and (in the context of the immensity and the urgency of our Situation) those efforts are sketchy.
What SHOULD be happening of course is that EVERY GOVERNMENT, EVERY COLLEGE, UNIVERSITY, SCHOOL, CHURCH, major CORPORATION EVERY GROUP with the MEANS should be WORKING HARD to try to keep this (precious) World of ours from toppling over the edge of the existential cliff where we are currently perched and teetering.
If we should succeed in our endeavors to get rich (or whatever) none of it will matter if we fail to survive our own brain-fog.
I have heard Maharishi (Mahesh Yogi) say that ‘When you think that something may be the wrong thing to do – put it off.’
THAT’s the right use and the appropriate time for Procrastination.
THIS is NOT such a time.
Selfishness
When I was at the University of Idaho, I had a friend – Arthur Small.
Arthur was from Elko, Nevada which is sagebrush country; and U/I is up in the panhandle, in Moscow. Most of 600 miles north.
I met Arthur on the day we both registered for our respective classes. And this was the same day he’d driven there from Elko.
And that day was the FIRST day he had ever been out of sage-brush country.
He told me that he was shocked when he found the air no longer smelled like sagebrush.
He had always thought that was just the way AIR smelled.
Well – in this culture we have that same situation with regard to SELFISHNESS.
Our society is so infused with it we don’t even NOTICE that it smells bad.
For example – we regard our loyalty and protectiveness to our own nuclear family as a form of altruism. Love.
And we just regard that as ‘normal’. We draw our Circle of Care about as small as it possibly could be drawn.
But we do not see that as a version of selfishness.
If you should become a guest in an Afghan home those people would DIE for you the same as if you were their blood family.
Emerson says:
As long as our civilization is essentially one of property,
of fences, of exclusiveness, it will be mocked by delusions.
Our riches will leave us sick;
there will be bitterness in our laughter, and our wine will burn our mouth.
Only that good profits which we can taste with all doors open
and which serves all men.
I dare say that we do not believe him when he so speaks.
We now (actually) think that “Greed is good.”
At least the Rich People think that; and they own 97% of the property. They’re the experts. They should know.
Ego
The Jungians say that the Ego is a complex.
Which I take to mean that it is a construct and that it has a complicated anatomy such that, for example, it may have “powers”.
In the case of our Ego, it certainly DOES have powers.
The way I make sense of it our ego is sort of a DIY demon
Or
It’s like a “robot” that we’ve built (ourselves) and it now “lives” inside our own psyche. And we’ve Certified it (ourselves) and Programmed it (partly by ourselves) and we’ve given it full run of the place.
It’s who we think we are. Our Fond Story of ourselves.
Basically it’s an Idea and, as such – it is subject to the Laws of Ideas.
Which is to say we could be wrong about it (about ourselves) [We are wrong actually. Quite wrong. But I’ll talk about that in a minute]
Ambrose Bierce defines “pitiful” thus:
Pitiful, adj : The condition of an opponent following an imaginary encounter with oneself.
Much of our Ego is our Fond Ideas of ourself:
Our sense of separateness from Nature (& being above it all): our sense of superiority of presiding of being in charge our sense of exemption.
The Pursuit of Happiness is one of our God-given rights, isn’t it?
Why be an American if you can’t do whatever you want and at least try to Get Rich?
Our sense of entitlement Surely it’s our right to be comfortable. This is America, isn’t it?
We’re card-carrying members of our Civilization, aren’t we?
We’ve got carpet, fancy cars, air conditioning, an expensive mattress. We get to be comfortable, don’t we?
I can’t help but wonder ~
It’s as though there’s a wall which keeps us from loving our Mother or even seeing Her: this wall is part of our enormous industrial-grade ego, with our fantasies of designer-sunglasses-coolness and self-sufficiency: our incestuous love affair with Civilization.
[I say ‘incestuous’ because civilization is our own child not the Earth’s]
Do you remember the scene from “Dances With Wolves” where the Cavalry Sergeant (still in uniform, still in the ‘club’) calls John Dunbar a “traitor”? The loathing? the hatred?
Because Dunbar (now Dances-with-wolves) has turned his back on civilization – the Sacred Club.
“We’ve got a Life here ! The Great Mother !! WHAT? Do you think every day is Mother’s Day?
We’re busy !”
Dersu Uzala points out: “The sun is a powerful man. If he dies, everybody dies.”
And it’s the same with our Mother: Mom dies, we all die.
~ Where there is no vision the people perish. ~
Materialism & Greed
We milk the cow of the world,
and as we do
we whisper in her ear – “You are not true.”
– Richard Wilbur
We know the milk is real.
It’s just that we think the COW isn’t real. – A’J
A culture is a group with shared: customs, art, values & laws, language & a belief structure: our shared paradigm.
And our Values fall out of our beliefs.
What we BELIEVE is : that Material is All. That All is Material. That Reality is equivalent to Materiality.
And the Value that grows out of our Belief is our Dollar-Signs-in-the-Eyes insane lust for money & material wealth:
~ Greed ~
One of my favorite cartoons is from the New Yorker magazine:
wherein we see : an elderly businessman in his suit at his desk in his private office. The wall clock reads “11:26”. Out the window we look down on the town of New York. The crescent moon attests that it’s night-time. He is on the phone (with his wife):
“ I’m not a machine Margaret ! I can’t just turn off greed.”
The people of the United States make up about 4.2% of the world’s population; yet consume
about 16% of the world’s energy and about 25% of the world’s natural resources.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Within the U.S. : Wealth (assets) are held thus:
- The very top (the top tenth of a percent) own 13% – 14.4% of all wealth
- The top 1% (including the very top) own about a third : (30.5% – 31.6%)
- The next 9% [90th – 99th percentile] own about a third : (re 35%) of the wealth
- The middle-top 40% [the 50th – 90th percentile] owns about a third (30-31%)
- The bottom 50% holds only 2.4% – 2.5% of the country’s wealth.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I am not opposed to material wealth.
But
the great gulf (described directly above) between the rich and the poor
is not an accident.
It is the doing of the super-rich.
Great wealth in the face of Poverty is immoral.
It’s predatory.
An indulgence.
It’s evil.
It’s an indicator of a Deep Disconnect.
And there is a relationship between HOW we treat each other
and how we treat our mom the Great Mother: the Earth Gaia ~
who enabled our birth and also keeps us alive all day every day.
No one can love their mother and mistreat and prey upon their brothers and sisters
or
love their brothers and sisters and then mistreat their Mother.
What we are now surrounded by here is an abuse of both due to a heart-disconnect from both.
Everyone (especially the Rich and the Super-Rich) should watch Kurosawa’s film – “Ikiru” ; and also read
the picture book The Quiltmaker’s Gift ; and (while I’m at it) : the Super-Rich should also all be required
to do 100 hours of face-to-face Community Service working directly with the poor.
Philosophy (in my view) is about what’s going on in the realm that lies schematically between us and Reality.
It includes all our ideas about what we consider to be real (or true)
And
It also includes our “direct” Perceptions of reality
since
BOTH of these things CONNECT us to Reality and we depend upon them utterly.
First let me say a little about who we think we are vs who we are actually.
(I said in the previous section [about the Ego] that I would do so presently):
When each of us was a toddler-philosopher we figured out (commendably, and also – erroneously) –
that “I am one of the “things” of this world.”
This conclusion shows up in the (charming, earliest) child’s drawings that may well get posted on the refrigerator door.
And every time then, in our whole lives when we look into a mirror we think “That’s me.”
But
This was never true !
[there is, of course, a way in which it is true; but, you know, we don’t want to confuse a squirrel’s nest with the squirrels even if the critters themselves are invisible ]
People die all the time; and this generally does not disturb us.
But
When someone CLOSE to us dies THAT gets our attention.
And when we find ourselves in the same room with their corpse
there is NO DOUBT IN OUR MIND that THAT dead body is NOT THEM.
And this MEANS of course – that it never WAS them !
But
DESPITE this brief moment of Deep Clarity we don’t figure it out.
Our belief habits are TOO DEEP. Grooves. Deep Grooves.
And of course the same is true of US. [and of everyone]:
There will come a day when we will have to lay our body down
And walk away. ‘cause we’ll then be done with it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Kabir says ~ What has death and a thick body
dances before what has no thick body and no death.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Wei Wu Wei says:
Why are you unhappy?
Because 99.9 percent of everything you think
and of everything you do is for yourself ~
and there isn’t one.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jimenez says ~
I am not I.
I am this one
Walking beside me whom I do not see,
Whom at times I manage to visit,
And at other times I forget.
The one who remains silent when I talk,
The one who forgives, sweet, when I hate,
The one who takes a walk when I am indoors,
The one who will remain standing when I die.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
And if my studies are correct these poets are telling the truth:
We HAVE a body. But we are NOT our body.
When we want our hand to come up it comes up.
This is sufficient evidence to conclude that
the soul owns the body
and not the other way ‘round.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Consciousness has TWO aspects. Experience & Experiencer
It does 2 things:
It shapes itself into anything imaginable. Anything.
AND
It experiences it.
Imagine an ocean with waves on it ~ the Field of Consciousness
This is an ocean that is able to experience its own waves.
The ocean COULD also be flat. Calm. NO waves.
In any case though with waves or not
It is all water. Nothing else. Only it has these TWO capabilities.
It is consciousness that is the True Self particularly the Experiencer aspect.
We NEED a strong notion of Consciousness the Experiencer because it’s who we are.
AND
We need a strong idea about the Experience aspect too. Let me try to explain why:
When we open our eyes in the morning and look around us
We think we see the world.
We don’t. (not the way we think we do)
When I was a kid and I watched a movie the credits were always at the beginning.
But that didn’t really matter, because they were short. Quick. Soon done.
Not any more.
These days much more goes into producing a movie than in the early days of film-making.
There are GROUPS of people Companies assembled to make it all happen.
It’s now a highly complex cooperative venture.
And you KNOW they had to break their brain just to figure out how to acknowledge
the various (5 or 6 maybe) companies in a way that’s satisfactory to all parties.
Well when we open our eyes on any morning there’s a lot more going on than there seems to be.
And it happens at the borderline of the two worlds there the physical nervous system touches
~ the field of consciousness.
What we “see” (any time our eyes are open / when we’re awake)
Is a sort of electronic work-up of our surroundings IN & OF our own consciousness but
shaped by our physical nervous system and our various organs of perception.
And we RECOGNIZE this work-up (which is posing as our surroundings) AS our surroundings.
THIS is what makes the world visible to us.
We’re ‘watching a movie’ you could say. When we’re ‘awake’.
But the movie is invisible to us as a movie
because in that ‘stroke of recognition’ due to which the world presents itself to us
the work-up (the movie) instantaneously / simultaneously becomes invisible.
Here’s a clue:
When we open our eyes and “see the world” is it colored?
Yes.
(For 99% of us)
it IS.
Despite the fact that the sky seems to be blue and the trees and the grass look green
I know of no reason to believe that the green-ness or the blue-ness is a property of matter or of light.
Color is a quality of CONSCIOUSNESS (NOT of the physical world)
Besides, it’s not the color of our waking experience that makes the illusion (of ‘direct seeing’) convincing,
It’s the fact that when we look out the window we think we see the trees (or whatever’s around, at a distance) out there
where those things actually ARE.
THAT’S what makes the illusion so absolutely CONVINCING.
We imagine that our “sight” goes out and sort of strikes the environment.
That’s why we say we look “out the window” even though everybody knows that the direction of perception is inward.
So ~
Our every-day experience – that we are seeing the world DIRECTLY (without the aid of any intermediating consciousness)
leaves us with the impression that we are in DIRECT CONTACT with REALITY. Even though we are NOT.
And THAT’S why everybody in the world tends to think they’re RIGHT all the time.
It sort of turns us all into Fundamentalists.
Please understand though ~ it’s working the way it’s supposed to.
That’s just the way consciousness WORKS
as it’s giving us the Power to Live in the World.
Even so ~ the illusion-aspect of it causes Lots of Trouble.
And if we knew who we are we would NOT treat each other or our MOM the way we’ve been doing.
The Predicament of the Commons & other external evils
The name (‘commons’) refers to the Common Pasture – where all the cattle graze regardless of who owns the cattle.
This system was widely used during the Middle Ages.
The predicament manifests when a single cattle farmer decides to increase his herd – maybe even beyond the carrying capacity of the pasture. But he is still incentivized to do so because the damage his cows do to the pasture is distributed among ALL the farmers using that pasture, whereas – all the profits flow to that single farmer whose cows are now over-grazing the commons.
It is not difficult to see that an economic system containing such a loop-hole is flawed, and needs to be re-designed.
(It’s probably a bad idea to rely on the ethics of those who may be tempted to exploit the loop-hole)
These days (at least in the U.S.) ethics is a thing of the past.
But not so long ago a businessman might “do what is right” even though the Law did not require him to do so
And maybe even if doing the right thing would cost him personally.
I happen to know that my father’s grandfather (who owned a bank in northwest Ohio) made such a moral choice.
When the Depression hit, many banks folded and the customers of those banks were badly hurt.
Now – Joel (my great-grandfather) had been successful, and had invested in real estate.
But he sold off those properties when the banking system collapsed so that his customers (who had trusted him) would not be destitute.
Joel impoverished himself in order to take care of his customers.
(after that – my grandfather (L.K.) would often surreptitiously slip his father some cash, when he happened to be visiting)
But the ground-rules have changed. Ethics is gone. There is now no difference between The Law and the ‘Ground-Rules’.
There USED to be: Ethics & The Law. Both were functioning.
Now there is only The Law.
Now it is common practice for corporations to search diligently for ways to displace costs to move them outward beyond the boundaries of the corporation.
ANYWHERE else. Doesn’t matter where.
Philosopher’s Note:
I have come to understand that it is legitimate to classify a deed/act (or a system) as “evil”
based entirely on whether the CONSEQUENCES are evil.
An act or a system may be truly “EVIL” even if there was NO malicious intent at the outset.
Generally speaking ~ things that are Life-Supporting are ‘GOOD’ ; things that are Life-Damaging are ‘BAD’
Our big (publically traded) corporations (the way we’re currently using them) are killing the planet.
We have become increasingly committed to “Short-term Profit” according to the ‘bottom-line’ numbers of 90-day Earnings Reports.
CEO’s, boards, and stock prices are all judged by THE GREAT QUARTERLY BOTTOM LINE.
And
NOWHERE on these reports is there a line for PLANETARY Health & Well-being !
So
The QUESTION becomes: What kind of people would be so out-of-touch with reality
as
to trade the habitability of our own planet for a bit of money? For short-term profit ?
…. and the answer is : those who have been drinking the Kool-Aid !
And what does the packet say that it contains? :
Ignorance Obliviousness Distraction Tunnel Vision
Alienation Exemption Self-sufficiency Self-absorption
Arrogance Commitment to Personal Comfort Procrastination
Selfishness Ego Materialism & Greed
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Okay. Let’s pretend we’re Jack Benny:
We’re walking down the sidewalk one evening
when a mugger steps out of the shadows, sticks a gun in our ribs
and says – “Your money or your life!”
We are silent, and we don’t move.
Again he pokes us with his gun, and says
“Your money or your life !!”
And we say – “I’m thinking.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
All right ~ personally I don’t think we could un-incorporate all the for-profit corporations. (even though that might well make our life better)
But you know SURVIVAL is a CHOICE.
so
maybe we could green them up:
I think this would probably mean that we should just pretend that the Amendment to our Constitution has already been passed which now makes it illegal to do anything which would harm the planet’s life-support systems upon which all of life depends,
and – that we pay dividends to our share-holders only AFTER we prove on each quarterly Earnings Report – that our Mom has been taken care of FIRST.
We could choose to do this because
as we all know
~ If Mama ain’t happy ain’t nobody happy ~
~ We like to think that we know everything but we don’t even know who we are. ~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9n6NvDpcwLM (Consciousness explained in 200 seconds 3:44 )
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGwb3YQBW5k (‘We Don’t Understand the Pathology of the Rich’ — Chris Hedges 11:58 )
https://www.urantia.org/urantia-book-standardized/paper-132-sojourn-rome?term=132#U132_0_0 (scroll down 7 pages or so to Section 5; read that section which is about 3 pages)
https://www.urantia.org/urantia-book-standardized/paper-72-government-neighboring-planet (Read the paper; it’s about 13 pages)
[The people of this neighboring planet, though they have obstacles similar to ours have made up their minds to survive.
For example – on that world, if a public official should betray the Public Trust, he is executed. Here we tolerate and expect corruption.]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Material World” (a book) by Peter Menzel et al. The author was a photographer for National Geographic.
It’s meant to give us some understanding of our (rather varied) relationship with stuff: our OWN stuff.
It contains photos taken all over the world. These photos all have the same “script” / format: people standing in front of their house
with all their personal belongings behind them.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ a note from Ambrose Bierce:
BRAHMA, n. He who created the Hindoos, who are preserved by Vishnu and destroyed by Siva — a rather neater division of labor than is found among the deities of some other nations. The Abracadabranese, for example, are created by Sin, maintained by Theft and destroyed by Folly. The priests of Brahma, like those of Abracadabranese, are holy and learned men who are never naughty.
O Brahma, thou rare old Divinity, First Person of the Hindoo Trinity
You sit there so calm and securely, With feet folded up so demurely —
You’re the First Person Singular, surely.
– Polydore Smith
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
For a Coming Extinction
Gray whale
Now that we are sending you to The End
That great god
Tell him
That we who follow you invented forgiveness
And forgive nothing
| I write as though you could understand
And I could say it One must always pretend something Among the dying When you have left the seas nodding on their stalks Empty of you Tell him that we were made On another day The bewilderment will diminish like an echo Winding along your inner mountains Unheard by us And find its way out Leaving behind it the future Dead And ours When you will not see again The whale calves trying the light Consider what you will find in the black garden And its court The sea cows the Great Auks the gorillas The irreplaceable hosts ranged countless And foreordaining as stars Our sacrifices Join your word to theirs Tell him That it is we who are important – W. S. Merwin |